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Do you believe in “free will”? Why or why not?

pcjoylov 4 Jan 3
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No, I don't. I'm a determinist. I think the closest we come to free will is what the compatibilists reference — the ability to act as we desire — but we cannot choose our desires, our motivations, what we value, etc. We are products of our environment, out past experiences, our biochemistry, and so on. Although we can strengthen our resolve through habit, and that feels like a real choice, there's necessarily an underlying drive, a value that we cannot author, that allows us to behave accordingly. At our core, we're products of causality. I have thought about this considerably and I see no viable alternative.

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I think in the main I do. How we willingly act is a result of our past (education, experiences, culture etc) and current circumstances. As those factors can be changed, we can modify how people choose to act.

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Undecided... Everything is, in a sense, preordained by the universal physical laws, both known and yet to be discovered. Mankind may never be able to grasp the determinant aspect completely, but if they could, they would see that free will is merely an illusion. Having studied quantum mechanics I learned that the uncertainty principle exists because of mathematical and scientific limitations that prevent the decoupling of position and momentum, we overcome the limitation and that all breaks down like Newtonian Mechanics does at relativistic speeds. But even if it cannot be overcome, what we understand as humans does not dictate how the universe behaves.
That said, there could be an emergent property of deterministic aspects that is free will. The free will would introduce indeterminable causes which will have determinable effects.

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Yes because you can literally change the structure of your brain by making the choice to be different and then cultivating different thoughts and actions.

Myah Level 6 Jan 4, 2018
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I do as I Please... I am under Management By My Man in the Mirror.

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I do not believe in total free will .Why? Because how can you deny that your environment and genetically inherited characteristics play a part in your thought process ,therefore you are programmed to think a certain way.An example is an individuals religious beliefs which their environment brainwashed them into ,and their weak minded characteristics that they were born with that may prevent them from questioning this nonsense

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Maybe we have free will and maybe we don't. You have no way to tell so you might as well act as if you do .

Or assume that you don't. It's not like your assumption will have any real world effect either way.

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In general yes, depending on how you define it. Did I have a choice to reply to this or not? I think I did. I am certain my choices are not controlled by a supreme being so in that sense I have free will. I also believe in the fundamental interconnectedness of all things. One could argue in the latter sense, I have limited will vs. free will.

I'll leave it to others to argue semantics...

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Yes because as an atheist, who else's will would I be serving if not my own

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