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Is free will real or just an illusion?

Free will is the idea that we are able to have choice in how we act and assumes that we are free to choose our behaviour, in other words we are self determined. According to free will, a person is responsible for their own actions.

Do we have free will or is it an illusion?

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Perhaps it's wishful thinking on my part, but I believe that we have free will; I believe in fate to a small extent, but I don't think our general actions are predetermined :holmes:
Original post by chelseadagg3r
Free will is the idea that we are able to have choice in how we act and assumes that we are free to choose our behaviour, in other words we are self determined. According to free will, a person is responsible for their own actions.

Do we have free will or is it an illusion?


Simple answer: No.

Longer Answer: No. Our behaviors are a physical result of physical phenomenon happening in our brain or interacting with it. Free will implies that we could have acted in a different way than we did, when we simply couldn't have. In the same way a bowling ball has no choice in how it travels down the lane.
I think we have free will to an extent. For example I can decide to eat and egg, but if you ask a guy why he willingly tight-ropes across a canyon, he won't have the most relatable answer... as for what the real answer is, I have no clue.
Reply 4
It's actually real.

It exists like Venn diagrams where everyone has it.

So one person's free will to be a certain way is partly encircled by one, or many, other Venn diagrams that colour the perception of what that person's actions mean.

Some of the financially or politically powerful tend to remain powerful so by abstracting, dividing, their power- e.g. by there being a middle class, or aspirations to join a middle class. By making an arguably selfish thing refracted in to being a common goal.

I'm not sure that without the powerful as boogie men, there'd properly be a meek.

Without the powerful to feel morally superior to, most of us would probably have to work a lot harder for the same feelings of financial, cultural, worth.
Not least because many of the things that people appreciate, like stately homes and public parks, were created by the powerful.

We live in the reflection of others free will, which includes the freedom to be under the guidance or wage of the more powerful.
(edited 6 years ago)
I think we like the idea of free will but that our biology plays a big part in the way we behave. For example, someone who has a lot of adrenaline will make more risky choices or become a daredevil, but is that still a conscious decision or is he/she influenced by their natural tendencies?
Until it can be described mathematically, human will is unbound. Describing true void is impossible, or at least too inconvenient to matter.

This is an extra-terrestrial dialogue.
I think we have free will
I’m not going to agree or disagree that there is freewill. But I am willing to look at one side for a moment.
It is easier to believe in freewill. Especially in cases of crime. The belief that someone had no control or choice over their actions and killed someone else, or robbed or raped someone else is JUST a condition of the brain and not a choice is difficult. If that is the case we shouldn’t be angry at them because they couldn’t help themselves. Some may say that that is a bit extreme but I can see why people believe there is free will. It makes our emotions towards bad situations more “justified” and bearable.
Original post by chelseadagg3r
Free will is the idea that we are able to have choice in how we act and assumes that we are free to choose our behaviour, in other words we are self determined. According to free will, a person is responsible for their own actions.

Do we have free will or is it an illusion?


It is an illusion. Decisions are simply interactions of neurons in the brain. These interactions are merely flows of electrical charge. Why the mind exists to experience the illusion that it has free will is the real question.
To some extent we are deprived on choice mekin because of circumstances but c'ant we manage the situations within the confiments# just asking?
Original post by Farm_Ecology
Simple answer: No.

Longer Answer: No. Our behaviors are a physical result of physical phenomenon happening in our brain or interacting with it. Free will implies that we could have acted in a different way than we did, when we simply couldn't have. In the same way a bowling ball has no choice in how it travels down the lane.


/closethread
Original post by awkwardshortguy
It is an illusion. Decisions are simply interactions of neurons in the brain. These interactions are merely flows of electrical charge. Why the mind exists to experience the illusion that it has free will is the real question.

What should be done to people who make wrong decisions that harm others? Since it was just an interaction with neurons, should it go punished or unpunished? Should everyone in prison for something violent take medication so that the neurons can interact in a proper way? Is the mind an illusion?
Yes and no.

Like once ya get into 'free will is fake' stuff, are we gonna start excusing genocidal dictators and rapists because all that behaviour was pre-determined by the universe? Nope. From our perspective, we recognise all those crimes as active choices that could've not been taken, and that is our version of free will.

Whether or not that extends further from our own reach and reality isn't really important, so even if it is an illusion, it's one of our own making that we adhere to because that's our own inherent belief system (therefore valid in terms of humanity).

I mean hey, time ain't a thing either but we're living pretty linear.
An illusion. We can only choose between the choices we are given.
Please can somebody tell me what you think the name of Trevor's cat is in my previous post is and why? It's your free will whether to spend the time of course. It's your free will whether to roll a die, whether to merely imagine that you rolled a die, whether to choose by your own self-appointed criteria, or some other logic.
Original post by master of none
An illusion. We can only choose between the choices we are given.


We can't do even that. Ultimately our brains are determined by data received. For example, If you can't decide between two dishes and finally you decide for one of them for no reason, it's because your brain received some info that the food is more required by organism.
We get programmed by reality and we execute the program. The search for awarness is rubbish, it's unlikely to be an abrakadabra everybody's looking for, only neural network reacting to inputs, accordingly to coded proteins and structure of the network itself.

Original post by shadowdweller
Perhaps it's wishful thinking on my part, but I believe that we have free will; I believe in fate to a small extent, but I don't think our general actions are predetermined :holmes:


How do you want to keep laws of physics valid, if our lifes are not predetermined?
I think the only answer you can give definitely is either "we have both" or "we'll never know".
In psychology we focus on the free will vs determinism debate that expresses the age old question that is whether our behaviour is determined by genes or by ourselves. Honestly, it isn't all that easy to answer. Firstly, we know we have innate behaviours that allow us to hunt and mate etc without getting too weird about it. The idea that I will hunt for food when I am hungry is an innate desire. The chemicals in my brain tell me that hunger is an uncomfortable feeling and thus I attempt to remove it. You (probably) wouldn't criticise a starving man from stealing bread. Perhaps his hand moved by itself. I'm sure in such a situation, your morals go out of the window. However, what makes this debate so hard is the modern system. Whereas millions of years ago a man may steal to stay alive, these days we have punishment systems and, most importantly, a conscience. This is where free will comes in. We can't possibly compare ourselves to animals anymore. As we refuse to eat off anything but a plate or from packaging we believe is clean, and as we seek refuge in homes that can't just be shelter, but must 'look nice', we can't really be compared to even apes. Let's take mating, for example. For the most part, there's a respected system. Although we all have trouble staying still when we see someone that really takes pur fancy, we invite them on a date, charm them and be nice to them until we've.won them over. That element is free will. The more innate option would be the males fight each other until someone wins and yay the ladies taken for like 2 mins until the guys done his bit. And yeah, some idiots still have this mentality, but these days we label them as rapists and shun them. Do you get what I'm saying or is this too far-fetched? Even simple things like manners, for example. Is it innate to hold the door for someone? No, but in countries where it's polite, such as the UK, everyone does it, even if it takes time out of their busy life. That doesn't sound very innate to me, especially as in other countries such as in Asia it isn't done at all. But then again, this is all assuming early humans had no morals at all, which isn't something I can say, but I think I can safely assume. Honestly this response is all over the place but I find this subject really interesting. However I don't have a definite opinion so I'll retail this as a collection of crummy and incomplete ideas.#urwelcome #tldr
Original post by PTMalewski

We get programmed by reality and we execute the program. The search for awarness is rubbish, it's unlikely to be an abrakadabra everybody's looking for, only neural network reacting to inputs, accordingly to coded proteins and structure of the network itself.


I'd say, purely on that basis, that you're a proponent of materialism,
'the view that all facts (including facts about the human mind and will and the course of human history) are causally dependent upon physical processes, or even reducible to them'.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/materialism-philosophy

This raises the question of what is the difference between the brain
and the mind and how that relates to morality and that's possibly one of the most 'alice down the rabbit hole'
http://www.inwardquest.com/questions/3306/what-does-the-term-down-the-rabbit-hole-mean
of all philosophy:

www.iep.utm.edu/dualism

and not one that any of us could possibly do justice to in even a long post on here. Your post is a posit but not universally agreed upon as
some, perhaps lucky, people who aren't so dependent on the opinions of most people in the public space that we call 'reality' (outside of the private space of the home tending to be regarded in general as more comfortingly allowing imagination, allowing 'master of my own castle' thinking).

The distance between the private and the public space, is particularly broken down in modern times by the internet, television, radio. So, as
what constitutes what most people regard as 'reality' changes, as choices for most people increase, the number and overlapping nature of
'realities' in one person increases and one program ends up, often unconsciously, being the primary overriding one trying to make sense of or simplify the other programs.

So maybe you're right but there is always some extra thing that makes people do things outside of what their prior programming would be
expected, at least on the surface, to make them do. It might take a stunningly talented person, a stunningly beautiful person, for instance, to shake up the programs but is their 'stunning' nature really reality or is it the private space being reflected in to the public space as if the two
are the same?
(edited 6 years ago)
Reply 19
It's a hard question to answer. Personally I don't think we do as we cannot see the future, thus cannot change our minds from what it would have been.

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