Free will

[lw1990]

that's interesting, I have never heard of people having their brains removed so they can experience this realm with their physical body and 'mind'

I mean, since the 'mind' can survive death, and the brain can't, why do you need your brain? get to removing it bro

[Webbman]

your missing the point. Logic without wisdom always misses the point. This is why the world is such a shithole.

there are those in this world, where you live, that want you to believe that you are nothing more than machines or animals so they can feel better about themselves as they slaughter you. Their entire existence is dominated by the false ideology that they are somehow divine and you are worthless but the truth is that they make themselves worthless simply by thinking this way. These morons spend all their time dreaming of the day when the great world class slaughterhouse is built and you all get to line up and be sacrificed to their inhumane insanity.

your thinking that you have no free will, or this is a computer simulation, or your just an animal or any of this nonsense serves to reinforce their position, and so it should since they come up with that idea. All their ideas are garbage though and lead to slaughter of the innocent, including their so called own if required. All manner of nightmares springs from this and usually have some sort of "ism" attached, though they are all the same.

The only way to combat such evil, evil you don't believe in, is to ensure that each individual human is special (equal in the sense that all are human beings and have their own gifts) in some way, and I assure you this is true, though whether or not you wish to see it is up to you.

The last thing they want is you going around being special, using your gifts, and exerting your free will.

Don't throw down your shield just yet. There's still a tiger in these woods waiting to pounce on you.

[lw1990]

I'm not missing the point, you are (see how useless this assertion you came up with is?)

Your worldview sees dictators, rulers, the 1%, the spoiled brats, the tyrants as 'evil', and 'seeking emotional justification', they couldn't care less most of them; and news flash, they are not some special breed of human, they are what happens to ordinary people when bestowed with wealth and power - take any average joe off the street, and they can easily turn corrupt given the same priveleges, power, and wealth over time. It's human nature, not some division between powerful groups and powerless groups. People like you who utterly fail to understand the division the idea of free will creates perpetuate the problem.

If there were 1000000 trillion humans alive on earth (or however many it would take to completely cover every part of the Earth) you would not say humans are special and should all equally starve to death. You don't understand that the nature of the problem is humanity's wellbeing as a whole, not some individual divinity. To increase the wellbeing of humanity as a whole, we have to start looking at us as we are - an interconnected system, who create both our 'heroes' and our 'monsters'. Free will removes blame and responsibility from society as a whole by saying it exists in individuals or local groups, non-free-will assigns blame equally to the entire universe (therefore destroying it) and allowing us to formulate clear plans for improving human wellbeing without idiotic circle jerk ideological notions like 'evil' that need to be eliminated by any stupid means possible like strapping a bomb to your chest and blowing up infidels or 'evil' people who don't agree with whatever divisive ideological stance you have.

[Webbman]

all the division of people is planned, enforced and reinforced by people, not a function of a persons free will. Every collective that has ever existed sooner or later serves evil no matter how good the original intent.

this is why the individual is so important.

[The Great Dog]

Sam Harris, the philosopher and neuroscientist, delves into this topic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FanhvXO9Pk

TGD

[lw1990]

Even if the argument of no-free-will isn't convincing to you personally, it should be extraordinarily obvious that something is wrong or something is fishy when it's not convincing to the vast majority (99%+) of the population despite there being no scientific evidence to support the idea. This hugely disproportionate belief concerns humans primarily, goes against all of the evidence, and therefore has all of the trademarks of bias, yet the humans still continue to repeat the mistakes of history when it concerns their own ego and lack of humility. First we believed we were at the center of the universe, center of the solar system, the only 'planet' (before there was a notion of planets) there was, etc. Continually shown how idiotic our bias is, and now, a free will "mini-god-of-self-control" bias is laid out in front of the community here and all they can do is keep drinking the kool-aid.

We don't have to prod each individual to find out this is the case; society at large functions with notions of blame, responsibility. We react with disgust, label people criminals or enemies or things that would be better off obliterated, instead of identifying poor methods of doing things that create bad behaviors, instead of empathizing with really bad behavior as sick and needing help or rehabilitation. Even if we don't have the resources to do that, and have to lock them up or euthanize them, if you see it as a problem that can be fixed rather than a target to attack you can actually take steps to prevent it from getting worse.

Instead, this HUGE ideological virus is going unnoticed, even to people who read this thread and choose to blind themselves to the inescapable conclusion that's drawn in everyone's mind after reading the first paragraph of this post.

[BirdyNumNums]

If you experienced complete free will you would likely loose all your family and friends and instead live in your own grand and wondrous existence but you wouldn't care and you certainly wouldn't care to prove the existence of free will.

Some self imposed limits on your free will helps you fit into the world as we know it.

Rather than proof of existence seek proof in experience.
Experience it in you mind, your body, your feelings, your interactions.
Ask for it, seek it, practice it, crave it, experience it, demand it and allow it.
Come back in a thousand years and let us know how it all feels.

[Solar]

Allow me to present you a very unpopular notion, that there is no free will.

How is it that Free Will was used in creating a thread which then seeks to posit the nonexistence of that which was enacted to create it? That is a contradiction. The very existence of this thread is a contradiction of its notion that Free Will supposedly doesn't exist as are any and all Choices to participate in it. For, it was by way of Free Will, Choice, and Volition, that the thread was made.

"To arrive at a contradiction is to confess an error in one’s thinking; to maintain a contradiction is to abdicate one’s mind and to evict oneself from the realm of reality." - Ayn Rand

[lw1990]

It is a contradiction that something created by free will did anything, because free will is a structural impossibility, like true randomness, or action at a distance, or traveling back in time.

[Younger Dryas]

Where does an idea come from?

For me, Mercury. We don't have to follow all their instructions. Perhaps we should though.

[jtb]

Making a decision is free will. Animals indeed have free will. I observed a lone dog walking on a side walk, approached the curb, looked left, no cars, looked right, saw a car coming, then turned around and went back to the side walk.

When in my car with my daughter's dog, I accidentally made a sharp noise and the dog turned and looked in the direction of the noise. I waited about a minute and made the same noise. The dog didn't flinch. Through association, the dog decided the noise was no threat and didn't react.

When I took my male and female dogs for a walk, Nickie knew exactly where she wanted to go and tried to pull me there. Sammie was happy-go-lucky and just looking for the next fire hydrant. Woman: What are your plans after we visit my mother and go grocery shopping? Man: I don't care. Whatever you want to do. "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife...". Men are wimps. A doe first enters a clearing and if she doesn't get shot, the buck follows. A man opens the door for a woman, and if she doesn't get shot, he follows. Me and my brothers were in the hay mount daring each other to jump into a mound of loose hay. Without saying a word, my sister climbed up with us and jumped. We all followed.

I noticed that when a woman approaches a door labeled "Pull", she unconsciously reads the sign and pulls. A man unconsciously reads the "Pull" sign and pushes. Saw a surveillance video where a masked male burglar gave up pulling the unlocked door. The sign on the door said "Push".

Not sure if plants have free will.

[Sovereign Slave]

Am new to actually reading the forum posts here (though not to EU), so am very slowly making my way through them and this one caught my attention. Great topic, as it is quite thought provoking. However, there is what I believe to be a fatal flaw in your opening post, lw, and as a result in all the subsequent posts...you failed to define "free will." What is "free," what is "will," and what does it mean when you put the two words together? Without a clearly delineated single definition, there's no solid foundation for meaningful debate. And I suspect that pinning down a meaningful definition for something as nebulous as free will may prove more challenging than it seems, and perhaps much more challenging than determining whether we actually have it or not. Or, put another way, how you define it probably determines whether we have it or not.

[jtb]

Sovereign, We're all slaves, but most just think they are free. My stab a defining "free will". I didn't start this thread.
FREEWILL', noun Webster's 1828 Dictionary
"1. The power of directing our own actions without restraint by necessity or fate. 2. Voluntariness; spontaneousness."

FREE, noun [Heb. See Frank.]
"1. Being at liberty; not being under necessity or restraint, physical or moral; a word of general application to the body, the will or mind, and to corporations."

The definitions of "freewill" & "free" imply spontaneous action directed by unrestrained desire.

WILL, noun [See the Verb.]
"1. That faculty of the mind by which we determine either to do or forbear an action; the faculty which is exercised in deciding, among two or more objects, which we shall embrace or pursue. The will is directed or influenced by the judgment. The understanding or reason compares different objects, which operate as motives; the judgment determines which is preferable, and the will decides which to pursue. In other words, we reason with respect to the value or importance of things; we then judge which is to be preferred; and we will to take the most valuable. These are but different operations of the mind, soul, or intellectual part of man. Great disputes have existed respecting the freedom of the will will is often quite a different thing from desire."

Exercising one's will results in making a reasoned judgement as to which motive, or object to pursue absent desire. I may desire cheesecake, but through reasoned judgement I choose an apple because I'm on a diet to loose weight.

It appears that "free will" would mean making a forced reasoned judgement. I allowed my children to choose between the belt or being grounded. They always reasoned, and made the judgement that the belt was preferable to grounding which restricted their freedom.

[Sovereign Slave]

Touche, jtb, for throwing my moniker back in my face, as is appropriate for this discussion. My suspicion is that as with Sovereign Slave, free will at it’s heart is a dichotomy, though I also suspect that most things that can be labeled as True actually are dichotomies.

But thanks for providing some definitions. Seems to make sense to start with your definition of “will” first: “That faculty of the mind by which we determine either to do or forbear an action; the faculty which is exercised in deciding, among two or more objects, which we shall embrace or pursue.” Seems it’s saying one function of the mind gives us the capability to act and decide or not. So, if we are capable of determining, by extension we must also be “free” to make determinations, or we would never act or decide on anything. So in that sense I’d say our will is free, or at least capable of being free.

However, if we look at the definition of “free:” “not being under necessity or restraint, physical or moral,” and put it in front of “will,” who can really claim to be able to make determinations totally independent of necessity or restraint? Seems there are an infinite number of factors that can both influence and limit our ability to exercise our will, everything from ingrained and/or programmed beliefs, limited knowledge and experience, fears, misconceptions, habits, pier pressure, cravings and addictions, outside forces, on and on. The list of necessities and restraints is probably infinite.

So, the will is by definition quite capable of making choices and decisions (and pretty much constantly does), but is it capable of doing so without necessities or restraints? Doesn’t seem like it, at least not for most people most of the time. On the other hand, the other part of the definition of “will” is: “The will is directed or influenced by the judgment.” So, in addition to whatever other necessities or restraints that may be influencing the will at any given time, it is still directed or influenced by judgement, which is defined as: “the forming of an opinion, estimate, notion, or conclusion, as from circumstances presented to the mind.” So though the will may never be totally free, the fact that we are able to apply judgement in the exercise of will would seem to contradict the will being COMPLETELY subjected to constraints, or predestination, or mechanistic override.

My hunch is that, much like electricity, free will is scalable.

Ok, got to go, cheesecake run.

[jtb]

Sovereign, didn't mean to offend you. Many years ago I studied law on my own. I always knew there was something wrong with getting a license when my dad told me he got one for his dog and his wife on the same day. In school we were told that a slave had to ask permission of his master to marry. A license is permission to do something illegal or unlawful & receive protection from the issuer while in compliance. A marriage license is a General Limited Partnership between you, your wife, and the gov't. Each have 1/3 interest in the assets of the partnership, including your children. Gov't collects their interest in the form of an inheritance tax when the partnership dissolves (you die). Only the issuer can dissolve the partnership (divorce). Birth certificates enter your children as articles of trade in interstate commerce relinquishing 100% ownership to the gov't, which in turn assigns you as guardians of their children during periods of good behavior.

A Sovereign is under Common Law: the law of Nature and Nature's God. A subject (slave) is under Statute Law, rules and regulations created by the sovereign. In England, the Aristocracy, blood line relatives of the King, were under Common Law; subjects under Statute Law. In 1933, American Citizens lost their sovereignty when the States in which they resided went bankrupt. Before 1933 it was against the Common Law for a Citizen to commit murder in NYS. After 1933, we lost our Citizenship (capital C) and murder was against Article 133 of the NYS Penal Code. I could go on, but suffice it to say: we're all slaves and legally or lawfully, own nothing, and sovereign in our minds only.