Free will does not exist

No rational person continues to feel the pain of guilt for things beyond their control. However the wisest of us will hang onto that feeling, storing it away in the back of their minds as a reminder and a learning experience. I fail to see how determinism is required to make peace with one's past.

 

Your beliefs are result of Free will, unless they are the result of fear, so don't fool yourself. People love to pretend that they aren't responsible for what they do.

 

i blieve that we have free will, but at the same time, whatever the higher thing is that's keeping an eye on us knows how it's going to turn out. it puts the situations down, we make a choice, it goes from there. we can't really know, only it can, but it's all leading up to something big and every action by every person serves a purpose, no matter how trivial it may seem.

 

Anyone at all? What are the pragmatic implications of determinism and how does being a determinist in practice benefit you?

 

Determinism may have implications in terms of the influence that a deterministic philosophy has on other beliefs that one holds. For example within the field of psychology some theories are rejected due to deterministic implications for human behavior which stem from those theories. This definitely has real implications because it influences how grant money is spent and how therapeutic methods are structured. I cannot, at the moment, think of a way in which determinism has an immediate and direct influence on one's daily activities.

 

Free will does exist.
The proof: I am writing this post without being forced to do it by anyone or anything.
Try to meditate it.

 

That's a good answer. I agree that in psychology certain philosophical assumptions must be made for the purpose of theories. Like Freud's psychic determinism for example.

I'm still waiting on how determinism makes the existentialist concept of free will invalid in practice though.

 

All but the completely retarded determinists believe in the importance of deliberating on our actions and by doing this we can influence our situational responses and do have freedom over our destinies. So get deliberating! The more you do it the freer you'll be.

 

If determinism is true, and if determinism makes free will impossible then perhaps this undermines existentialism because it means that the value or meaning that a person attributes to something is forced upon them by conditions which they cannot control. A person would still be free, as in free from constraints, to decide what various experiences mean to them but without belief in free will they would have to acknowledge that they could not have chosen to ascribe any other meaning than the one they 'decided' upon. It does not undermine existentialism in the sense that one could still reject pre-existing notions about value and meaning, but perhaps it does undermine it in the sense that without free will meaning and value are still being ultimately forced upon the observer.

 

Assuming hard determinism is true it undermines all value, purpose and human endeavor.

A lot of existentialists (myself included) are soft determinists. We can still make choices. We are free to choose to do something but we are bound to our learned responses. We can't do anything at all at any given point but we can choose to act or not. And regardless of the extent to which we are determined by causality, we are responsible for our actions.

 

We are both determined and deterministic. The apparent dichotomy between free will and determinism arises through our concept of time.
Time "passes" if you will, through the present moment not in a linear fashion, but from this moment to the next both toward the past and toward the future simultaneously.
It appears that we accumulate experience over time, that understanding or growth come from lessons or criteria filled from "past" activities. Yet the past becomes so as an artifact of the present. The sensation of the passage of time and the anticipation of the future comes from the expansion of our current awareness. We in a way see "farther back" and are better able to see "farther ahead" and find ourselves with a greater capacity to "guide" our lives with greater dexterity. The future as well an artifact of prescience.

 

So the extent to which we are aware of past, present and forthcoming causes is the extent to which we are in control of the future?

 

I had this argument for this topic lately, where I stole the notion of some sort of common consciousness, or collective... it went somewhat like this:
With the invention of languages and alphabet, man is able to pass on inventions. Sciences progress and spread quickly throughout time. Mankind is able to record and use empirical reasoning, and comes up with inventions that defeat the nature, such as contraceptives, the abortion method, drugs and medicine. This is done through some kind of collective consciousness, a collective effort of many individuals to invent to better their lives, in a great battle of survival.
well its not quite done up, it also is a partial argument, because it does not disprove anything really, but it has certain hope of free will in it after reading a little of modern philosophy....

 

Hello.
http://www.hipforums.com/newforums/showthread.php?t=382665&f=90

 

Past, present, and future are the linear perspective we have taken to explain the sensation of growth and the expansion of memory.
Events, while seeming to be close ended, (existing in time), are actually loose ended rhetorical concoctions whose character changes to the tune of our current slogans.
The emergent nature I am pointing to is less like establishing conditions and more akin to "growing space", or creation.

 

I believe we have what i would call semi free will. Saying we have complete free will or no free will are viewpoints that are to polarizing in my opinion. We don't have free will in the sense that we are limited to our bodies capabilities (individual body capabilities at that) so brain chemistry, physical strenths and weakness all limit the capacity of what us as individuals and a collective can do. That's why for the majority of history and even today we designate certain jobs and roles for males and females. Furthermore, we are somewhat a product of our enviornment. Our parents, peers, organizations and medias that we are thrown into and follow all influence not only our ideas and thoughts, but our possible ideas and thoughts. A kid raised strictly by wolves has a different notion of reality and possibilty and turns out to be a completely different kind of human.

That being said, we do have free will within our capabilities and make decisions not simply based on neurological programming or past knowledge of similar experience but by our choice. Also, we have what i guess ill call outlier moments of free will that go beyond our knowledge, thoughts, and instincts that usually send us into astonishment but are few and far between.

 

i've thought about this type of topic many times especially when in certain altered states. It seems like our brains may be just very very complex and involved electrical/chemical networks, and that information flows through the system in a set way. In this sense free will may just be an illusion. You can make a certain decision and argue free will but how can you tell that any other decision in that particular case was even a possible outcome to begin with?

 

In ancient Palestine there was a leader of an assassins guild that went by the name Hassan a Sabbah, he was responsable for numerous murders and conspiracy for murder, he alluded authorities most of his life but finally upon capture before they beheaded him they asked him why he could for his entire life devout his life to murder and other acts considered immoral to the average person.

His answer to the question and indeed his last words were simply this,

"Nothing is true, everything is permitted."

that saying has stuck with me since I first heard the story, I'm sorry if I derailed the thread.

 

One cold wonder why the ills of the world and the basic 'wickedness' of Man. What does it take to change one's own and other people's conscience.

For each individual there is the witch sitting by the stream of uncertain direction for the improvement of trust and unselfish use of the commonwealth (which is known as evident capacity to endeavor to defend each other's rights and application of the Golden Rule).

You ask: 'where do I go again' She answers: 'you can go hither along the stream, or go up the hill to the path of common sharing of the wealth for your esteemed talents and experience. The decision for bias is that simple'

 

I usually think that everything either has 100% chance of happening or a 0% chance of happening. Everything in the history of the universe has lead up to the very moment where you say what you say, do what you do. There is no other choice that you can make other than the choice that you made.