Freewill vs. Determinism

Do you believe in freewill or determinism? Or both? Please elaborate.

 

perhaps each unit has partial control over the whole. each cell of our body is partially controlled through our awareness, partially through its own. i feel this is the same with the human race and our collective unconscious. determinism is so bland and ugly to me. i'd rather not see things that way.

 

How can one choose choicelessness?

 

I can appreciate determinism, but I think I believe in free-will on several levels.

 

I think we sometimes confuse "free will" with indeterminacy or our ability to predict. Quantum mechanics and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle provide the classic illustration. Locating a particle makes the particle's momentum uncertain, and conversely, measuring it's momentum makes its location uncertain. But "free will" suggests something more than just unpredictability, although unpredictability would be part of it. And our sense of making choices may be an illusion, if what we perceive to be our choice is entirely predictable by a psychologist. I do think that an android can be programmed to deal with new environmental stimuli that the programmer did not expect the android to encounter--i.e., to solve problems. Is that free will? For example, a Catholic android encounters puberty and/or a pedophilic priest; a fundamentalist android encounters Darwin in college. Conflicts in the programming can cause strains that must be resolved. We've seen it on StarTrek, where the contradictions can lead the computer to become paralyzed or blow a fuse, but the pressures for humans to function in the world may lead to different solutions. Through feedback and memory, the solution may be incorporated into an expanded program and might alter the existing program. When a person encounters a robber in a dark alley, and the robber tells him "Your money or your life", whatever decision the victim makes is likely to be a function of values that were acquired through earlier conditioning, as well as a calculation of odds that is a function of reasoning or logic. Neither of those is exactly free will. Is it any different when a person is given the "choice" "Heaven if you follow these rules, and Hell if you don't"? I find the concept of "free will" to be almost oxymoronic and on the same plane with the Trinity and virgin birth, something impossible to get one's mind around.

 

that's what happens when you can't see outside of your own logic.

 

As none of us can.

 

i said see, not think. we all can see without our logic.

 

Have you seen the adam sandler movie "click"? I think its like that. You do things like a robot unless there is a moment of self reflection, where you realize that you can consciously make a change in your behavior. However, there is always an uncertainty of whether the new choice will have a positive or negative outcome.

 

Yup. Quantum mechanics is one of the "levels" that I mentioned in my last post, a level on which I can imagine free-will existing. Though I don't think it works unless you bring a theory like quantum consciousness (see Penrose and Hameroff) into the picture.

Some other levels I've considered are:

Compatibilism: The idea that it's not freedom that defines our will (at least, not in the sense that we aren't controlled by the laws of nature), but that it's always "us" who initiate our actions. We may be controlled by natural laws, but these laws have to work through us in order to have their effects.

Universal Freedom: this is an idea of mine in which I conceive of the universe in its entirety as free, and our freedom comes from our partaking in the universe's freedom in virtue of our being part of it. But this view only works when you consider the universe outside time and space - in which case the only thing it chooses (or can choose) is to exist.

Subjective Freedom: this is another idea of mine in which I conceive of our subjective experiences as more fundamental to defining reality than what most people take to be objective fact. So if we feel free, we are free. But there's still a mapping that links the objective rules of determinism to our choices, and the scheme for that mapping is to link physical causes with our reasons or justifications for the choices we make and physical effects with the actions we take in response to our reasons and justifications. If there is a necessary link between physical causes and effects, this link corresponds to our free-will in the subjective paradigm, linking our reasons and justifications to our actions. Reasons and justifications don't force us to act, but they always seem to be there backing up our actions. For this reason, I sometimes refer to this view as the "third way" view - meaning that free-will isn't determinism yet it isn't really something that breaks from determinism either - it's a "third way".

 

I haven't seen the movie, so my response might not be relevant. I wonder though about that "moment of self reflection, where you realize you can consciously make a change in your behavior." Where does it come from? What causes it to happen? Your choice? And if so, how does that work?

These things are difficult for me to handle in the abstract. Let's take a topical issue: homosexuality. Often the ethical/moral arguments on this are presented in terms of determinism versus choice. Are people "born that way" or do they choose it? The implication is that if the former is true, they can't be blamed or held responsible for it, and if the latter is the case, they can. It seems to me that it's worth distinguishing, as some Christian denominations do, between homosexual orientation and homosexual behavior. The orientation, same-gender attraction, is very difficult to conceptualize as a choice without being absurd. It's unlikely that anyone sits down and thinks about what to be attracted to, or if they did, to pick the one that seems to offer few advantages and many disadvantages. It is possible that if a person really put his mind to it (s)he could change orientation by deliberating blocking certain thoughts and willing others. It is somewhat more possible that a person might submit to some kind of thought reprogramming--"reparative therapy" or "conversion therapy"--which claim to be successful in a minority of cases. But why would anyone do that? Because of pressures or influences so strong that they motivate the efforts--fear, guilt, shame, etc. Should we say that that is free will at work? And if it were successful, would the subject be free or brainwashed? I think it would be probably easier to work on homosexual behavior--i.e., abstention from same sex relations and/or practice of opposite sex relations. Celibacy is possible, given proper motivation, although certainly difficult. The same issues exist, although maybe in lesser form: is the overriding motivation that brought about the change really free, or is it determined by some more powerful stimulus: guilt, fear, shame, etc.? And does that count as free will? And would it have been possible for psychologists knowing all the facts to have predicted that this would happen, given the totality of influences on the particular person concerned?

 

wow, what you say probes very deep into the understanding of human psyche and human society as a whole, I am just a simple being, I don't think I know the right answer. However, these are very good questions.
I will try to give you my perspective which is more based on religion than medical science or any serious understanding of any social philosophies. It seems that every action that we carry out has some sort of result on many levels. For instance, you brush your teeth everyday, then the physical result maybe that your teeth may not likely rot in the near future, but there is also a mental result, you may start liking the feeling of freshness in your mouth. You may not like to drink your coffee in the morning without ever brushing your teeth. Similarly, the moment of self reflection where you all of a sudden are aware of your behavior or actions is a similar result of certain actions. Maybe this involves a random act of kindness on your part or a girlfriend dumps you and you start reflecting on what is it that truly makes you happy. Anything really...but is that result good or bad? well that depends on how you look at it.
In hinduism, we call that karma. Your past actions and their results cause you to self reflect.
Now you may not be satisfied with this, and ask "Is it karma that a homosexual in this society faces so many difficulties pertaining to self identification?" ,my biased Hindu answer would be, "yes".
How do you account for the society's effects over the individual? Its still past karma , karma that he has acquired in a previous life.
So was this karma good or bad? Is Homosexuality an abnormal condition?Thats really up to your interpretation.

 

if you decided to sit and do nothing, not even think, for the rest of your life, would that action be predetermined? i don't have an answer.....just thought it was a cool question....

 

The real question is can you sit and do nothing? Even when you are sitting, you are acting. Your muscles - some of them maintain your posture, thoughts rush into your mind as your mind races elsewhere, or if you were lets say completely paralyzed and lie down, still you are doing something, you are breathing. When your body dies, it still does something- it decays.

 

true, but would physical drives support someone sitting and doing nothing else until they died? (assuming they aren't depressed)

 

No because they have to eat, they have to do other things. If you ever work in a hospital, physically one cannot stay in one position for a long time without forming sores. In hospitals, patients who are bedridden are moved to a different position least every two hours, so you see it is not possible to even sleep, how would it be possible to sit?

 

how about lie down? is it not possible to let the body die?

 

my point, of course, is to see if there is a difference between the drives of the body and personal will.

 

Determinism.

I don't think that there is such a thing as a soul. I don't think that there is a divine plane of existence where other beings can influence our thoughts. I don't think that conciousness or the mind is more than the product of neural interactions in our brains. This leads me to the same conclusion concerning thoughts.

If you will take it as given that all your thoughts are a product of electrical interactions between cells, then you must conclude that your beliefs, choices, and actions are the same. If there is no being or particle in the universe that is not governed by the laws of physics, then the all interactions, including electrical, chemical, atomic, etc, can all be organized according to physical laws. If this is true, then everything that happens in your cells, between your cells, in your body, and in your brain can be defined by physics. This would mean that everything everywhere is run by interactions between atoms, molecules, electrons, quarks, and whatever else goes in that category. This means that if you knew the exact placement and motion of every particle everywhere, along with how all these interactions worked, you could extrapolate that backwards through time and know everything that ever happened. Similarly, you could extrapolate it forward and know everything that ever would happen, precisely the way that it MUST happen. Of course, it is doubtful that anyone will ever have anything close to this knowledge, but whether we understand it or not, it remains true.

I have no reason to think that this is not the case. I don't think our bodies are immune to physics just because we are alive. In fact, as creationists have so often pointed out, our being here relies on a lot of physical laws and values.

yyyesiam - I don't think there is a difference between these two things. Of course, you can ignore things like hunger and fatigue for a while, but then things start shutting down. I don't think you can decide to passively die. You could starve, freeze, any number of things if you had that willpower to override your bodily signals, but I don't think a person can have enough control over their own body to just shut it off.

 

repeat.