Why do most philosophers believe in free will? and what do free will entails for humans beings?

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Brightstar777

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I've been a hard deterministic for my entire life. I just can't wrap my head around free will. Our brains are made up of chemical pathways, so all of our decisions/thoughts/behavior must be determined by biochemistry and genetics. Or they are determined by environment.
 
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The first flaw in this thinking, if I may be so bold, is this: simply because something is influenced by physical processes does not mean it is determined by them in some crude, clockwork sense. You’ve committed what is often called a category error, conflating causation with predestination. Yes, the brain operates with biochemistry. But that does not equate to a mechanistic determinism devoid of agency or freedom. The pathways may exist, but are they shackles? No. They are tools, and tools don’t dictate the outcomes—they enable them.

You suggest that every decision is merely the result of a chain reaction of molecules. A reductionist argument worthy of a dull physicist, but it overlooks the complexity inherent in human thought. Even if one acknowledges the impact of genetics or environment, the brain still generates emergent properties, like consciousness and reflection. Are you so sure that there is no room within that vast, complicated machine for an unpredictable, creative element? Must every synapse and neuron fire according to some slavish, deterministic program? If so, then this very conversation was predestined—my words, your ideas, all part of an absurd cosmic joke. How convenient for the fatalist!

You might claim, of course, that "free will" is an illusion—a mere artifact of neural complexity. But if we dismiss free will as illusory, then why give credence to any of our thoughts? If you are just a biochemical automaton, why should I take your deterministic reasoning seriously? You can’t have it both ways—if determinism is all there is, then rationality itself collapses. We don’t reason; we just react. And if you’ve reacted to determinism rather than thoughtfully concluding it, your entire belief system self-implodes.

The deeper question you must ask yourself is not whether our brains are influenced by biology or environment, but whether these influences exhaust the realm of possibilities. Might there not be a level of freedom, of choice, within that field of influence? After all, even the most rigid scientific determinist must admit: life is full of surprises, unanticipated decisions, sudden reversals of direction. Are these mere illusions? How utterly boring and nihilistic that would be. The beauty of existence lies precisely in its uncertainty, in the unpredictable magic of choice and consequence.

So, perhaps you are uncomfortable with free will because it requires you to shoulder the weight of personal responsibility, the uncomfortable realization that your life, and indeed the world, might not be wholly scripted. It might just be yours to shape—chemistry be damned etc.
 
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Provided you're not a philosophical zombie, you're right here right now and it seems like you're consciously choosing things, it's the easiest conclusion to come to and it has plenty of evidence to support it.
 
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Why are you such a faggot that you made three threads one after another about muh civilization/philosophy, Mr. Greek Statue Man?
 
Brightstar777 said:
I've been a hard deterministic for my entire life.
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I've really wanted to have a conversation with someone on your side of the fence. Will you answer one question for me please?

Do you believe that free will is even theoretically possible - not necessarily possible in humans - I'm asking if you think it'd be possible to build a robot, or a biological being, that had free will. Like, do you think god could do it in this universe, using the laws of nature as we know them.
 
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Determinists would be much better off if science stopped in the year 1800 and Newton had been right about the world being like a huge game of electric billiards. Unfortunately for that outlook quantum processes follow an outcome distribution that appears to be sampled from randomly. I say appears to be, because the mechanism by which random outcomes are drawn is not entirely clear and "free will" is as good of an explanation for whats going on as any other.
 
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byron said:
Do you believe that free will is even theoretically possible - not necessarily possible in humans - I'm asking if you think it'd be possible to build a robot, or a biological being, that had free will. Like, do you think god could do it in this universe, using the laws of nature as we know them.
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Yes
 
Brightstar777 said:
Yes
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Very good. So, can you tell me what form that would take? I mean, if I had an AI (if you'd prefer to think about biological systems then let me know) is there a way for me to (a) give it free will - like, is there a mechanism or an algorithm or anything that you would describe as "the free will module" that I can could add to it, and (b) could you tell the difference, with black-box testing, between that AI and one without free will?
 
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byron said:
Very good. So, can you tell me what form that would take? I mean, if I had an AI (if you'd prefer to think about biological systems then let me know) is there a way for me to (a) give it free will - like, is there a mechanism or an algorithm or anything that you would describe as "the free will module" and (b) could you tell the difference, with black-box testing, between that AI and one without free will?
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AI is without a soul and has no free will. You will never manage to give it free will because only God knows the secrets of heaven.
 
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Brightstar777 said:
AI is without a soul and has no free will. You will never manage to give it free will because only God knows the secrets of heaven.
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Did you want to continue the conversation? It seems like with this comment you're bowing out.

I asked you if it was possible to build a robot with free will. You answered "yes."

Then I asked how you would give the robot (or AI) free will. See that highlighted word? I am not assuming the AI already has free will, in fact the opposite, I'm assuming it doesn't have it, and asking you how you would give it to it.

...and you answer, "but it doesn't have free will"

It's like if I asked you, "how would you give that homeless person breakfast" and you answer, "but he's homeless so he is without breakfast"
 
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Damn, you can't wrap your head around free will, but then you mention "souls" and "god's secrets of heaven", seems like a waste of time.

They were right, you will be entering your religious phase soon enough. Let's hope you don't lean into Islam.
 
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byron said:
Did you want to continue the conversation? It seems like with this comment you're bowing out.

I asked you if it was possible to build a robot with free will. You answered "yes."

Then I asked how you would give the robot (or AI) free will. See that highlighted word? I am not assuming the AI already has free will, in fact the opposite, I'm assuming it doesn't have it, and asking you how you would give it to it.

...and you answer, "but it doesn't have free will"

It's like if I asked you, "how would you give that homeless person breakfast" and you answer, "but he's homeless so he is without breakfast"
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Your questions are bloated, you want to be God but you lack will and power.

>I asked you if it was possible to build a robot with free will. You answered "yes."

Yes but we don't know how to do so.
 
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Brightstar777 said:
I've been a hard deterministic for my entire life. I just can't wrap my head around free will. Our brains are made up of chemical pathways, so all of our decisions/thoughts/behavior must be determined by biochemistry and genetics. Or they are determined by environment.
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This may not be a satisfactory answer, but I see two ways of grappling with this.

1) MY IDEALIST ANSWER
Material reality does not really exist as such, only consciousness. However, consciousness effects consciousness; the thoughts of other beings, most importantly a Supreme Being, can greatly constrain your own consciousness' ability to reshape reality. Imagine playing tug of war against an elephant. So it is with consciousness; you may try to will yourself into believing that a certain thing is not so (my leg wasn't really cut off by that axe murderer), but some things, particularly those that exist outside of our own thoughts, would run up against the observations of many other living creatures and the overall design of God, and so without the direct intervention of God it would be impossible to make it budge one inch.

Objective reality is the system of logic that can, with the most internal consistency, reconcile the varying experiences of every observer; it can change, at least in small fashion in its boundaries, as people's observations change. Your actions are still your actions as they flowed out of your thoughts which come from your own stream of consciousness.

In this view, consciousness is not epiphenomena of material conditions so much as material reality is epiphenomena of consciousness.

2) MY MATERIALIST ANSWER
If you take a fully materialist view of the world, then your decisions are indeed all strictly determined by biochemistry. In the sense that if you knew the exact physical state of the brain at an instant you could predict the next action with 100% accuracy, and then the next one, and so on, and so in some sense it is all predetermined.

However, I think you might say that we would just as well accept or reject determinism for predetermined reasons. In the end, you have to ask what is useful, practical. I think that, in a way, there is a sort of suspension of disbelief that determinism requires, a faith in free will.

At the end of the day, no creature can really function off of a belief in its own determinism. No creature acts as though it buys into the idea. This, to me, suggests that the idea may just be fraudulent to begin with if our very being rejects it so much.
 
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