Free Will: Does it Exist?

Metaphysics & Epistemology
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I am curious what everyone’s opinions on free will are.

For me, if we define free will as the idea that going back in time, you could have done something else, then I would patron soft and hard determinism.

In general it makes sense to me that we behave in a way that satisfies our wants, so on a macroscale I would deny freewill because if you go back in time you will have the same conditions, and thus same wants.

On a microscale, I am a physicalist so I don’t see any reason to think that our brains would behave any differently than the other matter that can be determined by physical laws. Even with quantum indeterminacy I still don’t really see how randomness is free will.

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I think free will is freedom from the laws of physics. And humans have madder and done many, many things that do not violate the laws of physics, but are not explained by them. In Incomplete Nature, Terrence Deacon writes of a boy skipping stones across the water, and computers. In Life as No One Knows It, Sara Imari Walker word about anti-accretion. There are counties other examples. These things would not happen/exist if only the laws of physics were at work.

Regarding going back and making the same choices again, it’s difficult to say. I sometimes make a decision, particularly when ordering food at a restaurant, randomly. Which entree? Which dessert. I always order last at the table, hoping that I will have an answer by the time they get to me. I often do not. Sometimes I still debate it, and ask other people. Sometimes I just pick one without, as far as I can tell, any reason. What I made the same choice again? I couldn’t know. However, it seems free from there laws of physics.

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To me this is a wrong way to approach the problem of FW because I could argue that at the time I HAD TO make a decision, and I chose X instead of Y barring I could do both. Had I been allowed to do both, I would’ve.

Your post, of course, is not the first to post the problem like it. So I think an analysis needs to be made as to why our action in the past betrays our sense of freewill.

To me, the past does not prove we have no freewill.

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I think it doesn’t matter whether we have “free will” or “determinism” – for this reason: We can not prove that what we do, did, or will do [whatever that might be] was an act of free will or the result of behavior-shaping exterior conditions. We exist, and consequently do stuff. It seems like we are in charge a good share of the time (other times not), but it doesn’t seem to make any difference.

I like beer. I prefer X brand over Y brand. (Brand preference for any product is likely engineered by exterior forces.) Within broad categories, beer is beer (you heard it here first). it all tastes very similar; it all has similar levels of alcohol; it all has similar color; it all is made in very similar ways. So we don’t have good reasons to prefer Budweiser over Millers, but we do. (Or you have some local brand that you like–no credit to you!)

Speaking of beer, perhaps you are an alcoholic. Did you decide to become an alcoholic? And/or you are addicted to coffee, cigarettes, and weed. Did you make a decision to ruin your health by smoking? You gambled your savings away and ended up in deep debt. Did you make a choice to end up broke? You were promiscuous and contracted several STDs, two of which have had long-term consequences (liver cancer and throat cancer–with completely different etiologies). Did you choose to have all that sex so that you could suffer from cancer?

I am certain you did not "choose of your own free will " to do any of the things that had negative consequences.

I could make up another list of choices that all worked out really well: you graduated from college, you got a good job, you married well, your house has appreciated 200% over the last 10 years, and people like your dog. You will readily claim all those things as the result of good choices, but maybe they had little to do with you. Maybe your ethnicity, parents income and aspirations, and management at your high school resulted in your attending college. You majored in a field with demand, rather than majoring in Medieval French Poetry or Philosophy.

You were born just in time for you to be looking for a job 22 years later during an economic boom. Your genes (which you had nothing to do with arranging) were responsible for your suitability as an attractive mate. Most dogs are likable; they don’t choose to be likable–evolution makes it possible for them to weasel their way into our affections as a survival skill. Fido doesn’t love you; fido’s evolved brain simply recognizes you as a good deal–much better than hunting for food himself and digging a hole to stay out of the cold rain.

OK, OK; I’ll take that back. Of course Fido loves you. He evolved to love you, and you love Fido. He can’t help himself. And neither can you.

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Here is a counterargument to your position. Supposing we behave in a way that satisfies our wants, it is nevertheless true that we often deliberate about what we want, we often find that we do not want what we thought we wanted, and we often realize that we don’t actually know what it is we want. Thus our wants are a product of uncertainty and rational deliberation rather than a simple given, and both uncertainty and rational deliberation are things that seem different from a causal-deterministic chain of events. After all, whenever we deliberate we at the same time presuppose that we are fully capable of coming to different conclusions; and whenever we reach a point of uncertainty or aporia we have lost grip on the guiding thread that was previously leading us. It would not be possible to deliberate while simultaneously presupposing that we cannot reach different conclusions, just as it would not be possible to be uncertain while at the same time simply following our wants in a linear manner.

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I am a Moral Nihilist
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Yeah, assuming microdeterminism is not true, this does make sense.

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I get what you are saying, and I pretty much agree. The issue with saying there isn’t free will is that it doesn’t really do anything for you. If you say a criminal shouldn’t be charged because they didn’t have free will, well if they still get punished that also wasn’t an act of free will. Saying free will doesn’t exist basically leads to a dead end immediately, and so you just have to act like you do have free will.

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I’m a compatibilist. Free will doesn’t require that I “could have done otherwise”; it only requires that my bodily behaviour conforms to my will. That my will is a causally determined process is irrelevant. The will doesn’t need to be some non-physical thing that recursively controls itself (or whatever it is free will libertarians think).

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The thing I don’t get about compatibalism is it just feels like saying because I feel like I have free will then I do, which is a fair enough point from a pragmatic perspective because you can’t do much under the assumption you don’t have free will, but I feel like it is kind of dishonest.

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I’m not saying that it seems that I have free will, therefore I have free will.

I’m saying:

  1. My will (usually) causally determines my body to move in the intended way
  2. I have free will if (1) is true
  3. My will is a causally determined physical process

The hard determinist disagrees with (1) and argues that we have free will only if “we could have done otherwise”

The free will libertarian disagrees with (3) and argues that the will is something else (something non-physical?).

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Okay I get what you are saying sort of, but what are you defining the phenomena of will as?

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That’s why for most thinkers the question of free will is settled. This is libertarian free will, and most philosophers agree it’s nonsensical.

It doesn’t, because the source of the decision wouldn’t be you.

That being said quantum indeterminacy is simply an interpretation, not a fact.

The debate over free will is not philosophical, it’s linguistic.

Modern philosophers don’t argue that free will as most people understand it is real, they argue volition should be called “free will”. They like the brand “free will” and would rather keep debating about an idea called that, even if it has nothing to do with true free will.

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Don’t most Abrahamic philosophers still believe in a libertarian style of free will?

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I don’t define the phenomenon. I recognize the phenomenon occurring and then name it “will”.

Much like historical people just saw and pointed to the Sun and named it “Sun” without understanding exactly what it is (other than a light in the sky).

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But they could still say it was the bright circle in the sky, so in what words you can, what do you mean when you say will?

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There are no simpler terms known to me. My body/brain/mind is doing something and I describe that thing as “willing my foot to move”.

Like the people of history not having the scientific knowledge to explain what the bright circle in the sky is, we don’t yet have the scientific knowledge to explain what the will is. The hard problem of consciousness hasn’t yet been solved.

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That’s just a preference. You want that to be true because you like the term “free will”, but that’s not what most people understand by free will.

Compatibilists are stealing a term that for most people it means something else.

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Yeah, this is kind of what I meant by my earlier message

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19

I don’t know what you mean by “liking” the term “free will”. I just recognise that there, in general, three things that can happen:

  1. I will my foot to move and it does
  2. I will my foot to move but it doesn’t
  3. I don’t will my foot to move but it does

In the case of (1) my will is causally responsible for my foot moving, whereas in the case of (2) and (3) it isn’t.

My will itself being a causally determined process does not deny that (1) sometimes happens, and is different to (2) and (3).

Certainly if only (3) happens then we don’t have free will, but sometimes (1) happens. That’s an essential difference even if physicalism and determinism are true.

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That doesn’t mean you have to call that “free will”.