<p>I believe in free will, but not total free will. People don’t realize the extent that one’s literal immediate environment, environmental background, genetics, and biological tendencies play into everyday decision making.</p>
<p>What about randomness that arises in quantum mechanics? wouldn’t randomness disprove determinism?</p>
<p>Simple as this:</p>
<p>To participate or to not participate: I’m choosing to participate in this thread…so that’s my free will.</p>
<p>Now if you want to do something and opportunities are offered, then external circumstances have helped you to exercise your free will and vice versa.</p>
<p>If I want to go to a concert…I’m exercising my free will: I can go or I can choose to not attend.</p>
<p>Yes free will exist…everyday I’m exercising my free will in every decision I take. Now, there could be some motivations to exercise my free will or also could be a problem that cannot allow me to exercise my free will…but that does will be external considerations.</p>
<p>I cannot believe people are discussing something as obvious as the existence of free will! I love it…will keep reading…especially those posters that think free will does not exist…</p>
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<p>… You must have taken the Blue Pill.</p>
<p>Hi Manhattan…that was cute…I hope the red pill would allow you to major in philosophy and that is called free will! I saw the Matrix too! Nice movie!</p>
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<p>I can easily code up an AI agent that makes a decision in any situation. Do you think that agent has free will? </p>
<p>Really, if you actually read this topic you would have realized that the argument “I have free will because I make decisions” holds no validity whatsoever. I LOL at the arrogance.</p>
<p>Nice comparison Humans vs. AI!
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. Textbooks define the field as “the study and design of intelligent agents,” where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chances of success… "the science and engineering of making intelligent machines. Wiki</p>
<p>Humans certainly have free will.
AI, I don’t know, probably, depend how you code it…can you code it giving the AI several options to choose for each task? Then if the "AI” has options then also will have free will to the extent you program it and the AI choose among several options.</p>
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<p>No you can’t. Even if you spend a month doing nothing but coding you’ll probably get only a handful of situations.</p>
<p>can someone explain compatibilism? It just doesn’t make sense to me</p>
<p>That “20 Questions” game is pretty intelligent… How does it know?!</p>
<p>A dichotomous key…</p>
<p>“haha i didn’t bother looking at the god thread, because i knew it would turn into the usual: innocent guy asks question, obnoxious philosophy majors come marching in and act like dbags, annoying religious nuts come charging in, angry atheists start ripping people apart …and it turns into a neverending circle of bs.
just whip 'em out and compare, boys”</p>
<p>LMAO, i love you. [no girl homo]</p>
<p>@ Greenery,
You really must take the time to understand the arguments of determinism and free will. Understanding and choosing to do or not do something is not an exercise of free will. Every decision could have never gone otherwise. Choosing something or either the privation of something is not using free will. </p>
<p>Here is the time traveler paradox. This is to demonstrate that there is no free will.
Image John live in 1999 and hates his grandfather so much that he wishes to have killed him. The problem is, grandfather died in 1996. So John builds a time machine so that he can go back to the 1940s and kill his grandfather, 5 years before John’s father is born. John travels back in time to kill grandfather. When John is in the 1940s, he camps out in a tower with a rifle in order to kill grandfather. Moreover, there is another man, Jim, who lives in the 1940s, and at the moment that John is planning on headshotting his grandfather, Jim plans to do the same as well. We know for a fact, however, that Jim will fail no matter what, as the 1940s are already passed, and if Jim had succeeded, John would never had been born (since John’s father would not have been born either). So this is what happens with John:
Assumption A: John can kill grandfather
1.John wants to kill his grandfather.
2. John travels back in time to kill grandfather.
3. If John succeeds in killing grandfather, than John’s father, and subsequently John, will have never been born.
4.Assuming John does kill grandfather, then John’s father, and John, were both never born.
5. But if John was never born, then John never went back in time to kill grandfather,
6. If John never went back in time to kill grandfather, then John never killed grandfather.
7. Assuming 4 leads to 5&6.
8. However, assuming that John kills grandfather in 4 contradicts with John never killing Grandfather in 6.
9. Therefore we have a contradiction, thereby proving Assumption A to be false.
10. THEREFORE, JOHN CAN’T KILL GRANDFATHER.</p>
<p>This demonstrates a few things. No matter what, it demonstrates that John cannot kill his grandfather even if he tried. Even if he was physically capable, (not impared, had the tools), he was fated to fail. But more importantly, it demonstrates the necessity of the effects. When you are presented with two choices (or any number for that matter), you choose a specific one by causal necessity. The outcome moreover is necessitated as well. While you choosing something over another may be meaningful to you, it could never have gone otherwise because it was necessary, by rule of cause and effect, that you chose what you chose. There is no possibility of choosing something contrary to what is chosen. What you do is willed, but it is by no means free. And perhaps more importantly, this is an example of how even in the present, you are not free, given that at the present moment in which John pulls the trigger (and obviously fails to kill grandfather), it could have never gone otherwise.</p>
<p>^that paradox assumes that time travel is possible (“if time travel is possible, there is no free will”) which i’m not saying is false. It also assumes that when you time travel you go back in time in same universe. Quantum mechanics suggests that time travel would result in going to a different universe. Also M-theory suggests the possibility of multiple universes</p>
<p>The grandfather paradox also assumes that because john can’t do something, he has no free will.</p>
<p>There are other types of “can’ts” than “cannot chose to”. </p>
<p>I cannot jump from Nebraska to the top of Mount Everest, therefore, I have no free will? </p>
<p>Just because someone cannot do something, does not mean he cannot chose to do it, and fail.</p>
<p>In john’s case, he might just be unable to kill gramps just because he dies first due to a heart attack, or a billion other ways.</p>
<p>I feel like all of this is way over my head lol. I prefer the Pooh-Bear-Taoism-existence :p. Just peacefully chillin’ in the Hundred Acre Woods until I die :). </p>
<p>I would’ve thought there is free will because of the ability to make individual decisions but after reading others’ posts, maybe not :p. Could be due to the fact that decisions are often made according to influences that you can’t control. So who, or what, is really making the decision? </p>
<p>Either way, I will keep believing in a mixture that involves free will - it’s a more positive outlook :).</p>
<p>@ sk8rbr0 & kevmus,</p>
<p>Yes it is true that it assumes time travel being possible, which is why I made sure to bring in Jim. What is important is that the time travel paradox shows, when I add Jim, that it could not have been otherwise. The past is completely done. For John to even get to the past requires that it is determined in such a way that he, and Jim, have both already failed. Now imagine if John did want to kill his grandfather but could not go back in time and do it. No matter what his present is already determined in such a way that his grandfather died in 1996, so that option is already completely closed. Not to mention, his grandpa living past the 1950s has a causal relationship on John hating him. Afterall, if grandfather had died, John could not and would not hate him since John would not have been born.</p>
<p>I still say that free will does not exist because every person will always choose option A: what I think is best based on criteria I cannot control.</p>
<p>Someone said that someone can “choose” something that they do not think is best. Well, without arguing semantics, then that is just a meta-choice - their choosing of what is not best is really the choice they think is best.</p>
<p>If you put lab mice in a maze in a few basic scenarios, there aren’t going to be any surprises. We are basically a giant scale of that, but harder to predict and with more varied actions.</p>
<p>And no, nothing is truly random. Even quantum mechanic’s labeling of certain phenomenon as random really just functions as a temporary description/ a current lack of understanding. It just appears random.</p>
<p>Just picture shuffling a deck of cards. Sure, it’s too hard to predict what card is where. And it seems like the deck’s arrangement is random. But really, truly, when you shuffled that deck, you arranged that deck --precisely-- how it is arranged. You physically put every individual card in its place. There was not a single thing random about it.</p>
<p>Other phenomenon are exactly the same but on a much larger and complex scale.</p>
<p>Peter,</p>
<p>It’s easy to look in retrospect and say “He chose option A because of criterion 3”. What I said earlier is that reason uses cause and effect principles which is essentially saying you can predict anything (which you cannot). If you take away reason then there’s no argument against free will, besides maybe that time travel argument posted above, but then again I don’t believe time exists. </p>
<p>Even so, if the determinism argument is correct, I would be perfectly happy with a free will defintion of -the ability to choose, even if you don’t realize that you are not in control of that choice.</p>
<p>I’m not sure I follow what you are saying.</p>
<p>Are you saying that things are determinable only through reason (I disagree) which is man-made artifice so that determinism is only some sort of superficial idea? Well, that’s not what I’m saying.</p>
<p>You see, even if man can’t predict something, or maybe ever predict something, doesn’t mean that “the universe” won’t still follow an exact, already-determined course. Even if its impossible for man to predict it.</p>
<p>The chain of events is already determined based on the laws of motion and physics.</p>
<p>If I throw a baseball, it’s going to follow a destined course. Take one snapshot, then another, then another … you can pretty much predict that 1 millisecond later it will have moved another mm further forward.</p>
<p>Our universe is a baseball thrown in an empty void… the course is determined.</p>
<p>Luckily, we are largely unaware of our lack of free will and you will always decide what you WANT to decide anyway. In fact, it is impossible for you to choose to do something you don’t ultimately decide/ want to choose - that is our “cage” so to speak.</p>