Free Will

dscott8 wrote:As has been mentioned, the original post depends on the assumption of a deity's existence. I question the validity of that assumption.

I also question whether there's any point in debating whether we have free will. As an atheist, I see no reasonable alternative to free will. I choose my actions and take responsibility for the consequences, and it seems to me that claiming we don't have free will is an attempt to dodge responsibility.

tlb wrote:Whether or not we have free will does not necessarily depend on the existence of a deity.

Joat42 wrote:The minimum requirement for free will to exist is that the universe isn't deterministic. If there is a deity or not doesn't actually matter because such an entity would also be bound by the first requirement.

Of course, someone can argue that the universe isn't deterministic but the deity determines our fate. But that only means from our POV the universe is deterministic. The opposite can also be argued, that the universe is deterministic but a deity gives us free will which of course means the universe isn't deterministic.

And the above means that for all intents and purposes, whether a deity exists or not in this context, it doesn't matter one bit.

tlb wrote:However Free Will has implications about that deity

Joat42 wrote:In the end, since we can't prove if exists or not it doesn't actually matter, but it makes for an interesting philosophical topic that hasn't a definite conclusion.

Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will
by Robert M. Sapolsky
One of our great behavioral scientists, the bestselling author of Behave, plumbs the depths of the science and philosophy of decision-making to mount a devastating case against free will, an argument with profound consequences.

Robert Sapolsky’s Behave, his now classic account of why humans do good and why they do bad, pointed toward an unsettling conclusion: We may not grasp the precise marriage of nature and nurture that creates the physics and chemistry at the base of human behavior, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Now, in Determined, Sapolsky takes his argument all the way, mounting a brilliant (and in his inimitable way, delightful) full-frontal assault on the pleasant fantasy that there is some separate self telling our biology what to do.

Determined offers a marvelous synthesis of what we know about how consciousness works—the tight weave between reason and emotion and between stimulus and response in the moment and over a life. One by one, Sapolsky tackles all the major arguments for free will and takes them out, cutting a path through the thickets of chaos and complexity science and quantum physics, as well as touching ground on some of the wilder shores of philosophy. He shows us that the history of medicine is in no small part the history of learning that fewer and fewer things are somebody’s “fault”; for example, for centuries we thought seizures were a sign of demonic possession. Yet, as he acknowledges, it’s very hard, and at times impossible, to uncouple from our zeal to judge others and to judge ourselves. Sapolsky applies the new understanding of life beyond free will to some of our most essential questions around punishment, morality, and living well together. By the end, Sapolsky argues that while living our daily lives recognizing that we have no free will is going to be monumentally difficult, doing so is not going to result in anarchy, pointlessness, and existential malaise. Instead, it will make for a much more humane world.

tlb wrote:There is an argument presented that often decisions are made before conscious thought takes place and that can happen at a basic level. Life in the tall grass of the prairie or in the trees of the forest could demand that instant action to run, or fight, was needed for survival. Even today hockey goalies and martial artists can train their reflexes and "muscle memory" to respond incredibly fast. But has it been proved that the initial response presented, when an automatic response is not needed, is actually the response that is taken? In the extra time couldn't more thought be expended to amend, refine and revise what was finally performed?

The E wrote:

tlb wrote:There is an argument presented that often decisions are made before conscious thought takes place and that can happen at a basic level. Life in the tall grass of the prairie or in the trees of the forest could demand that instant action to run, or fight, was needed for survival. Even today hockey goalies and martial artists can train their reflexes and "muscle memory" to respond incredibly fast. But has it been proved that the initial response presented, when an automatic response is not needed, is actually the response that is taken? In the extra time couldn't more thought be expended to amend, refine and revise what was finally performed?

There's a paper out there that argues that there is a clear delineation between what they term "arbitrary" decisions (that is, decisions that have little to no weight to them) and more deliberate ones (like "which car am I buying") - while arbitrary decisions are taken with little to no conscious input, deliberate ones are definitely activating higher brain functions.

Way I see it, for every decision presented to you, you're going to have an instinctive and a reasoned option - these may or may not overlap - but if you go the instinctive route, your brain will construct a deliberate explanation for why you chose what you chose. This is what's happening when we move our bodies, for example - we have neurological evidence that the commands to start moving muscle groups are travelling down the body before the conscious command is given, indicating that there are processes at play that back-date things to preserve an illusion of control (this happens all the time, by the way. Without such mechanisms, human vision couldn't work - the bandwidth between our eyes and the brain isn't high enough, so a lot of what we think we see is actually backfilled by preconscious processes that interpolate data).