Is free will an illusion?

[olavisjo]

I find that under a naturalistic philosophy it is impossible for free will to exist, for the simple reason that when we make decisions about things we are performing electrical and chemical reactions in our brains, very much like our computers process data under the control of natural laws, so the outcome of any such process must be strictly determined by past events.
A theist can say that free will is a daily miracle given to us by God, but how can an atheist explain the concept?

[Cathar1950]

I am still working through this mess.
It is possible that our feelings or concepts of free-will meets or satisfies needs or to feel some sense of control or purpose.
But purpose is a cause as well as a product.
I try to think of choices as in choices when you flip a coin.
There are two choices and if you have two coins there are now three choices and so on.
Does an aunt have free-will or does it make choices?
How about other animals?

Nature and the process of evolution have programmed us all to respond.
What choices does an ameba have?

When you make your supposed choice do you have an explanation for your choice?
If you have an explanation then you choice was not free from influence and all I am saying is everything is influenced.
The influence may be pure chance of a serious of events that I am responding to but I am responding.
Most of what we do is unconscious what we didn’t inherit from other ancestors we learned. I think it is all determined but not predetermined as some things have not happened and they can not be included in the determination.
I think the whole thing is very beautiful and awesome as we are shaped by our experiences each moment provides the possibility of novelty and experimentation while the free-will advocate runs around wondering why they did anything believing they are making all kinds of choices that are unrelated to their responses.

[McCulloch]

If you have no free will, then you do not reason. Your thoughts are not thoughts; they are mere reactions to stimuli, and what you subjectively sense to be your "judgment" and "rational train of thought" are mere mechanical sequences of inevitable cause and effect.

How is it that you came to the conclusion that thoughts cannot be reactions to stimuli? In fact, I really doubt that I could have much in the way of thoughts in the absence of any stimuli, except drawing on the memory of various stimuli. If I never experienced anything, I would not have any thoughts.

[Cathar1950]

Little things add up.
We learn and respond.
Why am I trying this right now? Is it because I choose to or is it because the situation I am in demands the response and if not write then no response is a response. What ever we attribute to choice is done for reasons and it is always within some context.
Most of what we do is pretty predictable if we have sufficient information and I assume if you are making a choice for no apparent reason then you are just not cognitive of all the influences which include feelings, memories, other past responses, purpose and all manor of thing you don’t know.


Like tThe Parable of the Sower panting seeds everywhere and when the conditions are right they can grow. There are always some people that are ahead of their times but that is because times were not ripe.

Each moment brings a need to respond. Your heart needs to beat and you need to take a breath. You biological evolution as provided you a means of doing things without thinking or really making anything that resembles a will.
The will is the desire and need for satisfaction. It is biological processes in a social networks and relationship that use language and meaning as tools like an elephant uses its trunk. .
Each moment or experience or every response is novel in that it has not been done thing way at this time with these apprehensions and influences, it is novel yet determined by complex relationships. I find it hard to believe you believe you freely run around believing or doing things for no rational or apparent reasons.
You make choices because the situation demands you make a choice.

[cnorman18]

If you have no free will, then you do not reason. Your thoughts are not thoughts; they are mere reactions to stimuli, and what you subjectively sense to be your "judgment" and "rational train of thought" are mere mechanical sequences of inevitable cause and effect.

How is it that you came to the conclusion that thoughts cannot be reactions to stimuli? In fact, I really doubt that I could have much in the way of thoughts in the absence of any stimuli, except drawing on the memory of various stimuli. If I never experienced anything, I would not have any thoughts.

Of course thoughts, actions, etc. are responses to stimuli; but note the word "mere" in what I wrote.

I think I made this clear in later posts; in the absence of free will, thought is an automatic preconditioned response to stimuli and nothing else.

I say there is an additional influence or factor here, which comes from the self; we call that choice. The fact that there are other influences does not negate that factor. I don't understand why some seem to think that it does.

For some reason, it seems that "free will choices" are being defined here as somehow being random choices or choices that make no reference whatever to anything else. That makes no more objective sense than the idea that there is no free will at all. I've never said that nothing influences free will choices; I'm only saying that our choices are not totally predetermined by those influences. That seems wholly rational and wholly reflective of everyone's subjective experience of reality.

And before everyone jumps on that forbidden word, "subjective" - how do you objectify what's happening inside your own head? Are you aware of thinking, or not?

Who here will claim that they make no conscious choices? As soon as you decide to write that post, are you not making a choice?

Once again: if there is no such thing as free will, what can the word "choice" possibly mean? Does reflection and thought, reasoning about consequences and results, when one is making a decision - do those have no meaning? If they don't, why do we bother to waste our time with them? Where do they come from? If they do have meaning, how is there no free will?

I tend to agree with Goat here. This is a meaningless concept. If we assume that our sense of thinking and making decisions is just an illusion - well, what's left to say? If that's not an inverse of solipsism, where the self is the only thing that does NOT exist, what would that look like? I guess all there is to do is get drunk and wait to see what happens next.

[Cathar1950]

I am wondering if choices are really just something we want or don’t want people to do, except in marketing or course.
Free-will, or will, might well be a story or a process we go though to weigh responses.
I don’t see how our being influenced doesn’t allow responsibility. You did what you did for reasons that might be wrong or in error, how else do you learn except by responding unless it is some analogy at work which is another influence.
It seems rather haphazard but for the most part growing and learning work pretty well.
Maybe we seek knowledge because we intuitively know it will expand our experiences and those choices we make because of all those influences that are constantly being either reinforced or negated.
Just because you understand you are bring influenced doesn’t mean your still not being influenced.
We have whole systems of responses to meet whole systems of needs.

[cnorman18]

I don’t see how our being influenced doesn’t allow responsibility.

Neither do I. That's my whole point. I believe in free will AND influence. I honestly don't understand how anyone could NOT believe in both.

You did what you did for reasons that might be wrong or in error, how else do you learn except by responding unless it is some analogy at work which is another influence.
It seems rather haphazard but for the most part growing and learning work pretty well.
Maybe we seek knowledge because we intuitively know it will expand our experiences and those choices we make because of all those influences that are constantly being either reinforced or negated.

I agree 100%

Just because you understand you are bring influenced doesn’t mean your still not being influenced.

Of course not. But the influence, whatever it is, is not 100% determinative of your choice. Ever.

We have whole systems of responses to meet whole systems of needs.

Yes; and sometimes we use several systems simultaneously; e.g., ordering a meal in a restaurant when you're on a date with a prospective sexual partner. Your choice is influenced by your degree of hunger, your food preferences, your desire to look cool or sophisticated or macho or affluent (in short, attractive), which is in turn influenced by the social circle you move in and that which you perceive your date to move in, and of course the prices on the menu and how much money you have in your wallet. But the final influence is YOU, your self, your ego, the judgment you make in the midst of all those influences, some conscious and some less so. In the end, you make the choice. It is not predetermined.

As you said: the fact that we are influenced does not negate responsibility. Responsibility implies volition, which is the exercise of free will. No free will, no responsibility.

I TOLD you you didn't really believe in determinism....

[Cathar1950]

As you said: the fact that we are influenced does not negate responsibility. Responsibility implies volition, which is the exercise of free will. No free will, no responsibility.

I TOLD you you didn't really believe in determinism....

Yes I do believe (understand that we are determined) in determinism. I don’t believe in pre-determinism. I suspect you believe in it too even if you appear to be non-cognitive of how you are influenced.
Responsibility implies volition but volition is also determined.
Wish, will, decision, choice, desire, desire, preference, option, or coercion can all be forms of volition. Volition is a process and like the self it is an abstraction.
The synonyms for volitions above are determined but past experiences, the situation, your feelings, and all manors of other factors. The self you claim is a story you write in your mind about yourself that give you continuity and focus.
The reasons I don’t say things, including your choices, are pre-determined is because each new occasion or experience is new. There is something such as data and relationships in the past that are now present in the now that were not there in the past. This walk happens but once even if you do it over and over and as you repeat a behavior or experience it gets reinforced.

In the ideas of justice we may make inferences about how responsible a person is given the circumstances in their choices. A person would be held more responsible if they desired to do something then if they were coerced into doing something, they are responsible for both “choices�.
Let’s say a person breaks some law. They didn’t learn not to break the law. Even if all kinds of things influence them and they couldn’t help but do something do to factors they are still responsible for doing it as the are a problem or have a problem but the pint of the whole things is to prevent them or teach them not to do what ever it is they did. We want them to be influenced by the negative consequences.

I don’t see how our being influenced doesn’t allow responsibility.

Neither do I. That's my whole point. I believe in free will AND influence. I honestly don't understand how anyone could NOT believe in both.

I don’t know why you insist that responsibility and influence means you have to make choices that are not related to anything.
Free-will sounds like nonsense, as if you ran around making random choices for not even for apparent reasons. You sound like you are saying; “I just did it�.

Just because you understand you are bring influenced doesn’t mean your still not being influenced.

Of course not. But the influence, whatever it is, is not 100% determinative of your choice. Ever.

We have whole systems of responses to meet whole systems of needs.

Yes; and sometimes we use several systems simultaneously; e.g., ordering a meal in a restaurant when you're on a date with a prospective sexual partner. Your choice is influenced by your degree of hunger, your food preferences, your desire to look cool or sophisticated or macho or affluent (in short, attractive), which is in turn influenced by the social circle you move in and that which you perceive your date to move in, and of course the prices on the menu and how much money you have in your wallet. But the final influence is YOU, your self, your ego, the judgment you make in the midst of all those influences, some conscious and some less so. In the end, you make the choice. It is not predetermined.

I didn’t say it was pre-determined. Whatever choice you make is going to be determined by all those influences and the situation. You pick something. Why did you pick that item? You picked it because al the little influences lead you to pick that one. Most of what we do isn’t even thought about and almost come automatic because of our development and experiences. If you have reasons why you did something then it is determined.
If you read the menu you will have eliminated choices. If you don’t have enough money will further limit the options but this self you thin k makes some choice that is unrelated to the influences doesn’t exist. It is the unique some of all the influences, including feelings and your growth and development. Let’s say you make a poor choice do to your determining factors.

Of course thoughts, actions, etc. are responses to stimuli; but note the word "mere" in what I wrote.

I think I made this clear in later posts; in the absence of free will, thought is an automatic preconditioned response to stimuli and nothing else.

I say there is an additional influence or factor here, which comes from the self; we call that choice. The fact that there are other influences does not negate that factor. I don't understand why some seem to think that it does.

You are the one that seems ‘to think that it does�, as your self has also been influence and has developed and is still developing. If every time you ate something it made you sick it wouldn’t be long before you would eliminate it as a choice. I am just saying your self is also been determined and will continue to be and it is another influence. Are you willing to argue that your self has not been shaped and determined?
Not only have you reacted to stimuli in pretty much predictable ways, because of your development,

For some reason, it seems that "free will choices" are being defined here as somehow being random choices or choices that make no reference whatever to anything else. That makes no more objective sense than the idea that there is no free will at all. I've never said that nothing influences free will choices; I'm only saying that our choices are not totally predetermined by those influences. That seems wholly rational and wholly reflective of everyone's subjective experience of reality.

I think you are the one suggesting that choices are random or some random self is making choices. I have never said that it was pre-determined, I said it was determined. What if it rains or you feel sick and don’t do something because you feel poorly, how can that ever be pre-determined yet all this things will determine your choices.

Who here will claim that they make no conscious choices? As soon as you decide to write that post, are you not making a choice?

The situation demands you writie and why you are writing has been determined by you purposes that have all been influenced and are now being influenced and all those influences are determined. Are you saying you never learn anything?

Once again: if there is no such thing as free will, what can the word "choice" possibly mean? Does reflection and thought, reasoning about consequences and results, when one is making a decision - do those have no meaning? If they don't, why do we bother to waste our time with them? Where do they come from? If they do have meaning, how is there no free will?

A choice is a response. Your brain is constantly seeking information and experience it is not some passive machine waiting for some stimuli, it is looking for stimuli because that is how we evolved. Much of what you do is determined by the type of animal you are and how you developed as you grew.

I tend to agree with Goat here. This is a meaningless concept. If we assume that our sense of thinking and making decisions is just an illusion - well, what's left to say? If that's not an inverse of solipsism, where the self is the only thing that does NOT exist, what would that look like? I guess all there is to do is get drunk and wait to see what happens next.

If you agree with Goat then why are you trying to defend a concept or abstraction that you admit is meaningless? I am not really sure you have made it to a sophist level yet.


I am starting to think free-will is an abstraction of the process of the illusion of self.

I don’t think we are “mere� anything.
That seems to be your straw man not mine.
It seems it is you that is limiting your world to mere mechanics.

[olavisjo]

Sorry, that's a non sequitur. The power of volition. i.e., free will, can certainly have evolved just as surely as the power to walk upright. The ability to think and evaluate and make choices in unfamiliar situations is an obvious survival trait.

I believe in God, as it happens; but I do not believe that free will is a supernatural phenomenon any more than thought, vision, or the ability to eat and absorb nourishment.

How can something evolve that does not obey the laws of nature ?

Everything in the universe obeys the laws of nature, free will contradicts that statement.
Free will implies that humans obey some other law that is not natural.

What can give birth to an uncaused original idea?
To assert free will is to deny cause and effect, you can't have both.

Therefore, the atheist must insist that free will is an illusion, or better yet it is all meaningless.

[cnorman18]

As sometimes happens - though not frequently enough - I find that (1) I am substantially wrong here, because (2) I did not understand what you were saying, which was in turn because (3) I was too wrapped up in my own convictions and rhetoric to pay sufficient attention.

My apologies - and my thanks. As usual when this happens, I learn things and my mind is expanded. That's why I say it doesn't happen often enough.

As you said: the fact that we are influenced does not negate responsibility. Responsibility implies volition, which is the exercise of free will. No free will, no responsibility.

I TOLD you you didn't really believe in determinism....

Yes I do believe (understand that we are determined) in determinism. I don’t believe in pre-determinism. I suspect you believe in it too even if you appear to be non-cognitive of how you are influenced.

I'm beginning to think we're talking past each other here and that our disagreement is more a matter of semantics than of our actual ideas.
I think you are using the word "pre-determined" where I use the word "determined"; and you are using the word "determined" where I use "influenced" - and that we both mean the same thing.

Most of what you said here I find that I agree with entirely. We apparently understand the process in substantially the same way, but express it differently in words.

For instance:

Responsibility implies volition but volition is also determined.

I would say "influenced" here, but not "determined."

Wish, will, decision, choice, desire, desire, preference, option, or coercion can all be forms of volition. Volition is a process and like the self it is an abstraction.

Now this rang a bell.

I have occasionally described the "self" or the "ego," as it is normally understood, as an illusion; it is in fact the intersection of perception and memory.

(I think that there is a real entity there, but that it has little to do with what we think of as the conscious mind or the "me." Best description of it; when one is watching one's thoughts, it is that which watches. But that's of little moment here. If it exists, that is not where "choice" happens.)

So, if I understand you correctly, the nature of that false "self" and the choices it makes are influenced - you would say "determined," and we might both be satisfied with "shaped" - by the total of our knowledge, experiences and memories.

Does that work for you?

As soon as I picked up on your remark that you mean "determined, but not pre-determined," I began to suspect that our problem was words and not concepts. To me, "pre-determined" and "determined" are synonyms.

....The self you claim is a story you write in your mind about yourself that give you continuity and focus.

That resonated with me even more. You can see why. It strikes me as an accurate description of the conventional notion of the "self." .

The reasons I don’t say things, including your choices, are pre-determined is because each new occasion or experience is new. There is something such as data and relationships in the past that are now present in the now that were not there in the past. This walk happens but once even if you do it over and over and as you repeat a behavior or experience it gets reinforced.

In the ideas of justice we may make inferences about how responsible a person is given the circumstances in their choices. A person would be held more responsible if they desired to do something then if they were coerced into doing something, they are responsible for both “choices�.
Let’s say a person breaks some law. They didn’t learn not to break the law. Even if all kinds of things influence them and they couldn’t help but do something do to factors they are still responsible for doing it as the are a problem or have a problem but the pint of the whole things is to prevent them or teach them not to do what ever it is they did. We want them to be influenced by the negative consequences.

See, I find nothing to argue about in any of that. It seems perfectly sensible to me.

What didn't make sense to me was the notion that there is only one possible way that a choice can be made, and that that is determined in advance. After the fact, of course, it appears that the choice was inevitable and the only one possible; but as it's happening, that is not, I think, the case. The (illusory) self, or perhaps that undefined "overself," however either is composed or of what it consists, has an active role in balancing and giving relative weight to the various influences (or determinants) involved in the decision.

A key point here; I would concede that this "self" is also influenced - determined, If you like - again, maybe "shaped" will work - by all that it has encountered before.

The central idea, to me, is that choice is real; and it seems to me that without that idea, that of "responsibility," as in your coerced/non-coerced example, seems to me to be meaningless.

Are we making progress?

I don’t see how our being influenced doesn’t allow responsibility.

Neither do I. That's my whole point. I believe in free will AND influence. I honestly don't understand how anyone could NOT believe in both.

I don’t know why you insist that responsibility and influence means you have to make choices that are not related to anything.
Free-will sounds like nonsense, as if you ran around making random choices for not even for apparent reasons. You sound like you are saying; “I just did it�.

You see, that's a total misunderstanding. That's exactly what I'm NOT saying, and I don't know where you're getting it. Maybe it's clearer now.

Just because you understand you are bring influenced doesn’t mean your still not being influenced.

Of course not. But the influence, whatever it is, is not 100% determinative of your choice. Ever.

We have whole systems of responses to meet whole systems of needs.

Yes; and sometimes we use several systems simultaneously; e.g., ordering a meal in a restaurant when you're on a date with a prospective sexual partner. Your choice is influenced by your degree of hunger, your food preferences, your desire to look cool or sophisticated or macho or affluent (in short, attractive), which is in turn influenced by the social circle you move in and that which you perceive your date to move in, and of course the prices on the menu and how much money you have in your wallet. But the final influence is YOU, your self, your ego, the judgment you make in the midst of all those influences, some conscious and some less so. In the end, you make the choice. It is not predetermined.

I didn’t say it was pre-determined. Whatever choice you make is going to be determined by all those influences and the situation.

That's what I said! You see?

You pick something. Why did you pick that item? You picked it because al the little influences lead you to pick that one. Most of what we do isn’t even thought about and almost come automatic because of our development and experiences. If you have reasons why you did something then it is determined.

There it is again. I would agree, now, that it is "determined" in the sense you are saying it; that is, determined, but not pre- determined.

If you read the menu you will have eliminated choices. If you don’t have enough money will further limit the options but this self you think makes some choice that is unrelated to the influences doesn’t exist. It is the unique some of all the influences, including feelings and your growth and development.

Okay, then; now we're on the same page. The decision that the self (whatever it is) makes is certainly related to all these influences; and yet it remains a choice in some meaningful sense, or we would not assign responsibility for what "selves" do, as with your legal examples.

...your self has also been influence and has developed and is still developing. If every time you ate something it made you sick it wouldn’t be long before you would eliminate it as a choice. I am just saying your self is also been determined and will continue to be and it is another influence. Are you willing to argue that your self has not been shaped and determined?
Not only have you reacted to stimuli in pretty much predictable ways, because of your development,

Again, all that seems perfectly sensible to me.
Apparently we had to dig deeper before these concepts penetrated my "denseness" - which you mentioned, I think ... Apparently with some justice ....

I am starting to think free-will is an abstraction of the process of the illusion of self.

I think that might be an accurate statement, with the reservation that I suspect there might be a genuine self that is not accessible to the conscious, illusory one.

(My thoughts on that subject come partly from a non-drug-related "altered state" I was in some years ago, at which time the illusory nature of the "self" and a sense that there was another, greater one, became apparent - though not exactly "clear" - to me.)

I hope we're getting somewhere now. Thanks for your persistence.

[Cathar1950]

I think we are getting closer Cnorman18.

I tend to look at the self as a memory or form of memory.
That doesn't mean it is just memory.
Even our experiences are a memory as we become conscious of something that has already happened before we experience it and the consciousness is a intense memory.
Or memories are also shaped by feelings and feeling are attached to memories.
Feeling has been shown to play an important part of memory.
It might sound rather mechanical to you with the limits of our words but it is very dynamic.
Our responses you like to call choice are often learned and adapted where they become unconscious where they hardly qualify as choice. We practice so we don't have to think about what we are doing. We are pretty predictable and determined but we can't possible be predetermined as the conditions for our responses have not yet occurred.

Being responsible for you actions might be better served if they understood why they make the choices they do rather then just acknowledge they did it.