Is free will a trick of the mind?

This is an off-shoot of chaos theorem, no? I agree in a weird way… in that this is the only way this universe can exist in form, but not whether or not I am specifically here or not… life would occur, given enough life giving material in any given universe, but human life… hard to say. Other universes may be baron of such material.

the problem with determinism is random chaotic events. while determinism does work to a certain extent, events that are totally out of our control interrupt it. like the bouncing of the balls in the lotto machine that are governed by pure randomness and chaos that can lead to big changes in peoples lives.

do we make choices, yes. are those choices totally governed by out past experiences and where we destined to chose that way, yes, but chaos disrupts destiny from time to time, and that chaos was not destined to be that way.

there are infinite choices, real choices, but they all ultimately lead to a destiny and are ultimately forecast by the past. we do chose, but we are simply choosing between one destiny or another, and sometimes chaos takes it out of our hands.

I think you are confusing fate and determinism. Determinism assumes that the Universe is indifferent. The thing to get over is thinking of things as if single events mean anything. All things are random. There is no deciding body that says, ok that was planned and that was random chaos. It doesn’t make that distinction. So in a sense, under determinism, there is no such thing as chaos, because the chaotic event was the only event that could have happened given the prior events.

@poisonedantidote
“like the bouncing of the balls in the lotto machine that are governed by pure randomness and chaos”
What are you talking about? Of course they aren’t. It’s all determined by prior position and momentum and gravity. It’s just too complicated for you and me to keep track of.

Randomness is not a property of an event, it’s a property of our understanding of an event.

It must be easy to believe in determinism because if you have no free will you have no responsibility for your actions and I just can’t get on board with that. There is nothing to prove determinism is at work exclusively but free will we see daily.

@Fyrius yes, bad example. none the less there is still chaos in quite a few aspects of life.

Determinism or belief in it doesn’t mean we will walk around not making decisions or using determinism as an excuse. You can still decide to kill or not kill, but isn’t strange that those are the only two options? The fact that we are put in a position to make a decision with only two outcomes is a testament to determinism at work. Think about human cognition not human actions. There is a difference. You decide between two things, but when and where was it decided that there were only two options? That is where determinism lives.

@Captain_Fantasy
Surely you can believe in determinism and still be a responsible person. We just have responsibility mechanisms built into our minds that inhibit bad decisions.
Furthermore, there’s an important difference between uncomfortable and impossible.

@poisonedantidote
If you have any other example that you think are not governed by deterministic laws, I’d like to hear it.

Rememeber, everything has a cause. Fyrius was right. Randomness is in the understand of the event, not the event itself. Nothing is truly random. Everything has a cause.

If the world is deterministic, then surely, if you know the condition of the entire universe, you can predict the next moment’s configuration. Yes, after the fact, what happened is all that could have happened, but that is not the case before the fact. The choices of conscious entities do make a difference. There is also no predicting those choices.

Besides which, we have quantum uncertainty. Multiple possibilities are there at the same time, and only when the observation is made is the past made. This, it seems to me, is not deterministic, and it makes me question the math the physicists are using when they say the math describing the universe works equally well whether time runs forwards or backwards.

Consider this. You know that game, Othello? You have stones that are white on one side and black on the other? When two stones of one color surround a stone or stones of the other color, then the stones in between must be switched to the color of the surrounding stones.

Well, there are people who study the patterns of this, and they have discovered that there are two progressions. In one, if you go backwards from the end of the game, you can find the state the stones were in at the beginning of the game. However, there are also a large number of outcomes where you can not figure out the initial state of the game. A specific outcome could have come from any number of initial states. Similarly, an initial state can result in any number of outcomes. It all depends on choices, and there is no way to know enough to be able to predict those choices, and no way, afterwards, to know which choice and which action resulted in a particular outcome.

Is believing as you do a prerequisite for being taken seriously? Because if it isn’t, then there’s no point in this discussion.

Cause an effect is not a religion.

@wundayatta Determinism can only be assessed post-facto. That is, the possibility of assessing it could only happen post-facto. And if you can think of a way to trace every events metaphysical origins then you are the smartest man in the Universe.

@Captain_Fantasy You seem to be struggling with the nature of this theory and aim to take your anger out on those who do seem to understand it. Maybe you should stop following before your head explodes.

@Fausnaught I could do that if I could build a model that was an exact replica of the universe. But why bother? We already have the universe. Let’s just find out what’s going to happen, shall we?

@wundayatta
“The choices of conscious entities do make a difference. There is also no predicting those choices.”
Yes there is. We do it all the time.
If you think I’m wrong, tell me why people are surprised whenever you do anything actually random. When you go to work in a fish costume. When you paint a traffic sign pink. When you throw your coffee mug at a co-worker. For no reason at all.
It’s because everybody expects everyone to behave in predictable patterns. Everybody expects everyone to do what they do for a reason.

Yes, life is one big hamster wheel. One infinite and incomprehensible hamster wheel. A hamster wheel that is a part of the interactivity of everything and what ever everything is and was and will be. And what this period at the end of this sentence is. And what that is over there on your left. The cloud whisping above your house, the feces developing in your lower intestines.

Get over it, there’s no such thing as determinism, it’s just a term used for people thinking about the relativity of all things. People make choices, stuff happens. Analyze that more and the supposed futility of people’s actions less.

If you’re trying to disprove the notion that things come from nothing, there are better ways to do it. There is no purpose in questioning the purpose of existence itself. Question the purpose of your daily activities. That’s bound to be more fruitful.

Edit: proving that something can’t come from nothing isn’t pointless like I originally posted. I’m just grumpy and wanted to be negative. Sorry.

@wundayatta What I’m saying is assessing it or predicting it isn’t possible. Model or no model. You still need the final outcome to make the assessment, but what exactly would you pin point the final outcome to be? And will you be around to observe it? That sounds sill but the point is, that you can’t predict events using determinism because determinism only works after the events happen. So for your idea to work you would need the worlds most detailed model AND a time machine. And who knows that little experiment will mean to the universe?

This is a lot like all the non-dual theories.

Eastern philosophies lean towards destiny and karma, western towards choice and control.

I tend to go with the non-dual/deterministic stance myself…HOWEVER..this is not to say, regardless of choice or destiny that there are not consequences and in this respect ‘responsability’ does come into play.

One may not be ultimately responsable for the choice or action, but they will be held accountable by the laws of the land.

How much is truly destiny and how much is ones unconscious programming playing out in unavoidable ways…I think this is why humans strive for self improvement, self knowledge, but….it’s a crap shoot for the most part, like it or not IMO. lolololol

@fyrius Those are daily events dude. We aren’t talking about daily events. Do you know what metaphysical means? You can’t assess determinism by using everyday occurrences. The question isn’t why are people surprised when you show up to work with a fish costume, it’s why are they shocked by a fish costume in the first place, and why did you chose a fish costume? Also, why is a fish costume shocking? Why wear a costume? Why choose that as a way to give the impression of randomness?

Your choices seem random to you because you have a hand in deciding them, but the factors that went into that decision were not determined by you. It’s like a giant machine that makes a single snowflake, there were a infinite number of snow flakes that the machine could have made, but it made this specific one. Now you take the snow flake and decide weather to use it or another object from a different machine. Say, a piece of DNA. Now you have to choose one or the other. You are deciding between two, but the universe paired it down to just two of infinite options. So how much of say did you really have?

That is a simple explanation, but It should help you get what we are discussing here.

@Fausnaught

Yes…that is the mystery…perhaps we THINK we are choosing, but as you say, what if those choices have been predetermined therefore it only APPEARS as if we are choosing.

I am the first to say that we really know nothing for certain, other than the fact that we exist in our physical forms, but… it IS interesting to open to all the myriad possabilites.

This is where my frustration shows up in so many of these types of ‘discussion’ I;m just here to play with all the ideas, not to become invested in the right/wrong polarities.

No. Otherwise you would be constantly frustrated at doing things like asking questions on Fluther against your will. Imagine, constantly wishing to do something else, but some illusion in your mind forces you to take another action. If there is one thing that is self evident, it is volition.

@josie You’re totally out to lunch on this one duder.

I think the scariest thing about determinism for most people is this idea that determinism is a omnipotent force that is personally effecting us. Determinism isn’t the cause or the effect, it’s the assessment of both.

@Fyrius
Truth be told I don’t know why daily events don’t count to you. Surely determinism works everywhere in the universe all the time, so to talk about determinism is to talk about, among other things, for example, daily events. Like you can’t talk about nuclear fusion in a way that is irrelevant to the sunshine on a summer day.

My point there was to point out a sort of hypocrisy I’ve noticed. Almost everyone believes in free will, but at the same time almost everyone believes other people are fundamentally predictable beings. The prediction that mister Smith will not show up in a fish costume tomorrow morning is so obviously right that it’s a trivial, silly thing to say. Of course he won’t.
But why not? If mister Smith really has free will, what makes you think he won’t do something you couldn’t have seen coming?

And I know what determinism is, thank you.

@Fausnaught That makes two of us. Where do you wanna go?

@josie I just discovered fluffer today and will probably spend several hours answering and asking questions against many aspects of my will because I find it so interesting. But . . . “did I CHOOSE to find it interesting?” Hah! This is mental masturbation, I hope you realize. Good for a nice release, maybe some exercise, but overall not really getting much done. . . . I think I’m starting to like it.

@Fyrius No one is arguing that our daily decisions don’t matter to us. What we are saying is that the reasons they do or don’t matter are out of our control. We are programed (for lack of a better term) to do things a certain way as part of our evolutionary path. Why do we seek warmth and not the cold? Why aren’t we afraid of the light instead of the dark? These things are determined by extraneous factors that we never could control because they were set in motion before we had the cognitive ability to decide on our own.

@Fyrius Intelligence depends upon paradox, for what is complex must be simple for us to make use of it, adapt to it, survive with it. We have no free will, but we still make choices based on the concept.

@Fyrius I am saying that our daily decisions are irrelevant in this discussion but not in daily life. We do have rules that need to be followed that are also decided by determinism, but that might just throw people off further.

@Fausnaught

I think the scariest part is that man has a huge anxiety ridden need for control.

Admitting that one may not have nearly the control they hope they do pops the cork from the bottle, so to speak. The bottle being the small mind of ego.
Some cannot live with uncertainity, but learning to live with such is a huge part of spiritual development IMO.

@Coloma
I think the anxiety is conditioned, and we can not accept full uncertainty can we? One must be certain of some things in order to interact. If I didn’t know that up was up right now, I would be freaking out. Even if it is up because I have the illusion that it is up. It’s a practical illusion.

@Fausnaught
I’d like to point out that I already do understand and believe in determinism. You seem to be confused about where I stand here.

“I am saying that our daily decisions are irrelevant in this discussion but not in daily life. We do have rules that need to be followed that are also decided by determinism, but that might just throw people off further.”
So you’re simplifying the issue. Well, fair enough.

@zophu I have no idea what you are talking about. It’s the ramblings of a mad man.

@zophu
“One must be certain of some things in order to interact.”
Side note, possibly semantic: one must assume some things in order to interact. You don’t need certainty for that.

I agree very much with determinism, you describe it very well in your question. Free will really is a trick and delusion of the mind. I’ve always believed no matter what I do or say, the sequential events leading up to that moment of time have caused them. Nobody really has overriding control of their lives. But I’m also someone who doesn’t believe there is such thing as a “self”, which is a whole different discussion…well maybe not that different.

My bad @Fyrius. I was confusing your responses with someone else on the board. My apologies.

@zophu

Yes, to a degree.

Physically speaking for survivals sake we do need to be certain that we have enough food and appropriate means for survival.

Most anxiety created by mind is the reaction to a perceived threat, rather than a reality based threat.

If I lie in bed at night fearing bears, when infact there is not a bear within 100 miles, that is a far cry from fearing the bear that is chasing me down the trail as I walk. lolol

Most anxiety is the mind whipping the body into reaction without a factual based reality.

It’s the mind creating a lot of ‘what if ’ stories that do not exist in the reality of the moment.

@Fausnaught
It’s probably because you have a “D“octorate that you don’t know what I’m saying. Or, it’s because I’m an overemotional, undereducated loser who has too much thinking time on his hands and is ultimately full of shit. Take your pick.

I do think education solidifies things a little too much. You have a much broader collection of concepts, but because each is so specific, it leaves little room for flexibility. Which is good when creating theories for mass consumption, everyone knows the meaning of each term without question because they are so absolutely defined. But, it’s not good when dealing with things that can’t be absolutely defined. Which is metaphysics and philosophy, I guess.

@Fausnaught It seems to me that you are using a different definition of determinism than most people think of. You are using determinism to say that the past is immutable. Once it’s happened, it can’t unhappen. It was the way it was because that’s the way it was.

That kind of determinism is pretty useless, isn’t it? You can’t use it to make choices in your life. You can’t use it to predict anything. You are merely saying that the past is fixed.

I’m sure there’s something I’m missing here, and you’ll let me know what it is, but for the life of me, I can’t see what bee is in your bonnet. Why do we care if the past is determined?

@zophu for good measure I took my qualifications off that question. There is a difference between being clever and being educated. Being clever is fine, but if you don’t know the facts or the actual data and information, then you just sound silly… but still clever. Ask Karl Pilkington.

@Fausnaught
Gladly accepted.

@Coloma
It’s not the certainty of survival that is necessary to have; in fact that eventually causes over-comfort and laziness, I think. Think of knowledge and belief as tools, nothing is absolutely true from every perspective, but we must have knowledge, beliefs and faith in order to deal. They’re like the mental versions of legs and arms sort of. Knowing “too much” and believing overwhelming truths can have negative effects on health; but, our collective actions as humanity must be relevant to reality thus our pursuit to understand it. It is a balance between truth and lies that defines a healthy perspective.

@wundayatta I really hope you don’t think determinism means that someone determined how things develope, do you? Don’t let the root word, determine, fool you. No entity or process is determining anything. I find the term determinism to be a misnomer and wish they would have gone with something else. But anyway…

Just to reset the conversation I will re-qualify what determinism means in the guise of this conversation:

Determinism is the view that every event, including human cognition, behavior, decision, and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences. Determinists believe the universe is fully governed by causal laws resulting in only one possible state at any point in time.

It’s a pretty straight forward theory. Remember, determinism isn’t the effect or even the cause, it’s the assessment of the cause and effect post-facto.

@Fausnaught
I guess I’ll just have to sound silly. (heh) I’m hear more to exercise my cleverness, I guess, than sound knowledgeable anyway. Pretty selfish of me.

I wasn’t correcting your punctuation with the “D” thing. It just seems silly to refer to a doctorate as a proper noun, whether or not it is considered correct.

edit: Despite my lack of free will, I decided to move “just” to it’s proper place; thus seeming slightly less like the highschool drop-out I am. (Highschool’s one word as far as I’m concerned, fuck spellcheck. Hah! . . . clever. . .)

@wundayatta Furthermore…

You said, “You are using determinism to say that the past is immutable. Once it’s happened, it can’t unhappen. It was the way it was because that’s the way it was.”

What I am saying is, that the PRESENT is what it is because it is the only way it could be given the previous events leading up to today that stretch all the way back to the creation of the Universe.

@Fausnaught So no multi-world theories for Determinists? We can’t have an infinity of actual presents?

@zophu

Yep…integration is where it’s at.

@wundayatta Sure why not, but they will still be assessable using determinism. Each universe, if there indeed are alternate universes, will have it’s own deterministic chain. It maybe be different, but it would still explain, after the fact of course, the course of cognition and the state of their reality.

“Is free will a trick of the mind?”

Yes. Cogito ergo sum.

I think a strong case against determinism can be constructed.

Firstly, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle tells us that there are theoretical limits to the accuracy with which the position and momentum of a particle can be determined. The current interpretation of this is a probabilistic one. When combined with the butterfly effect of chaos theory, this means that at some point the small particle measurement inaccuracies will have a significant effect on even the most theoretical ability to make predictions.

Secondly, a human may be so complex that the only way to compute a person’s future behavior would be to create a simulator that is just as complex as the human. Would that really be deterministic? The only way to predict what the person does would in effect be a duplicate copy of the person.

Finally, consider the following. Suppose that a machine has been constructed to predict events given a small controlled environment. A building is constructed with controlled temperature and other environmental conditions. A small group of people is placed insides the building for a limited time. One of these people runs the prediction machine. Among other things, it tells in detail what this person will do. What is to prevent this person from altering, even in a small way, his predicted activity?

Maybe. I’ve shared this URL before:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Libet#Implications_of_Libet.27s_experiments

It’s the predictability of one’s actions—or the lack of it—that defines one’s free will. No?

I could care less about proving anything, takes all the fun & mystery out of the mystery, and a mystery it is!

Right now I am heading out into this amazing spring morning to soak in the uncertainty of the day!

Bring it on! lololol

chaos is just another word for I don’t know why.

Why are there only two choices in a moment—to kill or not to kill? Are there not many other possibilities. Your determinism seems to be based on either/or which I reject 100%.

“Are there not many other possibilities.”

Yes, which will eventually lead to the decision of killing or not.

Don’t we see this question every week or so? I should just start copy+pasting my answer.

Because a human is a part of their environment, and not a separate entity floating off in space somewhere, it is impossible for the human’s choice to be anything but an outcome of what came before.

The use of the concept of “free will” is still necessary to some degree. Because you are a part of an environment, you are also a part of what determines any outcome in that environment—any choice you make. Your concept of free-will is a tool used in calculating the “best” choices, but it does not define your choices alone as the concept states. Perhaps it is time we evolve beyond the need of the concept as it is commonly understood, but derivatives will exist regardless. Free-will is a necessary illusion.

Is that less silly?

nice to see other people arguing this.

you act according to your preferences and abilities and since you can’t help what you happen to prefer at the moment and since you can’t control your ability, determinism wins.

I prefer, therefore, I act.

Yes, but how does the hamster wheel exist? Regardless it unfalsifiable and largely irrelevant to because it is impossible to know the complete chain of events that occurred prior to the present and therefore precisely understand what, if any, causal laws exists or predict what will occur outside of all but the most limited perspectives. From our perspective, at any moment in time, determinism and it’s causal laws may or may not exist therefore negating itself. As to free will, it’s our own in so far as we must choose. A soft deterministic role exists (as our past experience relates to our choice) but at any moment in time all paths forward may be taken. To say one can only make the decision they were going to make is irrelevant because it assumes a future that is not capable of being known. To say the future exists because the past exists isn’t logical because it presupposes no outside influence. It may exist, it may not, all possible futures may exist, only some may exist, it is unfalsifiable.

“To say the future exists because the past exists isn’t logical because it presupposes no outside influence. It may exist, it may not, all possible futures may exist, only some may exist, it is unfalsifiable.”

no.. i’ve fallen out of love with the multi-verse myth. we have no evidence of any other timelines besides our own. to suggest that there may be other timelines, other dimensions, is a guess.. not a scientific asumption.