You don't have Free Will.

Originally posted by MoonSage
I do think we have free will. Although, most may predestine thier choices by not wanting to accept the repercussions of thier decision. Hence, it is "easier" to just go with the flow than to deal with the outcome.
IMO, free will is there for all, society, as a whole pushes the hand of direction.
Yes... I se this has already been said

You think you have free will. What you actually have is FATE AND DESTINY with the choice of changing your fate (freewill destiny). YOU if you change agressively your fate (by using free will) may be going against your destiny thereby changing your future, that was destiny in the first place and disallowing the "easier" flow of self determinism to actuate (no one said this was easy especially the ones determined not to reveal the info JESUS).

Originally posted by TheBandit795
reply to post by applesthateatpeople

 

Then debunk what I said.

I did.

I said it was b.s. (by free will)



Seriously though... with a title like "you have no free will", it is you that has the explaining to do.

And I was pointing out how unimpressed I was with everything so far.

You got anything else to add?

Originally posted by arpgme
reply to post by Nicks87

 

Originally posted by Nicks87
We all have free will.

I think some people act like we dont so they wont have to take responsibility for their actions or feel guilty when they do something morally corrupt.

Aw.. em.. atheists (coughing)

Not all atheists believe we don't have free-will. Even if free-will didn't exist people would still have been (and will be) getting arrested for their crimes. In fact, if free-will doesn't, exists, it would mean that it was meant for people to be punished for their crimes (as well as thought who escaped).This is just a thought.

I would think it would be the agnostics (they are the roll over puppy"drones" NO SPINE but a huge bite) most likely to not understand free will. Nations were fought over this ideaform of self determinism, right to exist. Atheists on the other hand have never defended a county, a province, a nation as "unbelievers of God", OH WAIT ONE SECOND was that not the tenent of the COMMUNIST CCCP, (soviet russia). YIKES AND YES, evil empire, Those those poor children being corrupted by a state run ignorant realm of fools that disallowed a Belief system of a parent god? The Russian Orthodox were/are Catholics Colbe; save them, (St.Petersburg) its in the DNA and they need your generous christian fellowshop/shipped brethren MONITARILY to help out a fellow Catholic, stuck in Moscow. Still trying to figure out the Onion Dome Bombs. Insane Architecture, Bob Dylan a real afficianado, Persian with a Ghangis Khan influence

Wake up people.

"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate." - Carl Jung

Wake up.

reply to post by TheBandit795


I have always had the same thought about there being no such thing as 'free will'. I think our subconsciouses are programmed to make every decision we make. Through every prior experience we've had in life (culture, enviornment, upbringing, personality) we have already predetermined our future decisions. Even when you think you are being spontaneous, your degree of a spontaneous personality, preferences and brain make-up have already predetermined what spontaneous act you will perform.

Originally posted by applesthateatpeople

Originally posted by TheBandit795
reply to post by applesthateatpeople

 

Then debunk what I said.

I did.

No you didn't.

Originally posted by Nicks87


It wasnt an attack. The mods on this site just like to act tough when they start losing arguments.

Dare I suggest you do us a favor? I'm not sure because that would require a choice and you are incapable of that aye!

That wasn't a veiled attack?

Originally posted by NewAgeMan
reply to post by TheBandit795

 

Were you compelled to make the OP in this thread to tell us that we don't have free will?

Perhaps I was, who knows. The scientific evidence provides support for that.

reply to post by slugger9787

Originally posted by slugger9787
If free will is untrue then determinism must be true.

I'm going to post a thread about how I believe that we do have free will in a way that includes subconscious cooperation with your conscious mind sometime in the future. Which does not conflict with this thread.

reply to post by TheBandit795


Wow.

You don't finish reading posts.

Interesting.

reply to post by applesthateatpeople


You didn't debunk it. Period.

You didn't bring anything to the conversation; anything that debunks or even criticizes the publications from Aarts, Custers, or Bargh I've posted.

You didn't say anything about the "psychological reversal" that I was talking about in this thread, or even the link I posted about it. You made no comment about this, other than a vague "b.s. (by free will)" you didn't explain what you meant.

I said in my OP "At least in the way we define free will: The act of consciously making decisions. That doesn't exist in the way we think it to be. "

The act of consciously making decisions, which means that the conscious mind is completely independent of external factors, including the subconscious mind when we make decisions. That is not the case as you can see in the articles and research studies that I've posted.

When you consider the mind to be the conscious and more (at least the subconscious mind) then we're talking another story.

I've found an interesting article that suggests something other to my OP.

Free Will Is Not An Illusion by dr William Klemm

Many scientists and philosophers think that free-will is an illusion. That is, intentions, choices, and decisions are made by subconscious mind, which only lets the conscious mind know what was willed after the fact. This argument was promoted long ago by scholars like Darwin, Huxley, and Einstein. Many modern scholars also hold that position and neuroscientists have even performed experiments since the 80s to prove it.

These experiments supposedly show that the brain makes a subconscious decision before it is realized consciously. In the typical experiment supporting illusory free will, a subject is asked to voluntarily press a button at any time and notice the position of a clock marker when they think they first willed the movement. At the same time, brain activity is monitored over the part of the brain that controls the mechanics of the movement. The startling typical observation is that subjects show brain activity changes before they say they intended to make the movement. In other words the brain supposedly issued the command before the conscious mind had a chance to decide to move. All this happens in less than a second, but various scientists have interpreted this to mean that the subconscious mind made the decision to move and the conscious mind only realized the decision later.

He continues:

In a paper in the current issue of Advances in Cognitive Psychology (Vol. 6, page 47-65), I challenge the whole series of experiments performed since the 1980s pur-ported to show that intentions, choices, and decisions are made subconsciously, with conscious mind being informed after the fact. These experiments do not test what they are intended to test and are misinterpreted to support the view of illusory free will.

My criticisms focus on three main points: 1) timing of when a free-will event occurred requires introspection, and other research shows that introspective estimates of event timing are not accurate, 2) simple finger movements may be performed without much conscious thought and certainly not representative of the conscious decisions and choices required in high-speed conversation or situations where the subconscious mind cannot know ahead of time what to do, and 3) the brain activity measures have been primitive and incomplete.

And concludes with:

In the real world, subconscious and conscious minds interact and share duties. Subconscious mind governs simple or well-learned tasks, like habits or ingrained prejudices, while conscious mind deals with tasks that are complex or novel, like first learning to ride a bike or play sheet music. Most deliberate new learning has to be mediated by free will, because subconscious mind has not yet had a chance to learn.

There is another article which replies to this which I am yet reading.
cognitivephilosophy.net...

reply to post by TheBandit795


Once again....

You didn't read it all.

I said that with a title like "you have no free will" it is you that has explaining to do.

I was saying the title is b.s. because it really isn't what the information suggests.

Originally posted by applesthateatpeople
reply to post by TheBandit795

 

I said that with a title like "you have no free will" it is you that has explaining to do.

Which I already did in the first sentence in the post.

From the link: Free Will Is Not What You Think It Is

Over at brainblogger there was a post recently (Free Will is NOT An Illusion) which argued against the idea that free will is an illusion. The author argues against the idea that all choices and decisions are made by the subconscious mind, that “the brain makes a subconscious decision before it is realized consciously”. He views this as a misguided notion. He focuses on certain experiments which purport to show the illusion of free will, and argues that they either have faulty methodology or that the data are misinterpreted. On this point I will tend to agree with the author, Dr. Klemm. The experiments he mentions alone are not enough for us to put aside long held notions of free will. Dr. Klemm is also spot on in his statements regarding the difficulty of distinguishing between the processes involved in consciousness and what we call the subconscious, and how these relate to decision making. The problem as I see it, is that Dr. Klemm began his whole line of reasoning from the wrong set of assumptions. These assumptions can be implicitly seen in the conclusion he reaches at the close of the article:

He quotes the dr Klemm's conclusion in his article and follows with...

What I see as the fundamental error in this line of reasoning is that it assumes without justification that free will lies in the realm of conscious choices. That a conscious choice IS a free choice. Most sophisticated criticisms of the notion of free will don’t assert that humans lack free will because decisions are unconscious (though this is certainly a piece of the puzzle), but because even the conscious process of decision making, choice, and action are themselves lacking in free will. These theories argue that the conscious experience of making a choice is in fact an epiphenomenon (i.e. – your conscious experience is just along for the ride, a passive observer with no causal influence on resulting action) and that the feeling of will that goes along with your conscious life is just that…a “feeling”.

Later on in the article:

Bringing it down to a more fine grained level of physical phenomena, where is there room for free will if at root, all behavior is the three dimensional organizational projection of a bunch of atoms, or protons and electrons interacting according to very rigid laws of physics? Each particular atom has no “will” of its own. And yet some very large collection of atoms are supposed be free in some wholly different way? It’s usually at this point where quantum mechanical theories of free will try to sneak in, but besides questions regarding whether quantum mechanical indeterminacy can even have any affect on higher order constructions of matter, indeterminacy itself grants no free will, it simply grants randomness. To explain free will, we have to be able to explain how a person, with beliefs and desires and values can make a decision that is in some way intentionally willed, but yet in an indeterministic* way. In a way that is free in some metaphysical sense. The quantum indeterminacy of microparticles gives us no solace.

Originally posted by TheBandit795
reply to post by applesthateatpeople

 

You didn't debunk it. Period.

You didn't bring anything to the conversation; anything that debunks or even criticizes the publications from Aarts, Custers, or Bargh I've posted.

You didn't say anything about the "psychological reversal" that I was talking about in this thread, or even the link I posted about it. You made no comment about this, other than a vague "b.s. (by free will)" you didn't explain what you meant.

I said in my OP "At least in the way we define free will: The act of consciously making decisions. That doesn't exist in the way we think it to be. "

The act of consciously making decisions, which means that the conscious mind is completely independent of external factors, including the subconscious mind when we make decisions. That is not the case as you can see in the articles and research studies that I've posted.

When you consider the mind to be the conscious and more (at least the subconscious mind) then we're talking another story.

What is annoyingly...mmm...presumtuous (disregarding nomenclature that describes the obverse of theories presented) is the blanket thrown over every single thinking, choice making mind. The reality is...as with all academic forays into a subject (of which they have little understanding - therefore creating psychological tricks [with fancy names...ohhh, to lend it credence, of course]...that assumes everyone, holus bolus, is beholden to) there is a propensity to make the behaviour fit the theory...psychology is not alone in this disingenuous exercise...it is a blight that ignores the individual (indeed, all individuals are roped in together, as hallucinators)...
What research does not address is the psychology of creating these determinations (through theory) that would compel them to reach the origami conclusions they do...instead, it dons the mask of psychological fundamentalism...and you can't argue with that kind if closed mind...

A99

I agree and that's why it's important to guard your mind as much as possible and practice deep breathing and mind control exercises to protect yourself from sabotaging your life. We do live in auto pilot but we can change that. I've been practicing mind control for twenty five years and I know it's possible to have at least some control of your daily decisions. With Neuro-linguistic programming, Silva mind control, and Rosicrucian teachings I've been able to do just that. And I like to make posting here on ATS not because I'm on auto pilot but because it is wise to share with people your knowledge to help those who want to be helped.

reply to post by TheBandit795

When you include the subconscious, then yes. I agree that we do have free will. Discard the subconscious (which the vast majority of people do) then we don't have free will.

So the conscious mind doesn't constitute as free will? Especially given that the majority of the cases provided in the article you linked were a result of subconscious sabotage, I think you'll have difficulty proving your case on that one.

Additionally, just because there is an antagonist doesn't negate the existence of a protagonist. Free will exists whether resistance exists or not. You seem to be suggesting that just because free will doesn't always win out over psychological programming, we may as well count it out completely. No. It doesn't work that way. Sometimes free will operates exactly as we expect it to, and sometimes our blindspots get the best of us. This doesn't make free will any less effective given the right circumstances and psychological stimuli.

We've seen plenty of examples of people being presented with two equally hefty choices. And when it was easier to do the wrong thing, they did the right thing and ended up changing lives. Wouldn't you call that free will?

reply to post by TheBandit795

The act of consciously making decisions, which means that the conscious mind is completely independent of external factors, including the subconscious mind when we make decisions.

The mind, that is the product of a human brain, which is the organ that carries out the dictates of the will, consists of three separate layers
1. Consciousness: current activity thoughts, directives,
2. Sub-consciousness: past memories that are readily and easily brought to consciousness. (how old you are, what you had for breakfast)
3. Un-consciousness: information that is unaccessible due to it being unimportant or repressed and supressed.
(what you got on your third birthday (unimportant), that you were present at your grandmothers death when you were six (repressed))

That unconscious layer of information plays a part in the formation of thoughts that the will begets into action proportional to the amount of emotional energy stored in the subconscious memory.

I repressed viewing my grandmothers death at age six and as a Catholic altar boy, who served at funerals, it influenced my emotional and mental and behavioral (the exercize of my free will) choices.

To conclude that everyone has repressed and supressed emotionally laden events that preclude conscious exercize of free will is cagetorically incorrect.

This thread keeps popping up. All I can say to it, after thinking and rethinking the ideas in it, is YES WE DO, we not only have free will, but sovereign infinite rights.

Thoughtscape. So think powerfully free and equal with overhwelming love for everyone and see the mismanangers giving up, joining with us, and ever so repenting for their tyranny.