Probability does not necessarily mean that there is free-will

NOTE: This thread is NOT about whether or not free-will exists. This thread is about whether or not everything is governed by Laws or is just Probability/Chaos, that doesn't necessarily mean free-will exists. Please read this entire Original Post before responding, thanks.

Just because complete Order doesn't exist because quantum physics proves probability, that doesn't mean that free-will does. We could all be slaves to Chaos, as life unfolds randomly.

It could be that there is Order, and everything follows this order and therefore with the right information anything can be predicted and everything is set in stone including the 'choices' that we think are ours.

Or it could even be, that there is Chaos, and everything is randomly happening including the 'chooses' that we think are ours.

Probability alone does not prove free-will, and neither does a lack of law/order.

What do you think?

reply to post by arpgme


When you set your alarm to wake up in the morning,

Explain the choice you make to either get out of bed or to go back to sleep.

reply to post by onequestion

onequestion
reply to post by arpgme

 

When you set your alarm to wake up in the morning,

Explain the choice you make to either get out of bed or to go back to sleep.

Just because it seems like 'choices' are being made, that doesn't automatically mean that you have free-will. I already gave an explanation as to why in the original post (which you obviously didn't read, or understood).

I'm looking for people to actually read the thread and try to debunk or explain away what is being said. That is the point of this thread.

reply to post by arpgme


How can it not be free will to choose?

You didnt explain it very well.

onequestion
reply to post by arpgme

 

When you set your alarm to wake up in the morning,

Explain the choice you make to either get out of bed or to go back to sleep.

Even crazier is you most likely have made the choice to do either, before you are conscious of that choice which triggers the actions to wake up.

We live in the past, everything we see is on such a time delay, that our mind makes up the difference, so the question is do we make a choice, or does or brain tell us after the fact that we did.

reply to post by arpgme


what if i am hungry and i go to a supermarket and CHOOSE what to eat is that freewill

I think you mite have to rethink this one fella.

reply to post by arpgme


All forms of chaos have an implicit order to them if you zoom out far enough.

Maybe what we choose can't be called "free will" but we are actively deciding on our predestined outcome. If you take time out of the equation, you can have it both ways.

reply to post by onequestion

onequestion
reply to post by arpgme

 

How can it not be free will to choose?

You didnt explain it very well.

Just because 'events' are happening in reality, it doesn't mean that you are in control of them. If Order exist, all of your choices are predetermined, if Chaos exists, then all of your choices are happening randomly. It doesn't mean that 'You' are involved.

Think of virtual particles. Just because they are popping into existence without a completely determined location, that doesn't mean that the particles are 'choosing' where they will be.

When people think of 'no free-will' they usually assume that there is some 'Order' or 'Law' that is determining everything. I'm saying, even without Law or Order, and even if only Chaos existed, that doesn't mean that it is 'You' who is in charge of anything, the choices may be happening at random while your mind gets you to believe you are in charge.

reply to post by Cuervo

Cuervo
reply to post by arpgme

 

All forms of chaos have an implicit order to them if you zoom out far enough.

The outer is just the result of the inner, before you can have atoms and molecules and organism, you need to first have particles pop into existence from energy, and quantum physics shows, that while particles are 'popping' into existence, it doesn't have a predetermined location, nor is there any reason to assume that particles are 'choosing' where they will be.

reply to post by coolcatt

coolcatt
reply to post by arpgme

 

what if i am hungry and i go to a supermarket and CHOOSE what to eat is that freewill

I think you mite have to rethink this one fella.

Either, you didn't read the thread or you misunderstood the point.

Please people, actually read the thread before responding.

reply to post by arpgme

Dear arpgme,

In another example of the accuracy of my name, Mr. Confusion, allow me to ask a question or two.

We could all be slaves to Chaos, as life unfolds randomly. . . . Or it could even be, that there is Chaos, and everything is randomly happening including the 'chooses' that we think are ours.

Let's assume for a moment that you are correct and everything is happening randomly. Doesn't that mean that the thought "Everything is happening randomly" is just a random thought? A random collection of words with no particular reason to believe it's true? Of course, that means that my question, and what I believe is the "thought" behind it, is also just random. "That way madness lies."

Alternatively, you suggest that nothing is random, everything is eternally fixed.

It could be that there is Order, and everything follows this order and therefore with the right information anything can be predicted and everything is set in stone including the 'choices' that we think are ours.

If that is true, why take any action or have any thought? Whatever happens was going to happen with or without us. Whatever action we take will not change anything by the smallest bit from what was going to happen anyway. That means all of our actions are futile, therefore meaningless. It seems to me that that is the identical result you reach by claiming everything is random, the idea that our choices have no effect on anything.

I hope I misunderstand you, otherwise you are holding to some very depressing philosophies.

(Although, come to think of it, those positions imply that humans aren't responsible for anything. Neither war, nor global warming, nor brutality, or hatred, or crime. I think those positions are wrong, but I can see where they would be comforting.)

With respect,
Charles1952

We have free will between boundaries of the path of life. If we go outside those boundaries, there will be consequences. There is no such thing as complete free will, if we do not drink water our free will disappears as we die. It is self regulating, a path is laid out that we must follow. This path is highly influenced by circumstances of the environment or society we live in.

reply to post by charles1952

charles1952
Dear arpgme,

In another example of the accuracy of my name, Mr. Confusion, allow me to ask a question or two.

Thank you for actually reading the original post before responding. Many people didn't (or didn't understand it).

charles1952
Doesn't that mean that the thought "Everything is happening randomly" is just a random thought?

Yup. It could be that these thoughts are randomly happening.

charles1952
A random collection of words with no particular reason to believe it's true?

Well, that would mean truth and lies come randomly, too, and whether we believe it or not is also random, although it may be disguised by the mind justifying why it does or does not believe something.

charles1952
"That way madness lies."

Maybe

charles1952
Alternatively, you suggest that nothing is random, everything is eternally fixed.

My point was to show that whether there is Order or Chaos, that doesn't mean that we have free-will. It could be that things are eternally fixed under some Law or Order; or it could also be things are eternally fixed under Chaos where things happen randomly and people are just acting through randomness (although the mind makes them believe they are in control).

charles1952
If that is true, why take any action or have any thought?

Because, if this is true, then you are forced to, whether by an Order/Law that governs the universe and works through you, or by Chaos/Randomness working through you.

charles1952
Although, come to think of it, those positions imply that humans aren't responsible for anything. Neither war, nor global warming, nor brutality, or hatred, or crime. I think those positions are wrong, but I can see where they would be comforting.

Maybe Chaos is forcing it to happen, or maybe Order/Law is forcing it to happen as a part of it's bigger 'plan'.

This kind of reminded me of the Dora the Explorer spoof they did on Saturday Night Live once.

www.metatube.com...

Towards the end she has this line: "If Mittens chose to save baby penguin based on his beliefs, and Mitten's beliefs are not in his direct control, does Mittens really have free will?"

onequestion
How can it not be free will to choose?

yeahright

onequestion
How can it not be free will to choose?

The following is my opinion as a member participating in this discussion.

Here's an example.

Computers make thousands of choices. In fact, that's what a computer does, it chooses. If A then B. Does a computer have free will?

Point being, the capacity to choose does not directly imply free will.

When you make a choice, do you know that you're making it by virtue of free will, or are you after the fact rationalizing a choice that was already made?

Free will? Free from what? You can't have degrees of free will in this context. It's either free, or it isn't. I've never found a compelling, believable, sustainable argument for the existence of true free will. But then maybe you don't think it means what I think it does.

As an ATS Staff Member, I will not moderate in threads such as this where I have participated as a member.

I don't know if I'd say computers make "choices" as opposed to making "calculations". "If A then B" isn't really a "choice", it's more a directive, IMHO.

reply to post by coolcatt

what if i am hungry and i go to a supermarket and CHOOSE what to eat is that freewill

As long as you choose something the supermarket supplies,

When you became hungry was there a thought in mind as to what you might want eat or was there no thought and a choice was made when arriving to the shop and seeing what is available?

reply to post by InhaleExhale


Well when I walking to the store am thinking am hungry I think I would love M D's but then I think It will only slow me down for the rest of the day then I'll go into the store look at whats their and choose one of my like-in.

reply to post by InhaleExhale

InhaleExhale
reply to post by coolcatt

 

what if i am hungry and i go to a supermarket and CHOOSE what to eat is that freewill

As long as you choose something the supermarket supplies,

When you became hungry was there a thought in mind as to what you might want eat or was there no thought and a choice was made when arriving to the shop and seeing what is available?

Good point. If each person has their own "will" and can "act" on it, that doesn't mean they have "free-will". It just means they have "will" and that will comes with limitations so it isn't really "free". It is completely dependent on circumstances.

Anyway, this thread is not about whether or not free-will exists. It's about the false assumption that if probability exists that must automatically mean that free-will does.

reply to post by Cuervo

All forms of chaos have an implicit order to them if you zoom out far enough.

Thank you Cuervo,

I was going to say a pattern can be found in chaos, to find it one understands the concept of something from nothing,

but the question is can it be verbalized for others to understand?

If you have found order to chaos have you found a way to express this knowledge without contradictions that will make you sound like a nut trying to explain it and the contradictions away?

I get stumped every time I seem to be getting close to expressing order from chaos. Its the concept of infinity acting on our understanding of another concept, that being chaos. You start to make sense of it and start trying to explain only to see you are miles off and further away then you were before when it seemed so close.

If there is no chaos, there is no order. If there is no order, there is no chaos. The two concepts are inseparable, as one requires the other to contrast itself against.

Whether there is chaos or order, we will react to it either way because we have no choice to. Even the prediction, the decision, is bound by rules. Does a will rule without being ruled itself? No.

We cannot choose, decide or will to will or not. Will cannot cause itself, nor end itself. So the idea of free or unfree will is quite ridiculous, as nothing is its own cause. To say that we decide because of will is to say that we decide to decide, which is a tautology. In the end, will is merely another word we use to describe the willing agent, the decider—ourselves—and the only way to have freedom from ourselves, our environment, chaos or order, is death. Human will itself, whether free or not, is a myth. The act is everything, and "intention" and "will" are merely hindsight ideas regarding a much deeper yet unintelligible substrate.

I think the mind is between complete randomness and complete predictability.

Like you say, just because we cannot - within the laws of physics - perfectly predict the choices someone will make, does not mean much. If the universe inserts a certain amount of randomness that prevents us from predicting the future then is that not an example of freedom being taken away? How can I choose something rightly if there's no surefire way to know what it will be in the future?

If inserting some randomness into the universe makes it impossible to know every choice someone will make, what does that say about a universe with no randomness? Doesn't that mean everything would be perfectly predictable and thus there would be no free will? If all that separates us from losing our free will is some randomness then it sure is a thin line. In due consideration, maybe we should re-term "free will" as something that better describes what it's. It's something that would otherwise be perfectly predictable if there was no randomness.

I think there's an amount of free will, but it's not complete free will. I think we have free will within the confines of our relative existence. Because there's some predictability and because we can sometimes make a better choice based on the evidence in front of us then this does mean we will experience some relative free will. Complete free will is like saying it's impossible to judge correctly ANY choice a person will make in the future. Because we can accurately judge some choices a person will make, it does mean there's not complete free will.

I think this is fundamentally about substance dualism. Is life separate of nature? Is intelligence separate of the universe? When we make a choice, is it separate of all the fundamental chemicals and processes in the brain? Do all of the fundamental chemicals and processes in our brain produce our choices? Is the mind like billiard balls on a pool table, always following definable rules, with some randomness thrown into it to make it so it's not perfectly predictable?