Do we really have free will?

Originally posted by Damrod
Oh...well...who am I to argue with scientist...especially the ones who have never taken the time to interview and study "every single human being's thoughts and motivations"....

So if they haven't study "every single human being's thoughts and motivations" , it must be false because they didn't do it with every. single . one?

Originally posted by Damrod
It is called "causality"...cause and effect. You CAN choose to do whatever you want to do...but...then you have to live with the consequences of those choices....this is human freewill....like it or not.

Causation and Effect does not equal free-will. That doesn't even make sense. You do release that your action is and effect of another cause, right?

The only reason why you can take action (effect) is because you were born (cause).

Everything is chained, no free-will.

Originally posted by Damrod
I can choose to do whatever I want to do...and be completely prepared to deal with the ramifications of those choices....

Really? You can flap your arms and fly if you wanted to? You can snap your fingers and pop things in to existence? If not, you can not "do whatever" you want. You can only do the stuff that you are ALLOWED to do.

Originally posted by Damrod
I disagree with determinism...you are basically saying that I am nothing but a culmination of prior events and the choices I make are completely based on that......and I disagree wholeheartedly because I have a brain capable of critical thinking and analysis....I can choose...at any point...to "trail blaze" a new path of my desire...."damn the torpedoes...full steam ahead"....

You parents meet (cause) > Your mom is pregnant (effect)
You are born (cause) > You have action (effect).

Of course there are many, many other chains of events which I don't personally know about your life, but they definitely fill in for everyone's.

Originally posted by Damrod
and I disagree wholeheartedly because I have a brain capable of critical thinking and analysis...

Yeah, and a computer has more function than a calculator...

Originally posted by arpgme

Originally posted by Damrod
Oh...well...who am I to argue with scientist...especially the ones who have never taken the time to interview and study "every single human being's thoughts and motivations"....

So if they haven't study "every single human being's thoughts and motivations" , it must be false because they didn't do it with every. single . one?

Originally posted by Damrod
It is called "causality"...cause and effect. You CAN choose to do whatever you want to do...but...then you have to live with the consequences of those choices....this is human freewill....like it or not.

Causation and Effect does not equal free-will. That doesn't even make sense. You do release that your action is and effect of another cause, right?

The only reason why you can take action (effect) is because you were born (cause).

Everything is chained, no free-will.

Originally posted by Damrod
I can choose to do whatever I want to do...and be completely prepared to deal with the ramifications of those choices....

Really? You can flap your arms and fly if you wanted to? You can snap your fingers and pop things in to existence? If not, you can not "do whatever" you want. You can only do the stuff that you are ALLOWED to do.

Originally posted by Damrod
I disagree with determinism...you are basically saying that I am nothing but a culmination of prior events and the choices I make are completely based on that......and I disagree wholeheartedly because I have a brain capable of critical thinking and analysis....I can choose...at any point...to "trail blaze" a new path of my desire...."damn the torpedoes...full steam ahead"....

You parents meet (cause) > Your mom is pregnant (effect)
You are born (cause) > You have action (effect).

Of course there are many, many other chains of events which I don't personally know about your life, but they definitely fill in for everyone's.

Originally posted by Damrod
and I disagree wholeheartedly because I have a brain capable of critical thinking and analysis...

Yeah, and a computer has more function than a calculator...

edit on 28-4-2012 by arpgme because: (no reason given)

edit on 28-4-2012 by arpgme because: (no reason given)

You really have some silly views that are attempting to complicate a very simple process....lets break this down to the simplest of choices....let's use a metaphor....

Let's say...I have found Pandora's box...now I have heard through mythology...that it is bad-bad to open it....however...I can choose to open it or not....that is Freewill.

Let's move that thought to a practical application...the "lost nuke" from Georgia....

Let's say...I find said nuke in a swamp...now I have a choice to make...I can choose to take my cell phone and call the appropriate authorities...or...I can think to myself "this country is over" and attempt to detonate said device....this is the essence of freewill....

Your whole idea of determinism that something is going to dictate my choice is fail...it depends on my mood at the moment...not some grand build up of pre-existing conditions....I CHOOSE what I am going to do in the moment....the fringe neurologists are completely wrong...they are not considering things like manic-depression...

My brain...at anytime...can choose to defy conventional logic...and this IS A KNOWN PSYCHIATRICAL/PSYCHOLOGICAL FACT....the human brain is far to complex to predict it's functions at this point in time...thus....determinism is nothing more than a theory....a fail theory at that.

Oh we have freewill...much to the dismay of the want to be rulers and kings.....

So here's my thought. I would probably like to not have free will more than I would like to have it. I like the idea of a supreme intelligence coordinating the movements of my life and the movements of the lives of others around me. When I look at it like that, I start to see a certain kind of harmonic dance all around me. I just can't figure out if this dance is due to not having free will or if it is due to me delusionally believing I don't have free will. Either way, the dance I see is pretty trippy.

You seem to desire to be a serf... having some being control every aspect of your life for you so you do not have to make any decisions yourself is pathetic. take control of your own life, make your own decisions.



As Christopher Hitchens once said, "We have free will because we have no choice." there is no need for an intelligent designer who controls everything we do.. what would be the point?
An astrologist (who's name i can not remember), once presented a model of the solar system to the king. the king said, "where is god in all of this?" the astrologist replied, "it works perfectly without that assumption."

there is no need for a supreme being to have the universe, or morality, or purpose.. you have free will because there is no celestial dictator. anyone who forces themselves into thinking there is one, desires to be a slave.

Originally posted by TheCelestialHuman

So here's my thought. I would probably like to not have free will more than I would like to have it. I like the idea of a supreme intelligence coordinating the movements of my life and the movements of the lives of others around me. When I look at it like that, I start to see a certain kind of harmonic dance all around me. I just can't figure out if this dance is due to not having free will or if it is due to me delusionally believing I don't have free will. Either way, the dance I see is pretty trippy.

You seem to desire to be a serf... having some being control every aspect of your life for you so you do not have to make any decisions yourself is pathetic. take control of your own life, make your own decisions.

As Christopher Hitchens once said, "We have free will because we have no choice." there is no need for an intelligent designer who controls everything we do.. what would be the point?
An astrologist (who's name i can not remember), once presented a model of the solar system to the king. the king said, "where is god in all of this?" the astrologist replied, "it works perfectly without that assumption."

there is no need for a supreme being to have the universe, or morality, or purpose.. you have free will because there is no celestial dictator. anyone who forces themselves into thinking there is one, desires to be a slave.

Bravo and well said....

I don't understand why supposedly freethinking beings would so easily relinquish their position...it makes no sense to me at all....Are you scared of the spaghetti monster? Are you afraid of the yet to be explored? I don't get it....man up...nut up...be strong or be used....don't be a wimp.....

reply to post by smithjustinb


You're still in gestation. It takes more than 9 months to build a human being. When you're finally done (and have tossed away the Homo Sapien placenta shell) you'll have all the free will that exists. The bitch is that most people allow themselves to be programmed by other people to believe that when they emerge from that placenta they'll be instructed and shown what "the truth" is and how to fit into "the plan" that's been at the base of all of this birth-life-death business. The reality of it is that this is just the way (the only way possible) that authoritarian people corral others into their idea of what eternity should behave like.

Those control freaks are everywhere on this side, and when you get to that side, the place is just as lousy with them and their arbitrary rules and regulations. Only there, they have most of us believing that the boss is God, and there's no cutting class - like ever.

I guess they figure that if everyone on that side of the veil knew how free they really are, it'd be a complete madhouse. Authoritarians are scared people. Scared people always try to force people into lines so that they can keep an eye on them.

reply to post by NorEaster


What do you think of the findings in Neurology which says that we don't have free-will and they can know our choices 7 seconds before we even decide it?

Originally posted by Damrod

You really have some silly views that are attempting to complicate a very simple process....lets break this down to the simplest of choices....let's use a metaphor....

Let's say...I have found Pandora's box...now I have heard through mythology...that it is bad-bad to open it....however...I can choose to open it or not....that is Freewill.

How do you know that you are "choosing" to open it? How do you know that action isn't predetermined? A neurologist will know whether you'll open it or not just by looking at your brain 7 seconds before you even DECIDE to.

Originally posted by Damrod
Let's say...I find said nuke in a swamp...now I have a choice to make...I can choose to take my cell phone and call the appropriate authorities...or...I can think to myself "this country is over" and attempt to detonate said device....this is the essence of freewill....

See the above, the same answer applies.

Originally posted by Damrod
Your whole idea of determinism that something is going to dictate my choice is fail...it depends on my mood at the moment...not some grand build up of pre-existing conditions....I CHOOSE what I am going to do in the moment...

But you never prove HOW it's a fail...
Your mood is dependent on circumstances as well.
Do you really believe you have a choice to open the box or not?

If you choose to open the box and something bad happens... what will happen if you go back to that exact moment? If your mind is exactly the same, without knowledge that something bad will happen, you'll pick it again! There is nothing happening to change your choice. Proof that in that moment you didn't have a choice.

Originally posted by Damrod
My brain...at anytime...can choose to defy conventional logic...and this IS A KNOWN PSYCHIATRICAL/PSYCHOLOGICAL FACT....the human brain is far to complex to predict it's functions at this point in time...thus....determinism is nothing more than a theory....a fail theory at that.

Sure, but how do you know that you are choosing to defy logic? How do you know that this wasn't also predetermined? Obviously the brain is not complex if all of your actions can be known before you decidei t.

People just don't want to except fact...

reply to post by Manunnaki


religion and the ignorant beliefs they spawn a are natural part of a species evolution.

just like the day that concepts of free will and an afterlife die.....

reply to post by Wertdagf


Look guys there are a lot of theories and scientific experiments about this and they point both ways.
So just choose, i prefer to believe in free will under certain limits, the more mature and evolved you are as a soul, the more free will you have, that is what i believe.

reply to post by Manula


Id be suspicious of the beliefs you carry because they make you feel all warm and fuzzy.

The time for the enabling of delusion, no matter how temporarily usefull, is coming to an end.

reply to post by Manula


Hmmm, I see it completely the opposite. The more "mature and evolved"; or in other words, the more one sincerely thinks about these things, one comes to not only realize but accept that free-will is an illusory concept. One must start to posit all sorts of other abstract concepts, such as God, Soul and Spirit, just to give it any credence. I don't know why people hate the idea of free-will be illusory so much, it ironically is actually more freeing. And after all, it is reality, what other reasons do you need to adopt such an idea?

I sincerely urge everyone interested in this topic to watch this video. I could never articulate this stuff as well as Sam does, so:

reply to post by smithjustinb


To understand how free will works, you need to have a reasonable definition of what free will is.

And its not what most people think it is. It's a matter of who dun it.

When you make a decision to do something and you follow through we attribute that to you acting with free will as long as it is within character. That is to say that with your personality, and your type of personality, you would do such and such.

Objectify that into computer terms to understand how that works...

You have generic consciousness software running, and it is using your personality file as a decision filter.

The things you do are based on the decisions you make, based on your personality type which is made up of nature and nurture and your archetype. (personality type)

If, you put a piece a coal, in a stocking at Christmas, although you are doing it, you are at the same time using Santa's free will, since it was his idea, and based on his personality type, he suggested that, and you are merely carrying out the orders.
BUT! If the orders you receive are not in accordance with the laws of the land, then regardless if you were falling to your death, outside a building with a shotgun in your hand, and it hit a flag pole and went off, went through a window and shot someone, a split second after you were dead from the fall, (its legalese) what I am saying is according to the Geneva convention, you must refuse to carry out orders that are not legal.

Which means a person is obliged to use their own free will.

In cases where it is deemed that a person cannot be held responsible for their actions, we assume it is because they did not act with free will.


The answer to the falling guy? He had made threats that he was going to shoot the person who died, and while he was lowering himself on a rope to shoot through the window, the rope broke, and he plummeted to his death, but hit the flagpole with the shotgun, and killed the person.

You see he has intent. It was an accident, but that is why he was there. He was there with the weapon, because he had intent.

Is it an accident or is it murder?

Use psychedelics to findout, but be carful. (of ur own accord)

I personally believe that we are put into this world to experience it, and what is called free will is nothing more than experiencing whatever it is you want to within the boundaries of the physical world. Like a 2 year old who crawls into a toy box full of new toys. Or better yet, like a mechanic with a bunch of parts and pieces and some tools.

The world is what we have made it. That is free will.
That's just an opinion though,
it could change at any time.



But to me, it is like we have been thrown into this chaos called earth and we just gotta do what ever we gotta do to exist in until we are gone. I think we do get steered in certain directions, depending on what and if we have a goal of some kind while we are here, but we can change at any time and do something totally different.

if you have an interest in this topic read vonnegut !

breakfast of champions, slaughterhouse 5, timequake