Post: #1

It looks to me that the biggest irony of life is that you know you don't have free will, that you are basically a calculation machine, but you can't do anything about it.

Quote:Arthur Schopenhauer put the puzzle of free will and moral responsibility in these terms:

Everyone believes himself, a priori, perfectly free—even in his individual actions, and thinks that at every moment he can commence another manner of life. ... But a posteriori, through experience, he finds to his astonishment that he is not free, but subjected to necessity, that in spite of all his resolutions and reflections he does not change his conduct, and that from the beginning of his life to the end of it, he must carry out the very character which he himself condemns...[130]

In his essay On the Freedom of the Will, Schopenhauer stated, "You can do what you will, but in any given moment of your life you can will only one definite thing and absolutely nothing other than that one thing."[131] According to Schopenhauer, phenomena do not have free will. However, will [urging, craving, striving, wanting, and desiring] as noumenon is free.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will

Post: #2

I think an irony of freewill is that the more we recognize the constraints on it, the more we have it.

When you're aware of your instinctual limitations, subconscious programming, etc., you can address why you do what you do and possibly change it. If you know, for example, that you're attracted to BPD psychos because you're trying to resolve something with your mom, you can see what's happening when it happens and rectify it.

But the people without much freewill are often those who most loudly insist they have it. They're entirely self-unaware and therefore blind to what controls them.

I believe we've got freewill, but it has its limits. The more you recognize those limits, the better you can handle and overcome them.

Post: #3

Free will is an illusion created by the human mind as a way of explaining our actions in hindsight. The reality is that all of our important decision making is done subconsciously, and we invent rationalizations for these decisions after the fact. This is why it is essentially impossible to change a person's nature, and why the only reliable way of changing a person's behavior is to enslave them with a rigidly structured habit that overrides their natural inclination.

To understand why free will is an illusion, think about walking down a street with a bunch of restaurants. A person who thinks he has free will would say, "I can choose to eat an any of these restaurants today. I have free will." But when he makes his decision on which food to eat, he cannot control or fully know WHY he made that decision. If you choose to eat pizza instead of a sandwich, it's impossible for you to determine why you chose pizza. You may say that you like the taste of pepperoni, or were simply "in the mood" for pizza. But why is that the case? Did you choose either of those things? Or was this simply a state of being which you happened to find yourself in and which you responded to through your choice?

This is what Schopenhauer was getting at when he talks about the necessity of willing one definite thing at a time and nothing else, and how this process is beyond our control.

Post: #4

There is no such thing as free will. You have the choice to make decisions, but whatever your ultimate action turns out to be, is exactly what you have decided to do--even if you decide not to do it to spite yourself.

Sam Harris wrote a a great book on it:

Quote:“Take a moment to think about the context in which your next decision will occur: You did not pick your parents or the time and place of your birth. You didn't choose your gender or most of your life experiences. You had no control whatsoever over your genome or the development of your brain. And now your brain is making choices on the basis of preferences and beliefs that have been hammered into it over a lifetime - by your genes, your physical development since the moment you were conceived, and the interactions you have had with other people, events, and ideas. Where is the freedom in this? Yes, you are free to do what you want even now. But where did your desires come from?”

“Whatever their conscious motives, these men cannot know why they are as they are. As sickening as I find their behavior, I have to admit that if I were to trade places with one of these men, atom for atom, I would be him: There is no extra part of me that could decide to see the world differently or to resist the impulse to victimize other people. Even if you believe that every human being harbors an immortal soul, the problem of responsibility remains: I cannot take credit for the fact that I do not have the soul of psychopath. If I had truly been in Komisarjevsky's shoes on July 23,2007 - that is, if I had his genes and life experience and identical brain (or soul) in an identical state - I would have acted exactly as he did. There is simply no intellectually respectable position from which to deny this.”
― Sam Harris, Free Will

Post: #5

Years ago, a friend of mine who got a PhD in philosophy (and then went to law school and was so depressed by being a lawyer he drank himself to death) told me Schopenhauer had one main idea.

Namely, you have free will to exercise your choices, but you have no free will in the choices you have.

Simple as that.

Post: #6

Quote:Rational animal is a classical definition of humanity,[1] often (though mistakenly) attributed to Aristotle's Metaphysics: however, in the Nicomachean Ethics I.13, Aristotle states that the human being has a rational principle, on top of the nutritive life shared with plants, and the instinctual life shared with other animals, i.e. the ability to carry out rationally formulated projects.[2]

That capacity for deliberative imagination was equally singled out as man's defining feature in De anima III.13.[3] While seen by Aristotle as a universal human feature, the definition applied to wise and foolish alike, and did not in any way imply necessarily the making of rational choices, as opposed to the ability to make them.[4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_animal

Post: #7

I have being thinking alot about this lately. I shared it with one of the most famous philosophers in the world - who has written an excellent book on Free Will.

And it was new to him...

THE ANDROMEDA PARADOX

Post: #8

It's interesting to ponder, but I'm not sure the pondering really helps people in any way. It seems we have "evolved" to accept that we have free will and make decisions (or carry out preordained actions if you prefer) as if we did. I know the whole "act as if" philosophy has been played to death by the self-help industry, but there really is some truth to it. IMHO there is no shame in "acting as if" we have free will, even if you are not really convinced intellectually. Maybe if you're hyper-smart like Schopenhauer you can make some sense of the discussion, but the average person is not intellectually equipped to live with the belief that they do not have free will.

Post: #9

Haven't read the whole thread. I will later. Some deep stuff.

I just quickly glanced at a few posts. I disagreed with most of them.

I 100% believe in free will. I believe we can re-program our mind. Create a new pattern of thought.

I will check back into this thread later and I'm curious if you guys will change my mind.

Post: #10

"IMHO there is no shame in "acting as if" we have free will, even if you are not really convinced intellectually. Maybe if you're hyper-smart like Schopenhauer you can make some sense of the discussion, but the average person is not intellectually equipped to live with the belief that they do not have free will."

Bingo.

The danger to believing you have free will if you don't is minimal--you'll try to change things fail, and be disappointed. The danger to believing you don't have free will if you do is fatalism and a resignation to circumstance.


"I can't help it I'm fat, that's just how I am." "There's no point in me trying to get better with women. I'll just have to wait until something changes me."

There's a whole lot to our minds we'll never understand and there are things we'll never be able to control. Shopenhauer's insight into women is fantastic, and I believe in the concept of philosophy. However, when the mind is used to convince people that they are powerless over their own lives it becomes exceptionally dangerous.

Convince somebody that all he is is dust in the wind and you may well be encouraging him to give up on life. I don't care what proofs you can offer, that's just wrong.

Post: #11

(04-16-2013 04:09 PM)Martel Wrote:  "IMHO there is no shame in "acting as if" we have free will, even if you are not really convinced intellectually. Maybe if you're hyper-smart like Schopenhauer you can make some sense of the discussion, but the average person is not intellectually equipped to live with the belief that they do not have free will."

Bingo.

The danger to believing you have free will if you don't is minimal--you'll try to change things fail, and be disappointed. The danger to believing you don't have free will if you do is fatalism and a resignation to circumstance.


"I can't help it I'm fat, that's just how I am." "There's no point in me trying to get better with women. I'll just have to wait until something changes me."

There's a whole lot to our minds we'll never understand and there are things we'll never be able to control. Shopenhauer's insight into women is fantastic, and I believe in the concept of philosophy. However, when the mind is used to convince people that they are powerless over their own lives it becomes exceptionally dangerous.

Convince somebody that all he is is dust in the wind and you may well be encouraging him to give up on life. I don't care what proofs you can offer, that's just wrong.

Agreed. Whether right or wrong, some things are just too depressing to ponder. Its not like these questions can ever be solved anyways, so why bother asking the ones that make you feel bad?

Post: #12

(04-16-2013 04:09 PM)Martel Wrote:  "IMHO there is no shame in "acting as if" we have free will, even if you are not really convinced intellectually. Maybe if you're hyper-smart like Schopenhauer you can make some sense of the discussion, but the average person is not intellectually equipped to live with the belief that they do not have free will."

Bingo.

The danger to believing you have free will if you don't is minimal--you'll try to change things fail, and be disappointed. The danger to believing you don't have free will if you do is fatalism and a resignation to circumstance.


"I can't help it I'm fat, that's just how I am." "There's no point in me trying to get better with women. I'll just have to wait until something changes me."

There's a whole lot to our minds we'll never understand and there are things we'll never be able to control. Shopenhauer's insight into women is fantastic, and I believe in the concept of philosophy. However, when the mind is used to convince people that they are powerless over their own lives it becomes exceptionally dangerous.

Convince somebody that all he is is dust in the wind and you may well be encouraging him to give up on life. I don't care what proofs you can offer, that's just wrong.

Agreed. Whether right or wrong, some things are just too depressing to ponder. Its not like these questions can ever be solved anyways, so why bother asking the ones that make you feel bad?

Post: #13

Quote:“Losing a belief in free will has not made me a fatalist - in fact, it has increased my feelings of freedom. My hopes, fears, and neuroses seem less personal and indelible. There is no telling how much I might change in the future. Just as one wouldn't draw a lasting conclusion about oneself on the basis of a brief experience of indigestion, one needn't do so on a basis of how one has thought or behaved for vast stretches of time in the past. A creative change of inputs to the system - learning new skills, forming new relationships, adopting new habits of attention - may radically transform one's life. Becoming sensitive to the background causes of one's thoughts and feelings can -paradoxically- allow for greater creative control over one's life. This understanding reveals you to be a biochemical puppet, of course, but it also allows you to grab hold of one of your strings.”
― Sam Harris, Free Will

Post: #14

I'm surprised at the number of people who answered in the negative considering the type of people that post on here. The lifestyle that we discuss on here is all grounded in the principle that a man can change himself to live the sort of life he wants and that people who don't want to do so whether it be fat chicks that refuse to go on a diet or guys that bitch about how they can't get girls because they are ugly or a certain race are responsible for their own failures. If there is no free will then the natural conclusion is that game is something that you either have or not and that no amount of approaches will change this.

I believe in "you can do what you want but you can't will what you want". The desires that you have are mostly out of your control but the decision on whether to act on them are within your control. And yeah many people do fail when it comes to controlling their desires but at least still have the possibility of doing so unlike animals who are purely driven by instinct.

Post: #15

Books to read on free will that actually explain the biological mechanisms behind it:

I am a Strange Loop
Freedom Evolves
Whose Freedom?
Consciousness Explained

These books will give you a sense of what free will actually is, what we can expect, where it comes from, etc.

As fas as how it works, there are different types of freedom:

"Freedom to"

and

"Freedom from"

You can't make choices if you have don't have choices to make.

Post: #16

“Losing a belief in free will has not made me a fatalist - in fact, it has increased my feelings of freedom. My hopes, fears, and neuroses seem less personal and indelible."

I'm glad it worked for Sam Harris, but that doesn't mean it would for the rest of us. Free Love and denigrating marraige worked well for the rich college kids for a while, too. It didn't work out so well for the rest of us.

It reminds me of the really smart postmodernist who can argue you into believing that the table in front of you doesn't exist. He's got an answer to everything and makes you feel like a dumbass.

But the simple fact is that there's a table and no matter how smart he is, no matter how erudite or capable of twisting your words to serve his ends, he's full of it.

Philosophy should empower us. Believing that you have no control over your life or what you make of us doesn't.

If it works for Sam, let it. It won't work for the rest of us.

Post: #17

16 posts and no one has mentioned the Rush classic?

As for "Free Will" itself, I don't believe it's an "either/or" thing. I believe some people have it more than others. We have words to describe it, like ambition, drive, and passion. Now enjoy some classic rock, people:

Post: #18

I believe that all men have free will. (By men I mean humans, not just males.) We are all presented with choices every single moment of the day, and the choices we make determine the future course of our lives, and often the lives of others, too. Practically speaking, our choices are somewhat dictated by circumstances, but we have the ability to work against those circumstances and try to change them if they do not accord with our will. Free will is one of the essential differences between men and animals. Animals have a purely material existence, and their will strives only to carry our their instinctive imperatives -to eat, to sleep in a safe place, to defend their territory so they can continue to eat and sleep, and to mate. Men, on the other hand, can do gratuitous and unnecessary things, and act selflessly. We always choose that which seems good to us, but we are free to choose it, and we are free to inform our consciences as seems best to us, so that we may be well-informed and make the best decisions possible.

Post: #19

Daniel Dennett put this fucker to rest IMO:

"We have all the free will it's worth wanting"

He likens it to magic. Everyone wants to see real magic, not conjuring tricks. But the problem is that "real magic" is impossible to have, by definition..

"Real magic, in other words, refers to the magic that is not real, while the magic that is real, that can
actually be done, is not real magic"

His argument is that we've done something similar with free will. What we want is the ability to choose, from outside and above the pre-destined way things were going to pan out. But we cant actually have that, because by definition, things always pan out how they were going to pan out... and that includes the choices you made.

...that seems to upset people. It feels like if that's true then you have less control. BUT thats the thing, you don't! You're still making the choices! you're still evaluating the situaton, comparing it to your values, and thinking hard and weighing things up and choosing and acting. It's just that, things were always going to pan out the way they were going to pan out (by definition).

So... we have all the free will it's worth wanting. Even if for some weird reason, we often seem to want more than that. But then, we also want to see real magic, even though we've defined real magic as something that can't happen.

Post: #20

I think people's actions are dependent on a marginal benefit system. People put a value on all options available and the option with the highest net benefit is chosen. Thus, our actions are determined by the way we value our options.

This in itself disproves free will.

Post: #21

How do you guys reconcile responsibility with the belief that there is no free will? It seems to me if there is no free will then all the ragging on IRT is not justified since he can't be anything else then what he is - same thing with white knights or beta males.

Post: #22

(04-16-2013 09:43 PM)Wutang Wrote:  How do you guys reconcile responsibility with the belief that there is no free will? It seems to me if there is no free will then all the ragging on IRT is not justified since he can't be anything else then what he is - same thing with white knights or beta males.

Check out Daniel Dennett on this one.

Answer = roughly that we choose and evaluate according to the data available. We also represent our own reasons to ourselves and others (unlike animals) so we are responsible for what we do.

Maybe we were always going to make the choices we make - but we still made them by evaluating, deciding, weighing up options. We werent puppets on a string.

Look at the word - response-able. Able to evaluate and choose responses, whereas animals just react.

We dont have the free will that everyone wants ("I want to be able to have wanted and chosen a different action from the one I wanted and chose"...!!), but we have all the free will worth wanting.

Regarding IRT and white knight, well, on some level they're choosing to be like that, given the options they see and their perception of the world. They have limiting beliefs. I agree we probably shouldn't hate on them, but it's not because they're mindless automatons. They still choose and evaluate, but they do so according to a belief system that we see as flawed.

Post: #23

(04-16-2013 02:03 PM)tenderman100 Wrote:  Years ago, a friend of mine who got a PhD in philosophy (and then went to law school and was so depressed by being a lawyer he drank himself to death) told me Schopenhauer had one main idea.

Namely, you have free will to exercise your choices, but you have no free will in the choices you have.

Simple as that.

Literally ..

Post: #24

Quote:Wutang Wrote:
I would say first of all it would involve not making any sorts of value judgement about anything and as Harris said, it would would mean you can't hold anyone responsible for anything they have done whether it be good or bad. If someone is a brilliant scientist or accomplished in whatever field they are in, you should give him no more praise or recognition then you would for someone who won the lottery. Someone like IRT or fat feminists shouldn't deserve any derision for being who they are. In fact, the whole mission and point of this website would be nullified and so would any notion of self-improvement as if there is no free will or any sort then there is nothing you can do to really improve yourself. It's nothing that "you' are doing after all, it's just forces molding you without you willing it.

Also as I wrote in my previous post, if you believe absolute determinism then it seems like a totalitarian, Brave New World type government would be the way to go and you shouldn't be aghast at the prospect of it. Democracy requires that the people under it be free agents that can plot out their own destinies. If they are not capable of doing that and are only products of forces beyond their control, then it undermines the whole basis of it. If people aren't willing agents then they are just cogs in a machine and should be managed accordingly.

The thing is what do you mean by "not doing something"?. Let´s analyse this at a micro level. Nearly every animal goes for pleasure and hate pain. For example women mean sexual pleasure to most males so they do something to get them. That´s the beginning of self developement. Every male does it to some extent.

So, good is what brings you pleasure or what you think it brings you pleasure. Bad is what brings you pain.

Post: #25

Before I respond let me see if I can get a better understanding of what you are saying: so are you saying that we make our decisions purely based on whether we feel pain or pleasure and therefore it undermines our free will?

Also, remember the context of my post. I was responding to your question on what it means how we should act if there was no free will and this was my response. To sum it up, we should never hold anyone responsible for anything and there we can never make any sort of judgement about any sort of action. Now, we can still make judgement about whether the action good or not (when I refer to good and bad I was also referring to acts beyond whether something is pleasurable or not. For example I'm sure we would agree a math genius coming up with a cool theorem will be seen as a "good" action regardless of any pleasure associate with it) but it should be a cold, emotionless decision. I suppose our attitude towards it should be the kind of attitude we have towards a day with good weather. You would be pleased about it but you wouldn't be jumping for joy the same way a kid who just got an A on his test would.