Asklemmy

Thoughts and muscle movements come about through the opening and closing of ion channels that allow information to travel through neurons and for muscle fibers to contract and relax. 'Free will' in the sense that our mind is separate from our body and that it can somehow open those ion channels is a combination of dualism and molecular telekinesis, so I do not believe that, no.

But I do believe that consciousness is an essential emergent property of our brain. What we experience might be the output of a causal prediction engine in our brain that is making a prediction about the immediate sensory experience in a way that we can respond to stimuli before they happen. In that sense, yes, I do believe in free will because that conscious output that I experience is me! This prediction machine is me making predictions and choices.

I think that a materialist framing of free will requires accepting some model of consciousness in which consciousness is not just a weird accident but is a physical phenomenon that is part of us. An essential feature of how our brain works. This is not yet demonstrated (very difficult if not impossible to do so), but I think it is. Then 'free will' and 'a material system following the laws of physics' is no longer a contradiction.

"Free will" usually refers to the belief that your decisions cannot be reduced to the laws of physics (e.g. people who say "do you really think your thoughts are just a bunch of chemical reactions in the brain???"), either because they can't be reduced at all or that they operate according to their own independent logic. I see no reason to believe that and no evidence for it.

Some people try to bring up randomness but even if the universe is random that doesn't get you to free will. Imagine if the state forced you to accept a job for life they choose when you turn 18, and they pick it with a random number generator. Is that free will? Of course not. Randomness is not relevant to free will. I think the confusion comes from the fact that we have two parallel debates of "free will vs determinism" and "randomness vs determinism" and people think they're related, but in reality the term "determinism" means something different in both contexts.

In the "free will vs determinism" debate we are talking about nomological determinism, which is the idea that reality is reducible to the laws of physics and nothing more. Even if those laws may be random, it would still be incompatible with the philosophical notion of "free will" because it would still be ultimately the probabilistic mathematical laws that govern the chemical reactions in your brain that cause you to make decisions.

In the "randomness vs determinism" debate we are instead talking about absolute determinism, sometimes also called Laplacian determinism, which is the idea that if you fully know the initial state of the universe you could predict the future with absolute certainty.

These are two separate discussions and shouldn't be confused with one another.

I want to, but Determinism sounds pretty reasonable. Everything is just going with the flow from the big bang, including what happens in our consciousness. Do I think this because of my own will, or because of events set into motion billions of years ago? 🤔

well atoms themselves are inherently random you can't even perceive them without them blowing the fuck away

I believe free will exists but the world is deterministic. In your life you can make any choice you want & it was decided by you. However the effect of your actions on the world is so small that it will continue on a predetermined path. Events in the future are “predetermined” & all I have power over is how I react to it.

You gave an argument against free will based on Determinism, but there are other good and even better arguments IMO. Like the science-centrist arguments of Neuroscience , Psychological and the Evolutionary Arguments. Then there are the philosophical Arguments from Divine Predestination or Fate. There are still more but the fun is on the discovery.

We have free will, but the majority are not free to exercise it because of material conditions and/or circumstance.

Does that even mater? Either stance can't be proved.

If free will was truly non-existent, it would mean that a theoretical entity with access to perfect information would be able to perfectly predict your actions. I don't believe that is possible; I think that human beings are too irrational. Consider a very simple decision: what am I going to have for dinner? You could know the restaurants I have access to, what food is in my home, what I have discussed in a given day, and even what my current mood is, but it can ultimately come down to a whim. I could choose something I've never had before, for no reason, and seek it out.

I believe that we are individual actors in a very complex system that introduces lots of constraints to our decision-making process. We may not even be consciously aware of some of the constraints; however, we are always the ones ultimately making the decisions. You always have the option of a whim.

Yes. Every person has to believe in it to accept the notion of good and evil.

ya'll some neo and oracle bustas up in here.

yes, as entities that are conscious of consciousness, we can steer ideas and actions with our will and intent.

This may or may not have universal implications, so stop trying to be all grandiose. we're barely existing conscious ants that have imaginations. does that mean the universe won't experience entropy? one of these things is not like the other.

OK let's just start with the assertion that there of a casual link back to the beginning of time.

We will begin with the big one first. We don't even know if time had a beginning.

If we assume that time began at the instant of the big bang. There is no plausible link between my bean induced fart, and some random energy fluctuation, there are just too many chaotic interactions between then and now.

There are so many things we don't know, making the extremely bold claim that free will doesn't exist, is dangerously naive.

We can't even solve Navier-Stokes; neuronal interaction is so far beyond what we are currently capable of, it's ridiculous.

My recommendation to anyone contemplating this question. Assume free will exists; if you are wrong, it will made no difference; you were destined to believe that anyway.

Local causality doesn't imply unbroken universal causality. In fact, the idea everything is a purely deterministic projection of some initial state is far weirder than the idea that stochastic actions can influence a partially deterministic state.

You have as much free will as a leaf or a fish.

Yes. I could talk about quantum indeterminacy as a scientific argument for it, but fundamentally, I believe in it because I want to[1]. I don't like the idea of being a deterministic machine with a fate I can't influence with active choices. It's not provable either way with the current state of science, so I choose to believe my preferred option is the correct one.

[1] Of course such a statement presumes free will. I think I want to, anyway.