Do You Believe In Free Will?

[Colin]

Pretty much one of the most debated questions in philosophy and politics, do people have free will. I am going to keep my personal beliefs on this issue to myself for now to give other people a chance to state their viewpoints.

For more information on Free Will:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Will
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism_and_incompatibilism

[minionofmidas]

No. I'm of the Slaughterhouse 5 school of thought on that - once you think of time as a fourth dimension, "free will" becomes a fairly absurd concept.
I'm not letting this position, arrived at intellectually, affect my personal life much, which is probably the sane thing to do.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Yes; sort of. But not in ideal sense in that a human being will always be faced with a limitless bunch of options and then chooses his\her path. In reality Cultural, Economic and Social (not to mention, Psychological and Biological but those aren't my fields.) are always going to limit the list of choices available; to use a crude example many Jews will get physically ill after eating pork (accidentally) - this of course is a purely "natural" reaction - getting ill to a true cultural competent. In some ways Culture and the body react and transform each other in strange and difficult ways to understand.

But that does not mean we don't have options; after all culture is a human invention and it's quite clear that humans can somehow transform it, though whether via individual effort or not is difficult to determine. To claim a deterministic view needs to evoke a deity imo to make some of sense because even within those cultural-social-economic-psychological parameters people still can make decisions which act outside of perceived norms; in each society there also seems to some numbers of "non-conventional" thinkers; though the reasons for this are difficult to explain. One theory is that subconciously there are a certain numbers of positions or roles one can play in human society and through unknown-strange and probably very symbolic-psychological factors one is chosen. Of course this leads on to (the much more interesting imo) question of Mind and Body.

So in short to borrow Einstein's metaphor; Humans can make choices between alternatives; but the dices in their brains are always loaded towards certain alternatives. (not that punchy I know; I'll think of something better. )

EDIT: One thing I wish to add is that all(?) humans seem to believe that there are some things which are not bound by free will but by what we will call "deeper forces" - want an example, pop over the bi-weekly "Is Gayness a choice OMG!111" debate. But seems what those deeper forces are and what factors are\are not bound by free will seem to change throughout history. Which to give an example sticking on the homosexuality theme, the attitudes of the Greeks towards homosexuality were tolerant (sort of) enough not to see it as a philosophical or political issue but a matter of human association. So perhaps the best way to have pure free will is not to be philosophical at all.

[Bono]

I believe people are free to choose what they want. So basically, I believe in free will in a compatibilistic sense. Whether this is yes or no, it's up to you.

EDIT: I would just like to clarify that I am neither a biological determinist nor a mechanistic determinist. I believe conscious will exists, just that it is part of the deterministic scheme.

[minionofmidas]

EDIT: I would just like to clarify that I am neither a biological determinist nor a mechanistic determinist. I believe conscious will exists, just that it is part of the deterministic scheme.

If I'm understanding you correctly... I think I agree with you.

[Colin]

Well to be honest I made this a poll mostly for people who don't want to write their opinions. I could have gone on into all the various schools of thought, soft and hard determinism, libertarian free will, compatabilism, evolutionary determinism, etc. but I thought that would be too crazy and would require too much Wiki reading.

[Gabu]

I'm honestly not sure.  It depends on how you define "free will".  Do humans make choices regarding what they do in life?  Yes, obviously.  But with any given set of stimuli put towards any given human, I can't imagine why the human would react in any other way than an identical way.  So is it a true choice, or is it just a mechanical reaction to an (albeit large) set of stimuli and parameters?  That I don't know, although I'm leaning towards feeling that the latter is the case.

[Alcon]

I'm honestly not sure.  It depends on how you define "free will".  Do humans make choices regarding what they do in life?  Yes, obviously.  But with any given set of stimuli put towards any given human, I can't imagine why the human would react in any other way than an identical way.  So is it a true choice, or is it just a mechanical reaction to an (albeit large) set of stimuli and parameters?  That I don't know, although I'm leaning towards feeling that the latter is the case.

I agree.  This seems more definitional to me than anything.  We respond to stimuli; if that means we don't have free will, than we don't.

[CultureKing]

I'm honestly not sure.  It depends on how you define "free will".  Do humans make choices regarding what they do in life?  Yes, obviously.  But with any given set of stimuli put towards any given human, I can't imagine why the human would react in any other way than an identical way.  So is it a true choice, or is it just a mechanical reaction to an (albeit large) set of stimuli and parameters?  That I don't know, although I'm leaning towards feeling that the latter is the case.

I agree.  This seems more definitional to me than anything.  We respond to stimuli; if that means we don't have free will, than we don't.

yeah, that is basically what I for the most part believe: soft determinism

[Friz]

Yes, but I don't think those with pliable minds count though...

[Verily]

I'm honestly not sure.  It depends on how you define "free will".  Do humans make choices regarding what they do in life?  Yes, obviously.  But with any given set of stimuli put towards any given human, I can't imagine why the human would react in any other way than an identical way.  So is it a true choice, or is it just a mechanical reaction to an (albeit large) set of stimuli and parameters?  That I don't know, although I'm leaning towards feeling that the latter is the case.

I agree.  This seems more definitional to me than anything.  We respond to stimuli; if that means we don't have free will, than we don't.

yeah, that is basically what I for the most part believe: soft determinism

I'm not sure why this becomes "soft" determinism. As far as we know, the only things uncertain about the universe are interactions at the quantum level, which are too small to impact our own split-second decision-making directly (though they do, in the long-term, impact the universe as a whole).

Under that model, our lives are fixed from the beginning. If you turn back the clock to the instant of birth and rerun it, everything will occur the same way: you will recieve the same stimuli, and you will react identically. Quantum differences are irrelevant as they will not build up sufficiently over a human lifetime to change events.

[Joe Biden 2020]

Absolutely,  God did not create robots, he created human beings.

I am free to choose Christ or not choose Christ.
I am free to be a Republican or a Democrat.

That is why, I believe, God created democracy.  Democracy gives its citizens free will to live wherever they want, worship wherever they want, freedom to worship or not to worship, freedom to voice opposition to the government without fear of imprisonment or worse, freedom to love whom they want to love.

So, yes, I definitely believe in free will.

[Joe Republic]

That is why, I believe, God created democracy.  Democracy gives its citizens free will to live wherever they want, worship wherever they want, freedom to worship or not to worship, freedom to voice opposition to the government without fear of imprisonment or worse, freedom to love whom they want to love.

So, yes, I definitely believe in free will.

If God created free will, that means that humans created democracy, not God.

[Tetro Kornbluth]

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If so, God really is a very slow worker.

[afleitch]

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If so, God really is a very slow worker.

Naturally

Though while I'll supress the inner Jesuit and won't go into liberation theology, there is some justification for there being a 'mandate' for democracy based on the NT (certainly not the OT where God was effectively a dictator/tyrant) However this has only really been theologically laid out since the advent of modern liberal democracy anyway, most recently as a backlash against clericalism which the Catholic Church burnt it's fingers in.

The link between the devolopment democracy and the democratic nation state, and Christian thought is tenuous. It's more of an afterthought.

[Bono]

Absolutely,  God did not create robots, he created human beings.

I am free to choose Christ or not choose Christ.

Oh really?
Ephesians 2:4-5But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),

[Filuwaúrdjan]

No. Not really. Might comment why I think that tomorrow, might well forget to.

[Joe Biden 2020]

Absolutely,  God did not create robots, he created human beings.

I am free to choose Christ or not choose Christ.

Oh really?
Ephesians 2:4-5But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),

God gave Adam a choice whether to eat of that tree or not.  He knew full well what Adam would choose, but still gave him the choice.  That set up the whole Christmas scene that would take place approximately 4,000 years later with Jesus Christ being born of a virgin teenage girl and growing up, sinless, and dying for us on the cross and rising from the dead on Easter Sunday and giving us the option to choose him or not.

That verse you quoted, is talking about those who have been "born again".  We are free to choose whether we want to be "born again" or not.  Those who choose to be "born again" are made alive in Christ.

I'm thankful that we have the option TO choose Him.  We definitely do not deserve that option.  We deserve to have no hope, we deserve to be crucified, we deserve to be condemned to hell.  Since Christ gave us that option by dying on the cross, we are free to choose Him.  To choose Him is to choose life.  To not choose Him is to choose death.  Now, we will all pass out of this body, but it just depends on the decision we make here as to where we will spend eternity once we pass away.

I'm not trying to convince any of you of anything, for thats not my job.  I'm just merely explaining what I believe and how I believe in free will.

[Gabu]

God gave Adam a choice whether to eat of that tree or not.  He knew full well what Adam would choose, but still gave him the choice.

If I put a bottle of Drano out by an infant knowing full well that the infant would drink it and die if I did that, is it the infant's fault when the inevitable happens and he dies?

The whole "it's a choice, but God knows exactly what will happen" is one of the most nonsensical things I've ever heard.  If the future is already set in stone such that the entire future until the end of time can be known, then everything is predetermined and true free will is a lie.  The only conclusion we can reach as a result is that God created humans specifically so that he could cast the vast majority of them into eternal suffering in hell, since he had the full capacity to create humans or the universe around them differently.

[Queen Mum Inks.LWC]

Of course.

[Gustaf]

Yes.

And, for the record, soft determinism is a sham, IMO. FIre away.

[Gabu]

Yes.

And, for the record, soft determinism is a sham, IMO. FIre away.

I wouldn't call it a "sham"... the only real difference between soft determinism is the definition of "free will" being used, and there's no "correct" definition of a term.  Soft determinism defines free will as any choice a human makes that that human was not forced to make by someone else; conversely, hard determinism defines free will as any choice whose outcome was not predetermined by prior causes (and then rejects the existence of such a thing).  They both basically believe the same thing; they just disagree on how "free will" ought to be defined.