Do you believe in free will?

18 comments

1. There is no scientific evidence for free will, but evidence for the opposite.

2. We are the captains of the ship for a portion of our life. You start out as a passenger being guided by your elders. When you’re a young adult you’re the captain until you find a partner. Then you’re a co captain until you give the orders and move on or have children. Finally as you’re an elder your final years you might just be a passenger again. Choices bad and good are what make life worth living.

3. People with cognitive disabilities definitely do not have control over their actions.

   I had a family member with schizophrenia and he didn’t know what country he was in or who he was.

   In a healthy mind, people invoke philosophical debate, but there’s plenty of hard science which suggests that it is in fact an illusion, most likely a byproduct of our motor system.

   My partner grew up supporting her best friend who had split personality disorder who also wasn’t able to control what she did or even have the awareness in the first place.

   There’s a long list of disorders, but two that come to mind are Asomatognosia and Somatoparaphrenia which I’ll let the reader look into for the sake of time.

   So medically no, did you “choose” to order a pizza? Well we can debate about that.

4. Theoretically, no, but pragmatically yes.

   That is, I know that all our choices are the result of physics and chemistry. Sense data triggers electrical impulses, thoughts cascade and decisions are made like dominoes falling. We don’t have free will.

   On the other hand, in a practical sense, I really feel like I have free will when I choose not to eat some chips, or to exercise. It might not actually be free will, but to all intents and purposes it is, because there is some part of my mind that exercises some kind of executive analysis of data to evaluate outcomes and reach a conclusion.

5. Philosophy major here: it doesn’t matter.

6. >Other times, I think that we’re all just doing what makes sense to us at the time with the information we have and the tendencies we’ve acquired.

   This is literally free will tho?

7. Free will was part of my Christian education.

   I accept it as valid with proof.

8. I absolutely do in the context that we admit that we are all the residue of our experiences and that may compel us to do somethings without us even realizing it.

   I get the Sam Harris argument that their is no free will as all thought is just a chemical interaction in the brain before we can have a thought. I just wonder if at some level there is not something that causes that chemical reaction to start which may be free will.

9. Of course you have free will, the fact that nobody gets to tell you what to do, what to think, how to feel, should be evidence of your free will.

10. We don’t have free will, but we don’t have the insight to see our threads so it feels like we have free will unless we come across something obviously bigger than us.

11. It’s physically impossible for free will to exist.

12. I do not. Free will is an illusion.

13. it’s looking like no, though it’s a useful and tenacious illusion.

    but, whether i have free will or not, i must act as if i do.

14. TLDR: don’t think about this too much. We’re not wired to grok this. Do the right thing and don’t judge others.

    I think a more revealing question is who is the “we” supposedly captaining the ship or along for the ride.

    Maybe there’s nothing permanent there to have will.

    Less cryptic answer: there’s no free will, it’s an incoherent concept and there’s also no stable self to do the willing.

    Nevertheless it’s vital that the phenomenon we call “self” acts as if it is in control. This isn’t a paradox or some gotcha – actions still have consequences and “we” can and must accept moral responsibility for them.

    Often these discussions reveal a e’re talking about two different things: the behavior of complex systems communicating ideas like this to each other vs. a simplistic notion of unconstrained uncaused causes who somehow steer themselves without external or internal input… yet are still in charge.

15. We have the illusion of free will and that’s what matters.

16. I’m not religious, but I believe in the theory that people don’t have the ability to think and act freely, and instead, the flow of electricity in our nervous system and perhaps some unknown, magical element is what dorects us to do what we do. We have no control on how this magic occurs, and it might actually be controlled by a supernatural power. Our ability to reason and adapt are only made possible because this supernatural being allows it.

    I suppose this belief can be described as a combination of evolutionary instincts controlled by fate.

17. Nope. If you really pay attention you’ll realize you actually aren’t the actually the author of your own thoughts.

18. I believe we have a limited form of conscious executive control. To me, arguments for absolutism in either direction of the free will/deterministic spectrum rarely account for certain things we know to be true.

    Our behaviour is driven in a significant way by urges that are of deterministic origin. In many scenarios, the decision to take a certain action appears to have been made before we’re consciously aware of it.

    But we also have some ability to consciously reflect on our own behaviour and make the choice to modify it in the future. And sometimes we find ourselves taking an action that runs counter to our conscious desires, and have the ability to stop mid-action and make a different choice.

    I’m no neurologist, but I’m aware of one view of the brain as a set of distinct but interlinked subsystems that exist in a kind co-opetition arrangement. They coordinate to drive behaviour, but also compete for resources internally. The prefrontal cortex is believed to be the seat of executive function. It has some ability to modulate the other systems, but it doesn’t have total control (that would be perfect free will).