Let me help you out Dan, you said "It's unsettling which is why I posit the question to this forum." you are absolutely right the "free" will you've been hearing about your life doesn't exist nor it ever did exist, the reason you posted this question on this forum is because you were waiting for someone to tell you that you are right. I've been thinking about same thing for last few years and came to conclusion that we make very few choices in our life, people think every day they have a choice, but they don't and not only that, but when you finally do make a "choice" it's predetermined by your environment.

The values of human were decided long before human was ever "created" and if you are wondering when you roll a dice, is it random? I like to look at this way, it's undeterministic till the point dice stops rolling, but you think to yourself did person throw it random speed? or when he was a kid watched television show, watched person roll a dice and it was set rooted in his memory on how to throw that dice? or was it thrown harder because he ate 10 minutes before rolling a dice? and did he choose to eat 10 minutes before throwing dice because next to casino was fresh baked bread that made his neurons thirsty for sugar? was that fresh baked bread baked at random point? or was it all planed long before player came into casino?

You have to understand one thing no matter what you think you can do it will be done by someone, if you kill yourself tomorrow, someone will fulfill your spot and finish where you started. What do I mean by that? think of it this way, universe doesn't care if '3' or '6' will be on a dice, he cares about who throws it, what happens after it has been thrown, who picks up dice, the reason for throwing dice.

I wish to see a compelling argument that makes thinking of free will as a possibility without the use of some outside power.

When you extend your notion of self to the very surface of your being, beyond the little homunculus we often pretend is there, you’ll find that the “outer forces” are often your own. The thing that causes the heartbeat, the metabolism, the immune system to do what they do is none other than yourself. All conscious and unconscious activity is determined, “willed” by this being. This being persists in all anterior, present and posterior events throughout your time here.

I believe in God and in free will. I don't think we are given free will, however. My reason tells me that I have free will and also that I would not have free will if everything I did traced to external causes. Thus I conclude that not everything I do traces to external causes. Which means I must never have come into being - so my free will is evidence that i have not been created. That is consistent with God existing. But it does mean that God has not given us free will's key ingredient. However, like I say, this is entirely consistent, for being God involves being omnipotent, omniscient and morally perfect. It does not require having created everything. After all, God did not create himself, did he? So, on pain of incoherence, one must say that God has created all created things, not all things simpliciter. But we - like God himself - are not created things.

I have never encountered a good argument against free will, only bad ones.

The main bad one appeals to causal determinism. Causal determinism is the thesis that everything that occurs was necessitated to occur by prior events and the laws of nature. Many think this thesis is incompatible with our having free will (as you may know already, they are known as incompatibilists). And some incompatibilists also think determinism is true (again, as you may already know, they are known as hard determinists).

But there is no good argument for hard determinism. Here's the main argument:

1. If causal determinism is true, then we do not have free will
2. Causal determinism is true
3. Therefore we do not have free will

Both premises are questionable. Niether is self evident to our reason. Yet they are being used to refute a much less questionable premise that is self evident to our reason, namely 'we have free will'.

These are undeniably stronger arguments:

A1. If causal determinism is true, then we do not have free will
A2. We have free will
A3. Therefore causal determinism is false

B1. Causal determinism is true
B2. We have free will
B3. Therefore causal determinism is true and we have free will.

Argument A gives us libertarianism (the combination of incompatibilism and a belief in free will), and argument B gives us compatibilism (the combination of free will and determinism).

Both libertarianism and compatibilism are, then, more plausible views than hard determinism.

Someone has mentioned indeterminism above. But that's a red herring. Indeterminism can't provide free will as it doesn't prevent everything one does fron tracing to external causes (an in deterministic cause is still a cause). All it does is render ones decisions indeterministic, but that doesn't make them any free than they would be if they were determined.

I suppose my terms are that no decision is random ergo, no decision is truly free because it is the direct consequence of something that happened before. — Barondan

My personal view differs from the conventional in that I don't believe that free will should be concerned with the possibility of non-determinism, be it material or otherwise. It should be concerned with human agency. — simeonz

But there is no good argument for hard determinism. Here's the main argument: — Bartricks

So to Barondan, I'm quoting these other people for emphasis. There's a generic tendency to equate predictability of choice to lack of choice; but there's something mightily suspicious about this tendency.

One common modern "scientific" argument against Freewill in general (not specifically religious choice) is the findings of Benjamin Libet's experiments on voluntary acts. A common interpretation of those results was to conclude that the body had already chosen to act before the mind became conscious of its own intention to act. Hence, "freewill is an illusion". — Gnomon

When you extend your notion of self to the very surface of your being, beyond the little homunculus we often pretend is there, you’ll find that the “outer forces” are often your own. — NOS4A2

To Gnomon (and Barondan), I think Libet's veto hypothesis is naive; there's a much more fundamental flaw in the will skeptic analysis based on the underlying presumptions. The general underlying assumption is that there's a "decision making" part of us, and that that "decision making" part must be the "conscious part" (this is what NOS4A2 I believe is talking about and calls the homunculus). But that violates even our own subjective experiences of how choices work. When I type a long sentence I generally type exactly what I mean to type, for example, but it doesn't subjectively appear to me as if I deliberate on the entire sentence. Rather, I'm only consciously aware vaguely of the intent, and of chunks of phrases coming to me as I type them. Somehow once the entire sentence comes out, it winds up following all of the rules of grammar and also winds up being what I meant to type. In other words, there are some problems with the generic presumption that the "consciousness" part of our mind is the "us" part. NOS4A2 I think is touching on this very thing.

Barondan: I'm both sketching an argument and quoting others here who have their own thoughts to demonstrate that my views here aren't simply some pet theory I've come up with... there seems to be problems in the general free will debate with the underlying presumptions we make about the nature of choice and the nature of the self. The real point here isn't to convince you that free will works that way, but rather to convince you that you should be looking very carefully at the fundamental assumptions people tend to make by default and make sure those are actually valid.

So to Barondan, I'm quoting these other people for emphasis. There's a generic tendency to equate predictability of choice to lack of choice; but there's something mightily suspicious about this tendency. — InPitzotl

I'm not doing that - where have I done that?

I make decisions. The decisions are mine. I have made them. That's the default. Causes must have origins. I originate my decisions.

What would deprive me of free will? Accurately predict my decisions? How would that work?

I have a coffee every morning. That's a free decision I make. But its predictable.

Let me say that I think there is nothing anyone - save God - can do to deprive me of free will. For to deprive me of free will you would need to make me into a created thing, rather than an uncreated one. How are you doing to do that?

I'm not doing that - where have I done that? — Bartricks

Relax Bartricks... I'm not refuting you; you've been quoted as an example of someone who agrees with me. (At least wrt choice).

Oh, okay. Carry on.

Who here on this forum is willing to say that their beautiful philosophical musings are merely the result of deterministic collisions of molecule? (Quantum waves).

The question of free will is an important one. Few can deny that but fewer still have made progress in demonstrating its existence or nonexistence, in fact the problem stands at it did roughly 2000 years ago when Greek/Indian philosophers first put the topic under the philosophical microscope.

Speaking for myself, I must report no progress at all in my investigations into the matter except for one small detail which is best illustrated through scenarios:

Imagine a person, X, who has been offered a choice of fizzy drink between a can of Pepsi and a can of Coke. Consider now that this person is, in scenario 1, simply presented with the two drinks and is asked to choose. However, in scenario 2 a gun is pointed at X's temple and he's asked to pick up the Coke can and not the Pepsi can.

Clearly there's a difference between scenarios 1 and 2 with respect to freedom of choice. In scenario 2, X is under duress to pick up the Coke can but in scenario 1, X is not under any coercion to do so. It's my hunch that such scenarios, which are realistic as in they do occur in real life albeit in different contexts, are the reason why people are under the impression that they have free will.

Note that this, in no way, proves that free will exists because scenario 1 doesn't demonstrate that we weren't compelled by factors other than a gun to the temple - our preference for any particular brand of fizzy drink maybe something we have no control over. Nevertheless...it does provide, in my humble opinion, some kind of an intuition or explanation/reason for why people believe they're free.

Hello, new here as well.

I think Free Will exists. Even when taking Libet's experiments into account, one can argue that a lot of decisions we make in life are not instantaneous. Sometimes they take days, weeks, or even years. For example, if I decide to go to college to improve my chances of employability in the future and make more money, it's a decision that is not instantaneous. It would have formed by quite a bit of information, weighing various options, planning etc. Such decisions do not follow short span that Libet's experiments follow.

Now the question of determinism. At its very elementary level (quantum level) universe seems to be probabilistic. The very building blocks of atoms of our universe are probabilistic in their nature: You can only know either the position of such building block (ie, sub-particles. e.g. Electron, quarks, photon) or their spin (momentum) but never the both at the same time. This behavior is different at classical mechanics level (atoms, molecules, trees, birds, planets, solar system, galaxy, etc). You can know velocity and position at the same moment which allows determinism at their level. Using thought experiments like Laplace's demon, we can conclude that given the ability of knowing velocity and position of every single atom in the universe we can determine how things will turn out to be. The molecules of cosmos already in motion and moving towards a deterministic end though well predictable path of classical mechanics.

How then free will comes into play? Free will becomes relevant at the level of agency of living organisms. Living organisms through their agency disrupt the course of the molecules within the temporal scope of their environment. This agency of living organism is an emergent phenomenon. As we move from very basic level (sub-particle level) of our universe to more granular (atom, molecules), and then further even more complex level (living organisms), certain emergent properties begin to appear that may not directly map to any properties at the previous level but yet have their own reality.

Free will, in my view, is one such phenomenon, or emergent property of reality at our (human, living agent) level. It does not exist at the level where objects of the universe do not have agency but it does exist when an agent comes into picture. So the question of free will exists at a level that determinism does not appear to be a relevant factor since we act in approximation and deterministically as part of the cosmic machine. Our agency does not have full control over the outcomes and hence our efforts (actions) are always approximate. Since we know this nature of approximation of our actions, we are left with trying out variable choices to optimize that approximation for most desirable outcome. This variability in choices gives us free will.

Welcome! I'm also new here.

To me the more relevant question is how society can makes us feel more free. Because it seems governments are more powerful than God :)

a surprising number. Including me.

a surprising number. Including me. — khaled

Then understanding the real situation, I imagine you don't put to much effort into convincing other people otherwise. We are all captives? What's more, Nobel Prizes are somewhat ludicrous, under these circumstances. Essentially, utterances and discoveries have no meaning beyond being an outcome. Pretty interesting, don't you think?

Essentially, utterances and discoveries have no meaning beyond being an outcome. — MondoR

And in your model someone discovering something is not an outcome?

And in your model someone discovering something is not an outcome? — khaled

Exactly. It is new insight. Your life is totally meaningless. Enjoy it.

It might be that indeterminism, if there is any, only exists beyond this universe. There doesn't appear to be any way to prove or disprove it.

In Physics, many who strongly believe this universe is deterministic, avoid this unsettling consequence that their lives are just played out, by postulating that we live out our lives in one of many possible scenarios, governed by a universal wave function. If you have ever seen the movie 'Sliding Doors' they see the sliding of the doors as just containing some splitting of a branch into different sets of alternate realities. This is the Many Worlds interpretation of Quantum mechanics.

Those Physicists who believe it is indeterministic will often cite the perceived randomness of outcomes appearing as outcomes derived from chance, or spontaneous interference outside of a deterministic cause to effect an outcome, as though they are probability distributions.

But that is not settled. It's not clear that there is any true indeterminism.

One tonic for those who struggle with these profound implications may be to live their lives more arbitrarily and invite perceived randomness into their lives. You could start by flipping a coin. The coin may land on heads or tails and you may choose to commit some action based on the result.

But proponents of determinism will argue that the coin's flip was not random.

So that just leaves bias. I often find that my bias reveals itself when I commit to flipping a coin. It's as though the act of deciding to flip reveals a slight bias I didn't perceive before, that I have for one of the outcomes if I know the outcomes. Kind o like suddenly it's horse race I have no control over and I feel an interest in backing a winner, whereas before I simply picked the winner. Maybe you could get two empty plastic balls and put a commitment into each one and mix them around or have someone else mix them.

But there is still a hope or preference you have in finding one of the outcomes that effects your choice. You could give a friend full decision over some arbitrary list of activities for the day that you have no say in and under the condition that they are all mundane things you have no preference for. He/She sets the choices for you and you pick one. Now you have no real preference or bias arguably and you just pick purely.

But the argument can still be made that your friend had a preference.

You can of course always still argue the whole sequence of events:
You deciding to introduce some variability into a choice by having your friend pick boring arbitrary things, and both you and your friends deterministic actions led to an inevitable outcome.

You can argue that my hope or will for something to happen is indeterministic. But a proponent of determinism can equally come along and say that even if I do have the power to influence the outcome, it is derived from my deterministically derived will to do so.

Of course it's hard for some and unsettling, that we may have no control whatsoever over our lives, which is one reason why the Many Worlds interpretation is so popular with many people.

Your life is totally meaningless. — MondoR

Why?

It's a series of meaningless, pre-determined outcomes. At least give yourself a Heaven and Hell.

It's a series of meaningless, pre-determined outcomes — MondoR

Why does an outcome being determined make it meaningless?

Exactly. It is new insight — MondoR

And new insight does not classify as “outcome”? Outcome of years of research and dedication maybe?

Your life is totally meaningless. — MondoR

Why do you think so? I certainly don’t think so.

Do you actually plan on engaging with new ideas or do you want to spout unsubstantiated nonsense like this?

And new insight does not classify as “outcome”? Outcome of years of research and dedication maybe? — khaled

The insight is the result of a choice by the mind to explore, to learn something new, to create a new idea, and with whom to share it. It is the choice that gives meaning. Otherwise one is just a bowling ball colliding with pins because the Maker [the Big Bang] made all of the decisions at that point in time. The Big Bang gets credit for everything.

Why does an outcome being determined make it meaningless? — InPitzotl

Just another form of fatalism.

When I order off a menu, I believe I have a choice as to what to eat. Once a choice has been made, one might say it was determined, pointing to the fact that what happened in the past may not be changed.

There are physical laws which determine physical outcomes, but is consciousness physical? The hard problem of what consciousness is and how it arrises, needs to be resolved before one may discount the possibility of free will.

I enjoyed the topic.

I would like to add something in support of indeterminism and thus free will, because as others rightfully point out, determinism sure does appear to be prolific in the universe and probably can account for most of the mechanics we see (certainly at the macroscopic level). General relativity is close to explaining this overall. And, in any event I would accept that overall indeterminacy emerges form a sum of parts which are both deterministic and indeterministic, which I will discuss below.

Although it does appear that the conditions to allow our existence came to be from an unimaginably energetic event a very long time ago (as we perceive time, there is disagreement even about how this unfolded, but agreement around how matter came to be at all, and hence time itself in any meaningful way). Was there only one big bang? Are they cyclical? We don't really know.

Indeterminism is not intuitive and we have a tendency to reject such things as not satisfying our classical understanding of the laws of nature.

An indeterminant process is a stochastic or random process whereby there is some indeterminacy in its future evolution described by probability distributions. This means that even if the initial condition (or starting point) is known, there are many possibilities the process might go to, but some paths may be more probable and others less so. The basic idea is that if you have were to be able to recreate the precise conditions of an experiment right down the last detail, you could still not repeat the results. Some level of randomness would intervene during the manifestation of the outcome to make it unique.

The first thing to acknowledge is that whether the universe is fundamentally deterministic or indeterministic, there are profound implications which can make our heads spin, most notable being for determinism that we would have no genuine free will. And for indeterminism, that paradoxes around the universe being unrealistically disorderly and in defiance of the basic principle of cause and effect, depending on how far you take it.

I do maintain that the universe would still heavily consist of deterministic processes in either case at the macro level and maybe in many processes at the quantum level too, but be overall indeterministic in that the indeterminism pollutes (if you will) the overall evolution of the system to make it stochastic. i.e. a system which is part stochastic must be stochastic overall, at least in this universe as we understand it).
Think of that as 'If I place one dodgy indeterministic domino in a long line of dominoes that behave deterministically, then the overall manifestation of knocking these dominoes is indeterminant.'

It's probably best to focus on the leading argument for indeterminacy in the first place, and that is radioactive decay.


Above, simulation of many identical atoms undergoing radioactive decay, starting with either 4 atoms (left) or 400 (right). The number at the top indicates how many half-lives have elapsed.
This process is the best candidate we have in our observed universe as indeterministic phenomena.

The basic reasoning for radioactive decay being genuinely indeterministic is that the process (as they see it) is not complex enough to create such a complex variance in decay times from atom to atom, for any underlying working to be taking place they don't know about. They rule this out. The generally accepted interpretation is that it decays through a stochastic process, in an indeterministic way. It's not proof. It's evidence.

From an indeterministic viewpoint, it can still be argued that this process still inevitably emerges from the very origin of the universe in an unbreakable chain of deterministic events and that each atom's decay is inevitable. But if so, why do these radioactive atoms bleed off their energy in such an unstable way?

I think this may actually be an indeterministic process. For reasons we don't yet understand, I believe it may be the case that the superset of our universe (that which determines the workings of our universe), if there is one, determines this. It cannot be proven that chance is at work in this decay, but I believe that if chance is involved, it may come from something deeper, something that existed before the big bang as it were.

To suggest that this process may be manifested from outside of our known universe is no more extreme a view than the universal wave function being outside our known universe determining each parallel universe as in the Many Worlds interpretation that a lot of Determinism proponents are so fond of.

I'm not convinced this is the one and only big bang we have had in this universe or that there isn't something outside of our universe, containing it.

From an indeterministic viewpoint, it can still be argued that this process still inevitably emerges from the very origin of the universe in an unbreakable chain of deterministic events and that each atom's decay is inevitable. But if so, why do these radioactive atoms bleed off their energy in such an unstable way? — Paul S

Paul,

Could it be that indeterministic nature of a phenomenon (decay in this case) is limited in scope to its temporal locality and occurrence? I believe that when we talk of free will or indeterministic behavior, we are merely talking about a limited scope of such activity within which this behavior is probable and not some continuous chain of event that are somehow connected in a causal relationship.

For example, while entropy of the universe will continue to increase, regardless of what we humans do, and that in itself can be termed as determinism of our universe (heat death of universe), within the scope of our lives, our acts and interactions may "move molecules" in less predictable ways compared if we did not exist. So this less predictability is scoped within the span of human (or sentient beings) existence.

If it’s neither, then are you looking for a decision that is not determined and at the same time not random? Does that even make sense? I don’t think it does. — khaled

That's not the alternative as I understand it. The alternative is a decision that is not determined by anything other than the self, with the self not being (wholly) determined by anything and the decision being purposeful. (Even a capricious decision is purposeful in the sense I am concerned with (that is, is not random) if it is deliberately chosen).

Paul,

Could it be that indeterministic nature of a phenomenon (decay in this case) is limited in scope to its temporal locality and occurrence? I believe that when we talk of free will or indeterministic behavior, we are merely talking about a limited scope of such activity within which this behavior is probable and not some continuous chain of event that are somehow connected in a causal relationship.

For example, while entropy of the universe will continue to increase, regardless of what we humans do, and that in itself can be termed as determinism of our universe (heat death of universe), within the scope of our lives, our acts and interactions may "move molecules" in less predictable ways compared if we did not exist. So this less predictability is scoped within the span of human (or sentient beings) — hume

As I see it, we are the sum of our parts (if not taking any notion of the soul into account).
The indeterministic nature would not be limited in scope due to what we call chaos or non linearity. A subtle manifestation of indeterminism cascades rapidly so that the result is more often much bigger.
We already have random number generators based on radioactive decay. If you were to not leave it up to your immediate locality or the belief that you are truly random in your own right and base some important decisions around the output of a random number generator like this, you could in effect be galvanising an indeterministic future for yourself (that is IF the decay is truly random), but in reality, if there is true indeterminism in decay, then it is likely in other places too, and it would lead to an indeterministic future regardless. I would argue that if there is anything in this universe that that is indeterministic, then your life inevitably will be too, regardless of distance. After epochs of time, even the most isolated indeterministic effect would manifest its effects and alter an otherwise deterministic state.

Here is one such generator. When we listen to these random sounds, are we tuned into true indeterminism?

Just another form of fatalism. — MondoR

Determinism and fatalism aren't the same thing. An event that is fated will happen regardless of what occurs. An event that is determined happens because of what occurs. A classic example is that you're sick. If your future health is fated, it doesn't matter if you go to the doctor or not. If it's determined, it does matter.

What do you mean it matters that you go to a doctor????

It's already Determined. There is no choice.

Determinism is a form of fatalism. The only difference is the name given to the Maker.

The alternative is a decision that is not determined by anything other than the self, with the self not being (wholly) determined by anything and the decision being purposeful. — Janus

So the requirements seem to be: Some randomness + deliberation + decision is being made by the self (whatever that is)

Well, we can get deliberation out of the way. Determinism or not, our choices can be deliberate.

And we can get decision is being made by the self out of the way too. Who else would make the decision? Determinism or no determinism, the self will always be the source of decisions. Then again, I suspect we have different definitions of “self”

Finally, the last requirement is ontological randomness. I don’t think this is actually a requirement. Let’s assume for a second that the world is fundamentally indeterministic:

Say you’re a prisoner in a jail cell that you cannot break out of. One day the guard removed the door and says “You’re free to leave but you will be shot if you step foot outside, and our snipers never miss”. Have you just become more free? I don’t think so. I don’t think gaining the ability to do something you would never do is an increase in freedom.

Before the door was removed, you had no choice. You could not have chosen to leave if you wanted to. That’s determinism. After it was removed you had a choice, IE indeterminism, but you would never want to leave anyways. And yet you were no more free. So the variable that seems to matter is not whether or not you can ACTUALLY choose differently. As here is an example where you are just as free being unable to choose as when having a choice.

Point is: I don’t think freedom is incompatible with determinism. What matters is whether or not you’re doing what you want to do. Not whether or not you can actually do otherwise.