Is love possible without free will? If not, could the possibility of love perhaps be a good that far outweighs the cost of permitting evil and suffering? — aletheist

Is love a freely willed choice, though? Do you get to choose who you love, who you hate, and who you're indifferent too? I have my doubts.

Let's say it is necessitated by having free will. Does that mean free will to do anything, or just free will to love?

I certainly don't love everyone, but I also don't commit terrible crimes against anyone, although surely my character would be improved by having more empathy. I'm not seeing that my free will to love needs the ability to murder to exist.

I might as well add that it's heritable change obviously. — Baden

So cosmic radiation modifying genes is only evolution if it gets passed down, same with anything we do.

his is particularly the case insofar as we are dealing with a question of science, that is, empirical questions. Science doesn't get to decide, in advance, what is and is not part of evolution - least you give up any pretension of empiricism and lapse into full blown dogmatism. — StreetlightX

But an important part of science is categorization, and an attempt to "carve nature at the joints", or at least make useful distinctions.

So sure, technological changes to DNA is evolution in the broad sense. I'm questioning whether it's biological evolution in the scientific sense of how life diversified on Earth from the earliest life form.

t would just depend on whether changes were made to the genes in the process. If cats die out and we bring them back as they were, they wouldn't have evolved. — Baden

Your position is that any change to the genes of an organism is evolution, full stop, no exceptions.

It would just depend on whether changes were made to the genes in the process. If cats die out and we bring them back as they were, they haven't evolved. — Baden

So the Jurassic Park scenario where frog DNA is used to fill in the gaps in dino DNA found in embalmed insects would be evolution, because those dinosaurs would be different from the actual ones that walked the Earth pre-extinction?

Because 99% would add in other things like tax dodging, queue-jumping, petty theft, flaming, driving without due care and attention, fracking, dropping litter, and so on. — unenlightened

But presumably God or a super AI would be able to draw the line such that we meaningfully had free will while not permitting the worst evils?

That is what we wish the world could be like. We want to be free, but we don't want people to be free to kill or enslave us, nor do we expect ourselves to be free to do those things (hopefully).

Artificial selection is an artificial mechanism by which evolution can occur." — Baden

Agreed, but it is considered an artificial mechanism. If biological evolution is just biological change over time regardless of what causes it, then okay, human technology can be part of that.

Although, I have to wonder if bringing species back from extinction is actually evolution under that definition?

I guess bird nests are unnatural, coral reefs are unnatural, and everything that atmosphere permits is also unnatural. — Chany

To an extent, sure. There is a continuum from natural to artifical, where you have beaver dams on one side and concrete jungles on another, and you can argue that they're the same thing, but the equivalent of a beaver damn or bird's nest can be created by water and wind, but concrete cannot.

It's one mechanism. Don't get hung up on the "natural" idea. — Baden

In a sense, twinkies are natural. They're made of matter, not some spiritual substance. But OTOH, they would not exist without sophisticated technology. There is no route for nature to take independent of intelligent design, save pure chance, to produce twinkies.

As such, we say that twinkies are artificial.

I don't care to answer any of these counterfactuals unless you provide a reason, in principle, why these can't be considered part of evolution. Otherwise we'll be here all day. Let's discuss reasons not hypotheticals. — StreetlightX

My understanding is that biological evolution is considered a natural, mindless process driven by several mechanisms such as natural selection, in which genes are selected for based on their fitness in a given environment and passed on to succeeding generations, leading to changes over time.

So? Nature probably couldn't have made a chihuahua without us either. — Baden

Right, I didn't think artificial selection was evolution, precisely because dogs would not evolve without human interference.

Sure, human activity including technological activity could be a mechanism of evolution. Why not? Artificial selection is. — Baden

Because humans will be able to do things that nature cannot without us, such as bringing extinct species back to life, or splicing in genes between vastly different organisms, like corn and fish.

Could we define "free will"? — Chany

In context of the FWD, that would be libertarian free will. Lucifer, Adam & Eve, Ted Bundy, etc could have done otherwise.

Then you haven't heard of niche construction, one of the basic mechanisms of evolution? — StreetlightX

That's interesting, but the wiki article says it's not part of standard evolution.

How far can you stretch technology to be part of evolution? Would creating organisms from scratch still be evolution? Would self-replicating machines be biological?

If we came across a planet terraformed by aliens where they engineered all the life for that world, would we consider that intelligent design or evolution?

To the degree that the unit of evolution is a developmental system, then yes, there is nothing in principle that would rule out technology from being part of the process of evolution. — StreetlightX

Evolution could be stellar, it could be social, it could be sports, it could be evolution of the smartphone, and it can be biological.

What's not useful is collapsing all those into one meaning.

Evolution is defined by heritable changes in the gene pool from generation to generation. Doesn't matter how they get there. Genes come and go. That's it. — Baden

I don't think that's true when it's the result of technological means, but if I'm wrong, then human activity would be considered a mechanism of evolution. I've never seen that stated.

Ok, thanks for joining. — StreetlightX

Sure, do biologists consider technology to be a mechanism in human evolution?

That 'if' just means you want to be the omnipotent dictator. — unenlightened

Why would it need to be me? I'm guessing 99% of the world would rather genocide never occurred again.

Cite a reason, in principle, why it isn't. The onus is on you here. Your disbelief means nothing.. — StreetlightX

Your belief means nothing.

Yes I disagree. The Nature/culture divide is bad philosophy spliced onto perfectly indifference science. — StreetlightX

So technology is considered part of evolution. That's a new one on me.

I don't think collapsing such distinctions is useful. Yeah, we're all part of the cosmos. No, that doesn't help when distinguishing between human technological activity and biology.

Well sure, that's why we have a justice system. But you really want an omnipotent dictator to make the decision about what you are allowed to be free to do ... if that's not already contradictory? — unenlightened

If it stops genocide without impinging on other freedoms, then absolutely.

3) The natural/unnatural distinction between human societies and nature out there is false. — Chany

No it's not. We've created tons of things that would not exist in our absence. Twinkies, agent orange, concrete, plastics, splicing plant genes into animals, etc.

Climate change is largely being caused by human activity, not natural processes. Nature wasn't going to dig up all that fossilized plant material and spew it out into the atmosphere on it's own.

Why? Provide a reason, not just just state an opinion. — StreetlightX

Technology isn't considered part of biological evolution. Do you disagree that we intelligently interfere with the natural world?

Evolution is indifferent to what is 'natural' or not: if the results of evolution happen to be a bunch of intelligent apes who can invent things like seat-belts that happen to save lives, then so be it - they are the species best adapted to survival in their environment. 'Natural' doesn't come into it, except as an extrinsic consideration from without the process of evolution itself. — StreetlightX

But for the concept of biological evolution to be meaningful. we need to be able to differentiate it from what humans do, such as artificial selection, artificial insemination, splicing genes, cloning, bring back species from extinction, CRISPR, etc.

That stuff isn't evolution, it's intelligent design by humans. And the father we go down that road, the farther from natural selection, genetic drift, etc we get. There is talk about being able to use a chicken to reverse engineer a dinosaur back into existence. That's not something evolution does. There's also been a lot of futurist speculation of using nanobots to aid our bodies in various ways. That's not remotely evolution. Or engineering viruses to fight cancer, create smart drugs, etc.

The claims of philosophy of language, which I think needs a complete revamp. — mcdoodle

Hear, hear.

I'm all in favour of locking them up out of harm's way, but eliminating everyone's freedom is a very high price to pay. — unenlightened

But we are only talking about eliminating everyone's freedom to commit certain crimes. Now that can be abused, and accomplishing it might have unwanted consequences, so maybe we wouldn't find such a society acceptable.

But not because people were unable to rape, pillage, burn, etc. Most people would rather live in a world where war and child abuse was a thing of the past and what not.

My argument is that we don't really value the free will to commit certain evils, nor do we consider having such free will a good thing. What we value is the free will to do non-evil things, and we're worried that some people would like to constrain us from living how we like, when it doesn't involve committing those evils.

I'm just going to say that it's not good for a serial killer to have the free will to kill people, and I don't think other people believe it is good either, which is why we try to deny free will to persons with such compulsions, when we become aware of it.

A Clockwork Orange. — unenlightened

I've never actually seen it, so can you explain how not being able to commit terrible evils would be a hellish thing for society?

Let's try another analogy, which is actually rather close to God. Some think that we will create a self-improving general purpose AI at some point in the future. Being that it does not have the restrictions of biology, it will be able to bootstrap itself to super intelligence.

Setting aside the plausibility of such a scenario, which is fodder for a different sort of discussion, what might such an AI do? Well, let's say it was designed initially with humanity's highest ideals as its guiding motivation. Then when it eats the internet and becomes all-knowing and powerful, relative to us, it could set about to prevent murder, rape, war, child abuse, etc.

It could do what God fails to do, which is prevent various evils. Would we consider such a constraint on human free will to be a good or bad thing?

There would be no virtue in good behaviour, any more than there is virtue in having regard to gravity. Such a world would be 'perfect' in the behaviour of its inhabitants without their being 'good' at all. In fact it would be a pretty hellish society to my mind. — unenlightened

It would be a hellish society where nobody had the free will to murder, rape, steal, commit genocide, or start wars?

I understand such an argument if that involves other unacceptable costs to being human, but not if it only limits our ability to do evil things. Because that is the sort of society we attempt to have much of the time, but fail to do so because we're imperfect, fallible humans with limited abilities.

That's not necessarily true. If free will is itself a good then it's imprecise to say that God values free will over good; rather you'd have to say that God values free will over other types of good. As explained here, "the value of free will (and the goods it makes possible) is so great as to outweigh the risk that it may be misused in various ways". — Michael

That's an interesting justification. But what's really being argued is that God values free will at the cost of permitting various evils to exist. It's not a matter of weighing goods, it's a matter of weighing the good of free will over permitting evil.

And it's not a risk to God, because God already knows that various evils will happen as a result of free will.

So the question becomes whether any good justifies evil, and whether free will is such a good. It would be quite easy to turn the argument around and argue that free will is evil, because it allows for evil to exist. And God, being in favor of evil, created free will for that very reason.

God is said to have given us free will, unlike parents who do not give us free will. So there is a difference in the meaning of "permission" in the OP when you compare parents who permit their children to perform evil acts and God who ("permits") allows for the ability to choose to perform evil acts. — Luke

All of that is fine, provided that God values free will over good, which means that God is something other than being perfectly good. It's certainly not something that human societies value in practice.

But now they are all grown up, they have to make the best they can of their own lives. If they turn out to idiots and arseholes in spite of my loving care and education, that is unfortunate, but if I have to go on exercising parental control for ever, then they cannot possibly grow into responsible adults. — unenlightened

Sure, but society takes over that role to an extent. We have various laws that are enforced, to an extent, which curb people's free will to do anything they might want.I could really hate my neighbor and wish them dead, but restrain from carrying it out because I don't want to go to prison.

I think this sort of thing demonstrates that human beings don't really believe in any sort of absolute free will as being a good thing.

If you aspire to be a believer then you have to accept that your finite intellect will never be able to understand the ways of an infinte intentionailty. — John

But that's a get out of jail free card for anything a believer wishes to attribute to God or the divine story of why things are the way they are.

"I was devastated when my husband started beating me, but I thank God that he had the choice." — Cuthbert

Haha. I've never heard it put that way before. Usually it's, "Why did God let that happen to me?", which turns into it being an opportunity for growth or forgiveness or God's ways are mysterious. But it's never thanking God for free will.

I think, for instance, your very use of the word 'interferes with', would be considered an improper term from an hermeneutic perspective. And again, your total absence of sympathy with the subject at hand, virtually guarantees that whatever interpretation you come up with, will be negative. — Wayfarer

What would you call what Yahweh and Jesus do in the various books of the bible, if "interference" is objectionable to your continental sensibilities? And I'm very familiar with the overall material, so it's not like you can tell me they weren't actively involved with human events throughout the entire Bible (or predicted to be actively involved in future events).

Also, I think the book of Job does a better job with evil and suffering than C.S. Lewis, and it still leaves one deeply dissatisfied. Afterall, God let Job suffer just to prove a point to Satan, and never told Job why.

Why? Because the god who is all unknowable mystery can not be convicted of anything. He's the all-purpose cause, the all-purpose reason, the all-purpose excuse. Very useful, really, but bogus. — Bitter Crank

I just don't see how that God can be only good, when there is evil and suffering in existence. A God who was both good and evil makes a lot more sense. Or a god indifferent to morality. An amoral being. A being for whom empathy and justice is a foreign concept. My very limited understanding of Hinduism is that God is beyond good and evil.

But a perfectly good God with omni-powers is in direct contradiction with existence.

Indeed, it would not be good. Free will is no excuse for bad behavior, whether on the part of a deity or the brats next door who ought to be straightened out with a big stick. — Bitter Crank

The entire thread is directed against a very specific notion of God, which was inspired by another thread, parodying that notion with an all-evil God allowing good in the universe, because free will.

everybody would be a winner, including Christians, who could then flourish with a more authentic religious form of devotion. — andrewk

Here, here. There are some good aspects of Christianity. Unfortunately, those are often tied up with some ridiculous elements.

Metaphors are not to be taken literally. — Bitter Crank

Sure, but they can aid an argument. If parents allowing their kids to have free reign over the neighborhood is considered immoral, then God allowing us to have free reign over the Earth can't be good.