As I also said there, free will runs into trouble even if you don't believe in God, because if we are physical systems, then our actions are simply the result of a series of other events, and the choices we make are no more free than, say, the "choices" made by a robot such as the Mars rover when it selects a path to follow as it moves across the Martian surface.

That definitely grabs the contradictory/paradoxical aspect of the issue.

When it comes to self-improvement, e.g., giving up a cigarette habit, it becomes abundantly clear that the part of a person that thinks s/he's free is precisely the part that's unfree. And so an internal war ensues....It's only by planning in advance,in this example, to deal with potentially difficult challenges, that the smoker is likely to become an ex-smoker.

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As I also said there, free will runs into trouble even if you don't believe in God, because if we are physical systems, then our actions are simply the result of a series of other events, and the choices we make are no more free ....

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If computers did not exist we would not have the choice of owning one. So I would agree that our actions are the result of other events.

I think that we do have certain choices in life. Sometimes we make a good choice and other times, in spite of our knowledge we go the other way.

Smoking is an example.We have known for years that smoking is not the best thing for one's lungs. There are those of us who in spite of COPD in our families merrily kept on smoking. The result more COPD.

I would say the choice was there and we decided that: IT CAN NEVER HAPPEN TO ME.

The question is, are the choices we make different, or are they simply a more sophisticated version of what the Mars rover does?

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Originally posted by N.Beltov:

When it comes to self-improvement, e.g., giving up a cigarette habit, it becomes abundantly clear that the part of a person that thinks s/he's free is precisely the part that's unfree. And so an internal war ensues....It's only by planning in advance,in this example, to deal with potentially difficult challenges, that the smoker is likely to become an ex-smoker.

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That's true, so far as it goes- the real question, though, is whether the decision to quit smoking (which appears to the quitter to be a free decision) really is.

[ 20 March 2004: Message edited by: Mike Keenan ]

...the real question, though, is whether the decision to quit smoking (which appears to the quitter to be a free decision) really is.

Nah!!! The real question is "What do we mean by "freedom?" More to follow...x()

What I don't want to do is to fall into the trap of treating F as acting in accordance with a volition which is not determined by external causes. Why isolate my thinking brain from the rest of the world? Nor do I want to suppose that ONLY unrestricted and unconditional F can be the basis of human responsibility and, therefore, ethics. Just because legal systems require me to be responsible for my actions in order to convict me if I violate the laws...doesn't mean I have to absolutize F. NOR do I want to stumble into some 18th century mechanistic determinism that denies F, and maintains that all actions are determined by external circumstances over which I have no control.

So where the hell am I? Spinoza says F = recognized necessity. I can dig it. I can also dig that my consciousness is a secondary or derived quality; that, therefore, I should lean towards the "necessity" side of things for a starting point. And, to go back to my quit smoking example, that seems the height of wisdom.

If I don't absolutize the two sides...then I don't have the big philosophical problems. Free Will or, more generally, Freedom and Necessity should be seen as RELATIVE terms,...

Oh, by the way, I did quit smoking. But the experience left me much more comfortable with notions that the "necessity" side of my actions and decisions are a lot more important than my "free" actions and decisions.

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Originally posted by N.Beltov:
Nor do I want to suppose that ONLY unrestricted and unconditional F can be the basis of human responsibility and, therefore, ethics.

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Okay, but what do we mean by responsibility? We sometimes say things like "this nail was responsible for the flat tire", but presumably when we're talking about legal or moral responsibility we mean something more than this. After all, we don't prosecute or condemn nails.

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So where the hell am I? Spinoza says F = recognized necessity. I can dig it. I can also dig that my consciousness is a secondary or derived quality...

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Originally posted by Mike Keenan:

So basically we are responsible for our actions and the Mars rover isn't, because we, unlike the rover, are aware of what we're doing. But by a "secondary or derived quality", do you mean an epiphenomenon? If so, doesn't that mean your "conscious self" is a mere passenger in your body? What would be the moral significance of consciousness, then, if it isn't really an agent but only appears to be?

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Classifying consciousness as "secondary" is my way of asserting that the foundation of my thinking is found in my being...and not the other way around. Of course if I decide to jump off the Osborne bridge in Winnipeg then my physical being, will, in all likelihood, come to an end. But this would in no way prove anything about the relationship between my consciousness and my being, other than that they are RELATIVE terms that, to repeat, shouldn't be absolutized.

I like the old orthodox marxist view that makes use of notions of forms of motion of matter and asserts that new qualities come into being by virtue of higher forms of motion. Example: chemical activity and motion leading to a new biological form of motion...the new quality of life on earth. So, in our discussion, consciousness as a higher form of motion leads to this new relative quality...freedom. I hope I haven't muddied the waters.

I don't know how much more I can assert other than that necessity seems so much stronger than freedom. The arrow points MAINLY in one direction. My experience of quitting smoking led me to the absurd, but comfortable conclusion that I had no "free will." It only seemed so at the time. (An interesting sidebar is that a Lutheran Pastor friend of mine saw nothing wrong with my conclusion. Did he think that the only really free will was God's? I shall never know...the Pastor passed away playing hockey...)But this one is a tough nut to crack. Perhaps there are some other takers out there in babble-land?

A final example. Health Canada has recently, with a pilot project and a mayor with some balls...oops I mean backbone...taken the approach of having a needle exchange program in Vancouver's Lower East Side. Never mind that the injection drugs that are used are illegal. The point is harm reduction and the ethics or morality of providing the users with safe, i.e., non-infected needles overrides the considerations of allowing illegal activity to go on. The government can easily rationalize its policy, e.g. by reducing the harm (and cost, one should add) of treating injection drug users for Hepatitis, HIV, etc. etc. I can't help but think that too many debates on ethics feel like the resistance of people who would not allow such a pilot project to take place.

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Originally posted by N.Beltov:

I like the old orthodox marxist view that makes use of notions of forms of motion of matter and asserts that new qualities come into being by virtue of higher forms of motion. Example: chemical activity and motion leading to a new biological form of motion...the new quality of life on earth. So, in our discussion, consciousness as a higher form of motion leads to this new relative quality...freedom. I hope I haven't muddied the waters.

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I don't know how much more I can assert other than that necessity seems so much stronger than freedom. The arrow points MAINLY in one direction.

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Does God know which choice I will make? Possibly. But that doesn't mean he has forced me to make that choice.

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a choice between spinach and cookies, I know ahead of time which one he'll choose

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Yes, but put two different kinds of equally yummy cookies in front of him, and you would not be so sure of the outcome. But God would, presumably. This is the kind of example that separates Gods from mortals.

Science has learned something about contradictions, although logic hasn’t caught up yet. There is no reason that lesson couldn’t be applied to the free will/determination quandary. I’ll quote from Freeman Dyson (physicist), who is here writing with reference to the possibility of the existence of parapsychological phenomena. Substitute “choice” for “light,” and "logic" for “science,” and I think there is a working theory toward this thread’s issue.

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The word "complementary" is a technical term introduced into physics by Niels Bohr. It means that two descriptions of nature may both be valid but cannot be observed simultaneously. The classic example of complementarity is the dual nature of light. In one experiment light is seen to behave as a continuous wave, in another experiment it behaves as a swarm of particles, but we cannot see the wave and the particles in the same experiment. Complementarity in physics is an established fact. The extension of the idea of complementarity to mental phenomena is pure speculation. But I find it plausible that a world of mental phenomena should exist, too fluid and evanescent to be grasped with the cumbersome tools of science.

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Or, you could just say that God works in mysterious ways. Never you mind what goes on behind closed doors—the reductionist has no business in God’s bedroom. But that’s just my preference.

[ 20 March 2004: Message edited by: bittersweet ]

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Originally posted by Michelle:
I don't necessarily agree with the opening post with regard to free will vs. God's omniscience. Believing that God is omniscient doesn't mean that you necessarily have to believe that he has predetermined all your actions and choices. For instance, say I have a decision to make in 10 minutes, and I have to choose from among, oh say 5 different actions. It is conceivable I have the free will to choose any of those five options, and God will be able to see the following results for any one of those choices. You could visualize it as a flow-chart of actions leading to other actions - an omniscient being would be able to see all possible patterns that could result from all possible combinations of actions without actually making the choice.

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Does God know which choice I will make? Possibly. But that doesn't mean he has forced me to make that choice.

Take a very limited analogy: knowing my son as I do, if I saw him making a choice between spinach and cookies, I know ahead of time which one he'll choose. But that doesn't mean that I have forced him to choose it or that I've taken away his free will.

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It still really comes down to choice.

I don't know whether my cats have a choice when they see a mouse in the house.

I have the choice of killing the mouse via a mouse trap. Ignoring the mouse. Creating a trap that doesn't harm the mouse and put it outside.

I think this is just the difference between humans and other animals. This is perhaps our survival skill as speed is in a cheetah and all the other survival skills in different animals.

Our set of assumptions about what constitutes Free Will seems flawed, due to the timelessness of God.

I prefer to think that Free Will can still exist because of this.

[ 21 March 2004: Message edited by: wei-chi ]

Frankly, I think this between-the-lines stuff and the timelessness (God lives in eternity and all that) is basically sophistry. It's a more sophisticated way of saying "God moves in mysterious ways", which in turn basically means "I haven't got a clue, makes no sense to me either but I have faith so it doesn't matter". Which is fair enough, sort of, and at any rate has the virtue of humility, but I'm a lot happier with such explanations when they just admit that they're falling back on faith rather than trying to baffle me with cute lingo.

My general lack of that virtue is probably the major reason I've always been rather impatient with all explanations of the "You just can't understand it because you're only mortal" variety.

On the other hand, all worries about whether the existence of God is consistent with free will basically are the same as worries whether predestination deprives us of free will, which brings us back to some of the earlier discussions about whether that's actually a problem. It's certainly a problem if free will equates to randomness.
Although it feels to me like it matters that not only does God *know* what I'm going to decide, but presumably when he made me knew that if he made me one way, I'd decide one thing, and if he made me another way, I'd decide another thing. So if he made me a particular way, he made me with all the consequences of that creation in mind, and designed me to do exactly whatever I ended up doing. That really seems like it ought to kill the notion of free will, but I'm not sure; if predestination by itself doesn't necessarily kill free will, does design plus predestination really change anything?
Possession of free will might be considered more a matter of what kind of being I am, what kind of decisions I'm capable of making. It isn't even necessarily about unpredictability, even at mortal levels of predictive power. I'm a fairly predictable person on many matters, because I have chosen to follow certain ethical principles and stick to them rather rigorously. But surely if free will relates to anything, it relates to that sort of choice, even if having made that choice makes me more predictable rather than less.

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Originally posted by bittersweet:
And yet, the problem of understanding free will may not be with God; it may be with the inability of a certain kind of thought to hold yes/no together at the same time. There is free will, and there is not, and there might even be both--depending on how you look at it. God is between the lines.

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The trouble with this is, if you reject the law of non-contradiction, then you can "prove" anything.

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Originally posted by nonesuch:
It doesn't matter whether your will is free: you have to live each day as if it were.

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Of course; I'm not denying this at all. I'm just wondering if there's more to free will than this. The idea that it might be a big delusion is disturbing to me.

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Originally posted by clersal:
The ability or discretion to choose; free choice: chose to remain behind of my own free will.
The power of making free choices that are unconstrained by external circumstances or by an agency such as fate or divine will.

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But what you want to do is still presumably caused by something, isn't it? And if that's the case, isn't that still a constraint, even though not imposed by anyone?

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Originally posted by wei-chi:
Once time is removed from our set of assumptions, then logic no longer works the same. Traditional causality may break down.

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But doesn't any kind of action have to take place within time? If time is an illusion (and this isn't only a theological position; many interpretations of relativity treat time as illusory as well) then not only free action, but action of any kind is illusory.

[ 21 March 2004: Message edited by: Mike Keenan ]

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Originally posted by Rufus Polson:

On the other hand, all worries about whether the existence of God is consistent with free will basically are the same as worries whether predestination deprives us of free will, which brings us back to some of the earlier discussions about whether that's actually a problem. It's certainly a problem if free will equates to randomness.

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Maybe the answer to the problem can be found in the ideas of the Soviet-born chemist Ilya Prigogine. I don't know enough about his ideas to say, but I've had a look at The End of Certainty in the library, and in the opening chapter he talks about some middle ground between determinism and randomness. Unfortunately the book doesn't go into any details about how this is supposed to relate to free will; he only suggests early on that it does relate. And I'm not knowledgeable enough to assess Prigogine's ideas; maybe DrConway is?

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But what you want to do is still presumably caused by something, isn't it? And if that's the case, isn't that still a constraint, even though not imposed by anyone?

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I'm not sure if cause and constraint are the same thing.

There is a cause for everything. There is an effect. I don't believe 'wanting' is a good word.

There are certain basic needs that we all need, food, shelter etc.

nonesuch:

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It doesn't matter whether someone else knows what you'll do! It only matters that you don't know. Every single time, you have to go though the process of making a decision as if you had a choice, and feel about the consequences as if you were responsible. It doesn't matter whether your will is free: you have to live each day as if it were.

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Let's leave God out, since He's pretty much unobservable.
We can keep other species in, since we can see enough similarities between them and us to know that we're related to them.
We might want to leave out all authorities, scientific as well as theological and philosophical, since we can't directly observe the data they used.

Starting from where i sit right now.
I feel as if i had choices. Go get another glass of wine, or stay in my chair? Turn on the desk lamp, or wait until it's too dark to see the keyboard? Put on a sweater or not? Small decisions, granted, but i don't perceive any constraints on my freedom to make them and carry out my intentions.
That doesn't necessarily mean there aren't any.

On the other hand, i cannot turn up the light outside or raise the temperature in the room or will my glass to fill. I perceive obstacles to my freedom of will. These obstacles are physical: I have no power over certain aspects of my environment.

There is a cat sitting on my desk. I could leave him alone, lift him down, push him off or strangle him and throw his corpse out the window. Physically, i am capable of each of those acts. Psychologically, i'm capable only of the first three. I know i can push him off, because i've done it before, when i was annoyed with him, or he was on a forbidden furniture. But he hasn't done anything wrong this time. I've certainly lifted him off this table before, so i know that's an option. But he's not in my way and it's not Bitsy's turn, so i don't have a reason to.

Therefore i must add internal limitations to my freedom of will: temperamental constraint, moral constraint and logical constraint.

Conclusion so far: I think i have freedom of decision and action, but only within certain narrow parameters, some of which are pre-ordained by material and some by mental factors beyond my control.

[ 22 March 2004: Message edited by: nonesuch ]

Now, let's compare humans to other animals.
I see that we are all less powerful than elephants and more powerful than mice. None of us can fly at all. None of us can swim as well as a sealion, nor climb as well as a bush-baby, but we swim better than cats and climb better than skunks.

To the extent that we can physically overcome the obstacles presented by the environment, we are free to make decisions about our position in it and relationship to it. On average, humans are as free to exert their will as are other animals - abilities balancing disabilities.

Add the mental dimension, and the comparison to other species is thrown way off balance. Humans, with our ingenuity and ability to make and use tools, have a far greater power to effect our environment than any other species available for observation.

On the other hand, the big brain also contains more logical, emotional and ethical constraints than will fit into the little brains of squirrels and swordfish.

Therefore: freedom of will is added by evolutionary advantage, and also substracted by the extra, non-physical, non-utilitarian dimension.

[ 22 March 2004: Message edited by: nonesuch ]

May we assume that the same type of limitation applies to other species?

Then, let's observe another species whose range is smaller and more measurable than our own.

Dogs are physically powerful, agile and adaptable. They are also intelligent and social. (I can say this with confidence, having observed and interacted with a large number of dogs. You may or may not have a similar cache of direct observation; you may or may not consider my observations accurate, relevant, applicable.)

Let's take four male retrievers from the same litter. Their racial history is as nearly identical as we're likely to find: same evolutionary steps, same needs, same general abilities, same instincts. Their genetic makeup is similar, though probably not identical: same body type and capability. Their physical power to effect the environment is near enough identical for the present purpose, and their desires are likely to be similar in a given situation.

Give one puppy to a nice old lady who gives her pets whatever they want and lets them walk all over her. Give one to a duck-hunter who needs to dominate everybody and win every obedience trial. Give one to a boisterous family with two young children and a big old tom-cat. Give one to a lonely middle-aged bookworm who loves and understands dogs.

Do you think these dogs will all behave the same way when they grow up?
If not, why not?

[ 22 March 2004: Message edited by: nonesuch ]

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The trouble with this is, if you reject the law of non-contradiction, then you can "prove" anything.

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[ 21 March 2004: Message edited by: bittersweet ]

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Originally posted by nonesuch:
If all action were predetermined, education wouldn't have any effect. Indeed, training wouldn't be possible.
Would it?

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Pavlov's theory would be for the birds too.

There are so many things that effect what we do. Weather is one of them. Tonight one of my cats is stomping around the house meowing. I keep telling her to shush, and no she is not in heat and never will be. I think I know why. For the last week or so it has been pretty springlike here and the cats have been going out a lot. Tonight it is about -20C and she is not happy. I'm not happy, her mother is not happy. Everybody is complaining about the weather. The dog doesn't give a shit. but you know dogs......
I think I have a point somewhere... Perhaps we wonder too much about this Free Will business, or rather it's importance in our lives.

Let us say we all agree that we have Free will.
Let us say that we all agree that we do not have Free Will.

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Originally posted by jeff house:
"Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices"--Voltaire.

That is the problem with koans and other escapes from reason. Those who believe are then easy prey for the next charlatan, or the next Godhead, or the next Fuehrer.

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Clersal -
Yes, Spring does affect us all, more or less strongly. I cook maple syrup and engage in futile intellectual exercises; my SO culls his library and plans his next home renovation project. Cats and teenagers go a little crazy. How crazy depends partly on their heritage, partly on their current physical capability, partly on the constraints of their environment, partly on the efficacy of their earliest training. And probably a dozen other factors.

There is free will, but it's only a little bit free and what we do with it is subject to so many variables that it's difficult to measure.
Or, there is no free will, and all jurisprudence, all morality, all civilization is a great nonsense. If there is no free will, i wonder how we ever came up with such elaborate nonsence.

[ 22 March 2004: Message edited by: nonesuch ]

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Originally posted by nonesuch:
Therefore: freedom of will is added by evolutionary advantage, and also substracted by the extra, non-physical, non-utilitarian dimension.

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I think you're confusing freedom of will with freedom of action. In this, differing physical capabilities are very different from differing mental capabilities.
I'm not physically capable of doing sixty pushups in a row. However, I'm currently rather closer than I was a few months ago, because I've been exercising. If I set it as a goal, I could in time gain the capacity to do sixty pushups in a row. But beyond that--I'm not capable of flying. But the will to fly has been a thread running through human imagination for millennia. Physical capabilities don't really limit the will.

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Originally posted by Mr. Magoo:
On the other hand, if you're walking around coat-less in the freezing cold, nothing but free will could explain that decision.

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Originally posted by clersal:

Let us say we all agree that we have Free will.
Let us say that we all agree that we do not have Free Will.

What bloody difference will it make on how we act?

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A great deal, I think. After all, to say we don't have free will is tantamount to saying we're not morally responsible for what we do. Very dangerous, don't you think?

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Originally posted by Mike Keenan:

After all, to say we don't have free will is tantamount to saying we're not morally responsible for what we do. Very dangerous, don't you think?

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I really do not see the relationship of free will and morally responsible.

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Of or concerned with the judgment of the goodness or badness of human action and character: moral scrutiny; a moral quandary.

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Society has decided whether certain actions are good or bad.

Ìf we are really confused we can go to court and our fate wille be decided by jurors who may or may not be as confused as we are. I am not talking about mental illness. Just 'crime.'

Killing is morally wrong, perhaps murdering is a better word. Humans do this everyday and are always finding an excuse of how it is good.

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People today are often afflicted with a sense that they cannot change things for the better. They feel helpless, constrained, caught -- in a word, fatalistic... Visser investigates what fate means to us, and where the propensity to believe in it and accept it comes from. She takes an ancient metaphor where time is "seen" and spoken of as though it were space; she examines how this way of picturing reality can be a useful tool to think with -- or, on the other hand, how it may lead us into disastrous misunderstandings. There are ways out. We begin by observing how fatalism expresses itself in our daily lives, in everything from table manners and shopping to sport. Having learned to detect the signs by which fatalism begins to manifest itself, we can go on to consider how to limit its influence over us, thereby gaining new perspective on our lives and our cultures.

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We want to change the earth to suit our purposes. These purposes are at odds with nature. We know. We talk. We write. We discuss. We end up screwing up more and more in spite of our 'superior' knowledge and brain.

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Originally posted by clersal:

I really do not see the relationship of free will and morally responsible.

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Put it this way: if we assume free will not to exist, how can moral responsibility be made sense of? If free will does not exist, then there is a perfect excuse for everything- after all, you couldn't have done otherwise. That's why the idea that we don't really have it seems dangerous to me.

I would like to see that Visser lecture, though I'm more curious to know more about how Prigogine deals with the issue.

[ 23 March 2004: Message edited by: Mike Keenan ]

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If free will does not exist, then there is a perfect excuse for everything- after all, you couldn't have done otherwise.

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I am not sure about this 'perfect excuse.' There are reasons of why do some things. We had the choice of not doing them but decided that we would or would not.

Being born and dying, the individual has no control over.

Moral responsibility is for the survival of our species.

We are conscious of our acts. I believe we are the only species who have a conscience. Whether it will save us from extinction is another question. It might be our downfall.

[ 23 March 2004: Message edited by: clersal ]

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Originally posted by nonesuch:
If freedom of will is not proven and measured by action, how is it proven and measured? Wishing and planning are not obsevable; actions taken toward a goal are. I can't observe that you want to do more pushups than you are able to do.

After toolmaking, flight becomes physically possible, but the only way i can tell whether you want to fly is to observe you boarding an airplane.

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This whole line of arguements reminds me of a conversation I had in second year with a poli-sci friend of my cousin's.

Personally, I beleive the difference between having free will and the appearance of free will is subtle enough that it doesn't matter. We are all free to do as we choose, knowing that there are repercussions to all actions. That freedom is an illusion, because we are still animals, driven by 5 billion years of evolution to act in certain ways. The whole concept of human behavior suggests we act in fairly predictable ways, most of the time. Thus although we are free to choose any path, we choose not to follow most.

I have a thought experiment I'd like anyone to try:

Imagine 2 pool tables, each in their own isolated system. Each are set up in precisely the same way (I am not ignoring Heisenberg here, I am superceding him. I am setting the two tables the same, not measuring them). I strike the cue ball in the same manner on both tables. Do the balls come to rest in the same pattern, or not?

Said another way: a pool table is set up, and the cue ball is struck. Is there only one possible outcome as to where the balls end up?

There are a couple of obvious answers: yes, and no.

Yes, they come to rest in the same manner, means there are no random events. Every action and reaction follows the chain of causality from the begining of time. Free will is a quaint imaginary concept, like the tooth fairy, as we are reduced to complex bags of chemicals, acting in a predetermined way.

Or

No, they come to rest in different patterns, means that causality, the basis of all of our science, is an illusion. At best, it is a suggestion. Random events can and do occur, and any explaination of the nature of the real world must include a 'fuzzy factor', which goes beyond wavicle interactions at a quantum level. Science is wrong. We are still complex bags of chemicals, but there is a randomizing factor that makes things unpredictable. It would appear as free will, but since the actions are random, it means that we aren't in control of the freedom.

I don't like either result, so I went looking for other answers. I have found a few others, one of which I like most. But I don't want to prejudice the conversation.

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If I know it, it is the case.

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I was merely responding to the suggestion that i had "confused" will and action.
In fact, i was being consistent in my proposed approach to the original question - drawing conclusion from direct observation rather than hearsay.
That's not exactly the same as treating people's minds like black boxes. It's more like taking one step at a time, instead of leaping forward to a conclusion i can't support. That essay up there was supposed to have five parts, but i stopped after three, because i *chose*... never mind what; all that matters is that i know.

dnuttall:

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Random events can and do occur

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[ 23 March 2004: Message edited by: nonesuch ]

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Originally posted by clersal:

I am not sure about this 'perfect excuse.' There are reasons of why do some things. We had the choice of not doing them but decided that we would or would not.

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Well, the question of whether or not we have free will is, I think, equivalent to the question of whether or not we really had the choice.

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We are conscious of our acts. I believe we are the only species who have a conscience. Whether it will save us from extinction is another question. It might be our downfall.

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Originally posted by Oliver Cromwell:
Just a question: suppose that this debate is resolved one way or another. What would be the implications if the no-free-will argument is correct? What about if the free-will argument is correct?

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I believe that some level of belief in free will is necessary to make any sense of ethics, because I don't think you can have ethics without responsibility, and I don't see how you can have any morally meaningful sense of responsibility without free will.

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Originally posted by dnuttall:
Free will.... what a lovely concept. The very existance of which may prove there is a deity...

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I think, if anything, it would prove the non-existence of a deity, unless we redefine "deity" to include beings that aren't omniscient. See my comments on this above.

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Yes, they come to rest in the same manner, means there are no random events. Every action and reaction follows the chain of causality from the begining of time. Free will is a quaint imaginary concept, like the tooth fairy, as we are reduced to complex bags of chemicals, acting in a predetermined way.

Or

No, they come to rest in different patterns, means that causality, the basis of all of our science, is an illusion. At best, it is a suggestion. Random events can and do occur, and any explaination of the nature of the real world must include a 'fuzzy factor', which goes beyond wavicle interactions at a quantum level. Science is wrong. We are still complex bags of chemicals, but there is a randomizing factor that makes things unpredictable. It would appear as free will, but since the actions are random, it means that we aren't in control of the freedom.

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I don't like either result, so I went looking for other answers. I have found a few others, one of which I like most. But I don't want to prejudice the conversation.

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Come on, quit teasing us... if you can. I don't like either result either, but whether or not you or I like it has zero to do with its truth value.

I'd also like to see someone who something about Prigogine post here. Anyone?

[ 23 March 2004: Message edited by: Mike Keenan ]

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I think, if anything, it would prove the non-existence of a deity, unless we redefine "deity" to include beings that aren't omniscient.

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This thought experiment leads us logically to one of 3 choices:
1) We are complex bags of chemicals, acting in predetermined ways since the beginning of time to the end of time.
2) We are complex bags of chemicals, acting in un-determined ways since the beginning of time to the end of time.
3) The premise of the thought experiment is faulty.
I believe the third is the only acceptable solution.

The conclusion I found was that no system can be isolated. This implies that there are forces that can act on a system in a non-predictable, non-consistant way - that can 'choose' to be inside the system or outside the system in some unknown manner. If these forces are constantly acting on the system, they can be determined and accounted for. The implication is that under no circumstances can one be sure the systems are either isolated or un-isolated.

My belief is that this suggests there is a deity that can act inside the universe, but chooses not to generally. That we, as complex bags of chemicals, can choose to get input from this deity and either act or not act in particular ways. If we don't confer, we are acting deterministically. If we do confer, then we have the option of acting indeterministically. So I would say that by beleiving in free will means there is a being greater than the universe that can guide our actions.

I have a great deal of trouble with the word 'deity', but unfortunately, my language arts are not what they could be. Replace the term with any other that can act from outside the universe in a non-mechanistic way.

I underscore here that this is a belief, not a logical conclusion to the arguement.

My yoga instructor said the premise is faulty, because one can not strike the cue balls identically, since one would have different intents at the act of striking (ie, my intent on the first one is to strike the first, then the second, while my intent on the second one is to strike this one and compare the two tables). This is reflected in the idea that one can not cross the same river twice, because in the time that has passed, the person has changed and so has the river.

There are bound to be other ways of dealling with the thought experiment. But in the end, it doesn't matter whether we have free will or not.

Humans are social animals. We act within the social structures of the communities we live in. We can choose to do whatever we want, and we must deal with the repercussions of those actions. If we act in ways that are beyond the boundaries set by the community, we will be excluded, isolated. We choose to ignore most of the options that are presented to us, for a number of reasons, so that we pre-edit our wants, thus limiting the repercussions. Living conciously doesn't change this. Not having free will doesn't change this, as under all measurements, we have at least the illusion of free will.

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Originally posted by Mike Keenan:

Does consciousness equal free will, though? I'm not so sure. Maybe consciousness is just another link in the causal chain.

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Originally posted by nonesuch:

Fine. That saves a lot of time on investigation and reasoning.
There is free will, because Rufus Polson says there is: an absolute answer... If it were resolved that Free Will = the freedom to wish.

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Holy misrepresentations, Batman!
I didn't say I could tell whether my will was *free*. But I can certainly tell whether I *will* something, and I can *will* something I cannot do.
You were claiming, pretty clearly, that will was limited by the capacity for action. And you were saying the only way to tell whether will was either existent at all, or free, was by observing actions. You said,

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If freedom of will is not proven and measured by action, how is it proven and measured?

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