Comment on Yes, We Have Free Will. No, We Absolutely Do Not

Knusper@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

• Masimatutu@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  It really is a question of definition. When you define it like most people think of it, that there was an alternate possibility in which they had not made the decision, then yes, the concept doesn’t make sense. But a more useful definition might just be the ability to act according to one’s own desires, a common stance held by many compatibilists, which corresponds quite closely to what people are actually referring to when they speak of “free will”.

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  • Knusper@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    But “desires” derive from the things happening around us, inside of us, in the past of us or in the genes of us.
    It’s just shoving an additional layer into the argumentation, thinking it somehow doesn’t need to be explored, which is a logical fallacy.

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    • Masimatutu@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Nobody is saying that desires are samehow fundamentally free, that would be silly. It’s just that if you redefine free will in terms of desire you might get a more useful definition.

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      • Knusper@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Yeah, alright, I get what you’re saying. Most people don’t have as clear/isolated of a definition of Free Will as those who strongly oppose it anyways, so we could just start ignoring the ‘Free’ and pretend nothing happened. I guess, I can accept that being a strategy.

        However, personally, I feel like humanity does need to be bonked with the fact, it does not have Free Will, because we’re behaving like absolute buffoons, because of it.
        For example, many people believe Free Will makes us different from animals and we should apply different morals, when we’re not. And it makes us feel like we’re somehow ultra special and need to be billionaires or whatever, when it would be less of a waste of money, if we shared with others instead.

        Obviously, a massive amount of our modern moral understanding and laws and such, foot on Free Will. It will be a painful bonk. But yeah, I don’t think, continuing unbonked is a valid option either, not when we’re so convinced that we’re doing things correctly…

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• FlowVoid@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I don’t think it’s that simple. Decisions can be based on more than one factor. Nobody doubts that the things around you affect your decision, the question is whether they fully determine your decision.

  And when someone asks “What do you want to eat tonight?”, intuitively it doesn’t seem that your answer is fully determined at the moment the question is asked - otherwise why would it take so long to reach the answer? Nor is it random, because asking it again wouldn’t produce a different answer.

  Which is not to say that free will definitely does or does not exist. But you’ve described all decisions as necessarily predetermined or random, and that is a false dichotomy. The third possibility is none of the above, which implies free will.

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  • Knusper@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I can definitely see why one might read my comment as presenting a dichotomy, which is why I was actually very careful to not do that in my formulation.
    Well, except that I am talking about true randomness (which I doubt exists, but we haven’t proven that on the quantum level). The more colloquial definitions of randomness, I count towards badly understood inputs or just a lack of inputs.

    Thing is, if we add true randomness to an input-based decision, it stops being predetermined, but there’s still a logically conclusive choice you’re going to make, based on the incomplete inputs you have. You cannot ‘freely’ decide to not pick that choice, because you have literally no reason not to pick it.

    Even if you think, you’re going to pick the ‘illogical’ choice for a change, that is still part of your inputs. It’s likely even baked into our genes, because what appears logical is often not actually the best choice and those who successfully experimented, ultimately survived+procreated.

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    • FlowVoid@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      if we add true randomness to an input-based decision, it stops being predetermined, but there’s still a logically conclusive choice you’re going to make, based on the incomplete inputs you have. You cannot ‘freely’ decide to not pick that choice

      I think you are contradicting yourself. If you cannot freely choose something else, then your choice is predetermined.

      Whereas if a choice stops being predetermined, then there is no “logically conclusive choice” that you are definitely going to make. There is a range of possible choices, one of them is chosen by you, and the others could have been chosen but weren’t.

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• Dkarma@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Yeah it needs to be better defined. You do have free will but that doesn’t mean it’s not subject to the limitations of the system in which u exist.

  U can’t decide to jump off the planet cuz gravity will pull u back down but that doesn’t mean u don’t have free will.

  In my mind if you didn’t have free will you wouldn’t have any control over your body at all.

  If you can move within the system unfettered to any extent then you have free will. Any reduction in movement is considered entropy within that system.

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