Not going to lie, I don't know what to make of this. I never really gave free will much thought since it was virtually a settled issue in my mind; of course we have free will, how else do I pick out my cereal in the morning?

Nonetheless I found this interesting and wanted to gather some thoughts on the issue. ...Which I wasn't even aware was an issue. ...Or was even aware there was a debate going on.

2191836
It is. There's no such thing, because it's a completely incoherent concept. This debate has been over for millenia: Either our behavior is caused, in which case we have no free will and can't choose otherwise, or it has no causal relationship to anything else, which is the same as randomness, in which case we have no free will and aren't making choices at all.

The general consensus among professional philosophers is that it's over and done with. There are still some "compatibalists" around, but they just redefine free will to mean freedom from coercion or the resources to live in accordance with your values, and nothing contra-causal or independent from determinism.

how else do I pick out my cereal in the morning?

Because you were hungry, you'd bought several cereals earlier, and you weighed the anticipated short- and long-term value you'd get out of all the different cereal options by doing things like remembering their various flavors and how you felt after eating them (stomach ache, sugar high, etc), as well as comparisons to things like a banana or toast or eggs or waffles or anything else you've encountered in the past and associate with breakfast. You made the choice of cereal you did because of who and what you are, namely the ideas in your head that are the result of natural inclinations and concepts you've picked up from the environment and recombined (leveraged through other ideas and inclinations), and choosing differently would have been the result of you being a different person. Your choices are real, like the answer to a math problem for which you've worked out all the steps, but they're equally as fixed and inevitable, because that's just the nature of the system.

And that's not a bad thing - Uncaused behavior is useless. You want your choices to be the logical, necessary result of your interactions with the rest of the world. Free will is a completely useless concept and should be abandoned, along with the associated notions of responsibility that underlie punitive criminal justice and other backwards moral opprobrium, instead of focusing on harm reduction and reconditioning.

No one could have done other than they did, but the converse of that is that all of us are doing exactly what we're supposed to be.

2191836 I feel very uncomfortable with the idea that we are reduced to arguing for free will based on the Uncertainty Principle. It's like what happens when people argue for God on the basis of unexplained events: you've basically conceded the field to your opponent.

Furthermore, what conception are we having of free will, when we justify it on the basis of these "unknown quantities" in the physical universe? At best, this kind of freedom doesn't seem to be sufficient, by itself, to influence the macro-decisions of life; at worst, Heisenberg's Principle merely replaces the tyranny of determinism with the tyranny of sheer randomness.

Free will is of course a massive issue because free will links directly to morality. It's assumed that if you couldn't help but do something, you can't be held responsible for it.

2191886 That was... interesting. The way that was worded, it almost seems like no matter what I do, whether it'd be eating breakfast and killing myself, wouldn't be free will because...

Your choices are real, like the answer to a math problem for which you've worked out all the steps, but they're equally as fixed and inevitable, because that's just the nature of the system.

P.S. You're not in position of power IRL are you?

P.P.S I find your comments most thought provoking, thank you for that.

2191895 Good points, thanks for sharing.

2191836

I don't know why but that billionth of a second thing with the eye is just really getting to me. I really just don't know why.

Another interesting fact this time to do with math is that PI is the answer to ever numerical answer in the universe. the way this works is that since PI is Infinite, every single number combination is in there. The day you die, the day you were born etc. And of course since there is every numerical option there is also the belief that at some point PI will be solely binary numbers of 101010101010 which of course is coding thus PI can give us even a picture (Via computer like systems which binary coding). Of course this is all on the basis that PI is indeed infinite and otherwise just treat this as hogwash.

I'm not sure what this has to do with the point about physics but it does have to do with the point about foretelling the future and finding all the answers...Not sure if that's a good enough bridge

2191836
Sure it is a debate. We had it before

As the famous-guy-whose-name-I can-never-remember says, if we consider the uncertainty principle then we have free will "in a sense". The sense in which it is impossible to predict behaviour with 100% accuracy.

However that isn't really free will. Behaviour is still mechanical, still bound to the rules of the universe. The fact that those rules are unpredictable is what makes behaviour unpredictable, not the existence of free will.

If you had two humans, that were exactly copies from each other, and you exposed them to similar stimuli, their responses would always be equal. Unless those theories stating the brain is actually a quantum computer are true, in which case you have to account for the principle of uncertainty and that brings the possibility that the two would occasional behave differently. That difference would however not be caused by free will, just random quantum fluctuations.

In other words a quantum fluctuation is not free will.

2192089 Tau is cooler

2191836
Determinism can still exist within the universe alongside the Uncertainty Principle. The Many-Worlds Interpretation is probably a good example of this. In MWI, every outcome of a quantum event happens simultaneously, because every time such an event happens the universe "splits" into two universes. In universe 1, the event happens one way, and in universe 2, the event happens in other way. (This explanation is not perfect). Many say that MWI is a deterministic interpretation,and it is deterministic on a quantum level. I still have an important unresolved problem with MWI, (Really a problem with quantum mechanics as a whole and neurology): How much do quantum events influence our decisions? If they do not influence our decisions, or they influence or they influence our decisions but only to a certain extent, I would say MWI is not completely deterministic in a macroscopic sense.

We can use physics to settle the debate over free to an extent. We still don't know enough about them to say absolutely no, or absolutely yes. I still say the debate far from over, despite what balthasar has said, and I hope to elaborate on this in a future post.

2191886
I'd say the debate is far from over. You make good points, but I still have issues with them. To say that everything we do is determined by our circumstances, past events, and to a lesser extent our own brain structures would require a lot of testing. Yes, the brain is basically a machine, but it's machine that we don't completely understand. This is very important.

Either our behavior is caused, in which case we have no free will and can't choose otherwise, or it has no causal relationship to anything else, which is the same as randomness, in which case we have no free will and aren't making choices at all.

This is a dichotomy. It's important to realize that those are not the only two possible options. I think we can safely say that a large portion of our behavior is indeed caused. However, here is a possibility that our behavior is partly caused, and partly random as well. Again, to determine how much of our behavior is unpredictable, and how much is predictable requires much testing.

2192131 Wow, didn't know you didn't believe in free will. That will make conversing with so much more fun!

P.S. Thanks for the link. I probably should have looked through the records before posting this. Meh, I probably would have posted this anyway. ...Or would I?