Do we have "Free Will" or is it an illusion?

by Rod P 134 Replies latest members private

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  Rod P

  siegswife,

  Free Will is not a goal, or something to pursue. We either possess it already, or we don't.

  Rather, the question here is, "Is 'free will' something we all HAVE at some level, or is it just an Illusion?

  In other words, maybe we just think or imagine we have volition, a freedom of choice. In actual fact, it may simply be all predetermined by our nature, our personality, our biology, our culture, our environment, and whatever else we may have inherited over time and evolution. We choose what we choose because we are what we are. Or not?

  You may find it liberating to think that you choose what you choose because you are what you are, and you do not desire to be someone else.

  I, on the other hand, would observe that this is more of an illusionary "comfort zone" than a liberation. ("Gee it feels good to be me, rather than the other guy. This way I will only choose what I want to choose, because I just gotta be me. I feel comfortable in my own skin, because I can't be anything other than me. So, I guess I will just go thru life making my inevitable choices, being what I am anyway. I just love being ME")

  Where is the freedom in that? How are we any better than "conditioned robots" under that scenario? And if we are simply reacting to our situations and our environments at any point in time, (eg. some influence or circumstance we may have to "fight against" to prevent a certain outcome), how do you know that you have not already been pre-programmed to react or choose the way you do?

  That is why the question "Do we have 'free will' or is it all an illusion?"

  If we do not have "free will", then to me it follows, we are not responsible for our own actions. Then there can be no right or wrong, no morality, no justice, and neither should there be reward or punishment.

  Rod P.
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  Narkissos

  If we do not have "free will", then to me it follows, we are not responsible for our own actions. Then there can be no right or wrong, no morality, no justice, and neither should there be reward or punishment.

  Sorry to interrupt, but "if we do not have 'free will,'" what is the meaning of "should"?

  Whether approached from the angle of freedom or of determinism, the "game" includes such words and concepts like "responsibility," "right or wrong," "morality," "justice," "reward or punishment," and even the endless "shoulds" and "shouldnots".
• 

  ellderwho

  Hyper-Calvinism

  Ross, you bastard, I knew it was coming.

  The Dog and I will deal with you later
• 

  LittleToe

  Hehehe, you know you like it
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  siegswife

  I guess I'm confused about your dilemma because I don't see where the problem is.

  If you feel that you lack of freedom of choice because you are destined to be you - what is the alternative to being you? Do you want to be someone else? Do you want to have choices that lie outside the sphere of your own existence? If you do, I'm afraid you'll have nothing but frustration and unanswered questions the rest of your life.

  What is your life other than your own being and how do you figure that there is something outside of your own self that you can chose to be? I don't understand how accepting that "I am" means that I don't have freedom of choice. I'm free to chose to be me and all that involves for good or bad. Hopefully I'll learn from my bad choices and mature to being the best me I can be. LOL I can't be something else and no matter what I chose I will still be me. Is that predetermined? Yes. Does it mean I lack freedom of choice? No. It means that I am. I can't think of anything more that I could want or need to be so I don't understand your angst.

  Lea
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  trevor

  I'm free to chose to be me and all that involves for good or bad.

  I can't be something else and no matter what I chose I will still be me.

  These two statement seem to me to be contradictory.

  We cannot chose to be someone else and someone else cannot choose to be us. The best we can do is to emulate another. There is nothing wrong with accepting that we cannot be other than who we are but in doing so we are accepting that we do not have free will to chose be other than what we are.
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  zen nudist

  If we do not have "free will", then to me it follows, we are not responsible for our own actions. Then there can be no right or wrong, no morality, no justice, and neither should there be reward or punishment.

  Rod P.

  we are players in the game.... active participants out for our own benefit and as such, we are relatively free to act in our own best interests and we are also able to punish others who violate our goals... at times.

  responsibility is not something we have, but our understanding that others will only allow us to get away with certain acts-- every move we make is a gamble to some degree and the only stakes that matter are our own contement in the end.... the only reason we ever act is because of dis-contentment or dis-satisfaction, which does include others who are often in our thoughts and their well being is part of our well being....

  the idea that all of this is PRE-determined meaning someone planned it all out seems a bit of an unwarrented stretch... there is no real evidence that anyone knows what is yet to be before it happens... good guesses seem to be the best anyone has demonstrated... barring the amazing but rare coincidences which are just really good guesses.

  if everything were pre-determined, there seems to me no need of caring, no means of acting upon our caring and no reason for any being to make it this way.
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  OldSoul

  trevor: we do not have free will to chose be other than what we are.

  Why do people who argue against free will seem to gravitate toward absolutes as basis for disproof?

  What I am now is an absolute. What I am now is an absolute that is slightly altered since typing that statement. Now is an absolute that is always becoming another now. What we "are" lives in the now. What we are is similarly an absolute.

  Free will is a concept that means what we are in the next "now" need not be driven directly from what we "are", which always is in the present "now." Free will is an ability to determine a course that is a result of volition rather than external pressures (including genetics) and arrive at a different "what we are now" than would have been arrived at had we never exercised volition.

  Is the existence of free will provable? No. But neither is respect, admiration, concern, disgust, disdain, or any of a host of other realities that we cannot prove to exist. Not everything can be weighed, quantified, and calculated. Not everything that exists can be proven to exist. Get used to the reality that is our life as imperceptive humanity.

  Respectfully,
  OldSoul
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  zen nudist

  without the myth of freewill...

  we would no longer damn and blame anyone for being who and what they are or were....

  we would accept that they were exactly what they had to be at that given moment....

  but much like rabid dogs, this does not mean that we would not protect ourselves from them should they prove to be dangerous

  but we would not what if and if only over their actions or our own...we would accept them, try to understand them, and prepare

  for our next moves
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  trevor

  Old Soul

  You have quoted only half of my sentence. I said

  There is nothing wrong with accepting that we cannot be other than who we are but in doing so we are accepting that we do not have free will to choose be other than what we are.

  I did not say that I had accepted that we cannot be other than who we are but that to do so was to accept that we do not have free will to choose be other than what we are.