[Closed] Make a case for the existence of free will...

could you have come up with something a bit heavier ?

[i]ffs[/i] can't you talk about cars, or pets, or the weather, or something, instead of all this poncey middle-class pretentious bollox ?

😐

I saw that at the movees when I wos I kid but it wos totlly lame borring shite that dolfin in the zoo that kiled the chick wos probibly just borred and crazee so I think they shuld just let it go it didnt mend to kill her it wos just playing

😀

I was not well enough to go on OldFarts Exmoor ride this morning. But I like driving my old Honda Type S much too fast. On the back roads to the woods today I hit a vast puddle and it nearly pulled me off the road!

Why did I do that? Did I somehow choose to drive dangerously? Or is this irresponsibility a consequence of my experiences. I strongly feel like I chose my destiny. But how do living things choose their destiny when inert things can only follow cause and effect?

:asleep smiley:

I could make a case for it, but I'm not going to.

QED.

Any other existential stuff you need sorting out?

I wasn't going to respond, but 4 billion years of prior events have made it inevitable.

LOL @ Mark Datz

lol at ernie - only the middle classes are capable of thinking! assuming you're working class, your ancestors would be ashamed.

ernie: of all this poncey middle-class pretentious bollox ?

cars, or pets, or the weather

nice one bassspine

exactly, Andy

Because the Matrix wouldn't work without it?

Evidence?

The One said so....

Free will – the selection, purchase and riding of tyres without long protracted discussion on internet fora

lol at ernie - only the middle classes are capable of thinking!

..........why should being able to think about deeper things ......be considered the exclusive domain of the middle class?

Now I've checked and double-checked, and double-checked again, and yet, I still can't see where I've mentioned anything about "thinking".

What I did suggest, was perhaps talking about things other than, 'all this poncey middle-class pretentious bollox'.

No, "thinking" is not exclusive preserve of the middle-classes.

Although talking out of your arse comes pretty damn close.

KT1973 - Member
LOL @ Mark Datz

Makes some of your posts seem positively logical! 😀

On a quantum level, everything is probabilistic. If you ran the universe all over again things would be different.

My 2p.

i wouldn't worry about it ernie lad. it's beyond ya.

Free will? I'm married, it doesn't exist.

it's beyond ya.

[i]Phew[/i]...........well thank **** for that 8)

Windows PCs have freewill.

I saw that at the movees when I wos I kid but it wos totlly lame borring shite that dolfin in the zoo that kiled the chick wos probibly just borred and crazee so I think they shuld just let it go it didnt mend to kill her it wos just playing

Superb.

philiosphy?

freewill is a result of quantum probabilistic effects on the synapses. But then I would say that.
(the difference between middle class and working class is that the working classes have to wash their hands before they take a p1ss. As a bike mechanic, I definitely fall under that)

Talkemada - Member

KT1973 - Member
LOL @ Mark Datz

Makes some of your posts seem positively logical!

true 😆

proper laughed my head off at mark datz! right place right time geezer. lol.

How big is it?

"On a quantum level, everything is probabilistic."

Yeah but quantum affects cancel out at atomic/macro scales don't they? [or get the half-dead Schrodinger's cat-in-a-box paradox thingy] Are you saying my brain works as a quantum computer? Is that a fact?

ernie, if you're going to be patronising, you left out football, whippets and pigeon racing. Oh, and a discussion on what flat cap goes with yer best jacket wot isn't too threadbare.
Personally I go with the free-will, I can choose to call ernie a total t*sser, or I can choose [i]not[/i] to call ernie a total t*sser. So far I haven't made a choice. And I was born and brought up working class, and football and most other “working class” sports and similar subjects bore me to ****in' tears. Just thought you oughta know, like.

LOL ! I didn't even mention "working class" !

And patronising ? Well if that's what you want to call it. I would prefer to call it taking the piss out of pretentious middle-class herberts who feel the need to impress others with their intellectual prowess....... I find it all really rather sad........although also, rather amusing 😀

Of course if the truth be told, the pleasure I derive from winding up and baiting pretentious middle-class herberts, also makes [u]me[/u] rather sad.

Still, they get a very easy run on here, and I reckon they deserve a bit of stick every now and again.

BTW, I can't help noticing the lack of takers for 'making the case for the existence of free will'. Seems to me as if poncey pretentious stuff doesn't have so much appeal after all. Despite the criticism of some, to my original post 8)

he pleasure I derive from winding up and baiting pretentious middle-class herberts, also makes me rather sad.

And so it should. Why can't you just be nice to people?

A week, I've been on this forum, but already I've noticed you are a particularly nasty and spiteful individual. Why?

As for 'free will', well...

Last week, I had a hospital appointment, and when I came out of the building, I lit up a ciggie. Some pompous bloke came out and started spouting off about smoking being banned in the hospital grounds etc.

Fair enough, there were signs, but I was outside, there was no fire hazard (it was damp anyway), and I was 20 metres from any building. So, I countered his pomposity by explaining that I, as an individual, had a free will, and therefore could do as I saw fit, rather than be forced to obey some pointless regulation. He stormed off in a self-righteous huff, mumbling something about a 'security issue'.

On reflection, I concede I could just as easily have obeyed the rules, done what I was told, not upset the order of things. But in all fairness, I made a judgement that there as no real, logical or valid reason why I couldn't smoke where I was. What harm was I actually doing? Seemed to me the rule was one designed to placate the HSE dept, and no doubt the insurance companies etc.

It's the same, sometimes, with riding on Footpaths. I believe the individual, with their free will, has the right to make a decision on their actions, based on their own judgements. I accept many rules are necessary, and serve society as a whole rather than the desires of the individual, but at times, are just a pain in the arse, and simply unnecessary. Sometimes, you've just got to act according to your own free will.

Yes, there may well be consequences, and these certainly have to be considered. Completely selfish behaviour is surely not conducive to peace and harmony. But an individual surely has the right to think and act for themselves, without some regulatory body dictating behaviour and actions.

I can be an obtuse bastard though, so maybe I don't lend myself well to the demands of authority. I dunno.

A week, I've been on this forum, but already I've noticed you are a particularly nasty and spiteful individual. Why?

It's just the way things are where I come from ........ everyone I know is a right nasty ****.

And in the last week, I've noticed that you appear to be a particularly dopey docile div.......where do you come from mate ? 🙂

i can go shit in a bucket, rigght now! ooof. coolest plop eva!

Flaperon - Member
On a quantum level, everything is probabilistic. If you ran the universe all over again things would be different.

How does that work? If you start from exactly the same place in eactly the same way, everything should turn out exactly the same.

Back to the OP, if our 'free-will' is really just a product of electrical signals between synapses (sp?) in our brains, then taking the above point to it's logical conclusion eveything is predermined by the starting point of the universe. If we had enough information about the start we could map out the course of the future in perfect detail. Electrical pulses are just elecrons moving around, and synapses are just made of atoms so we should be able to predict the patterns they will follow. Not saying it can be done, or is likely to be done, but it is theoretically possible.

@andrewh

I did have a long post about this and then realised that I'd argued myself into a corner. BRB.

Of course there's free will. How else could people choose between the voting options on X Factor?

to the Op...

NO!

I rest my case

I'm misunderstood. Not at all interested in impressing people just a bit bored and thought someone might have something interesting to say about it.

Ernie you seem to have issues mate! Something makes you orrible to people who mean you no harm. Is it freewill or something in your background that makes you resent people you never even met?

So Ernie thinks he chooses to be nasty but I reckon because someone was horrible to ernie he's orrible to everyone else.

Apart from quantum level stuff science seems all deterministic so I don't see room for freewill unless there something supernatural going on. Verging on religion here now: If you think you have free will then explain where it comes from?

Btw I strongly feel I have freewill

But was that by choice though? 😉
To misquote the oracle - The choice has already been made, what you need to do is find the reason.

"Every action, has an equal and opposite reaction"

S'Newton's Laws innit?

Ernie thinks he chooses to be nasty......

You're not paying attention mate - I never said that.

I told dopey, "everyone I know is a right nasty ****". As it happens, I reckon I'm one of the nicest persons I know.
So you can imagine what the others are like.......proper vulgar foul-mouthed tesco-shopping degenerates.
They think [u]I'm[/u] posh 😯

I probably am middle class but I dislike the idea of class. Didn't think I was especially pompous tho!

Seriously kinda, the freewill thing bothers me. The quantum computer Brain idea is attractive because could explain something that is otherwise mystical. I don't like the idea that I'm an automaton you see.

If I know I'm an automaton it doesn't change how I behave, because I'm an automaton. Horribly seductive idea but hateful.

I love the idea of evidence 🙂 For me the illusion - if such it is - is quite enough 🙂

Can't remember the name of the experiment or the scientist, anyone know about this?

Volenteer is put into a brain scanner, told to wave their hand at a random moment. Scientist can see from brain scanner half a second before they decide to wave their hand that they will wave their hand.

Freewill is indeed just rationalising what we are already about to do/have done.

andrewh - was on a Horizon programme a couple of months ago. That [url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_du_Sautoy ]Marcus du Sautoy[/url] bloke. Who sounds very middle class, and so as ernie would have it, merely trying to impress people by being a professor of mathematics with a job to promote the public understanding of science.

Volenteer is put into a brain scanner, told to wave their hand at a random moment. Scientist can see from brain scanner half a second before they decide to wave their hand that they will wave their hand.

Doesn't it actually show that our conscious perception lags behind actual events, rather than say anything about free will or decision making?

Scientist can see from brain scanner half a second before they decide to wave their hand that they will wave their hand.

meaningless, as the "evidence" is filtered through exactly the same system that allows you to feel you [b]did[/b] make the decision. And in this case though that of the "scientist", if he wasn't imagined. Everything you think you know beyond your own thoughts is conjecture. Also, the "when" is less important that the "what". If it takes place a second before you are aware of it didn't mean someone else did it, only that the nexus of thought that leads to an action might be skewed to time perception.

porterclough I think you might be confusing "people doing their job" with, "people who feel the need to impress others with their intellectual prowess". Just a thought.

Not sure that refutes freewilly tho just shows that our awareness of the choice is delayed doesn't it? Poop hang on that means there is a robot In My head making me do things.
My conscious mind is not responsible for my actions no?

(predictive text on the iPod gets a bit frisky sorry)

Not sure that refutes freewilly tho just shows that our awareness of the choice is delayed doesn't it? Poop hang on that means there is a robot In My head making me do things.
My conscious mind is not responsible for my actions no?

Well suppose you're playing tennis or something. Are you really making conscious decisions about what shot to play as the ball is hit toward you at 80mph by your opponent? I'd say not, and your conscious mind is mostly responsible for stuff like noticing that every time you play a certain shot you lose the point, so try something different next time.

[b]predictive [/b]text on the iPod

Make a case for the existence of free will...

easy done 😉 here it is played by my all time favourite,

Free will is an illusion. People always choose the perceived path of greatest pleasure. (Scott Adams)

🙂

Doesn't it actually show that our conscious perception lags behind actual events, rather than say anything about free will or decision making?

This sounds a bit like [url= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiphenomenalism ]epiphenomenalism[/url], which was one of my favourite branches of epistemology when studying this stuff.

My favourite analogy is that consciousness was like steam coming from a train. Brilliantly dated.

Ironically though, I think we can choose whether to go with freewill or determinism. It might seem as though determinism has an answer for everything, but it cuts both ways.

Ultimately freewill and determinsm are probably the same thing, and we're just asking the wrong question.

"even your MP3 player knows what you're going to do"

I know; I thought that was particularly funny (in a middle-class sort-of way)

"Ultimately freewill and determinsm are probably the same thing, and we're just asking the wrong question."

Oh gawd. A bit like particle v.s. wave then.

I suppose that if I want to argue a case for freewill, then I have to delve into the supernatural/mysticism/religion/souls etc or quantum computers to explain how it could exist. Determinism seems a simpler to understand (Occam razor) but seems incompatible with experience and social mores - why would you punish a robot?

It reminds of books by Kurt Vonnegut who seemed to follow determinism. His characters were powerless to affect events, usually ending in disaster of some sort and it's quite depressing!

In slaughterhouse 5, the time-travelling aliens explain that they have seen the end of the universe; that it happens because of an accident with a new kind of time-drive that destroys the universe. The lead human character suggest they choose not to invent the new drive. It's a concept which the aliens don't understand because they see all of time and know this outcome is inevitable.

Assume you have free will. If you are right, then well done. If not, then you had no choice in the assumption anyway.

There is a separate, and IMHO, much deeper argument to the brain/move/hand/delay scenario.

If I jab a pen into your leg, the delay before you say "Ow!" is about 0.5 seconds. However, if you chose to just move your hand, that happens to your perception instantaneously. What happened to the 0.5 second delay? That concerns me because it suggests that there is an aspect of my consciousness that is making decisions independently of me.

Note that the MRI does not come into this - there is zero delay between you deciding to do something and it happening, but theoretically there should be a 1/2 second pause. Where has that pause gone?

choices are governed by only three motives - fear, personal gain and sexual gratification - as we're constrained by these, we have no free will as such

fear, personal gain and sexual gratification - as we're constrained by these, we have no free will as such

you forgot ridicule 🙂

but I consider your suggestions to be hopelessly simplistic - what of altruism for instance ?

you gain praise and prestige by being altruistic or gain a feeling of self worth if done in secret, or a fear of wasting your resources..... you can file ridicule under fear

I think you moved you hand as directed by the automaton that is your subconcious. Then you rationalised why you did it. I wonder if consciousness is a feedback mechanism to programme our inner automaton.
I have long wondered if belief in reward in an after life permits us to perform altruistic acts. These then encourage reciprocity so that the overall effect improved community behaviour.

From personal experience I have been a lot happier since I've accepted faith in God as a justification for the altruism and moral position I have alway exhibited. When I was an atheist I really struggled with morality!

Anyway Im leaning more toward no free will.