Free Will

[Huw Dawson]

I think my head is going to explode if I try and understand what some of you are saying without corresponding source matter, so I'm just going to say this.

As a catholic, I go to church every sunday and holyday.
As a teenager, I have alot of time to think about life.
As I like to think I have a pretty far above average IQ, I feel that thinking about these matters is good for your grey matter, so to speak. So.

I believe that there is a God. This God created the universe by sparking the big bang. There is a Satan, as Newton's third law states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. For yin, there is yang and so forth. Free will flings us along this path as our consiousnesses are bound to this universe, but our conciousnesses are not of this universe. So we could be the mini programs inside the big program of the all encompassing computer so to speak. These external influences of Yin and Yang (I'm not using God and Satan here because of ease of discussion) affect our lives by giving us choices to follow. Maybe we make our own choices, following the middle path.

The point of my argument is this. These external influences are of other places. Same as our conciousnesses. We leave this universe and end up somewhere else after our deaths. And about free will? I would not be writing this now If I had none. I would be in a cave along with the rest of you going "Ug" and bashing each other with clubs.

- Huw

[LimpingFish]

But did cavemen have influences?

Did Satan influence a certain caveman to club his neighbour and steal his woman?

I love how Creation and Evolution have been combined to create Creavolution! It's so spiritually refreshing. 

[2ma2]

No, Satan did not appear until man had succeding in forming an agricultural society. Something about the proper housing.

[Wellington]

Nobody in this thread has defined free will in a clear, intuitive, non-circular way. This is okay, I guess, because nobody in the world has, either, but it does undercut the discussion a bit.

First of all, free will is being confused with nondeterminism in some of the posts. Would it be possible for a person to have free will, and yet to be absolutely predictable? Some religious viewpoints insist that God knows everything that is to come, but simultaneously insist that people have free will. Is this coherent?

Suppose human psychology follows this set of rules:

1. Every person has a unique personality that is shaped in a totally rule-based, mechanical way by the environment. This causes them to have certain preferences. These may not be obviously self-serving - they could prefer ethical actions, for example.

2. Whenever they make a choice, they look at the alternatives and pick the one that best fits their preferences. When the decision is extremely close, much subtler aspects of their nature cause them to make an apparently random choice. This is still ultimately deterministic.

In this case, people ARE making decisions based on internal preferences. They're making their own choices - it's not as if God is coming down and forcing them to act against their preferences. Does that fact that this is totally predictable mean that it isn't free will? If so, what does free will MEAN?

Would people have free will if tough decisions were decided randomly? What if the randomness of tiny, spontaneous nerve firings produced enough noise to make these decisions truly unpredictable? That's not free will - that's a coin flip!

[MillsJROSS]

It really just depends on what you're applying free will to. Once again wiki saves the day...

The principle of free will has religious, ethical, psychological and scientific implications. For example, in the religious realm, free will may imply that an omnipotent divinity does not assert its power over individual will and choices. In ethics, free will may imply that individuals can be held morally accountable for their actions. In psychology, it implies that the mind controls some of the actions of the body. In the scientific realm, free will may imply that the actions of the body, including the brain, are not wholly determined by physical causality.

So, depending on which area you're applying the term "free will" to, then non determinism may very well play a part. So I don't see anyone confused...we're just focusing on other areas.

Are we slaves to the rules that are set in this universe, or is our being present in some other universe deciding events. If the later is true, than it's possible, as far as this universe is concerned, that our decisions aren't based on the rules of this universe. Of course, once again, this is an example of scope. Regardless of the fact that our decisions might be able to guide us in different direction in this universe, we can only assume that the being in the other universe have some rules that must be followed. So while in this universe we show free will, in the other universe we are bound to deterministic rules and boundaries, and thus free will is once again yanked away from us. Of course, this is probably useless ramblings.

-MillsJROSS

[Dreadus]

Did Satan influence a certain caveman to club his neighbour and steal his woman?

Satan is a nickname, it's the hebrew word for "enemy." His name as an angel was lucifer. He is very misunderstood as far as i am concerned. He didnt challenge god's throne like people say he did. He thought that humans didnt need to follow god's law to live in peace, to govern themselves - being of socialist ideal, i can quite sympathise with him... And i suppose in a way it is challenging god, but it isnt so that he can take over, which is what was commonly thought.

[Helm]

Nobody in this thread has defined free will in a clear, intuitive, non-circular way. This is okay, I guess, because nobody in the world has, either, but it does undercut the discussion a bit.

God is equally undefinable, or Infinity, or Nothingness or other such terms. Yet they are widely used and abused and create invented problems for people to get confused with. Yes, there's a semanic issue there, but then again, the whole of language, no matter how robust an argument, how positivist, how whatever, will always be plagued by the issues that are emergent in using language to communicate.

In this case, people ARE making decisions based on internal preferences. They're making their own choices - it's not as if God is coming down and forcing them to act against their preferences. Does that fact that this is totally predictable mean that it isn't free will?

People ARE making decisions. If by people you mean the natural mechanisms that we are.  There's data, and there's processing, and there's result. Infinitely many decisions every half-second. If you mean some other mystical essence that lives within the body and commands it's actions, I'd have to say... no, no such thing probably exists and makes decisions. And these decisions that the machanisms are making, wether they're clockwork-determinism based, or chaotic quantum random based do not really have anything to do with free will that OVERRIDES THIS SYSTEM.

what does free will MEAN?

Free Will means: "I am scared of the world, please let me believe it is under control'.