No free will = giving up?

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This post makes me indescribably happy! I graduated college one class short of a philosophy minor and this was one of my favorite mind occupying roundabouts.

The favorite direction I went was that it really doesn't matter one way or the other if we have free will or not because human consciousness cannot act as though it does not have free will due to lack of being able to foretell the future. If we could say unerringly what was happening in exact detail five minutes from now at any given point we could act as though we had no free will. Not having that foreknowledge negates the possibility of acting as though we do not have free will, therefore we have to functionally have free will even if we do not in actuality have it. If we decide we are going to have tea it really has no import if we were going to decide that no matter what because we didn't know that ahead of time.

I'm actually a pretty pragmatic person. I used to be a libertarian, but now I consider myself more of a classical liberal. Though some might argue I'm still a libertarian.

Many libertarians tend to be puritanical. I support a small to moderate welfare state.

Being politically libertarian's a different context than 'liberatarian free will'. Being politically libertarian just means a person has the belief that people should be able to do what they want to do as well as reap the rewards and consequences as far as law and government can allow it before it butts up against other fundamental rights. Libertarian free will is the notion that you originate your thoughts as an independent cause of our own conceptions, which as far as I can tell just seems like bad causal accounting. It's a belief that's been hammered into a lot of people though - whether by religious doctrine, by social pressures to perform and not to fail, or by firm parenting and even there it seems highly suggestive that the reasons its argued for are pragmatic to the point of accepting bleed-over in the form of persecution in places that actually make society worse (such as permanently stamping prior convicts as morally suspect regardless of rehabilitation or abusing the poor to keep the ranks of the middle class behaviorally electrified by threat of stigma).

^^^^
This

Because science isn't thought-of as the be-all and end-all, by many (myself, included). Don't get me wrong, I have great respect / appreciation for science----but, IMO, for every study there's a counter-study----for every research, there's counter-research----and, for every "fact", there is a counter-fact..... I feel that anyone who doesn't / isn't willing to consider ALL, is doing themselves an incredible dis-service----I mean, why would ANYBODY block a path to learning?

I have a theory as to why people block paths to learning..... Most Aspies, it seems, want to have a concrete / black & white answer for EVERYTHING (I've been guilty of it, myself); because, IMO, that way, they don't have to exert any more brain power, in figuring it out----but, as cliché as it might sound, anything worth having, takes WORK, and the "anything", in-this-case, is TRUTH----and, the truth IS, there are scientists who believe that the scientists like those in your article, haven't proven, ANYTHING:

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/features/are-we-free

Also, IMO, anyone who doesn't / isn't willing to give consideration to ALL angles of an issue, isn't only doing THEMSELVES a terrible injustice, but they are also committing a terrible injustice to the thing (or person) to which they are referring. Would you not want someone to consider ALL factors in why you do what you do, for instance, BEFORE they make a judgment of you?

The Harris video makes good arguments for a practical reorientation of our criminal justice system. The arguments against the extent of volition, on closer examination, validate the assertions of mystics, although not my naive understanding of them.

May be a bit off-topic, but you are very mistaken indeed.

While it is true there is counter-research, there exists no such thing as a "counter-fact". Fact is fact, and it is independent of the observer in question.

While time and distance may be relative to the observer according to Einsteins theory of relativity, there does exist physical reality which encapsulates all times and all distances. Everything in the universe must adhere to these basic principles.

Our reality seems random, but that is due to lack of knowledge. Quantum Mechanics, in terms of Copenhagen Interpretation is also wrong, Bohmian Mechanics is all there is, people just tend to forget to leave out locality when doing experiments on Bohmian mechanics. Take non-locality into consideration, and everything in the entire universe follows strict paths, strict laws and there is no room for either randomness or free will.



Scientism tells that material reality is all there is, and scientism is science, it is based on facts, not wishful thinking.

Therefore, Scientism is the only thing that counts. Everything in the universe can be reduced into material reality. There exists no such thing beyond this, if there does it will have to be described through a material reality.

It follows simple logic.

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Back on-topic I would like to leave a little room for "free will". If we define free will not as a soul (which in turn would need a material description anyway if say "soul" exist) we could say that the universe itself has no free will, but the mind has free will.

It is a little counter-intuitive, but think of it in terms of layers of sciences: Social science affect our lives, just as much as physical science. But the two are incompatible with each other, because social science cannot tell what to do to fire a rocket into space, and physical science cannot tell how to deal with psychological or political issues.

The same applies to the mind: The mind is the "software", it depends on the "hardware", and while the hardware can function independently of the software, the software can do a lot of stuff. Physical science tells us what the hardware is made of and how it works, but cannot tell us how to programme, let alone use said software (but it can give ideas and inspiration on how to make the software work most efficiently).

The mind may have a free will, but the free will is dependent on the material reality.
The material reality is deterministic in nature, and therefore predictable.

Our lives are like movies, though interactive movies.

(While my worldview is generally Christian, I do make judgments, independent of the mainstream. I am not especially speaking for any congregation or schism, here.)

There is an ongoing debate, between predestination and freewill.

I personally believe that we come to acknowledge our given lot. We are self-aware.

I also believe there are people called tares, who have no freewill or conscience or self-awareness. Tares is an interesting figure of speech, because it outwardly resembles wheat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolium_temulentum

Mostly, I do not believe it is possible to persuade someone, against their will, even unto death. That is speaking of a willful person.

I think tares will go through the motions, belatedly, and without conviction.

People should do the honorable thing, because they are motivated, independently. Not passively, not under threat.

Exactly! Couldn't have said it better myself

Yes, self-awareness is what makes all the difference. We can't say that we are at the mercy of blind, purposeless forces, and therefore lack free will, because we are not billiard balls constrained by simple classical rules of causality: too many people who argue for the absence of free will tend to think in purely Newtonian terms, a paradigm that has been shown since the 17th century to be hopelessly inadequate when it comes to describing systems that are anything more than extremely simple.

I'd be interested in hearing how many mystics - I've seen some noteworthy exceptions but all too often I see a lot of people in the esoteric and occult world who hold free will as sacred as most Abrahamists do. One of the things that put a smile on my face with BOTA is that in the lessons Paul Foster Case and Ann Davies both lean in the direction you suggested and there was a particular monograph where Ann spoke of a situation that happened when she was maybe 10 years old that suggested to her that her random actions couldn't possibly rewrite the life stories of hundreds if not thousands of people simply by hailing her uncle at the curb as he drove home from work and causing a dip in the flow of traffic. She put a disclaimer on that story that she knew it would rub some readers the wrong way, spoke somewhat softly and indirectly about what she was implying (ie. the illusion of free will) but the case which unfolded from that story and her examination of it seemed very similar to my own theory of time itself being the biggest block of evidence against free will.

And yet each and every one of us are bundles of said forces and you could peel those forces away until there's nothing left - whether those forces are truly purposeless or not. Self awareness has nothing to do with it, Newtonian physics and misplaced trust in reductionism has nothing to do with it either.

Last edited by techstepgenr8tion on 19 May 2017, 8:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Scientism isn't to be equated with the scientific method though, or even with 'science': it is a purely philosophical paradigm upon which many who like to call themselves 'atheists' and/or 'materialists' base all of their other beliefs upon, including the ones they think were arrived at scientifically. Science itself has many assumptions built within it - for example, that there is an objective reality 'out there' somewhere, that the past is real, that solipsism is false, that 'science' can ultimately explain everything there is worth knowing about (which is what you believe, I believe).

No 'Thinkingpictures', science does NOT tell us "that material reality is all there is", because it CANNOT. That's not what it's for. It has its limitations which, by the way, specifically preclude it from being used in such a manner (i.e. in the investigation of purely philosophical questions). By definition it has to confine itself to the examination of physical reality, but some (actually many, like yourself) seem to believe that this tool (for that is what it in fact is - a tool, a method of enquiry) can be used for anything and everything. As the saying goes, "If all you have is a hammer, then everything will look like a nail".

I've known a number of Thelemites who make a clear distinction between free will and True Will. That came to mind when Harris spoke about self-observation. Roggin didn't pick up on that part, which I felt deserved more attention.

I apologize, but I have to say it - this is really naive and I think I'm starting to understand Lintar's criticism of Newtonian mechanism or why he'd bring it up.

As of right now science is cognitively stuck on materialism for political reasons that have a lot to do with the abuse it's faced at the hands of organized religion since its inception. They're ignoring the implications of entanglement - that the space between entangled particles is a sign that the spatial realities we put together, in the absolute sense, are a fiction. They've also jumped up and down on the random number generator studies, the Ganzfeld studies where even the Edinburough Koestler school of parapsychology, Susan Blackmore's alma mater, where people who'd swear up and down that NDE's are carbon dioxide effecting the brain even indicate that there's something odd enough about the Ganzfeld results - ie. a persistent deviation of 5 or 6%, that they believe its worth looking into. Heck, Sam Harris has brought these studies up on his podcasts, really both issues, and while he's fully in agreemwnt with James Randi's criticisms of Uri Geller and reminds his podcast listeners that it has no relationship to people bending spoons with their minds it is the kind of data that sober people would consider notable.

The other problem with physicalism as it's suggested by guys like Sean Carroll - there's no place for consciousness to come from. We either have to explain it away as a hallucination or imply a miracle - that it springs into being when enough neurons come together when there's no fundamental property of the universe for consciousness to come from since we know, with 100% certainty, that it's nothing but dead non-mental stuff.

Physicalism only looks persuasive if you keep reading the same stuff day in and day out.

Last edited by techstepgenr8tion on 19 May 2017, 9:14 pm, edited 2 times in total.