Free Will is a Social Construct Based on an Illusion

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lol, me too, but perhaps that's because by "free will" they just mean the daily/commonsense impression/illusion of being free to choose what they do, as :
rather than looking deeper at why they "chose" to do that and, like someone on page one said, realising that it was the end result of a "dialogue" ( multi-agent conference) between various "forces"/influences/programmations in their heads, whose conclusions were totally outside the control of the "I" watching the process.

Last edited by ouinon on 29 Apr 2008, 10:21 am, edited 1 time in total.

I have found that the idea of "free will", once fully understood is far more painful, more oppresssive, and horrific than its absence.

Why do you describe "free will" as a "nice" illusion?

I believe we have free will, but some of our actions are influenced by social constructs and personal experience

Well, I think that characterizing free will as "out of control" is a mischaracterization. We can argue that free will seems to have a contradiction in that in order for it to truly exist, a person's nature and their choosing faculty must be separate in a rather perplexing manner. Really though, what this discussion could really use is good definitions of free will in order for people to properly examine the idea.

From what I see, often times free will is defined as an acausal choosing mechanism that picks action arbitrarily. That simply doesn't make sense to me, why is this arbitrary action good or necessary? How do we even make sense of it? A causal choosing mechanism would seem to fit human reason more. Why do free will-ers disagree with me?

I think you’re right on here. I really think “free will” taken too literally is an incoherent idea often used inconsistently as a self serving rationalization. People will always invoke free will arguments when they want to take credit for something, yet they will revoke it when they want to avoid responsibility. People almost do it in the same breath sometimes.

I also hate it when free will defenders use the “argument from hedonism”. They argue that their “free will” is the only thing that allows them to choose principled ethics over amoral hedonism. According to that argument everyone who rejects their notion of free will become psychopathic hedonists. It’s the exact same argument religious fundamentalists use against non-religious people. Of course most people are not instinctually hedonistic because they have a strong desire to remain connected with society and empathize with their fellow human beings.

This is a digression, but this topic make me realize how necessary it is to come to terms with the fact that we can never be completely rational creatures. It seems like the people that deny their human nature and begin thinking they are above it are always the most closed minded, un-introspective, irrational, and violently dogmatic people.

I would agree with this somewhat. I have known consistent free willers though, but I often do see it as an incoherent idea as it is the notion of a self separate from the nature, a self without continuity or anything like that and that to me seems to cause major issues of human identity.


I hate it when people use that argument as well. How would this free will allow choice though towards good or evil though? What impels it to choose other than the nature of the chooser? If it is random then it can hardly be seen as above hedonism, and if it is a part of the identity of the chooser then how is it separate from their desires.

Yes, we do need to recognize that we are human and that humans are flawed beasts.

Free Will isn't about the actualising of your will. If you decide you want a house and can not attain it, that is not a invalidation of free will, it's an invalidation of your ability to achieve material values.

Free Will means that in any situation at any time you are able to direct your mind's focus and engage your volitional apparatus at your own discretion. I.E. in any situation at any given moment you can chose to engage your brain and follow it's connections, or you don't. It doesn't say anything about the content of those connections, or the processes being followed or thoughts being pursued. Just that you are able to do it.

It says nothing about the content of your value system or your thought patterns themselves. It says nothing about whether you would like to pursue an absolute or a relativist morality. It says nothing about whether you want a red car or a white car (or your ability or inability to get either.) All it says that you are able to pursue those connections to the best of your ability and to whatever standards of logic (or irrationality) you care to follow.

What determines your ability to do this though? I notice that you rephrased the same thing three times in your first sentence to stress that it is "you" doing this.

Why do you believe it is something free of all causes that determines this engagement/ability/"choice", rather than the result of another process of "negotiation" or "struggle" or "prioritisation" between influences in your brain?

What makes you think that that decision is not determined by brain state, chemistry, hormones, pre-laid tracks, or preset/programmed reactions? Your parents, your genes, your environment, what you ate, the state of your thyroid, your blood sugar level, the data you possess, the information you have received from the environment, all interact to arrive at a decision; you just watch while it happens.

If it was something "free" what on earth would it be? And how would it interact with the material of your brain to influence it?

Wouldn't necessarily be a problem, believing that, a "nice" illusion, if it were in fact nice, and not an oppressive and destructive one, causing much grief.

What makes you think you are an observer of the world without having any influence over it? Why aren't we just "zombies" that act as we do now, but without perceiving any of it consciously? Why is there a subjective awareness, an I, if it doesn't actually do anything?

I think of the perceived self more as a sum of interacting processes, not as a detached observer of them. You *are* your genes, hormones, neurons etc; you aren't just caused by them.

That's what I think aswell. The agent/process that i experience as "me" is created by the data, the biology etc. And so changes too, like everything else.

The "self" that I experience as "observing with" is an illusion, an "accident", probably created by language, because language separates up, designates "other" etc. It presupposes an active agent/thinker of the word ( for whatever is being indicated/represented). Whereas in fact the language may be "thinking itself".

I think zombie is a very good term to use in this context, because in our society the conception of humans as without free will is taboo/frightening to that extent. See horror films for idea of how horrific our culture considers humans without free will.

Modern society depends so much on the concept of free will for its functioning that the idea of it ( not free will, because it never existed, but the belief in it) , being wiped out is horrific/catastrophic.

As a (possibly irrelevant) analogy, I've often seen the term "illusion of choice" associated with computer and video games. For example, a game might allow a player to go left or right, but going right would kill them, so everyone "chooses" to go left. If they were to remove the choice altogether, the game would no longer be a game; it would be a completely passive experience, a movie. But the game developers can't just allow a player true freedom, or the player would encounter a situation that the programmers haven't taken into account, and the result might be... *blue screen of death*.

Real life is kind of like that, in that you have to feel free, or the game (life) isn't worth playing. Hence, consciousness, the feeling of dualism, being separate from the universe. But we're not really distinct from the universe. We are part of it, wholly constrained by determinism.

Maybe the universe invented the illusion of free will (consciousness) simply because without it, it would be a very dull place, a bunch of rocks spinning in space. But it can't let us stray too far outside of our predetermined path, or we might encounter a situation that its "programming" hasn't taken into account, and ... *Earth implodes*. Or not...

So, basically, free will is not necessarily anything more than a being able to direct themselves? That is not a biological issue or anything like that so it is hard to deny.


The "you" is not an issue. What makes the "you" free of other psychological determining factors? He never stated that it was at all, only that it was capable of making decisions. We know from our experiences that we can make those decisions, these decisions may be caused but they are ours.

It is not an illusion, it is completely real. It just does not necessarily have some supernatural cause or anything like that. Frankly, I don't see why language necessarily creates the notion of a separate agent, as the existence of separate agents is a logical result of the division of the world into component parts.


Modern society does not depend on acausal will, but rather upon individual agents that fulfill their purposes. Frankly, if you look into an economics textbook, you will see that homo economicus does not necessarily have a free will, he has a set of values and all he does is act towards fulfilling these values, and that can fit in with a strict idea of determinism. What makes homo economicus viable is that it is an individual agent and acts as an agent. Frankly, the idea that you are using is "free will is acausal, the universe is causal, therefore free will does not exist", I would instead argue that "free will is following one's preferences/nature/desires, the universe is causal, but free will still exists". Frankly, a lot of this issue is the definition of free will, if we hold to a compatibilist definition then there is no problem, if we hold to a libertarian definition then the problem is clear.

Much of the discussion has involved how the mind acts to its best interests and that concept of best interest is determined by the mechanisms of preset capabilities and concepts.
But there is another way to approach the subject. Currently time-space is generally accepted as a matrix of at least four dimensions and our conscious sense places us at a moving point in time. I have several times inquired of science sources as to how we feel ourselves within this point and I have not been able to get an answer. Physics conceives of this time-space construct as all space and time which is simply there. There is no future nor past. It is simply all there. Choice of the control of events, of course, evaporates totally with this concept. Even if the dimensions are multiplied to form so-called parallel universes, this would not change this rigid construction which would merely be extended but fixed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation

Interesting, I would think that the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics would reflect a less rigid view of the future than the one that you are putting forward. I could be wrong or mistaken or something though.

It couldn't really, seeing as acausal will doesn't exist. What it does depend on is the behaviour which follows from people believing in (acausal) free will.

I think that defining free will as "following ones preferences/natures/desires" misses the most important issue, about whether we are capable finally of doing anything which is not preprogrammed or influenced, or caused , or otherwise determined by genes, parents, environment, diet, etc. There is no free radical running around which can decide to do otherwise, in the face of all those factors. Everything in our decisions comes from somewhere in our data base, our body, our surroundings. None of it is some essential "me", independent of the world.

That is all. An a-causal free will does not exist, and any other kind is purely subjective.

Which would be fine if it remained a personal matter, if it wasn't oppressive of others. Belief in free will would be completely acceptable as a subjective position, but for its negative effects on many others. It is a position of privilege, which favours certain behaviours, even genes, which puts power into the hands of some at the expense of others. It encourages certain actions, and rewards certain behaviours. Belief in it alienates many people, perhaps everybody, from social connection.

"Free will", promoted as it is, is a piece of data, and it produces certain outcomes which absence of such belief does not. A kind of striving, a desire to prove oneself, etc. It acts as a judgement. It discriminates.