Free will vs Determinism

Post Reply New Topic

Well that got complicated quickly.

To those who still believe in free will,I recommend them to read "Free Will" by Sam Harris.It is going to change your perception of reality.
I guess we really don't have a choice. We are just puppets or robots.

I say this: Everything may be predetermined, but thinking that everything is predetermined isn't going to help you any.

Presuming that any given universal state is directly influenced by the state before it as per the laws of physics, then "free will" as commonly understood does not exist.

We are the observers of our actions but not the authors. We tend to assume that our actions follow our conscious exertion of "will," but that is probably ad-hoc after-the-fact rationalization on the part of the mind which happens below our perception. The mind must constantly reconcile the fact that the body has acted by fooling itself into thinking it has provoked the action. This is not necessarily the case.

The mind is a machine which operates strictly according to the sum of its chemical processes and the physical laws of the universe. To think that we may consciously affect these processes by a way of a vague and ill-defined concept of "will" is absurd.

So -- what are the social and societal implications of this?

Mostly nothing.

Dangerous and criminal people will continue to be locked up and reprimanded because they are dangerous and disruptive. Everyone else will resume their lives as they normally would because the illusion of consciousness is both powerful and irrelevant -- it doesn't matter if our decisions are not "our own" in the way we want to believe or not, because they feel like they are.

In essence, the "free will" question is interesting to discuss but has little bearing on how we should conduct ourselves in our day to day lives. And though the universe is probably completely deterministic, we still can't tell what it will determine for our future, therefor "living like the universe is deterministic" is a meaningless phrase.

I have always been a determinist. Think of it this way, say that God (doesn't matter if you believe in him or not, just imagine) is omnipotent. This means that he can predict the future flawlessly. He can do this due to determinism, thus, he knows what we will do, what we'll think, literally everything that will happen. He doesn't define it, he just witnesses it. I believe we have free will, but sadly, our free will is defined by preceding events. This is not fatalism, as God does not control our actions. I think determinism is just a natural law.

Question: How can anybody use Determinism as an "Excuse"? I can understand that somebody can use it to some extent to excuse some minor misbehavior, or to rationalize away some shady (Although not illegal) behavior one performs in their personal life, but if "Free Will" existed, people who were devoted to avoiding responsibility would find a way. Where there's a will (Free or not), there's a way. The bottom line is this, though, as far as I am concerned, and I understand and respect that people may disagree: If you commit crimes, particularly violent ones that infringe on the civil rights of others and threaten stability, society IS going to hold you to account for the actions you performed, irrespective of whether or not they were entirely voluntary or not, because having people running around committing these actions is not conducive to a functional, flourishing and stable society, which as was pointed out to me in the Story of Philosophy (The section on Spinoza) are reflective of our universal hopes with respect to the function we expect civil society to perform (Safeguarding us from the aggression and irrationality of one another so that we can live a peaceful and serene life, to take an Epicurean/Hobbesian view of things.). Whether or not people choose to accept that fact, it remains a fact regardless of what people choose to believe (Which is my issue with Subjectivism, be it moral or epistemological, the former being grounded in the latter's shaky foundation. This whole "Thinking makes it so" BS that it's predicated on with respect to personal preferences.)


As far as Free Will is concerned, I believe it exists to some degree. The notion that we are deterministic automata whose behavior is completely determined by an endless chain of prior events and circumstances is a radical theory which I find wholly unconvincing, but I also find the idea of "Free Will" in the way it's popularly conceived to be anthropocentrically smug, as if we are wholly rational and logical beings who are so superior to the rest of those "Savage beasts" (Most of whom don't wage war with one another.......) when simply skimming over a history book would immediately put the lie to that ignorant notion. That said, I understand where people are coming from when people say Determinism can quite easily be used as an excuse for behavior that society considers "Immoral", "evil", "wrong", whatever you want to call it, but like I said, society holds people to account because it must, which it will do regardless of whether one's acts are free or not, which makes the whole debate irrelevant to me. And as far as philosophy providing excuses is concerned, the idea of libertarian free will makes it incredibly easy to simply sweep society's problems under the proverbial rug and condemn others, because they were "Always in control" (which I don't disagree is often true, although emotions can be strong driving forces with regards to behavior) as opposed to fixing the underlying problems that, if they don't cause certain behaviors (And I believe they do in some instances), certainly influence it in a strong way. To pretend that inequality, a sense of disenfranchisement and powerlessness, genetics, upbringing, poor mental health and shittastic availability to mental health services and so on don't determine at all whether somebody will become a rapist, murderer, wife-beater, pimp, prostitute, robber, etc, are to deny simple facts of reality and to play the role of the ostrich, burying our heads in the sand like wimps.