What is virtue?

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Derk Pereboom does an excellent job on this weakness in the arguments for free will in his book "Living Without Free Will":

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Living-Without- ... 131&sr=8-8




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Free will is a desire fueled by courage, persistence, and faith. That is the best way I can describe it. Yes, I do believe the will is biological since everything we experience is biological and can be suppressed and manipulated with brain washing, chemicals, etc.

But what are those fuelled by?


The biological ( depending on what level look at it at ) is deterministic, and/or quantum non-deterministic. Which one do you think the biological process "free will" is?

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I don't think neurology has pinpointed what it is that causes a rewiring of the brain's synapses. Nonetheless, it is a real occurrence. We can now see from experiments the patients brainscans who undergo rehabilitation. These people who reorganize their brains to achieve "miraculous" healings display an extraordinary amount of perseverance, faith, and desire to get well. I think the will is the biological energy in our brains which causes us to feel courage and have faith in a desired outcome.

While all these experiments prove the validity of the plastic brain theory, I always just thought it was common sense. I was surprised to hear that scientists would ever think that the brain was not so. How did they explain the miracles? They pretended that it didn't happen because they couldn't explain it, or they just dismissed it as some anomaly without getting interested in how it happened. That sort of stuff gets me obsessed. It's a shame that people just accepted what they were taught while ignoring what was happening right in front of their faces. That is free will suppressed via brainwashing.

Ok, free will as brain plasticity. I would have generally taken the two things as different. With free will as a philosophical language thing, and brain plasticity as a matter of how the brain works. And yeah, brain plasticity is interesting.

There was an article that I read recently about how certain genes have a greater variability in outcomes, and that this variability is strongly influenced by environmental factors. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200912/dobbs-orchid-gene

Some people are more talented at certain things and are born with certain temperaments, but that is not to say that the people who are born with less successful genes will not be able to compensate for their lack of success traits. It is up to them (free will) to achieve success through non-ordinary means.

Somebody who has been paralyzed from the waist down has had environmental damage. But, it is not impossible for the paralyzed person to walk again as is shown through Taub's experiments. First we have to believe in ourselves and have a desire to get well. We make a choice to believe or not believe. All of our beliefs are choices, even the ones that are hammered in our heads, when it comes down to it, we choose all that we believe. If we are willing to believe something, then we believe it. If we are unwilling to believe in something, then we won't.

I don't think many people have this sort of determination, but that is because they are taught that there is no hope for them and that they are a victim of circumstances, or that they don't have a free will, and sadly they choose to believe it.

You have said that free will is fuelled by courage, persistence, faith, ambition, belief in oneself, and determination, and that these are fuelled by will. Either that is a seriously circular argument, ( which avoids facing up to the unfreedom, the "determined" quality of our behaviour ), or you mean two different "wills", but you have not said yet what fuels the "will" which fuels the bravery etc which fuels the free will.

Do you think that free will exists because of quantum physics, which describes a level of existence which is not ruled by "determinism"? ( in which you can not predict an outcome based on x acting on y acting on z ).

The trouble is that if free will exists because of quantum physics then noone is morally responsible for their actions either, because behaviour would be randomly created; people would not have had anything to do with the decision/choices involved.

Everything is either determined, ( and free will does not exist ), and/or quantum and non-determined, unpredictable, random, in which case the choices people make "freely" are not their responsibility either, but millions of tiny "acts of god" so to speak.

( if you like that idea realise that it is one that the most fundamentalist, rigid, oppressive, etc religions have frequently espoused; it involves examining people's thoughts and actions to see which ones are acts of god, and which ones the acts of the devil/the body/"determinism" ).

The only thing that makes sense is to realise that at any measurable level our behaviour is all determined, all "acts of god/the universe", and realise that your "I"'s real role is that of an observer, not a CEO. And if you know anything about Buddhism you will probably already be aware that it is definitely not an "easy way out".

It's funny all the people who argue that the danger of a world with no free will is an absence of moral responsibility, ( anarchy, selfishness, irresponsibility would ensue!! ! ). In fact it is the world with free will which implicitly excuses such behaviour, in fact can not establish moral responsibility.

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Ounion wrote:

I said that free will is fueled by courage, persistence, faith, ambition, etc and that these traits are fueled by desire. How is that circular? Besides, what we are speaking about is energy. We cannot dissect free will but we can see evidence of it through people's actions. Some people do not display this action of free will, but that is not to discredit those who do. What causes free will? I think belief in it does.

I can't find that. But I do find this:



I think that it is possible to dissect a social construct, and discover if what it refers to makes sense.


And what causes belief in it?
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Last edited by ouinon on 30 Nov 2009, 2:58 am, edited 1 time in total.

Yes and no, I think that the issue is the utility of the concept of "free will" which some feel is needed for people to bare responsability for their actions, the acceptance and assumption of the existence of a general concept for the sake of social, moral and legal control, I could not be entirely correct though but that that seems to be the issue.


Outside the utility framework, evidence seems to suggest the opossite, that people's actions are determined and free will only being apparent.


well, I think that from a christian point of view, could be said that Jesus was one who actually had or practiced free-will, given the belief of what he did and did not do, can be said to be humanly extremely difficult or impossible, as the notion that he was perfect and no one else has been.


In all honesly, all I have seen from people's behaviour are caused by circumstances and it is very difficult to support the notion that people can actually act totally free from the effects of their experience, enviroment and biologial issues, as very likely, we are the sum of all that and that seems to support determinism rather.

Last edited by greenblue on 29 Nov 2009, 6:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.

What causes us to choose to believe in a free will? A free will. If you don't have one, get one so then you can believe you have one. Get one now and stop asking all these silly questions.

Well, if free will relates to physical realities, then it seems as if we should be able to dissect it. If free will comes from somewhere outside of physical reality, then surely there is the question of where it comes from.

If belief in free will causes free will, then there seems as if there should be some process by which the belief in free will becomes free will.

It comes from the imagination. Try to dissect that. If you can't dissect the imagination, it still doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Many people think the imagination is not worth anything but this is where all the greatest discoveries were first formed. What we believe is created by how we imagine things to be. If we do not believe that we have a free will, then we don't. We can use our imaginations to create a free will.

So, is the imagination inside of physical reality or outside of it?

I never said that the imagination being irreducible meant that it didn't exist, it just brings up a lot of questions for something to be irreducible. Y'know, "why?", "how?", "how come?", etc.

In any case, is it necessary that the imagination be considered something irreducible? If the imagination is built upon the operations of physical realities, then the imagination's workings could be dissected.

Interestingly enough, this relates somewhat to another thread I created. If people have imaginations, then is it possible for the imagination to be given to AIs? If not, then why not? If so, then what is the imagination?

I think the imagination gets into a lot of metaphysical stuff. I can't explain how it works. Consciousness is a little bit of a tricky subject.

So, are you saying that imagination isn't a matter of physical processes? Interesting. I suppose that getting to the heart of that matter along with free will would be a much longer metaphysical journey than this thread can likely support.