Free Will

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Do we have free will? I think we neither have free will nor don't have it, and that free will is a construct of the imagination, like other things, like love and hate. Any thoughts?

I think we have the illusion of free will, but all of our decisions are predetermined by our genetics, upbringing, experiences and environment. Plus, even if we had 'free will' our will would also be subject to the will of others. I might decide to go to the shop today, but if the manager decides to close early I might not get the opportunity.

there is an ad on TV for funeral insurance, and they say they will throw in a "free will" kit if you sign up.
i already have a "free will" and i can not see how funeral insurance would stop me from dying, so i declined the idea.

seriously, what is "free will"?

i see all my decisions based on my will as "following paths of least resistance".
whatever the resistance is, it is not designed by me, and so it is external, and whatever decisions i make to navigate through the least resistant course of action, i will therefore make "inevitably".

one may say that monks may try to foil this reality by deliberately willing to take a harder path, but it is due to their resistance to being blindly led by inevitable currents that they choose to take a different route.

it is the route they feel happiest with so it is the one they "choose" to follow.

no one can truly master their destiny because their destiny depends on cause and effect, and what they choose to do is hostage to the moment they are placed in which is not in their control.

Time is one imaginary concept for your list that may make sense out of free will.

I see it like this:
Time is a math game that exists for solar positioning reference. All mathematics are just mind games to look at things through. Math does not exist in nature.
1) Time, and the other maths do not exist.
2) All possibilities are happening simultaniously.
Your life, and every other, has already happened in every possible way. The free will effect is moving from one parallel possibility to another.

There is no time. We are exploring a complex story that has already happened.

As a child, I liked to read Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books. These had many story paths written into them and you would skip to different pages when the charactor came to a choice to make.
Path A- skip to page 27
Path B- skip to page 42
and the story would continue the way you wanted. You did not write the book, rather moved the story for your own perspective.

I view life like this, with infinitely more story "choices" to follow.

Yes, time too. And humans and the universe. The only thing i think could be said to exist is immediate 'conciousness' as i experience it. The word conciousness might be replaced with other words more fitting, but i'm just going with that. Thats not to say that nothing else exists beyond my conciousness, its just that it would only be speculation.

I am a determinist as well. To have free will, we would need to have had control over what "allows" our choices from which we would willfully choose. We do not control our parents, genes, country of origin, religious upbringing etc. All of those shape who we are, impulse control, educability etc, which then influence our responses to the world. So no, we choose from a very limited array of options that are constrained by things outside our control, thus, no free will.

Free will is ????????

Is this it?:

"Free will is the ability to choose between different possible courses of action." (From Wikipedia)

The brain you're born with is primitive. It keeps your heart beating and lungs pumping air. It also shuts your eyes if a strong light is present and makes you cry if you're hungry and raises your hands in front of your face to avoid danger. Some call this primitive brain your reptile brain because we share it's characteristics with many other animals (re: our DNA matches large parts of many other primitive creature's DNA almost exactly).

Your subconscious "thought process" is initiated as your newborn brain fills with new information. When you use your "memory" to store and address old experiences you're actually accessing part of your subconscious.

What seems to upset so many people is they forget, or never knew their subconscious memory was created deliberately to help us with the everyday tasks of life. Example: When you go to a grocery store do you have to look at each item on the shelves and deliberate over each and every item? It's faster if you don't have to do this and instead have all of your likes and dislikes already identified and at your disposal.

And guess what (?)....your brain stores your previous decisions and choices for later use. And guess what's even better (?).... You don't have to go dredging around in your memory because your memory (subconscious) has it all sorted out, just exactly the way you decided you wanted it, and will pick out the right can of corn without you having to dig through your memories. THIS DOES NOT MEAN YOU CAN NOT ASSIGN A DIFFERENT, BETTER FLAVORED BRAND THE TOP RATING IN YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS.

And then we have our conscious "brain" attached to our sensory organs and designed to observe and experience the world. This part of our brain (the part you call ME) then uses other parts of the brain to construct a "plan for life" constructed of the good and bad experiences of your life.

How do you decide what action you will take?????

You will access your memory and decide whether you will or will not follow previous actions and decisions. If you decide you have received NEW information or you have used old information to create a different understanding of previous events then your are free to do so (everyone does this all the time). I believe this should be clear to all.

This is the way we live. We are free to continue to accumulate new information and make new decisions all the time. The "key" (if any) is: NEVER STOP LEARNING..........to do so is (for me) like a sort of a "1/2 death" where your brain and actions become rigid (creeps me out just to think of it). In this case you abdicate your learning function and turn over control to your subconscious memories and primitive brain.

The only people who would want to do this are people of the opposite political party.

after a cup of water and before going back to bed, i will say that what i choose to do is limited to very few options.
going back to bed is the most interesting of that limited variety. anything else would be tiresome, so i have no other choices to make, but i know what i choose now to do is inevitable, but i am nevertheless happy i that choose what i choose do do now as it suits me whether it is ingrained and irresistible or a conscious choice.

I believe in free will. I also believe that people who declare that free will is impossible are just looking for an excuse to abdicate all responsibility for their actions.

I dont believe in free will, but it's more that I don't agree with the concept of it. In fact 'agree' is not the right word as I don't think free will exists, but I also think it doesn't not exist. Paradoxically I think I have responsibility for my actions, as there is not some other me I can blame my wrongdoings on.
I think free will is a topic of conversation, a concept, conscious mind recognising behaviour. I think it is the norm to believe we have free will, but, and I do not mean this to be insulting, it may be the inheritance of human pride, to think we actually possess free will.

I've had similar thoughts. I don't believe in free will, however, I do believe that I need to take responsibility for the things that I do. I also believe that different people have different capacities for taking responsibility, so I try not to judge others.

I believe we have free will within boundaries. We are not 100% autonomous, but we do have some choices.

While we cannot choose the time or place or circumstances we were born into, we do have choices about how we will react to such situations, especially after a certain age.

I think we have free will the majority of the time.

If there is a God, I'm sure He/She would like us to have free will.

Forget about the Calvinistic thing about predestination.

No matter what, our will is limited.

It's only a partially good analogy, but when we go to a restaurant our choices are basically limited to what is on the menu, though we have free will to choose whatever we would like from those options.

If God, then God made the world and set up time and space. We are here by God's design and order of things and have a purpose that we do not necessarily see. Our choices are limited, though we have them.

If no God, then we still have only limited choices. We are a product of evolutionary processes that brought us to this point in time into which we were born. If, as some believe these days, our decisions and feelings are only the result of a series of chemical processes, then we have no choice at all.

Either way, we are not completely autonomous.
The only questions that remain are "Is there a God?" and "What is the meaning of life?"

No, we are not completely autonomous--but, potentially, we could become very autonomous.

Life is full of non-absolutes. This is why I don't believe in dogmatism.

True. But I suppose that answering the "ultimate questions" will determine what kinds of choices we might make and how we use whatever autonomy we might have. Different answers often lead to far different decisions!