Free Will is a Social Construct Based on an Illusion

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This is the definition I found:
Traditional Compatibilism: A traditional compatibilist holds that actions are free if and only if: a. They are caused by the will of the agent. b. They are not forced.

Assuming the above definition, any decision a person makes is either forced or free depending on your viewpoint since even a person under torture is free to choose to endure the pain or submit whereas a person only following his mild inclinations is also not free since the strongest inclinations always dominate the decision. So the term is basically meaningless.

To clarify a bit, the will that is cited as being free is actually the envelope of all the accumulated current perceptions and remembered past experiences and unconscious impulses from a person's being and totally lacks freedom.

Well, basically, under such an idea, free will exists tautologically. I wouldn't call it meaningless as such a view still allows for agency of the individual, and can be used as a conceptual rebuttal to a deterministic argument against human responsibility.

Therefore responsibility seems to be the crux of the problem. But if a person reacts badly in a situation he does so out of his experience and projection of the results of the consequences. What you are citing is more or less an argument for the justice of punishment which supposedly keeps society in order but experience with the social use of punishment is such that it is so incoherently and basically stupidly administered that a person who has violated current legal regulations most frequently ends up as at least minimally socially crippled and at worst a habitual menace to society. Responsibility is most probably not acquired through mindless punishment but most likely by comprehension as to how to properly manipulate social relationships to the benefit of all involved. It is unfortunate that society has yet to learn this basic lesson.

I do not see why it isn't possible that experience of and consequent belief in free-will be distributed in the same way as sex or skin colour.

I think it's interesting, and potentially useful, to treat the experience of free will ( without pronouncing one way or another on its fundamental non-existence ) , as something which is not universal, never could be, and should never serve as reason for discrimination, whereas at the moment it does, to the point of labelling people without it as suffering from a host of so called problems, ( poor impulse control etc), which strip them of respect, even sometimes of their rights.

Free will is a monolithic value judgement, supporting a framework in which those without/with less of this cognitive experience are systematically disadvantaged. It is highly political. Try to imagine a society in which free will was understood to be something only half of people had in any great quantity.

In fact I think it already exists, but it is one in which those without it are oppressed, like women used to be for being women.

ref: Punishment and responsibility. I think that is a red herring and am amazed it keeps cropping up as an excuse/justification for "keeping free will". It is perfectly possible to punish/restrain/penalise those who have "done" something whatever the status of free will. I don't think people whose sentence is reduced because of so called "reduced responsibility" gain anything out of it. I think it is often the cruellest punishmment, like a public humiliation, to be labelled irresponsible for one's acts in a society which so worships people supposedly displaying evidence of free will.

Last edited by ouinon on 01 May 2008, 11:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

But those people apparently not conforming to standard social values are merely driven by alternate values. Galileo spoke out with values different from those who punished him but essentially he also was a conformist "to the beat of a different drum".

Of course, but why demand that everybody behave as if have free will when for many it is not part of their nature?

I am taking this approach so as not to arrogantly assume anymore that Izaak is imagining things when he argues that he has free will. I don't want to assume that anymore. Perhaps some people do have it. I don't.

Last edited by ouinon on 01 May 2008, 12:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I have no idea what Izaak has in mind and I have a strong suspicion he doesn't either.

Well, that issue is because you are a utilitarian, others try to conceptualize things with other frameworks. To the pure utilitarian, free will doesn't really matter anyway so your counter argument is against the entire system, not whether or not compatibilist free will matters. The reason I brought up the matter of justice is because there is a well known court case where defendents got a lesser punishment due to an appeal to a lack of free will. Really though, this issue can also be noted in issues of freedom in society, as one of the issues of compatibilist free will is a lack of compulsion, so even though a person who wants a society they term as "free" may still be working within a deterministic framework, they can still argue that certain systems are more or less "free" based upon a conception of the interaction of free will and society. Now, once again, you might not care much about that either, but if your philosophy really does not care about free will in the first place, then these distinctions aren't going to matter anyway, my point is just that it has conceptual importance.

I could accept that as true, however, the issue is whether or not humans have free will, without regard to other situations.


We can examine that. Like I said, the issue isn't free will so much as anti-psychological beliefs. People try to refuse the existence of underlying characteristics.


No, it is an assessment, the conclusions taken from it are value judgments. Frankly, in all societies, we have systems that promote some over others, so therefore systematic disadvantages are a part of how society works.

Well, some people really do and that is why lawyers tend to seek this. I mean, like I already said, there was a major case where an appeal to determinism spared individuals the death penalty. Frankly, I'd say that there are issues in the consistency of our legal system and things such as that, but honestly, I just am trying to say that the definition of free will has conceptual importance.

AG, responding to your posts requesting clearer definition of free will under discussion:

If leave aside free will as meaning purely a-causal in an otherwise fully determined universe, because it is obviously impossible unless believe in supernatural forces, then free will must be caused, and its freedom is therefore subjective.

I think, since page 3 anyway, that perhaps it is distributed in the population like skin colour/sex, and that its uber-value status has in fact been under seige, since darwinfreudjungetc, watsoncrickdawkinsetc, schopenhauerfoucaultetc, and neuroscientists ( psychologists, physiologists, etc) , have been working on the subject.

Before long, I hope, those with large amounts of "free will", ( whose cognitive apparatus is such that they feel as if they are all alone at the wheel, completely isolated from everything ), are going to have to admit that those without it are as "valid" as them, and stop stomping on and denigrating them for feeling persistently directed/informed/inspired by things around them/the world ( body, environment, people, objects, data).

At the moment, as is often the case as a system approaches bursting point, the image of the revolting underdog is ... revolting. ( see "28 days later", tho in fact it is the supposedly hyper rational, free willing types at the military base who are the worst monsters in the end!! )

Last edited by ouinon on 01 May 2008, 12:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Let me be clearer. It is not that I desire or do not desire free will. I simply do not see how it is possible nor if it were I cannot see how it could be useful. It is most useful to understand the confining forces of the universe and react to them to maximum advantage. Our very existence depends upon responding properly to the causal forces of the universe. Improper reactions are very frequently fatal.

Well, right, I simply think that you don't care about free will. You are a utilitarian or a consequentialist, so really, any notion of free will no matter what it is, is just an abstraction anyway.

It is difficult to figure you out. If you are not a "utilitarian" does that mean you believe that some people do things that are deliberately not useful to staying alive or maintaining themselves? And thereby they are free? Does that make sense?
I don't see it as an abstraction which is something derived from reality. I see it as totally divorced from reality.

My views waver a bit or can be weird or I can argue positions I do not really hold because at the time I support the argument as stronger than that of the other side's so I can be difficult to figure out. Well, people technically do do things that are not useful for staying alive and do not maintain themselves. Everyone knows that sitting around and debating on WP for example is not the best way to maximize their life's potential in most cases, but we do so anyway. What I mean by utilitarian is the idea that societal institutions are designed solely in order to promote the welfare of the most human beings as opposed to increase their liberty or maintain certain social structures. You seem to take the view of maximizing social welfare rather strongly above the other 2.

It's not a matter of maximizing any particular point of view. I do these discussions because I am searching for alternatives to my understanding of the way the universe works which is very concerned with staying alive. I am nearing the end of my string and would be delighted to find major faults to my understanding that we are totally under the submission of the rigid laws of the universe. So far nothing I see around here fills the bill.

Why would you be delighted?

( genuinely interested, because i'm in the opposite direction, glad to realise that I'm fully caused like the rest of the universe).

Last edited by ouinon on 02 May 2008, 12:27 am, edited 3 times in total.