Is free will just an illusion?

Free will doesn't seem to be all that philosophical or personal a concept these days, considering what we're able to learn about the human brain.

I believe free will is just an illusion, just chemicals interacting with other chemicals in our brains. They create moods, desires, feelings, love, and other types of interactions.

You pretty much typed what took me 4 paragraphs to attempt to explain. Also (Its a little late for me to address this, but fuck it), I didn't mean to make my argument religion centered, I was just using God and religion as an example in case there are people here who are religious.

Determinism, there's way too many variables you have/had no control of, so your free will is actually limited to the context randomly generated around you.

As stated in the first answers to the topic, it all depends on the meaning one gives to free will.

If by free will, you imply the possibility of choosing between multiple "Fate lines" which were all possible at some point, the odds are that it doesn't exist. This because of determinism : if randomness doesn't exist, and you could predict the future behavior of a system knowing it's state at one point and the rules it obeys, then it would mean that the world is following a straight line, devoid of any "free will" to choose another path.

Now, if you look closer at us, human beings, you could think of this as free will : being able to make a choice without being silently influenced by internal or external factors, the choice being done entirely at a conscious level.
Alas, that's not how we work, you cannot stop your subconscious from working, and external stimuli always get its way into your subconscious (unless you are fully focused on something). I didn't even mention our biological state.

So, in my opinion, our will isn't perfectly free, because of determinism, and because we can't consciously understand and manipulate our whole thinking process. That means that free will is an illusion to an extent, but it's also real to an extent, because i can choose to do whatever i want right now. Black ? White ? Or just gray ?

It is not real, and you pretty much said it yourself why it isn't real. What ever it is you choose to do, that ultimate choice to do it is not done by your consciousness, but by your subconscious. All consciousness applies to this, is that you are consciously aware the choice being made and that is why the human mind perceives it as to it being the force behind the choice.

To me free will is base on choices we make and the options that come with those choices. Are we forced to do something or do we make our own decision. Outside factors will always restrict or affect free will, but it is still there no matter how small.

It is my opinion that it is impossible to know the answer to this question.

In order for "will" to be quantified one has to be removed from it enough to observe it which seems to be an impossibility to me.

Getting hungry and the need to use the bathroom... isn't that just simple biology? Lol...


Anyway this is an awesome discussion! I really enjoyed reading through some of the responses and damn you guys have an incredible depth of analyzing circumstances.

But to be honest... I don't really care if we have free will or not. As long as I can keep spending time with my loved ones and family, I'm good.

We control our own bodies and actions (although there is the biological side of things) but a lot of the things surrounding us and influencing these actions come from outside of the individual.

Basically society and everything it entails. The individual and society exist in a kind of weird symbiosis where society sets all the rules, motives, time wasters and goals but where the individuals are what make it a society and support/establish these things to begin with. There's of course lots of tension here between different facets of society as well as between the induvial and the facets they come into contact with. So basically, we are out of necessity never entirely free while alive as that would entail being outside of every facet of society. Even an ascetic is buying into a culture of asceticism and rejection. He is still bound by the very bondage he sees as his path to freedom (or whatever it might be).

That being said, we are still the ones who chose and develop ourselves within different cultures and societies. We each lead our own similar lives and so forth.

Anyway, I think the idea of free will is largely used to promote ideological and political compliance/defiance. Basically, it takes away actual autonomous action and thought and creates a point of consensus different individuals of a society buy into. This is never a fully good or bad thing.

Of course, there is also something to be said for the more violent forms of restriction of freedom (Confinement, censorship, forced belief etc.) versus the more soft ones that I’m referring to. The good news is that these methods often result in group wide back lash (not freedom fighting but the rejection of an imposed order for a new social construction which is often motivated by an ideological conception of free will). The softer form of restriction of individual freedom, on the other hand, is far more perpetual but, like I said, it is also something necessary because it is what it means to be social being as a human. Our loss of true freedom makes us what we are in a sense. Edit: It's what makes us social beings at least.

(Phew, felt like relaxing to some art rock and writing a little. Thanks for the topic to get me started.)

Yup it's fake.

Just think of product Advertising, the ultimate form of control.

For adults, they sell you luxurious products that you cant live without, so since you cant live without it, you go and purchase it.

For kids, they sell you the most fun and amazing toy ever, and since you cant live without it, you bug the living hell out of your parents until they cant handle you anymore and purchase it for you.

There is no free will. Everything is conditioned by something.

It's real. As far as I can tell it doesn't go away unless you decide it does.

This is just logic , Life and liberty don't resume to fight our instincts , if you are really conditioned , you can't do what you want to do by your own will, that's all.

Free will doesn't exist because some advertisers found out way to make a product you probably don't need appeal to you. Let's ignore the marketers who are consciously trying to figure out how your brain ticks, which social norms can be 'exploited', and various economic factors to try and get you to buy something. Does having something appealing like a carrot tied to a stick work for everyone at every time? Of course not, not even Freud was this thickheaded about the ego and super ego.

Your post and most of this thread is pseudo-intellectual garbage. Oh boy, we're made out of star trash, therefore everything is predetermined and meaningless because we're made out of chemicals! HURR DURR.

The determinism argument being pushed here isn't being elaborated on very well. It's not just that "we have some influences, therefore we must completely be a product of influence"; that's not really solid. By that logic alone, it's still entirely possible that influence only cuts off a handful of your options. If I influence your choice on an ABCD multiple choice question and tell you that D is a wrong answer, I've influenced your decision and potentially altered the outcome, but I haven't taken the choice away from you.

Think of it more like this; You give a child a set of refrigerator magnets and tell them to put them on the fridge, and afterward the child "chooses" puts them in some order. If you go back in time and give the exact same child the exact same magnets, logically, wouldn't the child "choose" to put them up in the exact same order? If you believe that, it implies that your choice is infact determined.

Personally though, I don't think that erases free will. Well, maybe some people's definition of free will, but not the bare essentials for will in general. All it suggests is that you get the same outcome with the same circumstances, not that choice itself isn't a circumstance.

Take the shuffle cups scam for example. A man tells me that if I can guess which of the three cups he's shuffled around has a ball underneath, that I'll get a prize. However, he's secretly removed the ball from all of the cups, and I'll loose no matter what I pick; in other words, the outcome is determined, as dictated by determinism. However, aren't I still choosing a cup on my own? It seems to me that determinism and choice can coexist.



This is an under-replied to post.

Still though, isn't what you're saying essentially just "we have free will until we know we don't" ? I mean, if we learned we don't, wouldn't that ultimately mean we never did at all?

Well, it is science to assume a theory is unproven until otherwise, and nothing is concrete. The free will question is a unique one in which an answer must be provided and argued constantly, because it is an intergral part of our nature and development. However, it is subjected to all the elements of the scientific process above, which means there will never be a perfect answer for it.

Until proven otherwise.

We are because we are. What we do isn't necessarily a matter of free will, we do things because it is within our ability to do so. I've given a lot of thought to the concept of free will, and there really isn't any way to deny that it exists. Just look at the shit humans do... murder, taxidermy, tea parties, softball... I could name a million other things, but if our actions were dictated by a higher power, we wouldn't be doing any of it, because it is completely irrelevant to our ability to survive as a species.

As someone who's enough a scientist to have talked at a nanotech symposium, thaaat's... not true. Things are unknown until known, that's it. That doesn't mean they aren't true until known. Take gravity for example; before having discovered gravity, was there no gravity? It's not like we were all floating in a weightless environment around before newton got hit in the head with an apple, so to speak. Same for discovering a lack of will; if we "discovered" a lack of will, wouldn't that mean there was always no will whatsoever?

Furthermore, in a philosophical context, science identifies trends rather than truths. You're making enough observations to create a mathematical model which describes what you've seen thus far, then assuming that it'll continue to work. Of course, in gravity's case for example, it's a pretty good assumption to gamble off of. The fact that it's been a sound idea for hundreds of years suggests it isn't changing anytime soon, but technically speaking a coin that's landed on heads for hundreds of years could eventually land on tails or who knows what.



I'd like to be devils advocate here and ask you "is that statement concrete?" but that'd be a big tangent.



You know, now that I think about it, could you live a good life without having a concept of will? I feel like I need to see if there are any subcultures which ignore the concept or languages which don't have a word for it. I want to guess not though, since it's the only means of really attributing blame, credit, or responsibility to anyone.



Not often I come across someone leaning into political realism. "It is a matter of one's wish and their ability to fulfill," so on and so fourth. Still though, a lot of people believe it entails a fair bit of lawlessness when applied to morality. But hey, as far as I'm concerned, Thucydides wasn't wrong: "Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."

Still though, I don't think that confirms or denies the existence of will. It could be a matter of the power the choosing individual has, or it could be a matter of the power the environment has over them all the same.



That last line seems like it isn't true. Plenty of things survive with virtually no will at all.

As for the rest of it, that's kinda just poetry. You can say humans to a vast stretch of nearly incomprehensible activities of all sorts and that's interesting, but you could say the same about the universe as a whole just as easily. The existence of seemingly miraculous stuff like singularities doesn't "prove" the universe has a will any more than the existence of miraculous human activity would prove people to have will.

Still, your choice from ABC is influenced by factors you don't have any control over. Your illusion of freedom of choice still only occurs to your consciousness. You don't think your thoughts before they occur to your consciousness and before you are aware of them.



Yes, determined by randomness and other influences which again we don't have any control over. Not by 'destiny' or faith or any other mystical bullshit.



Even if you describe the choice as a circumstance, that choice still was influenced by factors that are beyond your control.



This example is exactly the same as the previous ones.

What randomness though? It simply isn't possible to make something random, and it has nothing to do with mysticism. Just because I have no control over something doesn't mean it's random, your point is nonsequitor. If anything, a lack of control would mean it infact is determined, as I certainly can't control it myself.

If someone I don't know who I can't control decides to punch me in the face out of the blue, I wasn't "randomly punched in the face," or anything; I just don't know why I was punched in the face. There is, inevitably, a cause behind it. Not a mystical reason, but a cause, a domino that came before.

So, back to the refrigerator magnets; if the same scenario always produces the same results, the results are determined by the scenario. If you can't show otherwise, it's game set match. It doesn't matter how much control you have over the scenario; if it determines the results, the results are obviously determined.

The last example wasn't supposed to be further proof that everything was determined, but rather that even if things are defined as determined, you can still have a conceptual choice.