It is not free to post here ! You make an effort through your own determination. You expel the energy to post . Just because you like it that way does not mean energy was not used . With determination . I know you want to be free as well as I do too. We struggle for freedom . It is the human will in my opinion . We climb ladders of existing information so we can have a chance at freedom . You get to the top of the ladder and blamo , You find your self alone . Consider the teacher that teaches the same thing year end year out . Do the children repeat personalities . Even when they get that exceptional child there is a comparison . My son has one . His name is Parker . Parker the legend . Now there is a new Legend " My Son " The world of legends sees Parker and my Son as the same . Legends of the same heroism . It would not surprise me if in the following years Parker will be more of a memory instead of a child folk hero . It will be " Your just like Me's son
Why free will is impossible
- Thread starter litewave
- Start date
It is not free to post here ! You make an effort through your own determination. You expel the energy to post . Just because you like it that way does not mean energy was not used . With determination . I know you want to be free as well as I do too. We struggle for freedom . It is the human will in my opinion . We climb ladders of existing information so we can have a chance at freedom . You get to the top of the ladder and blamo , You find your self alone . Consider the teacher that teaches the same thing year end year out . Do the children repeat personalities . Even when they get that exceptional child there is a comparison . My son has one . His name is Parker . Parker the legend . Now there is a new Legend " My Son " The world of legends sees Parker and my Son as the same . Legends of the same heroism . It would not surprise me if in the following years Parker will be more of a memory instead of a child folk hero . It will be " Your just like Me's son
I have never seen so much question-begging in my entire life.
So you are saying that a person with complete information is going to necessarily be happy with how things are going? Or can't act on the information he has for some reason? Both assumptions are absurd. Hence, reductio.
So you are saying that a person with complete information is going to necessarily be happy with how things are going? Or can't act on the information he has for some reason? Both assumptions are absurd. Hence, reductio.
A person with complete information always knows how things are going; being "happy" doesn't really enter into it.RegularOldguy said:
How would they "act" on complete information? What would they "choose" to do, given they know everything?
The assumption that some being who has complete information can use it to "choose" to change the information, is an absurd assumption. The argument reduces itelf to an absurdity.
It's absurd because it starts with the assumption that complete knowledge is possible, then supposes that someone with complete knowledge can choose to act as if they do not have complete knowledge. That is, they choose to ignore that they already know an outcome and act as if they can predict a different one.
The argument defeats itself, ad reductio.
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No . As Dr. Gibson once told Me " Knowing everything that is going to happen can be depressing so it is better to keep up the illusion. It is more exciting that way . It gives you a feeling of surprise that way . I mean is it not better to be surprised on your birthday than when you already know all the people are hiding behind your furniture.
I am sorry for you out there that were expecting it and it did not happen . Maybe next time
INFORMATION ALREADY EXISTS. WE DID NOT INVENT INFORMATION . WE INTERPRET INFORMATION . O,K, sorry for caps , your thoughts are not your own . They come from the past. You might be surprised , but some one thought just like you in the past .
More and more your arguments show themselves to stem from personal incredulity rather than anything resembling a cogent argument.
And with regard what arguments you do try to make: the first step off the path for the "square circle" is to know that that is the path you are on.
Nothing "follows" from the scenario as given.
What follows (for each person differently) is decided by our axiomatic notions about how we and reality exist.
For you, one of those axiomatic notions is that the underlying nature is impersonal, that there are merely perceptions, but no real agents.
For some other people, one of those axiomatic notions is that the underlying nature is personal, that we are real agents.
This free will debate comes down to axioms, which, by their nature, cannot be further explained.
And you keep interpreting his stance as being a matter of perception and of taking perception for granted.
Ie. you say his stance is "I think I am a real agent, therefore I am a real agent. I perceive to have a choice, therefore, I have a choice."
But this is not what he is saying.
I am not sure we will see eye to eye anytime soon, since we are operating out of different axioms.
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For persons, states (such as happiness) do enter into the picture.
Do you have a favorite dish? A favorite film? Sport, etc.? I am sure you do.
Even though you know what your favorite dish tastes like, you keep opting for it over and over again. This is why and how it is your favorite dish.
Happiness, pleasure, enjoyment are factors in our activities, and there is no reason to think that an omniscient being would be different in this regard.
Knowing what something will taste/feel/smell/etc. like does not prevent us from desiring it and doing it.
It is not like the only way we can have any pleasure in this world is from things we do not yet know.
There is a difference between complete knowledge and complete experience.
Complete knowledge may be possible, but not complete experience.
It does follow - if everything is caused and the universe is determined (i.e. the output is singular and driven exclusively by those causes) then logic dictates predetermination.
For this not to hold then either not everything is caused or the universe is not determined.
This is the logic of the scenario and its conclusion.
Not quite true - I don't agree they are axiomatic notions, and it depends on definitions of the term "agent".
If "axiomatic notions" differ by that much then surely they are no longer axioms but merely assumptions.
And as assumptions they must be argued for if they are to be accepted.
Unfortunately that is just a cop-out. And it smacks of "I have no further argument to offer... but I believe therefore it is."
Then wtf is he saying? He seems incapable of expanding beyond this point - but if you think you can get past it, then feel free to explain it?
However, all points he makes stem from the point of perception by a conscious entity. :shrug:
And then he requires a square circle to get to the end-point he wants.
Even with different axioms there are positions that can encompass both, otherwise one set of axioms must be false.
Differing views of the same object can be reconciled.
Views of different objects can not.
Aye - conscious perceptions. Now where have I seen that line of discussion before?
Ooh, look: conscious perceptions. No less real to "us" - our consciousness, but they are conscious perceptions that only have meaning to the conscious.
In this line or argument, you, like RoG, are limiting your viewpoint to the conscious perception.
It speaks nothing of the underlying nature. :shrug:
Sure - enjoyment can be had while doing something that must be done. No argument there.
The difference is that while we do not know the compulsions / causes that lead us to the predetermined action (in RoG's scenario) and see it as "choice" or "free-will", the omniscient person will see all the causes, will see themselves as part of that cause, and already know (because they are omniscient) that they will act a certain way - and know that they are unable to do anything about it.
But they can still "enjoy" it, I guess.
The question here, though, is whether a conscious being can be omniscient... or whether knowing EVERYTHING prevents one from having that sense of "I".
If consciousness really does offer us the illusion of free-will due to lack of knowledge of the causes, then knowing those causes will negate free-will and thus possibly consciousness itself.
Thus a conscious and omniscient entity is just another square circle, and thus examples using such are flawed from the outset.
Pandaemoni
Valued Senior Member
Whether your information is complete or incomplete has no bearing on whether you have free will at all. A computer with knowledge of everything there is would not have free will necessarily. It is merelyt another assertion that you are free to act without much in the way of a proof.
I am not sure what you mean by "uncaused will never work", though. if you are saying that your choices are completely caused, then there is no choice at all, but the effect of a series of causes. Anything else is sophistry no different than saying that when I pull the trigger of a gun and powder ignites, the bullet "chooses" to move or not move. That a human is more complex than a bullet doesn't necessarily give a human any more ability to avoid the effect of the causes acting on it.
You can't simply assert that we have real choices, you have to prove it, and until you do, either theory remains possible. If you do, however, then you are the first person in the history of philosophy to prove the reality of choice. (In which case, you win one free cookie.)
There is one out...if choice is completely caused, but humans have some means of affecting the series of causal events in advance to change them such they they bring about the choices we desires to make all along...I suppose that would do it. It would also require a bit of magic, but it's somewhat akin to the notion of the transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics, with its temporally advanced standing waves.
That is not necessarily a correct answer, any more than any of the other theories, but I can't see how to disprove it.
OTOH, if, like many compatibilists, you are saying that causes set up your desires, and then you choose to act or not act on those desires, then only the desires are caused, and the choice is uncaused--a spontaneous exercise of will that cannot be fully and necessarily determined by the prior physical states in the brain.
Well, there is no predetermination, because quantum mechanics introduces real randomness. Under the most deterministic view of the world the universal wave function might be objectively real, and it is predetermined to evolve in specific ways, but the actual outcomes we experience generated by that wave function can still be one way or another from our perspective. Even in the many worlds view, everything that can happen does, somewhere...so perhaps one can say that there is predetermination there, but only if one takes an extraordinarily broad view and concludes "everything that can happen will happen in some universe somewhere."
Here again though, you merely assert that this omniscient being (which is already evidence that we are in the realm of unprovable assertions, since such a being cannot exist in thus universe, and this would have to be outside or separate from it) has "choice" even though he knows everything. But knowing everything doesn't give you the power to avoid anything or change anything, at least not necessarily. If the being has free will, then I believe you are right. If the being does not have free will, then you must be wrong. The state of knowledge in either case doesn't necessarily change that.
For example, the Princeton physicist Richard Gott wrote a book on time travel in the real universe, in which he runs through several theoretical scenarios, consistent with general relativity, where time travel looks like it should be possible. (They are all impractical, of course, but in theory possible.) He is very clear that, assuming the right kind of supermassive objects could be found, and if we were to use them to travel backwards in time, that there is nothing that we could do to alter the past at all. As the past has already "happened," we know that even if we tried to change it, we failed. So, if we traveled back in time, and actually tried to kill our own grandfather, we know we'd be unsuccessful.
But even as I heard him discuss that (years ago now), I hated that. I wouldn't try to kill my own grandfather, of course, but I felt like free will and my knowledge of what happened in the past should allow me to change it. If nothing else, being a jerk, after I return to the past, I would meet myself before I board the time machine and give myself a one word message, "positive"...except that if when I was boarding the time machine I met myself and my older self told me "postive", then when I went to the past, I would tell my next self "negative" (and if my older self said "negative" then I'd switch back to "positive").
Gott was very clear that even setting up oscillating timelines like that would not be stable and hence it was clear that my plan to meet myself would necessarily fail in some way (perhaps I die before I can back to the time machine, or perhaps in his worlds I'd be there and say the word "positive" and despite my plan, I would be compelled to say "positive" in each loop, or perhaps for some other reason...but my plan fails). Anything else crews up the physics apparently (at least in his view).
I tried to disprove his conjecture by coming up with something foolproof, but in the end, despite my intuition he is wrong, I can't disprove his view of the way spacetime prevents temporal paradoxes.
It's basically the same problem as you pose...but again (A) you really need to invoke the existence of a supernatural being to even pose the hypothetical, so the position is as unprovable as the question of the existence of supernatural beings in general, and (B) a supernaturally omniscient computer could know everything yet clearly not be free.
Imagine that there is a God and He is omniscient, but no being anywhere has free will, and there is predestination. Let's also assume that God starts out happy. In that case God knows the future and the past, and was happy in the past, and humans have no free will to throw a wrench into that. So God will be eternally happy, and hence God is immutable. (If God can become unhappy, then God is not really immutable.) In that view, even if God had free will, He'd never need it. Of course, once might say "but how could God be happy when there is evil in the world?", but that "Problem of Evil" (itself discussed for millennia) exists for any omniscient and omnipotent being, free will or no free will.
I suspect on a certain level you are assuming a supernatural being that is just like is (you even mention happiness), but I doubt that a supernatural being of that nature would be like us. I think the notion of our imagining such a being as "like us" is a bit strained. It's like ants looking at the kid who owns the ant farm and imagining he too must be just like them. An omniscient mind, though, would be many orders of magnitude more complex that ours is to an ant.
Still, the issue of whether such a God can have emotions or not is itself a topic that has been debated by philosophers, so again I concede that my position is not one I can assert to be true, but is rather just my personal intuition, with many other positions also being equally logically plausible.
It's a thought experiment. The limit case. It isn't about factual accuracy. Think Einstein and Galileo.
I never have been able to buy that. QM has to be a mathematically based construct based on the limits of perception. Why? Because physics is a hodge podge that is pretty screwed up, and has been forever, and mostly because I can't believe in miracles because they are internally inconsistent. I'm not going to fight anyone on this because I can't. If you have convinced your self that the world is internally magic and inconsistent, I can't do anything about it.
Since the past has already happened, the time travel you allow isn't like we perceive it at all in our fantasies. It is just like running a tape backwards. You can't even know you are doing it. So you would lack that ability to perceive you were in the past (your memory would back up too) and you couldn't reflect on your position. No new "trying" would be allowed.
However, in the present, before things have occurred, we can direct them, and what we want can control the future.
Back to the limit case: if I can see what the result is going to be, I can decide whether or not to let it happen. Oddly, because of what we are, we can take our own influences into consideration. Psychoanalysis can happen.
Saying you are "forced" by any particular causal nexus ignores the fact that you can take a moment and reflect and choose.
i think some here are comfortable with dismissing your professed agency as an instance of erroneous perception.
ja
they are calling you stupid
i think some here are comfortable with dismissing your professed agency as an instance of erroneous perception.
ja
they are calling you stupid
I missed you Gustav
that is it . Now consider this " all human activity of humans is purely instinctive to humans . Every thing a human does is part of human instinct . Can people rise above there nature ? I say no way . You would not be human if you did . As long as you are human you are trapped into being human . Except Me ! I like to think of my self as being more than human ( A God) . There is a hidden language that goes on right in front of you . It is all based in gestures, blinks, wiggles , grunts and what have you and all of you are subject to the language . You can not interact with another human with out the ability . It is part of being Human . It is instinct and we are all subject to the unwritten rules of instinct. You got know idea how this controls your every move . I know lots of you would like to think that you are above it , I don't think so . You are the Animal Human
O.K. show Me adaptability is free will ? I don't think so . I think it is natural selection and the winners that select right live and the ones that don't go by way of dinosaurs. So the dead had free choice and the living don't . Except the dead are dead and have no place in the decisions of the living. If the changing environment is what it will be then adaptability to that environment will be what it will be. Does this mean we have a choice ? Maybe to die or not to die , or better put To Be or not To Be is the question . That you might have a choice in living like someone suggested already . Except that to is vanity and probably is not true in the totality of things .
but what of abstract thought though
such as accounting , mathematics , chemistry , physics , biology , geology . philosophy etc
That is all natural progression of human evolution . The instinct of humans to pattern things . That is what humans do , Organize in herd animal fashions . The big thing is we make tools and mathematics , accounting and such things are no different than a monkey using a stick to get a banana . More "as a Human would say " sophisticated tool usury . That is all part of the nature of humans to copy and paste . Not at all related to free will , Quite the opposite by way of copying eliminates free will