if it was all predetermined, why PAY someone to see if it was predetermined or not? or maybe, the researchers just lied so they could keep getting checks. hmmm… sounds like they had free will!!!
Of course there is a choice. As long as you have options, you have a choice. As it were.
But I assert that if we are constrained by the number of options that our brains make us aware of at a moment in time and we are equally constrained by the feelings that our brain “makes” us feel when we evaluate those choices, then we are not truly “free”. This is like saying that someone who is wearing leg shackles and the man without them are both “free” to run a marathon. If we all agree there’s a possibility that we’re all wearing shackles but we don’t realize it, then we must also agree that we can’t profess that we, personally, have free will. We can speculate that it perhaps exists for others–people who are perhaps more evolved and special than us. But without knowing to what degree we are shackled, we cannot profess that we have free will. Because it is impossible, from our vantage point, to know for certain. It’s best to acknowledge that there is a lot we don’t know about why we do what we do than to make a strong statement like, “Of course we have free will! I choose to believe this!!!”
None of that has anything to do with “free will”.
a man in a wheel chair and a man who can walk can both choose to go (almost) anywhere they want. they are just going to get there by different means. being in a wheelchair doesnt mean you dont have free will. it means you cant walk.
not to you it doesnt
If someone had you list all the things you could be doing besides typing on a message board, do you think your list would be exhaustive?
Would your list look like mine?
How did you decide to put down “i could be outside walking in the sunshine”. Was it a conscious decision on your part to think of this (a thought about a thought). Or did it happen to come to mind from seemingly out of nowhere?
What about the item after that? And the item after that? At what point did you choose to come up with these “choices”?
If your final list doesn’t include “clean up my bedroom” and this turns out to be the best choice out all of possible choices in the universe, should you be judged as a failure for not considering this? If you do think “clean up my bedroom”, but you suffer a panic attack every time you think of dirt and filth, can you be blamed for going with a less prudent alternative?
I’m interested in your responses. I’m trying to figure out how well you’ve been following my or anyone else’s argument.
Which probably isn’t very except for well-defined, macro systems on very short time-scales. Determinism is not a viable model for the millions of tiny scale effects that feed into creating a particular reality. Quantum mechanics states that these types of effects are both not predictable based on any current state and not deterministic in any way that we know of. Combine that with Chaos theory which says that very small effects can have profound changes on larger systems that grow larger as time passes and the whole idea of determinism starts to fall apart.
This isn’t pseudo-philosophical bullshit I am spewing out. You can test it experimentally in many ways. Build a proton detector (or something that detects any other quantum event like radioactive decay) and hook that into a decision making algorithm that triggers stock trades, the route you take to work on a given day or any other decision making process that you choose. The result will be truly random if it is designed correctly and there is nothing classically deterministic about it.
If that sounds artificial, keep in mind that your brain also depends on tens of billions of individual connections that are also influenced by quantum events. These play a role in all behaviors as well even if the mechanisms aren’t that well understood.
In other words, if you took an exact physical snapshot of the world and replayed it many times starting from the same point, you would not see the same outcomes at the micro or macro level (cellular all the way up to the whole world). I don’t know what that means for the concept of free will exactly but it is a strong argument against the type of determinism that many people here keep referencing as a counter-argument. It doesn’t exist either.
you seem to be saying (are saying) that because things INFLUENCE or LIMIT my decisions and actions, i have NO CHOICE about what i do
i’m interested in your response too
no offense, but i dont think you really believe what you profess to believe
you seem to be quite full of individual will to me!!!
What does “free” mean to you? Because to me it means unrestricted, unimpeded, and capable of acting independently.
You can “define” free however you want. But for this debate to work, we need to have some basic agreement in terminology. If the man in the wheelchair is not allowed to run in the marathon with all the runners because the rules says “no wheelchairs are allowed”, then no, the two aren’t equally free. The “almost” you inserted parenthetically is my entire point!
Why can’t you answer my questions? I’ve answered yours. Please show me the same courtesy. That’s all I ask.
i thought i answered all of your questions at once by stating that a limited number of choices still leaves you with a choice… that seems to be the whole argument right there
I repeat, what is your definition of “free”? Because my definition does not allow for “influence” or “limit”.
The Google dictionary corroborates my usage of the word.
Free will is what we’ve been talking about all this time. Just in case you need some remindin’.
so we are arguing about the difference between a choice and free will.
I want to thank Robert163 for starting this thread. I have been meaning to ask it for a long time. This discussion always sounds like people are having about five different debates at the same time and they are only tangentially related. This thread is no different and I am still confused about what the core opposing positions are.
Robert - this is just a suggestion but this board has much higher standards than superficially similar boards. You are debating with real-life scientists with doctorates plus a few total numbskulls. Proper capitalization is appreciated especially in Great Debates. It is still unresolved whether you have a choice to do that or not but it will make people take you more seriously if you do 
ok. but he can do lots of other things beside run in a marathon.
But is this proof of a free will? NO, IT IS NOT.
The questions were my way of showing how you very NOT it is. It’s too bad you seem more intent on upping your post count than personally engaging with the core of the “free will is an illusion” argument. If choices come to us through a power we have no control over (e.g., our subconscious minds), then we are severely limited. Thus, we are not free in any meaningful sense. We can speak of having a “will”. But we can’t speak of having a “free will”.
well, put me in the category of a numbskull then, but thanks for the post and glad you like the thread
Hmm. I thought the title of the thread was “About the illusion of free will”. Not the “illusion of choice”.
Around here, we call this kind of dodging “shifting goal posts”. It is considered bad form in debate. I hope I don’t have to spell out to you why this is.
in all seriousness, we are now talking about a matter of opinion. you think we are not free. you support you claim by limited number of choices and casual influences. i say people still have a choice. no offense but you can’t prove people don’t have a chose, can you? no. so we are describing the exact same thing but have a different opinion on the matter. yours i view to be pessimistic. i dont see what possible value it could have to you. if we are to have an OPINION on a topic, why not let it be a positive one.
i hope i dont have to spell out to you what i mean when i say you are engaging in semantics. i am more concerned with the real issue than terminology.