# Does no free will necessarily entail fatalism or nihilism? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 29, 2024, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-no-free-will-necessarily-entail-fatalism-or-nihilism/1000940 "2024-04-29T19:37:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2024, 11:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-no-free-will-necessarily-entail-fatalism-or-nihilism/1000940/81 "2024-05-17T11:07:49Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > I wonder if there is some kind of underlying “prerequisite” - you need to already accept X before arguments on Y will click for you. I can follow **Mijin** fairly well if I assume just a couple premises - physicalism, compatiblist definition of “free”. His position seems self-consistent to me. However I personally reject those premises. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2024, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-no-free-will-necessarily-entail-fatalism-or-nihilism/1000940/82 "2024-05-17T12:11:17Z")
As the joke goes, “We all believe in free will; we have no choice.” We _feel_ we have “free will” but that’s all it is; a feeling. Presumably hardwired by nature, our conscious minds just paper over most of what goes into decisionmaking with the sensation of “free will”. IMHO an artifact of the fact that humans have no access to most of our mind and aren’t aware of most of the processes that lead up to a given decision, so we just look at output of the black box of our subconscious and call it “free will”. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2024, 12:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-no-free-will-necessarily-entail-fatalism-or-nihilism/1000940/83 "2024-05-17T12:13:30Z")
It seems to me that your difficulty with finding an acceptable definition of “free will” is quite similar to your difficulty with the concept of free will itself. If free will could be exactly defined in terms of other words or other concepts (in a non-circular way), we wouldn’t really need the concept of free will—we could just use those other words and concepts. If free will worked according to a “mechanism,” that explained what determines a person’s free choices, it wouldn’t be free will. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2024, 12:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-no-free-will-necessarily-entail-fatalism-or-nihilism/1000940/84 "2024-05-17T12:24:38Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > Yes, I certainly _feel_ as though I have the ability to make choices. Right, me too. I feel I chose to make a coffee just now. And instead of going to work this morning, I could have got on a plane to Cuba instead. Nobody, on any side of this debate, thinks otherwise. We all experience that same feeling and no-one here is arguing for Fatalism. > [@](#): > > Right now, I have the ability to choose whether or not I post this reply, and how I word it if I do. (Well, not “now” for you reading this, but my “now” when I’m composing it.) There are a number of reasons to post it, and a number of reasons not to, but those reasons don’t _force_ me to choose one way or the other. It is not about “forcing”, it is about the reasons that you did something. Let’s go back to my example of deciding to fly to Cuba, on a whim. There were reasons that I should have gone to the office, and I _chose to ignore them_, **free will for the win!** But wait a second, let’s dig down a bit. Did I choose to find my job boring? No, I can choose to change my job, but I can’t choose what I find stimulating. Did I choose to be in a state of malaise that morning? Obviously not. Did I choose for Cuba to exist, and to be somewhere warm and perceived to be exotic and laid-back? Nope, that’s the world I was born into. Did I choose to have a body that needs food, warmth etc? And on and on. All the factors that went into my decision are ultimately external or things I was born with. The decision-making comes down to how I weight these different factors. This is very much personal of course, but it’s also not something we ourselves choose. You don’t get to choose to be someone who loves adventure sports vs someone happiest playing chess and knitting. You can choose what to do at any instance, but not what things press your buttons, and to what extent. So, if we were to somehow reverse time, and importantly _reverse my memories back to the state they were at that moment_, I’ll **freely** choose to go to Cuba, for all the same reasons, all over again. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2024, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-no-free-will-necessarily-entail-fatalism-or-nihilism/1000940/85 "2024-05-17T12:30:57Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > It seems to me that your difficulty with finding an acceptable definition of “free will” is quite similar to your difficulty with the concept of free will itself. There is no “difficulty” on my part – I simply think the concept is garbage. The difficulty is on the part of those who insist it means something, yet cannot agree on what it means, as we’ve seen in this thread, or answer fairly trivial questions about it. > [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > If free will could be exactly defined in terms of other words or other concepts (in a non-circular way), we wouldn’t really need the concept of free will—we could just use those other words and concepts. This is true of literally every word or concept. A definition is something that could be substituted in place of a word or term; the usefulness of the word or term is in its brevity, and allowing us to therefore speak at a higher level. This kind of, frankly, dodge, tacitly concedes the point that free will is at best incoherent. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2024, 12:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-no-free-will-necessarily-entail-fatalism-or-nihilism/1000940/86 "2024-05-17T12:36:02Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > This is true of literally every word or concept. If it were true of literally every word or concept, you would have circularity somewhere. ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2024, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-no-free-will-necessarily-entail-fatalism-or-nihilism/1000940/87 "2024-05-17T13:01:55Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > you would have circularity somewhere Oh, for sure, language has lots of circular references. Find a definition, then find the definitions of the words that make up that definition, etc., and I’m sure you’ll be find lots of circularities. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2024, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-no-free-will-necessarily-entail-fatalism-or-nihilism/1000940/88 "2024-05-17T13:10:09Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > This kind of, frankly, dodge, tacitly concedes the point that free will is at best incoherent. I am tempted to ask you to define “incoherent.” And/or to define “definition.” I hesitate to do so, lest it seem like I’m playing “gotcha” games. But if we can’t define “free will” in a mutually acceptable way, I wondered whether we could define some of the other terms of the discussion in a mutually acceptable way, and whether that would make the discussion any clearer. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2024, 1:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-no-free-will-necessarily-entail-fatalism-or-nihilism/1000940/89 "2024-05-17T13:23:10Z")
I define free will this way: That somewhere in the universe, some consciousness, with deliberate intent, does something because they want to, and that’s the reason the event takes place. If you can instead explain the event in terms of causal factors that make the conscious decision irrelevant — “wash it out”, so that we don’t have any real reason to take the deliberate choice into account, then it’s no longer the reason the event takes place. Does that match up with what anyone else considers “free will”? ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2024, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-no-free-will-necessarily-entail-fatalism-or-nihilism/1000940/90 "2024-05-17T13:33:22Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > > [@Mijin](#): > > > > This kind of, frankly, dodge, tacitly concedes the point that free will is at best incoherent. > > I am tempted to ask you to define “incoherent.” And/or to define “definition.” @Mijin already defined incoherent in the context of this discussion. Free will is “incoherent” because it is internally contradictory; in order for “free will” to be real, our decision making process needs to possess multiple mutually exclusive properties. It’s incoherent in the same way an invisible pink unicorn is incoherent. It’s either invisible, or pink. > [@Mijin](#): > > The popular conception of “free will” is desiring an inconsistent set of properties. It’s saying that your decision is indeed linked to things like prior experiences, but it also needs to be the product of some other factor… And that factor has to have the potential to be _different_ given the same inputs from the universe, and also _cannot be random_, because randomness is not generally considered free. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2024, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-no-free-will-necessarily-entail-fatalism-or-nihilism/1000940/91 "2024-05-17T13:40:08Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > Does that match up with what anyone else considers “free will”? Not for me, and here is why. > [@AHunter3](#): > > That somewhere in the universe, some consciousness, with deliberate intent, does something because they want to, and that’s the reason the event takes place. OK, great, that happens every day for every one of us (well, it happens every day for me, and I assume you aren’t all Philosophical Zombies while I am not). > [@AHunter3](#): > > If you can instead explain the event in terms of causal factors that make the conscious decision irrelevant — “wash it out”, so that we don’t have any real reason to take the deliberate choice into account, then it’s no longer the reason the event takes place. This is where I quibble. Because this _also_ happens every day for every one of us in every decision we make. So if that invalidates “free will”, then I do not believe that free will exists. You are free to make any decision you want; but the decision you _will_ make is determined by your past and present, because you cannot _choose_ what you _want_. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2024, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-no-free-will-necessarily-entail-fatalism-or-nihilism/1000940/92 "2024-05-17T13:59:15Z")
Babale, I’m not clear on whether you dissent with my definition of free will or accept it as a definition and then conclude “in that case free will doesn’t exist”. If you dissent with my definition, that gives you room to make a different conclusion, using a different definition. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2024, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-no-free-will-necessarily-entail-fatalism-or-nihilism/1000940/93 "2024-05-17T14:06:21Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > Babale, I’m not clear on whether you dissent with my definition of free will or accept it as a definition and then conclude “in that case free will doesn’t exist”. I don’t dissent with your definition of free will because I don’t have my own better definition (other than “free from God’s direct control” which I think is what is actually typically meant by “free will”). I do think that if the second part I quoted invalidates free will by your definition, then we do not have free will by your definition, because as stated we cannot delink our decisions from prior and present states and thus causality. Eta: although, can you clarify this? > [@AHunter3](#): > > If you can instead explain the event in terms of causal factors that make the conscious decision irrelevant — “wash it out”, so that we don’t have any real reason to take the deliberate choice into account I don’t think _other factors_ wash out deliberate choice or that we can ignore deliberate choice. We clearly make choices. But the choices we make are not arbitrary or random. They are based on our past experience and present state. Modify our memories so we keep experiencing the same situation with the same perceived present and past, and you will keep getting the same outcome. I don’t know if that is “free” or not by your definition. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2024, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-no-free-will-necessarily-entail-fatalism-or-nihilism/1000940/94 "2024-05-17T16:13:24Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > I agree with you completely - this is the only definition of free will that has been internally consistent to me. > > My question is, what does this definition mean if we do not operate from the presupposition that God exists and created the world. Ok, I see that I got too hung up on the traditional to expand to what I meant. Without God, I think the issue is whether everything in existence is predestined or if it flows from an initial state but is not set in stone, not a clockwork existence. That’s the question being asked. So does the universe being deterministic mean that it flows by specific natural processes, or does it mean that the path of everything, every decision, every life, every molecule and atom is set so they cannot vary, that they are theoretically as predictable as eclipses? Or is there a difference between those two statements? > [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Bringing God into the matter rules out free will even more, since an all-knowing creator god directly contradicts the universe being anything other than purely deterministic. Such a god means that _everything_ was planned and known by that god before the universe even existed, including every act and thought humans have ever had. Yes, but this is a flaw in the concept of “all-knowing”. It’s sort of the same problem that arises out of prophesy. If you can see the future, is that future locked such that you cannot change it? If you could change it, then it’s a provisional future. Is it deterministic if it’s changeable? > [@Mijin](#): > > Thanks for attempting to define free will, but this serves to illustrate about how incoherent the concept of free will is. I agree. Whether it’s “free will” or “making choices”, the problem is the same. Does being deterministic mean that the factors that cause you to choose are such that resetting the universe exactly to that point, the outcome would always be the same because the factors are all the same. That’s the philosophical conundrum regardless of the words to describe it. > [@Mijin](#): > > I could say that a deterministic universe populated only by chess-playing computers, but that _has no god_, is free, according to your definition: those chess computers are not constrained by God in their move choices, right? In my initial statement, you could, but my intent was more to suggest that the source of the term arose in religious context but the conundrum exists if one expands the concept to a non-god explanation as I have done. ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2024, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-no-free-will-necessarily-entail-fatalism-or-nihilism/1000940/95 "2024-05-17T16:59:43Z")
As far as we can tell, the universe isn’t deterministic. That is, you couldn’t, even in principle, with a large enough computer outside the universe, predict how it will proceed. Quantum uncertainty will screw up your attempts. That doesn’t imply free will, of course – first, it’s not clear that quantum effects have an effect on the operation of the brain, other than randomly screwing it up, and second, randomness is not free will anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2024, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-no-free-will-necessarily-entail-fatalism-or-nihilism/1000940/96 "2024-05-17T17:09:05Z")
> [@RitterSport](#): > > As far as we can tell, the universe isn’t deterministic. That is, you couldn’t, even in principle, with a large enough computer outside the universe, predict how it will proceed. Quantum uncertainty will screw up your attempts. Yes. If we rewound the entire universe to a given point and then let it play out again, things would diverge due to quantum weirdness propagating up to the macro level, and then small changes like an atom being in a slightly different location propagate up to major changes like a different part of a DNA strand being hit by radiation causing a mutation, or a different sperm reaching the egg first, etc; through the butterfly effect, we expect very slight changes in initial conditions (or in the way things play out) to lead to massive changes in outcome. So if we rewound the clock 100 years and let it play out again, the world may very well be completely unrecognizable. But none of those differences would be due to someone faced with identical circumstances, in an identical state of mind, making two different decisions. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2024, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-no-free-will-necessarily-entail-fatalism-or-nihilism/1000940/97 "2024-05-17T21:01:12Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > That somewhere in the universe, some consciousness, with deliberate intent, does something because they want to, and that’s the reason the event takes place. Sure, but we can’t choose our wants. e.g. Look at the effort people go to to find a partner. Sure, all their actions are freely chosen. But they are also “wired” to feel a strong emotional and sexual desire to have a partner, in a way that most people weight this higher than many other factors. So again, for example, if I were arranging to go on a date, I was right now weighting that higher than other options available. If you were to reverse time and put my brain / soul / whatever back in that exact situation with the same memories again…I’ll again weight that option higher than others and arrange to go on a date. Why would I weight things differently, if everything is the same? ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2024, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-no-free-will-necessarily-entail-fatalism-or-nihilism/1000940/98 "2024-05-17T21:03:03Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > So if we rewound the clock 100 years and let it play out again, the world may very well be completely unrecognizable. But none of those differences would be due to someone faced with identical circumstances, in an identical state of mind, making two different decisions. Exactly, it’s completely a red herring. Whether the universe is deterministic or not, the way I reason and make decisions is the same. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2024, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-no-free-will-necessarily-entail-fatalism-or-nihilism/1000940/99 "2024-05-17T22:15:17Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > Eta: although, can you clarify this? > > > [@AHunter3](#): > > > > If you can instead explain the event in terms of causal factors that make the conscious decision irrelevant — “wash it out”, so that we don’t have any real reason to take the deliberate choice into account > > I don’t think _other factors_ wash out deliberate choice or that we can ignore deliberate choice. We clearly make choices. > > But the choices we make are not arbitrary or random. They are based on our past experience and present state. > [@Mijin](#): > > > [@AHunter3](#): > > > > That somewhere in the universe, some consciousness, with deliberate intent, does something because they want to, and that’s the reason the event takes place. > > Sure, but we can’t choose our wants. In the quoted portions of both of the above posters’ perspectives, there is a division between “who we are” and the externalia that drives us. To my way of thinking, if my sensation that I am making conscious deliberate choices is not an illusion, then this separation has to be called into question. I mean, if we aren’t going to go with “external forces determine your choices, hence you don’t have free will”, we have to posit that “who we are” includes those external forces in some sense. And I go with that model. Not that the individual discrete AHunter3 is not “who I am” but that it isn’t the only component of “who I am”. And to treat me as only that is to embrace an illusion. An illusion, I remind you, is something that ain’t so. I said “free will” means that somewhere in the universe, some consciousness, with deliberate intent, does something because they want to, and that’s why the event takes place. That “somewhere” is not, however, confined to AHunter3 the individual. People keep bandying God about in this discussion as well, so I may as well join in. God is in the interconnections, the unity of it all, the interactive nature of the universe, and it is in that participatory sense of self, I suspect, that the free will I sense myself as having, resides. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2024, 10:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-no-free-will-necessarily-entail-fatalism-or-nihilism/1000940/100 "2024-05-17T22:39:08Z")
> [@AHunter3](#): > > To my way of thinking, if my sensation that I am making conscious deliberate choices is not an illusion, then this separation has to be called into question. I mean, if we aren’t going to go with “external forces determine your choices, hence you don’t have free will”, we have to posit that “who we are” includes those external forces in some sense. And I go with that model. I wouldn’t quite phrase it that way, but that seems basically sound to me. I freely chose to scratch my shoulder just now _and_ that was an inevitable choice based on my physiology, psychology and the events that led up to that moment. But I also want to emphasize that _this is what choice is_. It’s not that the external universe is _preventing_ me having free choice, it’s that being in a particular scenario, and having particular preferences, is the only way we would both _need_ to, and be _able_ to, make a rational choice. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-no-free-will-necessarily-entail-fatalism-or-nihilism/1000940.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-no-free-will-necessarily-entail-fatalism-or-nihilism/1000940.md?page=6)