# Predestination and Freewill
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predestination-and-freewill/210939
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [November 2, 2003, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predestination-and-freewill/210939 "2003-11-02T03:29:18Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Hydrocortisone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hydrocortisone)
#### Post date: [November 2, 2003, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predestination-and-freewill/210939/1 "2003-11-02T03:29:18Z")
How do people reconcile the concepts of predestination and freewill? I know some religions believe in both concepts. How does this work? If a person is predestined, how can they have freewill?
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### Author:  [@The\_Peyote\_Coyote](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Peyote_Coyote)
#### Post date: [November 2, 2003, 5:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predestination-and-freewill/210939/2 "2003-11-02T05:02:49Z")
I’m predestined to believe I have free will.
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### Author:  [@hansel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hansel)
#### Post date: [November 2, 2003, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predestination-and-freewill/210939/3 "2003-11-02T05:05:35Z")
Whether or not we’re predestined for scientific or religious reasons, we 're unable to know the future, so we’re forced to act like we have free will. That being the case, what’s the difference between having free will and being unable to escape the illusion that we have free will?
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### Author:  [@EllisDee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EllisDee)
#### Post date: [November 2, 2003, 6:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predestination-and-freewill/210939/4 "2003-11-02T06:35:50Z")
Guilt/remorse and taking responsibility for one’s actions. All people should be held blameless in a predetermined world. They were only acting out the scripts they were given.
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### Author:  [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)
#### Post date: [November 2, 2003, 8:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predestination-and-freewill/210939/5 "2003-11-02T08:02:14Z")
There’s a more basic question that must be dealt with first: how do people reconcile the concept free will with itself?
What the heck does it mean?
> [@](#):
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> All people should be held blameless in a predetermined world. They were only acting out the scripts they were given.
How does predetermination alter responsibility? If an automaton kills someone, in what way is it not responsible? It may not have sole responsibility, as the one who built it would share responsibility, and so on back through any number of causal steps. But the automaton is still responsible, and the most immediately and directly responsible.
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### Author:  [@Joe\_Random](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Joe_Random)
#### Post date: [November 2, 2003, 8:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predestination-and-freewill/210939/6 "2003-11-02T08:55:45Z")
> [@](#):
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> \*Originally posted by Apos \*
> \*\*If an automaton kills someone, in what way is it not responsible? It may not have sole responsibility, as the one who built it would share responsibility, and so on back through any number of causal steps. But the automaton is still responsible, and the most immediately and directly responsible. \*\*
Not so. The builder of the automaton (assuming that the builder was in possession of free will) would be the sole bearer of the responsibility.
After all, an automaton is just a machine of arbitrary complexity. I could create another machine of arbitrary complexity. Let’s call this new machine a “gun”. If I build this “gun”, and then use it to kill someone, then I hold full responsibility, and the “gun” holds none at all. At least, not in the sense that I _think_ we’re using the word “responsibility” in this debate.
The problem is that, after you have enough separation between the initialization of the machine and its subsequent action – after the amount of direct supervision of the machine reaches some lower bound – we start to anthropomorphize the machine, and attribute to it properties that it does not actually possess; properties such as responsibility.
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### Author:  [@Lola](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lola)
#### Post date: [November 2, 2003, 9:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predestination-and-freewill/210939/7 "2003-11-02T09:00:41Z")
I’m pretty sure I’m operating under free will. Nobody could have planned all this shit. Although, if they did, it means I’m not to blame…
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### Author:  [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)
#### Post date: [November 2, 2003, 9:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predestination-and-freewill/210939/8 "2003-11-02T09:12:35Z")
> [@](#):
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> At least, not in the sense that I think we’re using the word “responsibility” in this debate.
What sense is that? I understand that people THINK there is another sense… but I’m not sure there really is. It would require a coherent explanation of what “free will” (in the strong sense, distinct from “freedom from external constraint”) is for it to make sense, and I’m not sure there is such a thing.
> [@](#):
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> The builder of the automaton (assuming that the builder was in possession of free will) would be the sole bearer of the responsibility.
I disagree: both are responsible at different levels, in the only way it makes sense to understand the word “responsible.” Take away either the automaton (prior to its murderous act) or its creator (prior to the creation of the automaton) and there will be no murder. The creator may intend the automaton to kill, but the automaton also intends to kill. In BOTH cases, there is intention, and in either case, where the intention comes from originally isn’t relevant after the being in question is running around making choices and having intentions that it carries out. The problem with your gun analougy is that the gun does not choose to kill, so it makes no sense to speak of it intending anything. But the automaton is built to choose to kill, just as the creator is built to choose to build a killer.
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### Author:  [@EllisDee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EllisDee)
#### Post date: [November 2, 2003, 10:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predestination-and-freewill/210939/9 "2003-11-02T10:49:23Z")
I can sort of see your side to it, though I disagree with it. It is more clear (for me at least) if you replace predetermination with genetic predisposition.
The basic difference is this: I can choose to not do what my genes dictate. If I had the alcoholic gene, for instance, I can choose not to pick up the first drink.
If I am predetermined to drink, however, I don’t even get to choose to not pick up the first drink.
You seem to be saying that, in your sense of a deterministic world, that we all choose to do what we are preordained to do. Your use of the word “choose” is misleading…there is no choice being made.
Think of humans in a predetermined world as akin to computer programs. You cannot blame a computer program for doing anything, because you programmed it to do exactly what it did.
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### Author:  [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)
#### Post date: [November 2, 2003, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predestination-and-freewill/210939/10 "2003-11-02T13:52:05Z")
I’ve been wondering about this myself. We live in four dimensions, the dimension of time being the one over which we have the least control. Okay, let’s say time is a continuum that exists “in the past” and “in the future” and “in the present”.
I think we all agree that the past has already happened, and that what is happening right now is the present. The “present” (and for the sake of ease, let’s assume that “the present” refers to more than just a single instant) was the “future” 150 years ago. Everything that has happened up 'til now is the “past”. Since the future is as it is, then it must have been “predestined” to be as it is 150 years ago. In another 150 years, today will be the “past” and the “future” will be what it will be.
It seems to me that what we call “time” exists; and if it exists, then it exists all at once. That is, the “future” already exists; but just as Seattle exists, it is displaced from Los Angeles and I can’t be in two places at once. I’ll have to cross an interval of space in order to be there. So the future “has already happened”, but we need to cross the interval of time to get to it. We just haven’t gotten there yet.
Here’s where “free will” comes in. We can do whatever we want. We can make decisions and act on them, or not act on them. Whatever we do though, it has “already happened” in the future. So I think that we can’t change the future any more than we can change the past. We can make our own decisions, but the outcome of those decisions exist already and we just haven’t gotten there yet. If that’s the case, then there is no “free will” in the sense that we can’t change the future. It’s “predestined”.
What about dimensions? If there are alternate universes, then there can be “alternate futures”. At the instant I make a decision and act upon it, the dimensions diverge. In one dimension, I acted and the future that would have happened does not happen for me. In the other dimension, I didn’t act and the future is as it was/will be the instant before I acted. I split into two entities and neither has any concept that there is another one. This splitting goes on for every instant in time, and for every decision I act upon. So if viewed from an external vantage point, my liives would resemble a leafy tree. But each of my infinite selves would be convinced that he is the only one and that there was no divergence from his “path”. In this case, I do have “free will”, and any choices I make creates another “universe”.
Or not. If anything is possible, then perhaps those other “universes” already existed and each of my infinite selves were predestined to take the paths they did.
So it seems to me that if there is one “universe” in which we live – that is, in which we can act – then we cannot change the future because it already exists. If there are infinite “universes”, then we can “change the future” all we want – except that any changes we make will simply shunt us off into another “universe” that already exists from the point that we made our choice and on to _its_ future.
Or I could be completely wrong. I rose early today, and have had only one cuppa coffee. And it will be five days before I can read any replies, since I’m heading out in about half an hour.
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### Author:  [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)
#### Post date: [November 2, 2003, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predestination-and-freewill/210939/11 "2003-11-02T17:12:10Z")
> [@](#):
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> Your use of the word “choose” is misleading…there is no choice being made.
Why not? What does “choice being made” mean to you? What does “making a choice” involve at a fundamental level that requires whatever you think “free will” is? What is “free will” and what role does it play in the operation of a being that is supposed to make a choice?
> [@](#):
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> You seem to be saying that, in your sense of a deterministic world, that we all choose to do what we are preordained to do.
No, rather, we are preordained to choose as we do.
But I’m not arguing for a deterministic world necessarily. It’s perfecly possible that the world has both deterministic and indeterministic (i.e. truly random, uncaused) elements. However, indeterminism doesn’t help matters at all when it comes to explaining “free will.” My choices may not be pre-determined in the sense of full determinism, but the elements of randomness add nothing to ones understanding of choosing either, since by definition they are random, and in the present, the outcomes of random elements act no different than the outcomes of determined elements.
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### Author:  [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)
#### Post date: [November 2, 2003, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predestination-and-freewill/210939/12 "2003-11-02T17:24:58Z")
I don’t like either. I make all my decisions by flipping coins.
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### Author:  [@Iamthat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Iamthat)
#### Post date: [November 2, 2003, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predestination-and-freewill/210939/13 "2003-11-02T23:05:44Z")
**Apros**
> [@](#):
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> I disagree: both are responsible at different levels, in the only way it makes sense to understand the word “responsible.” Take away either the automaton (prior to its murderous act) or its creator (prior to the creation of the automaton) and there will be no murder. The creator may intend the automaton to kill, but the automaton also intends to kill. In BOTH cases, there is intention, and in either case, where the intention comes from originally isn’t relevant after the being in question is running around making choices and having intentions that it carries out. The problem with your gun analougy is that the gun does not choose to kill, so it makes no sense to speak of it intending anything. But the automaton is built to choose to kill, just as the creator is built to choose to build a killer.
If it cannot be said that humans have ‘free will’ because that who has the free will cannot be found, i.e. does a thought have free will? How can a machine have free will in the form of choosing and intending?
If a human doesn’t have an observable ‘self’ then certainly a machine doesn’t either. It is necessary to maintain the appearance that humans choose, have free will and therefore can be held responsible. However it is not necessary to maintain such an appearance for machines.
The intention is not in the act.
In humans there is no casual link between intention and action. I.e. you can sit there all day and “think” your arm into moving but it won’t. Thoughts don’t move objects. Action appears to ‘just happen’.
The automaton doesn’t choose to kill. Its actions are a series of causes and effects built into its program. A choice implies a chooser but there is no chooser in a machine?
A machine or automaton can be held responsible as a “cause” but cannot be held accountable. In the same way that a machine cannot act irresponsibly. It can’t lack a sense of responsibility, because it has no “sense”. It’s not liable.
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### Author:  [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)
#### Post date: [November 2, 2003, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predestination-and-freewill/210939/14 "2003-11-02T23:49:33Z")
> [@](#):
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> If it cannot be said that humans have ‘free will’ because that who has the free will cannot be found, i.e. does a thought have free will? How can a machine have free will in the form of choosing and intending?
Before you even ask any of these questions, you have to tell me what “free will” is and what it means that something has it.
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> The automaton doesn’t choose to kill. Its actions are a series of causes and effects built into its program. A choice implies a chooser but there is no chooser in a machine?
Sure there is. It was built in.
> [@](#):
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> A machine or automaton can be held responsible as a “cause” but cannot be held accountable. In the same way that a machine cannot act irresponsibly. It can’t lack a sense of responsibility, because it has no “sense”. It’s not liable.
Why can’t it be held accountable? Who else, in the most immediate sense, made the choice to kill, if not it?
It most certianly can be made to have a sense of responsibility for its actions, in the same way that I take responsibility for my actions. After all, I chose them, regardless of why I chose them.
> [@](#):
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> In humans there is no casual link between intention and action. I.e. you can sit there all day and “think” your arm into moving but it won’t. Thoughts don’t move objects. Action appears to ‘just happen’.
Not really: there are distinct differences between when you think about doing something and actually choose to do it. The brain, for one, has a different readiness potential immediately prior to taking an action, as opposed to merely thinking about what it would be like if your arm moved.
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### Author:  [@Iamthat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Iamthat)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2003, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predestination-and-freewill/210939/15 "2003-11-03T01:03:44Z")
**Apros**
> [@](#):
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> Before you even ask any of these questions, you have to tell me what “free will” is and what it means that something has it.
Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it? If free will is an action free of influences then there is no such action as the “freely willed” since nothing is free from influence.
> [@](#):
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> The automaton doesn’t choose to kill. Its actions are a series of causes and effects built into its program. A choice implies a chooser but there is no chooser in a machine?
>
> > [@](#):
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> > Sure there is. It was built in.
You can’t create a chooser. One can only create the appearance of choosing.
A “chooser” is someone and/or something that is distinct and separate from the choices that are made. In an automaton there is nothing that distinguishes the chosen act from that which chooses. It is its actions; there’s nothing else to it. Then of course the same can be said of humans.
> [@](#):
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> Why can’t it be held accountable? Who else, in the most immediate sense, made the choice to kill, if not it?
>
> It most certianly can be made to have a sense of responsibility for its actions, in the same way that I take responsibility for my actions. After all, I chose them, regardless of why I chose them.
If it can be held responsible for its actions then it would have to be able to distinguish between good and bad acts. A series of replies can be encoded into it that give the appearance of good and ‘bad’, but it is void of its own morality because it cannot be hurt or suffer. It has no empathy because it can’t feel pain. It doesn’t know what it’s like to be something. It doesn’t know anything.
> [@](#):
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> In humans there is no casual link between intention and action. I.e. you can sit there all day and “think” your arm into moving but it won’t. Thoughts don’t move objects. Action appears to ‘just happen’.
>
> > [@](#):
> >
> > Not really: there are distinct differences between when you think about doing something and actually choose to do it. The brain, for one, has a different readiness potential immediately prior to taking an action, as opposed to merely thinking about what it would be like if your arm moved.
The intention doesn’t cause the act to take place. What causes your arm to move is an unknown. A cause and effect relation between thought and physical movement has yet to be established.
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### Author:  [@Apos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Apos)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2003, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predestination-and-freewill/210939/16 "2003-11-03T03:26:08Z")
> [@](#):
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> If free will is an action free of influences then there is no such action as the “freely willed” since nothing is free from influence.
Ah, but it’s much worse than that. If a choice is truly free… then it can’t be my choice. Because nothing I am determined what the choice was. In other words: the concept of responsibility is rendered null.
> [@](#):
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> A “chooser” is someone and/or something that is distinct and separate from the choices that are made. In an automaton there is nothing that distinguishes the chosen act from that which chooses.
Your points are null and void unless you can explain what you mean by a “choice.” The automaton is presented options in the form of possibilities, and makes a choice among them of which to do. If that’s not making a choice, then what IS making a choice? And how does it work?
> [@](#):
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> The intention doesn’t cause the act to take place. What causes your arm to move is an unknown. A cause and effect relation between thought and physical movement has yet to be established.
Intentions most certainly do make things take place. You are confusing imagining one’s arm moving with intending to move your arm. They are two distinct mental activities, which use different parts of the brain. Obviously, we aren’t talking about a c/e relationship between the EXPERIENCE of having thoughts and actions, because from all the evidence we can garner, the experience of having thoughts is caused by acts, rather than the other way around (i.e., the experience of deciding upon moving your arm happens temporally AFTER the electrochemical wheels have started to turn, precluding the experience fromhaving caused the wheels turning). We are talking about the actual mechanisms in the brain that are making the choices.
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### Author:  [@Iamthat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Iamthat)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2003, 5:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predestination-and-freewill/210939/17 "2003-11-03T05:36:45Z")
**Apos**
> [@](#):
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> Ah, but it’s much worse than that. If a choice is truly free… then it can’t be my choice. Because nothing I am determined what the choice was. In other words: the concept of responsibility is rendered null.
Right. If there is a willer of the willed it is not freely willed.
The presents of just …willing…would be free, but not from observation.
> [@](#):
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> A “chooser” is someone and/or something that is distinct and separate from the choices that are made. In an automaton there is nothing that distinguishes the chosen act from that which chooses.
>
> > [@](#):
> >
> > Your points are null and void unless you can explain what you mean by a “choice.” The automaton is presented options in the form of possibilities, and makes a choice among them of which to do. If that’s not making a choice, then what IS making a choice? And how does it work?
A choice is being made in the regular sense of the word choice, but there’s no “one” making the choice. There’s no entity present.
“what IS making the choice”?…is a misleading question. What chooses an avalanche to happen rather then not happen? It’s all a series of causes and effects. You know the famous saying, “When all the requirements are in place for an event to tale place it not only will happen it has to.”
Does a puppet make a choice? Or is the choice being made by a pull of the strings?
> [@](#):
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> Intentions most certainly do make things take place. You are confusing imagining one’s arm moving with intending to move your arm. They are two distinct mental activities, which use different parts of the brain. Obviously, we aren’t talking about a c/e relationship between the EXPERIENCE of having thoughts and actions, because from all the evidence we can garner, the experience of having thoughts is caused by acts, rather than the other way around (i.e., the experience of deciding upon moving your arm happens temporally AFTER the electrochemical wheels have started to turn, precluding the experience fromhaving caused the wheels turning). We are talking about the actual mechanisms in the brain that are making the choices.
No. It doesn’t matter which comes first, the action or the intention that’s not the issue. A thought has never been proven to be a physical event. The intention, which is a thought, to move my arm, does not move my arm. You’re confusing physical and physiological processes with mental ones. It is a completely unfounded assumption that the physical brain makes choices. Especially if it is also an unfounded assumption that there is a “you” who makes choices.
We have no proof that thoughts cause actions or actions cause thoughts. There certainly appears to be a relation between them but none has been established, mainly because we don’t know what a thought is, or what it is made of, if anything.
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### Author:  [@Dogface](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dogface)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2003, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predestination-and-freewill/210939/18 "2003-11-03T16:59:44Z")
Here is how my on Church sees it:
God’s perception is outside of time. Thus, as far as we can miserably (mis)understand Him, he “already knows” the future–but this is not a “knowledge” or a “future” as we are capable of understanding it, but it is not predestined because it has not “already happened”. Thus, we have free will, even if it cannot logically exist.
Now, to back up our contention that free will exists, we do point to Scriptural exhortations to observe moral behavior. Therefore, if Scripture is a message from God, and if it is a reliable guide to how we ought to behave, then it follows that we must have free will to not follow such exhortations, or they would not have been made.
How it is that God can know all outcomes and we also have free will is a matter of brain-teaser puzzles and is not immediately necessary for salvation, or at least nowhere near as important as “do not murder people” or “be charitable and merciful”.
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### Author:  [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2003, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predestination-and-freewill/210939/19 "2003-11-03T17:16:03Z")
Free will is an illusion, or at least an enormous oversimplification.
If, having been told to press a button some time in the next minute, I think to myself “I’m going to press it _now_…no, _now_…wait a moment, right _this_ is the one…” then there is only _one_ such correlation amongst all of those “decisions”, _ie._ the one immediately preceding the action. This is then [backwards](http://www.consciousness.arizona.edu/hameroff/New/Time_Flies/Time_Flies.htm) reasoned as being the _cause_ of the action. Further, if there is evidence of unconscious brain activity _before_ you have the experience of “choosing”, this would imply that even if there were such a correlation, the origin of the “choice” is not “conscious” at all. (Benjamin [Libet](http://www.pdcnet.org/volbrain.html) discovered that so-called “free” choices were preceded by an unconscious “readiness potential” in the brain around 500 msec. before the “choice” was made.)
Professor of cognitive neurology [Chris Frith](http://www.icn.ucl.ac.uk/members/Frith36) has an interesting theory which I liked - he points out that patients with a damaged prefrontal cortex _can’t resist_ making the “obvious” response (_eg_ neurologist Francois Lhermitte showed a patient around his flat - when he showed him the bedroom the patient undressed and got into bed). He suggests that we “train” our brains into a limited repetoire of responses, thus eliminating wildly inappropriate ones, by being trained through childhood what “mode” we can be in (heroic, scientific, friendly _etc_), and that this also might be determined by the environment. In this way, any “choice” is the result of a complex feedback between our brains and our environment, which _doesn’t_ absolutely eliminate “free will” as a useful entity but certainly relegates it to a mere “switching” response.
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### Author:  [@TVAA](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TVAA)
#### Post date: [November 3, 2003, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/predestination-and-freewill/210939/20 "2003-11-03T17:28:06Z")
Huh. Both **The Peyote Coyote** and **hansel** got it in one. The rest of this thread is just commentary (if highly erudite and sophisticated commentary) and pseudo-philosophic gibberish.
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