Can free will be proven?

[Drakim]

And if not, does that mean that free will as a concept is useless? I mean, if something has zero demonstrable effect, is it in any way, shape or form relevant to us other than a philosophical construct?

And as an extension of this: If free will is a useless concept in the practical realm, doesn't that also mean that all arguments like "if we don't have free will we can't blame the individual for his actions" are also worthless? After all, a person with or without free will seems to have zero differences as far as we humans can judge.

[fatape]

I find alot of the problems with free will is the fact that we can't even agree to a definiton of free will to begin with.

[Prinzy2]

We have the ability to act as we want within a defined set of parameters.

Three strippers are going to let me shove 20s in their bras or thongs.
Stripper A get the 20 in her bra.
Stripper B gets it in the thong.
Stripper C gets nothing because I didn't like what she was doing.

Free will is the ability to choose. I may be bias in my choice, but that doesn't mean I don't have free will.

[fatape]

At 10/17/09 10:36 PM, Prinzy2 wrote:
Free will is the ability to choose.

based on what?

are you suggesting that we choose every situation randomly?

[MachShot]

I think this question confuses the idea that influence trumps the idea of "free will". If we had no free will, we would be robots. We would have no emotions other than ones completely predetermined by a controlling force.

Imagine like you are a driver in a car, and you are on a highway. Likely, you are going to attempt to stay within the boundaries of the road, will slow down if it rains, will turn on the lights if its dark, and avoid other cars. This does not mean that you do not choose to to those things. We are just influenced in a way very similar to nearly all, given some sort of factor.

[Prinzy2]

At 10/17/09 10:42 PM, fatape wrote:

At 10/17/09 10:36 PM, Prinzy2 wrote:
Free will is the ability to choose.

based on what?

are you suggesting that we choose every situation randomly?

God, I really don't want to have a debate where I give you a rational explanation and you just say "why? Because you said so?". Try bringing something to the table.

How about this. You see $20 dollars laying on the sidewalk, nobody is around. You can choose to pick it up because it's $20 dollars in your pocket or leave it there because it isn't yours. We can say that we're programmed to pick it up or not pick it up for various reasons, but the fact of the matter is that we have a choice.

Nothing is random.

[fatape]

At 10/17/09 11:13 PM, Prinzy2 wrote:
Nothing is random.

that's determinism

[Ravariel]

At 10/17/09 10:06 PM, Drakim wrote: And if not, does that mean that free will as a concept is useless?

I don't believe one can prove free will, no. Not until we can determine an action with near 100% accuracy, then run double-blind experiments to see if anyone goes against the predictions. Even then it could be said that the setup was faulty.

I mean, if something has zero demonstrable effect, is it in any way, shape or form relevant to us other than a philosophical construct?

Probably not, no. However, as free will is how we SEEM to be... should we not assume that we have it? Considering the psychological and sociological ramifications of assuming the opposite, that should make sense.

[HorseloverFrost]

Proof of the existence or non-existence of free will is meaningless in itself. If it does exist it doesn't matter since people naturally assume it's existence, and if it doesn't exist we can't do anything about it.

However, proof of the existence of free will would also serve as a pretty large piece of evidence for the non-existence of God.

[gumOnShoe]

If you can't formally define free will you can't construct an experiment to test it and you certainly can't construct a proof either.

If you could prove that there existed a random one to many relationship between any one state of being and another you would have proof that free will could exist. A one to many relationship involves a function where you input x and have many possible values of y. And a strict definition of random occurrences is that when you have a one to many relationship the cost of traveling from x to y_n is the same as the cost as traveling from x to y_m. And for this case, not only would the costs be the same value, but it would not be possible to predict which version of y was going to come next and it would be impossible to to have a repeatable test.

Essentially, you would have to prove that there is no set of rules governing the universe in all circumstances of state transition. And that is highly unlikely, though it is fairly difficult to prove free will doesn't exist.

Free will is not necessary for justice.

[awkward-silence]

There is no way to prove that we have free will. I like Stephen Hawkings take on this. He said that we live in a cause and effect enviroment. Nothing happens without a previous cause, right? If your car wont start and a machanic looks it over and says that it should you will find a new machanic right? Because you know there must be a cause for the car to not start.

So every action that everyone does is a direct result of infinate many previous inputs. Things that have happened to us in the past, DNA, Society, Things that have happened to our great-great-great....... grandfather (and even farther removed). But since the inputs are unknowable as are their effects. We live in Chaos theory, giving the illusion of free will. And as such we must live as though we have it.

[Drakim]

At 10/26/09 04:23 AM, awkward-silence wrote: There is no way to prove that we have free will. I like Stephen Hawkings take on this. He said that we live in a cause and effect enviroment. Nothing happens without a previous cause, right? If your car wont start and a machanic looks it over and says that it should you will find a new machanic right? Because you know there must be a cause for the car to not start.

So every action that everyone does is a direct result of infinate many previous inputs. Things that have happened to us in the past, DNA, Society, Things that have happened to our great-great-great....... grandfather (and even farther removed). But since the inputs are unknowable as are their effects. We live in Chaos theory, giving the illusion of free will. And as such we must live as though we have it.

Although an interesting post, I'd much rather hear your take on the other questions I posed in the body of my OP, concerning the consequences of free will and the lack of provability.

[therealsylvos]

At 10/25/09 09:02 PM, gumOnShoe wrote:
Free will is not necessary for justice.

Are you planning on backing that up with an argument or are just supposed to accept your pronouncement?

[gumOnShoe]

At 10/26/09 10:28 AM, therealsylvos wrote:

At 10/25/09 09:02 PM, gumOnShoe wrote:
Free will is not necessary for justice.

Are you planning on backing that up with an argument or are just supposed to accept your pronouncement?

List the reasons you punish & judge people:

1) Reparations to the person harmed
2) Teach the aggressor a lesson, ie change their behavior
3) Deter both the aggresor and others from comitting simliar acts in the future

None of these things requires free will. A system can easily give back to victim, teach the aggressor a lesson and make the crime unappealing regardless of the existance of free will. You are still responsible for your actions as an actor, regardless of whether they will be made or not. In the strictest worse case scenario where we are all programs, we could still reprogram (counseling, behavior modeling, etc) you without affecting your individuality so that you don't bother others.

If an icicle is going to fall of a building and stab someone in the eye, and you can see its going to happen, then it makes sense to prevent it. If there is a machine built to make icicles to fall and kill people, we can do any number of things to the machine, such as disabling it, reprogramming it, turning it off etc.

[therealsylvos]

At 10/26/09 10:41 AM, gumOnShoe wrote:

At 10/26/09 10:28 AM, therealsylvos wrote:

At 10/25/09 09:02 PM, gumOnShoe wrote:
Free will is not necessary for justice.

List the reasons you punish & judge people:

1) Reparations to the person harmed
2) Teach the aggressor a lesson, ie change their behavior
3) Deter both the aggresor and others from comitting simliar acts in the future

Notice how you don't list justice.

If I have no free will, that means all my actions are caused.

If you push me down stairs, and i break someones vase, is it my fault, should I replace it, should I feel guilty?

If a hypnotist caused me to break all white, precious objects, am I responsible?

Lets take it further, if a hypnotist commanding me that for all actions which I receive praise, increase, and for all actions which I receive scorn, decrease. I still don't have free will, and I am not the cause of my actions anymore than if you pushed me.

You have to distinguish between an idea having value, or fulfilling the same purpose, and it being true. They don't have to go hand in hand.

So if a hypnotist commands me to break the first white object I see. And then he tells me to not do any action for which I have received punishment. And it happens to be your ming vase is the first object I see, holding me responsible may serve a pragmatic purpose, but it doesn't actually mean that I am responsible.

[amaterasu]

I think free will can be experienced but not observed.

[RubberTrucky]

Suppose there is no free will then there should be an algorithm to determine which answer will be given to a certain given question. (definition of free will)
Let this question be "Are you going to say 'cat'?"
It is possible to convey the predicted answer to the person before he answers the question, or else the algorithm is erronous.
The person can then choose to answer the opposite.

Hence, we have a contradiction and free will is quite disproven.

Though the assumption that a person can in fact answer the opposite might not be the case, but it would feel intuitively kind of weird.

[therealsylvos]

Ok one of us is retarded, or you mistyped

At 10/26/09 05:57 PM, RubberTrucky wrote: Suppose there is no free will then there should be an algorithm to determine which answer will be given to a certain given question. (definition of free will)

theoretically, however all determinists agree that decision making is a chaos system, and since you will never get EXACT measurements, such an algorithm would be useless. (see long range weather predicting)

Let this question be "Are you going to say 'cat'?"
It is possible to convey the predicted answer to the person before he answers the question, or else the algorithm is erronous.
The person can then choose to answer the opposite.

Hence, we have a contradiction and free will is quite disproven.

How does someone making a free choice disprove free will??
Furthermore, since reasoning is quite complex, why can't our prediction be something along the line of, "He will say cat, unless someone informs him of this prediction."
Of course then we start moving into the land of self-referential statements, which as Whitehead and Russel found out, is not really a place you want to be.

[SteveGuzzi]

The only way to 'test' free will would be to go back in time to when a decision is being made, and assuming all universal factors are exactly as they were before, observe whether a different choice is ever taken. Obviously we can't go back in time, and even if we could, our foreknowledge of events (among the other absurdities and paradoxes related to backwards time travel) would itself create a completely different set of factors than what the decision had occurred under before.

I consider free will "free" in the sense that, even though we are constrained by all sorts of preconditions and limitations on what choices we can possibly make, we're still generally free to choose at what length and at what intervals we make our decisions. In other words, we not only choose WHEN to choose but we also choose which factors we allow to influence us the most. Since everything is in a constant state of flux from one moment to the next we are under no compulsion to act under only one possible set of universal factors, and even with consideration to the factors that are present we can deliberately decide for ourselves which influences to suppress and which influences to encourage.

If the world were purely deterministic then I think it would by necessity have to exclude the possibility for individual thought and deliberation. I don't think the idea that "everything happens for a reason" by way of cause-and-effect does anything to disprove the idea that we each have the ability to choose which causes we LET affect us. Our will is not free in the sense that we can just up and do whatever we want regardless of circumstance, but I think if we get to choose even some of the reasons behind our actions then our will appears to be free-enough.

I don't think that determinism/free-will are contradictory ideas, I think they're complementary in the same sense that light/dark are opposite ideas and yet the presence of one does not disprove or contradict the presence of the other. Some things are determined to happen before the moment they happen has even arrived -- that's determinism; some things are only determined IN the moment and by a conscious entity that can choose both its moment AND its influence(s) -- that's free will.

[Korriken]

Cookie Turtledove head explode generator superman.

there, free will. i had no motivation for posting random words, no cause that forced me to type out random words, I did so for no logical reason.

[MultiCanimefan]

At 10/26/09 08:09 PM, Korriken wrote: Cookie Turtledove head explode generator superman.

there, free will. i had no motivation for posting random words,

Your motivation for typing random words was an attempt to prove freewill. The motivation can either be conscious or subconscious, it's still there.

no cause that forced me to type out random words, I did so for no logical reason.

No conscious reason, anyway.

[Korriken]

At 10/26/09 10:18 PM, MultiCanimefan wrote:

Your motivation for typing random words was an attempt to prove freewill. The motivation can either be conscious or subconscious, it's still there.

i suppose the motivation could be the simple fact that i wanted to, but since i freely chose such an action with no outside force telling me to, could that not be considered an act of free will? obviously i could have taken a lot of different action, like telling the op to go to hell, simply closing my browser, or even dancing in the rain in scuba gear to the macarena (that would get everyone's attention i do believe)

There you go. dancing in the rain in scuba gear to the Macarena, the ultimate act of free will.

[EggSnake]

To prove free will it must first be proven that god has ordered.
To prove free will is to disprove a divine plan.

[Shaggytheclown17]

Has anyone used the "if I tell you to jump off a cliff will you do it?" line yet?

Free will.....hmmm.... free will.......

guy 1 :I think free will is real
guy2: No, free will isn't real!
guy1:Well what makes you say that?
guy2:Becuase we came from a rock soup that magicly arranged into complex organisms and mutated somehow into higher ones.
guy1: .......is that all?
guy2: No, also because I had buttsecks with some random chick and she gave me herpes and aids, if God created me and didn't prevent it from happening then I'd rather go to Hell because I had no choice in the matter because I was created by slime soup and I'm controled by chemical reactions in my brain which are meaningless and without purpose!
guy1: ......... ............
guy2: (shoots guy1 in the head)

Soooooo.... the denial of free will in my opinion might be a form of insanity, a complete breakdown, or at least a convincingly fake one where a person uses this denial as an escape from responsability for one's actions, which doesn't work if you hadn't noticed.

Well I didn't really plan on having the guy1 n guy2 interaction go anywhere, just something I made up as I went lol

[fatape]

presenting any arguement with shaggy!

shaggy: BLAH BLAH EVILUTION IS WRONG BLAH BLAH ATHEISTS ARE STUPID

rational person: inserts evidence to the contrary

shaggy: BLAH BLAH THE BIBLE SAYS BLAH BLAH NOAHS ARK

rational person: theres no evidence of either

shaggy: WHATEVER IM LEAVING HAVE YOUR ATHEISM YOU LITTLE F*GG*T

rational person: ok

shaggy: ATHEISM IS WORNG , LOOK WHAT YOU HAVE TO LOOK FORWARD TO WHEN YOU DIE!

rational person: I though you were leaving? and we were talking about evolution

rinse and repeat

[fatape]

At 10/26/09 08:09 PM, Korriken wrote: Cookie Turtledove head explode generator superman.

there, free will. i had no motivation for posting random words,

to try and prove free will?

no cause that forced me to type out random words, I did so for no logical reason.

who said reasons had to be logical?

you just typed whatever appeard into your head first, and if we knew the exact inner workings of you brain and how it worked then we could figure out what you would write before hand.

[poxpower]

If there is no free will, think of what is actually at stake for, say, the USA.
The entire US constitution is null and void.

What's the point of letting people do their "pursuit of happiness" thing when the outcome of that search is already determined? They will either get it or not without them having anything to do with it.

What's the point of debates, elections, laws, trials etc. when their outcome was predicted before the sun was formed and before the first dinosaur walked the earth?

The role of humans in this machine is already determined: we are little puppets doomed to think our decisions shape the world when in fact it is the opposite. That's how we're made and we don't have a choice but to act out this program. We have the impression of free will. We don't have a choice. We're a robot programmed by the universe to think that we have no program and we make all decisions for ourselves.

We are irrevocably doomed to live this way and to interact with each other as if we all made decisions willingly.

[fatape]

At 10/27/09 12:20 PM, poxpower wrote: If there is no free will, think of what is actually at stake for, say, the USA.
The entire US constitution is null and void.

no becuase the constitution can influence what we do

however even if that wasn't the case that dosen,'t have anything to do with weither free will is true or not.

I hate to say it but alot of people hear are acting like wishful thinking religous people, thinking that just becuase something gives you comfert you should belive in it.

What's the point of letting people do their "pursuit of happiness" thing when the outcome of that search is already determined? They will either get it or not without them having anything to do with it.

you still have the take the actions though, in pre-determinism you can still improve your own life its just means that we could predict what would happen before it dose.

What's the point of debates, elections, laws, trials etc. when their outcome was predicted before the sun was formed and before the first dinosaur walked the earth?

again this is like the restaurant arguement

"why take an order when your just going to get the same thing anyway" the point is you have to take the order anyways,. The point of everything preety much stays the same, but all it means is that it could be predicted it would happen before it happens.

The role of humans in this machine is already determined: we are little puppets doomed to think our decisions shape the world when in fact it is the opposite. That's how we're made and we don't have a choice but to act out this program. We have the impression of free will. We don't have a choice. We're a robot programmed by the universe to think that we have no program and we make all decisions for ourselves.

some of us can think differntly ,

I think what happens is what was ultimaly going to happen all along, what I do still influences the universe , however what I do is predictable.

We are irrevocably doomed to live this way and to interact with each other as if we all made decisions willingly.

not if we can change the way humans think somehow

genetics or robotics , something along thoose lines.

[poxpower]

At 10/27/09 12:54 PM, fatape wrote:

I think what happens is what was ultimaly going to happen all along, what I do still influences the universe , however what I do is predictable.

You wouldn't say that a toaster chose to toast. Why do you pretend that you're special and chose anything?
The laws that govern a toaster govern you as well. You never had the choice to do anything you ever did just like the toaster never had the choice to do what it did.

In determinism, you have the same choices as a rock or a little piece of poop dangling from an elephant's anus.

not if we can change the way humans think somehow

See, you don't get it. You don't understand what determinism is :o

[Elfer]

At 10/27/09 12:20 PM, poxpower wrote: We are irrevocably doomed to live this way and to interact with each other as if we all made decisions willingly.

So? I can't see in four dimensions, so all the stuff is new to me anyway. Whether or not free will exists is relatively inconsequential.