Free Will

[romansh]

A trailer for a discussion coming near you soon:

 

[romansh]

This young man, I think, does a god job against compatibilist free will.

 

[romansh]

This could have gone in many threads.  Here Gus talks about how the Bible might be interpreted as being a determinist document at least in places.

 

[romansh]

Quite often people have asked does it matter if free will exists or not.

And for me, the answer is a very definite perhaps. Recently, the Nobel prize for physics was awarded where a particular aspect (locality versus non-locality) was awarded for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science jointly to Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger. Also, there was a recent Nature editorial perpetuating a misconception and a (one page) rebuttal article was written.

The conclusion can be taken as:
Contrary to what is often stated, these observations do not demonstrate that “spooky action at a distance” is real and nature therefore non-local. Rather, the observations show that if nature is local, then statistical independence must be violated.

Interestingly, whether we think we have free will or not affects the interpretation of how the universe ticks. Does this matter? 

Does anything matter?

 

[PaulS]

On 5/18/2023 at 10:13 PM, romansh said:

Quite often people have asked does it matter if free will exists or not.

And for me, the answer is a very definite perhaps. Recently, the Nobel prize for physics was awarded where a particular aspect (locality versus non-locality) was awarded for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science jointly to Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger. Also, there was a recent Nature editorial perpetuating a misconception and a (one page) rebuttal article was written.

The conclusion can be taken as:
Contrary to what is often stated, these observations do not demonstrate that “spooky action at a distance” is real and nature therefore non-local. Rather, the observations show that if nature is local, then statistical independence must be violated.

Interestingly, whether we think we have free will or not affects the interpretation of how the universe ticks. Does this matter? 

Does anything matter?

 

If free will doesn't exist, then one would have no cause to question if anything matters, I think.  If there was no free will, then why would anything occurring matter - we have no genuine say in the occurrences (even if we think we do) so what's the point in thinking it matters?

If one did believe in at least some degree of free will affecting the decisions of our brain, then indeed things do matter as we would have an opportunity to influence them perhaps. I guess one could ask if it matters if we can or can't influence matters through free will, but that's probably another question.

 

 

[tariki]

I looked up some other Free Will threads here as the subject came up on another forum. I posted the following, which incorporates a few words of JosephM, which I trust he does not mind.

My post:-

Is God free? Has God got freewill? Or are His acts determined by His having a particular nature? Or, as I prefer to think about it, is Reality-as-is predetermined, or is it more radical freedom, a constant advance into novelty?

Often it seems that any answer we give to this whole question (i.e. do I have freewill) is simply determined by our own predisposed conditionings and beliefs. Our "answer" - yes or no - "justifies" us, it's suitable for purpose.

On another forum there has often been various discussions of this whole subject, with no conclusion ever being reached. One such thread began with these words (not mine), which I find bear repeating:-

The majority of human beings are mostly convinced that they are the author of their thoughts, choices and therefore their destiny. There is no doubt human beings make choices. The question is: Are those choices free choices or inevitable choices that are not free but predisposed by a limited context? If they are limited, then by definition, the choice is not free choice, but an inevitable choice that is bound or enslaved by ones present level of consciousness and the circumstances by which that event occurs.

I find that the whole subject of our "level of consciousness" is a better starting point for the subject of freewill. It seems to me that often the accidental conditions of our birth and up-bringing are what determine many if our choices. We certainly do experience "choice" and yet the parameters surrounding those choices are surely there - thus we are not radically free. The question then becomes, just how far, how wide, can we extend the parameters of our freedom?

This also involves what we find to be what can be willed and what not. We can will "knowledge" but not wisdom, and we cannot will happiness. Of what does radical freedom truly consist?

There are some words of Thomas Merton, found in "New Seeds of Contemplation" that speak of the Gift of Freedom:-

The mere ability to choose between good and evil is the lowest limit of freedom, and the only thing that is free about it is the fact that we can still choose good.

To the extent that you are free to choose evil, you are not free. An evil choice destroys freedom.

We can never choose evil as evil: only as an apparent good. But when we decide to do something that seems to us to be good when it is not really so, we are doing something that we do not really want to do, and therefore we are not really free.

Perfect spiritual freedom is a total inability to make any evil choice. When everything you desire is truly good and every choice not only aspires to that good but attains it, then you are free because you do everything that you want, every act of your will ends in perfect fulfillment.

Freedom therefore does not consist in an equal balance between good and evil choices but in the perfect love and acceptance of what is really good and the perfect hatred and rejection of what is evil, so that everything you do is good and makes you happy, and you refuse and deny and ignore every possibility that might lead to unhappiness and self-deception and grief. Only the man who has rejected all evil so completely that he is unable to desire it at all, is truly free. God, in whom there is absolutely no shadow or possibility of evil or of sin, is infinitely free. In fact, he is Freedom.

Words worth our own contemplation, and I see them as corresponding to some other words by the Zen Master Caoshan:-

When studying in this way, evils are manifest as a continuum of being ever not done. Inspired by this manifestation, seeing through to the fact that evils are not done, one settles it finally. At precisely such a time, as the beginning, middle, and end manifest as evils not done, evils are not born from conditions, they are only not done; evils do not perish through conditions, they are only not done.


Freedom seems to imply spontaneity, what in the East is called "wu wei", effortless action. Myself, I think such a state of being (or non-being!) can be known. It involves surrender of "self", more a realisation than an attainment. Grace, gift. Never "ours" as such.

The Christian mystic Meister Eckhart speaks of our "union" with God, obviously in theistic terms:-

In giving us His love God has given us the Holy Spirit so that we can love Him with the love wherewith He loves Himself.

D.T.Suzuki, the "zen man", translates this into Zen terms: “one mirror reflecting another with no shadow between them.”

It is my trust and faith that such a "union", and therefore such a "radical freedom", can be known. Meanwhile I simply seek to see my own chains. I find any "advance" is more a stripping of knowledge than an accumulation.

 

 

Edited May 27 by tariki
Correct download error!

[PaulS]

I think another aspect of 'free will' is the purely physical chemical reactions of our brains.  Can we as humans control how much dopamine our brain emits for instance?  If dopamine is influencing what we find pleasurable, but we can't control how much our brain produces or when it produces it, how much control do we actually have over 'our' own decisions?