Free will exists

You will stop being angry about human mistakes that were inevitable.

I like how determinists slam the religious for believing "lies" because it's make them feel good, yet determinists believe lies because it makes them to have no accountability.

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>some retard claims that physicalism is a neurotic tendency, without explaining what would be the opposite of it
>article which claims that there isn't evidence to claim that decisions are unconscious, and brainlet user thinks that the conscious brain is somehow beyond causality

No it doesn't. Without free will there's no thought that is not a predetermined material consequence, and no rational action can ever proceed from any information.

Come now, you don't mean it, they're just making you say that.

It was predetermined I get angry

How would I stop if there's no free will and anger is the reaction to mistakes? Peace from anger can come from self-control, and self-control comes from sensual denial, but nothing comes from trite little pseudo-explanations.

You have to deal with the consequences of your actions and circumstances whether you are responsible of them or not.
And praying to Jesus does not absolve you from them.

You can learn new information assimilate it and change how you understand the world around you.

And it turns out that determinists have to deal more consequences of poor actions. Even Sam Harris cites a study in his book that says people given arguments for determinism before writing a test were more likely to cheat on that test. Belief in determinism clearly erodes any sort of accountability.

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Post quote and study, this sounds like bullshit

This is a pointless and dumb conversation if you actually believe in determinism. It feels like most people saying "yeah I'm a determinist" have completely failed to internalize what that means. It means you're a meatbag automaton whose every thought, action, and desire has been determined since the start of time, rendering any sort of normative judgment or moral code completely and thoroughly worthless.

Now, I'm not saying determinism is false. What i am saying is that smugposting about le epik determinism is the peak of bad-faith argumentation. It's the equivalent of saying "yeah I believe in God and the Bible, but I'm still gonna live a degenerate life on earth because YOLO". In that case, they clearly are not living in good faith because if they were they would internalize how horrifically bad hell is and wouldn't be making zero effort to follow Christian teaching.

Guys, guys, guys, just because free will is an illusion, that doesn't mean you can't make decisions and live your own life.

Determinism isn't a moral position though, nor does it imply one, unlike Christianity. Not the best analogy.

From the first page of the chapter "Might the Truth Be Bad For Us"
>One study found that having subjects read an argument against the existence of free will made them more likely to cheat on a subsequent exam.
K. D. Vohs & J. W. Schooler, 2008. The value of believing in free will: Encouraging a belief in determinism increases cheating. Psychological Science, 19(1): 49–54.
>Another found such subjects to be less helpful and more aggressive.
R. F. Baumeister, E. J. Masicampo, & C. N. DeWall, 2009. Prosocial benefits of feeling free: Disbelief in free will increases aggression and reduces helpfulness. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35: 260–268.
>It is surely conceivable that knowing (or emphasizing) certain truths about the human mind could have unfortunate psychological and/or cultural consequences.

sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120516093015.htm
Quantum Physics tells us that some things are completely random, that you cannot determine what the outcome is beforehand in any manner beyond guessing.
This means that the Universe as a whole is random. Even if you say that 'the chain reaction from these particles determines everything that comes after' it still stands the the base of the Universe is down to random chance.

The inherent randomness of the Universe means that nothing is truly predetermined.

So if I shoot you in the face it's not a crime? Ridiculous. This whole discussion is engineers (spit) imagining that they know something.

Wrong comment?

In the traditional view of science, that which is not random must be created or selected according to ambient (externally extended) principles of causality. But where external causality requires external scales against which to be defined, it can no more possess real existence than the external scales themselves. Again, anything real enough to affect reality from the outside is already included in reality and therefore on the inside, and since this is a logical contradiction, the idea of external causality is a priori invalid with respect to reality. This implies that in order to possess meaningful existence and therefore support meaningful volition, reality must be “self-caused”. But this comprehensive kind of self-causation entails an even deeper form of self-determination than that usually associated with volition; reality must not only determine its own structure independently of external causality, but must do so starting with nothing but itself! In other words, the universe must possess a global analogue of free will that lets it internally define and calibrate the very scale on which its intrinsic value is internally measured.

But wait a minute. Aren’t we ignoring the possibility that the universe is simply “random”, i.e. uncaused? Not really, for externally speaking, that’s exactly what it is! In deducing that the universe is unaffected by external causality, we find that it is externally acausal or “random” in that specific sense of the term. The operative distinction, of course, is that which holds between internal and external causality. And since our observations of a coherent, well-regulated, profoundly ordered universe rule out the possibility of internal randomness from the start – there is no way that a system as coherent and complex as the real universe can be accurately described as “randomly disordered” - we’ve got the issue of cosmic randomness sufficiently well-covered for present purposes.

So reality, being self-determinative but externally unconstrained, possesses a global, self-enabling analogue of free will that generates its own means of realization. If these means can be utilized by human beings within reality, then human beings possess free will, and because they are included in reality, they can use it to contribute to the realization of the global Self-structuring imperative. On the other hand, even if human beings cannot avail themselves of free will, they can still be used by it for the same purpose. In either case, human beings are integral parts of reality that contribute to its structure, and must either be using the inherent freedom of reality to do so, or be freely used as tools by some higher level of realty to the same end. So while the using-versus-used question remains up in the air, one fact has nevertheless been rationally established: whether it belongs exclusively to the universe or to man as well, free will exists. (Q.E.D.)

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>moral code completely and thoroughly worthless.
It is literally just a way of convincing people or one might say influencing them to avoid doing stuff that would be detrimental to society and themselves.

I'm not talking about moral bad faith but intellectual bad faith. What I have an issue with is twofold:

1. Smugposting about determinism on Yea Forums/elsewhere (even RL occasionally). It's the dumbest thing possible to be smug about, because, one, you're being smug about reality being a horrific puppet show, and two, that reality is a horrific puppet show means that there is no value whatsoever in being "right" or "wrong" about particular facts within said reality.
2. Self-identified determinists essentially pulling what does; incoherently trying to rationalize continuing living as if you have free will despite ostensibly not believing in it. In my experience, "determinists" are almost always in a state of denial in which they accept the premises of determinism without accepting the conclusion: that no one can be held responsible for their actions, that nothing they do matters, and that they have no control over their actions and thoughts, and most damningly of all, that there is no transcendental "you" in the first place, just a coincidental collection of carbon and oxygen atoms of no more consequence than a rock. The ones who actually do internalize it end up as sociopaths (see ), and honestly, who can blame them?

That the universe is not deterministic does not mean that free will exists de-facto. A truly random universe would be just as constraining of free will as a determined one.

>The two scientists stress that they have not thereby proved that the world is non-deterministic

I'm sorry, this is a place where people actually read things. Also it's 'post', not 'comment', newfag.

Why does determinism imply not wanting to continue living and why is it horrific? You're deciding my preferences for me in that post.

>tell a bunch of kids a poorly explained version of determinism and get worse results
No shit, it would be interesting to see the socio-economical outcomes of people who believe in free will vs those who don't.

Free will doesn't exist but determinism is also false.
The universe is random (not chaotic but actually random) and you do not have free will

It would be interesting to see the sample sizes and profiles, which are most likely, as with most psych studies, embarrassing.

Randomness of subatomic particles doesn't lead to free will user.

Of course they are going to say that they didn't prove Determinism wrong, that would be above and beyond any scientific paper.
But the key of determinism, as I know it, is that everything is preordained in some manner, whether that be by a deity or just cause and effect. Essentially if you could look at lives from an outside perspective you could predict from the Big Bang exactly how 'Now' would be. There is no free-will because our actions are guided by a God or by the domino effect of stimuli that go all the way back to the Beginning. Correct me if I didn't define that to your satisfaction.
The fact that the Universe is inherently random and unpredictable means that this 'roadmap' couldn't be drawn up, thus the Universe is non-deterministic.

The fact that something isn't humanly predictable doesn't imply that it isn't deterministic.

It may not lead to true free will, but it does mean that the Universe is overall non-deterministic. Free Will and Determinism are not an either-or dichotomy.
We can still be slaves to outside stimuli, but be in a non-deterministic world.
To prove Free Will is almost impossible, and only matters if one believes that they have free will.

>a poorly explained version of determinism
Disbelief in free will is a disbelief in free will. It doesn't matter how you arrived at those conclusions. All explanations of determinism are destructive including Harris' book. I used Sam Harris' book and determinism as an excuse for poor choices and performing poorly in school as a teenager. It doesn't matter the explanation of determinism. It will always lead to destructive effects.

It is horrific because it is saying that none of your choices matter, none of your thoughts matter, none of your emotions matter, you are going to experience a certain set of things in your life and you have no control over when, why, how, where or anything else about them. You are a meat suit forced to experience feelings from situations you have no control over.

Sounds like Hell to me.

>Of course they are going to say that they didn't prove Determinism wrong, that would be above and beyond any scientific paper.
And yet here you are, inferring non-determinism from a paper that you didn't read and whose authors explicitly deny that they have evidence for non-determinism, all in a format that you can't even name correctly.

>incoherently trying to rationalize continuing living as if you have free will despite ostensibly not believing in it
Making decisions doesn't imply that you believe in free will, you just acknowledge that your decisions don't come out of nothing and are caused by a long chain of biological and environmental causes (including socio-cultural influences).

I don't see how they don't matter just because there's a predetermined outcome.

Whether determinism is correct or not, we currently don't have an explanation for consciousness: how are "you" experiencing things and making choices?

The only refutation is religion, however, if you’ve actually taken even an intro to philosophy class in uni, you’ll know that religions are inherently fatalistic, which is also anti free will.

All knowledge is based on empirical experiences, free will is something we experience why not believe in it? If it turns out you are wrong there never really was a "you" in the first place

>we currently don't have an explanation for consciousness
Incorrect. There are explanations such property dualism and materialism. Although, no explanations are verified and who knows if they ever will be.

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>All knowledge is based on empirical experiences
Completely untrue.

>free will is something we experience
This is actually not testable and in fact I would doubt this statement.

>why not believe in it?
Determinists in effect just limit the definition of 'free will'

but especially
(you)
if there's no free will, do our actions matter?
if there is, does it change anything?

Every Cause has its Effect; every Effect has its cause; everything happens according to Law; Chance is but a name for Law not recognized; there are many planes of causation, but nothing escapes the Law.

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What is that from?

Is free will really mutually exclusive with determinism?
Imagine every decision you make would be to a certain degree random. This would mean that every of your decisions involves some sort of cosmetic entity rolling their dices.
I don't think that this implies that I am somewhat more free than if every decision that I make comes from myself even if that entails that I behave deterministic.

Questions for the hardcore determinists in here: How do you keep motivation, how do you not contemplate suicide, how do you combat """"choices"""" and directionlessness? Is your life just in a good spot and your surrounded by strong people and you ride off the momentum of all the good?
P l e a s e
R e s p o n d

>How do you keep motivation, how do you not contemplate suicide, how do you combat """"choices"""" and directionlessness
by not being an overly emotional mentalcase?

what is your reasoning here?
>welp, Nature is mechanistic, better kill myself?

there's literally no difference in how you live your life other than the occasional moment of clarity where you remember stuff like: "I think I'm choosing to pick up this glass and drink this water, but in reality there electro-signals prompting my consciousness to undertake this action that were galvanized by exterior events that by necessity added up from the Big Bang to this very moment."

if anything you are left in even further awe of the mundane and have a deeper appreciation for life and its miraculous mechanism

If free will doesn't exist, then why should anyone care about moral reprimandation? Are you implying people don't have the capacity to make choices or is your line of thinking purely theoretical?

I find determinism a lot more comforting than free will. Free will attempts to hold you accountable for your actions, but under a deterministic ideology, you are completely free to do what you like—what you like being an effect of the universe’s Will. I think it aligns you more precisely with the universe itself, and you should embrace it instead of trying to swim against the current.

>under a deterministic ideology, you are completely free to do what you like
Ummm... interesting cope

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The universe has no morality and neither should you. Only a slave voluntarily wears chains.

We don't have any choice in what family we are born into, the gender we're born as, where we're born, how we feel about an emotional event, the pain we feel after a physical injury, the resources that surrounds us, etc. So what exactly do we have free will over?

Because moral reprimandation is the result of an imperfect and evolving machine trying to protect us people who wish to harm the greater good.

from people who wish to harm*

>by not being an overly emotional mentalcase
I didn't choose this and have no control over this.

>welp, Nature is mechanistic, better kill myself?
More like we are all utterly fucked and there's nothing anyone can do it about. All criminals can't be held accountable for their actions. The quality of your life is 100% determined at birth, my parents were both barely 100 iq lower middle class and I will forever be a loser trapped in the lower caste. While millionaires with parents who are both 130 iq lawyers/doctors etc get to be higher caste and enjoy prosperous lives.

>voluntarily

How do religions cope with this? Do they ignore it?

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You’re right, but speaking in the context of determinism is unnatural.

So you decided not to for the sake of mutual understanding?

I believe in free will because I have no other choice

Did you choose to post such a gay thread or were you predestined to be a faggot?

youtube.com/watch?v=7iFPI6KH5xo
youtube.com/watch?v=gQxlVHkB_5Q
Define free will

See that's the problem I have with the theory. Everything is just there to fit the narrative. It is based on nothing but conjecture. I'm out.

No, it was simply unconscious. It’s similar to how people who don’t believe in the self still use ‘i’—well, some of them.

your problem with the theory is that it's consistent and all the facts can be easily assimilated to it? lol

this. it makes forgiveness easier. but beyond that it is useless. free will doesnt deny the will; you still have to exert it to get shit done. thats where people can get tripped up with determinism and nonduality

*determinism doesn't deny the will

Determinism denies quantum physics you mental patient.

The Underground Man displayed free will. First half of 'Notes' is mandatory reading.

>he lets a science still in its infancy decide his worldview
You do know that its conclusions are going to be radically different a hundred years from now, right?

>make a case against determinism
>everything we currently know says its wrong
>"but we don't know everything yet"

>Determinism is correct because in the future science will say it is (source: me)

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>other sciences with more maturity observe that everything has a cause and effect
>a science barely old enough to eat solid foods yet comes along and says that’s wrong
>therefore determinism is wrong, and the universe at it’s core is “random”

Even if quantum physics disproves determinism, it doesn't prove free will. Your choice is just determined randomly for you.

>other sciences with more maturity observe that everything has a cause and effect

oh no...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiom_of_Causality

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>self-evident, not proven
>one of the most disputed axiom

It's not one or the other, on the one hand you have things that are biologically locked in, other things that are circumstantial, you have the consciousness (you) which is capable of exerting its will over the physical body. Free will exists in the consciousness and must overcome the determinism of the body, both are at war with one another.

>he’s never read Newton
Keep coping with your prepubescent “physics”

>If free will doesn't exist then what is the point of telling me that free will doesn't exist?
No idea. I have no free will, so I didn't choose to tell you free will doesn't exist. I told you free will doesn't exist because I was fated to do so on the basis of a long chain of causes and effects which determined my thoughts and behavior.

>It means you're a meatbag automaton whose every thought, action, and desire has been determined since the start of time, rendering any sort of normative judgment or moral code completely and thoroughly worthless.
But we were predetermined to have these worthless conversations. Everything in the universe is ultimately worthless, but that doesn't mean we get to choose what to do and what not to do. We are just glorified meatbags and we follow our programming. Even your violent reaction of rejection when presented with the thesis of determinism is part of your programming, whereas determinists are biologically programmed to be fine with it. We're just different kinds of robots with different operating systems.

No, it doesn't. I know the nature of termites is eat wood, but I sure as hell am going to exterminate them if I find them in my house. Whether we have free will or not is irrelevant in my opinion because we're always going to do what we want even if it's what we're "programmed to do".

You were programmed to do what you want, and what you want is programmed. It’s a very freeing feeling, in my opinion. I wonder what’s the difference in psychology between people who embrace determinism and those who find it revolting.

Four Views on Free Will - John Martin Fischer
On Being Free - Frithjof Bergmann
Freedom Evolves - Daniel C. Dennett

This is retarded. My anger is also predetermined.

That doesn't really matter at all. In this case it is simply that the course of the universe and our own decisions are determined by chance between various possibilities instead of set in stone to one possibility. It doesn't mean that we're in control, we're still not in control and free will still doesn't exist. It just doesn't exist in a different way.
Very similar to that one joke where the waitress asks how the person wants their coffee and he says "no milk" and then she says "well we don't have milk sir, how about no cream? we have cream".

I think there are always competing interests in what we want.

>I am hungry
>I am tired

Or

>I am tired
>I want to get my degree

You can argue after the fact that you end up doing what you want or what you were programmed to do, but having the cognitive reflection of this also allows you to choose what to program into yourself.

Some people never seize these reigns and remain slaves to their passions and whims.

Nigger I’m trying to cope here

I can't predict the future so it still makes sense to strive for the outcomes I'd prefer. Being aware of how completely I'm shaped by my influences makes me more careful about what I expose myself to (awareness of determinism is now a factor in the feedback loop).

Nihilism is misunderstood. As a nihilst, I acknowledge that values/meaning cannot precede valuing agents (us), and so are not universal. The flipside of that though, is that I recognize values/meaning as stemming from our natures... If it is in my nature to assign value and meaning -- to care about and enjoy living -- then why wouldn't I?

The popular conception of nihilism has been confused and conflated with anomie. Perhaps nihilism does lead some types of people into anomie, but it is not a logical conclusion of philosophical nihilism by any means.

It can be freeing, but it also can be debilitating because you can excuse yourself of nearly anything that doesn't interfere with society as a whole. You could become hedonistic and say, that's just my programming.

Yes, it does conjure up Augustine's aphorism about a man has as many masters as he has vices.

>what authors/thinkers make a legitimate case against determinism?
The whole of quantum physics.
You're 100 years behind schedule boi

>And praying to Jesus does not absolve you from them.
Confession does.

no, chaotic/quantum systems & states = *our* models will never be precise enough to predict 100% what will happen--however--everything nevertheless functions by determined mechanisms and there is an unbroken chain of cause -> effect that maintains a sequence of pre-determined states.

No. In quantum states effects can precede the causes.
Hard determinism has died a century ago.

I am an egoist and hedonist, so maybe that’s why I find determinism so comfy.

>time being nonlinear means causality is false

Example of knowledge not ultimately based in empirical experience plz

You have never felt the experience of freely chosing one alternative over an other, or the extreme psychological struggle sometimes involved? You must have been very confused reading Medea. Test it by doing a multiple choice quiz.

There are obviously limits on free will e.g. Willing lasers to shoot out of your eyes, if that's the extent of your determinism fair enough. But except that true determinism means you and I don't really exist.

I think free will both does and doesn't exist. people who kill themselves are free. they've defied nature/life and done their own thing. whereas we're all slaves to living. we eat, shit, sleep, and take exercise to keep up our body. that's not freedom though. cos we can't really stop. your body will always make you do these things. but at the same time I can say whatever I want and do whatever I want. that's freedom imo. yes everything that has happened in my life has led me currently here writing this shit. you can call that fate if you want. it's just a series of stepping stones that get you from place to place. but I don't believe there's a master plan at work by God. I don't think God cares if we do this or do that.

Do you CHOOSE to believe in determinism?

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read the thread

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>Without free will there's no thought that is not a predetermined material consequence
material consequence includes other thoughts, feelings/emotions, memories, projections, bodily experience, sense of self

>no rational action can ever proceed from any information.
reactions only require stimulus, the brain interprets complex stimulus and produces complex reactions. in reality its pretty stupid to say free will doesn't exist because the subjective story of the self is what seems to experience choosing or deciding or making a rational choices. if it was always false then theres no "real" in the story then what does it matter, the function is still the same. harris and enlightenment gurus don't believe in a self as a real entity with agency but only a story made from automatic thought/imagination about direct bodily experience of the world. its correct but it doesnt change anything in the end.

t. guy who spent years going down the anatta rabbithole and didnt get wizard powers

yes this. I have traced back a lot of my massive problems to when I was a child.

you can still pray to jesus if you dont have free will

>scientific case
>on the title
If one has to insist on it being scientific that means it's obviously not scientific.

Agency exists, it circulates, it's what actors do and makes them do things, free will as unmediated volitive agency that one possesses it's absurd.

Try The Experience of God by David Bentley Hart

wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Free_will_(solution)

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perhaps there is a sort of metadeterminism where cause and effect affect things up to a certain point but each individual moment free will exists in that a person has the ability to recognize the things that effected them while still making their own decisions to forge more causes and effects of the nature they please, so long as it is someone who is capable of being aware and taking action towards these things

The things you recognise are necessarily mediated by language and images. In that sense human action is not different from the action of a stone.

>In that sense human action is not different from the action of a stone.
how?

>think free will isn’t real
>I had no freedom in coming to this conclusion
>therfore it has simply been given to me by the random fluctuation of particles
>therfore it doesn’t actually correlate to any logical stance
bada bing

chaos wouldnt be chaos to higher intelligences

Your sense of purpose was predetermined hence not an actual purpose. Your deflection is a pathetic projection of your cognitive disassociation of having a purpose while denying that purpose is actually not real.

Everything stops making sense if you start from the base assumption that everything is predestined. How can his deflection be "pathethic" if it was predestined? It means he could have done no different than he exactly has.

There is no way to prove or disprove complete predestination, but it seems to me like an assumption that sucks both meaning and relevance out of every act and leaves behind apathics and hedonists. You can't argue any morality or value from inside that base assumption because everything is simply fulfilling predestination.

The statement 'all knowledge comes from empirical evidence' cannot be verified using empirical evidence. And that's not to mention that tons of papers are produced yearly based on inference rather than actual evidence.

Also you can't really verify that we're not in a situation where the decisions we make are not really our own, but our brain feeds them back to us as if they are.

And yes, I don't believe we exist in the usual sense of the word. 'you' and 'I' are really just useful abstractions.

Just read Kant

Should be easy for you to provide an example of knowledge that isn't ultimately based in experience then. The inference is from evidence and based on cause and effect and repeatability which is learned through experience.

You can't really verify that you aren't a butterfly dreaming you are posting on Yea Forums, if our brain is tricking "us" about free will why not also believe it is tricking us about any evidence that supports determinism, to which you have less direct access?

free will exists but so does determinism
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism

I have no choice in the matter.

>you still have to exert it to get shit done

That sounds like the person has a choice: exert will or not.

And that sounds suspiciously like free will.

>Should be easy for you to provide an example of knowledge that isn't ultimately based in experience then.
I just did. See the first sentence of my post.

>if our brain is tricking "us" about free will why not also believe it is tricking us about any evidence that supports determinism, to which you have less direct access?
Actually that implies it's tricking us about conscious agency, not free will. Slightly different things. In any case though - of course it could be tricking us about said evidence. However that itself would imply a degree of determinism.

You're just arguing definitions. Exerting will is an effect of prior events.

why is free will even a thing anymore? the non existence of time proves that everything is determined in the end because everything is already happening all the time. your death birth and everything in between is always happening somewhere, it feels like a movie but its actually a painting.

determinism is a coping mechanism

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if free will doesn't exist how did you make this post

i seriously don't know if you're trolling or just that fucking stupid

and i don't know how the FUCK sam harris got this famous peddling this obvious bullshit. he's an educated guy, surely he only says this shit to take advantage of stupid fedorras

Where do you thoughts come from user? You don't choose what pops into your head.

they're projected from my soul onto my mind

So then your soul controls you?

i am my soul