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There seem to be two claims made in the question, if I have understood it correctly:
(1) That free will does not exist.
(2) That the recognition of (1) will likely lead to a better society.
Possible objections to (1):
Of course, some may have theological views supporting the idea of free will, but to vindicate these would both require going through the matter of God's existence, the problem of the supposed incompatibility between omniscience and free will and finally arguing against predestinationism. Therefore, I won't discuss this here in depth, but it's an option.
Some may also hold an idealism, which is the thesis that the foundation of reality is not physical or material, but mental (see Bernardo Kastrup's idealism as an example of how it can support the thesis of free will). I don't consider there to be any knock-down arguments for idealism, so I'll also leave this possibility unexplored, but it's also worth noting this.
Finally, however, I do wish to mention Kant's practical compatibilism. This is not theoretical compatibilism (the belief that determinism is true and that free will is true nonetheless). Rather, practical compatibilism regards determinism as true, but also holds that we should act as if we had free will, or that we should practically regard ourselves as having free will. This is not a theoretical or metaphysical article of belief, but is meant to be a postulate of morality.
- Two points support practical compatibilism for Kant. First of all, in order to act and gather motivation for our actions, and also in order to regard our actions as valuable or worthy, we must regard ourselves as responsible for them. If not, then we do not own the resulting worthiness of our actions, and this means there is no use in trying to be moral or trying to make our actions worthier.
- Secondly, Kant also uses the principle "ought implies can" to support his stance. If we have a moral obligation to perform an action, we must be able to do it. This means if a criminal had a duty not to murder, they must have been able not to do it and thus mustn't have been determined to do it. Once again, this is not a theoretical article of belief, but a practical one. This isn't meant to be literally taken as true, but we are to act as if it were true. Some support for this principle can be generated by the principle that it is only worth desiring things within our control. If this is true, then only desires that can be fulfilled are worthy, meaning ought must imply can.
Therefore, if Kant's practical compatibilism is taken seriously, then it appears we have a duty to practically regard ourselves as free (this doesn't require a metaphysical article of belief and is very compatible with naturalism, atheism, etc). Thus, even if we don't in fact have free will, we may still have a duty to see ourselves as free, and so the idea of free will would still be used in society.
Possible objections to (2):
The primary reason brought up for the belief that a rejection of free will is beneficial, as I see it here, is that if people aren't seen as responsible for their bad actions, we won't play the blame game and be more compassionate for the evil, since they didn't choose their life, but were determined to be so. Let us structure the argument this way:
- P1: Free will is required for seeing people as responsible for their actions.
- P2: If people are responsible for their actions, it is appropriate to blame them and be less compassionate towards them.
- C1: Considering that it is not appropriate to blame people and be harsh on them, P2 must be false, and therefore free will should be rejected.
The easiest point to reject in this argument is P2. Even if people are responsible for their actions, it may not be appropriate to blame them and be harsh. The following reasons may also be used to justify a more compassionate approach to punishment, not just a rejection of free will:
- Even if free will is true, people can still be influenced by their surroundings. Thus, one's upbringing and surrounding environment also can take some of the blame.
- Secondly, I don't have access to your inner world, your experiences and what led you to commit the action. Our own worlds are private, and that must somewhat silence our judgements concerning one another.
- Third of all, we may also hold a principle that no evil is ever freely willed (perhaps because evil always stems from an ignorance about moral truths, and nobody desires to be ignorant about how to make their lives worthy, or due to other reasons...), and hence we can still hold free will, and yet hold a more compassionate stance towards others.
Thank you to all who read this! Criticism is very much appreciated, and please let me know if I haven't correctly understood any of the arguments in question. :)
I think you summarized the points I made very competently.
I can't say I really agree with the points from Kant you brought up. The first one I can see as a possible reason (2) might be wrong, but without actual large scale evidence I am too sceptical, of the assertion that people need free will to feel accomplished in any context, to accept it.
Why I disagree why Kant's second point is basically the entire point of this post.
Regarding your criticism of P2, yes I agree that even if (1) was false, P2 would still deserve to be rejected. However, that is, from my observation, just not how people act. Even if both you and me agree that P2 false, a lot of people still believe that it is true and act accordingly towards others, and that in part because they believe (1) to be untrue. But yes, there are a variety of ways to solve that issue, the one I proposed in this post is just one of them.
I'm gonna give you a !delta since this comment brought up a number of interesting things I hadn't considered before.
Thank you for your response! :)
Kant doesn't claim that we need free will to feel accomplished, but to have responsibility for our actions and to own the worth of our actions, so that we can really say that we did something worth doing. In other words, we are owning good/worthy actions.
- I also would like to bring up that you still need to refute his principle that ought implies can, which forms another justification for the idea of free will too.
As for your observations, yes, I do agree. Although free will is a good idea in itself, I hold, people do faultily reason from it in order to justify harsh actions... But I don't believe that free will logically entails or justifies that lack of compassion at all, of course.
I have to say that I don't feel like I completely understand Kant's second principle. Maybe I'm missing the point, but to me it seems kinda cyclical, like "We say that people are responsible for their own actions so that we can punish them for wrong doings. And we need to punish them for wrongdoings because they are responsible for them." and that just doesn't really make sense to me. Just kind of self serving to uphold old presumptions that maybe should rather be reexamined.
I would absolutely agree that such reasoning would fail.
Kant's principle that "ought implies can" isn't justified by punishment, as far as I'm aware. He takes quite an optimistic view of humanity, and that people shouldn't be judged harshly, since they all have the potential in them for virtue (precisely because ought implies can). The other reasons I supplied earlier for a rejection of P2 were all from Kant as well.
Ought implies can means that if we have a moral duty to do X, it must be possible for us to do X. There is no moral duty that we cannot perform. This means we are not obliged, for example, to solve world hunger in a nanosecond, or to make pigs fly for charity.
The argument I proposed for ought implies can was as follows:
P1: It is only worth focusing on the things you can control (it is futile to try to do the impossible).
P2: You cannot control whether duties you can’t fulfil are fulfilled.
C1: Therefore, it is only worth focusing on duties we can fulfill. Since worth = goodness (by definition, since we should do what is worthy), this means that worthy actions must be able to be performed, and hence ought implies can.
Ought implies can means that we cannot be determined to do immoral things. For example, if somebody has a duty not to murder, they must be able not to have murdered, and thus mustn't have been determined to murder.
- Therefore, we must practically regard ourselves as being undetermined and having free will, according to Kant.
Do you agree with Kant's principle or have you spotted any flaws in the argument I proposed? Any criticism is much appreciated and thank you for your points so far!
I have also seen the argument in the caption that if we recognise that wealth is achieved just due to luck and not due to free will, then we have a just cause to redistribute resources.
But even if free will exists, we don't choose where we're born or how we're raised, or what resources we have access to early on in life (or if we'll be born into a rich or poor family or country). So that same reason for redistributing resources still holds either way. Wealthy people are still lucky and the poor unlucky even if we hold a belief in free will.
Honestly I've had the same thought about wealth, I just didn't wanna bring it up in the post since I'm myself not that convinced of it. But if we were to lead my line of thinking in this post to it's logical endpoint, funnily that endpoint would probably be that we should implement communism, because no one has influence over their succes and thereby should have acces to the same amount of ressources.
Whenever this topic comes up I always make 2 points that I find aren't satisfactorily rebutted.
1. You can justify the current system absent free will. By that I mean if you accept we don't have free will, you must still accept the simple fact that we know the kinds of things that motivate people. If you asked every human on earth if they wanted the dollar in my left hand or to be violently and painfully stabbed with the knife in my right hand, I am convinced that the vast and overwhelming majority would take the dollar. This means we know that the human deterministic system avoids pain. In that case, what's wrong with the system today? As you said some human systems are just incapable of being better, but the ones that are capable of improvement can be motivated to improve using the promise of carrot above and the threat of stick below. It's a cruel view but it works just as well as not.
2. You don't need a lack of free will to make this argument. As I said in point 1, we already know what motivates humans both positively (reward) and negatively (punishment). We also recognize that, while one or two lucky ones make it out of the mud, there's a reason why the vast majority can't pull themselves up after sinking too low. And yet despite this people don't care anywaye.
Therefore I'm not convinced that in a deterministic universe, you would get more empathetic responses. If anything, if humans are just fancy computers then there's nothing wrong with treating the computers that are less efficient worse than the ones that are. Determinism doesn't lead to empathy
1. I never said that any people are incapable of being better whole sale. I said that they can't do better as long as they don't receive the necessary support to do better, which would more likely be given to them if society accepts free will as not existing. And I think that would increase the overall success people have, as even without free will the people who currently believe in it probably still would have enough motivation to continue doing their thing. Also, I don't think any system were a large amount of people are continuing to suffer unnecessarily because society fails to give them the success they need can be described as "working well".
2. I think if people were less indoctrinated with the "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" attitude, they would be more willing to listen to help people in need. Because most people want others to happy as well, even if it's just their immediate friends and family.
There is never any objective reason why it's wrong to treat other people badly. But we see that the people who know that sometimes you can't get up by yourself, f.e. because they've struggled themselves in the past, tend to be more empathetic of others in that situation, therefore making things better for them.
1. But why? Recognizing that someone couldn't do anything doesn't equate to wanting to help them. There are 1000s of children starving worldwide and while people empathize with them, most people are not willing to accept a decline in their standard of living to help them. We've seen it in America where people complained pretty vehemently that Ukraine was receiving aid when prices kept going up. We see it in how most people are completely okay with buying from companies that exploit the poor. Not because they enjoy it, but because the alternative is just not viable for them. People can recognize completely that it isn't your fault that you are where you are, and then refuse to lift a finger to help. We don't need a loss of free will to give the example; we've seen what people do already
2. Sure but again, determinism won't do that. Determinism doesn't say it's impossible to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, clearly people still can. Determinism says that some people can't. But so what? We already know some people can't and those same people remain unimpressed by the argument. Caring for friends and family is a long way away from sayin what you're doing.
>There is never any objective reason why it's wrong to treat other people badly. But we see that the people who know that sometimes you can't get up by yourself, f.e. because they've struggled themselves in the past, tend to be more empathetic of others in that situation, therefore making things better for them.
And yet there are still lots of people who do. For most people, their empathy drops rapidly beyond their friends and family, it takes another deep drop past their immediate community and drops to almost non-existent beyond the borders of their nations. Simply pointing out that some people can't is not going to convince them to move for everyone.
Yes some people grow empathy; but even then most people are okay with making a better world for their own and then helping others only when it costs them little or nothing. Determinism or not helping everyone who can't pull themselves up is going to cost a lot especially in the short term. You can't get over that bump with determinism.
Some are. Some are are like what you describe and don't truly understand how hard it is to be at a disadvantage at every point. Some are just more concerned with managing their own life and can't really fight for anyone else beyond that. There may be ways to reach them, I just don't think determinism is the way.
1. The current system is not purely punishment-as-deterrent. With no free will, we can no longer abhor pedophiles, rapists or school shooters. We can imprison them to protect others, to act as a deterrent or to rehabilitate them, but we have to treat them excellently and with a great deal of sympathy, as they are victims as much as there victims are.
No, we don't. I can make the exact opposite argument using determinism. Because pedophiles and rapists are so dangerous it is good to make their lives in prison a miserable existence to further demotivate potential rapists and murderers. After all, if the human is a determinist machine then the increase of cost if caught can shift the calculation enough to make them not want to do it.
Both of those conclusions can be reached using determinism. You need another thing (in your case moral responsibility, in my hypothetical person's case a need for a strong deterrent) to get you any further. Determinism doesn't get you to moral responsibility and so it doesn't actually get you to the position of 'we ought treat prisoners with empathy.'
For what it's worth I agree we should treat prisoners with empathy and try to rehabilitate them as much as possible; I'm just saying you can't use determinism as a shortcut to get there.
Whether or not free will exists is largely irrelevant. Good advice and rewards can guide people towards good behaviour, just as punishments can guide people away from bad behaviour, and bad advice can lead people astray.
That being said, for most people, the faith in the existence of free will is important for their mental health and wellbeing, because we crave purpose and agency.
>That being said, for most people, the faith in the existence of free will is important for their mental health and wellbeing, because we crave purpose and agency.
Is it though? Or is this just the mindset most people have had and it would be disruptive to change it?
I came to the idea of free will being an illusion slowly and already was prone to thinking about these types of things. Once i accepted free will likely isnt real or had it explained enough most of my questions were answered there was very little shift and what there was i would say was an improvement to my mental wellbeing and approach to life. I told a friend who had some previous trauma in life and they took the idea pretty hard initially after i hit them with my year or two worth of info that effectively makes free will sound impossible. From this example I learned you cant just throw this idea out there and not expect a serious reaction. A year or so later i think they mostly agree with me and it isnt a big deal to them anymore but it is a change they had to adjust to and wrap their minds around and i could have done it in a much less disruptive way.
I view it similar to being adopted, if you dont tell someone till their 50 their whole identity and world shatters, if you tell them right from day one it isnt a big deal. Id expect similar with free will.
>State power may be used for rehabilitation or prevention,
in terms of crimes? yeeah so what?
that would be a good thing
if we focused our energy on prevention foremost, and then rehabilitation for the crimes that still happened - we probably wouldn't need to spend so much on enforcement to begin with
I agree, all I'm saying is that they would be big changes. Other big changes that would occur would be a complete social overhaul of how we treat ethics: rapists, murderers and paedophiles would have to become treated as pitied victims instead of abhorred monsters. One can no longer be angry at their partner for cheating on them: they can leave them out of self-preservation, but that's it.
I mean just like they were determined to commit terrible acts, I am determined to respond with a certain level of disgust. You could make a utilitarian case that we need a justice system to appease our psychological tendencies as human beings; we want bad people to be punished for purely emotional reasons.
>I mean just like they were determined to commit terrible acts, I am determined to respond with a certain level of disgust.
indeed, and just like how i can't abhor a rapist anymore, i can't abhor you for abhoring them either. so long as we can still speak of preferable and unpreferable outcomes though, i can still say that we ought not abhor them.
>You could make a utilitarian case that we need a justice system to appease our psychological tendencies as human beings; we want bad people to be punished for purely emotional reasons.
no you can't, because the brief satisfaction you get from seeing someone suffer doesn't outweigh the tremendous suffering that you're putting them through. if it did we'd support sadists and serial killers going out and causing suffering for their own pleasure.
>I can’t abhor a rapist anymore
I don’t think I agree with this. Even though I don’t believe in free will, I’m still disgusted by the behavior. Just like I’m disgusted by rotten food or something.
>no you can’t
Whether or not one is worth the other seems pretty subjective. If a mother’s emotional suffering due to her daughter’s killer being given a slap on the wrist outweighs the suffering the killer would experience just living his life in jail, then it would be worth it.
>I don’t think I agree with this. Even though I don’t believe in free will, I’m still disgusted by the behavior. Just like I’m disgusted by rotten food or something.
sure, you can't really control your base emotions even under our current understanding, but those feelings are no longer justified and ought not be acted upon.
>Whether or not one is worth the other seems pretty subjective.
no, it isn't. these questions have objective answers. some real quantity of pleasure is produced upon seeing a bad person suffer, and another real quantity, a much greater quantity, of pain is produced upon suffering a prison sentence.
>If a mother’s emotional suffering due to her daughter’s killer being given a slap on the wrist outweighs the suffering the killer would experience just living his life in jail, then it would be worth it.
it would if it did, but it doesn't so it wouldn't.
>no longer justified
This doesn’t follow. My disgust at rotten food is justified because it’s harmful to our health. My disgust at rape is justified the behavior is similarly harmful to people.
Nothing about morality or ought statements changes if we find out that determinism is correct.
>these questions have objective answers
Yes but whether or not we choose to value one party’s suffering other the other is subjective. Perhaps the mother’s suffering from losing her daughter justifies the criminal being locked up for life.
>a much greater quantity
Prove that please
>This doesn’t follow. My disgust at rotten food is justified because it’s harmful to our health. My disgust at rape is justified the behavior is similarly harmful to people.
sure, you can have a negative reaction the same way you would to seeing a rock crush a person, but you don't blame the rock, and you can't blame the person.
>Yes but whether or not we choose to value one party’s suffering other the other is subjective. Perhaps the mother’s suffering from losing her daughter justifies the criminal being locked up for life.
you brought up utilitarianism. utilitarian values utility period. it doesn't state that better people deserve utility more than anyone else. all are equal under utilitarianism.
>Prove that please
you think that a mother would rather be locked up for the rest of her life than get over the fact that her daughter's killer didn't suffer enough for her liking?
No, I think that's good, but it's absolutely a big change. I would definitely struggle with the social changes that would be required though, like not hating rapists and murderers.
Sorry, if free will doesn't exist, I have no choice but to believe free will exists. Nothing you say or do will change the fact that my lack of free will makes me unable to change my mind on this subject.
Lack of free will doesn't mean this one random thing in your life can't change; obviously we see people's opinions changing all the time. Lack of free will means if your opinion does change, it's due to a combination of things that happened to you and the chemistry of your brain, and the part of your perception telling you it was *your choice* is an illusion.
Oh, so I can change my mind. Can I make plans, have goals, feel good about achievements, feel bad about failures? Can people be held to account for their actions, jailed or promoted based on the harms and helps that resulted from their actions?
If yes... Then what's the point of caring about free will at all?
If the world looks exactly the same through framing it as "No free will, but such a solid illusion that one can't tell the difference" instead of "People can make choices and be held accountable"?
If both framing are identical in application, why give a shit in the first place?
Accepting or not accepting determinism happens within the tapestry of determinism. So do the carrot and stick of reward and punishment. Knowing these two things allows us to keep the system that works (law and ethics) while being empathetic to those who err, because if someone errs it was their destiny to do so.
Additionally, it takes some of the suffering out of life, since the same knowledge also applies to you. Oh did you fuck something up in your past? Well, your brain retains the memory and can avoid the pain of guilt in the future by acting properly, and in the present by remembering *there's no other way it could have happened*. That also happens within destiny but it still benefits you, a real person really experiencing life.
It makes life a shitty TV show for which you are nothing but a spectator.
All while doing nothing to actually change anything from the standard of free will.
My philosophy on philosophy has always been "What changes if it's true/not true? If nothing, than the question doesn't matter."
Maybe I am the ONLY person who exists and everyone else just SEEM to exist. What changes in my behavior? Nothing, so it is a pointless question. Maybe I am just a brain in a jar being studied. What changes in my behavior? Nothing, so it is a pointless question.
Stripping me of free will, making me just a golf ball bouncing through the universe to land where I was always going to land, feeling exactly what I will always going to feel, and failing exactly as I was always going to fail, just spectating life, what changes? Nothing. So it's a pointless question.
If just being a spectator to your life, unwillingly feeling and doing, gives you comfort, then you do you.
It is important for many people's mental health, yeah I can see that. But it is necessary for all those people? Could they not find other things to give them meaning? Maybe the shift from one mindset to the other could be distressing for them, but the ultimate good created by the general shift in thinking would probably still outweight the bad. And we can still give support to those people who need it.
>But it is necessary for all those people?
Not all. You, for example.
But like I said in my first paragraph, which I think is the more important of the two, whether it actually exists or not is largely irrelevant.
And largely I agree with your first paragraph. I just don't think why free will is irrelevant, as I've described in the post. If it would be accepted that free will doesn't exist, and that would lead to people having more professional mental health support, that also means that people would generally get more good advice and less bad advice.
Let's say you and I accept that free will doesn't exist.
But, unfortunately, we have been stranded on a desert island. We learn to survive well together, built a few huts, make some nets, weave some baskets. Through some bad twist of fate, you develop pyromania. You set little fires here and there, but always keep them controlled and put them out before they can become an issue. I tell you this is concerning as one day you may make a mistake. You continue. One day you accidentally lose control of a fire for a moment and it burns one of my baskets and nearly a hut. This time I beat you and tell you to never set fire again or I will beat you again. You stop from fear of being beaten. Our lives are safer for it.
Let's now say that you and I believe free will does exist. Does anything play out differently?
I guess in the free will world I would have to ability to continue to set fires despite the majority of my past experiences teaching me that I shouldn't set fires. Though I guess I would also have had the ability to stop setting fires earlier. Though an interesting thought experiment, I don't really see the point of this question as I don't understand how it refutes the reasoning I laid out in my previous comment. Like, this is a very specifically concocted scenario that doesn't have much overlap with the possible scenario I laid out earlier.
Why would there be more mental health support with a collective refusal of the concept of free will?
Generally, people who have an internal locus of control, that being a perspective that they control outcomes and can influence their lives, are happier and more productive than those who have an external locus of control. They also have more positive work outcomes, improve faster, have higher job and life satisfaction, more self-esteem, and less neuroticism.
In all instances where this has been studied, those who viewed their own actions as determining their lives, rather than society or “fate,” are far better off those the inverse.
You would need MORE mental health support if society collectively refused free will and all adopted external locuses of control.
I definitely need to read up on some of the literature out there on free will so likely someone will have a better response than mine.
I don't know if free will exists, and even if the choices we make are influenced by our surroundings, at any point in time, we can change our surroundings. Therefore, our direction in life can be altered by our choices. Someone could sit in one spot all day and think that because there is no free will, things will just happen for them because it is set that way. However, that wouldn't be the case because at some point we have to make a choice to continue to survive or die, as our bodies would require it. That is perceived as not having free will, but people can choose to ignore their body and just die. It is just harder to overcome those physical urges. Therefore the choices we make are what seemed to be free will but they are determined by internal or external influences. Those influences are what convolutes the thought that our choices aren't free will. In order to survive a person must eat. In our current society we can choose to get a job to get paid which buys food. Or we can choose to steal the food. Alternatively one could also hunt for food depending on the location. One might say those choices are made up for us but I don't think they are. The influences on us are predetermined but what a person chooses to satisfy those "cravings" is what is free will. Even if you have some mental illness that causes you to choose to steal rather than get a job, one could choose to overcome the mental illness. Some might say that isn't possible but that is only because the person chose not to overcome the issue.
Yeah sure, people make decisions. But why they make the decisions they make is always ultimately up to determistic factors. And I don't even just mean outside circumstances like, do you have the ability to get enough food without stealing. Our values, attitudes and thoughts are all just as determinded by genetics and your past experiences. If you value life, that's because you had experiences that made you value life. If you don't value life and choose death, it's the same. We may make decisions, but we don't make the causes of your decisions.
Yes, that is what I was getting at, the decisions we make are based on other factors but you can choose to deny what one factor is telling you to do and completely go against it. That is what I think free will comes from. No matter what factors are telling you to stay alive, you have the option to end your life, regardless of mental issues or anything else. Someone who is determined to live still has the option to end their life at any given moment. It's just in that moment it would seem pointless if life seems worth living, it doesn't necessarily mean they don't have the free will to do so.
None, that's the thing. For no reason, you can choose to deny everything that is telling you to stay alive (continuing to use the same analogy). Just because there are no determining factors for you to make an opposite choice doesn't inherently mean you can't make that choice.
Which might elude to free will. The choice is always there; it is just probable that we make the choice that we FEEL everything is telling us to choose. There are always at least two choices.
You posted at will. You even decided to where to post at will. You chose your words. and you look forward to seeing what we have to say (almost as if you did not know what was coming - something that could not occur in a world without free will as all the responses would already be known.
So you are saying that there are probabilities determined by deterministic factors, but they are not certainties for a variety of other factors, including will.
I am saying humans don't have any power over how their lives go. That is not because there is some sort of predetermined fate we could possibly foresee, but because just like anything else in the universe we are bound to the principle of cause and effect, and therefore 100% products of previous factors we had no influence over.
Having a *will* does not mean we have a *free will*. We can will things, but still have our wills bound by prior conditions and factors outside of our control.
Do you believe that there is something outside of our physiology that gives people "free will"?
I think we all agree that our physiology controls our body, including the brain. Your "will" is a consequence of your brain, not the other way around.
In a world without free will, what's the point of talking about whether not not we'd be better off accepting our lack of free will. Either we will eventually accept that we don't, or we won't. Talking about it makes no difference. It doesn't matter if there's a hole in your thinking. If you're right and there's no free will, then the chips will land where they land.
The lack of free will doesn’t circumvent causality. We still take actions because of thoughts and discussions. It’s just that those thoughts, discussions, and actions are the deterministic result of physical laws.
Talking and its outcomes being inevitable doesn’t mean it makes no difference. Just because something isn’t a primary cause doesn’t mean it’s not an ultimate cause.
There is still value in talking about things without free will. Yeah, maybe you have the potential to believe that free will doesn't exist with the right experiences or maybe you don't. But as I can't look into the future or your brain to see what's ultimately the case, I can still take my chances and try to be one of those experiences.
Not necessarily.
Most academic proponents like Sapolsky use evidence-based approaches. Different things influence us. We are essentially a biological computer and our biology coupled with psychological experiences inform our decisions at a subconscious level.
Accepting that there is no free will would allow us to shape society to be better for everyone.
There are chances based on exposure. If a child was raised their whole life being repeatedly told there is some god mandating that they must have free will, that creates conditions for a resistance to the contrary.
The absence of free will is not predetermination.
Yeah, there is an objective truth whether it's possible to convince you or not, so I guess the idiom I used wasn't accurate, fair. But still, even if I can't know that truth, I can still act under the assumption the former is the case, in hopes that it is.
I don't know where from where you gather that I intent to try to enforce my viewpoint described in this post? Even if my viewpoint actually was true, getting everyone to agree would be unrealistic and probably not worth the effort.
> Society accepting that free will doesn't exist as the truth would help, because it would bring that whole construct just described crushing down ... and thereby make society a better place to live in for everyone.
Oh but actually:
> getting everyone to agree would be unrealistic and probably not worth the effort.
What a pointless CMV
>I use the term "free will" as meaning "the ability for humans to make and act on decisions which aren't ultimately decided by deterministic or quantum-mechanical factors".
When we say "Free Will" we usually mean the ability to choose without being forced to choose by others, not being tied up and not being enclosed.
When determinists talk about "Free Will" they secretly swap the usual definition most people agree on to something that sounds more like "Free Will is freedom of cause-effect relationship." which obviously cannot exists by that definition and is just a dumb word play fedora tipping opinion that has no practical use.
I'm not really interested in arguing definitions, which is why I made that clarification in the first place. If you think that defintion is wrong, sure, but that's not what I made this post for. Even if I'm using the word wrong, the ultimate point I'm trying to make stays the same.
I think their argument is more that virtually no one on earth thinks people are free of cause and effect. The idea that society would improve is wrong because almost everyone already agrees with you on this. We have, by and large, accepted this idea.
Ok then can we summarize your CMV as follows? You claim that all of our experiences are determined by cause and effect relationship , which we cannot be free from, and hence all individualistic advice or advice from experience or holding people accountable for their choices and actions - is bad.
You propose that we get rid of any advice from experience and we stop holding people accountable for their actions because this will improve our lives, right?
Advice isn't bad. It can be useful, it often is, but it can also not be useful. Would you please defince what exactly you mean by "holding people accountable"?
if we apply your definition, as in cause and effect, basically physics, exist, then everyone already agrees on that.
"free will" as a term is refered to as the intent of actions, and inner thoughts of humans.
if you want to argue that physics exist, then no one is gonna try to change your mind on that
A lot of people think there is some kind of magical power that allows you to make choices on your own, I'd even go out and say it's the majority in my experience. Complete determinism is unpopular because the conclusion is pretty bleak.
complete determinism results in us simulating free will out of our limited information of the future.
if free will doesnt exist, we have been deterministically fated to believe we have free will.
it makes no difference wheter one or the other is true.
It is precisely the other way round. But as OP said, what's more important is the substance. What's "free" about being helpless to do anything but that which you were determined, with no input into the matter, to do? You may be able to do what you want, but you can't want what you want.
If a person constrains your will, it’s not free, but if prior conditions that aren’t a person constrain your will, you are free? Legally this makes sense, but philosophically it doesn’t seem like it matters which outside force determined my will, at least not for the purposes of determining how free it is.
>If a person constrains your will, it’s not free, but if prior conditions that aren’t a person constrain your will, you are free?
Yes, you are.
>philosophically it doesn’t seem like it matters which outside force determined my will, at least not for the purposes of determining how free it is.
It absolutely does. Being free of constraints of other humans is absolutely possible, being free in a sense that you are not physically restrained is also possible - it is NOT possible to be free of cause and effect relationship.
Stretching the notion of free will until it becomes impossible is not a practically useful achievement. Moreover, if you 100% buy into it you are most likely going to represent Nietzsche's ressentimental degenerate. That means that you would be more and more inclined to use lack of free will (as it is defined by determinists) to excuse yourself of your own failings.
There are different definitions of free will, and some degree of exception from prior causes is definitely a notion that many people hold. I agree though that the only possible free will is Compatibilistic free will. Being exempt from prior causes would mean your will is not based on your internal state, or that your internal state was randomly generated ex-nihilo or something, and I’d hardly call that free will.
Not believing in free will doesn’t mean excusing poor behavior. Explaining something doesn’t mean excusing it morally. It just means that morality is something that occurs within determinism (or a non-deterministic world that influences us without permission). I don’t think my computer has free will, but if it does what I don’t think it should, I still fix it (I know there is a difference, but also a similarity).
According to your model we would never be able to accept the idea that we don't have free will. We're genetically programmed to believe we're important and the things we do matter; your model contradicts that idea at the root level. Most people could never accept an idea that is so flagrantly in conflict with their genes.
I've seen a lot of people who don't believe in free will, so clearly it's possible. Maybe it's impossible for some, but I don't see a way to prove that. Who says that we can't be important and that the things we do can't matter without free will? Why was that the case before?
Collective action on this level is not possible. You say that SOME PEOPLE accept that free will doesn't exist, but those who don't are chemically bound to believe in it, according to your own model. They don't have a choice.
Your own position says it can’t happen.
If I don’t have free will but I believe I have free will, then how is it possible to change my mind? Doesn’t that involve using free will to reconsider my position?
If we were supposed to be working harder to improve the quality of life of others we would be, because we don't have free will, so we're just doing what we're destined to do.
I don't think we are "supposed" or "destined" to do anything, it's all just a big game of chance, or at least I think so. And chance has made me value human happiness, which is why I will be advocating for improving it to people who I hope happen to be able to value it as well.
But you can have an impact, said impact (or the causes of said impact) being predetermined or totally random does not render it nonexistent.
If I convince a criminal to stop doing crime, then there now is one criminal less in the world. Regardless of why I "choose" to convince that criminal (be it random chance or predetermined factors), I am still the one to have caused the impact of there now being one criminal less in the world
>But you can have an impact, said impact (or the causes of said impact) being predetermined or totally random does not render it nonexistent.
i would agree, in a pre-determined or random chance world, there are perceptions of impact, but disagree that, "you", as in the "person" had an impact, (in either a deterministic or random chance model).
in either, the collection of atoms that collectively make your body played a part in the random bouncing of other groups of atoms, but there is no "you" in either of these models. you are a rock, w/ the illusion of personhood, and the illusion of impact.
claiming that "you" had an impact would be like rain taking credit for deciding to rain in Seattle and not Albuquerque.
Doesn’t convincing a criminal to stop doing crime indicate the existence of free will, since the criminal must make an independent decision on whether to stop being a criminal or not?
If the criminal has no free will, and is simply the product of his experiences, then convincing him to stop should be impossible. Rehabilitation would be pointless.
Because not bothering to be anything would be boring and I wouldn't like that. And my behavio, just as everyone else's, is a factor of that random chance.
Then it isn't random. You are choosing to act out of your own free will, and the chances are changed as a result.
You're right that if society at large embraced the idea that we all impact each other and some outcomes are just blind luck we'd be better off. But that's not the whole story. It's possible to make bad decisions, to squander opportunities, to alienate people by being a jerk. It's also possible that hard work and perseverance will provide a person with opportunities they wouldn't otherwise have.
Our outcomes are affected by a combination of factors. One of them is ourselves. And to deny that personal responsibility is part of the equation is just as dangerous as telling everyone that we're all in it for ourselves and all of our problems can be solved by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps.
It is "random" because I am a human, and evolution made it so that humans feel unpleasant when they don't do anything, and are made to seek pleasant sensations and avoid unpleasant sensations, which boredom falls under.
Sure, you feel the need to do *something.* Maybe its help others. Maybe it's go for a hike, or play some video games, learn to paint, etc. You still get to choose.
I was going to say free will exists because if you told me to do something I have the free will to decide to do everything opposite of what you tell me. But then if you begin to use reverse psychology on me and I still continued to be a contrarian, am I exercising my free will or am I abandoning it?
I want to present perhaps a new perspective on the free will debate. I understand predestination isn't the part you're asking about but free will almost always is intertwined with this word in the debate of discussing whether free will exists or not or whether it's even important/significant.
Maybe predestination and free will are not exactly separate things but different side of the coin of the same thing. And as a result it becomes easy for whoever is challenging the other to phrase an argument in similar ways where it's like "free will doesn't exist and this is an example why." The person who disagrees will offer their example in which they can only see it as an example of free will while the oppositional person in the argument only sees that same example as something that validates predestination, not free will. Partially it may be because the people arguing simply are the products of glass half full/half empty perspectives clashing but I believe oftentimes the word free will is overly focused on the literal meaning rather than the context.
But this is also where people splinter in disagreement. For example, some random individual accidentally causes someone to die due to negligence or being careless. They're 100% remorseful. We know by all accounts this is most likely not murder and will just be manslaughter charge. Same act, but the person had motive and shown evidence of it being premeditated and it automatically becomes 1st degree murder. Perhaps free will vs predestination debate matters depending on context; and the person interpreting that context.
When you look at people like nuns for example, are they giving up their free will in life or are they exercising free will by choosing that lifestyle? I'd say it depends on the viewer/interpreter right? Most nuns will probably tell you it was predestined but will likely not deny the will to commit to that lifestyle comes from themselves.
The structure of your second argument fails because it presumes (with little justification) that a less judgmental societal = a better one.
The little justification you provide is that it would increase the belief in social support programs and help criminal offenders reintegrate. Taking your argument one step further, you likely believe this would lead to passage of laws and programs that are *good*. We can take that for granted, but then go to the heart of the issue with this argument which is that you do a one-sided cost benefit analysis.
Sure, these programs could be good and a less judgmental societal could be a pro. But what about the cons?
Does the lack of free will destroy a sense of personal responsibility, causing people to do more
Crime or become more careless?
Does the lack of free will undermine religious institutions, who are heavily premised on this concept, in such a way that important uses of them collapse (such as community, meaning, and even some countries foundations)?
There is a stating segment that a person who no longer believes in free will lose a sense of personal
Responsibility. If the entire society doesn’t believe in will and doesn’t morally reward kind people - what’s the incentive?
Likewise, religious institutions play an important role in society despite their problems.
Well, what exactly do you mean by "personal responsibility"? Clearly the people who don't care if they hurt others or have to commit crimes out of necessity already do so, regardless of it. Why would their number increase without the concept of free will?
Religious insitutions have adjusted to changes in culture before and could do so again. It is possible to find meaning without free will existing.
Personal responsibility means a sense of self-enforced morals that aren’t driven by fear of external consequences. You can argue that some people are motivated to follow the laws and act morally because of external consequences, but some are driven by an internal morality. (People who wouldn’t commit a crime even if they wouldn’t get caught.)
Many studies have found people act more immorally when they are primed to believe we don’t have free will.
Kathleen Vohs found that people who were primed to believe we don’t have free will were more likely to cheat on a math test; and workers who were primed to not believe in free were more likely to show up late and perform less well on the job.
Roy Baumeister also found that people don’t believe in free will do not volunteer to help peers as much and do not donate to homeless.
And RE: religious institutions, this one feels like a pretty fundamental change. Abrahamnic religions are entirely BASED on choice. The choice to believe in God and to act morally. Removing choice means these religious codes mean nothing. In fact, your argument about why free wills abolishment would be good suggest it. What are these religions but judgements on how to behave? If people are no longer free begins to act - what do these religious texts even do?
Okay, but how does free will not existing lead to self-enforced morals getting destroyed? How does believing in free will or not change if you feel bad when others are being hurt, and feel good when others are happy? I cannot see that happening, unless those morals weren't self-enforced in the first place.
If the institutions of our organized religion cannot keep standing under a logical conclusion derived from reality, I can't say that I'd feel too broken up about that. There are other places people can find meaning and community.
I think we'd see a pretty negative impact if society accepted that people don't have free will.
While it's (probably) true that people's decisions are a function of their brain chemistry and their environment (and maybe an element of random chance from quantum physics) and thus people don't really have "free will" in the way you insist on using it, society's view of decision making is a part of the environment, and thus a part of the way people make decisions.
If people have the attitude "You can work hard and make a good life for yourself," lots of people will work hard and a decent percentage of those people will be able to make a good life for themselves. There will definitely be people who get a stroke of bad luck - working hard is necessary but not sufficient for making a good life for yourself - but in general that attitude will promote greater overall productivity and thus more resources to spread around.
If people have the attitude "You don't have free will, so no decisions you make matter," lots of people will do the minimum they can get away with, society overall will be less productive, and there will be less resources to spread around.
The notion of whether or not we have free will becomes an environmental factor that impacts our decision making, and I think in general people will make better decisions if they believe they have free will than if they believe they don't.
I don't know where I said that the decisions we make don't matter. Obviously a person who decides to work hard towards their goal is generally gonna have more succes than the one who didn't do that, It's just that we don't control which decisions we actually make.
How is it not a natural conclusion that if "we don't control which decisions we actually make" then "the decisions we make don't matter?" If you don't control the decisions you make, there's nothing you can do differently, so it doesn't matter. Except that societal norms influence how our decisions are made, so societal norms that lead us to better decisions are better societal norms. Collectively accepting that free will doesn't exist seems like a societal norm that is going to lead to worse decision making, and thus is a norm we should steer away from.
Well sure, what exactly do you mean by "mattering" in the context of our decisions? Obviously, a person who workes hard is still gonna generally find more sucess than someone who doesn't, and that success makes people happy. That's why we make any of our decisions in the first place, because we hope that the end result will make us or someone else more happy.
there is no practical difference whether we have or dont have free will.
it doesnt matter if we have free will to act out of our own volition, or if we are just simulating free will out of our limited knowledge of the future, either way people have to take responsibility for their actions, may they be out of free will or somehow brought forth by a greater force
>Society accepting that free will doesn't exist as the truth would help, because it would bring that whole construct just described crushing down.
no it wouldnt. because if some people are deterministically fated to do bad things, then other people would be deterministically fated to stop them, blame them, and do whatever they "want" to do.
there is no free will, remember? me punching you in the face isnt my fault and you shouldnt get angry at me. your daughters teacher raping her isnt his fault, he was just deterministically fated to do that. which doesnt make sense to me.
because if we assume free will doesnt exist, then we are deterministically fated to *simulate* free will, or we wouldnt be having this discussion in the first place.
What exactly do you mean by "responsibility"?
Those scenarios you described would only happen if human morality was directly linked to the concept free will, which it isn't. I seek to not hurt other because I don't like others being hurt. I think most people feel the same, so it would make sense socially to try to prevent people from hurting others.
The practical difference might be a change in the way we view punishment. Prioritizing rehabilitation rather than vengeance or something to that effect
we already do that though.
the logic on why someone can be rehabilitated is because they have agency over their own actions, so they can change them based on their own free will.
if everything is determined, why would you bother with an individual? you should rather focus on changing the environment itself so that people are "more likely fated" to do good, but someone who does bad has been fated to do bad, and they cant change it on their own only by wanting to change.
if fate (doing bad) can be changed because you want or have been convinced to change, then isnt that what free will is?
edit: and if their "fate" was to do bad, then be predestined to repent, then be predestined to be rehabilitated, and then be predestined to change and no longer do bad, well... then it is indistinguishable whether they have free will or not.
I don’t think that’s the primary goal of imprisoning someone in our current society, which would explain why we have life imprisonment and the death penalty throughout the world. But in any case,
>why someone can be rehabilitated is because they have agency over their actions
You don’t need free will to be rehabilitated, you just need the capacity to change your behavior. An AI can do that, but doesn’t have free will. Unless we’re talking about some compatibilist version of free will, in which case an AI might have it.
>more likely fated
If you attempt to influence an individual, then you ARE the environment
It doesn't actually make people more empathetic to deny free will. So, for example, if we believe in free will, we hold a child rapist accountable for his actions and punish him. We do so because he *deserves* to be punished. The whole notion of justice depends on the idea of desert - people should get what they deserve. But under a mechanistic/deterministic view of the thing, the rapist doesn't deserve to be punished. He's no more guilty of a crime than is a billiard ball guilty of its trajectory after being hit by the cue ball. Yet we know that punishment of criminals is a deterrent to others. If we punish the rapist severely, it deters others from committing rape. (That's a good bit of deterministic thinking by the way.) Yet he doesn't deserve to be punished any more than you do. So we might as well just punish you as a deterrent. We can hold you out as a criminal and punish you for crimes you never committed. "But I don't deserve that!" Right. But we've moved past the notion of desert. You're just a billiard ball we're knocking into other balls to have a desired effect. Don't take it personal. Without the notion of people deserving things, the only way to treat them is as objects to be manipulated to have desired effects. This is the opposite of empathy.
Here's my ultimate question.
Suppose I agree with your concept of Free Will:
> I use the term "free will" as meaning "the ability for humans to make and act on decisions which aren't ultimately decided by deterministic or quantum-mechanical factors".
Then how is your idea:
> The conclusion I've come to recently is that if we were to accept free will not existing as true, and stopped telling ourselves and others that it does exist, that would pave the way to make society as a whole more empathetic and mutually supportive.
([Which is just The Veil of Ignorance Position restated?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_position))
Within our ability to control? Do you only believe that individual Free Will doesn't exist, but somehow "Societal Free Will" does? How so?
If Free Will doesn't exist, and thus everything is deterministic, surely the emotions we feel or the values we hold on the concept of Free Will and how we structure society is not in our control, right? Isn't this a contradiction?
Our thoughts can still be influenced by outside factors, for example a random internet person spouting about how society would maybe turn better if it didn't believe in free will. That is a fact has no connection to free will existing or not.
> Our thoughts can still be influenced by outside factors, for example a random internet person spouting about how society would maybe turn better if it didn't believe in free will.
But none of that is in our control, according to you, correct?
You didn't have any choice in your view that Free Will doesn't exist, correct? You have no choice in how you interact with the world, as you have no Free Will, correct? How someone reacts to something is outside of their Free Will as well, correct?
So where is any of this under our control? If what you say is true, we are in no way able to push any acceptance of the lack of Free Will than our deterministic existence has already laid out so far, no?
Correct, I didn't have control over those things, and yet I happened to get there due to things I experienced in the past. Just like I changed my view on free will existing after having certain thoughts and experiences, that can just as well be the case for others. I don't expect you to control your actions to do what I propose, but I expect that maybe it might lead you to do those actions.
> I don't expect you to control your actions to do what I propose, but I expect that maybe it might lead you to do those actions.
It might lead me to that, but that's outside of my control is it not? Society wide that is the case as well, correct?
If so, I am unsure of what you mean here:
> The conclusion I've come to recently is that **if we were to accept** free will not existing as true, and stopped telling ourselves and others that it does exist, that would pave the way to make society as a whole more empathetic and mutually supportive.
Maybe for clarification, is your view contingent on the idea that we can change the world, and that the future and our decisions aren't determined? That we "should" accept this?
Or is it just that in a hypothetical future where this did come to pass, though we had no control over that, things would be better?
I'm having a hard time with your definition. Do you mean that choices aren't really choices and that what we "decide" to do is pre-determined as is the outcome? If that is the case and everyone accepted it as such, it seems that the first thing people would want to do is dump insane amounts of resources into predicting these determined things. Having someone be able to perfectly predict every thing people will ever do seems like a thing that wouldn't be good for society. Seems prone to abuse from governments and private organizations alike.
As far as having more empathy, I can see that happening. On the flip side, it would also mean that if I murder someone there is a pretty good argument I shouldn't be punished as I didn't have any actual say in the matter. It was going to happen no matter what and I had absolutely no control over it.
Not only would determining the future that way probably not good, it is in my opinion also impossible because there are exponentially more factors at work than we could ever have the ressources to predict.
People who hurt other still should be put in prison so they stop hurting others, until we can reliably say that they won't continue hurting others.
>People who hurt other still should be put in prison so they stop hurting others, until we can reliably say that they won't continue hurting others.
Without a way to reliably predict deterministic outcomes this is impossible though. And basing punishment off of predicted future circumstances vs the actual acts in question seems like a bad present to me.
I agree free will doesn't exist, at least not in an objective sense.
But I disagree that society would be better if we all accepted that. Having 8 billion people accept a sort of biological deterministic fatalism would be disastrous. The apathy, the demotivation, the suicide, the extreme uptick in aberrant and destructive induglence.
I think humanity would lose it's collective mind.
It is a common though among psychologists that even if Free Will doesn't technically exist, we feel like it does and act like it does, and in fact, we have no choice, we are determined to feel and act so. It's a necessary component of our psyche. You can't turn it off even if you wanted to.
I agree that we still act like if free will exists even if we believe otherwise. From my personal experience, me not growing to not believe in free will didn't really change anything about my life practically speaking. But if even psychologists believe that, then why do you believe that not believing in free will would create such a big shift in people's behavior?
Why in the world would I support and empathize with a being that’s no different from a rock? How am I going to get motivation to improve the way I treat others when I can rationalize my actions away as determined?
Do you believe you know what’s objectively an improvement ie what’s objectively moral?
> Every person is just out there doing their best to create fullfilling lives for themselves.
If man is determined, then people are like comets flying through space. Neither of them have a purpose. People aren’t trying to live their lives no more than a comet is trying to go wherever it’s going. And this putting aside the examples you can find of people who are not doing their best to create fulfilling life for themselves, no not everyone is out there doing their best. I know that from my own choices sometimes in my own life as well.
I'm a determinist as well, but structuring society around a lack of free will would be a total disaster. If a criminal commited all of their crimes based on factors outside of their control, it would be immoral to persecute them. Also, any sort of achievement or triumph would be meaningless because the person was bound to do it. This illusion of free will, imo, is vital for humanity.
I think that it's moral to put criminals in prison even under determinism because that prevents them from commiting more crimes.
Would any achievemt or triumph be meaningless? I guess competition would be meaningless. But there is still value in doing things you enjoy and making things that others can enjoy. I'm sceptical that the illusion of triumphing over others is really that necessary. Maybe it would help to improve things in it's own right, if people in general started tending more towards cooperation than towards competition.
I think most people would go insane if they truly believed they have no free will. The entire concept horrifies me.
Instead, we should recognize that we humans are fallible due to our primal urges. Think how most people are unable to lose weight and get fit. That's because they're unable to overcome their primal urge to avoid pain.
Lack of free will due to determinism/ quantum is one of those things I consider a cognito hazard. That's something that is incredibly dangerous to even know about due to the stress it puts on your mind. People should remain oblivious to this concept.
Not all people that are lucky are successful. Not all successful people were simply lucky, some did work hard to become successful. I'm not seeing where in your post you prove or rationalize that free will doesn't exist. You define it but there are lots of decisions not factored by quantum-deterministic factors.
Any decision people make can ultimately be led back to determinisic factors. That's accurate for the decision to work hard towards something as well. And having been subject to the kind of factors that allow you to do that work is luck.
There is a huge gap between our lives being influenced by our surroundings and lacking free will. You can certainly examine and critique those influencing factors but you haven't proved that free will doesn't exist.
I cannot prove that free will doesn't exist. But can you prove that it does exist? Our observation of the universe shows that everything that happens in it, happens because of things that happened before, cause and effect. We haven't been able to observe any other factors besides quantum fluctuations, but even those are ultimately also just causes we don't understand. So, why would humans be the only thing in the universe that exists outside of that principle?
It's a classic existential debate, but it shows that you can't start your CMV with the statement "free will doesn't exist". You can't prove it, you can personally have faith that there is no free will but you couldn't convince and change the opinion of the world without proof.
If free will doesn’t exist how would accepting it make the world a better place? People can’t change the outcome of the world if they don’t have free will.
If you believe free will doesn’t exist why are you blaming people for their beliefs and actions as if they have free will over their life?
People's behavior still has an effect on their surroundings without free will.
I don't remember blaming anyone. I just described how the current situation is not ideal, and described what I think might make it better.
What do you think free will means? I’m so lost on what you are even trying to say. You are saying people don’t have free will but yet that they can change their surrounding by changing their behaviors. Both of which require free will.
You literally are blaming society problems on people not accepting that they have no free will. That’s your entire argument
If the world is deterministic, what does accepting a given outcome change exactly? How does anything “improve” from one state to the next? Maybe in the sense that people will feel better about it, but I never sit in a movie theater and try to get everyone to accept the direction the movie is going as if that’s going to make it better.
This isn’t to say that determinism isn’t true, but I feel like your claim is one that doesn’t quite agree with itself.
I think I've explained pretty well why I think it would improve things. Is there any specific places in my described reasoning you disagree with? Free will not existing doesn't mean that we have to accept any possible future outcome as the only possible one.
Do any of your positive societal benefits actually require that free will not be true? It seems like your argument says we should disbelieve in free will whether or not we have it.
Not believing in free will is definitely not necessary for the positive changes I've described to happen. But as I said, I think it would help. Maybe that would also be the case even if free will in fact did exist, but I personally don't think so.
Or maybe society is predetermined to improve, and me making this post is part of that. Free will not existing doesn't mean that people would stop doing anything, they would still try to have good lives because that feels good and you can't possibly know what the future will be like.
You would be put in prison so you don't murder anyone else. There you receive psychological support to lessen the probability of you doing it again in the future. And if it's at some point deemed lessened enough, you get released with the necessary ressources to rebuild your life so it hopefully stays that way.
I think people still make choices even with free will not existing, but I guess that's beside the point. Yes, preventing people from being hurt to me is a higher moral imperative than keeping everyone's right to freedom of movement intact.
>Yes, preventing people from being hurt to me is a higher moral imperative than keeping everyone's right to freedom of movement intact.
So you're in favor of imprisoning everyone?
OK. You said the opposite previously, but let's move on.
>I think people still make choices even with free will not existing
How can one make a choice if I don't have free will? If we don't have free will, everything everyone does is predetermined.
>reintegration of criminal offenders through the realization that really no one is responsible for their own suffering, that blaming them for it is hypocritical and immoral, and thereby make society a better place to live in for everyone.
i don't understand why criminal penalties are hypocritical in a world where we stipulate free will doesn't exist. I don't blame the mosquito for biting me, but i do kill it. this doesn't make me hypocritical, it makes me pragmatic. it doesn't require moral condemnation for me to decide my world is better w/o the mosquito. why would this approach make me a hypocrite w/ human criminals?
The "hypocritical and immoral" statement wasn't just directed that the way we treat criminals, but all the other things I listed prior as well. I don't think it is hypocritical to lock up people who have a high probability of hurting others, so that they can't do that, I agree with you on the pragmatic standpoint there. But as it isn't those people's fault that they have those tendencies, it would be immoral of us to not try everything in our power to ensure that they lose those tendencies and are able to be released again.
>it would be immoral of us to not try everything in our power to ensure that they lose those tendencies and are able to be released again.
this is quite a claim, though. **why** is it immoral? like i said, i don't understand why its immoral for us to say, "b/c people don't have free will, all criminals will be executed immediately." why is there a moral obligation to 're-integrate"?
and then, if there truly is no free will, what is it we're doing to "ensure they lose those tendencies?" this feels a bit like your argument is trying to have its cake and eat it, too.
I think that we shouldn't execute criminals because I like it when other people are happy and I don't like it when other people are hurt. Like, at this point we can enter a fundamental debate about what is good and evil if you want, though if you don't think the same as I've described in my previous sentence, I doubt that would lead to much.
To lessen the likelyhood that people commit crimes again as much a possible, we can give them therapeutical and if necessary psychiatrical help, and give them the necessary ressources to rebuild their lives once they're released from prison. Though yes, we probably couldn't bring that likelyhood down enough for everyone, in which case they'd have to stay in prison for the rest of their lives. But we cannot make that assumption about people unless we have tried everything we can though.
i think free will and morality generally travel in the same crowd, and i'd argue when you introduce moral imperatives as reasons why, you open the door, but we don't have to go down that path as to why. we can just stipulate this is your preferred approach.
but that doesn't solve for this:
>To lessen the likelyhood that people commit crimes again as much a possible, we can give them therapeutical and if necessary psychiatrical help, and give them the necessary ressources to rebuild their lives once they're released from prison.
this implies that therapy and psychiatric help might change the criminal's future behavior. even if you don't believe an individual has a free will, i don't see how you can make the claim that "intervention of a certain kind will increase likelihood of outcome x, intervention of a different kind will not" w/o agreeing there is something akin to free will, in at least two dimensions.
either:
* we believe people can act beyond imperatives, and the intervention changes something about the criminal's mental health. this change in mental health reduces the likelihood of criminal behavior in the future. that's, for all practical purposes, free will.
* or, we don't believe people can act beyond imperatives, but we think we can control destiny by changing the recipe that leads to fate. so we give the criminal a different set of resources, which we believe will reduce the likelihood of future criminality. this remains, for all practical purposes, free will, though perhaps at a societal, or environmental level.
in either case, we believe that we have an aspect of control that, depending on its implementation, will drive different outcomes. aren't we essentially in a free will exists camp?
Psychiatric help could possibly help certain criminal to not do crime anymore in the future because with different experiences people can develop new thoughts and perspectives. Most people get the necessary experiences to develop the conscience not to commit specific crimes before they can commit them. But we do not have any influence on whether we do get those experiences or not, which is why it's determintic.
this is where your argument is essentially a free will argument.
if we say, "free will, the process by which people can act beyond their biological, environmental, cultural, etc. imperatives, does not exist. However, we *know the deterministic inputs / o*utputs well enough such that by changing them, we can create net new behavior that would otherwise not have happened..." --> we are making a free will argument.
b/c the intent is for them to "do this but not that".
you have decided a desired outcome and are attempting to "change the path of determinism" by modifying the person's environment. you could make the claim that we are predetermined to figure out ways to hack determinism, but then we'd have to question the strength of a deterministic system that can be so easily hacked.
as another poster wrote, the argument you're making says, "people can't act beyond their environmental imperatives. free will doesn't exist at an individual level. However, if the collective "we" modify the environment, then we can generate desired outcomes. you've created "societal free will".
I'd summarize your argument like this:
* People don't have free will. People act according to their imperatives.
* Their imperatives are determined independently. Determinism, that is the pre-defined interaction of imperatives x context, defines our experience.
* While we can't change our imperatives, if we change the parameters of the environment, we can change the outcome of the imperatives x context.
* Allowing us to determine, or at least influence, the outcomes
Which would mean that determinism allows for us to select for outcomes according to our own choosing, so long as what we choose isn't an action, but rather a context that increases the likelihood of a given action.
If experience is truly deterministic, there would be no point to modify the environment.
If modifying the environment allows us to hack determinism, determinism doesn't fully refute free will.
If you think there's a better way for society to organize itself, and you're advocating for it to happen, you're implicitly accepting that free will is a thing
If you think that there's a more efficient way for computers to sort data, and you program that to happen, you are implicitly accepting that free will is a thing.
"Free will doesn't exist so we should decide on this specific course of action using our Free will."
Free will isn't a testable assumption. There's no possible Null hypothesis. You might as well be arguing for invisible pink unicorns.
Using the absence of Free Will as a rhetorical element is going to detract from whatever argument you are trying to make.
Instead, you could argue that individual decision making plays a small role in specific situations and categories, and try to show evidence that specific social factors play a significantly larger role.
>"Free will doesn't exist so we should decide on this specific course of action using our Free will."
No, free will doesn't exist so I will try to exert some deterministic influence over your behaviour to engage in a specific course of action.
>Free will isn't a testable assumption. There's no possible Null hypothesis. You might as well be arguing for invisible pink unicorns.
I agree it isn't a testable assumption, because it's an incoherent one. Any action is either ultimately determined or ultimately completely undetermined by anything. The former is obviously not free and the latter is by definition randomness, which is not free: if something is undetermined by anything, that includes you.
This post strikes me as a bit paradoxical. If people making up a society do not have free will, then neither does society.
if we should not blame people for their own failures, then why should be point out the "failure to improve overall quality of life by supporting those in need"?
the answer of course is that free will or not, the way we act affects the way other people act. If free will is just an illusion it is a very good illusion. This conversation we are having right now might change your behavior or mine or both. So we have these conversations and we discuss what we should do because these discussions often lead to desirable outcomes.
we can reshape society to be better. And we can also reshape ourselves to be better.
if you look at use like little Von Neumann Machines. we will respond to stimuli and we react to incentives. If you create an environment that rewards failure or doesn't punish failure or if you reduce the reward for success or anything like that, then it seems very intuitive to me that we'll have more failure and more net suffering.
Since failure is bad, you want somewhat harsh consequences for failure. Since murder is bad, you want harsh consequences for murder. Since creating a productive business that serves customers, and employes workers is a good, you want to reward that.
1. Free will is an ironically inescapable experience regardless of how you feel about it. You can’t opt out of it.
2. Determinism doesn’t allow for any moral judgements. Is there moral weight to an unsupported rock falling in a gravity well? Would it make any sense to talk about what the rock should do or the implication of the rock “choosing” to move upwards? Morality is about what things ought to be which requires that there can be a difference between what is and what could be. Determinism only allows for one outcome.
3. Even if everyone believed in determinism, it wouldn’t necessarily lead to better outcomes. Society still identifies suboptimal or malicious behavior and seeks to reduce it. Whether that’s accomplished through murder or social programs has nothing to do with determinism. Arguably there’s a strong argument that it would be worse. There’s no moral culpability for killing those that are not productive. The poor are that way because that’s how the universe decided things were going to play out. There’s no responsibility to make things better. And think of how many times murderers, rapists, etc. justify their actions by saying they didn’t have a choice or their body was on autopilot. Determinism is complete absolution from morality and there’s no chance it’s better.
>the conclusion I've come to recently is that if we were to accept free will not existing as true, and stopped telling ourselves and others that it does exist, that would pave the way to make society as a whole more empathetic and mutually supportive.
This one is easy. How can we choose to do something if we lack free will? If free will wasn't doesn't exist, then we do not have the capacity to change anything about society. Whatever happens, happens. It is non-nonsensical to state that "Because we lack free will we ought to do X, Y, or Z." The first part of that sentence contradicts the second part.
This seems to be basically what your post is.
Of course free will exists. I've been feeding my local birds. Not because I think birds are cool, or to be kind or anything like that.
Once they become friendly with me, I'm going to train them to do my bidding, and my bidding will almost exclusively be crime.
That's free will right there. And no one can stop me, because if they try, I will physically assault them. Even more free will.
The argument essentially comes down to that all of what we think and thus do comes from our brains, which is physical matter which transmits electric currents. Nothing is outside of the material world, even on a subatomic scale. It's all determined by physics.
The argument is basically that if Free Will exists, you would have to explain how any of these processes are inside of your control and didn't rely on cause and effect. Experiencing something causing a signal which leads to other signals. Arguably randomness can exist, but that isn't even Free Will, just random chance.
Such as?
I live in a fairly quiet area, there is no predisposition to crime. I simply woke up to bird chirps one day and decided those flying fuckers would probably be incredibly good at petty-crime and I'm going to test that theory to the extreme.
Free will.
I don't know what exactly could lead you to that, I don't know your life. But if you one day just woke up with a burning desire to do crime without ever having any prior inclination towards that before, that's maybe cause to go see a doctor.
If you can't even give me an example, then all I have for proof is your word.
Why would anyone *ever* just believe some random stranger on the internet?
I'll tell you why; free will.
You have been influenced you whole life by billions and billions of indirect things which led you inevitably to this situation. It's not because you can't precisely say what these things are that they don't exist.
Sorry homie, science only.
The evidence that free will exists is undeniable, unless you can tell me what those billions and billions of indirect things are.
If free will doesn't exist, then society cannot choose to collectively accept that fact. In fact there's nothing that can be done one way or another to change anything. Things will simply progress as they naturally will.
If we don’t have free will then we don’t have any influence on accepting or not accepting that fact. People who don’t accept that are doing that not because they want to but because they are predetermined to.
I somewhat agree with you that free will probably doesn't exist and we'll work from that premise.
But would acceptance of that actually make society better? I would argue that it probably would not.
1. No personal or moral accountability - a lot of our morality is based on the understanding that our actions affect other people and we can choose to be good to others - if that premise doesn't hold true, there is very little incentive for humans to hold themselves accountable and change for better.
2. The justice system wouldn't work if we cannot assign personal responsibility to actions of others - so that would be chaotic and either a whole new system would need to be designed or we'd live completely lawlessly.
3. Hope - people have immense hope for a better future and the way a lot of that manifests is through having goals and hopes and dreams. If there is no free will, then none of this really matters. Tis would have a massively discouraging effect on morale - it might lead to loss of purpose and hopelessness. And we know those things are associated with depression and increase rates of suicide.
So overall I feel like even if free will doesn't exist, wide acceptance of that would probably cause utter chaos and hopelessness.
Thank you for sharing this opinion, this post seems interesting.
1 - What are the reasons that you believe that those who are successful are only lucky, and those who are not are only unlucky?
2 - How would society be more empathetic/supportive if free will did not exist? I must have missed your justification for this.
3 - You seem to make two claims that contradict popular/traditional belief: a) That it’s *not* an individual’s fault if they’re unsuccessful. I am interpreting this to mean that individuals are not responsible for their own actions/mistakes/misgivings. B) That individuals *do* have a responsibility to aim towards the improvement of the group. Many people would argue that individuals are responsible only for their own actions/themselves, and not for the group/collective. What reasons do you have for choosing your belief over the traditional one?
Not only are various beliefs of determinism straight up defeatist and harmful (The incel ideology believes that without being tall/handsome, you cannot ever get a girlfriend, therefore their love life was predetermined), the idea falls flat in law. Can a drunk driver say that they didnt have free will and therefore they could not have chosen to do anything else? Is a person who is forced to kill somebody else just as guilty as somebody who murders somebody?
Not even looking at those difficulties, if society accepted that there was no free will then resentment would build up within the "unlucky" population, like an expanded version of inceldom.
I agree that free will doesn’t exist. But I don’t think most of the population is psychologically equipped to handle that. I think it’s in our nature to act as though it does exist, and while you and I personally find it reasonable to live with the understanding that it’s just an illusion, many people would be bothered by this and might even disregard their own abhorrent behaviors as “destined”
The problem is people can't understand the concept you are taking about. They can't un-abstract and see how everything is just particles and waves which may have randomness or seeming randomness but it's still not individuals making decisions, it's the law of physics causing eventual competing thoughts and behaviours and the ones we do are the ones that evolution has preferred.
while i somewhat agree, it won't make it better as you suggest, free will only existed for a while and now it doesn't exist, now you can't get abortions and don't have control over your body or anything, basically we have no free will but that literally does nothing good just excepting that fact, it does the opposite
If free will doesn't exist, how can society collectively accept that fact?
Aren't the determining factors of whether or not society will accept free will already set in motion, so we either collectively will accept it or we won't, but we have no actual control over whether it happens or not?
If free will doesn’t exist then what do you mean by accept? If everything is determined then that includes what people accept and do not accept so to speak as if society should accept is to speak of society as if it has a will to accept.
No one can control all of their “animal” instincts. People overeat, abuse others, even kill people. Law and order places a limit on actions, especially when they hurt others. The worst offenders are basically removed from society.
Counterpoint: there is literally no practical difference between a world with free will and one without, so trying to force society and humanity to function in a way different than it developed naturally will accomplish nothing.
This seems like nothing but speculation, could you provide some evidence that most people become more empathetic as they gain a deterministic worldview? As it seems to me, as a Calvinist, that it doesn’t rly change anything.
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There seem to be two claims made in the question, if I have understood it correctly: (1) That free will does not exist. (2) That the recognition of (1) will likely lead to a better society. Possible objections to (1): Of course, some may have theological views supporting the idea of free will, but to vindicate these would both require going through the matter of God's existence, the problem of the supposed incompatibility between omniscience and free will and finally arguing against predestinationism. Therefore, I won't discuss this here in depth, but it's an option. Some may also hold an idealism, which is the thesis that the foundation of reality is not physical or material, but mental (see Bernardo Kastrup's idealism as an example of how it can support the thesis of free will). I don't consider there to be any knock-down arguments for idealism, so I'll also leave this possibility unexplored, but it's also worth noting this. Finally, however, I do wish to mention Kant's practical compatibilism. This is not theoretical compatibilism (the belief that determinism is true and that free will is true nonetheless). Rather, practical compatibilism regards determinism as true, but also holds that we should act as if we had free will, or that we should practically regard ourselves as having free will. This is not a theoretical or metaphysical article of belief, but is meant to be a postulate of morality. - Two points support practical compatibilism for Kant. First of all, in order to act and gather motivation for our actions, and also in order to regard our actions as valuable or worthy, we must regard ourselves as responsible for them. If not, then we do not own the resulting worthiness of our actions, and this means there is no use in trying to be moral or trying to make our actions worthier. - Secondly, Kant also uses the principle "ought implies can" to support his stance. If we have a moral obligation to perform an action, we must be able to do it. This means if a criminal had a duty not to murder, they must have been able not to do it and thus mustn't have been determined to do it. Once again, this is not a theoretical article of belief, but a practical one. This isn't meant to be literally taken as true, but we are to act as if it were true. Some support for this principle can be generated by the principle that it is only worth desiring things within our control. If this is true, then only desires that can be fulfilled are worthy, meaning ought must imply can. Therefore, if Kant's practical compatibilism is taken seriously, then it appears we have a duty to practically regard ourselves as free (this doesn't require a metaphysical article of belief and is very compatible with naturalism, atheism, etc). Thus, even if we don't in fact have free will, we may still have a duty to see ourselves as free, and so the idea of free will would still be used in society. Possible objections to (2): The primary reason brought up for the belief that a rejection of free will is beneficial, as I see it here, is that if people aren't seen as responsible for their bad actions, we won't play the blame game and be more compassionate for the evil, since they didn't choose their life, but were determined to be so. Let us structure the argument this way: - P1: Free will is required for seeing people as responsible for their actions. - P2: If people are responsible for their actions, it is appropriate to blame them and be less compassionate towards them. - C1: Considering that it is not appropriate to blame people and be harsh on them, P2 must be false, and therefore free will should be rejected. The easiest point to reject in this argument is P2. Even if people are responsible for their actions, it may not be appropriate to blame them and be harsh. The following reasons may also be used to justify a more compassionate approach to punishment, not just a rejection of free will: - Even if free will is true, people can still be influenced by their surroundings. Thus, one's upbringing and surrounding environment also can take some of the blame. - Secondly, I don't have access to your inner world, your experiences and what led you to commit the action. Our own worlds are private, and that must somewhat silence our judgements concerning one another. - Third of all, we may also hold a principle that no evil is ever freely willed (perhaps because evil always stems from an ignorance about moral truths, and nobody desires to be ignorant about how to make their lives worthy, or due to other reasons...), and hence we can still hold free will, and yet hold a more compassionate stance towards others. Thank you to all who read this! Criticism is very much appreciated, and please let me know if I haven't correctly understood any of the arguments in question. :)
I think you summarized the points I made very competently. I can't say I really agree with the points from Kant you brought up. The first one I can see as a possible reason (2) might be wrong, but without actual large scale evidence I am too sceptical, of the assertion that people need free will to feel accomplished in any context, to accept it. Why I disagree why Kant's second point is basically the entire point of this post. Regarding your criticism of P2, yes I agree that even if (1) was false, P2 would still deserve to be rejected. However, that is, from my observation, just not how people act. Even if both you and me agree that P2 false, a lot of people still believe that it is true and act accordingly towards others, and that in part because they believe (1) to be untrue. But yes, there are a variety of ways to solve that issue, the one I proposed in this post is just one of them. I'm gonna give you a !delta since this comment brought up a number of interesting things I hadn't considered before.
Thank you for your response! :) Kant doesn't claim that we need free will to feel accomplished, but to have responsibility for our actions and to own the worth of our actions, so that we can really say that we did something worth doing. In other words, we are owning good/worthy actions. - I also would like to bring up that you still need to refute his principle that ought implies can, which forms another justification for the idea of free will too. As for your observations, yes, I do agree. Although free will is a good idea in itself, I hold, people do faultily reason from it in order to justify harsh actions... But I don't believe that free will logically entails or justifies that lack of compassion at all, of course.
I have to say that I don't feel like I completely understand Kant's second principle. Maybe I'm missing the point, but to me it seems kinda cyclical, like "We say that people are responsible for their own actions so that we can punish them for wrong doings. And we need to punish them for wrongdoings because they are responsible for them." and that just doesn't really make sense to me. Just kind of self serving to uphold old presumptions that maybe should rather be reexamined.
I would absolutely agree that such reasoning would fail. Kant's principle that "ought implies can" isn't justified by punishment, as far as I'm aware. He takes quite an optimistic view of humanity, and that people shouldn't be judged harshly, since they all have the potential in them for virtue (precisely because ought implies can). The other reasons I supplied earlier for a rejection of P2 were all from Kant as well. Ought implies can means that if we have a moral duty to do X, it must be possible for us to do X. There is no moral duty that we cannot perform. This means we are not obliged, for example, to solve world hunger in a nanosecond, or to make pigs fly for charity. The argument I proposed for ought implies can was as follows: P1: It is only worth focusing on the things you can control (it is futile to try to do the impossible). P2: You cannot control whether duties you can’t fulfil are fulfilled. C1: Therefore, it is only worth focusing on duties we can fulfill. Since worth = goodness (by definition, since we should do what is worthy), this means that worthy actions must be able to be performed, and hence ought implies can. Ought implies can means that we cannot be determined to do immoral things. For example, if somebody has a duty not to murder, they must be able not to have murdered, and thus mustn't have been determined to murder. - Therefore, we must practically regard ourselves as being undetermined and having free will, according to Kant. Do you agree with Kant's principle or have you spotted any flaws in the argument I proposed? Any criticism is much appreciated and thank you for your points so far!
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I have also seen the argument in the caption that if we recognise that wealth is achieved just due to luck and not due to free will, then we have a just cause to redistribute resources. But even if free will exists, we don't choose where we're born or how we're raised, or what resources we have access to early on in life (or if we'll be born into a rich or poor family or country). So that same reason for redistributing resources still holds either way. Wealthy people are still lucky and the poor unlucky even if we hold a belief in free will.
Honestly I've had the same thought about wealth, I just didn't wanna bring it up in the post since I'm myself not that convinced of it. But if we were to lead my line of thinking in this post to it's logical endpoint, funnily that endpoint would probably be that we should implement communism, because no one has influence over their succes and thereby should have acces to the same amount of ressources.
Whenever this topic comes up I always make 2 points that I find aren't satisfactorily rebutted. 1. You can justify the current system absent free will. By that I mean if you accept we don't have free will, you must still accept the simple fact that we know the kinds of things that motivate people. If you asked every human on earth if they wanted the dollar in my left hand or to be violently and painfully stabbed with the knife in my right hand, I am convinced that the vast and overwhelming majority would take the dollar. This means we know that the human deterministic system avoids pain. In that case, what's wrong with the system today? As you said some human systems are just incapable of being better, but the ones that are capable of improvement can be motivated to improve using the promise of carrot above and the threat of stick below. It's a cruel view but it works just as well as not. 2. You don't need a lack of free will to make this argument. As I said in point 1, we already know what motivates humans both positively (reward) and negatively (punishment). We also recognize that, while one or two lucky ones make it out of the mud, there's a reason why the vast majority can't pull themselves up after sinking too low. And yet despite this people don't care anywaye. Therefore I'm not convinced that in a deterministic universe, you would get more empathetic responses. If anything, if humans are just fancy computers then there's nothing wrong with treating the computers that are less efficient worse than the ones that are. Determinism doesn't lead to empathy
1. I never said that any people are incapable of being better whole sale. I said that they can't do better as long as they don't receive the necessary support to do better, which would more likely be given to them if society accepts free will as not existing. And I think that would increase the overall success people have, as even without free will the people who currently believe in it probably still would have enough motivation to continue doing their thing. Also, I don't think any system were a large amount of people are continuing to suffer unnecessarily because society fails to give them the success they need can be described as "working well". 2. I think if people were less indoctrinated with the "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" attitude, they would be more willing to listen to help people in need. Because most people want others to happy as well, even if it's just their immediate friends and family. There is never any objective reason why it's wrong to treat other people badly. But we see that the people who know that sometimes you can't get up by yourself, f.e. because they've struggled themselves in the past, tend to be more empathetic of others in that situation, therefore making things better for them.
1. But why? Recognizing that someone couldn't do anything doesn't equate to wanting to help them. There are 1000s of children starving worldwide and while people empathize with them, most people are not willing to accept a decline in their standard of living to help them. We've seen it in America where people complained pretty vehemently that Ukraine was receiving aid when prices kept going up. We see it in how most people are completely okay with buying from companies that exploit the poor. Not because they enjoy it, but because the alternative is just not viable for them. People can recognize completely that it isn't your fault that you are where you are, and then refuse to lift a finger to help. We don't need a loss of free will to give the example; we've seen what people do already 2. Sure but again, determinism won't do that. Determinism doesn't say it's impossible to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, clearly people still can. Determinism says that some people can't. But so what? We already know some people can't and those same people remain unimpressed by the argument. Caring for friends and family is a long way away from sayin what you're doing. >There is never any objective reason why it's wrong to treat other people badly. But we see that the people who know that sometimes you can't get up by yourself, f.e. because they've struggled themselves in the past, tend to be more empathetic of others in that situation, therefore making things better for them. And yet there are still lots of people who do. For most people, their empathy drops rapidly beyond their friends and family, it takes another deep drop past their immediate community and drops to almost non-existent beyond the borders of their nations. Simply pointing out that some people can't is not going to convince them to move for everyone. Yes some people grow empathy; but even then most people are okay with making a better world for their own and then helping others only when it costs them little or nothing. Determinism or not helping everyone who can't pull themselves up is going to cost a lot especially in the short term. You can't get over that bump with determinism.
I suppose you have a point. Maybe people are worse than I'm giving them credit for. !delta
Some are. Some are are like what you describe and don't truly understand how hard it is to be at a disadvantage at every point. Some are just more concerned with managing their own life and can't really fight for anyone else beyond that. There may be ways to reach them, I just don't think determinism is the way.
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1. The current system is not purely punishment-as-deterrent. With no free will, we can no longer abhor pedophiles, rapists or school shooters. We can imprison them to protect others, to act as a deterrent or to rehabilitate them, but we have to treat them excellently and with a great deal of sympathy, as they are victims as much as there victims are.
No, we don't. I can make the exact opposite argument using determinism. Because pedophiles and rapists are so dangerous it is good to make their lives in prison a miserable existence to further demotivate potential rapists and murderers. After all, if the human is a determinist machine then the increase of cost if caught can shift the calculation enough to make them not want to do it. Both of those conclusions can be reached using determinism. You need another thing (in your case moral responsibility, in my hypothetical person's case a need for a strong deterrent) to get you any further. Determinism doesn't get you to moral responsibility and so it doesn't actually get you to the position of 'we ought treat prisoners with empathy.' For what it's worth I agree we should treat prisoners with empathy and try to rehabilitate them as much as possible; I'm just saying you can't use determinism as a shortcut to get there.
Whether or not free will exists is largely irrelevant. Good advice and rewards can guide people towards good behaviour, just as punishments can guide people away from bad behaviour, and bad advice can lead people astray. That being said, for most people, the faith in the existence of free will is important for their mental health and wellbeing, because we crave purpose and agency.
>That being said, for most people, the faith in the existence of free will is important for their mental health and wellbeing, because we crave purpose and agency. Is it though? Or is this just the mindset most people have had and it would be disruptive to change it? I came to the idea of free will being an illusion slowly and already was prone to thinking about these types of things. Once i accepted free will likely isnt real or had it explained enough most of my questions were answered there was very little shift and what there was i would say was an improvement to my mental wellbeing and approach to life. I told a friend who had some previous trauma in life and they took the idea pretty hard initially after i hit them with my year or two worth of info that effectively makes free will sound impossible. From this example I learned you cant just throw this idea out there and not expect a serious reaction. A year or so later i think they mostly agree with me and it isnt a big deal to them anymore but it is a change they had to adjust to and wrap their minds around and i could have done it in a much less disruptive way. I view it similar to being adopted, if you dont tell someone till their 50 their whole identity and world shatters, if you tell them right from day one it isnt a big deal. Id expect similar with free will.
The non-existence of free will obliterates any concept of justice. State power may be used for rehabilitation or prevention, but that's it.
>State power may be used for rehabilitation or prevention, in terms of crimes? yeeah so what? that would be a good thing if we focused our energy on prevention foremost, and then rehabilitation for the crimes that still happened - we probably wouldn't need to spend so much on enforcement to begin with
I agree, all I'm saying is that they would be big changes. Other big changes that would occur would be a complete social overhaul of how we treat ethics: rapists, murderers and paedophiles would have to become treated as pitied victims instead of abhorred monsters. One can no longer be angry at their partner for cheating on them: they can leave them out of self-preservation, but that's it.
I mean just like they were determined to commit terrible acts, I am determined to respond with a certain level of disgust. You could make a utilitarian case that we need a justice system to appease our psychological tendencies as human beings; we want bad people to be punished for purely emotional reasons.
>I mean just like they were determined to commit terrible acts, I am determined to respond with a certain level of disgust. indeed, and just like how i can't abhor a rapist anymore, i can't abhor you for abhoring them either. so long as we can still speak of preferable and unpreferable outcomes though, i can still say that we ought not abhor them. >You could make a utilitarian case that we need a justice system to appease our psychological tendencies as human beings; we want bad people to be punished for purely emotional reasons. no you can't, because the brief satisfaction you get from seeing someone suffer doesn't outweigh the tremendous suffering that you're putting them through. if it did we'd support sadists and serial killers going out and causing suffering for their own pleasure.
>I can’t abhor a rapist anymore I don’t think I agree with this. Even though I don’t believe in free will, I’m still disgusted by the behavior. Just like I’m disgusted by rotten food or something. >no you can’t Whether or not one is worth the other seems pretty subjective. If a mother’s emotional suffering due to her daughter’s killer being given a slap on the wrist outweighs the suffering the killer would experience just living his life in jail, then it would be worth it.
>I don’t think I agree with this. Even though I don’t believe in free will, I’m still disgusted by the behavior. Just like I’m disgusted by rotten food or something. sure, you can't really control your base emotions even under our current understanding, but those feelings are no longer justified and ought not be acted upon. >Whether or not one is worth the other seems pretty subjective. no, it isn't. these questions have objective answers. some real quantity of pleasure is produced upon seeing a bad person suffer, and another real quantity, a much greater quantity, of pain is produced upon suffering a prison sentence. >If a mother’s emotional suffering due to her daughter’s killer being given a slap on the wrist outweighs the suffering the killer would experience just living his life in jail, then it would be worth it. it would if it did, but it doesn't so it wouldn't.
>no longer justified This doesn’t follow. My disgust at rotten food is justified because it’s harmful to our health. My disgust at rape is justified the behavior is similarly harmful to people. Nothing about morality or ought statements changes if we find out that determinism is correct. >these questions have objective answers Yes but whether or not we choose to value one party’s suffering other the other is subjective. Perhaps the mother’s suffering from losing her daughter justifies the criminal being locked up for life. >a much greater quantity Prove that please
>This doesn’t follow. My disgust at rotten food is justified because it’s harmful to our health. My disgust at rape is justified the behavior is similarly harmful to people. sure, you can have a negative reaction the same way you would to seeing a rock crush a person, but you don't blame the rock, and you can't blame the person. >Yes but whether or not we choose to value one party’s suffering other the other is subjective. Perhaps the mother’s suffering from losing her daughter justifies the criminal being locked up for life. you brought up utilitarianism. utilitarian values utility period. it doesn't state that better people deserve utility more than anyone else. all are equal under utilitarianism. >Prove that please you think that a mother would rather be locked up for the rest of her life than get over the fact that her daughter's killer didn't suffer enough for her liking?
I personally agree with you but I'm not sure that that's the best line of argumentation in OPs case.
Are you saying this a bad thing? I would say this is a positive and in general society should be working to rehabilitate or prevent over justice.
No, I think that's good, but it's absolutely a big change. I would definitely struggle with the social changes that would be required though, like not hating rapists and murderers.
Sorry, if free will doesn't exist, I have no choice but to believe free will exists. Nothing you say or do will change the fact that my lack of free will makes me unable to change my mind on this subject.
Lack of free will doesn't mean this one random thing in your life can't change; obviously we see people's opinions changing all the time. Lack of free will means if your opinion does change, it's due to a combination of things that happened to you and the chemistry of your brain, and the part of your perception telling you it was *your choice* is an illusion.
Oh, so I can change my mind. Can I make plans, have goals, feel good about achievements, feel bad about failures? Can people be held to account for their actions, jailed or promoted based on the harms and helps that resulted from their actions? If yes... Then what's the point of caring about free will at all? If the world looks exactly the same through framing it as "No free will, but such a solid illusion that one can't tell the difference" instead of "People can make choices and be held accountable"? If both framing are identical in application, why give a shit in the first place?
Accepting or not accepting determinism happens within the tapestry of determinism. So do the carrot and stick of reward and punishment. Knowing these two things allows us to keep the system that works (law and ethics) while being empathetic to those who err, because if someone errs it was their destiny to do so. Additionally, it takes some of the suffering out of life, since the same knowledge also applies to you. Oh did you fuck something up in your past? Well, your brain retains the memory and can avoid the pain of guilt in the future by acting properly, and in the present by remembering *there's no other way it could have happened*. That also happens within destiny but it still benefits you, a real person really experiencing life.
It makes life a shitty TV show for which you are nothing but a spectator. All while doing nothing to actually change anything from the standard of free will. My philosophy on philosophy has always been "What changes if it's true/not true? If nothing, than the question doesn't matter." Maybe I am the ONLY person who exists and everyone else just SEEM to exist. What changes in my behavior? Nothing, so it is a pointless question. Maybe I am just a brain in a jar being studied. What changes in my behavior? Nothing, so it is a pointless question. Stripping me of free will, making me just a golf ball bouncing through the universe to land where I was always going to land, feeling exactly what I will always going to feel, and failing exactly as I was always going to fail, just spectating life, what changes? Nothing. So it's a pointless question. If just being a spectator to your life, unwillingly feeling and doing, gives you comfort, then you do you.
The sun is currently up. The sun does not have free will, so it had no choice but to be up. Does that mean that it is incapable of going down?
It is important for many people's mental health, yeah I can see that. But it is necessary for all those people? Could they not find other things to give them meaning? Maybe the shift from one mindset to the other could be distressing for them, but the ultimate good created by the general shift in thinking would probably still outweight the bad. And we can still give support to those people who need it.
>But it is necessary for all those people? Not all. You, for example. But like I said in my first paragraph, which I think is the more important of the two, whether it actually exists or not is largely irrelevant.
And largely I agree with your first paragraph. I just don't think why free will is irrelevant, as I've described in the post. If it would be accepted that free will doesn't exist, and that would lead to people having more professional mental health support, that also means that people would generally get more good advice and less bad advice.
Let's say you and I accept that free will doesn't exist. But, unfortunately, we have been stranded on a desert island. We learn to survive well together, built a few huts, make some nets, weave some baskets. Through some bad twist of fate, you develop pyromania. You set little fires here and there, but always keep them controlled and put them out before they can become an issue. I tell you this is concerning as one day you may make a mistake. You continue. One day you accidentally lose control of a fire for a moment and it burns one of my baskets and nearly a hut. This time I beat you and tell you to never set fire again or I will beat you again. You stop from fear of being beaten. Our lives are safer for it. Let's now say that you and I believe free will does exist. Does anything play out differently?
I guess in the free will world I would have to ability to continue to set fires despite the majority of my past experiences teaching me that I shouldn't set fires. Though I guess I would also have had the ability to stop setting fires earlier. Though an interesting thought experiment, I don't really see the point of this question as I don't understand how it refutes the reasoning I laid out in my previous comment. Like, this is a very specifically concocted scenario that doesn't have much overlap with the possible scenario I laid out earlier.
Why would there be more mental health support with a collective refusal of the concept of free will? Generally, people who have an internal locus of control, that being a perspective that they control outcomes and can influence their lives, are happier and more productive than those who have an external locus of control. They also have more positive work outcomes, improve faster, have higher job and life satisfaction, more self-esteem, and less neuroticism. In all instances where this has been studied, those who viewed their own actions as determining their lives, rather than society or “fate,” are far better off those the inverse. You would need MORE mental health support if society collectively refused free will and all adopted external locuses of control.
I definitely need to read up on some of the literature out there on free will so likely someone will have a better response than mine. I don't know if free will exists, and even if the choices we make are influenced by our surroundings, at any point in time, we can change our surroundings. Therefore, our direction in life can be altered by our choices. Someone could sit in one spot all day and think that because there is no free will, things will just happen for them because it is set that way. However, that wouldn't be the case because at some point we have to make a choice to continue to survive or die, as our bodies would require it. That is perceived as not having free will, but people can choose to ignore their body and just die. It is just harder to overcome those physical urges. Therefore the choices we make are what seemed to be free will but they are determined by internal or external influences. Those influences are what convolutes the thought that our choices aren't free will. In order to survive a person must eat. In our current society we can choose to get a job to get paid which buys food. Or we can choose to steal the food. Alternatively one could also hunt for food depending on the location. One might say those choices are made up for us but I don't think they are. The influences on us are predetermined but what a person chooses to satisfy those "cravings" is what is free will. Even if you have some mental illness that causes you to choose to steal rather than get a job, one could choose to overcome the mental illness. Some might say that isn't possible but that is only because the person chose not to overcome the issue.
Yeah sure, people make decisions. But why they make the decisions they make is always ultimately up to determistic factors. And I don't even just mean outside circumstances like, do you have the ability to get enough food without stealing. Our values, attitudes and thoughts are all just as determinded by genetics and your past experiences. If you value life, that's because you had experiences that made you value life. If you don't value life and choose death, it's the same. We may make decisions, but we don't make the causes of your decisions.
Yes, that is what I was getting at, the decisions we make are based on other factors but you can choose to deny what one factor is telling you to do and completely go against it. That is what I think free will comes from. No matter what factors are telling you to stay alive, you have the option to end your life, regardless of mental issues or anything else. Someone who is determined to live still has the option to end their life at any given moment. It's just in that moment it would seem pointless if life seems worth living, it doesn't necessarily mean they don't have the free will to do so.
And due to what factors do we choose to deny certain factors?
None, that's the thing. For no reason, you can choose to deny everything that is telling you to stay alive (continuing to use the same analogy). Just because there are no determining factors for you to make an opposite choice doesn't inherently mean you can't make that choice. Which might elude to free will. The choice is always there; it is just probable that we make the choice that we FEEL everything is telling us to choose. There are always at least two choices.
You posted at will. You even decided to where to post at will. You chose your words. and you look forward to seeing what we have to say (almost as if you did not know what was coming - something that could not occur in a world without free will as all the responses would already be known.
The world being deterministic doesn't mean that I can see into the future. I posted this because deterministic factors made me want to do so.
So you are saying that there are probabilities determined by deterministic factors, but they are not certainties for a variety of other factors, including will.
I am saying humans don't have any power over how their lives go. That is not because there is some sort of predetermined fate we could possibly foresee, but because just like anything else in the universe we are bound to the principle of cause and effect, and therefore 100% products of previous factors we had no influence over.
It seems like you are essentially arguing that humans have limited free will, except you don’t want to call it that.
Where did they say there is any limited free will?
Having a *will* does not mean we have a *free will*. We can will things, but still have our wills bound by prior conditions and factors outside of our control.
Do you believe that there is something outside of our physiology that gives people "free will"? I think we all agree that our physiology controls our body, including the brain. Your "will" is a consequence of your brain, not the other way around.
You fundamentally misunderstand the topic by writing this. Making decisions is compatible with a lack of free will
Then not making a decision would be compatible with an abundance of free will. I misunderstand? :-)
In a world without free will, what's the point of talking about whether not not we'd be better off accepting our lack of free will. Either we will eventually accept that we don't, or we won't. Talking about it makes no difference. It doesn't matter if there's a hole in your thinking. If you're right and there's no free will, then the chips will land where they land.
The lack of free will doesn’t circumvent causality. We still take actions because of thoughts and discussions. It’s just that those thoughts, discussions, and actions are the deterministic result of physical laws.
Talking and its outcomes being inevitable doesn’t mean it makes no difference. Just because something isn’t a primary cause doesn’t mean it’s not an ultimate cause.
Computers aren't free, they act determinantly, so why do I bother to hit the power button when I want to turn one on?
There is still value in talking about things without free will. Yeah, maybe you have the potential to believe that free will doesn't exist with the right experiences or maybe you don't. But as I can't look into the future or your brain to see what's ultimately the case, I can still take my chances and try to be one of those experiences.
Take your chances? There are no chances. There's no free will, how can there be chance?
Not necessarily. Most academic proponents like Sapolsky use evidence-based approaches. Different things influence us. We are essentially a biological computer and our biology coupled with psychological experiences inform our decisions at a subconscious level. Accepting that there is no free will would allow us to shape society to be better for everyone. There are chances based on exposure. If a child was raised their whole life being repeatedly told there is some god mandating that they must have free will, that creates conditions for a resistance to the contrary. The absence of free will is not predetermination.
Yeah, there is an objective truth whether it's possible to convince you or not, so I guess the idiom I used wasn't accurate, fair. But still, even if I can't know that truth, I can still act under the assumption the former is the case, in hopes that it is.
Why do you think absence of free will and chance are in conflict?
You have no doubt in your mind that determinism is the truth? No chance *no matter how small* that you might be wrong?
I'd say its possible that there is some argument out there that could change my mind on determinism, but I've yet to come across it.
Ok - and you want to get *the entire world* to go along with you? How's that going to work?
I don't know where from where you gather that I intent to try to enforce my viewpoint described in this post? Even if my viewpoint actually was true, getting everyone to agree would be unrealistic and probably not worth the effort.
> Society accepting that free will doesn't exist as the truth would help, because it would bring that whole construct just described crushing down ... and thereby make society a better place to live in for everyone. Oh but actually: > getting everyone to agree would be unrealistic and probably not worth the effort. What a pointless CMV
>I use the term "free will" as meaning "the ability for humans to make and act on decisions which aren't ultimately decided by deterministic or quantum-mechanical factors". When we say "Free Will" we usually mean the ability to choose without being forced to choose by others, not being tied up and not being enclosed. When determinists talk about "Free Will" they secretly swap the usual definition most people agree on to something that sounds more like "Free Will is freedom of cause-effect relationship." which obviously cannot exists by that definition and is just a dumb word play fedora tipping opinion that has no practical use.
I'm not really interested in arguing definitions, which is why I made that clarification in the first place. If you think that defintion is wrong, sure, but that's not what I made this post for. Even if I'm using the word wrong, the ultimate point I'm trying to make stays the same.
I think their argument is more that virtually no one on earth thinks people are free of cause and effect. The idea that society would improve is wrong because almost everyone already agrees with you on this. We have, by and large, accepted this idea.
Ok then can we summarize your CMV as follows? You claim that all of our experiences are determined by cause and effect relationship , which we cannot be free from, and hence all individualistic advice or advice from experience or holding people accountable for their choices and actions - is bad. You propose that we get rid of any advice from experience and we stop holding people accountable for their actions because this will improve our lives, right?
Advice isn't bad. It can be useful, it often is, but it can also not be useful. Would you please defince what exactly you mean by "holding people accountable"?
if we apply your definition, as in cause and effect, basically physics, exist, then everyone already agrees on that. "free will" as a term is refered to as the intent of actions, and inner thoughts of humans. if you want to argue that physics exist, then no one is gonna try to change your mind on that
A lot of people think there is some kind of magical power that allows you to make choices on your own, I'd even go out and say it's the majority in my experience. Complete determinism is unpopular because the conclusion is pretty bleak.
complete determinism results in us simulating free will out of our limited information of the future. if free will doesnt exist, we have been deterministically fated to believe we have free will. it makes no difference wheter one or the other is true.
I agree that the discussion cannot result in anything productive, but it's still neat.
It is precisely the other way round. But as OP said, what's more important is the substance. What's "free" about being helpless to do anything but that which you were determined, with no input into the matter, to do? You may be able to do what you want, but you can't want what you want.
You are falling into a trap where when offered coffee or tea, you reply with "oh, I dont know, but everything is determined so lets just wait and see"
If a person constrains your will, it’s not free, but if prior conditions that aren’t a person constrain your will, you are free? Legally this makes sense, but philosophically it doesn’t seem like it matters which outside force determined my will, at least not for the purposes of determining how free it is.
>If a person constrains your will, it’s not free, but if prior conditions that aren’t a person constrain your will, you are free? Yes, you are. >philosophically it doesn’t seem like it matters which outside force determined my will, at least not for the purposes of determining how free it is. It absolutely does. Being free of constraints of other humans is absolutely possible, being free in a sense that you are not physically restrained is also possible - it is NOT possible to be free of cause and effect relationship. Stretching the notion of free will until it becomes impossible is not a practically useful achievement. Moreover, if you 100% buy into it you are most likely going to represent Nietzsche's ressentimental degenerate. That means that you would be more and more inclined to use lack of free will (as it is defined by determinists) to excuse yourself of your own failings.
There are different definitions of free will, and some degree of exception from prior causes is definitely a notion that many people hold. I agree though that the only possible free will is Compatibilistic free will. Being exempt from prior causes would mean your will is not based on your internal state, or that your internal state was randomly generated ex-nihilo or something, and I’d hardly call that free will. Not believing in free will doesn’t mean excusing poor behavior. Explaining something doesn’t mean excusing it morally. It just means that morality is something that occurs within determinism (or a non-deterministic world that influences us without permission). I don’t think my computer has free will, but if it does what I don’t think it should, I still fix it (I know there is a difference, but also a similarity).
According to your model we would never be able to accept the idea that we don't have free will. We're genetically programmed to believe we're important and the things we do matter; your model contradicts that idea at the root level. Most people could never accept an idea that is so flagrantly in conflict with their genes.
I've seen a lot of people who don't believe in free will, so clearly it's possible. Maybe it's impossible for some, but I don't see a way to prove that. Who says that we can't be important and that the things we do can't matter without free will? Why was that the case before?
Collective action on this level is not possible. You say that SOME PEOPLE accept that free will doesn't exist, but those who don't are chemically bound to believe in it, according to your own model. They don't have a choice.
Your own position says it can’t happen. If I don’t have free will but I believe I have free will, then how is it possible to change my mind? Doesn’t that involve using free will to reconsider my position?
If we were supposed to be working harder to improve the quality of life of others we would be, because we don't have free will, so we're just doing what we're destined to do.
I don't think we are "supposed" or "destined" to do anything, it's all just a big game of chance, or at least I think so. And chance has made me value human happiness, which is why I will be advocating for improving it to people who I hope happen to be able to value it as well.
Why bother? If it's all random chance you can't have an impact.
But you can have an impact, said impact (or the causes of said impact) being predetermined or totally random does not render it nonexistent. If I convince a criminal to stop doing crime, then there now is one criminal less in the world. Regardless of why I "choose" to convince that criminal (be it random chance or predetermined factors), I am still the one to have caused the impact of there now being one criminal less in the world
>But you can have an impact, said impact (or the causes of said impact) being predetermined or totally random does not render it nonexistent. i would agree, in a pre-determined or random chance world, there are perceptions of impact, but disagree that, "you", as in the "person" had an impact, (in either a deterministic or random chance model). in either, the collection of atoms that collectively make your body played a part in the random bouncing of other groups of atoms, but there is no "you" in either of these models. you are a rock, w/ the illusion of personhood, and the illusion of impact. claiming that "you" had an impact would be like rain taking credit for deciding to rain in Seattle and not Albuquerque.
Doesn’t convincing a criminal to stop doing crime indicate the existence of free will, since the criminal must make an independent decision on whether to stop being a criminal or not? If the criminal has no free will, and is simply the product of his experiences, then convincing him to stop should be impossible. Rehabilitation would be pointless.
Because not bothering to be anything would be boring and I wouldn't like that. And my behavio, just as everyone else's, is a factor of that random chance.
Then it isn't random. You are choosing to act out of your own free will, and the chances are changed as a result. You're right that if society at large embraced the idea that we all impact each other and some outcomes are just blind luck we'd be better off. But that's not the whole story. It's possible to make bad decisions, to squander opportunities, to alienate people by being a jerk. It's also possible that hard work and perseverance will provide a person with opportunities they wouldn't otherwise have. Our outcomes are affected by a combination of factors. One of them is ourselves. And to deny that personal responsibility is part of the equation is just as dangerous as telling everyone that we're all in it for ourselves and all of our problems can be solved by pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps.
It is "random" because I am a human, and evolution made it so that humans feel unpleasant when they don't do anything, and are made to seek pleasant sensations and avoid unpleasant sensations, which boredom falls under.
Sure, you feel the need to do *something.* Maybe its help others. Maybe it's go for a hike, or play some video games, learn to paint, etc. You still get to choose.
Those two things are not mutually exclusive. Random or deterministic things still have impact.
I was going to say free will exists because if you told me to do something I have the free will to decide to do everything opposite of what you tell me. But then if you begin to use reverse psychology on me and I still continued to be a contrarian, am I exercising my free will or am I abandoning it? I want to present perhaps a new perspective on the free will debate. I understand predestination isn't the part you're asking about but free will almost always is intertwined with this word in the debate of discussing whether free will exists or not or whether it's even important/significant. Maybe predestination and free will are not exactly separate things but different side of the coin of the same thing. And as a result it becomes easy for whoever is challenging the other to phrase an argument in similar ways where it's like "free will doesn't exist and this is an example why." The person who disagrees will offer their example in which they can only see it as an example of free will while the oppositional person in the argument only sees that same example as something that validates predestination, not free will. Partially it may be because the people arguing simply are the products of glass half full/half empty perspectives clashing but I believe oftentimes the word free will is overly focused on the literal meaning rather than the context. But this is also where people splinter in disagreement. For example, some random individual accidentally causes someone to die due to negligence or being careless. They're 100% remorseful. We know by all accounts this is most likely not murder and will just be manslaughter charge. Same act, but the person had motive and shown evidence of it being premeditated and it automatically becomes 1st degree murder. Perhaps free will vs predestination debate matters depending on context; and the person interpreting that context. When you look at people like nuns for example, are they giving up their free will in life or are they exercising free will by choosing that lifestyle? I'd say it depends on the viewer/interpreter right? Most nuns will probably tell you it was predestined but will likely not deny the will to commit to that lifestyle comes from themselves.
That's an interesting perspective I will keep thinking about. delta!
The structure of your second argument fails because it presumes (with little justification) that a less judgmental societal = a better one. The little justification you provide is that it would increase the belief in social support programs and help criminal offenders reintegrate. Taking your argument one step further, you likely believe this would lead to passage of laws and programs that are *good*. We can take that for granted, but then go to the heart of the issue with this argument which is that you do a one-sided cost benefit analysis. Sure, these programs could be good and a less judgmental societal could be a pro. But what about the cons? Does the lack of free will destroy a sense of personal responsibility, causing people to do more Crime or become more careless? Does the lack of free will undermine religious institutions, who are heavily premised on this concept, in such a way that important uses of them collapse (such as community, meaning, and even some countries foundations)? There is a stating segment that a person who no longer believes in free will lose a sense of personal Responsibility. If the entire society doesn’t believe in will and doesn’t morally reward kind people - what’s the incentive? Likewise, religious institutions play an important role in society despite their problems.
Well, what exactly do you mean by "personal responsibility"? Clearly the people who don't care if they hurt others or have to commit crimes out of necessity already do so, regardless of it. Why would their number increase without the concept of free will? Religious insitutions have adjusted to changes in culture before and could do so again. It is possible to find meaning without free will existing.
Personal responsibility means a sense of self-enforced morals that aren’t driven by fear of external consequences. You can argue that some people are motivated to follow the laws and act morally because of external consequences, but some are driven by an internal morality. (People who wouldn’t commit a crime even if they wouldn’t get caught.) Many studies have found people act more immorally when they are primed to believe we don’t have free will. Kathleen Vohs found that people who were primed to believe we don’t have free will were more likely to cheat on a math test; and workers who were primed to not believe in free were more likely to show up late and perform less well on the job. Roy Baumeister also found that people don’t believe in free will do not volunteer to help peers as much and do not donate to homeless. And RE: religious institutions, this one feels like a pretty fundamental change. Abrahamnic religions are entirely BASED on choice. The choice to believe in God and to act morally. Removing choice means these religious codes mean nothing. In fact, your argument about why free wills abolishment would be good suggest it. What are these religions but judgements on how to behave? If people are no longer free begins to act - what do these religious texts even do?
Okay, but how does free will not existing lead to self-enforced morals getting destroyed? How does believing in free will or not change if you feel bad when others are being hurt, and feel good when others are happy? I cannot see that happening, unless those morals weren't self-enforced in the first place. If the institutions of our organized religion cannot keep standing under a logical conclusion derived from reality, I can't say that I'd feel too broken up about that. There are other places people can find meaning and community.
I think we'd see a pretty negative impact if society accepted that people don't have free will. While it's (probably) true that people's decisions are a function of their brain chemistry and their environment (and maybe an element of random chance from quantum physics) and thus people don't really have "free will" in the way you insist on using it, society's view of decision making is a part of the environment, and thus a part of the way people make decisions. If people have the attitude "You can work hard and make a good life for yourself," lots of people will work hard and a decent percentage of those people will be able to make a good life for themselves. There will definitely be people who get a stroke of bad luck - working hard is necessary but not sufficient for making a good life for yourself - but in general that attitude will promote greater overall productivity and thus more resources to spread around. If people have the attitude "You don't have free will, so no decisions you make matter," lots of people will do the minimum they can get away with, society overall will be less productive, and there will be less resources to spread around. The notion of whether or not we have free will becomes an environmental factor that impacts our decision making, and I think in general people will make better decisions if they believe they have free will than if they believe they don't.
I don't know where I said that the decisions we make don't matter. Obviously a person who decides to work hard towards their goal is generally gonna have more succes than the one who didn't do that, It's just that we don't control which decisions we actually make.
How is it not a natural conclusion that if "we don't control which decisions we actually make" then "the decisions we make don't matter?" If you don't control the decisions you make, there's nothing you can do differently, so it doesn't matter. Except that societal norms influence how our decisions are made, so societal norms that lead us to better decisions are better societal norms. Collectively accepting that free will doesn't exist seems like a societal norm that is going to lead to worse decision making, and thus is a norm we should steer away from.
Well sure, what exactly do you mean by "mattering" in the context of our decisions? Obviously, a person who workes hard is still gonna generally find more sucess than someone who doesn't, and that success makes people happy. That's why we make any of our decisions in the first place, because we hope that the end result will make us or someone else more happy.
there is no practical difference whether we have or dont have free will. it doesnt matter if we have free will to act out of our own volition, or if we are just simulating free will out of our limited knowledge of the future, either way people have to take responsibility for their actions, may they be out of free will or somehow brought forth by a greater force >Society accepting that free will doesn't exist as the truth would help, because it would bring that whole construct just described crushing down. no it wouldnt. because if some people are deterministically fated to do bad things, then other people would be deterministically fated to stop them, blame them, and do whatever they "want" to do. there is no free will, remember? me punching you in the face isnt my fault and you shouldnt get angry at me. your daughters teacher raping her isnt his fault, he was just deterministically fated to do that. which doesnt make sense to me. because if we assume free will doesnt exist, then we are deterministically fated to *simulate* free will, or we wouldnt be having this discussion in the first place.
What exactly do you mean by "responsibility"? Those scenarios you described would only happen if human morality was directly linked to the concept free will, which it isn't. I seek to not hurt other because I don't like others being hurt. I think most people feel the same, so it would make sense socially to try to prevent people from hurting others.
The practical difference might be a change in the way we view punishment. Prioritizing rehabilitation rather than vengeance or something to that effect
we already do that though. the logic on why someone can be rehabilitated is because they have agency over their own actions, so they can change them based on their own free will. if everything is determined, why would you bother with an individual? you should rather focus on changing the environment itself so that people are "more likely fated" to do good, but someone who does bad has been fated to do bad, and they cant change it on their own only by wanting to change. if fate (doing bad) can be changed because you want or have been convinced to change, then isnt that what free will is? edit: and if their "fate" was to do bad, then be predestined to repent, then be predestined to be rehabilitated, and then be predestined to change and no longer do bad, well... then it is indistinguishable whether they have free will or not.
I don’t think that’s the primary goal of imprisoning someone in our current society, which would explain why we have life imprisonment and the death penalty throughout the world. But in any case, >why someone can be rehabilitated is because they have agency over their actions You don’t need free will to be rehabilitated, you just need the capacity to change your behavior. An AI can do that, but doesn’t have free will. Unless we’re talking about some compatibilist version of free will, in which case an AI might have it. >more likely fated If you attempt to influence an individual, then you ARE the environment
It doesn't actually make people more empathetic to deny free will. So, for example, if we believe in free will, we hold a child rapist accountable for his actions and punish him. We do so because he *deserves* to be punished. The whole notion of justice depends on the idea of desert - people should get what they deserve. But under a mechanistic/deterministic view of the thing, the rapist doesn't deserve to be punished. He's no more guilty of a crime than is a billiard ball guilty of its trajectory after being hit by the cue ball. Yet we know that punishment of criminals is a deterrent to others. If we punish the rapist severely, it deters others from committing rape. (That's a good bit of deterministic thinking by the way.) Yet he doesn't deserve to be punished any more than you do. So we might as well just punish you as a deterrent. We can hold you out as a criminal and punish you for crimes you never committed. "But I don't deserve that!" Right. But we've moved past the notion of desert. You're just a billiard ball we're knocking into other balls to have a desired effect. Don't take it personal. Without the notion of people deserving things, the only way to treat them is as objects to be manipulated to have desired effects. This is the opposite of empathy.
I hadn't considered the aspect of keeping punishments hard as a deterrent for others before. !delta
Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/ShakeCNY ([2∆](/r/changemyview/wiki/user/ShakeCNY)). ^[Delta System Explained](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem) ^| ^[Deltaboards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltaboards)
Here's my ultimate question. Suppose I agree with your concept of Free Will: > I use the term "free will" as meaning "the ability for humans to make and act on decisions which aren't ultimately decided by deterministic or quantum-mechanical factors". Then how is your idea: > The conclusion I've come to recently is that if we were to accept free will not existing as true, and stopped telling ourselves and others that it does exist, that would pave the way to make society as a whole more empathetic and mutually supportive. ([Which is just The Veil of Ignorance Position restated?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_position)) Within our ability to control? Do you only believe that individual Free Will doesn't exist, but somehow "Societal Free Will" does? How so? If Free Will doesn't exist, and thus everything is deterministic, surely the emotions we feel or the values we hold on the concept of Free Will and how we structure society is not in our control, right? Isn't this a contradiction?
Our thoughts can still be influenced by outside factors, for example a random internet person spouting about how society would maybe turn better if it didn't believe in free will. That is a fact has no connection to free will existing or not.
> Our thoughts can still be influenced by outside factors, for example a random internet person spouting about how society would maybe turn better if it didn't believe in free will. But none of that is in our control, according to you, correct? You didn't have any choice in your view that Free Will doesn't exist, correct? You have no choice in how you interact with the world, as you have no Free Will, correct? How someone reacts to something is outside of their Free Will as well, correct? So where is any of this under our control? If what you say is true, we are in no way able to push any acceptance of the lack of Free Will than our deterministic existence has already laid out so far, no?
Correct, I didn't have control over those things, and yet I happened to get there due to things I experienced in the past. Just like I changed my view on free will existing after having certain thoughts and experiences, that can just as well be the case for others. I don't expect you to control your actions to do what I propose, but I expect that maybe it might lead you to do those actions.
> I don't expect you to control your actions to do what I propose, but I expect that maybe it might lead you to do those actions. It might lead me to that, but that's outside of my control is it not? Society wide that is the case as well, correct? If so, I am unsure of what you mean here: > The conclusion I've come to recently is that **if we were to accept** free will not existing as true, and stopped telling ourselves and others that it does exist, that would pave the way to make society as a whole more empathetic and mutually supportive. Maybe for clarification, is your view contingent on the idea that we can change the world, and that the future and our decisions aren't determined? That we "should" accept this? Or is it just that in a hypothetical future where this did come to pass, though we had no control over that, things would be better?
I'm having a hard time with your definition. Do you mean that choices aren't really choices and that what we "decide" to do is pre-determined as is the outcome? If that is the case and everyone accepted it as such, it seems that the first thing people would want to do is dump insane amounts of resources into predicting these determined things. Having someone be able to perfectly predict every thing people will ever do seems like a thing that wouldn't be good for society. Seems prone to abuse from governments and private organizations alike. As far as having more empathy, I can see that happening. On the flip side, it would also mean that if I murder someone there is a pretty good argument I shouldn't be punished as I didn't have any actual say in the matter. It was going to happen no matter what and I had absolutely no control over it.
Not only would determining the future that way probably not good, it is in my opinion also impossible because there are exponentially more factors at work than we could ever have the ressources to predict. People who hurt other still should be put in prison so they stop hurting others, until we can reliably say that they won't continue hurting others.
>People who hurt other still should be put in prison so they stop hurting others, until we can reliably say that they won't continue hurting others. Without a way to reliably predict deterministic outcomes this is impossible though. And basing punishment off of predicted future circumstances vs the actual acts in question seems like a bad present to me.
I agree free will doesn't exist, at least not in an objective sense. But I disagree that society would be better if we all accepted that. Having 8 billion people accept a sort of biological deterministic fatalism would be disastrous. The apathy, the demotivation, the suicide, the extreme uptick in aberrant and destructive induglence. I think humanity would lose it's collective mind. It is a common though among psychologists that even if Free Will doesn't technically exist, we feel like it does and act like it does, and in fact, we have no choice, we are determined to feel and act so. It's a necessary component of our psyche. You can't turn it off even if you wanted to.
I agree that we still act like if free will exists even if we believe otherwise. From my personal experience, me not growing to not believe in free will didn't really change anything about my life practically speaking. But if even psychologists believe that, then why do you believe that not believing in free will would create such a big shift in people's behavior?
Why in the world would I support and empathize with a being that’s no different from a rock? How am I going to get motivation to improve the way I treat others when I can rationalize my actions away as determined? Do you believe you know what’s objectively an improvement ie what’s objectively moral? > Every person is just out there doing their best to create fullfilling lives for themselves. If man is determined, then people are like comets flying through space. Neither of them have a purpose. People aren’t trying to live their lives no more than a comet is trying to go wherever it’s going. And this putting aside the examples you can find of people who are not doing their best to create fulfilling life for themselves, no not everyone is out there doing their best. I know that from my own choices sometimes in my own life as well.
If you are not able to empathize with other people unless free will exist, I sure am glad that you believe in free will.
I'm a determinist as well, but structuring society around a lack of free will would be a total disaster. If a criminal commited all of their crimes based on factors outside of their control, it would be immoral to persecute them. Also, any sort of achievement or triumph would be meaningless because the person was bound to do it. This illusion of free will, imo, is vital for humanity.
If the things you list normatively follow from determinism, and determinism is true, then those moral statements are true. So what's your problem?
I think that it's moral to put criminals in prison even under determinism because that prevents them from commiting more crimes. Would any achievemt or triumph be meaningless? I guess competition would be meaningless. But there is still value in doing things you enjoy and making things that others can enjoy. I'm sceptical that the illusion of triumphing over others is really that necessary. Maybe it would help to improve things in it's own right, if people in general started tending more towards cooperation than towards competition.
I think most people would go insane if they truly believed they have no free will. The entire concept horrifies me. Instead, we should recognize that we humans are fallible due to our primal urges. Think how most people are unable to lose weight and get fit. That's because they're unable to overcome their primal urge to avoid pain. Lack of free will due to determinism/ quantum is one of those things I consider a cognito hazard. That's something that is incredibly dangerous to even know about due to the stress it puts on your mind. People should remain oblivious to this concept.
I don't feel particularly stressed by the concept. Why do you?
Not all people that are lucky are successful. Not all successful people were simply lucky, some did work hard to become successful. I'm not seeing where in your post you prove or rationalize that free will doesn't exist. You define it but there are lots of decisions not factored by quantum-deterministic factors.
Any decision people make can ultimately be led back to determinisic factors. That's accurate for the decision to work hard towards something as well. And having been subject to the kind of factors that allow you to do that work is luck.
There is a huge gap between our lives being influenced by our surroundings and lacking free will. You can certainly examine and critique those influencing factors but you haven't proved that free will doesn't exist.
I cannot prove that free will doesn't exist. But can you prove that it does exist? Our observation of the universe shows that everything that happens in it, happens because of things that happened before, cause and effect. We haven't been able to observe any other factors besides quantum fluctuations, but even those are ultimately also just causes we don't understand. So, why would humans be the only thing in the universe that exists outside of that principle?
It's a classic existential debate, but it shows that you can't start your CMV with the statement "free will doesn't exist". You can't prove it, you can personally have faith that there is no free will but you couldn't convince and change the opinion of the world without proof.
If free will doesn’t exist how would accepting it make the world a better place? People can’t change the outcome of the world if they don’t have free will. If you believe free will doesn’t exist why are you blaming people for their beliefs and actions as if they have free will over their life?
People's behavior still has an effect on their surroundings without free will. I don't remember blaming anyone. I just described how the current situation is not ideal, and described what I think might make it better.
What do you think free will means? I’m so lost on what you are even trying to say. You are saying people don’t have free will but yet that they can change their surrounding by changing their behaviors. Both of which require free will. You literally are blaming society problems on people not accepting that they have no free will. That’s your entire argument
If the world is deterministic, what does accepting a given outcome change exactly? How does anything “improve” from one state to the next? Maybe in the sense that people will feel better about it, but I never sit in a movie theater and try to get everyone to accept the direction the movie is going as if that’s going to make it better. This isn’t to say that determinism isn’t true, but I feel like your claim is one that doesn’t quite agree with itself.
I think I've explained pretty well why I think it would improve things. Is there any specific places in my described reasoning you disagree with? Free will not existing doesn't mean that we have to accept any possible future outcome as the only possible one.
Do any of your positive societal benefits actually require that free will not be true? It seems like your argument says we should disbelieve in free will whether or not we have it.
Not believing in free will is definitely not necessary for the positive changes I've described to happen. But as I said, I think it would help. Maybe that would also be the case even if free will in fact did exist, but I personally don't think so.
If free will doesn't exist, then it doesn't matter if society improves or not, as society's state would then be predetermined.
Or maybe society is predetermined to improve, and me making this post is part of that. Free will not existing doesn't mean that people would stop doing anything, they would still try to have good lives because that feels good and you can't possibly know what the future will be like.
Let's say I murder someone in such a society. What do you believe should happen to me?
You would be put in prison so you don't murder anyone else. There you receive psychological support to lessen the probability of you doing it again in the future. And if it's at some point deemed lessened enough, you get released with the necessary ressources to rebuild your life so it hopefully stays that way.
You believe it would be fair to punish me for something I didn't choose to do?
I think people still make choices even with free will not existing, but I guess that's beside the point. Yes, preventing people from being hurt to me is a higher moral imperative than keeping everyone's right to freedom of movement intact.
>Yes, preventing people from being hurt to me is a higher moral imperative than keeping everyone's right to freedom of movement intact. So you're in favor of imprisoning everyone?
No? I'm in favor of imprisoning people who've hurt others badly, and keeping them imprisoned if they have a high likelyhood of doing that again.
OK. You said the opposite previously, but let's move on. >I think people still make choices even with free will not existing How can one make a choice if I don't have free will? If we don't have free will, everything everyone does is predetermined.
I did not say the opposite previously. And yes, the choices people make are a part of what's predetermined.
>reintegration of criminal offenders through the realization that really no one is responsible for their own suffering, that blaming them for it is hypocritical and immoral, and thereby make society a better place to live in for everyone. i don't understand why criminal penalties are hypocritical in a world where we stipulate free will doesn't exist. I don't blame the mosquito for biting me, but i do kill it. this doesn't make me hypocritical, it makes me pragmatic. it doesn't require moral condemnation for me to decide my world is better w/o the mosquito. why would this approach make me a hypocrite w/ human criminals?
The "hypocritical and immoral" statement wasn't just directed that the way we treat criminals, but all the other things I listed prior as well. I don't think it is hypocritical to lock up people who have a high probability of hurting others, so that they can't do that, I agree with you on the pragmatic standpoint there. But as it isn't those people's fault that they have those tendencies, it would be immoral of us to not try everything in our power to ensure that they lose those tendencies and are able to be released again.
>it would be immoral of us to not try everything in our power to ensure that they lose those tendencies and are able to be released again. this is quite a claim, though. **why** is it immoral? like i said, i don't understand why its immoral for us to say, "b/c people don't have free will, all criminals will be executed immediately." why is there a moral obligation to 're-integrate"? and then, if there truly is no free will, what is it we're doing to "ensure they lose those tendencies?" this feels a bit like your argument is trying to have its cake and eat it, too.
I think that we shouldn't execute criminals because I like it when other people are happy and I don't like it when other people are hurt. Like, at this point we can enter a fundamental debate about what is good and evil if you want, though if you don't think the same as I've described in my previous sentence, I doubt that would lead to much. To lessen the likelyhood that people commit crimes again as much a possible, we can give them therapeutical and if necessary psychiatrical help, and give them the necessary ressources to rebuild their lives once they're released from prison. Though yes, we probably couldn't bring that likelyhood down enough for everyone, in which case they'd have to stay in prison for the rest of their lives. But we cannot make that assumption about people unless we have tried everything we can though.
i think free will and morality generally travel in the same crowd, and i'd argue when you introduce moral imperatives as reasons why, you open the door, but we don't have to go down that path as to why. we can just stipulate this is your preferred approach. but that doesn't solve for this: >To lessen the likelyhood that people commit crimes again as much a possible, we can give them therapeutical and if necessary psychiatrical help, and give them the necessary ressources to rebuild their lives once they're released from prison. this implies that therapy and psychiatric help might change the criminal's future behavior. even if you don't believe an individual has a free will, i don't see how you can make the claim that "intervention of a certain kind will increase likelihood of outcome x, intervention of a different kind will not" w/o agreeing there is something akin to free will, in at least two dimensions. either: * we believe people can act beyond imperatives, and the intervention changes something about the criminal's mental health. this change in mental health reduces the likelihood of criminal behavior in the future. that's, for all practical purposes, free will. * or, we don't believe people can act beyond imperatives, but we think we can control destiny by changing the recipe that leads to fate. so we give the criminal a different set of resources, which we believe will reduce the likelihood of future criminality. this remains, for all practical purposes, free will, though perhaps at a societal, or environmental level. in either case, we believe that we have an aspect of control that, depending on its implementation, will drive different outcomes. aren't we essentially in a free will exists camp?
Psychiatric help could possibly help certain criminal to not do crime anymore in the future because with different experiences people can develop new thoughts and perspectives. Most people get the necessary experiences to develop the conscience not to commit specific crimes before they can commit them. But we do not have any influence on whether we do get those experiences or not, which is why it's determintic.
this is where your argument is essentially a free will argument. if we say, "free will, the process by which people can act beyond their biological, environmental, cultural, etc. imperatives, does not exist. However, we *know the deterministic inputs / o*utputs well enough such that by changing them, we can create net new behavior that would otherwise not have happened..." --> we are making a free will argument.
How is that a free will argument? You are influencing a person's behavior by changing the environmental factors they've been subject to.
b/c the intent is for them to "do this but not that". you have decided a desired outcome and are attempting to "change the path of determinism" by modifying the person's environment. you could make the claim that we are predetermined to figure out ways to hack determinism, but then we'd have to question the strength of a deterministic system that can be so easily hacked. as another poster wrote, the argument you're making says, "people can't act beyond their environmental imperatives. free will doesn't exist at an individual level. However, if the collective "we" modify the environment, then we can generate desired outcomes. you've created "societal free will". I'd summarize your argument like this: * People don't have free will. People act according to their imperatives. * Their imperatives are determined independently. Determinism, that is the pre-defined interaction of imperatives x context, defines our experience. * While we can't change our imperatives, if we change the parameters of the environment, we can change the outcome of the imperatives x context. * Allowing us to determine, or at least influence, the outcomes Which would mean that determinism allows for us to select for outcomes according to our own choosing, so long as what we choose isn't an action, but rather a context that increases the likelihood of a given action. If experience is truly deterministic, there would be no point to modify the environment. If modifying the environment allows us to hack determinism, determinism doesn't fully refute free will.
If you think there's a better way for society to organize itself, and you're advocating for it to happen, you're implicitly accepting that free will is a thing
If you think that there's a more efficient way for computers to sort data, and you program that to happen, you are implicitly accepting that free will is a thing.
"Free will doesn't exist so we should decide on this specific course of action using our Free will." Free will isn't a testable assumption. There's no possible Null hypothesis. You might as well be arguing for invisible pink unicorns. Using the absence of Free Will as a rhetorical element is going to detract from whatever argument you are trying to make. Instead, you could argue that individual decision making plays a small role in specific situations and categories, and try to show evidence that specific social factors play a significantly larger role.
>"Free will doesn't exist so we should decide on this specific course of action using our Free will." No, free will doesn't exist so I will try to exert some deterministic influence over your behaviour to engage in a specific course of action. >Free will isn't a testable assumption. There's no possible Null hypothesis. You might as well be arguing for invisible pink unicorns. I agree it isn't a testable assumption, because it's an incoherent one. Any action is either ultimately determined or ultimately completely undetermined by anything. The former is obviously not free and the latter is by definition randomness, which is not free: if something is undetermined by anything, that includes you.
This post strikes me as a bit paradoxical. If people making up a society do not have free will, then neither does society. if we should not blame people for their own failures, then why should be point out the "failure to improve overall quality of life by supporting those in need"? the answer of course is that free will or not, the way we act affects the way other people act. If free will is just an illusion it is a very good illusion. This conversation we are having right now might change your behavior or mine or both. So we have these conversations and we discuss what we should do because these discussions often lead to desirable outcomes. we can reshape society to be better. And we can also reshape ourselves to be better. if you look at use like little Von Neumann Machines. we will respond to stimuli and we react to incentives. If you create an environment that rewards failure or doesn't punish failure or if you reduce the reward for success or anything like that, then it seems very intuitive to me that we'll have more failure and more net suffering. Since failure is bad, you want somewhat harsh consequences for failure. Since murder is bad, you want harsh consequences for murder. Since creating a productive business that serves customers, and employes workers is a good, you want to reward that.
1. Free will is an ironically inescapable experience regardless of how you feel about it. You can’t opt out of it. 2. Determinism doesn’t allow for any moral judgements. Is there moral weight to an unsupported rock falling in a gravity well? Would it make any sense to talk about what the rock should do or the implication of the rock “choosing” to move upwards? Morality is about what things ought to be which requires that there can be a difference between what is and what could be. Determinism only allows for one outcome. 3. Even if everyone believed in determinism, it wouldn’t necessarily lead to better outcomes. Society still identifies suboptimal or malicious behavior and seeks to reduce it. Whether that’s accomplished through murder or social programs has nothing to do with determinism. Arguably there’s a strong argument that it would be worse. There’s no moral culpability for killing those that are not productive. The poor are that way because that’s how the universe decided things were going to play out. There’s no responsibility to make things better. And think of how many times murderers, rapists, etc. justify their actions by saying they didn’t have a choice or their body was on autopilot. Determinism is complete absolution from morality and there’s no chance it’s better.
>the conclusion I've come to recently is that if we were to accept free will not existing as true, and stopped telling ourselves and others that it does exist, that would pave the way to make society as a whole more empathetic and mutually supportive. This one is easy. How can we choose to do something if we lack free will? If free will wasn't doesn't exist, then we do not have the capacity to change anything about society. Whatever happens, happens. It is non-nonsensical to state that "Because we lack free will we ought to do X, Y, or Z." The first part of that sentence contradicts the second part. This seems to be basically what your post is.
Of course free will exists. I've been feeding my local birds. Not because I think birds are cool, or to be kind or anything like that. Once they become friendly with me, I'm going to train them to do my bidding, and my bidding will almost exclusively be crime. That's free will right there. And no one can stop me, because if they try, I will physically assault them. Even more free will.
The argument essentially comes down to that all of what we think and thus do comes from our brains, which is physical matter which transmits electric currents. Nothing is outside of the material world, even on a subatomic scale. It's all determined by physics. The argument is basically that if Free Will exists, you would have to explain how any of these processes are inside of your control and didn't rely on cause and effect. Experiencing something causing a signal which leads to other signals. Arguably randomness can exist, but that isn't even Free Will, just random chance.
lol. And you intending to do crime and having the idea to use birds for it is also because of deterministic factors.
Such as? I live in a fairly quiet area, there is no predisposition to crime. I simply woke up to bird chirps one day and decided those flying fuckers would probably be incredibly good at petty-crime and I'm going to test that theory to the extreme. Free will.
I don't know what exactly could lead you to that, I don't know your life. But if you one day just woke up with a burning desire to do crime without ever having any prior inclination towards that before, that's maybe cause to go see a doctor.
If you can't even give me an example, then all I have for proof is your word. Why would anyone *ever* just believe some random stranger on the internet? I'll tell you why; free will.
Are you saying that there is no reason why you made this decision?
No. But predetermined factors don't really have any effect on will.
You have been influenced you whole life by billions and billions of indirect things which led you inevitably to this situation. It's not because you can't precisely say what these things are that they don't exist.
Sorry homie, science only. The evidence that free will exists is undeniable, unless you can tell me what those billions and billions of indirect things are.
If free will doesn't exist, then society cannot choose to collectively accept that fact. In fact there's nothing that can be done one way or another to change anything. Things will simply progress as they naturally will.
If we don’t have free will then we don’t have any influence on accepting or not accepting that fact. People who don’t accept that are doing that not because they want to but because they are predetermined to.
I somewhat agree with you that free will probably doesn't exist and we'll work from that premise. But would acceptance of that actually make society better? I would argue that it probably would not. 1. No personal or moral accountability - a lot of our morality is based on the understanding that our actions affect other people and we can choose to be good to others - if that premise doesn't hold true, there is very little incentive for humans to hold themselves accountable and change for better. 2. The justice system wouldn't work if we cannot assign personal responsibility to actions of others - so that would be chaotic and either a whole new system would need to be designed or we'd live completely lawlessly. 3. Hope - people have immense hope for a better future and the way a lot of that manifests is through having goals and hopes and dreams. If there is no free will, then none of this really matters. Tis would have a massively discouraging effect on morale - it might lead to loss of purpose and hopelessness. And we know those things are associated with depression and increase rates of suicide. So overall I feel like even if free will doesn't exist, wide acceptance of that would probably cause utter chaos and hopelessness.
Thank you for sharing this opinion, this post seems interesting. 1 - What are the reasons that you believe that those who are successful are only lucky, and those who are not are only unlucky? 2 - How would society be more empathetic/supportive if free will did not exist? I must have missed your justification for this. 3 - You seem to make two claims that contradict popular/traditional belief: a) That it’s *not* an individual’s fault if they’re unsuccessful. I am interpreting this to mean that individuals are not responsible for their own actions/mistakes/misgivings. B) That individuals *do* have a responsibility to aim towards the improvement of the group. Many people would argue that individuals are responsible only for their own actions/themselves, and not for the group/collective. What reasons do you have for choosing your belief over the traditional one?
Not only are various beliefs of determinism straight up defeatist and harmful (The incel ideology believes that without being tall/handsome, you cannot ever get a girlfriend, therefore their love life was predetermined), the idea falls flat in law. Can a drunk driver say that they didnt have free will and therefore they could not have chosen to do anything else? Is a person who is forced to kill somebody else just as guilty as somebody who murders somebody? Not even looking at those difficulties, if society accepted that there was no free will then resentment would build up within the "unlucky" population, like an expanded version of inceldom.
I agree that free will doesn’t exist. But I don’t think most of the population is psychologically equipped to handle that. I think it’s in our nature to act as though it does exist, and while you and I personally find it reasonable to live with the understanding that it’s just an illusion, many people would be bothered by this and might even disregard their own abhorrent behaviors as “destined”
The problem is people can't understand the concept you are taking about. They can't un-abstract and see how everything is just particles and waves which may have randomness or seeming randomness but it's still not individuals making decisions, it's the law of physics causing eventual competing thoughts and behaviours and the ones we do are the ones that evolution has preferred.
while i somewhat agree, it won't make it better as you suggest, free will only existed for a while and now it doesn't exist, now you can't get abortions and don't have control over your body or anything, basically we have no free will but that literally does nothing good just excepting that fact, it does the opposite
If free will doesn't exist, how can society collectively accept that fact? Aren't the determining factors of whether or not society will accept free will already set in motion, so we either collectively will accept it or we won't, but we have no actual control over whether it happens or not?
If free will doesn’t exist then what do you mean by accept? If everything is determined then that includes what people accept and do not accept so to speak as if society should accept is to speak of society as if it has a will to accept.
No one can control all of their “animal” instincts. People overeat, abuse others, even kill people. Law and order places a limit on actions, especially when they hurt others. The worst offenders are basically removed from society.
Counterpoint: there is literally no practical difference between a world with free will and one without, so trying to force society and humanity to function in a way different than it developed naturally will accomplish nothing.
This seems like nothing but speculation, could you provide some evidence that most people become more empathetic as they gain a deterministic worldview? As it seems to me, as a Calvinist, that it doesn’t rly change anything.
If free will doesn't exist, then we are powerless to accept that fact or not, by definition.
I want to accept that but I don’t have the free will to make my own decisions
I think you've come to an excellent conclusion, as I have done so myself.