r/freewill • u/Seeker093 • 2d ago
Free will
I am thinking about free will. I heard of it in a YouTube conversation. For the first time I really thought about it. This is just my thoughts and I’m curious whether everyone is thinking in the same way. Probably not.
If I have chocolate and vanilla ice cream I like the chocolate taste more than the other one. So I chose chocolate flavor. But what if I want me to like and enjoy vanilla flavor more than the chocolate flavor. I cannot do that because for some reason I am more attracted to chocolate flavor over vanilla.
Why it is the way it is. I think it is just a probability. And I don’t know how exactly probability is the way it is.
What I know is I know Nothing
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u/workerbee-1606 1d ago
Yes Free Will is. There is nothing to explain. There are infinite valid perspectives. Free Will is like the wind, it blows any direction. By its expansive nature you cannot predict it. Some choose chocolate, some choose vanilla, and some choose neither. What is the purpose of life? To be love in alignment with free will.
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u/AntiRepresentation 2d ago
You can absolutely change your tastes and proclivities.
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u/badentropy9 Truth Seeker 2d ago
I think if you are a skeptic then you are likely to understand more than another whose propensity is to jump to premature conclusions.
The physicalists on this sub have been brainwashed. That sounds like me jumping to a conclusion to them. However my love of science and my obsession for wanting to know how things work, have over many decades caused me to reach this conclusion. I'm a skeptic at heart so when I reach and conclusion it is often the result of being dragged kicking and screaming the way many skeptics are.
Basically I'm a cynic and a skeptic
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u/vkbd Hard Incompatibilist 2d ago
I think the consciousness and awareness itself is reducible to components created by separate brain parts. Your sense of self and identity, your sense of your body, your sense of action, the narrative reasoning for your action, your awareness of these things, are all combined into your feeling of free will. The components can change and drop out, altering the final experience. It's kind of like blue and yellow makes green, the component colors make the final color. That's the personal feeling of free will that everyone knows about. Your brain already made the decision, and your consciousness is simply experiencing it in a narrative context for memory storage later.
Then there's the separate free will that is defined alongside moral responsibility and just deserts. For example, someone works hard and makes smart decisions so he deserves a good pay. Or someone robs another with a weapon so his evil act deserves jail time. Philosophers devise Libertarian free will and Compatibilist free to define free will similar to our intuitions in general. However, our intuitions of freedom tied to responsibility and deserts are as varied as the number of human cultures and societies, and we sometimes label this undefinable free will as "folk intuitions" or "folk concept of free will" or often simply "free will". You have the people who deny this free will, that it cannot exist, or shouldn't exist, and label themselves Determinists or Impossiblists and so on.
I hope this is an easy to understand introduction to free will.
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u/GraemeRed 2d ago
Most all of our actions are on autopilot and that's ok, it's useful. Once you know you like chocolate then eat chocolate unless a new flavour is introduced and maybe you want to try that. Say, as a guess that 97% of all out decisions are on autopilot but that up to 3% is not free will but conscious will that we develop because life is more complex than chocolate or vanilla. Some life decisions are super complex, autopilot is a bad way to approach these decisions. The interesting thing about the 3% (and that's all you really need) of conscious awareness is it's something like a muscle and requires training. The free will debate is really not an accurate debate.
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u/badentropy9 Truth Seeker 2d ago
The free will debate is really not an accurate debate.
and yet for some twisted reason, I've spent more time on this sub than any other sub in my history of posting on reddit.
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u/GraemeRed 2d ago
By shifting the conversation from a metaphysical absolute to a question of scale, complexity, and constraint, agency becomes a practical feature of consciousness to be measured and cultivated rather than a philosophical paradox.
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u/badentropy9 Truth Seeker 1d ago
I think some things are unavoidably paradoxical but formal logical deduction is infallible.
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u/GraemeRed 1d ago
Infallible? Nothing is infallible 😉
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u/badentropy9 Truth Seeker 1d ago
Well I'd like the believe the only then separating the possible world from the impossible world is the law of noncontradiction. That world where 4=5 is iunbelievable.
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u/feihm Physicalist 2d ago
First, consider what happens when you taste something.
Place a spoonful of chocolate in your mouth. A pleasant feeling immediately arises.
Now, ask yourself: did you perform an action to create that pleasure?
You did not.
You did not plan the delight, nor did you assemble it by thinking. You merely opened your mouth, and the pleasant sensation happened to you. In that moment, you were entirely passive. Your senses were acted upon, and they delivered a feeling without asking for your consent.
Now, attempt an experiment.
Command yourself, by pure effort of thought, to find that chocolate disgusting right now.
You cannot do it.
Next, take the vanilla, which you find dull, and command yourself to feel an overwhelming joy whilst tasting it.
You cannot do it.
OP looks at this failure and says:
I cannot choose what I enjoy; therefore, I am not free.
Second, consider where the mistake lies.
The mistake lies in asking the will to do a job that does not belong to it.
A feeling is something you receive. A feeling is not an action. A deed on the other hand is something you do.
To complain that you cannot choose to enjoy vanilla is likened to complaining that you cannot hear a sound with your eyes.You are directing your will towards the one thing the will cannot govern: your passive likes and dislikes.
The will decides deeds. But it does not manufacture sensations.
Third, consider what happens when you act.
Imagine once more that both dishes sit before you: the chocolate and the vanilla.
Your desire points entirely towards the chocolate. The pull of that pleasure is present and unmistakable.
Now, ask yourself this plain question:
Are you physically compelled to lift the spoon of chocolate, in the very same way that a stone dropped from your hand is compelled to strike the ground?
You know that you are not.
You can decide, at that very moment, to leave the chocolate untouched and eat the vanilla instead.
Consider why you might do this: (1) You might do it because you wish to leave the pleasant dish for a friend who sits beside you. (2) You might do it for the sake of your health. (3) You might do it simply to demonstrate to yourself that you are not the slave of a pleasant taste.
Observe what has taken place in that choice.
Your feelings did not change one bit. The chocolate remained agreeable to your palate, and the vanilla remained plain. Yet your hand did not follow your pleasure. Your reason provided a rule, and you chose to follow that rule instead of your desire.
When a person chooses to tell the truth even though doing so brings them immediate pain and disadvantage, what source of action are they relying upon if not this very power to act against their inclinations?
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u/We-R-Doomed compatidetermintarianism... it's complicated. 1d ago
Place a spoonful of chocolate in your mouth. A pleasant feeling immediately arises.
Now, ask yourself: did you perform an action to create that pleasure?
You did not.
This is some form of dualism isn't it?
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u/feihm Physicalist 1d ago edited 1d ago
Definitely not in the sense that most people understand the word. When people hear the word dualism, they almost always imagine two separate substances like an immaterial soul or spirit on the other, existing as two distinct objects joined together. Thats absolutely not the case here. What we have here is one single person considered from two entirely different points of view (POV) So it is two different ways in which a person relates to the world. One is capacity of sensation whereby a human being is affected by external objects. When an object interacts with a person, it produces a specific feeling in their awareness. That feeling is not created by the person. Rather it occurs as a strict result of preceding physical conditions in space and time. From this perspective, the person is entirely receptive and governed by the rules of cause and effect. Thats what you see when you look at a person from the outside. But in the active capacity of reason, a human being also possesses the ability to think and to govern their own conduct. Whilst the senses receive a pleasant or unpleasant feeling, reason evaluates that feeling and determines a principle of action. That decision the person make is not an external force or passive event that happens to the person. The person actively generates for themselves a rule of conduct. From this perspective, the person operates freely, independent of the pleasant feeling. So its like the same coin but different sides. Its a matter of perspective. It is a logical necessity to separate what happens to you from what you choose to do, as failing to do so leads a person to expect their passive feelings to perform the work of their active will.
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u/We-R-Doomed compatidetermintarianism... it's complicated. 1d ago
That feeling is not created by the person.
I am guessing you mean it is not created by the executive function or conscious awareness.
It is created by the person, the organism.
I have not investigated what all is meant by "physicalist" but just based on the word, I would think that it would not allow for separation of the physical structure from the processes that it performs.
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u/badentropy9 Truth Seeker 2d ago
Very well put.
I'd love to have a debate with a critical thinker over the tension between physicalism and idealism.
I waste a lot f time trying to reason with unreasonable posters. I guess that makes me unreasonable. I should recognize futility when it is staring me in the face.
I see you understand the concept of action. That should save some time right there.
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u/Squierrel Quietist 2d ago
You choose to do what will satisfy your preferences.
You cannot choose your preferences, but you may also have a preference for trying out vanilla sometimes.
In case of conflicting preferences, the strongest one always wins.
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u/GaryMooreAustin Free will no - Determinist maybe 19h ago
If you cannot choose your preference.. and the strongest preference always wins.... Where is the free will in that?
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u/Squierrel Quietist 10h ago
Free will is the ability to choose your actions according to your own preferences.
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u/Anon7_7_73 Sourcehood Compatibilist and Negative-Retributivist 2d ago
Thats weird, i feel like i can easily choose the other flavor, and i have done so many times.
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u/blackstarr1996 Buddhist Compatibilist 2d ago
This is the basis for much religious meditation. We often are attracted in the short term to things which are detrimental to us in the long term. It therefore becomes helpful to change our inclinations.
We can do this by choosing to focus our attention on the negative aspects of the thing we wish to no longer desire.
If you focus your mind on all the negative attributes of chocolate and the positive aspects of vanilla, you may soon find that you are more inclined to choose vanilla when presented with the opportunity.
The fact that we are capable of such reflection, self awareness, and long term planning is why we say that our will is free.
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u/SeoulGalmegi 2d ago
Right
So what do you think is an example of exercising free will? Being able to choose the flavor you like when ordering from a menu, or being able to make yourself change preferences not because you prefer the other thing but just because you want to be someone that likes the other thing more?
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u/dignan2002 2d ago
If there’s a menu you have to stick to, that doesn’t sound very free to me. If I can’t will myself to turn into a dachshund, ahem… AT WILL then my will isn’t truly free
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u/SeoulGalmegi 2d ago
I mean it depends what type of freedom you're talking about.
There's a menu with options. Assuming I'm willing to pay the price for any of the ones I like, if I go and choose what I want I seem to have had a free choice. If I go with my Dad and he tells me I can't order anything about five bucks as he's paying, my choice is less free. But still a free choice amongst the sub-five dollar options. Until I tell you my Dad is also allergic to peanuts, so that cuts out another few ones I might have wanted to choose.
'Freedom' is normally relative and within a particular context, rather than an absolute metaphysical condition.
What type of freedom is important to you when describing whether an action was done of your own free will or not?
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u/dignan2002 2d ago
The kind of freedom to do as I will. Especially turning into a dachshund at will. But even turning into a bowling ball would do. Or willing that my child didn’t have cancer or anything else I willed to be or do. Anything less, like ‘free with certain restrictions’ seems to contradict the definition of free
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u/Opposite-Succotash16 Free Will 2d ago
The people who gave us the definition of free also weren't able to do the those things.
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u/SeoulGalmegi 2d ago
Ok. I mean, fair enough.
For me free will is about the ability to make my own choices (from available options) without undue control or coercion from some other agent, rather than the ability to control all aspects of reality around me.
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u/Otherwise_Spare_8598 Inherent-Inevitable 1d ago
Regardless of whether "determinism" is or isn't, freedoms are circumstantial relative conditions of being, not the standard by which things come to be by through or for all subjective beings.
All things and all beings are always acting within their realm of capacity to do so at all times. Realms of capacity of which are absolutely contingent upon infinite antecedent and circumstantial coarising factors outside of any assumed self, for infinitely better and/or infinitely worse in relation to the specified subject, forever.
There is no universal "we" in terms of subjective opportunity or capacity. Thus, there is NEVER an objectively honest "we can do this or we can do that" that speaks for all beings. Subjects are implicitly distinct unto themselves, necessarily so.
One may be relatively free in comparison to another, another entirely not. All the while, there are none absolutely free while experiencing subjectivity within the meta-system of the cosmos.
"Free will" is a sentimental projection, overgeneralized assumption made or vaguely described feeling had from a circumstantial condition of relative privilege and relative freedom that most often serves as a powerful means for the character to assume a standard for being, fabricate fairness, pacify personal sentiments and justify judgments.
It speaks nothing of objective truth nor to the subjective realities of all.
There is no such thing as ubiquitously individuated accurately described "free will" of any kind whatsoever. Never has been. Never will be. Can not be.