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The Mystery of Human Agency

What are your guy's thoughts on free will. I recently wrote a short blog arguing that it doesn't exist, but that it serves as a metaphorical truth with a significant amount of utility for society. Attached is a link to my arguments on my mind's account.

[minds.com]

SageClithsby 3 Apr 17
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I'm attached to the notion of free will, and while I understand the deterministic theory, I'm not convinced of its truthiness.

That's fair enough. At least for now it's mainly a philosophical debate because either contention isn't truly falsifiable.

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It tends to be viewed as intellectual to propose and argue for ideas and theories that go against our innate understanding of life and the world around us. And it makes sense, I suppose, as it indicates at the very least the the individual has at least explored and considered the ideas that many people wouldn't have even known were ideas.
But to be frank, I find the deterministic position on whether humans have free will to be pretentious and insincere. No offence.
As stated by yourself and everyone else who assumes such a stance, if there is no free will then people do not make choices. They simply respond to stimuli and bear no responsibility for their actions. If they bear no responsibility then the entire legal system is unjust and should be scrapped. But it wouldn't matter if it's scrapped or not because the judge who sends the unaccountable person to jail didn't choose to. They are simply responding to stimuli. Further more, the Nazi's weren't bad or doing bad things, they were doing to only thing they could in the circumstance.
You don't make hard decisions. You agonize needlessly over what you were going to do which is outside your control.

It's fun the theorize all the reasons that free will is an illusion and look at all the evidence to support the notion. But no one, and I include the most ardent supporters and yourself, believe it. When someone is unkind you may say they were unkind, but that only makes sense if they had a choice to be kind. When someone does something good for other people, they are only a good person if they had a choice to not do it. That guy who cut you off in traffic? The man who violently rapes children? A person who dedicates their life to medicine and then works tirelessly for free to help sick people?
No better or worse than you. According to your position there are no good or bad people. No smart or dumb. No hard working or lazy because all of these things denote the possibility to have been otherwise. Watch how you interact with the world and see how ridiculous that position would be to maintain outside of pure theory.

You will decide whether to buy a house. Whether to marry your sweetheart. You will weigh the options and consider the pro's and con's. If you don't have free will, why do you do that?

Of course there are many things that can INFLUENCE that decision and some of those factors are the chemistry and structure of the brain itself. Indeed changing these variables can make us more or less prone to make certain choices. Even choices we would never make under normal conditions. But does influencing factors eliminate the existence of free will? That's an odd conclusion to draw.

As tone of voice does not convey well in text let me clarify that this is ment to be direct and not belittling or condescending. I trust that you are mature enough to handle a differing view without it being an attack on you.
But even if you aren't, your position on free will means you can't be mad because you know I had no choice to do otherwise.

I don't find your criticism to be belittling or condescending. Rather, I hoped for something along those lines as I find this discussion entertaining. Perhaps that is why I posted it in the first place because historically discussing this topic has been rewarding.

I might be wrong on this, but I would disagree with the notion that there can't be good or bad people, or that people cannot be held responsible for their actions if free will does not exist. I offer you this; holding people accountable for their actions is a primary mechanism for shaping behavior under deterministic assumptions. The socio-cultural mechanisms society has developed regarding what is good or bad are useful for guiding individual behavior in large societies in order to maximize the success of the society. In this sense, having a criminal Justice system which punishes behavior deemed illegal is controlled by a history of reinforcement because it reduces the amount of aversive stimuli we are exposed to (i.e. rapists or murderers). People may do good things for other people because reciprocal altruism has evolved as an effective way to boost cooperation in social environments which may consequently improve evolutionary success.

The main reason why this discussion is so interesting is because, at least in my opinion, it opens up a larger depth of why people behave in certain ways other than simply saying "because they chose to".

Perhaps primary issues within this debate is that the term "free will" is not often defined to any operational clarity. You suggest that individuals are influenced by environmental factors, but contend that this does not exclude free will. Being that free will is such an abstract construct, perhaps it would be beneficial to define it more explicitly. It seems to me that as opposed to this discussion being a dichotomy of either free will or environmental determinism, perhaps behavior falls more on a spectrum somewhere between those two ideas. And perhaps an individual location on this spectrum varies within any given context where the more extensive their history of reinforcement is for a given stimulus, the less free will they have?

@adavad Lol on that last comment ?

@SageClithsby I always favour clear and concise definitions. It is very difficult to have a meaningful conversation when the meanings are muddied.

How would you define free will?

@Adavad I'm not sure. I think that is an underlying reason as to why I have an issue with the idea of free will. It appears too abstract to me to understand at a foundational level what it is.

I suppose the conceptualization I've been operating under is whether or not an individual has total control over their actions. I imagine you would disagree with such a definition. But along a spectrum between determinism and free will, that definition could be the extreme end of the free will side of the spectrum while an individual having no control over their actions is the extreme end of the determinism side.

How do you conceptualize free will?

@SageClithsby in the simplest terms I can think of, free will is the power to make a decision, or a choice. It is the final say in what a person will do. An addict may have a lot of chemical motivation to do a thing (drink, for example) but the final choice is his. To the extent an action bypasses the persons choice making process/power, that persons free will is limited.

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Free will is only a thing when you are consciously making a decision. Most people let the universe push them from one event to another without ever realizing that is is/was their decisions that brought them to their particular situation. Granted there are events that are outside of your control but your reaction to the event is totally on you. Can you muster the strength to help others or will you be the one needing help? Your choice.

While your reaction to events are entirely on you, it is important to understand that we all operate under limited rationality. So we may respond in a way that is not inherently beneficial to us and regret it, remember that it was a problem, and not react that way in the future. The way that behavior is shaped like that, it seems entirely possible that our degree of agency over our decisions becomes less and less salient the more we are exposed to as we begin developing response patterns to stimuli we are familiar with.

@SageClithsby I like to call that "learning" from the best teacher "experience". I would add that conscience reflection on what happened is often minimal or even overlooked and imho, that is the basis for intelligence. Smart people reflect more and create new connection points for future events.

@cRaZyTMG Environmental determinants refer to this as learning as well. It is the science of learning which critically analyzes the relevant stimuli which elicit observed behaviors. This isn't controversial when studying animal behavior. It only becomes questionable when humans are brought into the discussion, primarily because these points of self-reflection

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I can agree free will is a metaphor, free meaning no cost for your own decision, will meaning do or not. Your own choice. I also see every creature has that as they grow and learn, though some want control and they don't like that.

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