Any good arguments in favor of free will?

[hackenslash]

I don't agree that quantum uncertainty would give us free will (my definition of free will corresponding to your definition of "will"). I don't see how something in our brains being random can translate into choices. Maybe you can elaborate?

It's not that quantum uncertainty gives us free will, per se, it's simply that quantum uncertainty rules out determinism.

Stepping outside the realm of standard QM for a moment, though, quantum indeterminacy, if having any influence on our neural processes, would mean that our decisions cannot be deterministic, which certainly leaves the door open for free will in that sense. Incidentally, the aforementioned study suggesting that our decisions are registered before we are conscious of them does not affect that point, it only demonstrates that our decisions are often made subconsciously. This in no way paints them as predetermined in any broader sense.

[dloubet]

Even if quantum uncertainty did not directly affect our neuronal activity, circumstances still provide the data upon which we make our decisions. Since quantum indeterminacy affects that data, our purely mechanical decisions must still reflect that indeterminacy.

And lest anyone think that quantum events are puny, just imagine how your life would be different if even one key historical figure died of cancer before they could perform their key historical act. A cancer caused by a single atom decaying in the wrong place at the wrong time. Quantum events can have profound effects.

The decisions I'm making today would be entirely different if Abraham Lincoln had died as a child. I most likely would not even exist.

The future is open.

[dloubet]

We are conceived with a nature, develop it in utero, as children and so on, well what is the alternative, some angel touches you on the lip at birth and imbues with some godly purpose?

There is no alternative. Why should there be? Circumstances equip us with a nature we do not choose. That's simply the way it is. I can't see how it could be any other way.

When determinism is used to make life seem constricted I have to reject it as dysfunctional.

That does not mean it's not true, does it? I mean I can see ignoring that the universe might be deterministic and embracing the illusion that we have free will for simply practical reasons. The knowledge that our decisions may be purely mechanical does not help inform those decisions, and may in fact be detrimental to making them. Indeed, I treat the universe as if I have free will, but I still know intellectually that it's just a helpful illusion.

I am here an I can make choices.

Yes. You can make choices. We all can. So can my iPhone. It's the free part that's the illusion.

I think there is a sense of fair play, if it is offended it demands satisfaction.

Absolutely. That's part of our programming. It's why we seek to alter the behavior of those that violate that programming.

Robots don't raise children for decades, keep photo's of them at age three on their desks for ever, and when they hear of a mother who has lost her child under the wheels of a car, I doubt they shed a tear.

Since we are robots, that's exactly what some robots do. We are robots made of meat, evolved over billions of years. How should we behave?

Unless there's some supernatural magical power involved, we have to be robots. We have to be machines. Our cogs and gears are the molecules that make us. They're the same molecules that make chimpanzees, lizards, and bugs. They're the same molecules and atoms that form the cogs and gears of the molecular machine called a virus. It's machines all the way down.

We are machines capable of love and hate, happiness and suffering. Robots granted by circumstance the ability to discover their origins and march into an open future.

Not bad for meat-puppets, eh?

[Will37]

I think I would be happier if I believed in free will again, but I have yet to hear any good arguments in favor of it. However, I don't want to delude myself into believing something that is false either.

So you want somebody to convince you that you have free will?  I want an argument so that you can choose to believe in free will again?


You see what I'm getting at?