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Free will and Moral Responsibility(Or perhaps, lack of them)

Started by Johndigger, March 25, 2007, 04:56:07 PM

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Johndigger

So, what do you guys think of Free will?


If we do, where does it come from?


Can we have moral responsibility without free will?


JD

Whitney

#1
Well, if a person isn't free to make a choice then we really can't hold that person accountable for moral actions (although that wouldn't mean it would necessarily be wrong to remove those that harm society from society).  I'm undecided on free will.  I feel like I have free will and if who I am is just what my brain is wired to be then any free choices my brain makes is the same as me having free will.  I do think free will is more likely to exist without a eternal god than with one...because if something created everything while knowing the future then we were all made to make certain choices.

Johndigger

#2
So, what causes the Free will, if indeed we have free will?

It must be something outside of science, then, surely. Because in science there is no "random" there are only things we can't measure. Even things like particle diffusion (Which is somewhat considered Random but not in the true sense) if we knew all the factors involved in particle diffusion we could know exactly when and where each particle was going.


JD

donkeyhoty

#3
Do you mean the Rush song Free Will?

It's pretty kick ass I must say
"Feminism encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians."  - Pat Robertson

Johndigger

#4
Absolutely. That's exactly what I meant, how very...err...astute of you.


JD

SteveS

#5
Free will = really tough question to me.  I don't know.  One thing's for sure, people are very very non-trivial.  We are hard to predict, even to ourselves.  This means to me that free will could just be an illusion, we're just so complex that it's hard to get the equations right.

One thing, though, I think I can shed some light on,

Quote from: "Johndigger"Because in science there is no "random" there are only things we can't measure.
I don't think this is really true.  I believe that quantum events are random.  They follow probability curves, so you can predict them statistically, but one for one you don't know until it occurs, so I think they are random.  I believe this is what Einstein was upset about with his famous "God does not play dice" quote, uttered I believe in response to quantum mechanics (he did not like the fact that there was true randomness in nature).  More practical, but less absolute, is chaos theory, which doesn't really require truly random events underneath it to furnish a process that is impossible to predict.

Haha, maybe we are all just really chaotic.  This has a ring of truth to it, just merge into rush hour traffic some time.  :wink:  

Honorable mention to Rush, I like that song too.

Johndigger

#6
Yes, I did think of Chaos theory, but I don't that that is random either.


Take the weather for example. An extremely common example when discussing chaos theory.

If you had exactly the same conditions, then you would have exactly the same weather again (Or so people believe)

However, the problem lies in that we can't replicate the same conditions twice because even if you make an absolutely minute error - it throws the whole thing out entirely.


I don't think we can really know weather (Pun intended) Chaos theory really is random or not because we can't replicate the same conditions twice to find out.


The word random for me, basically is the consequence of Chaos theory.

JD

SteveS

#7
Johndigger, I agree with you about chaos theory.  My point about the chaos theory was primarily about the free will question; that if people's thoughts are "chaotic", and we can never accurately measure the "initial conditions", we'll never be able to predict their future thoughts and behavior so they may appear to have free will when they don't.  Do they have free will, or is their brain system just chaotic?  How do we tell the difference?  Personally, I have no idea, other than to keep studying how brains work and maybe one day someone will find the answer (go science).

The quantum mechanics part was another beast entirely;  I think random in that regard is very real in nature.  And, you did not address this in your response  :wink:  (Please understand I'm not trying to be rude, just conversing).

Johndigger

#8
Well, to be fair, that question is still up for debate amoung some of the world's top scientific brains. I've looked at both sides of the arguement, and they both present interesting cases. I'm going agnostic on this one. ;)

But, even, assuming there is random, does that even prove free will? It proves perhaps, a potential, for free will but it doesn't prove it.

JD

donkeyhoty

#9
there's already a long thread on free will, i'd link to it, but seek and ye shall find.
"Feminism encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians."  - Pat Robertson

Johndigger

#10
Yes. I did see the thread. But I'm looking not just at Free will.

But free will and moral responsibility.

pjkeeley

#11
Hi. This is my first post, though I have been lurking for some time. Good topic, I just have this to add:

Someone in this thread rightly pointed out that if we have no free will, we can't be held responsible for our actions... but then went on to question whether we should punish a person or not. Surely if there is no free will, morality would be just as pre-programmed as anything else? We would either be destined to punish them or not to punish them.

Doesn't make sense to me. I believe in free will.

Johndigger

#12
And then we have to somewhat backtrack into where this free will comes from.

To be fair, I don't think any Atheist really claims to have an answer for that question (Although, I'm quite happy to be proved wrong)

Anyone with faith claims to have the answer "God!" but therein lies the problem that if this being knows everything we're going to do and He created us, how do we have free will?

Whitney

#13
Maybe there is something beyond our comprehension that allows for free will yet is still natural.  If we define free will rather loosely (the ability to freely make a choice between available options) then I feel confident saying it does exist as long as you aren't being forced by another individual to do something against your will.

SteveS

#14
Quote from: "Johndigger"Well, to be fair, that question is still up for debate amoung some of the world's top scientific brains. I've looked at both sides of the arguement, and they both present interesting cases. I'm going agnostic on this one.
I've read about how people try to reconcile the non-deterministic qualities of quantum events with the deterministic qualities of quantum theory through the sort of "all histories happen in alternate universes" kind of approach, but I didn't think anyone was actually challenging the "non-deterministic" (i.e. random) qualities themselves.  But, for this purpose, I guess it really doesn't matter.  Your answer is fair enough for me.

Quote from: "Johndigger"But, even, assuming there is random, does that even prove free will? It proves perhaps, a potential, for free will but it doesn't prove it.
Oh I agree on this one, I don't think it proves it at all.  I'm not sure it even adds to the potential.  I mean, if our will was random, we wouldn't control it any more than if it was hard wired, right?  So it still wouldn't be "free".

I guess I tend to doubt free will for some reason, although it certainly feels like I have free will.  Also, people can modify their own behavior, sometimes just by thinking about it themselves (i.e. not through experiencing negative consequences or being punished).  This seems profound to me.  But, in the end, everything I've got to say about it is really just speculative.  I have no evidence one way or another.  Whether we are unpredictable because we have free will, or because we have a chaotic mental process that is practically random, or because we have some underlying truly random function, well, they all look the same to me right now.  I can't tell them apart.