FSTDT Forums
Community => Religion and Philosophy => Topic started by: TheReasonator on July 31, 2012, 04:10:36 pm
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I've noticed sometimes people will talk about free will and the implications of if there is no free will for criminal and moral responsibility such as if it would then be wrong to put criminals in jail.
It's strange that this rarely ever occurs to anyone in the conversation.
If there is no free will, then the cop who arrests the criminal has no free will, neither does the prosecutor who argues the criminal's guilt, the jury that convicts, the judge that sentences, or the prison guards and warden who keep the criminal in prison afterwards. The lawmakers who made the law in the first place didn't even have free will, nor did anyone who voted for them. So then it isn't wrong to send criminals to jail, since all the agents involved in the process are just doing what they were predetermined to do in the first place.
So if there is no free will we can just go about life exactly as we would if there is free will. In fact we would have no other choice. Whether or not free will exists has no real life implications whatsoever.
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Of course, but it's still a fun little topic to discuss whenever you're in a philosophical mood.
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Of course, but it's still a fun little topic to discuss whenever you're in a philosophical mood.
This.
...Art, it's scary when we agree. Good, but scary.
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Calvinist courtroom drama:
"How does the defense plead?"
"Goddmademedoit!"
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Calvinist courtroom drama:
"How does the defense plead?"
"Goddmademedoit!"
Plaintiff: "Godmadeuswritethelawstoconvictyousoyouareguilty!"
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Of course, but it's still a fun little topic to discuss whenever you're in a philosophical mood.
Not like you have a choice but to discuss it. ;)
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Hasven't neurological scientists pretty much proved that free will does not exist?
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Hasven't neurological scientists pretty much proved that free will does not exist?
This is my opinion. The human brain operates on natural laws just like everything else. We don't actually have any control over our thoughts and actions, we just feel like we do.
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Hasven't neurological scientists pretty much proved that free will does not exist?
In essence, your brain (on a chemical level) decides your response before "you" are even really aware of it. Thus "choice", and any/all decision-making, is simply a reaction to that chemical process after the fact. So yeah, there isn't really any free will...not how it's traditionally defined, anyway.
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Depends on what your definition of "you" is. [/billclinton]
Your brain is making the decisions. Are you your brain?
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Depends on what your definition of "you" is. [/billclinton]
Your brain is making the decisions. Are you your brain?
I think the electrochemical signals in my brain is what I perceive as "me". What else? I don't believe in the existence of a metaphysical "mind" or "soul".
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The illusion of free will is good enough. Until there's something out there than knows the current state of everything in the universe, every rule of physics, and is fast enough to figure out what will happen at some point in the future before it actually happens, it's a distinction that doesn't matter. This would also require a computer/mind faster than itself (it would have to predict its own prediction before it actually happened), so it won't ever happen.
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Hasven't neurological scientists pretty much proved that free will does not exist?
In essence, your brain (on a chemical level) decides your response before "you" are even really aware of it. Thus "choice", and any/all decision-making, is simply a reaction to that chemical process after the fact. So yeah, there isn't really any free will...not how it's traditionally defined, anyway.
Another possibility is that "free will" is merely limited, and indeed anyone whose emotions overwhelmed their decision-making process at times (everybody) proves that if "free will" exists at all it is not absolute.
It could be that "free will" can only apply to long-term decision-making. The studies were seeing if a person's choice could be predicted before a decision they made shortly afterwards. Or maybe it can only apply to more general things such as your attitude but we can't determine the specifics of action.
It could also imply that our existence as a single conscious entity is an illusion, that we are really an aggregate of other decision-makers/experiencers (which we know of as our subconscious mind), and those decision-makers are those parts of our brain releasing those chemicals that eventually come together to make a single, unified choice and unified experience. Thus, for us to make a choice as a whole entity rather than a random coming together of smaller entities requires deliberation between the parts and can only change things over the long-term.
Of course then these smaller entities' behavior can probably be predicted if we were able to look at the chemistry on an even smaller level, and perhaps so and so forth ad infinitum, which could mean free will paradoxically exists and doesn't exist all at once.
So then we would have free will in the same way that a government or an organization has free will, a will that depends on decisions being made but at the same time is not independent because it is the product of the decisions and communications between its members.