Do humans have free will?

What do you mean by unwelcome thoughts?

How do we choose which thoughts to act upon? Isn't that just one thought followed by another thought?

I've listened to Sam Harris speaking about free will. One thing for sure is we can't decide on something or choose and make a decision for something we don't know.
We are definitely largley influenced early in life by our environment and culture we grow up with. How can a young child have free will until they have knowledge? Interesting thread.

Of course we have free will. It's something that can't ever be taken from us. It's what defines us ad sentient beings.

Perhaps in the ancient world. These days the question is: if we're in a deterministic universe, then how could we have free will?

How would you challenge this argument?
1. All events have causes
2. Our actions are events
3. All caused events are determined by the past
Therefore:
4. Our actions are determined by the past
5. If our actions are determined by the past, then we have no power to act other than we do indeed act.
6. If we have no power to act other than we in fact do act, then we have no free will.
Therefore
7. We have no free will

Think of it like a row of dominos. Once the first domino is knocked over, the rest will fall. That first domino was the moment of the Big Bang. And the rest of the dominos are everything that happens after that.

Let's call the argument above, "the argument for hard determinism."

But then we could also formulate this argument:
1. If hard determinism is true, then don't have free will
2. If we have no free will, then we are not responsible for our actions.
3. We are responsible for our actions
Therefore: Hard determinism is false

(I didn't come up with these arguments myself).

yes they do. They have the ability to make decisions and suffer the consequences or reap the rewards from those decisions. Nobody is forcing them to do anything.

Most are eschewing science and making their case through subjective means.

I don't know how the term is being defined here. I generally think of 'free will' as regards to autonomy. I think it's possible to be autonomous, sure. Autonomous in the sense that the self has control based on its subjective awareness of things.

Right, but in as much as we can or do have awareness, there are those with the self-agency to assert will over their actions. Of course, that's still neurochemicals at play, but that locus of control is no less real. That's their brain at work. Their self is their brain however.

Yes, it's true that we don't REALLY get to pick our thoughts since there are thoughts that reside outside our awareness - chemicals in the brain are doing that for us. But those chemicals are us. They are part of what constitutes our identity.

Premise 1: Majority here is not like a major league....
Premise 2: Majority opinion is reductionistic.
Conclusion: It's still interesting since we're thinking about what it means to be free, willingly. You'd be having a whale of good time, when ya free Willy.

I got something new for you which I found interesting. But before I get to that, I'd like to share something more,,, pure and deontological.

The first few posts and the notion of consequentialism made me think of Joe Arpaio, the former sheriff of Arizona's Maricopa County. You may have heard of him, back in 1994, he established tent city jail and now he's a criminal. Someone's gaining power and making profit in prison system, and this happens because we were all thrown into this society which established justice system before we came to this world. There's nothing wrong to think life/time as a consequences of events and our actions, BUT, Life can only be understood backwards. Can you see how our prior knowledge always try to get to us? Machines can not will their actions, they are programmed. I feel things, when I think of people here and robots at Boston Dynamics...

Karl Popper(1902-1994)

Check out what this guy has to say. He avoids talking about it because he's not sure what it is, I like his scientific approach to this topic. His theories from biology and evolutionary reasonings are quite refreshing, he separates theological influence in our cultures from what we really need to be focusing on and I think it's a smart approach. It is chauvinistic and morally corrupt to ignore all the scientific inquires into human morality, they haven't figured out much just yet. I believe more in established scientific methodology for human knowledge than random people on the internet, it's just empirically evident that ,,, I should keep my mouth shut. I can truthfully say that i prefer Scientific American over Psych Central Forum.

I got nothing. No consciousness, it is unverifiable! which includes my identity. It's all an illusion, deal with it and try not to forget to have fun!

Man is free and there's a similar term called liberty, and we got Bill of Rights to do what we will. I would think you'd be responsible for things you did in your sleep, IF you knew that you knew that you could act like that. What am I saying? it's a legal issue and I would convict you depending on the circumstances. Dr. Peter Breggin could join the prosecution team, could you check the legal precedent for your argument there, bruv? In any case, we look at the evidence, take fifth if you have to, you're presuuuumed innocent, sounds fair enough?

This nonexistent argument(regular free will emotional talk) is kinda political, or for fun, I don't know. As you can see, I'm Kantian tonight, at least I exist in my mind, dunno about you though. Do you have any particular court cases to show us and asks us what needs to change in our legal system? As far as I know, the insanity defense doesn't usually work for the defendant, there's a question of what caused the diminished capacity too. Some medications have been proven in court that they cause harm to human mind, and I honestly don't know any cases where Cartesian dualism became an issue in a court room. I got fatum, and it's biologically explainable. And the problem you're raising is psychological in nature, forensic psychologists work for law enforcement, don't they?

Sorry, I'm not understanding your point much. A real psychopathy exists, right? Maybe ordinary people could think, hard, and say it's a diminished mental capacity, it is a mental disease.

Continental vs Analytical, I believe everyone's been talking from all angles.

The philosophical argument about the existence of free will really is about ...
A Dialogue on Compatibilism @Existential Comics

We are not born with a mind of tabula rasa, all the brain scientific researches could aid us to understand a part of the function of our brains, it's obvious the way we look at physics, biology and quantum mechanics has been asking us good questions about the use of the concept called 'free will', we discriminate minors for good scientifically understood reasons, which is the development of brain/neural development and pruning processes.

This whole talk is like Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.

You the particles, and I'm the waves that comes at you like big tsunami, you got no time to think, get to the high ground!

I believe our ethical attitude towards people in coma has been changing, it's something to think about. We do not see thoughts directly, certainly not through our languages. People with Hyperthymesia doesn't seem to struggle so much with life, they'd be making choices like anybody else does, I suppose...

There are always ethical cost for what you do or say, you're costing me good night sleep... Was I doomed from the start? Or was I born to be your conscience? Shop ethical and what was it? Think globally and act locally while you think of effective altruism.

By claiming your free will with bad definitions, you're likely creating less of a human somewhere else. You want promise and good,,,goodness from other people, even if you're not a nice person. It's a convoluted and flawed system, like I said in my earlier post, it's a psychological error, many people comes from broken family, we just need to suck it up and forget equity, inclusivity or diversity, all those BS political statement based on toxic postmodern ideologies.

自由意志, the translated word in my language makes me laugh, you'd almost be shunned from society for speaking out such egoism....

I believe we do, although we are influenced by environmental and internal factors.

@Takeshi
Let's just take the case of someone with no known sleep issues. Would you hold that person responsible for something he did in his sleep? Are there Any cases wherein one doesn't have free will?

@shakespeare47 (Shaving is not necessary in this court room, this is just a preliminary hearing. )

I guess we're ought to believe that the result of decision making process & our actions are causally related, roughly speaking, within this framework of "Heck, yeah, we love being free so much, all of our actions are the result of the freedom we have!!".

This seems normal to me, no matter how idiotic that may seem. I see what you're asking shakespeare, you want me to search and refute this apriori system which believers and non-believers are entrusted to follow, with sincerity!

We don't have good science for sleep, I'd rather care more about criminal psychological traits of the accused() here, or anywhere, and please note what you just wrote. "He" supposedly did it! *cue the Law & Order: Sound Effect!!* By the way, our society's legal system finds it 'necessary' to "qualify" 'In Pro Se', it all depends what you did in your Sleep though, doesn't it?

Well, well,,, to answer your question, I say, "yes, I would" for the first question. A person competent enough to stand before a court is someone who's capable of being responsible for his or her sleep, one can choose where one can safely sleep without causing harm to other people or properties.

"The US supreme court has called free will a "universal and persistent" foundation for our entire system of law.", 'The Guardian' reports... What do they mean 'called'? Again things depends on other things, they are not our direct representatives, and they sometimes show strong political biases, (aka Cognitive BIASES! ), nobody likes that...

So the second question is a good one, I like what you did! From a legal standpoint, sure, "they" say that we do have free will. Isn't it a bit like catch 22 though? I as an individual have superior brain than the opinion of the highest court, on occasion. We catch people in action, I see it's irrelevant whether one has free will or not and I see no problem with that. It's necessary condition for consistency in legal procedures, can I say this is a case of a Straw Man? I understand we're not seriously arguing, but if you could show us something more that surprise me, I'd love to hear that. Don't you love chances and spontaneity?

Research datas that shows suicidality and homicidality caused by psych meds are really disconcerting. The focus should be on the responsibilities, on the series of responsibilities and actions that led to diminished will or whatever, it's not legally questionable?? Of course one can try but I haven't seen many successful cases and let me just say it like a judge! It's a Truism in legal logic, that's the paradigm that's been set, so the answer to the second question is NO.

Have I been answering your questions and wondering satisfactorily? I get the feeling that you want to challenge the foundation of court! And this rhetoric or conjecture can be played out in court room legal game infrastructure as it stands, what do you think?

That's a horrible answer. If you could rephrase that, I would like to hear it. The reason I think it's horrible is that your words doesn't speak about our actions, and the action is the predicate of the logic we use to discern our behaviors. It seems you hold people's thoughts in guilt, if we behave in a way that judges our thoughts so harshly, I believe this will end up with something we call brainwashing or a cult like thinking.

It'd be reassuring if you could say that's how some religious people go about their way or add some supporting arguments for your opinion, otherwise, rational mind like mine would find it so frightening. Your statement sounds like you're claiming how people's mind work, without a shred of supporting evidence or everyday examples, and one could see that you're dictating your simplistic moral standard out in the public forum, and it's really insulting to human intelligence. Let me just ask from one person to another, why did you do that for?

How are we supposed to infer what you said after 'Yes' to the Q&A you just participated in? Could you please please elaborate on this for me? Thanks.

P.S.
I believe strongly that our decision making process and our moral conducts/actions affects the society, you may have multiple of choices or infinite choices, that's what being free means for human consciousness. 'How' we make our choices leads to the consequences you mentioned. You can believe in things without structured thoughts or systems in brains, pardon my poor example here, but I believe we as a species are much smarter than apes,,, could you reexamine the question and answer differently??

Hi, people!

"Guns don't kill people—the mentally ill do.” —Ann Coulter

Sometimes, we need to go to extreme places to find out the truth, mentally and physically... I'm seeking my truth obviously and I was at her website tonight to read about mass shootings and mental ill connections, I also watched her book promotion interview at Nixon Library on youtube where she was talking about the institutionalization of mentally ill people. I also found some studies tonight on my google search to suggest that severely mentally disabled patients were glad that they were forcibly medicated, to which I'm not sure what to say... The internet is full of articles that tries to convince us that medicating mental illnesses with psych drugs is the good/right thing to do, in fact, I had to talk with one forum member in 'other mental something...' board who was fully convinced that some type of mental illness had to be medicated few weeks ago.

And then there's the other side of the story.

Working Group on Arbitrary Detention @United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

"Horrible Psychiatry Story - Emma to UN Arbitrary Detention (United Nations)" by Everyday Psych Victims Project @youtube

The video has bad audio, so the auto-generated caption isn't working. I don't know who this Emma person is, I haven't checked her elsewhere. Her story is a familiar one, in the US as well as in my country Japan. Mad in America website has an article that talks about what things been suggested to US congress about civil rights of people with mental illnesses, I just hope people on this forum to realize sooner rather than later that,,, most of you think you know what you're talking about but you don't!

I could be a rational will with some kinda affliction in my brain. This is no identity politics!! I can live or die without faith, nor belief, and I definitely don't do this for pleasure.

That seems odd to me. I imagine a newly married couple. Their first night together, the wife rolls over in bed and smacks her husband across the face while sound asleep.

What about someone who starts having sleep issues? He has no reason to believe there are any issues. Then one day, he walks in his sleep and injures someone.

What about cases of coercion? Imagine that a bank manager is told he must hand over the bank's money, because if he doesn't, armed men will kill hostages. Should that manager be prosecuted if he decides to give the robbers the bank's money?

It seems to me that all things being equal, people are responsible for their actions, but there are exceptions.

I hear they say:

The stress lays off when you realize there's no free will

You're more or less influenced constantly by your mind and body and there's very little you can do about it for example obese people get poo transfers cause there's too much trash food demanding bacterial in their bowels so they get a mix from someone who has had a healthy diet. I think there's free will, but it's overrated.

For example every time I get addicted to some silly stuff, I usually wonder like what does my brains now want? To go back to that place? Nahh. I just stay here. It's almost like there's a lil boy inside you who wants to go everywhere and you have to be the adult.

Hi, I'm imagining a newly married couple, yes. It's called residual honeymoon period, and I'm not recalling the question I answered to right now? It was like would I hold someone responsible for things done during sleep, wasn't it? It could still be a problem in a liberal state like California, if there were no explicit consent, the wife could claim rape charges on the husband, the rolling over and smacking maneuver was muscle memory from her self-defence classes, I'm pretty confident that I could retain Any types of scientific experts if I had all the money in the world, and jurors get to decide/discuss the validity and certainty of evidence & facts presented in court.

The oddity you mentioned is something what people just say, isn't it? It sounds like it to me. This is the issue of sound mindedness, I can not trust psych evaluations of someone's past, 'Could he have acted otherwise?', 'Was he temporarily,,,off in his/her head,,,at the night of the crime??', I don't remember the exact state of my mind when I posted it, but I'm back here, trying and proving that I'm competent to know what's been said and feeeeling and ****.

So the couple(s), isn't/wasn't of a sound mind since ALL of 'em think they are so in love and stuff, some honeymoon travels obviously fails as soon as it starts because people get married too soon or having a ton of emotional baggages/scars from previous marriages, legal drugs like pot and alcohol may have been in her body, it'd be too late now to examine that now, wouldn't it? Get me eye witnesses and we'll talk more about this mysterious cases and I may defend you if I see that you have a good case, compensation matters, y'know, I ain't cheap. So, the question comes down to, who wants to sue whom?

Let me move on to the next case.

"Here, come sit down, and have some cannoli."

"You talk funny, man. Did you take care of the business that I told you to? I make the call to collect, they'd be shittin' in the pants now. As you know, we been in this beef with Irish across the street for a while now, feds looking into our accounts since last year, we need more politicians, lobbyists, pharma reps, bishops, whoever we can get our hands on in our pocket, ,,,why am I telling you this? The talk is above your paygrade, you hear? You're a family man now, and we got ears all over, that's all you need to know."

"By the way, If you got problems with your doc, we'll just find another one.... You could be more specific, before you bring your problems to me, it's called responsibility and its value is something that never get diminished, d'you understand? Well,,, I hear ya, I'll ring Tony and let him know of your issues. And would you stop saying strange thing like 'injury'? Learn how to talk first, you gotta know how to talk and when to ditch your phone. Your story reminds me of this one night before I and Paulie became a made man, funny story, the guy sleeping at the bottom of the bay was a physician who was talking exactly like you do. *read my facial expression, it's Silvio!*"

That's like an old movie plot, the public loves the bank robbers! I think the corporate policies can take care of what you're asking, the worker could simply be sued for damages if he weren't a good corporate slave. You need better example than that to make me talk on the case of coercion. It sounds interesting, but,,,where did your will go? Coercion is like something democrats do, they like to keep your life hostage at gunpoint, who do you think is being robbed, dude? It's a nice philosophical pondering, don't you think?

Not everyone's equal, saying like that is subscribing to an egalitarian ideology, I'm serious, man. All the justice of this world ain't mine, it's unjust to draw false/deceptive conclusion from arbitrary premises. Not all things are useful to think they are equal in value/worth, I believe there is this hierarchy of human values to consider. I'm fine with the way you see things, I'm not exactly following your thoughts right now though. Maybe I look being relative in my judgment or something, to me, things are just the way they are, and the way I see it is that the exceptions people find are the contradictions, many people seek continuity in human morality, and we don't know what's in us to discover.

Some animals migrate with their inner compasses, and it follows our human physical understanding of the laws in nature, other animals use senses that we do and don't have. And we humans understand the process of discovery, if there were unified goals we could all pursue, I hope it'd be something like actions and responsibilities associated with it to reduce sufferings or some **** like that.

“The average dog is a nicer person than the average person.”

― Andy Rooney

It's not my thing to think about average human beings but I agree with this statement.

I need to rethink why I said 'someone could've' argument. Now I see your point, I thought it was reasonable though. I might be incriminating myself here but just hear me out. It's easier for me, like that famous occam's razor's way to think that what comes as simpler explanation to difficult and delicate question in this hypothetical crime scene is for the accused to choose to face justice in physical form,,,he did something, man!

You'll be okay if you don't go confess to law authorities. If you could get away with any crimes, that's just not my business. I don't rely on human made laws for people to act civil, or not being evil in their own acts, I don't have a delusion like I can judge and punish other human beings. Probably, a lot of things could be justified with my sense of morality or something, which may not agree with sometimes unequally established laws.

I used the example that you found odd to illustrate my point that every citizens in civilized society are subjected to the laws of the land. You get asked to appear or get in touch with authorities first, I don't know how things would go down if someone called cops on you. Watch out for city cops, will you? I respect the Sheriff's department to some extent for obvious reasons...

And I consider Marbury v. Madison as a mistake, does this make me more Jeffersonian than I was? dunno. Do you see my point? The start point of our conversation? For all you know, I could be anything, at anywhere. Was it just a personal question? I'm not the law, man, I'm a traiter, internet street criminals, this thug life is not for everyone, I tell you this much. If you care too much on internet affairs, that'll be your downfall for you someday, my friend. Did something for real, didn't you? Buy her flowers and do more house choirs and you'll aight. Any more questions?

--------------------------

Yes I do! Who raided the fridge at Shakespeare's house? Don't nobody humiliate the reason and distort the soul, if it's not legal in your state.

That's very good. When I think of free and free man, I think of Notes from Underground, which I haven't read in its entirety. It's smarter to think that we don't have too much control in life, and,,,, I'm eating my lunch, the topic of someone else's bacteria couldn't have come at the better time, the lesson here is the free-willed plan could get interrupted at any time, our bosses at our workplace or at the highest level of the governments could lay us off without two weeks notice(??), even if you survive the competition which we call a rat race, the reward you might be looking at is to work for that business man you wouldn't wanna be in bed with.

It's like a grocery coupon, some people could get a little OCD about it. I was watching this short video clip some time ago, which showed a man yelling at someone at a cash register, the man was trying to get his food stamp/SNAP number to go through, the video was obviously about machoness of the dumb American man, implying that I'm the tax payer, get the F out of my way, you're waste of space, something like that.

People in that video was EQUALLY quiet. It's the kind the **** I'd like to get by the horn, and explain it to y'all that Gaussian distribution rules this world!

Our story of rape and reconciliation @TED Women 2016

I think this is a good example of human's free will in action.

Those people mocks me with a phrase like "You're loved". They don't skip the 'judge and punish' part... Well, I have been questioning this choices/options and making decision process that we all hear and supposedly practice in our every day life. I don't think I believe in it. This makes me highly skeptical of any justice system of this world, I simply can't bear the thought of being in that position to confine someone's freedom by taking away their mobility. Criminal justice system seems a lot different between my country and the US, it's preferable to have a higher power overseeing things on this sensitive part of our function in the society.

• There is no "bail" in Japan. (Unless someone is super duper rich white-collar criminal.)
• The prevailing logic in the Japanese "justice" system is guilty until proven innocent.
• Japanese criminal prosecutions have a 99%+ conviction rate.
• Prisoners in Japan that do not confess are treated "harshly".

The famous phrase the cogito was written to secure the foundation of knowledge and it does not imply faith. Kierkegaard and Heidegger made really funny critiques about this famous saying, I really liked them. Someone once said, "a priori truth is the only truth.", so where does that leave 'I' ? I make decisions affirmatively, no choice, really. No choice, given, because my conscience doesn't like to be raped. It's all part of the facticity I suppose, the world is full of pitiful, vengeful, weak and insecure fanatics. This Ressentiment appears time and time again... I'm still resolute though. It's time for The Gay Science and Re-Ordering of Descartes!!!

Maybe the more important question is do we have the freedom to choose our own destiny?
Stephen King touched on this once over human inventions like the creation of steam power and how there were other forms of power that could have been better but, for reasons unknown steam power became the norm for a while and as for the next form of power that came to be the norm there, was already something better but, it didn't work out that way and he had a talk with a friend over this and arrived at the conclusion that for the eras in question maybe there was a "steam time" and a certain time for each additional fuel source that followed in a certain order.
The conclusion of this concept was that if it really is that way then, it is very scary.

Alright. It was interesting to read but it wasn't more important. I remember seeing this documentary of electric cars, the very first one had huge fans and big Autos just didn't like them, felt threatened or whatever. They did horrible thing like, they eliminated those little cars off this earth by literally destroying 'em all. So, that's the force, my son. Great work, are you talking from the world of steampunk or something? D'you know anything about Tesla? You don't have to answer, I just found your post creative and interesting.

What you're saying makes sense, and there are also factors such as raw materials aside from technologies. We've acquired quite vast amount of knowledge so far though. Someone's always trying to prove 'Perpetual Energy' or something similar, I say we're limited as individuals and a collective of any size could be quite powerful on intellectual scale, it could be, it should be synergistic.

What scary to me is the oil reserve has peaked long time ago, if we didn't get out there into space in time,,,,,Machines from Boston Dynamics with consciousness would be taking over this spaceship earth. It's just one out of unlimited possible scenarios that someone would get to see, you could go watch Michio Kaku and his mind blowing theories if you're feeling scary. He's another kind of scary, he would say it's pointless to ponder on 'free'will', he's all Newtonian on the topic, and no one's convinced apparently.