The clockwork universe: is free will an illusion?

BidenPresident said:
I don't think Einstein believed there is no free will.
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Free will
Like Spinoza, Einstein was a strict determinist who believed that human behavior was completely determined by causal laws. For that reason, he refused the chance aspect of quantum theory, famously telling Niels Bohr: "God does not play dice with the universe."[77] In letters sent to physicist Max Born, Einstein revealed his belief in causal relationships:

You believe in a God who plays dice, and I in complete law and order in a world which objectively exists, and which I in a wildly speculative way, am trying to capture. I firmly believe, but I hope that someone will discover a more realistic way, or rather a more tangible basis than it has been my lot to find. Even the great initial success of the quantum theory does not make me believe in the fundamental dice game, although I am well aware that some of our younger colleagues interpret this as a consequence of senility.[78]

I do not believe in free will. Schopenhauer's words: 'Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills,' accompany me in all situations throughout my life and reconcile me with the actions of others, even if they are rather painful to me. This awareness of the lack of free will keeps me from taking myself and my fellow men too seriously as acting and deciding individuals, and from losing my temper.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_and_philosophical_views_of_Albert_Einstein#Free_will
 
AProudLefty said:
Free will
Like Spinoza, Einstein was a strict determinist who believed that human behavior was completely determined by causal laws. For that reason, he refused the chance aspect of quantum theory, famously telling Niels Bohr: "God does not play dice with the universe."[77] In letters sent to physicist Max Born, Einstein revealed his belief in causal relationships:

You believe in a God who plays dice, and I in complete law and order in a world which objectively exists, and which I in a wildly speculative way, am trying to capture. I firmly believe, but I hope that someone will discover a more realistic way, or rather a more tangible basis than it has been my lot to find. Even the great initial success of the quantum theory does not make me believe in the fundamental dice game, although I am well aware that some of our younger colleagues interpret this as a consequence of senility.[78]

I do not believe in free will. Schopenhauer's words: 'Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills,' accompany me in all situations throughout my life and reconcile me with the actions of others, even if they are rather painful to me. This awareness of the lack of free will keeps me from taking myself and my fellow men too seriously as acting and deciding individuals, and from losing my temper.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_and_philosophical_views_of_Albert_Einstein#Free_will
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Not reading it. I honestly don't give a shit what Einstein thought.
 
BidenPresident said:
Not reading it. I honestly don't give a shit what Einstein thought.
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:palm: I don't care what you think about what Einstein thought. The POINT is that QM challenges the concept of NO free well and a deterministic universe.

Newtonian universe does not allow "chances".
 
Many humans are too vain to believe that they're merely one species on the chain of evolution.

I've believed that my entire adult life, however.

I've interacted with too many fellow humans to be impressed, I guess.
 
I don't believe in free will. Our decisions are a product of chemical and electrical processes that we have no control over. It's the programming. We are each wired to do exactly what we do. That being said, there are so many factors that determine the outcome that we could make a completely different choice if one variable changes. So I think 'free will' is more like a random number generator than some choice 'we' make. Frankly, 'we' are just matter and energy.
 
Concart said:
I don't believe in free will. Our decisions are a product of chemical and electrical processes that we have no control over. It's the programming. We are each wired to do exactly what we do. That being said, there are so many factors that determine the outcome that we could make a completely different choice if one variable changes. So I think 'free will' is more like a random number generator than some choice 'we' make. Frankly, 'we' are just matter and energy.
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The problem I have is that science defines free will out of existence. That is not a way to explain what free will means, it just denies the possibility.
 
BidenPresident said:
I am not saying that, no. But you asked the right question. If there is no free will, then why punish criminals.
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The idea of there being no free will is nothing but philosophical nonsense.

Let's look at the 2 possibilities that allow for no free will.
1. All our actions are merely responses to stimuli.
2. All our actions are simply random responses.

Those are the 2 cases where we clearly have no control over our responses. Neither makes sense in a real world test. Clearly we can moderate our responses to stimuli so that we don't react the same whenever confronted with a similar circumstance. If our responses were merely random then we could not learn to respond the same to similar circumstances.

As to how free we really are, that is another question entirely. Our responses are limited by physics and our own personal restrictions. That doesn't mean we have no free will. It simply means our free will is located within a narrow band of acceptable responses.
 
Poor Richard Saunders said:
The idea of there being no free will is nothing but philosophical nonsense.

Let's look at the 2 possibilities that allow for no free will.
1. All our actions are merely responses to stimuli.
2. All our actions are simply random responses.

Those are the 2 cases where we clearly have no control over our responses. Neither makes sense in a real world test. Clearly we can moderate our responses to stimuli so that we don't react the same whenever confronted with a similar circumstance. If our responses were merely random then we could not learn to respond the same to similar circumstances.

As to how free we really are, that is another question entirely. Our responses are limited by physics and our own personal restrictions. That doesn't mean we have no free will. It simply means our free will is located within a narrow band of acceptable responses.
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Don't disagree. I think scientists and philosophers following science fail to acknowledge that the issue is not defined by absolute freedom of will or absolute denial of free will.
 
BidenPresident said:
I am not saying that, no. But you asked the right question. If there is no free will, then why punish criminals.
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I don't view prison as punishment, but protection for society. Also, the threat of prison is one of the factors in someone's decision making process, so it can definitely influence behavior. They still didn't have 'free will', they just made a different decision with the prison threat factor than they would have without it.
 
BidenPresident said:
A growing chorus of scientists and philosophers argue that free will does not exist. Could they be right?

“This sort of free will is ruled out, simply and decisively, by the laws of physics,” says one of the most strident of the free will sceptics, the evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne. Leading psychologists such as Steven Pinker and Paul Bloom agree, as apparently did the late Stephen Hawking, along with numerous prominent neuroscientists, including VS Ramachandran, who called free will “an inherently flawed and incoherent concept” in his endorsement of Sam Harris’s bestselling 2012 book Free Will, which also makes that argument.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/apr/27/the-clockwork-universe-is-free-will-an-illusion?
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did anyone make you start this thread or did you choose to?.....
 
Concart said:
I don't view prison as punishment, but protection for society. Also, the threat of prison is one of the factors in someone's decision making process, so it can definitely influence behavior. They still didn't have 'free will', they just made a different decision with the prison threat factor than they would have without it.
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In the article a case of someone with a brain tumor grabs a rifle and kills people. But everyone with a brain tumor does not go out and murder.
 
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