Determinism/free will | Forum

Quote from Ches The Unconscious (unknown) influences the decision.

Your experience of the fact is real, and to your brain and the biology and chemistry that affects you and has been affecting your species that is all that matters.  Determinism is also a model of something that exists beyond the scope of your brain, it too is real in the same reapect.  Thinking about it this way, with invoking and referring to an unknowable reality, the two can coexist in a weird plane.

Take for example the simplest and most identifiable paradoxical model your brain creates of reality, the usual optical illusions you see online.  What is on paper and what is happening when your eyes (tools) and your brain (model-of-reality-generating-machine) view it are slightly different and sometimes paradoxical, which is why they are so fascinating.  But they are both real.   Something like this is probably happening when you view two equally real yet paradoxical concepts such as free will and determinism.

The only thing free will poses a threat to is an all knowing God that tests you in life to send you to a deserving afterlife.  Judeo-christian religions believe that reality beyond our brain is knowable and they have rules that detail what happens.  It makes it easy to debate against.

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Google defines determinism as...

the doctrine that all events, including human action, are ultimately determined by causes external to the will.

Determinism is the antithesis of free will.

While it is debatable whether pure determinism is a Universal truth and free will in an illusion, it is very observably true that some degree of determinism exists.

Let me illustrate...

Pretend you are a ball in the atari game "pong". You are cruising along (inertia comes to mind) when you encounter an obstacle. The sum of your psyche, your instinct and the whole of your life experience, will dictate your response to the obstacle and the resulting trajectory of the encounter.

Now, to disclaim, there is nothing I dislike more than shiftless philosophy. Philosophy is a tool for understanding and problem solving. It is the greatest of fallacies to allow abstract philosophy to drive a wedge between the individual and objective reality. 

Such conduct is anti-survivalist, defeatist, and leads to the submission of the will.

So what can we learn and usefully apply from the ideas of determinism?

Firstly, From a systems theory standpoint, we can use the knowledge of an "obstacle" (for example, a human competitor or enemy), its background, its viewpoints, its habits as a useful means to make predictions. People unknowingly do this very thing by exercising intuition.

Secondly, an individual can examine his own nature, his instinctual predisposals, his life experiences, his judgments and values, to gain greater knowledge of the Self, and make predictions and adjustments to further aid in the will to power.

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.” - Sun Tzu, The Art of War

I don't mean any disrespect with this post, I am just looking for clarification as I think you are alluding to something interesting.

Because of the connotation of falsehood when the word "illusion" is used, I choose to us the word "model" when it comes to labeling free will.  And as I tried to point out in my previous post, in the same respect, determinism is just as much a model of reality and not any more true.  

If hard determinism was all true in the absolute then we run into the problem of well, what was the first effect and what caused it?  We will reach an unknowable point.  We will either have invent a God or say well there are just somethings we don't know.  At that point why don't we just admit from the beginning that things are unknowable, and everything we experience and know is a model and a half-truth of the absolute?

You mentioned you dislike shiftless philosophy.  Philosophy IS meant for understanding and problem solving and not to create wedges when there are none.  But what you go on to say makes me think of a purely utilitarian philosophy which is simply not what philosophy is completely about.  Part of philosophy's duty is not only to solve problem but to create them by placing careful wedges and asking questions.  This is meant for deeply reviewing the epistemology of things.  

You go on to say determinism is useful in that it helps you overcome obstacles and win battles by knowing all the moving parts of the system for you to act.  That is true but it has nothing to do with a debate about truth.  A person can still choose to commit suicide and end it all.  You may say that was determined by his experience and his nature etc, etc, but the truth is the experience of free will is undeniable and is not always blindly and intuitively survivalist.  

Why can't determinism beget the experience of free will?  And what i am asking is why can't they be part of something completely different that has nothing to do with any of this?  I understand as human beings it's impossible to sit on the fence and we are always leaning one direction or another and we often choose the useful one, but useful is not always telling of truth.  Usefulness is circumstantial. 

In the end, all of these are human concepts that our brains create to make sense of the outside, and we don't know the degree of accuracy.  Thinking deterministically helps us predict, free will just happens and the experience is so universal among humans that the phenomenon is undeniable.  

Your last paragraph sums it up nicely.

Many of the answers to the "big questions" are unknown, at least for now.

All great thinking men know that they do not know everything.

I originally wrote the above post as thoughts in a different thread. Thoughts on the use of the concepts of determinism as a tool toward the propagation of the Will.

You speak of utilitarianism. Are you familiar with the life and works of Paracelsus? His approach to "use what works" is a great inspiration to me.

But my initial thoughts on usefuleness or "use what works",

Useful is a complex concept.  The first level of complexity is there are various types of usefulness, there is practical usefulness like the laws of thermodynamics are useful for engineering a car to get you from point A to B in a happier manner.  There is belief-based usefulness like the belief in God can lead to a generally happier living.  The second level of complexity is, you guessed it, not everything that is useful for one person is useful to another.  For example the people that believe in magic find the concept useful, it makes them happy, it makes them believe they have control, the others that don't don't have any use for it.  So how can we define an objective concept when all the particulars are subjective?

The thing is the template for usefulness is there and is filled with the unique particular of the individual throughout their life time with the aid of their nature.  Meaning, everyone finds something useful and it is simply said that which makes a person happy is useful to that person, the subjective has been unified via the word happiness.

And that same concept is what is used for morals and ethics.  People and cultures have varying morals and ethics, do to them what makes them happy if you wish to be moral.  Beyond that, it's a hunt for shared morals, like murder, theft and their permutations is immoral for all humans.

At the end philosophy is a word game.  Redefining something with another word can do conceptual wonders.

Although I find interest in the way the topic has gone, I would like to throw it back to “what is free will”?

Lagawrd, when it comes to free will I actually use the term illusion. There may be other terms more fitting to other perspectives but I see the whole idea as a scam. Free will is a black and white idea in a shades of grey world.

Many look at a free choice issue and call it free will. A caged bird with both water and seed has a choice of what to go to first so it becomes choices within certain constraints.

Determination on the other hand can lead to whatever is possible even if it is not known to be possible yet. Very few of the advances due to the nature of determinism come in large leaps and most are founded on already existing limits that are only just being found.

So it is basically a range from freedom of choice and battling with limitations to explore new boundaries.

I'm never one for philosophy. I tend to find it a waste of precious time, for ultimately, there is no "truth" to be found. So the following is my conjecture based on some science.

I cite the study conducted by Schachter on fear and affiliation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7bpwbnged4

Basically, the study examines the relationship between fearfulness and our need to affiliate with others. The hypothesis was that people who are subjected to feelings of fear have a stronger need to affiliate with others (group up).

Ultimately, the results did show that, for WOMEN at least (a common criticism of this study, no men were involved as subjects), fearfulness led to a stronger need to affiliate.

Now, this is counter to what a free will model would show, that the results would at best be completely random. Most of social psychology, in fact, would be used as evidence against free will, and leans towards determinism.

However, note that *deception* is commonly employed in social psychology as well. In the interest of preventing skewed results, subjects are generally not privy to the purpose of the experiment or survey until the very end. You see it in this study, where none of the subjects were told that they were being studied for a need to affiliate.

Thus, my original statement that free will depends on things that are beyond your control. 

To have free will, one must have knowledge and the means to apply said knowledge for one's will to materialize. In this study, all the subjects were being deceived. Should they have known what the study was actually observing, they would certainly have chosen quite differently.

Sometimes, this knowledge is simply unavailable to you. In such cases, you do not have free will, because you lack the knowledge to execute it. A great example is the correlation between education and the likelihood of one becoming a criminal. I posit the argument that ultimately, criminals did not have free will to not commit a crime. Factors in their lives led to desperation that led to down the path of criminality. They did not have the knowledge and means to apply said knowledge to other, less risky paths in life.

Jonny, both the video and some of your comments made some interesting points. I also think deception is a large part of life and it's workings. The study is simple and to the point but it makes me think of those that already know of this idea and use it to their advantage.

The idea of being alone in a crowded room is sometimes by choice. To go off by one's self all the time actually draws attention so some learn to play the basics of the social game to be left alone. There are also those who seek attention by avoiding people but they bore me.

Quote from jonnywatts To have free will, one must have knowledge and the means to apply said knowledge for one's will to materialize. In this study, all the subjects were being deceived. Should they have known what the study was actually observing, they would certainly have chosen quite differently.

How can god give us freeWiLL, without giving us eVIL?

Quote the Mercury

To do so will require *knowledge* on the machinations of human psychology.

Quote from AnnaCzereda

Quote from jonnywatts To have free will, one must have knowledge and the means to apply said knowledge for one's will to materialize. In this study, all the subjects were being deceived. Should they have known what the study was actually observing, they would certainly have chosen quite differently.

More often, it's just a matter of intuition or gut feeling. In all psych experiments the subjects are deceived because such experiments must mirror the real life circumstances. If people knew it's just all fun and games, their choices wouldn't be natural. Still, in spite of all the manipulation, you can choose how to behave though it's not easy. Suppose the scientist, the authority figure, puts pressure on you to give an electric shock to another human being. How you behave in this controlled manipulated situation usually mirrors the way you would behave under real social pressure. Here and there, you still have a choice to disobey.

However, if given that I already know how the game works, I'd definitely choose NOT to obey. Knowledge leads to a state where one may have free will.

Most of the basics are pretty easy to spot.

Quote from jonnywatts To do so will require *knowledge* on the machinations of human psychology.

Once some of the key issues are seem and understood (even if only a little), it can be of use.

One of the parts I find rather funny is that if I don't argue a point then many think I agree with them. This can actually give less resistance later if I do something different. I would say it is people who use rules based manipulations that are the ones who also say “beware the quiet ones”.

So I would start questioning the following: How an individual is constituted?
Made it clear that this question integrates the individual as a whole, ie, its political ideology, religious beliefs, philosophy of life, etc.
It is clear that an individual is born not being socialist, republican, anarchist, etc: The newborn is like a sponge, he absorbs the information that is given to him.
So we can not say that a person born in the United States had initially free will to be a radical Islamist, a fervent practitioner of indigenous religious traditions of Mexico or a devotee of communist theories.
In short, a man in his state of nature lacks any conception of the world in which he is placed and his future conceptions are determined by his social environment.
Therefore, once this is understood the question arises: How is that social environment evolves if individuals have certain determined ideologies? The answer is simple. By interaction with other individuals who brings interaction with different ideas and practices which results in one thing: Free Will.

Quote from Joseph_Rose How is that social environment evolves if individuals have certain determined ideologies? The answer is simple. By interaction with other individuals who brings interaction with different ideas and practices which results in one thing: Free Will.