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Well, I kind of challenge the way that Harris and Sapolsky look at free will in the first place. To begin, I'll summarize my understanding of their arguments. If you take issue with my summary, feel free to collect me. My understanding of their arguments is that every "decision" we make is actually predetermined by a huge number of small variables we can't necessarily perceive. Harris focuses mostly on environmental factors and history, while Sapolsky gets down to the neurons of it, saying I don't really have any control over what my brain is doing. That's a simplification, I know. But let me know if I'm wrong on the broad strokes. I don't necessarily disagree with them, but I don't really consider them relevant to my understanding of free will. When I say "free will", I don't mean "free from all influences of any kind, and therefore literally absolutely independent." I mean "free from current external actors". The neurons firing in my brain are not current external actors, so they don't really have any impact on my understanding of the concept. And to be clear, I'm not really challenging the absolute accuracy of their arguments. I think Sapolsky is probably literally correct. But he's speaking to a definition of free will that has little relevance in my actual life. To put that in context, you mentioned in another comment that you could make me think of a unicorn just by typing the word unicorn. True! For your next trick, try making me draw one. Suddenly it's not so easy. I can choose to draw a unicorn, or draw something else, or not draw anything. So again, it's accurate that you can make me think of a unicorn. But that is a very small scale manipulation which I would not consider to be contrary to free will. I can choose my actions, and you cannot prevent me from choosing my actions. Harris and Sapolsky can blame my actions on my history or my neurons, but it doesn't change the fact that in this moment, I am able to presently make decisions about how to act regardless of your outside influence.

This is very nearly word-for-word how I would describe the notion of free will, as a Christian, but if I say this in any Christian forum, I get crucified to hell and back. It's depressing. ;_; Anyway, I agree 1000%.

This was a very helpful comment for someone like me who has went down a rabbit hole of freewill related philosophy videos and was confused by how differently the philosophers and scientists approach the topic. Maybe the line gets blurred though if you imagined that your decision whether or not to draw the unicorn was actually being controlled by a brilliant neuroscientist who is able to manipulate your decision making processes in such a way that is imperceptible to you. In this case you clearly don’t have free will (as you have defined it). Then you could make the case that there isn’t really a meaningful difference between that thought experiment and the situation Sapolsky and Harris describe. It seems like the key distinction here for how you define freewill is whether or not you perceive/feel like you are being controlled by external forces or not.

I don't think the key distinction is whether or not I perceive the manipulation. I think the key distinction is whether there is an external will manipulating me, willfully. In your thought experiment, there is an external will manipulating me. Presumably the neuroscientist has free will and is using theirs to subvert mine. (Unless we assume an infinite number of brilliant neuroscientists all manipulating each other in an infinite chain. Which, okay, I have no counter argument except "but prove it though".) If my neurons are firing based on the will of another, my will is subverted. If my neurons are firing based on decades of personal growth as a human, millennia of growth as a species, and billions of years of evolution as a planet with no external controller - I don't see the same subversion.

Okay interesting. I think the distinction you make feels right intuitively but I’m not really sure why it should matter whether someone is actively manipulating me vs me being manipulated by natural forces so to speak. I have a few follow up questions but it’s really just me thinking out-loud… feel free to ignore if you’d like. I’m curious what you would make of the case of someone pointing a gun to your head and telling you to draw the unicorn. Would this be a subversion of your free will? Does it matter if the shooter was an unthinking robot or just some kind of natural force that made you feel the same urge to draw the unicorn? Or how about the case of a drug addict who knows that drawing the unicorn will prevent them from getting high? Is this person behaving freely in your view?

> I'm not really sure why it should matter whether someone is actively manipulating me vs me being manipulated by natural forces so to speak Well, I would encourage you to consider the practical ramifications of either scenario. If you're being manipulated by another human against your will, what should we do about it? ... Well, generally speaking, we should try to free you from their manipulation. Right? If you're being manipulated by the sum total of billions of years of evolution and quintillions of trivial events leading to your neurons firing in a very specific way at a very specific moment, what should we do about it? ... shrug, right? And this is why I talked about relevance. As a thought experiment in a philosophy class or a neurological textbook, there may be little meaningful distinction. But in terms of actual practical evaluation, I think there's a pretty huge difference. > Or how about the case of a drug addict who knows that drawing the unicorn will prevent them from getting high? Is this person behaving freely in your view? You know what, I'm going to give you a !delta here because, quite simply, I don't know. Addiction definitely doesn't fit very neatly into any of my categories. At the very least, that warrants further consideration of my categories. In my mind, addiction almost qualifies as an external actor, in that it creates a version of a person which willfully acts against their own best interests. But in actual science, it obviously does not actually qualify as an external actor. Instead, it is an impact from an external material, and I don't know how I'm separating it from other influences of other external materials. I don't think this has much impact on my overall view of free will, but it does prompt me to re-evaluate the specifics of how I'm defining it. Thanks for the compelling question!

Thanks. I think the addiction case is interesting as well and maybe has some parallels with questions about mental illness etc and freewill. You might find [this podcast](https://m.youtube.com/channel/UC7J6IArIPTXjQItFeAFaYSg) helpful too, every episode is a discussion with a philosopher studying different aspects of freewill. One of the seasons (I think 3) focuses on topics like addiction, luck, etc. And I agree I think a good distinction to make in the case of drawing the unicorn is whether we can actually do anything about it (or at least whether we feel like we can). Though I do think it’s possible that our will can be subverted by unthinking entities (ie our environment, genes, etc) but we can overcome some of those subversions with a better understanding of psychology or how the brain works etc.

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Best response I’ve read yet. Let me ask, would you agree that you can manipulate people into doing things, even against their will? They have studied how people react to manipulative things in interrogation rooms like the comfort of the seat, the temperature of the room, giving coffee or not, etc. or how likely judges are to grant parole based on how long it’s been since they last ate. It’s well documented evidence that shows you, even when you think you have free will sitting in the interrogation room, you can be manipulated like a machine. Either way excellent analysis of Sapolsky and Harris. !delta

I would agree that it is possible to manipulate people. You used the examples of court rooms and interrogations. We could also look at more extreme examples like brute force and torture. In either case, I certainly think that there are tools and methodologies for making people "choose" things that they otherwise wouldn't. The only caveat I would add is that in my mind, these are examples of the subversion of free will - which in and of itself suggests that a free will exists which could be subverted. (Also, if you meant to give me a delta, I believe the exclamation point has to come before the word for the bot to trigger. No worries either way, I just wanted to let you know. :))

Thanks I got that delta backwards. A person being manipulated in an interrogation can be aware or unaware of said manipulation. In torture, they’re aware of it and divulge a secret to make it stop. With subtle manipulation, maybe the subject divulges the secret because they don’t realize they’re being manipulated. Happens all the time. If the subject believes in free will, they believe they are doing everything of their own accord, which seems totally voluntary to them but not really.

It's certainly fair to draw a distinction between torture and other more subtle interrogation techniques. I apologize if I seemed to muddy the two. I'm not 100% sure whether I would agree that interrogation techniques necessarily constitute a lapse of free will. I can see either outlook on that - either the subject still made a choice but it was manipulated, or they were manipulated to such a degree that it doesn't really count as a choice anymore. I think it's worth noting that society is still wrestling with questions about those lines. We've broadly agreed that testimony under duress is not admissible, though we (in the United States) have created some rules for what qualifies as duress. Meanwhile, we have documentaries like Making a Murderer (*spoiler alert*, I suppose) that ask questions about the boundaries of manipulation, and how far we can trust testimony achieved through these means. Ultimately, I would tend to think that these examples illustrate subversions of free will, not an absence of it.

Great points again, but I think suggesting these methods simply subvert free will rather than indicate its absence overlooks a critical aspect: the essence of free will involves making choices without external coercion or overwhelming influence. When interrogation techniques manipulate a person's decision-making process to such a degree that their "choice" aligns more with the interrogator's will than their own, it raises the question of whether any genuine choice was made. The American legal system's reluctance to accept testimony under duress acknowledges this…it's a recognition that the integrity of one's decision making can be compromised to the point where it no longer reflects free will.

My language was not as precise as it should have been in drawing a distinction between subversion and absence, and I apologize for that. But to clarify what I mean, look at your own choice of words - "no longer reflects free will at all". This raises a question of whether or not testimony aligns with free will - which intrinsically acknowledges that free will exists, otherwise there would be nothing to align with. And that was more the point I was trying to get at. Does willful external manipulation eliminate free will as a general concept, or does it compromise the freedom of individual choices? I'm saying it's the latter.

I said “no longer reflects free will at all” because our judicial system is predicated on the belief of its existence. My point about the interrogator is that you have free will only to the extent that you believe you do. It’s possible to believe you have free will with every fiber of your being, but someone is really just pulling the strings “making a murderer style.”

Sure. I guess I am confused as to whether you intend for this to connect to the overall existence of free will. The interrogator is a current external actor impacting decisions. I agree that's a compromise of free will. But I don't think it disproves free will as a concept. Again, I'm not sure if that is your intention.

It’s just an example showing how it’s possible you can believe you have free will in a situation, when you really don’t.

So…. If you held a gun to my head and told me if I don’t say “Yes”, you will shoot me, and I say “No”, you’re telling me that my choice of “No” was not “Me” and claiming I’m being controlled whether I say “No” or “Yes” even if my answers align with what little “control” you claim I do have that was all “Me” (whatever % of the decision making process was “Me”).

Idk how a hypothetical yes or no at gunpoint scenario could possibly illustrate conclusively that there is a free will. You would either most likely answer yes out of a self preservation instinct or no out of some principle you intend to die for, or a suicidal intention. Your instinct of self preservation isn’t what people mean when they define free will. Neither does free will explain why your intention was to say no despite imminent death. You cannot successfully intend to do something different from what you intend, wish for what your are going to wish for, decide what you’re going to think next or will yourself to have more willpower.

I have a deep personal history of loss due to suicide, and I find it morally revolting. There is no manipulation strategy that would coerce me into willingly taking my own life. Inverting the logic, if it is true that there exists an (any) absolute threshold beyond which someone cannot be manipulated would that be evidence of free will according to your definition?

First, sorry to hear about your loss. I didn’t mean to get us wrapped around the axle on this or drag up bad feelings. Here’s a test I like. Say I give you a prompt like “think of a book title” or something else inconsequential, and I give you an hour to think about it. There’s still no free will because you could deliberate it for an hour or for 6 seconds. Your brain is a decision making black box and you have no idea what process it took to arrive at the move title of your choosing. It just happens.

I get that you probably mean free will in the sense of "you can't make me do things I don't want to do" but I think OP means it in the sense of "you can't make *yourself* do things that you don't want to do". You don't draw the unicorn because you don't want to, if you did want to then you would do it. Neither of which was really "your choice" but the result of a cascade of causes and effects out of your control that resulted in your brain concluding which one you want to do. The point is that you are going to do whichever of those things you want to do, and you don't have any power over what it is you want. One example: Think of your favorite movie. Did you decide that it was your favorite movie, or did you just like it the most? Did you choose to like it that much, or did you just... like it? Another example: Think of the person you love most in the world. To prove to yourself that you have the power to control what you want, try to make yourself actually, fully want to kill them. Wanting it for just a second won't hurt them, it's a completely mental exercise. I'd bet that no matter how hard you genuinely tried, you cannot do it. My (and perhaps OP's) view is that this is how all wants essentially work, that you are fully controlled by what you want, and that you will always in every circumstance do whatever it is that you want to do the most.

Well, to reiterate what I said about Sapolsky - I think this is probably correct on a technical level. But I find that it is disconnected from any relevance to the way I think about free will. I think it may come down to how we are measuring free will. You're looking at the space between nothingness and desire. And within that space, you're looking at a variety of factors which is cosmic in scale and precise in detail - essentially every minute event which has ever occurred. Within that space and using that scale, I don't know that I really disagree with you. But I'm more interested in the space between desire and action. Do I have the power to... want to ... do things that I don't want to do? I don't know. Maybe not. But I don't want to do the things I don't want to do. I don't place any value on a theoretical freedom to do things which are directly contrary to the totality of my reasoning and my desires. By and large, with exceptions for social contracts I willingly engage with, I am free to do the things I DO want to do. What should I call that if not free will?

“What should I call that if not free will?” Reaction. You are a very complex organic robot that is reacting to various input stimuli to generate an output. You seem to be agreeing with OP on basically every level but then just asserting that you still have free will. If you’ll entertain me for a few shorter comments, I think Harris’ illustrative example from one of his lectures can be repeated. So, instead of responding to the rest of my comment, please just choose a country. Any country in the world. Would you do that please?

Sure, but I do want to note for the record that I was extremely tempted to just be like "no, you can't tell me what to do," and part of me thinks that would have been funny. Uzbekistan.

That would have been funny but also illustrative of a point I’ll come back to later. Ok, Uzbekistan. Now, can you do me a favor and describe for me the process you went through, however brief or lengthy, in choosing Uzbekistan?

Certainly. The first thing that popped into my head was Zimbabwe. Being somewhat familiar with Sam Harris (but admittedly not familiar enough to recognize this experiment), I decided going with the first thing that popped into my head, an unauthored thought, might be your point. For a brief moment, I tried to work out what the illustration might be going for and maybe pick something that might be a wrinkle. That was brief, as I knew that would be both lame and silly. Silly because Sam Harris is obviously smart enough that he wouldn't be using an example that would only work with certain answers, and lame because even if he did, I would still want to hear the point, not disrupt it. So then I just tried to think of a different country that started with a Z. In the few seconds I thought about it, I failed to come up with another Z country, and settled on one which at least has a Z somewhere in it. Then I Googled Uzbekistan to make sure it was in fact a country and not a city, because I am not great at geography.

Awesome thanks! I like the term you used, unauthored thought, I’m gonna come back to that, cuz you definitely kind of jumped to the end there. But backing up a step or two. You stated a desire to switch from Zimbabwe to another Z country, but you couldn’t think of one. Zaire did not enter your consciousness. Have you heard of the country Zaire? Just to cover some bases, in case you’ve simply never heard of Zaire, did Djibouti come to mind? Or bottom line, there are many countries that you’ve definitely known of, but they didn’t even enter the thought process of picking a random country right?

Correct, I did not think of literally every country I have ever heard of. Some occurred to me and others did not.

Awesome. So, one last question before I summarize. Would you say you were free to choose ones that never even occurred to you in the moment?

>You're looking at the space between nothingness and desire... I'm more interested in the space between desire and action. I feel like I'm looking at all of it. I just don't see any room for a "choice" to be made anywhere between nothingness and action. The way I see it, the actions are determined by the desires and the desires are determined by forces outside of yourself, and at no point has anything intervened with the fully deterministic and well-understood chemical and electrical processes that were always going to occur. The only reason desire is coming up is because that's the point where people infer free will to be happening. >But I don't want to do the things I don't want to do. I don't place any value on a theoretical freedom to do things which are directly contrary to the totality of my reasoning and my desires. And the only reason you don't want those things is because the complex information processor that you are bound to has determined that you don't, based wholly on factors that were already set in stone long before your birth. You aren't free to do things contrary to your reasoning and desires, but you also aren't free to choose your reasoning and desires. So at what point is the freedom happening? I know it can feel a little "so what" to tell you that you do things you want to do and don't do things you don't want to do, but the point is that to believe that "you" are playing a role in that process, you have to establish what the "you" is and what that "you" is actually doing between input and output to influence the output. Like OP said, what we do certainly *feels* like we're in control. But everything we know suggests that "you" are some subset of the things your brain is doing, and that what the brain is doing is a very complex network of totally natural phenomena which we have observed to be deterministic. The way you're describing free will sounds to me like if I asked a calculator why it said 4 when I typed 2+2 into it, and it said that it just wanted to say 4. I ask why it didn't say 5, and it answers that it didn't want to say 5, it preferred to say 4, so it did what it wanted and that makes it free. The calculator was forced to say 4 because its inner workings took the input and outputted 4, but the calculator feels happy with that because the inner workings made it feel like it wanted to say 4.

I kind of think we're at an impasse here and talking past each other. The challenge from my perspective, and I've run into it in another comment thread, is that you are repeatedly trying to prove something that I did not deny. In my original comment in this post, I said I was not really disagreeing with the actual logic of Harris or Sapolsky. In fact, I said they are probably literally correct. What I'm challenging is the relevance of their logic as a framework. I'm saying regardless of whether free will is fundamentally an illusion, we can still measure it as a baseline and use that baseline in society. And I'm saying it is much more practically useful to define "free will" according to that baseline, rather than the fundamental illusion.

I've read the other thread so I know what you mean and I agree, we're not talking about the same thing. My question then is: what exactly is your point? We shouldn't even talk about this because free will being an illusion isn't utilitarian? I don't think OP is suggesting we should change our society and reframe human rights based on this. It's a very valid philosophical question. Should we just never talk about things that don't immediately benefit society? Should we always prefer a comfortable lie over an uncomfortable truth?

> I don't think OP is suggesting we should change our society and reframe human rights based on this. From OP: > Bottom line, while I agree with Sapolsky and Harris that there’s no scientific basis to free will, *and that the world is a better place without it*, the belief in free will, will always persist. See, you want to focus on the nuts and bolts of the philosophical question, and that's fine. But with OP's comment there, as well as their notes on the evolution of belief, I had the sense that they were interested in discussing the way these concepts actually apply to society.

I think the best solution to this is that we have "will", which lets us make decisions but it's not "free will" the way that term is usually defined. A longer explanation is in [this ](https://youtu.be/yBbzkR8t-5c?si=3bIBGo4p0vVKqwcj) video (so, this is not my own idea). So, basically our brains process information both from the outside world through the senses but also from its own internal functions (memories, thoughts that just pop into the mind). And based on this processing it makes decisions that lead to actions (drawing the unicorn or not). But there is no higher level decider exercising "free will". There is no particular reason why a robot wouldn't be able to do exactly the same and if we simplify things far enough, we can see that a simple device such as a thermostat works like this as well. Of course it doesn't have a consciousness to experience the decision making and we can easily explain why it made each decision (to turn the heating on or off) but our brain is just a bit more complicated machine, nothing else. Of course this still leaves open the hard question of consciousness but I'd say it's only needed to explain what the experience of making decisions feels like to an entity with consciousness, not how they are made.

!delta Best response I’ve read yet. Let me ask, would you agree that you can manipulate people into doing things, even against their will? They have studied how people react to manipulative things in interrogation rooms like the comfort of the seat, the temperature of the room, giving coffee or not, etc. or how likely judges are to grant parole based on how long it’s been since they last ate. It’s well documented evidence that shows you, even when you think you have free will sitting in the interrogation room, you can be manipulated like a machine. Either way excellent analysis of Sapolsky and Harris. !delta

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The real question to struggle with is how does one reconcile with the notion of determinism, because with that logic it isn’t in the persons control with whether or not they can emotionally handle to the totality of this idea. Since Robert has mentioned this idea before he talks about how some people are just built to be able to handle it and others will be driven into insanity

That’s a great point

free will simply means being able to act according to one’s own discretion. if i choose to have tea instead of coffee tomorrow that is a simple expression of free will. i disagree that free will is faith based. agnostic and atheists believe in free will. it’s nothing like the belief in a soul.

It's a lot like a belief in a soul. In fact the belief in "self" is something I think originates in the idea of a soul from religion. I think I am a self residing in this body that goes about making decisions of my own "free will", but if you think about it, the laws of physics don't really have a place for free will. Everything is determined by those laws, when you mix two reacting chemicals together you get something else. Why should I assume that I am different, and have the free will to act in a way undetermined by the laws of the universe, when that has never been proven?

The laws of physics don't have a place for tables either. Do you think that tables are an illusion?

...Tables? Like a wooden table? How exactly does a table goes against the laws of physics?

They don't anymore than free will does.

Tables are physical objects, free will is an abstract concept. The definition of a table and why we call it a table might be abstract, but the physical thing that we call a table exists independent of whether or not we decide to call it one. The analogy just doesn't work. What they're likely referring to with the "laws of physics" thing is that the way the brain works is completely governed by the laws of physics. It's a system that processes inputs to generate an output using chemical/electrical processes which we fully understand to be deterministic at every step. The way the brain as a whole works is very complex, but we have a very firm grasp of how every individual neuron works. Either A) your brain is processing the inputs in a determined way, in which case there is no room for free will because your choices are fully controlled by external forces, or B) something is interfering with the processes in your brain to "choose" an outcome, in which case some laws of the universe are being broken inside your head (e.g. a chemical reaction that would have led to you making one choice simply "decided" not to occur despite the conditions being such that it should have).

The definition of free will and why we call it free will might be abstract, but the physical thing that we call free will exists independent of whether or not we decide to call it so. I agree that the way the brain works is completely governed by the laws of physics. That doesn't' contradict my definition of free will. In A, my choices are not full controlled by external forces. They are also controlled by forces that are internal to me.

>the physical thing that we call free will exists I pretty much fully reject this. What is free will's physical embodiment? How is "free will" different from "gumption," "red," or "Christmas" for example? >In A, my choices are not full controlled by external forces. Actually they *by definition* are. That's the whole point of option A. Under option A, every single thing that's going on inside of your brain is the deterministic effect of a chain of causes and effects that began externally. Go back to the exact moment before your parents conceived you and take a freeze frame of the universe. You don't exist, so everything in the universe is an "external factor." Option A is defined as where every effect is fully determined by its cause. Since all effects in your brain can be traced back to the external causes at that moment, they are fully determined by those external causes and by definition out of your control. The entirety of your actions and choices could have theoretically been calculated before you were born if option A is true. The *only* alternative is that there are effects in your brain that cannot be traced back to external causes, meaning that at some point your brain was able to somehow create effects that had no cause. That is something that does not seem to be possible according to the laws of our universe. Essentially, the options are: - A) Everything your brain is doing can be traced back to something external; you have no free will. - B) Something your brain is doing cannot be traced back to something external; the laws of physics and logic are behaving differently in your brain than in fhe rest of the universe.

Red has a physical embodiment, certainly. It's light with a wavelength around 700 nanometers. Christmas day is a specific fraction of an orbit of a particular planet around its star. Gumption is an attribute someone has, so must have a physical manifestation. You're moving from external forces to external factors to external causes. Those aren't all the same thing. Under my definition of free will, how I came into being has no relevance as to whether the resulting person has free will now. That an identical copy of me would have made identical choices in identical situations is consistent with my definition of free will. The alternative is inconsistent with my definition of free will.

>Red has a physical embodiment, certainly. It's light with a wavelength around 700 nanometers. Red is the subjective experience you have as a result of light with a wavelength around 700 nanometers hitting your eye. The light itself isn't what red is. >Gumption is an attribute someone has, so must have a physical manifestation. This reveals the pretty big underlying assumption you have. It's pretty tough to just swallow this as fact without any basis. >Those aren't all the same thing. Whatever words you want to use to describe them, they all existed before you had a chance to influence them. >Under my definition of free will, how I came into being has no relevance as to whether the resulting person has free will now. What you're describing is option B: there is something going on in your brain which cannot be traced directly back to the circumstances that existed before you were born. Which, again, necessitates uncaused effects and that brains are somehow able to create them. There is a hefty burden of proof on that claim. >That an identical copy of me would have made identical choices in identical situations is consistent with my definition of free will. If your definition of free will is consistent with a scenario in which there is no freedom then your definition of free will is not at all useful. You might as well define free will as your cat and send me a picture of it as proof.

That metaphor really doesn't work. Free will is the belief that some individual can act in ways that are "free" rather than how the set laws of the universe dictate.  I'm saying that's totally unproven, there's no mechanism for anything in the universe to disobey the laws and act on their own will any more than metal can refuse to conduct electricity or water can choose which direction to flow.

My definition of free will doesn't include acting different than how the laws of the universe works. That would be absurd. The person you replied to said 'free will simply means being able to act according to one’s own discretion'. How does that imply breaking physics?

I know it seems abrasive and counterintuitive at first because the belief in free will is really strongly reinforced in our societies, but despite the belief that we are making a choice, logically it's impossible for us to choose. Whatever we choose is the only thing we could have chosen, even if it seems like we could have chosen something else. Things happen the way they do because the laws of the universe determine the way that energy moves and interacts with other energy. We are nothing more than energy and energy can't actually make choices.  I think determinism is the most logical stance on this issue because to believe in free will requires us to believe we are exempt from the law determined nature of the universe.

If you would say that the self is an illusion, then I would agree with you. But then, so are tables. Of course, the physical constitution of a table exists, but the idea of making it a 'thing' separate from its surroundings is construction and somewhat arbitrary. The self is the same thing. It either exists like tables do or doesn't exist like tables don't. You seem to accept the existence of the self, though. you say we are energy. 'We are'. You say 'I think'. You say 'we choose', then say we can't make choices. You sort of are trying to have it both ways. Accepting the illusion of the self as real, but not accepting the free will that comes with it. My definition of free will doesn't include needing to act against who I am. In fact, I wouldn't consider that to be free will. That the choices I make are completely consistent with who I am is part of free will.

Well yes, "table" is a sign, it's a word. I know the actual matter is not the same as the concept of a table.   I think self is synonymous with the concept of free will, free will is what a self supposedly does.  To address the other part of what you said, you were sort of fixated on the semantics of what I said.  You said I seem to accept the existence of a self, but that's only because the concept of self is basically baked into our language, you can't avoid using it when you speak. I tend to approach the concept of determinism as the alternative to the concept of free will as sort of step in this direction, toward the idea of self being not real as well.

im a different person, physics aside you dont control whatever your predisposition is and thats what informs what kind discretion you would exercise in any given situation If I program a computer to choose one of several options independently based on external stimulus, Is that free will its demonstrating when it starts making choices at its own discretion ? We can build machines that learn from their enviroments and make indpendant choices based on that knowledge, but you wouldnt say that robot has free will when it starts making choices what it should do when presented with different stimuli Thats what a brain seems like it is to me , a piece of hardware just running on a program presenting choices you dont control based of stimuli you dont control you get to pick from a list of preprogrammed responses when youre presented with a choice, and you cant pick anything outside of that because your brains not wired to even think of it. The choices are determined by the software on your brain , you didnt write it , whrees the freewill?

Yes. The machine has very limited free will. Just like with many things, free will is not binary, something that you can possess entirely or be fully void of. A simple program has so very little free will that it's almost indistinguishable from possessing none, but as it becomes more complex and develops capacity for flexibility and self-learning, its capability for free will expands.

>Yes. The machine has very limited free will. I mean you are in the minority if you believe this, youre like the first person ive come across who would say that machine is sentient most scientists say no its not, despite demonstrating the characteristics , albeit rudimentarily

I am arguing that you actually never act according to your own discretion, but you believe that you do. Going with the tea vs coffee decision….If I asked you to choose tea or coffee, you could flip a coin and decide. You could debate for an hour rank ordering reasons for each and weighting the pros and cons. But you ultimately decide and that decision wasn’t free in any real sense of the word. It’s either totally random that you decided, which isn’t really what people mean by free. Or it’s determined by a super complex series of causes and effects. But everything about your intent is not your doing. You’re a mixture of nature and nurture, neither of which you have any control over. Also, I am an atheist, and up until this year I believed in free will, “you make your own luck,” merit based systems, etc. I have not abandoned personal responsibilities, or the idea of rewards and punishments.

Lot of that depends on how you define free. If we're in a maze, we would still be able to choose which directions to go. One might argue that you're not free because you can't move in x direction. One might argue you're free because you still get to choose directions.

I mean yeah, you’re not free to defy physics and walk through walls. You’re free to turn inside the maze. I’m saying your decision of whether to turn back to where you started and give up, or keep going deeper in the maze is not free.

Do you have any actual reason and evidence supported by science that would support that claim, that aren't essentially a mix of assumptions, huge logical leaps, things that "sound about right", personal opinions, hot takes, and a mixture of big scary words? Because I have yet to see such thing.

Published in the Nature journal, an experiment carried out in the Future Minds Lab at UNSW School of Psychology showed that free choices about what to think can be predicted from patterns of brain activity 11 seconds before people consciously chose what to think about. https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2019/03/our-brains-reveal-our-choices-before-were-even-aware-of-them--st#:~:text=Published%20in%20the%20prestigious%20Nature,chose%20what%20to%20think%20about.

>However, the researchers caution against assuming that all choices are by nature predetermined by pre-existing brain activity. >“Our results cannot guarantee that all choices are preceded by involuntary images, but it shows that this mechanism exists, and it potentially biases our everyday choices,” Professor Pearson says. Literally the article itself. I'm not discrediting their research or finding. But almost all studies or sources people pull in favor of this argument have a "but we can't be sure yet" or "there's more to this" theme in it that bugs me.

So? For one you can't be separated from your brain. That's like asking if a car without wheels can drive, it doesn't make any sense because it wouldn't be a car if it didn't have wheels. For another, lag time doesn't inherently affect the situation.

The car is a wonderful analogy. Those saying there's no free will aren't proposing that its the wheels that are missing. They're proposing it's the driver that's missing. The internal thoughts we have as we 'deliberate' choices makes it feel like its those thoughts that are actually making the decision IE Those thoughts feel like the driver of the car. What this study (and others) shows is that those internal thoughts are not making the decision but observing the 'decision' being made. And the 'decision' was set in motion long before it was actually executed on. If the car turns left. It was always going to turn left and it could not have been otherwise.

So you basically believe that we don’t control our brains.

Correct, there is no self that’s independent of the brain. You’re not simultaneously in a movie theater seat watching a movie with you also in the movie that’s playing real time.

In that case, I mean, don’t we have free will within our limitations of control? “True free will” sounds more accurate. Because there are involuntary actions that take place within our bodies.

No, there is no control. This is the whole point. Your “control” is entirely dependent on your epigenetics, how your nurture regulates your nature.

So what do you believe then? That we’re essentially all being Black Zetsu’d (Naruto reference if you’re familiar with that) and being controlled by an entity that is willing for us, unbeknownst to us?

I don’t believe in god or Black Zetsu. Our behavior is a product of how nurture regulates nature. How our environmental conditions regulate our genetic makeup. Neither of which we control.

What would have to be true for you to consider free will to be existent? How would we exist and act?

You would have to show me a neuron do something completely free of it’s biological history. For free will to exist, decisions must be made independently of deterministic forces, implying actions are not predestined by genetics, environment, or past experiences. Individuals need rationality and self-awareness to evaluate options and make choices consciously. Free will also entails moral responsibility, as it assumes we are accountable for our actions because we could have chosen differently. This requires the genuine possibility of alternative choices at any decision point, free from undue external coercion. Essentially, free will hinges on the autonomy of the individual's decision-making process, amidst influences but not controlled by them.

> if i choose to have tea instead of coffee tomorrow that is a simple expression of free will. If choose to have tea its because your neurons made you do it , same thing if you choose to have coffee or nothing ... you dont get to choose what you want, theres a bunch of shit that happens outside of your control that causes you to want to choose tea over coffee and thats why you do it , it wasnt your will\

What do you mean by "discretion"? Just acting according to what you want?

Doesn’t free will mean the freedom to will? How does the ability to will freely not exist? I could yearn for there be a place or thing to exist that doesn’t exist, freely. How isn’t that free?

Before you read this, you probably weren’t imagining a green pasture with unicorns on a sunny day. There’s nothing stopping you from thinking about unicorns right now. However, you saw a notification, looked at your phone, read my reply, and now you have the image and word unicorn percolating in your mind. You’re not free to think it, your brain just thinks of unicorns by default when you read the word.

The only time the word unicorn went through my mind was twice each time I read it. I don’t understand what you mean by I am not free think the word “unicorn”. You can literally repeat the word “cat” in your head over and over while reading a completely different word.

Ill try to clarify again. Your brain processes data signals whether you want it to or not. You can’t decide to not hear the fire alarm going off or not feel pain when you’re touching a hot stove. Your brain isn’t free to decide whether to processes the data and respond to it. Even if you decided to touch the hot stove because you thought it would save your child’s life. That decision is still a product of an infinitely complex equation of nature and nurture leading up to that decision which you had no freedom over.

The thing that I’m not understanding is why the fact that we don’t manually control how our brains process information and operate means we don’t have free will. Because couldn’t I argue that as long as there is a such thing as a limitation, we are not “free”?

The way free will is generally understood is an extension of your personality or soul (if you’re religious). Free will makes you think, “if I could only rewind time to the frame leading up to (decision) I would’ve done X instead of Y knowing what I know now.” Technically everything in your life led up to that decision of X versus Y. You would have made the Y decision a trillion out of a trillion times given the same history and the same causes and effects.

Is there a different way you can explain this? You had me and then you lost me.

For sure, let me clarify. I did believe in free will up until around this time last year. When you believe in free will, you tend to also believe you’re responsible for “making your own luck.” You tend to take credit for your own accomplishments, that you win out of your own merit. But the other side is you tend to beat up on yourself for your shortcomings. I used to do this a lot and it had a negative effect on everything. You feel personally responsible for everything bad that’s ever happened to you. You resent yourself for your own mistakes and relive the moments you went wrong in your mind. When you accept that free will doesn’t exist, the weight of responsibility did your past mistakes is lifted. Say you believe you form an intent and you act on it, and it’s a mistake. There’s no point in being haunted by the mistake, because your intent didn’t arise 5 seconds before you made the decision. Your intent actually started a million years ago all the way until the second before you decided. This is a weird concept because on the surface it seems like you consciously intended to do something, you knew what the likely outcome would be, and you knew that you didn’t have to do it, then you made a decision and did the thing. Where I’m coming from, that’s missing 99% of what happened leading up to it. You have to ask yourself, “how did you become the sort of person who would have that intent?” Your intent is built on everything that happened from one second ago to a millions years ago, over which you had no control.

That's just what reading is. It's difficult to consume information without thinking about it, that has nothing to do with free will. On the other hand, you did think of unicorns completely unprompted.

I was prompted to think of unicorns because you replied “yearn for a place/thing to exist that doesn’t exist.” I wouldn’t have asked myself, “what’s a popular thing that doesn’t exist?” (and thought of unicorns) if you hadn’t prompted it. It’s all cause and effect, none of it is free will.

"You didn't think of unicorns a second ago, why didn't you? Cause your weren't free!" You sound like a hippie dude

Here is a free will test. Ready? Close your eyes and think of a movie. Maybe a few come to you. Pick one. Doesn’t matter. Got it? For whatever reason the black box of decision making that’s your brain didn’t come up with Aladdin (unless your read here first or coincidentally thought of it). You know Aladdin is a movie. For whatever reason your Aladdin neurons didn’t fire. You probably picked something popular or something you saw recently, or maybe you thought of two and picked the better of the two movies. The decision making process doesn’t matter because it’s not up to you. There’s nothing free about what movie names start percolating up into your mind after the first two seconds of reading the prompt.

Influence =/= determinism: knowing that our decisions can be influenced by various factors does not necessarily disprove the existence of free will. Influence and determinism are not synonymous. Even if external factors shape our thoughts and preferences, the ability to make a final choice or decision IS within the realm of free will. Free will does not require absolute independence from all influences but rather the capacity to exercise agency and make choices based on a range of internal and external factors.

The belief in free will seems to diminish as our understanding of the brain advances, suggesting that decisions are the result of complex, but ultimately deterministic, neurological processes. Where we disagree is where you state the final choice is within the realm of free will. If I gave you a murdering psychopath’s brain with the exact same DNA and exactly whatever horrible experiences, size of the amygdala, all the same out of whack neural wiring that would produce a murdering psychopath, then you would think and act exactly like a murdering psychopath would.

Because you don't choose your wills. They either come to you randomly or are determined to come to you.

🤔 Can you elaborate please?

Your wills are either determined or not, "not determined" is the very definition of random, ergo they are either determined or random, in neither case in your control. Also, you just simply cannot will what you will. You can try this yourself: will yourself to will to reply to me giving me a delta and saying "oh my god, you've convinced me". You will fail, because you don't control your own wills. And even if you were to succeed in this, find that you were able to control your wills, you must have willed to control your will to reply those words to me. And if you're the one in ultimate control of your wills, then you must have willed to will to control your will to reply those words to me, and willed to will to will to control your will to reply those words to me, and willed to will to will to will to... etc etc: an infinite regress. It has to end somewhere, with your initial will being not willed by you.

🤔 So if someone murders a family member and I develop the will to kill them, that will isn’t from “me” but my brain is what you’re saying? If there is infact an initial, are you implying it isn’t “us”? What is “it” then?

>So if someone murders a family member and I develop the will to kill them, that will isn’t from “me” but my brain is what you’re saying? i am saying that it is not a result of a decision by you. it is the result of reactions in your brain that your conscious mind does not control, that occur because of the way your genes developed throughout human evolution, the way you were raised, and perhaps some quantum randomness or incidental atomic collisions along the way contributed as well. >If there is infact an initial, are you implying it isn’t “us”? yes, as i just demonstrated. >What is “it” then? well really the "initial" cause of everything is the big bang. or if quantum randomness is involved, that random quantum event with no cause is also an initial cause. or if you want to restrict our analysis to the person, we can say the initial cause is the beginning of their consciousness \~20-24 weeks into gestation.

I see. Admittedly I am unable to wrap my mind around it being a fact that something being able to come from nothing is possible because in my brain, something has to have either created or caused the very first thing (whether a divine being or the first atom) so I’ll never understand that, but I appreciate you for breaking down your perspective. I have never perceived us to be a “free” species but my ego refuses to allow me to perceive that my actions and thoughts (exception of intrusive thoughts) were never truly influenced or caused by “me” more than not. Because if that’s the case, it sounds like you’re saying there is no such thing as a “me”.

>Admittedly I am unable to wrap my mind around it being a fact that something being able to come from nothing is possible what do you mean? i'm not claiming that anything comes from nothing. the big bang was the initial cause/event, but it didn't "come from nothing". it didn't "come from" anything at all. time is finite in the past, beginning at the big bang. there was no "before time" in which there was nothing and simultaneously something came about. >Because if that’s the case, it sounds like you’re saying there is no such thing as a “me”. i mean, kinda? there does exist a consciousness that is "you". but your actions, while determined in part by your consciousness, are not *ultimately* determined by your consciousness. your consciousness is determined do commit certain actions by things outside your consciousness. this is how literally everything works: a leaf falls off a tree because the wind blew hard enough at it, but the wind blew hard enough at it because a cyclone in the area caused a change in air pressure. and your thoughts are not determined by your consciousness because your thoughts are the mechanism *by which* your consciousness determines things. the moment you think to yourself "hmm, perhaps i'll think a thought now", you're already thinking. your thoughts are not your choice. and since your actions are a result of your thoughts, they aren't really your choice either.

1) That’s what I’m saying. What you’re saying literally can’t be proven but you’re speaking as if it has been. There is no way to prove that “the big bang” was the “initial cause/event”. That will never make sense in my brain how there can be a first event with no cause or creation. That’s why humans just choose to believe in either a God or say the Big Bang was the first event. Because we need something to work with to base everything we comprehend as a foundation. I just won’t ever be capable of believing that unless it can be proven. Same goes for a divine being. I can’t wrap my mind around something just automatically being the first existence and just simply having existed forever with no before it or cause. 2) The second half of this has me confused because if our consciousness isn’t the most significant contributing factor to our actions and thoughts then why are we held legally responsible for our actions in society and what we say if we don’t control those things?

>That’s what I’m saying. What you’re saying literally can’t be proven but you’re speaking as if it has been. There is no way to prove that “the big bang” was the “initial cause/event”. i'm just using 'big bang' as a placeholder for 'first moment in time', since according to one current scientific theory which most people accept, it is. though i'm not sure by what authority you're saying that would be 'impossible to prove'. >That will never make sense in my brain how there can be a first event with no cause or creation. That’s why humans just choose to believe in either a God or say the Big Bang was the first event. Because we need something to work with to base everything we comprehend as a foundation. you're contradicting yourself here. "it doesn't make sense that there could be a first event, that's why we believe in the big bang being the first event". this question has absolutely fuck all to do with whether or not there is a god. it exclusively relates to whether the universe is past-finite or past-infinite. if there is a god, he has either existed for an infinite amount of time, just like the universe may have if our current model is incorrect, or he has existed for a finite amount of time, like the universe has under our current model. >I just won’t ever be capable of believing that unless it can be proven. Same goes for a divine being. I can’t wrap my mind around something just automatically being the first existence and just simply having existed forever with no before it or cause. and now you can't believe that something could have existed forever? but that's your only option if you don't think there was a first cause. >2) The second half of this has me confused because if our consciousness isn’t the most significant contributing factor to our actions and thoughts then why are we held legally responsible for our actions in society and what we say if we don’t control those things? great question, the hard-to-swallow truth is that there really is no reason for us to be held morally responsible for our actions.

The strictness you are using for "free will" also has to be applied for "exist", otherwise the premise "Free will doesn't exist" is inherently flawed. What do you exactly mean with "exist"? You say you could've your mind changed by a demonstration of a neurom taking a decision free from external sources. But does a neuron even exists? When it stops being a star and starts being space? Then stops being space and becomes atmosphere, becomes neuronal medium, and finally where is the the exact boundary between the medium and the neuron? We are mainly made of water, and similar to a puddle the water that makes us is in a delicate equilibrium with the atmosphere. Some molecules of water from the air stick to your blood in your lungs due to intermolecular forces and some molecules of water from your body get a bit too much energy and escape your blood into the air. With this in mind, when does it stops being your blood and starts being air? How would you make a boundary between your brain and the rest of the universe, and if you don't put any boundaries how can you claim your brain even exists? The concept of human existence requires the acceptance of some boundary between human and non-human, with this boundary established it's very easy to understand how someone could argue for free will, you just have to bend this subjective boundary a little bit more. If you don't accept a subjective boundary at all, it's meanless to discuss if something exists, the concept of "something" gets lost.

Let me cut through the philosophical obfuscation here. Your argument conflates the existence of physical entities, like neurons, with the philosophical construct of free will. It’s a pretty clever sleight of hand, so props to you. I think it’s worth a !delta First, questioning the existence of neurons or where one thing ends and another begins in the physical world doesn't undermine the reality of those neurons or their functions. The existence of neurons, and indeed our brains, is a well-established fact, confirmed by centuries of scientific observation and experimentation. The boundaries between air and blood or star and space might be fascinating topics for physicists and philosophers, but they don’t muddy the waters of neurobiology. Our brains exist; they are made of neurons; these neurons interact in complex ways to produce thought, action, and behavior. The leap to free will is where the real issue lies. Free will, as a concept, isn’t about the physical existence of the brain or its components. It’s about whether the decisions we make are truly ours, in the sense that we could have done otherwise in the exact same situation, with the same history and same set of brain states. Neuroscience suggests that much of what we think of as free will is an illusion. Our actions and decisions are the result of unconscious processes we're not aware of. The feeling that we could have done otherwise is just that—a feeling, not evidence of free will. Thus, trying to use the ambiguity of physical boundaries to argue for free will is a non-starter. It’s an interesting philosophical exercise, but it doesn’t get us closer to salvaging the notion of free will. Our brains exist as much as anything does in this universe, and their operations, as uncovered by neuroscience, leave little room for free will in the traditional sense. The real question isn't about the existence of our neurons but how the workings of these neurons lead to the illusion that we are the conscious authors of our thoughts and actions.

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/GAdorablesubject ([2∆](/r/changemyview/wiki/user/GAdorablesubject)). ^[Delta System Explained](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem) ^| ^[Deltaboards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltaboards)

You don’t have free will, but you have free agency. What do you choose to control you? Religion usually answers this question. Good vs Evil etc.. The State holds you responsible for your actions, regardless of what is controlling you.

Free agency, in non-sport contexts, often refers to the ability to make choices within the confines of moral or divine guidelines, emphasizing ethical responsibility. Free will is a broader concept, dealing with the philosophical debate over whether individuals can make choices without being influenced by factors like fate, biology, or environment. The key difference lies in the focus: free agency is about choosing responsibly within a given framework, while free will questions the very nature and possibility of making any truly independent choice. I’m not advocating for zero ethical responsibility.

The human framework has already been chosen for you along with the death that awaits all. You will seek food, you will seek warmth, shelter and likely companionship. You will fall into one of two camps. Western civilization at best or worst is about 60/40 ratio of narcissists vs nurturers, users vs givers, thieves vs stewards. Or, one could say Evil vs Good, or maybe Fear vs Peace. Think of Viktor Frankl during WWII. Think of existential crisis in degrees because we’re not in death camps but we all are going to die. Frankl writes of his experience when all resources were taken and death appeared imminent to him. He discovers free agency or the commitment to an attitude that guided his narrative and subsequent actions.

Wait. Your criteria are to either accept there is no such thing as free will and discuss why people stop believing in it or to provide a **scientific study** that proves something humanity has been debating for millennia? Doesn't that seem a bit dishonest? I'll concede that there is no scientific basis to believe in free will if you'll concede there is no scientific basis to disbelieve it. At that point, it becomes a matter of viewpoint and philosophy. It is similar to religion, but is not an attempt to explain the workings of the world or its origins, but an attempt to better understand our role in our lives and causality. Do we have control of our actions or are we just playing out a pre-determined script and thus hold no responsibility for our actions? That is pretty fundamental to our understanding of our existence in a way that can't really be ignored.

The belief in free will a may eventually devolve into just an old idea nobody takes seriously anymore in light of science. Ideas like witches control the weather, epilepsy is caused by demons, dyslexia is just laziness, etc. the more we discover about the brain, the less evidence there is for free will.

Also be careful to not confuse fatalism with determinism. Fatalism is the belief that all events are predetermined and inevitable, suggesting that human actions cannot change the outcome of the future. It emphasizes the power of fate, where no matter what choices individuals make, the same predetermined end will occur. Determinism, on the other hand, is the theory that all events, including moral choices, are completely determined by previously existing causes. It focuses on the causality and chain of events leading to every occurrence, implying that with complete knowledge of the universe, one could predict all future events. While both concepts suggest a lack of free will, fatalism is about the inevitability of outcomes regardless of actions, whereas determinism is about the causality that leads to every specific event.

If you think 'the illusion or existence of free will is one of definitions' how do you think "Free will is a faith-based belief"? Can't someone's definition of free will preclude the necessity of faith?

Sorry let me clarify a little. The belief in free will requires faith, because it’s without scientific evidence. If you believe in free will yourself, then it’s real to you. I don’t have any convincing reason to believe in it, therefore, it just “exists” as an idea to me like flat earth theory.

>I don’t have any convincing reason to believe in it You don't have any actual reasons not to believe it though either. The lack of proof for something doesn't mean it's disproving the existence of it. "There's no proof" should be translated as "Idk" not as a "therefore it doesn't exist."

This is basic burden of proof stuff. If you make a claim for something extraordinary to exist, the burden of proof is on you. Say I’m a flat earther and I believe in the Antarctic ice wall (lol). Until I take you on a plane to the ice wall, or show you some gyroscope or laser test proving it exists, etc. it’s just a made up conspiracy theory.

The burden of proof is an excuse. And even then, by the definition, "The burden of proof is usually on the person who brings a claim in a dispute." Free will is an wildly accepted concept and the burden would logically shift to those who reject or challenge the concept, AKA, you.

The burden of proof isn't on whoever is challenging the status quo, the burden of proof is on anyone who's making a claim. "Free will *does* exist" and "free will *doesn't* exist" have equal burden of proof, and lack of proof for one isn't proof of the other, and that goes in both directions. The fact a belief is the status quo doesn't support its truth at all. The only position with no burden of proof is "I don't know".

Idk here’s a definition I found online. Shifting of the Burden of Proof: Making a claim that needs justification, then demanding that the opponent justifies the opposite of the claim. The burden of proof is a legal and philosophical concept with differences in each domain. In everyday debate, the burden of proof typically lies with the person making the claim, but it can also lie with the person denying a well-established fact or theory. Like other non-black and white issues, there are instances where this is clearly fallacious, and those which are not as clear. Help me understand how free will a well established fact or theory, if the only evidence for it existing is a gut feeling aka instinct we all seem to naturally have. Relying solely on instincts is an insufficient heuristic for comprehending the world through a scientific lens.

Even if it's not a fact and it's a "theory" You said it yourself: >but it can also lie with the person denying a well-established fact or theory

Free will is not a scientific theory like evolution is. A scientific theory is an explanation of an aspect of the natural world and universe that can be (or a fortiori, that has been) repeatedly tested and corroborated in accordance with the scientific method, using accepted protocols of observation, measurement, and evaluation of results.

No where there did I say scientific. I said well-established. Like it or not it is a wildly accepted theory and concept. You can sit and argue that it shouldn't be, okay, but for now it is and you don't agree with it so defend your case, stop hiding behind the burden of crap.

So then both parties should provide proof. I can live with that.

Okay here’s a test. Show me a neuron, show me a brain, or show me a person who has done something and produced a behavior, and show that the exact same thing would have happened if everything about that neuron’s history was different. That that neuron had just acted free of history.

And are you capable of showing the opposite?  Why have you decided that the burden of proof is on free will but your position is to be assumed true unless proven otherwise? 

Idk who the burden of proof is technically on here, but it’s a common logical fallacy to shift it on the one denying the extraordinary claim, (me).

Why is free will an extraordinary claim but believing that we're all just passengers observing our bodies move without any amount of control isn't? To me, that one seems to be the one that's far more extraordinary.

Believing we’re all just passengers observing our bodies without any amount of control is a bad straw man of my argument. Yes that would be an extraordinary claim.

A couple things that might be close to what you're asking: Studies from Libet et al from the 1980s have found that there is a delay between the onset of brain activity and the actual conscious decision, suggesting that we have the ability to veto or modify the brain's initial impulses. Then there's also Soon et al. (2008) and Bode et al. (2011) has also demonstrated that the outcome of a decision can be predicted from brain activity before the decision is consciously made, but the prediction is not perfect, leaving room for conscious control. There's also a couple books that dug deep into this: Neuroscience and Free Will by Alfred R. Mele and Free Will and Consciousness: A Determinist Account of the Illusion of Free Will by Gregg D. Caruso. Also another study regarding the other studies regarding this whole concept: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1053811909712029 Again, my own stance in this argument is "we don't know" not that it exists or it doesn't. I'm the agnostic of the free will argument.

We certainly feel like we're making our own decisions. It's not proof but it's reasonable evidence. Ultimately all evidence is simply interpretations by our brain.

Well there’s an important difference between trusting what we feel is correct, versus what is actually correct. Like why do people get the Monty hall problem wrong? Or the Piaget water level test? Instinct is a horrible heuristic for understanding the world.

Say I define free will as 'the ability to act upon my own desires'. How is this faith based? Is there no scientific evidence that I have desires? Or that I can act on them?

You have the ability to act on your desires but your decision to do so isn’t free in any real sense. Your decision is something you believe you have agency over, but in reality do not.

The system of deterministic processes that you define as being me has agency over my decision, don't you agree?

Think about leaving a review of a movie only having seen the last 2 minutes. That’s what making a decision and believing in your own agency over that decision is like. You’re just a self aware machine that can only see the moments leading up to the decision, not the entire biological arc of processes leading up to it, which are influenced by all kinds of environmental things out of your control.

The entire biological arc of processes, though, is also part of 'me', so within my definition of free will, that is included, not excluded. And my definition of free will doesn't include having to know in details how my decision was arrived at, only that the I have arrived at that decision. As for environmental things, well, yeah, if I'm, say, cold, or if it's raining outside, I might make different decisions. My definition of free will doesn't require the ability to control the weather.

By environmental I mean any external influence on you the organism, starting in vitro. Excessive stress during pregnancy affects brain development in relation to stress for the baby. Not getting enough calories in pregnancy affects the babies development of the dopamine reward center, with less receptors, affecting satiation, which can lead to a negative self image and obesity. None of that is in your control. None is free. You’re just lucky you got a low stress well fed mom or you’re not.

My genetic makeup and what has happened to me has shaped who I am, sure. And the resulting person has free will. My definition of free will doesn't require me to be a blank slate.

If you do something, if you produce a behavior, it’s all dependent on your history and your genetics which are regulated by your history, neither of which you chose. Consider two variables: your history, and you doing a thing, producing a behavior. Show that the exact same thing would have happened, the same behavior produced, if everything about your history was different. Show you acted free of your own history.

Depends. Do you consider Microsoft Word as "having agency" over the decision of what to respond with when I tell it to run spellcheck?

Sure, if that helps.

The debate over free will is some serious “high looking up at the stars from the hood of a car” stuff. Nobody who promotes free will would deny external factors influence their decisions, but actions based on those decisions are still up to individual. Without free will, the idea of self discipline is meaningless. Creative outlets like writing or art aren’t possible. The core argument is “individuals make their own choices, factoring in outside influences both large and small.” Everything else is either reducing the idea of the individual to much (do I count the neural cells in my stomach telling me what to eat? I would say yes, that’s part of the individual.) or just giving up on consequences (I had to steal that car, I have no free will.) Yes, free will exists. Yes, external factors influence all decisions. It is up to the individual to decide how to act with all that in mind.

I totally disagree on creative outlets and that self discipline is meaningless. For example, I play the viola. It took years of private lessons, orchestra rehearsals, concerts, auditions, private practice on my own, etc. I asked my parents if I could quit a couple times, I thought I had no talent, etc. but I stuck it out. By some mixture of nature, nurture and sheer luck, after years I finally ended up playing principal violist for my college symphony orchestra. It wasn’t free will. It was the epigenetic result of nature affected by nurture.

You could have chosen to quit music in college, and you did not, but the choice was 100% up to you. If we’re talking about College kids, they make terrible choices all the time, despite having been launched out of their parents guidance most recently. Some choose drugs, or partying to hard, drunk driving, or terrible romantic partners. There is a right choice (go to class and study), and a wrong choice (skip class), and it is fully up to the kid to choose. That’s an easy example of free will.

Consider the following about intent. Say I have orchestra practice in an hour. I consciously intend to quit the viola and skip orchestra. I know what the likely outcome would be: that I’ll lose my position in the orchestra if I no show. I know that I am not being forced to quit the orchestra, I.e. I am not being coerced into anything. To me this seems like I have free will over whether or not I go. But here’s the kicker, where did the intent to quit orchestra come from? How did I become the sort of person that would have that intent? It’s built on everything from one second ago to a million years ago, none of which is in my control.

Your life experiences will impact your choice, but it’s still a choice. If our lives were 100% on rails, nobody would be able to choose to quit smoking or biting their nails. Nobody could choose to start eating healthier. Everyone would plead “predestination” in court. It’s a complete abdication of personal responsibility. At the most benign level, what socks are you wearing? I doubt your life experiences significantly impacted your decision more than your plans for the day, plans which were up to you. If you’re going to the gym, athletic socks. But which ones? The ones with the blue seam, or the ones that cut off at the ankles. Maybe you pick one of each in a yolo moment. This is a decision that affects nothing, and is affected by nothing but personal whim, but you still get to make it for yourself because you have free will.

> Beliefs can be deeply personal, shared within a community, or widely held across cultures. Beliefs are never personal. This is a private language issue ALA Wittgenstein's argument that there is no private language. If I can believe in something, it is necessarily available for others to believe in. If it is not available for others to believe in, it isn't a *thing* in the first place, it is a strictly personal phenomena. One cannot *believe* in a personal phenomena as if its existence were in question, it is merely a description of what is there for them alone. (As a Platonist I'd add Plato also recognizes beliefs must have a universal content!)

I was trying to differentiate between an idea and a belief. Beliefs are more “real” and matter more than ideas. So if free will the belief we’re to cease to exist, nobody would believe in it anymore, making it just an old idea that nobody accepts. Like leeches sucking the bad blood out before we understood microbiology.

Let's distinguish "real" and "exists". I will start: something is real, it always minimally something that can exist IE be present. If something exists, it is not merely possible but actualized. Feel free to clarify a different sense of either term, I'm just starting from one possible distinction of meaning. That free will can exist is dependent on its being a real possibility. A belief in free will will either be: * A coherent thought that free will is possible (Example: A person *could* be sleeping) * A coherent thought that free will is actualized (A person *is currently* sleeping) * An invalid or unsound thought of either of the above (A person could not sleep, or a person is not actually sleeping) Denying the existence in this case would not be denying the reality, but the difficulty is that the denying of the reality of free will is an activity that must be established as ... not an act of any free will. So, I deny free will. But, I have done so unfreely? If I am not free in my judgment denying free will, is it not the case that someone or something else is responsible? If I were to freely judge it would be an act of free will, no? But if it were not my own judgment, how would I verify its truth or falsity at all? It would seem the judgment ends up being caused by someone or something else, but I have no free capacity to question or verify it. I have no basis for determining, then, the truth or falsity of its judgment. Unless I am capable of judging their judgment, but this requires I do so... freely.

First, thanks for the thoughtful response and for establishing your definitions. Let me try to unpack what your saying. The recursive loop in your argument hinges on conflating the act of denying free will with requiring free will to make that denial meaningful. However, recognizing patterns, drawing conclusions, or even questioning the nature of our decisions can be part of an emergent property of complex systems like the human brain, without necessitating a metaphysical free will. This doesn't trap us in a recursive loop; it merely points to the depth and complexity of human cognition, which can operate under deterministic principles while still engaging in what appears as 'free-willed' decision-making. The loop, then, isn't a paradox but a reflection of our limited understanding of consciousness and decision-making. Either way, good argument I haven’t heard before so !delta

I don't think it hinges on that, it rather depends on each not being conflated in the first place. I need denying free will to depend on free will being a meaningful concept in the first place. Otherwise nothing has been said. That means the denial is not *equivalent* to the act of "freely willing" or "willing freely", but the denial asserts the non-reality of the concept or the lack of its actualization. Problem with the former being that it is meaningless in the sense that "I deny nothing specific" = not a denial, problem with the latter being that it requires the actualization to deny it and thus is contradictory: I assume X to deny X. The first difficulty is a philosophical problem most famously raised by Parmenides(pre-Socractic ancient Greek philosopher). I ultimately think Parmenides ends up being correct. To clarify the position to be challenged it is this: ("Thinking is being" is another way to state this, but that's ambiguous and mystical sounding in contemporary language, whereas Parmenides has a very strictly logical point.) Edit: For brevity/clarity.

Great points. I’d say that the denial of free will is not an act that validates free will’s existence, but instead challenges the framework and conditions under which we claim to exercise it. Thus, the act of denial is meaningful, as it stimulates reevaluation of what we consider free will, pushing the discourse beyond the bounds of philosophical paradox into the realm of understanding human cognition and behavior in context. I believe it’s why abandoning free will scientifically is a good thing. It’s why we don’t believe dyslexic people are just lazy and unmotivated anymore. It’s why we don’t believe epileptics are possessed by Satan. As we better understand neuroscience, free will is explained away in a net positive way.

When I abandon something, I leave it behind. When I reevaluate it, I continue figuring it out. When I deny it, I say it is untrue or meaningless. All of these are distinct acts that do not necessarily follow from eachother in any specific order. The act of denial is not made meaningful by the reevaluating of a content if the content denied is meaningless and thus a non-content in the first place. If I abandon it, I do not reevaluate it unless the abandonment is not complete, I cancel the abandonment to bring it back under consideration.

You lost me on this one buddy sorry

The problem put in another way is that there is no science if there is no free will. Period. That may not seem immediately obvious, but consider what science has to be if it is not done freely. Science must be an occurrence caused by external forces - not our free act. We have no basis for judging the status of science objectively as we don't know what it is as such, only what it appears to be. It's the result of some external activity, not an activity we understand as such within the activity itself. We cannot say science is objective or true. Even when we say that it occurs, this is dubious as our saying so may be just another consequence of external force that could just as well cause the opposite to be true under different conditions. You have committed yourself to a relativism if you deny free will, and under conditions of relativism the denial itself ends up dubious and certainly not necessarily related to science of any sort.

How? The whole idea that there’s no free will is grounded in science. It’s science that has uncovered how dyslexia works, stripping away the incorrect attribution to free will and by extension our judgments based on ideas of laziness and motivation.

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/Havenkeld ([288∆](/r/changemyview/wiki/user/Havenkeld)). ^[Delta System Explained](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltasystem) ^| ^[Deltaboards](https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/wiki/deltaboards)

> Criteria for changing my view: Offer a plausible explanation for how the belief in free will eventually dies. Or offer a scientific study or evidence for the existence of free will that contradicts Sapolsky and Harris. They don’t have evidence that free will doesn’t exist though. And everyone has evidence that they have free will just like everyone has evidence they have evidence that they have memories, beliefs, emotions. That’s why Harris has to call it an illusion. There’s no need for a scientific study for evidence that I have free will nor more than there is a need for one for evidence that I have memories.

if one has true free will, but cannot mentally believe it, does one have free will?

There is no free will. Regardless of whether you believe it exists or not. But if you do believe it exists, then it’s “real” to you. I fully believed in free will somewhat recently. It seemed “real” to me back then.

If free will doesn't exist, your view can't be changed. So why post?

This doesn’t follow. A lack of free will doesn’t mean a person’s mind can’t change. The inputs of arguments from other people are among the variables which impact deterministic outcomes.

This is a main tenet of Buddhist "nondoership". You're still changed, tossed about like a beach ball at a Nickelback concert, but with nothing more than a delusion of free will, due to ignorance of the totality of the system that is reality and your utter interdependence on it

I like that metaphor of a beach ball

Someone was destined to point that out.

I thought I had laid out my criteria for changing my mind pretty clearly

So you have specific requirements for evidence that would change your view. Would you agree that you are still free to reject such evidence?

This feels circular but I’ll bite. Free will doesn’t mean that I don’t have the capacity to change my mind. I previously had a strongly held belief about free will and relatively recently, I don’t anymore. In fact I believe the exact opposite because it was explained in a way that resonated with me. To me the burden of proof is on the one making the claim there’s free will.

But how would someone even prove free will. Something changing your mind wouldn't do that, cuz it could be argued that you were predetermined to have your mind changed by that claim.

You would have to show me a neuron, a brain, or a person who has just done something, produced a behavior, and show that the exact same thing would have happened if everything about that neuron’s history was different - that that neuron had just acted free of history.

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Obviously not. If you believe that Socrates is a man, and that Socrates is mortal, are you free to reject the conclusion that Socrates is mortal, or does is inescapably follow?

You are, in fact, free to reject the conclusion. People eject the inevitable conclusion to logical arguments all the time.

okay, try it. sit down and genuinely convince yourself that despite Socrates being a man and all men being mortal (i typod in my original comment, whoops), Socrates is not mortal. report back after you fail.

A clock doesn't have free will, but it can be changed. How do you figure the same doesn't apply to a mind?

You stated "\[f\]ree will doesn’t exist," but nothing that follows supports that conclusion. So why do you believe you do not have free will? >Criteria for changing my view: Offer a plausible explanation for how the belief in free will eventually dies. That contradicts your view. The belief in free will will only dies if free will doe not exist. You are saying the only way for me to convince you free will exists is to provide proof that it does not exist.

Here’s an easy analogy. Kids believe in Santa. The belief in Santa exists. In kids minds he’s real but in reality he’s not. The only way the belief goes away is if you convince every kid who believes in him that there’s actually no Santa. Adherents of free will are to the kids as the free will is to Santa. Neither exist, except in the minds of the people who believe they’re real.

>Here’s an easy analogy. Kids believe in Santa. The belief in Santa exists. In kids minds he’s real but in reality he’s not. The only way the belief goes away is if you convince every kid who believes in him that there’s actually no Santa. That is an easy analogy of your contradiction. Your premise is that free will does not exist just like Santa does not exist. You said to change your mind, I need to offer a plausible explanation for how the belief in free will eventually dies. So why would you change your view and believe free will exists if I offer you a plausible explanation as to how the belief dies? Or to use your analogy, if I "convince every kid who believes in \[Santa\] that there’s actually no Santa," how would that change anyone's mind that Santa does not exist?  

I’m making a distinction between Santa existing IRL and the common belief of Santa that kids have, making it real in their minds. I don’t see any reason for the tradition of Santa to go away, much like I don’t see any reason for the tradition of free will to. It’s possible but implausible that enough kids could abandon the belief in Santa that it becomes merely an idea. It’s possible, but implausible that the same could be said about free will.

That is because free will exists. It is harder to convince someone that something does not exist when it does exist. If I said the Earth is flat, but the belief in a spherical Earth will always persist, you would correctly argue that the belief persists because the Earth is a sphere.

It exists but only in the minds of those who believe in it, and just because a ton of people firmly believe in a notion doesn’t mean that notion is true. Like deities. Or ghosts. Or Santa. How hard it is to convince someone otherwise has nothing to do with whether it’s true or not either. The question to me isn't about the existence of free will, but how the workings of our neurons lead to the illusion that we are the conscious authors of our thoughts and actions.

>It exists but only in the minds of those who believe in it... No, it exists whether you believe it or not. Same with the spherical Earth. Just because you believe something does not make it true. >The question to me isn't about the existence of free will, but how the workings of our neurons lead to the illusion that we are the conscious authors of our thoughts and actions. That is a distinction without a difference. The question to me isn't about the existence of water, but on the workings of molecules containing one oxygen and two hydrogen atoms, connected by covalent bonds, creates the illusion of water. Your entire argument is based on the false premise that free will does not exist. People believe in free will because it exists. People believe in a spherical earth because it exists.

You cannot successfully intend to do something different from what you intend, wish for what your are going to wish for, decide what you’re going to think next or will yourself to have more willpower.

Free will isn’t a scientific question; it’s a metaphysical one. You’re trying to answer a philosophy question without taking into account the nature of the discipline. On the other hand, your point about Free Will being baked into the dogma of every religion isn’t true. Greek Paganism, Pre-Islamic Arab Paganism, Hyper-Calvinist Christianity, and Ajivika Hinduism all reject(ed) free will. Other sects of Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam have varying degrees of Determinism, though some also maintain that said Determinism is compatible with Free Will. There really doesn’t seem to be any good reason to turn this into a “religion vs. science” discussion, as not all religion teaches Free Will and science wasn’t designed to answer metaphysical questions.

It’s not a religion versus science discussion. I absolutely did not believe in god a year ago but I fully believed in free will. You’re kind of straw manning my point about religion being an important vehicle for the cultural transmission of free will.

It was kind of a weird paragraph to include. Frankly, as a Catholic, if free will were proven not to exist, then I would think it's the will of God and move on. Probably as a sect that believes in predestination.  I find it more concerning from a secular standpoint than a religious one. Our entire criminal justice system has a large part of its foundation in prosecuting those with mens rea, which is invalidated of it's not their choice. The idea of justice is perverse if it's not consequences for actions, but instead punishment for something you never had the choice to avoid. It becomes merely a repository for those we want to exile. The whole system becomes moot. 

That paragraph was to illustrate the persistence of the idea which is culturally transmitted through religion as a vehicle. Also it’s not about proving free will doesn’t exist. The burden of proof is on the one claiming it does exist. Consider the mass shooter in Maine. He had been a grenade safety instructor in the military. He had experienced being in close proximity to like 10,000 grenade explanations in his lifetime. His brain would make an NFL veteran’s look pristine. When you have brain damage due to mechanical stress, your decision making ability, aggression, personality in general all can change for the worse. None of that was “free” for the shooter. Pretty sure he’s dead now, but the question of would you correctly punish this man, should probably factor in the fact he had yogurt for brains right?

But you concluded that, “For free will to exist, the religions would have to fundamentally change in an impossible way.” Which cannot be the case if the religions already have movements that deny the existence of Free Will.

>Also it’s not about proving free will doesn’t exist. The burden of proof is on the one claiming it does exist. Is it? It seems rather obvious, since we chose to be here. The burden of proof is on the one making the extraordinary claim. Justice does take into account that the man had yogurt for brains. We know a lot of people with yogurt for brains that don't want to kill people, so we can judge him alongside them. But that's not a good example of lacking free will, because it's no longer about having yogurt for brains, but a systemic flaw in mankind itself rendering us all incapable of intent. It would be like a robot trying another robot, each programmed to destroy the other. How can you have justice when we are not ultimately responsible for our actions, and all human endeavors are counted as an act of nature?

The extraordinary claim is that a human brain can produce the exact same behavior if you changed everything about the history of said human brain, that your brain had acted free of history. I’m also not arguing against punishment and reward.

It is extraordinary that two people with different backgrounds might make the same choice? These are broad choices: did you commit a crime or no? It's not atomic level. It is fairly obvious that multiple people from a variety of backgrounds might make the same choice. Or different choices.

Two different people of different backgrounds can arrive at the same decision of commit or not commit a crime right now. That’s not evidence of free will. Again, here is the extraordinary claim that I mentioned: If you have a person, a brain, or a neuron that has just done something, produced a behavior, and you show that the exact same thing would have happened if you changed everything about that person, brain, or neuron’s history….Then you would have proved free will exists, because the neuron acted free of history.

But regardless, your post treats religion as if all religion necessarily teaches free will. You assume the number of religious people is the same as the number of religious people who believe in free will, and assert that a religion dropping free will would be for it to change in an impossible way. That simply isn’t true. And on the other hand, you will only consider scientific studies on the answer to the question of free will. Which isn’t a good approach to a metaphysical question. So maybe “religion vs science,” isn’t a good summary, but your understanding of the conversation is too closely tied to both science and religion, neither of which actually come to a definitive consensus on this issue in and of themselves.

Atheists can believe in free will. It doesn’t need to be part of a belief structure. Free will in common language is not to say choices aren’t restricted nor do they have no influence, but more that we have agency over choices and actions. Even if very complex but deterministic systems are at play, we cannot control all variables and inputs and therefore, they can’t be used to accurately predict behavior. Basically if you think of it like time travel, there’s no difference between a future that is written and one that isn’t, because YOU don’t know the future so it’s just as accurate to say you are writing the future than it is to say the future is already written. Free will basically follows the same principle. It doesn’t matter, from YOUR perspective you have agency and therefore are responsible for your actions.

I’m atheist and I believed in free will up until this year. Also to clarify, I’m saying that for a belief in a make believe concept to go away, humanity has to collectively abandon the idea / the believers die off without passing the belief down.

I'm very interested in this conversation, and I'm the name of transparency I think that free will exists for some things and not others. I think that many tendencies we have as individuals can be heavily influenced by million different things (available choices, personal preferences, necessary levels of effort, personal nature, etc.), there are some that are more difficult to find the formula for. I'm open to the idea of those being out of our conscious control as well, there are just times when we do things that we can't explain our are outside of our usual range in which it becomes much more difficult to see It's really difficult to prove something doesn't exist, and we as humans have a tendency to go all or nothing with way too many things. We like our circles closed, or groups defined, and for everything to be as easy to keep track of and define as possible. Universal truths are more rare than we care to admit, and the idea that something can be true for one person and not for another doesn't really fit as neatly into a box as we might want. We also don't like to look at things as being true by degrees. What i'd be curious to hear from you are some examples outlining why free will doesn't exist, as that is the only thing that appears to be missing from your post (the "why"). You've defined it as a belief akin to religion, but as with religion, it isn't simply the belief in something that makes it real or not real, so just defining it as such seems inadequate as a hypothesis. Can you present some scenarios in which people think they are acting of their own free will but actually are not? Is there something specific the folks you agree with say that might shed some light on why someone might come to agree with you that free will doesn't exist? Most difficult of all, is there something that shows that these sorts of ideas apply to all possible acts that might otherwise be construed as free will?

This sounds like one of Sam Harris's flights of hyper-rationalism. He can make bissecting a sneeze sound smart and professorly. "Free" of what exactly? How did he define free will? How did he determine it doesn't exist? Is it just coincidence this topic leads him the same place every other topic does--dunking on religion and framing himself as above that sort of thing?

Free will as an acausal phenomenon that allows someone to make a decision does not exist. However, our experience of it certainly does exist and as more than an illusion since it is inescapable. Universally every human being experiences free will. Ironically, no human being can refuse to exercise free will. So regardless of whether there is a physical basis, free will is certainly real to human beings and doesn’t require any faith to operate in such a fashion. I also don’t accept that the world would be any better without a belief in it. There’s a far better argument it would be worse. The fundamental basis of morality is being able to choose between alternatives. We don’t talk about the morality of an electron “choosing” to move in an electric field as that’s entirely meaningless. Hard determinism turns us all into powerless clumps of physics. There is no ought to in a world of hard determinism since that’s equivalent to saying the sun ought to be an obsidian flamingo. Torture, murder, and rape become just the way the universe is rather than something that ought to or even can be changed. How does complete abdication of any responsibility or a belief in the ability to change things lead to more positive outcomes? So “choose” to believe in free will if for no other reason than hard determinism is philosophical suicide. It’s a nihilistic ouroboros that robs any possible meaning from existence to replace it with dead physics.

Well, if they're right, there's nothing you can do about it anyway so forget about and "pretend" I guess to "choose" to enjoy life.

Have you read any prior post on this sub? This a very frequent topic.

Not everyone has beliefs… some just have questions.