Curious Question Cat

This meme is hilarious. Such a cute derp dog.

I agree we feel that we have free will but I believe that it is an illusion. If you watch your thoughts you will realize that you do not know what your mind will think of next. Where is the free will in not choosing your thoughts but instead witnessing them?

What about strategic thoughts? The purposeful planning to outwit another?

Not everyone tries to outwit someone else. If you are the type that tries to outwit, then I'd say that is based either on your genes, your upbringing, your personality or maybe a desire for revenge. All of these things you don't have control over.

I'll grant you some are born with certain abilities turned on. But I believe education and practice can hone skills and we learn skills to the point they come muscle memory. But education takes forethought. You may think we don't have any exercise of that, but I do.

I love to spar with people in humor. I have to think quickly when battling someone face to face with quick witted insults. We don't use swear words, but try and use clever means to belittle each other like a combat of words. Sometimes I prepare ahead of time knowing that I will face this in the future. If I have no feel will, then I would never preplan. I would just do.

I also believe education and practice can hone skills. I'm not saying that everything is predetermined or fatalistic. I do not argue for that at all. Everything has a cause. Perhaps your personality is one that doesn't handle loosing in a spar particularly well and therefore you choose to be ready for the next time.

What I'm saying is that the reason we do the things we do is because we have a reason to do them. If you say you choose something you've never chosen before then you must be reasonably open to new experience.

Consider that you did not have a choice of what genes you have, you do not have a choice of what family you were born into, you didn't choose how your family raised you, what they valued, what professions they did, what kind of influence they had in your local community, you didn't choose your family friends, you didn't choose your school, you didn't choose who you gravitated toward and who you were repelled by, which personalities you get along with and the ones that you don't. I can go on and on and on. All of these things make up our life experience. Our life experience combined with what we have learned, our genes, our personality, our current brain states, hunger, tiredness, etc dictate how we act.

Some people don't make an effort to learn or prepare, you say it's because they didn't choose to. I say it's because it's not who they are or because they were stressed or because it didn't occur to them, or because they had something more important to do, and they don't really know why they choose what they choose.

Oh believe me, I have a saying about certain people I have know. Born to be a junior high janitor. They lack interest in the world with no imagination. And yes I believe you are born with certain traits beyond your control. But what you do with those traits is what we consider free will.

Try paying attention to your breath via vipassana meditation and watching your thoughts for a while. You will see that you don't know why you think the things that you do. If we look carefully at how our thoughts and decisions arise, we can recognize that they come from an unconscious process, which gets configured by both unconscious and conscious processes that came about through other unconscious processes. Do you believe that you control your unconscious mind?

Not ignoring you, but next couple of days are going to be packed. I will revisit later as I am enjoying this.

Ok I got a little time before my flight, By it's very name "unconscious" is part of our body that we do not control normally. It keeps us breathing, reacting to hot surfaces and pretty everything that makes us a living being. Now with practice you can assume more control of these functions with the conscious mind, but while you are focused on breathing, you are still digesting food, pumping blood, filtering waste through the kidneys.

More important question is how did this divide happen? Our thoughts of free will are a conscious function. That the body has been designed to allow us to even pose the question is remarkable. We at some point went from a series of hardwired instincts to the ability to preplan. That more than anything to me points to a free will even as we still retain many of those instincts.

I love these kinds of things.

Right, so the problem here is that the type of control you speak of is also not controlled by us. We can adjust our algorithm but the algorithm that allows us to adjust it is another algorithm. Take the idea of an autonomous car a Tesla. As a metaphor it works brilliantly. We are autonomous in the same sense that a Tesla is but we not choose our original programming, our environment, our genetics. Sorry it took me so long to respond.

Yes, we all have the ability to make decisions, that's free will.

Of course we all have the ability to make decisions. I define free will as “The ability to have, of ones own accord, chosen otherwise than they did.” Do you believe in a given situation that you could have chosen otherwise or would you choose what is best for you in a given situation?

I try to weigh the pros and cons of most big decisions I make thinking how it will effect myself, my family and choosing the best course of action. I think every decision has a multitude of different options you could choose.

I'm not denying that you feel that you have free will. I believe free will is an illusion. I think we intuitively feel that we have control over our choices but in fact we do not. If you dig deeply into the concept you will realize that this is in fact an illusion.

Are you free to choose that which does not occur to you?

So do you feel we are forced into our decisions either by influence or pressure from others. I'm sure all those can affect people's decision making.

We are completely a product of our environment, our genes, our personality, our life experience, our friendships, enemies, fears, likes, dislikes, laws, etc. I can go on and on. All of these things have contributed to who we are. None of these things we have control over. We don't even control our likes or dislikes. We might be able to post hoc rationalize why we like or dislike something but the truth is we like it or dislike it because of the sum of our experience.

Hmm that's very in interesting and i suppose true. My husband likes to say "we all act out of ignorance" and we like to debate this idea that no one truly knows what he is doing when he chooses an action therefore we can never assume evil intentions even when someone does something we judge to be wrong.

Glad I could get you thinking. :) Exactly!

There is a documentary coming out soon. I suggest you check it out when it is released. https://www.freewilldocumentary.com

There are many good reasons for humanity why we shouldn't believe in free will as well. I suggest looking up Gregg Caruso's videos on youtube. :)

Follow me on twitter if you like @FreeWill_isFake

I will look those up! Thanks for posting! Please keep the great questions coming!

I dunno

Great answer.

Thanks

We don't, and our leaders can snap at any time.

Truth.

No, Peer pressure controls people and so does other things such as logic. If we had free will we could fly.
(I feel like I am using Free will wrong)

You nailed the first part but then...