I’m disappointed, though, that in your last paragraph you fall into the same trap as so many people when consider the lack of free will, assuming that, now that we are equipped with this knowledge, we must somehow lose all ability to pass moral judgement. This is simply ridiculous. For one thing, passing moral judgement, bestowing praise and punishments, are part and parcel of your #3.

The main objection to this punishing viewpoint, though, is that while ‘free will’ does not exist as a coherent concept, we can still act as if some fuzzy intuitive approximation of it does due to our lack of knowledge. I don’t know what you will do in the future. I don’t know what I will do in the future. I simply don’t have the necessary knowledge or computational power to predict that. As such, we abstract the brain into a black box with some levels and buttons on it, which we can twist and pull to achieve certain effects but who’s internal workings and final outputs are ultimately a mystery.

In the end, I believe that claiming something has ‘free will’ is nothing more than a claim that the entity has a sufficiently complex internal state that the outputs are not completely predictable from the inputs.

If I’m predisposed by my personality to respond to a certain stimuli one way 95% of the time and another way the other 5%, then we could say that my “decision” to not have vanilla ice cream this time was just the occurence of that 5% random chance. All that really does is define free will out of existence. And a point above that it would be foolhardy to act as if there were no free will is well taken. In sum, Failing to concieve of how a system we don’t completely understand could produce a phenomena that we don’t completely understand is not proof that the phenomena is impossible.

You’re right, of course, about the possibility of true randomness. I for one simply feel it’s an illusion based on a lack of information. But I’m talking from intuition there, so it’s nearly worthless.

I simply feel that our little system was seeded by something, and whatever created the rules that govern it did not have the ability to create randomness. Highly-random “randomness”? Sure. But I almost feel like *true* randomness is something that exists outside of physics and systems.

Anyway…that’s just talk. Accept it as such. :)

“I think that little bit of randomness represents yet another hole in our understanding — not something truly unknowable.”

Science being what it is, I can’t say that your hypothesis is wrong. I can however suggest that there is a good argument for the ‘truly random’ – and probably more that I don’t understand:

1. The distribution functions assume true randomness, and so far the universe behaves according to the predictions

2. Hawking has shown that for black holes to exist they have to radiate somehow, and that particular randomness enables it. I don’t claim to understand exactly how, it’s beyond me.

It is of course possible you’re right, and there won’t be any randomness in future more accurate models of the world. As of now, there is plenty of randomness, enough to cause some of the biblical miracles if you assume a conscious entity manipulating that randomness in a certain direction…

I can’t believe I’m giving pro-deist arguments, but if you want to present a topic, better present it whole; and if you’re talking about complete predictability – you can’t predict actions if there’s an element of randomness.

– Arik

Part of the argument here seems to be “If a human is just a deterministic function from input to output, then the human isn’t responsible for his actions, just the input and the function are.” This makes no sense to me. Even if I’m just a deterministic function (that I didn’t get to choose), I’m still responsible for my output.

On a different note, as a physics major I see the world as definitely non-deterministic, though I don’t like to rely on that in philosophical discussions. Matter behaves like waves (e.g. you can diffract a beam of neutrons), and the waves behave like probability distributions, where a value gets drawn when you actually go to measure a particle’s position. People have hoped desperately for “hidden variables” that are responsible, but it’s never panned out, and as we probe deeper into the “hidden” properties of matter, things seem to get more quantum-like, not less. But this really proves nothing philosophically — maybe god seeded his pseudorandom number generator once and it’s been humming along deterministically ever since.

I definitely agree on the first one; life might as well be random because we can’t possibly fathom the variables, and the same goes for those that influence our decisions.

I fully accept that this is outside of my expertise and that I’m probably not qualified to comment on the matter, but I also disagree with the notion of “true randomness” when discussing an omniscient perspective.

Tell me something isn’t known, or that it can’t be known by us, and I’m fine with that. But to say that a system such as the physics that govern our universe can function in a non-repeatable fashion to me is absurd. Again, I’m seeing my own limitations here, so I’m not saying I’m right. I’m just saying it makes no sense to me.

I think that little bit of randomness represents yet another hole in our understanding — not something truly unknowable.

There is no free will, because there is no god and we are all responding to stimuli, so everything is perfectly predictable; BUT – the system in its entirety is so complex that in order to predict it you need to simulate every piece of it, which for us, today, is impossible. So while there is no free will, we look at the world as if there is because we cannot know what it is that we will do lacking means to predict it.

And another one:

Quantum theory predicts a certain randomness that’s impossible to predict, only to calculate the chance (probability) of an event happening in a particular way. It has been shown to be a good description of reality so far and made semiconductors possible. If this theory is true, there is a lot of randomness to manifest an arbitrary decision maker or a god instead of the randomness. Albert Einstein realized that, and was very much against the theory, with his famous quote “God does not play dice with the universe”.

In conclusion, from my experience, talking about free will is pretty much meaningless, because the way we subjectively perceive the world determines whether we perceive an action we made as ‘free willed’ or not. For the same action some would say it’s free will and some would say it’s not.

Take care,

– Arik

I did not detect the question of God’s morality but rather so the question as questioning God’s ‘perfection’ in creating free will. Such as trying to say that perfect free will would be the same as perfect choice making… and that is not the assertion of free will.

email text: You still have the underline basis that there is no free will. Predestination can be used in two ways: 1. God planned it… it was His will and you could do nothing else 2. (Free will) God gave us choice (yes the perfect ability to choose mean giving us the ability to choice wrong) and while knowing the outcome, He did not dictate it.

Those two are debated over even within Christianity (and I would assume Judaism).

Yes He knew we would fall in the garden… but that was a choice. He did know before He started and He chose to do it anyways. Why? Because He also knew that there would be those that would believe on Jesus and would choose to love him.

But hey, if you are right: I cannot help but believe it… I dont have free will.

But if I dont have freewill those that I have/will cause to suffer… there suffering is still not my fault, I dont have free will. The guy that takes a sledge hammer to your BMW… dont call the cops… its not his fault, no free will. The folks that are destroying the world (global warming, cultivation of the rain forest, water pollution) dont hate on them… it isnt their fault.

Take care buddy.

Oh, and by the way… whats up with your whale bones? Have not heard back from you on that one.

Anyway; I don’t think the fact that we are deterministic systems needs to stop us acting as we do presently, but we simply need to ask different questions of ourselves, e.g. instead of asking “Is this worthy of praise”, ask “Would my praising this work positively influence the system”, you’d probably still have to make a value judgement though, because you don’t want to praise something useless, since that would not help the system, etc.

And even though I think we’re just responding to stimuluses, we still need to provide stimulus to those around us, e.g. no matter whether a person had no choice but to rob a bank, if you stopped persecuting people, more people would rob banks. So long as we accept that the justice system has nothing to do with justice, but rather exists as a deterrent, nothing really needs to change.

So as I see it, everything can go on as it is, we just need accept that things are deterministic, and therefore not take things personally.

Oh, and regarding the fact that “we forfeit the ability to heap praise on the virtuous or scorn on the wicked”, well, not really, since praise of virtuous actions increases the likelihood of more, and scorn of wicked actions decreases the likelihood of wicked actions.

Man, you had me all psyched up like you were going to show me something. You came off with some cool references that led me to believe you knew your stuff, but you ended up with nothing.

Coming with the fact that morality doesn’t come from God when talking to an atheist seems rather silly. We all know what Kant said about morality, and it has little to do with the discussion at hand.

Then you actually attempted to prove consciousness by illustrating that I would duck if you threw a rock at my head. I think some AI folks might take issue with that. If that were the criteria than those little disk vaccuum cleaners that avoids obstacles are conscious too.

You basically said we’re conscious because you think we make conscious decisions rather than programmed ones. You tried to prove your assertion with an assertion.

Anyway, thanks for the comment. I enjoy the discussion. Idiot. ;)

You have to choose the level of perspective you’re going to use. On the level of the individual, each individual certainly feels free to choose their course of action. (For instance, if you bind someone up, or use the threat of force to compel their actions, they will almost certainly feel less free.) Thus, when the individual “decides” to do something, when they are least constrained and compelled by external factors, then that decision can be attributed solely to the individual.

But on a higher level, if you argue that the individual really has no choice because all of his actions were necessary due to the history of the universe up to that point, then by extension all the people around him have no choice but to condemn him, judge him, incarcerate him, etc. (And some of those people will have no choice but to reflect upon what they’ve done, and ask if it is Just.)

In summary, you are asking an invalid question. Value judgments can only be made if there is choice. So if you accept the reality of a giant cosmic machine that leave us no room for choice, then it is meaningless to speak of good or bad, virtue or evil, outside of it. Those concepts only make sense when viewed within the context that gives people the ability to choose their actions, even if those choices are illusory. Outside of that context, when we look at the giant, completely deterministic cosmic machine, the only valid statement would be, “It is what it is.”