I think you can have this same dilemma as an atheist as well. I’m personally agnostic as I don’t have the knowledge to make a decision.
If we are all just atoms moving/reacting, surely everything we’d ever do would be predetermined by the initial reactions/vectors/forces at the big bang. I know there’s quantum randomness and stuff, but it’s possible that’s all calculable and we simply don’t have the means to calculate it. If that’s the case, IMO we still have freewill because we can’t predict the future, and it’s still worthwhile to move forward doing our best to be good people.
At least here in the US, a person’s zip code of birth is a huge indicator of their success and life trajectory. That, to me, would seem to indicate that free will is bullshit.
Hmm almost as if free will isn’t some magical ability to remove yourself from any disadvantageous situation, but a fundamental liberty to choose how you act in response to said situation and see in it a metaphysical meaning that transcends cultural ideas like success? Damn, wouldn’t that be crazy. If only that was true, could you imagine?
Not sure that’s true. Free will doesn’t mean anyone can do anything. It means any decisions a person makes are truly decided by them, and they actually could have made a different decision.
People who don’t believe in free will believe that the physical laws of the universe are deterministic. That leptons and quarks behave in ways determined by their state. That this is true even inside your brain, and thus decisions you make are actually just the result of particles interacting. Even quantum effects, though random, are not consciously decided and thus do not affect free will.
The circumstances you are in change the inputs to those equations, but they don’t change the fact that the equations exist.
Or in other words, “free will” is a macroscopic effect arising from the fundamental laws of the universe. Like most everything else we deal with.
Like… temperature doesn’t really exist, it’s really just an average of kinetic energy of particles. But that doesn’t stop it from being a useful concept!
I reckon we are so incredibly complex, are integrating so much information that from inside it’s hard to see if you’re deciding or selecting by rule your preferred path given what you know
You can call the complexity free will, we’re all so different having had different parents, different childhood experiences, different education, different opportunities so each has their own solution that rises to the top in any situation
But also brain scans have demonstrated that for minor stuff (like raising your hand) action precedes “deciding” to take the action.
Why are we better off behaving that way? Under that outlook, it seems like free will is a trap to hold people accountable for things they wouldn’t actually be responsible for.
It’s also very often used as an argument against rehabilitation in prisons:
If free will exists, then crime is a choice. If you choose crime, you are a bad person, and punishment is the only way forward.
If you commit the crime again, it’s because the punishment didn’t work, and/or because the person is simply bad, so a longer punishment is needed, and infinitum.
It’s also used to justify the death penalty, which would not make any sense in a deterministic universe.
If you’re a complex machine whose action could be perfectly predicted (with full knowledge of everything you ever experienced) it’s still reasonable to punish you for breaking rules - the risk of punishment goes into your programming as part of the (deterministic) calculation of what action to take
Because one of the many inputs to people’s actions, if we assume that their actions are deterministic, is their knowledge of how other people will respond, and how they have responded to similar things in the past.
That’s not a dilemma for atheists because atheists aren’t the ones claiming there’s an omnipotent being guiding everything.
Also, you can be both an atheist and an agnostic. They cover different things. I’m fairly certain you’d consider yourself an atheist in regards to the sun god Ra.
I think you can have this same dilemma as an atheist as well.
I’d like to hear your opinions on how you think so (truly). The way I see things, Atheism is only the answer to a single question: do you believe in any gods? If “yes,” you’re a theist or deist. If “no; I don’t know; not currently; maybe one day,” then you’re an atheist. It’s not a philosophy or a comprehensive worldview, and it can’t possibly answer deeper questions.
What you’re referring to in the latter half is Determinism and Compatibilism (Determinism + free will). Science is currently leaning pretty strongly towards Determinism, but since Compatibilism doesn’t add much more to the idea, it’s also still a candidate possibility.
It’s very likely you could calculate every chain reaction from the Big Stretch up until now and maybe even into the future. Whether we have the ability to affect or disrupt those chains might be a matter of philosophy.
God having a plan vs. everything being calculable to us is practically the same thing, no? Either way, it’s still best to act within your moral framework, religious or atheist because it’s just better to be a good person. I think me calling it a dilemma for either side is a stretch.
God having a plan vs. everything being calculable to us is practically the same thing, no?
No. A supernatural conscious agent with intent (e.g. a god) planning and orchestrating every quantum-interaction is not the same as humans documenting or even predicting extremely complex chains of physical reactions.
Either way, it’s still best to act within your moral framework, religious or atheist because it’s just better to be a good person.
Agreed. Whether Determinism is true only gives credence to philosophies like cosmic nihilism, and being a cosmic nihilist myself, it doesn’t matter that much whether my actions have purpose beyond now. It feels good to be kind, I know how it feels to be hurt, and so I try to do as much of the former and as little of the latter as possible.
That’s not how predetermination works. Just because there is an explosion does not mean that every particle has a preset location it must reach to enact a grander outcome of the combustion. Atheists don’t suffer from a need to have decisions rendered by an omnipotent being or a universe that is some stand-in for that being. There is no grand plan. The Big Bang was not some kick off for a well thought out schematic.
I never meant to imply it was. I was simply stating that with a hyper advanced understanding of chemistry it’s possible that everything in the universe could have been predicted up to this point by an infinitely well programmed/powerful computer or whatever. Because in my head, that’s theoretically possible, it’s also possible everything is predetermined, not by some grand scheme or designs, but just predetermined by random chance.
I don’t think we know enough about the universe yet to be sure that cause/effect is 100% the be all end all. It sure seems like it is from where we’re standing now though, that’s for sure.
But did you choose which atoms make up you? I think there is no free will because we’re don’t choose out of all options what atoms we get, we are just thrown into a random atom combination.
True true, but if there is genuinely quantum randomness, then the reactions those atoms go through aren’t predetermined, so the initial conditions could be on an individual basis, but not the long term.
It’s “free will” vs determinism (or other options).
The problem is that our entire violent society is based on the pseudo-scientific, religious concept of “free will”. It’s what has justified prisons, etc. since the dawn of the christian fascism.
I think you can have this same dilemma as an atheist as well. I’m personally agnostic as I don’t have the knowledge to make a decision.
If we are all just atoms moving/reacting, surely everything we’d ever do would be predetermined by the initial reactions/vectors/forces at the big bang. I know there’s quantum randomness and stuff, but it’s possible that’s all calculable and we simply don’t have the means to calculate it. If that’s the case, IMO we still have freewill because we can’t predict the future, and it’s still worthwhile to move forward doing our best to be good people.
My take is that there is no free will, but that this fact is irrelevant and we’re all better off just behaving as though we do.
At least here in the US, a person’s zip code of birth is a huge indicator of their success and life trajectory. That, to me, would seem to indicate that free will is bullshit.
Hmm almost as if free will isn’t some magical ability to remove yourself from any disadvantageous situation, but a fundamental liberty to choose how you act in response to said situation and see in it a metaphysical meaning that transcends cultural ideas like success? Damn, wouldn’t that be crazy. If only that was true, could you imagine?
deleted by creator
why would that be a problem for free will?
all it shows is that we cannot freely choose everything, it does not prove that we are not ever able to freely choose.
Not sure that’s true. Free will doesn’t mean anyone can do anything. It means any decisions a person makes are truly decided by them, and they actually could have made a different decision.
People who don’t believe in free will believe that the physical laws of the universe are deterministic. That leptons and quarks behave in ways determined by their state. That this is true even inside your brain, and thus decisions you make are actually just the result of particles interacting. Even quantum effects, though random, are not consciously decided and thus do not affect free will.
The circumstances you are in change the inputs to those equations, but they don’t change the fact that the equations exist.
Or in other words, “free will” is a macroscopic effect arising from the fundamental laws of the universe. Like most everything else we deal with.
Like… temperature doesn’t really exist, it’s really just an average of kinetic energy of particles. But that doesn’t stop it from being a useful concept!
I reckon we are so incredibly complex, are integrating so much information that from inside it’s hard to see if you’re deciding or selecting by rule your preferred path given what you know
You can call the complexity free will, we’re all so different having had different parents, different childhood experiences, different education, different opportunities so each has their own solution that rises to the top in any situation
But also brain scans have demonstrated that for minor stuff (like raising your hand) action precedes “deciding” to take the action.
Why are we better off behaving that way? Under that outlook, it seems like free will is a trap to hold people accountable for things they wouldn’t actually be responsible for.
It’s also very often used as an argument against rehabilitation in prisons:
If free will exists, then crime is a choice. If you choose crime, you are a bad person, and punishment is the only way forward.
If you commit the crime again, it’s because the punishment didn’t work, and/or because the person is simply bad, so a longer punishment is needed, and infinitum.
It’s also used to justify the death penalty, which would not make any sense in a deterministic universe.
If you’re a complex machine whose action could be perfectly predicted (with full knowledge of everything you ever experienced) it’s still reasonable to punish you for breaking rules - the risk of punishment goes into your programming as part of the (deterministic) calculation of what action to take
Because one of the many inputs to people’s actions, if we assume that their actions are deterministic, is their knowledge of how other people will respond, and how they have responded to similar things in the past.
John Calvin approves.
Yeah. It’s a fair take, and this is generally what I was getting at.
Robert Sapolsky wrote a whole book on this based on this called Determined. I really enjoyed it and pretty much agree
That’s not a dilemma for atheists because atheists aren’t the ones claiming there’s an omnipotent being guiding everything.
Also, you can be both an atheist and an agnostic. They cover different things. I’m fairly certain you’d consider yourself an atheist in regards to the sun god Ra.
I’m mostly agnostic to it almost all of it. For all I know, the ancient Egyptians were spot on.
I’m convinced it’s impossible for us to determine whether there are two gods or not.
I’m a diagnostic.
Damnit, I just finished watching Alien Romulus and that’s a dad joke worthy for the android in it.
I’d like to hear your opinions on how you think so (truly). The way I see things, Atheism is only the answer to a single question: do you believe in any gods? If “yes,” you’re a theist or deist. If “no; I don’t know; not currently; maybe one day,” then you’re an atheist. It’s not a philosophy or a comprehensive worldview, and it can’t possibly answer deeper questions.
What you’re referring to in the latter half is Determinism and Compatibilism (Determinism + free will). Science is currently leaning pretty strongly towards Determinism, but since Compatibilism doesn’t add much more to the idea, it’s also still a candidate possibility.
It’s very likely you could calculate every chain reaction from the Big Stretch up until now and maybe even into the future. Whether we have the ability to affect or disrupt those chains might be a matter of philosophy.
God having a plan vs. everything being calculable to us is practically the same thing, no? Either way, it’s still best to act within your moral framework, religious or atheist because it’s just better to be a good person. I think me calling it a dilemma for either side is a stretch.
No. A supernatural conscious agent with intent (e.g. a god) planning and orchestrating every quantum-interaction is not the same as humans documenting or even predicting extremely complex chains of physical reactions.
Agreed. Whether Determinism is true only gives credence to philosophies like cosmic nihilism, and being a cosmic nihilist myself, it doesn’t matter that much whether my actions have purpose beyond now. It feels good to be kind, I know how it feels to be hurt, and so I try to do as much of the former and as little of the latter as possible.
That’s not how predetermination works. Just because there is an explosion does not mean that every particle has a preset location it must reach to enact a grander outcome of the combustion. Atheists don’t suffer from a need to have decisions rendered by an omnipotent being or a universe that is some stand-in for that being. There is no grand plan. The Big Bang was not some kick off for a well thought out schematic.
I never meant to imply it was. I was simply stating that with a hyper advanced understanding of chemistry it’s possible that everything in the universe could have been predicted up to this point by an infinitely well programmed/powerful computer or whatever. Because in my head, that’s theoretically possible, it’s also possible everything is predetermined, not by some grand scheme or designs, but just predetermined by random chance.
Apologies if I’m using the incorrect phrasing.
I don’t think believing in fate (or a plan) is strongly correlated with atheism
I don’t think we know enough about the universe yet to be sure that cause/effect is 100% the be all end all. It sure seems like it is from where we’re standing now though, that’s for sure.
But did you choose which atoms make up you? I think there is no free will because we’re don’t choose out of all options what atoms we get, we are just thrown into a random atom combination.
True true, but if there is genuinely quantum randomness, then the reactions those atoms go through aren’t predetermined, so the initial conditions could be on an individual basis, but not the long term.
It’s “free will” vs determinism (or other options).
The problem is that our entire violent society is based on the pseudo-scientific, religious concept of “free will”. It’s what has justified prisons, etc. since the dawn of the christian fascism.
Scientifically the problem is that there’s not much evidence for “free will”. It’s largely an illusion of consciousness.