Topic: Do Humans Have Free Will? - page 2. (Read 586 times)

The question of whether or not we have free will is unlikely to be settled. Personally I would argue (as others have in this thread), that it all comes down to physics, atoms moving in a certain way because other atoms have already moved in a certain way. In this sense, at the sub-microscopic level, everything is pre-determined... and yet at the everyday level we feel as though we can make free, conscious choices.

I think - much like the question of whether god exists - it is unlikely to be proven conclusively either way, and so in that case it is not the most important question in respect of how we live our lives.

I would say a more important question would be: should we live as if we have free will? The answer for me is a resounding yes. We should always be our best selves, make the most of every moment that we have. 'Determinism' shouldn't be used as a crutch to support laziness or poor behaviour. I could sit around in my underwear all day eating chocolate, doing nothing, and say it's not my fault, everything is pre-ordained. Or I could get up, go to work, be kind and generous and as nice a person as I can be, and act as if every decision and action was due to my own free will.

Living as if free will is real is simply the best way to live, and the most authentic.

IMHO all discussions about free will boil down to one idea: at the very last moment when you are making a decision to do something, how you know who picks a certain variant? If you are absolutely honest with yourself it's clear that this last decision just drops into your consciousness from nowhere like a letter into the postbox. So is there any free will at all? Obviously not. All ideas, thoughts, emotions just happen to us. We can only observe this process. 

The tetrahedron is the simplest of geometric forms that are greater than 2-dimensional. Check out the article at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrahedron to see the complexity of the tetrahedron as it sits in space.

The brain is full of patterns and geometric forms in the relationships of the atoms and molecules therein. These geometric forms impinge on space, itself, and form patterns that extend into dimensions beyond the 3rd-dimension.

People are built to understand the basics of how geometric forms work together, but we don't have any method for tracking what really goes on with these forms. This, however, doesn't mean that we don't use the forms in conjunction with each other, naturally, in our brains. In other words, we can live and move in all kinds of realms in all kinds of dimensions, but we will never be able to track the movement.

The whole thing is an operation is complexity that is so far beyond anything that we or science will ever be able to develop, that we might as well just use it, and not question it. If free will is within us, it has to do with geometric patterns that reach beyond time and space.

The human brain is full of mystery, years of studies conducted through the brain but we all only know small parts of it we still dont know how it actually works the mysteries behind. That question is indeed quite interesting we still have a lot to learn of the human brain but one thing is for sure human beings are capable of making decisions on their own. For example if a majority is doctrinated to believe in a one true god, one would realize that something is wrong with their belief and question it thus bringing him to a path of atheism.

The question is who they are contracts with. After all, none of the people who signed those contracts are still living. You can't impose a contract on someone else just because you feel like it.

The breaking of a contract is damaging someone who trusted in the contract. So, it's damaging his contractual property.

You don't seem to know that the contraction for "you are" is you're, not your.

your soo freeman narrow minded.
you are forgetting tresspass and contracts
yep the constitution is a contract. and so are elections

That's where the US type of government is different. The US is not a democracy. A democracy is majority rule... which is simply the majority imposing their free will on the minority.

The real US government is freedom for all people as long as they do not harm anyone or damage his property.

I think we have our free will. But as a whole, you can't impose your free will on others' free will. It is subject to the majority, which is good for the whole. In the end, our free will is subject to limitations IMHO. If we have no limitation, then each one is pushing their own agenda, self-interest and finally greed.

an athiest translation
the so called 'adams apple' is the thyroid gland in the throat area. which is the hormones which is the endocrine system which is the power behind the subconscious and conscious thoughts and making different organs function.
people and animals with thyroid issues have 'zombie' lethargic minds

cavemens thyroid function was low and they just acted on impulse mainly (low cognitive ability). with no real intellectual thought beyond basic desires and needs. evolution came when cavemens diets changed due to changes of animal/vegetation evolution to produce new fruits which fuelled the hormonal growth and their for made cavemen have more deeper thoughts and start planning their actions.

the subconscious mind is the impulsive automatic reacting side. many science people call the 'god' entity, peoples individual subconscious.. the conscious mind is the one which we make the choices from

EG your subconscious mind(god) is what you teach from as a child to automate thoughts like how to breath, walk and talk and then how to impulsively react to things like ducking when you hear loud explosions and not putting your hand into fire.
then your conscious(freewill) gets the ability to override the impulse and negotiate if the risk/reward benfits of choices to decide which option is best


...
any way because humans have more developed consciousness and fuelled by a better endocrine system we have more free will than other animals
that said we are not the only ones with free will. just some other animals have less free will because they are 'dumber'
and yes some humans who cant think straight and have trouble making their own choices feel like they have no free will. when in actual fact is they have less free will purely due to brain/body damage/disease/disability possibly due to birth defects or environmental impacts like diet, drugs or abuse.

this is why even courts recognise that some humans may not have the cognitive ability to defend themselves in court

Yes, humans have free will. That's not the point. The point is that free will isn't something that anyone knows much of anything about.

When you get up in the morning, and you choose which side of the bed you get out on, or you choose which color tie to wear, or you choose which kind of cereal to have for breakfast, or the route you will go to work today, this isn't free will. Something prompted you to make the choices that you make.

It all has to do with cause-and-effect. You were pushed in a direction, and you succumbed to the push. Even in the Lord's Prayer we see C&E. "Lead us not into temptation," because whatever way God allows us to be directed, that's the thing we will do. So, we continue to pray, "...but deliver us from evil," so that we don't do anything wrong and get hurt by it, through being directed into temptation.

Our free will has to do with some tiny part of us that is directed in the direction of God. It has nothing to do with what we call our free choices.

When our free will is in the direction of faith in God, God directs us this way. But when we are weaker in faith, God directs us that way. Thank God that He is trying to save us, and build us up in life. Otherwise we'd have a lot more trouble than we do.

Our free will is based on our faith in God. The decisions we make in life are promptings that God prompts us to make. But He does the promptings according to what He sees in our free will faith.

Free will is absolutely different than anything we understand. Our choices in this life are artificial free will, based on our real free will, and the way that God moves life according to our real free will.

Free will is about stating that you have free will, and feeling that you do, but having been programmed to state and feel this way.

alot of people think free will is about freedom. meaning do whatever you want without consequence. sorry but no

freewill is about having a choice. and ability to make choices
where some choices do come with consequences but you have the freewill to do it or not do it, but remember some choices do come with consequences

EG
being told at a bank to get down on the ground or be shot by a bank robber
you might initially think you are forced to get to the ground, meaning no fr will.. but actually you do have a choice..
A. get down on the ground.  
B. get shot
in fact you are not limited to the choices forced upon you.

you can also
C. get your gun out and shoot the robber
D. get gun out and say 'everyone get down were both robbing the bank' (winning the initial robber over to become your equal)
E. run for cover and find an escape
F. talk to the robber
g.h.i...  the list goes on

free will is about choice. but NOT having no consequence freedom

Is there anything called absolute freedom?
And can it exist without responsibility?
If we are created, causal beings, can we have absolute free will or limited?
I think we have the freedom to choose, but there is no absolute freedom to do bad things and destroy ourselves and our lives.
Absolute freedom and free will don't exist without responsibility,

Free itself is an ambiguous word. Free is never really free.
Free comes with terms and conditions. Set by others and our environment and unconsciously set by our own experience and ideology.
Emotions bring on hormones and hormones bring on emotions.
People perceives free differently. Because we are to some extent always influenced by the ideas we've taken in.  We are never 100% free.

It is indeed something to be thought about but then will I be willingly think about will-power or your post made me do it?!

Well this can be a little complex but if we think it alright, free will does exist maybe not in a way that we perceive but it does because the fact that the neurones and all those stuffs involved in making a decision that we call as free will should not be actually doing the stuffs.

I mean those chemicals that are involved in our thought processes, what makes them obligated to do that? Why would my brain which is made up of fundamentally electron, proton and neutrons which are obviously dead particles are obligated to perform the act of thinking or making a chemical arrangement to make the final decision of my will?

Maybe we don't have a free will as we say but in us there is something that does have free will that control us.

To be honest I believe in the butterfly effect which simply states that the future is actually totally dependent on the past and every action. So every action I take is reaction to the past. But it must have started somewhere? It can't just start from nowhere. And if it does then the cause of that origin can be said to have free will because the origin might not choose to be the origin of something and then nothing would exist. And then the origin itself wouldn't have existed but it did which means it had no choice except to make a choice, and the choice had only one option.

^^ Absolutely.

The thing we are lacking is a way to subjectively/objectively analyze the soul (whatever that is). It is in the soul where the true free will resides.

The second thing we are lacking is a way to analyze how God converts our soul's free will into the activity that our soul is choosing. Why, most scientists don't have any kind of a handle on what God really is. Many think that He doesn't exist.

Personally, I think that the connection of the soul to the body is in a recently discovered part of the brain. Newly Discovered Brain Region Helps Make Humans Unique - https://www.livescience.com/42897-unique-human-brain-region-found.html.

I think that this part of the brain controls shapes - like the tetrahedron - and those that are far more complex. The shapes are made out of electrons and protons - and other brain chemicals - and play on the structure of the emptiness that we call empty space, or nothingness... something that we commonly know very little about.

Free will is actually a controversial topic because what we have come to know as free will might have been fostered upon us by society, parent, economy, friends or government as the case maybe in our subconscious state. Some people have chosen a religion today thinking they have a free will to do that forgetting the fact that its actually because their parents are practicing that religion and have been raised in that path which means it was actually chosen for them. The same goes for the course other people study in school or the woman they marry, the career they followed among other things down to the political party one choose to support among other factors.

But the process of creation is what "free will" is described as. Whenever you choose to do something, like writing out the text you just typed, the decision on whether or not to write that was part of your "free will". How did you actually choose to write the post, though? Your cerebral cortex went through biochemical reactions which influenced your consciousness to create the post. On another note, free will tends to be more of an illusion more than anything. The feeling that you have when making decisions cloaks itself with the perception of free will when in reality its predicated on neuronal firings deep within the brain causing you to feel as if you're the one in control of the decisions you're making. The contemplation process isn't something that's organic or something that you can physically control.

Humans are (a little bit advanced) animals. Just like any other animal, they follow their instincts.

It is a very basic diagram:


source: https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html

Even animals want to experience "friendship, family, sense of connection", they only lack the top 2 parts of the pyramid.  (that's the part which makes us advanced)

One way or another we all follow this algorithm.