I know, irrelevant question right!
Well...sometimes I find a certain amusement/anything-elsement from asking not too relevant questions.
Good start on this discussion btw.
Thanks in advance for a good discussion!
See you around!
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I do not believe free will exists because every bit of evidence indicates our universe/multiverse is deterministic (meaning everything happens for a physical reason); when we think we could have done something differently, we actually couldn't. It is my destiny to write this post. Even though I feel like I have freewill, I know this feeling is illusory.
How would the absense of free will play in the court of law?
Alright, if you define free will as "being able to make choices completely independently from memory, environment, and any other variable" then, gun to my head, I would have to conclude that we do not have free will.
Sorry, I should have looked that up from the beginning. I read the title "...how would you describe it?" and assumed a more subjective approach to the definition. For the nature of our discussion, the philosophical one was definitely more appropriate.
Ok, well I still don't get it. Your definition of free will said nothing about action: (free and independent choice; voluntary decision). What is wrong about my definition? I said:
"I think of it as the ability to make conscious choices/decisions and give birth to desires"
I mean, certainly there is at least a little room for subjective interpretation of the definition of "free will"?
The proper definition?
will - verb. Intend, desire, or wish (something) to happen: "he was doing what the saint willed".
Yeah, I was using it.
-Nothing we know about conciousness leads us to believe that it is anything more than a function of our brain. Our brain(in collaboration with our body) is the only tool we have for understanding the world around us. The burden of proof would have to be placed on anyone trying to prove otherwise.
-Human beings are extremely complicated machines, but machines nonetheless. Our self-awareness puts us at a higher level of sophistication and complexity, but does not free us from the physical laws that govern the universe. Our memories are stored information. Our thoughts are not magic, they exist within our brains in a physical form.
-Nothing is truly random, everything has a cause. Chaos often appears to us to have a random nature, but that is only because we do not have the tools and/or intelligence to understand it.
-If we were to experience an identical situation one million times over in which we had to choose between two possibilities, we would inevitably make the exact same choice each time. The same neurons would fire, the same memories would be recalled, and the same thoughts would pass through our brain, leading to the exact same conclusion. The reason that we don't realize this is that none of us have ever been in the exact same situation more than one. Because of the ever-changing nature of the universe it can never happen. An immeasurable number of factors, both internal and external, change from second to second making it so that no circumstance is ever repeated. Even the mere passage of time leaves us and our surroundings irrevocably changed.
-Actual free will and the illusion of free will for a self-aware entity living in a deterministic universe are subjectively indistinguishable. The existence or nonexistence of free will must be worked out rationally, as any entity that is conscious of its own existence would most likely feel as if it had free will.
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