i don't see why people think its a problem. it seems fairly obvious that there is no such thing as free will. just because humans dislike the fact that thats the case do sent change the fact.

if more humans actually rolized that there is no free will then thay would stop congratulating them selfs on stupid things. and maby injoy life for what it is. and strive to make it more enjoyable

something more interesting to debate and philosophize over is the concept of ideas. what are ideas where do thay exist what are ideas constructed from.

yeah but if they don't have free will then they had no free will about worrying about free will

I would recommend reading Daniel C. Dennetts book "Freedom Evolves". Free will is both possible and real, thanks to the evolution of our mental ability to simulate future events based on previous experience. Our will is constrained, of course, but it is free enough to allow for praise and blame in moral terms. I used to be a hard determinist when I studied philosophy, but this book changed my mind (and my life).

Dan Gilbert presents this concept very neatly in this video on happiness and choice from TED Talks:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7822696446273926158&q=ted+talks&total=1146&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=5

simulations do not mean free will, the simulations themselves must have a a degree of freedom, or we must be free from them for there to be free will.
I haven't read the book I but i really don't like biology entering this field

Hey Westy, i admire your change to regular typing. Finally i can really read your comments. I'm not making fun, i'm serious: Good decision!

i watched a lecture by Daniel C. Dennett and although i agree there is the posablity for free will it seems less intuitive to me ( not that i know everything and im obviously basing this on my limited knowledge and sciences limited knowledge on the subject matter) another thing that relates to free will ore rather points to how nonsensical the universe could be is the old argument about infinatly devisable items sutch as time ( i reolise the concept of non limited things are probably simply due to us evolving on our perceivable plane of exsistance) interestingly there is a budist philosophy based around the idea of us not having anny point in time to exist ( if exsistance is defined as conchoise awareness) it seems to me that there is a mounting amount of evidence to sajest that time is erelivent and there for all actions and posablitys have alredy happend/not happened at the same "time".

my spelling is only ok because i work now and hence have word open most the time to spell check. also it depends on the post and how much i feal like putting the effort into spelling.

Though I think that many of our thoughts and actions are heavily influenced by things like our gender, our home life, and our cultural environment, etc., I'm pretty much in the "free will" camp. Yes, we do make our own choices. Yes, we do have significant control of our destinies.

I chose to write the words above. I chose to contemplate the notion of free will versus determinism. If I were nothing more than a vessel of some grand, predetermined mechanism that had itself decided, billions of years ago, to write those words - what would be the point of it all?

Why would we try to do anything if it was already written?

Isn’t the joy of a first kiss never having kissed before?

Whence doubt, if it is all out of our control?

*Science
*Religion
*Talks
*promote

Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Tuesday, August 14th, 2007 6:00am PDT - promote requested by gwiz665.

Adding video to channels (Religion, Science, Talks) - requested by gwiz665.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'sosa, linklater, waking life, physics, will' to 'David sosa, linklater, Waking Life, Free Will, Determinism, Philosophy' - edited by gwiz665

I like this, but I think that he oversimpifies quantum mechanics in order to prove his point just a tad. I'm all for agency and I think that strict determinism is bogus. In fact, I tend to believe that strict determinism has been soundly disproved by cosmogony.

Westy, it is interesting to me that you think that the idea of free will is counter-intuitive. I would think that the opposite is true. Agency is our most intimate experience every minute of our lives. To believe that we don't have free will is to suggest that your very mind's existence is an illusion. It also releases us from moral accountability and negates any purpose to our lives, which would really suck bigtime. Everything that is important to you doesn't matter. Your mom's mind doesn't actually exist. She's just a complex, pre-determined machine. Ick. If that's not counter-intuitive, I don't know what is.

I was almost hoping that Rougy was on the side of determinism so that everytime he gets amd at me I can say, "Don't blame me! I'm just a complex machine and had no choice in the matter!" Cheers for believing in your own mind, Rougy.

The Emperor's New Mind by Roger Penrose is a good one.

http://www.amazon.com/Emperors-New-Mind-Roger-Penrose/dp/0140145346

Well worth $5

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fI1624SwYnI

As a physicist myself it seems likely that there is really no such thing as 'free will.' That's not to say that the initial conditions of the universe would result in there even being an Earth, much less you deciding to come to videosift.com again if everything were done all over again; that is the definition of a chaotic (that is, non-deterministic, which the universe clearly is) system.

That said, our illusion of free will is a nearly perfect illusion. No one has knowledge of himself being controlled by circumstance and an inevitable sequence of particle collisions. So, what is the difference? How do you define free will?

A person can only play out any instant in time once, and with every instant he has the perfect illusion of being in control of his choices. He never has the chance to play out that instant in time again, so he of course can't test whether or not he could force himself make a different decision. So what is the difference between this being governed by probability and being governed by some ephemeral non-physical free will? It's not even that it is a question with no answer; it is a meaningless question.

The only sensible thing to do is to simply lead life as if you are free. Or don't, if that's how you're programmed. Whichever.

To believe that we don't have free will is to suggest that your very mind's existence is an illusion. It also releases us from moral accountability and negates any purpose to our lives, which would really suck bigtime. Everything that is important to you doesn't matter. Your mom's mind doesn't actually exist. She's just a complex, pre-determined machine. Ick. If that's not counter-intuitive, I don't know what is.


Ummm but if it is true then the world doesn't change. The past still happened the same way it happened. The future still happens the way it was determined. Mum still buys you a gift on your birthday. Nothing changes regardless of your acceptance of it. If it comes into your awareness as a truth, it was already determined and life goes on? Makes me think about Sisyphus. Surely there is potential to find a greater freedom in knowing the predicted future than an uncertain one? Release from futile tasks and acceptance of reality?

"The struggle itself...is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy." - Albert Camus


Personally I am still in contemplation on the issue so can't offer any decent argument. I do find it odd however that we look toward history in awe but if the future was written it is apparently a disaster. But then again I did always like to try to work out my pressies before Christmas Day

Hard determinism is impossible. (Ignoring quantum mechanics, but it doesn't change the argument.)

If we're all a collection of particles following very precise rules of physics, then it is possible to collect all the information about a system and simulate it into the future. However, if we know the future, then we can do the exact opposite. (The formal proof of this is based on the Halting problem.)

Imagine, for example, the entire universe consisted of a billiards table and a single pool ball on it, slowly bouncing around, with no entropy loss. There's a small sensor, motor, and processor inside the billiard ball. It's not especially fast, the sensor records the position of all the atoms in the universe, and the processor runs a simulation of every atom in the universe, and concludes that in 10 years, it will finally bounce into a pocket and come to a stop. It then gives a command to the motor to move the ball slightly, so that it does not go into a pocket.

The ball will never go into a pocket that it is predestined to enter.

Where will the ball eventually end up? It is undefined.

My hunch is that that is the space where Free will could be lurking.

It's hard to show how Free Will could be possible, but since hard determinism is logically impossible, we're only left with possibilities that do not include hard determinism.