Ambrosia Software Web Board: Free will - Ambrosia Software Web Board

Take a being unfettered by anything. A body, existence in a universe with laws, emotions, essentially anything that might limit free will. A theoretical being. Now ask, how much free will does this being have?

Our theoritical being has no free will whatsoever. Because of this complete unfettered existence, he has no *cause* to exercise his free will. He has no reason to do so.

To create free will, I would have to limit this being's 'free will' in some way.

So, free will is impossible.

Comments?

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There are only 3 kinds of people: those who can count, and those who can't.

I seem to remember a number 16th-19th century philosophers debating this exact topic to the point of schitzophrenia. The problem is that "free will" is an obscenely subjective notion. At it's base you can reduce it to the options one has to react to something, but those options demand a situation be present where a choice is required. It's a bit of a moot point, really.

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I thought up this line of reasoning when I was asked to write an essay about governments, and tried to play the devil's advocate. My argument was that if people have no innate independance anyway, then a police state (by restricting freedom) is only subjecting people to a different set of possibilities.

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There are only 3 kinds of people: those who can count, and those who can't.

[This message has been edited by Joveia (edited 05-03-2002).]

Ah, but that would actually restrict "free will" since it would certainly reduce ones options for reaction.

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In life, people are faced with limited choices all the time. It's not often by a police state though. Most of one's life, if not all of it, is spent simply reacting in an obvious way.

People already have their lives reduced by emotions. I'm convinced that emotions, the sexual drive, and alot of what the unconscious does is restricting what pseudo-free will people have (which I believe is to choose things logically in your own self-interest). I mean, how can emotions be for anything else than narrowing your options?

People have enslaved themselves before any police state can.

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There are only 3 kinds of people: those who can count, and those who can't.

I have a bike. I don't ride it because I have nowhere to ride.

Do I have a bike?

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Yeahhhh.....


And yet another of Joveia's meaningless topics

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Dye my hair black and call me a blonde!

I would say that there has to be something agaisnt this being to let there be free will. There has to be choices to have free will.

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And then there were the toe-socks...

This is a logical argument stating simply, that people need a restriction on free will to do anything. We're assuming that motivations (like boredom and artistic fervour) restrict free will. Over that, I think the most innate free will has to be just the chaos inherent in your brain. I believe it operates on a level that involves quantum unpredictability. So absolutely nothing can predict a human brain, in a 'pure' state. Emotions etc, would make things alot easier...

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Give it a rest... this topic is far more 'meaningful' than anything I remember you posting. If you don't like philosophy, go away.

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There are only 3 kinds of people: those who can count, and those who can't.

I have a whole slew of philisophical things I've thought up. However, the piece of paper that I've written most of them on isn't readily available, and this topic is about free will, so I won't be posting them here or now.

As far as free will goes, I don't really see how the whole idea of the topic relates to much. People do what they feel like, and they don't really need to wonder that much why they feel like doing what they do.

And I would say that the theoretical being has free will, but, as you said, has no reason to use it, so it doesn't (use it, that is). So, therefore, free will is entirely possible, it's just that the amount of it varies from situation to situation, and having a situation with no boundaries causes people to not use free will.

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"Cleanliness is evil. Embrace the mess!"

[This message has been edited by Mag Steelglass (edited 05-05-2002).]

No, he doesn't have free will. I don't think you realise it, that if you bound someone with absolutely nothing then they would still be bound by logic. The being in my theoretical world is bound by nothing except what is logical, that is to do nothing. Without logic, you have complete chaos. There is no free will in the universe, for you, or God.

You know, perhaps this is what Einstein was about when he quoted 'I'm more interested in whether God had choice in the form of his creation.'

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There are only 3 kinds of people: those who can count, and those who can't.

Joveia, I'm not sure if you've even pushed yourself far enough on this point.

If there is no free will, what is there? Nothing. Nothing is neither Order nor Chaos. Since you put Chaos as free will, and we've just said there was no free will, that leaves Nothing and Order. Order would be putting a limitation on something, which is what you're saying free will would be. That gets rid of Nothing and points it directly to Order.

Now, Order is something that others enforce on you, and that you enforce on yourself, be it Chaos or Order itself. Now where did they get that idea that they should be forcing these ideas on you? Order? Yes, but where did they come with this Order? It had to be planted from somewhere. That somewhere is Chaos, free will, being alive.

This Order that you've given to free will nullifies free will itself. Yet if you take away the Order, you are left with Nothing and Chaos. But there cannot be Nothing in a human or anything ever, for everything has the will to survive. So there is Chaos, which is Free Will. But there is an Order to this Chaos, because it gives itself a true equation in which things fit.

This must be the TRUE Order. But the TRUE Chaos crumbles it, for paradoxes are Chaos, and therefore beats out the TRUE Order. Hmmm... So for a brief moment in existence, TRUE Order has existed (or exists), but inevitably ending with TRUE Chaos.

So, free will does exist, because Order cannot exist in an environment where there is Chaos.

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Beware My Big Stick

I'm sorry, I stopped reading your post Kah as soon I saw you hadn't grasped what I meant. I'm not attacking free will, I'm attacking the notion of free will. It's a flawed concept.

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There are only 3 kinds of people: those who can count, and those who can't.

WHAT!?

That means you're attacking free will!

And I can see you have no free will, goosey. You Ordered fool.

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Beware My Big Stick

You are expanding seemingly irrelevant concepts up to gigantic proportions and then reciting them in a text no one (I think except you) can really understand.

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That sounds like child-like reasoning. Some of it's based on reality, most of it is based on your own wishy-washy world where anything is possible.

Now, if I am arguing against something, I am trying to disprove it. That means that the thing that I am arguing against exists, and is not some kind of illusion that I'm aware of. If it is an illusion, then I don't bother to argue about it, because there is no point. It's like an incorrect piece of reasoning, it has no basis in our world. I am trying to prove free will is an illusion.

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There are only 3 kinds of people: those who can count, and those who can't.

But how could you do such a thing? That's what I don't understand; that you have divine powers that allows you to go outside of all rules of everything and just simply figure it out.

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Beware My Big Stick

What I'm using to figure out free will is an illusion is not part of that which is involved in the illusion of free will?

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There are only 3 kinds of people: those who can count, and those who can't.

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Mmph, I spent a long time showing that that wasn't true. Chaos simply implies randomness, NOT a lack of order.

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