Free will vs determinism?

20 Comments

determinism: The doctrine that all events, including human action, are ultimately determined by causes external to the will.

Free will: The power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one's own discretion.

Which do you think is right?

I always thought free will, but then I started to question: when we choose something to eat, we have to eat what's available to us, something that will fill our hunger, something that we like. All external factors. Then we choose something that fits that criteria, where's the free will? The ability to eat ANYTHING?

Also, do you think you could go up to someone on a nearly empty bus and ask them for their seat? Whatever your answer was is it free will, or determined by your genes, behaviour? Because I could never convince myself to do that to someone on a bus, where's my free will??

Free Will 35
Determinism 18
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Comments ( 20 )
  • Ihadtomakeyetanotheraccountffs
    12 years ago

    It doesn't matter.

    It feels like we have free will, there's no way of knowing if we actually do or not, so let's just take it for granted that we DO have free will, so that there is a chance we can change things for the better.

    There's no point in worrying about this because either way there's nothing we can do about it. =)

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    • dom180
      12 years ago

      I totally agree. It doesn't matter whether we have free will or not. What we have feels like free will, so there's no sense in worrying about it.

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    • dappled
      12 years ago

      I agree with you too. I'm a staunch determinist and I don't believe we have free will, but it makes most sense to imagine that we do.

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      • Ihadtomakeyetanotheraccountffs
        12 years ago

        AFAIK there's no way of being sure. It's possible that we have unknown or inconceivable forces influences our decisions. But we might not.

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        • dappled
          12 years ago

          The only way to make sure would be to build a model of the Universe, but then the Universe would have to include the model, and so on, and so on. So yes, technically it's impossible.

          A lack of free will also makes the justice system a joke. People couldn't really be punished for anything if physics was solely to blame.

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          • D_revolting_enigmaaaaa
            12 years ago

            Awww dappled u are a terrible nemisis stfu akready

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            • dappled
              12 years ago

              I send my apologies to you on the wings of a thousand doves. I'll try to be a better nemesis. :)

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          • bananaface
            12 years ago

            I was actually watching a documentary about how the American justice system is changing so that a person can avoid death penalty if they have some sort of brain abnormality that would make them act the way they have.

            A man there now has to only do live sentence because his brain has all of the common traits of a psychopath:) Not really much of an improvement from death penalty:S

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            • dappled
              12 years ago

              It's an interesting point, isn't it? Personally, it's fascinating to me. Why do we punish the mentally ill for committing crime when it was the illness that caused them to do it? It's easy for me to suggest leniency but if someone raped my sister and said that it wasn't his fault that he couldn't control himself, then hmm.

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  • lisac1919
    12 years ago

    i dont know what i believe. i would love to beileve in free will but when you think about it almost every choice you make was formed because of something that happened in your past. and even if you chose to do the opposite of what you would have normally chose, your only doing that because you were reading about this somewhere, which is once again, an external factor.
    i dont know, i kind of believe the universe was made so intricatly and precise that having free will would somehow mess something up.

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  • x007bit
    12 years ago

    I think that maybe Dualism is the correct approach. Take into account quantum physics. Things can happen at random, but the possibility of these states occurring is determined by previous states.

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  • Rhuarc
    12 years ago

    Free will but I think that (this is me from my belief in God standpoint) we will ultimately choose one thing and that based on our behaviors, socio-economic status, ethics, etc. and that we will only choose one thing. This is how God could know the future and still maintain free will. Because ultimately we choose to be what we want but its sort of like we as humans already predetermine it.

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  • zenji
    12 years ago

    Neuroscientists suspect we don't have free will. The situation is no evidence for free will, right? I really wonder about this. I think not knowing the answer means we should be nicer to each other. Assume oneself does have free will, others do not.

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  • howaminotmyself
    12 years ago

    With both of these you are looking at the end result and not the journey it takes you on. Maybe it is determined, and maybe we have free will. Or maybe we have free will to choose determinism. Or maybe it is determined we will have free will. Will we ever know the truth? There aren't enough experiments one can do to see the whole range of possibilities.

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  • [Old Memory]
    12 years ago

    How does us having free will somehow negate fate?

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  • hiyer1
    12 years ago

    free will is deterministic

    It is the selection [by the individual] of a pre-determined set of possibilities, which well then lead to a pre-determined set of outcomes, and so on and so forth.

    asking whether its one or the other demonstrates an incomplete understanding of matter in our universe...though it is still good you are asking.

    If you want to graduate to higher levels of thinking, do not get caught up in false dichotomies and either-or fallacies...the universe is not that simple.

    -Hari

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  • [Old Memory]
    12 years ago

    Determinism; I believe in the String Theory.

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  • cuccobarn
    12 years ago

    There is no way to prove a causal link between the different factors and reasons for behaviour. For all we know, there could be some factor that we haven't even conceived of that affects our decisions. But I think that believing that everything is determined is a depressing world view. Can contrariness and spontaneity be determined?

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