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Real for who? Free will is obviously an extremely important subject since its the assumption behind most of our moral and legal system. You can of course ignor

Real for who? Free will is obviously an extremely important subject since its the assumption behind most of our moral and legal system. You can of course ignore it and just assume, however I am unconvinced that does anything good to our understanding of other people.

rocqua 10y ago
For the moral and legal system, 'Free will' is important because it means people are responsible for their actions. In that sense, a world where someone could have made a different choice is a world with less free will. After all, the choice they made was random, it wasn't inherent in their character. What matters here is agency. Did you act of your own volition, with your own agency? Or did someone else use their agency to manipulate you (threats, etc.). In this perspective, free will means that your choice depend on who you are (i.e. in the causal chain that lead to your decisions, your 'character' was of very large influence). In a materialist view, your character would be a property of your body. There is a gray area, as alluded to in the aricle, for those properties of your body you are not aware of, that play a large role in the decision process. (e.g. being cranky because of some indigestion)
- ThomPete 10y ago
  Not sure what you mean with it being random. It's not. The choices they made are based on previous choices they made. In that respect it's more akin to an evolutionary way of looking at our choices. You don't need to be manipulated by anyone else it might just be that you simply don't make the choices you think you do but that they are spread out over a much longer timeline.
  - rocqua 10y ago
    I was arguing for the existence of some conception of free will in a deterministic world (i.e. compatiablism). Specifically, I was arguing against the definition of free will where someone has a choice in the sense of 'they could have done something else'. This gets into a harry discussion about what 'could' means.
    - ThomPete 10y ago
      Ahh yeah. The way I look at it is basically and to oversimplify: We learn from our past never our present. As long as we survive the present that information gets used to update our reaction in the future. Sometimes large updates (once scorned, twice shy) other times incremental improvement (practice). Perhaps one could say that we dont have free will but things are not 10% deterministic either it's just not our consciousness who is running the show but the entire system.
jhanschoo 10y ago
> Free will is obviously an extremely important subject since its the assumption behind most of our moral and legal system. This statement can be argued. It seems sufficient to rationalize the current state of the legal system using principles that do not require free will. For example, we may consider it a systematic form of distribution to satisfy an instinctive need for vengeance and retribution, or for deterrence from acts that deprive us from our instinctive need to feel happy and safe. From this perspective, it seems like the legal system is perfectly tailored for a rational agent maximizing for these instinctive needs. On the contrary, it seems like a person having Schoenpauerian free will would do poorly by such a system, since a person with such free will wouldn't really care about satisfying their own need for vengeance or retribution, and should they find themselves on the wrong side of the law, would probably welcome their suffering as a demonstration of their freedom of will.
- ThomPete 10y ago
  Putting the death sentence on someone for a thing they arent in control based on the assumption that they were just as an example of the issue IMO.
- Digit-Al 10y ago
  I think such contortions are unneccasary. Surely it is much easier to say that if a person is committing what we call crimes because they have no free will and are pre-determined to do so, then we punish them for it because we have no free will and are pre-determined to do so.
  - ThomPete 10y ago
    Just because we don't have free will does not mean we don't have some will.

rocqua 10y ago

For the moral and legal system, 'Free will' is important because it means people are responsible for their actions. In that sense, a world where someone could have made a different choice is a world with less free will. After all, the choice they made was random, it wasn't inherent in their character. What matters here is agency. Did you act of your own volition, with your own agency? Or did someone else use their agency to manipulate you (threats, etc.). In this perspective, free will means that your choice depend on who you are (i.e. in the causal chain that lead to your decisions, your 'character' was of very large influence). In a materialist view, your character would be a property of your body. There is a gray area, as alluded to in the aricle, for those properties of your body you are not aware of, that play a large role in the decision process. (e.g. being cranky because of some indigestion)

ThomPete 10y ago
Not sure what you mean with it being random. It's not. The choices they made are based on previous choices they made. In that respect it's more akin to an evolutionary way of looking at our choices. You don't need to be manipulated by anyone else it might just be that you simply don't make the choices you think you do but that they are spread out over a much longer timeline.
- rocqua 10y ago
  I was arguing for the existence of some conception of free will in a deterministic world (i.e. compatiablism). Specifically, I was arguing against the definition of free will where someone has a choice in the sense of 'they could have done something else'. This gets into a harry discussion about what 'could' means.
  - ThomPete 10y ago
    Ahh yeah. The way I look at it is basically and to oversimplify: We learn from our past never our present. As long as we survive the present that information gets used to update our reaction in the future. Sometimes large updates (once scorned, twice shy) other times incremental improvement (practice). Perhaps one could say that we dont have free will but things are not 10% deterministic either it's just not our consciousness who is running the show but the entire system.

jhanschoo 10y ago

> Free will is obviously an extremely important subject since its the assumption behind most of our moral and legal system. This statement can be argued. It seems sufficient to rationalize the current state of the legal system using principles that do not require free will. For example, we may consider it a systematic form of distribution to satisfy an instinctive need for vengeance and retribution, or for deterrence from acts that deprive us from our instinctive need to feel happy and safe. From this perspective, it seems like the legal system is perfectly tailored for a rational agent maximizing for these instinctive needs. On the contrary, it seems like a person having Schoenpauerian free will would do poorly by such a system, since a person with such free will wouldn't really care about satisfying their own need for vengeance or retribution, and should they find themselves on the wrong side of the law, would probably welcome their suffering as a demonstration of their freedom of will.

ThomPete 10y ago
Putting the death sentence on someone for a thing they arent in control based on the assumption that they were just as an example of the issue IMO.
Digit-Al 10y ago
I think such contortions are unneccasary. Surely it is much easier to say that if a person is committing what we call crimes because they have no free will and are pre-determined to do so, then we punish them for it because we have no free will and are pre-determined to do so.
- ThomPete 10y ago
  Just because we don't have free will does not mean we don't have some will.