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Stephen Fry Would Like to Remind You That You Have No Free Will
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoDoes Stephen Fry have free will? If not, then in what sense would he "like to" remind us?
- dragonwriter 5y agoliking things is an emotional response, which does not require free will.
- jpcooper 5y agoYes, but he doesn’t just like, he _would_ like. The word would is a past-tense form of the verb to will. Checkmate.
- dragonwriter 5y ago> The word would is a past-tense form of the verb to will. Checkmate Here, its an modal verb modifying “like” into the subjunctive mood. Where it is a past tense of “will” its the other “will” (the modal verb expressing future tense or habitual action), not the active verb referring to exercising will (of which the past tense is “willed”, not “would”.) Although I've seen a usage (though I think its either actually archaic or an affected archaicism) in which the modal-active combination “would will” expressing exercise of will in the subjunctive mood reduced simply to just “would”, so “would” is sometimes used a form of the verb “to will” in the sense of “exercise will”, but, still, not in the use under discussion.
- jpcooper 5y agoOkay. I will concede.
- 4rt 5y agoI assume that was the whole reason for wording the title like that
- TylerLives 5y agoCan HN help me understand this: When people say that free will doesn't exist, is that a falsifiable position? What would it take to convince you that free will does exist?
- kiba 5y agoIt would help to consider if free will is a coherent notion in the first place.
- onceiwasthere 5y agoThis is what I always try to ask people. Is there even a possible definition of free will within the laws of physics? It seems to me to be blurry philosophy and nobody has the same definition. Not that it's invalid to talk about if there's no physical framework. But there's no scientific way we can talk about it that I've seen.
- AnimalMuppet 5y agoIf you accept that cause and effect holds in a closed system, then no, there is no possibility of free will. But within that viewpoint, everything we think of as making us human is dead. It's not just free will. Truth is dead. (You can't determine whether something is true, because you have no choice whether you believe it or not. All you can say is that you found the explanation convincing.) Morals are dead. (Both because you can't blame anyone for what they do, and because you have no ability to choose what you think is right or wrong.) Even love is dead, at least in the higher sense of choosing to do what's best for the other person, because you can't choose anything. And even in the lower sense of attraction, that's determined too. The problem is, this view really doesn't match with our experience of what it means to live as human beings. We experience deciding. We become convinced that things are actually true. We love and are loved. We know, from direct experience of living as human beings, that this is not who we are. This leaves a dilemma. Either our experience is wrong, or our initial starting point is wrong. Either the laws of physics are not what is "furthest back" (in Francis Schaeffer's term), or else we really are determined and our lived experience is an illusion.
- coward76 5y agoHe didn't have any choice in the matter.
- tharne 5y agoTypical BS vendor. I will guarantee that Mr. Stephen Fry does not live his life as if he has no free will, in which case he is just another fraud promoting ideas that he himself does not believe to be true.
- netizen-936824 5y agoAnd what does it mean to 'live as if one does not have free will'?
- tharne 5y agoIf one did not believe in free will, one would not believe in rewarding or punishing people, including criminals. It is not fair, reasonable, or productive to reward or punish people if their decisions are the result of some mechanistic process, rather than a decision that they made born of free will. That would be like punishing the weather for a tornado. My guess though, is that Mr. Stephen Fry does not believe that we should let serial rapists go unpunished or just open up all our prisons. If he believed his own words, these are exactly the kinds of things he would advocate for, since morality can only exist in a world with free will.
- hermitsings 5y agoI don't believe in free will.
- tanseydavid 5y agoIt seem that each time I read something about this claim it seems to distill down to a deterministic universe from a classical physics viewpoint. At the same time there are examples of non-deterministic classical physics described by various aspects of Chaos Theory and its "strange attractors" phenomena. What strikes me is that the folks arguing "No Free Will" appear to ignore the non-deterministic parts of classical physics. I do not know is whether this born out of ignorance or whether these folks have an agenda when it comes to trying to convince others that they do not actually have "free will."
- tanseydavid 5y agoAn example: release a Ping-Pong ball into the water at the top of Niagara Falls and tell me within one meter of accuracy where the ball will be relative to the banks of the river when it reaches 500 yards past the bottom of the falls. This is non-deterministic classical physics.
- netizen-936824 5y agoThat situation is absolutely deterministic. Its just so complex that it is nearly impossible for us to predict with current methods. That's also the current situation for behavioral neuroscience as well.
- feoren 5y agoChaotic systems and strange attractors are 100% deterministic, yet still unpredictable -- that's what makes them so interesting. Really, determinism vs. non-determinism seems to be missing the point. I wouldn't feel like I have any more free will if it turned out all my decisions were based on the outcome of a random die roll, for instance. Like so many philosophical discussions, it quickly devolves into an argument about definitions. What exactly is "free will"? How would the universe and my experiences in it be different if I had it vs. if I did not? If we're not debating about testable, falsifiable things, then we're just arguing about definitions of words.
- JALUK 5y agoThe issue of free will from a religious theological viewpoint is maybe what Fry is hinting at - Arminianism versus Calvinism ie. Free will v Pre-Destination. A person can be redeemed and change their life or they are simply born bad and that is allotted at birth and no matter what choices they make that is set in stone. Is a person born a psychopath, is it in the genes or is it nurture v nature?
- teslaberri 5y agofree will is a product of complexity turbulence. if a complex system can be disentangled to explain certain causes producing certain results, the system exhibits a form of laminar flow in time and space. otherwise it exhibits turbulence. while certain forms of turbulence appear indecipherable at first, it turns out some of the turbulence can be predicted by identifying vortex patterns. at the margin beyond those identifiable vortexes, lies the the volume in which entropy of turbulent flow goes asymptotic towards proveable non-decipherability. thats where free will is.in that volume. so free will might 'not exist' but still be comprised as an emergent property of provably undecipherable turbulence. if we can prove that causation can NEVER possibly be found, then we can express this as free will. god of the gaps. free will of the gaps. as such, even a bacteria may be found to have indetifiable free will in a number of studied circumstances. ypu may have to look in very fine detail to find it. find what? find the indecipherablr margin where the bacteria takes actions upon itself and its environment. animals most certainly can be found to have free will. the real question for human civilization is not whether we have free will. the big question is how we follow a code of ethics to hold people accountable and responsible for their actions. that is the bedrock of faith in our way of life. individually and together.
- anoncake 5y agoThe guidelines say "Please don't use uppercase for emphasis". Not "Please don't use uppercase except for emphasis".