Is Free Will just an illusion?

[Farael the Fallen]

I like to be naive about this. If I am not imprisoned, then I am free to come and go at will. I may be confined to bed by illness, or I may be confined to a cell at her majesty's pleasure. My freedom, however, extends to anything that is determined by my will, and not by circumstance. To pretend that there is no difference between being confined and being unconfined is merely to refuse to engage with the topic. The philosophical difficulty is that one has to believe that the past is completely determined, and that will completes this determination; but one has also to believe that one's decisions remain undetermined until one determines them. One can only decide anything on the basis that the decision is efficacious. There is a sense of 'determine' that means 'to find out'. Imagine the world as a computer game - fully determined in its internal workings, but requiring input from the player via a controller. These posts don't write themselves, do they?

[Kyer]

If free will is an illusion then life itself is pointless.

[Farael the Fallen]

If free will is an illusion then life itself is pointless.

I hope I don't have to define Freewill but what I understand of it is that to possess it one must be able to make choices without being influenced by anything. Freewill is usually contrasted with determinism which is the belief that the any state of affairs is causally specified by what comes before it. What is of note is that to understand x we need an explanation y and, the fact is, ALL explanations are causal in nature and that means, to explain freewill (necessary to comprehend it) we need to construct a causal model of it. That, it seems to me, is deterministic in flavor from the get go which Freewill, if extant, is NOT supposed to be. Do you agree, then, that Freewill can't be understood because it can't be explained since that would require a causal (deterministic) model?

[MyriVerse]

Nah. That isn't free will. Of course, there are things that limit the choices, but you always have choices. All ways. And that is free will.

[MajorHoy]

Is Free Willy an illusion?

[Adam Allen]

Nah. That isn't free will. Of course, there are things that limit the choices, but you always have choices. All ways. And that is free will.

That's just it ... you can come up with an abstract concept that you call "free will", and conclude through the conditions you've set that the concept is impossible, or debate unto infinity about whether it's possible or not. And consideration of abstracts definitely has utility -- a lot of advancement of the human condition has absolutely depended upon it.

Agreed with you tho, we shouldn't get too carried away with it. In the immediate experience of life, of existence, we always have a choice. Even if all of the choices are lousy, or even if we ultimately choose to do nothing. We have agency in the immediate. So yes, we have free will. Unavoidably, even. What you do is always up to you, even if you'd rather it wasn't.

Maybe that's what the whole deterministic thing is about? "It's ultimately not my fault if I'm a lousy human being, because the sheer weight of human history and physical science and billions of other living creatures have made determined I must be, and besides thinking I could choose otherwise is only an illusion anyway?"

Isn't the whole mythos of the superhero kind of the antithesis of all that, tho? The whole "with power comes responsibility" thing?

[ermac]

If free will is an illusion then life itself is pointless.

bingo! bingo!

[Duskman]

There isn't, if you extrapolate both scientifically and spiritually far enough.