Questions tagged [free-will]
for questions concerning the freedom of choice of rational agents (often as opposed to determinism)
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Queries and Thoughts on The Evolution of Free Will
I have been thinking on the differentiations between animal and man and it has yielded all but one viable point of divergence.
That point is free will. Not free will in it's typical chemically and ...
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Do we make informed choices or random choices?
In everyday life we have to make choices are we making informed choices or random ones.
I propose that in most circumstances in order to make a choice we have to way up our options then we make a ...
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Can Free Will be Explained?
Explanations are causal, at least to the extent that I'm aware. If I explain X then I basically identify and expand on the cause of X (if X involves an ontological claim the explanans is all about ...
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Is there a difference between will and free will?
In Leviathan, Hobbes argues that it is not the will that is free but that which exercises the will. So is there only will, exercised by beings who may or may not be free?
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Can anyone suggest a reading list for perspectives on aesthetics, specifically two dimensional visual art?
Can anyone suggest a reading list for perspectives on aesthetics, particularly visual art? I am interested in the critical interpretation of specifically two dimensional drawing and painting through ...
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Is the argument from freewill further supported by causal arguments
The argument from freewill is a paradox that can be loosely described as, if God is omniscient or all knowing then God subject's, man , cannot have freewill as the 'fate' or actions of man have been ...
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On the linguistics of math affected by freewill?
After thinking more about: Daniel Dennett's concept of free will as an equation of state?
I am super confused about the linguistics concerning mathematics. For example, "take the limit of x ...
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Daniel Dennett's concept of free will as an equation of state?
I was thinking of Daniel Dennett's concept of free will, in which he argues that our choices are the result of complex computations that take into account our desires, beliefs, and goals, as well as ...
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Freewill independent of determinism? [duplicate]
So I'm confused on how this is possible.
If determinism is true freewill does not exist:
If determinism is true, then every event has a cause, and every cause has a unique effect.
If every event has ...
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Is belief a choice or a state of being convinced with regard to a particular statement?
When presented a statement or argument x, and relevant background information B(x), what determines whether the listener's assent to the truth of x can be interpreted as a choice vs an induced state ...
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Would the kind of probability involved in strong/hard free will be non-unitary?
By "unitarity" I mean that the sums of the probabilities in the given cases would be 1. Non-unitarity would, I assume (for now!), allow for final negative probabilities as well as imaginary-/...
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Does compatibilism redefine free will?
In an essay titled "How to Think about the Problem of Free Will", Peter van Inwagen writes:
‘free will’, ‘incompatibilist free will’, ‘compatibilist free will’, and ‘libertarian free will’ ...
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Best arguments against compatibilism?
According to the 2020 PhilPapers survey, 59.2% of philosophers are compatibilists when it comes to the free will/determinism debate. Despite its popularity among professional philosophers, what are ...
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Is everyone's sense of power always predicated on diminishing that of someone else's? [closed]
Why think that everyone's sense of power always predicated on diminishing that of someone else's, and is it the case? I think the question isn't a trivial "no reason to think it".
power ...
user67675
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Is free will even experienced? If not, can this be evidence for epiphenomenalism?
Epiphenomenalism is the view that mental events are caused by physical events in the brain, but have no effects upon any physical events.
Many of the challenges to this view revolve around how it ...
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Is the existence of free will falsifiable?
Is the existence of free will falsifiable? A lot of people debate about free will, but it seems to me they do this by pure argument, not by scientific experimentation. Can some scientific experiment ...
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Does choice exist?
I've been thinking about a few legal quotes that have initiated my investigation into whether or not choice actually exists:
A "universal and persistent" foundation stone in our system of ...
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On the framing of causality?
So I shall restrict Nagarjuna's dependent arising of phenomena to the physical realm*. The source of my understanding is "Part Two, Chapter one - Examination of Conditions" of the book the ...
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Does philosophy, based on Archimedean solids, permit an infinite-face prism projecting a fifth dimension of infinite realities from a third dimension?
To quote the MIT work on the Hypershere: 'Considering that the largest Archimedean solid, the hyper truncated icosahedron, has over 14,000 faces, this object alone could contain within it an entire ...
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Schopenhauer and the 'ability to make decisions' as a metric for free will
I've been having a less than productive discussion with someone about perspectives on free will. I feel confident in my position, but experience has taught me that my confidence is often in direct ...
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What's the meaning and roots of the notion of "fault"?
This may sound naive and I'm not a native english speaker, but recently I've started wondering what people really mean by the notion of "fault", for example in the context of saying "it'...
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Why use a concept of free will in reasoning if it's unproven?
The concept of free will is indeed to much religious reasoning, yet its existence is still unproven. Using an unsubstantiated assumption to prove other conclusions is problematic from a logic ...
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What is the rigorous definition of free will?
What is the rigorous definition of free will? There has been, and will continue to be, a lot of debate around free will. These debates seem to go nowhere, and that is because (so I think, anyway) ...
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Fatalism vs Determinism vs Free-Will
To my understanding, physical causal Determinism means that if E is a physical event, then there is a physical event C such that C causes E. Fatalism means that if some event C happens, then any event ...
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Has this definition of free will been discussed before? ('free will' is the ability to act against instinct)
I want to preface this by saying I'm not a 'professional' philosopher. I like to ignore pre-existing ideas to make my own route as much as I can. As such, I'm not aware of who has written papers on ...
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How is decision making under libertarian free will meant to work?
Sorry if this question is stupid or answered in another post but I really can't imagine how people who believe in libertarian free will think decision making happens.
If I am meant to choose between 2 ...
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How do adherents to Plantinga's "free-will defense" against the problem of evil explain that God is free and immune to moral evil at the same time?
The free-will defense is an argument commonly attributed to Alvin Plantinga, who developed it as a response to the logical problem of evil. However, in developing this argument Plantinga unwittingly ...
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Eternal recurrence and free will
In rereading Nietzsche, I had a question: Is Nietzsche a determinist? As far as I understand from reading Beyond Good and Evil, it follows that it does not, for Nietzsche himself, as I understand it, ...
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Does Freudian/Lacanian psychoanalysis drives toward irrationalism and low self-control?
Presentation:
According to Freudian/Lacanian psychoanalysis:
Human behavior is partly driven by the subconscious. The subconscious is a kind of psychological black box, inaccessible directly by the ...
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Can beliefs be immoral?
Suppose a white supremacist to whom non-white races are inferior. Do they commit an immoral act insofar as they verbally or physically act on what they believe? Or is the belief itself immoral?
What’s ...
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How do philosophers answer the following question about a counterfactual notion of free will?
So let's assume that free will requires the ability to have done the opposite.
Suppose we abstract from the world (and from our mind) and can reproduce an event in the same conditions as given ...
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Brain states, morality and free will: What can we discern from the case of the schoolteacher who became a pedophile post-brain tumor?
Roughly 20 years ago, a disturbing story hit the news media: Nightmare experience for man whose cancer turned him into a pedophile.
The presence of an egg-sized brain tumour is claimed to have ...
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Might there be a Bell-like theorem for free will?
I suspect this question deserves to be closed on a number of grounds, but I am posing it anyway in the hope that some of you might find it interesting (most of the near duplicates were asked some ...
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When and by whom was the Strawsonian Framework extended to forward looking responsibility?
As I understand it, theories concerning forward-looking responsibility existed before Strawsons 1962 "Freedom and Resentment".
The Categorization of it as backward-looking and the ...
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Who sets the rules of society(*), and shapes the choices (we) make?
Free will as a concept implies that someone can act following set rules, or make other choices (breaking laws is included). But who sets legal choices? Society? Or society in dialog with individuals? ...
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A concept of strong free will that's able to be represented in category theory?
Are there any such things as category theories where the category is an indeterminist/postdeterminist form of free will? Let's say, maybe it is a category where each object is an object of choice, ...
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Does Hume undermine determinism? [closed]
The problem of induction (kind courtesy David Hume) states that causality isn't deductively justified.
Determinism, predicated on causality, isn't justified.
Ergo, free will is (at the very least) ...
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Philosophers answering "what happens to a society that does not believe in free wıll?"
The Scientific American article, What Happens to a Society That Does Not Believe in Free Wıll?, looks to answer the question from a research perspective and The clockwork universe: is free will an ...
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What is the definition of libertarian free will?
I've seen similar questions asked once or twice on here, but I wasn't able to find a satisfying defense of libertarian free will. The answers seemed to be kind of scattered. So, I wanted to make ...
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Relation between free will and consciousness
What is the relationship between consciousness and free will ? Many scientists think there is no free will.
And does free will mean a phenomenon not bound by cause and effect ?
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Pragmatism vs Truth: Does evolution prioritise one over the other?
Pragmatism:
Pragmatism is a philosophical movement that includes those who claim that an ideology or proposition is true if it works satisfactorily, that the meaning of a proposition is to be found ...
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The Mediocrity Principle, The Laws of Nature and Free Will
The Mediocrity Principle, though it had a very specific meaning when it was first stated, is now a more general principle the essence of which is not to assume "a phenomenon is special, ...
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Should one abstain from a behaviour because they know why they engage in it?
I'm 16, I don't study psychology in college, only biology, chemistry, physics and maths, but I find evolutionary psychology incredibly interesting, because it's the only psychological theory that ...
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Strawson on Free Will: What are the most persuasive challenges to his position?
There are arguments against free will and moral responsibility which rely on strict causal determinism and/or determinism modified by quantum randomness. Criticisms of these views raise doubt as to ...
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Is there any way existentialism can be compatible with the idea of free will being an illusion?
I just read another question from this website about free will, decided to ask my own rather than comment on another. I have no formal education in philosophy. I almost want to ask this question from ...
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Criminals the proof of free will?
Are criminals the proof of free will? They are told the law, not to steal, for example, but they do it anyway. Free will is independence from other agencies, governments, people, entities, etc. Does ...
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Systematic search for Free-will
I understand that you can't prove that free will does not exist; the old adage is that you can't prove a negative, but has anyone attempted to do a systematic search for proof that free will does ...
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Does libertarian free will necessarily choose the same thing every time?
Suppose libertarian free will exists. Say that a person is presented with choices A and B, and she chooses A. Then, her memory is wiped, and her brain, body, and surrounding conditions are reset to ...
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Value from arbitrary restriction vs value from sharing
Let's take a simplifying example to illustrate two opposite worldviews:
Some people see value in intangible things when access to these things is restricted as if sharing was leading to a value loss: ...
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Can a decision be something other than voluntary or involuntary?
I am attempting to construct an argument against free will.
An early objection has been raised, to the very first premise:
1. Decisions may be either voluntary or involuntary.
In Human Nature: the ...
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