Do Humans have free will?
MadManLee
Banned
in General Chat
I read a article on Listverse ( a highly respected accurate site) which said a group looked at lot of studies in whther or not humans have it, and concluded the without a doubt Humans DO NOT have free will. What do you think of this?
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Yes of course.
People make the choice to wake up in the morning or go back to bed. How is that not choice?
No, we don't.
Why is that? I choose to do what i want, when i want.
I believe there are things that influences decisions that we make.
That might be true, but you still have the choice to make it. For example say you really want to eat cereal in the morning, and you come home and there is pancakes , eggs, whatever sitting there already cooked. Your parents ask you to eat said breakfast, you have the choice to ignore their request and eat the cereal or eat what they prepared for you.
Personally I find it hard to believe that we have free will. In order to have free will I think it would require that we have an immaterial portion of our consciousness which there is no reason to believe is true. But I don't think this should change the way we view choice making (e.g. people that do actions that are harmful to others should still be held accountable for those actions).
Humans in general? Yeah sure we have free will. We can do whatever we want, but choose to limit ourselves, unless it's under the laws of physics. We can think we're just being manipulated everyday to think and act a certain way everyday, but really we could choose to go against at anytime, just could be scary to do so. The fear of the unknown and all that.
But is there any reason to suspect that the outcome you eventually came to was anything but the only possible outcome? The illusion of choice in the human conciousness doesn't necessarily mean there was an alternative.
If I want to be yelled at, sure.
*That is if I were to eat something else than what is prepared.
Of course we have free will.
Not really.
Everyone has constraints, be they physical, mental, economic or moral. As a half-blind person, I realized earlier than most that "you can do anything you set your mind to" is just a platitude. I felt angsty about it for a time, but it really doesn't bother me anymore. I just play the hand I've been dealt.
It's neither 100% or 0%, but quite frankly, it's a relatively useless question - if we have it, there's no point in arguing, and if we don't, then there's nothing we can do about it.
This is the theory I agree with, which is called determinism and no, it doesn't say you can't make choices for yourself, but that you would make that choice no matter what because it was already determined you would do so.
In other words, it says that everything in nature has a cause, and so does human behavior. So if two twins were nurtured in isolated rooms in the same conditions (same breastfeeding times, identical people taking care of them), they would have exactly the same personality when they grew up. It basically says that what makes humans what they are is the world around them and not themselves, which could bring a lot of questions for religion if proven.
We do.
I believe we have the free will to do any thing we want but we're either too lazy or scared or even both to do said things.
Yeah, how do you know that decision isn't entirely based on your arousal, genetics, environment and experience?
Spoiler alert: it's not.
I've studied neuroscience for years... hate to break it to everyone, but I truly believe free will is entirely an illusion.
Does it matter?
I read this as "do humans have free wifi?
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How has your studies solidified this theory for you?
I think we have free will but society pressures us to believe along a path that is normal, or acceptable. Some people can be happy being guided, others like to branch out more.
But remember, physical, mental, and emotional limits due exist. So ... as the saying goes, "You can do anything you set your mind too." Is BS, you can't do everything, but you can do something. Which is better than doing nothing.
Besides, you had the freedom of choice and the free will to ponder such an idea. You do have it to a degree I believe.
OH GOD
Please not this topic again. Please.
Well between all the stuff on genetics, experience, and how your brain works and responds to things, it's hard to see where free will fits in with all of this.
Mostly because it doesn't match with how the brain really works. That's... complicated, but basically, your unconscious brain, if you can call it that, influences a lot of your decision making. The thoughts you are conscious of are often post-hoc or you just making sense of your own decision making. Or, let's put it this way. There's a lot of evidence you are basically born or eventually hardwired for things - even some evidence that they are very specific, such as liking roller coasters or soft serve ice cream http://www.correlated.org/70. If biology determines such specific, superficial preferences, it definitely also affects the big things. Indeed, how you are born and with what genes you are born with can reasonably determine every major aspect of your life - your wealth, your health, your happiness and personality, your job, whether or not you are single, your sexual orientation, your political orientation, the things you are likely to have in your home - everything correlates with genetics and experience http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/mar/19/do-your-genes-determine-your-entire-life.
Moreover, genes predispose people to certain experiences, and, remarkably, experiences and your environment can even affect your genetic structure through microRNA and such - http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/dna-is-constantly-changing-through-the-process-6524898. So everything is connected to your biology and your environment. Even little things, like your favorite colour can be affected by this - http://scicurious.scientopia.org/2010/05/17/what-is-your-favorite-color/
There's more. Like I said, it was years of readings and different papers that led me to this conclusion. I could go on and on about it. I tried to post reader-friendly articles as opposed to the technical papers where I get most of this from.
I look at things on two levels when it comes to reality: these being Objective reality and Percieved reality. Objective reality, I define, as being that around us and everything that pertains to it. Perceived reality, I define, as being what we interpret from objective reality. Case in point, objective reality dictates that the Mona Lisa is a peice of wood with layers of paint on it. Perceptive reality, however, dictates that the Mona Lisa is a portrait of a renaissance merchant's wife. In short, reality exists independently from conciousness.
Objectively, everything that happens follows the rules of cause and effect. Perceptively, we do what we wish to and our decisions are our own.
What field are you in?
Cognition. Or I was, but I've basically left the field. The material was cool, academic culture just doesn't suit me.
Too cut throat? Why didn't you enjoy it?
"Cut throat" isn't the word I would describe it as. It's a very tedious work, with a job market that's just awful. I don't like the climate of grants either and I think it biases researchers in a very negative way, too.
When people say "free will," what do they mean to say that their will is "free" from? The influence of others and the environment? As though a decision only counts as your own if it ignores everyone and everything else and is only based out of your own internal thought process? As though your own internal thought process isn't itself a product of the people and environment you grew up with interacting with your genetically-determined brain?
The concept of free will comes from the idea that the human mind can exist and operate separately from the rest of the world, a viewpoint that is unscientific and egocentric. All "you" are at any given moment is your brain state, and all your brain state is is an electro-chemical interaction between your brain (which is part of the world) and its environment (which is also part of the world). So there is no such thing as "you" and "the rest of the world." There's just "the world." And whatever will you have is just as much a part it as anything else. There's no "freeing" yourself from it.
I do believe humans have free will.
I don't know honestly.
I do believe that the scientists tend to be a bit arrogant. Publishing their every experiment as 100% accurate.
Let's say, they prove that the bananas are blue. They will reference some experiment and then tell you that "banana is blue" as if it was a fact and no further debate is required.
Yeah, that's how the scientific community operates. . .
A lot of it does. Many scientists treat discoveries as an absolute. Especially when they are defeating a common view point. Even Steven Hawkings did that and had to publicly apologis. Do not missunderstand me. No all members of the scientific community. Just a large group within it.
It really doesn't. Discoveries in science are treated with the utmost scrutiny. Single scientists may, rarely, try to pose a new discovery as fact (usually one of their own, because they want to contribute something worth while), but to say that scientists tend to do this is outstandingly laughable.
i am talking about those scientists that make the 'big, shocking' dicoveries. Like all those people that try to prove Einstein was wrong or that all rocks ARE living things (yes seriously). And the more ridiculous or impossible to prove the more certain they are. They are the ones i was talking about.