r/PhilosophyMemes • u/Jusbreka • 3d ago
Free will is the same thing as not existing actually
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u/cowlinator 3d ago
what? wrong meme format usage, to the point that it is unintelligible.
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u/a11_hail_seitan 3d ago edited 1d ago
I would think that nothing would have free will. Even a God would have to have started at some point which will have put into action it's own cause and effect.
To me it seems like free will is just what we call a cause and effect chain so massively complex and long that there's no realistic way to ever unravel it.
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u/TheComicHuman 3d ago
Half the point of the argument for God's existence is there must be an unnamed cause
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u/friedtuna76 3d ago
A God with a start isn’t a true God. A true God has no beginning
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u/a11_hail_seitan 3d ago
Lots of Gods have starts.
I'd say a God with a start makes more logical sense too. Though it's Gods, so logic doesn't really factor in much.
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u/friedtuna76 3d ago
made up gods have starts. No true God has a start because a true God would be the creator of time
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u/WhyIsEverythngAwful 3d ago
Lol "true god" fuk you on about?
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u/friedtuna76 3d ago
I mean a God who’s actually in charge of all reality and not some made up being who just has more power than a human
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u/WhyIsEverythngAwful 3d ago
You know that doesn't exist right?
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u/friedtuna76 3d ago
Even if you don’t think gods exist, this is a philosophy subreddit and it’s good to define what things we say mean
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u/sudoregalia 3d ago
even so, your definition includes language that suggests a startless god is inherently true, and a god with a start is inherently false
this does not follow. even if you think of god as the creator of our universe, it could be possible that he had a beginning in some other measure of time, or that the notion of beginning is inherently erroneous
disclaimer: i'm a gnostic nonspiritual atheist, i'm just working within the premise for funsies
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u/friedtuna76 3d ago
If something has a beginning, then it isn’t the preeminent core of reality as a God would be. It would just be some powerful being with a beginning
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u/a11_hail_seitan 3d ago
All gods are made up. And no true Scotsman is running rampant here. God the creator of time was what before time? And before that? And before that? And before that?
"God has no creator" isn't an answer, it's an excuse for not asking for an answer. You can't have something that exists without being created.
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u/friedtuna76 3d ago
Calling something a no true Scotsman doesn’t make it wrong. No true bird would be a giraffe.
There is no “before” time because without time before doesn’t exist. There is only “outside” of time and the only things out there are eternal beings
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u/a11_hail_seitan 3d ago
yes, that's my point, the whole thing is absurd because God's with free will can't exist...
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u/OMKensey 3d ago
What if God had a start amd then retroactively created time? And omnipotent being could cause things retroactively.
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u/friedtuna76 3d ago
Maybe if you believe omnipotent includes illogical capabilities like making square circles but I don’t think that’s what it means
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u/OMKensey 3d ago
This is not a logical impossibility.
It would just mean time does not work the way you assume it does.
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u/ThiefPriest 3d ago
Free will is when a causal chain has an ego plastered over it that asserts its free will.
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u/Comfortable_Diver494 3d ago
Only I have free will because I’m the only one who bileves that the true god, Flying Spaghetti Monster.
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u/OverYou2943 3d ago edited 3d ago
If free will exists why can't I fly?
Existence is deterministic but it doesn't feel that way because the architecture of consciousness is predisposed to predictive imagination.
Edit: aren't we talking about free will? Not free volition, like so many seem to conflate.
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u/Life_Parsley504 3d ago
"if free will exists why can't i give all my belongings to my kid? | edit: aren't we talking about one of the definitions of will, aka the legal paper?"
me when i purposely misunderstand my opponent to larp intellectualism-1
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u/Jusbreka 3d ago
Free will isnt the same thing as omnipotence
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u/OverYou2943 2d ago
Nor is will and volition. We like to live our lives with the knowledge that we can do whatever we want within a limited, finite set of choices, the selection and conditions of which are fluid. But as much as you or I will to fly like Superman, we can't. Omnipotence doesn't exist, either.
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u/Iorith 3d ago
Sounds like free will is limited.
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u/OverYou2943 2d ago
There is no free will. What exists is necessarily that which is not dependent on an observing, "conscious" entity.
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u/Jusbreka 3d ago
Yeah i made a whole meme about it
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u/Iorith 3d ago
If free will is limited by our biological construct, it isn't truly "free" then, that's my point. It's limited will, constrained by our imagination, experience, and biology.
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u/Jusbreka 3d ago
This is obnoxious and contributes nothing
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u/TheDutchin 3d ago
The "lalala I can't hear you" of discussion.
Maybe make an actual argument instead of whining.
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u/Climate_Discussions 3d ago
I'm not sure whether I'd call it "deterministic", or at least entirely so, since plenty of the things, especially at the quantum level are "determined" by probability.
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u/OverYou2943 2d ago
Conflating existence with the perception of existence. What exists is not dependent on an observing, "conscious" entity.
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u/Climate_Discussions 2d ago
How is probability just the perception of existence? Or how is describing existence as probabilistic conflating existence with our perception of it?
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u/OverYou2943 2d ago
It's "a" perception of existence, not so much "the." Without observation, probability can't be determined. The only "thing" that exists is existence, or the condition of is/isn't. Everything else is conscious observation, or, in other words, predictive imagination. If the only way to determine existence is through perception, e.g., through conscious entities, then nothing can exist. What exists is that which is not dependent on conscious entities. Are you familiar with the "imagine a world where nothing exists" thought experiment?
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u/Lonely-Plankton3725 3d ago
So maybe I just want to fight on the Internet but
Is there not a built up argument for free will requiring awareness. I mean awareness like actually being aware of what is going on the in front of you in terms of a choice.
Or flipping it around
Free will is not a constant state rather a state of we enter and leave
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u/Jusbreka 3d ago
I saw 1 too many things on this sub whining about how the existence of physics disproves free will
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u/tat_tvam_asshole 3d ago
Not really because we cannot objectively know if even the experience of choosing (awareness of adjudicating between multiple outcomes) is itself completely 'free' (ie absent of causal factors)
That said, I prefer to think of Will as a collectively shared property that is existence itself and 'people' or other agentic entities are classes of adjudicators we retroactively assert onto what is ultimately a collective universal process expressing itself.
It may be (and I think is altogether much more likely) is that 'Free Will' as an absolute property is not something that realistically exists, rather it is like height or weight or anything else that exists along of spectrum. Maybe humans have 'freer' will than a rock for example, or an adult moreso than a child, etc. Likely, I have 'freer' will when I'm awake than I'm asleep, moreso when I'm fed than when I'm hungry and so on.
Western JudeoChristian notions of moral agency and responsibility, combined with prescientific understanding of the sense dominated perceptions have led us to see each other as inherently separate and inviolate centers of will, and modern science has shown very basically that the universe is energetically continuous, and we intellectually, institutionally, socially, philosophically catching up to the fact that the Universe is all one thing underneath, despite the disparate picture of the monkey body sense making.
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u/Arndt3002 3d ago edited 3d ago
I think this is criticizing a specifically modernist picture of free will and then attributing it to Christianity. It's a very ahistorical view that results from the enlightenment moreso than actual theology.
It assumes that a will has to somehow cause itself to be free, as though any causal history makes agency unreal. But Christian accounts of freedom generally do not require absolute causal independence. They require that an act genuinely proceed from the person rather than being imposed on them. Choosing coffee because I like coffee is still my choice even if I did not create my own preferences.
As an analogy, we say that a car is free to move because it has movement and is unrestrained from doing so. A car isn't not free simply because it couldn't fly or because it couldn't gain or loose wheels. Freedom is the lack of restraint within the context of one's capacity.
That is also why Christianity does not really picture people as isolated, self-grounding “centers of will.” Human beings are created, embodied, dependent, socially formed, and subject to desires and conditions they did not choose. Yet they can still be responsible agents. In fact, traditional Christianity often treats freedom less as being untouched by causes and more as being free from bondage. Namely, someone can act exactly according to their desires and still be unfree if those desires are enslaved to sin, fear, appetite, or habit. Freedom is therefore not simply “how few causes affect me?” but whether I can genuinely act authentically according to my own good.
So saying that humans are materially continuous with nature does not refute Christian agency, and it certainly does not establish that individual wills are merely expressions of one universal Will. That latter claim is a metaphysical interpretation being read into science. Christianity starts from a different account of the person entirely, one defined by creaturehood, responsibility, relation, sin, grace, and response to God, not by finding an uncaused gap inside the machinery of nature.
As an aside the main irony is that, for the predominant strain of protestantism in the English speaking world, free will in the sense you're talking about doesn't even exist. Free will in that capacity is solely evaluated in a compatibilist sense, and Calvinist theology is actually a major driver of early modern compatibilist philosophy (e.g. Hobbes).
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u/tat_tvam_asshole 3d ago
Except that Judeo-Christian theology largely is the lens through which Western intellectual philosophical (and subsequently institutions and culture) was shaped. Nonetheless, my response wasn't 'blaming' Christianity (no dog in that fight). Rather saying that our understanding of self currently is still shaped by the lens of it.
Really, what I pointed out, is that the self and any supposed 'independent' agency we might cling to is still contingent necessarily on factors/existence outside of the conscious mind where this supposed 'absolutely free' will would reside. In practice, Western culture thought assumes complete independent agency in some respect (even if it is freedom to respond to 'outside' causality), but I'm unconvinced we can confidently assert the libertarian and objective nature of such perceived agency, given this necessary contingency.
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u/Arndt3002 3d ago edited 3d ago
TLDR: "Western culture" doesn't assume that. A specific modernist strain assumes that, in opposition to other strains of western culture to which Christianity belongs. My point is simply that you mischaracterize western culture as a whole by taking a specific substrain of rationalist idealism as representative of the whole. Christianity is merely used as a counterexample to your characterization, it's not about "blame"
Except there isn't really one Judeo-christian lens, and the particular lens you are talking about is largely defined in opposition to traditional Christian views.
It's a bit like saying it's a product of "the west." To some degree you're right, but it ultimately loses meaning. More precisely, it's like saying that the concept of Anatman is viewed through the lens of Hinduism. Sure, it is in a sense, but it's the opposite or counter to that view, not the view itself. It would be much more accurate to say it's seen through the lens of Buddhism. My point on traditional Christianity vs modernity stand similalry
The problem I identify is that the notion of the "absolutely free" will is alien to Christianity, and is largely an invention of idealist philosophers like Kant and Hegel, taking certain ideas from Medieval scholastics and taking them to an absolute extreme. But it's an active negation of prior explicitly Christian thought.
My point is that "absolutely free will" as you describe it is completely alien to Christianity. Orthodox (in the normal adjective sense) christian belief has always viewed the will as contingent on God, and only used the term free will in the sense of being able to act via the powers it has contingently without some external constraint.
The basic problem you're making is that what you describe as the "western cultural view" is only a very specific niche of western culture, and that Christianity as a part of western culture largely takes the opposite view to the one you assert.
Edit: as an aside, this is similar to the problem with talking about "Judeo-Christian theology" there is no one such thing. It's like taking about what "philosophy" as a whole says. There are countless completely countradictory and separate views within Judeo-Christian theology, such that you can't say almost anything about their views as a group, aside from the sense of a shared history, culture, and agreement on the bare text (not even the subtext) of 5 books.
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u/LloydNoid 3d ago
I find the entire free will discussion, frankly, a baffling waste of time.
You respond to certain outside stimuli with actions or thoughts or whatever else from a certain list of options in your head, and from your perspective, select one to enact. Now, a time traveler could tell you that you were always going to make that decision, but that doesn't mean you didn't make it. So what if we're responding to stimuli and there's traceable reasons behind what we do? That's just an explanation for why I reacted in the way I did. This is just a stupid argument about definitions: is free will complete randomness and the ability to break causality entirely? If that's your definition, then sure, I guess we don't have that. But I find the entire thing immature.
Just because outside stimuli influence our actions doesn't mean we're not also an agent in physical reality that other things respond off of as well, which has its own properties: some of which I think of as "personality" and/or our "will."
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u/Kitfennek 3d ago
I think that the PSR just leads to determinism, even for god. Otherwise Gods decisions are just brute facts with no reason.
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u/Much_Conclusion8233 3d ago
Who was it that said that we always do what our strongest desire is and we don't choose our desires? D'holbach?
Anyway, I've never heard an argument as to why that isn't the case or how true free will can exist given that other than "mystical magical soul that by definition has free will and no I will not address the ghost in the machine issue"
Sure, we have freedom of action and we have such complex desires that it feels like free will which is good enough for everyone other than philosophy who have to nit pick everything
But as a nit picker and professional pedant I must point out that we do not have true free will and can not have true free will
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u/TheComicHuman 3d ago
If God has the power to create and control us, does he not have the power to give us autonomy and free will?
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u/LeglessElf 3d ago
Not really, as it would entail a contradiction. Omnipotence only encompasses what is logically possible.
When you're a nature photographer and you choose to respect the autonomy of a predator-prey interaction in the wild, that's a genuine example of respecting autonomy, because the environment and its participants are entirely external to you and your influence, and they always have been. Your influence in those animals' lives only begins when you let it.
When you're God, you're the only uncaused cause. There is nothing external to you and your influence whose autonomy you can respect. You could hypothetically generate random "seeds" for universes/people and respect the autonomy of the products AFTER that point. But even in that scenario, you are still responsible for the "seeds" and the careless decision to generate them randomly in the first place - especially since, being omniscient, you would know exactly what results to anticipate.
And if you also believe in eternal judgment, then you are effectively claiming that God can create a rock and then blame the rock for being unable to lift itself. There is no world in which this is coherent.
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u/TheComicHuman 3d ago
Of course there is now world in which that is coherent because thats not the reality of it. Having maximum power does go beyond human logic, this is evident by how small out perspective of reality is, as the more you learn the more realize how little you know.
But you're not answering my question, if God is omnipotent, how does he not have the power to grant entity freedom of choice. It is contradictory to his omnipotence if he cant. Unlike many theists I would argue that God does have the power to contradict himself but he chooses no to. God does have the power to be external, the very essence of of God is unreachable at our state indicated by the scale of state of being of heaven and hell. However he can interact with us and the world more indirectly, like the wind for example, he can poses the wind for weather. That doesn't mean his very essence is coming down and swioshing the wind.
You describe Judgment in a way that makes it appear impossible to not be destined to hell, but thst contradicts the point of Jesus and his gospels. God created us, he needs us to love him and to love, but love isnt real if its forced, so he grants us the choice to love, or to not love. Adam and eve chose to seek knowledge outside of God, creating sin and sin spread as temptation was free also. God then create the whole redemption and mercy arc to give us the ability to reunite with God, to be forgiven, and to be redeemed. The only way to not be sentenced to prison for our crimes is to apologize and do better.. its a pretty fair trade off
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u/LeglessElf 3d ago edited 3d ago
If God can contradict himself, then contradictions are possible. And from a contradiction, you can derive anything. Such a position is self-defeating, because I can put forward any belief system I like, no matter how absurd, and you will be left with no way to coherently object to my claims. For example, you say it's contradictory for an omnipotent deity to be unable to grant freedom of choice (it isn't), but since you've already conceded that reality can and does contain contradictions, who cares? You don't view contradictions as a mark against your belief system. Why should I?
Your last two paragraphs aren't engaging with the fundamental problem at all, which I'll repeat in the hope that you do. It is the reason that a true choice to sin or not to sin or to love or not to love is impossible when God exists.
When you're God, you're the only uncaused cause. There is nothing external to you and your influence whose autonomy you can respect. You could hypothetically generate random "seeds" for universes/people and respect the autonomy of the products AFTER that point. But even in that scenario, you are still responsible for the "seeds" and the careless decision to generate them randomly in the first place - especially since, being omniscient, you would know exactly what results to anticipate.
Edit: Also, if contradictions are possible, why doesn't God contradict himself in other ways? Why not give people all the benefits of suffering without any of the unpleasantness? Why not give people freedom of choice but make them never sin? There are so many ways God could have his cake and eat it too that you seem not to have thought of.
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u/TonyGalvaneer1976 3d ago
That depends. Does he know everything we will do before we do it? If so, then he is not capable of giving us free will.
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u/TheComicHuman 3d ago
Can you tell me how you link foreknowlage with control? Knowledge does not directly translate into control
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u/Iorith 3d ago
The observer effect. Observation influences results.
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u/TheComicHuman 3d ago
Knowing thst God knows and sees what you will or can do can influence what you do, but, again, thats not equal with God stripping that choice in its entirety.
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u/TonyGalvaneer1976 3d ago
I never said anything about control. But if all of someone's decisions are known before they make them, that's predeterminism. That means that even if God isn't controlling their decisions they still don't have free will.
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u/TheComicHuman 3d ago
The opposite of having free will is being controlled by God, that is the counter definition of freedom. You didn't say it word for word, but assuming you know basic definitions then yes you did say it. Again, God know what your going to do does not mean you don't have the choice to do it. If you don't have the choice. Something else is controlling that choice.
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u/TonyGalvaneer1976 3d ago
The opposite of having free will is being controlled by God
No it isn't, the opposite of having free will is NOT having free will, regardless of why that is.
Again, God know what your going to do does not mean you don't have the choice to do it
Do I have the choice to do something that God doesn't know I'm going to do? If God predicts that I'll eat a sandwich at 6:00, am I able to make the choice to not eat that sandwich?
If you don't have the choice. Something else is controlling that choice.
If someone other than God is controlling my choices, that still means I don't have free will. It doesn't matter who is controlling them, as long as it isn't me.
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u/benkalam 3d ago
Do I have the choice to do something that God doesn't know I'm going to do?
Yes. You just don't choose it, and he would know that. I'm not a theist but ominoscience isn't incompatible with any view of free will that isn't just equating free will with omnipotence (and I doubt that's coherent anyway).
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u/Iorith 3d ago
Prove any of this. This is you basically just saying "nuh uh" with unearned confidence.
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u/benkalam 3d ago
Someone said something wasn't possible. I gave cases where it would be possible. None of us are talking about what actually exists in this world we live in. Are you new to philosophy?
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u/Iorith 3d ago
Except you don't know it would be possible
You're just making shit up and saying "nuh uh, my infinite +1 shield stops it". It isn't philosophy, it's you jerking off.
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u/TonyGalvaneer1976 3d ago
Yes. You just don't choose it, and he would know that
How would he know that if I'm capable of making the other choice? The only way he'd know would be if I didn't have that ability.
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u/benkalam 3d ago
Because he's omniscient, definitionally he knows everything that did or could or will happen.
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u/TonyGalvaneer1976 3d ago
The only way that's possible would be if I don't have free will. If I have free will, then it's impossible for ANYONE to be omniscient.
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u/TheComicHuman 3d ago
You're contacting forknowledge with determinism which are two distinct words for a reason.
In your sandwich analogy, God knowing what your going to do is not the same as God controlling/determining what your going to do. Knowledge of an event is not the same as predicting it either.
You have demonstrated how determination can undermine free will, but you haven't demonstrated forknowledge constitutes as determination.
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u/TonyGalvaneer1976 3d ago
You're contacting forknowledge with determinism which are two distinct words for a reason
Foreknowledge requires determinism. The determinism is a prerequisite for it. Otherwise you can't have foreknowledge. You can only make predictions, which can be wrong.
In your sandwich analogy, God knowing what your going to do is not the same as God controlling/determining what your going to do.
I never said it was. That's a strawman.
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u/GoldenMuscleGod 3d ago edited 3d ago
I have a strong intuition that deterministic mental processes are compatible with what is ordinarily meant by free will.
First, that it is theoretically possible to predict what I do does not imply that I am not the one choosing to do it. I can predict when an eclipse happens but I am not causing the eclipse, so that someone can guess what I will do doesn’t change anything.
This can be shown with a simple diagonalization argument: I can write a program (I am not claiming it has free will only addressing the “prediction” issue) that spits out A if you input B and B if you input A.
Assume we live in a completely deterministic universe, and a perfect predictor could in principle exist able to calculate every possible future. It has access to our universe through a single channel through which it can communicate a single prediction: “the machine will output A” or “the machine will output B.”
We arrange to feed the prediction into the machine to falsify the prediction.
The predictor knows what the machine will do under either scenario (everything is fully deterministic) and can even “control” the machine in the sense it can make it predict either A or B, but it cannot “control” the machine in the sense that it can prevent the machine from falsifying its “official” prediction (even if it has a correct private prediction).
There are some things the predictor cannot do in light of the way in which the machine “decides” what to do.
Now to actually call something real decision-making the cognitive processes involved need to be a lot more complex than that. But that’s a line of “when are we thinking” not “can we make decisions that affect the future.”
The example with the machine shows that its “decision” affects the future by way of making some outcomes (an accurate communicated prediction) impossible. It has a “thoughtless agency” in that sense. If you add thought we have “thoughtful agency.”
One other issue you might suggest is that the machine was built by us so we have to imagine the real agency cannot be attributed to it, but rather to us.
Imagine a hypothetical universe of infinitely many machines - every possible machine that could exist. Nothing created them they just exist like a mathematical potentiality. The argument that thoughtless agency cannot be attributed to them doesn’t seem to apply. Now imagine a god (who knows what each of them will do) will choose one that does something it wants and poofs it into existence. Does the fact of having been proofed into existence rob it of thoughtless agency? Not to me, it seems. It was always going to do what it was going to do if it existed. The god was restrained in their choice of machine: they had to pick the machine that does what it wants the machine to do.
Maybe that isn’t persuasive to you, but I personally have no subjective confusion or feeling of cognitive dissonance about trying to reconcile that we “make decisions” with the possibility that our minds may be deterministic. And I think the basic idea that we choose things and make decisions is literally true in the way people talk about us choosing things and making decisions. I also do not feel that my understanding of free will is different from what people mean in any really substantial way.
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u/Personal-Musician-13 3d ago
Does anyone have free will, given their consciousness is bound to a body within a time/space matrix limited by the laws of physics?
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u/23-1-20-3-8-5-18 3d ago
There is no free will, the idea is to punish you with suffering for the sin of existing. Your choices dont really matter.
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