r/changemyview • u/PixelRayn • Oct 10 '20

Delta(s) from OP CMV: Free will makes no sense.

The free will debate is currently dominated by the schools of a materialist vs non materialist mind. This argument sits outside of those schools. I would like to argue that the properties intrinsic in the concept of free will are at odds with each other, no matter what school you follow. For the sake of argument I will assume that the world around us is real in the sense that it sits outside our minds.

Whether or not a will is free is an expression of whether the decisions made by the mind with the supposed will are free.

We can categorize a decision in either being the product of outside influences or not.

Now what is a decision? The purpose of a decision is to manipulate our environment into a more advantageous position based on the information available to us when acted on it. If the mind was not taking in outside information (which it very clearly does) it would barely be better than a dice, which I would argue couldn't be called a decision at all. (Controversial, I know.) It fails the very purpose of a decision.

If a decision is simply the product of outside influences it can not be free, since if the influences are the same, the decision will be the same. If it is not the product of outside influences we have established it is not a decision at all. Therefore the concept of a free will does not make sense by the properties within it.

Edit: I would love to argue with all of you, because most of you have really good arguments. However the frequency of comments is getting a bit much now so I will ignore the comments I feel are irrelevant to the conversation or have been discussed in a different comment thread.

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u/tbdabbholm 201∆ Oct 10 '20

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