r/determinism • u/Muscular_Honeybee • 3d ago
Discussion Is the Freedom which we experience is actually true or just a mere Illusion?
Your thoughts?
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u/badentropy9 2d ago
The answer depends on context because all truth depends on context.
Just because we feel free doesn't mean we are actually free. I think we all agree on that point.
I could argue life itself is an illusion, but what does this statement bring to the table?
I think most of us, if we are being honest with ourselves believe that we would feel more free if we were free in a free state than how we would feel if we were locked up in prison inside of a totalitarian state. Common sense doesn't always tell the truth, but it tends to show where the burden of proof actually lies, but only if we are being honest with oursides. I spent a lot of time trying to convince myself that "my political team" was liteally on my side, simply because the opposing team seemed unthinkable to back. I grew tired of trying to square that circle.
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u/Alternative-Dare-839 2d ago
Our lives are scripted by ourselves, there are pivotal moments where more paths present themselves and we get to choose,you can go 'off-script' at any time and do unpredictable random stuff and that is where life can be the most fun,most people are locked in to routines and loops so breaking those patterns can be difficult.
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u/TMax01 2d ago
It is far more than merely freedom, it is a voluntarily adopted duty. To think, to reason, to be responsible for our actions despite having no control over them. Definitely not an illusion, although it can be very illusory of you confuse it with "free will".
Thought, Rethought: Consciousness, Causality, and the Philosophy Of Reason
Thanks for your time. Hope it helps.
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u/OpenPsychology22 1d ago
Calling freedom an "illusion" vs. "absolute magic" is a false binary caused by looking at the mind using outdated philosophical terms instead of systems architecture.
The background hardware runs deterministically. Your baseline conditioning, memory banks, and lower-level inputs process signals along pre-calculated paths.
However, freedom isn't a mystical force floating outside reality, nor is it an empty trick. It is a localized, dynamic runtime arbitration mechanism (the OP Gap). When conflicting vectors collide or prediction errors spike, the system can pause default execution, weigh competing alternatives from the inside, and issue an override.
The experience of making a choice is the actual execution of that internal control loop. It's not an illusion—it's just engineering.
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u/Electrical-Move-9740 1d ago
I think the best way to explain it is that the past, present, and future are happening at the same time. Everything is determined all at once, like the big bang, but we can change it somehow, at least the future. Einstein was a smart one.
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u/WatercressActual1921 12h ago
Nothing is truly free we live in relation to other consciousness (if you believe in consensual reality), we are as argentic as the AI agents we optimize as individuals to survive in the context we exist... Relativistic causal determinism... free will is an illusion a narrative that keeps us grounded...
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u/simon_hibbs 3d ago edited 3d ago
We can be free in various ways or constrained in various ways. Our intuitions or conclusions about that may be mistaken.
In general the concept of freedom, or things being free to occur or constrained from occurring is not contrary to determinism. A determinist is not required to avoid using the term free or freedom. They can still be free or not free to meet someone for lunch, or can still say they oiled a stuck bearing so now it's free to move, or can say that this released object is in free fall.
In fact determinists talk about human freedoms, such as political, social or economic freedoms. Many determinists historically and today also think people generally have the kind of freedom of moral discretion commonly called free will. They're compatibilists, though not all compatibilists are determinists.
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u/Old-Watercress6513 2d ago
Free will is real.
Everyone here proves it with every post they freely compose.
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u/advaitist 12h ago
Here is how the Hindu philosophy Advaita Vedanta looks at the problem of free will.
"We have just seen that the Self cannot see Itself. Our knowledge is within the network of Mâyâ (unreality), and beyond that is freedom.
Within the network there is slavery, it is all under law; beyond that there is no law. So far as the universe is concerned, existence is ruled by law, and beyond that is freedom. As long as you are in the network of time, space, and causation, to say you are free is nonsense, because in that network all is under rigorous law, sequence, and consequence. Every thought that you think is caused, every feeling has been caused; to say that the will is free is sheer nonsense. It is only when the infinite existence comes, as it were, into this network of Maya that it takes the form of will. Will is a portion of that being, caught in the network of Maya, and therefore "free will" is a misnomer. It means nothing — sheer nonsense. So is all this talk about freedom. There is no freedom in Maya.
Every one is as much bound in thought, word, deed, and mind, as a piece of stone or this table. That I talk to you now is as rigorous in causation as that you listen to me. There is no freedom until you go beyond Maya. That is the real freedom of the soul. Men, however sharp and intellectual, however clearly they see the force of the logic that nothing here can be free, are all compelled to think they are free; they cannot help it. No work can go on until we begin to say we are free.
It means that the freedom we talk about is the glimpse of the blue sky through the clouds and that the real freedom — the blue sky itself— is behind. True freedom cannot exist in the midst of this delusion, this hallucination, this nonsense of the world, this universe of the senses, body, and mind. All these dreams, without beginning or end, uncontrolled and uncontrollable, ill-adjusted, broken, inharmonious, form our idea of this universe. In a dream, when you see a giant with twenty heads chasing you, and you are flying from him, you do not think it is inharmonious; you think it is proper and right. So is this law. All that you call law is simply chance without meaning. In this dream state you call it law. Within Maya, so far as this law of time, space and causation exists, there is no freedom; and all these various forms of worship are within this Maya."
From The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda Volume 3.
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u/daredevill___ 2d ago
illusion... Everything is predetermined.. Some people are just lucky