The way people talk about it makes it sound indistinguishable from “random will”. If you believe in the existence of a “self” in any form, be it the chemical signals and electrical impulses in your material brain, or a ghost existing outside of space and time controlling your body like a puppeteer, you must believe in one of you believe in that self having free will.
Say you were to run a scenario many times on the same person, perfectly resetting every single measurable thing including that person’s memory. If you observe them doing the same thing each time then they don’t have this quality of free will? But if you do different things each time are you really “yourself”? How are your choices changed in a way that preserves an idea of a “self” and isn’t just a dice roll? Doesn’t that put an idea of free will in contradiction with itself?
Edit: I found this article that says what I was trying to say in much gooder words
This is really more of aporia about selfhood than a proof by contradiction against free will. I mean it is also the latter, but as a side effect.
Anyways the reason I’m saying this is that it has been discussed outside the West (where “free will” in itself is important, especially in Christian theology). For example, the entirety of the Indian philosophical traditions could be described as the questioning the nature of the self.
Buddhism is especially important here. The nature of the self is a tricky question with seemingly vague and contradictory answers. The self neither exists, doesn’t exist, doesn’t exist and not exist both, nor neither… rather it’s a question not to even be answered.
I like these kind of aporetic topics. I believe that in Buddhism the real solution is to experience the truth of a matter personally ie. through meditative insight and enlightenment. Or maybe getting high.
Another way to put it is that it is a linguistic or cognitive issue that requires a perspective shift…maybe Wittgensteinian? That the concept of a self or free will is a limiting one that will lead to holes and contradictions in systems of logic, and are really more useful as a conventional marker for an abstraction. But not reality itself in itself
Do you have a recommendation for something I could read for more information? I do know a very little bit about Buddhist non dualism (think two video essays or so)
I’ll open it up to anyone to follow up on recommendations because I might be a little over the top with it…I like to read the old texts in the original or plain translation. The Mūlamadhyamakakārikā by Nāgārjuna is what I was thinking of when I wrote up my comment.
I would say to find a translation and commentary (the wiki page has a list), and maybe also watch some video lectures before starting because the Buddhist philosophical tradition is its own beast that you would need context for
I’ll see if I can follow up with some video links later
I find the religious argument of free will to be silly. God knows every action you’ll commit. But you also have the power to change. Basically, god knows every variation of your choices, including the variation that will actually be your life and not hypothetical
I tried making this same argument on once, of course no one understood what I was saying.
I like this question because it asks how is ‘free will’ defined exactly. Depending on how that is done, one might argue that sociopaths have more ‘free will’ than others due to social context. I think this is pretty useful to force philosophy to have a more social context with this stuff.
It’s similar to the contrast between “liberty to X” vs “liberty from X”. Defining ‘free will’ only in the context of individualism doesn’t seem to be very helpful, but I’ve not seen much of this discussed around this topic. It’s mostly tug-of-war BS between philosophy, religion, neuroscience. We need more social sciences in there.
Sartre defines free will as being our ability (or our curse) to choose and to be responsible for those choices. Furthermore, our freedom is dependant upon the freedom of others, so in this context sociopaths who encroach upon the freedom of others in turn reduce their own freedom. At least in existential, Levinasian, or Derridean philosophies, freedom is always defined in relation to others and the responsibility we have for them and ourselves.
Actually the unitary self is itself a fiction. There is no “you” outside of whatever exists in the moment, and it is constantly in flux
I agree with that, but is it in flux irrespective of things that happen to you/it insofar as it does exist? It exists in this moment, so if you were to run this moment over again I would type this exact same reply every time, or else there would be no self even in this moment. Quantum effects are as far as I’m aware undeterministic (or at least thus far not understood), but I don’t believe you could construct an idea of “free” will out of them either.
But like I said in another reply, if I’m not a philosophy guy and I figured this out myself more or less, why is there still so much discussion about free will in philosophy circles? That’s why I assume that I’m missing something in my understanding of what they mean by free will.
TBH, I’m not personally very interested in this concept of free will. I think we have to act as though it exists whether or not it actually does. But if, I were, say a moral philosopher, I would probably be very concerned about it because it underpins all my other assumptions about right/wrong.
Often times, there’s stuff that’s extremely critical to a specialist and less so to a layperson. Literally theorists will stab each other to death over interpretation, meaning and language because that stuff is at the base of all their work.
I’m not personally invested in it either I just know I hear about it a lot and, even though philosophy makes my brain feel like it’s overheating, I find it compelling and interesting. If you put a gun to my head I suppose I would say I don’t believe in free will, but I don’t think it’s absence will cause people to start eating babies without feeling guilt or whatever.
