fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2781 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2781 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[Game of Thrones]

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[Kevin Sorbo/Hercules: The Legendary Journeys]

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[Transformers: Prime]

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[Darkchylde]

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I would define it as something like "the ability of a human mind to understand itself as freely choosing between willing and nilling any given object."

The point, to me, is that free will is something which exists in the human mind, in the same sense that, say, love exists in the human mind, and that whether or not free will is a result of biological, chemical, material phenomena in the body, we still have free will in most senses in which that term is meaningful for us.

Perhaps that's too loosey-goosey of a definition for you but that's how I view it.

To make sure I'm understanding this correctly: are you saying that the term matters in terms of someone thinking they chose freely, regardless of any outside influences they did or did not have? (If nothing else, that would seriously piss off some of the Christian free-will believers.)

That's probably not how I would phrase it (I would definitely rather talk about the experience of choosing freely, rather than thinking that you choose freely) but it's not a million miles away from what I think.

SA - I know this is super late, and you probably won't see it, or care. But I was thinking about the topic and wanted to clarify my feelings on the issue.

The reason that I wouldn't like to talk about it in terms of someone thinking they have free will is that it tends to imply that free will is an illusion - a providential illusion, perhaps, but basically an illusion. This is not what I think at all. I would want to argue that free will does exist, as a fact, in most of the senses of 'existing' in which it could be significant for human beings.

I do really think that love is a good comparison here. It seems reasonable to say that love is determined by physical factors in much the same way that free will is. That is to say, love is fundamentally a biochemical phenomenon. But it seems to me ludicrous to say on that basis that love doesn't exist. And I don't think it would make any sort of sense at all to dismiss the fact that love has an affect on the way we live our lives, or to argue that we should try to dismiss it or eliminate the idea of love.

Ultimately, I think pretty much all our mental and emotional states can be traced to biochemical causes. I don't think that's a reason for dismissing them. To me, saying that free will doesn't exist makes as much sense as saying that our thoughts don't exist. It's simply a reason to build a concept of our thoughts, our identity, our personhood as something that arises out of a biochemical origin. And I think free will is something that makes perfect sense in that basic framework, as a phenomenon derived from the biological structure of the body and the brain.

I could probably come up with a complicated explanation of why they're different, but that would be dishonest to my intentions. My real, honest reason for even caring whether free will is real or not is that the idea of free will gives people more leeway to be bastards.

I realize that sounds a bit counterintuitive, but people who choose to be "good people" do so regardless of whether they think they're choosing freely or not. The concept of free will has more of an effect on whether self-proclaimed "good people" feel happy and comfortable doing awful things to "bad people"--it's a lot easier to hurt someone who "chose to be evil" than someone who's a product of his environment.

I don't think that's true at all. I think both things can be used to justify atrocious behavior one way or another. You get more moral condemnation if you think the target of your behavior chose to be the way they are. But you can get more aggressiveness and violence towards them if that's just who they are. If you're dealing with a criminal and you think it's absolutely impossible for them to decide to be anything other than a criminal, there is a sense in which that can justify harsh treatment, because there's no hope for redemption. And I think we've seen, in history, plenty of cases where people have justified massive atrocities on those grounds, where that has fed into the logic of massacre. "Members of [ethnic minority X] are evil inferior vermin and will always be evil inferior vermin and blood will out and so we must stamp them out." Or even to adopt totally inhumane measures with the justification that it's in the best interests of the class in question. The view can absolutely be used to justify awful ends.

I don't think either attitude is a moral panacea or basically right. I think the better alternative is to understand the complex blend of ways in which our environment and our choices intermingle. I think we need to look at things as they are. And I think part of the way to do that is taking account of free will, to the extent that it does exist. And I do think that the existence of free will is, to some extent, something which ought to give us hope, because it indicates the possibility of change.

This might just be semantics. The way I'd phrase it is that someone who's done bad things should be put in a situation, and given input, that will make them likely to change. In practice, that generally equates to more merciful treatment. You might phrase that in terms of making them want to change, and that would probably mean the same thing in practice.

[ SECRET POST #2781 ]

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