Written by Twilight on 03.08.2012 at 13:32

The concept of 'free will' is obsolete. There is only a 'will', which has a certain amount of freedom. Much of the perceived freedom you have is bound by your character and environment.

I kind of disagree with that... ''Free Will'' exists. you can't quantify ''freedom'' and you ARE free to do as you please, OF COURSE its within reason, I mean that you can't grow wings even if you have the will to do it The only thing that can stop you from doing what you want when you want it is ''Do you have the means'' to do it but that does not stop you from having a ''Free Will'' even if you can't do something, you can still have the will to.

Written by Guib on 09.08.2012 at 09:03


I kind of disagree with that... ''Free Will'' exists. you can't quantify ''freedom'' and you ARE free to do as you please, OF COURSE its within reason, I mean that you can't grow wings even if you have the will to do it The only thing that can stop you from doing what you want when you want it is ''Do you have the means'' to do it but that does not stop you from having a ''Free Will'' even if you can't do something, you can still have the will to.

If the means places some restriction upon your will to do something, in what sense is it then "free"? The idea of a universally "Free Will" is impossible I think, as there are varying levels of restriction which limit your availability to exercise your will. That depends on a number of things like your own character and circumstance/context.

You might say though that there are particular ways or situations in which will is free or unrestricted.

Written by R'Vannith on 09.08.2012 at 16:49

Written by Guib on 09.08.2012 at 09:03


I kind of disagree with that... ''Free Will'' exists. you can't quantify ''freedom'' and you ARE free to do as you please, OF COURSE its within reason, I mean that you can't grow wings even if you have the will to do it The only thing that can stop you from doing what you want when you want it is ''Do you have the means'' to do it but that does not stop you from having a ''Free Will'' even if you can't do something, you can still have the will to.

If the means places some restriction upon your will to do something, in what sense is it then "free"? The idea of a universally "Free Will" is impossible I think, as there are varying levels of restriction which limit your availability to exercise your will. That depends on a number of things like your own character and circumstance/context.

You might say though that there are particular ways or situations in which will is free or unrestricted.

Yeah that sounds good to me, I guess its situational

Thanks R'Vannith, that is more or less what I mean. I think it can be compared with believing in a cyclical universe or in a linear universe. We all grow up with the idea that everything has a beginning and an ending. But that is only because of our very limited lifespan. It is hard for us to comprehend something without a beginning or end.

Maybe a little bit offtopic, but try this out: The universe is perfect, an imperfect/flawed system would never be able to work like this and we wouldn't exist. If the speed of light would've been a bit slower or faster, things would've collapsed for sure (Slower, and the universe would never have been able to expand because of gravitational forces. Faster, and the universe would have expanded too fast. Too much emptiness, not enough forces to hold things together). And if it is perfect, all moments in time should also already be 'known' or 'included'. (space-time) Everything needs to be inside, otherwise it wouldn't be perfect. So in a weird way, you could say every life is predetermined. It just doesn't feel like that (partly because that is the way it is taught us) and you can still do anything you want, it doesn't rule out the idea that you can do whatever you want, because it all fits in.

Joseph Campbell once said in a speech that in India, people do not live their lives; life leads them instead. They do not cling so much on the idea that they really are in complete control of their lives, like we do.

I'm not saying I believe in all this stuff, by the way, I just think it is very interesting and shouldn't be discarded so easily.

Not sure if the universe is actually perfect. Mostly just because that word 'perfect' has a certain quality to it. In the universe chaos and order become indistinguishable. We say everything rose from the chaos of the big bang, but it all followed the rules of physics. It is the nature of things that as they become more structured they appear more chaotic and as they become more chaotic they appear structured. This isn't exact, but as science delves into the deepest reaches of large scale (big bang, relativity) and small scale (quantum, subatomic) the bizarre balance becomes more apparent. Much like how Boulez went out to make the most structured music ever and it sounds utterly random. Or how the more bureaucracy you have the more ridiculous it is to do anything. Or how subatomic particles are actually impossible to predict.

I think these kinds of laws are central to why free will is just a difficult concept to define. Is free will the ability to make a completely random action? But is it really free just because it is random and abnormal? What if a really dull decision not to do something was an act of free will and we'd never know? Everything kind of breaks down when you look at it closely. Free will becomes this kind of strange term as hard to pinpoint as a quantum particle.

Oh, my head hurts when I think about it. What IS free will? I cant even think of a logic definition for it.

What I believe is this: free will does not exist because of determinism. Determinism is the consequence of every action and decision us humans make. So in my limited experience on the subject, I believe that no one has free will because we all are preconditioned. How can this be? Well we don't usually kill people, although many of us would like to do so. Why? Our society, our parents, etc etc told us killing is bad. And given the chance, most of us would refrain. Well what about the people who do kill? They probably had some experience that affirmed that behavior. For instance, people who are bullied often bully others. Even simple decisions like, which color to choose, is determined by experience. I was a tomboy all my life, so if someone gave me a choice of pink or red, I'd pick red. Could I pick pink? Of course. But would I? Doubt it. We are lulled into thinking we are free to do what we want, when really, we are programmed by ourselves and our world. We really don't have choices at all. At least that is what I think

I had a free choice not to post in this topic...but i selected to do so...

Written by Ellrohir on 01.09.2012 at 19:23

I had a free choice not to post in this topic...but i selected to do so...

Free Will does not exist. The concept does not even make sense. There is literally no possible way that you could have any ultimate control over your life, your thoughts, or your actions.

To explain this on a basic level. Think of any city in the world. Literally any city you want. Now that you've chosen that city, why did you choose that city? Why didn't you choose Cairo? (unless you actually did) The reason you didn't choose Cairo, is because your thoughts have been manipulated through your past experiences. Maybe you happened to see a commercial in San Fransisco today, or maybe you live in Boston, so you chose one of those cities. If you chose Boston, then why did you choose Boston? Was it because Boston is a city you like? Why do you like Boston? Is it because it gives you comfort inside? If you answered yes, then hy does it give you comfort inside? Is it because it gives you a sense of security? If you answered yes, then why is that you like the sense of security? Its because you are an organic being, and its instinctual to not want to die, and feel safe. Did you have any free will over that desire? No, and ultimately, that is what all of our desires boil down to. In the end, everything we do can be explained through series of past events, and something related to our desire to continue living/reproducing.

Just as all matter behaves in a predictable way, we humans, as biological creatures which are made up of matter at the core, also behave in a theoretically predictable way, although we are much more complicated than an object with like a baseball for example. In theory, if you could somehow obtain a massive mathematical equation explaining all the encompasses space/time, then you could know the future, and know what a certain person would say or do. But what about quantum mechanics? Doesn't this leave possibility of free will, since we have a hard time predicting the position of a single particle at a specific time? No, because who is to say that that has any significant effect on our lives? and who is to say that we had any control over the position of that single particle? And, your life would still be influenced greatly by other things...and because the notion of quantum mechanics leads to even less free will if the sci fi sounding theories of mutliple dimensions are true. If every interval of time, the universe creates multiple universes based on every possibility, then how can free will exist at all? Does it make sense for us to have any choice what world we go into?

I'm not saying to live your life like you're not free because that would change the way you act and experience life, which could be negative to your experience. Ultimate free will does not exist, but making decisions about your life based on examinations and analysis is about as close to free will as you'll get.

The moral of this, is that life was not meant to be about freedom, but acceptance and the experience.

I think you are misunderstanding the meaning of "free will"

of course we are deciding according to our experience, but then again we have to evaluate our experiences and choose the most suitable option...and THAT, this process of deciding( based of experience and preferences), is what is called (or what i call) "free will"

by denying the existence of free will, you are more likely saying there is someone else, some God or whatever, who is making this decision instead of us

Sorry Ellrohir, but you are wrong. If your decision is already determined by your preferences, or even more largely, by the unbreakable chain of causality, that is not free will. In fact, you are more likely to find free will in religion or some supernatural belief than you are in physics. That is because the physical laws of causality require this. Granted, when it comes to the complexity of the brain and thought, causality appears far removed.

I honestly think Grody is onto something. We think we know what Free Will means, we feel we know what Free will means, but as soon as we start describe it, it falls apart at the seams. It doesn't make sense. Really it is nothing more than that we feel that we have made a decision. But objectively, that decision was made for us a long time ago. Even neuroscientists have noted the beginnings of decisions minutes before they are made.

Obviously the clash of our feelings and objective logic cause a paradox here. It is impossible to act 'deterministically'. Sure you can write things off as 'would have happened anyway' but as a species we are wired to believe that we are actually making choices ourselves. In other words, despite a logical understanding that causality limits us to a determined world, we can only actually act like free will is real. So maybe free will is real, but it is a feeling, not actually the decisions we make. An attitude as it were. Maybe? It's a difficult question. Hence why it's so fun to discuss!

Written by Ellrohir on 08.10.2012 at 15:18


of course we are deciding according to our experience, but then again we have to evaluate our experiences and choose the most suitable option...and THAT, this process of deciding( based of experience and preferences), is what is called (or what i call) "free will"

by denying the existence of free will, you are more likely saying there is someone else, some God or whatever, who is making this decision instead of us

100% correct

Written by Ellrohir on 08.10.2012 at 15:18

I think you are misunderstanding the meaning of "free will"

of course we are deciding according to our experience, but then again we have to evaluate our experiences and choose the most suitable option...and THAT, this process of deciding( based of experience and preferences), is what is called (or what i call) "free will"

by denying the existence of free will, you are more likely saying there is someone else, some God or whatever, who is making this decision instead of us

Not necessarily...

The sum of all experiences from your past would probably determine a great deal of all your future decisions. In what sense would you call that 100% free? I wouldn't. Maybe a little bit free.
So there is always a limited amount of choices, always. You cannot be someone else, you can only be yourself.

The simple experience of getting burn after you put hand onto hot stove you got as a child doesn't prevent you from doing it again...of course you probably wont choose to do so, but there is nothing holding you back technically - you simply CAN...

the same way you can for example go and violate the law...it will have consequences for you, so you would probably rather hold back, but you CAN...

that you DON'T WANT TO, doesn't mean you can't...you are pretty free to do anything possible...

If you go into a room, the are two chairs, one left one right at the table, you sit on the left chair... can you explain why you do that ? The point is you could not know there will be two chairs, not only one chair behind the door, in the room, so you just sit on the left chair unconsciously, so it's your "free will utmost" but even further than your mind decision. ... So that we can do "free will" what we subconsciously and unconsciously, and the utmost free will you do as by yourself with your experience, perception..., but the part unconsciously you do the thing but not knowing why. Back to the example two chairs behind the door at the table, who would make two chairs, why not one or more than two ? that implies that we could never control what will comes or happen with us before our mind can ably act minded (subconsciously). Then what control what would happens with us, who we would meet, things come to us... well I somewhat believe in God even just a thought I think he exists, but yeah it is very non-proof and controversial debate,... but yes sometimes we do things and act things we dont know why even most of time... accident/deliberate/impulse/habit... etc

Written by Ellrohir on 09.10.2012 at 19:13

The simple experience of getting burn after you put hand onto hot stove you got as a child doesn't prevent you from doing it again...of course you probably wont choose to do so, but there is nothing holding you back technically - you simply CAN...

the same way you can for example go and violate the law...it will have consequences for you, so you would probably rather hold back, but you CAN...

that you DON'T WANT TO, doesn't mean you can't...you are pretty free to do anything possible...

I can see your point, but determinism runs deeper. Let me try and give a different example.

In the moments leading up to a decision where you are consciously unsure of what decision you will make, you feel this. It appears that there are two options (we'll stick with two for simplicity's sake). However, once you've made the decision, how could you know that the other choice 'could have been made'. You cannot go back in time and relive that choice, picking the other option. I mean, you can imagine doing that, but the actual act is impossible because you cannot return to that exact moment in time. You feel an emotion that you made a decision. However, just because you feel these emotions does not mean that a decision actually occurred. There are many points in our lives where our emotions are misplaced and illusory. In this way it is very possible that the feeling of a choice being made is an illusion. It is a very convincing illusion, before the decision we feel either path is plausible, after we feel like it would have been possible for us to choose the other path but we did not. But once the choice is made, that's it. The deliberations we have over making those choices are just a lead up to the choice we would eventually make anyway.

This is just another way to look at determinism instead of continuing to quote the laws of causality over and over again.

The key here is, the distinction between objective and subjective reality. Our subjective experience is where the idea of free will emerges from. When looking at free will objectively it falls apart completely. So the ultimate question comes when we try and decide which is more real? Can subjectivity hold up to objectivity? Does their contradictory nature some how compliment and jell with each other at some point?

Written by Grody2themax on 08.10.2012 at 10:15

Written by Ellrohir on 01.09.2012 at 19:23

I had a free choice not to post in this topic...but i selected to do so...

not sherriff srs....one does not simply enter a thread on free will and make the typical response that you had the choice of doing something and did it accordingly.

Sorry for using shitty memes btw.

Free Will does not exist. The concept does not even make sense. There is literally no possible way that you could have any ultimate control over your life, your thoughts, or your actions.

To explain this on a basic level. Think of any city in the world. Literally any city you want. Now that you've chosen that city, why did you choose that city? Why didn't you choose Cairo? (unless you actually did) The reason you didn't choose Cairo, is because your thoughts have been manipulated through your past experiences. Maybe you happened to see a commercial in San Fransisco today, or maybe you live in Boston, so you chose one of those cities. If you chose Boston, then why did you choose Boston? Was it because Boston is a city you like? Why do you like Boston? Is it because it gives you comfort inside? If you answered yes, then hy does it give you comfort inside? Is it because it gives you a sense of security? If you answered yes, then why is that you like the sense of security? Its because you are an organic being, and its instinctual to not want to die, and feel safe. Did you have any free will over that desire? No, and ultimately, that is what all of our desires boil down to. In the end, everything we do can be explained through series of past events, and something related to our desire to continue living/reproducing.

Interesting idea, you could extend it and ask yourself why you had us choose a city? I'm sure there are predetermined reasons based upon experience which led you to ask us to choose a city.

Yet why is having these past experiences going to have an an effect on our ability to exercise free will? If I choose a city such a choice is made of my own will. When I make this choice with my own will is it "free" of anything? It isn't free of experience, you're right but without experience it is impossible to make a decision in the first place, your will to do something depends upon experience. So if there is such a thing as free will it cannot be without experience, otherwise we would have no ability to make decisions.

Written by Ellrohir on 08.10.2012 at 15:18

I think you are misunderstanding the meaning of "free will"

This depends on your definition of free will.

Written by Ellrohir on 08.10.2012 at 15:18

by denying the existence of free will, you are more likely saying there is someone else, some God or whatever, who is making this decision instead of us

The concept of pure free will does not even make sense in either a Godless or God ruled universe. The argument of free will (that I'm making at least) has nothing to do with a higher being.

If you were to truly have the closest thing to pure free will, then every decision you made must be considered in its entirety. Meaning, it would take you a long time, week(s) or months to just consider absolutely everything. You would have to write out on paper every single aspect of the decision you were making. Look it over, consider every aspect. And then, try to make a rational decision based on your original goal. But this sort of undermines your exercise of free will, because if you did this, you would have just wasted so much time that you would have made your decision too late for it to be of any value. Also, your original goal would have been influenced by something other than your "free will".

The best thing we can do is to try our best to examine situation and not become overwhelmed by them to the point of not doing anything about our goals or problems. Also, its important to note that nothing you do, or think comes purely from yourself. Every single one of your thoughts is a collaboration of influence from outside sources. This is a basic principle of logic.

Would you really know either way? Unless you can have a mulligan on life. (or do-over if you don't know what a mulligan is)

Written by Grody2themax on 14.10.2012 at 20:42

Also, its important to note that nothing you do, or think comes purely from yourself. Every single one of your thoughts is a collaboration of influence from outside sources. This is a basic principle of logic.

Not that I agree with the whole of your post anyway, but at least at this point I'm calling BS. The empirical truth (insofar as it is a truth; but I'll grant it) you mentioned has nothing to do with the formal calculus that is logic. Logic by definition doesn't concern itself with the content of propositions. You'll have to do better.

Besides, you seem argue that "free will" means "decision-making completely independent of outside influence" - or "totally free will". But that's not what the word means. Our decisions don't come "purely from ourselves" as you say, but that doesn't imply they are "purely" external either. You're just setting up an extreme view and attacking it, thinking you've now defeated all opposition. Your strawman is burning but nobody cares.

I don't think it's news that we are conditioned by external circumstances. But what you'd have to demonstrate is that that's all we are, that every action is determined by a certain type of causes and that what we consider "will" doesn't factor into it. In addition to external forces, there's also internal causation to consider: nothing's to say your mental processes couldn't be genuine causes of your other mental processes. In fact, it's highly more plausible and less problematic than explaining how a physical event could directly cause a mental response. But of course, that doesn't mean the resulting mental states are necessarily "free": they might still have been caused by something in a mechanical, law-like manner.

What's at stake is what "free will" actually means. If it means there's some transcendent core ego who exerts sovereign decision-making independent of external influences, then we can dismiss it offhand. But "free will" does not mean "completely free will" anymore than "free education" means there are no costs to society. Does freedom mean there's absolutely no causation, or that the causation is intrinsic to the object which is free? I'm inclined to say the latter: random chaos is not freedom, but a man regulating his own life is generally called a free man. And where exactly do we find a "will" in the first place? Are our mental processes part of our will, or external to it? Are our brain's electro-chemical processes part of our will, or external to it?

It seems to me we can define free will as a state in which the agent's intrinsic mental states act as causes or part of the causes for that agent's other mental states (which in turn cause physical action). So whether free will exists boils down to whether there is genuine mental causation (which I believe is well-argued by P. Raatikainen, for example), and whether the mental states acting as causes are considered intrinsic to the "will" whose freedom is at stake.

Even if this analysis is incorrect, the questions I raised are nonetheless the kind you have to deal with if you are to formulate a plausible answer to the topic.

I don't think you should argue about what 'free will' means, that just depends on the context.
The Intuitive notion of free-will refers to man being a demigod, which you can find it's origin in the ancient near east (Occidental Mythology by Campell). Given that meaning we can argue if it is correct or not.
I think a working definition as a part of a wider theory is needed, and not arguing about a definition per-se. Let's assume your analysis is correct. I can still ask you...so what? as a part of what it is factually not empty and has a functional role?
I'm interested in how P. Raatikainen bridges the gap between mental and physical.

I don't think we have to bridge that gap in order to defend the notion of autonomous mental states that aren't fully determined by physical events. Philosophy tends to tackle with one issue at a time, and there's no need to assume more than what's necessary to solve the problems at hand. (Some people seem to have a pretty grandiose view of philosophy, anyway; the most famous articles of the 20th century had to do with very mundane, intuitive examples.)

I'm not sure what you mean by "The Intuitive notion of free-will refers to man being a demigod, which you can find it's origin in the ancient near east (Occidental Mythology by Campell). Given that meaning we can argue if it is correct or not." I haven't read the book, but that certainly isn't the intuitive meaning; if you were to ask a random person on the street, they wouldn't produce that answer. It's a general problem that transcends cultural context, even if our western understanding of free will was directly linked that what this Campbell posits (though I doubt the link is that straightforward).

The starting point of any discussion is to define the concepts you're dealing with, and refine them in the process. In fact, much of 20th and 21st century analytic philosophy has seen it as its purpose to clarify and improve the natural language. I think it's possible to defend different requirements for "free will" but you have to make them explicit. Grody above proceeds to deny even the possibility of free will (something which is probably incorrect, given that empirical laws aren't necessary in all possible worlds), but he demands that free will be absolutely independent of any outside influence. On the other hand, I don't think anyone here is actually arguing for such an extreme freedom.

Anyway, here's an article from Raatikainen if you're interested. It's about 10 pages, pretty quick to read. This isn't directly relevant to the question of free will, but shows that mental causation is not as trivially problematic is generallly supposed:
http://www.mv.helsinki.fi/home/praatika/mental%20causation.doc

The premiss to accepting it is probably that you already know what the type identity states and why, despite its initial appeal to the modern naturalistic person, it turns out not to be viable.

How do two fundamentally different categories of being interact on each other?
Yes, I think that is what a person on the street would refer to - an a-casual (<I've got this term wrong, I just can't remember the proper one) account of free will. "I" as a primum movens, the uncause cause of his own choices.

If you keep redefining the terms you are de-facto redefining the issue. The original question concerns fatalism, after generations the issue of "free will" came to concern determinism in general.

I think much of this is revolving around normative issues and not descriptive. From a descriptive point of view, which is psychology as far as I'm concerned, I don't see any room for free will as I described above. We can predict with our theories human behavior and understand them rather well as a part of a casual world.
The normative issue, which should be a part of ethics, is who is considered free i.e. should be taken to be responsible for his actions in some sense. Responsibility, as far as I'm concerned, does not need free will in the descriptive sense.

Thanks for the article. I've get to it when I have a chance, I'm overloaded with studying right now.

Written by IronAngel on 14.11.2012 at 01:23

Written by Grody2themax on 14.10.2012 at 20:42

Also, its important to note that nothing you do, or think comes purely from yourself. Every single one of your thoughts is a collaboration of influence from outside sources. This is a basic principle of logic.

Not that I agree with the whole of your post anyway, but at least at this point I'm calling BS. The empirical truth (insofar as it is a truth; but I'll grant it) you mentioned has nothing to do with the formal calculus that is logic. Logic by definition doesn't concern itself with the content of propositions. You'll have to do better.

Besides, you seem argue that "free will" means "decision-making completely independent of outside influence" - or "totally free will". But that's not what the word means. Our decisions don't come "purely from ourselves" as you say, but that doesn't imply they are "purely" external either. You're just setting up an extreme view and attacking it, thinking you've now defeated all opposition. Your strawman is burning but nobody cares.

I don't think it's news that we are conditioned by external circumstances. But what you'd have to demonstrate is that that's all we are, that every action is determined by a certain type of causes and that what we consider "will" doesn't factor into it. In addition to external forces, there's also internal causation to consider: nothing's to say your mental processes couldn't be genuine causes of your other mental processes. In fact, it's highly more plausible and less problematic than explaining how a physical event could directly cause a mental response. But of course, that doesn't mean the resulting mental states are necessarily "free": they might still have been caused by something in a mechanical, law-like manner.

What's at stake is what "free will" actually means. If it means there's some transcendent core ego who exerts sovereign decision-making independent of external influences, then we can dismiss it offhand. But "free will" does not mean "completely free will" anymore than "free education" means there are no costs to society. Does freedom mean there's absolutely no causation, or that the causation is intrinsic to the object which is free? I'm inclined to say the latter: random chaos is not freedom, but a man regulating his own life is generally called a free man. And where exactly do we find a "will" in the first place? Are our mental processes part of our will, or external to it? Are our brain's electro-chemical processes part of our will, or external to it?

It seems to me we can define free will as a state in which the agent's intrinsic mental states act as causes or part of the causes for that agent's other mental states (which in turn cause physical action). So whether free will exists boils down to whether there is genuine mental causation (which I believe is well-argued by P. Raatikainen, for example), and whether the mental states acting as causes are considered intrinsic to the "will" whose freedom is at stake.

Even if this analysis is incorrect, the questions I raised are nonetheless the kind you have to deal with if you are to formulate a plausible answer to the topic.

In your post, you basically brought up the ambiguity of the words, freedom, will, and free will. There was a reason I used words like pure free will, and this was to try to define what it is I was trying to argue, which is no doubt on the extreme end of things. Your final definition of free will allows free will (according to your definition) to exist. I genuinely like to stare bouncing titties, and sit by warm fires. Both of these examples provide opportunity for me to be healthy, and reproduce. The will in these cases are intrinsic. But we don't have a choice over what is intrinsic to us, so free will exists within your definition (if I understand you correctly), but not in a more blunt definition which I was originally arguing.

Not that I thought I was talking some revolutionary shit or anything in my first post though...

Written by IronAngel on 14.11.2012 at 01:23
You're just setting up an extreme view and attacking it, thinking you've now defeated all opposition. Your strawman is burning but nobody cares.

I was just giving a little more in depth analysis and a different approach to an overly simple post in this thread.

Philosophically speaking, I don't think free will exists. Judicially speaking, it would be appropriate to say that we should be held responsible for our actions, because I don't think the philosophical sense of free will has many good implications about the real world to push society forward.

Also, given the complexity of the human mind, and implications of theoretical physics, I think there is possibility of much better ways of thinking about our interaction and role with the rest of the time and space.

We have a free will.

Seems like comments on ambiguity were made before I made them in a different thread.

http://myscienceacademy.org/2013/01/15/scientific-evidence-that-you-probably-dont-have-free-will/

"Free will doesn't exist. Only the illusion of free will, because the causes of our behavior are so complex that we can't trace them back. If you've got one line of dominoes knocking each other down one by one, then you can always say, Look, this domino fell because that one pushed it. But when you have an infinite number of directions, you can never find where the casual chain begins. So you think, That domino fell because it wanted to."

"God, our genes, our environment, or some stupid programmer keying in code at an ancient terminal - there's no way free will can ever exist if we as individuals are the result of some external cause."

And the most important quote in response to this

"Even if there is no such thing as free will, we have to treat each other as if there were free will in order to live together in society. Because otherwise, every time somebody does something terrible, you can't punish him, because he can't help it, because his genes or his environment or God made him do it, and every time somebody does something good, you can't honor him, because he was a puppet, too. If you think that everybody around you is a puppet, why bother talking to them at all? Why even try to plan anything or create anything, since everything you plan or create or desire or dream of is just acting out the script your puppeteer built into you.
So we conceive of ourselves and everyone around us as volitional beings. We treat everyone as if they did things with a purpose in mind, instead of because they're being pushed from behind. We punish criminals. We reward altruists. We plan things and build things together. We make promises and expect each other to keep them. It's all a made-up story, but when everybody believes that everybody's actions are the result of free choice, and takes and gives responsibility accordingly, the result is civilization."

All three quotes are from Orson Scott Card (not from the link above).

In short, we probably don't have free will, but it's not very useful to think of ourselves like that, because that makes it hard to interact with others in our society. Better to just pretend we do, whether or not it's true.

The above is so jumbled and incoherent that it makes my head hurt. In what sense are you trying to do something, or convince yourself you have free will, or plan, if it's all mechanically predetermined? That whole claim makes no sense, because you can't really evaluate whether something is "hard" or "useful" in a well-oiled machine that simply produces effects without meaning or intention. The whole question of whether it's beneficial or necessary to assume we have some free will is absurd, if we didn't have a choice in the matter in the first place.

It may be that there is no free will. I don't think there's a very good case to be made, though. In solving a dilemma, you'll have to find the solution that most corresponds with our experiences, intuitions and rational principles. Whether a purely mechanical causality is such a solution, one thing is clear: we cannot even think or talk without assuming intentionality and agency, so you can't really posit an intelligible theory that denies all intention and choice. It simply doesn't fit within our cognitive faculties. Trying to make sense of it in such everyday terms as the quote above stumbles in its own impossibility.

Now maybe reality really is such that it cannot be comprehended and our lives are an illusion. But is it the best, most plausible explanation that deals with the majority of our experience and beliefs satisfactorily? If a reductivist view of causal physicalism logically leads to conclusions that are almost impossible to accept or even understand, isn't that good reason to suspect the explanation has gone astray? It seems arbitrary to choose certain observations and principles as primary, and dismiss others. Why should we consider highly technical and theoretical data on brain chemistry as more compelling than our immediate experience of free will? You would be just as consistent in assuming that because you do in fact experience free will and know it exists, the reductive physicalist conclusion from some other data must be false.

It's quite simple. We think we have free will because it is beneficial to our survival. Things beneficial to our survival naturally become incorporated into our behavior/biology by natural chemical, physical, and evolutionary processes. For example, if a species did not have the "desire" to live, it would die. That's it. There were probably many species just like that throughout the history of this planet, but I'm sure they're extinct now.

If I created a machine with the sole purpose of doing all it can to prevent itself from going offline, I would program rules into it to help that along.
I would make it run from danger, attack what it couldn't run from; I would program it to act in ways that would prevent it from receiving damage, to repair itself if it did receive damage, to keep itself charged, oiled, clean, etc. This machine has no true options, as it must follow its programming, but it always seems to act as if by choice, doing what it can/must to stay online as long as it can. Is this machine alive? No, not at all. But if it were useful for it to tell other people it was alive, I would probably program that into it, too, to give it every advantage I can.

Nature does this in the same way with us, through natural selection. If a creature has a psychological defect that causes it to die, then it does not reproduce and that defect is not likely to repeat. If another creature has a different psychological defect (i.e. thinking that all its actions are by choice) that causes it to survive longer, it is likely to pass on that trait to its offspring.

This would only make sense, of course, if you believe in a world of cause/effect where everything is mathematically predictable and measurable--provided the necessary instruments and processing power to make sense of the data, of course. I happen to believe in a world like that, but that doesn't mean that's the only possibility; I always accept the very real possibility that I could be completely wrong.

This whole discussion is probably for naught; the ambiguity of reality itself causes this entire topic to be nothing more than a bunch of convoluted arguments--talking around something that cannot possibly be adequately described in the limited construct of human language.

Except that's not how evolution works (it's a crass carichature, even if the general idea seems right) and you still seem to posit intentionality. You just described a machine with a purpose. It's very problematic to describe evolution, because we tend to resort to teleological explanations. In fact, there can be no goal of survival or reproduction, organs have no purpose, and planning is impossible in mechanical causation. Causation only looks backwards. You can't coherently claim animals run away to avoid danger and death, you should be saying they run away because of immediately preceding physical causes. To explain the illusion of free will as a prerequisite to good society is a teleological explanation, and it certainly doesn't explain the emergence or nature of the phenomenon.

What's problematic about such views is not that the world is, in principle, processable and observable; but that it's measurable and predictable in just the ways our cognitive biases expect it to be. Things like rigorous cause and effect are taken as a priori, but ultimately there's no guarantee that our millenial philosophical categories actually represent the nature of the world accurately. As I understand (and I understand very little), the concepts of cause and effects don't even seem applicable in the latest depths of physics. There's been experiments of effect preceeding cause, have there not? (Though I'm not sure about their validity.)

Either way, the case for a causally closed and sufficient system of mechanical physicalism rests on many common-sensical assumptions and jumping from one to the other with seeming ease. But there's a very high chance one of those assumptions is slightly inaccurate and doesn't actually imply what we think it implies. I would be very hesitant to embrace conclusions that lead to unacceptable, absurd consequences. Not because they can't be true, but because our evidence doesn't seem to support them and it's dubious to trust some theoretical principle of deduction over the immediate experience and knowledge we believe we have. I trust philosophy can offer a solution to these issues that we might not yet see. I do seem to know for sure that mental phenomena and agency are real, and it takes more than a formal principle like "Reality is causally closed" to convince me otherwise.