Determinism and Free Will

Rational discussions on metaphysical and abstract topics.
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Jiva
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Determinism and Free Will

Post by Jiva »

The subject of determinism has been raised in previous threads, but never as a central issue. Therefore I thought I’d start this thread to see what opinions people have regarding it. There are three broad categories: determination, free will, and a mix of the two. However, there are many subcategories and also the question of what something like “determinism” actually refers to, i.e. is it biological or behavioural or whatever? Wikipedia has short summaries of the major choices. Many aren’t mutually exclusive and consequently a lot of mental gymnastics can develop from this deceptively simple question.

Aside from a general interest in people’s opinions, I was reading something regarding determinism and antinomianism recently that sought to reconcile the two, which kind of relates to the ‘Biblical Law and the Messiah’ thread that I started. The most famous determinists were the Calvinists who believed that while salvation was indeed determined, it had to be justified by actions. Apparently the Izbica/Radzin Hasidim thought something similar, yet believed that if one followed the halakha more stringently than required by using divine intuition rather than legal reason (the example given is Judah refusing to justifiably kill Joseph), then one could partake of a latent messianic strain in humanity that will only be fully actualised once the messiah arrives and makes the law unnecessary. Essentially, this seems very similar to Jesus’ antinomy. Interestingly though, this extra-halakha is referred to as a kind of personal tzimtzum (contraction/limitation) that, in effect, goes some way to reducing the original metaphysical tzimtzum.

Personally though, I have quite a standard, boring view. I think the body and mind have essentially shaped each other via evolution and therefore consider an obvious physical and moral determinism apparent. In other words I subscribe to the biological determinist argument. Of course, environment/culture also has a determinist role, but I think this is more of a template by which biological determinism is put into action.
'Oh Krishna, restless and overpowering, this mind is overwhelmingly strong; I think we might as easily gain control over the wind as over this.'
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Insanus
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Re: Determinism and Free Will

Post by Insanus »

Determinism might be the way our memory just happens to work. To me, the question thus is: do I have any degree of control over my mental workings in any given situation. I do think the answer is yes, because I can always just stop thinking.

I think the determinism/free will corresponds to the Jungian ideas of causality/synchronicity.
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Jiva
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Re: Determinism and Free Will

Post by Jiva »

I’m not sure I understand your point. I guess you mean that you consider yourself only determined by the experiences you remember – essentially behavioural determinism – but I can’t see why silencing (or forgetting?) this would be desirable in a practical, everyday situation.
'Oh Krishna, restless and overpowering, this mind is overwhelmingly strong; I think we might as easily gain control over the wind as over this.'
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Insanus
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Re: Determinism and Free Will

Post by Insanus »

Jiva wrote:I’m not sure I understand your point. I guess you mean that you consider yourself only determined by the experiences you remember – essentially behavioural determinism – but I can’t see why silencing (or forgetting?) this would be desirable in a practical, everyday situation.
I mean that the fact that I am able to silence and/or forget it is enough proof for me that I do have some freedom, even if it's only negative freedom. It might be that every action & thought is reaction, but not-doing is not a reaction, so it's not determined, if that makes any sense?
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Nefastos
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Re: Determinism and Free Will

Post by Nefastos »

My opinion can be found from the first two books of Fosforos. In a nutshell:

I believe in both strict determinism & absolute freedom. It depends from which side you approach the problem, from the side of matter (which is linear & causal) or from the side of spirit (which is atemporal & thus acting without outside stimulus, instead acting out from its pure essentiality).

In matter, everything we seem to "choose" is bound by the unseen factors that together make up our mind; but in the true unity of nirvâna, every moments happen at once, so instead of the bounds there is a (or rather, the) permanent explosive moment of absolute power.
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
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Re: Determinism and Free Will

Post by Wyrmfang »

First of all, the idea of free will is anything but transparent and clear. It seems that in the current Western world free will is usually understood as "liberty of indifference", the ability to choose something for no apparent reason. However, this kind of freedom would be equal to a random number generator, and it is evident that mere chance is not what we are after with the concept of freedom. Freedom has to have also some aspect of determination. On the other hand, if my actions are determined beforehand then they are obviously not free. The most important aspect in the meaning of freedom is moral responsibility; if I cannot freely choose between right and wrong I´m not a morally responsible being at all. These are the basic starting points concerning freedom in German idealism.

According to this tradition, the problem in classical metaphysical systems, both idealistic and materialistic, is that will is thought as a thing. If will is a thing, then it obviously has to be understood in terms of causal mechanisms of nature like all other things in nature. If, however, will is thought as a kind of causality in itself, the idea of freedom is seen in a completely different light. The only thing that is required for freedom to be real is that future is open. There has to be some causal explanation for everything that happens, but from this it does not follow that a previous state determines what will happen; there can be many open possibilities.
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Jiva
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Re: Determinism and Free Will

Post by Jiva »

Yeah, the views of my original post are obviously an empirical view. The thing I find difficult about Will as a causality in itself is that it could easily be interpreted as hedonistic or amoral, which leaves freedom open, but doesn’t specify any concept of morality. That’s why I found the Izbica/Radzin example quite interesting, as the motivation for modifying the empirical laws of God to what we would essentially describe as more moral comes from a paradoxically divine impulse. It basically seems to me that this would be a reciprocally productive relationship [rather than the one-way-street of typical religion. EDIT].

However, as you can tell, my thoughts aren’t the clearest or most developed, hence me starting this topic :P.
'Oh Krishna, restless and overpowering, this mind is overwhelmingly strong; I think we might as easily gain control over the wind as over this.'
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Re: Determinism and Free Will

Post by Wyrmfang »

Jiva wrote:The thing I find difficult about Will as a causality in itself is that it could easily be interpreted as hedonistic or amoral, which leaves freedom open, but doesn’t specify any concept of morality.
I think I see some similarity between Insanus´ view of not-thinking and the views of Kant and Schelling I have studied. Kant´s theory of maxims is the key to understanding the autonomy of will as morality. I think the only presupposition that has to be accepted is that when we act, we act on a maxim, that is, we at least unconsciously act according to some generalized principle - there is no act that is a random act without any principle behind it. And when we generalize maxims enough (I take I hammer in order to nail, I nail in order to make a roof, I make a roof in order to get shelter etc.), it seems reasonable to say that there are only two fundamental maxims: self-love and morality (self-love in very broad sense as "because I want to"). And which one one obeys is a matter of subordination of lower order maxims, not some substantial "moral maxim" that would always be the same. In Kant´s view, when one acts morally, he ceases to act in the sense that he does not act because of his own desires but he listens the universal voice of reason that necessitates by its own essence to treat oneself like others and not as an exception.

Schelling´s theory of freedom is entirely different because it is not a normative theory at all, but in his view human freedom is somehow related to non-being because he conceives human spirit to be a replication of the unity of the completely indifferent will that wills nothing (which grounds the duality of the irrational self-will of the ground and the rational-universal will of structured existence).
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Re: Determinism and Free Will

Post by Vavrinec »

The central theme of Calvinist Christianity is predestination, it states that Jehovah promised to his son Jesus his 'elect' prior to the creation of the world. Calvinists believe that only this 'elect' would be saved, unlike Arminianism Christianity which states that all who turn to Christ & are baptized in his name will become one of the 'elect' as mentioned in the Holy Bible. Both these schools of thought came out of the Protestant Reformation & still exist today in Baptist theology. On the topic of free will I don't believe in it personally. All of our choices are made for us, both in birth, life, & death. We don't make the conscience decision to be born, nor do we truly decide our lot in life. We can't decide to breath, to eat, or to drink, nor when to go to the bathroom. We all have to work to earn our daily bread, pay taxes, pay to keep a roof over our heads, etc, etc. Everything we do in life is decided before we our born. And, in the end, we cannot chose to die. For die we must. So yes I do believe in determinism because this world had decided for us, prior to our birth, what we must do in order to surive. Ad for free will, we have none, it is all illusionary.
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Re: Determinism and Free Will

Post by Cancer »

One way of formulating what we mean by free will in everyday speech is saying that it refers to the direction of causality (I can't remember whether I encountered this thought on the forum, somewhere else, or came up with it myself). When a person acts of their free will, the act's reason - or at least one of its reasons - is in the future; the act is not only a reaction to past events, even though it necessarily is also that.

Another apparent criterion for a free act is that its motives be at least somewhat transparent to the actor. If an act of mine can be explained in a way that contradicts my own understanding of it, that lessens the degree of freedom we tend to ascribe to it. I think I want to help a stranger in need because it is morally right, but really it just serves my ego to seem like a good person in front of others etc. - my knowing this would make the act freer, if not less cynical. This kind of contradiction between explanations is why we feel our self-image as free individuals is threatened by those neurological studies that show a decision being made in the brain ten or fifteen seconds before we consciously experience making it.

In light of these observations, the question "Is free will real?" can be interpreted as "Do philosophy and natural science corroborate the immediate experience of decision-making we have in everyday life?" This might seem trivial to some, but at least for me it seems worth spelling out that when we ask questions about free will, we are by the same token asking questions about the validity of our pre-scientific theories of decision-making. These theories not only describe free will but are, if correct, inexorably bound in its action; a free agent must, in order to be free, have a correct theory of their freedom.
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