Do you believe in free will?

[Sylar]

I believe that free will exists to a limited extent, we covered this in my Psychology class in my college days. Perhaps it would have been better suited to a philosophy class.

You can make yourself some breakfast and think what you ate was all your choice, but how much of your decision was determined by time and ingredients available? You can pick an outfit to wear but your choices are limited by what items you can afford.

Can free will really be free when outside factors will always dictate your choices in some way. It's like how choose your own adventure books never let you choose your own adventure, they allow you to choose from a limited path of options someone else decided upon.

 

[Crossbreed]

Can free will really be free when outside factors will always dictate your choices in some way.

They are not all outside factors. Some of their own prior choices impact the funds available for their wardrobe, for example, like

• overspending on food or
  
• fines for misdemeanors that they chose to do, etc.

 

[Aurellia]

Free will can be defined as choosing a path in which your choices will take you down.
How much did the black death affect your choice of food for breakfast on the 24th of July in 2010? There is no way of knowing how, but it most likely did, or do you owe the circumstances of that choice to the conquests of Alexander the Great?

Somebody's choice to found a bank which you use to pay a mortgage for a house you want to own, in turn, its monthly rate affects your financial decisions for the following years (or decades).

We exist perceiving time as linear path. To us, free will is just a series of choices, with our past defining our future. (Sometimes, it's not even our own past, but that of the planet itself.)

Free will exists, but it is the ability to act upon the consequences of our decisions made before.

 

[Calibar]

Depends on what you mean by free will. Can we do what we want. Sure we can. I want to type here right now so I am doing it. I watched a movie yesterday which I wanted to watch (for the 30th time I might add.) Before I started watching it, was it within my power to not watch it. I don't think so. I am a reductionist who sees humans as nothing more than complex machines made up of parts that care only for the laws of physics and not free will or anything else. Can a properly functioning washing machine bring it about to not rotate? Can a tree bring it about to not grow when it has sunlight, organic material and air? Can your cells bring it about to stop dividing? Can your heart choose to stop beating? Why is any individual part of the brain any different? Why is the brain as a whole any different? It is just a physical machine subject to the laws of physics and nothing else. The laws of physics deal with different kinds of forces and properties, none of which are free will. Granted the laws of physics cannot explain consciousness, but they should be able to explain why a certain particle behaves a certain way at a certain time. And we are nothing but collections of particles.

 

[AustinFrom1995]

I think that people have the choice to do what they want, there so no one up there pulling strings and nothing is pre-determined. Our actions are the results of our choices. I know a lot of people like this romanticized idea that everyone is given a purpose in life, but everything I have seen has lead me to feel that this is not the case.

-Austin

 

[Clueless in Canada]

Increasingly, no.

 

[Oldlady]

If by free will you mean 'make choices', then yes I do think we have free will, but with a caveat.

I don't think that we are aware of the processes that go into our own 'choice making' for the most part. I think what drives us in every way is mostly hidden from our conscious awake mind. Like an ice berg. We are aware of only the tip.

 

[NothingToSeeHere]

Superficially yes, in actuality, no.

We have the ability to make choice. Right now I am choosing to write this message, I have a cat on my knee whom I chose to adopt, I am in a flat which I chose to rent. Superficially, I utilised 'free will' to make those decisions.

However, when you actually pay attention to the mind it is evident that I have no true control over any of this. I do not have the ability to choose what I am going to think next, the thought simply arises by itself, and I have no knowledge of what it will be until it does. I did not consciously choose to the use the word 'arises' in the previous sentence, and I cannot control the fact that I think it is an appropriate word to use. I cannot stop myself from understanding English, or make myself not understand the composition of water, or make myself not love cats, or change the fact that out of all of the cats in the shelter it was the one currently sitting on my knee which felt right.

All of our choices are determined by things completely beyond our control. We do not choose our genetics, the structure of our brain, our formative experiences, or the perceptions by which we are constantly bombarded, both consciously and subconsciously. There is no free will there.

 

[Oldlady]

I think there is some free will in that we do make choices. I make a choice between picking up the light laser on my right or the one on my left. But, how I make that choice (consciously or subconsciously) and who this person I call myself is that is making that choice?????