Is free will a paranormal concept?

[Jono]

Free will is just an abstract way of not saying that no matter how badly we want to flap our arms and fly away freely and physically, we can't because we are not birds.

 

[DeviousB]

Free will is just an abstract way of not saying that no matter how badly we want to flap our arms and fly away freely and physically, we can't because we are not birds.

I've always imagined that if I could only wish for it hard enough, my arms would grow feathers and I'd soar into the skies like an eagle. Only I've never been sure, would that be an example of "freak will" or "free quill"?

 

[jskowron]

Free will and determinism were common topics of the behavioral scientist B.F. Skinner. In his biography of Skinner, Daniel Bjork writes

"He (Skinner), like most Americans for much of our history, preferred to
emphasize the ability of people to shape their environments- except
that he reversed the relationship: Environment determined how people
acted, rather than people freely creating their environments." (p231)

This seems contradictory to me- Our behavior is determined by the environments that we shape.

 

[IllegalArgument]

Free will and determinism were common topics of the behavioral scientist B.F. Skinner. In his biography of Skinner, Daniel Bjork writes

"He (Skinner), like most Americans for much of our history, preferred to
emphasize the ability of people to shape their environments- except
that he reversed the relationship: Environment determined how people
acted, rather than people freely creating their environments." (p231)

This seems contradictory to me- Our behavior is determined by the environments that we shape.

Feedback loop, our enviroments shape our behavior, which causes "us" to shape our enviroment, etc etc.

Evolution works on the same principal.

 

[ceptimus]

Your brain is made of atoms. Atoms obey the laws of physics.

No room for free will there. Perhaps atoms don't quite obey the laws of physics, when they're part of a brain.

 

[EGarrett]

In other words, free will involves an appeal to the supernatural and hence is no more scientific than other woo.

Actually, if you go from what I said, determinism requires an equal amount of woo. Simply because of the chaos in the universe.

To understand how we make our choices also requires a knowledge of how the brain functions that we don't yet have.

 

[EGarrett]

This is precisely the flaw that shoots down a lot of religious philosophy. If a deity is omniscient then it must know everything we will do, and therefore we don't have free will, even if it seems so to us. Equally, if we have free will the any deity cannot know what will happen next, which contradicts at least the Christian view of god. The only way around this is to impose limits on the power of god, such as saying it can know everything now, but somehow lacks the ability to work out what will happen next. Either way, the concept of an all-knowing, all-powerful god is fundamentally incompatible with free will.

You're assuming that just because something is predictable that it isn't a free choice.

If you know that your buddy is going to open all the windows in the morning and close them at night...because he always does it...does that suddenly mean that it's not something he chooses to do? Of course not.

 

[Jeff Corey]

Free will and determinism were common topics of the behavioral scientist B.F. Skinner. In his biography of Skinner, Daniel Bjork writes

"He (Skinner), like most Americans for much of our history, preferred to
emphasize the ability of people to shape their environments- except
that he reversed the relationship: Environment determined how people
acted, rather than people freely creating their environments." (p231)

This seems contradictory to me- Our behavior is determined by the environments that we shape.

I haven't read Bjork, but I have read a lot of Skinner. Our enviroments shape our behavior because when we respond, our environment changes. We respond and get or lose stimuli. Sometimes these changes operantly change the behavior that produced those changes.
No contradiction.

 

[Ericka]

Unlike animals people have the capacity to learn how-to learn. We aren't just programmed by our environment and our genetic instincts. If we want to sit down are read a book on C++ we can choose to do it, and then become a programmer. Or instead we can choose to waste time in front of the television (On any of the 500 channels without anything on). Animals have needs, but people have desires and opinions. To one person working as a lawyer might be what they decide to do and to another person working as a doctor might be what they decide to do.

Somewhere people make a choice. No one is predisposed to becoming either a lawyer or a doctor, and you can't force anyone to make such a choice. In fact if you tell someone they have to become a doctor, they might decide to become a musician instead. Animals don't have these kinds of choices, and they only learn because someone trains them to behave differently than they naturally would, with rewards and punishments. People on the other hand have a natural desire to learn how to improve themselves and create their surroundings in a way that appeals to them.

If we didn't have free will then no one would be responsible for their actions. But somewhere along the line people make a choice to become criminals, and we hold them responsible for it. It is possible that if they wanted to, they could have become a doctor instead. But obviously in some cases people are mentally ill, and can't control their behavior. And we say these people don't have free will, but that doesn't mean the brain is so simple that you can anticipate where any person will be 10 or 20 years from now. But a dog will still be drinking from its dish, and pooping in the neighbors yard.

 

[Jeff Corey]

Unlike animals people have the capacity to learn how-to learn...

Sorry, when you start out by stating something false, I just stop reading the rest. Animal behaviorists have been studying learning sets (learning how to learn) in animals ranging from rats to college students for over 50 years.

 

[Garrette]

Unlike animals people have the capacity to learn how-to learn. We aren't just programmed by our environment and our genetic instincts. If we want to sit down are read a book on C++ we can choose to do it, and then become a programmer. Or instead we can choose to waste time in front of the television (On any of the 500 channels without anything on). Animals have needs, but people have desires and opinions. To one person working as a lawyer might be what they decide to do and to another person working as a doctor might be what they decide to do.

Somewhere people make a choice. No one is predisposed to becoming either a lawyer or a doctor, and you can't force anyone to make such a choice. In fact if you tell someone they have to become a doctor, they might decide to become a musician instead. Animals don't have these kinds of choices, and they only learn because someone trains them to behave differently than they naturally would, with rewards and punishments. People on the other hand have a natural desire to learn how to improve themselves and create their surroundings in a way that appeals to them.

If we didn't have free will then no one would be responsible for their actions. But somewhere along the line people make a choice to become criminals, and we hold them responsible for it. It is possible that if they wanted to, they could have become a doctor instead. But obviously in some cases people are mentally ill, and can't control their behavior. And we say these people don't have free will, but that doesn't mean the brain is so simple that you can anticipate where any person will be 10 or 20 years from now. But a dog will still be drinking from its dish, and pooping in the neighbors yard.

This is what many (or even most) people who are uninformed in this area believe, but as Jeff Corey pointed out, it is unsubstantiated.

Read the rest of this thread, particularly the posts of Mercutio and you may learn a bit. I rarely participate in threads such as this one because I have no expertise in the subject, but I always learn a lot by reading them.

 

[Ericka]

I'm not saying that animals don't have free will, I only said that humans have more free will. I migth also say that plants have free will, but much less than animals or humans do. But saying animals didn't have any free will wasn't something I said.

 

[Garrette]

I'm not saying that animals don't have free will, I only said that humans have more free will. I migth also say that plants have free will, but much less than animals or humans do. But saying animals didn't have any free will wasn't something I said.

Try reading the posts a bit more carefully then try a new response that addresses what was actually said.

Additionally, you might want to cite some evidence (as opposed to new age beliefs and wishful thinking) about plants having free will.

 

[Mercutio]

Unlike animals people have the capacity to learn how-to learn. We aren't just programmed by our environment and our genetic instincts. If we want to sit down are read a book on C++ we can choose to do it, and then become a programmer. Or instead we can choose to waste time in front of the television (On any of the 500 channels without anything on). Animals have needs, but people have desires and opinions. To one person working as a lawyer might be what they decide to do and to another person working as a doctor might be what they decide to do.

Corey addressed this...

Somewhere people make a choice. No one is predisposed to becoming either a lawyer or a doctor, and you can't force anyone to make such a choice. In fact if you tell someone they have to become a doctor, they might decide to become a musician instead.

Social psychologists call this "reactance", and have shown that it varies systematically with changes in the sorts of choices that are offered and denied.

Animals don't have these kinds of choices, and they only learn because someone trains them to behave differently than they naturally would, with rewards and punishments. People on the other hand have a natural desire to learn how to improve themselves and create their surroundings in a way that appeals to them.

This "natural desire" is circularly inferred. The nice thing about a systematic analysis of behavior is that we do not have to circularly infer; we can actually demonstrate causal relationships.

If we didn't have free will then no one would be responsible for their actions. But somewhere along the line people make a choice to become criminals, and we hold them responsible for it. It is possible that if they wanted to, they could have become a doctor instead.

Hmm... consider, please... an emphasis on "free will" is a tremendous tool for a society. Individuals are much easier to manipulate when the focus is on the consequences of their actions, rather than on the antecedents. If we were to focus on the antecedents to criminal behavior, we would be forced to acknowledge that the environment *does* play a causal role, and that if we truly wanted to reduce crime we would actually have to take action ourselves, rather than simply waiting until someone committed a crime and punishing that person.

It is in our government's best interest to emphasize "free will"; that way we don't have to take responsibility for the environments we have created.

But obviously in some cases people are mentally ill, and can't control their behavior. And we say these people don't have free will, but that doesn't mean the brain is so simple that you can anticipate where any person will be 10 or 20 years from now. But a dog will still be drinking from its dish, and pooping in the neighbors yard.

We have the most complex brains we know of, but also the most complex environments. "Free will" suggests that we can never understand human behavior scientifically; fortunately, if we start out with the assumption that we can, we don't have to give up before we begin. And if you take that 10 or 20 years, I think you will find that over any given 10 or 20 year period, we have come to know more and more about our behavior. "Free will" would suggest that should not be the case.

 

[Thinktoomuch]

My apologies for presuming to butt in again.

The statement
"If we were to focus on the antecedents to criminal behavior, we would be forced to acknowledge that the environment *does* play a causal role, and that if we truly wanted to reduce crime we would actually have to take action ourselves, rather than simply waiting until someone committed a crime and punishing that person."
appears to imply that a majority still does not acknowledge this. Am I deluded in thinking that it does, at least conceptually, but it is not prepared to back it up in practice? I would have thought that widespread acceptance of a traumatic past as a mitigating circumstance in judgment was sufficient evidence.

Does the statement
"Free will" suggests that we can never understand human behavior scientifically"
imply that statistical analysis of collective human behaviour has no heuristic value?

 

[Jeff Corey]

\

Does the statement
"Free will" suggests that we can never understand human behavior scientifically"
imply that statistical analysis of collective human behaviour has no heuristic value?

Yes to the first part and no to the second.
The implication does not follow.

 

[The Atheist]

I see pages of thread, yet nobody has addressed post 65 yet.

Am I to presume that such a simple concept and one sentence explanation just doesn't fit into the world of Freud, Libet, Skinner, et al?

Or is it really just far too obvious?

I'm not trying to be a smart-arse; it just looks like a very easily answered question. Maybe Antipodeans' minds work at a different level and I have no idea what I'm typing. The compulsion I've had to keep an eye on this thread clearly negates my thinking in one way, but I am getting BLOODY HUNGRY HERE, so will someone please answer the post before I starve! I really like food and have a house full of it, but my free will is about to overtaken by my stomach which is protesting that my throat has been cut.

 

[Thinktoomuch]

Well, ThAt, I could never forgive myself if you died of starvation because everybody ignored you.

My guess is that all those here with postgraduate studies in psychology and those deluding themselves as having an equivalent understanding find your antipodean cultured English logic (there, I deeply insulted you !) ((private joke, others ignore us please)) too mundane to warrant an answer.

Given that mine are in more numerate subjects, I think I can add up as follows:

1) nobody knows enough about brain function yet to say with reasonable certainty how thought is produced
2) free will implies that thought is not produced by the physical brain
3) therefore we can not yet say whether free will is real and produced by a hypothetical "mind" or a fiction produced by our brain.
(oops - that looks dangerously similar to a sillogism - maybe I have stepped out of line!)

The unpleasant part is that, by the same logic, free will is a matter of belief, therefore by accepting its existence you have to make an exception to your skepticism... Did somebody mention something about casting first stones?

 

[Thinktoomuch]

Well, ThAt, I could never forgive myself if you died of starvation because everybody ignored you.

My guess is that all those here with postgraduate studies in psychology and those deluding themselves as having an equivalent understanding find your antipodean cultured English logic (there, I deeply insulted you !) ((private joke, others ignore us please)) too mundane to warrant an answer.

Given that mine are in more numerate subjects, I think I can add up as follows:

1) nobody knows enough about brain function yet to say with reasonable certainty how thought is produced
2) free will implies that thought is not produced by the physical brain
3) therefore we can not yet say whether free will is real and produced by a hypothetical "mind" or a fiction produced by our brain.
(oops - that looks dangerously similar to a sillogism - maybe I have stepped out of line!)

The unpleasant part is that, by the same logic, free will is a matter of belief, therefore by accepting its existence you have to make an exception to your skepticism... Did somebody mention something about casting first stones?

 

[The Atheist]

Well, ThAt, I could never forgive myself if you died of starvation because everybody ignored you.

My guess is that all those here with postgraduate studies in psychology and those deluding themselves as having an equivalent understanding find your antipodean cultured English logic (there, I deeply insulted you !) ((private joke, others ignore us please)) too mundane to warrant an answer.

Given that mine are in more numerate subjects, I think I can add up as follows:

1) nobody knows enough about brain function yet to say with reasonable certainty how thought is produced
2) free will implies that thought is not produced by the physical brain
3) therefore we can not yet say whether free will is real and produced by a hypothetical "mind" or a fiction produced by our brain.
(oops - that looks dangerously similar to a sillogism - maybe I have stepped out of line!)

The unpleasant part is that, by the same logic, free will is a matter of belief, therefore by accepting its existence you have to make an exception to your skepticism... Did somebody mention something about casting first stones?

Mate! I am disgusted! If I'd known you were watching this thread I wouldn't have bothered. I was lmfao when I read your reply. That's it, that's going to cost you a 10k raise. Back to Community!

Man, I hate guys like you.