What is the actual free will humans have?

[ruby sparks]

I identify the source of free will with our relative isolation as living organism from the rest of the universe. We're not absolutely isolated so free will couldn't be absolute. You'd have to look at it as a practical question. Much in the same way as you would accept that a jar can contain a certain amount of water by virtue of its shape and of the physical laws applying. Any other view I conveniently deem ideologically motivated.

According to this, I identify the location of free fill to our physical body, especially our brain. However, it's not just our brain. The entity properly endowed with free will is the public personae. Free will is a political idea. The idea of free will underpins all our relations in the context of the human society. Free will is the default assumption whenever we have to deal with other human beings in any social context.

The basis for accepting this view as the default one is the realisation that we are limited as to the amount of informations we're able to obtain about other people. This limitation will always, in normal contexts, prevent us from knowing what it is other people may be up to and from controlling what other people do beyond crude physical coercion. It's a practical perspective. Free will is on a par with our idea of love and friendship. Could people live without love and friendship, do you think?
EB

Well put, imo.

I might say that I think free will is only partly a political idea, in that it becomes political (or social) as a result of the outworkings of the individual pyschologies of individuals.

On the topic of whether we could live without notions of love or friendship (or free will) I would say.....I don't know, or I might lean towards either saying 'no' or, 'yes, but the richness of our experience of existence might be diminished'.

That does not, of course, rule out the possibility of benefits being obtained from adjusting our notions of any of those three things. In some ways, I think that is the goal of better understanding and gaining greater knowledge. Sometimes called the pursuit of wisdom.

This throws up the point that notions of free will are not just relevant to courtrooms, but to our personal relationships with others, perhaps including ourselves.

One very interesting aspect is compassion (and/or forgiveness), imo.

 

[ruby sparks]

This causes me to wonder.......tangentially...

In my experience, internet forums, including secular/atheist ones, are not the most forgiving or compassionate of places. I don't exclude my own tendency to be harsh or nasty when I get caught up in an argument.

Perhaps most or many of us behave, even in threads on free will (which can easily become heated, in my experience) 'as if' we had a LOT of free will. I have seen people who strongly deny free will exhibiting behaviours they imply are unnecessary or irrational.

I also wonder if the non-face-to-face interactions facilitate some of this.

 

[ruby sparks]

“And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small café in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.”
(Douglas Adams)

Some might speculate that the girl had worked out that we have no actual or complete free will. The idea that we would be better off as individuals and as a society is one optimistic opinion of the consequences of accepting that.

Big caveat: the guy on the cross may or may not have existed and even if he did, may or may not have said that, but someone did. Lots of people in fact.

 

[Speakpigeon]

So more the constraints on the freedom of our will.

It's interesting how people have an experience of essentially limitless freedom, and yet in practice their freedom is constrained by so much.

Perhaps it's the normalisation of their experience that does it. They know no other way, so it could be no other way, so the world is as it should be. The idea that they could be more free than they already are does not occur to them.

I think people experience something they call free will but are also very much aware of the many practical limitations to what they can do.

Free will may be thought of as the degree of autonomy, relatively to the environment, afforded to humans as complex cognitive systems.
EB

 

[ruby sparks]

....also very much aware of the many practical limitations to what they can do.
EB

Possibly, but possibly a bit optimistic regarding how many or how often people appreciate just how many limitations or constraints there are.

Vengeance and retribution for example. Not exactly a minor trait in the history of human behaviour, could arguably be said to often (not always) be predicated on an incorrect belief, perhaps fuelled by thirsty emotion or something similarly 'non-rational', about the limitations.

 

[ruby sparks]

Also, and I really don't think this is entirely irrelevant to the general topic... even if it's not strictly philosophical.....let's not laud the capacities of the typical 'human machine' tooooo much regarding the exercise of their abilities. An awful lot of people who if they thought about it might have thoughts about whether they have free will or not, instead spend their time eating fast food and ice-cream and lying in front of a tv half the day and then end up wondering why they have a heart condition.

 

[Speakpigeon]

Also, and I really don't think this is entirely irrelevant to the general topic... even if it's not strictly philosophical.....let's not laud the capacities of the typical 'human machine' tooooo much regarding the exercise of their abilities. An awful lot of people who if they thought about it might have thoughts about whether they have free will or not, instead spend their time eating fast food and ice-cream and lying in front of a tv half the day and then end up wondering why they have a heart condition.

Sure, most people don't think at all about free will, at least not in any formal way like we do here. But I would expect most people to have at least a very basic sense of free will, i.e. a default impression that they can make choices.

Now, I'm bound to say that regardless, we all have free will, at least to the extent that we are autonomous in the choices we make. And this idea of free will as autonomy is obviously qualifiable as to its degree, i.e. we may have varying degrees of free will, depending on how much autonomy we have with respect to our environment.

And I guess most people will still choose the flavour of their ice-cream. Surely, nobody is going to do it for them.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

....also very much aware of the many practical limitations to what they can do.
EB

Possibly, but possibly a bit optimistic regarding how many or how often people appreciate just how many limitations or constraints there are.

Vengeance and retribution for example. Not exactly a minor trait in the history of human behaviour, could arguably be said to often (not always) be predicated on an incorrect belief, perhaps fuelled by thirsty emotion or something similarly 'non-rational', about the limitations.

Your actions may be significantly affected by your emotions, but your emotions are an integral part of what you are, so even then it will still be you making the choices leading your actions.

Perhaps one criterion would be that you should be aware of what you're doing and of possible alternatives. Free will certainly requires will to begin with, and will seems to require an awareness of a range of alternative choices among which you can pick in an autonomous way.
EB

 

[fromderinside]

I don't think so. If emotions are running one way and decision making processes are indicating another way, very likely the behavior resulting will follow the emotional driver. Here being aware of a range of choices even choices all favorable to another outcome the base response will be determined by emotion.

Take how the election seems to be going in Alabama. Although reasonable persons have already determined and made public they are opposed to the behaviors of one of the candidates they are now chiming in for him purely on an emotional basis. Its seems 'free will' is not operative here.

 

[Speakpigeon]

I don't think so. If emotions are running one way and decision making processes are indicating another way, very likely the behavior resulting will follow the emotional driver. Here being aware of a range of choices even choices all favorable to another outcome the base response will be determined by emotion.

So what? If so it just means that emotion can override free will.

Free will is not necessarily followed with action as should be clear given the terminological make-up of the expression. Free will is at best the freedom to will, not the freedom to do. Being free to want to do is not necessarily followed by doing it.

And being prevented from doing what you want doesn't remove your freedom to want to do it and hence doesn't remove your free will.

Hence the difficulty in testing free will. It's essentially inside your head.
EB

 

[Subsymbolic]

I don't think so. If emotions are running one way and decision making processes are indicating another way, very likely the behavior resulting will follow the emotional driver. Here being aware of a range of choices even choices all favorable to another outcome the base response will be determined by emotion.

So what? If so it just means that emotion can override free will.

Free will is not necessarily followed with action as should be clear given the terminological make-up of the expression. Free will is at best the freedom to will, not the freedom to do. Being free to want to do is not necessarily followed by doing it.

And being prevented from doing what you want doesn't remove your freedom to want to do it and hence doesn't remove your free will.

Hence the difficulty in testing free will. It's essentially inside your head.
EB

You don't think that emotion is part of anyone's free will?

 

[bilby]

We have free will in the sense that we are unpredictable and not beholden to our own or other people's expectations about how we will act.

But unpredictability is the limit of our freedom. Humans are complex and chaotic systems, and defy prediction, despite being composed entirely of (and influenced entirely by) deterministic parts that cannot disobey the simple laws of physics. We are unpredictable, not because we are free, but because the complete details of our lack of freedom are so complex as to be unknowable.

Just because a system is deterministic, that's no reason to assume that we can determine what it will do next. Even when we think of that system as our 'self'.

 

[DBT]

I think that people generally love the term 'free will' because it gives the impression of freedom to be what you want to be and do what you want to do....regardless of how accurate the impression is or how these perceived abilities are being formed and generated.

 

[Speakpigeon]

You don't think that emotion is part of anyone's free will?

I think emotions are part of the environment in which we have to exercise our free will. Emotions are a part of what we are and so we remain responsible of our actions even those taken under the influence of our emotions. But free will is choice and emotions certainly make it more difficult to consider alternative options. Emotion is also never entirely absent so again it's a matter of degree.

Unless you can offer a different perspective?
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

We have free will in the sense that we are unpredictable and not beholden to our own or other people's expectations about how we will act.

But unpredictability is the limit of our freedom. Humans are complex and chaotic systems, and defy prediction, despite being composed entirely of (and influenced entirely by) deterministic parts that cannot disobey the simple laws of physics. We are unpredictable, not because we are free, but because the complete details of our lack of freedom are so complex as to be unknowable.

Just because a system is deterministic, that's no reason to assume that we can determine what it will do next. Even when we think of that system as our 'self'.

Yes.

Crucially, humans are unpredictable certainly to other humans. So free will is ultimately a political concept covering a political reality.

Maybe this will change one day but that's the situation today, apparently.
EB

 

[The AntiChris]

But free will is choice and emotions certainly make it more difficult to consider alternative options.

It's emotions which give you the motivation to make choices. Without them, choice-making wouldn't exist.

That's my understanding, anyway.

 

[untermensche]

But free will is choice and emotions certainly make it more difficult to consider alternative options.

It's emotions which give you the motivation to make choices. Without them, choice-making wouldn't exist.

That's my understanding, anyway.

Yes they are catalysts to movement and choices.

There are reflexive behaviors that the emotions can push some into, in extreme situations, but with practice these reflexes can be overcome.

 

[Speakpigeon]

But free will is choice and emotions certainly make it more difficult to consider alternative options.

It's emotions which give you the motivation to make choices. Without them, choice-making wouldn't exist.

That's my understanding, anyway.

Yes, I can agree with that, but too much emotion doesn't help.

And being motivated is not the same as being furious.
EB

 

[fromderinside]

Crucially, humans are unpredictable certainly to other humans. So free will is ultimately a political concept covering a political reality.

Maybe this will change one day but that's the situation today, apparently.
EB

So politics is the land of the unpredictable too-complex-to-know human deterministic machine.

Naw.

Politics bend to some level of rationality therefore failing to account for emotion or politics bends to emotion thereby overwhelming rationality. bilby is right and he was right to ignore rationality and emotion parts played.

 

[Speakpigeon]

So politics is the land of the unpredictable too-complex-to-know human deterministic machine.
Naw.

Think about how human beings tend to organise the societies they form. Even the most dictatorial of political regimes rely on a large dose of individual initiative. Compare other social animals: bees, thermites and ants for example, which provide a model for societies featuring minimal individual initiative. But look at other mammals, too. I would argue that what is missing in other species is the political level, and this is what allows human societies to grow larger while keeping the ability to experiment with a variety of political organisations, which ultimately produced democracies and capitalism and science. Rather important I think, this. And the heart of the political organisation is the gradual recognition that human beings can only be regarded as individually responsible and society can only work on the basis of a comparatively loose cooperation between responsible individuals.

Politics bend to some level of rationality therefore failing to account for emotion or politics bends to emotion thereby overwhelming rationality. bilby is right and he was right to ignore rationality and emotion parts played.

There is a level of emotion beyond which rationality becomes impossible. There's also a level of rationality that is only possible because we are able to keep our emotions at a very low level for a long time. Think of the job of scientists for example but also that of most professional people. And it's not clear to me that people subjected to strong emotions really do what they want. It seems that people in this context often end up feeling sorry about their own actions.
EB