Posted on 07/18/2015 11:38:12 AM PDT by Zeneta
Are you reading this because you chose to?
Or are you doing so as a result of forces beyond your control?
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130924-how-belief-in-free-will-shapes-us
After thousands of years of philosophy, theology, argument and meditation on the riddle of free will, I'm not about to solve it for you in this column (sorry). But what I can do is tell you about some thought-provoking experiments by psychologists, which suggest that, regardless of whether we have free will or not, whether we believe we do can have a profound impact on how we behave.
The issue is simple: we all make choices, but could those choices be made otherwise? From a religious perspective it might seem as if a divine being knows all, including knowing in advance what you will choose (so your choices could not be otherwise). Or we can take a physics-based perspective. Everything in the universe has physical causes, and as you are part of the universe, your choices must be caused (so your choices could not be otherwise). In either case, our experience of choosing collides with our faith in a world which makes sense because things have causes.
Snip..
You might find that determinists, who believe free will is an illusion and that we are all cogs in a godless universe, behave worse than those who believe we are free to make choices. But you wouldn't know whether this was simply because people who like to cheat and lie become determinists (the "Yes, I lied, but I couldn't help it" excuse).
What we really need is a way of changing people’s beliefs about free will, so that we can track the effects of doing so on their behaviour. Fortunately, in recent years researchers have developed a standard method of doing this. It involves asking subjects to read sections from Francis Crick's book The Astonishing Hypothesis.
snip
And the results are striking. One study reported that participants who had their belief in free will diminished were more likely to cheat in a maths test. In another, US psychologists reported that people who read Crick’s thoughts on free will said they were less likely to help others.
snip
So, free will? Yes, and no.
IMO It’s the media again.
In their perfect world consumers would always buy what’s advertised and keep the media’s money flowing in. And exquisite marketing pretty much makes that true!
As for free will: one has only the choice to do what’s right. But one can choose how much they will learn of “right”. and then act accordingly.
If the choice is between being a robot and making decisions purely by random chance, then I don't think that's much of a choice.
“You have free will but the results of that free will are known beforehand, creating the illusion of no free will, imho.”
Of course I was talking about Provine’s and Dawkin’s (i.e., the atheistic materialist’s) opinions of free will, not Calvin’s. Which means I somewhat agree with you, except there is no illusion whatsoever.
Anyone who can think can discern that they have free will.
Yeah, yeah, I know... a Decartes trope. People lots smarter than I am have already beaten these subjects into the ground and beyond. It just kills me when little college skulls-full-of-mush think they’ve hit upon something brand new and earthshattering when they read some New Atheist declare something that has already been easily refuted 400 or 500 years ago. Or earlier, in the case of Epicureans versus the Hebrews.
Before arguing about free will, it’s better to build a sound doctrinal vocabulary regarding Volition, the anthropology of man (body, soul, and spirit), discernment of good and evil from faith and sin, and later studies in common and efficacious grace.
Well your robot option is what I would call determinism.
Having purely mechanical non-mental processes subjected to purely random chance is a counter example to what I call determinism.
Free will exercised by some agent (like a soul) would be another counter example, although its is not demonstrated by the like of the double slit experiment. But it is demonstrated every day by what it is like to be human.
Arguing against this experience of free will as a merely subjective thing, by assuming from one's subjective intuition that the material world is deterministic, then having this shown to be wrong by scientific discovery, and yet still clinging to parts of this subjective guess to try to invalidate the more powerful direct subjective experience of making choices, is silly and unreasonable.
I’m not arguing about “free will”.
My questions are about what the article and the referenced studies found regarding the “belief or lack of belief” in free will and how THAT influences behavior.
In a nut shell, belief in “free will” causes people to behave better towards others vs. those that think free will is an illusion.
The left and so-called progressives have been working for well over 100 years trying to convince people that they have NO FREE WILL. Most of their efforts are very subtle, but occasionally we find very outspoken advocates of the concept. Most of these advocates are dedicated Darwinists’ that have recognized and embraced the logical conclusions of evolution.
I find the study as something the evolutionists would rather not talk about.
We can take a high level, objective view and say “ of course not”. They are the left and they are evil or at least stupid.
However, when you talk to someone on the street virtually every single one will say that, “Yes, We have free will”.
But then the question of why are so many of them willing to promote both overtly and covertly, stand silent and not challenge the lefts assertions is beyond me.
The fundamental question is a simple yes or no answer.
Virtually everyone answers YES.
Yet, for the past 100 plus years virtually every American institution has been co-opted into one form or another of the advancement of NO.
It makes no sense.
It runs completely counter to the human instinct.
IMHO, this question, asked by our conservative politicians will define them and will lead to a landslide victory never seen before.
The question, however asked by the politician should not be a statement or asked directly.
Socialists want people to think they have no free will but also their policies- which have predominated- restrict peoples freedom. And people with less freedom will believe less in free will.
A peasant HAS less free will than a noble.
A slave who believes in the concept of free will is a very maladjusted person. Though correct.
Exactly.
IMHO, their efforts are much more insidious than what can be understood at the surface.
“The leftist want to be God”
Yes.
And,
They want you to believe YOU are GOD.
Spend a few hours studying Buddhism and the works of Joseph Campbell, the foremost expert on mythology, and the conclusions are evident.
Introduce any number of “quantum physic” so called, conclusions or understandings and we have a world being re-built on uncertainty.
A “Brave new World” that suggests that knowing something or almost anything to be true, is attacked and destroyed.
Logic itself is being destroyed.
"...In a nut shell, belief in “free will” causes people to behave better towards others vs. those that think free will is an illusion..."
It certainly explains why. If you have no free will, then anything you do, no matter how good or bad, is something that you just had to do. It was preordained.
No free will is a free and simple explanation for any kind of behavior.
I was having a discussion with my brother tonight about the concept of hypocrisy, and how it is the favorite weapon of liberals.
They consider themselves free of the stain of hypocrisy, because they have no standards. Anything goes.
I have attempted to advance the concept I have regarding the lefts “embrace of uncertainty” for a number of years.
Whittaker Chambers outlined the essence of this in “Witness” when he stated “The Communist vision is the vision of man without God.”
It has been a while since I read it.but I recall that there is more to that quote, where he suggests that not only is there no God, but man becomes God.
I saw that aspect of the Left instantly when I became politically aware back in the late Sixties.
I was a solid conservative at the age of 11...sounds odd, but it is true.
Odd?
I found Christ as the result of exploring the work of Joseph Campbell.
But I kept digging.
He, concludes his work centered around Buddhism and the idea that “we are all God”.
This idea became extremely popular in the late 1960’s and has found additional support as “New age religion” and “Humanists” found support from “science”.
For many, it was just stupid.
But for the media and the popular players it became worth consideration.
IMHO, we are reaching a critical tipping point.
A time in which people need to decide where they stand, if only those that have a platform could articulate the bottom line.
The one thing I know to be true is that people, and I mean everybody, have an amazing ability to rationalize their their behavior.
False and misguided rationalizations are becoming more and more the norm.
Because they have no fundamental foundations and more and more of our media are providing people with opportunities to escape or justify their beliefs and actions.
I’m not familiar with Nagel, but assume his writings a very similar to those of Fred Alan Wolf.
I find their concepts to be truly extraordinary because they are actually possible.
Providing that what we know of “uncertainty” is certainly true.
It still leaves Man alone.
Interestingly Nagel still professes to be an atheist. I suspect he has a crabbed conception of God as the logic puzzle philosophers and a lot of Western theologians turn Him into, rather than the transcendent ground-of-being, who is nonetheless by some improper analogy best thought of as personal. (I’m what in these latter days passes for a devout Orthodox Christian, and I most assuredly do not believe in the logic-puzzle-God of Western thought.)
I don’t know Wolf.
Well, you nailed that one, for sure.
Rationalizing is a weakness that everyone is susceptible to, especially those to whom an internal, honest dialogue is foreign.
I know I am susceptible to it.
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