Free Will

[netmouse]

In the comments on yellowmouser's journal here and here I engage the question of whether or not free will is an illusion (I think not). Updated to add: J argues against me here.

What are your thoughts on the question? Is it an interesting question or purely a polemic debate?

Comments

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

If we don't have free will, we don't; no choice, no control. We may be incapable of knowing it. But if we're on that side of the decision table, what we think, say, do, doesn't matter and isn't under our control. So all philosophy is completely irrelevant there.

So just ignore it.

Whereas, if we do have free will, and we end up deciding we don't, that's an *avoidable* error, which would have actual consequences.

I choose to avoid that error.

[knightlygoddess.livejournal.com]

Wow. That was about as simple as you could make it while still being brilliant! My hat's off to you! (And I agree, so double kudos there!)

:)

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

My explanation of the "Sipfle's Wager" concept (from a philosophy professor at Carleton), which is in turn adapted from "Pascal's Wager" about the existence of god (but Pascal starts from the assumption that either the Christian god exists or there is no god, and hence is invalid; there are many other equally possible outcomes, and the multiplicity of outcomes spoils the logic). Brilliant, yes, but I stole all the good parts from other people.

[knightlygoddess.livejournal.com]

I wish I could take you to school with me. Our sociology professor tried to spark an intellectual debate with the class about the existance of "god" but the overwhelming argument and position is that "there is only the Christian god". It's quite frustrating to live in an area full of closed-minded idiots, but it's quite another to have to attend a college filled with them as well. ;)

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

That must be very frustrating. Try not to get trapped in the area when you're done with school!

Not that anywhere in the US is free of such idiots. But sometimes they don't dominate local culture quite so thoroughly.

[knightlygoddess.livejournal.com]

Oh I don't plan to be trapped here. And luckily, I have lived in other areas, so I know there is intelligent life outside of this rural hellhole. ;)

It's more frustrating, I think, to see young people at the college level, 18-24, who don't have an open mind. Isn't that the whole point of higher learning? To expand the regions of your own brain?

I have a brilliant instructor who is teaching his first dual enrollment course and he's never dealt with tenth graders before. He was telling me the other night how he doesn't think he'll be able to do it again, because the closed-mindedness in this area seems to be fostered in the local primary/secondary schools (which is an easily supportable position out here). He said, "I started the program with a sense of excitement and promise, and now I find myself fighting a sense of dread and dispair for our future when I see how these kids not only fail to flourish intellectually, but FIGHT it, at every turn!"

His assignments are joyfully open-ended, and he really wants to see you think. Apparently the students were so up in arms about "not being told what to write" that he had parents calling and telling him that he "wasn't teaching anything." It's so creepy and bizarre to me.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

I suppose he can't go quite so blatantly as to make really specific assignments...like "compare and contrast the Catholic mass to what's known about Mithraist ceremonies", say. Or "Summarize what's known about the goddess Est". Ah well.

It's not just rural hell-holes that have parents wanting more specific goals, though; suburban parents worried about their little darlings getting into the right college act just like that.

[dionysus1999.livejournal.com]

This is quite similar to Pascal's Wager, and suffers the same problem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_wager

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

I'm quite aware of the similarity, and in fact referred to it here before you mentioned it. But I disagree that it suffers from the same problem. The two big problems with Pascal's are that there are multiple hypothetical gods to decide between, not just one, and that the value of believing or cost of non-believing depends on the gods, and are (by his hypotheses) unknowable to us. Neither of these affect Sipfle's application of the idea to free will.