r/freewill

If our beliefs are just accidental collocations of atoms, then the logical validity of our scientific theories seems to be rendered suspect?

If a thought is just a physical chemical reaction (atoms colliding), how can we trust it to be logical?

If our brains are designed for survival and the truth gets us killed?

Evolution cares about behavior, not truth.

Peace✌️

The "I feel free" argument is weak. Subjective experience is messy, and any neuroscientist will tell you your brain is just a series of electrical impulses you don’t control. Most people get stuck wondering if they feel free. That’s a trap. Instead, look at the Preconditions of Reason.

You can't argue against free will without accidentally proving it exists. Here’s why.

1. The "Calculator" Problem

To truly know something, you have to evaluate evidence against logical rules and decide it’s true.
Think about a calculator. When it spits out 2 + 2 = 4, it doesn’t "know" anything. It’s just a physical system where an input (pressing buttons) leads to an inevitable output (the screen lighting up) based on its wiring. It can’t "choose" to be wrong, so it can’t "know" it’s right.

If your thoughts are 100% determined by your brain chemistry and prior causes, you aren't "reasoning"—you’re just reacting. You didn't "reach" a conclusion; you were physically compelled to arrive at it.

2. Determinism is a Performative Contradiction

The moment someone says, "I’ve concluded that free will is an illusion," they’ve walked into a logical trap.

If their conclusion was determined by their neurobiology before the conversation even started, they didn't actually "evaluate" anything. They’re just a set of gears turning. You cannot claim a belief is "rationally justified" if you were physically forced to believe it. It’s just a byproduct of your biology, like a sneeze or a heartbeat. You don't "justify" a sneeze; it just happens.

3. Argumentation as Proof

The very act of debating someone presupposes two things:

1. You have the agency to choose the better argument.

2. Your opponent has the agency to be persuaded by logic.

If we were all strictly determined, "persuasion" wouldn't exist. We’d just be waiting for our internal programming to update. To argue against free will is to treat your opponent like a free agent capable of changing their mind based on merit—which is exactly what you're trying to say they can't do.

Free will isn't a "vibe" or a religious mystery; it’s a logical necessity.

Without the ability to freely choose between ideas based on their merit, "truth" isn't a rational discovery—it's just a mechanical byproduct. If we can reason, we must be free. If we aren't free, then we can't trust a single thought in our heads, including the thought that we aren't free.

If you’re using logic to argue against free will, you’re using the very thing you’re trying to disprove. You’re trying to saw off the branch you’re currently sitting on.

Does your perspective seem somewhere in-between or completely outside of Libertarianism, Compatibilism, and Hard Determinism?

I have thoughts, but I’d like to hear some of your beliefs and reasons for that first.

As a simple example, let's say my boss asks me if I'm willing to work an extra shift, and I respond with "yes".

A libertarian believes that, even if we had full knowledge of my brain's chemical makeup and could somehow rewind the universe back to the moment my boss asked the question, we couldn't say with certainty that my answer would be "yes" every time.

And when you take quantum mechanics into account, this very well might be true. For difficult choices, maybe a single uncaused event within your mind is all it takes to set a butterfly effect in motion that eventually sways your decision one way or the other.

But my question is: why would we describe this as willful? Wouldn't it make more sense to call it arbitrary?

It seems to me like a truly indeterministic decision can never be completely logical: I could lay out all the reasons why the answer "yes" was the best choice, but if an alternate universe exists where I do the same with the answer "no", then it's no longer a logical choice: it's just an example of my brain's ability to fabricate a post-hoc narrative.

• In general compatibalist and incompatibalists do not disagree about physical facts about the world. They're willing to assume determinism.
• Their main disagreement is semantic or conceptual. When a compatibalist and an incompatibalist observe some action they agree about what is happening on the physical level, but they differ in how they want to label or organize that information. They differ in how they want to use the words "free will".
• The compatibalist and incompatibalist both want to move from their definition/conception of "free will" to a normative conclusion about responsibility and moral desert.
• Generally there doesn't seem to be a way to make normative conclusions from descriptive statements.

I see there being 3 layers to this debate given some event where someone takes an action:

1. Physical: Facts about atoms, causation, laws of physics, brain states, whether someone had a gun, etc.
2. Semantic/Conceptual: Which words you want to use and when to use them when describing the action. Two people can look at the same event and say I want to use free will to mean this part of the event, and someone else could say I want to use free will to mean this other part, but they are both observing the same event and they agree about the physical layer.
3. Normative: This is the part where people conclude things like, therefore we shouldn't blame people for their actions or that person deserves to be punished.

I say there's no way to go from the first two layers to the third other than just asserting it. This is a specific case of the more general is-ought problem. Descriptive accounts ("bananas are yellow") don't appear to lead us objectively to normative conclusions ("we should eat bananas").

Specifically, if the incompatibalist says "free will" is when your action is uncaused, and the compatibalist says "free will" is when your action is uncoerced neither side is making a falsifiable claim! They're just saying how they are using the words "free will". The part that's implied in what they're saying is "...and that's the part that really matters for my normative conclusion about responsibility and moral desert".

I think this last move is misguided. The physical facts and the conceptualization of "free will" is all descriptive. They can't lead us to normative conclusions like people deserve blame.

Specifically the compatibalist can say "fine, free will is when actions are uncaused, but i don't care about that I care about coercion and so I think we should blame people for their actions". The incompatibalist can say "fine, free will is when actions are uncoerced, but I care about being uncaused and so I think we shouldn't blame people for their actions."

Now both sides are at a stalemate and the debate can no longer progress or be resolved. And this is necessarily true because of the explanatory gap between what is and what we ought to do.

This just came up in my feed and I am unsure how I had never encountered this page before/why I had never searched it. I am a hard incompatibilist and believe in determinism. I work in molecular neuroscience (highest level of education achieved just the bachelor's so far though) and also have another degree in philosophy. After a lot of reading, I fully believe that I am a sum of parts, a ship of theseus, an automaton of genes which become proteins that send signals via neurons that form networks that compute your response to everything. Neurons which also fire more frequently following hebbian learning and the molecular process of long term potentiation (LTP). Which pathways are recruited via repetition is all a matter of environment and circumstance and what you happen to be exposed to in life. But it's just that: the molecular biology of your brain (not just genes, either, but things like viral exposure, medications, injury, diet... anything that can alter your biochemistry) + what you experience in life. If you were somehow to be cloned and given the exact same life experiences (which is not possible but hypothetically) I do believe that you would make the exact same decisions and do everything the same way and this is beyond your control.

We are just organisms. We are no more special than an amoeba, just more complex and developed as a system.

Under the freewill delusion, all social injustice is personal failure.

Under the freewill delusion, you can simply “pull yourself up by your bootstraps”

If you’re poor? That’s your fault. You made the wrong choices

If you’re unable to find work? That’s your fault. You made the wrong choices.

Unable to hold down a job? That’s your fault. You made the wrong choices. No, your depression/anxiety/trauma did not determine you to fail at your job, nor did failing at your job determine your decision to seek therapy, you just made the wrong choices.

A belief in free will blinds you to the truth and directly serves the ruling class.

People who believe in free will think people are the deciders of their own fate. OK, but what criteria do they make their decisions by? If they are weighing the odds and had a consistent standard by which they would make decisions, they would have no free will because their decisions were already decided for them by their decision-making process. However, if they are irrational, and make decisions with no forethought, then there is free will.

Free will is metaphysical: the control required for moral responsibility. It is not political in itself, but it is the basis of political liberty.

https://www.reddit.com/r/freewill/comments/1t0wxur/free_will_is_an_instrument_of_power_for_the/

OP while complaining free will is a tool of the ruling class has this line: "pull yourself up by your bootstraps"

Do free will deniers believe we cannot 'pull yourself by your bootstraps' metaphsyically, but we can 'pull yourself by your bootstraps' politically? But surely our metaphysical beliefs have a connection to our politics?

Alternatively, if you believe political liberty is also problematic, do you think the people who can fix the problems (government/others) do have free will or more of it?

https://www.reddit.com/r/freewill/comments/1szxd1d/comment/oj5h57a/

Getting the patient to regain agency and take responsibility is often a crucial part of therapy.

In fact telling patients that they have no free will (with or without the redefinition of free will as "lack of causes") is likely to be detrimental.

Client: “I want to find out why I keep pushing people away.”

Therapist: “You are pushing people away because of free will. You are free to choose not to push people away.”

Client: “Wow! Thanks doc, I’m cured!”

The ability to categorize something as something good or something not good is free will.

Human beings are born with free will.

With free will, everyone decides for themselves whether something is something good or something not good.

Dramatis personae

Chad; a good looking compatibilist who recently became a partner at a prominent architectural firm. He is dropping off his motorcycle to be repaired.

Hedley; owner of the Hard Determinists motorcycle repair shop who has been checking Chads bike for the last 15 minutes.

Scene 1

Chad sits in the waiting room. Hedley returns from the garage.

Hedley: Good news, Chad

Chad: Go ahead

Hedley: I found the problem with your Harley.

Chad: Finally. What was it?

Hedley: the big bang

Chad: What? I want to know why the bike failed.

Hedley:Thats what I'm trying to tell you. It was the big bang.

Chad: I am almost certain it was the fuel injector.

Hedley: That's because you aren't treating this scientifically. The question I asked myself was what is the ultimate cause for your bike failure. A lot of mechanics would look at your bike and tell you the fuel injector failure was the cause of your bike not running. But something caused the fuel injector to stop running and that too was caused. A long chain of causes. Heat cycles, material fatigue, manufacturing variance It turns out that every time I thought I found a cause, it too was caused and therefore had no responsibility in the ultimate sense.

Chad: But I don't want an ultimate cause. I want to get my bike running again. I can't decide who is worse, I tried a libertarian motorcycle repair shop first. They said there was no cause at all. Just the injector acting how it wanted.

Hedley: The big bang is the ultimate source of your problem

Chad: So what? this is all the Big Bang’s fault?

Hedley: I wouldn’t say “fault.” I try to stay away from retributive mechanics. There are no parts to blame. I don't believe in praise or blame. The bike is a system so it has to follow the laws of physics.

Chad: So are you going to replace the injector or not?

Hedley: Replace is such a loaded term. The injector is merely participating in a deterministic unfolding.

Chad: Is the part broken?

Hedley: “Broken” presupposes a normative standard imposed upon matter.

Chad: That seems unhelpful.

Hedley: It’s only unhelpful if you think blaming a part is what you need to fix a motorcycle. No, what I'm going to do is to change the fuel injector.

Chad: That's exactly what I would have done.

Hedley: Yes but you'd have changed it as a kind of punishment. I'm going to change it compassionately.

Chad: Will that still fix it?

Hedley: Yes.

Chad: Then why bring up the Big Bang at all?

Hedley turns to leave and shakes his head. Then turns around and wipes the grease onto a rag.

Hedley: Well Chad once you understand deterministic mechanics you become more compassionate towards the parts you change.

Chad: What do you do with the parts you change?

Hedley: Oh put them in the crusher and send them to the dump. I don't think about them again. They're just parts after all.

Chad: That's more compassionate, I guess. Well go ahead and fix it.

Hedley: I don't think of it as fixing Chad, I like to think I'm rehabilitating the bike. Give me till Tuesday and come pick it up.

Chad: alright see you Tuesday.

Exeunt.

A lot of people say "What was the point in evolution/our brain/x if there was only one outcome/(its purpose)?" , and here is my answer:

Just because.

The reality is that anything that happens was meant to happen (assuming quantum events rarely cause macroscopic ones) . Hence, asking "why" to a given circumstance doesn't make sense, it just had to be that way. Evolution does not have a "point" the same way the fact that specific leaf on the road blowing by does, everything you see is governed by the same physical laws.

"So why do I ask why?"

Just because. Your ability to say why was written into T+1 seconds after the Big Bang, there is no "point", nor lenience it what "could have happened" during then and now, with the intermediary of evolution.

Your brain doesn't "simulate outcomes" in a meaningful way that implies it could actually "have done otherwise" given the same circumstances, it does it just because it had to given history.

"But it's counter intuitive, and that tells us something, right?"

What makes you think that your counter intuition is not also part of this loop? That philosophical rebuttals are exempt from physical laws? Even this reddit post was written into time 50 years ago. Possibilities are illusions caused by a lack of data, and "as it happens" we aren't omniscient.

The conclusion? That the more important question is:

"Why was the matter in the Big Bang/dawn of time composed and arranged and exploded in such a manner, be it intrinsically random, by some being, or beyond epistemic reach, to entail "why", to entail "you", to entail ANY specific event, & absurd "intuitively" meaningless things like the invention of vanilla ice cream"?

Is there inherent meaning in physical events specifically because they were "made" to happen?

The answer will never be found out and that is the real existential suffering of rejecting free will and being convinced by hard determinism.

My personal view: Simulation theory is becoming more attractive/multiverse .

A common objection to libertarian free will is the demand for a mechanism. The assumption behind this challenge is that any genuine explanation of action must ultimately be cashed out in lower-level mechanistic terms, and that without such a mechanism the idea of agent causation is unintelligible or incoherent. The following argument targets that assumption directly.

• P1. A mechanism is an explanatory structure in which the behavior of a system is accounted for in terms of the organization of its parts, their states or activities, and the relations that connect them.
• P2. Within any mechanistic explanation, the explanatory force of a higher-level description depends on lower-level structures, such that each mechanistic account implicitly appeals to further underlying states, activities, or relations in order to be fully specified.
• P3. If every mechanistic explanation requires a further mechanistic explanation of the conditions that produce it, then either (a) the chain of explanation proceeds without end (infinite regress), or (b) the chain must terminate in some explanatory posit that is not itself further explained in mechanistic terms.
• P4. An infinite regress of mechanistic explanations does not amount to a complete explanation of why the system as a whole obtains, because each stage depends on a prior one, and no stage provides an independent account of the whole.
• P5. Therefore, any coherent mechanistic explanatory framework must terminate in at least one irreducible explanatory ground.
• P6. An explanatory terminus within a mechanistic framework does not constitute an explanatory failure, but marks the point at which the framework treats some element as basic for purposes of explanation, thereby delimiting the scope of mechanistic reduction rather than undermining explanatory coherence.
• P7. Libertarian free will, in its agent-causal form, holds that an agent can function as an irreducible source of a decision, such that the decision is not fully accounted for by prior mechanistic states, but instead originates from the agent as an explanatory terminus.
• P8. If mechanistic explanation is compatible with explanatory termination in general, then the presence of an irreducible agent-level terminus is not ruled out solely by appeal to the structure of mechanistic explanation itself.
• C. Therefore, libertarian free will is not ruled out as incoherent or unintelligible by the nature of mechanistic explanation alone.

The bottom line is that "but what's the mechanism?" is not, by itself, a decisive objection, because mechanistic explanation always requires some stopping point. If explanation in general permits such termini, then there is no principled reason in advance to rule out an agent functioning as one. To reject agent causation at that point, one would need an independent argument showing why agents cannot serve as explanatory termini in the first place. Simply insisting that there must always be a deeper mechanism already assumes the conclusion that agents are not such termini, which is where the reasoning becomes circular.

I have a genuine question that I’m interested in to read from you:

If free will is desired by God for us, and some angels used their free will in heaven to rebel, will we be given free will in heaven or be allowed to keep it? If allowed to keep free will in heaven, and the angels rebelled using it once upon a time, what would keep some people that are born again from rebelling in heaven by use of that free will?

I’m quite curious.