Thanks Lasha! Could you expand please? You seem to be saying that you believe human spirits (or souls) freely *create* immaterial dimensions. Do you believe human souls are created by something else, along with the dimensions they inhabit?

As material world is bound to obey laws which the Creator has made for, so humans are also bound by those laws and will of the Creator. However, we are free to the extent to follow the path as shown by a series of prophets or not though by nature (fitrat) we are inclined to follow the right path. Humans may decide their ways and act apparently of their free will though which are also predetermined. But none can expect that his/her decision and act will necessarily bring intended result or effect.

Thank you Mohammad, I very much like that idea: "act APPARENTLY of their free will though ... also predetermined".

Would anyone care to offer a strictly material argument for or against free will?

It's just that, technically, if you knew all the variables of all of the events in our universe, there would be a predictive formula for all behavior. Therefore, I assert that free-will is an illusion.

Allison, I take it that you disagree with Niel Bohr regarding the Copenhagen Convention understanding of Quantum Physics/Mechanics. If Mind is an equal category to Energy/Matter, and probably Space and Time, and all are interrelated, then the world might well seem just as it is, and would explain such results as have been recorded at Princeton while they had their "PEARS" project going.

Alastair, to provide a purely material argument, such as Allison has done, is to assume a specific stance regarding an unproven in physics. While it might be helpful for a individual's understandings of things it holds no ultimate value at present.

This could be an interesting debate :D

Neils Bohr doesn't hold a lot of credibility in my mind. Bohr's atomic model was only accurate for hydrogen, and yet he irresponsibly blanketed the entire natural world with his solar-system hypothesis while never testing it beyond one element.

Einstein properly modeled the Copernican idea of simultaneity which tells us that everything that was ever going to happen within our particular universe is done, over, finito, old news -- we just think that its happening now.

In my opinion, consciousness studies, while interesting and apparently fundable, are fairly useless in light of the theory of simultaneity.

This is looking interesting. If we add supernaturalism as a logical possibility, the plot thickens also. Say the natural world is deterministic, but imagine a supernatural being or beings could "mess" with it, perhaps within constraints, perhaps not, could we escape determinism? On the other hand, say the natural world did have fundamental uncertainty embedded within it (even if we haven't observed precisely that yet), could it be that what is uncertain from a natural perspective might still be certain from a supernatural one?

Or perhaps say that the act of consciousness interacting with the universe is what is causing the multiverse!

Maybe so. :-)

Well might I note that the purely materialistic understanding has had a problem ever since Newton. Gravity is accepted as real, but it really does not fit with a purely materialistic understanding. We have no materialistic means for gravity to work at present, all we have are promissory explanation, details to be filled in at some later date.

I would also note that if we bring in supernaturalism, then all bets go out the window. By pure definition, supernaturalism gets to ignore all rules. However, should consciousness be an aspect of reality that influences and is influenced by matter/energy, we do not lose the existing rules, we merely modify them. The currently accepted rules apply unless, which is no more than what has occurred at many times in the past, most recently with the introduction of quantum mechanics.

I am proposing merely that mind exists independent of matter/energy, but still is bound by certain rules. Mind may influence matter/energy via some as yet undefined means, just as matter/energy may influence mind as seems evident from the success of various procedures to still one's mind, both voluntary and involuntary. This approach might help explain NDE experiences, which to date have failed to be fully explained by materialistic approaches (all existent explanations I am aware of fail to meet scientific criteria of explaining all aspects of the phenomena but rather ignore aspects while claiming success).

Thanks again, William. The "known" indeterminacy of quantum mechanics is a different kind of material argument to the "unknown" character of various parts of a material causal chain to human intentions. Or are they? How well known is quantum mechanics, beyond finding it to accurately predict experimental outcomes on the basis of random rather than non-random variables? Will what is currently unknown become known at some point, or are there physical limits to knowing, that mean we can never actually know whether the most primary levels of causation are random or not? With supernatural cases for or against determinism, I think you are right, unless a proposal is logically self-contradictory, they are immune to epirical test and ultimately undecidable. I'm a theist and determinist, but that is a theological axiom, not a deduction, nor a generalisation from empirical observation.

Gracias Daniel, for your encouraging testimony. Praise God! It would be a wonderful thing if God, not you, wanted you to have supernatural healing and supernatural powers. Whether you, your friends or your enemies wanted one thing or another, wouldn't it be wonderful if God made good things happen even when we try to make bad things happen?

But are you trying to tell me that you believe God did *not* want or make you better? Do you actually think that God did not want or make things happen in Bolivian politics, but rather it was what *you* wanted and what *you* did that made things happen, whether God liked it or not, and without him causing it?

Maybe you are right! But if you are right, then perhaps it is *only* you that has free will. Your body, so it seems, must do your will, not its own. Other people, so it seems, must do your will, not their own will. And even God himself must do your will rather than his own. You may be right that you have free will, and I guess that means free will exists *for you*. But since your will extends to people that must conform to your will, they do not have complete freedom of will, because their will depends on yours. A will they may have, but not an absolutely free one, since your will can override their will.

So, I accept your point, that in theory a person could have complete freedom of will, but only one person, since other people would then find their own wills operating only underneath the will of that one person with absolute freedom of will. Congratulations to you, if you are that person! :)

Hi Alastair,

Yes, I exist. I both am and have free will.

Could you choose to believe you don't exist? If not, your will is not free.

I have decided to answer this question by my own free will. I have chosen my answer by my own free will. This is my answer!

Alastair: "Could you choose to believe you don't exist? If not, your will is not free."

Here are My options, and I am free to make all of them. In fact, right now, I am making all of these choices: I choose to believe I exist or do not exist; I choose not to believe either way, I choose to ignore the question; I choose to change my beliefs; and so on.

Why am I free to make all of them? And why is My Will free?

Because I = God. In other words, I am every person that exists now, has ever existed, and will ever exist. All choices, all decisions, all selections, are, have been, and will be Mine.

Hope this helps explain why I exist and why I am and have free will.

@Issam: For all I know, someone has offered you a large amount of money, or made a terrifying threat and you answer as you are told to answer, *not* according to your alleged free will. But let's say you can prove to me there is no one forcing you to say what you say, how do *you* know that you have not been brainwashed to believe in free will? Let's take this another step. It is a question of epistemology. To claim you have made a free choice is to claim you are under no external influence at all. That's a *huge* claim! Of all the infinite number of logically possible influences, you claim you *know* that not one of all that infinite number of possibilities is actually the case. Your genetic make-up, your upbringing, popular assumptions in literature and public media, let alone God are all alike completely insignificant in influencing your choice.

For all I know, you could actually have free will. I just don't think it is likely. Evidence suggests even electrons are subject to quantum entanglement beyond the constraints of the speed of light! Causation is more unbreakable than the most universal of physical laws. Given all the evidence that every eventuality has a cause (and many causes) and the complete lack of uncaused events, free will is unlikely. But it would only take one counterexample to overturn the theory. As a scientist, I always have to be that humble. Science, empiricism has limits to what it can know. That's its strength!

It seems to me that all you are really saying is that you are not aware of anything influencing your choice. But how can your ignorance of causes be an argument for there not being any causes? That's wishful thinking, not science nor logic. You could be right, but it would be an extremely lucky guess, completely against all evidence.

@Erik: The fact that you can *imagine* a set of options other than the actual state of affairs does not prove that those options are possible. Even if they are possible, it doesn't prove that you have a realistic capacity to pursue them. If someone actually understands what unity, duality and addition mean, then he can't--by any ordinary meaning of the word believe--actually believe unity added to unity is anything other than duality.

Regarding your "I = God" proposal. In broad terms, that's exactly what I think people like to believe, and it's precisely why we are so fond of the notion of free will. The objection I'd offer is that if God were a good God then he couldn't do evil could he? So he would not be free. There are many objections available to the "Erik = God" proposal. My personal favourite is the one I offer, though: if you have free will, then you can't be God, cause there's only one God and he's good, and so he doesn't have free will.

Anyway, nice playing mind games with you, Erik. :)

Alastair

Falsely accusing people is, to say the least, unscientifc. My answer was short, effective and direct to the point. I stand by what I said 100%.

Dear Issam, I'm comfortable with your false claim that I've made some kind of false claim. It's important you stand by your answer, because you provide no evidence but the authority of your own opinion, that stands by that answer. Short, effective, direct, to the point is not helpful if the answer is wrong. This is Research Gate, not reality TV, I'm not asking for opinions and votes but evidence and arguments, i.e. research. But thanks for your opinion. That's fine. Can you think of any publised scholars who hold your opinion and argue it in 25 words or less? I'm happy with whole books of argument, but shorter is sweeter when possible, I agree.

My answer above has been voted down soon after it was voted up! I could vote down the person who voted me down, but revenge is not science. This is Research Gate, not reality TV!

Alastair, since you have brought up quantum entanglement and hte notion of cause and effect, are you familiar with the suggestion by Charles Lear in"The Bell Inequality and Nonlocal Causality" that in some cases the effect preceeds the cause? This would add a new elelment to the debate over free will in that do the results of our decision force the decision. Of course another question to consider would be, just what does free will truly entail. Is it the ability to choose between a wide variety of actions, or is it properly expressed in some other manner? When I decide to eat in a particular restaurant, does that limit my free will in that the only meal choices available to me are the ones on that restaurant's menu?

Mind games? Heh? Just Me playing with Myself.

Have fun playing: Being God, I am Alistair denying that I am God while I cannot deny Myself because I am Undeniable.

In this post I will present some reasons why effects preceding their cause should be taken seriously in physics.

In my next post, I will introduce a study that suggested the same phenomenon occurs in human physiological responses to various stimuli.

In the following posts, I will introduce a time-symmetric interpretation of quantum mechanics.

In the final post, I will present a time-symmetric based speculation that's reserves free will" while simultaneously introducing a a teleology into the time evolution of creation.

A discussion of effect before cause would be incomplete if the paradox of delayed choice quantum erasure were omitted from the discussion. In this context, numerous delayed choice quantum erasure experiments have been conducted and are reported in the literature (See generally http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_eraser;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed...quantum_eraser and

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheeler...ice_experiment).

In their paper, “Random Delayed-Choice Quantum Eraser via Two-Photon Imaging” (The European Physical Journal D - Atomic, Molecular, Optical and Plasma Physics, Volume 44, Number 1 / July, 2007 (see also http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0512207v1), the authors: Giuliano Scarcelli, Yu Zhou, Yanhua Shih; provide a brief summary of these experiments and report on their experimental contribution to this literature. For those who are not familiar with these experiments, I have copied their introduction below:

“Quantum erasure was proposed in 1982 by Scully and Druhl [1]. After two decades the subject has become one of the most intriguing topics in probing the foundations of quantum mechanics [2,3]. The idea of quantum erasure lies in its connection to Bohr’s principle of complementarity [4]: although a quantum mechanical object is dually particle and wave; its particle-like and wave-like behaviors cannot be observed simultaneously. For example, if one observes an interference pattern from a standard Young’s double-slit interferometer by means of single-photon counting measurement, a photon must have been passing both slits like a wave and consequently the which-slit information can never be learned. On the other hand, any information about through which slit the photon has passed destroys the interference. In this context Scully and Druhl showed that if the which-slit (which-path) information is erased, the interference pattern can be recovered; the situation becomes extremely fascinating when the erasing idea is combined with the delayed choice proposal by Wheeler and Alley [5,6]: i.e. even after the detection of the quantum itself, it is still possible to decide whether to erase or not to erase the which-path information, hence to observe the wave behavior or the particle behavior of the quantum mechanical object.

In the past two decades, a number of experiments demonstrated the quantum eraser idea by means of different experimental approaches and/or different point of theoretical concerns [7–17]; in particular Kim et al. [12] have realized an experiment very close to the original proposal by using entangled photon pair of spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC). The experiment demonstrated that the which-path information of a photon passing through a double-slit can be erased at-a-distance by its entangled twin even after the annihilation of the photon itself. The choice was made between the joint detection of a single two-photon amplitude that involved either the upper slit or the lower slit (read which-path information) or the joint detection of a pair of indistinguishable two-photon amplitudes involving both slits (erase which-path information).

Unlike all previous experiments the present work takes advantage of two-photon imaging. A photon passes through a standard Young’s double-slit for its complementarity examination. The quantum correlation between this photon and its entangled twin allows the formation of a “ghost” image of the double-slit on the side of the entangled twin. Thus, the which path information is completely passed to the entangled twin photon and can be erased by the detection of the twin. After the detection of the photon which passed through the double-slit, a random choice is made on the Fourier transform plane of the “ghost” image between “reading complete information” or “reading partial information” of the double path.

The new approach shows clearly that any attempt to interpret the physics of the quantum eraser in terms of complementarity examination on a single photon leads to counterintuitive results and paradoxical conclusions ..."

The following is a meta-analysis of 26 reports that tested whether there is a predictive physiological anticipation preceding stimuli of two or more types that are presented in an order designed to be unpredictable and that produce different post-stimulus physiological activity. The study found that direction of the pre-stimulus physiological activity reflected the direction of the post-stimulus physiological activity, resulting in a Small but statistically significant unexplained anticipatory effect.

http://www.frontiersin.org/Perception_Science/10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00390/full

In the course of their analysis, the authors briefly discuss other studies where effect preceding cause phenomena have been observed.

"The first category includes physiological anticipation of intentional motor activity, e.g., physiological anticipation of a willed movement begins at least 500 ms before the conscious report of the intention to move (Libet et al., 1983; Haggard and Eimer, 1999; Soon et al., 2008). The explanation for these effects is that human conscious experience is preceded by subconscious initiation of that experience (Libet et al., 1983).

The second category consists of experiments for which the EEG signals during the pre-stimulus period from trials on which stimuli will later be detected differ significantly from the pre-stimulus signals from trials on which stimuli will later be undetected. The general explanation for these effects is that specific phases and/or amplitudes of neural oscillatory firing (Ergenoglu et al., 2004; Mathewson et al., 2009; Panzeri et al., 2010) facilitate detection (or non-detection) of an upcoming stimulus.

Recently, a third category of anticipatory effect, dubbed “preplay,” was discovered when the pre-maze activity of mouse hippocampal neurons was shown to mimic the activity recorded during and after being in the maze, even in mice for whom a maze was novel (Dragoi and Tonegawa, 2011). The authors also found that the firing patterns typically recorded in one maze are predictably different from those recorded in another maze. They offer the explanation that preplay patterns may reflect a sort of recycling phenomenon in which the hippocampus uses generalizable firing pattern templates from its recent history to code for an animal’s current spatial exploration experience."

Nearly all physical processes at the microscopic level are time symmetric, such that that the theoretical statements that describe them remain true if the direction of time is reversed. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_of_time) It is the second law of thermodynamics and our experience that conventionally limits classical mechanics and the equations of Maxwell, Schrödinger and Heisenberg to a “forward in time” direction. Accordingly, any quantum system is normally described in terms of the quantum state(s) of the system’s initial condition(s) and the subsequent evolution of the initial state(s) in a “forward in time’ direction. However, in time-symmetric quantum mechanics (TSQM), quantum systems must be described both in terms of forward-in time evolution of the systems’ initial boundary states, but also in terms of some future-defined boundary conditions that evolve backward in time.

A more detailed description of TSQM

(For readers seeking an in dept introduction to TSQM, a multitude of relevant papers can be found on Google Scholar. Also, Jeff Tollaksen's (who previously taught at George Mason) in a paper titled “Novel relationships between superoscillations, weak values, and modular variables” (http://iopscience.iop.org/1742-6596/70/1/012016) wrote the following:

"The 'time-asymmetry' attributed to the standard formulation of Quantum Mechanics (QM) was inherited from a reasonable tendency learned from Classical Mechanics (CM) to predict the future based on initial conditions: once the equations of motion are fixed in CM, then the initial and final conditions are not independent, only one can be fixed arbitrarily. In contrast, as a result of the uncertainty principle, the relationship between initial and final conditions within QM can be one-to-many: two 'identical' particles with identical environments can subsequently exhibit different properties under identical measurements. These subsequent identical measurements provide fundamentally new information about the system which could not in principle be obtained from the initial conditions. QM’s 'time-asymmetry' is the assumption that measurements only have consequences after they are performed, i.e. towards the future. Nevertheless, a positive spin was placed on QM’s non-trivial relationship between initial and final conditions by ABL [named after the physicists Yakir Aharonov, Peter Bergmann, and Joel Lebowitz] who showed that the new information obtained from measurements was also relevant for the past of every quantum-system and not just the future. This inspired ABL to re-formulate QM in terms of Pre-and-Post-Selected-ensembles. The traditional paradigm for ensembles is to simply prepare systems in a particular state and thereafter subject them to a variety of experiments. These are 'pre-selected-only-ensembles.' For pre-and-post-selected-ensembles, we add one more step, a subsequent measurement or post-selection. By collecting only a subset of the outcomes for this later measurement, we see that the “pre-selected-only-ensemble” can be divided into sub-ensembles according to the results of this subsequent 'post-selection-measurement.' Because pre-and-post-selected-ensembles are the most refined quantum ensemble, they are of fundamental importance and subsequently led to the two-vector or Time-Symmetric reformulation of Quantum Mechanics (TSQM) [4, 5]. TSQM provides a complete description of a quantum-system at a given moment by using two-wavefunctions, one evolving from the past towards the future (the one utilized in the standard paradigm) and a second one, evolving from the future towards the past. While TSQM is a new conceptual point-of-view that has predicted novel, verified effects which seem impossible according to standard QM, TSQM is in fact a re-formulation of QM. Therefore, experiments cannot prove TSQM over QM (or vice-versa). The motivation to pursue such re-formulations, then, depends on their usefulness."

Experimental Verifications

There is now third party research that quantitatively confirmed predicted outcomes which were unique to the TSQM formulation of quantum mechanics. As these outcomes cannot be explained by the traditional formulations of quantum mechanics, I believe that paradigm shifting evidence of “Quantum Miracles” is both beginning to emerge from independent research groups and is beginning to be recognized in the popular media (See Discovery Magazine http://discovermagazine.com/2010/apr/01-back-from-the-future/article_view?b_start%3Aint=0&-C

It must be emphasized that unique predictions of TSQM have been experimentally confirmed. These experimental verifications of TSQM are occurring in the context of "weak measurement" theory and research that itself involves both intriguing explanatory and ontological implications. As examples, please consider the following:

"Experimental joint weak measurement on a photon pair as a probe of Hardy's Paradox" http://arxiv.org/pdf/0810.4229

"Direct observation of Hardy's paradox by joint weak measurement with an entangled photon pair" http://arxiv.org/pdf/0811.1625

"Quantum interference experiments, modular variables and weak measurements" http://arxiv.org/pdf/0910.4227

"Postselected weak measurement beyond the weak value" http://arxiv.org/pdf/0909.2206

"Complete characterization of post-selected quantum statistics using weak measurement tomography" http://arxiv.org/pdf/0907.0533

and dozens more.

In quantum mechanics, the initial quantum state of any system evolves over time into a probability distribution of all possible states consistent with the initial boundary condition. If an initial state is assumed in which all Divinely ordained states and spacetime geometries are subsumed, a probability distribution of possible states, including all observable states, will necessarily arise. Applying time symmetry, this probability distribution will simultaneously appear as the set of all futures and the set all histories which can arise from and lead to this common point of origination and destiny. As this point of origination constitutes both the system’s beginning and ending boundary condition, all actualizations must occur within this contextuality.

If the big bang is then understood to have occurred as an actualization event within this preexistent contextuality, it would constitute the initial boundary condition for our universe and, inter alia, embody all of the laws of physics pursuant to which our universe could thereafter evolve. All subsequent actualizations would then be strongly bounded by this and the set of all immediately preceding actualizations; but would also be subtly influenced by a future unity or destiny toward which all of our possible futures would necessarily converge.

This speculation introduces a kind of “determinism” into the time-evolution of Creation. From the frame of reference of the scientist, the process is an entirely “natural phenomena” and, from the frame of reference of the theologian, the centripetal convergence toward unity is the Divine destiny ordained by God”. The beauty of the speculation is that “determinism” comprised of contingency preserves “Free Will” within that contingency. In other words, human choice exists within those individualized boundary conditions of each person’s “Now”.

Alastair,

God can be good and have free will because evil can also be good depending upon the circumstances. There are numerous examples showing evil can be good such as the evils of incarceration can be good for society. To say that God does not have free will because he is good greatly limits the definition of the word “good.” Forgiveness neutralizes evil actions. To determine if God is truly good, you have to await the outcome of the project He has undertaken. It is a fact that everyone is actually “good” under the right circumstances and it must be a good God’s objective to exploit that fact in everyone’s favor by any available means. Thus, God can have free will by being both good and evil if everyone eventually forgives His evil. It is a well known proverb that says “they who are forgiven much, love much.” That, in my opinion, is a win-win outcome proving that God is good.

Nils

Philosophy considers free will one of the limit problems. History can show how full explanations have fail to convince, as sciences should. Thousands of quotations can be considered, when I think there is one conviction that must be defended: till it is not fully proved, my feeling of being free remains untouched, against those who affirm it is an illusion. S. Harris argues freedom is an illusion. I don't. And dangerously I affirm that Harris in his real life behaves as a free individual, defending himself against any attempt to control him.

Naturalism (Darwin) taught freedom was an illusion covering the set of natural laws ruling the behavior of animals... and men & women. Psycologism (from Freud to Skinner; not Psycology) taught freedom was illusion hiding powerful psycological unconscious rules (infinite sets of those unconscious rules show themselves unconvincing). Structuralism, and all Sociologisms taught freedom was an illusory feeling to explain decisions we take governed by relations in the frame of a society...

All these self-considered ultimate explanations for freedom must consider that were not as convincing as they supposed to be.

Freedom remains an evidence to normal people: and science *must" take this in account. And if a scientist *feels* freedom is an illusion, he must prove his illusion is more than that.

Alastair, with absolute respect for what you consider, I think that common sense has a lot to do with science and Philosophy: I would fight to preserve my freedom, and that is not banal.

Good Philosophical considerations on freedom were made by R. Yepes - J. Aranguren, in "Fundamentos de Antropología: Un Ideal de la Excelencia Humana", Pamplona, 1998.

quote from Elio Conte:

Thread: Neuroscience vs. Philosophy : Is free will an illusion?

" the traditional notion of free will... that is.. in our reality we are free or our future is in some manner signed from the first day of our life?."

Alastair,

"Causation is more unbreakable than the most universal of physical laws. Given all the evidence that every eventuality has a cause (and many causes) and the complete lack of uncaused events, free will is unlikely."

William has explained earlier that the world is not deterministic. Not everything come from a cause.

The word "freedom", like the words: "cold" "salty", "pain", "love", "awareness" designates certain experiences we all here experience. Lets assume that you have a son and he ask you : papa do you love me? Would you answer, I do not know son because I really do not know what love is? I took a lot of physiological class and nothing in there explain that. Sorry son! Freedom is one of these experience we cannot explained. Should we doubt it in the basis that an explanation is not available?

I think Freewill is in the process of being explained as our knowledge of the material universe expands (no pun intended) However, to properly discuss the topic of Freewill, it must first be recognized as being a theistic discussion. If we exclude a supernatural element, we have no natural basis for freewill. This is because, Freewill is not subject to cause-and-effect (C&E) principles. If it were, then it would not be free. To be truly free, The Will must exist outside the confines of this deterministic universe which is what I mean by supernatural.

Next we need to define what “The Will” is as simply as possible. It appears that The Will is an intangible property of our brain that we call our Mind and is recognized as being oneself or the” I” in our conversations with ourselves. I seem to talk to my Mind sometimes with instructions such as, “Let’s see, what should I say next to really define this issue?” I think everyone should know what I mean by this. Yes, I do talk to myself and I do sometimes answer. Freud defined this Mind property as being our Ego or what some might call The Observer. We, The Observer, sometimes battle with the Id (the unconscious) and Superego (our conscience) to eventually come to a conclusion regarding an action. It is this “battle” that we can call our Freewill. It may be that both the Id & Superego are not free. The Id appears to instinctly react selfishly and the Superego instinctively reacts unselfishly. Our freewill is a blend of these two extremes which is the result of our Mind’s independent choice if given enough time to make a rational decision.

If what I have outlined is an acceptable premise thus far, then we must next explain the mechanism that allows our Ego to operate freely within our C&E universe. My choice for an explanation involves Time. There are numerous other choices, some of which work through a The Quantum Mind connection. These all may have a bearing on Freewill, but I prefer, for simplicity, to assess the Time connection. There is a growing body of knowledge that recognizes that Time is not limited by what we consciously experience. Since Einstein’s equations have altered the concept of “Now” and recognizes that the past, present, and future can all be real within the same Now. This has led to topics such as Eternalism, B-Theory of Time, and Block Time to name a few. These concepts view the past, present and future as all being real which we experience in an incremental series of “nows” like a film in a motion picture.

If Eternalism is true, then we can identify how Freewill works. However, it involves yet another concept called Molinism or Middle Knowledge. This idea hypothesized that a higher power who is said to be Omniscient, manufactured a deterministic universe which can accommodate Freewill actions as a means of developing independent Minds capable of moral behavior. In other words, we are here to learn that unselfish behavior is the only means by which we can coexist with one another indefinitely.

Therefore, the answer to the question, “Does Freewill Exist?” is “Yo” or Yes and No. Freewill does not exist within our Block Time universe. The past, present and future have already been fixed. However, Freewill did exist when the Block Time universe was assembled outside of and before our universe existed.

Thank you to so many people for such thoughtful replies! :D

@ William Mayor, I'm not familiar with Charles Lear, but he does sound interesting. It is a fascinating thought that not only might hidden preconditions constrain choices but that choices might also be constrained by their outcomes. I must admit it is strongly counterintuitive, though it seems there is evidence in some Quantum Mechanical theories for something rather like it.

Thanks to Jon Trevathan for more material than I can quickly digest. I do rather like your summary, especially as it is so simliar to my naive expectations. That we make decisions with consequences, i.e. that we make choices seems clear enough, but it also seems clear enough that consequences are constrained by possibility. Perhaps the question, in your terminology is something like, Are actions of the will independent "actuating events," or are they actuated by constraints on possible states that are simply opaque to the observer of his own will?

Dear Nils Jansma, in reply to your first post, the murder of God's own Son is put forward by the Bible as a good thing, celebrated in English speaking tradition as Good Friday. It is not just the Bible, of course, that recognises that suffering--for example to save money, train for an athletic competition, or to pursue a revolution to a successful conclusion--can be a good thing. However, I'd want to take the opposite position to you regarding "The Good" and Freedom. I don't believe God can decree something to be good which isn't intrinsically good. So I certainly don't believe say a consensus of human judges can decree what is good, by vindicating God's actions or such like. It is a famous ethical proposal called Divine Command Theory, only placing a nebulous group of humans in place of God for determining what is good. Alternatively, it devolves to being equivalent to my own suggestion, in that the nebulous group of people actually correctly perceive The One True Absolute Good and are able, retrospectively, to predicate it of God's actions (though I think actions are neither good nor bad, properly speaking it is motives, not actions, nor consequences that are *morally* good or bad).

Thank you for the correction! You have made the right decision.

Gracias Manuel de Elía for your very clear and wise overview, expressed so very politely. I acknowledge that we scientists and theologians who agree with one another than free will is an illusion have the burden of proof upon us when that most excellent of rational positions--common sense--is weighed against us. Indeed, it is one of the reasons I started this thread, since it provides an opportunity for atheists and theists to work together on an interesting and important question. But it works both ways, there are theologians and scientists who can work together to oppose Sam Harris and myself also.

Merci, Louis Brassard, for your thoughtful replies. I am sure you are correct, that we can neither explain how we might be free, nor explain in detail how it is that we are not. To my mind freedom appears to be unlikely and an illusion, to yours it appears self-evident, but you are wise enough to place it in the category of inexplicable truths, like love. If you are correct that we are free, I think you are also correct that it could well be a matter beyond us to explain (perhaps for precisely the same reason freedom were possible, knowledge of how it worked would be impossible, *that* might even be a provable thing, though it would still leave us without ever knowing for sure that we were as free as we feel we are).

Finally (for now) tak Nils for your second thought provoking reply. I'm very much with you on the suggestion that free will is quite possibly an irreducibly metaphysical notion, and hence beyond science if it is true. Indeed, several argue from what they believe to be self evident free will to the necessity of metaphysics and from that to the likelihood of there being a God. We could call it the free will argument for God. I think it's not a bad argument, except that although I believe in God, I do so for different reasons, and ultimately I believe in a different kind of God, not a free-will giver, more like a constrainer of reality over and above the constraints on reality we perceive to exist in the material universe.

Alastair,

Descartes, the one who invented the space time framework for expressing all mechanisms with causal relations knew that he could not explain his own free will in this frawework. That is why he split the world between EXTENSION and MIND. The Mind Body problem was created and since them different solutions been proposed to overcome it. I do not know of any satisfactory naturalist solution but I know a lot which goes in the right direction. I think that the key to the solution is the new physics that is coming, a physics which is not limited to spacetime and causality, a physics which explains EXISTENCE, a physics of process. But I am convinced that there is no physics that will ever even come close in principle to explain the whole of reality, the most mysterious part being creativity.

Oui Louis!

I thought I'd heard the mind-body problem behind your other answers. Answers to the question I asked must assume answers to the mind-body problem. If the mind is somehow independent of the body, an unmoved mover, then will free of material causation is certainly possible, but so, as another unmoved mover, would be a disembodied God!

And I think our interest in the topic is precisely the one you offer: creativity. Whether I design a vehicle, a social event, launch a new business, give a surprise birthday party to my wife or other friends, write a poem, give birth to a child, solve a puzzle in mathematics or physics, climb Everest without supplementary oxygen, or whatever I do, I want it to be me, just me, my personality creating something new and beautiful, my footprint on the universe. These ambitions seem to be robbed of their charm if all they reflect is hidden causes driving us to do whatever we do, however original and creative it might seem.

I think you reformulate the question in equivalent helpful ways. Merci. :)

Alastair,

Your described what you are doing as you experience it and us since we are humans like you and experience the same and so we can speak to each other. It is not an explanation of the why we do that but that is not necessary for doing it. Now if we are curious and what to know why we have to realize the chalence it is. A scientific explanation is necessary from the outside. Human being are the result of three and half billion year of evolution on this planet and the most complex entity that exist. Physics which is the study of the simplest mechanisms in the universe cannot even understand what is going on on the event horizon of a black hole. There quantum physics become inconsitent with general relativity and our knowledge end. Our knowlede end very very rapidly when we try to understand human mind and their creativity. But we experience the world from the inside of the knowledge of the mind knowledge horizon. Understanding is occuring inside.

We are always thinking, proposing, explaining problems in a kantian environment: what originally was an attempt to free subjectivity of the frame of Cartesian mechanicism (of Kant's contemporaries rationalists), evolved into a more radical division of the material dimension of nature (and man within it) and the other dimension of freedom (subjectivity, individuality, personality...). Science has to do with the first "half" of knowledge: there you find what you can calculate; outside of this field, reigns freedom, not capable of being "objectivized" "conceptualized", brief "calculated", explained in "scientific" terms.

Kant would accept that there is only *truth* in the first field (Categorial knowledge). Out of this realm, there is only opinion, and better, consensus, but not exact and *real* knowlegde.

Since then a long way in what is called "human sciences" has tried to look for ways of translating the exactitude of maths & physics to man (neo-kantism in economy, sociology, politics, but also psychology), when man should have remained out of "science"... Admiring what those disciplines have achieved, they are derivations of an "original mistake" of trying to separate what we live and experience in an irreductible unity: mind and body (res cogitans & res extensa).

I firmly consider that Kant was right to state that freedom *does not belong to the realm of matter*, but because of his system he has no way to solve the division he so firmly created (following Descartes). Our environment is mainly "kantian": things that matter, scientific, serious things, should be clearly explained in scientific, experimental terms. Experience shows it's not possible in certain things: brief, human things.

One of the most human conditions is freedom (condition, characteristic... is difficult to name what it is: it seems to be more than a *property* of what we call man when it seems to be man itself...). My conviction is that it's absolutely impossible to talk of freedom in the experimental sciences, since overflows the capabilities of what is measurable. Freedom is not only the capacity of choice: it has to do with creativity (I liked very much that, Louis and Alastair), that is to *put* in the world what has not been yet seen. That means capacity of introducing novelty, being not forced by *any* causal explanation. That is Kant: causal is a term to physics, freedom to man. Beyond all conditioning of genetics, environment, education, structures, there is a novelty in man & woman we call freedom. To finish with Popper (and perhaps with de "second" Wittgenstein) I would add that there is truth also out of experimental sciences. Philosophy is still alive despite Hawkings, and has a lot to do in this.

I'm sorry for writing this long.

Thanks for your post Manuel.

and thanks *especially* for being generous enough to write so much, and so thoughtfully and clearly! :)

I think your suggestion is newish among those posted. Yes, if we distinguish mind and body, the things of the body fit within a largely known deterministic world, but still one that is not completely known, even in fairly basic questions of physics. Many people, and I am one of them, will not grant that mind is truly independent of the body, but rather than minds as we know them are "embodied minds" and reveal that even by the languages in which they communicate and reason. That is not to say that mind, in theory, could not operate independently of the body as we know it, just that it doesn't do so within the realm of our experience.

From a theological point of view, even were mind independent of body, if there is a God, a theistic God rather than a deistic one, even the realm of minds beyond and outside the natural world would still fall within the domain in which the theistic God was as much a determining principle as the laws of nature are within the physical realm.

The common ground I'd offer is that free will is a reasonable hypothesis, but an unproven and maybe unprovable one, it lies in an area perhaps necessarily clouded and beyond ordinary epistemological confirmation. Physics can neither confirm nor deny it, though on principle it tends to deny it. Theology can neither confirm nor deny it, being a metaphysical kind of science, though on principle it tends to deny free will also.

Perhaps what is fair to say is that a presumption of free will is very important to the average person in expressing what they think is special about being human. So precious is it that most would argue that they'd prefer to presume it to be true until it is proven to be false, so passing up any need to carry a burden of proof.

If freedom could be proven from objective knowledge then it would not be free become you could predict what it will do. Freedom is part of our awareness and this come before knowledge and proofs. We are curious though. Human thinking is uniquely human form of mamalian awareness. Freedom exist for mamals and lower animals.

Awareness (feeling something) is primary a qualitative sort of think although there is a quantitative part which built on how the sense-acting systems of our body work. The relational knowledge between ourself and the world which took 3 billion years to evolved is built-in. It is a kind of implicit platonic world. Mammal make use of it all the time and informs their decisions. But humans are unique because we can dream while being awake by self-enacting our built-in platonic world and freedom become freedom of thought.

Wow Louis! That's a very interesting theory. One classic test of awareness is the "mirror test," where a child has a spot of paint placed on its nose and then is stood in front of a mirror. Up to about 18 months of age, children will reach out and touch the image, their reflection in the mirror, even on the nose where the paint is. Only after about 18 months do they rub the paint off their own physical nose, guided by the mirror. I think there are difficulties and complexities about regarding that test as definitive of self-awareness, however, it is pretty universally accepted. Even chimpanzees, apparently never get to the "mirror test" level of self-awareness.

Developmentally, we do certainly come to self-awareness at say 18 months, which is well in advance of more complex cognitive achievements like appreciating and evaluating proofs and truth claims. However, I'm not sure that once we've reached that level we would still consider self-awareness a more reliable kind of knowledge than proof.

I'm with you, though, in thinking that "relational knowledge" like recognising affection, frustration, excitement, humour (which is very complicated), disappointment and anger are all more concrete to small children than "abstract" as we adults sometimes tend to think they are. However, I also think children appreciate as much as we do that "relational reasoning" is defeasible reasoning, that is to say there is a genuine logic to it, however it does not guarantee certainty the way deductive reasoning does. It should be added that scientific reasoning is also defeasible (outside mathematics), since it is more useful and powerful than mathematics as it includes empirical data as well as inductions along with deductions.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/reasoning-defeasible/

Alastair,

You will agree that mammals do not use logical reasoning. Logical reasoning is a late development of language which developed out of our capacity to express of self-enacted dream. The butlk of our awareness, 99.9 of it is mamalian and no reasoning. And language is 99% about a word based self-enactment of dreams. The remaining .01% is about logical reasoning. It has nothing to do with creativity, it is only involve in the last phase of ordering the dream. Deduction, logical reasoning which are taken to the the height of intellect are really only the wax over the package. Painting, music, danse these are the type of thing that develop the creativity and the intellect. Logic only force us to think into a format. It is very creatively unhealty in the long run.

I would have to review a few documents in the public sphere, but I believe that some of our fellow mammals are being given short shrift in here. I believe that logical thought and the mirror test have both been accomplished by fellow primates.

In view of the fact that any human in his/her 'right mind' does not operate as a remotely controlled robot, I will subscribe to humans having freewill, described here and in one of my works as 'limited freewill.' The limiting factor being the knowledge possessed by the very individual in question.

Your knowledge, fears, what gives us joy and belief system form 'stimulants' restraining or guiding your willpower, implying an absence of absolute freewill, although you are still responsible for all your actions (permitted actions). Absolute freewill does not exist among humans. Even when you misuse your freewill out of desperation, the frustration itself has exacted certain level of control over your freewill, hence not fully free. Some toddlers may not be very scared of falling from a height, but adults know the implications of sustaining serious injuries to the head. Such toddlers will like to use their freewill to jump off a height while the adults will restrain them based on the adults' knowledge of a fall. So, what is freewill, does it exist and who has it without qualification?

I will strongly argue that humans have freewill, but under the control of their knowledge (see Rationalism) in order to use it constructively to improve the quality of life within human society and our ecosystem. FREEWILL used well is a virtue for human's better living standard. However, it is often misused unfortunately.

Thanks for your thoughts Akintayo. I also think knowledge is an important part of this question, in that it is our lack of knowledge that gives us the illusion that our real will is more than just real, but actually free. I am a common sense realist, in other words I think my will is no more and no less than a function of the processes of my brain. Since I don't know how my brain works, I don't see how my will is its puppet, but that is still the reality of it. Perhaps you believe in a soul or something, independent of the body, but I find that hard to imagine and am certainly not aware of there being any scientific evidence for that as yet. Such a disembodied soul or disembodied will may well be free, but my brain is subject to the laws of physics, chemistry and biology in a way that makes me think it unlikely that I'm different to other animals with brains really, except for consciousness. I am *conscious* of the decisions my brain makes for me, and that is part of the brilliance of the evolved brain, that our consciousness probably feeds information back to the brain influencing its future processes, hence we can learn, and even engage with other minds as part of the context of our brains moving our puppet bodies and consciousnesses around. I do like your concern that human brains be trained to work for good rather than evil, and like you I believe that is possible.

I would note that if we are to include the accounts of NDE's into the discussion then it seems far more likely that free will does exist. There are numerous accounts in the NDE literature of individuals who claim that they had the choice to stay in the NDE realm, and thus die in our physical realm or to return to the physical. Now we have no way of proving what happened, but the accounts consistently defy our current understandings of what occurs in circumstances of extreme bodily/brain injury. Portions of the NDE experience have been supposedly explained, but only by selectively examining the material. For every explanation I have seen there are examples in the material that contradict it.

One example is the explanation for the "tunnel" experience by linking it to known problems with the optic nerve under some circumstances. This is all well and good, except not all NDE accounts include the "tunnel", and not always in the "tunnel" experience is the light straight ahead as is required in the optic nerve explanations. The light is sometimes off to one side or there might even be multiple lights.

To explain some of the phenomena in an NDE and claim the entire genre has been explained is a false statement. To assume that there is a materialistic explanation for all NDE phenomena is to make as assumption, it is not to present a fact.

When it comes to the existence or nonexistence of free will, we simply do not yet know enough. Nor do we show signs of gaining sufficient knowledge given out current level of knowledge. Rather our current level of knowledge would seem to imply that we cannot gain sufficient knowledge to answer the question, just as it implies that we will remain incapable forever determining if the universe is monistic or dualistic.

There's always a third option to either/or, BOTH!

Alastair, thanks for your comment. I am not very sure whether anyone would like to provide a SCIENTIFIC method to authenticate or deny the existence of a *soul/spirit* in a living body. It would have been nice to use a more appropriate tool if one can find it, and if soul/spirit exists. At the same time, our lack of experts should not lead to a denial.

Freewill discourse did not originate from the field of medicine or 'modern science' and should not be confused by applying wrong tools. Who is to be held responsible for my actions if my freewill is not free or if freewill is an illusion? I do not think Physics, Chemistry or Biology will be comfortable with answering these questions, which you try to illustrate in your response to my post. Humans cannot sincerely be 'puppets of the brain,' a composition of Phy-bio-chemicals WITHOUT A RESPONSIBLE WILLPOWER, exemplified in a robotic world.

Thank you William for your last paragraph/conclusion, as it really appears difficult to speak emphatically on *absolute freewill,* and how much knowledge we need to make *semi independent decisions.* Humans have incredibly developed brain, but I also still wonder if the *hard drive* is big enough to process non material things, and we are sometimes tempted to disregard the *Metaphysical and Theological* aspects of reality. It is however too early to make absolute statements that 'we will remain incapable forever...' as you try to suggest in your post. Let us look forward to what *Theology and Metaphysics* may have for Freewill discourse in the post modern world.

Thanks again William for another argument to free will from metaphysics. I think that's something I can take away and keep using: the notion of the possibility of the *freedom* of the will is, in fact, a metaphysical theory. It could be that beyond our natural world is a supernatural world that interacts with the natural world in some complex way that might allow some, but not all, physical impossibilies to be circumvented. For example, physical processes could in some or all cases cause death, but at this very point of death, the human will might interact with the supernatural world in a way where the supernatural world interacts on behalf of the human will to bring some natural processes into submission to that will, even a will to continue living. The physical world seems not to permit human wills to be free, but our lack of knowledge of all details permits a "god in the gaps" who could be orchestrating things via separate and sovereign negotiations with human wills. I can't disprove that argument. It's not my personal position though.

Thanks for the suggestion of "both ... and" CJ. I'd need a little more elaboration. The law of excluded middle is unbreakable. The sun will rise tomorrow OR the sun will not rise tomorrow. There is no "both ... and" about it. The world is full of false distinctions, which are applications of the law of excluded middle where it does not apply. The right of politics are trying to steal your freedom! No, the left are! But this is sloganeering, so often based on false distinctions, to keep things oversimplified. Both left and right want government to control things, that's why people vote for them! People vote for parties they think will take *less* of their liberty away. More positively, neither left nor right wants to rob people of *all* their liberty, just the liberties they believe are anti-social licenses. But the question of the liberty of the human will is a matter of Yes or No. I *do* kind of take a middling position, along with Sam Harris, that our wills *look* as though they are free because we cannot see what moves them the way they are moved; but on the other hand, given everything else in the universe operates according to universal laws, our wills should be like that too. So Sam and I say Yes, the will appears to be free, but No it cannot actually be free. Sam might agree with me that in the end it doesn't really matter if our wills aren't free, because we can't see how they are bound, and because they feel free, we might as well enjoy and play along with the illusion. That's OK for ordinary life, but it's not good enough in hard science or rigorous philosophy. Most people are only interested in ordinary life. Sure, get on and enjoy it! :)

Dear brother Akintayo, Romans 9 discusses this very point of human responsibility even given God's predestination of souls. Even twins, even before birth, we are told: "Jacob I loved but Esau I hated." And we are told this is all about God's Grace: "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy." And shown the same point in reverse: "So it is not by the one who wills or acts, but by God's grace." Having painted such a strong clear picture of a Divine plan for history covering each person from before birth all the way to eternity, Paul asks the same question we do: "How can God blame us, since who resists his will?" Look carefully, how does Paul answer our question for us? He doesn't give a definite answer. He can't explain the whole thing. God doesn't tell us. He tells us that it *is* so, he doesn't say how or why. Or at least that's how Augustine, Calvin and I read the passage. There are other views. JS Mill knows this whole question arose in theology before ever science started thinking about it. In theology, the no-free-will theologians Augustine, Luther and Calvin won the day (unless we are Jehovah's Witnesses or Roman Catholics). The same issue is likely to divide the church until Jesus' return. ;)

Alastair,

Very concrete exposition of those passages. I believe that no man (Christian or not) truly has FREE will. If you are an unbeliever, scripture says you're slave to sin and the desires of your flesh (Romans 8:7; John 8:34, 44). If you're redeemed according to the grace of God through Christ scripture says you are "caused to walk in [God's] statutes (Deut. 30:6)."

It is not for our fallible, finite, depraved, selfish, and weak minds to know how or why the Sovereignty of God works 100% of the time. God knows every bit of information about the past, present, future AND all of the alternatives to any and every action made in that time. Until we get there, we honestly shouldn't pursue a "free" will. We'd have no idea what to do with it. We can barely handle the limited ones we have now.

Amen Seth. That is exactly how I see it also. No further comment needed ... unfortunately! LoL Following your page. :D

Alastair, you made a reference to a supernatural world imposing on this one at times. I truly hate references to supernatural worlds though, as to me they sound like fantasy land. Are not the experimentally supported findings of modern science strange enough?

When science supports the notion that the future determines the present, that time runs both forwards and backwards, we have gotten into very strange territory without adding anything more. We cannot simply assume a purely materialistic world without ignoring what modern science has found. Einstein's General Theory of Relativity and Maxwell's electromagnetic equations exclude that.

While a dualistic universe cannot be proven, given our current scientific knowledge it remains plausible, just as a purely mental world remain plausible. Either a dualistic and a purely mental universe would easily accomodate free will. A universe where the future determines the past would easily grant the illusion of free will.

Now given that we cannot determine what the nature of our existent universe is at present, whether it is purely mental, dualistic or materialistic with time running both forwards and backwards, all of which are plausible given our current level of knowledge, we cannot hope to answer a question of free will without great and unforeseeable advances in our knowledge. The one universe we may safely exclude though is that we do not live in a purely materialistic universe where time marches resolutely and exclusively forward and the answer regarding free will may be easily found.

Fundamentally, I think its hard to "determine what the nature of our existent universe is at present..." if you immediately eliminate the supernatural. Until very recent history, almost all of mankind took the supernatural for granted (and many still do). Experimental support does not eliminate the necessity for mankind to fulfill his spiritual craving...a craving that requires some kind of supernatural "ideas" to exist.

Having said that, the point is this--are you truly able to do anything you want in this life? Before you make a decision, do you not consifer the impact of that decision on the lives of your family, friends, colleagues, etc.? Do not your morals play a role in your decisions? Or simply the environment in which you make those decisions? Based on the obvious answers to those questions I don't think man, in any of the theoretical realms or the reality that we live in, truly has (or needs or craves) a free will.

Seth, I see no reason to claim that any factors that i consider in making a choice restrict my free will. For me to even consider them is itself an act of free will, unless you posit some external agency that forces me to consider all these factors. If it is internal, even via conditioning which I chose to accept, it is a result of free will.

You two are leading me to a more interesting question or two here. To what extent would a perfectly moral universe, without moral transgression leave room for free choices? Do moral choices depend for their moral value on a presupposition of free or conscious selections between options? Are moral values, like good and bad, hard-wired in some epiphenomenal way into reality as we know it? At what point? Are they out there on the moon, if only we go to the moon, or are they in us, say in our brain? And if they are in us, are they in each of us the same way, or does it differ? Are some people born with higher gifts of moral sensitivity as it were? In all these questions we are exploring the boundaries between the objective material world, and the subjective personal world. Our wills, our choices, our physical operations on the world, mediated by our decisions, are a kind of boundary case of thinking about the human experience. I can look at a chess problem, think hard, solve it, without leaving my chair or lifting a finger. This is the life of the mind, whatever the physical processes like vision and breathing and heartbeats that underlie it. But if I engage with someone else's mind, in a real game of chess, then we will each make physical changes to the board in front of us as we move pieces around in making choices. So, if I make some move in chess, how free is my move? I cannot break the rules of the game. I may instinctively avoid some moves that will lose me the game, while others will require more careful reflection. Does the time I take to arrive at a move matter? Is the aim of winning the game a key element in constraining my moves? Does that have analogies in our instinctive moral choices in ordinary human life? Are they purposeful in some long term or big picture way that we even lose conscious sight of at times, while nonetheless marching to the beat of that deep purpose within us that drives the choices we are making?

Alastair, in regards to your chess analogy, there is a flaw. I am fully capable, that is to say I CAN break the rules while playig chess. However, I MAY not do so. Now if I would break the rules in chess, I will be forced to take my move back, and if I persist in breaking the rules I will probably be ruled to have lost the game, but those would be consequences of my choice. I am free to attempt to break any rules I wish to, but in many cases there will be consequences, quite often consequences I do not wish to incur. The only thing that blocks my free choice of breathing water is that I would not like the consequences. I may choose to fly, but unless I stay very close to the ground, best if I start standing on the ground, I will not like the consequences. That I choose not to like the consequences of some choices, and thus avoid them, does not mean that I am incapable of choosing them. In fact I tried a few such things when I was young and dumb. Learning how much some of these choices hurt managed to revise how I choose.

Hi, Alastair, sorry for the long break,

I think it is nice to consider the place of 'God's foreknowledge' in predestination (and vis a vis God's Sovereignty), as Paul also was conversant of it in his same Romans Epistle (8:29), "For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son,.." I like to distinguish 'fatalistic predestination' from "predestination out of God's foreknowledge and Grace." [I mean fatalism like, you yes go to hell, and you, yes go to heaven at random..] (For by GRACE you have been saved through FAITH; and that not of yourselves, it is the GIFT of God... Ephesians 2:8; John 3:16, 17). Grace, Faith and Gift of God are important words which need to be seriously examined.

God foreknew all that Jacob was going to do (even before his birth). HE knew Jacob was going to make a great mess, repent and seek after God in prayer... build an altar (Bethel) for the HIM; REPENTANCE and WORSHIP which we do not see in Esau. Jacob seems to provide a link for the continual worship of YHWH, otherwise there would have been a premature break in worship after (Abraham and..) Isaac. I can easily understand Pauline Epistle better through "God's foreknowledge" before Jacob and Esau were born, "Jacob I love.. Esau I hate" Romans 9:13. I try to search for the role of foreknowledge in the discourse by the virtue of which God's LOVE is in conformity with HIS other attributes such as Justice.

I love and respect CALVIN and LUTHER, but they are not 'the Scripture'. I also like proper biblical exegesis (true to the Scripture).

Seth, William and Alastair,

Very interesting...

There are certain factors that keep humans from using the 'freewill' in an absolute sense, hence would like to qualify freewill as a 'limited freewill'. But Seth may like to dispute this that if it is limited, then it is not free; but that is not true. It is still free until the set boundary is reached. It is not an absolute freewill though.

Definition/description of freewill may help clarify our thoughts. So what is 'freewill'?

1. If freewill means absolute freedom, then no known human has it, as I already explained at some point above. Seth will be comfortable with this definition/description of freewill. Absolute freewill does not exist.

2. If freewill means ability to make some choices within a set boundary, then all humans have freewill within the set boundary. The boundary could mean some of the points already raised above. So William is right, if he meant 'limited freewill' So we have it.

Seth is right if he meant absolute freewill, no human has it. And thanks to Alastair for his question.

@William. Your "can" v "may" distinction is exactly the same as that implied by my long series of questions, and a clear and helpful thing it is for you to make it. My illustration is only that, an illustration, it's hardly the suggestion that people have no choice in life except to play chess! LoL ;) The analogy works by allowing the rules of chess to illustrate the laws of nature, but the choices of move to illustrate the application of the human will. There *are* laws of nature. The human will exists and is exercised everywhere. The questions are: is that will free of any constraint under the laws of nature, and does it need to be free in order for there to be any possibility of a theory of morality?

PS As far as your suggestion that you can fly at will but choose not to in order to avoid consequences, I'll allow that you can jump or maybe do things I cannot do, but I'm coming from the perspective that gravity is beyond our power to avoid, we may choose to harness its power by jumping from a diving board into a pool, but we have no choice about how gravity operates. That fact may be pressed further, in that the functioning of our brains has a chemistry that we do not completely understand, but is likely to work by cause and effect like other things, leaving our choices as ultimately effects of our brain chemistry, even though we experience them as being choices according to a pattern that we consider to be our "self."

Dear Akintayo,

you articulate classic semi-Pelagianism, but from different passages to the ones normally offered for it. You believe the Bible teaches salvation by works, just as Pelagius did (and John Stuart Mill mentions in the quote in my question), and that is very common in Christian thinking today, just as it was in Augustine's day.

Grace has a different meaning in Pelagianism and Roman Catholicism to what it has in Scripture, understood with due attention to context. In scripture, grace refers to God's sovereign election of some to eternal life, in the context of him excluding the remainder. God binds all men over to disobedience so that he might have mercy on some elect (end of Romans 11). Grace is undeserved election, not based on what we have done, are doing or will do. If you died in 10 years time, would you go to heaven? Scripture teaches us to say, "Yes," because God elected me in Christ before the foundation of the world and wrote my name in the book of life before I was born, a totally different book to the book of my deeds.

In Pelagianism and Roman Catholicism, grace is an assistance God gives us to come close enough to his standards, or even to totally fulfil them, that he foresees, oversees and finally judges us according to our grace-assisted actions. Many people these days teach that the Holy Spirit does the same thing. Charitably I can call it a long standing interpretation of the scripture shared with Pelagius, that is motivated by either: (a) a horror at the thought that God chooses some for destruction; or (b) a pride in one's own efforts to persevere in walking in God's ways. Motive (b) is of real concern, motive (a) is just an understandable lack of trust in God's complete love due to incomplete familiarity with the full text of the Bible and appreciation of some of its most prominent themes.

But the main thing is that the Bible nowhere teaches that God has no power to command the human will, but rather everywhere asserts that he is all powerful, and specifically over the human will, not simply to first shape it, command it and foresee, oversee and judge it, but also to change it, to replace hearts of stone with hearts of flesh, to make what is dead to be alive.

Your eyes saw my unformed body;

all the days ordained for me were written in your book

before one of them came to be.

http://bible.cc/psalms/139-16.htm

Alastair;

Constraints make human freewill a LIMITED FREEWILL. I doubt the existence of freewill without qualification among humans. Constraints like gravity, hunger/willingness to eat due to chemical composition of the brain and digestive system are NOT sufficient grounds for denying freewill. There are still elements of freedom although not without motivation towards certain choices like an hungry man going for food, but still have within his ability to choose to eat or not , or to make selection out of the available menus.

Dear Alastair,

That 'essay' of mine does not fall under semi-Pelagianism. {... 'I try to search for the role of foreknowledge in the discourse by the virtue of which God's LOVE is in conformity with HIS other attributes such as Justice'...}

I expected a response to 'GOD'S FOREKNOWLEDGE, Predestination, God's Love and Justice' vis a vis Human's Freewill/Determinism. Discussions around some of these and other related terms will be helpful, which are in line with your question, 'Does free will exist?'

St Augustine wrote extensively on foreknowledge and predestination. Augustine was also involved in a lot of discourses with Monks against Pelagianism.

Salvation is by GRACE (unmerited favour) through FAITH, which is the GIFT of God (Ephesians 2:8).

I've just finished an interesting book on "Will" (José Antonio Marina, "La Voluntad Perdida", Barcelona 1997). His kantian inspiration (don't know if he would accept de adjective) guides him through a rough, hard but amusing investigation on kantian grounds and in human positive sciences (psi & sociology) on what "moves" us to final decisions. Unfortunately it's a long way to nowhere: he finishes stating that it's not easy to explain that strange & typical human behavior called decision (where free will stands).

To say that free will is not clear because there are lots of forces "causing" us to act is, I think, missing the point. When a sometimes long series of considerations, justifications, propositions, is finished... it's finished by me... and I experience it's "me" doing it albeit "subconscious", "social", "structural" conditions. There is that conditioning, but I'm still feeling me free. That's why merit and penal guilt exists.

It amused me to read in Marina that we should pay more attention to the phenomenical descriptions done by a medieval philosopher, Tomas Aquinas, on free will.

The contemporary followers of Aquinas find the free.will in intelligence. In the mind and brain problem, I state first of all, intelligence overflows neuronal activity, at least in the actual stage of neurophysics. Intelligence is possibly all things (Aristotle): she (she!) can reach "any" reallity, and that is the trascendental freedom. Not "absolute" as William wrote, because we are limited beings: we cannot do or be all we would like to do or be...

There is no experience in this world, in this history, in this humanity o something such as absolute free will, even when all the liberal tradition of XIXth century preached something like that.

Luther (perhaps learning it from Bernard of Clairvaux) thought the freedom of man similar to the freedom of God (in his nominalistic formation one should pay attention to meaning of the word), in his capacity for decision, if not in its reach...

The point:

1-I would make distinctions on different, in technical words *analogue*, dimensions of freedom, of free will: transcendental freedom, moral freedom (developed skill to manage our own actions), social freedom, political freedom.

2-The experience I have of psicological, sociological, environmental, familiar, educational conditionings dont eliminate the stronger experience of free will. See how we react when someone somehow someway sometimes tries to overwhelm our convictions... I have, in spanish words a "libertad situada" (R. Yepes Stork, free will in a *place*, in a *time*, in an *environment*).

Under 'normal circumstances,' humans have 'LIMITED FREEWILL' within a set boundary or boundaries.

Yes, Akintayo: I omitted to underline that I liked that: but without capitals. Limited freewill within a set boundary or boundaries.

In Islamic Philosophy it is discussed as the problem of Jabr and Qadar (destiny and free will), a number of Islamic thinkers under influence of alien philosophy find solace in a position in between absolute determinism and absolute free-will. But, like pristine Islam I does believe in absolute destiny. Even we act under specif situations not differently, but we are prior destined to react like that. One may say it is in our genes and there may be given several arguments to be these reactions being of our own free choice as when one knows ordinarily what reaction should be why not one reacted differently. This problem in the philosophy of geography is discussed under environmental determinism and posiblism. But, much earlier Friedrich Engels has warned that each victory of ours over nature will result bit by bit avenge by nature, it turns out true and Green Movements have revived the philosophy of environmental determinism- control of nature on our actions, our behaviours and culture. One may argue so far we could got victory of our own free will. To me it was already destined for the people of our era to learn again what in history different cultures like those of Babylonians and Mayans have learned or we know why different cultures or communities were destroyed as told in all scriptures of major religions, but we are adopting their behaviour and cultural traits at a high speed. Scientifically, we cannot defy gravity and fly like birds. Time and space barriers are intact in spite of FLAT EARTH or GLOBAL VILLAGE. I am communicating with the community on this thread and my communication you will receive say instantly when I finish or I communicate with you through video-conferencing or using Webcam, but you will loose the opportunity to see me fully and loose the opportunity of laughing on my English vernacular accent and poor grammar.

Hello Mohammad Firoz,

It was nice you introduced Jabarism and Qadarism to this discourse. Could you briefly tell us if Mutazilism also has anything to offer Freewill discourse?

As you have preferred to align with 'absolute destiny,' would you like to explain the correlations between 'absolute destiny' and God's Justice? Where is Justice if a man/woman has been programmed, remotely controlled, or systemically maneuver (absolute destiny) to act one way or the other throughout life, unable to actually make alternative choices, and would be judged for whatever he/she does. Do you think there are no complications in that position?

Perhaps, you have forgotten, that Most Muslims are afraid of Allah's Justice. If Allah does justice,there had been no human on this planet we have declared war against Allah. All Muslims and other religious persons who know seek God's Mercy, only Mercy, not Justice.

Do you mean when we are programmed to sin why should to be punished for our destiny. A very old question and answered by too many Muslim ulema. It started with the mischief of Muslim sect that believe in absolute justice from Allah. They, through their non-Muslim slave asked this problem from the Muslim Ullemah of the time in the form Arabic Poetry during period of Imam Ibn Taymiyyah. All Muslim Ullemah gave satisfactory answers but they want a fitting answer. Indeed, Imam gave a fitting answer and I know that, but search the way like me to know the answer for your satisfaction.

Thank you, Mohammad Firoz. Is there any grounds in Muslim thought to separate religious considerations from, say, philosophical thinking? I'm aware of the richness that carries the religious thinking, more if it is revelation. But, I believe on the possibility of rationale thinking on man, and consequently, on free will.

Judaism, Christianity and Islam, based on their scriptures, but accepted by believers because it makes rational sense all believe God is Almighty, and hence that there is no freedom in regard to the human will. What they also all believe in is a morally responsible will. The important questions arise from moral accountability: Are we guilty? What happens because of guilt? Is God merciful? On what grounds does he extend mercy? Simply put, all three religions believe that God is merciful to the repentant. But there are different theories of how justice works in that. The religions differ, interpretations of the religions differ. But all rational theories of justice are "incomplete." Even atheists, or especially atheists, find metaethics difficult to establish on an axiomatic (deductive) or empirical (inductive) basis.

But scientists generally, and most atheists actually agree with religions on this point about the human will. It is common sense that the will is not free. The difference between atheists and theists on the subject is only that religions have an a prior rational reason of a metaphysical kind, scientists have an a priori reason of an empirical kind.

Nothing in the physical universe we can observe except man has a will, and all things work by cause and effect. The human will is not free, because whatever it wills is caused by something. Because we cannot see the causes, some people like the idea of freedom.

Some people get trapped in a losing game of saying: OK I don't ever choose to fly because I cannot cause that to happen, but I'm free within constraints. Then they have to admit: OK I choose to speak English because other people here speak English, but I'm still free within those constraints. Then they need to admit: OK I'm answering a particular question caused by other people, but I'm still free within those constraints. Of course, we can keep pushing and pushing until we reach the fact that there are many, many, many, many known constraints that radically limit any possibility of freedom of the will. But people stubbornly cling to the idea that there must be freedom down there somewhere, despite the fact that there's endless evidence of constraints, but there's no evidence at all of freedom at any level.

We know that we wilfully make choices, but ultimately we have limited knowledge of what causes those choices. The notion of free will is not just an illusion, it's a matter of pride for many people. At that point, rationality has a habit of leaving discussion, whether the free will defenders are religious or atheist. There is more hope for religious defenders of free will, however, because they can claim it is supernaturally assisted in some way.

Alastair,

Can you justify the claim that "... there's no evidence at all of freedom at any level." as you wrote in your last post? That statement will be true only among robots, considering all the debates we have had so far.

But as you rightly said, it is nice to stop at certain point, and this could be the right place. I am happy to be recognized with my claim for 'Limited Freewill' within the overwhelming constraints among humans. But, who or what factors control the remaining part of the 'Will' if it is limited? That is a good question for further research. These could be constraints already mentioned in our debates like gravity, hunger/desire to eat, and I will further add here addictive substances, evil spirit and God for those who have a religion. Humans are ultimately responsible for their actions and in-actions and all that they permit or allow.

I will agree with you on some theists' claim for the relevance of the supernatural to support them in time of uncertainties and in the use of their WILL POWER especially in a positive way and for peaceful purposes. Humans can seek help whenever necessary and that is the reason why many pray as it works for them.

I can quickly cite a few Christian examples for further studies like George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, Smith Wigglesworth and Billy Graham. These Bible preachers believed in the transforming power of the Gospel as recorded in the Bible and it worked for them. Their 'clients' were transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit who came to live in their lives having believed the Gospel. Anybody can read about them too and correlate it with the teachings of Jesus in the Bible. Nice meeting you all. Cheers. LIMITED FREEWIL

Akintayo Olayinka & Manuel de Elía,

Absolute Justice as one the attribute of God implies free-will on the part of its slaves (creature) . I shall explain it by an example, let me declare first that God me test Its creature, not the vice versa. In India across all religion it is common saying, if you sow barley, you cannot expect to harvest wheat. One may argue that it itself implies we eat fruits of work done by our free-will. Nay. Tow persons test their common personal God, one depends on Its mercy and says whether I toil in the field or not, whether I sow my field or not my Lord provide food from this field. Another, whatever weather conditions and hardships and I want to see how my Lord stop me to taste the fruit of my toil. He worked hard, sow best seeds of wheat available in the market, apply fertilizer in adequate doses and irrigate the field at correct times. Crop is very good, every one visit to see how cultivation is done and praise the owner of the field. Now crop matures and the farmer find his field at prime time to harvest the crop and take the grains home. He goes to bring harvester and mean while a small patch of clouds emerge from on the horizon and in a short duration reaches the village and hails fall down in a narrow belt over a long distance and the field of the farmer who wanted to taste the fruit of his toil ia also complete, the grains far gone, he could not even take straw to his home. Both were fools who tested their God, if God wanted them to live and eat he will open some other way, but not their own way. It is why we do what other are doing because we are destined to do that but we cannot expect to realise our desired results.

Yes, in fact philosophy and logic may be used as a component of wisdom only in on situation. The situation is when a direction is not found in the Holy Book and in sunnah (deeds and saying of the last Apostle of Allah, a leaned Muslim or Alim (educated in religion), then as ijtehad can use these two in such a way major norms are not violated and no contrast is found with the Book and Sunnah.

I don't really believe in free will, but I suppose statistical mechanics and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle point toward the idea that it is possible... probably.

I'm far of your way of thinking Mohammad Firoz. And Allison, belief and supposition doesn't make a statement: If our feeling free-willed is illusion, it shoud be proved as such. Those who deny the existence of free will continue to defend it against any agression. Why!?

I guess it was a bad joke...

I believe that to do any thing some effort is done and power to carry out this effort is given by our Lord, without this grant of power, one cannot expect that the out would be as expected. If otherwise why delay in reversing climate change which is outcome of our deeds? Try to carry out farming desert and semi-desert by constructing dams on a perennial stream from these areas as the Babylonians did? It is urgently required for starving humanity. Whatever we can do for mankind we think it is who is doing all this. The fact is that our Lord let humans know how to use laws of nature to utilize for their benefit. Instead of thanking our Lord Who set these law and created situations and granted power of effort to know and apply these laws for our well-being, we revolt, deny Lord's existence and consider ourselves our own lord, how ungrateful we are. If you can leave the universe why not you settle in another dimension, either parallel or linear and find out a universe where you can express your arrogance which is source of all turmoil, war, hatred and terrorism.

@Allison. It was not a joke. Did it sound offensive? Sorry me if it was the case, cause was not what I meant. But this can help the argument: was I free when I wrote that? If I wasn't, was I responsible for offending? Responsibility, civil responsibility, moral responsibility, personal responsibility, is correspondent term to free-will. Whithout free-will there is no responsibility. Whithout responsibility there is no society, no possible dialogue, no peace.

Saying that belief or supposition dont made a statemente I mean that there is no possible scientific verification in individual considerations. In writing this I consider also that the personal expierience of freedom is realy universal, even if there can be doubts on this perception, I will not allow anyone to act against me imposing me anything.

If I can offend -that I dont want- is because I'm moraly free, and responsible for my acts. If yor, Allison, can feel offended for what I expressed myself in such an unskillful way, is due to your confiding in my freedom.

I really *know* that free-will is more than a belief: I would... die for freedom, defending your freedom and my freedom.

Manuel. My apologies for the misunderstanding. My post was a joke that was playing on my discipline which is chemistry, I was talking about probability at the quantum level. What I meant was "I guess my post was a bad joke."

@ Manuela, great illustration.

Your freewill to be polite in your response to Allison was not fully free, but guided by your value system/moral value, training, knowledge and possibly, belief system. Not everybody will use their freewill the way you have used yours, being courteous. The factors restricting us from using our freewill in a similar way are barriers in themselves. Although you exercise a high level of freedom in deciding to reply Allison, move to your computer/device and communicate, but your freewill was restricted by your understanding of values and consequences of your actions, like being sensitive to how Allison would feel or other readers of your post. Were you fully free?

J. L Mackie, arguing on Freewill and the problem of evil wrote, "What value or merit would there be in free choices if these were random actions which were not determined by the nature of the agent?" Even though I do not fully support everything Mackie has ever written, but here, one can see that you cannot call that freedom, if your actions are random and not in control of what you do. If one is in control to certain extent, he/she though free, is not absolutely free.

We humans are free, but restricted by our knowledge and value system. The freedom that we have is LIMITED FREEDOM, otherwise, we will all be acting as if intoxicated. Humans can use the little freedom we have to make the world better and more peaceful.

Akintayo, if our actions can make the world better and more peaceful, then that better and more peaceful world will not depend on anyone's free will, but on our free will to take away their free will to do harm. As it turns out, there is no evidence for free will, the only evidence we have is to the contrary. Experiments show gravity exists, time passes, cardiac arrest kills, brain injury impairs mental function. Everywhere we actually go to the trouble of looking, there we find cause and effect of strictly material kind, without any need to believe in metaphysical wills, unmoved by the material universe but able to act upon it. In short, you are simply begging the question in favour of a "god of the gaps": because we don't know everything about why someone choses a blue shirt or a green shirt, then you conclude the choice is uncaused, except by a spontaneous action of some metaphysical entity that has never been observed which you call the will.

Quantum mechanics doesn't really help in the end, because wave equations are all about hypothesising particles as having intrinsic randomness, i.e. accidental properties of location or whatever. Quantum entanglement does illustrate elements of randomness, but much more powerfully elements of causation. One paradox is that entangled particles seem to cause one another's properties to propagate faster than the speed of light, essentially instantaneously. Either that, or material reality is embedded in a deep layer of fundamental determinacy. Entanglement suggests no free will. Randomness doesn't describe freedom, just unpredictability. If a will had unpredictable success, that wouldn't be freedom.

To clarify the question again. Given that everybody already knows that the human will is radically limited by being an effect of genetics and brain neurology, is there any hope for freedom of the will? What experiment could be designed to prove a human will was free? Or, is it possible to explain why no such experiment could ever be designed. The freedom of the will is an a priori logical fallacy, essentially a logical contradiction if expressed in precise language.?

On one side, as Alastair puts it, there is gravity (that is not free), time (I would better say: movement, cause ¿who has seen *time*?), cardiac beating... All these are not free events, but guided by physics. Physics are about measurable matter, experimentation on things (particles, waves, bodies...) we can measure.

Is there any proof of the existence of free-will? Of course not in the world of Physics, cause there is no freedom in Physics: there is need, *causes*. The proof of the existence of free will *must* be searched out of Physics.

Does "Metaphysics" mean something else than *magic*, *mystery*... say *nonsense*? Nonsense in the way Wittgenstein or Popper use the term: things we can't *verify* experimentally?

Alastair: the statement "everything has a cause" is a non-physical statement, a non scientific statement: the validity of the statement must be looked for beyond physics, Aristotle would say Meta-physis. We should say, perhaps, in Logic, and that would be right. But beyond that, if intelligence can say something logic on the world, that is not because of Physics.

I affirm, for me is evidence, that there are interesting topics beyond experimental sciences, and freedom belongs to that topics. Culture accepts today there is no place for Metaphysics (on the Aristotle's way, not Hegel's): since Descartes through Montaigne, Leibnitz, to Hawking, Man is a machine. Well, that is just a non proved and unverified statement. Popper reminded Carnap and the whole Circle of Wien that the statement "there is no place to Metaphysics" cannot be verified, and consequently is not scientific.

Freedom cannot be proved in Physics. It can be observed, studied, explained... in a different way, that is also Knowledge, and Sense (against nonsense).

We can feel gravity but although all I do is constainted and limited by gravity I am not a rock. The rock simply accelerate under gravity unless it is stopped to do so by another external force. Me, I not able to jumb to the moon but I am not a rock. I can walk whereever I want and for walking gravity is a necessary constraint. A bird can even fly where it wants. Take any physical laws and for living organisms this law is not a determinant but only a constrained which is taken advantage off. Life is far far too complex to be determine by a very simple set of physical laws.

There are laws in nature as there is laws in our societies. Although I respect all the laws of my society, does it mean that these laws deternine my life? Not at all. Nature is like society, it has laws but these laws do not govern/determine all aspects of Nature and the most complex living being on this planet even less. Where does this metaphysical idea that everything is cause and effect come from?

as one of my favorite musicians stated:

In our confrontation with an enormous and cold universe

There is something comical to the idea

That we can really enforce our will on humanity

I don't believe in free will because I know that there is a mathematical equation that starts at the singularity and predicts everything that ever was to happen. Nobody will ever deduce this equation, but it still exists.

Manuel, the Law of Cause and Effect is technically a hypothesis, an assumption about the phenomenal world that has no counterexamples. We can state that law in Spanish, English, German or Dyirbal. Those statements might be characters typed and seen, representing sounds uttered and heard--phenomenological things, empirical things--but with an interpretation that is an idea, a proposition, a truth-claim, that has no independent existence of its own outside human minds (unless there are alien lifeforms or gods and supernatural beings exist). Propositions only have meaning in the sense that they refer to the phenomenological world, or that they can be modelled within it. The brute fact that ideas are not actually real, but epiphenomenal, doesn't stop them from being true. 1 + 1 would not equal 2 in that case, it would simply mean nothing at all. "One" is an abstraction of individual particularity, "addition" is a different abstraction, and duality is yet another. But these ideas can be modelled in any number of ways that make the proposition 1+1=2 work out to be true, i.e. to be an accurate description of the state of affairs that actually obtains in the world we can test empirically. We can also model the symbols and abstractions in ways that do not work.

All that is to provide a rough overview of the philosophy of language developed before WWII and still current today. When I state the Law of Cause and Effect, I'm simply stating the basic principle of science. You don't need to believe in science, that's fine by me. Karl Popper didn't believe in science, and that's fine by me too. But most people do. The Law of Cause and Effect, like any other inductive law is not deduced from self-evident truths, it is an extrapolation from the known and experienced, i.e. empirical observation, to the unknown. It makes a prediction, an educated guess, that since everything we've seen so far is like X, everything we see in the future will be like X. That's what science is. It is a logically invalid argument, however it is very often true, and even more often it is the best we can do to establish facts and make best guesses about the future. Gravity could stop tomorrow, but we don't think it will, because we've never seen it stop anywhere else.

Likewise, the Law of Cause and Effect might have exceptions, one of those might be human choices. But since science has never yet observed a breach of cause and effect, it seems that human choices cause things, but they are themselves caused by things we can guess about, but simply don't know in detail ... yet. It doesn't worry me whether my choices are caused or not, since I enjoy making them, and from my point of view they are about the future and what I can cause to happen, not the past and what leads me to want to cause certain things to happen. The main thing is that I *feel* free, not that I actually am, but my choices wouldn't change at all if I learned that they were always caused by brainstorms of certain kinds tri...

About in the middle of the 19th century it was beleived that the physical world was orderly and deterministic and everything is an effect that follow from a cause and so the whole story of the universe was determined from the beginning. The 20th century quantum physics changes all that. Before quantum physics, Darwin had understood that RANDOM mutations were fundamental. Since 1927 we know that the idea of the world as a big machine is not true. The world has evolved in complexity because it is not a big machine. All the marvelous mechanisms that are part of the living have been invented during evolution; they were not part of the order of the universe at the time of the bing bang.

That's not quite right Louis. In the 19th century, physicists thought the universe to be the size of the galaxy and in an eternal steady state with no creation. A Catholic priest (and maths PhD) solved some of Einstein's equations and came up with the theory of an expanding universe. There was scepticism, because it sounded like a scientific version of Genesis, but Einstein agreed. Hubble then observed it. Finally, we even "heard" the Big Bang in the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation. That prompted a theory of hyper expansion to explain how the temperature was the same in all directions, which it shouldn't have been by simply extrapolating current observations backwards. Where differences exist, we now view those as quantum effects, which have since resulted in the differentiated mass structures of the observable universe.

Short summary of above: random quantum effects existed from the creation/big-bang, evolution is a different and relatively trivial phenomenon. The *universe* and *without life* was evolving for seven billion years before our sun and solar system evolved out of it. It took generations of galaxies to produce stars that went nova before we could get the iron for the core of the earth, and other elements--notably carbon--needed for life as we know it on earth. We still don't actually know how the first self-replicating molecules started here.

Second point: random mutations are not fundamental. If randomness was very high, since most mutuations are deleterious, not beneficial, species would never form, offspring mutating out of existence too quickly to exploit what are called "niches." Though it is true that if randomness were zero, we'd simply have endless cloning without evolution. In fact, randomness is probably a bit too low, so sexual reproduction evolved, which increases randomness.

Third point: randomness is not free will. If your thoughts are random, Louis, why do you trust them? Randomness doesn't mean the present wasn't determined by the past, it means the way the future is determined by the present is opaque to us, we can't see it in detail, we can't determine what makes it so. Another way of looking at it is that our wills are not truly wills and cannot cause anything if everything is random. The concept of will itself is the assumption that a human mind can cause an effect. If you deny the law of cause and effect, then you deny the possibility of will, let alone free will. The very thing that makes a human will a reall will is the law of cause and effect.

Louis,

Very good argument except the case of mutation in connection with Darwin as even well-known biologists who devoted their life to evolutionary biology and others in related fields like bio-chemistry etc. differ on this count. It is to a great extent true that world emerge out of chaos whatever theory of universe are multiverse is considered, first stage after initiation is that of chaos. However, the matter out of chaos took different forms and developed in an orderly system. What were [natural] constants or laws that matter took different forms and subsystems being apart at astronomically or cosmologically being apart follow the same laws and some system opposite to known systems [still being explored at initial level] behave differently. I don't think, any stochastic theory may explain it. My conclusion is that it was destined by THE ONE who set the laws of behaviour of the matter so that an orderly system could develop.

Alastair,

The purpose of my last posts was not to explain how free will is possible but to establish that the science of the last century has discredited the Laplacian deterministic picture of reality. Classical physics was Laplacian and General Relativity which is the last remnant of classical physics is still Laplacian as was Einstein. But the bulk of physics is based on quantum physics and this is the part of physics that is most relevant to living organisms. Most quantum physicists rejects the idea the quantum world is deterministic or the idea that everything in the quantum world is cause and effect, mechanistic. This quantum physicists think that the quantum reality is irreductible and involves an irreductible creativity/randomness/spontaneity.

I personally believe that biological evolution is not completely explained by neo-Darwinian theory but I agree with most biologist that random mutations plays a role.

I personally do not believe that this is not the end of the story but my point here was to illustrated that randomness plays a role in Biological evolution and so that we do not live in a Laplacian biological world.

I mostly agree with what you said about the early part of the universe history but I do not see your point. I agree with your second point but it is not relevant to the issue.

Agree

My thought s are not randoms but there are not the result of a mechanical process.

Quantum physics is clear, the unpredictability is not an artifact of our lack of knowledge but is intrinsic to reality. There is no hidden machinery. The argument that you stated is Spinoza’s argument and this argument is dead.

http://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/standard_argument.html

by Bob Doyle

This is an excellent web site on free will and how the world evolved by the continual creation of new structures/information.

You are fighting “randomness” as if it is a source of destruction. Sometime it is but without it, there would be no creation in this world. This is not the end of the story on creation, only the beginning.

Mohammad,

You will agree that "THE ONE" created the world. I personnally think that right now everything that exists and ever existed is being created by THE ONE which we are all part in our creative central part.

Here's an article from the journal Science indicating that even if we do have free-will, we rarely use it: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/329/5987/47.abstract

Allison,

In science, we can only analyse aspect of reality and express our findings as a model/mechanism. Any scientific models, models that have been experimentally tested and empirically validated do not represent reality but represented aspects of reality from the perspective of the relations between the measurables/variables in the model. All that science can ever know are models/mechanisms. Should we infer that all there is, reality is a big machine. Quantum mechanics at the level of the quantum is definitive on this question: NO. What about the more complex entities we know in the cosmos: human beings? Since it is epistemologically impossible to know anything that is not a mechanism about human beings, should we infer that this limit is the limit of the reality of a human being and that we are a complex machine? That cannot be proven scientifically because the question cannot be tested empirically. Whatever that can be known about specific aspects on how human being manage to direct their actions, and I have no doubts that we can learn a lot on this vast topic, this will never prove nor disprove that we are a macnine. Science is a method to uncover mechanism and we can scientifically know are mechanisms. But let not foul ourself that we should necessarily limit reality to mechanism. Classical physics had made this mistake and has been proven wrong.