Posting this because I think it’s an interesting examination of the overlap (or lack thereof) between atheists and general skeptics. It’s worth remembering that the term ‘atheism’ only means a rejection of theistic beliefs; non-theistic beliefs that are nonetheless irrational and unsupported by evidence are not relevant to the term. And yet one can easily see why there is an overlap between these two communities and why many atheists scoff at other atheists who profess belief in things like astrology, ghosts, reincarnation, etc.
I’m definitely one of those who doesn’t believe in anything supernatural, but I’ve certainly met atheists who do. It’s worth remembering the two groups aren’t synonymous.
I’m a determinist myself, but my understanding from reading/listening to some articles and interviews with professional philosophers on the subject is that the concept of free will as the layperson tends to think of it doesn’t actually have much utility in philosophy discussions and that professional investigations of it have generally settled on some version of “it’s complicated” and “you’re asking the wrong question.” I don’t pretend to have a sophisticated understanding of it and it’s been a long time since I looked the issue up, but I’m not sure I would put people who believe in free will in the same “faith-based believers” category I would use for people who believe in ghosts.
I would. I generally need a reason to believe something. If there’s not a reason, and you believe it anyway, it’s faith. The fun thing about the free will debate is that there is only contrary evidence. So believing in free will is a lot like believing in flat earth. They have an intuitive understanding that they have free will in the same way a flat earther has an intuitive understanding that the earth is flat. It meshes with the subjective experiences that have shaped their schema. When information contradicts a persons schema, they tend to ignore it, and will cling to their belief regardless of contrary evidence. They’ll look for free will like it’s the god of the gap, hoping somehow that it’s hiding in quantum effects that they don’t understand. The kicker though is that people who believe in free will don’t choose to believe in free will. Because they don’t have free will, no one does. Everything that happens is a direct result of preceding events, even your thoughts and beliefs. It’s all cause and effect. I agree though that it is the wrong question. Even though on the macro scale humans don’t have free will, on the micro scale of a human life all of those variables are hidden from us and we have to act as if we had free will. Even though every decision we make is the product of hidden interactions. This makes believing in free will a very useful belief. Should we believe in things because they are useful, or should we believe in things because they are true.? Whatever answer you come up with to that question, just remember that it was the only answer you COULD have come up with, being the person that you are now in the circumstance that exist presently.
You’re kind of preaching to the choir, but I would also add that there’s a difference between the philosophical rejection of a belief in free will and the more pragmatic “belief” even determinists must engage with whenever we make a choice. Again, I’m no philosophical expert on the subject, but this was a key point of discussion for philosophers in the articles I read. If we’re all acting in accordance with the idea that we have free will, even if we believe otherwise in a more cerebral sense, what impact does that lack of belief really have on the world or even just our lives? There’s the argument that, if we truly live in a determinist reality, should we even be punishing criminals for the harm they do to society as opposed to just imprisoning them for safety purposes and trying to reform them? Does that mean all determinists should be prison reformists who think punishment has no place in the criminal justice system? I certainly don’t subscribe to that philosophy, but do reject the idea of free will.
Anyway, my overall point is simply that the philosophical question of whether or not free will exists is a lot more complicated than the question of whether or not ghosts exist, and that it’s not just about the evidence for/against it, but also about the role such a belief (or lack thereof) plays in our moment-to-moment lives.
I think that the thing that makes the issue sticky isn’t that believing in ghosts and believing in free will is fundamentally different, it’s that ghosts lie outside the common individuals experience while everyone has at some point or another probably believed that they have free will. One idea is no less magical than the other, there is just as much evidence for ghosts as there is for free will. A decision is like a software black box, information goes in and a result comes out, the process that’s happening in the code is hidden so we ascribe to it the name “Free Will”. But in our case it’s not 30 year old software code that no one understands anymore, the processes that are at work are heuristic. We subconsciously absorb information and that information is filtered through our heuristic biases which are a result of genetics and life experience, then we get our result.
Now let’s say you traveled back in time to redo some fateful decision. The caveat is that you’ll be inhabiting your past body and can’t bring your future memories with you. All the variables that you used to make the decision would be the same, and as a result you would make the same decision.
I’m saying that is what makes them fundamentally different. A ghost is an external phenomenon that we can gather objective evidence about and nothing in our experience intrinsically violates that evidence. By contrast, while we can gather objective evidence about people’s decision-making processes, and in the future may even be able to “see” ourselves making decisions in an MRI machine or its future equivalent, we’re still faced with the existential paradox of experiencing “free will” and having to “submit” to the illusion if that’s all we think it is. That paradoxical experience is a sticking point that makes the question of whether free will exists very different from that of whether ghosts exist.
I managed to recall and find one of the articles I read years ago on this subject that convinced me that the subject of free will was not as simple as I’d thought it was. I want to be clear: I’m still firmly in the determinist camp, but I now appreciate the complexity of the issue on a level that I don’t fault people who maintain a belief in free will on the same or even just similar grounds that I would someone who believed in any other superstition. In fact, I don’t think it’s even appropriate to call belief in free will a superstition; it’s a much more nuanced (at least in those who have bothered to give it the requisite amount of thought) philosophical stance that I happen to disagree with.
I think that people who believe that they have seen ghosts probably experience a similar existential paradox. They too would have the subjective experience that creates dissonance with reality as they know it. So I don’t really think it’s all that different at all, it’s just that you don’t have the interference of that subjective experience. Thank you, I appreciate the link and will read it with interest. I’ve heard many arguments for free will, but they often fall into the same traps as religion. I would also like to thank you for responding so thoughtfully in this thread. This has been a refreshing little discussion.
Fair enough. I appreciate your input as well and am happy to agree to disagree.
deleted by creator
Could you elaborate, why do you believe that free will doesn’t exist? You could also give me some reading materials. I’m a skeptic, I’m an atheist, I do think that free will exists.
I can round some stuff up. I don’t need a reason to believe that free will doesn’t exist, I need a reason to believe that free will DOES exist. Belief follows evidence. Not the other way around. Here is a good video by a fellow free will denier and physicist Sabine Hossenfelder: https://youtu.be/TI5FMj5D9zU She goes pretty in depth on your lack of free will.
Rational belief follows logic based on evidence. There are things you can infer.
I’m another person, may I offer ‘my’ reasoning?
(Free) will is a decision making process, generating a decision as it’s output. Basically, it’s an algorithm (arbitrarily complex).
How can this algorithm generate it’s output? It can …
I cannot conceive or imagine any other option. Granted, this is an argument from ignorance. But I think however ‘free will’ works, it can be boiled down to one of these three approaches, or nested sub-algorithms which again build from these three ingredients.
And none of that resembles what we mean when we say ‘free will’. Is it free if it is determined? Is it will if it is random?
How is ‘free will’, fundamentally, different from algorithms available to computer games?
For example, if I choose burger over pizza for lunch, my brain taps into available data (my taste preferences, what I ate recently, how I expect to feel after eating either choice, …) and does it in a fuzzy way which involves some randomness. I arrive at a choice which I want, because I prefer it (in a random margin). I could have chosen otherwise, if the data had been different to change my decision, or if the random influence tipped the scales the other way.
Maybe it just feels like being in control because we cannot tell the result of the calculation until the calculation has finished. Weighing the options and settling for a decision is that process.
I love discussing this, so please challenge my view, you’re welcome!