Free Will vs Determinism/Fatalism

[cheat-master30]

Do you believe people have free will, and are completely free to change their personality and actions, or that it's determined by either their upbringing, genetics or some other set in stone factor?

I'm personally someone that believes in free will. Partly because any deterministic system makes it incredibly difficult to justify punishing wrongdoing (can you take responsibility for something you can't resists doing physically?), and also because it's a lot more realistic than the alternatives.

[Zexis]

Do you believe people have free will, and are completely free to change their personality and actions, or that it's determined by either their upbringing, genetics or some other set in stone factor?

I think it could be a bit of both. Your genetics and upbrining are certainly going to influence your personality and actions. Studies show that environmental effects can change the way we develop as much as genetics do. However, that doesn't mean that you still can't make your own decisions. To me, supposing that you have anything other than free will just seems silly.

[cheat-master30]

That's a fairly moderate point, and it makes sense, to a good degree. But you're right, supposing anything other than free will is something that really doesn't make any sense.

[benoit489]

I definitely believe in free will. I've seen two of my friends go from one opposite to another. One of my friends was just wasting away his life getting high every day, and he wasn't very sociable at all. A couple months ago he finally quit, and now he comes around all the time wanting to hang out. He's also a lot kinder than he used to be.

I also had another friend who joined the Marines. I took him to church with me a couple times when we were younger, but he wasn't convinced so he kept living life the way he wanted to. Earlier this year I was catching up with him on Facebook and he told me he started going to one of the churches in Annapolis. He had given up quite a few of his bad habits and he was also observing Lent.

There's 2 people going from one extreme to the other, by themselves, although I think God played a role since I specifically prayed for them (my prayer for my Marine friend was pretty specific, and everything about it was answered).

[elvis1835]

This question DEFINITELY loops back to Religious vs. Non. Free Will would imply a lack of chemical, mechanical or even anatomical control (at least, initially), because, in order to have free will you must be using a portion of your mind which is set to control all and is not involuntary, and one of the harder concepts to grasp, the YOU of it. That branches into a long stream discussion based on Physicality vs. Mentality which I won't get into now. No free will would imply that there is not in fact a you. Some things you do follow pure necessity or the bodies need for certain chemicals and Some is the byproduct of the hundreds of influences we receive throughout our life span. So how am I to say this links back to Religious vs. non? Free Will would imply that we are bound by nothing except possibility. This blows out of the water the theory that our goal in life is to "Survive and Reproduce". As well, Free will would state that something beyond understood fact is allowing us to create Subjectivity from Objectivity. (Opinions, Likes, Dislikes, Interests, etc... from, Human anatomy and physiology). This would then imply that if evolution/science had it right, Free Will couldn't exist. Determinism/Fatalism would state that we can't in fact even THINK for ourselves (which to me sounds ludicrous because, in that case where did thought originate?). This would imply that reactions have specific reactants. Personally, as portrayed throughout this post I am on the side of Religion and Free Will.

[cheat-master30]

I definitely believe in free will. I've seen two of my friends go from one opposite to another. One of my friends was just wasting away his life getting high every day, and he wasn't very sociable at all. A couple months ago he finally quit, and now he comes around all the time wanting to hang out. He's also a lot kinder than he used to be.



That's an interesting example you've got there, and it definitely shows that people can drastically change their personalities if they try. As does the argument below.

I also had another friend who joined the Marines. I took him to church with me a couple times when we were younger, but he wasn't convinced so he kept living life the way he wanted to. Earlier this year I was catching up with him on Facebook and he told me he started going to one of the churches in Annapolis. He had given up quite a few of his bad habits and he was also observing Lent.

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There's 2 people going from one extreme to the other, by themselves, although I think God played a role since I specifically prayed for them (my prayer for my Marine friend was pretty specific, and everything about it was answered).

Since I'm personally agnostic, I can't really comment on the idea of a God or prayer playing a role, but I'm glad you could be involved in this discussion and that you added some excellent examples that back the idea of free will.



[QUOTE=elvis1835;357941]This question DEFINITELY loops back to Religious vs. Non. Free Will would imply a lack of chemical, mechanical or even anatomical control (at least, initially), because, in order to have free will you must be using a portion of your mind which is set to control all and is not involuntary, and one of the harder concepts to grasp, the YOU of it. That branches into a long stream discussion based on Physicality vs. Mentality which I won't get into now.


Aka that branch is basically the entirety of philosophy of Mind and it's various branches (aka you've got dualism which has the mind and body as seperate entities, non reductive monism which has the mind as some generated thing by the body and theories such as mind brain identity theory, behaviourism and functionalism which has the brain equals mind view. The quality of those specific theories varies significantly).



No free will would imply that there is not in fact a you. Some things you do follow pure necessity or the bodies need for certain chemicals and Some is the byproduct of the hundreds of influences we receive throughout our life span. So how am I to say this links back to Religious vs. non? Free Will would imply that we are bound by nothing except possibility. This blows out of the water the theory that our goal in life is to "Survive and Reproduce".

A lot of people also forget that the evolutionary stuff applies more so on a genetic level, as in gene behaviour rather than actually how the individual acts. Or something similar, it was used as a pretty good argument against evolutionary egoism once.


As well, Free will would state that something beyond understood fact is allowing us to create Subjectivity from Objectivity. (Opinions, Likes, Dislikes, Interests, etc... from, Human anatomy and physiology). This would then imply that if evolution/science had it right, Free Will couldn't exist. Determinism/Fatalism would state that we can't in fact even THINK for ourselves (which to me sounds ludicrous because, in that case where did thought originate?). This would imply that reactions have specific reactants. Personally, as portrayed throughout this post I am on the side of Religion and Free Will.

More so fatalism, from what I heard would imply that, because determinism would be a tad more subtle in effect. But I kind of agree with your argument, although it is a bit cluttered and jams the points together a bit with little explanation for each.

Random thought: If the world was ever determinist, in a genetic way, and you changed your geneties, ala transhumanism, does that mean you had free will, have free will in order to change your genetics or now have free will? Or that you've changed what determins you in a strange path like way? Or that the mere possibility to do so utterly kills any theory other than free will?

Similarly, a few things of random note:

1. Self help books, experts, psychiatrists and counsellors basically depend on free will being existant to have a job. In a confusing way, they also depend on a sort of semi deterministic aspect in that if your upbringing doesn't effect your personality in any way, it makes it impossible for them to come up with some weird explanation of an individual's personality and it's causes. On the other hand, if the world actually was fatalist, their entire books and life has been completely pointless.

There's also a moral point. We have to assume people have free will, and that has to be correct for society to actually function. Otherwise no one will ever take responsibility for their own actions, the legal system is in a really bad position and a lot of things to do with the press, political system and eduational system are just completely screwed up. Can you honestly imagine a world where it's been decided everything is completely set in stone and no one is technically responsible for their own actions because of fate? The difficulty of that makes theories against the idea of free will just a tad impossible.

[benoit489]

Me and my friend had a talk. He believes people can't change people, only God can, and only if the person is willing.

When I see people having a problem, I try to help them, but sometimes it seems like nothing will work, like with my friend who was using drugs. No matter how much I tried to hang out with him (aka time where he couldn't get high) he didn't want to change or feel a need to change. Finally, I just decided to step out of the situation, and pray that he finds his way. I prayed that he would realize how useless it was, and that it was leading his life down a path that was meaningless.

After not seeing him for a couple months, he started coming back to church. We started talking again and he told me that he read the whole New Testament, and that he had moved out of his buddies' apartment and was now living with his dad out in the countryside. He said that besides me and one of our mutual friends, he wasn't talking to anybody. Right now he's working on getting into the Air Force so that he can go to college.

These examples I've posted are some reasons for my faith.

[Chrisjh0223]

I believe in free will. We mortals have the ability to switch to anything we choose, take me for instance. I was originally going to be a computer informational worker (someone who interacts with computer systems and networking) but since I ran into constant walls and couldn't make any sense at all out of computer programming, I quit that career path. Now I've moved onto accounting, where I'll interact with numbers.

Also as Zexis mentioned, how you are raised in life (and some genetics) influences what you'll do later in life.