As an atheist, what is your opinion of the concept 'free will'?
Free will is more than the ability to choose between the choices presented, but also to find, and choose, the choices not presented. Free will is the ability to think beyond what you have been told it is possible to think.
When two men, or gods, come up to you and say, "You can be a slave to one of us or the other," free will is the ability to choose to be slave to neither. (wingedbeast #273)
I'll assume that by "free will" one means some property of the human brain that is independent of both the laws of physics and of randomness. Another definition might admit of "free will", but it seems to me it
would be a trivial usage of the term.
Given that definition, what can free will possibly be? You can't make any action that is both independent of influence and independent of
randomness. There simply is nothing else. Even if one were to presume new factors active only in the brain, one still couldn't escape the fact that one's actions must depend on those factors and randomness, Thus I don't feel the concept of "free will" even makes sense. (Rumplestiltskin)
"In short "cause" is a mental construct derived from the way humans view the world and not a necessary "entity". Use it when its useful, abandon
it when and where it no longer applies."
I feel that free will is an illusion of our mental process that is a
useful explanation for much of what we do on a superficial (read that as over simplified to the point of being wrong without being useless) in much the same way Mark speaks of "cause" as a useful construct without actually being a true requirement of reality.
If and when we develop examples of artificial intelligence that rival or superceed our own, we will be in a much better position to see how this
is so.
If free will is truly free, what is it free of or from? Physics? hemistry? Time? Logic? Reason? Biology? The only thing I am sure it is free of is influence by deities. (John Popelish #159)
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