Alfred Mele - Free Will: Essence and Nature

Why is free will one of the hardest problems in philosophy? What are the core issues of free will and why do they seem to defy resolution? Most philosophers are pretty sure they have the answer—but their answers all differ! Some privilege external facts of the physical world; some privilege inner feelings of conscious choice. No one has a knock-down argument.

Alfred Remen Mele is the William H. and Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University.

Closer To Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[NWLee]

Very interesting discussion, thanks. It made me wonder if there is randomness or just complexity. Like free will, it is conditioned by circumstances, causes that are just too complicated and/or subtle to perceive.

[kallianpublico]

The question isn't about will, a faculty of living beings. Its about causation, a proposition of "intelligent" living beings.
In this context the notion of free will is a consideration of intelligence, not causation. Not the origin of action but the origin of thought. As such it is at the heart of the mystery about language, communication, technology, purpose, prediction, survival, speed, structure, function, desire, meaning and transcendence.
Not if thought can transcend physical constraints, but if intelligence can transcend...consciousness? Or just the brain 🧠?
If there is a free "intelligence" then it must have its source in something outside Nature.

[YoungGandalf]

I believe in determinism, but it's not possible for us to know the exact state of the universe and all of the determining factors at any given moment in time.

It "feels like" we have free will in the decisions we make in our day-to-day lives, and for all practical purposes we do.

[mickeybrumfield]

It would seem to prove determinism wrong one would have to be all-knowing and all-seeing, something that finite beings like humans are not capable of. It could be that we simply are not capable of knowing if we have free will.

[danielgoody]

Does one of these fit a model where free will is an emergent property of biological determinism? It seems like our other inexplicable capabilities (ie consciousness), are always seen as conglomerate processes built on orders of magnitude.

If so, I am very interested in the boundaries between emergence. When are molecules, water? When are nerve impulses free will ?

[BahmanFarahani]

We're deterministic machines, but we can behave non-deterministically by taking a random input source and use that in our decision making process. When such random addition changes our decision against our training, we have the illusion of free will. The random behaviors throughout our life gives us extra training points and is essential to our training. When the source of randomness is affected by quantum randomness, our behavior is not deterministic. Regular randomness with deteministic nature ( a coin toss for example) is enough to help us train better and still give us illusion of free will that in occasions we act against our training or what the deteministic part of us suggests.

[thesilvervigilante]

Feynman distinguished between the Babylonian and the Greek ways of mathematical thinking. The Babylonians discovered independent truths, often by relying on observation. The Greeks, on the other hand, looked to build a body of mathematics from a set of fundamental axioms.

[mellonglass]

Try memory loss, there is no power of forgetting.
If you ‘thought’ something, the mind is burdened of a thought.
If anything, the largest constraint is privilege and being divided from the other.

[brianlebreton]

Great overview of the rainbow of descriptions of perspectives on the subject. Thank you.

[vu]

YOu DO HAve YOur FRee WIll IN SOme SEnse.. BUt IF YOur STory TO BE LIved INvolves PEople ANd VIsion AS STeps TO EXperience THose MOments.. THen IN THat SEnse, THere IS NO FRee WIll.. THe MOment YOu HAd THat VIsion TO DO SOmething, ITs REsult ANd IMpact IS ALready PRedicted, OTherwise YOu WOnt BE THinking ABout IT..

[SRAVALM]

Chess is a deterministic game, and how you play it isn't.
Every move, situation, is known. The decision to be made isn't.
If determinism is a principle, why isn't every game of chess the same?
Because determinism isn't a bloody principle.

[brendangreeves]

Determinism in the grand scheme of things.
How an individual acts at a point in time results from personality type, innermost drives, life experiences, perceived advantages/disadvantages of acting in a particular way.

[chriswaterman]

Means different things to different people ? That's just nonsense . If definitions are allowed to become arbitrary, then the entities defined become meaningless whether they exist or not . FREE WILL does not . The philosophical proposal has to do with the making of a choice or decision which is FREE from any antecedents .And that, when logic is applied to it falls apart during an even cursory inspection, and is understood to be the nonsense that it truly is.
I' M NOT BUYIN' ANY OF HIS GAS .

[ingenuity]

With the laws of nature, the universe has no choice but be deterministic.

[chayanbosu]

Lord Krishna says our existence consist of 3 levels 1.Gross body 2.Subtle body i.e mind, intellect and ego and 3.soul.Now conciousness emarges from soul and mind is the interface between outer world and soul. We are human beings and free will is the symtom of soul existence.

[longcastle]

I think a case could be made for both consciousness and free will (the ability to make choices from a limited number of options) arriving together with life at the very beginning of life. Even if both were only at very minimal, rudimentary or “proto” level stages of development—when life itself was barely recognizable, having just emerged from hundreds of millions of years of chemical “evolution” / natural selection. Even a worm has some level of awareness of its environment and the ability to make choices in it. Everything we have just at a more rudimentary level.

[Maxwell-mvrx]

Guys if you Free Will is true sugestion you Go to stock market make a Lot of money . Ridiculus you are showing Free Will without honestly evidence .

[philochristos]

Who came here looking for a fight? You can't bring up free will and expect there not to be a fight.

[cmhiekses]

How many of those “96 different definitions” of determinism have any actual meaningful difference from one another? This smacks of hyperbole.

[abenezerfantu]

i all the time have to see this things 1000 * to understand them