Is free will possible or just a myth?

Question

Is it possible for free will to exist, or does the existence of society, religion, and the "global villiage" concept of this "modern" age eliminate the possibily?

Answer 1

When it comes to human interactions, no. Most 'logical' people view destiny, and determinism concept as something illogical or pathetic, but if you stick to the topic and actually do some research on it; you will eventually find that it is plausible.

"Our decisions are predetermined unconsciously a long time before our consciousness kicks in," says John-Dylan Haynes, a neuroscientist at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Berlin, who led the study. It definitely throws our concept of free will into doubt, he adds.

This is by no means the first time scientists have cast doubt on conscious free will. In the early 1980s, the late neuroscientist Benjamin Libet uncovered a spark of brain activity three tenths of a second before subjects opted to lift a finger. The activity flickered in a region of the brain involved in planning body movement.

But this region might perform only the final mental calculations to move, not the initial decision to lift a finger, Haynes says."

The idea of determinism is that all events are the results of previous causes. If we heated a bar of iron, and the bar expanded, we would say that the heat was the cause of expansion.

The idea of a physically determined universe is associated with Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727). This is sometimes called the billiard ball view of nature: A billiard ball will only move when acted on by another force such as another billiard ball hitting it. If we could measure the exact velocity and angle of the first billiard ball, we could predict the movement of the second.

The philosophical problem comes with human beings. If we were to accept the empirical view that human beings are organized systems of matter and that our minds are formed as a result of experiences then we may want to explain human behavior in terms of cause and effect.

If we knew enough about the biological make up of an individual, his early childhood experiences and the social and historical circumstances he was born into, then perhaps we could predict all of his actions. From this point of view the idea of free will (the ability to choose) is simply the result of or ignorance of all of the causal factors.

Determinisms are actually backed up with a lot of evidence. However, uncountable people do not believe because it just seems illogical to them. Free will(choice) is merely an illusion that is part of determinism. So, in the big picture everything is determined but small choices we make, make up our destiny(the big picture) so it really depends on your perspective.

But note that determinism may not the case at quantum level, quantum mechanics suggests that everything is all probabilistic, which is not really compatible with determinism.

Answer 2

Free will is just a myth.

There are restrictions everywhere.

Answer 3

The person above me pretty much summed it up better than I ever could, nonetheless I'd like to add my interpretation of what the main points to take away from this are.

It would seem that if we adhere to the materialistic point of view, then a human being is no more than his/her physical makeup, i.e., matter and energy. Assuming there is no such thing as a soul or a mind that is divorced from the physical brain, then I don't see how Free Will is possible, since all physical systems follow strict physical rules and are generally deterministic.

The sole exception to the above is in the field of quantum mechanics. However, the seemingly indeterminate world of quantum mechanics doesn't help free will become possible with respect to humans; as there would be no way random events occuring at the subatomic level can influence people, and even if they could, they would add no degree of freedom in our choices, but only add a factor of randomness, which is no more freedom than strict determinism.

If we adhere to some belief in which humans possess some sort of soul or mind that is independent from our physical bodies, than I suppose free will is possible. This would follow from the fact that something independent of physical constraints doesn't have to follow the deterministic laws of physics, and then, could possibly have free will.