Do We Have Free Will? Do We Live A Deterministic World?

Discussion in 'Philosophy' started by Duuuuuude, Aug 12, 2014.

  1. So what do you guys think? It seems we live in a deterministic world (cause and effect), yet we behave in a way as if we have free will and are immune to the law of causality. Can the two be reconciled?

     
  2. Brother man (or girl). This has been on my mind for a very long time, sometimes 24/7.

    Not intending to take this to a religious level, although i am of Christian Faith.

    BUT
    Can it truly be that we are all part of a predestined/foreseen path controlled by God...? I don't mean in asking this is the ONLY answer to that question, but can it honestly be true. Not a single living being can answer that...

    Many believe so... And many do not...

    Either way great post.


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  3. I'm to negative for these threads lol
     
  4. Hey JayBreak. I know I think about this all the time man.

    What exactly do you mean, "Can it tryly be that we are all part of a predistined/foreseen path controlled by God". I thought that Christians believe in predistination, no?
     
  5. Haha. I never seem to find a definite answer for these questions man its bothersome
     
  6. #6 LuxSpiritus, Aug 13, 2014
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 13, 2014
    WE live we die the end.
    "The wheel of time turns but it never changes direction"
    Life is a chance to find who you are, if you don't you are a failure and lived a meaningless life.
    It's not like anything we do changes anything anyway.
    Might as well find out who you are, and search yourself for the answers.
    Reality will not yield anything except following a false belief
    that your life will succumb to a traditional reasoning
    and that purpose is given to you for a reward.
     
    We all live, we all die. But very few can find out why.
     
    Reality doesn't exist, it's a mirage of the senses to produce imagery and stimuli to aid in the search for reason, but since we believe that the reason is already there. You just live a false life. It is there, but it is not obvious.
    Nothing is determinant because nothing is real. You have two breaking events in your life it is up to you to find the link between.
     
  7. Short answer yes, long answer no. Right now say you have the immediate choice between Pepsi and Coke, that is your choice. However the universe consists of endless co-existing possibilities. One world line you picked the Pepsi, one world you picked the Coke.
     
  8. #8 Vicious, Aug 13, 2014
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 13, 2014
     
    This is nihilistic denial. And you're saying things don't exist again when it is subjective. Even if you consider reality as a mirage, that mirage is your reality. Reality and Truth are separate but co-exist like Order and Chaos. The senses we produce are not for reason, its how we cope live in this universe. The stimuli, waves, energy, light and everything we take in to view the world is our sensory organs making sense of Matter. What you take in is your reality skewed by not only by our neurology but individual stimuli, bias, prejudice, previous experience and more things we will ever know. Truth is Universal and individually observed. Our collective realities amongst infinite observable possibility record the annals of Truth.
     
  9. Does cause and effect not coincide with free will? :confused:
     
    Free will means the ability to make your own decisions, and to some extent, determine how your life will unfold. The two seem to back each other up perfectly, at least to me. Free will doesn't mean having no consequences for your actions.
     
    Anyway, I don't think our lives are predestined by 'fate' or any god. It all comes down to our actions, the actions of others, and chance.
     
  10.  
    Well, causality kind of breaks down on the quantum level, so there you go...Kind of hard to straddle the deterministic side of the fence when you realize that causality is not really universal.
     
  11.  
    Never really understood this thinking...If an omniscient God really does exist, how does him knowing the 'future' invalidate the idea of free will?
     
    Being truly omniscient means you likely would not see time as linear. Future, past, and present really wouldn't apply; it would all be the same. That really wouldn't qualify as seeing the future, now would it? The reason God would know what decisions you are going to make is because to him, you already made them.
     
  12. #12 LuxSpiritus, Aug 13, 2014
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 13, 2014
    Yes we all look at reality in a different way. I think we have our natural born stimuli and then the freedom of will to create our own.
    I don't think anything is determinant i just think that we are better off finding our own views than expecting them to rain upon us,
    The collective realities is obviously all of life. Which is when all of life is one the reality will show itself through the mist, and it becomes clear as to why it is there. Two people's realities merging into one is just the start of a bonding of life and a greater recognition for what encompasses it.
    It takes hard work to search for the 'metaphoric' life when no one possess the ability to do so.
     
    I think you misunderstand. I meant the reality we know, the one we see and hear is a scheme of communication of multiple realities to figure out the true reality we all have. And how life is all bonded to us. It takes more than one person to express that to billions of people.
     
  13.  
    See my post. I'll talk meta-physics. If God is the Collective Conscious or the fibers of our universe we cant apply morals, reasons or laws of our dimension or realm. If the past, present and future exist simultaneously, the consciousness within us (holy spirit, "made in his image") is accumulated and could be a part of "God" itself.
     
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OrcWntw9juM
     
  14. #14 KushyKonundrum, Aug 13, 2014
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 13, 2014
     
    I hate to use labels, but this guy seems like another M theory zombie. Blech. It's become almost like a religion at this point...
     
    I also lol'd when he said, more than once, that we are on the 'verge of' understanding consciousness. I would be wary of anyone whose able to say that with a straight face. I'm not trying to be catty, I just don't see how somebody can ever make that claim and not think themselves completely disingenuous. The fact of the matter is, we aren't. And honestly, I think we never will be. Decades spent researching this particular field, and we haven't even come to a unifying definition as to what it even is. Baby steps people, baby steps...
     
    EDIT: But yah, that line of thinking, meaning yours, isn't without it's merits. It makes sense to think of the universe as an extension of God, if one so happens to exist. Naturally, it follows that if that's the case then we are also, by virtue, an extension of him as well.
     
  15.  
    I wasn't saying I believe that or the video. Just making some allegories since some were on the topic of God. Though I stand by my first two posts.
     
  16.  
    Ah, gotcha :).
     
    You wouldn't believe how badly M theory have infected the 'scientific community' though. Kinda funny it's touted as the theory that brings them all together when there's like, what, 4 or 5 different versions of it floating around? TBH, they should finish one candy bar before opening a new one. Let's at least *try* to get a better grasp on quantum mechanics before trying to unify it with macro mechanics.
     
    I dunno, maybe I have a bone to pick with it. It smacks of intellectual laziness to me...
     
  17. What would truly having free will entail? Being able to make a choice that has nothing to do with environmental context? Is it not environmental context that ultimately limits our options -- the amount of choice we actually have? And if there is always an "amount of choice," what about this makes a choice "free" in any transcendental way? How can we make a choice that we aren't capable of making? The mere option to make a different choice does not mean that the choice we did end up making was "free," because there are factors beyond oneself at work when one ultimately decides one way or the other.


     
  18. I'm not an advocate for Christianity. So I won't say yes or no. My question is very grey but deserves a black or white answer. And there can only be one answer. YES or NO. I also don't like stating I'm a Christian because there's so much controversy as to what a real Christian is...

    I have a inner-enlightened relationship with God. I can say God and not A God, because for me, he's our God. I'm stating to ramble, I should go to bed now. Lol


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  19. Hmm. I also believe that there exists a multiverse (Everett's theory). But was it deterministic that I picked up the pepsi instead of the coke?
     
  20. but wouldn't the "hidden variable" theory - if it is definite and true - allow for determinism in quantum mechanics? I don't mean to say that the hidden variable theory is true, but what if it is - then what?
     

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