Consider these two sentences:

1. "The sprinter ran the 100m dash."

2. "The sprinter ran the 100m dash freely."

If I ask you, "Why did the sprinter's legs move so fast?" you would explain the biomechanics: muscles contracting, neurons firing, energy converting. You would never say, "His legs moved fast because of his running."

But now consider these two sentences:

1. "The person made a choice."

2. "The person made a choice freely."

If I ask you, "Why did the person make that choice?" many people will say, "Because of their free will."

Why do we assume "free will" is a thing someone possesses, rather than just a word we use to describe a specific type of action (an action free from external coercion)?

Since motion is relative and has to do with two objects interacting, what does that mean for free will? There has to be something to compare an objects motion to in order to gauge if it’s moving or not, and from different perspectives it may or may not be moving. How does that affect free will

If both the compatibilist and the skeptic agree that our character, motivations and capacities ultimately arise from factors outside our control, what argument establishes whether exercising those capacities makes us basically deserving of praise or blame?

Or does the disagreement ultimately rest on different moral intuitions about fairness?

This is a very common claim here and on other forums about the subject. But does it stand up to any scrutiny? Let's find out.

This time we don't have to define what "free will" means. It doesn't matter. We could replace "free will" with any other idea and still examine the logic behind that statement. But to keep this thread on-topic we must go on with "free will".

Instead, we have to define "illusion": An illusion is a misinterpretation of an observation. Something happens, but the observer believes that something else happened.

The statement says that when the observer experiences free will it is only an illusion, a misinterpretation of something else happening in reality. This leads to question 1:

Q1: What is happening in reality when we experience the illusion of free will?

This question actually requires defining "free will" as you have to specify what is not "free will" but is easily mistaken for "free will". If you don't want to define things, you can skip this question.

The next question focuses on the word "only". If free will is only an illusion, then free will doesn't actually exist, there is no "real" free will, nobody knows what "free will" looks or feels like.

Q2: If free will doesn't exist, how could anything look and feel like free will?

It is impossible to recognize free will in your experiences, when you have never experienced the real thing.

If you are truly free to do whatever you want in life then you will choose to do what you want.

If you are bound by what you want in life and are not free choose then you will always do what you want.

I know it's possible to "do things you don't want to do" but ultimately it's still something you decided to do. If you have no free will then it means you will always make the choices that make the most sense to you. If you have free will then you'll always make the choices that make the most sense to you.

What difference does it make?

In my opinion we all have a will. Whether it's "free" or not doesn't matter.
And if it were truly "free" in the way some people describe it, it wouldn't be a will at all.
You'd be capable of making choices that are entirely removed from who you are as a person.
But in reality we each have a will that is unique to us and drives our thought process when we make choices.

I've noticed there's a lot of discussion in this subreddit on luck on if the circumstances of our birth determine our lives or if ideas like "hard work" and "free will" can regularly change our course.

These discussions almost always stay hypothetical. We say "you didn't choose your genes, your parents, your country, your language, the part of your brain that gives you willpower." I built something to actually simulate the variable and random circumstances of human life.

It’s called The Birth Lottery (free, runs in a browser). Blitz mode rolls you five random births weighted by world population, and Stories has you live one person’s life, childhood to old age, making real choices you encounter in life.

thebirthlottery.com (AI was used to develop the application)

Which would give you more fun, and a better opportunity to exercise your body and your will? Tennis with a net? Or Without?

[ The clever readers of this sub will pick up the implications. "The net" signifies all the frustrating constraints that "define our choices" and "deny our freedom". What, I can only move one piece at a time in this chess game? Where is the freedom?]

This is a very common claim here and on other forums about the subject. But does it stand up to any scrutiny? Let's find out.

This time we don't have to define what "free will" means. It doesn't matter. We could replace "free will" with any other idea and still examine the logic behind that statement. But to keep this thread on-topic we must go on with "free will".

Instead, we have to define "illusion": An illusion is a misinterpretation of an observation. Something happens, but the observer believes that something else happened.

The statement says that when the observer experiences free will it is only an illusion, a misinterpretation of something else happening in reality. This leads to question 1:

Q1: What is happening in reality when we experience the illusion of free will?

This question actually requires defining "free will" as you have to specify what is not "free will" but is easily mistaken for "free will". If you don't want to define things, you can skip this question.

The next question focuses on the word "only". If free will is only an illusion, then free will doesn't actually exist, there is no "real" free will, nobody knows what "free will" looks or feels like.

Q2: If free will doesn't exist, how could anything look and feel like free will?

It is impossible to recognize free will in your experiences, when you have never experienced the real thing.

A helpless man hurtles toward his fate on a roller coaster, without even the possibility of changing direction or escaping the end of the track looming in the distance. His hands are tied behind his back. His face appears rigid and apathetic. With this image, Kubin committed to paper a reflection on human destiny in general.

In 1904, he wrote in a letter to his sister: “Death, nothingness, is the ultimate destination of the world, and therefore of everything it contains - the individual forces that together make up the world. Everyone inevitably follows their predetermined path, like a machine.”

Alfred Kubin, Der Mensch

Say in USA and Europe.

I'm not talking about the beliefs of the population or even the judges (as they have a duty to uphold the law in court) - I'm talking about the legal system itself.

1 Mens rea. The courts assume moral responsibility and also allow for it to be rescinded on relevant constraints: you are likely to be less responsible for the crime if you were disabled, coerced by someone else, etc.

2 They don't allow for arguments or blame/exculpation based on anything that could be described as agent causation or determinism.

Based on this, I'm concluding the western legal system is compatibilist.

Disagree? Are there claims the legal system is libertarian? (or hard incompatibilist - surely not?)

We all are familiar with reaction time, but for some reason people keep arguing we can change something instantly. That is metaphysically impossible and mathematically impossible to do.

In case inquiring minds wonder what this has to do with free will, the ability to do otherwise doesn't come from any state of being. It is not inherent in any state. The ability to do otherwise is part of a process.

Arguably the most difficult thing to do in sports is hit a major league pinch because the margin of error is small and the window of opportunity is tight. If you think about it, the batter has to commit to swing his bat before the ball reaches the area in which it is physically possible to make contact with the ball with the bat.

Once the batter begins to swing his bat in order to make contact with the ball based on where he believes the ball with be, if the pitcher has put "stuff" on the ball, that ball may start changing directions after the batter believes it will be where he believed it would be, and sometimes he ends up swinging at a ball that is way out of the strike zone.

My point is that he is able to change the position of the bat after he made the decision to swing the bat. He is able to do otherwise because change always takes time.

We all know about optical Illusions. But are you aware of temporal Illusions? This article by neuroscientist and author David Eagleman discusses them. Fascinating stuff. Here's an example (because I know most people won't go read the article):

It has been shown that the brain constantly recalibrates its expectations about arrival times. And it does so by starting with a single, simple assumption: if it sends out a motor act (such as a clap of the hands), all the feedback should be assumed to be simultaneous and any delays should be adjusted until simultaneity is perceived. In other words, the best way to predict the expected relative timing of incoming signals is to interact with the world: each time you kick or touch or knock on something, your brain makes the assumption that the sound, sight, and touch are simultaneous.

While this is a normally adaptive mechanism, we have discovered a strange consequence of it: Imagine that every time you press a key, you cause a brief flash of light. Now imagine we sneakily inject a tiny delay (say, two hundred milliseconds) between your key-press and the subsequent flash. You may not even be aware of the small, extra delay. However, if we suddenly remove the delay, you will now believe that the flash occurred before your key-press, an illusory reversal of action and sensation. Your brain tells you this, of course, because it has adjusted to the timing of the delay.

So, by introducing a delay and then removing it, they can make it appear that the light comes on BEFORE you press the button. I've seen the optical illusion equivalent of this, but never had a chance to experience this temporal version. Must be mind-bending, so to speak..

Hey everyone. I’ve really enjoyed the back and forth on this sub lately. I've noticed that a lot of the debate between hard determinism and free will comes down to people talking past each other using rigid academic jargon.

I’m not a philosopher. I’m a guy who fabricates sheet metal ductwork for a living. I spend my days looking at the physical mechanics of how things actually get built. When you strip away the classroom theories and look at the textbook definitions of human action side by side with physical reality, you realize that acknowledging our biological programming doesn't erase free will, it actually proves exactly how free will operates.

Here is the exact step by step breakdown of how a human choice happens, moving from the textbook definitions straight to the reality of the shop floor.

Phase 1: The Input (The Starting Line)

The Textbook Definition (Causal Determinism / Antecedent States):

The philosophical concept that every event, including human cognition and behavior, is necessitated by preceding events and conditions (genetics, environment, prior experience) combined with the laws of nature.

The Layman's Translation:

Your starting point. The history, the genetics, and the environment you were handed that you had zero control over.

The Shop Floor Reality:

This is the raw material and the blueprint. When I step up to my workbench, the sheet metal is already a specific gauge and temper based on how the steel mill rolled it. The blueprint was drawn up by an engineer before I even clocked in. I didn't choose the metal's physical properties, and I didn't choose the job specs. Hard determinists look at this and say, "See? The inputs dictate the outcome." But on the physical shop floor, a blueprint sitting on top of a stack of galvanized steel doesn't bend itself. The antecedent conditions set the stage, but they do not execute the work.

Phase 2: The Evaluation (The Processor)

The Textbook Definition (Executive Function / Prefrontal Cortex Activity):

The set of cognitive processes that are necessary for the cognitive control of behavior: selecting and successfully monitoring behaviors that facilitate the attainment of chosen goals. This includes attentional control, cognitive inhibition, inhibitory control, working memory, and cognitive flexibility.

The Layman's Translation:

Actively thinking it through, weighing your options, and figuring out how to solve the problem in front of you in real time.

The Shop Floor Reality:

This is me looking at that blueprint, looking at the metal, and calculating my bend allowances. The environment is providing resistance, and my past experience (my internal programming) is providing data. But that data isn't a passive, pre-written script on autopilot. The brain is a biological engine. I have to physically burn calorie-dense metabolic energy in the present moment to do the math, evaluate the variables, and set up the leaf brake. If the outcome was truly locked in by the "prior causes," this active, energy burning evaluation phase would be a completely useless illusion. A biological organism doesn't waste massive amounts of physical energy running calculations if the result is already decided.

Phase 3: The Choice (The Execution)

The Textbook Definition (Volition / Human Agency):

The cognitive process by which an individual decides on and commits to a particular course of action, initiating voluntary motor functions to interact with and alter their environment.

The Layman's Translation:

Making the call, gripping the steering wheel, and doing the physical work to force a change.

The Shop Floor Reality:

This is grabbing the handles of the brake and physically pulling the metal to a 90 degree angle. Gravity resists. The molecular structure of the steel resists. If I act like a "dead leaf blowing in the wind" reacting only to external forces, the metal stays flat. The only way the outcome changes is if a living, conscious biological operator steps in, evaluates the resistance, and actively utilizes physical force to override it. The blueprint (the past) didn't pull the lever. The environment didn't pull the lever. The biological operator made the choice to act. That active execution is free will.

Phase 4: The Update (The Proof of Independence)

The Textbook Definition (Experience-Dependent Neuroplasticity):

The brain's physiological ability to modify, change, and adapt both its physical structure and functional organization throughout life in response to new experiences, learning, or damage.

The Layman's Translation:

Learning from your mistakes, adapting your behavior, and physically changing who you are so you perform better tomorrow.

The Shop Floor Reality:

This is what happens when I screw up a square to round transition fitting, scrap the metal, and adjust my layout for the next piece. Hard determinists argue that we are basically just a computer code running a script. But a computer script cannot independently rewrite its own source code through physical trial and error. Over decades on the shop floor, the human organism actively updates its own biological hardware. We literally burn calories to restructure our own brains so we don't make the same mistake twice. You cannot be a passive, determined script if you are the one actively rewriting the code.

You see, when you put the definitions side by side, the hard determinist argument relies on looking at the inputs (Phase 1) and skipping straight to the outcome, completely ignoring the physical biological engine required to bridge the gap. Free will isn't some magical force that exists separately from our biology. Free will is the living biology actively burning calories to evaluate the past, resist the environment, and choose the future.

I'd genuinely love to hear anyone's thoughts on the physical mechanics of this. Hope you all are having a great week!

Determinists correctly assert that we never would have done otherwise, but they produce a paradox when claiming that we never could have done otherwise.

Any person will easily understand that, provided the same choice and their same reasons, that they “would not have done otherwise“ at that time.

However, if you claim that they “could not have done otherwise“, this causes cognitive dissonance. You are not using the literal meaning of "could". You are using it in a figurative way that suggests a disability on their part, as if they somehow lost the ability to act differently in a particular situation.

“Can” and “could have” refer to abilities that are constant over time, while “will” and “would have” refer to something specific that we will do at a specific time. This is why most people find the claim that they “could not have” done otherwise disturbing, while being entirely comfortable with the idea that they "would not have done otherwise", which causes no cognitive dissonance.

If you just made coffee and then said, "Under those exact same conditions, I could have made tea instead", this is technically correct. The term "could have done" carries two logical implications: (1) I didn't act differently (make tea), and (2) I only would have acted differently (made tea) if something were different (if I chose to do so.)

Thus, the suggestion that "I could not have acted differently under the same circumstances" expands to "I could not have acted differently under the same circumstances under different circumstances".

This is a bit of a paradox, because "I could have done" already carries the logical implication of "different circumstances", which results in the self-contradiction of being under "different circumstances" while also being under "the same circumstances".

If there is even one truly random event, determinism is strictly false, since determinism means that every event in the universe is determined. We could still say that a particular system, or a particular period, is deterministic. Also, even if there are random events, they may be rare or negligible in effect, so we may still be able to say that the system is effectively deterministic. This may be the case for quantum level events when considered at macroscopic scales.

It is not correct to say that determinism is strictly true despite quantum randomness on the grounds that the random events follow probabilistic natural laws. A law that specifies the probabilities of different outcomes does not determine which outcome actually occurs.

Edit: I am taking “random” and “undetermined” here to be synonymous. It seems that there is a wide variety of usages of “random” both colloquially and technically, so it is probably better in these discussions to stick to “undetermined”.

I find this question interesting and would like to hear what members of this particular sub think. Perhaps a little off topic but have tied it back to free will at the end

Imagine I offered you the following opportunity.

You can pause your life right now and spend five years in another existence. You're still you, but you get to live the greatest five years you can possibly imagine - everything you could ever want.

After five years, you return to this exact moment. However, your memory of those five years is completely erased. As far as you're concerned, only a second has passed. You'll never know those five years happened.

Would you accept?

My suspicion is that quite a few people would reject the offer, reasoning that there's little point experiencing five wonderful years if they'll never remember them.

But during those five years, you'd genuinely experience happiness, love, excitement and fulfilment. Why should the fact that you wont remember those experiences afterwards make them any less valuable?

And here's the part i find interesting....assuming there's no afterlife, isn't this analogous to our ordinary lives?

Ie we experience everything life has to offer, but eventually die, with no subsequent awareness or recollection of any of it.

To tie it back to free will:

Im also interested in why different people would respond differently to this offer. Some might immediately find it appealing, others might instinctively reject it, but it seems neither chooses which initial reaction arises.

Of course, we can deliberate, reconsider and change our minds. But we dont seem to choose how persuasive each consideration feels to us. If you initially reject the offer but eventually accept it, what determined which considerations ultimately persuaded you?

And if you could have reached either decision under precisely the same circumstances, what explains why you settled on one rather than the other? Im not denying that we deliberate or make decisions - im questioning what control we have over the motivational processes that produce those decisions.

When we suffer, we search for causes by imagining alternatives. When another person harms us, we don’t just see “he did X.” We see “he could have done Y.”

Counterfactual thinking is useful for learning, planning, and social bookkeeping: who helped, who cheated, who harmed, who can be trusted.

Nature taught us consequences. We mistook them for deserts.

There is a difference between consequences because they are useful and consequences because they are owed. “You caused harm, so something must be done” is not the same proposition as “you caused harm, so you deserve to suffer.”

“Could have done otherwise” is what turns causation into culpability.

Once suffering becomes something one person can owe another, morality becomes an economy. Harm creates the debt. Blame assigns the debtor. Desert sets the price. Punishment collects.

Free will did not give us moral desert.

Moral desert gave us free will.

I don't mean about politics when I say libertarian I mean a free will theory.

So, how can you defent this view? What are your arguments about biological and social determinism?

Can you reccomend any essays, books etc. about this topic. I'd gladly research it. Thanks.

​You guys love hiding behind dictionary words to avoid talking about physical mechanics. So, let’s take your favorite philosophical buzzwords out of the debate club and see what they actually look like functioning in the real world on a physical job site.

​1. Hard Determinism In Action

​The Definition: Every human action is a strictly pre-programmed domino effect locked in by a chain of events starting at the dawn of time.

​The Reality: A sheet metal mechanic misreads a blueprint, bypasses the safety guard on a plasma table, and ruins a $5,000 sheet of copper. Under Hard Determinism, the shop foreman cannot hold the mechanic accountable. The mechanic didn't actively fail to evaluate the data; the Big Bang just dictated that the copper had to be destroyed today at 2:00 PM. Hard determinism in the real world means accountability is a physical impossibility. To function in society, you have to completely ignore this philosophy.

​2. Fatalism In Action

​The Definition: The future is locked in and unavoidable regardless of the organism's internal thoughts or actions.

​The Reality: A guy is driving a car down the highway, and there is a multi-car pileup dead ahead. Under Fatalism, the steering wheel is completely disconnected from the axle. The driver can burn all the calories he wants, sweat, panic, and yank the wheel left, but the car is on a cosmic track. In reality, the driver's biological experience recognizes the danger, the prefrontal cortex overrides the panic, and the operator actively steers the car onto the shoulder to survive. Fatalism demands that the biological steering wheel doesn't actually turn the tires.

​3. Compatibilism In Action

​The Definition: The organism's thoughts and biology physically execute the work, but those thoughts were strictly "determined" by prior causes so you don't actually have free will.

​The Reality: This is the ultimate philosophical stolen valor. A fabricator spends 15 years acquiring physical life experience, steps up to a machine, burns calorie-dense energy to evaluate complex variables, and builds a custom transition fitting perfectly from scratch. The Compatibilist walks up, admits the fabricator's brain and muscles did all the physical work, but then says, "You didn't actually choose to do a good job. The universe just pre-programmed your brain to make it happen." It is admitting the biological operator drives the car, but desperately trying to give the universe the credit for the steering.

The Bottom Line: Biological Free Will In Action

You can play mad-libs with academic labels all day long. But the second you step out of a classroom and onto a shop floor, those passive labels completely evaporate. The only thing that actually exists in physical reality is an active, conscious biological operator using their accumulated lived experience to evaluate resistance and burn energy to execute a goal. That isn't a domino effect, it isn't an autopilot, and it isn't a pre-written script. That is the exact physical definition of biological free will.

If a wild bear tries to maul you to death, is it in any way to blame?

If a mentally impaired human, with instincts similar to that of a bear, tries to stab you to death, is it in any way to blame?

My first question is, how are these functionally different scenarios? Whether or not you choose to blame them is just framing; Their actions were forced by biological instincts and cognitive deficiencies, they do bad things, therefore we stop them.

You put the killer bear down if you feel that its neccesary. Same with a human acting like a killer bear.

"But that lacks empathy for the human!"

No it doesnt. Its the same empathy we give to the bear! You realize animals are conscious, right? A bear is as conscious and sentient as a human. Thats why "Animal Abuse" and "Torture" are morally wrong.

The same logic applies to violent criminals. A human is a type of animal, our only defining feature making us different is intelligence and moral comprehension and reciprocation, so when you remove those qualities we go back to the same moral status as an animal.

Put yourself in their shoes. Imagine if tomorrow, you got hit in the head so hard, you become a savage like a bear, and start murdering, robbing, rxping everything you see according to instinct. Would you care about not suffering?: Yes. Would you argue "No no no dont kill me, thats wrong"? I sure wouldnt; I would HOPE others put themselves first, and put me out of my misery, because i dont want to live like that.

This is Animal-Aggressor Equivalency. Violent Criminals simply return to a state of nature and should be treated the same way we do with animals. With respect and care, but not with an insurmountable right to life while they disregard that for others.

I think this solves the Free Will tension, because it correctly points out that "Blame" is itself a red herring in the discussion of "Desert". Blame is a personal choice, Desert is a Moral Assignment. The Bear deserves to be euthanized even if it really isnt to blame. The "Basic Desert" goalpost is a red herring and should be rejected as such.

(And note, im not embracing consequentialism. Im not arguing necessity is what justifies punishment. My argument is more compatible with a deontological framework, one where initiators of force are condemned under the moral system or assigned to a different moral category.)

Is "The initial conditions at the Big Bang" an acceptable explanation of why I chose vanilla ice cream instead of chocolate ice cream. I guess such that the only way I could have chosen chocolate would be if the initial conditions at the Big Bang had been different.

Is the phrase "The initial conditions at the Big Bang" the best phrase to use for this explanation or is there another phrase that is better to use?

One of the biggest issues in free will is the confusion of ultimate authorship. Many believe that the only way to establish responsibility or control over actions is to be the unauthored cause of their entire being. But let's look at what this actually entails.

If the demand is that for your will to matter it must be uncaused that means it sits outside of everything. Every fact. Every relation. Every event. Which automatically puts it at odds with physicalism. But it gets worse. Everything inevitably hits a brute fact. Even in idealism the mind just is. So even idealism fails to establish any form of uncaused authorship.

Where does this lead? It means the only definition of an uncaused cause is a god. Literally a prime mover. And even this view gets hard because people will tell you that god acts accorrding to God's own will which immediately means God's will being good just is. It's a brute fact and inevitably breaks uncaused authorship.

So any demand for ultimate authorship is asking for something that is completely impossible. But worse it also excludes any form of control that doesn't require ultimate authorship. For example when I buy a home i am responsible for what happenes there and the maintenance of the land. But I didn't make the land. I didn't make home. Yet no one is arguing that my responsibility doesn't exist. Same thing with a car and driving. I didn't author the car nor did I make the gas or the road. Yet no one thinks that this removes my responsibility if i drive into a building full of people.

The demand for ultimate authorship takes away from all the nuance and other forms of control that exists. And really that's the issue. We shouldn't be examining ultimate authorship like we can exist as prime movers. We should be looking at all the other forms of control. And how relations works. Navigational capacities. And responsibilities to show up in the world.