Does free will actually exist? Opinions please.

[Formless]

He's not saying anything about whether that kind of information is possible. It's fine to argue about his misunderstanding of quantum mechanics, but do note that you created this strawman of his argument before he mentioned anything about that.

His first post is explicitly about the possibility of perfectly predicting human behavior, and his statements after that post have only further solidified that it is indeed his argument against free will. Hence, its perfectly acceptable, now especially, to attack his assumptions about the realities of predicting human behavior. Alternatively, he's trying to pass off a hypothesis as valid that has already been falsified by modern physics-- different words to describe the same counterargument I've been using from the beginning. Your accusations of strawmanning have been examined, and have been determined "whiny bullshit".

But I'm not hung up on any of that. What I'm really hung up on is you being a jackass and opening up full-bore on a newb without having the decency to actually plumb his position and try to understand it first.

He's been here since 2010. He's hardly a newbe, and even if he was new, he indicated that he's read the thread... and then completely ignored everything that had been said before, by Alyrium especially. I'd flame anyone for that kind of trolling. So again, pull the burr out of your ass and stop acting as if I'm picking on some poor, undeserving n00b.

Edit: clarity.

[ThomasP]

Why would you need to "make decisions independent of brain activity" for there to be free will?

I have no idea; I was asking (mostly rhetorical) questions to pare down why I find the concept so difficult to express.

Whether or not you're a product of deterministic physics (or indeterministic physics or something supernatural) is completely irrelevant. Those issues affect how "you" is defined, not what decision is or is not "free." Your decisions are free to the degree to which they're not coerced by external influences, and coercion is a concept that makes sense in any of those possibilities.

I follow you here, but I have a counter-question: where's the line drawn between constraints of the "I"/"you" concept, assuming that "I" is a product of *some* system (whether that's physical determinism or supernatural or whatever else) that imposes limitations on it, and genuine coercion?

One line of reasoning that I can see is that (say) determinism is...maybe an implied form of coercion, in the sense that it presents an involuntary* limitation on the behaviors of the "I", but I get the impression that you're heading somewhere else; could you elaborate?

* I realize I'm begging the question with that loaded wording, but I hope my meaning is understood (and not itself part of the problem in comprehension).

[Cykeisme]

When it comes to defining "free will", perhaps to assist in its definition, we should define what is not free will, or at least some examples thereof.

Firstly, I suppose we need to define boundaries within which is "you", and outside which is "not you".
If we take "you" as a brain (and whatever other organs might affect brain chemistry), if we have perfect information about its physical composition and state, we should be able to predict what decisions it will make based on what sensory stimulus we input into it (or perhaps the possible range of decisions if we take into account quantum uncertainty of its constituent particles).

So can we say that by having perfect information about that brain, we can carefully construct sensory stimulus that it receives from the outside world to "force" it to make decisions of our choosing?

Does it then have "free will"?


Edit: I'm following on from ThomasP stating that its difficult to explain or express the concept of "free will", not a direct response to the OP.

Also, perhaps the boundaries of "you" are not that important. For purposes of a hypothetical scenario, if we take "you" to be an entire human body rather than just a brain, I suppose we could manipulate the entire universe around that body to lead it to decisions of our choosing. That then leads back to whether a person manipulated in such a way still has what constitutes "free will".

[SCRawl]

We will have no thread necromancy. You want to resurrect a topic this old, start a new one and reference this one.