Do we have free will?

Do you believe we have free will or is everything predetermined?
 
I'm leaning to the latter of the two.
Basically, I feel we don't have free will because of all the forces in the universe working together puts us on a single path. We can only make one action and not two. You can't have your cake and eat it so to speak.
 
The path you take all comes from hereditary and your environment.
Aka, I was taught English all my life, my environment places me in an English speaking world. I can and will talk to people. Place me in a French speaking world and I will be unable to communicate.
 
The past (my hereditary) was being taught English. My environment is the English/French speaking world.
 
Another example of a predetermined path is something that inevitably happens: The sun will rise tomorrow. I will also get out of bed. I believe I have free will by doing this, but I have only taken that ONE action. If I choose to not get out of bed it is by other predetermined resons, and I have NOT gotten out of bed. That SINGLE action.

Interesting, but what is the point of this post? The question posed is unanswerable and isn't really worth asking. 

" Interesting, but what is the point of this post? The question posed is unanswerable and isn't really worth asking.  "

Not worth answering, either

No one knows.

dono

Would you kindly respond to this post?

You summed up exactly how i think about the matter. No bullshit
 
Edit: Ignore these dickholes that feel the need to post in every thread they see, even if they have nothing relevant to say.

I read the topic as "do we have free Wi-Fi?" 
 
This is actually even easier to answer... 
 
Of course we have free will. I can throw the cake away at any time and I could stay in bed all day, you could also learn any language you wanted. Your will to do so is on you. When you say "forces in the universes" what exactly do you mean?

I choose not to answer.

" @Wes899 said:

" Interesting, but what is the point of this post? The question posed is unanswerable and isn't really worth asking.  "

To create thought and discussion. What forums are for. "

This is a really awkward and weird argument of free will vs predetermination. I figured this would be about the nature of time or maybe the nature vs nurture argument, but this is...somewhere in between. 
 
Let me get this straight. The earth rotates and revolves around the sun, therefor I don't have freewill? Hmm.

Just because you only have one available action to take, it doesn't mean that you don't have the ability to chose from several actions. That ability is nothing but free will. Also, if you were to be placed in France, you have the option (or choice) to learn the spoken language, you don't have to, but you can. Again, that's free will. So I'm all up in some free will.

No, sir, I believe we don't.  When you think about it, it all really comes down to the chemistry of our bodies. We react in a certain way to every situation because it's what we are programmed to do. Of course there is no foreseeable way to predict what we will do until we do it, so life it still a surprise. Life really is just a one track ride, though.

" I read the topic as "do we have free Wi-Fi?"  This is actually even easier to answer...  Of course we have free will. I can throw the cake away at any time and I could stay in bed all day, you could also learn any language you wanted. Your will to do so is on you. When you say "forces in the universes" what exactly do you mean? "

I believe in something more than the physical realm, so I believe in free will. To me, the more things are predestined, the more difficult it is to explain the existence of anything at all. Only nothing can be without a cause.

" I read the topic as "do we have free Wi-Fi?"  This is actually even easier to answer...  Of course we have free will. I can throw the cake away at any time and I could stay in bed all day, you could also learn any language you wanted. Your will to do so is on you. When you say "forces in the universes" what exactly do you mean? "

" This is a really awkward and weird argument of free will vs predetermination. I figured this would be about the nature of time or maybe the nature vs nurture argument, but this is...somewhere in between.   Let me get this straight. The earth rotates and revolves around the sun, therefor I don't have freewill. Hmm. "

" @Frohman said:

" @Wes899 said:

" Interesting, but what is the point of this post? The question posed is unanswerable and isn't really worth asking.  "

To create thought and discussion. What forums are for. "

I like you already!  I'm not sure if everything is set in stone, there's some choices we are free to make but overall the human life is pretty straightforward. It's your own do or don't that makes it as free as can be. "

" Just because you only have one available action to take, it doesn't mean that you don't have the ability to chose from several actions. That ability is nothing but free will. Also, if you were to be placed in France, you have the option (or choice) to learn the spoken language, you don't have to, but you can. Again, that's free will. So I'm all up in some free will. "

" If there is no free will then is it right to punish murderers? "

" I believe in something more than the physical realm, so I believe in free will. To me, the more things are predestined, the more difficult it is to explain the existence of anything at all. Only nothing can be without a cause. "

I will let my friends Rush sum up my belief: 
 
 You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice.
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill;
I will choose a path that's clear
I will choose freewill.     
 
Basically you can have freewill if you choose it, if not you'll float along your path

" @MatPaget: If you've never done anything on a whim.....you sir have more problems than a pre-determined fate.... "

" I will let my friends Rush sum up my belief:   You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice.If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill;I will choose a path that's clearI will choose freewill.      Basically you can have freewill if you choose it, if not you'll float along your path "

" @guiseppe said:

" Just because you only have one available action to take, it doesn't mean that you don't have the ability to chose from several actions. That ability is nothing but free will. Also, if you were to be placed in France, you have the option (or choice) to learn the spoken language, you don't have to, but you can. Again, that's free will. So I'm all up in some free will. "

But if my background made me a jaded person who hates new languages, I probably wouldn't. However, if my background determined otherwise, then I would. I feel like my past and environment predicts my future.
 

I think that if you were dropped in a French country or parts of Canada you'd probably find a way to communicate, through gestures & maybe someone over there who might understand enough English to get a foundation of communication going. Granted this might lead to any number of bad choices in food they have (which you might not like) or waking up in some strange bed somewhere.   
 
As for free will, yes you have free will, as last I checked there's no eldritch horror from beyond the stars or impish signpost in your environment that compelled you against your will & natural impulses to write this forum post in the beginning. There's a many great variety of things in the universe, who's to say that while the universe isn't going along it's clockwork path that you haven't gotten a choice when presented with a fork in the road on which way to go. The choice & will is your's, it's your choices & what you learn from it all that's important. Besides if there was no free will we'd all be in the matrix or some damnable construct like it which would make most philosophy teachers/writers very useless on arguing about the state of things instead of enjoying the time that's there. You even have a free will to read or not read this reply :P.

From what i can tell, 90% of the people in this thread arguing against you, don't even understand your point in the first place.

I've thought about this before, I do agree with you in a way, but I don't think it really matters. It's almost a semantics argument at a point.

" @Malakhii said:

" I will let my friends Rush sum up my belief:   You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice.If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill;I will choose a path that's clearI will choose freewill.      Basically you can have freewill if you choose it, if not you'll float along your path "

Wouldn't choosing free will be apart of your path? Also, in your own words, what is free will? "

Nah I think the whole "life is a predetermined path" things is BS from and for folks who 1. want to live in a magical world were they don't have to worry about a thing because it's all out of their control anyway 2. want to think that it's not them beating their wives, being disorderly and destructive and all sorts of bad things/making poor choices, it's the way the universe works dawg. 3. etc 4. etc. etc. etc.
 
It's pretty much like how alcoholism and stuff  "is" in fact a disease, and the drunks/users are victims of it, or how in the olden times men murdered each other in the name of religion and.... NO wait wait I mean they sent their enemies to a better place, a paradise filled with women/whatever religion_x teaches.... Yeah....

Since it's not possible to prove, and debates about it just go round and round in circles, I don't really see the point. 
 
Even if you did prove it one way or another, nothing would change. 

Not as long as Giantbomb is around.

I've thought about this a lot and know where I stand on this one. My answer is basically "To an extent". I think saying that we have entire free will or everything is entirely predetermined are ridiculous extremes.

I have gone back on enough decisions on my time to know that there is free will
I am on this forum talking about video games because I decided I was tired of playing Just Dance 2

I read this as free Wii...Yes we have free will btw

I am going to assume that we are talking about nature vs nurture here. Am I free to determine who I am? Yes and no. There things in the world that are out of my control. I can't change the fact that I was born a white male in America. I have a normal functioning brain and I don't suffer from any physical disabilities. Those facts will shade and color my life and how I fit into the world. I was taught English by my parents, because at that point I didn't have the cognitive ability to actively decide if I was interested in learning that language or not. I guess you could say I was taught that against my will. In my childhood and young adult life some things happened to me. Some of them were good, some of them were bad. Some of the bad things were not because someone else wanted to hurt me, nor was a specific human being to blame. I was a victim of random chaos. All of this will help to shape who I am and how I feel about the world. My past experiences will factor in to future decisions.  
 
But that doesn't decide them for me. I can chose how to react to them. I can be told all my life that a certain thing is true, but at any moment I can stop and question it. I can doubt it. Because you grow up in a deeply religious community and are deeply religious for the first half of your life, does that mean you have to be that way and stay that way? Does an outside force have to convince you otherwise? Or can you come to that conclusion alone and decide for yourself what you believe? 

 
i think its all perspective, you can't ask for an absolute 
 
but if you're asking do you think we have free will? 
 
then no, personally i believe / am convinced that everything is predetermined, i fought over the ideas for years but now im certain, everything, from my perspective / perception of the world, seems too coincidental  
 
so i don't believe there is free will, but i think it depends on your individual perception of the world

Predeterminism and predestination are silly ideas to me.  Do you think you were predestined to question whether or not you were predestined to question about predestination?  What a self-defeating mechanism of fate, that engineers its puppets to think such a way.
 
My answer to this question has largely a theological basis, since I argue with Calvinists like it's a freaking job.  So my arguments won't hold much weight to those who reject the existence of God, but whatever.  Both common sense and the Bible make it pretty clear that we are given choice in how we conduct our lives, and that we are accountable for the decisions we make.  Without free-will, God would not be justified in creating people who do evil and then condemning for said evil (if anyone would like to throw down about Romans 9, send me a PM).  Likewise, we would not be justified in prosecuting people who commit crimes, as their actions were not of their own will.
 
Predestination rob us of personal responsibility and accountability, ultimately giving us an excuse for our moral shortcomings.

I think we have no idea of the momentum of all accumalative consciousness racing through space-time. We are archetypes unfolding again and again. I do not want to state any truth because then I have fallen to the folly of duality. I believe (intuitively, not rationally) that we act out of free will but that our choices are predetermined anyway. We can phatom both, can we not? To quote Blake: "Everything possible to be believed, is an image of truth". The term pre-determined implies time can be seen as something seperate from experience and well, that's just a nice little Newtonian safety net for your sensibilities. Actually this question can never be answered as this very debate is also subject to the question creating an infinite paradox. 
 
Inb4 some philosophy major starts quoting Aristoteles and deducing stuff.
 
Edit: I should stay away from these topics because my personal truth is more interesting to me than unsolveable abstractions on direct experience. On that note, you should all take entheogens and try thinking about one or the other as absolution without feeling silly.

I'm hungry but don't have the force to get off bed. ugh

It was predetermined that I would say we have free will.  

I am going to have to go with free will. Just because you do not know the outcome of the actions you do not take does not mean that you yourself did not make your actual choice, that it was predetermined. You can do whatever the hell you want in this life, I'm not saying this like a parent says to their kid when it comes to their future, but I mean it in the way of your choices. I feel that people say that life is predetermined or their choices are not their own because they are scared of life. You make so many different choices every single day of your life, and as each day, week, month, and year passes those decisions you make, both big and small, make you who you are. It is so much simpler to imagine that we become who we are, or get where we go in life because our life path is already laid down in front of us, but I feel that is just a cop out. Sure I could be wrong, but I like to think that I make myself who I am, I dont know about you but to think that we are nothing more then a spirit trapped inside a vessel on a locked track is depressing. Having the belief that my life is my own is just more empowering. Both my good and bad decisions make me who I am, while it is would be easier to think choice has no sway on my future, I would rather I be who I want to be, not who I was meant to be. 

Yep. we've got free will

To me, the concept of cause and effect makes much more sense than that of free will. I'd love to have my mind swayed, but I have trouble viewing belief in free will as anything more than another instance of human exceptionalism. If you believe in free will, then you're basically placing yourself above the primacy of biological and environmental factors, which we know to be the driving forces behind the identity (and thereby actions) of any living thing. Just because it is more difficult to understand how specific factors operate in humans does not mean that there is another force at play--to claim that it does is sort of a lazy perspective on psychology.

Maybe.

 
@MarcusOfLycia said:

" I believe in something more than the physical realm, so I believe in free will. To me, the more things are predestined, the more difficult it is to explain the existence of anything at all. Only nothing can be without a cause. "

But isn't everything cause and effect. Nothing does anything without something else acting on it. "

I find that most people who believe in things being determined by an unknown force, or having no free will, often use it an an excuse to ignore the consequences of their own actions.  
If you trip over a rock and break a bone, it is much easier to accept that the wheels of fate made it happen. 
It is harder to accept the fact that you are a fucking idiot who needs to pay attention to where you're going.  
Also, your free will is interdependent with others. You live in America and speak English due to the free will of your parents, as do they, and so on.  
If you have no free will, then nothing is ever your fault, is it? 
How nice.

@MarcusOfLycia said:

" I believe in something more than the physical realm, so I believe in free will. To me, the more things are predestined, the more difficult it is to explain the existence of anything at all. Only nothing can be without a cause. "

But isn't everything cause and effect. Nothing does anything without something else acting on it. "