Do you think you have free will?

[TimberWolf]

See poll

[Mich the Tester]

No, mine cost me more than a thousand euros. Bloody solicitors, they’re like contractors but more expensive.

[DimPrawn]

I wanted to vote yes, but .......

[DaveB]

As an intellectual exercise it's kept philosophers off the streets and out of trouble for centuries. As a practical question it's pointless.

If we don't have free will we have no awareness of that fact, so from our point of view we do, because we don't know we don't. If we do have free will then it's no different to the above.

[Mich the Tester]

As an intellectual exercise it's kept philosophers off the streets and out of trouble for centuries. As a practical question it's pointless.

If we don't have free will we have no awareness of that fact, so from our point of view we do, because we don't know we don't. If we do have free will then it's no different to the above.

Are we not in danger of falling into an excluded middle fallacy? Perhaps we have a sort of ‘bounded free will’ whereby we can choose freely within the bounds of those choices of which we are aware in any given context, but that we are restricted to the choices of which we are aware; that awareness is perhaps controlled by rules that are unknown to us.

In other words, I don’t know.

[MaryPoppins]

As an intellectual exercise it's kept philosophers off the streets and out of trouble for centuries. As a practical question it's pointless.

If we don't have free will we have no awareness of that fact, so from our point of view we do, because we don't know we don't. If we do have free will then it's no different to the above.

Eh?

I dunno about that.

But I do know about kittens and knitting.

[TimberWolf]

As an intellectual exercise it's kept philosophers off the streets and out of trouble for centuries. As a practical question it's pointless.

If we don't have free will we have no awareness of that fact, so from our point of view we do, because we don't know we don't. If we do have free will then it's no different to the above.

Quite. And also, if we do have free will, where does it come from? What decides what choices we make if it isn't random or based on incognisant rules.

[TimberWolf]

Are we not in danger of falling into an excluded middle fallacy? Perhaps we have a sort of ‘bounded free will’ whereby we can choose freely within the bounds of those choices of which we are aware in any given context, but that we are restricted to the choices of which we are aware; that awareness is perhaps controlled by rules that are unknown to us.

In other words, I don’t know.

How do we choose? Are rules involved?

[Mich the Tester]

Quite. And also, if we do have free will, where does it come from? What decides what choices we make if it isn't random or based on incognisant rules.

Perhaps free will doesn’t come from anywhere; surely only restrictions can come from somewhere. A bit like cold. ‘Cold’ (not the snotty sniffly kind) doesn’t exist; it is merely the absence of thermal energy.

But that would mean that free will doesn't exist. Only restrictions can exist.

[ratewhore]

Eh?

Thank God I'm not alone...