Scientific Justification for Free Will?

[Divine Insight]

Is there any scientific justification for the notion of Free Will?

Question #1. If you believe their is, can you please state your scientific evidence for the existence of Free Will.

Question #2. If you believe there is no scientific justification for the notion of Free Will, then please explain how we can have any scientific justification for holding anyone responsible for their actions. In fact, wouldn't the very notion of personal responsibility be scientifically unsupportable?

[Divine Insight]

Otseng, I realize your following comments were in response to Peter. However, having a deep interest in the topic of this thread which I have started, I feel compelled to respond to some of the things you have stated here.

The main point of this thread is "Is there any scientific justification for free will?" And as agreed by many people in this thread, there are none. The corollary to this is that personal responsibility is scientifically unsupportable.

I am in total agreement with this.

Another corollary that I mentioned is that without free will, morality is meaningless. There is no morality without free will.

I am in passionate disagreement with this. Very passionate disagreement.

Relative, contextual, or subjective morality is NOT meaningless, IMHO.

So you are making an absolute statement here that I feel cannot be supported.

What you can say is that "Without free will, absolute morality is meaningless." That's fine. And it certainly would be.

But to simply say, "Without free will morality is meaningless", is wrong.

Morality can still exist as a subjective, contextual, or relative ideal in a meaningful way. It would certainly have meaning. It may not have any absolute meaning, but that very concept right there would be a meaningless concept itself in a non-spiritual secular world.

You seem to be fixated on the extreme importance of absolutism to the point where you appear to feel that if things can't be said to be absolute then they can have no meaning at all.

And it is that perspective that I passionately disagree with here.

In a theist worldview, a god (it doesn't have to be the Biblical God) supports the notion of free will, personal responsibility, and morality. Things can be absolutely morally right and wrong. So, we can say that it is wrong to kill someone just because of their ethnicity, regardless of time or place. It's wrong now, it's wrong in 1940 in Germany, and it's wrong at any time in the future.

I agree. This is true within the context you have framed here. The God would be the authority that decides what constitutes absolute morality. And the particular scenario that you have described could indeed be absolutely immoral by a God's decree.

However, I would like to also point out that your particular scenario includes a concept of INTENT. And this is a very important concept to pay attention to IMHO.

The implied intent here is to kill someone specifically for the reason of their ethnicity. In other words, even as subjective secularists could decree such an intent to be murder and not be a justified reason for killing someone.

The important thing to realize here is that, in both cases, some sentient beings have decreed this morality. In the case you argue for, that sentient being was a God (that forces the issue of absolutism because there is no higher authority to trump God). In the case of humans decreeing this to be immoral it's simply subjective to the humans who have decreed it to be so. We also know that there exist humans who would not decree this to be so.

In short, you are basically assuming that any sane person would agree that killing someone based purely on ethnicity is wrong. The reason you can safely assume that most people will agree with this is precisely because we live in a world where this sentiment is actually shared by the vast majority.

But in a way, you have cheated and picked something that already has a great deal of subjective support. What about belittling, degrading, harassing, or potentially killing people based on their sexual orientation? We all know that according to the Bible the Biblical God hates homosexuality and there are places in the Bible where this God instructs that if two men lay together as with a woman they are to be stoned to death.

Is that an absolute morality because some God has decreed it to be so?

I don't know about you, but I'm certainly hoping that humans will move beyond that ideology.

As you agree, in a secular view, one cannot justify that anything is really right or wrong, it is just personal preference. Personal preferences change and cultures change. Even popular opinion changes. There is no concept of absolute morality in such a worldview.

I agree with this as well. But I don't see why this represents a problem unless a person is obsessed with a need for absolutism.

You need to make a case for why you feel that absolutism is of such extreme importance. Perhaps that very desire or need right there may actually be entirely subjective on your behalf? Have you ever thought of that?

Secularists are then unable to scientifically justify free will, personal responsibility, and morality. However, in the real world, one cannot escape the ability to decide; one cannot throw away personal responsibility; and one cannot really believe that morality does not exist.

But morality only exists in humans. It doesn't exist in the animal kingdom insofar as we can tell. At least not to a degree any greater than is needed for a species to survive.

Subjective morality in a species like humans would arise naturally. We are a social species that relies upon a social structure to survive. That very need to survive forces us to create a system of morality as a matter of practical survival. And we've done that.

After all, just look around. Every human culture on planet Earth has created their own worldview and religion all of which contain ideals of morality, yet all of which differ in the details of what each culture considers to be moral.

The most obvious elements of moral systems are the ones that are most important to any social culture. Do not kill, do not steal, respect your neighbor, respect the laws of marriage and parenting, etc. These fundamental laws of morality will naturally evolve in any social species over time if only because a species that doesn't abide by these principles will surely die out.

There is then a conflict for secularists. One way they approach it is to redefine the terms. Free will is not really free will, it is an illusion. It's incoherent to me to say that someone really has free will if everything is deterministic. Morality is also redefined to be subjective morality. This is not really morality either, but simply preference and culture.

Again, I agree with much of what you say. But I disagree when you say, "This is nor really morality, but simply preference of culture".

In a secular world that is what constitutes morality so where do you justify proclaiming that "It's not really morality"? That very demand right there is nothing other than your own personal subjective opinion.

You are basically demanding semantically that morality = absolute morality, otherwise it doesn't fit your personal ideal of what the term should mean.

But your very stance on that is nothing more than a subjective stance.

Another way they approach it is to attack Christianity. However, this is moving the goalpost. Christianity does not have exclusive claims on free will and morality. The argument is that spirituality/religion in general supports these concepts, not that Christianity alone supports these concepts.

For me personally, even if accept that there exist a God, and that there exist an absolute morality decreed by this God, I would still attack Christianity because, IMHO, Christianity actually teaches and preaches extremely immoral concept. Concepts, that I could never believe any genuinely all-wise supreme being could support, much less actually direct men to follow.

So even if I were to accept a notion of absolute morality I would still reject Christianity as clearly having nothing to do with any all-wise God.

Thus, the most coherent position is the supernaturalist viewpoint. It provides support for free will, personal responsibility, and morality. The secularist viewpoint is unable to provide proper justification for these concepts.

With this I have some agreement and some disagreement.

Secularism can actually work with a pseudo concept of "Free Will".

How so? Well, humans have an ability to understand logic and reason. At least the vast majority of them exhibit this ability. Clearly not all do. Therefore since humans can think logically is seems reasonable on the surface to expect that they can understand laws and know when they are breaking them. Thus, in this sense, any human can be held responsible on a purely logical level.

In other words, if a human breaks a law, they can be held accountable for not being logical. The only problem at that point is whether or not an illogical human can be held personally responsible for being illogical? But that's a whole deeper question.

You are always talking about real world examples, but even in the spiritual view of things we allow for mental illness, disease, etc, to relieve a person of personal responsibility. For example, if someone goes insane and starts killing people and it's discovered that they are suffering from advance rabies, we're not going to hold them personally responsible for what they have done because we realize that they had no free will choice when under the influence of this terrible disease.

So even in a spiritual view there are situations where personal responsibility no longer applies. Surely a righteous just God isn't going to cast someone into hell for having done something whilst they were suffering from advanced rabies?

In other words, the only real difference between a secular view and a spiritual view is the line where personal responsibility breaks down. That's really the only difference.

Of course, there would also be another difference. In a secular world, humans are often hard-pressed to know precisely why a person did what they did. Supposedly an omniscient God would know the intent behind the actions. Humans can only guess at intent.

Actually, for this very reason, humans have no business holding people personally responsible for anything whether they have free will or not. So how ironic is that? We are far better off assuming a secular world. It's the safer assumption. We have no business judging anyone's intent or whether they even have free will.

We're probably much further ahead by assuming there is no such thing as free will and treat everyone accordingly at least in terms of holding them personally responsible for their actions in terms of blaming them for their choices.

Obviously, we'd need to remove dangerous people from the rest of the society just as a matter of safety, but that has nothing to do with blaming these malfunctioning people on a personal level. We really should move beyond the whole blame game whether there exists a God or not.

In fact, religious people are the last ones who should blame anyone for anything. If they truly believe in their God they should leave that up to their God.

[Divine Insight]

Who said morality doesn't exist? ABSOLUTE morality doesn't exist.

This seems to be Otseng's entire argument.

I think what the problem is at its core, is that in a sense Otseng is right. If reality is indeed purely secular with no spiritual essence, then there truly is no such thing as absolute morality. And because of this, Otseng is then holding out the idea that morality itself cannot exist in any absolute sense.

And this is why he says that if we are making up subjective morality, that "isn't really morality" it's just objective opinions.

But the bottom line is that this is what morality in the real world may indeed be. Nothing more than subjective opinions.

Otseng can't go there because, in his mind, he has already accepted the idea of morality as having some concrete absolute reality. And if that's not the case then, in his mind, to speak of opinionated subjective morality is to corrupt the entire concept.

I understand where Otseng is coming from in that sense. But I agree with you, Peter, in the real world the whole concept of morality is a human invention to begin with. We invented the very concept.

Clearly nature herself has never exhibited any sense of absolute morality.

On the contrary the natural world is extremely cruel in terms of the human concept of morality.

Therefore, I say to Otseng:

Why even imagine there to be such a thing as absolute morality, when we don't see any signs of morality outside of human societies? Even animals don't appear to have any sense of morality. And the natural world most certainly doesn't exhibit any signs of morality or compassion for that matter.

So on what grounds can we even begin to justify an ideal of absolute morality?

[JohnPaul]

[Replying to post 230 by instantc]
instantc wrote:

Seems like we agree here then, regardless of whether I am a bag of chemicals or a magical Bible-man with a free soul, all my choices are necessarily predetermined by the reasons they are based on and my rational capabilities.

It seems to me that you are denying the existence of some magical entity called a soul, and at the same time you are claiming that you have such a thing. Otherwise, what is it that perceives and understands these "reasons" and has the "rational capabilities" that you claim determine your choices? At the present level of science, these capabilities cannot be explained for a bag of chemicals, so if you have such capabilities, you must be a magical entity.

[help3434]

Secularists are then unable to scientifically justify free will, personal responsibility, and morality. However, in the real world, one cannot escape the ability to decide; one cannot throw away personal responsibility; and one cannot really believe that morality does not exist.

There is then a conflict for secularists. One way they approach it is to redefine the terms. Free will is not really free will, it is an illusion. It's incoherent to me to say that someone really has free will if everything is deterministic. Morality is also redefined to be subjective morality. This is not really morality either, but simply preference and culture.

Just because secularists are unable to "scientifically" justify those things, does not mean they can't justify those things at all. No conflict there.

[help3434]

In a theist worldview, a god (it doesn't have to be the Biblical God) supports the notion of free will, personal responsibility, and morality. Things can be absolutely morally right and wrong. So, we can say that it is wrong to kill someone just because of their ethnicity, regardless of time or place. It's wrong now, it's wrong in 1940 in Germany, and it's wrong at any time in the future.

Nope, an omniscient creator would be 100% responsible for everything that everyone did. A universe created by an omniscient being would be the absolute opposite of a universe with free will.

[Nilloc James]

I see a lot of people saying "if no supernatural, then no objective morallity"

Could someone explain why that is true?

[Divine Insight]

Secularists are then unable to scientifically justify free will, personal responsibility, and morality. However, in the real world, one cannot escape the ability to decide; one cannot throw away personal responsibility; and one cannot really believe that morality does not exist.

There is then a conflict for secularists. One way they approach it is to redefine the terms. Free will is not really free will, it is an illusion. It's incoherent to me to say that someone really has free will if everything is deterministic. Morality is also redefined to be subjective morality. This is not really morality either, but simply preference and culture.

Just because secularists are unable to "scientifically" justify those things, does not mean they can't justify those things at all. No conflict there.

How can they justify holding someone responsible for having "free will" if they can't even show that such a thing exists?

How would that be any different from religious people accusing people of being "sinners" when they can't show that such a thing as "sin" exists?

[help3434]

[Replying to post 244 by Divine Insight]

What about personal responsibility and morality? Do you believe those things exist?

[Divine Insight]

I see a lot of people saying "if no supernatural, then no objective morallity"

Could someone explain why that is true?

I think it's best explained by simple asking you to define what "objective morality" could even mean outside of the concept of an absolute objective authority?

Where would you come up with an absolute objective authority?

The religion people claim it's a supernatural God.

However, I'll be the first to object to that notion. After all to the religious people I would ask, "If the creator of the universe has objective morality, then does the universe itself not obey that standard?"

Do we see any absolute morality in the behavior of animals? No.

Do we see any absolute morality in the behavior of nature herself? no.

Where do we ever even see the concept of morality come up? Well, clearly it's a human invention. A concept constructed by the human mind. And it's clearly not even absolute since all humans don't even agree on precisely what should constitute moral or immoral behavior.

So on what grounds to religious people even suspect that there should even be such a thing as absolute morality?

Can they even point to such a thing?

Even religious myths and doctrines are in self-contradiction and self-inconsistency with their own claims of what should be moral or immoral. This is especially true of Christianity where the moral values of Jesus are clearly different from the moral values taught in the name of the Old Testament God.

So where would we find an example of any absolute morality to even point to?

And if we can't find such an example, then why claim that it must exist?

All we have ever seen around us is relative subjective human opinions.

That's it.

[help3434]

[Replying to post 246 by Divine Insight]

I think that people do have natural rights that transcend time and culture. Is that objective morality?