Zak asked:

Someone give me a convincing argument against the reasoning that humans have "free will". I've
heard the argument that if you could calculate everything at a certain moment you could predict the
future. But that doesn't mean we don't have free will, it just means we can predict the future. I think
that a lot of philosophers take the "everything has been determined" standpoint because they are
pretentious.

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I don't know that I can supply what you are after regarding Freewill. But take care about formulations
of Determinism.

You pick upon that popular picture of the clockwork universe in which the pre-arranged future is
pictured as being rather like the modern weather forecast only better. Observations about present
conditions are made and then computations according to known patterns and laws predict the
predetermined future states. Now, the weather forecast sometimes gets things wrong. But you think
of the predetermined future as that plan of events which a thoroughly perfectscientific understanding
of everything that holds in the present would have predicted: "if you could calculate everything at a
certain moment you could predict the future".

Problematically, your choice of words here makes the truth of determinism dependant upon the
conceivability (not practicality or actuality, in the way of which there are several obvious obstacles,
but conceivability) of 'a perfect scientific understanding of the present'. And I think that there are
several reasons why this perfect understanding isn't conceivable. The first and most serious is that
the concept of a perfect measurement can't be made sense of. Even supposing that you could get
magically instantaneous and non-intervening methods for measuring the position and spin and so on
of every single atom in the universe, there would still be the problem that the measurements from this
survey would have to be returned in numerical and computable form. If they are to be computed then
the number of decimal points in the observations, and thus the degree of accuracy, could not be
infinite. So, any set of data from which calculations could be performed would of necessity contain
imperfection and error. This necessary imperfection in the information could only lead to a necessary
imperfection in the prediction. Thus you cannot (and not even conceivably) "calculate everything at a
certain moment [and] predict the [determined] future".

Now, this is just to say that you cannot (as it is usually supposed) understand determinism in terms of
an ideal science, with the determined future as that which a perfect science would correctly predict.
Maybe it is possible to understand determinism in a different way, but since the attraction of
determinism seems to derive mostly from faith in science and technology (the "clockwork universe"),
nobody much seems to be trying.

David Robjant

Did you choose to be born? Have you a choice between mortality and immortality? Can you wilfully
increase or decrease your height? etc. etc. etc.

It seems that any free will we are able to exercise falls within set parameters. To illustrate with a
simple analogy, Consider yourself locked in a windowless room with a few pieces of furniture, your
choices will be limited to moving the furniture around, the walls and the locked door will ensure that
the number of choices available aredeterminedwithin these constraining parameters. If your captors
control the light switch outside your room, your light and dark (night and day) will also be outside your
choice. As I say, a very simple analogy, but the choices in life are rather like this, a limited freedom
within a determined scenario.

We can make good choices in life, or we can make choices we afterwards regret, but, over all, we
find some powerful restricting boundaries in nature and very much under the influence of cause and
effect. Most people live their lives burdened with unfulfilled desires.

I find it difficult to respond to your accusation that philosophers who support determinism are
"pretentious". I require to see the premises of your argument, the claim you make is an unsupported
conclusion.

John Brandon

Try Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wantingby Daniel C. Dennett. I think you will find
the author very readable, and his text directly addresses your question.

Stuart Burns

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