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Questions tagged [free-will]

for questions concerning the freedom of choice of rational agents (often as opposed to determinism)

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What is the difference between free-will and randomness and or non-determinism?

In relation to the question "What are the necessary conditions for an action to be regarded as a free choice?", it came up that one way to insure the possibility of free-will was to have more than one choice. But that doesn't separate free-will from…
Mitch
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Does the lack of randomness imply the lack of free will?

Let us assume that randomness does not exist. For example, even the flip of a coin is not considered random. The coin's flip can be calculated if certain variables are given (the force used for the flip, air resistance, distance from the ground,…
aanrv
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Is free will reconcilable with a purely physical world?

Many are of the opinion that there is no metaphysical world beyond the material that we can sense, and that everything is therefore governed by physical cause and effect (some believe that we cannot know if there is anything beyond our world, but…
commando
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Have there been any proposed empirical tests for free will?

Have any observational, i.e., empirical, tests been proposed for determining whether an entity has free will? That is, given an arbitrary entity, how would one test whether it has free will. Asking does not count as a valid test. Or to put it…
RussAbbott
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Was Augustine intentionally ambiguous regarding free will?

So many scholars have written about St. Augustine and his views on free will, but there is little consensus to be formed from their literature. According to John Rist: There is still no consensus of opinion on Augustine's view of each man's…
Pauzle
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What are the implications of accepting that we don't have free will?

While reading this question about the existence of free will, I thought that the implications of stating nonexistence of free will can be at least as important (and interesting) as the main question itself. Assuming that one accepts no free will. I…
KFkf
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Is free will even experienced? If not, can this be evidence for epiphenomenalism?

Epiphenomenalism is the view that mental events are caused by physical events in the brain, but have no effects upon any physical events. Many of the challenges to this view revolve around how it reduces us to nothing more than machines and goes…
user62907
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Can free-will be defined in terms of what it should give someone that they don't already have?

Some people, such as Harris, state quite confidently that free-will doesn't exist. So, if it did exist then what would it give you that you don't have now? I've never found anyone who could answer this. Sam Harris casts free-will in the same light…
scientious
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Can Free Will Exist In A Causal Material World?

India's leading daily, The Times of India can easily put other contenders of the same bracket (like the widely-praised The Sun) to shame. Today, scanning the lifestyle section, I came across the following lines in what was more of a self-help piece…
Sampark Sharma
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Can a mathematician create free will?

I'm of the firm opinion that free will (the idea of choice we exercise in an event) at least in the daily usage of the word is incompatible with the "laws of the universe" as we currently know them. Not even probability from quantum mechanics…
More Anonymous
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How can someone have a free will if they act based on their experiences?

First of all I would like to state that I have nothing to do with philosophy, I might even be totally new to the field. So far I had my own thoughts about life and how things work, mentally mostly. Maybe I don't even know how to determine the field…
Not Amused
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Is it possible to program free will?

In any computational environment(digital,neural,analog or quantum mechanical) is it possible to write or construct a program which can be construed as free will?
Dheeraj Verma
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Why use a concept of free will in reasoning if it's unproven?

The concept of free will is indeed to much religious reasoning, yet its existence is still unproven. Using an unsubstantiated assumption to prove other conclusions is problematic from a logic perspective. A few key issues with relying on free will…
user66933
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Might there be a Bell-like theorem for free will?

I suspect this question deserves to be closed on a number of grounds, but I am posing it anyway in the hope that some of you might find it interesting (most of the near duplicates were asked some years ago, so with luck you will have forgotten about…
Marco Ocram
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What is free will free of?

Free will can be seen as freedom "to" and freedom "from". What is it freedom from? Is free will free of logic? Is free will free of cause and effect? What is free will free from?
C. Stroud
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