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Do you believe in free will? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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There is an argument that free will doesn't exist because there is an unbroken chain of causality we are riding on that dates back to the beginning of time. Meaning that every time you fart, scratch your nose, blink, or make lifechanging decisions there is a pre existing reason. These reasons might be anything from the sensory enviornment you were in the past minute, the hormone levels in your bloodstream at the time, hormones you were exposed to as a baby, or how you were parented growing up. No thought you have is really original and is more like a domino affect of neurons firing off in reaction to what you have experienced. What are your thoughts on this?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

There's an element of free will and an element of instinct and mechanism.

Conceptually I see the mind as a system which takes its own outputs as inputs and also reacts to externalities. I also believe in a stochastic universe so there's plenty of opportunities for these partially self-decided decisions to be unique, unpredictable and incorporating the sense of self and an introspected mental model. This is a "good enough for me" version of free will in a physical system.

I have some intuition that the brain probably undergoes some level of "cognitive bootstrapping" where at some point it goes beyond just being a mechanism and starts reacting to stimuli as according to its own learned mental model. But this is necessarily limited and the degree to which an individual gets to do this, as opposed to reacting instinctively or reflexively, varies based on their physical and mental state.

There are also instances where an individual loses their personal sense of freed will and submits it to a crowd, such as in the concept of "de-individuation"