We need free will because: the source is exactly the same for when we fuck up or when we do good. This is mighty handy because it restrains the holier-than-thou’s from putting the rest of us under the knife for the fuck up part.

Metaphorically speaking...........

I don't think we need it per say- it probably depends on how you frame free will. if you mean the ability to choose between a number of options without that choice being pre-determined or 100% causal, it gives us a way to isolate blame and responsibility to an individual (or their soul if you believe in that).

hard determinists claim there is no free will, while compatiblists would reframe free will as more of a 'free necessity', where even though no alternate choices could be made, the freedom to affect and make that choice stems from the unencumbered mind (and not external forces/confusion/chemical imbalances)

even though the idea of free will allows us to dictate morality or blame, I think that treating our actions by the effects they have, as well as treating individuals by the risks they pose to the rest of us, still allows for the same level of legal accountability, just without labeling individuals as having 'good' or 'evil' intentions/actions.

so to sum it up: I don't believe we need free will, what we really seem to need is a way to justify restraint or consequence for individuals when their actions or risk are a danger to the rest of us.

I don't believe we need free will, what we really seem to need is a way to justify restraint or consequence for individuals when their actions or risk are a danger to the rest of us. — MacGuffin

Should the "risk" be assessed by mis-actions, nature, maybe even both, would you say?

We do not need free will but the illusion of it. We are living as human being in moral communities, and we have to ascribe to other people not only agency but responsable agency. Apes do not know morality and responsability and therefore they do not need the illusion of free will. If an ape feels the urge to punish another ape, he simply does so, without any reflection.
But we humans do not function like that: When we feel the urge to punish somebody for a moral transgression, we have to justify (!) this punishment to ourselves and of course to the other members of the group. We have to say : "You could have acted differently!"

even though the idea of free will allows us to dictate morality or blame, I think that treating our actions by the effects they have, as well as treating individuals by the risks they pose to the rest of us, still allows for the same level of legal accountability, just without labeling individuals as having 'good' or 'evil' intentions/actions. — MacGuffin

It's not really the same kind of legal accountability though. The consequences would be vastly different. Being a "danger to society" would warrant the harshest sanctions regardless of what a person had already done. On the other hand, actions taken in unusual circumstances wouldn't have to be punished significantly, or at all.

Without the restraints that the notion of individual guilt establishes, it's easy to see everyone as a cog in the machine of society. And what happens to broken cogs?

why do we need free will — mujo1127

To choose whether to put on a Zappa or Stravinsky album.

Should the "risk" be assessed by mis-actions, nature, maybe even both, would you say? — THX1138

yes! agreed.

It was an open-ended question, lol (nice touch of humor).

I guess I should be boiled in a vat then. I am who I am. Guess my discipline isn't sufficient to excuse my nature.

Without the restraints that the notion of individual guilt establishes, it's easy to see everyone as a cog in the machine of society. And what happens to broken cogs? — Echarmion

I believe I see your point, could it be that a punishment as a deterrent to others resulting from one's actions (even if we don't believe the individual will repeat those actions and aren't a major threat) would also serve as a risk mitigation for the future actions of others? what I'm really trying to imply is a utilitarian approach to a legal response, but there are likely problems with that I haven't thought of

i wondered, but I agree with your options, so I truly would say both. honestly I don't see it as much different from what we do today, just without the guilt factor lol

I guess I should be boiled in a vat then. I am who I am. Guess my discipline isn't sufficient to excuse my nature. — THX1138

wait what did you do? what are you planning to do? vat boiling can be effective in extreme circumstances :D

Not only guiltless sentencing, but on the contrary, just-deserts reveling sentencing. You are right, not different from the world we live in today at all.

My only citation is that I feel kind of lonely in the vat and wonder how other wrongdoers found a way to do what they've done, yet, not end up down here with me. Guess I was just doomed from the get-go. :razz:

And personally, I do think that people whom come forward with their screw up should be assessed differently from people who are only identified as screwing up because they were caught. Very telling of a difference of conscience, from where I'm standing.

Oh, it's a messy story. I thought it was okay to mess around with someone who was dozing off (as you might be right now while reading this :joke: ) all because I had done so consensually in the past with someone else and well, kind of thought it was a thing some guys did (I'm gay btw). So, I guess I'm a sexual assailant and would-be rapist now, idk.

On an unrelated note, I am effected by thoughts of pedophilia (always consensual in my ponderings, usually of my past child self with an adult man, bizzarely enough, there have been exceptions though). What I plan to do? Keep these musings in my warped head, but not condition to deprive myself of them because I don't find the concept to be immoral and am not breaking the law while doing so. Is that vat piping-hot yet? :yikes:

Seriously, by the way, I think free will is important for making the simplest choices we can make.

Is that vat piping-hot yet? :yikes: — THX1138

dude. we all belong in the vat (maybe we are? lol)
but seriously you seem to have a healthy respect for your own feelings and when acting on your own urges would cross the legal boundary, so as long as you aren't beating yourself up over being human which is self destructive, or doing harm to others, I'd say you are just fine.

I believe I see your point, could it be that a punishment as a deterrent to others resulting from one's actions (even if we don't believe the individual will repeat those actions and aren't a major threat) would also serve as a risk mitigation for the future actions of others? what I'm really trying to imply is a utilitarian approach to a legal response, but there are likely problems with that I haven't thought of — MacGuffin

From what I remember from criminology, the main preventive effect of punishment seems to be in assuring the other members of society that a) the rules are upheld and b) people who break the rules are punished. This serves to uphold peoples trust in and identification with the rule of law.

The problem with basing your system of legal accountability purely on it's effect on other poeple is that it ends up treating the actual criminals merely as examples - means to an end.

The problem with basing your system of legal accountability purely on it's effect on other poeple is that it ends up treating the actual criminals merely as examples - means to an end. — Echarmion

could you elaborate on this? I would think we are treating their actions as examples, and their punishment as the deterrent, but I'm not sure I quite understand what you meant

could you elaborate on this? I would think we are treating their actions as examples, and their punishment as the deterrent, but I'm not sure I quite understand what you meant — MacGuffin

But if your justice system is utilitarian, you aren't really punishing people for their actions. The action is merely the trigger, the punishment then follows utilitarian reasoning.

oh okay, perhaps utilitarian is too specific a term for what I'm advocating. malign and praise the actions, not the actors, in accordance with what we feel will best promote our collective well being (including promotion of our intrinsic ideals). I wouldn't say our justice system is much different from this, but that our treatment of those who have committed crimes or performed great works is.

We need free will to better fight the darker sides of the human condition.

dude. we all belong in the vat (maybe we are? lol)
but seriously you seem to have a healthy respect for your own feelings and when acting on your own urges would cross the legal boundary, so as long as you aren't beating yourself up over being human which is self destructive, or doing harm to others, I'd say you are just fine. — MacGuffin

I'm not being self destructive and not doing harm to others. Thanks for making me feel less lonely in the vat, MacGuffin. I can now watch my legal porn with taboo themes without a care in the world again. :razz:

I get a bit tangled up with this question.

If I change ‘free will’ to ‘kidney’, then the answer is to survive. But history proves that you can survive without free will. You just won’t be free. So to say we need free will to be free I have know what free is? Is it free will?

We want to believe that we can change our situation/life therefore our choices need to be matter. We need to believe our life has not be pre-determined. That we can choose the situation we are in. We want-need to be in charge of our life.

I think that a lot of the rejection of the concept of free will stems from that others just want to indoctrinate people into whatever ideology that they seek to set forth. There is no real evidence of the rejection of free will at this point. I feel like quantum indeterminacy suffices to suggest that whether or not we have free will is, at the very least, just simply unknowable. People experience the world as if they do have free will and so philosophies should be set out as if they do have it. The lack of the potential for agency has devestating consequences for Philosophy. I'm of a quasi-simultaneous 'soft' determinist/free will position. There is a causal chain of effects that can be seen as comprising everything, but, causality is somewhat indeterminate. Everything is just the happening of whatever. The happening of it is indeterminate. The holes in Physics are where a philosophy of free will can flourish. I honestly don't know the Physics to adequately set forth such a position, but, would suggest that those who have have done so under a number of assumptions. The general consensus of mind-body thinkers seems to be of a more deterministic position which I would argue is based too much in science that bears no relation to how the mind goes about doing whatever it does. Consciousness is embodied and everything is connected as energy. Where there is indeterminacy, there is room for free thought.

Because no one can really know and everyone can agree that people do experience the world as if they do have free will, I would suggest that the experience of free will should be accepted as a given. I don't have too much of an argument to set forth aside from that, but, do believe that I do have what people would generally consider to be free will and think that it is rather unlikely that any person should convince me otherwise.

The rejection of free will through causality is basically Analytic Philosophy's equivalent to the crypto-Behaviorist, Neo-Structuralist, pseudo-Althusserian fetishization of "material conditions" levelled by the Old Left. They have just simply replaced the appeal to "Marxism" with "Science". People experience the world as if they do have free will. It's existence is thusly self-evident. Determinism is the last Judeo-Christian complex that has yet to be fully abandoned. Such sophist cult precepts belong to an era where Reason served as an antithesis to the alleged will of God.

I honestly just felt like writing a polemic and doubt that the so-called "Determinists" are really that bad. The experience that I have of the world is realistically the only sufficient evidence that I have for the existence of free will, but, I would state that it is sufficient. I honestly don't really care to argue this all that much. Whether or not people actually do have free will is totally uknowable. My inclinations are that you should act as if you do have free will because it is better to believe that people do. There's a ton of Physics and Neuroscience to learn if anyone really cares to tackle this problem. It's kind of out of my field.

It does not clarify the picture to corral the idea of determinism to be merely the epiphenomenon of those interested in validating the cancellation of direct experience.
What will you make of the argument between Luther and Erasmus in that context? How does that explain the distance between Spinoza and Descartes?

As a matter of the "history" of philosophy, any and everyone's explanation is a tale of what had to be or not. I don't see the advantages of qualifying ideas in advance of their presentation.

I would probably side with Erasmus, but, give a certain degree of credibility to Spinoza in spite of that I think that something like the cogito ergo sum is sufficient evidence. I honestly don't have too much of an argument to set forth in favor of free will. I'm just really skeptical of deterministic worldviews. Such a position lends too much in the way in favor of advancing an ideology. I was basically accusing those parties of not acting in good faith so that I could reinforce what I think is a minority position within the free will/determinism debate. I would contend that such strategic axioms are reasonable, but, that people should not believe in them too directly. I do think that it is the case that the majority deterministic stance relies too much upon "Scientism". They're probably not quite as ideological as the old Left, though. Like I said, I was just kind of in the mood to level a polemic. Anyone can take that however they feel like doing so.

The concept of free will has been present for long enough to be considered as an eternity. It is good and its refutation has negative consequences. That it is good may not bear any relation to whether or not it exists, but, its refutation does have negative consequences. It would be irresponsible to suggest that free will does not exist without considering what that may entail. The potential ramifications of Determinism do not prove for it to be false, but, they do exist. The idea is qualified. There is no way to see it otherwise.

The idea is qualified. There is no way to see it otherwise. — thewonder

Well, what if one disagreed? Saying there is the line in the sand as you describe a "necessity" is presented as a limit to what is possible. There is a bit of determination in every expression of free will.

One way to look at it is that "free will" is not a self evident thing but a topic brought up in specific situations.