Material evidence against free will

[james03]

Free Will exists and I've proven it by showing the infinite series you create if you assume a deterministic approach.

There is also the matter of conscience.  Why do serial murderers act in secret?  At some level, even cultural approbation, they know they are doing evil.  However if the serial murderer is just a deterministic machine, he should just act. 

If that same physical cause is also causing intellectual activity, then there is still physical causing intellectual.

There is a difference between "causing" and "influencing".

Which it shouldn't be, if Thomism has the right answer to the mind-brain problem.

Science won't solve this, as it sucks at explaining the immaterial world.  Even the physicist Feynman (can't remember his name, came up with the diagrams) admits his diagrams are non-explanatory.  They just work.  Science can't tell us HOW charge/field can change the momentum of the mass of a proton or electron.  It never will.

On the other hand, I don't think metaphysics will ever be able to tell use HOW charge/field work, or how the immaterial soul can change the immaterial charge/field in neurons to make your hand move.  Metaphysics can at least show that the immaterial can interact with the immaterial.  In other words, it is more plausible to say that the immaterial mind can alter the immaterial field then to say that an immaterial field can change the momentum of an electron in a nerve.  I'd say at least the claims are equivalent in plausibility.

In the end both metaphysics and science contribute to understanding.  Metaphysics through cause, potential, act, form, and matter.  Science through predictive mathematics.

[mikemac]

Simply more brilliance by the "professor" and "researcher" Kirin.

8 posts and you already know me so well? And whos sockpuppet do I have the pleasure of addressing?

I'm going to place a bet on Mikemac.

  I just read this tonight.  Sockpuppet, that's funny.  Sen is nobody's sockpuppet.  It looks like he is just being observant. 

[Daniel]

How can we say that man has free will, when all it will take in a few years is one man with a scalpel to change your very personality and what makes you....Well, you? "But we don't have to act on our urges!" you might say, but the studies suggest that such urges are often irresistible. As one might have put another turn on the rack in the medieval era to heighten the level of pain, all it would take is a few more pills and another incision to heighten the urge until you cave. At the moment such efforts are often clumsy, but we already can control limited agents to inspire deep depression, a heightened sense of fear or intense anger; how long will it be before we actually work out what chemical composition we need to drop to do something rather more specific like these traumas by sheer misfortune turned out to carry exactly the right combinations for these specific changes in the will?

The fallacy is that the word "irresistible urge" is equivocal. In the premise it refers to freedom of action whereas in the conclusion it refers to freedom of choice. These are not the same thing; there is such a thing as an involuntary action. But are all actions involuntary? The evidence doesn't really suggest that. (And even if it did, that still would not disprove free will. All it would show is that our will is not the efficient cause of our actions.)

edit - Also, I wouldn't even go so far as to say that the examples you cited do in fact demonstrate "irresistible" actions. Your second example - yes, the guy did suffer a stroke which was beyond his control, and yes, he did consequently experience an "irresistible" change in sexual preference... but no, it doesn't follow that his adopting of a homosexual lifestyle was also "irresistible". It's conceivable that the same person could have suffered the unavoidable stroke, experienced the irresistible change in sexual preference, and then afterwards NOT taken on a homosexual lifestyle. Because he could have willed not to do so.

[Xavier]

Atheists who make this argument (like Sam Harris and others) don't seem to realize they have given people excellent reasons not to be atheists. If there is no free will, neither a real intellectual or moral choice is ever possible; sheer nihilism and abdication of responsibility for one's actions would be the logical result of such a false and wrong worldview. When these same atheists want to critique Christianity, they themselves give the lie to their argument by presuming and speaking as if such moral and intellectual choices were possible.

Now, what is free will? Free will is a power, the real power to choose one of two or more alternatives presented to you. We can say the human will is self-determined and self-determining, because God has willed it so, as a reflection of His own Will. The intellect weighs the choices, then the will freely chooses to move to whatever it determines.

We see an example of free will way back in Genesis with regard to that murderous Cain, Gen 4:6 "And the Lord said to him: Why art thou angry? and why is thy countenance fallen? 7If thou do well, shalt thou not receive? but if ill, shall not sin forthwith be present at the door?" Further examples are given by St. James, and in Sirach 15:14, "14 God made man from the beginning, and left him in the hand of his own counsel." Moral responsibility and personal culpability, as well as the very possibility of rationality, exists because man is free.

I'm curious as to how Theologians approach the material evidence that the will, indeed the entire human psyche, personality and desires themselves can be hijacked by an outside force without any assent from the victim

You argue, if someone or some circumstances really forced me to do something, my will is no longer free. But that is only an argument, at most, for reduced culpability in that individual case, as others have pointed out.

The very fact that my will should be forced in order for the situation to hold shows that, when my will is not forced, it is entirely in my power to determine. Let me ask you, when you have a choice to lie or not lie, to curse or not curse, to blaspheme or not blaspheme, do you really think you - free from any external coercing agent - are compelled to choose one way or the other? No, you are free, you can listen to the voice of conscience that every urges us to use our free will rightly, or you can choose to discard it, and act wrongly. But you are free. Simple, first person experience teaches us we are free and can consciously make moral and other such decisions. We know what decisions made under force or duress are, and consequently also that decisions made without those attenuating circumstances are entirely our own free choice. If free will does not exist, there is no good and evil either, everything is ok, everything is unavoidable.

Does an axed tree have any choice in falling to the ground? No, it does so necessarily. Is man, a moral agent, really like that? He is compelled to kill when he kills, steal when he steals, rape when he rapes, and is also forced - without any merit or virtue therefore - to love when he loves, to share when he shares, and care when he cares? What a perverse worldview atheism leads to!

Man has free will because he has a soul, and the soul is the seat of free will. Man has free will because he was made in the Image and Likeness of a Free God Who wished we should freely come to know and love Him. That materialism leads to this kind of dead determinism is an excellent reason to reject materialism. Finally, the example of Christ, and the Martyrs, shows the human spirit, especially when aided by grace, is able to triumph over impossible odds and overcome even seemingly unthinkable situations. Who would think man could remain faithful in the midst of severe torture, and a painful death? But he can. Why? Because he willed to do so, and God assisted him.

The attempt to force them to choose wickedly failed. The will of a Man aided by God is the strongest thing in the universe, it can overcome any obstacle, if your will-power is properly developed, strongly trained, and open to grace. So it was in Christ and the Apostles.

When St. Paul says, "I can do all these things in Him Who strengtheneth me" (Phil 4:13), he shows what real strength of will consists of.