You cannot decide all the sensory stimuli in your environment, your hormone levels this morning, whether something traumatic happened to you in the past, the socioeconomic status of your parents, your fetal environment, your genes, whether your ancestors were farmers or herders. Let me state this most broadly, probably at this point too broadly for most readers: we are nothing more or less than the cumulative biological and environmental luck, over which we had no control, that has brought us to any moment. source Unverified

1730 God created man a rational being, conferring on him the dignity of a person who can initiate and control his own actions. “God willed that man should be ‘left in the hand of his own counsel,’ so that he might of his own accord seek his Creator and freely attain his full and blessed perfection by cleaving to him.” Man is rational and therefore like God; he is created with free will and is master over his acts. 1731 Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one’s own responsibility. By free will one shapes one’s own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude. source Unverified

No. There was once a powerful argument against free will based on the supposed “determinism” of the laws of physics, but this determinism was overthrown by quantum mechanics in the 1920s. “Physical determinism” is the idea that the laws of physics uniquely determine how any physical system will develop over time. In the 19th century, this appeared to be correct, because all the physical laws that had been discovered, such as Newton’s laws of mechanics and gravity, had deterministic equations. It was widely expected that this would also turn out to be true of the complete laws of physics. Consequently, many people began to doubt the reality of free will. source Unverified

So on this view, again, free will is an illusion – you never really do anything freely. And that flies in the face of our experience of ourselves as free agents. I can freely do certain things or freely choose to think about certain things. I am not simply determined by my brain states. So freedom of the will – if you believe in that – gives you reason to believe in the reality of the soul and to reject these reductive and non-reductive physicalist views. source Unverified

Hard determinism need not be the nihilistic philosophy it’s cracked up to be. If we were to give up the idea of duality and the belief in free will, it might help us to gain something in the process. For example, if the “you” that says that you consciously chose your actions is an “unreliable reporter,” could it also be an unreliable reporter for other things, like when we tell ourselves that we’re ugly, fat, incompetent, or doomed to fail? In fact, this updated version of the self is a cornerstone of so-called “third wave psychotherapies” like acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) and mindfulness-based therapy. [...] In order to understand the true nature of the self, it may be worth abandoning some of our time-honored intuitions like free will and duality in favor of a more neuroscientifically grounded, ongoing process of self-inquiry. Equipped with such enhanced self-awareness, who knows what mental health benefits might result? (2014) source Unverified

If the self is an illusion, what is your position on free will? Free will is certainly a major component of the self-illusion, but it is not synonymous. Both are illusions, but the self-illusion extends beyond the issues of choice and culpability to other realms of human experience. From what I understand, I think you and I share the same basic position about the logical impossibility of free will. I also think that compatibilism (that determinism and free will can co-exist) is incoherent. We certainly have more choices today to do things that are not in accord with our biology, and it may be true that we should talk about free will in a meaningful way, as Dennett has argued, but that seems irrelevant to the central problem of positing an entity that can make choices independently of the multitude of factors that control a decision. (2012) source Unverified

Robert Lawrence Kuhn: Al, you believe that God knows the future, right? Alvin Plantinga: Right, I do. Robert Lawrence Kuhn: You also believe that human beings have free will. Alvin Plantinga: I believe that too, right. [...] Uh, well, first of all, I’d have to ask why there’s a problem about that. source Unverified

If consciousness is fundamental reality, then there’s no conflict. Free will and determinism are complementarities, just like wave and particle are complementarities. So at the most fundamental level there’s the potential for both. Now the conditioned mind, which we all are, mostly, in fact 99.9999% of behavior in the universe is deterministic, and it is cause effect related, okay? But if you really understand consciousness, then even causality is an illusion. There’s no such thing as causality. It’s all correlation in an infinite ground of being and it’s nonlocal and cause effect are also illusions. But on the materialistic level, yes, everything is determined. The classical brain, it is determined. And everybody out there is a walking robot. They’re bundles of conditioned reflexes and nerves that are constantly being triggered by people and circumstance into very predictable outcomes. But if you really understand consciousness, that’s one end of the spectrum. Then as we become more conscious of our consciousness, okay more in the realm of possibility, then you start to have a little bit of free will. source Unverified

Two points I would make. First, I don't accept that the world is a determined, the physical world is a deterministic system. I think quantum theory has suggested otherwise. The more normal interpretation of quantum theory is just that on the very small scale, how a fundamental particle will behave is not predetermined. The very attempt to suggest that certain experimental results have the consequence that our intentions don't affect our brain events depends on a certain kind of evidence is what subjects tell us. And we believe that evidence because we believe that their intentions caused them to tell this. So, the only way of proving that your intentions don't cause your brain events is by believing certain evidence, which depends on the assumption that your intentions do cause your brain events. So, I regard this as a self-defeating program. source Unverified

One prevalent idea is that freedom requires a supernatural ability to transcend the laws of nature, because otherwise we would appear to be mere puppets of cause and effect. This makes free will into something mysterious, which would set us apart from the rest of creation. As this notion contradicts everything we know about the world, it is no surprise that ever more people are concluding that free will must be an illusion. Yet all around us, every day, we see a very natural kind of freedom – one that is completely compatible with determinism. It is the kind that living things need to pursue their goals in a world that continually presents them with multiple possibilities. Our intuitive sense that we have free will is based upon this behavioural freedom. And unlike the old mystical idea, this natural ability to shape our future is central to our own wellbeing and that of society. This is what FQ sets out to capture. (2021) source Unverified

Right. Uh, I don't think that that conclusion needs to be drawn. I, uh, I think we can take seriously our self-conception and take seriously, what we increasingly are learning about from science about the details of how neurophysiological, um, processes shape how we behave, um, but still supposed we do have capacities to make choices. I think, uh, a fundamental distinction one needs to draw to, to begin to see the possibility of reconciling these two visions, is between some things having causes and some things being wholly determined by, um, some set of causal factors. Uh, I think all of our choices, as well as all of our mental life, more generally, has physical causes. There – there are factors that influence why I'm thinking the thoughts I am, even there – there are physically embedded factors influencing me to take seriously certain options when I, uh, make a choice, versus other options that I don't even consider. [...] Now, that could be an illusion, right? But there's no necessity to suppose that it's an illusion just from the fact that, uh, any choice capacity that I have is at least a causal product of that very capacity, there being a properly functioning brain. source Unverified

I can live without God, but I need free will. Without free will life makes no sense, it lacks meaning. (2019) source Unverified

If our instinct cannot support the idea of free will, then we lose our main rationale for resisting the claim that free will is an illusion. (2011) source Unverified

As I explain in my book, there are rational arguments in support of the view that free will exists. (2019) source Unverified

I'm a free will skeptic [...] who we are and what we do is ultimately the result of factors beyond our control. source Unverified

our intentional actions continually flow into the world, changing the world and the relations of our bodies to it. source Unverified

Will, then, is not a faculty which can be called free. 'Free-will' is a word absolutely devoid of sense [...] a chimera unworthy to be combated. (1764) source Unverified

Consequently, penalty and reward would be unjust if human beings did not have free will. [...] Hence God ought to have given free will to human beings. (395) source Unverified

That there is no such thing. Free Will has always existed in words, but it stops there, I think—stops short of fact. (1906) source Unverified

So a free will and a will under moral laws are one and the same. (1785) source Unverified

There cannot be any such thing as free will; the very words are a contradiction [...] that which obeys the law of causation cannot be free. (1896) source Unverified

This is what many call free will, and most scientists and philosophers agree that it is an illusion. Our actions are in fact literally predestined, determined by the laws of physics, the state of the universe, long before we were born, and, perhaps, by random events at the quantum level. We chose none of this, and so free will does not exist. I agree with the consensus, but it's not the big news that many of my colleagues seem to think it is. (2012) source Unverified

Let me return to the title of this post: “Free Will Isn’t Independent of Biology; It's Enabled by It.” I hope you now see what I mean. Yes, it’s always our brain doing the choosing. But we conscious agents are the erstwhile controllers of that brain, in the same way that the computer program controls the computer. Thus, selves have a legitimate (indeed, an indispensable) status in the material universe. We are conscious, language-using beings, with imaginations that can escape the current reality, to simulate possible futures—and to select and work toward the possible future we want. This leads us to the real question: Can we use our free will wisely? The answer, derived from research in personality and positive psychology, is “yes,” but it takes experience, reflection, and maturity to do so. Here’s my belief: If we have an ultimate purpose, this is it. (2022) source Unverified

Does this mean that we must embrace the modern scientific view and put aside the ancient myth of voluntary choice? No. We can't do that: too much of what we think and do revolves around those old beliefs. Consider how our social lives depend upon the notion of responsibility and how little that idea would mean without our belief that personal actions are voluntary. Without that belief, no praise or shame could accrue to actions that were caused by Cause, nor could we assign any credit or blame to deeds that came about by Chance. What could we make our children learn if neither they nor we perceived some fault or virtue anywhere? We also use the idea of freedom of will to justify our judgments about good and evil. A person can entertain a selfish impulse, yet turn it aside because it seems wrong, and that must happen when some self-ideal has intervened to overrule another goal. We can feel virtuous when we think that we ourselves have chosen to resist an evil temptation. But if we suspected that such choices were not made freely, but by the interference of some hidden agency, we might very well resent that interference. Then we might become impelled to try to wreck the precious value-schemes that underlie our personalities or become depressed about the futility of a predestination tempered only by uncertainty. Such thoughts must be suppressed. No matter that the physical world provides no room for freedom of will: that concept is essential to our models of the mental realm. Too much of our psychology is based on it for us to ever give it up. We're virtually forced to maintain that belief, even though we know it's false — except, of course, when we're inspired to find the flaws in all our beliefs, whatever may be the consequence to cheerfulness and mental peace. (1986) source Unverified

Maybe this early signal isn't a full decision, it's just like a nudge that you get, it's just biasing you one way, but its not really finally making up your mind. Decisions are caused by unconscious brain processes, then consciousness kicks in later. It is subjective experience that you think that you have free will. It's something that is implausible, its incompatible with the scientific deterministic universe anyway. (2012) source Unverified

STEVEN PINKER: I do believe that there is such a thing as free will but by that I do not mean that there is some process that defies the laws of physical cause and effect. As my colleague Joshua Greene once put it, it is not the case that every time you make a decision a miracle occurs. So I don't believe that. I believe that decisions are made by neurophysiological processes in the brain that respect all the laws of physics. On the other hand it is true that when I decide what to say next when I pick an item from a menu for dinner it's not the same as when the doctor hits my kneecap with a hammer and my knee jerks. It's just a different physiological process and one of them we use the word free will to characterize the more deliberative, slower, more complex process by which behavior is selected in the brain. That process involves the aggregation of many diverse kinds of information – our memory, our goals, our current environment, our expectation of how other people will judge that action. Those are all information streams that affect that process. It's not completely predictable in that there may be random or chaotic or nonlinear effects that mean that even if you put the same person in the same circumstance multiple times they won't make the same choice every time. Identical twins who have almost identical upbringings, put them in the same chair, face them with the same choices. They may choose differently. Again, that's not a miracle. That doesn't mean that there is some ghost in the machine that is somehow pushing the neural impulses around. But it just means that the brain like other complex systems is subject to some degree of unpredictability. At the same time free will wouldn't be worth having and certainly wouldn't' be worth extolling in world discussions if it didn't respond to expectations of reward, punishment, praise, blame. When we say that someone – we're punishing or rewarding someone based on what they chose to do we do that in the hope that that person and other people who hear about what happens will factor in how their choices will be treated by others and therefore there'll be more likely to do good things and less likely to do bad things in the expectation that if they choose beneficial actions better things will happen to them. So paradoxically one of the reasons that we want free will to exist is that it be determined by the consequences of those choices. And on average it does. People do obey the laws more often than not. They do things that curry favor more often than they bring proprium on their heads but not with 100 percent predictability. So that process is what we call free will. It's different from many of the more reflexive and predictable behaviors that we can admit but it does not involve a miracle. source Unverified

I suspect that the claim that free will is an illusion is often made in haste, in ignorance, [...] What is not illusory is self-control. (2013) source Unverified

Choices are not made freely - there are all kinds of constraints on it. I hated the idea of human free will. (2005) source Unverified

NOT a necessary forced conclusion. Free will in our normal sense means that I could have, contrary to fact, decided and done something else. (2011) source Unverified

If we define free will as the power to do otherwise, the choice to veto one impulse over another is free won’t. (2012) source Unverified

the notion of having free will is an illusion. It's a useful illusion. (2023) source Unverified

Free will is simply an obvious aspect of human experience. [...] I don't believe that it's the case. (1983) source Unverified

I answer that, Man has free-will: otherwise counsels, exhortations, commands, prohibitions, rewards, and punishments would be in vain. (1265) source Unverified

our mental conditions are simply the symbols in consciousness of the changes which take place automatically in the organism; [...]. We are conscious automata. (1874) source Unverified

man is condemned to be free. [...] from the moment that he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does. (1946) source Unverified

Man is necessitated in all his actions, that his free will is a chimera, [...]. 'But,' you will say, 'I feel free.' This is an illusion, [...] (1772) source Unverified

I have taken an experimental approach to this question. Freely voluntary acts are preceded by a specific electrical change in the brain that begins 550 ms before the act. Human subjects became aware of intention to act 350-400 ms after RP starts, but 200 ms. before the motor act. The volitional process is therefore initiated unconsciously. But the conscious function could still control the outcome; it can veto the act. Free will is therefore not excluded. These findings put constraints on views of how free will may operate; it would not initiate a voluntary act but it could control performance of the act. The findings also affect views of guilt and responsibility. But the deeper question still remains: Are freely voluntary acts subject to macro-deterministic laws or can they appear without such constraints, non-determined by natural laws and ‘truly free'? (1999) source Unverified

Are we the authors of our own stories? Or is our apparent freedom of choice really an illusion? [...] We, in contrast, are causes of things in our own right. We have agency: We make our own choices and are in charge of our own actions. I am not willing to give up on free will so easily. In this book I argue that we really are agents. We make decisions, we choose, we act — we are causal forces in the universe. These are the fundamental truths of our existence and absolutely the most basic phenomenology of our lives. If science seems to be suggesting otherwise, the correct response is not to throw our hands up and say, “Well, I guess everything we thought about our own existence is a laughable delusion.” It is to accept instead that there is a deep mystery to be solved and to realize that we may need to question the philosophical bedrock of our scientific approach if we are to reconcile the clear existence of choice with the apparent determinism of the physical universe. (2023) source Unverified

I think, in some strong sense, free will is an illusion. In neuroscience, we have a real problem with the idea that a conscious event, which is somehow independent of the brain, which is occurring only in the mind, but not in the brain, can somehow trigger the brain activity, which then triggers the movement of my arm. From a neuroscientific point of view, there is no conscious mind independent of the brain. So, the way that we think about free will in our everyday lives, in which Descartes summarized for us, is that our conscious thoughts cause our actions, but really, this is not neuroscientifically possible. So, no neuroscientists are really surprised by the result of the Libet experiment, because consciousness has got to be a product of our brain activity. [...] I think the work that we’ve been doing on this project suggests that if you do believe in free will it may not be as strong as you think it is. And I find that quite surprising because in our everyday lives we’re very attached to our idea of free will. Which I believe is the imagination. source Unverified

Do we consciously cause our actions, or do they happen to us? Philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, theologians, and lawyers have long debated the existence of free will versus determinism. With the publication of The Illusion of Conscious Will in 2002, Daniel Wegner proposed an innovative and provocative answer: the feeling of conscious will is created by the mind and brain; it helps us to appreciate and remember our authorship of the things our minds and bodies do. Yes, we feel that we consciously will our actions, Wegner says, but at the same time, our actions happen to us. Although conscious will is an illusion (“the most compelling illusion”), it serves as a guide to understanding ourselves and to developing a sense of responsibility and morality. (2017) source Unverified

I am willing to suppose it is an illusion since so many people insist that they have free will, even if none of them can show what they mean or where this free will hides. But I’m insisting it is an illusion. It could just be a silly bit of nonsense. (2011) source Unverified

I think we all, whether we are religious or not, recognize that free will is a reality. (2006) source Unverified

What is being abolished is autonomous man—the inner man, the homunculus, the possessing demon, the man defended by the literatures of freedom and dignity. (1971) source Unverified

As for determinism and the denial of real free will, that is a conclusion which, so to speak, goes without saying for scientism. (2009) source Unverified

I am a determinist. As such, I do not believe in free will. (1929) source Unverified

The Error of Free-Will. At present we no longer have any mercy upon the concept ‘free-will’: we know only too well what it is—the most egregious theological trick that has ever existed for the purpose of making mankind ‘responsible’ in a theological manner,—that is to say, to make mankind dependent upon theologians. I will now explain to you only the psychology of the whole process of inculcating the sense of responsibility. Men were thought of as ‘free’ in order that they might be judged and punished—in order that they might be held guilty: consequently every action had to be regarded as voluntary, and the origin of every action had to be imagined as lying in consciousness (—in this way the most fundamentally fraudulent character of psychology was established as the very principle of psychology itself). [...] Even the priest knows quite as well as everybody else does that there is no longer any ‘God’, any ‘sinner’ or any ‘Saviour’, and that ‘free will’, and ‘a moral order of the universe’ are lies. (1889) source Unverified

Their brains, in a kind of random walk, continuously preactivate, discard and reconfigure their options, and evaluate their possible short-term and long-term consequences. [...] there is plenty of evidence that an animal’s behaviour cannot be reduced to responses. Our experiments show that they actively initiate behaviour. (2009) source Unverified

Free will is granted to all men. If one desires to turn himself to the path of good and be righteous, the choice is his. Should he desire to turn to the path of evil and be wicked, the choice is his. [...] There is no one who can prevent him from doing good or bad. A person should not entertain the thesis held by the fools among the gentiles and the majority of the undeveloped among Israel that, at the time of a man's creation, The Holy One, blessed be He, decrees whether he will be righteous or wicked. source Unverified

Imagine, that I’m deliberating whether to do my duty, such as to parachute into enemy territory, or something more mundane like to risk my job by reporting on some wrongdoing. If everyone accepts that there is no free will, then I’ll know that people will say, ‘Whatever he did, he had no choice—we can’t blame him.’ So I know I’m not going to be condemned for taking the selfish option. [...] the more people accept the determinist picture, the worse things will get. We cannot afford for people to internalize the truth. [...] look the dark truth in the face. (2016) source Unverified

I am talking about the kind of free will that suggests that ‘I’ can freely choose to do something that is independent of all other influences – memes, genes, environment and so on. In other words, ‘magical’ contra-causal free will. Someone like Daniel Dennett would say ‘nobody believes in that anyway’ – but they do! Give a lecture to a hundred people and ask them if they believe their conscious thoughts cause their actions, and they will say ‘yes’. That’s the kind of free will that I’m talking about. No – not if you mean that ‘I’ as a conscious being in charge of this body made the decision. I would say the choice was made because of multiple causes going back into the past. [...] I haven’t chosen to have that belief. [...] it was not ‘I’ who decided. (2017) source Unverified

According to free will skepticism, we human beings lack the sort of free will that is at issue in the traditional debate. source Unverified

People certainly have a will and they make decisions all the time. But most of these decisions are not made freely. source Unverified

I am arguing that rapid synaptic reweighting is the physical mechanism that gives humans the power to exercise free will. (2013) source Unverified

As long as Libet-type experiments can't pass analytic muster, free-will illusionists have no real evidence for their conclusion that humans lack free will. source Unverified

Free will is not an illusion. [...] Neuro-determinism, though seemingly self-evident, is also wrong. (2007) source Unverified

Free Will Is Not an Illusion. [...] Conscious mind has agency—some of it freely determined. [...] Likewise, we have some freedom to sculpt our future nature. (2016) source Unverified

Neuroscience reveals that the concept of free will is without meaning [...] It's time to get over the idea of free will and move on. (2012) source Unverified

free choice is in reality a fiction, or a name without reality. [...] Actually, the will tries to escape from grace and rages against it. (1520) source Unverified

I would say there's a fundamental sense in which free will is impossible, [...] And is it an illusion? Well, in some sense, yes. source Unverified

At any rate, I will assume [...] that it is no illusion. My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will. (1870) source Unverified

Just because free will is an illusion does not mean you are not allowed to use it as a thinking aid. (2020) source Unverified

men believe themselves to be free, simply because they are conscious of their actions, and unconscious of the causes whereby those actions are determined; (1677) source Unverified

a belief in free will is nothing other than a continuing belief in vitalism (2010) source Unverified

The concept of baseball is emergent rather than fundamental, but it's no less real for all of that. Likewise for free will. (2011) source Unverified

the will is by its nature so free that it can never be constrained (1649) source Unverified

But I do think free will is an illusion in a different way, at least if one thinks that we really have a “will” that is distinct from the deterministic (or quantum-mechanical) forces that operate in our brains. We think our actions originate spontaneously with us, and that we can freely choose between alternatives, but we can’t. The idea that we are the authors of our actions is, to me, an illusion. [...] I don’t act like a robot even though I think I am largely a robot made of meat, and I still denigrate people whom I see behave in bad ways, even though I know they can’t help themselves. I act as if I have free will, even though I know I don’t. The fact that determinists like me aren’t nihilists, and do find meaning and beauty in our lives, shows that it can be done. (2012) source Unverified

Though we feel that we can choose what we do, our understanding of the molecular basis of biology shows that biological processes are governed by the laws of physics and chemistry and therefore are as determined as the orbits of the planets. Recent experiments in neuroscience support the view that it is our physical brain, following the known laws of science, that determines our actions, and not some agency that exists outside those laws. For example, a study of patients undergoing awake brain surgery found that by electrically stimulating the appropriate regions of the brain, one could create in the patient the desire to move the hand, arm, or foot, or to move the lips and talk. It is hard to imagine how free will can operate if our behavior is determined by physical law, so it seems that we are no more than biological machines and that free will is just an illusion. (2010) source Unverified

One fall night I lay awake wondering how I should begin this essay. I imagined a variety of ways I could write the first sentence and the next and the one after that. Then I thought about how I could tie those sentences to the following paragraph and the rest of the article. The pros and cons of each of those options circled back and forth in my head, keeping me from drifting off to sleep. As this was happening, neurons were buzzing away in my brain. Indeed, that neural activity explains why I imagined these options, and it explains why I am writing these very words. It also explains why I have free will. I call those who contend that science shows that free will is an illusion “willusionists.” There are many reasons to be wary of the willusionists’ arguments. First, neuroscience currently lacks the technical sophistication to determine whether neural activity underlying our imagining and evaluating of future options has any impact on which option we then carry out minutes, hours or days later. Instead the research discussed by willusionists fails to clearly define the border between conscious and unconscious actions. (2015) source Unverified

Yes, yes. The traditional idea of free will where somehow our bodies or our brains are shielded from causation, that’s crap. It’s just gotta be false. [...] So if that’s what you think free will has to be, if you think free will is incompatible with determinism, then there’s no free will. Then free will isn’t real. It’s an illusion. I would prefer to say free will is perfectly real, it just isn’t what you think it is. (2020) source Unverified

Dan seems to think that free will is like color: People might have some erroneous beliefs about it, but the experience of freedom and its attendant moral responsibilities can be understood in a similarly straightforward way through science. I think that free will is an illusion and that analogies to phenomena like color do not run through. A better analogy, also taken from the domain of vision, would liken free will to the sense that most of us have of visual continuity. [...] Of course, we could take Dan’s approach and adjust the notion of “continuity” so that it better reflected the properties of human vision, giving us a new concept of seamless visual perception that is “worth wanting.” But if erroneous beliefs about visual continuity caused drivers to regularly mow down pedestrians and police sharpshooters to accidentally kill hostages, merely changing the meaning of “continuity” would not do. I believe that this is the situation we are in with the illusion of free will: False beliefs about human freedom skew our moral intuitions and anchor our system of criminal justice to a primitive ethic of retribution. (2012) source Unverified

Today no one is saying: did you have the free will to not have an epileptic seizure? Of course not. Do you have the free will to not be depressed? The person who's ready to jump off the bridge in that instant, do they have the free will to not jump off the bridge I don't think so. And the more I add up and explore the human condition I'm forced to conclude that the direction we are headed is that we are all products of an absence of free will. As a result, society needs more compassion for people who do not otherwise fit in. source Unverified