My question is about the free will problem. I hope it is not too stupid or anything. Many philosophers seem to argue against free will like this: "Either everything has a cause or not. If everything does have a cause, then it looks like you have no free will, because the chain of causes leading to your actions began before you were born. And if not everything has a cause, if in particular some of your actions are uncaused, then that doesn't seem like free will either. It seems just like a random event." This is from what Peter Lipton wrote in another question. I don't understand why if it is true that not everything has a cause, it must also be true that an uncaused event must be a "random" event. Suppose that a Cartesian "soul" caused an event, but there was no prior cause for the soul's causation of the event. That doesn't seem like a random event, it seems like an event which was caused by the soul, but which was not caused by anything else. To me it looks like this would be compatible with free...

I have a question/argument that straddles the free will debate, philosophy of mind and evolution. I hope it is not too bad. Suppose all of our actions are determined by the conjunction of natural laws and the history of the world and thereby we are deeply misguided in our view of ourselves as free, autonomous beings. My question is then, from an evolutionary perspective, why would we evolve to have this illusion about ourselves? Wouldn't philosophical zombies with no consciousness be simpler entities and thereby more likely to evolve? If consciousness does not really have any causal efficacy (in the libertarian sense), why do we have it?

Considering our world in a deterministic way, saying everything is declared by our determinate physical laws, we are tending to presume that there is no space for free will since even the electrochemical reactions within our brains underlie those laws. Now one could say: "That's not true. What about the chaos theory and/or quantum mechanics?" In fact the behaviour of quantums can not be predicted which leads to the assumption that they behave completely incidentally. Otherwise they would be predictable. Here is my question: Am I right in saying that even the quantum mechanics/chaos theory do not affect the issue that we have no influence on our actions and thoughts? I mean, there are two possibilities: Either our actions and thoughts underlie the physical laws and are definite OR they underlie the "laws" of coincidence. Both possibilities do not leave any room for free will.

Does freedom exist? Let's say this is anarchy: there are no rules, and no control -- is that freedom? You have the freedom to go kill someone, but in return you'd be taking away their freedom to live. Does freedom only apply in certain cases where it doesn't affect anybody? Such as freedom to think what you want. But then again wouldn't education be taking away that freedom, by telling you what's right to think? My question is simply can freedom exist?

I have a question regarding destiny and free will. I have never been able to decide upon a solution to satisfy my search and stumbled upon this site and decided to see if a trained philosopher would be able to do the problem justice. Do we, in fact, have free will or do we not? There are two views I can think of that would both say that we do not have free will, while the general belief is that we do have free will and that what we do are products of that free will. Assuming belief in a higher all-knowing power exists, then doesn't it make sense that this being would know the future and therefore your actions are predestined simply by the knowledge this being contains and that there is no way of straying off the path that is known for you? The second belief is a more scientific belief in which no higher power is of existence, yet it is undeniable that quantum mechanics exist and that particles all have a set of laws they follow and that whatever started "everything" whether it was the big bang, or...

My question concerns existentialism and determinism. I understand that a "movement" like existentialism is very nebulous and diverse. Many of the thinkers given the name "existentialist" hold varying views on various subjects. But one theme, at least as I understand it, that runs through many existentialist works is the idea of freedom, Sartre's "condemned to be free" for example. From what I understand the sum of an individual is composed of their actions, we are what we do. As such we have a responsibility towards our actions. But I was wondering how some of the major existentialist thinkers would address determinism, specifically determinism based on scientific physical laws. It would seem that if this type of determinism were correct, it would undermine the existentialist view of freedom.

Does free will fare any better under a Dualistic or Deistic system than it does under materialism?

If we were to assume that human beings have free-will, then should we also assume that other animals have free-will? If not then at what point in the evolutionary process can we reasonably place the development of free-will?

My question is about the relationship between God, determinism and ethics. In my opinion if there is no God, then it looks like people do not have any non-physical "soul". I think most people would agree with this, partly because people usually reject God in favour of a naturalistic worldview in which the soul similarly has no place. But if people do not have any "soul" then that must mean that that people do not have free will, because they are entirely physical. But if people do not have free will then I don't understand how any ethics could exist, because ethics surely requires that people can choose. So, if this is correct, then if you want to argue for some kind of ethics, then you have to accept the existence of God. But there is clearly an endless amount of Philosophers who don't believe in God and do argue for some kind of ethics, such as David Hume or Bertrand Russell. But how can they do this? What I think you will say is that maybe ethics can exist even without free will. But surely this...

I read all the questions and responses related to determinism, quantum mechanics and chaos theory that you have posted, but I am still unclear exactly how they relate. Supposedly, quantum mechanics and chaos theory refute any hard case for determinism, but I am still unclear as to how. Could anyone add to this or suggest some reading on the subject?