h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guid/A502525

I think that the subject of free will in philisophy bothered me so much that I had to find a way to describe it logically.

Here is my effort. Comments and suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
thnx,
Lucien

I think that'll be at http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A502525

Sounds a lot like philosophy rather than fact to me ....

One question about the free-will / determinism debate. How do we know that free-will is not already determined? I.e. when we choose to do something and then change our minds (because we have free will), how do we know that the change of mind isn't part of the illusion of free-will.

BBS

seems ok, as far as it goes, but it is clear from reading it that it is not about causal relationships and free will, it is about determinism and free will. so it needs extending, and renaming.
Just as a helpful summary, we have free will to choose which of the options we wish to choose, but determinism and causality choose which options we cannot choose.

I think an entry on 'Free Will' would benefit greatly from a section regarding the history of the question. How have philosophers of the past viewed 'free will'? Hume and Kant are prime examples of people whose views would be worth discussing.

Personally, I think (with Hume) that 'free will' is bunk, except as the vaguest of concepts. This doesn't bother me, because I find it comforting to think of myself as a bundle of nerve impulses undergoing certain processes, but... diff'rent strokes, right?

Regarding the specific content of your entry, I would ask whether a 'decision,' as you call it, has its own internal causes, perhaps at a cellular level. After all, the most spontaneous decision on my part is still a mental event, and one would hope that the matter in my brain obeys the laws of physics.

GTB [determined to decide to sign his name this way by the the cold, irreproachable laws of physics]

Hi Lucien!

We have an entry on free will: http://www.h2g2.com/A301122 . Unfortunately, as you can tell from reading it, it never actually says what free will is, making the whole thing a little dubious.

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philosophy

Your first dichotomy appears to be between "every event has a cause" and "no event has a cause". The excluded middle here is "some events have causes, and some don't". In the case of my decision to write this, it's caused by a bunch of things, some of which themselves have causes, and some of which do not.

An "influence", to me, is just a partial cause. I am influenced to write this by my enjoyment of the PR process. But it's not the only cause - other causes include such diverse things as being alive, having a computer, knowing English, and so on. Many of these causes have a random element.

My own feeling on the subject is that free will is just an idea, like Luxembourg or Equal Rights. Luxembourg doesn't exist on the atomic level, and neither does Free Will - but they are both useful concepts that allow us to make sense of our daily lives. But then I'm just a born-again holist, so...
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Writing

You have a tendency to define stuff a lot - this is pleasing from a rigour point of view, but I think it makes the flow a little stilted. Similarly, your paragraphs are a little short for my taste: though this is a question of style...

I feel that you might indeed want to look at what other people have said about free will. No idea is new (???), so I suspect some philosopher will have proposed your idea back in the Rennaisance - to be able to say "this idea was first proposed by X in the year Y" is a tremendous boost to the informative and factual level of an entry - and it would allow those who want to know more to do so fairly easily.

The best bit about your entry, to me, is the conclusion: it's where your short, simple style really shines: you summarise the idea succinctly and clearly, and end with a qualitative 'touchy-feely'
note - nicely done...

Xanthia - "I think therefore I am unoriginal"

I more or less agree with what the others have been saying, and I'd like to add the following:
Such a topic should really be longer because it is so wide in scope. One thing which I would (personally) like to see is maybe at least a brief discussion of the biochemistry of the brain during the decision-making process, i.e. the build-up and fall of various neurotransmitters in various pathways that are actually believed to comprise the whole process.

Of course, there's a HUGE amount more that could go in too, but that again just goes to show that the entry could do with being longer. I see you had a list too - maybe you should try GuideML to make it look better? Don't be put off if you haven't used it or HTML before - neither had I until yesterday morning, but I'm now using GuideML in my work with ease

You can see how at http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/GuideML-Clinic

Hope that helps!

Thanks everybody for the input so far! I've never used HTML and as this is my first entry I didn't want to bite off more than I could chew so to speak. As far as content, I really appreciated the comment about simplistic style. I've always felt that simplest is best, so that you don't lose your audience. I've never thought about the biochemistry end of thought process. Will have to look into it.

thnx everyone!

Glad to help

I actually had a chat with a liberal Protestant Priest about this same topic recently. I share a similar point of view to yourself on this issue(humanity as reflexive organism) and he said i was a Darwinian Reductionist.Is that accurate?

Reductionist means you seek to explain complicated things in terms of their components, and/or that you believe that this is possible.

The opposite is Holism: the belief that complex things can be understood only at a similar level - and if you try and reduce them they will appear non-existant or self-contradictory.

If you believe that both reductionism and holism have their moments, then you are a dualist. If you believe they are both bunk, then you are a nihilist.

As for darwinian.... well, you're darwinian if you believe that evolution (of one form or another) by mutaton and natural selection created life on Earth. It's kind of irrelevant to free will: it's a question of history rather than reality.

This is fine; but surely the same event may be brought about, separately, by different causes. In a way it might be similar to the same answer being given to two (or more) disparate questions.
It might be worth having a look at 'de Bono'.
'nette

This is fine; but surely the same event may be brought about, separately, by different causes. In a way it might be similar to the same answer being given to two (or more) disparate questions.
It might be worth having a look at 'de Bono'.
'nette

NB: the new thread for this conversation is at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/F48874?thread=105876&post=888742

Aside: If another scout will second me, I'll suggest that this be moved out of PR and attached to the entry itself - better there than the sinbin, so that the sub-ed can read it if it ever gets recc'd...

Lucinda -- I'll second you on this one!

Mikey

I'm a little confused, what are we going to do?

As requested, I've moved this duplicate thread to the entry itself, and the PR thread continues at http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/F48874?thread=105876