How? Emergence is also a preconceived notion in regards to our discussion and does not give the proof needed to defunct free will or otherwise.

Studies have shown that not believing in free will can have a negative impact on your work proficiency and a lot of other things in your life. It can make you less dedicated to everything basically. So evolutionarily, it totally makes sense that we believe in free will, even if it is an illusion. It is as they say, ignorance is bliss.

There's no need for that. Same chemical reactions could lead to different results because in physics 2+2 isn't always 4. or 5. or 6.

Quick example:

Take a male bunny and a female bunny and put them in a rabbity hole for four months. Do you know how many bunnies are there in the hole now?

There are computers out there that are designed to work just like human brain. Also as mentioned earlier that other beings like animals also have brains with said chemicals and electrical signals. But they lack the consciousness of humans.

RolStoppable said:
I've thought about this some more today, so here's what crossed my mind. The proponents of "free will is a myth" use science as their proof. Science is taken as the truth because it provides an explanation for why things are as they are.

When I was in school, I was taught that the human tongue can discern four different tastes: sweet, sour, salty and bitter. This was the scientific truth. Nowadays science says that there are five tastes, so what does it mean? Back then when it was only four tastes, there was no better explanation, so it was accepted as the truth of how it works because scientists had agreed upon that. This example can be taken further by looking at the areas of the tongue that recognize the different tastes which nowadays is a very different picture from it was back then.

Saying that free will is a myth... well, the scientific proof for that assertion is merely the best explanation science has come up so far for how our brains work, how humans work. It doesn't mean that the explanation is correct, just like the scientific work on the human tongue that I've been taught in school wasn't correct.

Just because we don't know the full complexity and all the inner workings of the brain, we do know how it works on a base level. It is just electrons and chemical reactions. This is a fact. As in, proven. If you deny this, then you might as well just throw all of science out the window.

Back to free will, when a man betrays his wife by having sex with another woman, the proponents of "free will is a myth" would say that the man ultimately had no choice despite weighing option A (don't do it) and option B (do it) before committing the act. They would say option B won out despite option A being considered the better course of action by the man,

The man also has no control over what he considers to be the better action. That is a part of this. I ask you this, why did he cheat? And you'd say "because he's a bad person and has bad morals". Now consider what those things are: the effect of his environment and his genetics. You don't choose your personality. It is "given" to you. And your personality is the basis of how you act (your personality is, harshly put, the cumulative effect of all the chemical reactions that have gone on in your brain.)

therefore free will does not exist. I stand by it that that is nonsense. My explanation is that option B won out because the man allowed his instinct to take control. Another man might go with option A when facing the exact same choice and my explanation for that is willpower. Not everyone has it to the same degree, but it most certainly exists. Willpower goes hand in hand with free will. Yes, people can choose their behavior.

And how did he "allow" his instinct to take control? Did he go like "ahhh... I really shouldn't do this, but I want to get laid by someone other than my wife..... Fuck it Imma go for it" In that case, then he was really gonna end up sleeping with the woman from the start. He didn't choose. In the end he wanted more to sleep with that woman (read: that chemical reaction was more powerful) than he wanted to remain faithful to his wife (than this one was). He never chose. Same goes if he ended up not sleeping with the woman. That just means the chemical reaction for remaining faithful to his wife is stronger than the chemical reaction for cheating.

The explanation that people cannot choose their behavior is idiotic at a fundamental level already (fundamental = considering only two options, not a more complex scenario). When a man betrayed his wife with another woman and his excuse to the wife is that he had no choice and may even point to "free will is a myth", the answer he's going to get is: "Of course you had the choice!" And the woman is right. The man had the choice and no amount of talk of neurons and the like is going to change that. The reason why I think that this is a good example is because it deals with one of the most basic instincts of humans, so people have to make such a choice on a frequent basis, and they most certainly can make that choice.

Your example is actually a very very good example indeed. Not of why we have free will, because it still does nothing to show that we do, but rather of why it is so difficult for a lot of people, including you, to accept that we don't have free will.

It's only an illusion if it's not true.

Even if the dynamics of laughter and love are conveyed through synapses, they would ultimately be lies if they were pre-programmed. That's what I mean.

It's not an illusion, rather it's a broken machine. Laughter is there but it is artificial.

I refuse to believe that laughter and love are artificial feelings only existent to give us false tinglings. It would defeat the honesty and purity of the emotion.

If free will were false, and with that knowledge, there is no more reason to laugh at anything, or accept love. Because it would all be a lie.

I don't believe that free will is false, therefore I accept love. But if I did believe it to be false, I wouldn't care about anything anymore, and would fein most of my emotions from there on out.

And that would go against the "evolutionary" process, basically defeating itself through false reasonings.

That's why I don't think it's arrogant or naive to believe in the truthfulness of love or laughter, I think it's sound because it validates the existence of said emotions.

Now you are more or less just making up strawman arguments. Firstly, I do not deny the base level. I deny your and others' assumption that the base level is enough to jump to such conclusions as free will does not exist.

Okay. If you don't deny that in essence the brain is just a bunch of chemical reactions and electrons together, none of which you have any say over, then I don't really understand how you can still cling on to the notion of free will. At least not without there being some metaphysical unobservable thing that enables us to have free will. But alright.

Secondly, and this is a very blatant strawman, you say my answer would be "bad morals" when I explicitly gave a different explanation in the following paragraph.

Your explanation was that he caved into his instincts instead of his rationality, right? That's not the "why", it's the "what". WHY did he cave into his instincts instead of his rationality? Do you think he had control of the process that ended up with him caving into his instincts?

Thirdly, if your age is real, then you are probably unable to properly judge such a scenario to begin with.

Nice one. Trying to dismiss my arguments due to my age. That's a low blow.

You also do not address willpower and pretend that no such thing exists, but it's the reason why rationality can win over instinct. The instinct is about short term gratification for your body, but rationality takes the long term consequences into account. A man with no willpower will tell himself that he had no choice, because it's easier to pretend that something else is at fault. But other persons go through the same scenario, so they have the experience that it is very much a choice whether you have sex or not.

I've adressed willpower. Willpower is essentially when you have several different thought processes (chemical reactions) in your brain, one which benefits you in the short term but is perhaps detrimental in the long term, while the other isn't so enjoyable in the short term, but is mroe beneficial in the long term. Having "willpower" is just that the chemical reactions for picking the long term over the short term are dominating. I've tried to tell you this, time and time again. This isn't about "instincts" versus "rationality". You may use your rational thinking capabilites and end up with a different result than your instincts. But that's not free will. Because you still don't control the outcome of the rational thought process. You don't even control when to start the rational thought process. Other people go through the same scenario and get a different outcome. That's not because they have free will. It's because they have lived a different life with different external stimuli and have different genes, all which affect the exact state the persons brain is when the two "competing" chemical reactions occur, and influence which of the two that "win".

Lastly, I think the definition you've given for free will is something different from what you argue. What you are arguing is not that there's no choice of behavior, but rather that there's no control over which thoughts cross someone's mind as chemical reactions are triggered by various stimuli.

Nope. You literally have no control over any of your thoughts. And since your thoughts control your behaviour, you have no control over your behaviour either. I've literally explained to you how you don't control anything of what goes on in your mind. How you behave isn't separate from what goes on in your mind. Everything you say and do originate from your mind. You can't say a thing without your brain giving the signals the say that specific thing first.