People say extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Is the existence of free will an extraordinary claim? If so, what evidence would be sufficient to prove or disprove it?
People say extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Is the existence of free will an extraordinary claim? If so, what evidence would be sufficient to prove or disprove it?
Comments
No
The existence of free will is dependent on how it is defined. Whether or not it is an extraordinary claim depends on how it is defined.
You tell me….
This is one of those questions that has no good answer. Physicists, philosophers, and theologians cannot agree between or even amongst themselves about the existence of free will. That said, the claim that free will is extraordinary would only be true if you believe or accept that reality is deterministic. If you believe in free will determinism would be extraordinary.
I was going to provide proof of free will but decided not to, so there you go
Free will is not an extraordinary claim. It either is, isn’t, or is a construct of a belief and/or illusion. In essence, it is what you make it. You buy a bag of chips today, did you choose to freely, or were you forced to because of desire? Assuming no one asked you to buy chips, cuz that disqualifies this example. Or did you buy a candy bar? Was the option to choose free choice because the options existed? Or do you belief affordability bars free will? If you fall in love with someone, was that free will? Or do you believe love just happens, hence no free will, but you willingly go along with it. You can argue the existence of free will any day and anywhere, and it will vividly change between geographic, demographic, and physograpgics. So depending whom you speak with, the answer will vary greatly. It’s like asking is religion an extraordinary claim? Some will say no, some will say yes, and some will say everything in between.
It depends on what you mean by free will. If it means being in control of and selecting your actions, then it’s pretty evident from your own existence. I wouldn’t call that an extraordinary claim.
People say a lot of things, most of them are shit. To say the earth is flat is an extraordinary claim but really requires very little to prove that false. Most things just need a properly blinded, controlled peer reviewed study that’s multiply repeatable to prove it wrong or right ( or other equally rigorous tests and studies). Determinism vs free will is really complex and not easily resolved outside of a philosophical construct. There’s plenty of arguments for and against both but I’d mainly dispute the main premise. Extraordinary claims most often don’t require extraordinary evidence as they fall apart when confronted with the basics.
80% of the decisions you make are unconscious. That doesn’t mean you don’t make the decision it just means that you have a bias or preference. For example if you have the choice to eat a cupcake or an onion you could choose to eat the onion but your subconscious would make you heavily prefer the cupcake.
I don’t think the existence of free will is an extraordinary claim.
I decided a while back that even if there is no such thing as free will we should act as though there was.
Most people instinctively feel like they have the ability to make choices, etc. So the existence of free will isn’t usually considered an extraordinary claim.
But it’s hard enough to define free will, let alone prove or disprove it.
But there is extraordinary evidence, in the ongoing miracle of our consciousness.
So you’re claiming that there’s something preventing or controlling someone’s free will? Free will is the default not having free will is the extraordinary claim.
The evidence to disprove it is social media. Do we really want to spend our lives like this?