Do the concepts of ‘free will’ or ‘fate’ exist?

[Kalahari Inkantation]

From a purely scientific standpoint, I am inclined to believe the concept of ‘fate’, or something like it, is very likely to exist, though perhaps not in the traditional sense.

This is based on two rather major assumptions I will be making:

1. There are no ‘supernatural’ forces (‘god’, ‘souls’, etc.)

2. Everything that is ‘natural’ is able to be completely understood.

I will first explain using a series of analogies, and then get to my actual point: The chemical compounds we use for cleaning and other tasks â€" soap, bleach, etc. â€" are used because they are expected to clean.  We can reasonably expect that they will work currently as they have in the past â€" as highly efficient cleaning compounds â€" because their properties are governed by the natural laws of physical and chemical science, and as such, their actions can be predicted.  If this were not the case, two bottles of bleach might react completely differently under identical conditions, and thus it would be rather useless as a cleaning product.  This is also the case with machinery: we have the ability to use and control it because its actions are predictable: governed by the laws of chemical and physical science.

In fact, I cannot think of a single product or tool or item that exists at all whose actions can not entirely be predicted based on the laws of natural science â€" simply put, once we completely, truly understand the chemical, physical, and other scientific properties of an item, I can see no reason we should not be able to predict the ways in which it might react to chemical, physical (etc.) stimuli.

We may not yet understand it completely (nor am I certain we ever will), but the universe itself is, as far as we can tell, entirely made up of ‘matter’ and ‘empty’ space.  Of course, there are certain kinds of matter involved (antimatter, dark matter, etc.) which we don’t quite understand yet, but that is an irrelevant point â€" if all of this matter is governed by the natural laws of science, it can be understood, (Assumption 2) and thus, its behavior can be predicted.

To summarise (read from this point if you truly wish to ignore the above (:'()): All objects we interact with are made of or are a result of chemical matter, chemical compounds and/or compounds of chemical compounds, chemistry of course being governed by the laws of natural science.  As a result, the actions of all objects made of or produced as a result of matter can be predicted.

(For the rest of this post I will speak in terms of humanity, though if I am correct, it should be true for all living (and even nonliving) things.)

If Assumption 1 is true, then life itself is entirely a product of chemistry.  If we can predict the actions of bleach, a rather simple chemical compound, based on its chemical and physical properties, who is to say that the same predictions cannot be made of humans?  Humans, too, are chemical systems, albeit far more complex (and therefore far more difficult to understand and therefore far more difficult to predict) than a simple cleaning compound.  Do humans truly have the ability to 'choose', or do their scientific properties dictate the way in which they respond to stimuli?  Did I choose to make this post, or was I chemically inclined to do so all along, even if I was given other options to make it feel like a choice?  If there are no 'supernatural' forces that could have provided us with 'free will', then I think the only thing that could realistically dictate our actions is our scientific properties â€" like every other particle of matter in the universe.

But if any of what I say is true, can the concept of 'free will' actually exist?  If so, perhaps an action can only be classified as 'free will' when one is chemically inclined to perform such an action and nothing ('natural' forces, the 'will(s)' of others, etc.) hinders him/her from doing so.

Thoughts?  All I'm looking for are 'yes' and/or 'no' answers to the title and why.

[spoiler]Inspired by the "Shit that weirds you out" thread.

And remember, all opinions are equally valid. [/spoiler]

[Classic]

In a sense, I agree and disagree.

You said some science mumbo-wumbo-jumbo, but I think I kinda got it.
What you're saying is things happen due to the structure and nature of said object. Bleach being the example. In the example, one cleans better than the other. The other may not work at all.

I can agree with what you're saying. The chemicals obviously are not all the same, therefore giving a different result. Ony pair of my underwear no longer has the diarrhea stains, while the other pair still has piss stains.

Maybe it's just the whimsical side of me, but the second bottle of bleach you purchased was a bad bottle...that seems like bad luck to me. Luck, of course, being part of the 'supernatural' factor you don't believe in. You could have gotten any other bottle, but you chose the one bad bottle...sounds like fate to me.

I'm saying both forces exist, if you didn't catch any of that. I'm pretty hungover, so you'll have to excuse me. 

[Tri4se]

I agree completely. If we knew every single aspect to flipping a coin, such as the amount of force applied to it and all other environmental aspects, we would be able to predict the outcome of the flip every single time. Probability only seems to exist to us because we don't fully understand all the factors that exist before and during a specific event.

It's interesting to think that if a god like being doesn't exist then fate and destiny do.

[Kalahari Inkantation]

You said some science mumbo-wumbo-jumbo, but I think I kinda got it.

Well, I certainly did make up a few terms there, like "chemical inclination", but hopefully I explained myself well enough.

Ony pair of my underwear no longer has the diarrhea stains, while the other pair still has piss stains.

i lol'd

Maybe it's just the whimsical side of me, but the second bottle of bleach you purchased was a bad bottle...that seems like bad luck to me. Luck, of course, being part of the 'supernatural' factor you don't believe in. You could have gotten any other bottle, but you chose the one bad bottle...sounds like fate to me.

Let's say one bottle of bleach works as it is supposed to and the other does not.  I suppose then that you could call it 'bad luck' that you would end up a useless bottle, but is the fact that the second bottle doesn't work really caused by a 'supernatural' form of 'luck'?  Believe it or not, I would actually call that 'bad luck' too, but I'm willing to bet that if we were to actually check to see exactly what caused that second bottle of bleach to be 'bad', we would find that its chemical composition is somehow different from the properly functioning bottle (whether via contamination or expiration or denaturation or whatever it is that might cause it to have different chemical properties from the working bottle of bleach). 

We predicted that the second bottle of bleach would function as bleach, and it didn't, but that doesn't necessarily mean that supernatural forces are involved -- the explanation can be perfectly natural, I think, although perhaps not perfectly understood.  It's 'bad luck' because the outcome was negative to you, but the forces that led to that negative outcome could be entirely natural, I think.

I guess it would be 'supernatural' if both sets of bleach were exactly identical in composition, yet acted differently under identical circumstances. (i.e. there would be no reason to believe that they would act differently but for some indecipherable reason they are acting differently)

In short, I do believe 'luck' is a legitimate concept, but I would define it as something like the probability of a particular outcome occurring over the other possibilities.

[YPrrrr]

I think that's a pretty big oversimplification while interesting

[snoorkel]

I think that's a pretty big oversimplification while interesting

Agreed. The 'logic' is intact, but another law of the universe is that there is infinity beyond our grasp. The chemical interactions we observe are only the obvious manifestations of much, much deeper workings.

I'd say that fate exists, sure, but each one of us creates it for ourselves and everyone around us. If we define atoms, we will find atoms, if we define quarks, we will find quarks -- we'll find the next smallest constituents ad infinitum. I guess that's the ultimate definition of 'free will' as well. The question isn't how everything material works together to create what we see, as if we can assemble a complete blueprint for reality based on observation. The question is how we know what we're seeing, and how 'observation' is in fact much more intimately linked with discovery than we'd like to think it is.

[Selkie]

We broke through the threshold of fate and gained free will the second we became aware of ourselves.

That's my belief.

[Tri4se]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism

Determinism is often taken to mean simply Causal determinism: an idea known in physics as cause-and-effect. It is the concept that events within a given paradigm are bound by causality in such a way that any state (of an object or event) is completely, or at least to some large degree, determined by prior states. This can be distinguished from other varieties of determinism mentioned below. Other debates often concern the scope of determined systems, with some maintaining that the entire universe (or multiverse) is a single determinate system and others identifying other more limited determinate systems. Within numerous historical debates, many varieties and philosophical positions on the subject of determinism exist. This includes debates concerning human action and free will, where opinions might be sorted as compatibilistic and incompatibilistic.

Is this what your are talking about? Or am I completely missing your post.

[Kalahari Inkantation]

Agreed. The 'logic' is intact, but another law of the universe is that there is infinity beyond our grasp. The chemical interactions we observe are only the obvious manifestations of much, much deeper workings.

I'd say that fate exists, sure, but each one of us creates it for ourselves and everyone around us. If we define atoms, we will find atoms, if we define quarks, we will find quarks -- we'll find the next smallest constituents ad infinitum. I guess that's the ultimate definition of 'free will' as well. The question isn't how everything material works together to create what we see, as if we can assemble a complete blueprint for reality based on observation. The question is how we know what we're seeing, and how 'observation' is in fact much more intimately linked with discovery than we'd like to think it is.

I suppose that's true, and I guess it is pretty arrogant of me to claim that everything 'natural' in existence can be understood... but still, if the actions of a chemical like bleach are predetermined by its scientific properties, why should humans be any different?  I can still see no reason we'd be any different from an inorganic object unless some sort of supernatural force is involved.

Life is more unpredictable because it's far more complex, but its complexity alone can't make predicting it impossible.  In theory, with enough information, shouldn't we be able to predict its behavior like we can simpler things?  It'd be a bit impractical considering the amount of information that would be required as life is an extremely complicated system, but I can't find a reason it would be impossible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism

Is this what your are talking about? Or am I completely missing your post.

That does seem quite similar... although now I'm rather disappointed that this theory of mine isn't entirely original.

Oh well, at least it means I may not be crazy.

[snoorkel]

I suppose that's true, and I guess it is pretty arrogant of me to claim that everything 'natural' in existence can be understood... but still, if the actions of a chemical like bleach are predetermined by its scientific properties, why should humans be any different?  I can still see no reason we'd be any different from an inorganic object unless some sort of supernatural force is involved.

Life is more unpredictable because it's far more complex, but its complexity alone can't make predicting it impossible.  In theory, with enough information, shouldn't we be able to predict its behavior like we can simpler things?  It'd be a bit impractical considering the amount of information that would be required as life is an extremely complicated system, but I can't find a reason it would be impossible.

It's not necessarily an impossible problem, just limited by the 'building blocks' perspective you're looking at it with. Universal laws of synergy demand that the total behaviors of systems are not predicted by the characteristics of their components in isolation, so a much more holistic approach is probably necessary to define patterns like life and consciousness.