Free Will: The Pothole and the Playwright

[sealchan]

Free will is the influence a pot hole has on the road of life.

The road is the nervous system, the sensory neural input is the road ahead and the motor neural output is this road behind. The pothole is the human personality intertwined with that person's memories and experiences. The personality derives expectations out of the memories and experiences it has had. How all of those memories and experiences and the current impact of the states of the body will impact travelling down that road is based on so many interconnected factors that predictability becomes practically incalculable. In this realm causal order moves towards the edge of chaos especially when conflicting neural signals from the sensory input tangle up in the personality and memory and fail to resolve into decisive motor output.

In this causal morass some long ago experience may have as much influence as recent learning. Maybe the person is just coming down with a cold and their thinking has been subtly affected. The causal web is so filled with the potential for twists and turns that it no longer makes sense to think of any set of causal events as providing a reliable guide as to the outcome of that person's thinking and motivation. The person, the pothole of neural activity, becomes the focus of causal understanding, they become an "agent" of a self-centered (not selfish) "will" and understanding how that person has acted in the past is more telling than any practicable understanding of all the causal influences at work within that person's body when it comes to understanding how that person will act in the present.

~

Free will is the playwright who watches as they write their own play wondering how it will turn out in the end.

The playwright's pen is drawing ink from a bottle which is filled from the words recently written. No wonder the playwright doesn't know what will happen next even as he/she decides...

~

Any sincere thoughts or silly observations are welcome.

 

[Nakosis]

Free will is the influence a pot hole has on the road of life.

The road is the nervous system, the sensory neural input is the road ahead and the motor neural output is this road behind. The pothole is the human personality intertwined with that person's memories and experiences. The personality derives expectations out of the memories and experiences it has had. How all of those memories and experiences and the current impact of the states of the body will impact travelling down that road is based on so many interconnected factors that predictability becomes practically incalculable. In this realm causal order moves towards the edge of chaos especially when conflicting neural signals from the sensory input tangle up in the personality and memory and fail to resolve into decisive motor output.

In this causal morass some long ago experience may have as much influence as recent learning. Maybe the person is just coming down with a cold and their thinking has been subtly affected. The causal web is so filled with the potential for twists and turns that it no longer makes sense to think of any set of causal events as providing a reliable guide as to the outcome of that person's thinking and motivation. The person, the pothole of neural activity, becomes the focus of causal understanding, they become an "agent" of a self-centered (not selfish) "will" and understanding how that person has acted in the past is more telling than any practicable understanding of all the causal influences at work within that person's body when it comes to understanding how that person will act in the present.

~

Free will is the playwright who watches as they write their own play wondering how it will turn out in the end.

The playwright's pen is drawing ink from a bottle which is filled from the words recently written. No wonder the playwright doesn't know what will happen next even as he/she decides...

~

Any sincere thoughts or silly observations are welcome.

Individually, this two ideas seem thought provoking. However is there supposed to be a connection between the two?

The second seems more like the idea of an observer waiting to see what "direction" their subconscious mind will take them.

I think the CNS (central nervous system) is a bit more chaotic. It creates its own "potholes" just not on a conscious level. It seems capable of creating new thoughts, ideas from the morass of external influences, the past of experiences own its own and presenting these to the observer, self conscious ego.

 

[sealchan]

Individually, this two ideas seem thought provoking. However is there supposed to be a connection between the two?

I just captured these two thoughts and jotted them down...they are probably related.

The second seems more like the idea of an observer waiting to see what "direction" their subconscious mind will take them.

Yes, we are observers of our own mind and perhaps this is a critical part of our sense of free will...that we appear to be attending a stream of consciousness play which we ourselves identify with in the closest sense.

I think the CNS (central nervous system) is a bit more chaotic. It creates its own "potholes" just not on a conscious level. It seems capable of creating new thoughts, ideas from the morass of external influences, the past of experiences own its own and presenting these to the observer, self conscious ego.

Yes, no doubt potholes within potholes...

I think the first metaphor was an effort to get at this simplistic notion (that I witnessed in another thread) of free will as some sort of disconnect from causality. I think the biggest barrier to understanding our sense of free will and consciousness is this desire to create some magic substance that is non-physical, non-causal and identify ourselves with it. I don't think this is necessary or accurate.

We need to explore the implications of living as and in multiple, complex, adaptive systems in our bodies, minds and cultures.

 

[wellwisher]

Free will is the ability to make choices that have no psychological, emotional or even physical cost. The lack of cost is what makes it free. We can will ourselves to do things we don't like, but this is willpower, but not free will since there is a cost.

As an example, a group of boys are at the quarry and decide to jump off the high ledges to the water below. Everyone is scared, but some boys jump and some decide not to. Since there is a cost; fear, nobody has free will even though half of the boys jump. They show willpower but not free will.

Eventually, all the boys have jumped except one who has too much fear for even willpower. His cost is too high for willpower never mind free will. After his friend humiliate him, he realizes he fears the constant humiliation and taunts, more than his own fear of jumping. There is an offset in his math, where the cost of choosing to jump or not jump, offset, due to conflicting fears. This lowers the cost, so he willfully jumps.

Sometimes free will is about using the imagination and mind to renegotiate the natural price.

 

[ChristineM]

Free will is the influence a pot hole has on the road of life.

The road is the nervous system, the sensory neural input is the road ahead and the motor neural output is this road behind. The pothole is the human personality intertwined with that person's memories and experiences. The personality derives expectations out of the memories and experiences it has had. How all of those memories and experiences and the current impact of the states of the body will impact travelling down that road is based on so many interconnected factors that predictability becomes practically incalculable. In this realm causal order moves towards the edge of chaos especially when conflicting neural signals from the sensory input tangle up in the personality and memory and fail to resolve into decisive motor output.

In this causal morass some long ago experience may have as much influence as recent learning. Maybe the person is just coming down with a cold and their thinking has been subtly affected. The causal web is so filled with the potential for twists and turns that it no longer makes sense to think of any set of causal events as providing a reliable guide as to the outcome of that person's thinking and motivation. The person, the pothole of neural activity, becomes the focus of causal understanding, they become an "agent" of a self-centered (not selfish) "will" and understanding how that person has acted in the past is more telling than any practicable understanding of all the causal influences at work within that person's body when it comes to understanding how that person will act in the present.

~

Free will is the playwright who watches as they write their own play wondering how it will turn out in the end.

The playwright's pen is drawing ink from a bottle which is filled from the words recently written. No wonder the playwright doesn't know what will happen next even as he/she decides...

~

Any sincere thoughts or silly observations are welcome.

Free will : the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate.
The ability to act at one's own discretion.

 

[sealchan]

Free will is the ability to make choices that have no psychological, emotional or even physical cost. The lack of cost is what makes it free. We can will ourselves to do things we don't like, but this is willpower, but not free will since there is a cost.

As an example, a group of boys are at the quarry and decide to jump off the high ledges to the water below. Everyone is scared, but some boys jump and some decide not to. Since there is a cost; fear, nobody has free will even though half of the boys jump. They show willpower but not free will.

Eventually, all the boys have jumped except one who has too much fear for even willpower. His cost is too high for willpower never mind free will. After his friend humiliate him, he realizes he fears the constant humiliation and taunts, more than his own fear of jumping. There is an offset in his math, where the cost of choosing to jump or not jump, offset, due to conflicting fears. This lowers the cost, so he willfully jumps.

Sometimes free will is about using the imagination and mind to renegotiate the natural price.

If a decision involves "no cost" then it is arbitrary. That is one example of our conscious experience that leads us to believe in free will but is not IMO descriptive of the whole range of such experiences. We order an ice cream and there are a multitude of flavors...we really don't care which one we have but we usually have flavor 'x'...but so and so says this is good and you try a sample...flip a coin... From that experience of ambivalence one has a sense of personal power over the final act (decision). Here costs are small, arbitrary things and the "choser" is more troubled by the decision than feels free from it as he/she just wants some ice cream.

But another similar case shows that cost, or rather a balance of very high costs, also gives rise to an experience that strongly gives us the impression that we have free will. I stand with all the other boys at the edge of a cliff, I want them to like me, the cliff is very high...if I tear my clothes I will be grounded for a month if not break my leg. But I don't want the others to think I am scared. Here the boys sense of cost if very high on two sides of a decision. That balance of costs leaves him in a state of ambiguity between two high stakes choices. Once he makes his choice he is likely to self-praise or self-criticize his decision because it was so high stakes. He will be highly inspired to see that in that moment he had some power over his future and that what he thought in that moment was more important than what he did as a result of that internal deliberation. This is also a basis for understanding we have free will.

In one case our free will was a bit of a bother...in the other it is epicly fateful.

In the former case I have proposed that favorites, as in for a particular flavor of ice cream, is a sort of implicit neurological mechanism that has, as an outcome, the ability to save time in the case of arbitrary choices that don't impact survivability. Often the favorite is a "first of its kind" experience that has the individual have preference for something particular because, arbitrarily, it was the particular that was part of its first pleasurable experience of a kind. Given that association to the irrelevant details, future choices are decided based on a subjective sense of value stored in a neurological context.

There is no reasonable or meaningful understanding IMO of free will as restricted to a "no cost" context. The "free" in free will is, I think, understood as "in spite of" the strong sense of cost one has regarding the "decisions" one makes. When the "choice" becomes more important than the outcome, then one has a knower that considers "themselves" an important agent of causality.

 

[sealchan]

Free will : the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate.
The ability to act at one's own discretion.

That definition sounds good, but does anyone ever experience free will in that way? Without conflicting motivations or past experiences or arbitrary choices?

Sometimes free will is forced upon us by an arbitrary choice (which flavor of ice cream) or is an outcome of an inner battle between two high stakes options (to jump or not to jump). Sometimes our sense of free will comes from reflecting on a similar past situation and determining if any new insight is applicable to making a choice in the current similar situation. In which way are necessity, fate or any sort of causal influence not relevant and in which way is discretion also not applicable? It seems to me that these are all factors measured in degrees rather than ever experienced in any absolute way. The definition you show then becomes an ideal unless it is understood that the definition is meant only in an experiential sense. But even then it may be incomplete or misleading IMO.

Whether or not free will exists, we certainly have experiences that inspire us to believe or explain away that belief.

 

[ChristineM]

That definition sounds good, but does anyone ever experience free will in that way? Without conflicting motivations or past experiences or arbitrary choices?

Sometimes free will is forced upon us by an arbitrary choice (which flavor of ice cream) or is an outcome of an inner battle between two high stakes options (to jump or not to jump). Sometimes our sense of free will comes from reflecting on a similar past situation and determining if any new insight is applicable to making a choice in the current similar situation. In which way are necessity, fate or any sort of causal influence not relevant and in which way is discretion also not applicable? It seems to me that these are all factors measured in degrees rather than ever experienced in any absolute way. The definition you show then becomes an ideal unless it is understood that the definition is meant only in an experiential sense. But even then it may be incomplete or misleading IMO.

Whether or not free will exists, we certainly have experiences that inspire us to believe or explain away that belief.

Experience will (or should) help the decision making process. Eg, i have had that ice cream before. Did i like or dislike it, or should i try another flavour? The free choice will depend on the answer to that question

Ultimately is is still the individuals choice so 'the ability to act at one's own discretion' is a valid statement

 

[sealchan]

Sometimes free will is about using the imagination and mind to renegotiate the natural price.

I like this example and I am not sure I have included it in my four experiences of free will...actually I did but I have editted my old list to include your language...

Here is my updated list of ways in which we experience the "truth" of free will:

• Individuals in a social group perceive that there are individual differences in how a person responds to a given scenario. They also perceive that they respond differently to similar scenarios themselves over time.
• As such individuals may hold each other accountable for their actions in order to make sure that the others are not going to choose options that open themselves and/or the group to unwanted risks.
• We experience free will also when in conflict over ambivalent (unimportant) or conflicting (important) choices.
• We create a perception of free will when we utilize memory to influence a new choice in an old situation or we see our minds “change” (choice change) as the result of a new piece of information.
• We may create a new option no one has ever given us and therefore solve a difficult decision through a new creative response. Our imaginations make “discoveries” which can influence our choice/outcome.