Free Will

[RestlessSoul]

I think you'd instantly detect you/not-you if a fly flew up your nose!

All a matter of perception. What if to me, I and the fly are part of the same molecular dance, no more separate from each other than two waves overlapping in the one ocean?

 

[ratiocinator]

It's only when we consider the matter in other ways that we end up with interesting questions, such as could we have chosen otherwise...

I don't think this question is all that interesting. If we could have chosen differently at the time we made a choice, then, since everything involved, including our entire state of mind, would be exactly the same, so any difference would have to be purely random. I really don't see how that would make you more 'free', as the 'you' would not be involved, it would just be being nudged around by randomness.

 

[Nimos]

So it is a conscious effort, is it not?

Yes in the sense that I would argue that all decisions or beliefs are consciously related. But to me, there is a difference, between saying that you freely chose your position using your free will and whether you were influenced by whatever to reach that position.

...but you have not been convinced. You take a guess, with the hope that you are right.
So I don't understand why you are against the word feeling, other than because you want to distance yourself from anything that is not certain.
It's not certain. You think, feel, believe... This is not saying you are emotionally attached to something, necessarily.
You might have a reason for believing.

Because I think "inner feelings" make it sound like something mysterious and unexplained. Which I don't think is true, even if you make a guess. Let's say you had to choose numbers for a lottery ticket, then many people will choose numbers that relate to birthdays or special days, I would also argue that most people will not choose for instance 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 because something tells us that it is more unlikely that 1 to 8 shows up when drawing the numbers than a random combination, even though that is not the case.

So even in cases like this where it is completely random, I still think we rely on some former information/experiences/superstition to reach a conclusion that something is more likely to occur than something else.

The information is already in your head, and there is information coming in, even as you speak.
Your subconscious is processing information 40 to 50 bits per second, so choices are being made even before you speak.
Your brain has already determined, and is continuing to determine how to answer me, and yes, it is based on what you already know... and believe.

Yes, and as I say, unless you present me with an argument or evidence that can change my view and that things we do are completely based on free will rather than former experiences or information etc. then I won't be convinced that I'm wrong, even though I might be. And that is where I think the free will argument falls apart because even if you should try to convince me, the information about free will you have, is from somewhere else, which convinced you that we have free will.

Right. You did not get what I am saying.
You subconsciously take in things that make you what you are, on the inside, and it may be things you are not even aware of - little subtle things that slip past your conscious awareness.

Yes but in that case, I wouldn't call it free will, because it is outside my control. I didn't choose to let these subtle things slip in. It's sort of the same with the lottery example had little Hugo been born on another day, then that would have been the "magic" number I would have chosen.

You don't choose the color of your eyes, or skin either.
It's hereditary. Your genes passed on from a parent, grandparent, distant grandparent, play a tole in what you like or don't like. Even smell.

True, but I think that goes beyond free will, regardless of whether we have free will or not, we can not change our eye colour or hair colour, because we feel like it. So it has to be related to something in the mind and how we experience or view the world around us. But when it comes to taste we can change our minds, we can hate something as children, but as we grow up we might end up liking it. Some of this could be explained by children having a more sensitive taste (if that is true?), or that the child simply had a bad experience when tasting something that they turned out not to like. But even as adults, there are lots of things we do not like to eat, which might be purely based on looks, in China they eat a lot of things that simply couldn't be sold here in Europe because we find it disgusting despite never having tasted it. Let's say dogs for instance or when they use all those medicaments from animals to solve various diseases/issues because they are convinced that it helps. That would simply not go in western cultures, because we are not convinced that these things are true.

 

[ChristineM]

This echoes Alexander and the Gordian knot. But does the story indicate the wisdom, or the ignorance, of the Western mind?

Either way, the question being asked here is, how do you know when you choose a course of action, that your choice wasn’t determined by the web of causation converging on the moment in which you appeared to choose? How do you know you have choice rather than the illusion of choice? Go back to any moment in your past, think of a choice you may have subsequently come to regret, and ask yourself, given the exact same circumstances and knowledge that you had then, could you possibly have chosen any different?

How do you know? Consciousness l, being aware of your life, your surroundings, your actions.

And it seems that the Gordian knot could have been a myth

 

[wellwisher]

In the life sciences, statistical analysis is used, because their theories have not fully reached causal determinism. Instead of cause and affect; accurately predict the future of evolution, for example, things are based on odds, which like buying a lottery ticket and winning, is not a sure thing. Probability leaves things open ended, albeit with some things having higher probability. However, nothing is assigned 100% certainty, which is a rule of probability. How can you have determinism and probability at the same time? Will power offers choices, that can defy the odds, in a theoretical land where there is no sure thing.

Nobody has been able to form life, in the lab, from scratch; Abiogenesis. If this was based on determinism, why is everyone unable to find that determinism? This is not to say that that determinism does not exist, but rather the ego, can't find it, even if it is determined to try. Instead science, diverges in many directions, none of which are fully predicted; deterministic. The only thing that is deterministic here, is the lack of determinism.

In the Bible, there were two trees; Good and Evil, and Life. Life is about natural instinct or the natural integration of life both internally and externally. Good and Evil is not as integrated, but is more relative. This symbolic tree of good and evil is where free will appears. For example, transgender to the extreme Left is called good, while to the extreme right it is called evil. Knowledge of good and evil is often relative and subjective, not always predetermine by one set of logic. Subjectivity, adds wild cards, allowing the determinism of natural instinct to become blurred for subjective will and choice.

We have two centers of consciousness; inner self and ego. The inner self is natural and is the center of the animal brain. All animals have an inner self. The ego is much newer; 10K years old, and is only found in humans. Although the higher domestic animals, like a dog, can form a virtual ego; trained to become unnatural; neurotic, to serve the needs of the owner's ego. One may need a professional trainer to reverse and/or shut off that virtual ego, so the dog's inner self can come to the front. When domestic dogs go feral, their inner self is restored, however, the option of a virtual ego remains; new owner can induce it to coordinate with instinct; natural, or run contrary to instinct; neurotic.

When you have two centers, where each center see the world by two different systems; how the same data is processed, the two systems do not have to coordinate. The Tree of Life, and Tree of knowledge of good and evil, caused a parting of the ways; ego and inner self. This is the original mention of free will and choice; connected to the appearance of the ego. The human ego may have begun as a virtual ego, complementary to the inner self. But as time went on, it finally stuck and became self standing, allowing will and choice to appear.

The way this works, in practical terms, is the ego is more differential; left brain processing, while the inner self is more integral; right brain processing. In calculus, there are two different math operations; differentiation and integration, that treat the same equations, differently. The ego differentiates reality, allowing it to see itself as a certain ethnicity or skin color. This makes anyone outside that set, seem different. The inner self integrates, and sees how all humans are part of the same species. These two different POV, make it hard to overlap 100%, leaving room for ego choice and will; subset. The inner self is more 3-D while the ego is 2-D or less.

 

[muhammad_isa]

Yes but in that case, I wouldn't call it free will, because it is outside my control.

Nobody is saying that all of our decisions aren't influenced by many things, but that does not negate our free-will.

If we are not the ones making decisions, then who/what is?
Who/what is driving the cars down the highway, if not us?

 

[shunyadragon]

I don't see how.
We are not automatons .. while many things that happen in life are not in our control,
many things are.
..yet you seem to want to negate our choices by some philosophical mumbo jumbo.
A person of sound mind is resposnsible for their actions .. tribe and survival motive don't come into it.

You are not reading my posts. Humans most definitely are not automatons, but factors have been well documented that limit the 'range of our possible choices' and cause and effect outcomes in life. This is true of all of life in nature. The limits on our possible choices are critical to the survival of our species. The archaic belief in Libertarian free will' is found false in numerous ways by well documented science. To be automatons ever human decision and cause and effect outcome needs to be predetermined, and this is not the case.

Part of this is due to the fractal nature of our physical existence defined by 'Chaos Theory' where all cause and effect events in nature are limited by Natural Laws and the resulting natural processes

 

[shunyadragon]

Actually it does but you probably don't realise it

. . . probably?

 

[muhammad_isa]

Humans most definitely are not automatons..

..so we make decisions, and are responsible for them.
..and that is what is commonly known as the "free-will" to choose.

Nobody is saying that our choices aren't limited .. just that we make them freely.
If we don't make them freely, then how could we be responsible for them?

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

If I *am* my neural network in action, then the laws that govern that neural network also determine my choices, but those choices are still *mine* (because I am that working neural network).

This gets back to the definition of "I" or self. Should we include the infrastructure outside of consciousness that makes self-awareness possible? Sometimes, we hear two parts of our mind giving contradictory information. We're a little dry, the hypothalamus detects that, and sends a message to consciousness to drink. Is that me, or is that a message to me? How about when the neocortex tells us not to drink, because perhaps we're going to surgery in the morning. Now, I have conflicting messages. It feels like the higher one is more me than the lower, but really, what's the difference? We have two physical structures generating and delivering messages to the self. @Evangelicalhumanist made a comment earlier that he considered his subconscious self, which is a reasonable position, but one can also argue that the self is the passive witness of theater of consciousness, witnessing two neural structures in action. If you saw the movie Being John Malkovich, it explored the idea of entering a consciousness to witness its unfolding as kind of a hitchhiker. We can conceive of ourselves - our own self - as fulfilling that same role in this body, watching its reality unfold.

Asserting that you have no degree of control over your thoughts and actions is tantamount to saying we cannot actually reason but are instead predestined to reach our conclusions whatever they may be.

This gets back to what we call self. My neocortex reasons just fine, but perhaps that's just it conforming itself to the accumulated evidence of the senses and the resulting unconscious inductions. Intuition seems to support an idea like this. One can view it as the output of an unconscious process, and sometimes, it generates intuitions that conform with reality and are found to do so when investigated empirically, as with Einstein's great insights. It feels like a part of his brain was reasoning outside of consciousness. The point is that the consciousness was reasoning under no control of the self-aware self, who only is included when the brain informs the mind of it's output.

So, if our conclusions are predetermined and our reasoning isn’t ours, then we cannot have knowledge

My definition of knowledge doesn't depend on either of those things. Knowledge is part or all of the collection of demonstrably correct ideas one holds, whatever their provenance.

I am unsure how you don’t see solipsism.

Solipsism: "the view or theory that the self is all that can be known to exist." That's an interesting philosophical discussion, but I don't see how it relates to this one. Perhaps you could make the connection for me explicitly.

I don't think this question is all that interesting. If we could have chosen differently at the time we made a choice, then, since everything involved, including our entire state of mind, would be exactly the same, so any difference would have to be purely random.

I find that very interesting. There's part of the problem with calling free will free. Whether what we will is the product of deterministic processes or has an indeterministic component, can we call the self the source of those desires, meaning even if we could go back in time and make a different decision under identical circumstances, does that demonstrate that the self was the source of those desires rather than a passive recipient of them. Also, note that even if we could time travel and choose again, we wouldn't know that that had happened. If we did, then we were not the exact same person when we made the choice again. What all of this tells me is that this is an extremely knotty problem with no answer. Nevertheless, my intuition after considering these things changes from the intuition that I am free to choose the opposite - that I do not possess free will. And that introduces even more knotty problems that cause some minds to despair, which generally results in dismissal of the idea for being too horrible to contemplate, leading to this fallacy:

"Argument from Adverse Consequences: Asserting that an argument must be false because the implications of it being true would create negative results."

I really don't see how that would make you more 'free', as the 'you' would not be involved, it would just be being nudged around by randomness.

Agree. I don't see why you don't find that interesting. This introduces the idea that the world need not be deterministic for will to be determined, hence not free. Think of Schrödinger's cat, whose fate is determined by an indeterministic process.

 

[shunyadragon]

..so we make decisions, and are responsible for them.
..and that is what is commonly known as the "free-will" to choose.

Nobody is saying that our choices aren't limited .. just that we make them freely.
If we don't make them freely, then how could we be responsible for them?

That is not what the definition of free will stated that you posted. It stated that the choices are unemcumbered.

Your ignoring the fact that our choices are very limited within a range of choices, which is not comparable with yout definition.

 

[shunyadragon]

Corrections since this dumb system stuck my post on reply.

..so we make decisions, and are responsible for them.
..and that is what is commonly known as the "free-will" to choose.

Nobody is saying that our choices aren't limited .. just that we make them freely.
If we don't make them freely, then how could we be responsible for them?

That is not what the definition of free will stated that you posted. It stated that the choices are unencumbered.

Your ignoring the fact that our choices are very limited within a range of choices, which is not comparable with your definition.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

All a matter of perception. What if to me, I and the fly are part of the same molecular dance, no more separate from each other than two waves overlapping in the one ocean?

Do you have any idea how many "what-if" questions can be formulated?

If your position really is that you can't tell between you and not-you, I suggest you don't actually do anything ever again, because you will find yourself in constant danger of finding out, when you lose bits of "you."

 

[RestlessSoul]

Do you have any idea how many "what-if" questions can be formulated?

If your position really is that you can't tell between you and not-you, I suggest you don't actually do anything ever again, because you will find yourself in constant danger of finding out, when you lose bits of "you."

I suggest that a willingness to question reality doesn’t make a person any less capable of functioning in the world, than someone who takes it all at face value.

I can recommend a reading list if you want to know where these ideas come from; you’d doubtless be surprised to learn how close much Buddhist thought is, to particular ontological interpretations of theoretical physics.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

I suggest that a willingness to question reality doesn’t make a person any less capable of functioning in the world, than someone who takes it all at face value.

I can recommend a reading list if you want to know where these ideas come from; you’d doubtless be surprised to learn how close much Buddhist thought is, to particular ontological interpretations of theoretical physics.

But remember the old quote by Arthur C. Clarke: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." When we don't understand how something works, we really can't do much except think it magical. I suspect this is very much the case with theoretical physics, and when we have made break-throughs and understand more, some of that magical (or mystical) thinking will evaporate.

 

[RestlessSoul]

But remember the old quote by Arthur C. Clarke: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." When we don't understand how something works, we really can't do much except think it magical. I suspect this is very much the case with theoretical physics, and when we have made break-throughs and understand more, some of that magical (or mystical) thinking will evaporate.

The world is a magical place, and our conscious existence within it is truly miraculous. I pity anyone who doesn’t see that.

 

[Nimos]

Nobody is saying that all of our decisions aren't influenced by many things, but that does not negate our free-will.

If we are not the ones making decisions, then who/what is?
Who/what is driving the cars down the highway, if not us?

This is obviously where things start to get complicated

Because looking at an action isolated and out of context we quickly reach the conclusion that we made that decision using our free will. But I don't think that is truly possible, to begin with.

If we take the example of choosing to drive a car, who makes the decision to do that? It is a good question and maybe the answer is that no one does, even though the obvious answer is that we do since we are driving the car after all. What I mean by it, getting complicated is when we don't look at an action as being isolated, but rather that it is motivated by something and that we look at it as a string of events leading to set action. Then choosing to drive the car, might be done because you have to go visit a friend, which has invited you to their birthday and to get there, the car has somehow convinced you that it is the best option available of all the ways to get there.

But you wouldn't have driven to your friend if you hadn't met them at school in the first place and therefore you wouldn't have any reason to even drive there in the first place. And it obviously becomes extremely complicated when adding all the things that eventually led you to choose to drive the car there.

So the idea that you freely chose to take the car, is where I would refer to it as being an illusion of free will because you obviously wouldn't backtrack several years in your life trying to figure out whether taking the car or the train is the best option or even why you would have to go visit your friend. But ultimately I think this process, whether we give it any deep thought or not does occur whenever we do something, it is motivated by something and choosing one thing over another is based on whatever convinces us is the best option to reach our goal. Could there be some sense of free will, might be. But in that case, I think it is extremely limited.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

The world is a magical place, and our conscious existence within it is truly miraculous. I pity anyone who doesn’t see that.

I can be as awed and humbled by the world and my place in it without the need to invoke magic and miracle. A fresh breeze and the smell of basswood flowers are no less wonderful because I know how they come to be.

 

[osgart]

Every will has desires. Religious free will is about choosing between good and evil. In choosing evil one is slave to those desires. In choosing good one is truly free to live because there can be no worthy law against innocence.

I see that the Abrahamic religions operate according to mercy. According to some Bibles humanity is sold under sin, and God's mercy is always there until death. So under sin no one has free will but for one thing, to choose between good and evil. Our lives a gift from God.

I distinguish good from evil very simply. Evil is any kind of hatred, murder or abuse used for pleasure and/or gain. Good is to love virtues, and to live an honest life. If God exists than it's in full acknowledgement of God. If God is a mystery than one does the best they can. If God does not exist, it still stands that good and evil do exist, and it must be contended with anyway.

As for my free will to choose between good and evil, I'd be a fool not to choose innocence having realized and recognized its path. The trouble is in reality abstract qualities such as virtues, and vices are not always easy to recognize. Yet every human has abstract character traits.

If the argument is about free will in religion I would say that religious language is far different than scientific language. There is the religious claim that understanding is developed spiritually. And science has its own terminology.

I would say nature has it's bounds and limits on what humanity can choose to do, or do otherwise. Desires, and the natures of desires is where free will comes into play.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Religious free will is about choosing between good and evil. In choosing evil one is slave to those desires. In choosing good one is truly free to live because there can be no worthy law against innocence.

I challenge that statement. Religious free will has, quite often in our history, chosen to torture and horribly murder human beings. In many religions. Without religion, it is easy to see that sacrificing a human (or an animal) to a god is evil -- but too often, religion blinded people to that. Without religion it is perfectly obvious that burning a human alive for what they believe is hideously wicked, but religion said, "no, set her alight!" Without religion, anybody can know that it's wrong to own other humans, that children should not be beaten as punishment, that shunning your friends and neighbours for their opinions or their ideological or sexual differences does immense harm to individuals and families -- yet religion has argued and still argues for all of those.

No, if anything, religion makes one a slave -- a slave to unthinking obedience to things you should know are wrong, but can't prevent because religion says so.