About the illusion of free will

Great Debates
241

I disagree. A creature with “free will” would not be responsible for anything because its actions would not be correlated with its previous state or its external inputs (yet, somehow, without being random). There would be no point in punishing or rewarding it because it would not respond to punishment or reward. Responsibility requires that their mental state be correlated with their behavior, which is an example of determinism not free will.

Despite the praise people heap on the concept, an actual free willed creature wouldn’t think or act much like a human. Probably a free willed creature would be killed or permanently imprisoned due to being totally unpredictable (predictability requires determinism).

That assumes that something deterministic like a computer choosing between two programming branches according to an input doesn’t qualify as a choice. Personally, I find it qualifies more as a choice than some magic neither-determined-nor-random undefinable thing like “free will”.

242

The concept “Person with Free Will” is defined as an organism that although made of physical stuff has some non physical element imbued with a supernatural logic and control that is not mere earthly determinism. It does not mean an entity without form and goals.

Free Will is said by libertarians (the few there are left now) to be the normal state of humanity- an ensouled being that differs from machines and animals by its extra-natural abilities to make choices not determined solely by its previous condition.

You are assuming something (randomness, rootlessness, lack of goal orientation) that is not in the libertarian model of human beings. They would assert that it is the very freedom of will provided by a soul that makes people normal and what separates them from common animals.

243

Check your ordinary dictionary as well as a philosophical one.

Choice means an active considered conscious decision. Decisions are not necessarily choices.

Wikipedia: Choice consists of a mental decision, of judging the merits of multiple options and selecting one or more of them. While a choice can be made between imagined options (“what would I do if …?”), often a choice is made between real options and followed by the corresponding action.

Britannica:choice, in philosophy, a corollary of the proposition of free will—i.e., the ability voluntarily to decide to perform one of several possible acts or to avoid action entirely. An ethical choice involves ascribing qualities such as right or wrong, good or bad, better or worse to alternatives.

In discussions such as this, Choice implies a Free Will Decision.

Any Object may make a decision- even a toss of a coin, but choice is decision reached via free will.

244

I am aware that you are a “rose-by-any-other-name guy”, but I nonetheless take issue with this. I’m not using your ‘free will as described by intuition but stripped of it’s historical legacy and import’ definition. I am arguing against the commonly understood notion of free will, as has been built up by religious thinkers and religious-apologist philosophers.

Insofar as that notion of ‘free will’ still dictates a lot of discourse on the matter of human agency, I think it is important to distinguish this historical philosophical notion of free will from the kinds of scientific and philosophical notions we have been raising in this thread.

Your argument that it is indistinguishable, has been understood, but I nonetheles find it lacking. If this ‘free will’ notion is on it’s way to being debunked by modern neuroscience (and also apparent logic, by my subjective reckoning), then it is time to stop using innacurate terminology to describe it. If it is restrained, causal, and subjectively limited then it is not ‘free’, and hence why the term ‘free will’ is troubling to me and others.

Arguing that if it were free, behaviour would nonetheless be indistinguishable is not convincing to someone who is skeptical of free will, especially coming from someone who doesn’t seem to be raising any functional defense of the notion of free will beyond the fact that it conforms to what you imagine the outcome of human agency would be either way.

245

Why do you say it conforms to what I’d imagine the outcome would be either way? You wrote that, if we posit free will, then “we can step back from this nature in order to activate our ‘free will’, where we override our natural, developed nature and reactions in order to… make the same decision that we would have done without positing such”.

I don’t disagree with you; I nod amiably.

You then go on to discard the whole idea of ‘free will’, and I see no reason to argue, since you laid that make-the-same-decision groundwork for a wholehearted round of distinction-that-makes-no-difference call-and-response.

246

Agreement. Whether it’s “Free Will” or merely “volition,” we have the capacity to make decisions and choices. It’s a learned behavior, and, in humans, it can be trained up. For instance, judges can be trained to make remarkably complicated decisions on the basis of enormous volumes of law.

(And even then…judges sometimes differ in the decisions they make. Even the formal logic of the law does not produce “deterministic” decisions. If it did, we’d replace judges with algorithmic systems.)

And, yes, definitely: some people can lack this ability, perhaps due to a cerebral stroke or injury. It can also be diminished by alcohol or hypnosis.

You are entirely correct in pointing to “volition” (or whatever) as that capacity which is lost or diminished in some people at some times.

(Stephen Jay Gould had an essay on the value of studying things by examining their loss. Brain injury studies have been hugely informative about the workings of the brain – and the mind.)

247

Volition is an experience. It is not proven to be a cause. That is the essence of the lack of support for Free Will.

248

OLet us go back to first principles and use language very carefully.

Initially there is a choice between beliveing that either:

1/ The World that we know from experience as examined by the Sciences is the only world about which we can talk.
OR
2/ There is something about the world that is beyond the purview of Science.

If Option 1 is taken, all the indications are that any change in the world is either

3/ Caused by a previous state of the World
OR
4/ Uncaused- random, stochastic etc.

If Option 2 is taken, anything asserted outside science is a mere belief without any backing outside of the mind experiencing it. It is Faith without proof. There is no decision procedure between different such experiences of belief and this no argument to be gainfully made.

If Option 3 is taken then all change is caused by a determined process, and the future is known but unknowable until it occurs.

If Option 4 is chosen then some things are random and the world has no definite future and cannot be known ahead of time.

Let us now look at the concept of cause. This is best described as A is caused by B if and only if A preceded B, B cannot occur without A and there is some connection that justifies B being affected by A.

So one might say that a pool ball striking another on a table meets this criteria- Pool balls do not spontaneously move under normal circumstances, but if ball A hits ball B we understand that movement will be transferred under Newton’s Laws of Motion and its direction will be predicted by various mechanical equations. So we have what is required of cause and effect.

Having considered the above problems with Ontology (what there is in the world) and Cause and Effect, we can now try to understand what a claim of Free Will actually means.

There are three possible meanings of Free Will.

i/ Libertarianism- something separate from the world known to science causes change in the Physical world by some mysterious means.

ii/ Compatibilism- the world is entirely determined but it is permissible to talk of Free Will as a method of explaining and discussing human behaviour and societal reaction, even though the future is unaffected by any such entity. “Free Will” may be experienced by people and others may use the concept of Free Will in explanation, but it only exists in experience, not in the reral world.

iii/ Hard Determinism- Free Will does not exist as a causative factor in the world in any manner.

Option i by the definition of cause is ill defined- people may claim that Free Will CAUSES action, but we cannot set up an “if and only if” statement as it is unmeasurable, and we do not have a sufficient explanation of the connection between the thought and the action. It is always arguable that in fact the action is the cause of the thought, or that the thought is totally extraneous to the act.

Option ii is a halfway house. Free Will is never a cause in the real world but is a construct of the human mind attempting to explain a complex process by metaphor.

Option iii denies the effectiveness of Free Will completely.

Anyone suggesting that Free Will causes actions in the world needs to build a framework to support the contention. So far there has been no such argument acceptable to the vast majority of people (Philosophers or Scientists) working in the field.

249

Well, you lead off with there may or may not be something about the world that is beyond the purview of science, which I’m not really in a position to dispute, since it pretty much gives the whole thing away at the start.

You then add that ‘people may claim that Free Will CAUSES action, but we cannot set up an “if and only if” statement’ – such that, if free will exists, then whatever a guy does, advocates of free will can say That’s Free Will Right There, and other folks can say But That’s Exactly What He’d Have Done Without Free Will: you’ve defined it as functionally indistinguishable from being persuaded by appeals to a decision-making calculus within an internal moral structure.

So: maybe it exists, and maybe it doesn’t, and if it does, there’s no if-and-only-if way of telling the difference, since it makes no difference? That’s your bold position?

250

As I said, get yourself a Philosophy Primer and try to understand the question rather than firing off half baked objections.

All your petulant responses are doing is to illustrate your inability to even grasp the initial question.

No time to waste on you if you are not willing to engage.

251

What objection?

You state that there may or may not be stuff beyond the purview of science; I don’t object. You state that we can’t set up an if-and-only-if statement to test whether the stuff exists; I don’t object. I see a summary, but I don’t see an objection.

So where is the objection? I’m looking real hard for it, but it doesn’t seem to be there. Is it one of those things you say may or may not be beyond the purview of science? Is it one of those things you say we can’t set an if-and-only-if test for?

252

There is a route map to help people understand how such concepts as Free Will which seem important at the time may wither away when a more prosaic explanation becomes available.

Since ancient Eygypt via Posodonius, a Hellenistic philosopher, and early scientists there was a belief in ‘Vitalism’- that some numinous force inhabited living matter that changed its nature from mere material to that of living stuff. Science searched for this and it was a convenient crutch on which to hang half understanding of the subject.

With the rise of modern science and the understanding provided by Evolutionary theories together with Biological ideas such as Homeostasis and such, Vitalism just fell out of the tool box of explanation.

I believe that the same is happening with ‘Free Will’. A paradigm change is happening where we are coming to see that it is not necessary to have the undefinable numinous idea of Free Will in order to understand the complexity of Human Behaviour.

In the same way that no-one now claims that a special force (given various names under the doctrine of Vitalism) is necessary for matter to be living, so shall we lose the need to insist that our awareness of our actions is necessary for those actions to happen- Free Will will be excluded from the Causative Chain, but will still exist in human experience- a mere construct of the Brain as is the rest of the Mind.

253

As I said, try to address the question.

Your reply is similar to a reply to Evolutionary Theory that says-

“You talk of a scientific theory of Evolution involving merely matter. I don’t object to that. nor do I object to Creationism. It doesn’t matter to me which is true.”

254

Ah. So you say I’m offering objections – and, when pressed, you can’t point to an objection amidst the mere summary; no apology follows. You say I’m creating beliefs instead of merely summarizing them; no apology follows. You say I’m ignoring stuff instead of merely summarizing it; no apology follows.

You sure do like to just say stuff, and then quietly abandon it, don’t ya?

That’s what’s lacking from the little back-and-forth you propose right there: the key is that someone else would have to kick things off by saying they believe in one or the other, and then hastily add that he of course can’t come up with an if-and-only-if test to tell 'em apart, since as far as we can tell they’re indistinguishable – which is when I’d say, “um, okay, then,” and tick a box on my Distinction Without A Difference card.

I don’t create the belief any more than I object to it; I simply ask how things would be different in the alternative – and if you reply that things would be functionally identical, such that we wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, I’ll nod in agreement, because, hey, who wants to be falsely accused of objecting? Why, that’d be awful!

255

Keep on climbing that pole.

256

As a Strong AI proponent, I somewhat agree. However, I would say, instead, that AI emulation of actual thinking minds will show that volition is wholly material. Decision-making is a property of sufficiently organized matter.

We don’t need a “spirit or soul” or other magical construct to be decision-making minds. We only need a really, really complex system of thinking stuff.

If human volition is an illusion, so is consciousness. Yet, no one who experiences it can well regard it as only an illusion. If nothing else, and at very worse, it’s a self-regarding illusion, and thus has sufficient “reality” to support itself. You can’t “lift yourself by your bootstraps,” but you can be aware of your own awareness, and this cannot be defined away semantically.

(If our awareness is only an illusion…who are we talking to?)

257

Here is my understanding of scientific determinism.

There is no magic. Everything in the universe is subject to the laws of physics. This includes the air currents caused by the butterfly’s wing in China. This includes the neurons that fire in your brain, my brain and everyone else’s brain. This includes the current physical state of every object in the universe.

There is no real randomness, just unpredictability. The result of every coin flip is governed by the laws of physics – there are just way too many factors in play for our puny minds to calculate them. Randomness is an illusion.

Every instant in time is the answer to an incredibly complex and elaborate equation with zillions of varibles - the state of every object in the physical universe, the state of every cell in everything made of cells, the state of every neuron in every living brain.

But despite the complexity of the equation, there is still only one correct answer. The answer is utterly unpredictable due to the sheer number of varibles but it still works like any other equation. That correct answer defines this instant and there is only one possible answer.

Free will is a perfect illusion, but an illusion nonetheless.

258

After six pages, not only does there remain a complete absence of compelling (or even vaguely convincing) arguments for the existence of free will, but also an absence of any coherent and consistent definition of what free will could even possibly mean in the first place.

At this point it seems the debate has run its course, and we’re just left with bickering between particular users about the virtuousness of their posting styles.

Still, the thread has been a good read.

Thank you to all those who took part.

259

Excellent points.

The existence of free will is a matter of perspective: it exists only from a subjective frame. But that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist, any more than to say that consciousness, or love, or the experience of the color red doesn’t exist. (Do qualia exist? Well, of course they exist, but only in the subjective framework.)

From the objective standpoint (assuming the the brain is a machine), there are only two options: either it’s deterministic or nondeterministic. Either way, no magical “free will.”

But there’s another way of looking at it, which is that the mind is an emergent property of the “machinery” of the brain (or a computer), just as chemistry is an emergent property of subatomic physics. The fact that chemistry can be reduced to physics doesn’t mean that chemistry doesn’t exist. It doesn’t eliminate chemistry as a meaningful science.

Likewise, to say that the mind is created by the brain doesn’t mean that it makes sense to talk about everything about the mind as though it’s just an aspect of the machinery. Furthermore, in the case of mind/machine, we get one of what Hofstadter calls “strange loops” where definitions become a bit circular. The brain creates the mind, but the mind affects the brain: the brain’s own output affect its inputs.

Note that I’m not saying that the brain creates some kind of supernatural new spiritual force. What it does create that’s astonishing and new is subjectivity.

Think about it: before the first brain, as far as we know, there was no subjectivity in the universe. The first brain comes along, and bingo, it exists! Rudimentary at first, no doubt, but look what it’s become. Something pretty substantial. It creates a whole new frame of reference. It’s nothing to sneeze at!

From this new frame of reference, free will exists. I can choose to raise my right arm now, or not. It matters not to me whether the outcome was somewhat pre-programmed. I’m still faced with the decision to make. I can’t AVOID making decisions. For this reason, ethics is not a slave to determinism (or nondeterminism). It makes sense to talk about good and bad, right and wrong, and making good decisions.

Nit: there is real randomness. Ask any quantum mechanic, while he’s rotating your quantum tires. However, that doesn’t really affect your point, which is equally valid regardless whether we posit determinism or nondeterminism. Your point is, it’s mechanistic: the mind is created by a machine that obeys the laws of physics. That’s a valid point; one that I agree with, and I’m confident that Trinopus does too.

You say that like it’s a bad thing. :wink: Seriously, it depends on what we mean by “illusion”. Generally, we mean it to imply that something doesn’t exist. For the reasons mentioned above, I disagree with that interpretation in this case. But I would agree that “it doesn’t objectively exist” and I admit that’s a fine hair to split. However, I think fine hair splitting is required here.

260

One is perfectly free (hehe) to insist as loud as they want that they have free will.

But when it comes to treating others and matters of public policy, the notion that we free will serves no utility and should be discarded. Why not turn all of our tax dollars to the church so a bunch of nuns can pray over our souls and do away with social welfare spending, if the environment doesn’t dictate the choices we make? Why pay lip service to rehabilitation programs in the criminal justice arena, if people are just going to do whatever they want? Why should juries hear testimony about how abused and neglected a defendent was as a child? Why should subliminal messages be banned from TV commercials? Free will, baby! Bring 'em on!

Illusions are not just cool parlor tricks. They can bother harmful and helpful. if everyone can agree with this, then I’m fine with individuals deluding themselves as much as they want to.