An **Sapo{/b] and Dio, I understand your points now. Thank you. Perfect sense. And I’ve no real disagreement with your perspective. In fact it was an analysis similar to that that got me off my previous soft atheism position into a soft pantheist one. Carry on.
Revenant Threshold:
I’ve already done so, upthread. If you can establish that a person’s choices are determined by something other than themselves, then the person did not determine the choice, ergo no free will.
If my choices can only be explained with reference to I/me and what I bring to the situation in which the choices are made, I possess free will.
(And I’ve disclaimered as follows: that if you avoid referencing I/me specifically by instead describing my entire unabridged context, i.e., the entire sequence of my life in total detail up to the moment of choice, you have not in fact avoided referencing I/me at all, as I am equally well described by the totality of my context in space and time, which is to say that the meaning of both is described by the relationship between them. If this part is muddy, go back upthread, I think I worded it better the first time)
Hmmm. It took me all night to figure out what’s going on… (I seem to think better when I’m asleep.)
- The OP framed his definition of Free Will as a process that must defy logic.
If there is a logical reason for choosing to do “x” in a given situation, then we wern’t “free” to make that decision, that decision was driven by those reasons and not by free will.
- The OP has also stipulated that another trait of free will is the ability to divorce itself from outside influences. Note he states “To try to put it another way, “choices” are really effects, not causes. What causes the effect?” and “I’m saying there has to be a reason WHY we make choices. There always has to be an element which is not “free.” The only way to be truely self-determinant is to be random.”
To put it in other words, because we are influenced by the physical world, we are not “free”. We only react to causes to the physical world, even if those causes are sourced entirely within our own minds. (The desire to paint, for example.)
He set up a no-win argument in the first place. He defines Free Will in such a way so as it cannot exist. I cannot divorce myself from the physical world, and I cannot count the decisions that actually apply to the concerns at hand (living life), so therefore I have no free will.
There was something tickling the back of my brain about the whole argument that I couldn’t put my finger on…
If two people have all the exact same conditions for a choice, but yet each make a different choice, is that an example of free will or randomess? Does randomness allow for free will, or is randomness just the illusion of free will? reminds me of chaos theory for some reason.
Free will exists because I say it does, to me. If I can make the decision that what I do is based on my own free will, how can anyone or anything disprove that? You can either accept I did it on my own free will, or you can think I did it due to some other factor. Either way, it cannot be proven, so I will go with the default.
Free will exists because we say it does and we accept that our choices are ours to make or not make.
That is not the OP’s argument. This is closer: If X was solely the result of other actions, then X is not an act of free will. If X is a random result, then X is not an act of free will.
Consider any action X. If it were possible to reset the universe and replay all the events that lead up to X, would you do X again every time? If the answer is yes, then couldn’t we say that X is determined by that state of the universe? If the answer is no, then how is X different from randomness?
Slice away all experience, biology and environment from any “decision” and what do you have left? In order for there to be free will there has to be within you an uncaused first cause. If such a thing is possible, how could we differentiate it from randomness?
That’s exactly what I mean when I say that it’s a no win argument:
“The decision/action must not have cause, and it must not be random.”
The coin is not allowed to be heads, and it is not allowed to be tails.
So you agree that free will is a logical impossibility? Or do you wish to propose another definition of free will?
I just thought I’d interject to post a link to the Free Will Theorem of John Conway (the Game of Life guy!) and Simon Kochen. It says that if we have free will, then elementary particles must have free will as well.
My own summary:
They equate “free will” with “not determinable by the prior history of the universe”, i.e. separate from the “influences” previous posters have invoked.
If the experimental environment is not determined by the prior history of the universe (i.e. set up by experimenters that enjoy free will), then the observations of the experiment are not determinable from the prior history of the universe (i.e. the particles under observation enjoy free will).
To me, this seems to suggest that if free will exists, all of science would collapse, since the free will of particles would make codification of physical laws impossible. The authors, however, while conceding that a universe without free will is logically possible, apparently still believe in free will. They believe (see section 11.5) that the choices made by particles “cancel out” at higher scales, while our brains are set up to avoid some of those cancellations and thus maintain some free will.
mlees, I don’t think the OP is about Free Will going against logic. It has more to do with it being against Causality chains. You are right that we can make choices based on purely “internal” reasons (your desire to paint) but those internal reasons are also a product of the functioning of your brain which responds in a mechanical way based on previous experience, laws of biology, chemistry, physics. Once you boil down to the level of physics, we are stuck with little balls bouncing around (yes, I know they are not little balls bouncing around) inexorably following the laws of physics. Our mental processes are the results of our chemical history.
Which brings us to Dob’s question. Two people cannot share their conditions. There is no such thing as “exact same conditions” at the most basic level. Even identical twins delivered simultaneously by a symmetrical C-section by twin doctors have enourmous amounts of differences that prevent them from being taken as equals. Their physical history is different and they will respond differently to an identical event (which they will perceive differently anyways)
The way that it is framed for this thread, yes. We are trapped into a logic loop by the parameters set up by the OP.
“The action must not have cause, and it must not be random.” Well, what else is there? The definition, by it’s very parameters, rules out the possibility for it to exist. An intended paradox, as it were.
Well, hehe. Yeah. My “gut” tells me there is. But I can’t seem to put my finger on it again, and I won’t highjack.
You guys are sharper than me. It took me a whole day to see what actually happened in the framing of the argument in the thread. If I tried to frame a definition of Free Will without some serious thinking, you guys would nitpick it apart, and I would get frustrated again.
Sufficient (for me/to me) to say that I respectfully disagree with the definition of free will as set by the OP, and leave it for you argue within the parameters set by the OP as you desire. It’s a great thought excercise, anyway. Good job!
This strikes me as the same sort of “angels of the head of a pin” debate that was mentioned above. Something to talk about at 3 am but which has no practical answer.
I do have several problems with your statements above though.
First, The egregious error you make in insisting that the only two opions that describe the world are random and determined. Clearly both exist in the real world and therefore this isn’t an either/or proposition. There may even be a third option of the spontanious.
Second, the realization that the first statement is blatantly false makes your second statement meaningless.
Third, you reduce all human experience to a series of choices. For example, I’m reading a book one day (a clear choice) but encounter an idea that just happens to interact with several that I already posses causing me to come to an original conclusion. Where was my choice to experience a moment of realization resulting in a unique response to stimuli?
As to the free will debate you propose, I fail to see how original thought is explained in your model of the universe. Am I to understand that original thought comes from unwillingly “choosing” something that does not yet exist?
I don’t see any evidence that this black box is demonstrably much different than that of dogs. Both boxes seem to weigh choices against different competing interests and influences and pick amongst them (or sometimes even get stressed out and not pick). The human box may be more complex and self-reflective and it may include things like the ability to communicate some aspects about the choosing process, but no one has demonstrated that the human way is of a fundamentally different kind of process.
Hello, non-sequitur. Being a moral being is not dependent on Free Will. In fact, since you and everyone else have completely failed to define or explain what Free Will is, you can’t even BEGIN to claim that it is a necessary component of being a moral being.
I’m not familiar with the sorts of atheists you are talking about: can you give me some examples (were they mentioned in the prior thread?)
Again, it is a huge mistake to confuse the origin or production of something with its value or perceived purpose or worth. In fact, it’s such a huge mistake that there is a formal name for it: the genetic fallacy.
That’s certainly all interesting in terms of the magic tricks John Mace was talking about, but it doesn’t solve or even ATTEMPT to address the problem we’re dealing with here: it doesn’t EXPLAIN the core question of how or why a particular set of choices was chosen: and it is the very question, not the particulars of the answer, that is so fatal for “Free Will.” All those things you mentioned are, are simply more black boxes with respect to natural law. But just as we faced the question of “why did X will this to happen” in the natural world, we cannot escape the question even if we retreat to the supernatural world. Why did the magic wand change the table by 4cm and not 6cm? Why did it change the angle of the shot to bank more left instead of more right?
Again: any ATTEMPT to answer the question is itself immediately destructive of the idea of Free Will.
I don’t think it’s a hijack. For the purposes of hypothetically outlining a concept, I’ll allow lots of leeway. The problem is that I don’t think the concept has any logical meaning, so no amount of leeway is going to help. But hey: go for it and we’ll see.
It’s not clear, and it may never be clear, and yes it could be both. I don’t think anyone has disagreed with this position.
I’m not sure how that would differ from the random. Remember: in this debate, “random” means uncaused: a particular event just happens, for no reason. That’s “real” randomness.
Since you mischaracterize it, I think you have made the error. If you think there are other options to consider, then by all means present them!
None of this is of any particular problem to what Dio and I have been saying. We aren’t saying that all things that happen are choices, not even all things that happen in the mind. The human mind in particular is very clearly a powerful but imperfect and often sloppy pattern recognizer and reassembler. Original thoughts can be expected to be synthesized up all the time.
Even if it’s a mix of random and determined variables, that still doesn’t get you one inch closer to solving the problem. And what do ypu mean by “spontaneous?” How is that differentiated from the random?
How is the first statement false?
No I don’t.
It wasn’t a choice. Just a confluence of variables. So what?
I wasn’t aware that I had proposed a model of the universe.
No. Thoughts are pretty much non-volitional.
A bit of a hijack but it has some bearing on the whole determinism aspect of this thread. “Clockwork” may turn out to be a poor metaphor. Yet randomness along the lines of quantum models may also be a bit of a stretch. Think more massively nonlinear and chaotic. Even all the processing power imaginable may be unable to determine which of several probable outcomes will occur given a particular set of starting conditions. Determining which ones are most probable (the attractor basins) is another story.
Question: If free will is illusory, is “self” just an illusion as well? Leaving the Cartesian “ghost in the machiners” out of this discussion, if my “self” is (as I fully accept it is) an emergent property or result of various biologic processes, then it has no physical reality itself but is also just an illusion. I think I am … but I am not … really.
And here comes into play AHunter’s definition of free will. If I accept an “I” as existing other than as an illusion, then I equally accept “free will” as that which “I” decide, even if my decisions are determined by all that preceded it. And since I cannot just will myself out existence I must continue to live the delusion.
My last paragraph details what a spontanious variable is, original thought. This then becomes a cause that is, by your own admission, neither random nor determined. This renders your first statment false.
Which means that they figure into the “free will” question. These are the spontanious events that your theory doesn’t account for. Free will must exist because original thought exists and original thought can influence the will (or the wanting if you prefer) of the thinker despite other stimulus.
So we have a variable occurring within the individual, and no where else, that is neither random nor determined, that provides original input to the process of decision making. Therefore I consider your statements in the OP to be flawed.
I don’t see any reason to think of it as a “delusion” except in very colorful language. Your identity with yourself as a being seems very real. The fact that you work in SOME way, as yet mostly hidden to you, doesn’t detract from the fact that you are you: you experience being this person and making choices. You are responsible for your choices: even if you are a “machine” as you might think of it, you are THIS machine, and not some other one.
I think Liberal has explained the issue pretty well, but maybe not even going far enough. We really just can’t say what your conscious experience is. We can affect it, and it may be that not long in the future we can completely control it, externally (there’s certainly all sorts of creepy examples of this done in labs already). But we cannot directly study or look at a conscious experience: it isn’t something we can put in a jar and poke at and examine and see it, at least not in the same way you experience it. The problem of consciousness is that we don’t even know how to begin conceptualizing what sort of thing it is.
What evidence is there that an original thought is spontaneous in the sense of not having any predictable precursors? In fact, virtually every original thought I can think of involves someone putting together old facts in a new way. Even ones totally out of the blue are based on conceptual framework of concepts and language, which of course jumble around in different minds differently.
Nonsense. You’ve yet to explain in any way what sort of thing has happened in the case of an original thought that is neither of those nor any mix of them.
I’m sorry, but your basic responsibility before even getting here is to define what free will IS. You haven’t done that. So how can you claim that “it” must exist because of some state of affairs. WHAT must exist?
You’ve provided no evidence at all that original thoughts are unexplainable in theory by the elements provided. I have a genetic algorithm as a screen saver right now that via natural selection invented an “original” (as in, unpre-programed in) form of walking locomotion for a collection of blocks and joints in a 3D world. There is no need to find either causes or lack of causes wanting for the explanation of how this could happen.
You are aware that determined and random roughly relate down to “caused” vs. “not caused.” What other alternative can you possibly offer to a BINARY distinction? The middle is excluded.
Hey, you are preaching to the choir 
I was just using dogs as their box is, as you said, simpler and we might get to open it sooner than man’s. If not dogs, roaches will do. They are also the same process in an even simpler form (maybe) and we might get to open that black box even sooner. I mention man’s black box as there is the possibility that we might get to open all the boxes except man’s and have all animals explained and only man with a black box.
Although that definition is a burden that should fall on those who defend it and I think FW has been sufficiently defined, let me take a stab at it again. Free Will would be (if it existed) the ability to carry out an action independently of the previous history of the universe that led to it. The ability to act spontaneous way, that is not in response to history and circumstance at the most basic level.
Anyone who 1) Believes there is nothing supernatural (that the universe explains itself) and 2) Believes that Free Will exists. How many are there and who are they? I thought I spotted several right here on SDMB but maybe I was mistaken.
not exactly what I am saying. Take for example an ID advocate who says “Creation is so perfect it has to be created with a purpose” and we claim bull. It is the way it is because that’s how it came to be. Nature brought it to what it is. It is all atoms bumping around.
But then someone else claims that because our decisions are so complex/perfect/unpredictable they have to be the product of purpose and not just the result of atoms bumping around. Not claiming this is bull seems very hypocritical to me.
Once you push the black box out of nature and into the supernatural (the black wall, if you allow me), you are pushing it out of the scope of science and it must remain unexplained.
As we close the gaps of our knowledge and shrink the domain of the black box, one of two things must happen: We either vanish the black box completely (and are left with no Free Will) or we squeeze it to the Black Wall and out of the realm of nature (and are left with a supernatural Free Will)
Of course there is always the possibility that we won’t be able to close all the gaps of knowledge and be stuck with a black box in the living room. That would be our shortfall.
me? as I said, I personally believe that if there is such thing as Free Will at all, it must be supernatural. My same position about God, btw. What I believe happens outside the black wall is all dragons and angels and cauldrons full of fairy dust. Hardly the stuff of a GD, I believe.
Certainly. Clockwork is shorthand for wicked complicated stuff we have no chance of figuring out. The computer needed to calculate this would be the universe itself.
Yes. I think, therefore I am-human and believe I AM.
The box is black to itself. Even if we somehow (read magically) modelled the process, the box would still be unable to see inside itself. The illusion holds and the “self” continues to believe in itself and feel it has Free Will.