I have buttons on my remote controls that I’ve never used and have no idea what they do. 
I think we will reach a turning point in our social development when people no longer feel “icky” over using biometrics to identify potential sociopaths so that they can either be fixed or isolated from others. When society makes that shift, that will indicate we have collectively let go of the primitive idea that sociopaths are simply people who have just chosen to be bad for badness’ sake. Whether posters here want to admit it or not, that is what the free will connotes to most people.
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Sociopathology, any pathology really, is a scale with mitigating factors. Before we take to isolating people based on their genetic predispositions, we better be damn sure we know what we’re doing.
(We won’t. We almost never do.)
Eh, nothing we do is ever perfect. But if we identify a set of factors that predict sociopathy in 90% of cases, with a false positive error of 10%, it would be irreponsible for us not to do anything with this information.
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Well, since there aren’t any plant or animal “atheists” that I know of, I assumed the question was directed at humans regarding humans.
Most praying mantises are just yielding to peer pressure.
Every time I bathe my 10-month old, I can appreciate how much control my subconscious mind has over my actions.
My daughter is a chub of wriggly energy. When she’s in the bathtub, she gets excited and wants to grab all the toys and all the soap bubbles. She normally can sit up just fine, but because she’s so top heavy, you can never be sure that she won’t topple over. I don’t trust her not to drown herself the second I turn my back on her.
When I sit by the tub watching her play, sometimes my arms will shoot out to catch her when she falls. Before it registers in my mind that she’s even lost her balance, my hands have already grabbed her. It’s like an alien is literally controlling my body. It has happened enough times that I’ve stopped being startled by it and I just embrace it for what it is: my subconsciousness insists on taking the wheel when my baby is in the bathtub. Probably because it knows my conscious mind is too slow to react to subtle signs she’s teetering towards death.
But here’s the thing: my subconsciousness takes the wheel in situations like this one, but I’m wise enough to know that doesn’t mean it’s influence is limited to just those times. Isn’t it quite likely it is almost always behind the wheel and I’m simply unaware of it because the actions its driving aren’t as obvious as alien arms moving without my control? Most of these “actions” aren’t going to be actions at all. They are going to be thoughts, feelings, and impulsive gestures. My conscious mind might take the credit for all of this stuff, but like any executive writing up his/her performance report at the end of the year, it’s really the subconscious machinery that is doing the work.
Eve was tempted by the snake into eating the apple. Believers in free will focus on this simple action (taking the apple and eating it) when judging her for choosing wrongly. But given the nature of her brain, personality, and the sum total of knowledge that she had at the point this whole scene went down, could she control whether she would be curious about the apple? Could she control the persuasive effect the snake’s words had on her? Could she will herself not to be hungry at the exact moment she saw the apple? Could she will herself not to find the apple visually pleasing? If her subconscious mind compelled her to impulsively reach up and grab the thing because of all these drivers in the background that she has no control over–the same way mine commands me to grab my bathing daughter–is this “free will”?
I think this topic is interesting although a bit removed from athiesm and free will, so I created a separate debate thread on this subject titled [THREAD=880039]“Sociopath Screening”[/THREAD].
~Max
I either really don’t understand your original question or I really don’t understand this response. If you want to clarify the question or claim, I’ll try to answer again.
You asked, what power was controlling a person since an atheist doesn’t believe in a higher power (or something like that) and I responded that it was physics and chemistry – your brain has a certain physical and chemical configuration at each moment and will respond a certain (unpredictable) way given the same inputs. I don’t see any room for whatever “free will” means. I also gave examples of other living things that respond to stimulus, but no one would claim that a plant has free will. And yet, using chemistry and physics, it will orient towards the sun.
I honestly find “natural” free will more believable than free will under an omniscient creator. If he knows everything, he knows everything then he knows everything we will do.
Outside of an omniscient god, we have nothing that can predict our every move with 100% precision. I think that would be the the only “proof” that free will doesn’t exist. Until that time, I think it is fine to think that free will exists and I will not fault a person for thinking one way or another (btw, I also think it’s absolutely fine to believe in God). I think our unpredictability is pretty convincing evidence that we have something like free will.
I believe a “choice” is created by an immensely complex set of factors related to past experiences, beliefs, your peers, your brain chemistry, stress, etc. It is such a unique signature, that while I believe a machine could probably predict your actions with pretty good accuracy, I do not think it could do it within your lifetime, as all those factors are constantly changing. I do not think choice is necessary always a conscious choice either.
I do believe people can change and make different choices than the would have at different times under similar circumstances (e.g. become “better” or “worse” people). One could easily argue that transformation was not due to choice either, but it’s close enough for me.
Could you clarify what you mean by “unpredictable” in this sentence? Do you mean practically unpredictable but still deterministic? Or do you really mean non-deterministic, as in the Copenhagen interpretation? Or do you mean stochastic? Or what?
~Max
Well forgetting for a sec that for one of those examples you’d have had to travel forward in time to reference, it was really the claim that my post was pseudoscientific that raised my hackles. There is nothing pseudoscientific in that post. But hey, let bygones be bygones.
I don’t like “biological machines” either but you weren’t happy with causal determinism without compatibilism. I think that should be enough to start the conversation (though it may require further refinements).
I don’t think the idea that conciousness exists on a gradient is controversial. We know there is a difference between sentience and self-awareness, and that humans can be unconcious but still dream.
Most emergent properties are causally determined. I don’t know of any that don’t make sense (though conciousness is obviously hard to get our heads around). Note that most emergent phenomena seem intentional but aren’t. IMO that seems closer to an implication that there’s no free will (I’m certainly not sold on that notion though).
I’m not sure free will doesn’t exist - I’m just blown away by how many otherwise scientifically-minded people default to tossing Occam’s Razor in the trash just because they don’t like how they look in the mirror after using it in this case.
It’s surely unpredictable, even in theory, because of the wavelike qualities of electrons in your neurons. It’s probably also unpredictable, even in theory, due to chaos effects, sensitive dependence on initial conditions and so on, although I’m willing to be talked out of that one.
Leaving quantum effects aside, is it possible to predict, even in theory, how a spinning die will land after falling through turbulent air, for example? It’s possible that there are too many variables to be solvable before the heat death of the universe or something.
Anyway, that’s a hijack from the main point for me which is, even though you can’t predict the outcome, that doesn’t mean “free will” was involved. You can hook up a machine to output different things depending on the clicks of a Geiger counter and the movement of a feather in a turbulent windstorm, but no one would argue that the machine had free will.
Only tangential to the topic but - I remember reading those studies about how people act more antisocial when recently exposed to the idea there is no free will. I ended up writing a Vonnegutian short story about how Homeland Security finds out that a scientist is about to publish a research paper showing conclusive proof there’s no free will. Scientists at Home Sec run simulations that predict public disbelief in free will would essentially end civilization as we know it. They attempt to convince…well I don’t want to spoil the rest.
If you care about convincing people, you might eschew unfounded generalizations such as this. Whether or not “most people” believe this, I’ve seen nothing to suggest this is a position held by any posters to this thread.
To which monstro responds
I doubt anyone in this thread would question that actions are not INFLUENCED by prior conditions. My perception is that the disagreement is whether EVERY action is ENTIRELY DETERMINED by those conditions. In other words, in Mijin’s definition - could you have decided otherwise?
I do not know the answer. I’m certainly not a neurochemist/physicist. But it sure FEELS like I’m able to decide which flavor of ice cream to have. And I (and it seems most people) seem to view life as more enjoyable and meaningful if we act under what may be a shared delusion that we each have at least some limited degree of personal agency.
So the debate is:
science hasn’t proven the existence/mechanism of free will VS it sure seems like we have FW, yet current science is unable to explain it.
Decide which side you prefer and live your life accordingly.
I’m not sure what the argument is here, but chaotic phenomenon (including sensitive dependence) are deterministic and in theory predictable.
Actually it’s only different quantitatively. Qualitatively it’s exactly the same.
When a human announces that I will choose strawberries, they are making an educated guess about the paths my thought process will take. They say to themselves, “my experience tells me that begbert2 prefers strawberries, so now that he’s been given the choice, I speculate that his preference for strawberries will make him pick the strawberries.”
The Demon does exactly the same thing, except he’s not speculating. He looks into my head, notices that my neurons are pulling up (or going to pull up) information about my preferences, and can with absolute precision determine every other cognitive influence that will influence the decision, and predict how those influences will interact at the mechanical level. This allows him to predict the result - through informed inference and deduction. Which, again, is exactly the same thing the human predictor does, except the Demon has more and more certain information to work with.
I have problem with your allegory.
‘Imagine you’re blue. In this allegory you’re blue, therefore you’re really blue.’
Anyway, with that out of the way, let’s rewind and review the meat of that paragraph.
That’s not how Laplace’s Demon works. The Demon doesn’t actually see into the future; it only extrapolates from the data available in the present. The backstory, so to speak. So, obviously, it’s flat-out wrong to say that “the demon isn’t going by your backstory, it is going by the fact that it already knows what you are going to do because it has already seen the film”. That is, again, completely and flagrantly in opposed to the definition of Laplace’s Demon.
I understand the implications just fine. I’m just not ignoring the mechanics.
Supposing at time T I’m sitting with two plates in front of me, one with strawberries on it and one with suffering on it. At time T+1 I’m sitting there happily munching on strawberries and ignoring the plate of doom. That’s the scenario, and you can describe it by just mentioning those two points and nothing else.
But in actuality, one has to actually get from T to T1 in real time, and during that time processes are happening. Light enters my eyes telling me about the food and mockery-of-food in front of me. Cognitive processes interpret this information to identify the objects in front of me. My memories are accessed, and based on them I can identify strawberries by sight, and the peppers as some kind of pepper maybe. Preferences for known tasty fruit and unknown probably-vegetables are weighed, as well as an assessment of my hunger levels as relayed by my stomach and the absence of observed indication that there will be negative consequences for eating the strawberries (like a price tag). Mental math on these preferences is carried out, concluding with the decision that I should eat the strawberries. This triggers a cascade of other decisions at the conscious and unconscious levels of my mind to manipulate my arm and finger muscles into picking up the strawberries and put them in my mouth, and to manipulate my mouth muscles into chewing and swallowing them in a manner that savors their flavor.
Between time T and T1 many physical processes occur, notably including that “mental math” I mentioned. That “mental math”? That’s a choice. That’s the process of choosing, of assessing different options, weighing them, and choosing between them.
Now, for some reason you are saying that choices don’t matter if the outcome is predictable. This is, of course, false - if my mental math had mechanically resulted in me eating the ghost peppers, I can say with confidence the resulting agony would have mattered to me, what with pain not being my friend. (The knowledge of that being why my mechanics would probably direct me not to eat them.)
And honestly, I don’t see why I should be bothered by the fact that the mechanics of my brain and mind and thoughts determine what I’m going to do. Because what’s the alternative? Making decisions not based on knowledge and preferences? Randomity taking over and spastically shoving ghost peppers into my mouth against my will? No thanks. I’m perfectly happy to know that who I am determines what I choose to do. The choices I make will be real choices, of course, with real consequences, and the fact that they’re controlled by me, the physical matter that makes up my body and brain, is exactly the way I like it.
Of course the murderer had a choice; his brain went through with the process of assessing his situation, options, opinions, feelings, and beliefs, and based on that weird stew of emotion, stimulus, and sociopathy he chose to do something terrible. That he was driven to this end by the course his life took is unfortunate but inevitable, because that’s the course his life took. That the poor murdered children found themselves in the position to be killed is also unfortunate, but it’s also the natural result of the events leading up to that point in their lives. Events happened, billions of decisions were made, and each decision altered the situation from one moment to the next.
Though I do feel I should mention, that while I think it’s self-evident that brains make virtually no use of ghost-pepper-grabbing randomity, it’s quite possible that randomity exists in the rest of the world that can butterfly up to have significant effects. I believe that (if randomity exists) brains edit out any effects of randomity via mechanical processes (much like how computers ignore most random voltage perturbations), because I don’t think randomity helps reasoned decision-making and I think evolution would have corrected it away. However the rest of reality had no reason to develop in a way to filter out randomity, so there could be random events in our surrounding environment significant enough to alter the course of events. Just, not within anybody’s decision-making processes.
In any case, the fact that Sandy Hook was predeterminied (presuming no random events occur) does not by any measure mean that we shouldn’t hold criminals responsible for their actions. Sure their choices were ultimately determined by their state and environment, but the bulk of the state that resulted in those decisions was in their head, so removing that head from a position where it can decide to do more crimes will result in a more pleasant experience for everybody else.
Presuming the state in our heads determines that such an action should be taken, anyway.
“Initial conditions”? It sounds like you think “my emotional and mental state this specific instant” is an “initial condition”.
It sounds like you want decisions to be made not based on anything about me as a person - my emotions, my preferences, my knowledge, my beliefs, my awareness of my surroundings and situation. All these things are in place predating the decision - so none of them can be used, huh?
Yeah, pretty much. Though as you can tell from my rambling, there’s a fair amount of interesting conversation possible discussing how or why reality does or does not meet the criteria for a given definition.
And I really do like these discussions as a result. Though it is best when people can be at least somewhat on the same definitional page.
It may be worth noting that the term “free will” has two words in it: “free” and “will”. The bulk of free will discussion is about people, who tend to be generally accepted as having “will” unless somebody thinks they can make an argument from absurdity that determinism makes will impossible, or somesuch. So, most of the time, the discussion of free will is about whether people’s wills are free or not.
When you start talking about feathers and geiger counters, you’re suddenly talking about “will” too, which sort of muddies the discussion a but. Sure your machine lacks will - but is it or isn’t it “free”?
As with most threads we have had here about free will, most posters here arguing for free will are all arguing different things. You have people here arguing that subconsciously-driven actions are free will. You have people here arguing that a discussion of mental impairment has no relevance to free will. You have people implying that anything that acts randomly has free will.
So I don’t have to work that hard to convince someone (maybe not you) that the notion of free will is a bunch of bullshit. All I have to do is point them to the diversity of ad hoc, diosyncratic, and contradictory definitions and they will at least walk away thinking that it is a problematic concept with little intellectual rigor behind it.
I have no way of knowing whether an action is entirely dictated by prior conditions or whether it is merely influenced. So instead of being arrogant and assuming something I cannot know, I choose to take the more parsimonious position-- one that simply allows me to say I performed an act. I don’t have to say I performed that act under my free will. I don’t have to give an unqualified explanation for why I committed that act. I can just say I committed an act. The end.
Do you choose what kind of ice cream you prefer? If I offered you the choice between your favorite ice cream flavor and shit-flavored ice cream, do you think you would ever choose the latter? If you chose the latter, don’t you think that would indicate that you were insane? Don’t we normally deny free will to the insane?
I know that for me, I would never choose shit ice cream unless I was being coerced (someone was holding a gun to my head or threatened to fire me from my job). Being coerced into an act is the opposite of free will. Now as a determinist, I view the ice cream choice as coercion even without a gun. I don’t feel anyone pushing my hand to select my favorite ice cream, but since I did not choose to have a preference for it in the first place and since I did not choose to be repulsed by shit, I believe my hand is indeed being pushed. I can imagine myself selecting a bowl of shit to eat just to make observers recoil in horror, but that does not mean I ever would make this choice freely, without some external condition pushing me into this action.
I gotta think that if you met someone who had to deliberate long and hard over whether it makes more sense to eat shit than vanilla ice cream, you would immediately assume something was wrong with that person. Either they are mentally challenged or they are mentally ill. And because of this, you would likely conclude that they did not have free will. Or at least the same kind of free will as a “normal” person. Normal people act predictably yet people assume they have free will. Crazy people are unpredictable, but we assume they aren’t mentally “free”. That is crazy to me!!
I too share in this delusion most of the time. But the difference is, I stop indulging in this delusion when it loses its benefits. And I am not afraid to call it a delusion.
It only “sure seems like it” when you haven’t thought about it long and hard enough. I think if people were more familiar with neuroscience, they would see that free will doesn’t have a lot of usefulness. It is feel-good pap for those who don’t care to dig deeper.
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