# Convince me I should believe that Free Will really exists! **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 20, 2013, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-i-should-believe-that-free-will-really-exists/658822 "2013-05-20T15:11:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2013, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-i-should-believe-that-free-will-really-exists/658822/101 "2013-05-20T18:46:24Z")
The only one claiming that it subverts the laws of nature seems to be you. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2013, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-i-should-believe-that-free-will-really-exists/658822/102 "2013-05-20T18:53:42Z")
> [@Pjen](#): > > It is more than positing that we have a determined nature. I am suggesting that unless we can come up with a convincing explanation for why human behavior is outside the laws of physics (which elsewhere we accept as either determined or random with no call on spirits, or ghosts or other ethereal non-physical causes, why does a Human (a result of descent from animals, descended from plants, descended from single celled organisms) suddenly require something non physical to explain the behavior? > > What is this ‘free will’? How does it subvert the laws of nature? When and where does it have its traction? This is why definitions are so important, because I see nothing about free will that is outside the laws of physics. Free will is just the freedom to act according to one’s determined motives. As a sentient, self-aware being, I can form motives, or intentions, or goals, if you like. This process occurs in my brain. As a person, I am capable of free will, because the forces acting upon my decisions are _internal_ ones, some combination of my biology, past experiences, instincts, and reason. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2013, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-i-should-believe-that-free-will-really-exists/658822/103 "2013-05-20T18:55:54Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > Free will is just the freedom to act according to one’s determined motives. As a sentient, self-aware being, I can form motives, or intentions, or goals, if you like. This process occurs in my brain. As a person, I am capable of free will, because the forces acting upon my decisions are _internal_ ones, some combination of my biology, past experiences, instincts, and reason. And you form motives, intentions or goals why? ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2013, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-i-should-believe-that-free-will-really-exists/658822/104 "2013-05-20T19:00:07Z")
> [@For You](#): > > And you form motives, intentions or goals why? Again, some combination of biology, past experiences, instincts, and reason. There’s no one cause. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2013, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-i-should-believe-that-free-will-really-exists/658822/105 "2013-05-20T19:05:57Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > Again, some combination of biology, past experiences, instincts, and reason. There’s no one cause. No one cause, but there are causes. You are almost never acting spontaneously and arbitrarily, your actions are addressed toward dealing with some need, want or desire. That some guys built the Mackinac bridge was due to the fact that it would be useful and that it was possible. They did not just one day say, “hey, wouldn’t it be amusing to have a bridge here!” ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2013, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-i-should-believe-that-free-will-really-exists/658822/106 "2013-05-20T19:12:36Z")
> [@For You](#): > > No one cause, but there are causes. You are almost never acting spontaneously and arbitrarily, your actions are addressed toward dealing with some need, want or desire. That some guys built the Mackinac bridge was due to the fact that it would be useful and that it was possible. They did not just one day say, “hey, wouldn’t it be amusing to have a bridge here!” That’s an argument for rationality, not determinism. Rational choices can result from free will or be determined. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2013, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-i-should-believe-that-free-will-really-exists/658822/107 "2013-05-20T19:29:20Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > That’s an argument for rationality, not determinism. Rational choices can result from free will or be determined. OK, I guess I am failing to understand where this free will fits in. As far as I can tell, everything has some kind of cause, even if we cannot perceive it. Perhaps the cause is apparently random (why did van Gogh paint _Sunflowers_?), but it is still a cause. ---
**Author:** ![Pjen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Pjen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pjen)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2013, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-i-should-believe-that-free-will-really-exists/658822/108 "2013-05-20T19:29:31Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > The only one claiming that it subverts the laws of nature seems to be you. Me, and most other philosophers and scientists. The Universe is described by physical laws. Nowhere is there a scientific description of what Free Will is or how it causes change in matter. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2013, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-i-should-believe-that-free-will-really-exists/658822/109 "2013-05-20T19:33:51Z")
> [@Pjen](#): > > Me, and most other philosophers and scientists. Cite from major scientists that they believe that free will subverts the laws of nature, please. ---
**Author:** ![Pjen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Pjen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pjen)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2013, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-i-should-believe-that-free-will-really-exists/658822/110 "2013-05-20T19:35:03Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > This is why definitions are so important, because I see nothing about free will that is outside the laws of physics. > > Free will is just the freedom to act according to one’s determined motives. As a sentient, self-aware being, I can form motives, or intentions, or goals, if you like. This process occurs in my brain. As a person, I am capable of free will, because the forces acting upon my decisions are _internal_ ones, some combination of my biology, past experiences, instincts, and reason. In many ways I would agree, but I would change some of the words Human behaviour (Free will) is just the EXPERIENCE OF APPARENT freedom to act according to one’s INTERNAL BELIEF STATES (determined motives.) As a sentient, self-aware being, (I can form AM AWARE OF motives, or intentions, or goals, if you like. This process occurs in my brain. As a person, I am capable of SUCH BEHAVIOURS (free will,) because the forces acting upon my decisions are BOTH EXTERNAL AND INTERNAL (_internal_ ones,) some combination of my biology, past experiences, instincts, and COGNITION (reason.) ---
**Author:** ![Pjen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Pjen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pjen)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2013, 7:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-i-should-believe-that-free-will-really-exists/658822/111 "2013-05-20T19:36:45Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > That’s an argument for rationality, not determinism. Rational choices can result from free will or be determined. Only if ‘free will’ is part of the universe and can act as a cause. Damned if I can see the scientific explanation for that! ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2013, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-i-should-believe-that-free-will-really-exists/658822/112 "2013-05-20T19:39:26Z")
> [@For You](#): > > OK, I guess I am failing to understand where this free will fits in. As far as I can tell, everything has some kind of cause, even if we cannot perceive it. Perhaps the cause is apparently random (why did van Gogh paint _Sunflowers_?), but it is still a cause. van Gogh painted _Sunflowers_. Could he have chosen not to paint it, or not to paint it in exactly the way that he did? If so, then free will exists. The determinist position is that the fact that he painted it means that conditions existed such that he could do nothing else. My take as a compatibilist is that even if some of the conditions were beyond van Gogh’s conscious control, such as his brain chemistry, van Gogh as an entity chose to paint it. His brain is part of his self. ---
**Author:** ![Pjen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Pjen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pjen)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2013, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-i-should-believe-that-free-will-really-exists/658822/113 "2013-05-20T19:43:35Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Cite from major scientists that they believe that free will subverts the laws of nature, please. Cite please for any scientist who can give a scientific explanation for Free Will! Many scientists believe in GOd; not many believe that He acts in mysterious ways. We all believe in the social construct of Free Will, even me, a hard determinist. I also believe in Political Parties, Races of people, the existence of Religious Belief, the laws of science themselves, the color blue, the sound of trumpets and the smell of vanilla- all human constructs with no reality in the real world- all ciphers of human experience struggling to explain the universe. Underlying all these constructs are physical realities which are open to scientific dialog, but none of the constructs as objects are. ---
**Author:** ![Pjen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Pjen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pjen)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2013, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-i-should-believe-that-free-will-really-exists/658822/114 "2013-05-20T19:46:59Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > van Gogh painted _Sunflowers_. Could he have chosen not to paint it, or not to paint it in exactly the way that he did? If so, then free will exists. > > The determinist position is that the fact that he painted it means that conditions existed such that he could do nothing else. > > My take as a compatibilist is that even if some of the conditions were beyond van Gogh’s conscious control, such as his brain chemistry, van Gogh as an entity chose to paint it. His brain is part of his self. The ‘Could have acted otherwise’ involves a philosophical and not scientific statement. Science cannot deal with hypothetical contrafactuals. The weather system currently giving low temperatures and rain over my head could have acted otherwise and passed to the south, giving sunny warm weather. Would this imply that it could have chosen to take that southern course. What is the difference in scientific terms between the two examples? ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2013, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-i-should-believe-that-free-will-really-exists/658822/115 "2013-05-20T19:53:28Z")
> [@Pjen](#): > > Cite please for any scientist who can give a scientific explanation for Free Will! No. _You_ made a positive claim that most scientists and philosophers think that free will subverts the laws of nature, so you need to show this. Since I did _not_ make a positive claim that scientists can give a scientific explanation for free will, I do _not_ have to provide any cites that show this. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2013, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-i-should-believe-that-free-will-really-exists/658822/116 "2013-05-20T19:53:53Z")
> [@Pjen](#): > > Only if ‘free will’ is part of the universe and can act as a cause. Damned if I can see the scientific explanation for that! Free will isn’t a cause, as such. It’s an effect of having a particular sort of nervous system. _People_ can cause events, though. > [@Pjen](#): > > The ‘Could have acted otherwise’ involves a philosophical and not scientific statement. Science cannot deal with hypothetical contrafactuals. That’s a limitation of our current understanding, not evidence of anything. The fact that van Gogh created a painting isn’t evidence that he _had no choice but to_ create a painting, it’s evidence that he _created a painting._ > [@Pjen](#): > > The weather system currently giving low temperatures and rain over my head could have acted otherwise and passed to the south, giving sunny warm weather. Would this imply that it could have chosen to take that southern course. What is the difference in scientific terms between the two examples? We can observe humans making conscious choices, for one. ---
**Author:** ![Pjen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Pjen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pjen)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2013, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-i-should-believe-that-free-will-really-exists/658822/117 "2013-05-20T19:55:37Z")
Czarcasm has challenged me to name scientists who see that the claim of human free will as anything more than a social construct is against the known laws of nature. This is possible, but difficult as it is like trying to prove a negative. I know of no reputable scientist who starts on an analysis of a problem with a belief that the experiment may be affected regularly by non physical occurrences changing the physical outcome (save for a few fringe believers in the wider ranges of parapsychology. Scientists accept the incompatibility of Free Will and Science in the same manner that many accept the incompatibility of an interventionist Deity and Science. It is just not mentioned but assumed. The vast majority of Philosophers do not admit Free Will into the Ontology of the Physical Universe. Let us start with Stephen Hawking: [http://amiquote.tumblr.com/post/2318471636/stephen-hawking-on-free-will-do-people-have-free](http://amiquote.tumblr.com/post/2318471636/stephen-hawking-on-free-will-do-people-have-free) Stephen Hawking on free will “Do people have free will? If we have free will, where in the evolutionary tree did it develop? Do blue-green algae or bacteria have free will, or is their behavior automatic and within the realm of scientific law? Is it only multicelled organisms that have free will, or only mammals? We might think that a chimpanzee is exercising free will when it chooses to chomp on a banana, or a cat when it rips up your sofa, but what about the roundworm called Caenorhabditis elegans—a simple creature made of only 959 cells? It probably never thinks, “That was damn tasty bacteria I got to dine on back there,” yet it too has a definite preference in food and will either settle for an unattractive meal or go foraging for something better, depending on recent experience. Is that the exercise of free will? Though we feel that we can choose what we do, our understanding of the molecular basis of biology shows that biological processes are governed by the laws of physics and chemistry and therefore are as determined as the orbits of the planets. Recent experiments in neuroscience support the view that it is our physical brain, following the known laws of science, that determines our actions, and not some agency that exists outside those laws. For example, a study of patients undergoing awake brain surgery found that by electrically stimulating the appropriate regions of the brain, one could create in the patient the desire to move the hand, arm, or foot, or to move the lips and talk. It is hard to imagine how free will can operate if our behavior is determined by physical law, so it seems that we are no more than biological machines and that free will is just an illusion.” — Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, The Grand Design, Bantam Books, New York, 2010, p. 32. ---
**Author:** ![Pjen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Pjen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pjen)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2013, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-i-should-believe-that-free-will-really-exists/658822/118 "2013-05-20T19:59:06Z")
Pinker and Dawkins [![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/8LE4uu49SU8/hqdefault.jpg "Steven Pinker & Richard Dawkins on Free Will") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LE4uu49SU8) Note especially Dawkin’s description of the illusory nature of Free Will. ---
**Author:** ![Pjen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Pjen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pjen)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2013, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-i-should-believe-that-free-will-really-exists/658822/119 "2013-05-20T20:04:35Z")
Richard Feynman Richard Feynman won a Nobel Prize for his work on quantum electrodynamics (QED) but he also developed simple yet insightful explanations of quantum mechanics. In his famous Lectures on Physics, some of the more accessible material re-published as Six Easy Pieces, Feynman argued that the most important scientific knowledge - from physics to biology - is the simple fact that all things are made of atoms. If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generations of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis (or the atomic fact, or whatever you wish to call it) that all things are made of atoms—little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another. In that one sentence, you will see, there is an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied… (Six Easy Pieces, p.4) Everything is made of atoms. That is the key hypothesis. The most important hypothesis in all of biology, for example, is that everything that animals do, atoms do. In other words, there is nothing that living things do that cannot be understood from the point of view that they are made of atoms acting according to the laws of physics. This was not known from the beginning: it took some experimenting and theorizing to suggest this hypothesis, but now it is accepted, and it is the most useful theory for producing new ideas in the field of biology. (Six Easy Pieces,p.20) ---
**Author:** ![Pjen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Pjen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pjen)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2013, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-i-should-believe-that-free-will-really-exists/658822/120 "2013-05-20T20:16:49Z")
In return I would ask for a single quote from any reputable scientist that fits Free Will into the causative chain of events in a manner similar to or in addition to physical information transfer within the brain. I know of no such claim! The most that scientists allow themselves is a compatibilist position. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-i-should-believe-that-free-will-really-exists/658822.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/convince-me-i-should-believe-that-free-will-really-exists/658822.md?page=7)