# Free Will with a Little Bit of Science! (TM)(C)(R) **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 30, 2021, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-will-with-a-little-bit-of-science-tm-c-r/931877 "2021-01-30T17:53:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 15
**Author:** ![jcklpe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jcklpe/32/6602_2.png) [@jcklpe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jcklpe)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2021, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-will-with-a-little-bit-of-science-tm-c-r/931877/281 "2021-02-18T03:43:50Z")
> [@Max\_S](#): > > If it was never in their power - if it was never physically possible for it to happen any other way, my entire system of justice breaks down. Well that’s one reason why I offer the restorative focus on justice over the retributive. Punishing someone would not make sense, but that isn’t what the point of “justice” should be IMO. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2021, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-will-with-a-little-bit-of-science-tm-c-r/931877/282 "2021-02-18T04:15:20Z")
> [@jcklpe](#): > > Well that’s one reason why I offer the restorative focus on justice over the retributive. Punishing someone would not make sense, but that isn’t what the point of “justice” should be IMO. But I’m talking about letting someone off the hook after they prove that they were physically unable to prevent some tragedy. That’s not retribution motivating my leniency. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![jcklpe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jcklpe/32/6602_2.png) [@jcklpe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jcklpe)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2021, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-will-with-a-little-bit-of-science-tm-c-r/931877/283 "2021-02-18T04:42:14Z")
What are we talking about here when we say “letting someone off the hook”? ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2021, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-will-with-a-little-bit-of-science-tm-c-r/931877/284 "2021-02-18T05:28:57Z")
> [@Max\_S](#): > > We agree on culpability and responsibility, they are synonyms in my book. I don’t think we agree on what it means to be “able”. > > Assume determinism, then answer me this: if you see a person drowning in a lake and do _not_ actually save him, does that necessarily imply that you were _unable_ to save him? Your action is predetermined, so you were always either going to save him or not. Either you were always able to save him, or you were always unable to save him. > > Assuming determinism, I don’t think it is logically possible for a person who is _able to respond_ to then fail to respond. Ergo, it is logically _impossible_ for a person to be irresponsible. I don’t really believe in randomity in decision-making; if your mind is deciding things randomly then you’re as mindless as the ocean, and just as incapable of thought or responsibility. So I don’t care if your cognition is housed in a brain or a soul or a computer - if you choose to do something, you _always were_ going to choose to do that thing. A murderer does not murder because he is _randomed_ into it, he murders because his beliefs and knowledge and motivation and mood all lead him, in that moment, to choose to murder. If he is instead nondeterministic then the murderer did the murder for no reason _including his own mind and beliefs and choices_, and thus cannot be considered morally culpable, because he was not responsible - _nothing_ was responsible. It just randomly happened. On the other hand, if a person’s mind _is_ controlling their thoughts and actions (which is to say, it’s operating deterministically), then it’s entirely reasonable to hold that physical person responsible for their actions, because that physical chunk of matter we call the person is the thing that made that decision. If something sentient decides to commit a crime deliberately and with malice aforethought, then that’s something that that thing did - and it both knew what it was doing and has a mind/cognition with the capability, under at least one set of times and circumstances, to do that crime. It’s that fact that it made the decision deterministically that makes it a crime - even killing somebody often isn’t considered a crime if it happened by accident, without foreknowledge or intent, due to random occurences. All that said, even if he’s properly deterministic I’m not sure that a passerby can be reasonably held responsible for rescuing a drowning man, since we don’t really know how the passerby perceived the situation in the moment. Perhaps they were afraid they would drown themselves, and that stayed their hand. Perhaps they didn’t believe they could do it. Perhaps they experienced bystander syndrome or some other quirk of cognition that slowed their reaction time. Perhaps they were panicking out of sympathy. There’s really no way to know from the outside, or after the fact, how they were perceiving the world - and their perception of the situation is just as relevant as their physical ability to react to it. So while there’s a certain amount of merit to the morality of a person who will leap to their death on the off chance of saving another person, I don’t think that that kind of morality should he applied to people from a third party perspective. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2021, 7:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-will-with-a-little-bit-of-science-tm-c-r/931877/285 "2021-02-18T07:00:35Z")
> [@Max\_S](#): > > if you see a person drowning in a lake and do _not_ actually save him, does that necessarily imply that you were _unable_ to save him? Your action is predetermined, so you were always either going to save him or not. (emphasis added) I wanted to go back to this because it cuts to the heart of the matter. When we say choices are determined, we don’t mean that your choice to save or walk away has been decided external to you, and all your conscious thoughts are a red herring. We mean that your choices are determined _by you_, by the combination of: the universe that you find yourself in, your past experiences and your personality. You _really make_ that choice. Aside: I know that some people will point out studies where in some circumstances a choice is made in the subconscious mind and the conscious mind seems to rationalize it afterwards. I don’t personally see those studies as so significant, because there is no clear division between conscious and subconscious in the brain: all conscious function rests on subconscious processing, you cannot separate the two. So, in these studies, one part of me made a decision and another part of me rationalized it. ---
**Author:** ![BeepKillBeep](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9e8a1a/32.png) [@BeepKillBeep](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BeepKillBeep)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2021, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-will-with-a-little-bit-of-science-tm-c-r/931877/286 "2021-02-18T12:30:21Z")
The more I learn, the more I realize how little I know. I have no real notion as to how the brain might work so I would be the wrong person to tell you that you’re incorrect. Maybe my colleague the neuroscientist, although I have a funny feeling he would say “We don’t know.” Part of the goal of the research I’m doing is to model the differences in the function of healthy and injured/diseases brains so that we can treat the injury or disease. I would like to think that with sufficient detail this would start to give some additional data about how the brain works. Wow. 61 posts. Lots to catch up on this morning. ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2021, 12:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-will-with-a-little-bit-of-science-tm-c-r/931877/287 "2021-02-18T12:35:41Z")
> [@Max\_S](#): > > AI to figure out how to play an entirely new video game that it wasn’t trained on before. That sounds like “generalization” to me. Yes, an astute observation. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2021, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-will-with-a-little-bit-of-science-tm-c-r/931877/288 "2021-02-18T12:59:43Z")
If generalization counts as free will, then not only are my decisions an example of free will, but basically all my brain functions are. Recognizing that the object in front of me is an apple is free will. My autonomic system deciding to slightly raise my metabolism is free will – there’s no way such a system could function as either IF…THEN rules, nor a lookup table or whatever, it’s not only much more complicated than that, but also it’s adaptable. And of course we can go way down the tree of life – at least to anything with a nervous system, maybe even below that. As well as the aforementioned simple AIs. ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2021, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-will-with-a-little-bit-of-science-tm-c-r/931877/289 "2021-02-18T13:18:27Z")
> [@jcklpe](#): > > And there are even artificial neural networks which do their calculations through chemical signals Thanks for the link. ENODs look like a step up from Memristors. The brain appears to be an analog computer with digital features. Not just one or the other. I once saw a poster presentation where a student was mimicking a neural net by combining pulse width modulated waveforms. Since the weights (PWM) were virtual, it was very low power and easy to construct. He presented it as a novelty, but I believe we will see it again. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2021, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-will-with-a-little-bit-of-science-tm-c-r/931877/290 "2021-02-18T13:40:09Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > Aside: I know that some people will point out studies where in some circumstances a choice is made in the subconscious mind and the conscious mind seems to rationalize it afterwards. > I don’t personally see those studies as so significant, because there is no clear division between conscious and subconscious in the brain: all conscious function rests on subconscious processing, you cannot separate the two. So, in these studies, one part of me made a decision and another part of me rationalized it. I think this misses the point of the study. I agree, it doesn’t show that it isn’t YOU making the decisions. It just shows that our concept of YOU as an invisible soul guiding our meaty body is wrong. YOU is in fact an emergent property of your brain function. That doesn’t make you any less “free” or “you”, it just means that you are part of the physical universe and obey the laws of physics. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2021, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-will-with-a-little-bit-of-science-tm-c-r/931877/291 "2021-02-18T15:09:28Z")
I would agree with your analysis, but if you are suggesting that I am the one misinterpreting the study, that’s not the case. The “readiness potentials” experiment has been cited as a demonstration that we have no free will countless times, including I think in this thread. Even to the extent that publications like New Scientist feel they need to [debunk](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22144-brain-might-not-stand-in-the-way-of-free-will/) that position. And even their debunk still assumes that if the whole decision _were_ made at the subconscious level then that _would_ be evidence against free will (although [this](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/how-a-flawed-experiment-proved-that-free-will-doesnt-exist/) scientific american debunk eventually points out that even a subconscious decision could still be described as “me” making a decision). ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2021, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-will-with-a-little-bit-of-science-tm-c-r/931877/292 "2021-02-18T19:09:55Z")
One of the ongoing difficulties in free will discussions is getting everybody on the same page about what “me” is. People who say that determinism in my brain refutes my free will are (at best) rejecting the idea that my brain is “me”. If one claims that the actions of my subconscious are robbing me of free will, then they’re saying that my subconscious isn’t part of “me”. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2021, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-will-with-a-little-bit-of-science-tm-c-r/931877/293 "2021-02-18T19:21:28Z")
Right - and I think that what @Mijin and I are both coming at, potentially from different directions, is that the study doesn’t prove that there is no “me”, but rather that any meaningful concept of “me” must include both the consciousness, the brain, and the subconscious, and that this “me” is not free from causality nor determinism. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t posses free will - it just means that the whole emergent system of my brain/concious mind/subconscious mind had free will, but no part is “free” from the others. And how the system we call “me” chooses to act is based on a combination of internal states and external stimuli, not magic. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [February 18, 2021, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-will-with-a-little-bit-of-science-tm-c-r/931877/294 "2021-02-18T19:25:23Z")
Yes, agreed ---
**Author:** ![Hellestal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3ab097/32.png) [@Hellestal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hellestal)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2021, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-will-with-a-little-bit-of-science-tm-c-r/931877/295 "2021-02-27T16:44:36Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > That’s a metaphysical commitment, but it has nothing to do with Occam’s razor. > [@Hellestal](#): > > Wrong lol that wasn’t especially helpful, was it? I had a long post that I decided was mostly off-topic, deleted almost all of it. I had another sentence here about the boring semantic point that probably should not have been cut, which was something like… > [@](#): > > It _is_ a “metaphysical commitment”, that’s true, but the term “Ockham’s Razor” very commonly denotes exactly such a commitment. I would guess it even goes beyond “commonly”, and that the _overwhelmingly majority_ of use of the term implies exactly such a commitment. This happens to be exactly the sort of “metaphysical assumption” that allows us to dismiss with extreme prejudice ideas like Last Thursdayism, an idea which makes exactly the same predictions as theories of a 13.7 billion year old universe. And this is exactly why the shift from Last Thursdayism to interpretations of QM – in other words, from a subject on which our epistemological intuitions are very well developed to a subject for which our intuitions are practically no help at all – is such a terrible red herring… Ah, there I go again. That was exactly the sort of stuff I cut as being off topic. Anyway. The boring semantic point remains: Ockham’s Razor is regularly used – I would guess _overwhelmingly_ used – to indicate exactly that “metaphysical assumption” which is objected to as “unjustified”. It is simply a gross error of language to state that the term does not carry those implications, when it so often and so clearly does. And rather than “unjustified”, I would say that a “metaphysical assumption” of the sort being referenced here is natural, intuitive, reasonable, and even _inevitable_ when we start to consider why ideas like Last Thursdayism are so clearly wrong. But that gets into other territory well past the boring semantic point, which is (again) that the particular Razor under discussion (again) very commonly (or even overwhelmingly) implies this very sort of assumption. I’m not entirely sure that was worth bumping the thread for, but a vanity search told me that that post from weeks ago was my most recent post, and… it’s not an especially good one. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2021, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-will-with-a-little-bit-of-science-tm-c-r/931877/296 "2021-03-02T18:39:02Z")
Maybe of interest to some in this thread, at last year’s Romanell lecture, Daniel Dennett has given an overview of his particular version of compatibilism, emphasizing the notion of control: > Causation and control are not the same thing. Not all things that are caused are controlled. Things that are controlled are caused, like everything else, but control requires a controller, an agent of sorts designed to control a process, and that requires feedback: information about the trajectory and conditions that can be used by the controller to modulate the action. > **[Daniel C. Dennett: Herding Cats and Free Will Inflation - 3 Quarks Daily](https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2021/03/daniel-c-dennett-herding-cats-and-free-will-inflation.html)** > > Dan Dennett’s Romanell lecture delivered at the one hundred seventeenth annual Central Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association: Causation and control are not the same thing. Not all things that are caused are controlled. Things... (Article links to pdf of the lecture) ---
**Author:** ![eburacum\_45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum_45/32/3385_2.png) [@eburacum\_45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum_45)\ **Post date:** [March 2, 2021, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-will-with-a-little-bit-of-science-tm-c-r/931877/297 "2021-03-02T23:00:43Z")
> [@Daniel Dennett in that lecture](#): > > “Contra-causal” or “libertarian” free will is a fantasy. But what follows from that? Nothing whatever about moral responsibility or the justification of punishment, for instance. Lovely stuff. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2021, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-will-with-a-little-bit-of-science-tm-c-r/931877/298 "2021-04-07T00:11:08Z")
> [@jcklpe](#): > > > [@Max\_S](#): > > > > > [@jcklpe](#): > > > > > > > [@Max\_S](#): > > > > > > > > If it was never in their power - if it was never physically possible for it to happen any other way, my entire system of justice breaks down. > > > > > > Well that’s one reason why I offer the restorative focus on justice over the retributive. Punishing someone would not make sense, but that isn’t what the point of “justice” should be IMO. > > > > But I’m talking about letting someone off the hook after they prove that they were physically unable to prevent some tragedy. That’s not retribution motivating my leniency. > > What are we talking about here when we say “letting someone off the hook”? Hopefully I have the right idea in mind. We were speaking of restorative justice, so when I inflict some harm onto you. Because the injury was caused by actions (or negligence) of my own will, I am responsible for just compensation. We meet with a magistrate and work out what kind of compensation can make you whole again, or if that is not possible, to determine what is appropriate. The “hook” is one of responsibility, specifically the offender’s responsibility to compensate the victim. Let me bring this full circle. 1. Presume, for the sake of argument, I have a responsibility to save any drowning person I see if I am physically able to do so. If I fail, I am responsible to the family of the deceased (for my irresponsibility). 2. The only actions I am physically able to do are those that I actually do. Actions I do not take were always beyond my physical capabilities. (determinism) 3. Therefore if I did not save a drowning person, I was always physically unable to save that drowning person. I will never be responsible to the family of a deceased drowning person under this law. The compensation envisioned by the law will _never_ materialize. And so it goes for _all_ laws where responsibility for the act is a requisite of responsibility for its consequences. Determinism precludes responsibility for the act, and therefore no system of justice may rely on responsibility to determine consequences. _Quod erat demonstrandum_, determinism gets rid of a coherent concept of responsibility in regards to justice. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2021, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-will-with-a-little-bit-of-science-tm-c-r/931877/299 "2021-04-07T04:19:15Z")
> [@Max\_S](#): > > And so it goes for _all_ laws where responsibility for the act is a requisite of responsibility for its consequences. Determinism precludes responsibility for the act, and therefore no system of justice may rely on responsibility to determine consequences. _Quod erat demonstrandum_ , determinism gets rid of a coherent concept of responsibility in regards to justice. Interesting argument, I think the issue with it is equating various forms of “able”. Let’s say we have a God’s eye view and can see what thoughts went through the mind of the person who didn’t save the drowning person. She thought to herself “I may be an olympic swimmer, and that may only be a paddling pool, but I don’t actually care about others, because I don’t really feel empathy. And if the police find out I ignored that person struggling, it will only be, like, a $10,000 fine, I can comfortably afford that”. Now, in a sense, that woman is not responsible; she didn’t choose to be a person without empathy (and note the issue with not being able to _choose your wants_ exists whether or not there’s Determinism.) However, we can say that at the very least what society should do is follow through on the “threat” of penalizing that person, as an example to others. The goal is to encourage people, even those that don’t feel empathy, to act. If the fine goes down from $10k to zero then we might see more instances of people drowning unnecessary. ---
**Author:** ![Naymit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/8797f3/32.png) [@Naymit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Naymit)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2021, 5:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-will-with-a-little-bit-of-science-tm-c-r/931877/300 "2021-04-07T05:43:26Z")
Let’s say you have something like the weather and image how we get better at predicting it. We are correct say half the time. Image we created a sentient machine that can write its own code and exponentially gain infinite intelligence. Does that mean it could predict the weather all the time. Could it predict all human action down to the person and time. If intelligence was unlimited would we be able to predict all future events. Or look at quantum mechanics. We can predict up to 99% of what all atoms will do but there is still a small fraction of built in uncertainty. Is this because we haven’t figured it out or did we figure out that there will always be a small amount of randomness in existence. That randomness could be our free will but most actions could be predicted if we had unlimited intelligence. Just thoughts [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-will-with-a-little-bit-of-science-tm-c-r/931877.md?page=14) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/free-will-with-a-little-bit-of-science-tm-c-r/931877.md?page=16)