How does free will exist? Where does it come from?

Great Debates
1

Damn Hamsters ate my post; fortunately I saved it:

This is a thorny puzzle that I often ponder.

If the materials of which our universe is made are predictable in their behaviour, and our bodies are constructed solely of those materials, and our thoughts/actions are solely the result of interactions between the components of the assembled system of parts, how is it that I am able to decide to do anything - on a whim, I’ve just grabbed a pen and written “three free fleas” on a piece of paper on my desk - I am under the impression that I did this because I chose to do it, but if the idea came into being because of the deterministic interactions of chemicals in my brain, then how did I have a choice? - How could I have decided to write anything different, or chosen not to write anything at all?

If the behaviour of the materials is NOT absolutely predictable (i.e. if it contains truly random factors), I’m still perplexed as to how randomness on the small scale can result in useful choices higher up the system.

I’m aware that there is evidence that suggests the perception of ‘free will’ in the brain is to some extent a post hoc fiction, invented to explain actions that were reflexive or programmed, but that isn’t quite what I’m asking about here; what I’m asking is could it have been any different? - could I have decided to write something else on that paper and how? Or am I just an actor, playing out (and indeed thinking) a script that could have been predicted from any point in the past?

I’m also aware that, given my background, some people might see this thread as an oblique argument for the existence of non-material or spiritual entities; let me be absolutely clear that this isn’t the case - for the purposes of this question, I am entirely happy to dismiss any such possibilities, indeed, I think we should make that a condition of the thread, in order to avoid pointless sidetracks into unfalsifiable possibilities.

2

A hampster obviously exercised its free will to munch your OP. Yummy

I’m very much a believer in free will (within limits). I’d image it’s somehow connected with consciousness, but if you’re looking for a scientific explanation for either I think you’ll come up empty handed, since no one really have the slightest idea what they are.

However, even if free will should somehow be proved not to exist, we’d have to go as if did. Else how could we hold anybody responsible for anything. Why do anything if you’re slavishly controlled by your destiny anyway. Reminds of a Nick Cave song “… if I have no free will how can I be morally culpable.”

  • Rune
3

the other (quasi-duplicate)thread contains the OP.

Mods, please could you close this one?

4

Well, I did better than that, since Winston had replied, I merged the two threads.

Thus, future readers can ignore the statement about the OP having been devoured.

And, Mange, you’ll usually be more certain of response if you email the mods rather than post. In this case, I happend to see the two threads side by side, but otherwise it might’ve gone unnoticed.

5

Of course, in the same way that the weather could have been different today given small changes in the conditions elsewhere some time ago.

The weather and the human mind are enormously complex systems containing any number of nonlinear feedback mechanisms making large-scale prediction past a certain point in the future essentially impossible. However, unpredictable does not by any means equate to inexplicable. Since no mysterious “will” need be introduced in order to cause the weather, is any such entity necessary to explain what causes our thoughts and actions?

I would say not. As you state in your OP, it is the post hoc, the “after the fact”, that past discussions and experiments have focussed on, such as the work of Benjamin Libet. (“Press a button some time in the next minute”
“Okay, I choose…now…no, now, no…right, this time <press>. Ha! I chose!”
“Actually, no. Your PET scan shows significant unconscious brain activity almost a second before you became aware of any of your ‘choices’. Sorry, but you were simply being a random number generator.”)

The problem is this: Need we consider before the action at all? We either do something or we don’t. Could it be that even though we can never predict how our past experiences and genetic make-up “cause” us to actually-do-or-do-not, they are nevertheless the sole arbiter no matter how complex and labyrinthine the equation which acts on those parameters is?

You say you “choose” to commit a crime or not. I suggest that this is to introduce an Ockhamly unnecessary entity. You actually do commit a crime or not. Some people, for whatever reason, commit crimes where others do not. The justice system serves as a parameter input into that impossibly complex decision-making equation called your brain: it becomes part of the feedback process that if we commit a crime we cause others to suffer and will suffer ourselves if caught and convicted. Everyone’s “equation” is different, and random inputs may have a significant part to play as in the button-pressing example, but at no juncture does this entity of “will” (no matter how “free”) become necessary in explaining the phenomenon of a person doing something or not.

To misquote great mind: Do, or do not. There is no “choose”.

6

So are you saying that the writing (that says ‘three free fleas’) on the paper that is now in my wastebasket, came into existence independently of my ‘will’?

I’d also like you to clarify whether by unpredictable you actually mean non-deterministic.

7

i think the problems that arise in discussions of “free will” come from people defining “choice” or “choose” so narrowly that it can’t have any meaningful extension.

few people, for example, would say that a computer program makes a “choice” when it decides to move its rook just there. similarly, even fewer would agree that a thermostat makes a choice when it discovers the room is too hot and turns the heat off. i honestly have no idea why that is, but i suspect that in order for people to consider something a choice, they must be unable to see the mechanism by which the choice is made.

as we work out a scientific model for human cognition, the people who believe the aforementioned things are going to encounter a lot of difficulty.

i think if people refine their definition of “choice”, they will realize that choices are made, and are made for reasons, and people can be held accountable for those choices.

i still really have no idea what the “free” in “free will” is supposed to mean. no one seems to be able to come up with a mechanism by which free will might exist, given the most common usage of the word.

of course not. if it could’ve been different, it would’ve been. but what does that change regarding our outlook?

8

I don’t think could necessarily implies would; what I was asking was:

Was the act of my writing those words inevitable? - If it is just the current manifestation of a bunch of wholly deteministic interactions, that would mean that since the early days of the universe, it would have been inevitable that I would write ‘three free fleas’ on a piece of paper this morning; that I am essentially a puppet and that what I perceieved to be a choice of words, or a choice of pen colours, or indeed the choice to do any of it, or start this thread, is nothing more than an illusion.

9

To exercise free will. . .the real question probably is whether it is something that you possess or some possibility you might achieve.

Genetics, social programing, educational indoctrination, Skinner’s candy treats on Holloween Night. . .

Given all of this each person probably does the only thing they can possibly do in any given situation. And yet they believe that there are other possibilities. That they may have acted differently. And this they have defined as “free will”.

Cultural memory pops in here. It is cultural memory that gives each of us the impression that we can choose. Because we are given examples of other people acting differently in the same situation. Those “possibilities” are presented to us by history, literature, art, music, folk tales, religion, etc. That some choices are perceived as “better” than others is another set of programing. (Certainly relativistic. . .after all Christ and Ghandi and a few others taught us to “turn the other cheek”, but Don Carleone and Stalin and Hitler and a few others taught “do unto others before they do unto you.”

We are, each of us, units capable of very complex programing. Some may be more programed than others. But to exercise our “free will” we must first claim it. We must realize that we are programed and begin to step outside of that programing. Some choose to do this by simplifying the programing as much as possible. (Oh for just an hour, or for just a day, to be cute cute cute in a stupid ass way. Jacques Brel).

How many people have told us that we are only in prison because we don’t recognize that we are in prison? And then, when you’ve finally grappled with your prisonership, you have to begin struggling with that whole Plato deal that everything is only a reflection on the back of a cave anyway. . .

So, hypothetically, it is possible to stop being programed and thus move toward free will. This, of course, must be an individual effort. And, as John Barth once pointed out: The key to the treasure is the treasure. Or more succinctly tktttitt.

10

Of course, yes - sorry for the lazy syntax. (Note also that with a powerful enough supercomputer we could perhaps predict whether it will be raining here at noon in one month’s time, but also that the demands grow so rapidly that a computer bigger than the entire universe would be necessary even for a few thousand molecules over the course of a fortnight!)

If a number of actions were listed on a dice, and the dice rolled “pick words from a dictionary”, and you then flicked through a dictionary picking random words, would this very definitely not be your will? Would your “act of will” be relegated to rolling the dice or not?

I am saying that “three free fleas” is the output from an enormously complex “equation” having any number of literally random inputs and feedback mechanisms. However, on a very base level one could perhaps say that your brain acted as a “dice” and further that the dice was actually rather loaded towards things you do every day. Out of your entire vocabulary, your first word is “three”. Quite a simple choice, hmm? It then forms part of a phrase comprising how many words? Your other words then even rhyme!

I am not pretending that I can explain cognition in toto: that is the challenge of 21st century science and beyond. All I am trying to do is show that when one looks at the brain as a biological computer, many intuitively mysterious or spiritual concepts may fall by the wayside.

On preview, I see Rama has turned up too, and reinforces my earlier point: Think not of what might be since, like the weather, it is so complicated as to be non-deterministic. Think only of what is.

11

what i mean is: it did happen that way, so it could not have been any other way. so i guess the short answer is yes. then again, we’re not talking about quantum-scale operations here. but i think it is pointless to talk about whether something could’ve happened differently if we just went back and started again. if something different could’ve happened, that’s not the way it did happen. so who cares?

if you will read my previous post again, you will see that i disagree with the latter half of this statement. that you were bound to choose one option over the rest does not mean you did not have the rest of the options from which to choose. think of it as a big switch statement.

12

I choose not think about whether free will exists or not.:slight_smile:

Do we have free will if we cannot choose not to be conscious? Is that not the most fundamental choice of all (a nonconscious being cannot have free will)?

Perhaps future generations will look back and view our belief in free will the way we view the ancients’ belief that lightning came about due to the skys being angry.

13

SentientMeat: The problem with your description as I see it, is that much the same line of arguments can be used to deny consciousness (or perhaps sentience is the correct word?), and yet we are all undeniable conscious (well I am at least – not so sure about you guys). A computer can be made to be enormously complex as well (in a few decades to rival the human brain) - it by no means mean (personally I very much doubt) it’ll ever be conscious or experience free will. Cogito ergo sum.

Ramanujan: Has anyone come up with a mechanism by which consciousness might exist? Except for some obscure quantum speculations. And even though consciousness apparently is as hard to fit into existing theories, no one, for obvious reasons, are arguing it therefore does not exists. If we assume, as I believe, free will and consciousness are intimately linked (is it at all possible to explain consciousness without free will), what is it in free will that makes it more unbelievable than consciousness? Until I see a creditable explanation for consciousness, I don’t think I’m going to accept any claim that free will does not exist.

  • Rune
14

How is it possible to make a non-deterministic system using only deterministic components? - It seems like adding more and more deterministic factors certainly makes the results difficult to predict, but no less inevitable.

Perhaps another way to ask the question is:
If we rewound the universe to a point in the past, so that everything was exactly as before; every particle, energy quantum, vector, force etc was exactly as it was, then let it run again for the same amount of time, would circumstances still have contrived to have me here sitting at my desk, writing ‘three free fleas’ on a piece of paper?

15

No it would not (most likely). But that has to do with quantum mechanics. And not necessary free will.

  • Rune
16

a few things here trouble me. i’ll sum it all up at the end. first of all, by what knowledge do you believe that a computer could never be conscious? what is magical about consciousness? secondly, do you take a dualist outlook on things? and finally, there was a big monster of a thread a while ago in which we showed (rather definitively, i thought) that cogito ergo sum does not demonstrate anything more than it assumes.

so on to my summary:

no one is really sure what causes consciousness. but the reason for that is because no one can agree on…wait for it…what consciousness is.

so my long awaited summary: i can answer all your questions if you’ll only tell me what you mean by consciousness. right now it appears the word has an extension but no intension.

17

If this happens, it could only be so because the universe presses them inevitably to think it; perhaps we should pity them.

18

Mange: Gaa! My head is filled with meat indeed. By unpredictable I meant deterministic (just not determinable). Yes, there is no will. Yes, events exist in time, both past and future, like places on a map. Yes, “it is inevitable” (although with your rewinding the universe idea, as Winston says, there do appear to be genuinely random events in the quantum world which would bifurcate the subsequent universes - this is a nitpick, however, equivalent to simply saying “you can’t rewind the universe”) . The point is that any event is caused by those before it, including whatever is fed back into those impossibly encrypted computers called brains (eg. one’s actions being influenced by the sudden conviction that “everything is inevitable”!). Keep focussed on what actually happens, and the explanation for it, rather than what might happen.

Winston: I am perfectly happy to call consciousness an illusion as well as free will. (That is not to say that “The illusion of consciousness does not exist”, since it plainly does). Why should a computer not labour under the same illusion?

19

[/quote]
Clearly, I care - this is the core issue of this discussion - whether I make things happen or whether I am imperceptibly compelled down some inevitable route - you can’t just wave it away.

And I think I disagree with this - ‘options’ from which you are bound to make a predetermined choice, is exactly how I would define ‘illusion of choice’.

20

The Many Worlds Interpretation of QM would refute the argument that the universe could be re-wound and then produce a different result.