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

Great Debates
41

Firstly, I bet no-one can define free will clearly. I suspect this sort of debate beomes impossible because we normally work of an impression of words like “free will”, “I”, “choice” mean, but here we need a definition, and can’t have one.

Currently, I can only imagine two real possibilities: (1) our brains are deterministic (ie. given the state of the universe yesterday it’s inevitable I’ll do whatever I did today) ; or (2) our brains include a random (eg. QM) component, and are otherwise deterministic. Of course, either way we’re complex enough that we can’t actually predict what we’ll do.

Can anyone think of anything else?

It’s natural to think of ourselves as being something other than a really complex program, but I can’t actually envisage anything that isn’t. Furthermore, we may never really know - we’ve all thought about a choice, and wondered if we can cheat destiny and choose the other way, but it’s possible that it’s actually impossible to rewind and try it again.

42

Without invoking some kind of supernatural choice-making element that is unaffected by anything other than the force of its own will, I think you’ve pretty much covered the bases.

43

Yeah, perhaps the brush was slightly too broad. But OTOH, feel free to come up with a supernatural choice making entity. Other than by saying “(3) something about which we are forbidden to reason (ie. doesn’t follow the laws of logic) and hence the end of the GD part of the discussion” can even something supernatural be neither (1) nor (2)?

44

Here’s some definitions: Free will is the conscious experience I have of making a choice. A rainbow is a colourful arc, miles in diameter, growing from the ground into the sky.

We are exploring the idea that free will and the rainbow are to some extent illusions which can be explained by non-supernatural means. For the rainbow we appeal to water droplets, but again there is an illusory aspect, since “droplets of water” are actually molecules of hydrogen oxide connected by Van der Waals forces. Similarly, the definition of free will appealed to further entities such as “I” and “conscious experience”, both of which might be explained in terms of unique memory strings and sensory feedback loops etc.. This is, I guess, merely paraphrasing Shade, but I wanted to counter what appears to be a consensus here that discussing free will is a hopeless endeavour; on the contrary, it is the challenge of our time, just as explaining the rainbow was one of Newton’s.

I also suggest that this talk of destiny and inevitability is a little misleading. Things happen or not, and each event can be explained by its past even if those factors are random events. I propose that the mind is deterministic and random. The two are not mutually exclusive: determinism merely requires a cause “external to the will”.

The thing about inevitable destiny is that it’s only inevitable once it’s happened!

45

Incidentally, what d’you call an Orca whale which can make conscious choices?

46

Groan Free Willy.

47

B’dum TISSSHH!

48

ah, nothing can kill an enjoyable debate quite like a bad joke.

oh well…

49

What about a sentient giant squid?

50

…Not only to forget the idea; to will the unexistence of conditions necessary for the perception of will to exist. From this, we can easily assert that things can be willed that we are not free to do.

So then the inverse question becomes critical –

Are we free to do something that we do not have the will to do?

I would generally answer “no” to this question as well. If we don’t have the will to do it, then how does it make sense to call it a freedom?

Given that both of those answer in the negative, we understand at a minimum that “free” will is going to require contraints. This being the case, we can conclude that “freewill” is a meaningless concept insomuch as it attempts to circumvent the idea of conditions.

51

Is there a distinction between willing to do something and actually doing it? I think there is. There are a lot of physical constraints that can bind free will to a limited course of action. For example, it would take the will of God to create an universe and break the laws of Nature, but we can, if we truly desire so, will it. Would we succeed? Probably not. To be able to will the possible and the impossible does not necessarily mean succeeding due to the deterrence of conditions outside our control.

52

Gotcha. For you, freewill is defined by the ability to will whatever we want regardless of whether or not it’s possible – so will in this sense is defined as “wanting a particular thing to occur”, which you submit that all people can do.

Well, this brings up two questions –

It seems that we have to “want something to occur”, even if it is a negative, such as “I don’t want anything to ever occur”. Given this, it doesn’t seem a property of “freewill” to simply want something to occur, because we have to want something to occur as part of the definition of being sentient.

The second point of question that arises from this veiw occurs when one considers whether it is possible for one will to secure the inability for another being to have a particular will emerge. Do I have a method of making sure that you will never again have the ability to will a particular thing? Can I do this through conditioning that bypasses your intent; that bypasses your knowledge of the fact that I am going about this?

While the second point is an open question, my intuition settles on the ability for one will to control what type of will another being will have. It seems self-evident to myself that nature allows this to occur.

From this, the question emerges whether there are wills which are more free, such as a pyramid, or maybe continuum.

I don’t think this is the case either. Our perception of who has the free-est will is something akin to an illusion IMO, but that requires delving into the topic in a manner that I’m not sure would be concise on my end.

53

The problem is, this ISN’T sufficient to define the things that people want free will to include. Even if everything is deterministic, you can not only make choices, but experience making them. The process of making the choice will indeed, on finer analysis be a deterministic and pre-ordained one, but it will BE a process, and you can experience the “story” of that process.

I think a lot of people confuse “pre-determined” in the sense of determinism with “inevitable” as in a rather emotional sense of things being “unavoidable.” But even in a fully deterministic world, avoidance is common. Just because your destiny is fixed doesn’t mean that your destiny can’t include you avoiding some forseen fate, or radically changing your life.

54

Well, I will drag my Objective and Subjective worlds into this once again. :stuck_out_tongue:

  1. The objective world.
    Just because Quantum Mechanics(QM) has an element of chance from our point of view, doesn’t mean it does from natures point of view. I believe also QM is deterministic, just we can’t see it.
    Anyway.
    On to consciousness and whatnot.

Since the mind and all of our thoughts are without a doubt contained in our brain, then it must follow the laws of nature.
The problem with this is that we don’t actually know much about how nature works. If QM indeed does have an element of chance, maybe Objective free will actually exists.
But then, this is exactly like it is now.
Even if a choice is predetermined by the billions of small on/off switches that makes up nature and our brain, after the choice has been made, it couldn’t have been made any other way WITH an element of chance in the picture.

Let’s take QM then.
A particle has 3 possible states, and once it appears on one state, the choice has been made. We might never know WHY it chose that point in spacetime, but it did.
No doubt something /else/ must have been in on the decision.

Now for the subjective world.
The bliss of not understanding a system from inside a system, is also as much a curse. But it’s also the only way for it to function correctly.
Even if we could see all choices, from an Objective view, we could then choose to disregard all those choices, meaning there is another choice on another level created.
This goes up and up and up.
The more we see, the more choices we have, and the less we know.
The only way to have true free will, well, I guess that isn’t possible.

But do all this matter to us here and now? No, it doesn’t.
Consider this example.
A musician is sitting on his computer with a sequencer, he’s programming the drums, playing the melody lines on his keyboard and adding small effects here and there.
He has a drum line set, but he’s not sure on the bass line.
He goes through several types of sounds for the bass, he plays different notes, but he’s note quite sure.
What’s happening then, is of course tons of predetermined “stuff” in the brain.

Sensory inputs, memories of music and what he likes and everything, neurons etc.
But then, suddenly it hits him, he finds a sound he likes, it hits him, he gets an emotion from that sound, he utters “yes! this is the sound I want to use!”
Maybe he chose it because the frequency content of the bass line is what he wants, or on a lower level because all the electrons made their choice and it’s now inevitable to have chosen anything else.

But all that doesn’t matter, because part of being a good musician is using your ears, and also to love music. What goes on behind the scenes has no meaning.
This is why I seperate between levels of living, and levels of understanding.
The world of QM is only important to particles, not to planets.
As it’s not important to us.
Because of all the things we do and experience everyday, we are on another /level/ in the universe.
We MUST make a difference between these levels, and we cannot blame one level, for influencing another.

Hm, and I think that’s it. Hope it gives you something to think about.

55

Ahhh, the “hidden variables” theory of QM. It’s been called into question…many wiser than myself would say that it’s disproven, but I do not understand why the experiments that supposedly have disproven it actually do (they don’t, from what I can see.)

I, personally, have not settled on an operative definition of “free will” (so I have chosen to decide? :D) But I would say that in as much as the rest of the world is deterministic, the brain and mind are deterministic. (Unless it is proven otherwise.)