I have started going swimming, once a week on Thursday; as I got changed, it struck me that every time, I was taking off exactly the same pair of green socks; on a thursday, I always wear green socks (but I was not consciously aware of this routine until then).
I had already noticed this sort of thing before; as I shave my face in the morning, I always lather it in the same way, then shave it in the same way.
I saw a TV programme a while back that asserted that a very large proportion of what we might imagine to be deliberate choices are simply reflexes or habitual routines and that our mind actually tricks us into thinking we chose to do it after the event. I believe that this was deduced from examination of the brain and it was said that the part of the brain* that is active when someone thinks about what colour socks to wear is active after the bits that control the motor actions responsible for picking them up; a sort of Last Thursdayism of the mind, if you like.
*[sup](I know it’s not as simple as that)[/sup]
Is it therefore possible that none of our actions are conscious choices and that in fact we merely have the illusion of volition?
I think that this would only prove that the illusion of choice can precede the action; your choice may already have been made at some sub/non-conscious level and your episode of wondering whether you will or not may just be your brain’s way of forcing you politely.
Well, how about if I link a decision to something else, so that subconscious desires cannot come into play.
For instance, I might shut the window now - but I will link this decision to a toss of a coin. Heads, I shut the window. Tails, I leave it open. (I rather hope it’s tails as the sun has just gone in).
BTW, I’ll say now that anyone attempting to turn this thread into a religious debate about freewill/predestination will be taken to the pit and shot through the head.
Damn. I was just about to ask how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. But oh, no. You have to go and interfere with my free will to hijack this thread.
I am currently of the mind that neither free will nor determinism exist. A very interesting book on your after-the-fact-last-thursdayism mind is Consciousness Explained by Daniel C Dennett. He calls the mind a struggle between the Orwellian factor and the Stalinist factor, and he notes (correctly, if his two fations are accurate in any way) that the individual cannot, upon inspection of memory, whether it was altered as it was made or if it was altered after it was made, or if–in fact-- it is correct.
The idea that we don’t have free will is nothing more than an intellectual conceit. Whatever factors are involved in the process of making a decision, it is made within us, and the systems making it are part of us. Therefore, we are the ones making the decision.
Are you suggesting that, if you make a choice, and then change your mind to prove you have free will, your subconscious has already made the choice to apply free will and the subsequent choice also? If so, then how would you test the capacity for free will?
Hmmm… Now I’m beginning to wonder whether my tendency to be contrary is not so contrary after all. I better go get that Dennett book.
Spinoza said something interesting stuff about this. It pretty much boiled down to causes determining your actions. If it weren’t warm, you wouldn’t want to shut the window, so the temperature determined the condition of the window, not your free will. It’s kind of similar to Descartes’s “Initial Push” theology.
I don’t know if I agree, but it’s an interesting point.
Equivocation is possibly strong evidence for true freewill; the alternative would have to be that the subconscious decision-maker was also a devious trickster, implying a distinct personality.
FTR I don’t believe that everything we do is devoid of free will, but of course I can’t prove it; I just find it an interesting philosophical question.
I’m not sure what test one could put forward—even as a thought experiment a la Schrodinger’s Cat—which could prove decisively that we have conscious free will. And, in fact, what could even be meant by unconscious free will? Trying to move free will to the realm of the unconscious is playing a game where we cannot access what we want to prove (or disprove). We would have free will, but wouldn’t know it? That seems contrary to thought on free will.
I’m saying that there is no such thing as choice. Our minds are a set of competing algorithms: competing for access to all other portions of algorithms, or at least ones that they might conceivably affect.
For example, there are a number of things that a person might say at any one time to another person. Which one actually gets said? Do we tell them that we find their current clothing to be rather dull, or fantastic? Do we tell them what we ate for breakfast this morning, if in fact we ate anything at all? Do we tell them about our plans for financial security, or about our complete inability to regularly do the dishes? The context of the existing conversation could help, triggering certain speech, but even at that I personally find that I sometimes say things which, were I prompted previously, I would never admit a desire to express.
Commonly, we call such expression a “brain fart” or some other colloquialism. But does that really encapsulate what is happening here? We had a thing in mind that moment, or earlier that day, or whenever, and we simply blurted it out without thinking.
I don’t know, it is an interesting notion. When I take into account what I understand about science, evolution, and so on, I feel compelled to accept that consciousness—whatever it is—is probably an epiphenomenon, and that the real work done is by parts of our mind which are either open for inspection or not understandable by that inspection.
In many ways I feel like I have free will, but what does that really demonstrate?
How can you have free will and yet fail to exercise it?
If you don’t exercise free will, it is because you absolutely could not? If so, then you didn’t have free will. On the other hand, did you choose not to exercise free will? Then you have just made a willful choice.
