There is now a strong counter-attack developing denying that the experiments of pre-conscious decision making proving anything at all about will. They’ve been very trendy but we’re reaching the inevitable stage of debunking.
I’m finding it interesting following your link to whyevolutionistrue to discussions that boil down to, yes, everybody believes they have free will, and we are constrained to talk as if we all have free will, and we can’t deny that we make choices all the time, and there’s no way to be precise about not having free will, but there’s no such thing as free will. That’s what I call incoherence.
We need to be quite precise about terminology here, and I concede that sometimes people on that site (including Jerry) are not as clear as they could be. But conceptually it’s certainly not incoherent.
We certainly make choices, or decisions - it’s a semantic issue, but I think it would be silly to call what we quite obviously do all the time anything else. It’s just that “choices” or “decisions” are computation, data processing, entailing some combination of deterministic and stochastic processes - the only kinds of processes that there can possibly be, and neither of which comports with “free will”. So they are not “free” choices in the sense of free will, and sometimes people (including Jerry) express that by saying “we do not choose”, which I think is misleading. I’d prefer to say we do choose, but we choose in the same way that a thermostat chooses to turn on the heat, or a microorganism moves by chemotaxis: computation. Much more sophisticated computation, of course, but no magic.
Forgive me if this has already been stated in one fashion or another…
Bad computer and little time for such things here at the moment…
But let me throw this out.
Lack of “free will” does NOT IMO mean the same decisions would always be reached given the same circumstances.
At some point as you drill down, there will be IMO randomness injected into the decision making system. Maybe it is higher up in the subroutines, maybe it is do to random external variables. Maybe it is down low at the level of neutron x firing or not firing do to quantum physics effects.
Indeed, but I already said that. Free will does not hinge on these experiments in any way. Nothing is being “debunked”. Nobody who considered the issue carefully ever thought that these were experiments to test free will.
But one value of the experiments is to show that our brains create incredibly strong illusions. If the reality is that we make decisions unconsciously, and then perhaps seconds later our brain constructs a fictional narrative that our conscious self somehow controlled the decision, it’s quite a shocking discovery. If the incredibly strong sensation of conscious agency is shown to be an illusion, maybe that helps us to realize that we cannot trust the illusion of free will.
Nobody’s arguing for the kind of determinism (sometimes called pre-determinism I think) that excludes QM these days. We know QM is true, there is stochastic indeterminacy in the universe. And at the macro level, there are many pseudo-random effects.
But do you think that stochastic indeterminacy - i.e. “rolling a dice” - comports with anyone’s notion of free will?
We have a sense of self and assigning agency to that sense makes sense with our level of senses and computational ability. But in a purely deterministic universe I’d agree with Riemann. I don’t argue from a supernatural point of view often but if such stuff did exist I wouldn’t think it’d be constrained by our abilities to calculate.
But this is an empty statement. We’re not talking about a well-formed empirical question, we’re not even talking about something that might be supernatural and beyond the ken of current scientific understanding. In “free will”, we’re talking about two words that are conceptually and logically incoherent and undefined, and that correspond to no observed phenomenon. What you’re saying is equivalent to saying “Just because smillagrybejnicezubflop is incomprehensible to humanity doesn’t necessarily mean it cannot exist”. It means literally nothing.
I would argue that the concept that free will and consciousness are illusory is incoherent. An illusion requires someone who is tricked, and that falls back to assuming a conscious entity.
I argue that, since we all experience these phenomena and agree at least in broad strokes about it, that alone is enough to declare them factual.
I’m not claiming that the illusion of free will is unreal. Of course we experience the subjective feeling that we “could have done otherwise”. The feeling is real.
But it is false, it is only an illusion. Since we only get to run history once, there is no actual event that we have experienced where we know that we could have done otherwise under precisely identical conditions, because we have never actually done so.
And as for this: “An illusion requires someone who is tricked, and that falls back to assuming a conscious entity.” So what? You are a conscious entity. You are tricked. You are a conscious entity without free will. Where is the contradiction in that that you seem to imply?
How are they undefined? People understand what is meant by free will. The possible mechanism for such is what eludes them. That’s why the appeal to the supernatural. If the words weren’t defined how’d you be able to argue so eloquently against them?
Ok, at face value people understand free will to mean “could have done otherwise in precisely the same circumstances”.
But you need to dig a little deeper than that. People think that definition makes sense, because the strong illusion of free will in our minds makes them feel that have good intuition for what happens. But when that intuition is analyzed carefully, it actually makes no sense at all.
If you disagree, please read my post #32, then come back and tell me in that context (a) how that definition of free will makes any sense at all, and (b) any observable event that corresponds to the operation of free will.
I know what free will means. That’s why I don’t think it exists if we live in a deterministic or non deterministic universe devoid of supernatural influences. I’ve had this point of view for damn near 20 years now.
Any form of decision making is governed by the laws of physics. What mechanism is there for actually making a choice? In a physical universe I can’t think of any. A choice is made by your brain and your sense of self contrives a reason for it sometimes. Thus the illusion. I understand all that.
All that I am saying is that, at our current level of understanding, to have real free will you’d need supernatural influence to make it possible. That doesn’t mean the mechanism would be understandable by our brains though.
I do find it fascinating that the simple laws that govern the universe have determistically generated a self-aware universe that can probe and analyze itself through biological agents.
With regards to observable events that demonstrate true free will? How’d you know? Where’s the control universe to see what another copy would do?
But I just don’t buy this. It doesn’t make any difference whether the proposed decision-making entity is just our physical brain or some supernatural entity. It still has to interact, process data (or ignore data) and generate output. What other kind of interaction and decision-making process is there for any type of entity in any conceivable universe other than deterministic or stochastic?
But there is simply no observation that corresponds to free will occurring. You don’t need a control when there is no observation to explain.
Essentially, you’re saying:
“Something supernatural might exist to explain a phenomenon that I have not defined cohrerently, and which corresponds to no observable.”
It’s like proposing a supernatural mechanism for homeopathy. You don’t need an explanatory mechanism when there’s no observable.
Well, ok. My assertion is:
“The claimed phenomenon of free will is not defined coherently and does not correspond to any observation. We do not require explanations, supernatural or otherwise, for non-existent phenomena.”
If you bring up the possibility of a supernatural explanation, please first tell me what exactly it is an explanation for?
It’s strictly hypothetical. I agree with your point of view as I mentioned above. Aside from the concept of free will being undefined or incoherent. The hypothetical is that to have what is understood as free will would require supernatural influence in a manner that would quite possibly be incomprehensible to our brain.
Do you agree that free will does not inhere in deterministic processes, making choices for reasons?
Do you agree that free will does not inhere in stochastic indeterminism, it is not rolling dice?
Do you agree that there is no actual observation in our experience that corresponds to our intuition of the capacity to choose otherwise under precisely the same circumstances?
If you agree with me as you say, yet still claim that there is a coherent definition of what contracausal free will means, please state it.
It’s the ability for some agent to make real choices unconstrained by the physical laws of the universe. Anyone I’ve talked to about free will who has thought about the subject and has a bit of education knows for real free will you can’t be constrained by anything we know of physics. It’s not as if the concept of a clockwork universe is hard to grasp nor are the ramifications.
If I am not mistaken even ancient philosophers had to appeal to the divine or other supernatural influences to explain decision making that was, as you say, contracausal.
And how can you argue against the concept of what you call contracausal free will if it’s impossible to define coherently? Furthermore definitions and existence are not necessarily correlated.
