Free will redux: What is true free will?

[Dave1001]

Ok - feel free to expound upon your differentiation of 'salient' and 'perceptual' and explain how that impacts upon the logic under discussion.

Although the language may have been awkward, I wasn't actually directing contrasting 'salient' with 'perceptual'. But rather actual free will, meaning one is actually able to make choices between options in a way that isn't predetermined, and solely perceived free will, where all of our "choices" are predetermined but yet we perceive them not to be. I agree with your folding of randomness in to predetermination for the purpose of this discussion, although I do think that's a debatable side topic.*(See footnote at bottom).

I think the common perception is that there is something additional to free will than human-shaped matter energy bouncing around in predetermined ways 20 billion years after the big bang. Just because we've created a neat little logical flowchart that free will is inevitably reduced to that, doesn't mean that it's so. I'm skeptical, even if I can't fully articulate the reasons why. Perhaps by hashing it out in this thread with you I can get a better sense of where I think the weakness is in this model.

I think one starting point is my skepticism that subjective consciousness exists completely within the known materialistic elements of the universe. There seems to me to be an analog projection of reality in the way we experience it from the point of where it's captured (in its own analog way, in our internal synaptic interactions). And in that analog projection there is the subjective experience of agency leave room not for just rote perceived interest maximization but also whimsy.


*(Footnote.) The debatable side topic being whether true randomness occurs in human decision-making, and whether or not "the random factor [being] ultimately just another constant pattern that we could not describe beforehand" means that "Ultimately there is no 'free'."

 

[Piggy]

Hey, Dave1001. No offense, but has anyone ever told you that bold red siggie is annoying as hell?

Just asking.

 

[Zombified]

All notions are dependent on the existence of minds. There are no objective notions. Without brains/minds, there would be no notions. Therefore all notions (contingent on the existence of individual brains/minds) are subjective.

Do you get that there's a difference between things that are defined operationally and things that aren't?

 

[Dave1001]

Hey, Dave1001. No offense, but has anyone ever told you that bold red siggie is annoying as hell?

Just asking.

It exists at the mercy of the moderators and administrators. And you're the first to tell me their opinion on that topic.

 

[Piggy]

But rather actual free will, meaning one is actually able to make choices between options in a way that isn't predetermined, and solely perceived free will, where all of our "choices" are predetermined but yet we perceive them not to be. I agree with your folding of randomness in to predetermination for the purpose of this discussion, although I do think that's a debatable side topic.*(See footnote at bottom).

I think the common perception is that there is something additional to free will than human-shaped matter energy bouncing around in predetermined ways 20 billion years after the big bang.

So, do you think predetermination is the sole issue?

I agree, if everything is predetermined, then free will is off the table.

But given the well-establish existence of probabilistic phenomena, I think it's a pretty safe bet that if we rewound the universe from point A to point X and let it run again, it would not evolve back to point A. It would be somehow different.

If that's true, then would you say we have free will if our choices are not predetermined, but they are a product of the non-conscious modules of our brains, and it only seems to us, fractions of a second after the fact, that the decisions were made consciously?

 

[Piggy]

It exists at the mercy of the moderators and administrators. And you're the first to tell me their opinion on that topic.

Ok. Well, fwiw, it's annoying as hell.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

 

[Brainache]

OK here I go again(I'm enjoying this BTW)

Piggy in your analogy of the CEO and the secretary(s) to define in a simple way the idea of the "i", why is it so difficult to imagine the CEO making choices and giving orders?

OK the processes are determined by physical laws, but I don't understand why the sum of those physical laws interacting with the material in my skull can't produce complex unpredictable (yet directed) results. Once those results are then used as inputs another layer of complexity is tweaked one way or another depending on all kinds of strange personal reasons(what I had for breakfast, was I beaten as a child, am I drunk etc)

I work in television and one of the fun things to do in a studio is to point a camera at a monitor and watch the pretty patterns it produces(especially after you put the signal through a few layers of visual effects). I used to do this regularly. The resulting image is never the same each time(although similar). No one is breaking any laws of physics here and the slightest tweaks in any one of several variables will produce a big difference in the image produced. It is called controlled feed-back.

I don't see why our experience of the self can't be inferred to be a similar phenomenon. An extremely complex picture of great beauty created by tiny variations in input. As the complex picture is experienced by the cognitive regions of the brain all kinds of things can push the individual to do one thing or to do something else.

Does this amount to the "i" changing the brain state or vice versa? Is there a difference? It all happens together. I would suggest that there are sometimes when the "i" has more control and sometimes when it has less. I think it is a delicate balancing act which all too often and easily can tip into chaos or catatonia.

Anyway that's another two cents I won't see again.

 

[Piggy]

Piggy in your analogy of the CEO and the secretary(s) to define in a simple way the idea of the "i", why is it so difficult to imagine the CEO making choices and giving orders?

Oh, it's not. I was only using that example with regard to the model of the brain as a mechanism which "averages inputs". Seems to me that's not apt. A model in which inputs are screened, sometimes filed for later use, sometimes trashed, sometimes reformatted and condensed, sometimes sent to the boss as-is... that's a better descriptor.

As I mentioned, we can't go too far w/ the boss analogy b/c we fall into the homunculus trap, the illusion of the Cartesian theater.

But using the metaphor as it is, then yeah, if it turns out that the "i" can indeed somehow push changes into the feedback loop, that would be like the CEO sending memos.

 

[Piggy]

Does this amount to the "i" changing the brain state or vice versa? Is there a difference? It all happens together. I would suggest that there are sometimes when the "i" has more control and sometimes when it has less. I think it is a delicate balancing act which all too often and easily can tip into chaos or catatonia.

I believe the model of the feedback loop is right on the money.

I also think it's worth mentioning Dennett's model here of the 2-part brain. According to this model, consciousness arises (or can arise) when you have a dual brain structure -- not the hemispheres, but the stem/cortex.

In short, you build brain A (the reptilian brain) which is merely a "dumb" processor. Then you build (evolve) brain B, the higher level cortex, which takes its input from brain A.

As Dennett puts it, perceptually speaking, brain B "lives inside" brain A. (Even though physically, in humans, the layer of brain B structures is generally located "outside" of brain A structures.)

The feedback loop between A and B is continually tweaked by a constant stream of new data being received and processed by A.

So far, though, there's no apparent agent of free will anywhere in the model.

What I've been labeling with the variable "i" is the conscious self, the feeling, experiencing "me" that we all identify as "who we are".

The "i" is an emergent phenomenon, totally dependent on the activity of brain modules -- not equal to it, but yet nondifferent from it -- kindof in the way that waves are emergent phenomena totally dependent on -- and both not precisely equal to, but yet also nondifferent from -- the water in the ocean.

Seems to me that for free will to exist, this emergent entity, this "i", must be able, in some way, to introduce changes in the feedback loop.

The trouble is, there is no available model to explain any such action on the part of i. At least, not that I know of.

If it could be shown that it is impossible for i to introduce changes in the feedback loop, that could be the death knell of free will. But studies of emergent phenomena as a class are so young... it's hard to say what's possible or not.

 

[hodgy]

I think the common perception is that there is something additional to free will than human-shaped matter energy bouncing around in predetermined ways 20 billion years after the big bang. Just because we've created a neat little logical flowchart that free will is inevitably reduced to that, doesn't mean that it's so.
...
I think one starting point is my skepticism that subjective consciousness exists completely within the known materialistic elements of the universe.

I think this is the heart of the issue. Those who propose that free-will is something more than the perception of will being free typically base their argument on the claim that there could be something else other than 'the known materialistic elements of the universe'.

The problem with this is that it does not actually help their position except insofar as it muddies the waters of the discussion and creates opportunities for irrelevant tangents to the argument.

Let us put aside 'materialistic elements' and consider a hypothetical thing, that we will call consciousness, that is able to make decisions. There is no reason why we cannot ask the same logical questions of this immaterial consciousness that we previously asked of a proposed material one.

Given a choice between A and B we can ask why did the consciousness choose A?. Either the decison A was caused by some previous state of the consciousness or it was not (or a combination of the 2). We can go on to examine the reasons for each preceding decision / state in the same way, just as we could with a material consciousness.

The argument against [the common notion of] free will is a logical one, not a physical one. It does not require any laws of the universe to be real, universal or known. The proposition of an immaterial free will does not get the free will proponents off the hook of the logical argument.

 

[Dave1001]

So, do you think predetermination is the sole issue?

I agree, if everything is predetermined, then free will is off the table.

But given the well-establish existence of probabilistic phenomena, I think it's a pretty safe bet that if we rewound the universe from point A to point X and let it run again, it would not evolve back to point A. It would be somehow different.

If that's true, then would you say we have free will if our choices are not predetermined, but they are a product of the non-conscious modules of our brains, and it only seems to us, fractions of a second after the fact, that the decisions were made consciously?

I think you missed my footnote. I agreed with Hodgy to also not call that free will, cause I don't think that matches to common intuitive perception of what free will is.

 

[Dave1001]

I think this is the heart of the issue. Those who propose that free-will is something more than the perception of will being free typically base their argument on the claim that there could be something else other than 'the known materialistic elements of the universe'.

The problem with this is that it does not actually help their position except insofar as it muddies the waters of the discussion and creates opportunities for irrelevant tangents to the argument.

Let us put aside 'materialistic elements' and consider a hypothetical thing, that we will call consciousness, that is able to make decisions. There is no reason why we cannot ask the same logical questions of this immaterial consciousness that we previously asked of a proposed material one.

Given a choice between A and B we can ask why did the consciousness choose A?. Either the decison A was caused by some previous state of the consciousness or it was not (or a combination of the 2). We can go on to examine the reasons for each preceding decision / state in the same way, just as we could with a material consciousness.

The argument against [the common notion of] free will is a logical one, not a physical one. It does not require any laws of the universe to be real, universal or known. The proposition of an immaterial free will does not get the free will proponents off the hook of the logical argument.

I think this is a false distinction (that the rules of logic somehow inevitably exist outside of the known material universe). You're describing cause and effect, which is a logical principle we base directly off of observations of known reality. In fact, I think a reasonable case can be made to be skeptical that such logical principles even exist outside of our neuroanatomy: we may be precluded from observing many non-logical phenomenon by the limits of our collective brains' current modeling capabilities. However, I think it's worth putting my broad skepticism about logic to the side right now, because I acknowledge it doesn't leave us much to work with.

The reason I'm specifically skeptical about applying such logical principles to the common intuitive experience of free will is that I don't think they provide a convincing explanation of my subjective experience and observation of free will in the field, unlike the very convincing way that Newtonian physics describes the mechanics of objects in motion, or that neuroscience research describes how my brain represents the visual world (it's fascinatingly non-intuitive, but makes complete sense once one learns about it).

This isn't to say that I think it's clearly wrong that functional free will doesn't exist. I'm just unconvinced. And although I understand your neat logic formulation completely, my suspicion is that there might be an error in first principles, not disimilar to trying to apply Newtonian physics to matter interactions at the particle level.

 

[hodgy]

So, do you think predetermination is the sole issue?

I agree, if everything is predetermined, then free will is off the table.

But given the well-establish existence of probabilistic phenomena, I think it's a pretty safe bet that if we rewound the universe from point A to point X and let it run again, it would not evolve back to point A. It would be somehow different.

If that's true, then would you say we have free will if our choices are not predetermined, but they are a product of the non-conscious modules of our brains, and it only seems to us, fractions of a second after the fact, that the decisions were made consciously?

I do not think that the 'existence of probabilistic phenomena' changes the basic argument regarding predetermination since, ultimately, everything that exists does so just because it does. The fact that a particular event along a time axis can be shown to have been dependant on previous states of existence (causation) does not explain why the macro existence has a state in the first place. At a certain level of granularity there is no great difference between caused and apparently random events.

 

[President Bush]

There is quite an extensive literature on "choice" in behavioral journals, all assuming that choice is not a function of free will, but a function of environmental variables. Any time there is more than one option, there is a choice situation. We can manipulate the situation, and find that organisms (including, but not limited to, people) lawfully respond to these manipulations, altering their choices accordingly. The choices are, demonstrably, constrained and not "free".

Does Behaviorism's process of "manipulate(ing) the situation, and find(ing) that organisms (including, but not limited to, people) lawfully respond to these manipulations, altering their choices accordingly" involve any decision-making?

 

[Piggy]

I think you missed my footnote. I agreed with Hodgy to also not call that free will, cause I don't think that matches to common intuitive perception of what free will is.

Gotcha. Thanks.

 

[Piggy]

I do not think that the 'existence of probabilistic phenomena' changes the basic argument regarding predetermination since, ultimately, everything that exists does so just because it does. The fact that a particular event along a time axis can be shown to have been dependant on previous states of existence (causation) does not explain why the macro existence has a state in the first place. At a certain level of granularity there is no great difference between caused and apparently random events.

I'm sorry, but I don't follow this line of thought at all. I just don't understand what you're saying. Can you rephrase?

And maybe I didn't explain myself as well as I could have.

It seemed to me that Dave1001 was focusing rather narrowly on predetermination. My understanding of predetermination is "it's gonna be this, and it can't be anything else". You know, clockwork universe kinda stuff.

As far as I understand the term, if the elaboration of a process involves sub-processes which must be described in probabilistic terms (in other words, we would say there is an element of randomness invovled) then one could, in theory, rewind the process to an earlier state, let it run again, and the result would be a different end state to some degree at least from the state it was in at the point where the rewinding began.

So, as far as I can see, the universe we're in is not predetermined, even if it contains certain inevitabilities (such as heat death rather than a big crunch).

That being the case, it does not appear to be a valid argument that free will in humans (i.e., consciously directed choice) is prevented by predetermination, since predetermination is not a quality of our universe.

So that leads us to the question: Is the activity of the brain entirely mechanistic?

Tough question, because the activity of the brain includes activity at the quantum level, molecular level, neural level, modular level, and conscious (emergent) level. And each of these levels of granularity operates by non-identical sets of rules.

The way I see it, the issue of free will depends entirely on whether activity at the conscious level is entirely passive or not.

 

[chriswl]

But using the metaphor as it is, then yeah, if it turns out that the "i" can indeed somehow push changes into the feedback loop, that would be like the CEO sending memos.

Again I have to say that this seems obviously crazy to me.

Its all very well talking about emergence and levels of description but we mustn't lose sight of the the fact that the low-level physical reality is all that there really is. Everything else is just high level descriptions the we construct for our own convenience because they are more tractable than a full description of the behaviour of every atom. They add no new information that is not already contained in the low level description.

Free will means freedom to act physically in the world in a certain way. Suppose I am the subject of an experiment where I have to freely choose to press either a red button or a green button every time I hear a buzzer. The scientists observing me have a machine that can somehow predict the state of every atom in my body several seconds in advance. If the world is deterministic at the lowest level then this is logically possible (though it almost certainly will never be a practical proposition, of course).

This means that just before they sound the buzzer the scientists know which button I will press. They know what my body will do in advance because my body is just atoms and they have predicted the position of every one of them. Is there some "higher" level in which I don't press the button that was predicted for me, the button that my fingers actually press? Only if this higher level is actually some sort of delusion.

 

[Mercutio]

Does Behaviorism's process of "manipulate(ing) the situation, and find(ing) that organisms (including, but not limited to, people) lawfully respond to these manipulations, altering their choices accordingly" involve any decision-making?

Is "decision-making" the same thing as "choice"? If so, then yes, it does. It involves choices, or decisions, that are every bit as constrained by environmental variables as are the ones they are studying. Skinner's book "Cumulative Record", reprinting his earlier experimental work, makes this point explicitly (thus the title).

 

[Mercutio]

Libertarian free will is defined to be will that is not deterministic. Libertarians would also like their free will not to be random. The question is: What does this leave for libertarian free will to be?

~~ Paul

Exactly what "free will" is supposed to be--an active, un-influenced, "un-moved mover". The starting point, independent of environment, of our behavior.

There actually would be a very simple way to demonstrate it; we just have to be better predictors of our own behavior than a good knowledge of our environment would allow. It could not thoroughly disprove environmental determinism, as one could always claim there were environmental influences which were not measured, but it is a start. Turns out, though, that we often do not know why we do the things we do. We often are poor predictors of our own private behavior. We often are surprized by our own actions ("I guess I was hungrier than I thought!"), and are unaware of things that do influence our behavior.

If "free will" is what we normally think of it--that is, a conscious free will, in which we actively make decisions and determine our own actions--it
certainly is shy about itself. The more we know about our behavior, the less we see room for the sort of free will that makes a difference. And so, discussions of free will dissolve into "randomness", which is not free will at all, and "unconscious choice", which tends toward the oxymoronic, and lots and lots of "it feels free to me", which is utterly irrelevant. My sister was tone-deaf, and couldn't float a tune in a barge, but she loved to sing; it sounded good to her. Doesn't make it good, doesn't make it free.

 

[Piggy]

Again I have to say that this seems obviously crazy to me.

Its all very well talking about emergence and levels of description but we mustn't lose sight of the the fact that the low-level physical reality is all that there really is. Everything else is just high level descriptions the we construct for our own convenience because they are more tractable than a full description of the behaviour of every atom. They add no new information that is not already contained in the low level description.

This is simply not true.

The actions of macro-level phenomena cannot be described by simply aggregating the actions of atoms.

Macro-level objects and phenomena interact based on properties which pertain on a macro-level, which do not even exist on an atomic level.