The unsolved problem of "free will"

[Mercutio]

No. We know that at the most basic level every physical interaction has an element of randomness. Absolute determinism, as such, no longer exists. It still gives meaning, however, to discuss which interactions are sufficiently macro such that the old deterministic laws can still be said to apply.

Pragmatically, we can still say that functional relationships exist between environmental variables and behavior, if (when) we can reliably demonstrate that relationship through systematic manipulation of the environment and measurement of behavior.

Whether one chooses to call it determined at that point is immaterial.

I think we have major agreement. Done grilling you.

 

[cyborg]

No. We know that at the most basic level every physical interaction has an element of randomness. Absolute determinism, as such, no longer exists.

And yet I can still give a deterministic description to every single physical interaction if I so wish.

You say, "We know that at the most basic level every physical interaction has an element of randomness." as if that were not exactly the sort of black-box assumption I told you one is forced to make that cannot constitute some-sort of absolute 'knowledge' about the actual mechanism of the box.

 

[cooper1958nc]

Mr. Mercutio, though your remarks are not models of clarity, am I to understand you are suggesting that the concept of mens rea be abandoned in law and ethics?

You suggested I was "exactly wrong" when I pointed out that the concept of mens rea was necessary to separate a trip from a crime. Other than an assessment of intent, which implies a choice, how do you make that distinction?

Extraordinary claims (the legal system is wrong about mens rea) require extraordinary evidence. Yours is what?

 

[Jeff Corey]

...Extraordinary claims (the legal system is wrong about mens rea) require extraordinary evidence. Yours is what?

Laws evolved well before any understanding of the science of behavior did. Skinner discussed many of these issues in Beyond Freedom and Dignity.
Was the legal system wrong in medieval Europe to try, convict and hang farm animals for murder?

 

[Mercutio]

Mr. Mercutio, though your remarks are not models of clarity, am I to understand you are suggesting that the concept of mens rea be abandoned in law and ethics?

If you mean "abandon this concept, leave the rest of the baggage", then of course not. It is but one part of a system that is based on false assumptions. As for clarity, I am being perhaps too brief because this is not the first thread in which these arguments have been discussed.

You suggested I was "exactly wrong" when I pointed out that the concept of mens rea was necessary to separate a trip from a crime. Other than an assessment of intent, which implies a choice, how do you make that distinction?

By looking at the behavior in its context. You have done the same thing, actually, but instead of stopping there, you inferred "intent" from this context, then circularly credited this intent with causing the behavior. Choice does not imply intent. Choice happens whenever there is more than one option--intent is mentalistic baggage.

Extraordinary claims (the legal system is wrong about mens rea) require extraordinary evidence. Yours is what?

The burden of proof is on one arguing for additional entities.

Some reading for you.

 

[Beerina]

"The current legal system is based on a prescientific understanding of behavior. Do not look to it for "truth". It is easy enough to recognize the effects of consequences on behavior, and to choose to reward and punish behaviors in the best interest of the long term survival of a given culture. There is no need for "mens rea" to enter into it. A recognition of determinism does not mean that we let the criminal off with "his environment made him do it." Rather, if we recognize that his behavior is determined in part by the consequences of his actions, appropriate contingencies must be applied to reduce that undersirable behavior."

So if a person walks into a room holding a letter opener, trips and kills her cousin sitting in a chair, that behavior is to be treated the same as if she tries to kill him?

Prescientific or not, the system makes distinctions based on conscious intent.

And, deterministic or not, knowledge that you may very well be caught and punished are valid inputs to that calculating device you call a brain, and are thus perfectly rational, even in a futuristic society that can see a brain laid out like a pie recipe.

 

[fishkr]

As a hardcore atheist committed to scientific materialism, and I admit not very skeptical about it, I am on occasion reminded that my worldview may be too narrow. For instance, I cannot fathom quantum indeterminacy or action at a distance, or parallel universes, or any of that. I prefer a billiard ball universe, I guess.

However, closer to home lurks the central problem of philosophy, and I admit I cannot solve it very well.

People believe they have options, i.e. a choices of what to do or not to do. The legal system, and the definition of a "meaningful" human action, assume such. The phenomenological conclusion from inspecting the "contents of consciousness" appear to agree, in that it "feels" most of the time that one can choose actions. In the macroscopic world where quantum effects are not apparent, objects in nature appear to have no such choices. Yet man is fully a natural object.

This statement of the fundamental problem of philosophy, absent the numerous citations it requires to be erudite, bears examination. Solutions to the conundrum have ranged from Cartesian dualism, occasionalism, idealism, and many other isms that in modern parlance seem silly. Roger Penrose suggested that quantum effects in the brain provide a basis for human freedom. Others have invoked the Uncertainty Principle. Personally, I believe the answer is in complexities of neural nets and in emergent properties of complex systems, not in quantum mechanics. However, no one has ever made a neural net that has exercised apparent choices.

Beyond the objective observation of choice lies the ultimately mysterious nature of the "subjective." No neural net seems to have choice, and similarly, does anyone really believe that neural net computer programs have self awareness?

So the problem of consciousness, related in some way to apparent freedom of action, haunts my billiard ball universe. Not enough for me to change.

Perhaps this discussion belongs in another area? None seemed particularly fitting.

I have long suspected that the potentially non-linear behavior of dynamical systems represents a possible "creativity" engine within consciousness, one that is indemic and sub-conscious - completely beneath our radar of self awareness.

If you substitue "Julia Set" for Newton's billiard balls, how does that effect your thinking on this subject?

M

 

[cooper1958nc]

Yes an interesting thought, and the behaviour of fractals is enticing.

There are, of course, many many nonlinear systems in nature, weather being one. At one time the thunderbolt was thought to be the will of Zeus. Are our actions and thoughts just brain weather, a cascading effect in a nonlinear system of some microscopic perturbation? Therefore without "meaning," equally as is the weather, to us now.

Of course no one today thinks the weather has free will or makes decisions, only that it is somewhat unpredictable because of its nonlinearity, amount of variables, chaotic nature, etc.

Yet try as we might, nobody really believes that people don't exercise choice. Probably because mere randomness, as was discussed above in this thread, seems an insufficient basis for apparent freedom. Of course, I am mindful that weather is not purely "random" (to continue the analogy), but seems to follow patterns, perhaps not unlike people.

The insight is valuable though: human freedom is really the weather of the brain.

I like the thought. I need to think about it some more.

 

[RandFan]

I agree. I think it's probably "healthier" to live your life as though you actually do have free will, though.

Do we have a choice?

 

[cooper1958nc]

Mr. Murcutio, you said intent was "mentalistic baggage" and you chastise me by saying I am arguing for "additional entities."

The function of the brain does not involve, I am confident, additional entities or supernatural constructs. It is strictly material. However, as Loren Eiseley used to say, matter has strange properties indeed.

One of those properties is to achieve some sort of self awareness called consciousness under the right circumstances. Consciousness appears to be an emergent property of neural interconnections. I reject your assertion that a thermostat has consciousness as hyperbole, or distortion of language.

Under the pall of nineteenth century determinism, we (you?) have oversimplified "matter" and its potentials. The subjective view of intent is of equal validity, as a perspective, to the alternative. The goal, it would appear, is to understand intent and apparent or real freedom as a manifestation that matter is capable of, not to ignore it because of preconceived ideas about what matter can and cannot do.

The Staddon piece was interesting and thank you for citing it. Staddon is a well known behaviouralist from Harvard, now at Duke. I admire his work, though he has no formal legal training, of course.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Mr. Mercutio, though your remarks are not models of clarity, am I to understand you are suggesting that the concept of mens rea be abandoned in law and ethics?

You suggested I was "exactly wrong" when I pointed out that the concept of mens rea was necessary to separate a trip from a crime. Other than an assessment of intent, which implies a choice, how do you make that distinction?

I know this wasn't directed to me, but it's the same point I've been making. You can address legal issues of intent (mens rea) without resolving the greater issues of consciousness and free will. The courts do this every single day.

As for ethics, I've given my example of a system that doesn't attempt to address consciousness and free will twice already.

I think systems that require knowledge that we don't have aren't any good. Since we can't define consciousness, why invoke it if it's not necessary?

I don't think there's anything wrong with examining the questions regarding consciousness (I've seen some interesting attempts at definitions) and speculating about free will. I just don't think in the practical matters of law and ethics that it's a requirement.

 

[RandFan]

I reject your assertion that a thermostat has consciousness as hyperbole, or distortion of language.

Dan Dennett said that a thermostat is aware. I agree. Ramachandran says that the thermostate is not aware that it is aware. Again I agree.

I know, I've been quoting again. Some don't like it so I'll try and back off for awhile.

 

[Mozybyte]

It was because of this subject that I ended up in hospital (the last time).
As far as I could, before admission, I was conducive to certain that although I agree that Free Will/Chaos is contained within Order/Compulsion, does little to the fact that within that containment Free Will exists, as Conscious Choice and Intent.
It doesn't have to be one or the other, and in fact Compulsion is "sub conscious" and may not exercise command on free will but be consequential of choices made.
Kind of like, a particle that lays wave that determines outcome... even though the particle originated the wave it is the wave that calls the shots, and tells the particle what to do.

What's there to read on Julia Sets fishkr? Seems like it is a region of Classified Documents.

As to reading thought, no bet is off the table, back in the seventies they could put dreams on screen, and if one considers the classification period, I can only guess what is now possible, they can certainly put thought into your head, and however unbelievable it may seem, close your eyes and watch TV is there too.

Breaches of the Casimir, being published now by Independents was achieved in the early sixties.

 

[Robin]

About 230 years ago Hume began discussing the subject by saying:

It might reasonably be expected in questions which have been canvassed and disputed with great eagerness, since the first origin of science and philosophy, that the meaning of all the terms, at least, should have been agreed upon among the disputants; and our enquiries, in the course of two thousand years, been able to pass from words to the true and real subject of the controversy. For how easy may it seem to give exact definitions of the terms employed in reasoning, and make these definitions, not the mere sound of words, the object of future scrutiny and examination? But if we consider the matter more narrowly, we shall be apt to draw a quite opposite conclusion. From this circumstance alone, that a controversy has been long kept on foot, and remains still undecided, we may presume that there is some ambiguity in the expression, and that the disputants affix different ideas to the terms employed in the controversy.

David Hume - An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Part 8 Liberty and Necessity

 

[cooper1958nc]

Of course you can sometimes address mens rea without an analysis of consciousness or free will, but I am here to tell you, you can't always avoid it either. As I mentioned earlier, whether a person "can" quit smoking or not has been a central issue in some of the biggest trials in history.

 

[Robin]

People believe they have options, i.e. a choices of what to do or not to do. The legal system, and the definition of a "meaningful" human action, assume such. The phenomenological conclusion from inspecting the "contents of consciousness" appear to agree, in that it "feels" most of the time that one can choose actions. In the macroscopic world where quantum effects are not apparent, objects in nature appear to have no such choices. Yet man is fully a natural object.

I would say that most people would agree that their choice was caused by something. If you say, "why did you do that?", they will reply something like "because I wanted to", or "because it was the right thing to do", or "because it was the smart thing to do". In short we feel we have choices, but we also feel that the choice we make will be determined by something.

It does not seem unlikely that our emotions, intelligence and conscience that we believe to be the determinants of our actions are the physical entities within our brain that science suggests are the determinants of our actions.

So there does not appear to be any contradiction whatsoever between what we feel about free will and naturalism.

 

[Mozybyte]

Analysing Consciensciousness is like looking into Reality, each one to its own, plus that there are many a sentient state just to expand the process more.
A Very open mind is needed and this is not the place, lest we not start on the impossible, and touch on the short comings of the sheep.
But good luck on trying, I'll certainly be here for the listening and try pumping a wee bit.

 

[Mozybyte]

Conscience is paradoxical, in that, the more competent you feel the less the free will and vice versa.
When under sedation, one would expect actions to be more autonomous, but in fact that's when Free Will seems more apparent. in that one functions albeit with lack of judgment the choices are harder to take.
While when elevated as in Mania you don't seem to have any choice at all, and can function as under hypnosis or a puppet on a string (The God within [but there are many states here]).
It may be that it is those of lesser competence that in fact have a greater cause for Mens Rea, than the highly qualified, this is the Black and White, most of us (well not me per se), fall in the grey and thus have a certain "Responsibility" (I'm Free and do as I please).

 

[Mercutio]

Of course no one today thinks the weather has free will or makes decisions, only that it is somewhat unpredictable because of its nonlinearity, amount of variables, chaotic nature, etc.

Yet try as we might, nobody really believes that people don't exercise choice. Probably because mere randomness, as was discussed above in this thread, seems an insufficient basis for apparent freedom.

"Has free will" is not the same as "exercises choice". We (organisms, not just humans) are constantly put in situations where we have more than one option; in such cases, we must and do choose one among many. We (scholars of behavior) can attribute this choice to free will and be done with it (we used to say it was the will of the gods, just like the weather), or we could actually look at the environmental variables that contribute to our choices. There is, for instance, a substantial literature on impulsiveness vs. self-control (choosing to pursue smaller, sooner reinforcers vs. larger, later reinforcers) which can be studied with people or pigeons.

We are acutely aware of our actions. We are far, far less aware of the multiple events and variables in our past and present which determine those actions. As I wrote here several years ago, paraphrasing Arthur C. Clarke, any sufficiently subtly-determined behavior is indistinguishable from free will.

 

[cooper1958nc]

But what can it possibly mean to have "more than one option" (assuming you are not in quantum reality)? It is either an illusion (you had to do what you had to do, you just did not know it) or you really had more than one option. Is having more than one option unique to dogs and people, or do potatoes have it too?