The unsolved problem of "free will"

[DanishDynamite]

You said the Is were. I asked about any words. They are all conventions. Discovering that I is merely a placeholder is not a startling insight into the nature of being. It is a banal insight into the nature of language.

My point is that the term "I" for many people is a term covering more than a placeholder for referring to the origin of output of a given human brain. For them, it refers to some sort of entity which resides inside the brain of someone.

For me it is only a placeholder for referring to the origin of the output of a given brain. There is no "I" there.

 

[Marquis de Carabas]

My point is that the term "I" for many people is a term covering more than a placeholder for referring to the origin of output of a given human brain. For them, it refers to some sort of entity which resides inside the brain of someone.

Yes, and for some ghost is a disembodied spirit (whatever the hell that is). For me, it's just something to do to a HDD.

It is well nigh indisputable that we each feel that we are an I. The word in common parlance is not at all confusing. So what is this thing to which we are referring? That, to me, is a question worth investigating. I do agree that we should check our preconceived notions at the door, and we may not like the answers.

 

[DanishDynamite]

Yes, and for some ghost is a disembodied spirit (whatever the hell that is). For me, it's just something to do to a HDD.

It is well nigh indisputable that we each feel that we are an I.

Agreed that that is how "I" "feel". "I" assume others do likewise.

The word in common parlance is not at all confusing.

Agreed.

So what is this thing to which we are referring? That, to me, is a question worth investigating. I do agree that we should check our preconceived notions at the door, and we may not like the answers.

I agree it is worth investigating in detail. My point in this thread is that I see no evidence that the I is anything other than a way of refering to a process and that it therefore makes no sense to talk about this process having free will or not. For me it is like asking whether an Excel sheet during calculation has free will. It makes no sense (if the Excel sheet has random inputs).

ETA: (if the Excel sheet has random inputs).

 

[cyborg]

Asking where the 'I' is seems rather akin to trying to locate the water molecules responsible for an ocean.

 

[The_Animus]

For me it is only a placeholder for referring to the origin of the output of a given brain. There is no "I" there.

Isn't the origin of the output of a given brain the brain? As such I is referring to the brain. If you are trying to refer to which specific area of the brain produces the output that is quite difficult because in most instances there is no one part of the brain that functions alone. There is correspondence constantly between different parts of the brain. As such to try to pinpoint a specific spot in the brain for the output of the whole seems silly to me.

Thats why I think the origin of the output of a given brain is the brain itself.

Or you could think of it in terms of external things as I said earlier. This, That, His, Hers, Mine, yours, I, Me, My, Theirs, are all similar in that they denote the difference between things. Or a separation of things.

This pen is not That pen. My pen is not Your Pen. His pen is not Her pen.

My understanding of physics is different than your understanding of physics. I like cake. You don't like cake.

The thoughts coming from your brain are not my own. I have my own thoughts.

 

[Mozybyte]

8h37vmewki8 jnba6yn dj437 sjh7jf jfcnb j8734 k nhdklka jghmkalk vnsjhfu klkow kksshhsolqnv.p';a, m,A[-754 MNHJA82L, ,LSA9 MKANIK2WOP...
(Free Will)

 

[RandFan]

Agreed that that is how "I" "feel". "I" assume others do likewise.
Agreed.

I agree it is worth investigating in detail. My point in this thread is that I see no evidence that the I is anything other than a way of refering to a process and that it therefore makes no sense to talk about this process having free will or not. For me it is like asking whether an Excel sheet during calculation has free will. It makes no sense (if the Excel sheet has random inputs).

ETA: (if the Excel sheet has random inputs).

I have somewhat simmilar feelings. I personally don't care. When I first considered the concept the hair on the back of my neck stood up. That lasted a day or two then I figured it all out. It just doesn't make any difference one whay or the other to me. There are two options.

• If I have free will then I will live my life the way that I'm living my life.
• If I don't have free will then I will live my life the way that I'm living my life.

? What's the fuss?

Now, from a neuroscience, Dann Dennett's no Cartesian Theatre to Chalmers Hard Problem of Consciousness to Steve Pinker to Susan Blackmore, it's a very, very interesting question and one I find quite fascinating. So long as you leave out any implications for my philosphical view point of life.

Anyway, I wasn't sure if I would post this or not so I flipped a coin, it came up heads.

 

[Dancing David]

Maybe it's just me but I think an interesting topic of human behavior to look at concerning free will would be Addiction.

It doesn't really matter what addiction whether chemical or psychological.

But for the purpose of this post lets use a highly addictive drug such as nicotine in cigarettes. After having smoked them you now have a biological and psychological need for the drug. So the next time a physical or psychological craving hits you, there are two possibilities.

1. You continue to smoke
2. You don't.

Now you are predisposed to pick number 1 and as can be seen this is what usually happens. Nonetheless people do quit. But how? If there is no free will, no choice, and no I to make a choice, then how do we fight against what our biology and chemistry want? Why do some people continue to be addicted while others can quit? Why do some quit for a few months but ultimately end up an addict again?

Perhaps it is due to alternate wants conflicting with the addictive wants. Maybe you wish to quit for heath reasons, money reasons, or because friends or loved ones want you to quit. This results in a conflict and if your want to quit outweighs your addiction to continue then you stop.

But then this begs the question, who is assigning value to your different wants. Value for your health, versus value to your want of the nicotine. Who or what decides between the two?

Welcome to the forum!

This is one of my trains of thought. I am a methodological behaviorist although I am shifting more towards the radical side. I just happen to believe that internal behaviors are capable of changing external behaviors. But the nomenclature I use is very old so I am often wrong in the technical aspects.

When i did mental health, domestic violence and crisis work I tended to use a relapse prevention/marm reduction model in working with people.

But the key to changing addicted brehaviors is in "choosing not to use". The rest of it is usally just crap that keeps you busy while you get used to your new lifestyle.

I believe the behaviorsit model I just happen to believe that there are choices to be made internaly that effect the consequences.

 

[Dancing David]

Once again, I find the question of "free will" looses meaning when one realizes that the concept of "I" is also without real meaning.

A buddha speaks!

 

[Dancing David]

"I think, therefor I am"

And Danish - who is it that is doubting there is an I?

In order to doubt there is an I, there has to be a doubter.

"I am pink therefore I'm spam."

You can be a doubter with a body that has a brain and no transcendent self. There is no need to insert another ghost in the machine and call it "I".

 

[Dancing David]

It's inside your skull. Remember that I is your brain and the mental processes associated with it. So where is I is asking where is your brain. In your skull.

If you would like you are more than welcome to replace I in your sentences with My brain and its associated mental processes.

As in: I understand physics.

My brain and its associated mental processes understand physics.

Or you can simply refer to it as my brain since the associated mental processes are a part of the brain rather than a separate entity.

Well here is the rub, there is much conflated nonsense associated with the use of the word "I".

People like to ascribe magical significance to the terms "consciousness", "awareness", "qualia" and "self". They are often used in this sort of religio mystic way that has no meaning or refferent to the external reality.

So it just helps to remind people that they are a body, they have no magical transcendent self.

 

[cyborg]

So it just helps to remind people that they are a body, they have no magical transcendent self.

I sought to map the greatest treasure, the source of all: of pain, of pleasure.
What riches vast would it hold? Frankincense, myrrh... maybe gold?
Richer than the King of Kings this map would show me all those things.
A map not of some distant land but of the will to move my hand.

I sought it high, I sought it low, I sought from a wise old crow,
"What you seek is hard to find but have you tried to free your mind?"
And then I saw the fool I'd been; the map I need it is: machine.
The map I want is plain to see, the map is here, the map is -- me.

 

[Tricky]

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(Free Will)

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(Random characters genereated by my computer. Free will?)

ETA: I find it amusing that it generated a couple of combinations that make smilies.

 

[andyandy]

seeing as i'm joining this thread 174 posts in, i guess i've missed the meat of the debate, nevertheless,

I don't see any room for actual "free will" where we define free will as the potential to act differently given the same stimuli in the same situation at the same time-period. The brain in a vat surely reaches the same conclusion that I do, and thus if one knew my actions, then reanimated the BIAV calibrated from time line A, those decisions would be wholly determined. If the BIAV can act differently then we still don't have "free will" we have some kind of random number generator decision making process - a probabilistic model in which the outcomes could again be wholly determined as a probability function. I guess if one wishes to regard random as free will then one can, but it requires no more free will than a dice does before it is rolled.

We can play around with definitions of free will to allow for compababilist positions if required (and many people do ) though this seems (to me at least) something of a semantic comfort blanket.

 

[Robin]

Perhaps, as the editorial first person pleural may find out one day, interconnected neurons exhibit queer behaviour. We shall be surprized, because our deterministic models are found wanting, much as Newtonians were surprized when quantum indeterminacy was revealed.

Perhaps, at a given level of processing, a form of spontaneity erupts that is perceived subjectively as free choice and is observed objectively as unpredictability within limits, i.e. human behaviour.

It would be the ultimate defence in court, if our actions were found to be the result of indeterminacy or unpredictability.

If our actions were ultimately undetermined or unpredictable then how could we be held accountable for them? How could they be said to have been done by us?

The very idea of will suggests control and that implies deteminism. How can you control an undetermined or unpredictable action?

There is here no suggestion of anything "else," no spirit worlds, no souls, no dual reality. Lack of constraint, lack of rigid causality, is a property of complex interconnection, that's all.

An interesting hypothesis. I wonder what experiment proves it wrong?

But I wonder what use the hypothesis is.

After all I understand my choices as being determined by my mental processes, memory, intelligence, emotions, personality, prejudices and so on, and I understand that they are also determined in part by environmental factors.

So there is nothing about the normal experience of free will that is incompatible with determinism.

On the other hand anything in my behaviour and choices that appears unpredictable seems to me the very opposite of free will.

For example if I set off to drive to one location and end up in another, that would not seem to be free will.

 

[Mozybyte]

At an higher level I have no control of "Process", I certainly have "free will" as to which keys I hit on the keyboard, or even if I hit any at all...
Without "free Will" there wouldn't be "Process" just "Outcomes" and thus more likely "Nothing at All".
Now admittedly, it is all Zero, and more likely than not, it is all just illusion, but still for however virtual it may all be, within my illusion or should I say, delusion, I have "Free Will".
My decisions can and are often outside of what a cluster may determine I should follow, and I will challenge environmental factors.
Free Will may in fact be the purpose of life, if there is one, it certainly is what gives it purpose.
Unless you're a puppet, a sock, both or likewise another.

 

[The_Animus]

"I am pink therefore I'm spam."

This has absolutely no relevancy at all. The other is a profound quote that shows the very act of doubting whether you exist shows you do. If you did not there would be no one to doubt whether you exist. Your quote is not only logically flawed, but utterly pointless.

You can be a doubter with a body that has a brain and no transcendent self. There is no need to insert another ghost in the machine and call it "I".

Please define transcendent self.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

This has absolutely no relevancy at all. The other is a profound quote that shows the very act of doubting whether you exist shows you do. If you did not there would be no one to doubt whether you exist. Your quote is not only logically flawed, but utterly pointless.

Um, no it doesn't. Doubting shows that doubting (thinking exists). It does not localize where the thinking takes place. More specifically, it does not imply an "I". Nothing beyond the thinking is proved by the cogito. No personality, nothing else that we typically associate with an "I".
We only know of thinking within persons, so we naturally think that the cogito implies an "I", but it doesn't.

 

[DanishDynamite]

Isn't the origin of the output of a given brain the brain?

Yes, but the brain is not "I" of the brain. Just as the engine in your car is not the power that drives the wheels. Or the soot that emerges from the exhaust pipe.

As such I is referring to the brain. If you are trying to refer to which specific area of the brain produces the output that is quite difficult because in most instances there is no one part of the brain that functions alone. There is correspondence constantly between different parts of the brain. As such to try to pinpoint a specific spot in the brain for the output of the whole seems silly to me.

Me too and that is not what I'm doing.

Thats why I think the origin of the output of a given brain is the brain itself.

The light is not the bulb. The heat is not the radiator.

Or you could think of it in terms of external things as I said earlier. This, That, His, Hers, Mine, yours, I, Me, My, Theirs, are all similar in that they denote the difference between things. Or a separation of things.

This pen is not That pen. My pen is not Your Pen. His pen is not Her pen.

My understanding of physics is different than your understanding of physics. I like cake. You don't like cake.

The thoughts coming from your brain are not my own. I have my own thoughts.

Yes, the process occuring in your brain is not occuring in mine. And the "I" in your brain is not in my brain. But then, neither is it really in yours. It is a construct, a useful way of referring to a part of the processes in your brain.

 

[DanishDynamite]

I have somewhat simmilar feelings. I personally don't care. When I first considered the concept the hair on the back of my neck stood up.

Considering these sorts of things, like whether I really exist or not, can definitely set the hairs on end.

That lasted a day or two then I figured it all out. It just doesn't make any difference one whay or the other to me. There are two options.

• If I have free will then I will live my life the way that I'm living my life.
• If I don't have free will then I will live my life the way that I'm living my life.

? What's the fuss?

A pragmatic view and one I suspect almost all people take, if they think about it at all. Still, for me at least, it's sort of a wound which never healed completely and where discussions such as this is a bit like picking at the scabs.

Now, from a neuroscience, Dann Dennett's no Cartesian Theatre to Chalmers Hard Problem of Consciousness to Steve Pinker to Susan Blackmore, it's a very, very interesting question and one I find quite fascinating. So long as you leave out any implications for my philosphical view point of life.

Anyway, I wasn't sure if I would post this or not so I flipped a coin, it came up heads.

Glad it did.