The unsolved problem of "free will"

[cooper1958nc]

Nah, you are making a claim that demands extraordinary evidence, i.e. that brains are causal, even though people clearly do the unexpected all the time. So if someone is to claim that despite the internal observation of apparent freedom of action, and despite the objective inability to determine the antecedent "causes", one is nonetheless convinced because of some classical worldview or belief in a billiard ball universe, that the brain has to be causal, then it would seem they need to marshal the evidence. True, the behaviourists seem to want to deliver on this, and they think they have found the evidence. Maybe so, maybe not. I think not, actually, but it is a fair game.

 

[Mercutio]

Nah, you are making a claim that demands extraordinary evidence, i.e. that brains are causal, even though people clearly do the unexpected all the time.

...which is why advertisers make millions...

So if someone is to claim that despite the internal observation of apparent freedom of action, and despite the objective inability to determine the antecedent "causes", one is nonetheless convinced because of some classical worldview or belief in a billiard ball universe, that the brain has to be causal, then it would seem they need to marshal the evidence.

That is not the claim at all; none here have claimed a billiard ball causation. But... if one had... every bit of evidence we have about local potentials, action potentials, the propogation of nerve signals across a semipermeable neuron membrane... everything so far does not support your claim of "apparent freedom of action". Your ignorance is not evidence.

True, the behaviourists seem to want to deliver on this, and they think they have found the evidence. Maybe so, maybe not. I think not, actually, but it is a fair game.

It is not merely the behaviorists, but the neurologists, the psychobiologists, the ...

To echo Wasp... what is your evidence that brains can work acausally?

Words like "clearly", and phrases like "apparent freedom of action" are not evidence.

 

[cooper1958nc]

Nah again. That's all reductio argument. Nerve physiology shows how single nerves work. When you get enough connected, other properties may arise. We have evolved to treat ordinary objects "causally." Like Newtonian physics it works well, so the organisms that evolved to work it, lived. Equally, we can't predict where electrons go. We did not evolve to predict electrons. Equally again, we don't treat living people like potatoes. We treat them as if they had freedom of action. Why? Organisms that did that succeeded. In the face of that, we have no reason, other than an ill founded "belief" in causality's extent, to think that just because individual nerves behave causally, that the brain always does.

 

[Mozybyte]

Excuse me Cooper, if I may call you Cooper, could you just clarify for me that I'm interpreting cooper1958nc, as Cooper Born in 1958, North Carolina?
I'm a little floored by the prospect that you graduated from Yale in 1970, as you said...

Nothing serious, other than a matter of credibility, as you may have noticed I'm having problems with "Humanity" and the dust we all have been covering ourselves with.

You see in the matter of conscience and free will, reference comes only from the interpretation of ourselves, as it would be foolish going about listening to the dust of the other resident population in this asylum, irrespective of how clever they are in organizing words into sentences.

Hubris of ego and excessive pertinence of others needs to satiate theirs, can be somewhat sidelining to our endeavours as observers, and thus cloud the clarity required for objective analysis.

This is a most fascinating thread, don't be scared or let yourself get bullied into where others want you to be.

At my lowest point of introspection, being brutally honest with myself, I come to see how I was nothing at all... Literally.
In doing so, a voice within, told me that I was God, so persistently that I myself came to believe it, and in the believing that I was this that was God, which I little understood then, clarity withstood. It matters not what I Am but that which I believe to be...

If you want to have Free Will, take it, it is yours, and no argument will ever raze it.

In listening to me, you would think that I'm inclined to philosophizing, but not, it is science that interests me.
Now don't go answering a Madman, or you'll see the nutter that you can be... But then again, you may want to become free.
Whatever you do, I'm not really here, nor have I ever been.

The hope for Humanity, lays in coming to accept ourselves for what we are, and understanding that that is what we will always be.
If the whole Universe is no more, why should we?

Zero PLUS a little less

 

[DOC]

God's perfect gift of free wil

Genesis 6:6 says God grieved for making man (because of the sin). This verse shows that God was not aware how man would act, even though I believe He could of if He chose to do so. This verse supports that humanity has total free will.

 

[JoeEllison]

Genesis 6:6 says God grieved for making man (because of the sin). This verse shows that God was not aware how man would act, even though I believe He could of if He chose to do so. This verse supports that humanity has total free will.

This verse shows that "God" was a moron. Wow.

 

[DOC]

This verse shows that "God" was a moron. Wow.

Not that I believe God is what you said, but I'd rather have been created by a moron and have total free will than to just be a puppet or a robot whose life was determined by total unchangeable fate.

 

[JoeEllison]

Not that I believe God is what you said, but I'd rather have been created by a moron and have total free will than to just be a puppet or a robot whose life was determined by total unchangeable fate.

Interesting... as though what you'd prefer has any bearing on reality.

In the meanwhile, the Bible describes the Christian deity as an idiot, a sadist, and a lunatic. *shrugs* Not my book, so I don;t care either way. I just wonder why the believers put up with it.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Nah, you are making a claim that demands extraordinary evidence, i.e. that brains are causal, even though people clearly do the unexpected all the time. So if someone is to claim that despite the internal observation of apparent freedom of action, and despite the objective inability to determine the antecedent "causes", one is nonetheless convinced because of some classical worldview or belief in a billiard ball universe, that the brain has to be causal, then it would seem they need to marshal the evidence. True, the behaviourists seem to want to deliver on this, and they think they have found the evidence. Maybe so, maybe not. I think not, actually, but it is a fair game.

How is asking a question "making a claim"? I have made no claim. You made a claim. I showed it to you and you are squirming around now and fooling no one.

So, to play along with you and this "extraordinary evidence" issue, how would the claim that brains -- physical structures -- work via determinism constitute an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence (even though I have not claimed that)? There is nothing at all extraordinary about the claim that brains are physical. There is pleny of evidence, mounds of evidence, that demonstrate just that fact. Is that evidence knock down-drag out proof that brains never work acausally? No. We don't prove negatives. I am simply unaware of any evidence that shows brains working acausally. You implied that they do and I would like to see that evidence.

It is your claim.

ETA:

Oops, Merc beat me to it. Thanks.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Nah again. That's all reductio argument. Nerve physiology shows how single nerves work. When you get enough connected, other properties may arise. We have evolved to treat ordinary objects "causally." Like Newtonian physics it works well, so the organisms that evolved to work it, lived.

Emergent properties do not arise acausally. Emergent properties are part and parcel of a chain of causation. The causation is different but it is still causation. The emergent property of wetness cannot easily be predicted by our view of one water molecule. The fact that we cannot predict wetness from that one water molecule does not mean that the wetness we do experience in the presence of billions of water molecules is acausal. It is, in fact, caused by the interaction of all those billions of water molecules.

Something superficially similar occurs with the function of billions of neurons. It is not as simple as water molecules interacting, but that explanation requires considerably more time.

Equally, we can't predict where electrons go. We did not evolve to predict electrons. Equally again, we don't treat living people like potatoes. We treat them as if they had freedom of action. Why? Organisms that did that succeeded. In the face of that, we have no reason, other than an ill founded "belief" in causality's extent, to think that just because individual nerves behave causally, that the brain always does.

Quantum mechanics has nothing to do with neuron function. At the level of neuron function -- large molecules and cells -- from all the information we have of quantum weirdness, the quantum effects "wash out" so that what we actually observe looks deterministic. It may not be on a fundamental scale, but it certainly appears that way on the scale of cells and macromolecules. If it didn't we wouldn't be able to do the work we do in the neurosciences.

The fact that we treat people as though they have free will means nothing but that we treat people as though they have free will. That does not tell us that people do have free will.

The issue that you raised initially is not "just because individual nerves behave causally.... (that we cannot conclude that).... the brain always does". You stated that we have years of observing brains suggesting that they act acausally.

If your claim now is that we just don't know absolutely, incontrovertibly, for sure, no questions asked.......well I think you would need to look far and wide to find someone who would disagree. Is that your real claim -- that we don't know? Or are you claiming that we have evidence that brains do not always work acausally?

If the latter, again, I ask, "What is your evidence that brains work acausally"?

 

[Dancing David]

What kind of evidence would you accept as proof? Lets start there. Or, do you have any evidence that brains are causal? How would that be tested? Can you devise an experiment that would decide this?

Oh gosh, really.

This must be rhetorical, you don't want me to cite neurology journals do you?

This would appear to be troll like behavior as well.

1. Insert electrodes, apply low levels current, watch the effects.

2. etc., etc. Have you ever read up on brain trauma and the effects on motor skills and language or about the lack of development of speech in children who are not exposed to it?

 

[Dancing David]

Nah, you are making a claim that demands extraordinary evidence, i.e. that brains are causal, even though people clearly do the unexpected all the time. So if someone is to claim that despite the internal observation of apparent freedom of action, and despite the objective inability to determine the antecedent "causes", one is nonetheless convinced because of some classical worldview or belief in a billiard ball universe, that the brain has to be causal, then it would seem they need to marshal the evidence. True, the behaviourists seem to want to deliver on this, and they think they have found the evidence. Maybe so, maybe not. I think not, actually, but it is a fair game.

Woo alert, potential gibberish ahead.

isotropy is an axiom as is causality.

You are like a creationist saying "The earth looks flat, so prove that it isn't. It is common sense that the earth is flat"

Causality has not yet to be shown to be false.

You have made the extraordinary claim. Magic Sky Pixie anyone?

 

[Dancing David]

Nah again. That's all reductio argument. Nerve physiology shows how single nerves work. When you get enough connected, other properties may arise. We have evolved to treat ordinary objects "causally." Like Newtonian physics it works well, so the organisms that evolved to work it, lived. Equally, we can't predict where electrons go. We did not evolve to predict electrons. Equally again, we don't treat living people like potatoes. We treat them as if they had freedom of action. Why? Organisms that did that succeeded. In the face of that, we have no reason, other than an ill founded "belief" in causality's extent, to think that just because individual nerves behave causally, that the brain always does.

Thought experiment:

"In the face of that, we have no reason, other than an ill founded "belief" in causality's extent, to think that just because individual atoms behave causally, that the billiard ball always does."


"In the face of that, we have no reason, other than an ill founded "belief" in causality's extent, to think that just because individual "molecules" behave causally, that the "protien" always does."

This is somewhat reminisent of the Mijo argument, if something is random, it can not be causal.

Causal and predetermined are not the same.

 

[cooper1958nc]

We don't observe much behaviour in proteins that would suggest they can act that way. People, on the other hand, seem to. Big diff.

Early AI guys and gals were very interested in complex systems that were self referential. Many believed that the ordinary notions of causality had to be abandoned on these "second order" systems. Or at least modified in a concept called "circular causality." For instance, http://www.thehope.org/Bernard_Scott/Causality.html, citing von Foerster, the later worth a longer look.

Probably simplistic notions of causation are what need revision when dealing with self referential networks.

To Mr. Mosbyte or whomever, why are you obsessed with decoding my login name? What does yours mean, or on second thought, spare me. Nobody here seems to identify themselves anyway, so who cares?

I won't state my training and experience since apparently that is irrelevant to the discussions. So as newcomer to this forum, let me make a few observations. Many people seem so worried about defending some little island of understanding, or proving they are hard scientists (when they are not), they don't see the forest, only the trees. Induction as well as deduction is necessary for problem solving.

You know who you are.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

We don't observe much behaviour in proteins that would suggest they can act that way. People, on the other hand, seem to. Big diff.

Early AI guys and gals were very interested in complex systems that were self referential. Many believed that the ordinary notions of causality had to be abandoned on these "second order" systems. Or at least modified in a concept called "circular causality." For instance, http://www.thehope.org/Bernard_Scott/Causality.html, citing von Foerster, the later worth a longer look.

Probably simplistic notions of causation are what need revision when dealing with self referential networks.

To Mr. Mosbyte or whomever, why are you obsessed with decoding my login name? What does yours mean, or on second thought, spare me. Nobody here seems to identify themselves anyway, so who cares?

I won't state my training and experience since apparently that is irrelevant to the discussions. So as newcomer to this forum, let me make a few observations. Many people seem so worried about defending some little island of understanding, or proving they are hard scientists (when they are not), they don't see the forest, only the trees. Induction as well as deduction is necessary for problem solving.

You know who you are.

Your "evidence" is that people "seem to" act acausally?

Could this not result from our incredible lack of knowledge about the inputs for human behavior?

How are self-referential systems acausal? Yes, they can assume new properties when compared to simple inputs. Much of our brain function results from complex loops of information that feed back on themselves. A simple system that demonstrates this nicely is the cerebellum where we see information flow from proprioceptors hitting the cerebelar cortex and being modified by surrounding inputs as well as by descending inputs, sending that information back up to the cerebral cortex (or back down to the motor neurons and proprioceptors depending on which part of the cerebellum is being discussed) in these constant loops where the information is modified. The cortex largely works by thalamo-cortical relays and cortico-cortical relays that modify the incoming information.

I still don't see anything there that is acausal. Where is the acausality?

 

[Mozybyte]

What Forrest and what trees?
It's a Desert, and all there is is sand.
Thanks for answering the question, and truly sorry for you.

 

[cooper1958nc]

Mr. David, causality was thought to be an axiom for a long time, only to be revised at the quantum level anyway. (Before you jump on that, I make no claim that quantum indeterminacy is related to human brain action, though much smarter physicists than I have. Nor do I claim that randomness is the origin of apparent freedom of choice, for reasons expressed early in this thread. I do not exclude the possibilty of "brain weather," one of the more interesting thoughts to come from this discussion, and not yours, I might add.)

Causality works well in the normal sphere of things. And without it, we are kinda adrift, it is true. But, causality does NOT seem to work well when we are doing ordinary parlance with human beings and to some extent higher animals. We treat them differently. Now the earth is easily seen as round today with minimal experimentation. Yes it WAS up to someone to prove it round, because it looks flat. But no problem they did.

As I said, no one can prove that a human is really a deterministic machine. You can believe it based on the axiom that a human is in nature and you are convinced all nature is causal. Well that's belief. But there is equal or better belief that humans don't act the way potatoes act. So who is reaching here?

Unfortunately, AI science has not delivered a calculus of complex systems. I "believe" something will eventually be understood, that complex self referential systems have behaviour that is, by common account, not strictly causal, but that it does not originate from quantum effects or random effects.

If Penrose went to all that trouble to try to base apparent freedom on quantum effects, I guess he did not accept your reductio argument either. Read Penrose and tell me he is a "woo" to use your witch-hunting phrase.

 

[cooper1958nc]

Mr Wasp, that is the reductio argument. Naming the neural pathways in the cerebellum is worthwhile, but does not answer the question. Are you familiar with "The Cerebellum as a Neuronal Machine" by I think Wilshaw or Wilsham or something. Its pretty good, but not the point.

You keep saying you don't see evidence of acausal behaviour in humans. Apparently most of the human race sees it everyday, both objectively and subjectively. Query: What would it look like if it were there, to your eyes? If you can answer that, maybe we can move to the next level.

So answer, what would acausal behaviour in the brain look like if it existed?

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Mr Wasp, that is the reductio argument. Naming the neural pathways in the cerebellum is worthwhile, but does not answer the question. Are you familiar with "The Cerebellum as a Neuronal Machine" by I think Wilshaw or Wilsham or something. Its pretty good, but not the point.

Not familiar with the book, but I'm quite familiar with the cerebellum. I use this as an overly simplistic loop because it is easy for most people to see. I did not mean it to explain cerebral cortical behavior. That is why I separated that idea from the thalamo-cortical and cortico-cortical loops.

You keep saying you don't see evidence of acausal behaviour in humans.

I keep saying that I don't see evidence of acausal activity in brains. Your claim was that there was such a thing. I am asking for your evidence. It's just that simple. Why won't you cite any evidence. Speaking of feedback loops and complexity does not constitute evidence of acausality.

Apparently most of the human race sees it everyday, both objectively and subjectively.

Really? Most of the human race knows all the inputs for human behavior and can tell implicitly that that behavior is clearly acausal? I guess I missed that day in school. Most of the human race with which I am familiar don't give this a second thought. They assume that they act acausally, perhaps, but assumptions do not constitute proof. Again, you are the one making the claim, where is your evidence and why are you being so coy about it?

Query: What would it look like if it were there, to your eyes? If you can answer that, maybe we can move to the next level.

So answer, what would acausal behaviour in the brain look like if it existed?

I am asking you that very question. What would it look like? What is this evidence? How would we know that it is acausal? You, once again, are the one making the claim. Please provide your actual evidence for acausal brain behavior. You said that we have plenty of evidence of this acausality from looking at brain behavior. I want to know what this evidence looks like.

 

[Mercutio]

Social Psychology is full of examples of caused behaviors that the behaving people are unaware are caused (if that parsed). The Meyers textbook even had a chapter heading (earlier edition--don't know if it currently does) called "we often do not know why we do what we do"--showing scads of experiments in which we manipulate environmental variables, note the changes in behavior, and note also that the people are utterly unaware of what things in their environment contributed to their behavior.

Loftus's work with eyewitness testimony has some dramatic examples of this, where a leading question, or a statement at time A, systematically changes testimony later at time B, with the witness completely unaware of any change.

The evidence, I suggest, firmly points to the notion that this "apparent acausality" is mere ignorance of variables. We do not, as a rule, carry control groups around with us; as individuals, we are not equipped to systematically determine which elements in our environments are influencing us. But when scientists look systematically, the causality is apparent.