Free Will

It is entirely possible that causality rules supreme but we still cannot in principle accurately predict the future.
 
Belz... said:
Free will doesn't exist. Randomness isn't free will and determinism isn't, either. Unless someone can propose a mechanism by which one makes decisions not randomly AND not based on previous experiences, that horse is dead, dead, dead.
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So basically it doesn't exist because you've chosed an impossible and not very useful definition of it? Reminds me of linus's disproof of God by burrito :p

Also, "based on" doesn't mean complete determinism. Of course it's based on previous experiences, or it would be stonking stupidity and utter inability to learn. The question is whether those experiences make your final choice 100% predictable and in fact pre-determined, or there is room for that thing called "free will" to pick something else anyway.

E.g., I remember picking my first console, a Dreamcast. Past experiences and rational thought said that I have a perfectly good, top-end PC and I don't have enough time to play even all PC games. I got one anyway because of curiosity.

Was that decision perfectly deterministic? Maybe, but I don't think it's that easy to prove or disprove either way.

As I was saying, even acquiring those past experiences is itself ruled by one's own personality, interests and experiences even farther in the past. Does no free will enter there either? How would you know?

The whole system is massively complex and massively iterative, i.e., the domain if chaos theory by definition. (Of chaos theory.) I don't think it's that easy to definitely and categorically distinguish between the wild swings that such a system normally throws, and a decision that comes from some kind of "free will."

So basically we're at making unfalsifiable statements at best.
 
dlorde said:
We have no choice but to act as if we have free will.
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If you start a thread, can you please be more clear and explain your point of view better? More than one sentence would also be good for an OP.
 
JetLeg said:
If you start a thread, can you please be more clear and explain your point of view better? More than one sentence would also be good for an OP.
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The terseness was deliberate. I was curious to see whether it would stimulate any discussion. If it did, I wanted to hear other people's POV.

For my part, the sentence sums up my point of view in many ways - I find the relation between free will and determinism/reductionism curious, puzzling, contradictory and amusing. Like many things in life, the closer we examine what we mean by free will, the more it seems to slip through our fingers. ISTM that we act as though we have free will, both personally and socially, and I don't see how we can not do so. So, in a sense, we have no choice... Even if the universe were entirely deterministic, a 4D Parmenidean Block of spacetime, we could not tell the difference (perhaps even in principle), and from our POV we would still be acting as if we had free will. The juxtaposition of choice and free will in the sentence points to the cloudy relation between choice and free will, etc., etc.
 
Gate2501 said:
For me, it all comes down to one thing.
Can your brain(a physical thing), violate causality.
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I think this is an interesting question. If, as some speculate, our nervous system has processes that are dependent on QM, then our brain might well possess the ability to violate causality since QM can apparently violate causality.
If it cannot, then that means that given sufficient information on the variables(causes) that process in your mind to create a "choice"(effect), could be calculated beforehand, rendering free will an illusion. I look at it like the roll of a D6. There is really only one possible result to any roll once the initial conditions of the roll have been set in place. We only think that there are six, because we cannot calculate all of these variables with any degree of accuracy.
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Actually, there are more than six possible outcomes, though the probability of anything outside of those six is extremely small. For example, one or both dice may land on edge displaying two sides as uppermost rather than one. When this happens in a board game because the die lands tilted against the edge of the board, we just reroll without giving the matter any further consideration, but it is an outcome outside of the usual six. I would also disagree with your contention that there is “only one possible result to any roll once the initial conditions of the roll have been set in place”. We simply don’t know that is true because we are not able to know all the conditions and therefore we cannot test the assertion that if all conditions were known, only one outcome is possible.
Gate2501 said:
Well, even if the base "randomness" of quantum mechanics somehow does affect our minds, I don't see how that would translate into free will. The mind would still not be violating causation, it would just make some of the variables(causes) in the thought process "random". Those causes would still lead to a calculable effect(if we had the processing power and full knowledge of entry variables in a "choice").
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But we don’t, nor can we ever have full knowledge of the entry variables in a “choice” because what choices are perceived by a human for any situation is a fundamentally subjective set and cannot be known by any other individual even if you are willing to grant that an individual can be said to have ‘full knowledge’ of all the possible choices they are considering. Since we don’t have that full knowledge, just as we don’t have full knowledge of the total conditions of a roll of dice, why should either be considered deterministic? It seems to me in both cases you are relying on the assumption that the world fundamentally works according to deterministic principles which we now know, via QM, is not the case at all.
Randomness wouldn't cause free will to emerge, it would just add another level of wackiness to the whole process. Even if it could somehow add possible outcomes to a choice, it wouldn't put "you" in control of the selection thereof.
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I agree that a deterministic system would not allow for free will. While I agree that randomness may not cause free will to emerge, I think it does allow for it to occur since it changes the system from deterministic one to being non-deterministic . Why don’t you consider the brain to be the controlling agent of the choices an individual makes? Or perhaps, why don’t you consider that to be ‘free will’. How are you defining free will if that is the case?
I say either deterministic or random, you still don't end up with free will(unless you want to add an immaterial aspect to the mind).
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I guess I’m not sure what you mean by free will then. I think of free will as the ability to make choices that a) cannot be predicted, even in principle and b) are a direct result of the individual making a conscious choice among various options that are considered. Since I don’t think we can, even in principle, ever determine the subjective array of possibilities that an individual is subconsciously considering before deciding which ones to consciously choose among, I don’t think that we can, in principle, predict the outcome although we may be able to predict general probabilities for some subset of likely outcomes. And why would it require an immaterial aspect to the mind?
Belz... said:
Free will doesn't exist. Randomness isn't free will and determinism isn't, either. Unless someone can propose a mechanism by which one makes decisions not randomly AND not based on previous experiences, that horse is dead, dead, dead.
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Why would that be required for ‘free will’. See my definition above. I think both randomness and previous experiences are part of the process of making choices and do not exclude the possibility of free will. What is your definition of ‘free will’ such that it cannot include such factors?
 
dlorde said:
Yes and no. Do you not think that free will is relevant to religion and philosophy?
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I was referring to the frequency of the threads, not the positioning.

(Seems that every week or so, another "What about free will?" thread springs up and follows a predictable pattern until it fades into obscurity before the next one arises.)

That all probably proves or disproves free will.
 
The Atheist said:
I was referring to the frequency of the threads, not the positioning.

(Seems that every week or so, another "What about free will?" thread springs up and follows a predictable pattern until it fades into obscurity before the next one arises.)
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My apologies, I completely misunderstood - even though the original comment was intended to be mildly sarcastic (free will is always likely to be high on the philosophy & religion agenda).
 
dlorde said:
My apologies, I completely misunderstood - even though the original comment was intended to be mildly sarcastic (free will is always likely to be high on the philosophy & religion agenda).
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No sweat.

You're right that it's high on the list - it's a central tenet of christianity. In fact, it's probably the only one they have left.
 
Ok, what if there's no free will, but you can get it at an unbelievable discount?
 
The Atheist said:
Some people are determined to avoid the subject.
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I'm sorry. I'm just kidding around because... well, the question I really want to ask is: How is this thread different from all the other free will threads we've been through?
 
moopet said:
He shot Officer Down.
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The Atheist said:
I was referring to the frequency of the threads, not the positioning.

(Seems that every week or so, another "What about free will?" thread springs up and follows a predictable pattern until it fades into obscurity before the next one arises.)

That all probably proves or disproves free will.
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So we're predestined to discuss free will?
 
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