Free Will

[Robin]

I choose to exercise my free will and not join another thread on free will.




D'oh!

 

[Georg]

Is this a good time to be pedantic and note that predestined is different to determined?

It is a good time indeed, but it does not matter since you could not have chosen another time anyway.

 

[Robin]

As Ed Lorenz says - "you can be confident that if you choose to believe in free will, you will not have chosen wrongly"

 

[dlorde]

As Ed Lorenz says - "you can be confident that if you choose to believe in free will, you will not have chosen wrongly"

but can you be certain?

 

[quarky]

Confidence is a suspension of certainty.
There can be no certainty.
Yet, we can behave as though there is certainty.

 

[linusrichard]

For all of you guys that do believe in free will, I would ask you the following:

What part of the human mind is immune to causality, and how does this translate into "you" being the decision maker?

I don't know. I also don't know what exactly causes every object in the universe to exert an attractive force on every other object in the universe (I have a name for it: "gravity" - but that doesn't mean I know what it is), and yet I do believe that every object in the universe exerts an attractive force on every other object in the universe.

My take on it is this: The only thing we can directly observe is inside our mind. Everything else, we use tools. Some of our tools are biological: eyes, ears. Some are mechanical: microscopes, telescopes. But what's in our head, we observe directly. I directly observe the experience of making decisions. Determinists will tell me that this is an illusion. They may be right. But any observation we make might be an illusion. We might be brains in jars, we might be batteries for robots a la The Matrix, we might be the dream of a demented God. Is any of this at all useful? I submit that the first thing we have to do if we're going to get anywhere at all is pretend that we know that our observations are correct unless we have a very good reason to believe that they are not correct. Because without prima facie trusting our observations we have nothing.

So what is the very good reason determinists have for telling me my observations (along with the observations of every other human being, including the determinists) are incorrect? It's that they can't conceive of a mechanism that would make them correct. To me, this is on a par with theism. Primitives say "we can't figure out why there's thunder, so it must be God." Then we figure out how that works, and later on, people say "we can't figure out how the variety of species came about, so it must have been God." And then we get Darwin, and figure that out. And then it'll be something else. To me, the determinists do something similar - they say "we can't figure out by what mechanism the individual makes a decision, so people must not really be making decisions." I'm sorry, but your failure to have a complete understanding of the workings of the human brain is not sufficient justification for me to throw out the shared observations of every member of the human race, including (most importantly from my point of view), me.

Maybe there is something about the physical brain that we don't understand that allows us to make decisions. Maybe there is something outside the physical brain that allows us to make decisions. This latter is actually my preferred hypothesis. I find it useful to name such a thing a "soul," although it does not necessarily share the characteristics that would normally be assigned to that word. I do not believe in an afterlife, or a God, or a universal morality, or any of the other baggage that might normally accompany belief in a soul, but I believe (though weakly) in something that I like to call a "soul." I don't believe that I am disobeying Ockham too egregiously by doing so.


As a side note, I find it interesting that determinists can't help (ha!) but use the language of free will all the time. We can not live as determinists, even those of us who are.

I just do not think that the onus should be on me to prove that free will does not exist. Instead, those who do believe in free will, should be able to describe the mechanism behind it, and how the mind is able to violate rules that everything else in the universe seems bound by.

This seems reasonable, but my response is that since I observe free will directly (as do you), the onus is not on me to prove how it works, but on you to prove why these observations are false, since the only reasonable starting point is to assume that that which is observed is true.





... and of course if this is all wrong, it isn't my fault, since I couldn't help but type all of it. Right?


ETA: My apologies in advance if I've misrepresented the determinist position - if I have done so I have done so in good faith and hope to escape the accusation of "Strawman," which to me is when someone intentionally or recklessly creates a weak position and assigns it to his opponent for the purpose of discrediting him dishonestly. I am trying to address what I honestly believe to be the determinist/anti-free-will position, so I hope if I am wrong it will be pointed out to me in patience.

 

[linusrichard]

As Ed Lorenz says - "you can be confident that if you choose to believe in free will, you will not have chosen wrongly"

Beautiful.

but can you be certain?

You can be absolutely certain, because you have either chosen correctly, or you have not chosen at all.

 

[minorwork]

Gotta get that 15th post in somewhere.

Free will. The feeling of having a choice.

Easily understood. Not amenable very easily to the metaphysics of a deterministic position that require an infinite amount of time to calculate a hard effect based on cause.

Very practical in political discussion. The woman pregnant by a run in with the date rape drug certainly wants to feel that she has a choice. She would certainly notice if she did not when the Dominion Theonomy crowd would strap her down and force her to carry to term. Extreme? You betcha and I've talked to those who would strap them down and after the birth would kill them for the past abortions they had. The real fanatics are not empaths. They have extremely hard hearts. They seem not to know of compassion.

But if it is metaphysics then the riddle of free will presents this way.

If God knows everything and can do everything, then can God create a rock that he cannot lift? God gives the rock free will and lets it lift itself. God is not then responsible for lifting or not since the rock can now decide for itself. The rock is, of course, the human soul endowed with free will and God has absolved Itself from responsibility. Damn it.

 

[Soapy Sam]

dlorde- there have been discussions of free will here before. Eventually they bog down in a morass of definitions, often featuring many different meanings of the term.

My 2 cents- Minds are a feature of brains and have severely limited abilities. I can will all I like to picture something in my head, but I can't do it. I can't extract cube roots of large numbers, I can't sing.
I would like to be able to do these things, but I cannot.
Which would seem to leave the idea dead in the water.

 

[dlorde]

dlorde- there have been discussions of free will here before. Eventually they bog down in a morass of definitions, often featuring many different meanings of the term.

That's OK, plenty of interesting threads end up like that. There have been some interesting and amusing posts.

My 2 cents- Minds are a feature of brains and have severely limited abilities. I can will all I like to picture something in my head, but I can't do it. I can't extract cube roots of large numbers, I can't sing.
I would like to be able to do these things, but I cannot.
Which would seem to leave the idea dead in the water.

Surely free will is to do with having a choice between the options available to you, not any options you can imagine.

 

[Third Eye Open]

I don't know. I also don't know what exactly causes every object in the universe to exert an attractive force on every other object in the universe (I have a name for it: "gravity" - but that doesn't mean I know what it is), and yet I do believe that every object in the universe exerts an attractive force on every other object in the universe.

My take on it is this: The only thing we can directly observe is inside our mind. Everything else, we use tools. Some of our tools are biological: eyes, ears. Some are mechanical: microscopes, telescopes. But what's in our head, we observe directly. I directly observe the experience of making decisions. Determinists will tell me that this is an illusion. They may be right. But any observation we make might be an illusion. We might be brains in jars, we might be batteries for robots a la The Matrix, we might be the dream of a demented God. Is any of this at all useful? I submit that the first thing we have to do if we're going to get anywhere at all is pretend that we know that our observations are correct unless we have a very good reason to believe that they are not correct. Because without prima facie trusting our observations we have nothing.

So what is the very good reason determinists have for telling me my observations (along with the observations of every other human being, including the determinists) are incorrect? It's that they can't conceive of a mechanism that would make them correct. To me, this is on a par with theism. Primitives say "we can't figure out why there's thunder, so it must be God." Then we figure out how that works, and later on, people say "we can't figure out how the variety of species came about, so it must have been God." And then we get Darwin, and figure that out. And then it'll be something else. To me, the determinists do something similar - they say "we can't figure out by what mechanism the individual makes a decision, so people must not really be making decisions." I'm sorry, but your failure to have a complete understanding of the workings of the human brain is not sufficient justification for me to throw out the shared observations of every member of the human race, including (most importantly from my point of view), me.

Maybe there is something about the physical brain that we don't understand that allows us to make decisions. Maybe there is something outside the physical brain that allows us to make decisions. This latter is actually my preferred hypothesis. I find it useful to name such a thing a "soul," although it does not necessarily share the characteristics that would normally be assigned to that word. I do not believe in an afterlife, or a God, or a universal morality, or any of the other baggage that might normally accompany belief in a soul, but I believe (though weakly) in something that I like to call a "soul." I don't believe that I am disobeying Ockham too egregiously by doing so.


As a side note, I find it interesting that determinists can't help (ha!) but use the language of free will all the time. We can not live as determinists, even those of us who are.



This seems reasonable, but my response is that since I observe free will directly (as do you), the onus is not on me to prove how it works, but on you to prove why these observations are false, since the only reasonable starting point is to assume that that which is observed is true.





... and of course if this is all wrong, it isn't my fault, since I couldn't help but type all of it. Right?


ETA: My apologies in advance if I've misrepresented the determinist position - if I have done so I have done so in good faith and hope to escape the accusation of "Strawman," which to me is when someone intentionally or recklessly creates a weak position and assigns it to his opponent for the purpose of discrediting him dishonestly. I am trying to address what I honestly believe to be the determinist/anti-free-will position, so I hope if I am wrong it will be pointed out to me in patience.

Well said. It matters little to me whether I have what you call free will or not. It will not change my behavior in any way if I know for sure that i have free will or that I don't. I suspect that humans are as predictable as any other material object, but if there is no one doing any predicting, then it matters not to me.

If you are able to predict a choice, does that make it not a choice?

 

[cyborg]

If you are able to predict a choice, does that make it not a choice?

Predicting a choice requires creating a simulacrum of the world and the effect of that choice upon it as to how it will change the world.

Free-will is a complete red herring. The real question is why do you want the world to be a particular way.

 

[Beth]

But if it is metaphysics then the riddle of free will presents this way.

If God knows everything and can do everything, then can God create a rock that he cannot lift? God gives the rock free will and lets it lift itself. God is not then responsible for lifting or not since the rock can now decide for itself. The rock is, of course, the human soul endowed with free will and God has absolved Itself from responsibility. Damn it.

Thanks. I've not seen that argument expressed that succintly before. It helps me understand it better.

My 2 cents- Minds are a feature of brains and have severely limited abilities. I can will all I like to picture something in my head, but I can't do it. I can't extract cube roots of large numbers, I can't sing.
I would like to be able to do these things, but I cannot.
Which would seem to leave the idea dead in the water.

Why? I can't sing either. At least, not so's anybody else would want to hear. I'm slightly tone deaf. Why does imply that I have no free will?

Predicting a choice requires creating a simulacrum of the world and the effect of that choice upon it as to how it will change the world.

Free-will is a complete red herring. The real question is why do you want the world to be a particular way.

Why wouldn't you want the world to be a particular way? Doesn't everybody? I'd like a world with no war or famine and in which everybody was nice to one another. The kind of world that's totally bland and boring and peaceful to live in. Free will seems a far more interesting question to me. What does it mean to be able to make autonomous choices and why is it so important to us?

 

[cyborg]

I'd like a world with no war or famine and in which everybody was nice to one another.

That is a fantasy situation - not something you're actually going to control.

Is your world going to have ice-cream for dinner or not?

Free will seems a far more interesting question to me.

It's not.

What does it mean to be able to make autonomous choices

if X then Y else Z.

and why is it so important to us?

Why do you care what shape your world will take?

And no, I'm not talking about some child dying of poverty that you've never met and don't really care about other than in some abstract sense that you find the concept of poverty upsetting. Do you want ice-cream in your world tonight or not?

 

[Beth]

I'd like a world with no war or famine and in which everybody was nice to one another.

That is a fantasy situation - not something you're actually going to control.

Yes. So?

Is your world going to have ice-cream for dinner or not?

Yes. So?

Free will seems a far more interesting question to me.

It's not.

Really? I'm mistaken about which is the more interesting question to me? It's fascinating that you know such things while I am mistaken about what I like best. How do you manage that? Is it telepathy or mind control?

What does it mean to be able to make autonomous choices

if X then Y else Z.

????

and why is it so important to us?

Why do you care what shape your world will take?

Because that's where I live.

Why are you posting in a thread titled 'Free will' if you don't find the question interesting? Were you destined to do so since the world began or did you choose to do?

 

[cyborg]

????

What is so confusing about such a simple proposition?

Because that's where I live.

And you care about where you live why?

 

[Beth]

What is so confusing about such a simple proposition?

I see no relationship between the proposition and the question it was posted in reponse to.

And you care about where you live why?

Because I live there. Remember the old saying about having to sleep in the bed you've made?

Can you answer my question now? Why are posting in a thread on free will if you don't find the question of interest?

 

[cyborg]

I see no relationship between the proposition and the question it was posted in reponse to.

There is nothing more complex required for autonomous choice.

Because I live there. Remember the old saying about having to sleep in the bed you've made?

Yes - but you're not answering the question.

Fundamentally - why do you care?

Why are posting in a thread on free will if you don't find the question of interest?

Because the answers to the right questions are.

 

[Beth]

There is nothing more complex required for autonomous choice.

You provide a simple equation to 'explain' automomous choice.

if X then Y else Z.

What, pray tell, do X Y and Z represent in your equation? And how do those quantities correspond to phenomena of autonomous choice? What do they explain about why we humans think it is so important?

Yes - but you're not answering the question.

Fundamentally - why do you care?



Because the answers to the right questions are.

My, you're very much into non sequitors aren't you!

We all find certain mysteries of life fascinating. But they aren't the same for everybody.

 

[Beerina]

We have no choice but to act as if we have free will.

The skeptics around here are all so funny, aren't they?

I'll tell ya what I think. Free will is a nonsense concept, like a round square or a tasty color.

What you are, whether your mind is some spiritual thing floating around and created by God, or a bunch of atoms and molecules and neurons, is a machine that processes inputs and creates actions and decisions based on that.

Nothing more, nothing less. Such a thing is deterministic (or partially random, which doesn't help the case for free will) because that's the only kind of thing that exists.

What other way can things interact aside from determinism with possible true random influences? Name me a 3rd way.