Determinism and Free will

Maui

I'd say the whole paradoxical combination freewill-causality-determinism went down the drain with the introduction of superpositions. Superpositions of states are notoriously anti-realistic, so much so that if taken seriously the whole issue turns into chasing a red herring. Put otherwise, superpositions don't imply that things happen because of causality, though they very certainly appear to follow a deterministic pattern from everything we have been able to observe thus far. The paradox of freewill and determinism appears only when causality is treated as fundamental, instead of being just one aspect of that which is observed(which is just a momentary state of fields). What's worse, i don't think we have a candidate for filling up the vacant places of previous believed-to-be fundamental concepts.





These are models and some are better than others. Their philosophical underpinnings are quite unclear, so yes philosophically they are more models than facts. The idea that e.g. the contents in one's imagination can be traced back to some grand unified field from 13.7 billion years ago is ridiculous.

Pythagorean

Well firstly, the border between the two is defined generally by a layer of skin, and it's a border that allows many classes of molecules and energy signatures through, all with varying consequences, so the two are obviously intricately coupled.

But... whether it's implicit or explicit doesn't matter anyway. The question is whether the implicit process is a deterministic process.

We could go further back in time too... during abiogenesis... when the implicit processes were most certainly only allowed to come about because of the explicit processes occurring.

rocket123456

The probabilities are determinstically calculated. The wave-function is deterministic and predicts how the world will evolve(probalistically) in the future. It's deterministic randomness like Hawkings says.

Nevermind Qm theres a much simplier argument for why the world must be deterministic if you mean by deterministic fatalistic.

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Is_life_pre-determined

Zarqon

The arguement in that link is rather bad/full of holes and based on a circular reasoning. They are making the ASSUMPTION that the only way a complex organism can work is if all it's parts (cells) are predictable, but they give no proof of this. On the contrary, I can instead easily come up with other situations where the complex organsim works just as well even with all parts unpredictable (but for example where the average of their behaviors are still predictable).

Zarqon

In my view the biggest issue with these discussions is defining "free will" in the first place. How can it possibly be defined? The core problem with defining free will is that the Brain is either fully deterministic or it it contains elemtens of randomness, and in either of those cases there is no free will:

1) the brain is fully deterministic, which might be considered as "will" but it certainly isn't "free", thus there is no free will.

2) the brain has random elements, and while this makes your choices "free", most people do not consider this as "will", and thus there is no free will.

My best explanation for the notion of "free will", is that it is a collection of algorithms and filters in our brains that are based on information from our past gathered experience + genetics + immediate sensory input, in order to arrive at a "choice". The reason why it feels like the choices we make are out of a free will, is that you may not be directly aware of most filters/algorithms in the brain, since there are so many of them, and they all contribute/interact in subtle ways to help you "make the decision".

In addition to that, I think there is some amount of randomness/unpredictability involved in making choices. This may not stem from fundamental (quantum) randomness, but may simply come from the fact that most sufficiently complicated processes demonstrate some form of chaotic behavior, which gives unpredictability. And our brains are most certainly complicated enough for this.

rocket123456

You know very well that all arguments rely on premisses/assumptions. A much better way to put it would be to infer the workings of cause and effect to show why everything is predetermined.

For instance let say you think you have free will... and now you decide to do nothing! well you can't--- your brain still continues to process input-output- you still have the impulses.. and everything around you keeps moving along.

The flow of time just keeps on going. If there truly was unclear randomness then there would not be a continiuty of events. THe next event in your life for each second just continues to unfold seeminglessly.

matt24

I'm not a philosopher neither study about metaphysic yet in my understanding freewill is a decision/choice made by human while determinism refers to cause and effect. .e.g. Your thinking to be a successful businessman - that is your choice, your free will. The next step is what, how, when to do it - that is your determinism.

rocket123456

To me the only meaningful definition of free will= you could have done otherwise.

Determinism with cause and effect- says no. Your life is already set in stone- all parts of it--

If you think free will means making your own decisions, fine you can say that, but how can it be a genuine decision if there were never any uncertainty as to wheter you would make it or not?

We are basically just machines trapped in the universe.

skeptic2

Why are particular algorithms or filters chosen over the many other possible ones? For example, why might you have an algorithm or filter that suggests you to get out of the rain?

Zarqon

Because standing in the rain typically leaves you wet and cold, something that increases chances of getting sick? From evolution we have thus learned to dislike it.

Also note that there isn't much point in discussing the details of particular algorithms, it's enough to consider them as a whole collection of interwoven "circuitry". In fact, my guess was that the illusion of free will arises exactly because we can not distinguish them and pinpoint where our decisions originated from, so we instead attribute the "decision" to the mysterious free will.

skeptic2

Still, getting out of the rain isn't a deterministic reaction. Even if you argue that the algorithm or filter makes it deterministic, there must have been a choice at some point to use that filter.

Pythagorean

There must have been? Shouldn't we be skeptical without evidence?

skeptic2

There is strong statistical evidence that organisms take actions that benefit themselves. Does determinism claim a causal relationship exists between rain and people running for cover. What does it say about a person who decides to stay in the rain.

Maui

What does determinism say about feeling pain? What/who/how feels pain? Seems like we have a new entity.

Travis_King

Choices are easily accounted for in deterministic frameworks.

Pythagorean

All of this is independent of the determinism discussion. Chaos theory is the basic premise that describes how two systems that are generally similar can have all kinds of behavioral variety given small differences in the system.

But more importantly, the differences aren't small across people's. A large part of our neural development is in the associative cortex, which samples environmental events for years, so all kinds of social and environmental quirks can factor into long-term behavioral habits.

As an anecdotal examples, I was raised in a place that rains 250/360 days a year. In the new town I'm in, it's not unusual for me to be left standing in the rain going "what's the problem?" when my friends bail for cover.

For instance, one could argue that ducking into the rain is an evolutionary impulse (surely, many of our ancestors would have died from exposure/hypothermia if they didn't evade the evaporative cooling of the rain). But in my hometown, you can't get a whole lot done if you keep running from the rain, so we eventually desensitize to the panic response as our need to work outweighs our need to feel comfortable and our ore autonomous brain eventually recognizes there is no threat.

The general idea here is that we have evolutionary panic responses that are no longer necissary, but unless we have an opportunity to overcome our fear (when desires or other fears outweight them) most of us may never realize what cautionary behavior we participate in that is useless. Another example besides the rain is tickling, which is thought to be a panic response to letghal insects. But in this example, it's much more difficult to overcome the panic respones of somebody else tickling you.

Maui

Yes, but choosing is not. Man can choose to build a cruise ship or not to build a cruise ship. There is zero evidence that nature forces man to build cruise ships by deterministic processes.