Free-will requires a soul?

Descartz2000

Statement: To have free-will requires a soul or some variable that is not physical.

Is it true that physical properties and their behavior are either random or determined (in principle)? If so, then free-will requires something immaterial. Does any one care to argue against this point and say that physical properties are something other than determined or random? What about emergence or top down causality which seems to allow someone to still hold on to physical properties as the foundation, yet allows for emergent behaviors not written in these configurations or properties?

Pupil

Define free will.

Descartz2000

Free-will: To choose without constraint. No dependence on initial conditions or previous states. The ability to choose otherwise.

WaveJumper

Thoughts, dreams, numbers, etc. are all immaterial. There is an approximate copy of the world in everyone's head, so materialism doesn't rule out a temporal 'soul'.

Q_Goest

Hi Descartez,
Would you agree/disagree that this statement could be rewritten:
Mental causation requires a soul or some variable that is not physical.

If one claims that only the four fundamental physical forces (gravity, weak and strong nuclear, electromagnetic) are at work in the universe, then does free will (or any mental causation) require an additional, 5'th force? Or is there enough wiggle room to suggest that these 4 forces are sufficient but that top down causation provides for this "soul or some variable that is not physical"?

Q_Goest

Why is a thought, dream, number, etc... not just a causal interaction that creates a pattern in something such as a computer? Why must they be immaterial?

What about the experience of the color red, the taste of sugar or other qualia for example? Are the fundamental experiences of the world immaterial, and if so then why are they not simply physical patterns as computationalism would hold?

kldickson

Define a soul. I find the concept totally and utterly foolish.

If you are familiar with the story of Phineas Gage, you are aware that a person's personality can be changed by brain injury.

As for qualia, I do not regard David Chalmers to be an even remotely respectable philosopher of mind. In fact, I have low regard for any philosopher that doesn't let science guide them.

Brain and mind are one and the same, and all psychological phenomena are traceable to neurological phenomena. Your perception of 'red' will be influenced by the rods and cones in your eye (someone who is red-green colorblind will have a different perception of 'red' than someone who isn't!) and your experience with naming colors and inborn human reactions over the millennia to things such as bright colors and their association with danger in their environment.

Descartz2000

Hello Q_Goest,
I would say your statement can not be rewritten and still apply. Mental causation must have a physical basis of some type. However, if it is argued that mental causation is actually a non-physical variable, then there is nothing more that can be done with this statement. If we look at emergence, it seems it still has a physical foundation of some kind. The higher order processes are not described in the properties themselves, but in the relationships between these physical properties. I would say for free-will to be true, it must require some type of a 5th force (as you mentioned). Until this is discovered, or until mystical top-down causation can fully account for a human choice, I have no reason to buy into the delusion of free-will. Even if top down-causation can account for choices, why would we turn to it being the decision maker? In other words, our biology and neuronal connections may direct the mind, as it seems that it does, but the "will" or "I" is not guiding the biology and neuronal connections. Even though this is top down causation (the whole of the body and it's emergent mind, if it exists at all), it still does not require "I" to direct itself. It seems that is what the body and brain are for.

Descartz2000

[QUOTE=kldickson;2292496]Define a soul. I find the concept totally and utterly foolish.




I agree with your argument. Sounds like you are a epiphenomenalist. Emergence bugs me. Seems to be tricky and I get caught up in it too much.

kldickson

The whole differing of 'physical events' and 'mental events' is a bit tiresome, really. Philosophy elevates the human being higher than it should.

kldickson

'Free will' is subjectively definable; in a sense, we have as much free will as we're aware of. If you consider basic aspects of behavior that unite all humans to not be 'free will', you have to differentiate those that are logical from those that are illogical, and determine whether the individual is consciously choosing those or not.

robertm

Wha...??

What do you think is going on inside that skull of yours? Magic?

Math Is Hard

I don't think WaveJumper is really saying anything weird. They aren't material things. They could simply be the result of processes that material things undergo, but they are not material things themselves. You can't hold a concept in your hand.

The analogy epiphenomenalists make sometimes are of mental events as by-products, like gas fumes from a car engine. I find that difficult as an analog because even fumes are physical things made of molecules with a direct physical relationship to the engine. Not quite the same thing as brain processes causing "experience".

Anticitizen

I believe the word usually used to describe what you're talking about is 'agency', as in, 'the mind is a free agent, unconstrained by physicality/whatever'. To religious people that agency would be the soul.

I don't believe it.

robertm

Well, I don't think we know near enough about consciousness to claim this. But we do know that direct physical intervention in the brain makes changes in patterns of conscious thought...

And that one can image in real time changes in brain activity when changes in 'state of mind' are brought about.

Of course you are speaking figuratively? I mean, you can't hold electricity in your hand etc...

WaveJumper

You are taking this way too far. There is a very Big difference in the way ideas, thoughts, numbers "exist" and how electricity exists. Are you seriously claiming that dreams are as real as electricity? I think you are joking and i am simply failing to spot the humour.

WaveJumper

I think electrical signals in the brain do not have the same way of existence as their consequences - thoughts, dreams... They are obviously related but they aren't one and the same IMO. No one knows the true relationship between electricity and dreams about past/future.




I can't explain how consciousness works but i feel that the known laws of physics are inadequate to explain the phenomenon of human consciousness.

I know that the Philosophy forum is the most inappropriate place to make definitive statements, but I strongly don't believe that we are simply deterministic biological robots, as this only opens the door to all kinds of gods, unicorns, deities, jesuses and such. I believe in human free will and free will requires that the known laws of physics would not describe the phenomenon "consciousness". Luckily, I have not seen this belief of mine refuted to date.