Is free-will dependent on something immaterial?

[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 anyone 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,

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

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]

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'.

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]

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"?

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]

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]

Thoughts, dreams, numbers, etc. are all immaterial

Wha...??

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

 

[Math Is Hard]

Wha...??

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

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]

They aren't material things. They could simply be the result of processes that material things undergo, but they are not material things themselves.

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.

You can't hold a concept in your hand.

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

 

[WaveJumper]

You can't hold a concept in your hand.

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

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]

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?

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.

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?

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.

 

[Q_Goest]

Hi robertm,

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.

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...

I suspect you would agree that the mind supervenes on the brain which states that for any two brains in identical physical states, the mind must also be in an identical state. In order for two minds to differ, the brains must also be in different physical states. That much is generally accepted. The point about electricity is that electricity is physically measurable. One can determine voltage, current flow, magnetic flux, etc... by measurement. In this case, the measurement produces a physical interaction between material things which can be interpretable by a person as 'electricity'.

Concepts, qualia, experience or other phenomenal aspects of mind however, differ in that one can't measure such things directly. We may (or may not) be able to determine that the color red is being experienced by examining the interaction of various neurons, but that isn't measuring the experience of red directly - it is only a measure of physical interactions. Whether or not the experience of red exists will have nothing to do with whether or not those physical interactions exist. For example, strong AI assumes the interaction of the circuits in a computer will produce the experience of red, but we can equally explain everything the computer does without resorting to explanations about what experiences it may have. All interactions in a computer can be explained at the level of the electric circuit, so the experience of color for example, can have absolutely no causal affect, and really can't be determined by examining the interactions in the circuit. Similarly, concepts or thoughts are not measurable by measuring material things, so it is not unreasonable to state that, "[concepts and thoughts] are not material things themselves" whereas electricity is certainly a material thing.

 

[Q_Goest]

... 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.

The use of "we" implies a dualist perspective. If our mind supervenes on the brain, and the brain is material, then how does that open the door to the supernatural?

 

[WaveJumper]

The use of "we" implies a dualist perspective.

Yes, kind of, it does.

If our mind supervenes on the brain, and the brain is material, then how does that open the door to the supernatural?

A purely deterministic "mind" as a determinite consequence of a brain in a determinite universe requires the Supernatural. If we do not have free will, who willfully created my celluar phone, if it was not the will of the engineers at Nokia? Whose will was that? Who created the LHC collider and the beer I've just opened? How could any of those things exist if "we" did not willfully created them? Who did? There is certainly nothing wrong with the belief in god, but i got the impression you were not implying this.

 

[Descartz2000]

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".

It seems it may be more accurate to say: things like thoughts and numbers are representations of real things, and no you can't hold a concept in your hand, but in principle you can have a set of physical correlates in the brain that generates the experience of thoughts and numbers. If there is a direct correlation and a tit-for-tat process is in place, then what is the difference between the representation (mental) and the physical (brain and neurons)? In other words, if we just look at the mental aspect, we are eventually led to ask: "where do these mental representations come from?" and we have to answer this with an explanation involving physical processes. Or, if we just look at the physical aspect, we are led into the realm of questions involving: "Where do these physical processes lead?" and we have to answer this with an explanation involving an experience of those physical processes.

 

[Q_Goest]

If there is a direct correlation and a tit-for-tat process is in place, then what is the difference between the representation (mental) and the physical (brain and neurons)?

The difference is the "explanatory gap". Why should only some physical processes give rise to phenomenal processes? This perspective (that there is no difference between the mental representation and its physical basis) falls into http://philpapers.org/post/381".)

 

[robertm]

Hi robertm,

I suspect you would agree that the mind supervenes on the brain which states that for any two brains in identical physical states, the mind must also be in an identical state. In order for two minds to differ, the brains must also be in different physical states. That much is generally accepted.

Yes I think this is plausible; though I'm not so sure that I would going so far as to confirm the existence of two different phenomenon at work here, namely mind and brain. I have a suspicion that when a certain complexity is reached in such a physical system, the words are interchangeable.

The point about electricity is that electricity is physically measurable. One can determine voltage, current flow, magnetic flux, etc... by measurement. In this case, the measurement produces a physical interaction between material things which can be interpretable by a person as 'electricity'.

Yes, precisely what I meant. Thanks for that!

Concepts, qualia, experience or other phenomenal aspects of mind however, differ in that one can't measure such things directly.

Well, simply because we haven't been clever enough to figure it out yet, doesn't mean you can claim with reason that it is impossible. What you say may certainly be the case, but it is far to soon to say.

'I' can certainly measure my own experience of qualia, and I have no delusions of being capable of this without 'me' being a certain set of mushy physical organs all in working order.

We may (or may not) be able to determine that the color red is being experienced by examining the interaction of various neurons, but that isn't measuring the experience of red directly - it is only a measure of physical interactions.

This is spot on. We need new techniques in order to see if we are even able to penetrate the 'mind'. Something along the lines of nano-wire implants seems promising to me. Also, I think powerfully psychoactive chemicals could be a key window into experience; sadly of course, most research along these lines is blocked in the US.

Whether or not the experience of red exists will have nothing to do with whether or not those physical interactions exist.

This is not necessarily true. We may not know weather a microbe with an eye spot sensitive to 'red' wavelengths has any sort of qualia, but we do know that it has a physical mechanism that reacts to red light(much like artificial photoreceptors); now, what is the difference between a microbe's 'experience' (or lack thereof) of light and a higher mammal's experience?

I say: complexity. For, we are really 'just' a complex of symbiotic microbes.

For example, strong AI assumes the interaction of the circuits in a computer will produce the experience of red, but we can equally explain everything the computer does without resorting to explanations about what experiences it may have. All interactions in a computer can be explained at the level of the electric circuit, so the experience of color for example, can have absolutely no causal affect, and really can't be determined by examining the interactions in the circuit

This is only the case if the computer does not have the ability to communicate it's experience. In which case, the particular dialog would be a direct physical consequence of qualia.

Similarly, concepts or thoughts are not measurable by measuring material things, so it is not unreasonable to state that, "[concepts and thoughts] are not material things themselves" whereas electricity is certainly a material thing.

Again, this is conjecture. We do not know enough to say. I am of the opinion, however, that we will be able to gleam a deeper understanding of this eerie phenomenon through further observation and experimentation.

One must also keep in mind, I think, that whatever consciousness may be it has arisen through the blind watchmaker of natural selection of chemical mechanisms, no direct intervention required. So that, if qualia turns out to be immaterial we must conclude that a material process gave rise to an immaterial process. Personally, I doubt this is the case.

 

[octelcogopod]

I think something is a bit off with how we view reality when we automatically have to divide things into material/physical and not material/metaphysical.
Are we really absolutely sure what an atom is? Or what a molecule is? Or what electrical impulses are?
Are they really all that we think they are.. these "physical" things with which we can hold in our hands or are temporal in nature.

I believe something is missing from the puzzle. That there must be more to not just how the brain works, but also our fundamental concepts of what physical means.
Obviously the brain can create phenomena which is not "physical" because you can't see or hear the content of whatever physically.

I do not know what is missing, and this debate I feel is not going anywhere anytime soon. But I do believe that there is more to this physical matter that we observe around us beyond just being physical as we instinctually define it.

 

[kldickson]

Wavejumper, first, I'm going to recommend you stay away from the phrase 'I feel that [blah] is true'. It sends the message that you think something because your emotions, which are not necessarily based on factual information, tell you that.

Second, dreams are a function of your brain. Essentially, they're brain farts during the time your brain is consolidating information. They are what you perceive and make sense of during the time your brain is in REM.

Third, you're going to have to prove the existence of anything non-physical about the brain.

'Deterministic biological robots' does not open the way for imaginary entities; free will is subject to debate; we have as much free will as we can perceive. The world is not entirely under human perception. We do not need a supernatural to have agency; you seem to make so little of human minds and human abilities. To use your cell phone example, humans saw a need for a cell phone; they invented it because they had the ability and because that was the best thing they could think of. It's an adaptive behavior. If we had better perception of our environment and different tools, we might learn to communicate telepathically.

 

[kldickson]

I think part of the reason many people falsely think there is some sort of creative agency is that humans make things themselves; we make tools and concepts and machines and schemata and discoveries and because of this central aspect of human behavior many people cannot see it any other way.

Too few people really seem to understand human limits.

 

[WaveJumper]

Wavejumper, first, I'm going to recommend you stay away from the phrase 'I feel that [blah] is true'. It sends the message that you think something because your emotions, which are not necessarily based on factual information, tell you that.

What gives you the impression that I think that you or I or anyone else here is qualified to make firm statements on such contested topic as 'free will', without looking like an idiot?

Second, dreams are a function of your brain. Essentially, they're brain farts during the time your brain is consolidating information. They are what you perceive and make sense of during the time your brain is in REM.

Why do you state the obvious? The fact that dreams are function of the brain doesn't make them material AT ALL.

Third, you're going to have to prove the existence of anything non-physical about the brain.

Nobody will invest millions to prove the obvious. Thoughts and ideas are related to the elecrical signals in the brain but they aren't the electricity, they are rather the information in it, interpreted by the brain in rather inconceivable way. Information is immaterial and the classical world is overwhelmingly full of immaterial concepts.

'Deterministic biological robots' does not open the way for imaginary entities; free will is subject to debate; we have as much free will as we can perceive.

How is this different than the information contained in the message - "Someday i'll do something that i want"?

The world is not entirely under human perception. We do not need a supernatural to have agency; you seem to make so little of human minds and human abilities.

You didn't understand my argument.

To use your cell phone example, humans saw a need for a cell phone;

Obviously they had free will.

they invented it because they had the ability and because that was the best thing they could think of. It's an adaptive behavior. If we had better perception of our environment and different tools, we might learn to communicate telepathically.

What's your point?

 

[kldickson]

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.

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.

Either you're obfuscating your point or one of us isn't being clear.

Dreams are real, indeed, just as real as experiencing the color red or feeling pain. The key here is that it is a human interpretation of a phenomenon.

In addition, I'm not sure what you mean by 'free will'. Humans are entirely capable of acting against their instincts; there's no supernatural involved in that. We can choose to not follow a drive to kill or rape or get wasted. But the sense of 'free will' you seem to assume seems to be one that assumes humans are able to perceive everything in the universe, which is not true, and that they are able to perceive things that aren't going to be influenced by their own neurological milieu.

 

[Q_Goest]

Q_Goest said: For example, strong AI assumes the interaction of the circuits in a computer will produce the experience of red, but we can equally explain everything the computer does without resorting to explanations about what experiences it may have. All interactions in a computer can be explained at the level of the electric circuit, so the experience of color for example, can have absolutely no causal affect, and really can't be determined by examining the interactions in the circuit

This is only the case if the computer does not have the ability to communicate it's experience. In which case, the particular dialog would be a direct physical consequence of qualia.

Think about that - what you're saying is that this experience of red, if it is reportable, will have some direct physical consequence. The experience of red will, in some way, cause the report that red is being experienced. If the experience of red can be reported by anyone, then is it the experience of red that's being reported, or is the report a direct consequence of the interaction of the state changes of all the various transistors that make up the computer's chip?

The experience of red is, per computationalism, an emergent property of a large number of classically interacting neurons. Per strong AI, the experience of red is an emergent property of a large number of switches, transistors, or other classical devices (ie: those systems that are governed by classical physics). So the question one must consider is whether or not any of those interactions between all the various switches or transistors is in some way affected by this emergent property - a property which only occurs at the higher level.

I think it's very obvious that computers are deterministic machines, and they are deterministic because one can, in principal, determine any future state of the machine from a given initial state and the knowledge of how the machine is made to work. There is never any need to determine if the machine is being affected by the experience of red or not. One can always determine how one transistor affects another by looking at its state at any given time. So is the machine reporting the experience of red, or is the machine simply changing state in a pre determined fashion, dictated by the interaction of its individual components?

If one holds that any particular dialog (or report of some emergent mental phenomenon) might in fact be affected in some way by that qualia, then either one is saying that (1) the experience of the qualia is in fact equal to the physical change in state, or (2) one has to hold that transistors (or neurons) are affected by non local, emergent phenomena. The scientific paradigm today is (1). (2) essentially holds that there must be such a thing as "downard causation". There are no philosophers or scientists I'm aware of who have put forth a reasonable account of how a physical system might be affected by downward causation. In fact, Jaegwon Kim has written numerous books and papers on this topic, and is in my opinion, the best reference for understanding the issues and problems surrounding mental causation (or free will). The argument Kim provides leads one to the conclusion that the report of any mental phenomena is a simple consequence of the change in state of the physical basis on which the mental phenomena supervenes. I've not seen a decent rebuttle to any of Kim's work.

 

[ThomasT]

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 anyone 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?

The assumption in the physical sciences is that Nature is deterministic. Our observations/perceptions of Nature are random. So, determinism and randomness aren't mutually exclusive.

If Nature is deterministic, then we can't have free-will (vis your definition), even though it might seem that we do.

 

[kldickson]

Another point I think needs to be made - nature sans supernaturality does not have to be deterministic. Nor does determinism necessarily imply a lack of free will.

There are two schools of determinism: hard determinism and soft determinism. The Wikipedia article on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism" talks more in depth about it.

Much of my view on the determinism vs. free will argument is that it seems to be argued about most often by people who don't have a good sense, neurologically and psychologically, of what we're able to perceive.

 

[ThomasT]

... nature sans supernaturality does not have to be deterministic.

There are good reasons to believe that Nature is deterministic. This apparent determinism might have supernatural origins, but there's nothing that can be objectively said about what those might be. It's outside the domain of scientific inquiry.

Nor does determinism necessarily imply a lack of free will.

Standard determinism does. Anyway, there are good reasons to believe that the notion of free will is a product of our ignorance.

Belief in determinism is due to what we know, while belief in free will (and souls, and spirits, etc.) is due to what we don't know.

So, does free will require a soul? Well, if our wills and volitional behaviors are free in the sense that they're independent of antecedent conditions, then they don't require anything. But of course they might be free in the supernatural sense, and, assuming that the supernatural is also deterministic, then we can say that they correspond to souls acting as supernatural agents according to supernatural law. Or, we can assume that the supernatural is a function of the superdupernatural, and so on.

 

[WaveJumper]

Anyway, there are good reasons to believe that the notion of free will is a product of our ignorance.

There is also good reasons to believe that free will is an objectively existing emergent property. Why would anyone try to devorce free will from Life, which is an emergent property of quantum particles?

The fact that we are fighting our pre-determined genetic insticts shows that something unexplained and unaccounted for is at play.

 

[kldickson]

I wouldn't say that. We are able to fight our pre-determined genetic instincts for a reason: because we have the mental power to deduce that in certain situations, certain vestigial instincts might not be conducive to situations such as bargaining for resources.

I think it's an aspect of the human mind and body changing to adapt to a new environment.

 

[wittgenstein]

“Honestly I cannot understand what people mean when they talk about the freedom of the human will. I have a feeling, for instance, that I will something or other; but what relation this has with freedom I cannot understand at all. I feel that I will to light my pipe and I do it; but how can I connect this up with the idea of freedom? What is behind the act of willing to light the pipe? Another act of willing? Schopenhauer once said, "Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills."…When you mention people who speak of such a thing as free will in nature it is difficult for me to find a suitable reply. The idea is of course preposterous.”
Einstein