How physicists handle the idea of Free Will?

[madness]

I was thinking about the problem of freewill recently and it suddenly struck me that the whole idea of freewill is based on a fallacy. We believe ourselves (ego) to be some extra "agent" above and beyond our bodies, brains and minds. When we see through this false sense of agency we realize that all it means for us to make a free decision is for our bodies/brains/minds to make that decision, since there is no special agent outside of this that we should call our self. There is no conflict between determinism and freewill, and the apparent conflict is due to our mistaken sense of agency. If we realize that all of our thoughts, actions and feelings are what we are, rather than some extra agent which has these thoughts and feelings and causes these actions, then there is no contradiction between determinism and freewill. The root cause of our sense of agency is an interesting question in neuroscience.

(I should clarify that I do think there is an explanatory gap between our physical brains and our conscious experiences, but that this has no effect on my argument. I am arguing that there is no thinker who has the thoughts - the individual is the collection of thoughts and experiences. I think this dissolves any issues with freewill.)

 

[sophiecentaur]

"Mistaken sense of agency" sums it all up. People seem to need a consciousness in the same way that they need a god.

 

[madness]

If we accept this argument (which I'm sure not everyone does), then we should reduce the problem of freewill to the problem of why we feel like we have freewill, i.e. why we have a sense of agency (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense_of_agency). Schizophrenics, for example, can lose their sense of agency, causing them to believe someone else is controlling their actions and thoughts.

 

[Goodison_Lad]

People seem to need a consciousness in the same way that they need a god.

Is consciousness not a self-evident phenomenon, therefore completely different in that it does not require faith?

 

[Quinzio]

I was wondering who can claim to be conscious.
I 'd exclude the self: I cannot claim and prove to be conscious, as you cannot claim it, let alone the fact one could be lying*.
So the only way to understand if a third person is conscious is to ask. But can a simple answer be enough to conclude someone/something is conscious ?
What if I train a robot to say it's conscious ?
*: can a non conscious being lie ?

 

[Goodison_Lad]

I was wondering who can claim to be conscious.
I 'd exclude the self: I cannot claim and prove to be conscious, as you cannot claim it, let alone the fact one could be lying*.
So the only way to understand if a third person is conscious is to ask. But can a simple answer be enough to conclude someone/something is conscious ?
What if I train a robot to say it's conscious ?
*: can a non conscious being lie ?

The word 'conscious' has a multitude of meanings, though in this context, I think we're talking about the qualia of consciousness, and this is apparent only to the individual, and does not permit of independently verifiable proof. All things that might be considered evidence of consciousness in a third party are really, either directly or indirectly, evidence of brain activity.

Neuroscientists are undoubtedly achieving much greater understanding of brain processes, and how these correlate with reported states of awareness. However, the philosophical zombie would produce exactly the same results: I might be the only conscious being and everybody else might be a philosophical zombie. So we can only infer consciousness in another, generalising from our own direct experience. This may be good enough for operational purposes, but I don't know of any way to distinguish between these two particular possibilites.

You could programme a robot to 'lie' about being conscious, but, as you suggest, if it were really not actually conscious, I don't think you could call it a lie, in the same way that free will requires an awareness (not just mechanical knowledge) of the possible choices. It would merely be a machine saying an an untruth.

For the record, I claim to be conscious, and nobody can prove me wrong!

 

[pftest]

Some of my thoughts on free will:

The experience of wanting something ("will") exists and it has a causal influence on the physical (for example our bodies). If this is so (and i don't think it would make sense to suppose otherwise), there is no reason to think that "what is wanted" and "what physically happens" are always two different things. In other words, "what is wanted" can actually cause it to physically happen. In fact this causal relationship between "the experience" and "its physical consequence" is something that can aid survival, so evolution is at work on it to increase, over time, the match between what is wanted and what physically happens.

As for the "wanting" being free, undetermined by physical laws, i think this option is wide open. I haven't seen any physical laws that predict how experiences influence each other, which is what happens with "wanting", which in turn causes it to physically happen.

 

[Q_Goest]

Hi pftest,

The experience of wanting something ("will") exists and it has a causal influence on the physical (for example our bodies). If this is so (and i don't think it would make sense to suppose otherwise), there is no reason to think that "what is wanted" and "what physically happens" are always two different things. In other words, "what is wanted" can actually cause it to physically happen. In fact this causal relationship between "the experience" and "its physical consequence" is something that can aid survival, so evolution is at work on it to increase, over time, the match between what is wanted and what physically happens.

As for the "wanting" being free, undetermined by physical laws, i think this option is wide open. I haven't seen any physical laws that predict how experiences influence each other, which is what happens with "wanting", which in turn causes it to physically happen.

Sounds like you're suggesting mental states* influence physical states* and also rejecting the causal closure of the physical. Would you say that we need to reject causal closure to make any sense of free will, and if so, why - what argument do you find persuasive?

*Here I'm using the terms mental states and physical states as Kim uses them.

 

[Quinzio]

If we accept this argument (which I'm sure not everyone does), then we should reduce the problem of freewill to the problem of why we feel like we have freewill, i.e. why we have a sense of agency (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense_of_agency). Schizophrenics, for example, can lose their sense of agency, causing them to believe someone else is controlling their actions and thoughts.

Definitely. I think this is the heart of the problem.
During sleep normally people are unable to do anything but the basic bodily functions.
Yet some people who suffer of somnambulism talk while they sleep, walk, eat food, etc... and yet it does seems they are unaware of what they're doing.
My question is: why can't we perform our superior ability and still be unaware of what we do as if we were sleeping ?
Is it a chance that we can do e.g. math only when we're awake and conscious or there is something more profound to be understood. There are some "intelligent" activities like reading, writing, doing math that seems to be incompatible with an unconscious state of mind.

 

[Pythagorean]

You commit learned activities to automated processes in the brain. Lots of unconscious behavior is already going on when you read or write. You don't have to eXplicitly construct a grammatical sentence of what you want to say: you have a general idea and other parts of your brain automate the process that you once had to perform manually for your english teachers when you were learning the process.

Also remember that people with abnormal sleeping behavior probably have matching abnormal brain physiology.

 

[pftest]

Hi pftest,

Sounds like you're suggesting mental states* influence physical states* and also rejecting the causal closure of the physical. Would you say that we need to reject causal closure to make any sense of free will, and if so, why - what argument do you find persuasive?

*Here I'm using the terms mental states and physical states as Kim uses them.

I think mental states influence physical states yes. It may be tempting to deny causal powers to consciousness, and that it may seem like it saves the day for physicalism. However, i say the opposite is true and it would actually be completely selfdestructive for physicalism.

Personally i do not believe the physical is causally closed, but it is possible for it to be causally closed while at the same time also allowing mental causation. This is possible if the two are identical.

 

[sophiecentaur]

I meant that they 'explain' what they feel in terms of 'consciousness' IF they actually stop to think about it at all. It seems to me that it's a very similar thing to having a god sort of concept. Faith if you like but what is that in the end?

 

[Goodison_Lad]

I meant that they 'explain' what they feel in terms of 'consciousness' IF they actually stop to think about it at all. It seems to me that it's a very similar thing to having a god sort of concept. Faith if you like but what is that in the end?

I'm not very familar with the examples you must have encountered, but certainly, if consciousness is offered as an explanation, and that's it, it's completely unsatisfactory because it is no explanation at all, just another set of problems.

It strikes me that this thread, and similar ones, exists in the first place because people feel the have free will, whether they're right to or not. If free will doesn't exist then the feeling of it being real is worth as much consideration as the question of whether it exists.

 

[pftest]

Is it a chance that we can do e.g. math only when we're awake and conscious or there is something more profound to be understood. There are some "intelligent" activities like reading, writing, doing math that seems to be incompatible with an unconscious state of mind.

Yes, what does consciousness achieve physically that cannot be achieved by nonconscious physical processes? I think we must conclude that consciousness is necessary for at least some physical processes to occur. But if we do so, then it will imply that consciousness is required for far more than just what happens in brains, since physically speaking what happens in our brains isn't very different from what happens in other physical objects.

 

[John Creighto]

As possible a-side. Many often think of the macroscopic world as if it is determined by the random motion of particles but the very fact that the macroscopic particles are organized into structures and systems poses constraints and order upon the behavior of the microscopic world.

Microscopic motion is thought of as stochastic. Particles randomly collide with each or are detected with complete uncertainty based on some quantum function. However, these microscopic particles are not acting in a world devoid of structure. There are fields, even wave phenomena is a form of macroscopic organization.

We as a system are to a degree independent of our environment in that our behavior is as much determined by what is internal to us as what is external to us.

This of course doesn’t address the question of consciousness but someone mentioned sleep walking. One thing that distinguishes this from conscious daytime action is that we remember things in the day time and we perhaps reflect on what we do more deeply.

Thus consciousness must at least in part consist of reflecting on sense data and remembering the results in an organized (probably chronologically) fashion so that through some combination of reason and memory we can make better choices in the future.

 

[madness]

Yes, what does consciousness achieve physically that cannot be achieved by nonconscious physical processes? I think we must conclude that consciousness is necessary for at least some physical processes to occur.

Or that consciousness inevitably arises during certain processes. We don't know that consciousness actually does anything, it may just be a biproduct or epiphenomenon associated with certain physical processes.

 

[Pythagorean]

I'm not very familar with the examples you must have encountered, but certainly, if consciousness is offered as an explanation, and that's it, it's completely unsatisfactory because it is no explanation at all, just another set of problems.

It strikes me that this thread, and similar ones, exists in the first place because people feel the have free will, whether they're right to or not. If free will doesn't exist then the feeling of it being real is worth as much consideration as the question of whether it exists.

unless the feeling is just a spandrel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spandrel_(biology )

 

[madness]

unless the feeling is just a spandrel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spandrel_(biology )

Why should that make the feeling of freewill not worth consideration? I think that is exactly the point - the feeling of freewill exists, and that is what we can study scientifically. This is what I was getting at when I was discussing the sense of agency.

 

[Goodison_Lad]

unless the feeling is just a spandrel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spandrel_(biology )

Well, suppose we agree for now that the feeling that we have free will is worth consideration, unless it is a spandrel.

The question is: is it possible to ascertain whether it is a spandrel, so that we don't need to bother with it if does turn out to be one?

 

[Deicider]

Didn't really read the thread so this post is to the point of why free will is nonsensical.

Free will is an impossible concept.
Because either all physical interactions are pure random or determined there can't be no -what you call- "free will".

If they are all determined then the outcome is fixed, if its random then its not 'will' of any kind, just randomness.
People justifying "free will" using examples like self sacrifice are poorly educated individuals, just open any evolutionary biology book and you will understand why someone makes seemingly unreasonable choices.

The only shelter "free will" can take is dualism ( a.k.a. magic).
Dunno why but almost everyone can't see the obvious, that even if god existed he would be deterministic, because any kind of pattern implies laws/rules, otherwise it wouldn't be a pattern.

That means even if something magical existed "outside" of physical reality that cause consciousness, that too would be deterministic, because it would have a purpose, a structure, a pattern, it would be just another type of physics.

Free will is not something "unlikely" or "wrong" its plainly stupid.

The only type of free will we have is the causal one, like picking which ice cream flavor we eat, chocolate or vanilla?
Our wiring, and all other physical interactions brings you into a "choice", that is the only acceptable form of will."TemplarKnightOfStuffTemperature", if you seen this before then you should be embarrassed.

 

[John Creighto]

That means even if something magical existed "outside" of physical reality that cause consciousness, that too would be deterministic, because it would have a purpose, a structure, a pattern, it would be just another type of physics.

I can't help think that it is tautological to try to define something that exists outside of reality from within reality.
Gödel's theorem says:
“A meaningful axiomatic system cannot be shown to be both consistent and complete except by using axioms from outside that system. Those additional axioms must come from a system that logically encompasses the system under study.”
http://www.sexandphilosophy.co.uk/pe09_axioms_of_evolution.htm
Aristotle thought the first cause should be from something which is un-perishable.
So if there is a first cause, and it is possible for us to prove (or at least understand) we must find laws of physics which don't break down at the beginning of time. The other possibility is that there is a larger system of which our universe is contained within but we cannot see the whole picture (hidden variables) and consequently cannot discover all of its laws. Plato's allegory of the cave is a good metaphor to describe this.

Determinism is one law of nature we perceive in this world but it is temporal in that it rests on the principle of cause and effect. If tachyons existed what would that do to our notion of cause and effect. We presume that all information travels forward in time but even time is not an absolute quantity. Relativity tells us that even the sequence of events depends on the observer.


Still though from all reference frames we are left with causality being forward in time and hence the possibility of determinism. Well, the notion of cause gives us comfort we know that in complex systems there is never a single cause and at quantum scale systems everything is to a degree random and uncertain.

Everything I said though does not suggest a notion of free will but where did it all begin. Was all the information needed to create everything we see today encoded in the big bang or are we where we are today purely by chance. Whatever part chance played there had to be enough order for complex systems to form. Even if chance played a part in creating what we see today there still needed to be enough rules (cause and effect) for the complexity and order we see today to be a likely outcome. For by chance a lone it would not be possible for such complexity and order to evolve to a scale which gives the appearance of having properties which transcend the physical nature of the universe -- as our notions of free will and consciousness appear to transcend what we perceive as material. What a paradoxical outcome from such an apparently disordered beginning.

If the universe is defined by the laws of physics and it was through these laws of physics from which we evolved -- then as Aristotle would ask, did these laws always exist? For if time is linear and cause and effect always follow the arrow of time then either they always existed, or they originated from some other principles. He would then ask what caused these other principles, or as Atheists ask today, "Who created God"? If cause and effect is an un-perishable principle and always forward in time then either for each event there is always a prior cause or there is a first cause but does the notion of first cause even make sense. Did time exist before the universe and if not there could be no notion of cause before time.

Our perception of time consists of how our memory relates to cause and effect. Without memory we would have no concept of time. Without a concept of time we would have no notion of a cause. All quantum scale dynamics need macro scale order to impose structure. It is only from the perspective of the macroscopic which the laws of the microscopic can be observed but without a frame of reference to observe some order in what sense would such notions as cause exist?

 

[pftest]

Or that consciousness inevitably arises during certain processes. We don't know that consciousness actually does anything, it may just be a biproduct or epiphenomenon associated with certain physical processes.

The problem i see with the idea that consciousness cannot influence anything, is that nothing can influence consciousness either. I would compare it with kicking a ball. You can't kick a ball away without it touching your foot also.

 

[pftest]

About the causal closure of physics: isn't this a necessary consequence of math? The only options it offers are deterministic or random processes. The idea of something being caused by a conscious force (will) is ruled out a priori. The idea of causal closure then depends on the assumption that everything can be described by math. Is this a reasonable assumption?

 

[madness]

The problem i see with the idea that consciousness cannot influence anything, is that nothing can influence consciousness either. I would compare it with kicking a ball. You can't kick a ball away without it touching your foot also.

If consciousness is an epiphenomenon then it is completely determined by the physical and hence is influenced in the strongest possible sense by physical processes. I have no idea what you mean when you say that physical processes cannot influence consciousness.

 

[pftest]

If consciousness is an epiphenomenon then it is completely determined by the physical and hence is influenced in the strongest possible sense by physical processes. I have no idea what you mean when you say that physical processes cannot influence consciousness.

When you say "C is determined by the physical" do you mean "C is physical"? In that case, the causal powers of C are identical to the causal powers of the physical, and it is not an epiphenomenon.

If you do not mean that C is physical, then i don't understand how the physical can influence C, but C cannot influence the physical. Or going back to the ball metaphor: how can a ball can be kicked without it touching the thing that is kicking it?

 

[John Creighto]

The problem i see with the idea that consciousness cannot influence anything, is that nothing can influence consciousness either. I would compare it with kicking a ball. You can't kick a ball away without it touching your foot also.

When I think, doesn’t it change the state of the atoms inside my head? Therefore, don’t my thoughts directly influence at least a small part of the physical world? Therefore, the dynamics of particles depends on how particles are organized in the whole.

We might say though that I have cause backwards. However, the motion of these particles is dependent on fields. Fields are the result of how particles are organized. Well, in theory we may suspect that fields can be modeled as a consequential sum of the totality of particle effects. However, the calculation of such fields is not as interesting as the structure of the fields. It is structure which is the most important property of the whole.

There is a duality between the whole influencing the small and the small influencing the whole. A wave for instance is a macroscopic property. It extends though all space but a single particle can be described as a super position of waves.

The wave isn’t just an emergent property of the particles as even the motion of a single particle is described by a wave. Thus the large and the small are inextricably linked.

The mind is a property of the large and it’s properties are inextricably linked to the states of the particles within our body. Therefore, motion of particles in some regards is influenced by our thoughts. Thus in some way our thoughts influence the small. If thought is equivalent to consciousness then we should also expect consciousness to directly influence the dynamics of particles. If consciousness is not equivalent to thought then what is it?

 

[Ferris_bg]

Here are the four standard models of mind-body interaction.

The mind is a property of the large and it’s properties are inextricably linked to the states of the particles within our body. Therefore, motion of particles in some regards is influenced by our thoughts.

If we accept that the mind is a property of the whole, then as you say at first it seems logical that the mind influences the whole. There is a however one problem with this assumption and its well illustrated by the Supervenience Argument from Kim. The argument points out that the non-reductive physicalism theories entail epiphenomenalism. If the mind supervenes on the physical, then it should be casually inert, if we accept that this is not a case of causal over-determination.

Consciousness is equivalent to intentional/cognitive properties ("thought" as you say) plus qualitative properties of consciousness (qualia) or C = M + Q. C is also unified, meaning that you can't separate M from Q or vice versa.

 

[sophiecentaur]

When we examine our mind, we are a system trying to analyse itself. We are bound to fail to come up with a complete explanation.
I commented earlier that consciousness and 'god' (/faith) are very similar. My thought is that our consciousness is probably closely associated with the need for a complicated organism to communicate with other individuals (huge evolutionary advantage). When we 'consider' a problem in our minds, we use our consciousness to 'discuss' the matter with ourselves rather like we would discuss with someone else. To communicate anything to another person, we often need to express it via our consciousness in order to assemble the words etc.. There are, of course, forms of communication between individuals which are not conscious - as there are between humans and other animals and between other animals. The message is then unstated and 'non-conscious' but it is not an 'intellectual' message that is passed.

 

[ThomasT]

I have always been quite curious how physicists reconcile the concept free will with the determinism of physics.

The term free will is commonly used to refer to at least two things. One is that we obviously consider alternative courses of action. This isn't incompatible with determinsim. The other is that our actions could have, given identical antecedent conditions, resulted in different consequences -- or that, given identical antecedent conditions, we could have thought and acted differently than what we did. This is incompatible with determinism, and amounts to an assumption that our universe is evolving indeterministically.

By determinism I mean the one at macroscopic level, because I know that at quantum level most of the things are based on probabilities. So there's no free will for an electron.

There's no known quantum level of events. There's only, as far as can be objectively known and unambiguously communicated, a macroscopic level of events. The indeterminism of quantum experimental events is realized at the macroscopic level -- the level of instrumental behavior amenable to our sensory apprehension.

But, at macroscopic level, everything seems to have some equation that determines its future, even if that's chaotic and very difficult (for us) to predict.

Not so wrt the macroscopic apprehension of quantum experimental events. Radioactive decay is random, unpredictable. Does that mean that nature is fundamentally indeterministic? Not necessarily. There's just no way to ascertain it one way or the other.

... if I'm to believe in physics determinism, I should give up on the concept of free will ...

Not necessarily. As noted above. I believe in, currently assume, a fundamental deterministic evolution of our universe, but I also think that the term free will has a certain meaning compatible with that assumption.

So how do physicists answer that dilemma - is there free will in physics?

It isn't necessarily a dilemma. It just depends on how the term is defined. Ie., one can assume a fundamental determinism (and there seems to be compelling evidence for this assumption), while still entertaining a connotation of the term free will that's compatible with that assumption. Ie., our choices and actions are causally linked to certain subsequent events.

One conception, phrasing, of free will is that you could have, given identical antecedent events, chosen/done otherwise. The problem with assuming this is that there's absolutely no evidence for it. All that's known is a certain set of antecedent conditions, a certain subsequent set of actions, and a certain subsequent set of conditions -- all of which is compatible with the assumption of a fundamental determinism.

Bottom line -- our universe doesn't appear, taking into account all observational evidence, to be evolving indeterministically. So, a fundamental determinism is assumed, which is compatible with a certain connotation of the term, free will.

 

[sophiecentaur]

People bandy around the term 'free will' but I doubt that anyone could genuinely quote an instance where they were aware of actually having made a purely mental decision (genuinely used their free will) and could describe how they got there. When you actually HAVE made a 'decision' then you start to rationalise it post hoc. On another day, you'd quite possibly come to the exact opposite decision. The term 'free will' is not unlike the term 'democracy'. In both cases the individual has some sort of mis-guided notion that they can actually affect what happens to them. We are at the mercy of Politicians, our pasts and our hormones (all 'random' and powerful influences on what we like to call our free choices.
The only decisions / conclusions that you can arrive at, ante hoc, are the conclusions that arrive from a mathematical process, which is repeatable again and again.
But Maths is neither like our brains nor the Physical World. It is based on axioms.
This thread can never go anywhere because people are trying to relate the nature of the Universe (deterministic or otherwise) to the detailed functioning of their brains (to a depth that has fundamental limits).