The Illusion of Free Will: A Scientific Perspective

[josh1492]

Your later point about whether modelling the human brain perfectly would produce a conscious computer or a philosophical zombie is another tough question. The key question would be: how could you tell the difference? Arthur C. Clarke commented that when he told people that one day sufficiently sophisticated computers might be built that had conscious emotions, those people put on a very impressive simulation of anger!

I want to reference an episode of StarTrek, next generation, where Data was excluded from a life of slavery, as all the other robots had to do, because he had developed consciousness. Anyway, everyone knows that shortly after computers develop consciousness they will deem humans a threat to the planet and they will have to exterminate us, for our own good of course.

 

[Quinzio]

What I mean is that free will is the ability to take an action or not to take an action(the number of inactions being infinitely greater than the number of actions) and determinism is the result of that action.

But how can this be proved ?
Imagine one takes a decision and the state of the universe is A
I mean, one should re-create the same exact situation A, and then observe that the subject takes another decision. But as we have not a time machine, that's impossible.

 

[Quinzio]

After watching a Sam Harris conference a question came to my mind.
Maybe it's been discussed several times, but I couldn't find any of that.

The starting point is that, according to determinism, the state of the universe in instant $t_1$ could be theoretically determined knowing its state at a previous instant $t_0$.
Well, let's take it for granted, which is not by the way.
Let's go back in the past, where every instant is predetermined by the instant before.
We may eventually arrive to a beginning, let's say the big bang.

Question is: what if all the matter at a certain moment (the first moment) was in an homogeneous state ? If all the matter was compressed into a hot dense sphere of homogeneous matter, then how can determinism be true ?

Otherwise, there must always be, in any moment, as much variables, as we find in a successive moment, otherwise it's not possible to determine the causes of the actual state of universe.
Is then determinism compatible with big bang theory ?

 

[josh1492]

But how can this be proved ?
Imagine one takes a decision and the state of the universe is A
I mean, one should re-create the same exact situation A, and then observe that the subject takes another decision. But as we have not a time machine, that's impossible.

you can recreate events. I can move something and put it back and move it again. Each event is unique but for the sake of determining the result of specific actions in relation to an effect you can do simulations. Kinda feel like I am explaining that that big red ball in the sky is what causes it to be light outside haha...clearly there is some disconnect here.

But I think you are trying to describe how our actions are pre-determined because of all past events and how we have no control of our own actions because we are merely byproducts of our environments. This may be somewhat true in a probabilistic sense..IE people in low income areas are X amount more likely to do Y. Or if you give someone an STD they are whatever % more likely to perform certain actions. But on the individual level it really is up to the individual. It does beg the question, if it is all individualistic, they why do probabilities exist? I think it is because the accumulated influence from a macroscopic event is much greater over a macroscopic area than it is felt over an individual area. In essence I can choose what affects me but when viewing a population as a whole you are going to end up with probabilistic trends. Even me as an individual I am subject to certain probabilities that certain events will influence my actions but then again I really do have the final say about what I choose to influence me.

 

[DrSnarl]

Arthur C. Clarke commented that when he told people that one day sufficiently sophisticated computers might be built that had conscious emotions, those people put on a very impressive simulation of anger!

Nice. :) I had not heard that one before.

 

[chiro]

One thing that I think is important in analyzing determinism has to do with a kind of local analysis in comparison to a non local analysis.

The local analysis could be seen as the current way we analyze things. Local analysis in this context refers to analyzing things in terms of local changes. Non-local analysis refers to analyzing things in terms of non-local changes.

The local analyses usually refer to what we know as differentials or finite differences. In other words when we want to analyze a system, we look specifically at how things change either instantaneously for a continuous/analytic system in terms of the finite differences between immediate time-steps for a finite difference system.

One thing that should be considered is a non-local analyses. In other words, instead of looking at completely local changes, instead consider what happens when we relate changes that are non-local. In other words, instead of dx/dt for a continuous system, consider CX/CT where CX is the change of X with respect to a non-local difference (as an example CT might be 1, 1.5 or even 100 or it could even be variable.

By doing this we consider the possibility that in systems of extreme complexity when we analyze them in terms of a local analysis, that same system may actually yield some more important information when considered in a non-local analysis.

What this means intuitively is that instead of thinking in terms of cause and effect in the short-term, we think about effects in the long term where there is a kind of delay involved instead of having effects happening instantaneously like we naturally expect them to in our local analysis way of thinking.

 

[RAuld]

Functor97,

I believe that much of your argument is otiose; what is relevant is the reality that we experience day-to-day. It seems to me that each of our exisences is governed by three factors:

1. Genetic a priori: that is, evolved characterisitcs such as ability to reason, sensory acuity, genotype and phenotype.

This is the deterministic part of our existence, that we cannot change, also known as fate.

2. Free Will: that is, the decisions that we make day-to-day, where our reason sorts between memory, current evidence from our senses, and our imagined future.

You must surely agree that you take decisions every day, some that you regret; you must sometimes choose to learn something new, and so are choosing to change your future experiences.

3. Chance: those things in life which you simply cannot control and can only account for in retrospect; the wheel of fortune of people who you walk by in the street, jobs that appear at opportune moments, etc.

It is your choice to make the most of these opportunities, or not.

In my view, there is determinism, free-will and random chance!

 

[jduster]

Assuming that there is random chance, then our "decisions" aren't meaningful either. They're just like "dice rolls" and it would be no more consequential than if we were at a fixed path.

 

[beanybag]

Jumping in, hi.

you can recreate events. I can move something and put it back and move it again. Each event is unique but for the sake of determining the result of specific actions in relation to an effect you can do simulations. Kinda feel like I am explaining that that big red ball in the sky is what causes it to be light outside haha...clearly there is some disconnect here.

The disconnect is that you don't seem to see that those are different events. It is not a recreation of the first event in any way, because it occurred at a different time (a few seconds later) under different circumstances (you have memory of moving the cup, it will have some warmth and oils from your hand from previously moving it, perhaps the liquid inside the cup also heated up from some of the kinetic motion, etc.) and probably the events differed as well (you moved the cup a a few centimeters differently than before, in a different arc, with different finger placement, etc.). You cannot recreate the exact event because the past affects the future. You have to undo every moment up to the specified one in order to recreate it. How do we observe you taking a different action than before, however? There'd have to be some outside observer (which is already suspect since observing is not a one-sided action) who is also outside of time - it isn't doable.

This is also why I think the debate is meaningless. Free Will is an incoherent idea. So what if we have free will and therefore possesses the ability to take a different action than we otherwise would have? We only ever end up taking one - it's functionally deterministic (not taking into account relativity, quantum uncertainty, and observer perspectives). And further, why would we take a different action? I take the actions I take because they are the ones I choose based on reason, conditioning, past experiences.. everything that makes me myself. Would any other decision really be mine? It simply doesn't make any sense.

But I think you are trying to describe how our actions are pre-determined because of all past events and how we have no control of our own actions because we are merely byproducts of our environments. This may be somewhat true in a probabilistic sense..IE people in low income areas are X amount more likely to do Y. Or if you give someone an STD they are whatever % more likely to perform certain actions. But on the individual level it really is up to the individual. It does beg the question, if it is all individualistic, they why do probabilities exist? I think it is because the accumulated influence from a macroscopic event is much greater over a macroscopic area than it is felt over an individual area. In essence I can choose what affects me but when viewing a population as a whole you are going to end up with probabilistic trends. Even me as an individual I am subject to certain probabilities that certain events will influence my actions but then again I really do have the final say about what I choose to influence me.

And this is why I think the idea of Free Will is dangerous. It let's people blame others for their circumstances. Sam Harris is exactly right that if you were them, atom for atom, you could not make a different decision than them because you would be them. It allows people to shrug off social responsibility by thinking that people choose to live the way they do. You recognize patterns of causality and still choose to toss them aside for some 'comforting' notion of free will and I don't understand it at all? Why would you want to be 'free' of your memories, reasoning, and bodily functions? They ARE you!

EDIT: I should also point out that free will seems to necessarily require a form of dualism or at least a working model of 'self', which is another concept I find to be incoherent (and illusory). I don't mean to entirely dismiss the qualia of self, free choice, and so on (as I go on to dismiss said qualia), but psychology does seem to have firmly destroyed most of our conceptualization of self - asking if 'I' made a choice can really break down semantically when we parse what 'I' am. I can't imagine a monoist out there who would advocate free will (speak up if I'm wrong please) and it would seem most are physcalists/naturalists (implying determinists or free will denialists). Dualism has enough problems as is -adding to that the incoherency of free will and you have a concept that should really be discarded.

 

[John Creighto]

My self (the molecules and fields which make up me) contain information of who I am and how I behave. The action of these molecules and forces are moved by my thoughts, and the laws which govern these movements I call reason. These laws are not fixed because through my thoughts and the information I process from the environment, I change these rules to achieve my purposes (my will). Well, what I do is governed by laws; who I am, is an interaction of my choices, my thoughts and my environment.

Well, what we do is determined by our state in a deterministic and partly random manner, we learn from each action, and grow in our understanding of the environment. Perhaps free will is not what we do in anyone situation but rather the intelligent process we go through in where we learn how to adapt our actions to the environment to achieve our ends.

 

[apeiron]

So what if we have free will and therefore possesses the ability to take a different action than we otherwise would have? We only ever end up taking one - it's functionally deterministic (not taking into account relativity, quantum uncertainty, and observer perspectives). And further, why would we take a different action? I take the actions I take because they are the ones I choose based on reason, conditioning, past experiences.. everything that makes me myself.

Broadly speaking, freewill boils down to the claim we can make conscious choices. We can always imagine doing otherwise.

If you trace the origins of the idea, you can see in the early days it was the realisation that individuals could do something other than their societies or base desires might demand. The reasoning mind could rise above two kinds of unthinking prompts for action.

This was turned into a dualistic religious deal. The source of this now absolute freedom to chose came from a soul.

Then it became a monistic scientific illusion. Newtonian mechanics reduced all causality to atomistic action and so it seemed any naturalistic account of consciousness or reasoning must be micro-deterministic. Outcomes are already fixed by their initial conditions.

So we go from a mild claim - we can make reasoned choices - to an opposing pair of extreme claims, an immaterial cause guarantees free choice vs material cause forbids actual choice.

As you say, the way out of this bind is just to accept that causes are hierarchical. There are macro-level causes (reason, conditioning, past experiences) that functionally determine our choices - or indeed, are responsible for shaping the fact of choice in the first place.

If you insist on viewing the issue of choice through a Newtonian microscope, the only causation you can see are the micro-circumstances of some present moment. It is how all your molecules are at some instant that "completely determines" the next instant - and every further instant to the end of time.

But if you step back to see the wider view, then you can see that the reasoning brain is having its choices "determined" by past experience, conditioning, etc, and having its actual choice "determined" by some anticipation of future results. So the initial conditions driving some moment of action indeed have a macro-extent, reaching both into a remembered past and a predicted future.

Newtonian particles of course do not enjoy this kind of extended, memory/expectation based view of the world so it is irrelevant to their modelling. But some notion of macro-scale causation is essential for the modelling of more complex systems like brains.

At this point, scientific fundamentalists will again want to insist that macro-causes still reduce completely to micro-causes. But this remains a hollow claim unless the micro-view can actually show us how to construct the kind of global "emergent" states that constitute a memory/expectation based process of conscious reasoning and choice.

Compare for example any attempt to model human choice in terms of molecular motions and game theory - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory

One demands infinite information - an unlimited number of measurements - because it has no way of fixing the higher level constraints. The other comes up with elegant and simple formulae by directly modelling those constraints.

The freewill debate has heat mainly because scientists get drawn into defending a strong ontological position - that all causality is local effective cause, Newtonian determinism. But science is really about modelling the world. It might be guided by certain ontological intuitions at times, but these are dispensable.

That is what distinguishes science. It becomes the art of the measurable rather than the defence of the immeasurable (whether that be immaterial souls, or the kinds of material descriptions of nature that would require infinite measurements).

 

[RAuld]

Assuming that there is random chance, then our "decisions" aren't meaningful either. They're just like "dice rolls" and it would be no more consequential than if we were at a fixed path.

I never could understand this type of reasoning!

It must be obvious to you as you go through each day that you take decisions: some based upon thorough reasoning because the consequences are too severe to make a mistake, some based upon intuition (i.e. - past experience manifest from the subconscious), some based upon instinct (i.e. - evolved reactions to certain situations).

Whether your decisions are "meaningful" or "consequential" is, frankly, moot. On a cosmological scale they aint, but to you and your family your actions (i'm sure) are important. To say otherwise is to argue from an objective, abstract rationality rather than the subjective experience of the everyday!

 

[Bill_McEnaney]

Guys, have you ever wondered whether determinism would undermine the knowledge(?) we at least seem to get from the natural sciences? Say circumstances, biology, laws of physics and so forth guarantee that I'll always draw the same conclusions when I'm under some set of condition or other. Then it's hard to know why I should trust my judgement any more or any less than I trust yours when you draw the opposite conclusions under exactly the same circumstances. What if deterministic factors guarantee that you'll believe that, say, water consists of H20 when it actually consists of something else instead?

 

[Goodison_Lad]

Then it's hard to know why I should trust my judgement any more or any less than I trust yours when you draw the opposite conclusions under exactly the same circumstances. What if deterministic factors guarantee that you'll believe that, say, water consists of H20 when it actually consists of something else instead?

If pure determinism is the way the universe is built then none of us has any choice about what we believe. Decision-making processes where I might weigh up the evidence, form a conclusion and then make the decision are themselves, by definition, determined.

So, if pure determinism operates, it doesn’t really matter whether my conclusion is right or yours is – they were each unavoidable and inevitable.

Only if the laws of nature contain some wiggle room can the notion of truly free choice be entertained – free, in this context, meaning being able to do something other than that which hard determinism dictates.

I don’t think determinism affects one way or another our understanding of the truth of natural law. Some might, deterministically, be compelled to reject certain evidence. Others would equally be compelled to accept it. In a universe that is not wholly deterministic, and real free will existed, some would be inclined to choose not to accept evidence, while others would be inclined to choose to accept it.

 

[Pythagorean]

Say circumstances, biology, laws of physics and so forth guarantee that I'll always draw the same conclusions when I'm under some set of condition or other.

But the "set of conditions" changes with new knowledge. Organisms change their behavior based on new information.

 

[chiro]

But the "set of conditions" changes with new knowledge. Organisms change their behavior based on new information.

This means that the systems themselves are implicitly defined rather than explicitly defined.

 

[thinker04]

Hi all, new here.

I have a question:

Consider that you were to build a contraption that was as such: A geiger counter that read the decay of an atom from a small radioactive substance, and was hooked up to a machine that flashed a light if it detected decay (Schrodinger's cat thought experiment, but without the cat, box, or poison). Or something similar to this (but for real and based on radioactive decay): http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/e9cb/

Let's also say you make the decision whether to eat breakfast or not in the morning based on if you see the light turn on or not within a 10 second period. If the light turns on within 10 seconds after you start your stopwatch, you eat. If it doesn't, you don't eat.

If radioactive decay is TRULY random, then would your life no longer be "determined" based on actions that could be predicted if all variables were known? Would you still not have "free will", since you would be trading your decision making process from normal deterministic sensory inputs to the random decay of an atom?

If there is some literature on this scenario somewhere, can someone point me in the direction of it please? I couldn't find anything... but don't blame me, it was decided billions of years ago that I would ask this question on this forum before finding anything :D

 

[Whovian]

Would you still not have "free will", since you would be trading your decision making process from normal deterministic sensory inputs to the random decay of an atom?

I imagine the argument for free will would be something along the lines of "you chose to determine your actions based upon the outcome of the experiment of your own free will."

If radioactive decay is TRULY random, then would your life no longer be "determined" based on actions that could be predicted if all variables were known?

Correct; to the best of our knowledge, QM completely ruins determinism, and almost certainly will continue to do so.

 

[Maui]

Hi all, new here.

I have a question:

Consider that you were to build a contraption that was as such: A geiger counter that read the decay of an atom from a small radioactive substance, and was hooked up to a machine that flashed a light if it detected decay (Schrodinger's cat thought experiment, but without the cat, box, or poison). Or something similar to this (but for real and based on radioactive decay): http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/e9cb/

Let's also say you make the decision whether to eat breakfast or not in the morning based on if you see the light turn on or not within a 10 second period. If the light turns on within 10 seconds after you start your stopwatch, you eat. If it doesn't, you don't eat.

If radioactive decay is TRULY random, then would your life no longer be "determined" based on actions that could be predicted if all variables were known? Would you still not have "free will", since you would be trading your decision making process from normal deterministic sensory inputs to the random decay of an atom?

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.

If there is some literature on this scenario somewhere, can someone point me in the direction of it please? I couldn't find anything... but don't blame me, it was decided billions of years ago that I would ask this question on this forum before finding anything :D

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]

This means that the systems themselves are implicitly defined rather than explicitly defined.

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]

As of late i have been musing upon the nature of free will. However i disagree with the standard interpretation of the link between Determinism and free will. Incompatibilism states that Free Will and Determinism cannot co-exist, and i agree with this stance. Where i disagree is with the empirical nature of our reality and the implications for free will.

Quantum mechanics has demonstrated that our universe is (at least at the quantum scale in-deterministic). In the standard Copenhagen interpretation we must assign probabilities to certain events,

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 Hawking says.

Nevermind Qm there's 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 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 Hawking says.

Nevermind Qm there's 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

The argument 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]

The argument 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).

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]

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".

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]

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?

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]

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.

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]

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.

Choices are easily accounted for in deterministic frameworks.

 

[Pythagorean]

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.

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]

Choices are easily accounted for in deterministic frameworks.

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.

 

[Pythagorean]

Yes, but choosing is not.

Sure it is. We can design a computer that deterministically chooses things based on it's current sample (stimulus) and it's collection of samples over its history (memory). If we wanted to make it really biological, we could throw random metabolic perturbations in, that have more to do with internal resource management than explicit decision making.

 

[Maui]

Sure it is. We can design a computer that deterministically chooses things based on it's current sample (stimulus) and it's collection of samples over its history (memory). If we wanted to make it really biological, we could throw random metabolic perturbations in, that have more to do with internal resource management than explicit decision making.

A computer can't design anything on its own. It lacks creativity and imagination. You have to program every single step and let it run. This isn't choosing, this is programming.
A computer cannot choose to ponder or not to ponder the nature of determinsm, as machines cannot ponder.


What's the likelihood of placing an electrical activity of the frequancy range of Alfa, theta and beta waves(coupled with the supportive chemical reactions as in a functioning brain) on a pile of dough and it becoming conscious of itself?

 

[Pythagorean]

A computer can't design anything on its own. It lacks creativity and imagination. You have to program every single step and let it run. This isn't choosing, this is programming.

Neither can a human do anything on its own. They go through a long period of "supervised learning". In fact, they will die without a caretaker during critical periods.

Qualities like "creativity" and "imagination" aren't very quantifiable, but qualitatively, feral children don't display much for them either. You can theoretically emulate creativity and imagination but having erroneous associations being made (which is fairly typical with humans). Humans produce a lot of senseless information in an attempt to produce reliable predictions. That is essentially what creativite works consists of: senseless (or vague) information (sometimes mixed with functional information.. but once it becomes purely functional it's now technical and not creative).

This isn't choosing, but it's not really programming either. We design computers NOT to have the flaws that humans have. If you ever have written in C though, you CAN actually get random results with sloppy programming.

 

[Maui]

Neither can a human do anything on its own. They go through a long period of "supervised learning". In fact, they will die without a caretaker during critical periods.

We did everything we have acomplished so far on this planet on our own(unless one believes in divine intervention, we are the ones who built the civilization we have today, we walked this road alone). True, that was in a group, not on our own, but we could communicate and reason the communicated information. Machines cannot exchange information, they exchange frequencies. You need a mind for frequency to become information.

Qualities like "creativity" and "imagination" aren't very quantifiable, but qualitatively, feral children don't display much for them either.

Yes, from a purely physical perspective they are hard to quantify(i cannot be of help eaither). That doesn't mean you cannot observe its achievements - just look around in the room you are sitting in.

You can theoretically emulate creativity and imagination but having erroneous associations being made (which is fairly typical with humans). Humans produce a lot of senseless information in an attempt to produce reliable predictions. That is essentially what creativite works consists of: senseless (or vague) information (sometimes mixed with functional information.. but once it becomes purely functional it's now technical and not creative).

This isn't choosing, but it's not really programming either. We design computers NOT to have the flaws that humans have. If you ever have written in C though, you CAN actually get random results with sloppy programming.

I agree with most of your points about determinism playing a very big role, where my opinion differs is the inclination to think(or imply) that determinism can even in principle account for all of human behavior and its achievements. I find that notion rather absurd.

 

[Pythagorean]

We did everything we have acomplished so far on this planet on our own(unless one believes in divine intervention, we are the ones who built the civilization we have today, we walked this road alone).

But probably not with intention. It just kind of accumulated into what it is now through mutual negotiations, much like life formed from mutual particle negotiations.

I agree with most of your points about determinism playing a very big role, where my opinion differs is the inclination to think(or imply) that determinism can even in principle account for all of human behavior and its achievements. I find that notion rather absurd.

Of course, I'm not asserting that for sure it's all deterministic. It could be random too. But that doesn't really lead to free will either. I just wanted to demonstrate that things we percieve as having free will are often deterministic processes (as shown by Libet's experiments).

Free will is kind of a ghost. It would imply that we can evade causality, which is a strange concept (something we could find "rather absurd" as well). It has no evidence, so far, it's just a feeling we (including myself) have. But I think you have to really face that feeling and question it if you want to have an honest discussion.

I have lots of feelings about lots of things; a lot of them are bogus and lead me to false conclusions. I've been shown over and over again when my feelings are wrong through constant reflection and self-analysis.

 

[skeptic2]

No one is saying that choices are made out of the blue. There are many factors that weigh in choices but those factors are not deterministic.

For instance there are many factors that determine how one drives a car. There are personal preferences, which lane to drive in; there are physical laws, how fast you can stop; there are legal laws, stopping at a red light; and there are desires, stopping off for a latte on the way home from work. None of these represent a causal relationship to how one drives nor are they chaotic in nature.

For the universe to be deterministic, all those factors must have existed at the Big Bang, otherwise known as Deism.

 

[Pythagorean]

I think I've addressed your comments in post #90. Not sure if you saw it before you posted.

 

[Maui]

Free will is kind of a ghost.

So you want to delve into the fundamental nature of things and you singled out 'free will' as if it's the only thing that appears like a ghost under very close scrutiny?

It would imply that we can evade causality, which is a strange concept (something we could find "rather absurd" as well). It has no evidence, so far, it's just a feeling we (including myself) have. But I think you have to really face that feeling and question it if you want to have an honest discussion.

I've pushed a lot of bounderies and I am questioning everything all the time, probably past the safe sanity level. There exists a personal experience, that's all i can say. I can believe a framework if it fits all the evidence and stick to a worldview that i would consider correct. If it fits some of the evidence, but not other, i revert to "my personal experience" framework and remain sceptical.When determinism addresses the issue i raised in post 82, i may join the camp.

 

[Pythagorean]

So you want to delve into the fundamental nature of things and you singled out 'free will' as if it's the only thing that appears like a ghost under very close scrutiny?

Freewill is the red hering in behavior science. It's not needed to explain anything. It's a feeling we have (that's been questioned by Libet's experiments) so I do so on rational grounds agasinst my natural intuition. Though, by now, I've developed an intution about causality in behavior.

When determinism addresses the issue i raised in post 82, i may join the camp:
[...POST 82...]
What does determinism say about feeling pain? What/who/how feels pain? Seems like we have a new entity.

Again, this is independent of whether things are deterministic or not. We could feel pain whether we did so as a passive observer or an active observer. This is the "hard problem of consciousness". It's not solved.

However, it does fit into determinism. It's an evolutionary mechanism. Pain and pleasure are the mechanisms that allow for survival (pleasure leads to sustainance and reproduction, pain leads to death).

 

[Travis_King]

When determinism addresses the issue i raised in post 82, i may join the camp.

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

Determinsm says nothing about feeling pain. That isn't in its purview. The nature of the self is quite a different question than the nature of the interactions of extant things, both living and non.

Do you know what determinism actually argues? It isn't simply, "Free will is wrong"...

Edit, Seems Pythagorean beat me to it.

 

[chiro]

One thing I think people should really think about is what information people have, what they don't have, what they are assuming based on what they don't have and as a product of what they have (i.e. inference) and also how far the projectification of information is being made.

The projectification of information means that you start with a tonne of information and you project it down to a tiny sub-space for something like a lower descriptive capacity in order to be able to make sense of it.

In a lot of these examples, the space being considered is extremely narrow and basically doesn't take into account the myriad of other information, relationships and dependencies that exist.

When people talk about determinism, funnily enough people often talk about a form of local determinism rather than a global determinism and so they focus on an extremely narrow form of cause and affect which is always going to result in problems from the start.

 

[Nikitin]

determinism seems like a bunch of BS to me. I mean, sure, if the universe behaved like a clock-work and had 0 degree of randomness, then determinism would be guaranteed.

However, from what I've understood from quantum mechanics, I'm fairly sure atoms behave randomly to a certain degree. Ergo there can never be any determinism.

 

[Travis_King]

Determinism on a macro scale doesn't necessarily require determinism on a quantum scale...

 

[Pythagorean]

determinism seems like a bunch of BS to me. I mean, sure, if the universe behaved like a clock-work and had 0 degree of randomness, then determinism would be guaranteed.

However, from what I've understood from quantum mechanics, I'm fairly sure atoms behave randomly to a certain degree. Ergo there can never be any determinism.

Cohered macro-systems (ensembles of quantum particles) behave in a deterministic manner. Furthermore, quantum effects have been shown not to play a relevant role in decision making in the brain (there were a few papers published in response to Penrose, whose view is considered crackpot by physical chemists and neuroscientists).

 

[Maui]

Again, this is independent of whether things are deterministic or not. We could feel pain whether we did so as a passive observer or an active observer. This is the "hard problem of consciousness". It's not solved.

So there obviously exists something that feels pain and it can not be accounted for in physical terms, but we are somehow supposed to believe that that same "it" that feels pain and can reason can not make sovereign decisions? If there is a hard problem of conciosuness, there is a hard problem of free will.