The Illusion of Free Will: A Scientific Perspective

[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.