The Illusion of Free Will: A Scientific Perspective

[Pythagorean]

For anyone else still reading, I'd like to see a discussion on what the necessary conditions are for "free". As one might have deduced from my argument a couple pages back, I believe that freedom is whatever we want to do. Our freedom is only challenged by coercion, which is to say anything which 'forces' us or demands that we do something which we do not agree with, or which we do not want to, or cannot, do.

I think that's my problem with free will too. I don't really know of a reasonable definition. Here's how I see the definitions:

will: the ability for an organism to carry out its chosen action

free will: the idea that organisms chose actions independently of determinism, i.e. independent of influences from the physical world.

In behavioral sciences, this isn't a very helpful idea. There would be no way to model it. But more importantly, it seems to be unnecessary. People's decisions are found to ultimately come down to a combination of biological, psychological, and social factors, all twisted in a complicated spiral of emergent behavior. It's like dropping a handful of tic-tacs. You can't predict exactly what pattern will come out because off all the small differences in initial conditions, but you know all the forces involved and how they generally statistical outcomes over a large number of trials.

 

[Bill_McEnaney]

Bill, this question has been debated for centuries...it seems you aren't alone in not knowing the answers!

That's comforting. The older I get, the more I need to question what I believe. I'm something like Socrates. He thought long and hard about why anyone would believe that he was wise. "Well," he said to himself, "maybe it's because I know that I'm ignorant." As you know, in the Early Socratic Dialogues, he usually made fools of proud people who thought they already knew the right answers to his questions. Too often, they only repeated widely-held false opinions.

With regards to your last point, yea, mostly I take a pragmatic stance on the idea of "truth". However I do recognize that the pragmatic "necessary conditions" for truth are not really all that convincing from an epistemological standpoint.

I believe that truth consists of conformity between the intellect and reality. I say "intellect" first because too many people want to conform reality to their their intellects, not the other way around. I want to know how things actually are. If the word shows me that I'm wrong about something, it's time for me to change my mind. I'm not going to be a relativist about truth.

Maybe I told you guys about Karl Popper's asymmetry between confirmation and refutation. The idea is that any scientific inductive argument is always inconclusive when it supports its conclusion. However many experiments confirm it, there's no contradiction in saying that there may be a counterexample that disproves it conclusively. You might count a million white swans when you're testing your theory that all swans are white. That strong statistical evidence will help you write a strong inductive argument for that conclusion. But that conclusion is still false because some swans are black. Some scientific belief may only seem to be knowledge.

I know some people who hear the pragmatic argument and think it amounts to saying, "Well, this seems to be good enough. Let's stop here, I'm pretty sure we're ok saying we 'know' this to be a 'truth'." It's hard to say who's right.

Many do that. But you can still ask the pragmatist why they believe the pragmatic theory about truth is true. If they appeal to usefulness when you ask them to argue for that theory, their argument probably will be useless for proving what they want it to prove. After all, it probably will be circular.

For anyone else still reading, I'd like to see a discussion on what the necessary conditions are for "free". As one might have deduced from my argument a couple pages back, I believe that freedom is whatever we want to do. Our freedom is only challenged by coercion, which is to say anything which 'forces' us or demands that we do something which we do not agree with, or which we do not want to, or cannot, do.

The trouble is, at least for me, that some coercion can be internal and other coercion can be external. I can still ask whether laws of nature determine what I choose by governing what happens in my body.

 

[apeiron]

For anyone else still reading, I'd like to see a discussion on what the necessary conditions are for "free". As one might have deduced from my argument a couple pages back, I believe that freedom is whatever we want to do. Our freedom is only challenged by coercion, which is to say anything which 'forces' us or demands that we do something which we do not agree with, or which we do not want to, or cannot, do.

Another way to look at it is that global constraints create local freedoms. So anything that is not globally forbidden, can - indeed must - happen.

So toss a die and the constraints - all the information that went into creating a six-sixed object that got properly thrown - do determine a lot, but are then indifferent about which face actually lands.

This seems merely an epistemological view of determinism. But it becomes ontological if you accept that there are quantum or chaotic limits to measurement - if you believe you can never obtain the complete information needed to constrain a system's degrees of freedom to a single determined outcome.

So this re-frames the physical level model of determinism.

You then want to step up to ask how human choice fits with this model. Again, a key point often overlooked is that it is our awareness of social and physical constraints on our personal degrees of freedom that creates a sense of being choosers. If we know we are meant to do one thing, this is why we know equally that there is now the option of acting in contrary fashion.

But then what we actually do becomes a mix of this social "coercion", the world's physical limits (we can't decide to levitate, etc) and the information we supply ourselves (all the stuff like our memories, goals, physiological state, etc).

So the effective freedom we have is to combine a variety of kinds of information to weave our own highly personalised states of global constraint (our moment to moment states of intentional awareness). And these mental states then act top-down to highly constraint (tightly determine) the activities of our bodies (we shift our feet - they have no choice - because we want to get to the kitchen).

Freewill remains a perennial debate because people are attached to a particular mechanical notion of determinism (one where the global constraints, like the laws of physics, are treated as mysteriously immaterial - the necessary information must be held in the mind of God perhaps ). And then the opposite of determined is taken as random.

But a systems approach demands that we account for all the information driving a process in a material fashion. And so already we are asking the question, well who determined things to be this way? Who constructed the global constraints that define the local degrees of freedom in play?

 

[audioloop]

to look at it is that global constraints create local freedoms. So anything that is not globally forbidden, can - indeed must - happen.

reframed:

it is not possible, is determined.

and

and what is possible, is likewise determined (by the former).
...then, a full determinism.

 

[lavinia]

I generally think that free-will is an illusion; but free-will can be a big subject with different peoples having different connotations.

I differentiate it form will-power. Will-power is an organism's ability to get what it wants. Free-will is the notion that the organism can choose what it wants. There's definitely will-power, but free-will seems like it would evade cause and effect and as far as we have measured, we don't do that.

What do you think of the probably antiquated idea that free will is the ability to choose to do good?

 

[Ryan_m_b]

...ability to choose...

Is there even a good definition for this?

 

[someGorilla]

What do you think of the probably antiquated idea that free will is the ability to choose to do good?

If you assume there's something as the "ability to choose" you are already begging the question.

 

[jduster]

Is there even a good definition for this?

yes, there is an adequate definition, but not a pleasant, flattering or satisfying one.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

yes, there is an adequate definition, but not a pleasant, flattering or satisfying one.

Go on, put me out of my misery.

 

[lavinia]

If you assume there's something as the "ability to choose" you are already begging the question.

I haven't thought this through analytically. Perhaps you could help.

What for instance does it mean to have the ability to choose anything?

 

[Pythagorean]

What do you think of the probably antiquated idea that free will is the ability to choose to do good?

Free will is just the ability to choose choices (good or bad) depending on how you define "choose".

What for instance does it mean to have the ability to choose anything?

There's two different versions of choose that automatically must come out of this discussion. At some level, we make a decision, we "choose". But did we choose to choose? I.e. was that process of choosing deterministic or is there some magical violation of cause and effect (a spirit, a soul: free will) that allows us to engage in behavior independent of causality?

I think most people elect to believe in the magical violation, simply because it's a natural, normal part of consciousness to believe so, to operate as a functionally independent agent. But I think the reality is that our behavior is more deterministic.

 

[lavinia]

Free will is just the ability to choose choices (good or bad) depending on how you define "choose".


There's two different versions of choose that automatically must come out of this discussion. At some level, we make a decision, we "choose". But did we choose to choose? I.e. was that process of choosing deterministic or is there some magical violation of cause and effect (a spirit, a soul: free will) that allows us to engage in behavior independent of causality?

I think most people elect to believe in the magical violation, simply because it's a natural, normal part of consciousness to believe so, to operate as a functionally independent agent. But I think the reality is that our behavior is more deterministic.

ok but you still can have or not have the ability to choose to do good. That is not controversial. What is controversial to me is why we choose not to.

 

[Pythagorean]

"Good" is a value judgment. We're taught "good" by our parents and peers and society (and of course, genetics certainly plays some role too, as we've adapted to altruism to some extent). Our frontal lobes are left open to tweaking all the way through to our early 20's when they finally get "finalized" (myelination). But this is only one part of the brain and it is in competition with other parts of the brain. Depending on development, genetics, and social happenstance, different people will have a stronger "good" muscle in their brain than others.

Sociopaths have a particular "dysfunction" in their neurobiology in their amygdala, an important emotional aspect of weighing "good" and "bad" (in fact, amygdala has direct connections to the orbitofrontal cortex). In many cases, sociopaths "choose" not to do good because they don't have the same value judgment as you or I may have about what is "good" (they may know on some intellectual leve that society does not like it, but they do not emotionally feel the same way about it that you or I might). In other cases, you or I may just disagree on what "good" is based on our cultural norms. In yet other cases, people's primal brains just tend to over power their social brain, possibly because this is precisely the behavior that has worked for them in their development period (i.e. they've somehow been rewarded for it, which can be typical in neglectful parenting cases, where negative behavior gets the child some attention when positive behavior doesn't).

on psychopathy:
http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/182/1/5.full

 

[someGorilla]

ok but you still can have or not have the ability to choose to do good. That is not controversial. What is controversial to me is why we choose not to.

I don't see why choosing to do good should be regarded as something different from choosing to eat an ice cream. What has "good" to do with the existence of free will? A certain climate can do me good; does the climate have free will?
I'm also quite persuaded that "good" can have a meaning only at the level of human interrelationships - a level at which free will manifestly exists (for any sensible notion of "exists"). But there's not, for me anyway, any definition nor any meaning of "good" at the deeper level of analysis at which you can wonder if free will exists.
Also, what is choosing? If you choose to do something then you have free will? Fine. But did you choose to choose it, or were you necessitated to choose it? Did you choose to choose to choose it? Of course the chain can't be followed very far, it gets totally fuzzy after the first one or two links. The concept itself of choosing goes out of focus the more you try to pin it down. There is experimental evidence that (at least some of) our acts of choosing happen way before we are aware of them. I'll look for a link to that. Experiments have been made – by magnetic resonance imaging if I recall well – monitoring a given area of a subject's cortex and foreseeing with an advance of seconds a choice he would make. Seconds is a lot. Even microseconds would be a lot (it it were possible to time with that precision the occurrence of an act of choosing) but seconds is a macroscopic lot. It's scary. It gives a hard, experimentally tested reason to wonder whether the one who is choosing in your head is really you.
What I think is that in order to state that free will exists, or even to negate that free will exists, you need to be speaking of somebody's free will. The question whether free will exists makes sense as long as you have a metaphysical concept of a conscious being, person, soul, call it what you want. Here is the rub. If we are talking at the low level of quantum mechanics, there are no consciences, and it makes no sense to talk of free will. (Funny how there are people wanting to see free will in quantum indeterminacy, refraining from referring to conscience lest they appear animistic or something.) If we are talking at the high "hi, how are you?" level of human interactions, you do what you want and you expect people to do what they want, and that's it. If you mix levels, which is both intellectually fascinating and unavoidable, you get stuck in the mud of thought.
I don't think the question has an answer – other than saying that free will and determinism are not in contradiction. At least I am in good company (from Kant to Buddha).
If someone cares to argue that free will and determinism are in fact mutually exclusive, can he give clear definitions of both? Possibily in logical (symbolic) form? I think it will be easy to show that no contradiction exists, or that the definitions rest on some unresolved vagueness.
But being the scientifically-minded basher that I am I'd like real facts to get better ideas from. Who knows where the future will lead us. If we ever reach a theory capable to describe effectively the workings of the brain (everything from atoms to the whole system), we might have new ground to set this discussion on. Same if we could build a conscious machine – but I suspect the most logical way to do it would be to leave it grow and self-organize, thus losing the power to describe its inner workings.

 

[marty1]

In my experience "free will" is used as an excuse to explain why some people make the wrong decisions.

 

[lavinia]

"Good" is a value judgment. We're taught "good" by our parents and peers and society (and of course, genetics certainly plays some role too, as we've adapted to altruism to some extent). Our frontal lobes are left open to tweaking all the way through to our early 20's when they finally get "finalized" (myelination). But this is only one part of the brain and it is in competition with other parts of the brain. Depending on development, genetics, and social happenstance, different people will have a stronger "good" muscle in their brain than others.

Sociopaths have a particular "dysfunction" in their neurobiology in their amygdala, an important emotional aspect of weighing "good" and "bad" (in fact, amygdala has direct connections to the orbitofrontal cortex). In many cases, sociopaths "choose" not to do good because they don't have the same value judgment as you or I may have about what is "good" (they may know on some intellectual leve that society does not like it, but they do not emotionally feel the same way about it that you or I might). In other cases, you or I may just disagree on what "good" is based on our cultural norms. In yet other cases, people's primal brains just tend to over power their social brain, possibly because this is precisely the behavior that has worked for them in their development period (i.e. they've somehow been rewarded for it, which can be typical in neglectful parenting cases, where negative behavior gets the child some attention when positive behavior doesn't).

on psychopathy:
http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/182/1/5.full

- Many actions that would be judged as heinous - e.g. euthanasia against mentally challenged people or against a race of people that are viewed as inferior - involve value judgements.

- To me there is a difference between what is good and what is the right thing to do in a particular situation. In the first case, there can be no disagreement. In the second case, there can.

i put it this way because my naive sense is that the idea of good in this setting is not meant to be relative.

 

[lavinia]

I don't see why choosing to do good should be regarded as something different from choosing to eat an ice cream.

Well then I will cancel all of my charitable donations and spend the money on Hagendaas coffee ice cream. Yum.

 

[chiro]

In my experience "free will" is used as an excuse to explain why some people make the wrong decisions.

Freedom is the ability make your own choices and live with the consequences of them.

How can you get a better system than that?

 

[chiro]

- Many actions that would be judged as heinous - e.g. euthanasia against mentally challenged people or against a race of people that are viewed as inferior - involve value judgements.

- To me there is a difference between what is good and what is the right thing to do in a particular situation. In the first case, there can be no disagreement. In the second case, there can.

i put it this way because my naive sense is that the idea of good in this setting is not meant to be relative.

Both of these outcomes are based on perceptive decisions that are completely narrow relative to a much more global viewpoint of perception.

This mistake is made all the time because people think they have global understanding about situations when they don't.

Hell most people can't even think about the decisions they make will affect themselves and others past a week or a year: how the hell can people comprehend the intracacies and relationships of things that occur on both massive time scales and also on massive scales of interrelationships?

The picture for all of us is always incomplete and the sooner we at least acknowledge that, the better off we will be.

 

[Pythagorean]

- Many actions that would be judged as heinous - e.g. euthanasia against mentally challenged people or against a race of people that are viewed as inferior - involve value judgements.

- To me there is a difference between what is good and what is the right thing to do in a particular situation. In the first case, there can be no disagreement. In the second case, there can.

i put it this way because my naive sense is that the idea of good in this setting is not meant to be relative.

I don't disagree with your examples of value judgments, but when you speak of an objective "good" does that imply that people who disagree with your perception of what that objective good is are wrong? How do you go about finding out which behaviors are objectively good when two people disagree on a behavior's nature?

And... more importantly, what does it have to do with free will?

 

[lavinia]

I don't disagree with your examples of value judgments, but when you speak of an objective "good" does that imply that people who disagree with your perception of what that objective good is are wrong? How do you go about finding out which behaviors are objectively good when two people disagree on a behavior's nature?

And... more importantly, what does it have to do with free will?

Those are good questions. Not sure if I even know how to think abut it.

I would guess that free will and Good are,in this context, connected. The ability to choose to eat ice cream for instance is neither good nor bad. The ability to choose to do good is free will. But maybe this is nonsense. I don't know. I am a little surprised though that the only idea of good proposed here is relativistic with some speculations about the workings of the nervous system thrown into justify it.

 

[lavinia]

Both of these outcomes are based on perceptive decisions that are completely narrow relative to a much more global viewpoint of perception.

Your language is too technical for me. Can you boil it down?

This mistake is made all the time because people think they have global understanding about situations when they don't.

\

I would agree with that - as would anyone I guess.

Hell most people can't even think about the decisions they make will affect themselves and others past a week or a year: how the hell can people comprehend the intricacies and relationships of things that occur on both massive time scales and also on massive scales of interrelationships?

True that.

The picture for all of us is always incomplete and the sooner we at least acknowledge that, the better off we will be.

Why will we be better off? I ask because in meditation the idea is to dispense with distracting thoughts to reach a state of inner completeness - the true self.

 

[Evo]

Well then I will cancel all of my charitable donations and spend the money on Hagendaas coffee ice cream. Yum.

This has become more a "random thoughts" thread suitable for GD than a discussion about the philosophical meaning, which is the intention of the guidelines.

All members need to have a working understanding of philosophy to post in this forum. Please read the guidelines, the rules for the first post apply throughout the thread.

 

[Maui]

There's two different versions of choose that automatically must come out of this discussion. At some level, we make a decision, we "choose". But did we choose to choose? I.e. was that process of choosing deterministic or is there some magical violation of cause and effect (a spirit, a soul: free will) that allows us to engage in behavior independent of causality?

I think most people elect to believe in the magical violation, simply because it's a natural, normal part of consciousness to believe so, to operate as a functionally independent agent. But I think the reality is that our behavior is more deterministic.

Yes, more deterministic or mostly deterministic is demonstrably true. At the same time, there are traits of conscious behavior that appear to rule over processes that govern bodily functions and behavior.

How can we explain someone(the self?) taking medication to correct harmful processes like cancer cells, viruses, autoimmune disorders, etc.? Does it make sense to say the processes chose the best medication for themselves or for other impaired processes(or other more qualified processes prescribed the best medication)? I agree we are zombie-like most of the time, this is beyond doubt as far as i am concerned, but there is seemingly more going on - processes can't be happy or sad, a solid case cannot be made that processes can understand, dream or imagine. There still seems to be a small corner to us that is still largely unexplored.

 

[Pythagorean]

Yes, more deterministic or mostly deterministic is demonstrably true. At the same time, there are traits of conscious behavior that appear to rule over processes that govern bodily functions and behavior.

How can we explain someone(the self?) taking medication to correct harmful processes like cancer cells, viruses, autoimmune disorders, etc.? Does it make sense to say the processes chose the best medication for themselves or for other impaired processes(or other more qualified processes prescribed the best medication)? I agree we are zombie-like most of the time, this is beyond doubt as far as i am concerned, but there is seemingly more going on - processes can't be happy or sad, a solid case cannot be made that processes can understand, dream or imagine. There still seems to be a small corner to us that is still largely unexplored.

You're saying:

"processes can't be happy or sad"
therefore
"a solid case cannot be made that processes can understand, dream, or imagine".
(and so, I presume, you mean determinism must not be the whole story?)

You are talking about the hard problem: how we can have subjective experience, but I think this is independent of the question of determinism. I disagree that processes can't be happy or sad, but that's probably for another thread to discuss our merits.

 

[lavinia]

This has become more a "random thoughts" thread suitable for GD than a discussion about the philosophical meaning, which is the intention of the guidelines.

All members need to have a working understanding of philosophy to post in this forum. Please read the guidelines, the rules for the first post apply throughout the thread.

The intent of this comment was to suggest the inequivalence of moral values and sensual desires. Perhaps it is you who does not understand any philosophy

 

[Pythagorean]

The intent of this comment was to suggest the inequivalence of moral values and sensual desires. Perhaps it is you who does not understand any philosophy

Yeah, but you first need to explicitly motivate what it has to do with the discussion of determinism vs. free will, preferably without riddles.

 

[Evo]

The intent of this comment was to suggest the inequivalence of moral values and sensual desires. Perhaps it is you who does not understand any philosophy

You made several inapplicable posts in a row. Other members are trying to have a serious discussion.

Thanks.

 

[Maui]

You are talking about the hard problem: how we can have subjective experience, but I think this is independent of the question of determinism. I disagree that processes can't be happy or sad, but that's probably for another thread to discuss our merits.

I am not going to argue with you, i am sure a lot people share your worldview, especially those who actively search for or research current neuroscience. I generally agree with you, but i can also see where we split in our opinions. There is something typically human to us that evades deterministic explanation. Have a look at the subforum and its name 'philosophy' that generally discusses reality and existence. I would agree that a wolf's behavior might be framed and understood as entirely deterministic but could we find a deterministic process that is specifically tailored to addressing issues like existence? Why would tissues, brain cells or neurons care about existence? It makes no sense to me to say that someone's brain was wired for it and if we stop making sense, there is no point to anything at all.

 

[Pythagorean]

A process doesn't need to be specifically tailored or "wired" to exist. There also doesn't have to be a point.

 

[Maui]

A process doesn't need to be specifically tailored or "wired" to exist. There also doesn't have to be a point.

You misunderstood something...

A process that produces thoughts on existence does not appear be deterministic(there is something that exists and we are somewhat aware of it, do you agree?). If there is no point in certain animal beginning to ponder existence, then there likely is no point to anything at all. There is no point in logic, after all there doesn't have to be a point as you insist. It seems our processes are waisting everyone's time.

PP. I respect your opinion even if we disagree. We are what we believe we are, that is as concise and correct as it can get. Everyone is born blank and utterly clueless and gradually belief begins to settle in. Bombarded with controversial findings from different fields of study(physics, neuroscience, philosophy...), our ultimate conviction of what constitutes 'us' is belief. In a sense, we are our beliefs.

 

[someGorilla]

How can we explain someone(the self?) taking medication to correct harmful processes like cancer cells, viruses, autoimmune disorders, etc.? Does it make sense to say the processes chose the best medication for themselves or for other impaired processes(or other more qualified processes prescribed the best medication)?

If we had a clear definition of what a "person" (or a "self") is, we could examine whether it can do this or that. But do you think there is such a definition?
For one, I don't think so. I think the problem lies in the self being a fuzzy cloud without a clear boundary separating it from the rest of the world, so that the difference between you acting and you being acted upon is not clear. In Raymond Smullyan's words, which I completely agree with:

Of course, you might well say that the doctrine of free will says that it is you who are doing the determining, whereas the doctrine of determinism appears to say that your acts are determined by something apparently outside you. But the confusion is largely caused by your bifurcation of reality into the “you” and the “not you.” Really now, just where do you leave off and the rest of the universe begin? Or where does the rest of the universe leave off and you begin? Once you can see the so-called “you” and the so-called “nature” as a continuous whole, then you can never again be bothered by such questions as whether it is you who are controlling nature or nature who is controlling you. Thus the muddle of free will versus determinism will vanish.​

I agree we are zombie-like most of the time, this is beyond doubt as far as i am concerned, but there is seemingly more going on - processes can't be happy or sad, a solid case cannot be made that processes can understand, dream or imagine. There still seems to be a small corner to us that is still largely unexplored.

Processes can't be happy or sad - ok. So what can be happy or sad? Can you even talk about being happy or sad without already positing a person, a mind, a soul? This doesn't mean there is a small corner within us still to be explored (which might be true, but is not implied by this). It means that you need a certain conceptual fuzziness in order to talk about emotions, choices, or mental states in general.

By the way, this is what I was referring to a couple of posts ago:
Soon, C. S., Brass, M., Heinze, H.-J. & Haynes, J.-D. Nature Neurosci. doi: 10.1038/nn.2112 (2008).

 

[octelcogopod]

. I would agree that a wolf's behavior might be framed and understood as entirely deterministic but could we find a deterministic process that is specifically tailored to addressing issues like existence? Why would tissues, brain cells or neurons care about existence? It makes no sense to me to say that someone's brain was wired for it and if we stop making sense, there is no point to anything at all.

Well imagine this then, as speculation. Humans develop a language of symbols to represent the world in their minds, kind of like a more advanced version of animals knowing what their prey is or seeing and hearing things through their senses from the external world. The animals need to develop some kind of internal language that has some amount of object modeling to be able to distinguish objects and feelings. Now humans do the same, except they develop a further 'meta-language', a written and spoken language, and it develops so much that we can build entirely new objects and imagine anything from it.

As the general information in society that is shared within humans advances, and we develop ideas like objects having an existence, creatures having autonomy, differences between the physical and the mental, we start to ask questions about what we learn, and we understand ourselves within a greater context.

Intuitively to me the power of the brain started at the moment where there could be a sensing of external objects, and the second revolution was the ability to refine that language into a symbolic meta-language (the language we have today), and all this didn't need any particular reason, it just had to evolve from a start point naturally. To me, the issue of existence comes totally natural from an animal that can sense the external world. By sensing we are automatically separating ourselves from what we're sensing, just in a very primal form.

 

[bohm2]

Intuitively to me the power of the brain started at the moment where there could be a sensing of external objects, and the second revolution was the ability to refine that language into a symbolic meta-language (the language we have today), and all this didn't need any particular reason, it just had to evolve from a start point naturally. To me, the issue of existence comes totally natural from an animal that can sense the external world. By sensing we are automatically separating ourselves from what we're sensing, just in a very primal form.

An interesting argument that relates to this point is that a lot of these difficulties of trying to understand free will and consciousness/subjectivity/existence may be epistemological in nature:

Conceptually, it is worth distinguishing two versions of mysterianism, one ontological and one epistemological. The former would hold that consciousness is mysterious in and of itself. The latter is the more modest claim that the mystery does not lie in consciousness itself, but rather flows from certain constitutional limitations of the human intellect...

Introspection is our only channel to the properties of consciousness, but it does not afford us any access to the properties of the brain. Sensory perception is our only channel to the properties of the brain, but it does not afford us any access to the properties of consciousness. There is no third channel that affords us access to both consciousness and the brain. Therefore, our concept-producing mechanisms cannot in principle produce a concept for the connection between consciousness and the brain. Consequently, our knowledge of consciousness and our knowledge of the brain are doomed to be insulated from one another. More specifically, we can have no knowledge of the manner by which the brain produces or yields consciousness. The connection between the two is necessarily opaque to us. Therefore, we cannot possibly grasp the solution to the problem of consciousness.

Mysterianism
http://uriahkriegel.com/downloads/frankthetank.pdf

Stoljar also points out that the limitation is epistemological in nature by arguing that we lack knowledge/are ignorant of the intrinsic properties of nature (e.g. physics only deals with extrinsic/relational properties of matter) but it is these properties that we would need to know to understand how stuff like free will and subjectivity/consciousness can emerge from matter.

Introduction to Ignorance and Imagination
http://philrsss.anu.edu.au/sites/default/files/people/I&I.Intro.pdf

 

[Maui]

To those who deny the existence of the self - would you believe me if i told you that i whenever i cut my finger i felt pain? Why wouldn't you? There is no empirical evidence or proof that i or you or anyone else feels pain, but you have believed this thousands of times in your lives. It's a very personal thing that we(or at least i know) that exists, yet you cannot prove it in an experiement. If you accept that someone else can feel pain(and is not just acting as if they felt pain), then you accept that there is a new entity(phenomenon), something additional to the physical body.

Furthermore, those believing that determinism is a complete expalnation of their experience, you are aware that discoveries in foundational physics show that neither of the concepts needed for determinism(matter, time, space) are fundamenal or absolutes, but secondary/emergent(quite possibly the biggest riddle of 20th century physics)? What is even more puzzling - conscious experience also appears transient, at least that's what our experiemental evidence suggests.

 

[someGorilla]

I've never negated the existence of the self. I have negated the independence of the self. I have argued that the apparent paradox between determinism and free will depends on assuming the self is - as you say - an entity. Of course I know that others can feel pain, just as I know that I can feel pain myself. But, to me, saying that their being able to feel pain shows there is a new entity additional to the physical body is just like saying that the sky being blue shows there is a new entity additional to the air or atmosphere. You can perfectly well assume that there is no such entity, and I suppose you will agree on this. So, in a sense, there is no sky. Yet, "the sky is blue" is a true statement. Funny, isn't it?

 

[someGorilla]

Also, I don't believe that determinism is a complete explanation of my experience, for the simple reason that I don't believe determinism is an explanation of anything. Determinism is a kind of more or less formalized description of physical events. It's a quite effective description, that's why we take it seriously. But I can't call it an explanation.
Can I call it a description of my experience? Most obviously, no. Could I call it a description of my experience if I knew the position and momentum of every particle in the universe? Well in that case I'd be such a different being from what I am that I can't possibly imagine what I would think.
Fundamentally I think that determinism is a property of some of our descriptions of the world, not a property of the world itself. So your critique falls short of its target.
About conscious experience being transient I probably agree but I don't know exactly what you mean and I fail to understand what you want to imply.
The problem with saying there is a "new entity" as you call it is the same problem dualism has always had: either you have to explain how the two planes of existence interact (and explain whether and how this does or does not violate known physical laws), or you have to suppose they don't interact but are magically synchronized by the clockmaker. Both solutions are to me unsatisfactory and plainly wrong. How do you solve the conundrum?

 

[Pythagorean]

Same here. Self exists: it just exists as an emergent property. It arises from several interacting processes and you can still have self by taking away some processes.

I don't think determinism is a complete explanation of experience, but I believe its a complete explanation of behavior.

 

[octelcogopod]

The only reason why we can't describe experience in terms of determinism is because we haven't found a straight-forward way to describe them with the language of the physical at this point.

I think we can quite easily explain experience in plain english from a subjective non-empirical but still deterministic way.
We all know deep inside that we learn most things from the external world. We're either told something, or we read something or we have an experience that enables us to make a connection of symbols. And we can also intuitively know that nouns are abstractions of objects, places and other such things. These objects are tied to symbols, whether words or images or sounds or sequence of memories in the mind, but they are also interchangeable with other such symbols. We can attach the symbol and image "green" to an apple, a forest, and we can attach a stick to an image of a tree or a metal rod.

From this we can know intuitively that as we learn words, and as we learn concepts about relationships in the world, we develop the language that enables us to abstract and think about these things. This is IMO again based on a more primal language of being able to sense the world with our senses. But the language from our senses IS the external world, we sense our arms, we sense the images coming in through our eyes, and we, in a deterministic way, build one thing upon another.

Psychology and psychiatry is one such way of creating deterministic explanations for behavior and emotions. We could in theory trace all emotions, feelings and images back to external deterministic sensory experiences, as it must be built in one way or the other from these symbols of language and the relationships and concepts between them. If we were able to grasp the immense complexity of a specific brain, and also the environment it grew up in, I don't see why we wouldn't be able to create a deterministic account of the subjective experience. We could also then describe the whole history of that brain to the person, whether via images, stories and a full account of its history. If that's true, then it tells me that the deterministic history / process exists.

Of course there is the difficult problem of describing the process that enables the brain to actually have a consciousness, but the more I think about it the more I feel like most of the consciousness comes from sensory experience. That the consciousness is in fact a portion of the external world. My vision IS the room I'm viewing, my touch experience on my skin IS the skin, and the surface of the table I'm feeling. Consciousness is a transparent layer that only manifests itself in the physical. That's strange, and fascinating, but I don't know if it complicates the 'account' of experience just yet.

 

[Maui]

I've never negated the existence of the self. I have negated the independence of the self. I have argued that the apparent paradox between determinism and free will depends on assuming the self is - as you say - an entity. Of course I know that others can feel pain, just as I know that I can feel pain myself. But, to me, saying that their being able to feel pain shows there is a new entity additional to the physical body is just like saying that the sky being blue shows there is a new entity additional to the air or atmosphere.

I can confirm that i can feel pain and if the sky can confirm that it can feel pain too(esp. in a manner that i can relate to my experience of pain), i would venture to say that there's something additional(something that feels pain) to the sky that you likely have ommitted in your examination/description of it. But i am very sceptical the sky has an experience, this is very very unlikely :)

 

[Maui]

Fundamentally I think that determinism is a property of some of our descriptions of the world, not a property of the world itself. So your critique falls short of its target.

You've got it vice-versa. If it were so, there would be no reason for the world to behave in a deterministic manner. You don't think the world is obliged to behave according to our models, do you?

About conscious experience being transient I probably agree but I don't know exactly what you mean and I fail to understand what you want to imply. The problem with saying there is a "new entity" as you call it is the same problem dualism has always had: either you have to explain how the two planes of existence interact (and explain whether and how this does or does not violate known physical laws), or you have to suppose they don't interact but are magically synchronized by the clockmaker. Both solutions are to me unsatisfactory and plainly wrong. How do you solve the conundrum?

You seem to make the typical assumption made multiple times in the past - that what is currently known is all that can ever be known. Here are a few statements that highlight this attitude:

"There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom."
--Nobel Prize-winning physicist Robert Milliken, 1923

"A rocket will never be able to leave the Earth's atmosphere." --The New York Times, 1936

"That the automobile has practically reached the limit of its development is suggested by the fact that during the past year no improvements of a radical nature have been introduced." Scientific American, January 2, 1909.The best thing one can do when pursuing science(beside learning as much as they can from what has been accumulated as verified knowledge and tentative facts) is keep an open mind. Right now we are exactly in the middle of nowhere as far as an adequate description of the world and experience in concerned. If you have an idea how and under what circumstances time, matter and space have the properties they do as we observe them(classical-like, uni-directional and deterministic-like), do share with us. I have no explanation for anything, i am not ashamed to admit so, it doesn't seem like matter, time, space and experience arise from anything we have considered so far, but i am not qualified to enter speculative territories which are normally a reserved domain of string theorists and nobel-prize winners and which could be allowed to be posted here just because of the authority of the author. I have no explanation for mental experience either, i don't really understand much of anything except the deterministic framework that seems to allow events to unfold in a seemingly causal manner. This is an almost completely unknown and incomprehensible world/experience when examined in depth and detail. And if the world seems to make sense to one, it certainly suggests that one has not yet dug deep enough in its workings.

 

[Vespa71]

A cat washes, it raises it's hairs to look bigger. It pisses on the corners of it's territory, it communicates vocally with other cats and it's owner. A cat has self, but not too much reflection on the matter. Nor has a child.

I'm with octelcogopod on this one. Genetic development of the human, combined with culture, foremost written language, determined self reflection. Free will or not, now that's semantics.

Free will is

 

[someGorilla]

You've got it vice-versa. If it were so, there would be no reason for the world to behave in a deterministic manner. You don't think the world is obliged to behave according to our models, do you?

The world behaves the way it does. How we can build effective descriptions of it capable of correct predictions, why determinism works, why even mathematics works, is deep down a total mystery to me - and I think to many.
What I meant here is just that determinism is part of our description of the world. But this is just an epistemological subtlety and I probably didn't express it too well. In any case it's not important for my argument.

You seem to make the typical assumption made multiple times in the past - that what is currently known is all that can ever be known.

What exactly of what I wrote gave you that idea? Just to understand.
Where I wrote "known physical laws" you can just substitute it with "physical laws known in a distant future" or "knowable physical laws" or "physical laws known to an omniscient god" and my point will still hold.

Namely, you have to explain how a non physical entity (the self) can interact with the physical world. This was my point.
I think that if you assume it does interact, then you have two possibilities:
1) it exists, it interacts with the physical world, and this interaction can be studied scientifically and tested. In this case, its existence is no less physical than the existence of quarks. It would make no sense to call it a non physical entity.
2) it exists, it interacts with the physical world, but its existence cannot be probed in any way - I mean in any way consistent with physical research, so introspection doesn't count. If this is the case, its interaction will have to break the normal course of physical events, but this interaction cannot be tested in any way, otherwise we fall back to case 1). So you have that when an electron interacts with a positron you can detect the interaction, but when an electron interacts with a self you can't detect it in any way, even though the electron's behaviour is changed. I don't say this is impossible, but is this what you think?

By the way... you didn't answer the question in my previous post.

[...]

Be it far from me to say I know everything (see above). But what does this has to do with selves being separate entities or not?

 

[Maui]

I wrote a rather lengthy post but the site logged me out on posting and chewed my post. I'll see if i can get a motivation for a more detailed response later today.

What exactly of what I wrote gave you that idea? Just to understand.
Where I wrote "known physical laws" you can just substitute it with "physical laws known in a distant future" or "knowable physical laws" or "physical laws known to an omniscient god" and my point will still hold.

It was implied in your statement that there exist an understanding of the self(the personal experience) in the determinsitic framework, which is false. Science operates on models, some models are pretty far-reaching, some are more limited and some are virtually non-existent. Conscious experience being of the latter type. Sticking to the models we have and avoiding the possibility of flooding the forum with nonsense, we can agree there is no satisfactory resolution to the conscious experience debate(certainly not through scientific models). Furthermore, all our models are deterministic in nature and to demand that there be an explanation of emergent phenomena through deterministic models is a contradiction in terms. There is emergent behavior at all scales, so the phenomenon isn't new or unfamiliar. The question is can there be a model that describes it?

Namely, you have to explain how a non physical entity (the self) can interact with the physical world. This was my point.
I think that if you assume it does interact, then you have two possibilities:
1) it exists, it interacts with the physical world, and this interaction can be studied scientifically and tested. In this case, its existence is no less physical than the existence of quarks. It would make no sense to call it a non physical entity.

Contrary to many people's belief, among the experts in physics there is no agreeable explanation how a physical entity interacts with the physical world, so singling out the question of how an emergent consciousness interacts with the physical is unwarranted and strange.

Be it far from me to say I know everything (see above). But what does this has to do with selves being separate entities or not?

It has everything to do with causality and determinism(possibly has some rather obscure implications for freewill). At one time it was philosophers' role to examine the assumptions and conclusions of physicists, now physicists themselves have become philosophers examing the foundations of their models. Here is a new article in Nature that addresses the same issues i raised yesterday, and while somewhat speculative(the whole field is), their articles are usually peer-reviewed and considered credible:

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v3/n10/full/ncomms2076.html

 

[bohm2]

Contrary to many people's belief, among the experts in physics there is no agreeable explanation how a physical entity interacts with the physical world, so singling out the question of how an emergent consciousness interacts with the physical is unwarranted and strange.

I think a lot of the difficulties it trying to reduce or expain consciousness is this implicit assumption that we have a clear concept of the reduction base itself; that is, we have a clear conception of the "physical" or the "material". The problem is that we don't. So as some have argued it's "not that all reduces to matter, but rather the kind of matter on which the two-substance view is based does not exist."

 

[Maui]

I think a lot of the difficulties it trying to reduce or expain consciousness is this implicit assumption that we have a clear concept of the reduction base itself; that is, we have a clear conception of the "physical" or the "material". The problem is that we don't. So as some have argued it's "not that all reduces to matter, but rather the kind of matter on which the two-substance view is based does not exist."

Agreed. It's weird that when cornered by the multitude of experimental evidence people would accept that space and time are somehow one indivisible entity, but they would viciously oppose the idea space, time, matter and experience can be merged in one whole. Some would even claim to understand(make sense of) the unity of spacetime, but such claims are easily dismissed under closer scrutiny. On the whole however, people are more receptive to change in worldview.

 

[apeiron]

Agreed. It's weird that when cornered by the multitude of experimental evidence people would accept that space and time are somehow one indivisible entity, but they would viciously oppose the idea space, time, matter and experience can be merged in one whole.

The problem here is that people seem quite happy about reducing biology to a material basis, so why in principle can't neurology follow suit? If life is not an immaterial force, why should mind be presumed to be any different?

Yes, different explanatory frameworks are required. So biologists are very interested in the material basis of autonomy - the ability of life to make adaptive choices. Life seems neither determined nor random. Instead is seems very good at making choices (or speaking antithetically, not being indecisive).

Theoretical biologists now have developed definite models of autonomy. For instance -
http://informatics.indiana.edu/rocha/sa.html

So there is no need to collapse everything into one simplified merger. Complexity can be discussed in its own right. As they say, more is different - even if it is also just more.

The classical problem of freewill is people can't see how the mechanical determinism of a Newtonian world can turn into the kind of autonomy exhibited by living and mindful creatures.

But biology actually has specific theories about this now. Another good background paper - http://rs2theory.org/files/134_341_844.pdf

Animals exist in a material world, but control it through symbolic machinery that is independent (for all practical purposes) of these material limitations. So this is why the material world can be determined, and yet life is still truly free to make choices.

 

[Maui]

People would shy away from uniting matter, time and space but does our current best theory of micro and macro scale actually support such a view? No. Though gravity is still not included the theory, QFT and the field ontology is currently the only consistent unified picture of the world.

We seem to have stumbled on a seemingly fundamental determining factor in nature(quite possibly the determining factor of how observable causality arises), yet its physical meaning is quite nonexistent - i am referring to "physicalness" of the quantum field operator.

 

[someGorilla]

It was implied in your statement that there exist an understanding of the self(the personal experience) in the determinsitic framework

No.
You can deduce from what I wrote that there might be a deterministic explanation of human behaviour (I avoid saying "the self") just as much as you can deduce that there might be an explanation in terms of free will of a lead weight's fall.

Furthermore, all our models are deterministic in nature and to demand that there be an explanation of emergent phenomena through deterministic models is a contradiction in terms.

This doesn't make any sense... there are thousands of emergent phenomena explained through basic physics, i.e. deterministic models. I don't know what you mean.


I'm not saying that it's possible to reduce everything to a material basis, as apeiron says. I'm saying that "material basis" doesn't mean anything at all, just as "immaterial" doesn't mean anything at all.

 

[Maui]

No.
This doesn't make any sense... there are thousands of emergent phenomena explained through basic physics, i.e. deterministic models. I don't know what you mean.

Consciousness and conscious experience, that's specifically what we were discussing. I also don't know what you mean by deterministic models explaining consciousness through basic physics(if you include conscious experience in the same group as the other emergent phenomena you referred to).