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.