The Illusion of Free Will: A Scientific Perspective

[Functor97]

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, and we can never discount a certain event from occurring (such as an electron existing out at Pluto). Now this clearly demolishes the deterministic frame work, but what does it say about free will? This is where i disagree with the standard interpretation made by the likes of Kaku (See here http://bigthink.com/ideas/37862), who claim that this demonstrates we have free will. I agree that an observer would be inclined to state that a "mind" has free will as the observer can only calculate the probability of certain actions occurring thereby negating determinism.
However consider the perspective of the "mind". From its perspective, no matter which course of action it takes, it will be unable to determine the results. Certain probabilities may be calculated, but is it not chance which decides the outcome of the event? The mind cannot be certain of that any action it undertakes will cause a particular event, and thus despite its will, it may not reach the desired result. Is this not a contradiction to the very definition of free will?

On the other hand, if you subscribe to Everett's Many worlds interpretation (this world is the world in which x occurs and not x'), is not determinism left intact, and thus our free will negated?

I am inclined to agree with Arthur Schopenhauer's belief that free will is an illusion, but i am not totally convinced. Compatibalists such as Dennett (see Elbow Room) disagree with my stance, but i believe they are confusing uncertainty from the perspective of an observer and ignoring the uncertainty of the "mind". I cannot find a modern philosopher who agrees with my stance, and this somewhat disturbs me, as i may be missing something crucial. I would like to hear other people's opinion on my stance and their advice for searching for sympathetic philosophical works.

 

[conquest]

Hi,

I'm no philosophy buff, but I do think quantum mechanics is to often used carelessly indiscussions about this matter. In quantum mechanics physicists describe certain concepts like the electron (which is kind of the prime example of a particle) by determining a state or a possible state and then measuring whether this is actually it's state. This state then is quite robust it is the state of the electron (you could even say it is the electron). The difference with the deterministic view is that even once a state has been assigned this doesn't force the same results for the same experiment on an electron in the same state.

So the state of an electron doesn't determine it's behaviour exactly but it does offer the probabilities of certain things happening and via pauli's exclusion principle for instance it also excludes some things from happening. In my view it doesn't pay to use these concepts in talking about free will. The description of a concept like an electron just doesn't have anything to do with free will.

The thing that should be taken away from this is the way of thinking about things. Namely that something can have quite neat and well recorded properties and still not react the same way to the same situation.

 

[chiro]

There is also the idea that the systems that are described in nature are 'pseudo-random' and not actually random.

The idea is that the deterministic nature of things is tied up in systems that are just so complex in the way of a mathematical expression (very complex), or in the number of variables involved, or a combination of both.

Given that most people have problems when we talk about systems that go over say five variables, I wouldn't be at the least surprised if the pseudo-random argument was the case.

 

[Pythagorean]

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.

 

[Functor97]

Hi,

I'm no philosophy buff, but I do think quantum mechanics is to often used carelessly indiscussions about this matter. In quantum mechanics physicists describe certain concepts like the electron (which is kind of the prime example of a particle) by determining a state or a possible state and then measuring whether this is actually it's state. This state then is quite robust it is the state of the electron (you could even say it is the electron). The difference with the deterministic view is that even once a state has been assigned this doesn't force the same results for the same experiment on an electron in the same state.

So the state of an electron doesn't determine it's behaviour exactly but it does offer the probabilities of certain things happening and via pauli's exclusion principle for instance it also excludes some things from happening. In my view it doesn't pay to use these concepts in talking about free will. The description of a concept like an electron just doesn't have anything to do with free will.

The thing that should be taken away from this is the way of thinking about things. Namely that something can have quite neat and well recorded properties and still not react the same way to the same situation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will_theorem I think the nature of quantum mechanics is very important when discussing this subject. If nature is deterministic then we must understand the basic physical laws, which are quantum in nature in order to determine outcomes.

 

[Pythagorean]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will_theorem I think the nature of quantum mechanics is very important when discussing this subject. If nature is deterministic then we must understand the basic physical laws, which are quantum in nature in order to determine outcomes.

QM isn't needed to reproduce the action of neurons that we attribute to behavior. The system is treated classically and most arguments for quantum consciousness aren't taken seriously by the community. What you have linked here is the opposite point... a flavor of panpsychism it appears: concluding that particles must have free-will... but i'ts predicated on humans having free-will... which hasn't been shown yet. In fact, most experiments are interpreted to show the opposite.

 

[conquest]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will_theorem I think the nature of quantum mechanics is very important when discussing this subject. If nature is deterministic then we must understand the basic physical laws, which are quantum in nature in order to determine outcomes.

The introduction to this wikipedia entry reads:

The free will theorem of John H. Conway and Simon B. Kochen states that, if we have a certain amount of "free will", then, subject to certain assumptions, so must some elementary particles

This seems to me to absolute hogwash then. It is not hard to dispute the very existence of elementary particles other than in the way of a concept used by scientists to model certain situation. I only read the wikipedia article but it seems like they choose ´free will' to mean that the outcome is not predetermined. This seems to follow from quantum mechanics pretty easily. But the way it is presented there it seems to me to be only about elementary partciles and thus about the domain where quantum mechanics of quantum field theory is valid.

If you model a certain theory by using another theory you can't just blindly assume it works. Quantum mechanics was partly invented because the model that we had for orbiting planets didn't seem to work for orbiting electrons. An example of this fact.
If you use quantum mechanics to model a theory of free will you shouldn't use quantum mechanics to prove it, of course the model for your theory agrees with it!

 

[chiro]

Also one should realize that its not going to do justice to the problem to think in terms of purely isolated cases or in terms of segmentation.

There may certainly be ways of using statistical analysis to describe mean behaviours and even "tail" behaviours but until we start at looking these things in more wholistic way, we are bound to miss important interactions that will give us the most valuable hints.

Looking at a reduced problem is useful as its important to build up intuition so I'm not saying to not bother with understanding building blocks like say an electron or a neuron or whatever, but if we keep taking the approach of only segmentation or divide and conquer, then again many important effects will swept by the wayside.

 

[apeiron]

I only read the wikipedia article but it seems like they choose ´free will' to mean that the outcome is not predetermined. This seems to follow from quantum mechanics pretty easily. But the way it is presented there it seems to me to be only about elementary partciles and thus about the domain where quantum mechanics of quantum field theory is valid.

There is an interesting parallel in that the choices being made with both QM and the brain are post-determined, not pre-determined. The constraints which determine the action lie in the future rather than the past. Well, there are constraints in both directions, but the "freedom" concerns what has not yet happened.

In QM, this gives you the retrocausal view of the transactional interpretation.

And with humans, it boils down to our ability to anticipate. We can imagine courses of action and predict the results of different choices. So we are constrained by future expected consequences rather than - in some direct fashion - a past history of events.

Human freewill is like QM freewill in that the past does not completely constrain a systems degrees of freedom, further information is needed that comes from the future of the system. But while there is a causal parallel, the source of the brain's freewill has nothing to do with QM's indeterminism. In QM, the information would actually have to come from the future, whereas brains can only imagine their futures.

 

[I_am_learning]

How can you prove there is a free will? I believe in Determinism.

oh! wait. Shall I drink water on my desk, now. I'm feeling thirsty. I can either drink and clear my thirst or keep being thirsty. Oh! I can choose. I have free will.
Or maybe, what I will do is already determined by the configuration of neurons in my brain and the ambient temp/humidity etc... etc. This is just so confusing.
I quit, I can't answer. :)

 

[Maui]

QM isn't needed to reproduce the action of neurons that we attribute to behavior. The system is treated classically and most arguments for quantum consciousness aren't taken seriously by the community. What you have linked here is the opposite point... a flavor of panpsychism it appears: concluding that particles must have free-will... but i'ts predicated on humans having free-will... which hasn't been shown yet. In fact, most experiments are interpreted to show the opposite.

The universe(reality) is creative :)

I am beginning to consider this possibility that arises from strong determinism

 

[Maui]

How can you prove there is a free will? I believe in Determinism.

oh! wait. Shall I drink water on my desk, now. I'm feeling thirsty. I can either drink and clear my thirst or keep being thirsty. Oh! I can choose. I have free will.
Or maybe, what I will do is already determined by the configuration of neurons in my brain and the ambient temp/humidity etc... etc. This is just so confusing.
I quit, I can't answer. :)

The claim is that your choice not to drink water was made at least 13.7 billion years ago.

 

[TGlad]

I don't see what the philosophical problem is with free will...
Whether the microscopic world is deterministic or stochastic, either way it doesn't have free will. This should be uncontroversial.
But animals in the macroscopic world do have free will. They do by definition of the words free and will. If you argue that animals don't have free will then you are changing the meaning of the phrase free will.
Why is it so hard to understand that a concept can exist at the macroscopic scale despite not existing at microscopic scales? This emergence happens all the time...
wetness, elasticity, probably gravity, well anything really.

The argument that free will doesn't exist because the underlying laws are deterministic or stochastic is about as sophisticated as claiming chocolate doesn't exist because there are no chocolate atoms, or that happiness doesn't exist because it can't be seen in the laws of physics.

 

[Pythagorean]

I don't see what the philosophical problem is with free will...

Free will would evade cause and effect, undermining strong determinism. If an organism can act independent of how it's acted upon, it's evading cause and effect.

In a completely stochastic universe, there's no cause and effect, so free will would be useless; you wouldn't be able to make anything happen, things just happen by chance, not because you caused them to happen by will (it would only appear that way).

So at these two extreme ends, free will is paradoxical.

Anyway, much of our behavior, independent of philosophical arguments, is empirically shown to be deterministic in the short-term; even when we feel that we are being spontaneous. Long-term is not as easy to test.

 

[apeiron]

So at these two extreme ends, free will is paradoxical.

Yes, they may stand as limits on what we conceive as the possible. But why can't freewill (which would better be called intelligent choice of course) then emerge as part of the actual complexity of the world?

I mean why does strong determinism have to be the case? And utter indeterminacy the only alternative?

The very fact you can imagine such a thesis and its anti-thesis already opens up the further possibility of their higher-order synthesis. It's basic Hegelian logic

 

[Pythagorean]

Right; my post was meant to be a pedagogical reply to Tglad's question, thus the qualifiers. I make no arguments about what the universe is; I just describe the philosophical foundations of the question.

 

[TGlad]

For me, the root of the problem is that people think of 'does free will exist' as a boolean question, rather appreciating that existence of a concept can vary with the level of detail:

At a coarse detail level, e.g. in everyday conversation, referring to normal situations, using the colloquial definition of free will, we can say that people are able to make choices independently of others, therefore free will does exist at this level, as most people understand the term.
At a fine detail level, e.g. considering interaction of atoms or the basic laws of physics, then free will clearly doesn't exist.

So it is a high level property. Like wetness, or elasticity or sentience, or roughness etc etc.

 

[apeiron]

Right; my post was meant to be a pedagogical reply to Tglad's question, thus the qualifiers. I make no arguments about what the universe is; I just describe the philosophical foundations of the question.

Except there was nothing in TGlad's post to suggest he did not get the basic claim.

Whereas you seem to say that determinism is an issue to do with "external" cause and effect, when the conventional view is that the difficulty lies with the workings of the brain/mind. And then you equate the stochastic to some kind of total lack of controllability, when most would think that probability is a measure of what actually is predictable.

 

[ThomasT]

Free will, as I think it's usually used, refers to our volitional behavior -- an observation, not an assumption or, necessarily, an illusion. Taken in that sense, free will is compatible with the assumption that our universe is evolving deterministically in accordance with fundamental dynamical laws. So, if free will is taken to refer to our volitional behavior, then there's no problem.

But if free will is taken to mean that we could have done otherwise, then, wrt that connotation, free will refers to an assumption that implies nondeterminism ... and sets up an, imo, unsolvable problem. That is, we're then back to pondering the apparently unanswerable question of whether our universe is evolving deterministically or not (though, imo, determinism is the more reasonable assumption).

 

[Helicobacter]

i always found it facinating how deep feelings are encoded and how the "i am" irreducible (at least in the psychological sense) consciousness part is encoded in matter...its pretty amazing

 

[Pythagorean]

Except there was nothing in TGlad's post to suggest he did not get the basic claim.

Whereas you seem to say that determinism is an issue to do with "external" cause and effect, when the conventional view is that the difficulty lies with the workings of the brain/mind. And then you equate the stochastic to some kind of total lack of controllability, when most would think that probability is a measure of what actually is predictable.

Not surprisingly, you're putting words in my post that aren't there in effort to stir up controversy that is equally vacant.

External/internal can be taken as one system.

 

[chiro]

Also probability can sometimes help define a system in very specific ways.

Anything that minimizes entropy is a good thing. In a completely deterministic system, you would be able to get an exhaustable number of conditional entropies that had a zero value.

Even if you can't get the above, if you ended up getting a process that had significantly lower entropy than a maximum value, that still gives a lot better constraints for that process than you would get if you just assumed "anything can happen".

 

[Pythagorean]

While were at it, let's destroy the fallacy that taking a probability implies a nondeterministic system. I use probability measures on my deterministic models regularly.

 

[chiro]

While were at it, let's destroy the fallacy that taking a probability implies a nondeterministic system. I use probability measures on my deterministic models regularly.

Haha I don't know if people would go that far ;)

The thing is that our pattern matching ability, even with computers is pretty bad. Computers with the right algorithms and the right horsepower can do wonders, but the sad truth is that we are geared to make sense of the world and unfortunately we are not that good at being 'random' ourselves.

Its hard enough for us to see simple deterministic processes like linear recurrence relations let alone something resembling a stock price, natural scientific system or something similar.

 

[ThomasT]

While were at it, let's destroy the fallacy that taking a probability implies a nondeterministic system.

I agree. Probabilistic and random experimental results, accidents, chance, etc. are all compatible with the assumption of determinism.

 

[ThomasT]

It should be clear that wrt the view expressed in post #19 that free will can't be said to be an illusion. That is, free will either refers to observations about choice making behavior which are compatible with determinism, or free will refers to an assumption that implies nondeterminism (which is effectively the same as assuming nondeterminism).

 

[apeiron]

Free will would evade cause and effect, undermining strong determinism. If an organism can act independent of how it's acted upon, it's evading cause and effect.

The way you write makes it sound as though you think it is the actions of the world upon the organism, rather than the actions that constitute the organism, which are what people are worried about. Or are you perhaps making some dualistic argument where the question is whether the mind can somehow evade even the causality of its own brain activity?

Either way, neither of these would be standard ways of framing the "paradox" of Newtonian mechanical determinism.

In a completely stochastic universe, there's no cause and effect, so free will would be useless; you wouldn't be able to make anything happen, things just happen by chance, not because you caused them to happen by will (it would only appear that way).

Again, your meaning is murky here. If it appears that you are in fact making things happen (such as choosing to move off at a green light, or perhaps instead run a red), then are you really claiming that a standard position in freewill arguments is that this is some kind of elaborate stochastic illusion, a trick the universe is playing on you?

Randomness is more usually invoked in the sense of neural noise or other tiny uncontrolled forces that may have biased some decision that you thought "you" were making. An element of chance deep down in the works would be enough to evade strict mechanical determinism.

 

[Pythagorean]

The way you write makes it sound as though you think it is the actions of the world upon the organism, rather than the actions that constitute the organism, which are what people are worried about. Or are you perhaps making some dualistic argument where the question is whether the mind can somehow evade even the causality of its own brain activity?

Either way, neither of these would be standard ways of framing the "paradox" of Newtonian mechanical determinism.

I am talking about modeling the universe as one N-dimensional super-particle. Every Newtonian particle (whether it's part of what constitutes an organism or not) would have a determined path given by the initial conditions at the beginning of the macroscopic universe.

This is where Laplace's demon arises.

Again, your meaning is murky here. If it appears that you are in fact making things happen (such as choosing to move off at a green light, or perhaps instead run a red), then are you really claiming that a standard position in freewill arguments is that this is some kind of elaborate stochastic illusion, a trick the universe is playing on you?

Randomness is more usually invoked in the sense of neural noise or other tiny uncontrolled forces that may have biased some decision that you thought "you" were making. An element of chance deep down in the works would be enough to evade strict mechanical determinism.

Neural noise is not really random at all though in the non-determinism sense. If you drop a handful of tictacs, they're going to fall different every time and you can add a noise term to model this. What's really happening, of course, is chaos: different initial conditions every time and a high-sensitivity to those differences (even though the eye/hand can't detect the difference in initial conditions).

I was talking about a purely stochastic universe, of course. So if you have a grid of squared and each square has a 50/50 chance to be black or white, you'll usually see noise; but if you wait long enough, patterns and shapes will eventually appear and you can make laws to describe the patterns for a short time. Human existence could simply be a short time in a stochastic universe where patterns just seem to line up.

Of course, these are two ideals generated by the human mind to make sense of the universe and probably neither are true (but they aren't proven wrong, of course) but if you begin to mix them just a little bit, things become too complicated to sum up in a single internet thread. Several whole branches of science have to develop and communicate with each other over a long period of time to even begin to establish a framework in which to test such questions. Whole libraries stacked with volumes of information go into explaining any mixture of these two extremes.

That is the nature of complexity: events can be unpredictable independent of whether they are deterministic or not.

 

[Johninch]

Incompatibilism states that Free Will and Determinism cannot co-exist, and i agree with this stance.

May I as a beginner in philosophy offer my first thoughts?

Our earthly environment is one of a range of possible outcomes in the universe and I assume that it is unique. The same applies to my personal inheritance. Within these constraints and recognising the application of chaos theory, I exercise my free will. The environment and other people push me in certain directions, so I have to weigh up the consequences when I exercise my free will. I often say, I have to do this or that, but it's not true, particularly when taking risks. I can take this risk or that risk.

If the dog had not run across the road at that moment, I would not now be choosing a new car. That I replace my ruined car in these circumstances is only partly predetermined, as it is influenced by my previous choices of life style etc. I have preferences regarding the model, year, price, etc. but when I go searching on the internet, I can only find what happens to be on offer and I may not get that car because someone else has already bought it, etc. So I am free to exercise my will, but I can't determine the result. That's the same deal for the whole universe and every life form. The result is predermination within certain ranges, but within those ranges there is uncertainty.

My conclusion is that both determinism and free will are present in uncertain and variable proportions. It's not one or the other. Furthermore I would like to point out that our free will is exclusively future orientated. We try to live in the present, but all of our choices refer to future imagined scenarios, which do not actually exist.
.
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[ThomasT]

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.

Free will, in one sense, means that, given a certain decision/action wrt certain conditions, you could have chosen/done other that what you chose/did. Free will in that sense is clearly incompatible with the assumption of determinsim. In another sense, free will refers to the fact that your decisions/actions affect the course of events -- no more, no less. Free will in that sense is compatible with determinism.

Where i disagree is with the empirical nature of our reality ...

That's a somewhat curious statement, given the definition of the word 'empirical'.

Quantum mechanics has demonstrated that our universe is (at least at the quantum scale in-deterministic).

That's incorrect.

In the standard Copenhagen interpretation we must assign probabilities to certain events, and we can never discount a certain event from occurring (such as an electron existing out at Pluto). Now this clearly demolishes the deterministic frame work ...

Or, it's evidence of our ignorance. Take your pick.

... but what does it say about free will?

Nothing, as far as I can tell.

... the observer can only calculate the probability of certain actions occurring thereby negating determinism.

This doesn't negate the assumption of determinism. It merely supports the assumption of our relative ignorance wrt the deep reality of things. At least that's one way of looking at it.

... is it not chance which decides the outcome of the event?

Chance doesn't determine anything. Chance is a word that refers to our inability to make precise predictions.

The mind cannot be certain of that any action it undertakes will cause a particular event, and thus despite its will, it may not reach the desired result. Is this not a contradiction to the very definition of free will?

If your state of mind is a contributing factor wrt subsequent actions, then no.

On the other hand, if you subscribe to Everett's Many worlds interpretation (this world is the world in which x occurs and not x'), is not determinism left intact, and thus our free will negated?

Everett's relative state interpretation of quantum theory has nothing to do with free will. Anyway, this interpretation is, afaik, largely disregarded.

I am inclined to agree with Arthur Schopenhauer's belief that free will is an illusion, but i am not totally convinced.

Assuming a certain definition of free will, the one that's compatible with determinism, it's not an illusion, ie., it has subjective referents which are compatible with observed, objective referents. Eg., you made a decision to act in a certain way, and you acted in that way.

Assuming a certain other definition of free will, the one that says you could have chosen/acted differently than you did, then this is an unanswerable question. However, there's no particular reason to assume that you could have chosen/acted other that you did, and it amounts to assuming that the world is evolving indeterministically. And the problem with that assumption is that observations strongly suggest that the world is evolving deterministically.