Freedom of the will

Húrin

Simple question: do you believe in free will?

Hivemind187

Over all? No, as a concept it is fundamentally flawed since we can only react to stimuli based on the interaction of electricity and chemicals in our brains with the neurons that make up its matter. These are shaped by genetics and environment.

However, do I "feel" like I have free will and the ability to decide and choose things for myself? Yes. Quite happy in that particular illusion thank you

liah

This a trick question?

I believe we have the ability to choose what we want to do with our lives, yes. Things we do that go against societal norms are punishable but it doesn't mean we can't do them. Thus, we have free will.

--amadeus--

Ever get the feeling someone is trying to set you up for a punchline?

But yes I believe I have "free will". In teh sanctity of my head I can think whatever I choose. However my freedom of action is curtailed by my sense of decency, morality and public responsibility (not to mention the laws of the land and the fact that Angeline Jolie lives a long way away and might not fancy me in real life )

Calibos

I agree with HiveMind. In fact just the other day I think I became concious of something I had only read about. How your brain has made a decision to move your body for example before you are concious of deciding to move your body. ie. I was already in the process of swinging my leg off the couch when I decided to get up of the couch Free Will me @rse

Zillah

It is a non-term, so no. Any definition falls to pieces under the slightest scrutiny.

Hence why I believe in a practical approach to morality and law. If I as a judge punished someone for breaking the law I would do it as a deterrent for future transgressions, and as an example to others who may be considering breaking the law, not because they deserve it in some abstract sense. It's also why I never indulge in the visceral reactions others often do when they encounter a story of a rapist or pedophile (castrate them/burn them to death etc). I'm not saying that terrible punishments should not be meted out, but for different reasons.

Stercus Accidit

Me? No.

I'll be impressed if there is even some element of random chance in how we react to stimuli due to the theory of random events at quantum level.

But then again, try discussing quantum theory with regard to a philosophical question and you have exceeded my ability to give you an all encompassing answer!

Yes, I do.

But, in saying that, I feel like I'm after walking into some sort of a trap...

Edit: People are giving pretty specific definitions of what they consider to be free will; I'll try and clarify my stance. On a simplistic level, do I believe essentially in free will (i.e. where I can determine what I want to do, and my determining to do that is not pre-determined consciously in any sense)? Yes, I do. But on a deeper level, is it my own conscious thought sparking an action, or is my conscious-self being fooled into believing that it has free will by my subconscious? I guess I can never know.

Zillah

I never got the random universe argument. If it turns out that the universe is random then your actions are ultimately determined randomly, meaning there's still no such thing as free will.

liah

Zillah wrote: »

I never got the random universe argument. If it turns out that the universe is random then your actions are ultimately determined randomly, meaning there's still no such thing as free will.

Never thought about that or Stercus' comment. Gives me something to mull over.

5uspect

I recently read Daniel Dennett's Freedom Evolves.
In it he argues that Free Will does indeed exist. He draws the differene between inevitability and determinism so that while we're deterministic machines our actions are not inevitable.

He pretty much rejects ideas about quantum randomness influencing our decision making as being non starters.

I'm going to have to read it again tho as I didn't have time to study it properly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eS5Q-9uNCLU

Zillah

5uspect wrote: »

I recently read Daniel Dennett's Freedom Evolves.
In it he argues that Free Will does indeed exist. He draws the differene between inevibility and determinism so that while we're deterministic machines our actions are not inevible.

He pretty much rejects ideas about quantum randomness influencing our decision making as being non starters.

I'm going to have to read it again tho as I didn't have time to study it properly.

I suppose I'll just read the book rather than expect you to defend his thesis, but suffice to say I remain sceptical.

Also, inevitable.

5uspect

Zillah wrote: »

I suppose I'll just read the book rather than expect you to defend his thesis, but suffice to say I remain sceptical.

I'm not sure I understand him myself so I won't try.

Also, inevitable.

D'oh.

Húrin

By free will I mean that we have the ability to choose what to do. This is in contrast to the belief that all our actions are determined by what has happened to us before, and our DNA.

In recent times, the idea has come under increasingly robust criticism. And yet, morality and justice both seem to collapse as useful concepts without it.

I myself see things both ways to a degree. I think that mostly we have a choice about what we do. But not a lot of it.

liah wrote: »

This a trick question?

No. Despite not being an atheist, I am not a manipulative swine.

Zillah

Húrin wrote: »

By free will I mean that we have the ability to choose what to do. This is in contrast to the belief that all our actions are determined by what has happened to us before, and our DNA.

And how do you define "choose"? Let me present a hypothetical conversation to elucidate the problems I have with the notion:

Me: So, how do you define what freewill is?
Bob: Freewill is our ability to choose our actions.
Me: Ok, well if I were to dose someone with a drug that caused them to become very violent, and they killed someone, did they act with their free will?
Bob: No of course not, they were under the influence of a drug.
Me: Ok, and what if someone had an illness, like a brain tumor or glandular problem that caused them to act violently and harm others, are they acting under their freewill?
Bob: No, because they're under the influence of an illness.
Me: Right. So what if they had this illness since birth and they had always acted this way and asserted that it was just who they are?
Bob: Hmm, I don't know, that's a tricky one Zillah you clever handsome man. But no, I'd say they're still not acting under their free will.
Me: Er, ok. Well, what if someone had the exact same influence as the aforementioned drug or illness, but it was just the way their brain came out in the genetic lottery?
Bob: Hmm, I don't know. Maybe that is their free will then.
Me: But, the chemical effect is the exact same it just has a slightly different source, why does that matter?
Bob: Yeah I have no idea.
Me: And while we're on the matter, let's take a less extreme example. Let's say that someone gets dosed with a drug that, in a tiny way makes someone slightly more confident, and so they make the decision to go bungie jumping whereas they would not have otherwise. Further more, let's continue the comparison and say there is another guy who has some genetic trait or event in his past that has the exact same effect of making him that tiny bit more confident, which of them is acting or not acting under their freewill?
Bob: I don't want to talk about this any more. Want to go get some icecream?
Me: Sure, my body wants some sugar, but I'd probably have said no otherwise. Or maybe I'd say yes to be social because humans have an evolutionary bias towards community.


Suffice to say, I find it a uselessly nebulous concept. Thoughts and decisions are outputs of the brain, outputs that result from a combination of processes and inputs, and those processes and inputs always have a source that is outside the person, fed to them through their senses, memories and genetics.

I can't think of any other way to look at it that makes the slightest bit of sense.

In recent times, the idea has come under increasingly robust criticism. And yet, morality and justice both seem to collapse as useful concepts without it.

I thought I had addressed that quite well in my first post, no?

Overblood

Húrin wrote: »

Simple question: do you believe in free will?

Of course. Is there any reason why I should not?

Hivemind187

Húrin wrote: »

No. Despite not being an atheist, I am not a manipulative swine.

... what was that about pre-conceptions and prejudices?

Sam Vimes

It exists to the extent that there are some things we have control over and some we don't. A lot of our thought processes are defined by our parents and peers and we follow them subconsciously, never questioning whether what we're saying/doing is our own beliefs or a "programmed response".

But overall, yes it does. We aren't completely defined by our environment. We have our own consciousness and an ability to overrule our social programming with a lot of effort


Why do you ask?

bnt

If I may use a computer analogy: computers and operating systems have random number generators, but it's actually hard to make them random, and they're more accurately called pseudo-random number generators. It's possible to analyse just how random they are, and some have failed that test spectacularly, leading to security flaws that have been hacked. Some "hard" generators use external input, such as a radio antenna picking up background noise, to increase the "entropy" of the generated numbers.

The reason for the analogy is this: I know about the possibility of quantum randomness at the subatomic level, but at our "macroscopic" level, I have a hard time believing anything is random. We confuse "extremely complicated" for random, for various reasons. Perhaps we can't see the input, or there may be delays between input and output. The famous "chaos theory" example of a butterfly flapping its wings and causing a hurricane somewhere else, later, is not an example of randomness, since if you could perfectly replicate all the conditions in place, throughout the whole process, you could replicate the result. (It is highly sensitive to initial conditions, but still deterministic.) It might be impossible to actually do that, due to entropy, or just because it would be far too complex for us, but (again) we should avoid conflating that with inherent randomness.

So, I think similar things happen in our brains. We might not understand exactly why we make the decisions we do, but that doesn't mean that it's random. Something from our past may be a factor, forgotten to our short-term memory, but it's there, as any Freudian psychoanalyst will tell you. I'm not ruling out the possibility of quantum effects in the operation of our brains, but if they had much effect, I would expect our decisions to be more random than they are. Also, that would not explain the wide range of decision-making processes we encounter in people, nor the variations we see in intelligence and the quality of our decisions.

What does this mean for free will? I don't see it. We make decisions, and think we have control, but do we? Others have already mentioned the experiments which appear to show that, when faced with an even choice, we act first then rationalise our decisions afterwards. My take: even when we think we are thinking independently, actively making a choice, even the "weightings" we apply to various factors are the product of our particular brains, differing between people, but still neither random nor under our control. Even when we decide to "use free will" and make a choice, that meta-decision had to come from somewhere.

So, I don't see free will in people at all. As with e.g. the weather, I see a lot of extremely complex processes and factors that are currently beyond any human's ability to fully comprehend, but that does not mean that they are random, or subject to some "supernatural" form of external control or guidance. As with evolution, there are gaps in our knowledge, but we ought to be very careful about how we fill those gaps.

Joe1919

bnt wrote: »

We make decisions, and think we have control, but do we? Others have already mentioned the experiments which appear to show that, when faced with an even choice, we act first then rationalise our decisions afterwards..

Is the mind a unity? Can the mind operate without consciousness, in a zombie auto-pilot state. I think we need to distinguish between intuitive non-conscious fast decisions and conscious deliberate slow decisions. Many decisions and skills, such as driving and typing or playing a musical instrument become intuitive through pratice.We internalise, we devolop subconscious 'machine code sub-routines' to handle certain jobs and so many of our decisions are made instantly and are really only pre-judgements (prejudices).

We deliberate afterwards about our decisions and 'fine tune' our intuitive system and our prejudices. In this sense, we make 'moral corrections' and in this sense, our consciousness (which is a 'function' of the brain) has some control.

In this sense, if we want to use a computer analogy, our consciousness is a high-level 'executive type' process that contains all the slowness and inefficency of a high level 'language' but it has the ability to convert repetitive 'jobs' into a lower level subconscious faster code.

Anyhow, personally I think free will is just another word for self-determination (compatibilism) and the debate is really about what is the 'self'.

togster

Joe1919 wrote: »

the debate is really about what is the 'self'.

So true. What is the self? Is it the mind and it's thought processes? Are we our minds? If we are our minds, then free will can only be possible through control of our minds at the deepest sub-concious level imo. It's all about definitions. If free will is the concious decision to do anything (thought included) then yes it exsists. Many people may think they have free will, but how many of us react instictively to a song on the radio that we may have heard before? That is pre-programming and hardly free will as your mind has governed the emotion attached to the song via a set of parameters determined from the past.

Goduznt Xzst

My opinions on this are as follows. Free will does not exist, there is a common misunderstanding that equates causal physicality and events to causal mentality, when the supervenience of mentality is forgotten, in that it is determinist.

The issue here is that when you reduce the human to merely the freedom of events they create, then wherein is the respect for the thought, rationality and intellect of the individual. If causal mentality is merely the product of determinism then wherein lies the worth of the human? Wherein lies morality and ethics?

Free will does not exist, but I believe as a construct, humans need to believe it does.

Flamed Diving

Ah, false dichotomies. Gotta love em...

Goduznt Xzst

Flamed Diving wrote: »

Ah, false dichotomies. Gotta love em...

Well, yes of course there probably is the mysterious prize behind door number 3 but I have no idea what that is. If you accept the specious nature of morality, then you are left with the dilemma of forming a new morality that accounts for the non-existence of free will. I don't know what that would look like frankly, a better society than this one will have to work that out.

Although I think it will be a long time before the masses are woken up to the reality of their free will. To do so is akin to sticking ones hand into a bee hive when one is not only allergic to bee stings but also honey.

Flamed Diving

Goduznt Xzst wrote: »

Well, yes of course there probably is the mysterious prize behind door number 3 but I have no idea what that is. If you accept the specious nature of morality, then you are left with the dilemma of forming a new morality that accounts for the non-existence of free will. I don't know what that would look like frankly, a better society than this one will have to work that out.

Although I think it will be a long time before the masses are woken up to the reality of their free will. To do so is akin to sticking ones hand into a bee hive when one is not only allergic to bee stings but also honey.

Nonsense alert.

Joe1919

togster wrote: »

So true. What is the self? Is it the mind and it's thought processes? Are we our minds? If we are our minds, then free will can only be possible through control of our minds at the deepest sub-concious level imo. It's all about definitions. If free will is the concious decision to do anything (thought included) then yes it exsists. Many people may think they have free will, but how many of us react instictively to a song on the radio that we may have heard before? That is pre-programming and hardly free will as your mind has governed the emotion attached to the song via a set of parameters determined from the past.

I'm inclined to take the view that 'consciousness' or as you say 'thought processes' or our 'awareness' or our 'self-consciousnesses' are in many ways similar and make up the 'self'..
There are also in a sense 'mind processes' that we are unaware of and hence this gives us a sort of false dualistic view that these are different than our conscious 'self' and is not part of the body as such and in some way can be detached. (IMO)
Our 'self' is (IMO) a combination of our natural dispositions and our enviorment, our experiences and memory, our habits and prejudices(pre-judgements) and in these that determine our choices and our freedom.
Properly understood then, freedom is when we can consciously determine the outcome and in this way, free will and determinism can be said to be compatible with one another.

Tim Robbins

Húrin wrote: »

Simple question: do you believe in free will?

Despite what some Theologians think, free will has nothing to do with the God question.

We don't need a creator to have free will. If we do, then God also needs a creator to have free will.

MrPudding

Zillah wrote: »

Suffice to say, I find it a uselessly nebulous concept. Thoughts and decisions are outputs of the brain, outputs that result from a combination of processes and inputs, and those processes and inputs always have a source that is outside the person, fed to them through their senses, memories and genetics.

Like bnt I would like to use a computer type analogy.

Following Zillah’s logic it can be argued that we do not have free will. But I also think that at the level we work at, on a day to day basis, we kind of do. It is a bit like storage virtualization in computers. At the lowest level you have loads of individual disks, above that you have logical constructs created and managed at the array level, above that you have volumes or LUNs, again created and managed at the array level, then you have disks on the server and then partitions in the operating system. What the user sees at the OS level is very different to what is physically going on at the hardware level. But the user does not care and is not interested in what is actually going on. He asked for a 72gb drive and by geek he got one. He does not care that his 72GB “drive” is actually comprised of small chunks of dozens and dozens of much larger physical drives.

I personally think that free will is a little like that. Most people simply don’t know or think about what is going on below the covers. They want to do something and do it. It feels like they chose all by themselves. They care not that their actions may simply be programming built up over thousands and thousands of years.

I think Zillah’s explanation is very interesting and very possibly a good model for what goes on, but I am still happy with the perception of free will that I have on a day to day basis. I know that deep down through all the layers of virtualization I possibly have little choice over what I do, but I am happy to have the perception that I have the choice, and more importantly, I am happy to take responsibility for my actions as if I was completely free to act as I choose.

MrP

Sam Vimes

Tim Robbins wrote: »

Despite what some Theologians think, free will has nothing to do with the God question.

We don't need a creator to have free will

Do people actually say that? What do they base that claim on? I don't see how one has anything to do with the other. If anything, having your life guided by an omnipotent being eliminates free will

Goduznt Xzst

Flamed Diving wrote: »

Nonsense alert.

What don't you understand. I'll try and explain it to you.

Perhaps there is some confusion. When you said "false dichotomy's" of what where you referring.

togster

Joe1919 wrote: »

I'm inclined to take the view that 'consciousness' or as you say 'thought processes' or our 'awareness' or our 'self-consciousnesses' are in many ways similar and make up the 'self'..

I believe our minds are our tools and as such we should use it in a careful, logical and clear way.

Joe1919 wrote: »

There are also in a sense 'mind processes' that we are unaware of

How can they happen if we are unaware of them or do you mean they are automatic? But automatic of what?

Joe1919 wrote: »

There are also in a sense 'mind processes' that we are unaware of and hence this gives us a sort of false dualistic view that these are different than our conscious 'self' and is not part of the body as such and in some way can be detached. (IMO)

I don't think they are seperate of our "self". I think that we are aware of them, but can't see/ or realise them.

Joe1919 wrote: »

that these are different than our conscious 'self' and is not part of the body as such and in some way can be detached. (IMO)

How can we detach from them when they happen in our body? I believe that as humans we have the ability to be "aware" of everything.

Joe1919 wrote: »

Our 'self' is (IMO) a combination of our natural dispositions

I agree.

Joe1919 wrote: »

our enviorment, our experiences and memory, our habits and prejudices(pre-judgements) and in these that determine our choices and our freedom.

It is these that determine how we behave. But that is not who we really are.

You are correct it is these who determine our choices. And that's hardly conducive to survival, is it? Effectively you are saying that we are robots? I mean we have the parameters now!

If these traits are who we are, then we are controlled by them. Why should what prejudice i have, affeact the way I behave in a given circumstance?

Joe1919 wrote: »

our choices and our freedom.

What freedom?