Is free will a myth?

Earthhorse

I don't see how those questions are relevant to the fact that a new quality arose from parts that do not possess that quality. The assumption of reductionism is that this doesn't happen.

seamus

Earthhorse wrote: »

There is no "missing ingredient" as you put it. The point is that the finished product, the brain, possesses the quality of conciousness whereas none of its constiuent parts do.

I'm not really sure why this is any kind of amazing thing tbh.

I'm using a computer here. It's built of a number of parts which individually, cannot be used as a computer. But when they are put together they possess the quality of being a computer. If we remove any of these parts, it is no longer capable of being a computer.

The same can be said of anything which is constructed of a number of distinct parts - cars, buildings, etc. Constructed they are all capable of things which they are individually incapable of. But they are still just the sum of their parts.

Earthhorse

If you don't know why it's an amazing thing then why bring amazement into the debate? Who ever said it was amazing?

I don't really know how simpler I can make the point. Perhaps an example will suffice.

A table is "just a bunch of atoms". A human is "just a bunch of atoms". What does that tell you about a table? About a human? About the differences between them? Almost nothing. Of course, it will always be correct of almost anything in this universe to say it is "just" a bunch of atoms, or quarks, or electric impulses or whatever else. But that doesn't preclude the possibility of it from possessing other qualities such as colour, taste, texture, conciousness or free-will.

Scanlas The 2nd

Earthhorse wrote: »

If you don't know why it's an amazing thing then why bring amazement into the debate? Who ever said it was amazing?

I don't really know how simpler I can make the point. Perhaps an example will suffice.

A table is "just a bunch of atoms". A human is "just a bunch of atoms". What does that tell you about a table? About a human? About the differences between them? Almost nothing. Of course, it will always be correct of almost anything in this universe to say it is "just" a bunch of atoms, or quarks, or electric impulses or whatever else. But that doesn't preclude the possibility of it from possessing other qualities such as colour, taste, texture, conciousness or free-will.

You are not explaining how we have free will. For free will to exist the laws of our universe woould have to stop working in our body and that clearly isn't the case. IMO we are no more special than a stone. We are more complex, but everything you do and think is the result of physics, chemistry etc... Free will is an illusion.

The qualities of colour, taste and texture are determined by the laws of the the universe too. I don't see your point here.

Dades

Earthhorse wrote: »

A table is "just a bunch of atoms". A human is "just a bunch of atoms". What does that tell you about a table? About a human? About the differences between them? Almost nothing. Of course, it will always be correct of almost anything in this universe to say it is "just" a bunch of atoms, or quarks, or electric impulses or whatever else. But that doesn't preclude the possibility of it from possessing other qualities such as colour, taste, texture, conciousness or free-will.

Hmmm...

Take a lunatic who believes he can fly. If you release him from a height he believes he has the free will to go which ever direction he pleases. Obviously he doesn't, because the laws of the universe which dicate that the sum of the lunatic's parts, and those of the ground will act in a certain way and determines that they are going to meet at a predetermined point in space and time.

Just because the lunatic is "conscious" and believes he has free will does not change the reality that he doesn't, and is just as subject to the laws of the universe as a stone or a whale or a prawn cocktail.

Earthhorse

Scanlas The 2nd wrote: »

You are not explaining how we have free will.

Correct. Nor have I attempted to. I have been pointing out the problem with the reductionist approach.

For free will to exist the laws of our universe woould have to stop working in our body and that clearly isn't the case.

Assuming all laws of the universe are known to us and correctly understood by us can you explain to me, specifically, which ones free will breaks and how it breaks them?

Dades wrote: »

Take a lunatic who believes he can fly. If you release him from a height he believes he has the free will to go which ever direction he pleases. Obviously he doesn't, because the laws of the universe which dicate that the sum of the lunatic's parts, and those of the ground will act in a certain way and determines that they are going to meet at a predetermined point in space and time.

Let's say that instead the lunatic confounds all our expectations and takes flight into the night. What does this say about free will? Nothing. All it would prove is that the lunatic could fly, not whether he chose to fly and whether that choice was predetermined or not.

Scanlas The 2nd

Earthhorse wrote: »

Assuming all laws of the universe are known to us and correctly understood by us can you explain to me, specifically, which ones free will breaks and how it breaks them?

Free will contradicts basic logic because just like rolling a dice, there is only one thing that is going to happen. (lets not get into quantum mechanics as it's not relevant.) The dice will land which ever way it's going to land and that's it. Similarly, a humans movements, thoughts etc are going take place the way they are and that's it, we can't change what we are going to do, I was always going to be writing this sentence right here and now, I feel like I made the choices and I did, but physics made me make these choices. I think you are getting confused because you feel like you can choose to do what you want so you consider that free will, but what you were going to do and think was already predetermined.

Earthhorse

No, I'm not confused. I said in my opening post that the balance of evidence was not in favour of free will.

It'll be interesting to see what we discover when we begin to understand how the brain makes decisions and choices. I think there's a good chance we'll find something new; it might not be free will or anything even as radical as that but I think it'll be something no one ever thought of before.

take everything

I'd imagine free will is an illusion.
Having said that, chaos theory (unpredictability in certain complex systems) was touched on here and i'd think that this might be a "block" on proving that a leads to b leads to c etc. At least i don't see anyone getting past this any time soon. That's possibly moot but still it is one block on "seeing" free will at work at least. So this seems to be a "block on measuring reality"

The other thing mentioned, possibly more relevant and fundamental (Quantum mechanics and how it applies to biological systems- specifically the brain). I'm not sure exactly how this applies to the free will question- but again it seems to be a "block on predicting reality fully" thing to me rather than anything else.
(But even if it is indeterrministic, i don't see how that confers free will/agency on a person. It's not like the person controls the QM inside them- it's the other way round, they're still a slave to the indeterminacy, aren't they).

So (given the limitations above) the first question might be:
Can we ever test if we have free will or not.

In other words are we hopelessly unamenable to true self-examination (including whether we do or do not have free will) because of our complexity and our limitations in measuring that complexity.