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Where Does Free Will End...or, is that Begin?

MoSurveyor said:
Quantum effects only allow for randomness, not free will. In fact, that's the only issue I have with Honest Joe's post above. Not everything little thing is deterministic because there are (quantum) random events that can on occasion have macroscopic effects.
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We're not even sure that quantum randomness is really random or if it isn't just the same old thing we usually call random in statistics.
 
calamity said:
I'm not trying to excuse all pedophiles. I'm only saying this particular person with a brain tumor had no free will.
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Then you have just acknowledged the existence of free will and are simply discussing what factors may inhibit it.
 
MoSurveyor said:
"Free will", as it is commonly used, is an illusion. It's been shown that conscious recognition of making a decision lags behind actions taken because of that decision.
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Yeah. I read about that recently. It's amazing, IMO.
 
Fletch said:
Then you have just acknowledged the existence of free will and are simply discussing what factors may inhibit it.
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No. I am acknowledging that this particular person with a brain tumor had no free will. Whether or not other pedophiles have it is still open for debate.

A serial killer, for instance, follows so many "signature" patterns during his act of violence that they must be unconscious actions, meaning it is not likely that he is in complete control of his behavior. Nonetheless, the man cannot be cured and thus needs to be exterminated or otherwise removed from potential victims when caught.

The brain tumor found on the child molester can be removed. And, once the affliction is cured, he will no longer exhibit such behavior.
 
Fletch said:
Then you have just acknowledged the existence of free will and are simply discussing what factors may inhibit it.
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"Influence" is a better word here than inhibit, I think. Some people simply cannot fight "the demons" in their heads. Others are able to do so. What we know about serious child abusers is that they most often come from abusive homes themselves. Yet all people abused as children don't become abusers. A pedophile, perhaps, will always be a pedophile. Whether or not he chooses to act upon it is an exercise of his free will. And that's why they are so dangerous. And reviled.
 
calamity said:
Taking God out of the equation, the question remains. Are we really in control of our actions? In theory we are really just slaves of our chemicals and various electrical pulses. Control of our impulses may not be under our control, especially if someone's frontal lobes are damaged.
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It is still a pointless question.

You asked if we are in control of our actions. Why does it matter? The anatomy of your question is heavily structured by philosophical bias. It is almost begging the question. When analyzed the question can imply a denial that a soul is hokus pockus. I mean why would it matter if every thought and decision is the result of chemical reactions and electrical impulses? If one does not believe in a soul then it doesnt matter at all. It then turns out that you just dont understand that the brain is just a organ. if you did understand that fact then it would be no surprise that chemicals and electrical impulses are how it works and wouldnt believe that we are slaves but instead that, chemicals and electrical impulses are what we are. Nothing magical just biology.

What matters is that reality appears coherent to us. That for all appearance we perceive that we make decisions cause actions. I like to believe that I am responsible for everything that I do. After all 'I' am my brain, every bit of it, I cant make myself a slave to my self. That would be illogical.
 
FreedomFromAll said:
It is still a pointless question.

You asked if we are in control of our actions. Why does it matter? The anatomy of your question is heavily structured by philosophical bias. It is almost begging the question. When analyzed the question can imply a denial that a soul is hokus pockus. I mean why would it matter if every thought and decision is the result of chemical reactions and electrical impulses? If one does not believe in a soul then it doesnt matter at all. It then turns out that you just dont understand that the brain is just a organ. if you did understand that fact then it would be no surprise that chemicals and electrical impulses are how it works and wouldnt believe that we are slaves but instead that, chemicals and electrical impulses are what we are. Nothing magical just biology.

What matters is that reality appears coherent to us. That for all appearance we perceive that we make decisions cause actions. I like to believe that I am responsible for everything that I do. After all 'I' am my brain, every bit of it, I cant make myself a slave to my self. That would be illogical.
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I see now what you mean.

I believe we are both slaves to chemical and electrical signals and made up of nothing more than chemical and electrical signals. In other words, when our chemicals are firing correctly and our electrical circuits are all flowing in their proper order, we can be functioning adults in a society. When those signals go askew, we become sociopaths or psychotic. Traits which are perhaps of benefit in war or perhaps while selling drugs on a street corner, but not conducive to life in middle class suburbia.

Thus comes the question of morality. What defines moral behavior? In one society eating a cat is perfectly fine; in another, eating your enemy is in order. We are all products of our environment and forced to live within it's restrictions. Those that do not fit in are either removed from it or made its leaders.
 
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lizzie said:
Of course, but when you make a choice between two or more possible actions, you are using free will. You may be influenced by you knowledge and past experience, but that does not bind you choose a specific way. You can throw caution to the wind, just because you dare to.
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You don't know that you've made a "free" choice - but not knowing is not your fault. Unknown influences could do anything and since they're unknown there's no way to account for them one way or another. What might feel like free choice really isn't, at least not in the classical meaning of that term. There might be unconscious free will but I'm not sure that phrase has any real meaning.
 
iangb said:
The existence of randomness allows for the existence of free will - or at least, it makes testing for free will pretty much impossible.
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Randomness doesn't "allow" for free will but I admit it would be virtually impossible to test if not actually impossible. However, Occam's Razor comes into play at some point. Randomness is obviously a more simple and elegant answer than some mysterious and unknown process by which we sidestep causality. You may as well be asking if God is real. The odds of their existence are the same for both, virtually nil.

iangb said:
As Lizzie just said, free will is the ability to make a decision in spite of physical factors - both concious and unconcious ones. If free will were not to exist, then a specific individual would make the same choice over and over again if faced with an identical set of physical influences (although given that memory is one of those physical factors, setting up such an experiment would be tricky). However, the existence of 'randomness' indicates that, in identical situations, a specific individual may not make that same choice. As such, that leaves room for free will - it is currently impossible to tell whether 'randomness' or 'free will' causes the outcome.
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The same circumstances are never repeated, at least not in the life of the universe. If nothing else you always have the results of the last outcome, both seen and unseen, that are part of the next "test". Time has passed and things have happened. You simply can't go back and take a Mulligan on a past event.
 
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joG said:
We're not even sure that quantum randomness is really random or if it isn't just the same old thing we usually call random in statistics.
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There are some differences between classical probability theory and quantum mechanics but I'm not versed enough in QM to even begin to explain it. Oddly, I was watching this thread on physicsforums.com until they closed it. You might want to read through it if you're interested:

Is something wrong with statistical interpretation of QM?
 
MaggieD said:
"Influence" is a better word here than inhibit, I think. Some people simply cannot fight "the demons" in their heads. Others are able to do so. What we know about serious child abusers is that they most often come from abusive homes themselves. Yet all people abused as children don't become abusers. A pedophile, perhaps, will always be a pedophile. Whether or not he chooses to act upon it is an exercise of his free will. And that's why they are so dangerous. And reviled.
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Whether or not he chooses to act upon it is an example of societal "programming".

Lack of free will does not preclude learning, which is nothing more than our brains making new internal connections and/or letting others fade out. Humans learn quicker than most animals. It's one of our biggest biological advantages.
 
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MaggieD said:
I see what you're saying, but I don't think that negates free will.
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I edited that post not knowing you'd already responded. Here's the edit:

Lack of free will does not preclude learning, which is nothing more than our brains making new internal connections and/or letting others fade out. Humans learn quicker than most animals. It's one of our biggest biological advantages.


Free will presupposes we can somehow step outside the flow of time and cause & effect. I see no reason to assume we can sidestep causality - and the occasional random event.
 
MoSurveyor said:
I edited that post not knowing you'd already responded. Here's the edit:

Lack of free will does not preclude learning, which is nothing more than our brains making new internal connections and/or letting others fade out. Humans learn quicker than most animals. It's one of our biggest biological advantages.


Free will presupposes we can somehow step outside the flow of time and cause & effect. I see no reason to assume we can sidestep causality - and the occasional random event.
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I guess I don't understand what you're trying to say. If you're saying that when I decided to go into real estate that wasn't my free-will choice? Then I don't agree. Perhaps those who don't think we have free will need to define what "free will" means to them. *shrug*
 
MoSurveyor said:
You don't know that you've made a "free" choice - but not knowing is not your fault. Unknown influences could do anything and since they're unknown there's no way to account for them one way or another. What might feel like free choice really isn't, at least not in the classical meaning of that term. There might be unconscious free will but I'm not sure that phrase has any real meaning.
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I think you may not be understanding the point I was trying to make, and perhaps I made it poorly. When you have a choice between two actions, you will usually weigh the options, and try to maximize your advantage, when you make that choice. That is influenced heavily by your ability to predict outcomes. Now, otoh, pretend you have a choice to make, one of which will almost surely lead to a positive outcome, and one which will likely lead to a negative one. Let's say the choice is between staying faithful to your wife, vs having a fling with the new young hot secretary at the office. Everything in your logical brain is telling you that you would be a fool to get involved with her, but you decide to do it anyway, consequences be damned. That is a choice of free will. You are making that choice in spite of the possible negative consequences, and in spite of what your good sense tells you to do. You have defied your conditioning to always do the smart and wise thing.
 
This question seems to pop up regularly here. The debate over free will is mostly just a proxy for a deeper, underlying debate - namely, whether moral responsibility is or can be compatible with a deterministic universe.

In the pro philosophy community today, the debate over free will is really just a debate over semantics. Incompatibilists (those that contend free will does not and cannot exist in a deterministic universe) and compatibilists (those that hold that free does or could exist in a deterministic universe, which is the much more widely held view among the pros btw) really only differ over the definition of free will - what most people mean when they say "free will" in usual conversations. (of course this is a bit of a simplification, it's more complicated and there are other views - for instance, libertarians, who agree with incompatibilists that free will cannot exist in a deterministic universe but disagree that our universe is deterministic.)

The much more substantive debate, and the reason we even care about the existence of a notion of free will, is whether we can hold people morally responsible for their actions in a deterministic universe. Most laymen are familiar with the classic incompatibilist argument: that we cannot be morally responsible for our actions in a deterministic universe because in a deterministic universe there is no possible way we could have done otherwise. Less well known are a number of very strong counterarguments to this, however, like Frankfurt's.
 
MoSurveyor said:
Randomness doesn't "allow" for free will but I admit it would be virtually impossible to test if not actually impossible. However, Occam's Razor comes into play at some point. Randomness is obviously a more simple and elegant answer than some mysterious and unknown process by which we sidestep causality. You may as well be asking if God is real. The odds of their existence are the same for both, virtually nil.
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However, we experience the quale of free will every time we think we are making a choice. That means that there is evidence for free will - testable, repeatable evidence. You can argue that this evidence is the result of an illusion, but that means the burden of proof rests back on you.

The same circumstances are never repeated, at least not in the life of the universe. If nothing else you always have the results of the last outcome, both seen and unseen, that are part of the next "test". Time has passed and things have happened. You simply can't go back and take a Mulligan on a past event.
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True. This is a thought experiment only.
 
opendebate said:
I always feel like this question carries the implication that somehow if we were to discover that we don't have free will it would diminish our value or the meaning of our lives. I think we are initially directed by some base impulses. Flee, food etc., but their is so much choice piled on top of that. I guess I think that's enough free will to avoid that loss of my own relevancy.
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I don't think it would.

The value of eating isn't diminished by the fact we are biologically programmed to experience hunger and the desire to eat. While that desire is not our will, but something that we are born with innately and (without some INTENSE training) have no real control over. Go eat some ice cream or brownies or something, its yummy :)
 
iangb said:
However, we experience the quale of free will every time we think we are making a choice. That means that there is evidence for free will - testable, repeatable evidence. You can argue that this evidence is the result of an illusion, but that means the burden of proof rests back on you.
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There is no evidence of free will at all. What you experience as "free will" is just an illusion no different from any other. You can say you've made such and such a free willed decision but you can't prove that with objective observation. All anyone else has is your word on it, your subjective evidence. That hardly qualifies as "testable, repeatable evidence".



As a side note:
If you believe it to be "testable, repeatable evidence", then I must also assume you believe God is real. You say you made a free will choice while I could just as easily and with the exact same type of evidence and level of credibility say, "God told me to do it". Both are nonsense and have on proof.
 
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lizzie said:
I think you may not be understanding the point I was trying to make, and perhaps I made it poorly. When you have a choice between two actions, you will usually weigh the options, and try to maximize your advantage, when you make that choice. That is influenced heavily by your ability to predict outcomes. Now, otoh, pretend you have a choice to make, one of which will almost surely lead to a positive outcome, and one which will likely lead to a negative one. Let's say the choice is between staying faithful to your wife, vs having a fling with the new young hot secretary at the office. Everything in your logical brain is telling you that you would be a fool to get involved with her, but you decide to do it anyway, consequences be damned. That is a choice of free will. You are making that choice in spite of the possible negative consequences, and in spite of what your good sense tells you to do. You have defied your conditioning to always do the smart and wise thing.
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This example is an excellent case. The whole problem with having the fling are the negative (social) consequences, right? But to NOT have the fling requires an incredible amount of programming, training, or whatever you want to call it because it's a billion year old tendency to want to procreate and the more exceptional the mate the greater our want.

As I told MaggieD, learning does not require free will. Even insects "learn". What you've shown here is an example where the programming against nature has failed. It's essentially the same thing that happens when a person is overwhelmed by passion or rage and attacks someone, maybe even killing them. In both cases, whatever programming they had was not strong enough to counter the animal urges we all have.
 
MoSurveyor said:
There is no evidence of free will at all. What you experience as "free will" is just an illusion no different from any other. You can say you've made such and such a free willed decision but you can't prove that with objective observation. All anyone else has is your word on it, your subjective evidence. That hardly qualifies as "testable, repeatable evidence".



As a side note:
If you believe it to be "testable, repeatable evidence", then I must also assume you believe God is real. You say you made a free will choice while I could just as easily and with the exact same type of evidence and level of credibility say, "God told me to do it". Both are nonsense and have on proof.
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You, and others, also experience the quale of free will. That's testable and repeatable.

On the other hand, neither of us (I suspect) has experienced God.
 
MaggieD said:
I guess I don't understand what you're trying to say. If you're saying that when I decided to go into real estate that wasn't my free-will choice? Then I don't agree. Perhaps those who don't think we have free will need to define what "free will" means to them. *shrug*
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Why did you make the decision to go into real estate? I'd bet somewhere at the end of a whole chain of "whys" is an emotional response of some kind or other. In fact, I'd venture so far as to say all of our actions have negative and positive emotions at the end of the chain. Rationality is a tool, not an end unto itself, so what you think of as rational (or "conscious") free will decisions really aren't when you follow them back to their emotional origin.

Our goals are set by emotions and we can't really control those. We can control the actions we take (or not) on those emotions through programming/training but the emotions themselves are beyond control. (I can stop myself from having an affair but that doesn't stop the attraction I have to the knock-out brunette next door.) So the bottom line to me is that, yes, we make "rational choices" but at the base of those rational choices are emotions we have no control over. And if we can't control the emotional base of our actions and choices then are we really independent agents? Do we really have free will? I say, no, we aren't independent agents and therefore, have no free will. We're animals tethered and bound to our emotions.
 
calamity said:
Back to the age old question--is there free will? Is what we do done willfully, each action carried through with intent and forethought, or are we simply reacting to a myriad of stimuli, most of which we are unaware even exist?

Here's an in-depth article exploring the matter.
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You had no choice but to make this post, because there's no free will?

There are too many factors coalescing to know when, where and how much of your own thought process is randomly involved.

If free will is strictly an illusion of human reaction to outside stimuli, then the whole universe is predetermined. Which really makes no difference, since the illusion of free will is sufficiently fooling everyone.
 
iangb said:
You, and others, also experience the quale of free will. That's testable and repeatable.

On the other hand, neither of us (I suspect) has experienced God.
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As my first post stated, "free will is a common illusion", (emphasis added) 'common' in it's general meaning, we all share it. Its nothing but a product of the structure of our brain. Adding a thousand, a million, even a billion more accounts of subjective evidence doesn't make it real.

Let me give you another example of a common illusion to help you along here - the continuity of vision. Our eyes don't do what most people think they do. We "see" a continuous flow in the world around us but in reality our eyes dart about several times a second, focusing on this and that. Both our eyes have a blind spot right where the light entering our pupil hits the area of our optic nerve at the back of the eye but we hardly ever experience that blind spot. What we see is an illusion of continuity and completeness created by our brain. It's not real, regardless of how real it may look and feel. And, yes, we all say we see the same continuity, the same completeness. It's a common illusion but an illusion it is none-the-less. Free will is no different, it's just an illusion. That's why it takes objective evidence, not just a bunch of subjective evidence, for us to declare something as "real".



I haven't experienced free will. Does that mean it doesn't exist?
Many people will tell you their lives are determined by God, that He guides them in everything. Does that mean God exists?
 
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grip said:
You had no choice but to make this post, because there's no free will?

There are too many factors coalescing to know when, where and how much of your own thought process is randomly involved.

If free will is strictly an illusion of human reaction to outside stimuli, then the whole universe is predetermined. Which really makes no difference, since the illusion of free will is sufficiently fooling everyone.
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Not just outside stimuli. Our generic structure and all it's subsequent outcomes and influences are very much a part of what we are.
 
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