There are few things that arouse stronger reactions in people than the claim that free will is an illusion. When I used to run workshops for graduate students on how to critically read research papers, I would hand out a paper that discussed experiments that had evidence that seemed to show support for the idea that we did not have free will. (More on the nature of this evidence later.) The students would get into this exercise with gusto, as I knew they would, poring over the paper and analyzing the data and the reasoning to try to find flaws so that they could hold on to the idea that they had free will.
Why do we cling so tenaciously to the idea that we have free will? To even discus the idea we need to be clearer about what we even mean by the term ‘free will’, since there is some ambiguity there and many different definitions floating around. The usual free will model is that ‘I’ consciously make a decision to take some action (get up, pick up a pen, say something, etc.) and then carry it out. The word ‘will’ is not that problematic. We can assign it to the decision-making process that results in the command to be executed. It is the word ‘free’ that causes problems. Free of what, exactly? A belief in ‘free’ will says that the ‘I’ is not purely biologically driven and is in control of that part of the process and could just as easily have made a different decision (keep sitting, not pick up the pen, stay silent, etc.) and carried that out.
But who is this ‘I’ that initiates the process?
If you are a Cartesian dualist, you simply assume a distinction between mind and body in which the mind makes all the decisions and communicates them to the body. The mechanism by which this happens is not specified. Here is Rene Descartes on the topic.
“I perceive that there is a big difference between the mind and the body insofar as the body, by its nature, is always divisible whereas the mind is evidently indivisible. When I reflect on the mind (or on myself insofar as I am simply a thinking thing), I certainly cannot distinguish any parts in myself; instead I understand myself to be a completely unified and integral thing. And even though the whole mind seems to be united with the whole body, if however a foot, an arm, or any other part of the body is cut off, I know that nothing is thereby taken away from the mind. Nor can the faculties of willing, sensing, understanding, etc., be said to be parts of the mind, because it is one and the same mind that wills, senses and understands. In contrast, I cannot think of any physical or extended body that I cannot divide easily in my thought; for that reason alone, I understand that it is divisible. That would be enough to teach me that the mind is completely different from the body if I did not already know it adequately from other considerations.” (Sixth Meditation by Rene Descartes, p. 67)
On the other hand, if you are a thoroughgoing materialist, then the ‘I’ is just an integrated biological system, and the decisions (along with our consciousness and thoughts) are just the the results of the various parts of the body working according to the laws that govern them to arrive at the ‘decision’, with no metaphysical agency intervening in the process at any point. This means that the decision could not have been anything other than what it was and hence is not ‘free’ in the sense that ‘I’ could have made an alternative decision. There is no ‘ghost in the machine’ (to use a formulation by Gilbert Ryle) that can override the process. Believers in free will have to postulate some mechanism, not determined by our biology, that can override the biological processes that drive our consciousness, thoughts, and actions.
The difficulty of postulating such a mechanism while staying committed to the universal applicability of scientific laws is what has made an increasing number of people, especially scientists, come to the conclusion that free will is an illusion. Biologist Robert M. Sapolsky has concluded after decades of study of primates that there is no such thing a free will and has written a new book Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will.
After more than 40 years studying humans and other primates, Sapolsky has reached the conclusion that virtually all human behavior is as far beyond our conscious control as the convulsions of a seizure, the division of cells or the beating of our hearts.
This means accepting that a man who shoots into a crowd has no more control over his fate than the victims who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It means treating drunk drivers who barrel into pedestrians just like drivers who suffer a sudden heart attack and veer out of their lane.
“The world is really screwed up and made much, much more unfair by the fact that we reward people and punish people for things they have no control over,” Sapolsky said. “We’ve got no free will. Stop attributing stuff to us that isn’t there.”
…Analyzing human behavior through the lens of any single discipline leaves room for the possibility that people choose their actions, he says. But after a long cross-disciplinary career, he feels it’s intellectually dishonest to write anything other than what he sees as the unavoidable conclusion: Free will is a myth, and the sooner we accept that, the more just our society will be.
Many people worry about what rejecting free will means for the justice system, fearing that it means that people can do what they like since they are not responsible for their actions. But there is a difference being and subject to consequences for our actions (which we still are), and being morally culpable (which we are not).
“Who we are and what we do is ultimately the result of factors beyond our control and because of this we are never morally responsible for our actions in the sense that would make us truly deserving of praise and blame, punishment and reward,” said Gregg Caruso, a philosopher at SUNY Corning who read early drafts of the book. “I am in agreement with Sapolsky that life without belief in free will is not only possible but preferable.”
Caruso is co-director of the Justice Without Retribution Network, which advocates for an approach to criminal activity that prioritizes preventing future harm rather than assigning blame. Focusing on the causes of violent or antisocial behavior instead of fulfilling a desire for punishment, he said, “will allow us to adopt more humane and effective practices and policies.”
Caruso presented some very cogent arguments in his favor in a written debate he had with Daniel Dennett that I wrote about a few years ago. Caruso says that free will skeptics do not deny that there may be good reasons for retaining punishments but they do say that the retributive motivation for punishments, that we punish people because they deserve it, are not valid. He says that who we are and what we become is largely dependent on the various forms of contingent events that occur as we grow up. But he says that punishments can “be justified by its role in incapacitating, rehabilitating and deterring offenders”.
A detailed and careful treatment of how the justice system should deal with the realization that we have no free will is provided by Anthony Cashmore. He says that “free will is better defined as a belief that there is a component to biological behavior that is something more than the unavoidable consequences of the genetic and environmental history of the individual and the possible stochastic laws of nature.” I like this definition because it focuses on the crucial question of the actual mechanism by which free will acts, rather than on our perceptions about the inevitability or otherwise of our actions.
As I said above, accepting that free will is an illusion is a difficult idea for many people to accept. It seems to carry heavy emotional costs.. But Francis Merson argues that it need not be so, and that taking a worldview without free will can provide many benefits.
Detailing the consolations of a clockwork Universe is not just an academic exercise. In my practice as a therapist, I’ve seen patients who adopt a deterministic worldview become more empathic, less angry, more socially conscious and less inclined to struggle needlessly against the vicissitudes of life. Rather than something to be feared, determinism could be personally, positively transformative for many. While it can be a hard pill to swallow, it may, once fully digested, result in a range of emotional benefits – like a kind of metaphysical Zoloft.
Recognising that people’s actions were predetermined can result in a much calmer reaction to perceived wrongdoing. Anger relies on the assumption that someone could have acted other than how they did (which is why angry people are so passionate about instructing you on what you could have done differently). However, when seen in the light of determinism, the assumptions of the angry mindset melt away like so much sorbet in the sun.
…If people’s actions are not freely chosen, it doesn’t make sense to be angry at them – any more than it does to be angry at someone for anything outside their control, such as having green eyes, or the hiccups. This doesn’t imply that you can’t try to change the world, and occasionally even succeed. But if you are motivated by anger, you’re more likely to focus on punishing the perceived offender – often at your own expense – rather than on a useful prosocial outcome.
My problem with Merson’s paper is that he seems to be a believer in classical determinism, in the sense that everything is pre-ordained from the beginning of time and that hence everything is in principle predictable. But modern science tells us that the world is stochastic, that truly random events occur at the quantum level and hence the world is unpredictable. What we have is quantum determinism in which outcomes are still predictable but only in a statistical way. But that does not rescue free will since it still does not provide a way for our ‘will’ to control events.
Discussions about whether free will exists or not have gone back millennia and involved philosophers and religious scholars who tried to argue for and against on a priori grounds. Some still think that it is to these fields of study that we should turn to for arguments for and against free will. Kevin Drum, for example, thinks that free will is ‘mankind’s biggest myth’ but continues that “this is a very old religious and philosophical argument, and neither Sapolsky nor I are going to settle it. But we’re right.”
We can get an answer to this question but we should not look to religion or philosophy for it. Doing so ignores the most important developments which is that with the arrival of brain studies, this has now become an empirical question that can be answered by experiment. While the answer has implications for philosophy. religion, and the legal system, those areas are not the ones we need to look to to decide if free will exists or not. (Back in 2010, I wrote a 16-part series exploring the free will question in great detail, including the experiments that had been done to date.)
How can brain studies address this question? Belief in free will supposes that there is first a conscious decision that is made to take come action, and that is followed by the action. But if we can find some activity in the brain that an individual is unaware of but can be used to predict the conscious decision and action, then that will negate the foundation of free will. And indeed fMRI studies are revealing just that. Those studies found that patterns in brain activity predict what the person would decide to do five to ten seconds before they consciously made the decision. The predictions were not 100% accurate as yet but the key research was done by John-Dylan Haynes back in 2008 and developed further in 2015, and as the power and sophistication of the MRI machines improve, enabling researchers to focus on ever smaller regions of the brain, one can expect the accuracy of the predictions to increase.
Here is a talk given by Haynes in 2013 clearly explaining what they did.
Here is another talk by him given in 2014 where he goes further and says that the decision making process in the brain occurs up to seven seconds before we are conscious of making the decision. He also discusses the consequences for responsibility of actions.
Haynes says in the PNAS article that there are some signs that someone can veto a decision that has made but even that is limited and there is a point of no return beyond which one cannot change one’s mind.
Despite these developments, people still try to find a way to retain free will even if the decisions are being made are at the unconscious level prior to the person being aware of them. But those arguments are unconvincing, to me at least.
Giving up the idea of free will actually has few consequences for everyday life, other than requiring a rethinking of our motivations for punishing people for bad behavior and taking away feelings of guilt and moral failure for bad actions, even though we will still face repercussions from them. We cannot avoid acting as if we had free will, that we are making decisions and carrying them out. What alternative is there? Try being inert and waiting for the brain to tell you what to do. It will tell you but that will not be distinguishable from you thinking that you made that decision of your own free will.
As Isaac Beshevis Singer so aptly put it, “We must believe in free will. We have no choice.”
You’re only writing this because you have to, Mano.
I’ve started thinking about this in terms of the coexistence of the past, present and future due to the flexible nature of time and space. If our future already exists, does that mean we can’t change it?
Matt G.,
Our future would pre-exist if we lived in a classical deterministic world. But since the world is quantum deterministic and thus influenced by random events, there is no pre-existing future. It is dependent on contingent events.
i happen to feel that “i” is a convenient fiction, but i still don’t see how any of this is necessary. in practical terms, at the level of our awareness, we can make decisions and we are the agent of those decisions, even if the one we chose was always going to be the one that we chose, right? bringing dualism vs. materialism into it feels like a non sequitur.
the crux of that position here is “Believers in free will have to postulate some mechanism, not determined by our biology, that can override the biological processes that drive our consciousness, thoughts, and actions.” really? do they?
hell, all that experiment establishes is the latency between thought and action. how could it possibly demonstrate that the thoughts couldn’t have gone any other way?
I think it was Alan Watts who said “Free will is an illusion, but it is an illusion we must take seriously”.
I find superdeterminism to be most convincing, in which quantum uncertainty relates to a system we don’t fully understand and appears to be probabilistic. There is no free will, and what happens in the future is encoded by the past.
I am most convinced by superdeterminism…no free will, quantum “randomness” reflects a lack of full understanding of quantum mechanics. The future is encoded by the past.
Bob A @#6,
The idea that the randomness at the heart of quantum mechanics is an illusion due to the theory being incomplete has a long history and has been explored quite thoroughly, with experiments being done to test Bell’s inequality. The consensus is that it is not an artifact of incompleteness. The 2022 Nobel Prize in physics was given to the people who did the experiments.
Mano @#8
Sorry for double post.
I read that the work associated with the 2022 Nobel Prize deals with entanglement, ie, if we measure a property of a particle, we can know without measuring, what the property of an associated particle has. Even if the particle is very far away.
Since we have no free will, the measurement itself was determined, and the measurement provided us knowledge of a state of a particle. This forces the other entangled particle to be in another state. Seems more deterministic than randomn.
I sort of see what karl random @3,4 is getting at.
The illusion of “I” exists only in one part of the brain, the one that has words and thinks in words. But, how do we know that the whole rest of the brain isn’t making the decision, and could have made a different one, then sends the decision to the “I” part of the brain, and then “you” know what decision you’ve made?
You know how people “sleep on” a decision? And wake up knowing what choice they’ve made? Sort of letting the rest of your brain decide and sending it to your conscious brain while you slept.
I suppose that when we’re reasoning through a decision, thinking about doing one thing or another, writing down lists of pros and cons, etc., the conscious brain could be sending those thoughts to the rest of the brain, that then makes the decision based on the information, and communicates to the conscious brain what it has decided.
That wouldn’t be “free” will either, since “I” am not the part of the brain making the decisions.
I think it’s an important semantics argument. The OP made no factual error. However, he is using the wrong definition of “free” and “free will”. See standard compatibilist philosophy such as Daniel Dannett.
The mind is not writing the the book of our existence but rather reading it as it occurs. We just have the illusion that we’re the writer instead of the reader.
Also, determinism does not imply predictability if there is no way to know the full system at some initial state. There is no experiment in which the whole universe is not the system and we are always part of it and in a non-controlled state. And the models we create for the whole system will always reflect that.
boba1@#9,
There are two issues involved here.
The experiments done on entanglement were to test whether QM was complete or not. i.e., if the property being measured (in this case the spin of the photon) existed prior to the measurement on the other photon or not. If it existed prior to the measurement, that meant that QM was incomplete and the history of the universe is predetermined and, at least in principle, predictable. If it did not, then that meant that the Copenhagen interpretation of QM with its inherent indeterminacy, was the correct interpretation and the universe was not predictable.. The results were that QM’s indeterminacy was an intrinsic property of nature.
The other issue is whether the decision of which property of the photon to measure was pre-determined or not and that is more closely related to what this blog post deals with. The answer is that the decision was initiated by brain processes prior to the experimenter thinking they they were making the decision. Now was that pre-determined from the beginning of time? No, it was determined by the person’s history plus any contingent events including random ones due to QM indeterminacy.
Gerard @#11,
I find Dennett’s compatibility argument for free will rather incoherent and confusing. The debate he had with Greg Caruso (that can be found at this link) sharply contrast the two views.
Well, it’s not like they have any choice in the matter…
Mano @#13
The issue seems to be one of interpretation…ie, Copenhagen versus de-Broglie-Bohm versus Everett, and others.
In regards to photon spin, I think you’re saying that the photon does have spin that exists prior to measurement, but it is indeterminate as to what the spin is. Upon measurement, the spin takes on a fixed, known value. That still doesn’t necessarily exclude other interpretations besides the Copenhagen interpretation.
In regards to both issues, we have to consider that emergent characteristics are different than fundamental characteristics. So in regards to a person making a measurement, there are many emergent characteristics at play. I think one has to conclude that the decision goes back to the beginning of time (the Big Bang based on our current understanding) due to determinism. Contingent events had their own deterministic causes, and quantum indeterminacy doesn’t play a role at the emergent level of human beings.
Don’t even need quantum uncertainty; sufficient degrees of freedom of the system would mean it’s computationally intractable. In short, even if we only ever do what we would always have done, it cannot be predicted.
(Then, of course, there’s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dice_Man )
Agreed, this topic provokes some of the strongest eyerolls and sighs from me. (Not because I choose to of course.) The entire discussion is otiose, as its proponents even admit we must proceed as if people have choice anyway. It seems the only difference argued for in e.g. punishment is to remove the vindictiveness from punishment… but there is good reason other than the presence or absence of free will to do that anyway: harsh punishment for the sake of vengeance doesn’t work, and only increases recidivism. So what’s the point, the new thing that is not already suggested by other reasoning, that the ‘no free will’ position results in?
A claim that contrasts sharply with your condemnation of many people’s behaviour, arguments, rhetoric, policies etc. as reprehensible, vile, and similar. Remember, poor dears like George Santos and Donald Trump are helpless before the forces that make them corrupt. Whence the judgement, the condemnation of character, if they could not but choose those specific behaviours?
For my part, I reject it on the basis that it has not been demonstrated to be anything more than a pointless reframing of choice, a change in wording with no practical difference of outcome.
I’m sorry, what? We DO, in fact, have free will. I could choose to go outside and have a ciggie. I’m choosing not to, because it’s too damn cold out. If I didn’t have free will, I’d be out there freezing my ass off instead of leaving this comment. WE ALWAYS HAVE FREE WILL, and anyone claiming otherwise is probably trying to sell you some bullshit wrapped in gold-colored tissue paper.
Holms @#18,
I don’t see that my “condemnation of many people’s behaviour, arguments, rhetoric, policies etc. as reprehensible, vile, and similar” is in contradiction with my belief in a lack of free will. We can still use those words to describe what people say and do. We can and should seek to condemn those words and actions and counter them. What the lack of free will influences is what and why and how we respond to them. The lack of free will does not mean that people have carte blanche to do what they want without repercussions. That is whole point of what Greg Caruso and Anthony Cashmore argue.
Mano, thing is the reflexiveness of the claim.
“We can and should seek to condemn those words and actions and counter them.”
(The concept of “should” is only meaningful if choice is available)
Morales @ #21
Choice is available, but what is chosen by an individual is inevitable based on the individual’s past.
Whether you accept the “should” or not will be beyond your control, though you will feel like the choice is within your control.
boba1:
Nah; you’re playing word-games using natural language, but not making either conceptual or logical sense.
Or so I believe.
If you want to try to articulate just how you think an inevitable choice is actually a choice, feel free. Or not 🙂
(“Any color the customer wants, as long as it’s black.”)
Then it’s meaningless, isn’t it? Same as before.
See, you’re doing a chatGPT type of thing, stringing words together.
I can do that too: You should do what is right, but you must do what you will do.
(Semantics matter)
I didn’t question that repercussions follow certain behaviour, I questioned the moral judgement. In what sense is someone’s behaviour e.g. reprehensible if they had no choice but to do the thing?
I also note that the language you use constantly implies choice. You say “we can still use those words… We can and should seek…” which is why I think this is purely a matter of indulgence -- in all practical respects, even you act and talk as if choice is a thing.
Morales @#23
There are alternative actions one can take based on a given circumstance. When you choose one of those actions and not the others, you have made a “choice”. The choice is predicated on things beyond your conscious control, though the choice seems to be consciously controlled.
Holms, indeed.
In the very same sense that condemnation for such reprehensibility is virtuous; people who make judgements and impose punishment are likewise not able to do otherwise.
“Why do you punish me? I have no free will, so I am not to blame”
“I punish you because I have no free will, so I am not to blame either”
Much like the simulation hypothesis, it makes zero difference whether or not that is the case.
Holmes @#24
We can characterize an act as reprehensible while acknowledging the person had no choice but to do it.
boba1 @25, nice try. But you’ve just done the very same thing again.
I think I get where you are: “When you choose one of those actions and not the others, you have made a “choice”.”
The concept at hand is not whether choices occur — is whether they could ever be other than what they will be.
I think you conflate ‘free will’ with ‘choice’, rather than with ‘free choice’.
In short, the concept at hand is being able to choose what to choose, not just being able to choose what you will ineluctably choose.
Morales @ #28
You seem to get it…the issue is whether the choice could ever be other than what it will be. Or, does free will exist?
The answer is no, the choice can only be what it will be. There is no evidence of free will.
John @#21 and Holms @324,
Our language use is highly influenced by the fact that we have grown up thinking we have free will. It is so deeply ingrained that we use that language reflexively. To avoid using the language that is associated with free will would be to indulge in strict policing of the words we use to replace them with circumlocutions.
I don’t think that lapsing into word usage that is associated with free will negates my belief that free will does not exist, though it does provide opportunities for ‘gotcha’ responses, any more than my accidentally using the wrong gender pronoun for someone whom I know who has transitioned means that I am willfully denying them the right to be identified with the gender pronoun of their choice. Language habits are hard to overcome.
So yes, I will undoubtedly on occasion use words like ‘should’.
#27 boba
This doesn’t answer my question about passing moral judgement when an action is constrained. All you’ve said is ‘because we can’.
___
#30 Mano
Okay, we should not expect a proponent of the ‘no free will’ position to do as little as change their wording. So not even a semantic difference between a world in which choice exists and a world in which it doesn’t.
Indeed.
Or perhaps establishing an agreed-upon meaning of terminology before disputing claims. You know, a shared universe of discourse.
That’s OK, but I don’t reckon it’s merely a ‘gotcha’ response.
Holms @ #31
We pass a moral judgement on the act (which is subjective and subject to the evolution of society’s view of morality).
As to the individual who commits the immoral act…the individual could not have done otherwise. So we should take actions to ensure public safety as regards the individual. to rehabilitate the individual, and to send a societal message to the public that immoral acts are not tolerated.
boba1 @33:
“Why do you punish me? I have no free will, so I am not to blame”
“I punish you because I have no free will, so I am not to blame either”
Round and round we go. 🙂
Morales @ #34
I get that it can seem like circular logic. Now you try to get why it’s not.
Same thing as the teleological language of goddists, really.
Things like ‘purpose’ imply a need which imply a needer, and so to speak of purpose is necessarily to speak of some entity whose purpose it is, thus predicating that entity as a hidden premise.
That’s what you’re doing with your use of ‘should’ — it is meaningless unless one can actually choose to do what one should do rather than otherwise, and you are predicating that choosing that one choice over all possible alternative choices is not a matter of will; there is no discretion. So, in a similar way to ‘purpose’, ‘should’ predicates the existence of free will.
(I think Mano gets it, thus his clarification)
Morales @ #36
“should” is based on some ethical assumptions. Those ethical assumptions are human inventions subject to change.
What one should do (based on those ethical assumptions) has nothing to do with free will.
Some will do what they should (based on a largely agreed upon societal set of ethical assumptions) and some people won’t (they will use their own personal set of ethical assumptions).
Meanwhile, there is no evidence to support free will.
Round and round.
In the most general sense, ‘should’ refers to choosing the best one of multiple choices of action to achieve some goal.
Note that those are all necessary components of the concept; if one has no ability to choose one choice among many, or one has only one possible choice, or it is not the best possible choice, it makes no sense.
(Sorry, I do like my little linguistic jokes involving semantic shift in… um, sense)
In a very specific sense, there is no generally agreed objective or even subjective morality, so that claim is particular to each individual. Different people, different moralities, so obviously each has a different ‘should’, right?
But that’s a different discussion.
Yes, yes. You have noted that multiple times, now.
Not seeing its relevance to the rest of the comment.
Surely you don’t think I’m contending that there is evidence to support free will!
I’m saying it’s a vaguely interesting concept, much as the simulation hypothesis, but that it makes zero difference to us either way. It’s just a little diversion.
#33 boba1
And what is the value of the word ‘subjective’ in a worldview that permits no ‘I’ to exist? Hell, what is ‘judgement’ in that world? All I see is redefining words in an increasingly recursive manner.
#37
And where do those ethical assumptions come from if not from people considering a matter and using judgement? Someone chose to prioritise a certain outcome (justice, harm reduction, societal stability etc.) when weighing those assumptions. Every step you claim is not necessarily subject to judgement reveals a further step where judgement is needed.
And here is another.
Is there evidence against it?
And again I ask, aside from differences in how we describe things, what is the practical difference between a world with choice and a world without?
Holms, heh. You allude to the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homunculus_argument
As with previous discussions on this topic, I just don’t get it -- the “no free will” argument seems hopelessly internally contradictory. I’m not arguing against the proposition; I’m saying I don’t see how the arguments aren’t contradictory. I know Mano and Daniel Dennett and others are very smart people, so I’m sure it’s me who’s missing something, but…
How does the concept of preference make any sense at all in the absence of choice?!
How can one prevent future harm when one has no choice how one behaves?!
But the very point being argued is the we have no choice what we adopt!
Again, the entire concept of a deterrent depends upon choice.
Mano #30 dismissed this as linguistic habit -- people using language that assumes free will. But I see not just a language problem but a fundamental contradiction:
But you can’t “take a worldview” if you have no choice in what worldview to take!! This isn’t just a limitation in language. Either one can choose a worldview or one can’t. If one can, there exists free will.
What is the point of this observation if one has no choice but to be angry?
.
But according to the entire ideology we cannot “give up” anything! That again, presupposes a choice. If there is no free will, one has no choice as to what one “gives up” or does not give up. Anyway, hopefully that’s enough examples to illustrate my problem. It’s not just that these people speak as though free will exists -- it’s that they draw conclusions, or make recommendations, that only make sense if free will exists. 🙁
Silentbob, nice comment. Really.
[And, this is not intended as snark, but rather as a riff]
Consider the concept of a guilty pleasure.
(Oscar Wilde has a quotation or two about that)
Also -- I’m repeating myself here, I think, from earlier threads -- I have deep philosophical problems with two things that are identical being said to be different. Not just two things that appear identical but could hypothetically be distinguished -- but two things that even in theory can never be distinguished.
If there is a fundamental randomness in the universe, such that an individual’s behaviour can never be predicted -- how could one even in theory distinguish between a universe with free will and one without? If they cannot even in theory be distinguished, how can free will be said not to exist? Or perhaps phrasing it more accurately, how can the existence or non existence of free will even be said to have meaning?
(I’m not persuaded by the MRI showing 5 minutes between brain activity and choice -- that doesn’t rule out free will necessarily, just a delay between choice and conscious action.)
Sorry, 5 seconds, not minutes! A 5 minute delay might indeed convince me that all is preordained. X-D
@WMDKitty,19:
“I’m sorry, what?”
Your apology is accepted, and your incomprehension noted.
I envy you, i honestly do. It must be so EASY being you -- nothing complicated or nuanced to have to think about. How sweet.
https://youtu.be/nZ9EWcaS7II?si=3qvi_xFiSOGS8YMz
It’s been a while since I thought this way, but I’ve not seen anything that’s come close to changing my mind.
Even before getting into a deep philosophical analysis, free will does not exist because it is always vaguely and poorly defined. I suspect it is undefinable on account of being contradictory.
Away from the abstract theorization, what would free will look like practically? Let’s compare with the automaton model, that the mind is a machine that generates outputs in response to inputs.
There are several decisions I have ended up regretting in my life (including one really major one that I’m confident has affected my life for years now), but I know that rerunning those situations exactly as they were I would make the same choice almost every time. Why? Because my reasons would be identical almost every time. I would have the same external inputs being applied to the same mind with the same life history. How could I not make the same decision?
Crucially, automaton model does not mean that I would make the same choice in all alternative versions of the situation. Many people look back on the past and pine “If only I’d have known better, I’d have made a different choice.” This does not contradict automaton model because different inputs can lead to different outputs.
What would be the alternative? Randomness? I guarantee that no one would claim dice have free will because they give a different result when you roll them. What other model of behavior and decision making, of agency itself, can there even be other than processing inputs again past life experience through the weightingss of a person’s current personality? What else can there even be?
In summary: free will doesn’t exist because it just doesn’t even make sense. Might as well argue about how many angels can sit on the head of a pin.
As far as I can see, you’ve just agreed with team ‘choice exists’ by admitting that your choices would differ some of the time.
If you’ve got a materialistic view of the world then there is no issue that free will cannot exists since every decision making event (I prefer that framing rather than talking about choice) is just a set of chemical and physical processes that can only lead to a deterministic result (ignoring any quantum uncertainty that is irrelevant at our scale). If you have a dualistic view then anything goes and there is no point discussing it.
Now that does not mean that we have to take a fatalistic view of our existence because while the decision process is deterministic, the process itself is always evolving with the inputs received over time. You can view that as a self-changing program. So while what you did (your previous choices if you want) was always going to be what it was, what you will do in the future may be different. It will still be deterministic but it will be influenced by what you’ve been through. So that may still not be satisfactory but it should at least respond to some of the points raised by Silentbob @41.
So regrets about the past is futile (but very much human nature) but acknowledgement of the past can help in the future. And that’s also what I think we should do when dealing with socially unacceptable behaviours (crime and other issues); revenge is not the answer.
Eh. I find that whoever is certain about their position on free will is certain based on a remarkable lack of evidence. So i find it mildly amusing that most hard determinists will also claim how scientific and rational the basis for their belief is!
We also should probably differentiate between freedom of actions(which if we are not free , atleast give a very powerful appearance of freedom to choose) v/s freedom of beliefs (which seem to be vastly more constrained) v/s what we internally experience when we seem to make a choice(Its this part that usually gets people to react strongly to an argument of the form off we all follow laws of physics ==> we have no free will).
Statements like these are handwaving. Its where you seem to recognize that this theory is unworkable in practice, but since it is a consequence of what you believe, you will use motivated reasoning and hence these distinctions.
Why do you need anything other than natural consequence ? Why would we imprison people for their actions any more than we would destroy oceans for floods ? Lets nuke the moon -- it causes high tides and low tides that causes people to drown -- The moon is not morally culpable but why should it escape consequences ?
Consciousness/Awareness is what sets us apart and until there is a full fledged theory of how all these play together , its just speculation.
But thats the problem right there. Even if you had a supernatural component to yourself (say your soul) why would it have made an alternate decision ? And suppose you did make an alternate decision , wouldn’t you then say thats random , not choice ? Thats why this definition is unworkable.
On what basis does even God make choices ? and why would God choose differently unless its random? If we cant even make up a coherent answer for a mythical imaginary supernatural being then that surely should indicate a problem with the definition of the terms.
Deepak,
No.
The issue at hand is not whether one would have, it’s whether one could have.
Obvious cases are obvious, for example, whether to open the parachute.
Liminal cases, however, not so simple.
(Note my reference to The_Dice_Man @17.
Same decision, different possible outcomes independent of the decision)
@John Morales
Our current language only limits us to 2 options -- either we arrived at a choice rationally(or whatever laws of physics) and hence if everything is the same we would always arrive at the same choice(hence no free will) OR we call it random(hence no free will).
Quantum Mechanics -- Many world interpretation say I could and I would(but still no free will I guess).
On same day Mano made this post, a debate between Sapolsky and Mitchell was posted on Youtube, for those interested:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9Y1Q8vhX5Y
It seems science is pretty good at reductionism, but not at building up complexity from fundamentals.
A somewhat superficial and lazy essay. Alluding to a 16-part (why not, say, 124-part?) series on free will is typical of an ideological academic. Important ideas can be explained briefly, simply but not so simple as to throw the baby with the wash water.
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No free will = no moral cupability? Yep. George Soros et al. funded the election of several D.A.’s who beleive (sincerely?) in the non moral cupability of career criminals. The criminals cannot help themselves!!! The Devil made them commit such evils!!! No moral blame on the criminals!!! Please, do not dare call them criminals!!! We are currently living through the consequences (societal dystopia) of the belief of the non-existence of free will.
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“…a worldview without free will can provide many benefits.” Yes, says the psychopath who can go on in his way (do not call it evil. Call it “deterministic”) with a clear conscious for concepts of good and evil, being metaphysical concepts, do not exist from the thoroughgoing materialist point of view.
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A strictly deterministic view of life. A house is infested with termites. A rational owner does not get angry with termites for termite-human comunications is most difficult. Just exterminate them varmints!!!
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A strictly deterministic view of life. A Communist Leader (evidently atheist) observes a number of comrades who are resistant to Collectivist Indoctrination. Cannot comunicate with them recalcitrans!!! Thus the rational, deterministic thing to do is to execute all of them!!!
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This question of free will is intimately connected to other metaphysical concepts as Knowledge, Action, Consciousness, Meaning, Faith, Belief, Emotion, Reality, Perception, Existence, Morality, Politics, Soul/Spirit, Persona, Economics, Mind, God Concept, etc.. There is Physics and Metaphysics (beyond Physics). For the thoroughgoing materialist all metaphysics is non-existent, illusory. The thoroughgoing materialist is akin to someone who hangs around the lit end of the street while looking for a wallet dropped at the unlit end of the street.
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The following is a comment I gave at a meeting about Artificial Intelligence (AI) (among other topics).
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I applaud one of the panelist who brought up the subject of the Turing Test. The AI may pass off as a human being but said “human” may be a sociopath. The current stage of AI is really one of Artificial Cleverness. I see AI as a technology capable of seeking and acquiring new knowledge, not some technology that is a search engine on steroids and a parser of human languages.
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Besides Alan Turing, may I bring up 2 other mathematicians: Godel and Church. From Godel one knows that Mathematics is neverending, to solve some problems new axioms need to be invoked. Church addressed the question: can a machine with associated hardware, software, algorithms can derive all possible mathematical facts? Answer is: No. At first glance it seems that humans are needed forever in the quest of intelligence and knowledge. But is that so?
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Randomness. From Randomness arose Life. The subcomponents of Life (DNA, RNA, etc..) are akin to computer programs: a result of, a manifestation of Intelligence. Said Intelligence (and its products) are derived for Randomness and so far one does not have a clue how. From the Second Law of Thermodynamics a system can go from random to ordered state with the consequence that the surroundings become more random. So randomness can become less random or more random. One is utterly clueless about the dynamics of randomness. Yes, I know all about Chaos Theory.
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Randomness. From Randomness arose Humans. Through the Ages, Humans acquired Knowledge. How? No extra-terestials came to Earth and passed down Knowledge to the mere mortal humans. Where did Knowledge come from? Answer: Randomness of the Universe. Somehow, the Human Brain interacts with randomness (via quantum or non-quantum ways) and some how (one is still clueless) extracts Logic, Knowledge, and Meaning. If ever one builds a computer chip that can extract Logic, Knowledge, and Meaning from surrounding Randomness, the gig is up for the Human Race.
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Randomness. From Randomness comes Matter (ordered, physical). From Randomness comes Knowledge (ordered, metaphysical).
Randomness. The Ancient Greek philosopher Epicurius was the first to hypothesis the atomic (indivisible matter) theory of matter. The genius of Epicurius is that he hypothesized that the atom-atom interactios are random (inspired by Brownian motion of pollen in water?) and such randomness brings about free will. The question of free will may be answered when after building the computer mentioned in the previous paragraph and replies “NO!!!” when givien a command by a human.
“A somewhat superficial and lazy essay.”
That’s you in a nutshell, friedfishe.
Such idiocy!
Funny, this line is most used by conservative christians looking to avoid becoming outcast amongst their own highly religious peers.
“A somewhat superficial and lazy essay,” says the guy who can’t even organize his repetitive copypasta into a coherent-sounding argument.
Seriously, this friedfish guy really seems to literally not know what he’s talking about: he obviously doesn’t understand the text he pastes, and is thus unable to organize it into a coherent statement. And his failure to respond to anyone else’s comments strongly imply he doesn’t understand what we’re talking about either, or how our responses relate to his comments.
George Soros et al. funded the election of several D.A.’s who beleive (sincerely?) in the non moral cupability of career criminals.
Names and citations required.
This is (a) obviously false, and (b) irrelevant to the philosophical disputes about free will, particularly in the light of the weasel-word “virtually”. My own view is that no-one has produced a coherent account of what would count as “free will” in the sense that both believers in it and deniers of it appear to need to make sense of their positions, so it’s neither true (or false) to say we have it, nor true (or false) to say we don’t. What we do have is agency: we really do make decisions, and they really do have an effect on the external world.