Can we choose our thoughts? If not, does this rule out free will?
To choose implies that a set of options exists *from which one chooses*. I dont see how else to choose could be understood. So in order for one to be able to choose their thoughts, they would have to be able to *think* of several options and choose one of them to be their next thought *without thinking their next thought in the process*, which is of course impossible.
If this is correct, does this automatically rule out the possibility of free will?
If this is correct, does this automatically rule out the possibility of free will?
Comments (103)
"Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills". It seems pretty obvious to me, however Nobel Prize winning Sir Roger Penrose says quantum mechanics provides hope for free will. I don't know of his reasoning for this.
Ive always loved that quote from Schopenhauer, it makes things pretty clear.
Ive been contemplating free will and the lack thereof from a metaphysically neutral perspective without committing to physicalism, dualism, idealism, etc. Free will seems to fall apart when I introspect upon my own experience of thinking.
A lot of our mental activity goes on outside of the portion that we are consciously aware of. What the brain delivers to our consciousness if pretty much fait accompli. We don't decide what we like, what we want, or what we think. Do you like strawberries? If so, did you decide to like strawberries, or did you just find them delicious?
For instance, I may have consciously decided that your topic title was interesting, but I'm not sure about that. Perhaps an unconscious predisposition compelled me to respond to you. I did not "decide" how to compose this response. It just arrived in my fingers on the keyboard. I have, however, edited what occurred to me. Was the editing an act of free will or was it the product of a fussy compulsion? Don't know.
It doesn't matter, really. Whether we have free will or not, we have evolved to operate more or less successfully. We are, fortunately, not left to our devices. We require years of careful rearing before we are able to live independently. A lot of who and what we are is supplied by genes and experience before we have a choice in the matter.
I think you might be right about this, considering there is no ubiquitous understanding of what free will even means. If I had to put a definition on it, I would call it the ability to choose ones own intentional actions. But that would require one to be able to choose their intentions, which are thoughts. And I dont see how one can choose their thoughts.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I agree. I think it boils down to how much of ones own mind is under their own conscious control, which is not much.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Yes, this is true. However, do you think people misuse the concept of free will to blame others?
It doesnt. To rule out the possibility of free will one will have to show that thoughts, or any action for that matter, comes from somewhere or someone else.
So youre saying that if I do an action, that action is free if it comes solely from me? I agree that it would have to come solely from me in order to be considered a free action, otherwise I cant even claim ownership over it. However, the fact that I am an agent who can claim ownership over my actions does not on its own necessarily mean that I do those actions freely.
Yes, all of our thoughts stem from something that is not our thoughts. Even if thoughts stem from our other thoughts, the first thought was caused by something that was not our thought.
Just makes you doubt what seems obvious when someone as distinguished as Penrose says there could be free will.
It does not mean that you do them un-freely either. The action is generated without cause or input from anything else in the universe. There is no restraint or anything barring such actions from being committed. It is not determined by any other being. So how is it not free?
I guess the issue that Im ultimately concerned with is the ability to do otherwise rather than whether or not an action is considered free or unfree. Forgive me for not mentioning this or clarifying it until now.
Do you think we have the ability to do otherwise?
In agreement, no, we don't and can't consciously think up the alternatives we choose between at each juncture wherein we sense ourselves to choose between alternatives (an ad infinitum regress of thought would result, tmk). Instead, our unconscious mind does this for us.
We don't choose our thoughts-as-alternatives; we only choose between what is given to us by our unconscious mind as thoughts-as-alternatives.
The possibility of free will merely stipulates that we as conscious agents can choose among these unconsciously emergent alternatives such that, in principle, the one choice we end up making is not necessarily the only one choice that we could have made.
So while the issue remains open-ended, the fact that we as conscious agents do not bring into being those alternatives we choose between doesn't rule out the possibility of us conscious agents being endowed with free will.
Interesting perspective, I never thought about it like this before.
What do you think of the following argument against the ability to do otherwise? Someone recently mentioned this one to me:
1. If one can do otherwise, then one can do either A or not-A at the time of action.
2. If one can do either A or not-A at the time of action, then A and not-A are both possible in the same sense at the same time, which is a contradiction.
3. Therefore, one cannot do otherwise.
I dont currently see a way out of it, but Id like to get your thoughts on it.
Possibly subtle, but important: One cannot do both A and not-A at the same time of action in the same respect. Instead, one can only do either A or not-A at the time of action. It's not an issue of both occurring at the same time in the same respect. It's an issue of either one occurring at the expense of the other or vice versa.
This "at the time of action" stipulation seems to be implicitly equivocated with "before the time of action (before the choice is made)". Before the time of action two or more alternatives are present at the same time but in different respects: each alternative presenting its own unique possible outcome. The alternatives are not deemed to be identical to each other - hence to occur in the same respect. The don't have the same features of details.
Unless one can evidence how what I've addressed is wrong or misconceived, then what I've mentioned will make the argument invalid. But I'm always open to being wrong.
Forgive me, but I have trouble with the ability to do otherwise principle of free will. Many have taken it as a priori while I can hardly wrap my head around it. What matters to me, and responsibility in general, is whether he was the source of his actions. Thanks for clarifying.
You have said that to choose one must select from options. But then you have mistakenly supposed that one needs to have chosen the options.
No, at most you need options. You do not need to have chosen the options.
I have option a and option b. I didn't choose those options, but that doesn't mean I didn't choose a over b when I select a over b.
Can we choose how much insulin our pancreas secretes? If not, does this rule out free will?
The brain does what the brain does in the same manner that the pancreas does what the pancreas does. Neither is under our direct control. That fact says nothing about free will.
And yet we choose!
Consider the two wolves within, Stoicism, and Cognitive Behaviour Therapy...
Hence Paul's argument is flawed. Mind is recursive, not linear, conflicted, not homogenous. We have the capacity to choose what thoughts we revisit, which thoughts we act on, and what becomes habitual. Hence we can improve who we are.
Curious, that so many folk here consider themselves automata.
I understand. From what Ive gathered in my time researching free will, the ability to do otherwise would allow an agent to either do or refrain from doing any given action, and I think it is assumed by many that this is highly relevant to moral responsibility. I can see how one being the source of their actions would also be very crucial to responsibility in general, this just seems obvious to me.
Quoting Bartricks
For each individual thought that one thinks, do they have options to choose from for what it will be prior to them thinking it? Where would they get these options from? They could only come from their own mind and thoughts, nowhere outside of themselves. If they dont have options in the first place, then they cannot choose their thoughts by definition, as youve conceded.
Quoting T Clark
If the brain does what the brain does in the same manner that the pancreas does what the pancreas does, then the brain makes its choices automatically without any input from us as well.
Quoting Banno
If Im presented with two options, A and B, I can choose between them. The question is, can I choose the thought which chooses between them? If not, do I have any control over what I choose?
Yes.
Problem solved.
Yes, and it gets even worse if you consider that time doesn't pass because it is just a special kind of space, as theory of relativity implies. Do we have free will if the future already exists just like the past?
It occurred to you to edit what occurred to you.
Ah, good ole B-theory and eternalism. If thats true then we absolutely do not have any meaningful or relevant kind of free will.
Something Ive been wondering about regarding the block universe is, does the block universe model depend on physicalism being true, or could it also work with ontologies such as monistic idealism? Im hoping you could help me figure that one out, because I dont know which ontology is the correct one.
If you slip on a banana peel is it an act of your free will or is it an act of the banana's free will?
In slight difference to 's answer, I find this to be quite a misguided conceptualization. The I in these propositions is not a thought contemplated by a being which is itself a thought contemplated by a being, ad infinitum.
The I addressed is itself a being with agency.
Thoughts dont choose between thoughts. Agents - such as ones own conscious being - choose between thoughts. Hence the agency of choice as it pertains to beings / agents (and not to the thoughts which agents / beings think of).
This observation is apart from the issue of whether we as beings hold the ability choose otherwise in a selfsame situation, i.e. are endowed with free will. If we are not, then the choices we effect are themselves always completely determined by antecedent causes - making us as responsible for what we effect as would be a billiard ball. If we are, then in some way what we effect is not fully determined by antecedent causes - at the very least not when we actively choose - and our effects thereby originate with us in some meaningful sense.
Maybe getting closer to your concern:
In either perspective, we as conscious agents would have no choice in whether or not we hold free will: either being existentially fated by reality to have it whether we want it or not or, else, being existentially fated by reality to not have it regardless of what wed want to be the case.
That we hold no free will in our existential condition of so having free will (were we to have it) does not, however, of itself invalidate the logical possibility of us having it.
Neither. When one slips on a banana the actions he takes range from trying to limit the harms of slipping (trying to regain balance, extending ones arms to suppress the fall) to doing nothing. The slip itself is more of an act of physics, I suppose.
I think the simplest interpretation of theory of relativity is that time is literally a space and therefore it doesn't pass, it just exists. But we have various feelings and one of those feelings is that time passes, which is apparently associated with feelings of memories and expectations.
So physics has free will?
Deference would be more apt than difference... :wink:
The trouble with free will, of course, is that it's never been clear what it is. I'm dubious that the notion can be made coherent. Instead we might do well to reject the false dilemma of free will against causation, and still maintain what counts for our ethical status: responsibility for our actions.
We can agree that it's the way the OP is conceptualised that is in error.
Anyway, looks as if the thread's promise of being interesting will again be fumbled by the physicists. A problem that is becoming ubiquitous on the forums. As bad as Christians.
Why would agents do that? Because they are driven by thoughts, including by thoughts to choose between thoughts. Or when they are not driven by thoughts, their choices are unintended, which precludes free will too.
If you take intents to be thoughts, then I might in this way alone agree: in so far as out choices are always in part determined by that which we intend to accomplish. Still, intents do not of themselves choose outcomes. We as agents so driven by our intents do.
Intents drive us and we drive outcomes. Seems like a row of billiard balls.
I agree with OP. We cannot choose to think a thought without already thinking it. Which means that our choice of thoughts is just thoughts popping into our head. So much for free will.
Nope. Free will pertains to living beings, in particular humans.
Not quite. Intents are teleological processes, i.e. teloi, and not causal processes as the latter is understood in modernity via Hume's notion of causation and the notions of those who followed.
But, as to the issue of determinacy, if we do hold free will then we are only partly determined by determinants (teloi and antecedent causes included) in the choices we make, and thereby remain partly free to choose what we see fit (I have no idea what "absolute freedom" would be anyway). If we do not hold free will, then we are completely determined by determinants in all we do, including our choices.
This issue, however, cannot be resolved via feelings of what is either way.
As a heads up, if you want to argue against free will the best bet I currently know of is in research attempting to show that our unconscious mind chooses our choices before we are consciously aware of so choosing. That said, the issue of whether or not free will occurs is as of yet very much unresolved - very much despite all such research, which tmk so far is inconclusive.
Is it pleasing to have such an uncomplicated mind?
No. What made you post all this? Curiosity no doubt. What made you curious? The intrinsic nature of your brain? That's kind of a whitewash isn't it? Under the same mindset, what can't be declared as outside of free will? "Everything I do has to make logical sense therefore due to the existence of logic the only act of free will is that which is purposely illogical."
Words are nice. They can make anything seem like anything and lead the mind across a full circle of legitimate stepping stones that constitute "a logic" without actually explaining or having any real purpose or effect on anything.
So it is not enough for my free will act to originate in me. I must also be alive and maybe also intend to do the act? But how do I choose an intention without already having it?
That strikes me as a false dilemma. But is that what you are saying?
It remains that one does not know what one will do next. Even if what one will do next were determined, the choice remains.
I want to eat a cookie and this wanting is the intention that drives me to get a cookie. If the wanting is of an obssessive intensity you can literally feel how it pushes you to your feet and toward the cupboard with the cookie.
Quoting javra
So to the extent our action is determined by our intentions it is not free. But to the extent it is NOT determined by our intentions it is unintended and therefore not free either.
By choosing between alternative potential intentions - like the intent to read a book or the intent to see a movie.
Quoting Banno
Epistemologically, yes, of course. But this does not resolve the ontology of the world in which we dwell. We, in a sense, could be fated in a causal determinism to always hold the illusory sense of us having free will via our ontological nature of not being omniscient: the epistemological uncertainty as to which course of action is best then resulting in an epistemological sense of freedom in what we choose.
Hoping the terse aformentioned summation makes some sense.
Still, for one example, in this ontology of causal determinism, no degree of ontic uncertainty - no degree of "tychism" as Peirce would call it - could occur in the world. Rendering all that we do predetermined in full, ontologically.
The difference might not be important for every day applications, granted, but it does make a significant difference in terms of what can be infered about the world we live in. But I think this now is deviating too much from the thread's topic of interest.
Oh, I can decide between them, I just need a thought to decide between them, except when I don't need a thought to decide between them, in which case I don't decide or I decide unintentionally.
It is enough for your act to originate in you. Whether an action is willed, determined, directed, chosen, intended, controlled, conditioned, dictated, regulated, they arise within and are performed by the same agent. In a sense, then, youve chosen, determined, directed, regulated, willed your thought by having it.
A person can and often enough does have conflicting wants ... these then being the alternatives we choose between.
Quoting litewave
No. Our actions would yet be "free" if we could choose otherwise in a selfsame situation - hence a situation wherein the same overarching intent (e.g., to increase one's own happiness) and the same alternative / conflicting wants (e.g., seeing a movie or reading a book) occur.
... will be taking a small break from the forum for now.
Like, I have an intention to read a book and also an intention to see a movie? How do I intentionally decide between them? I would need an intention to yield to the first or the second intention. But how do I choose that intention?
So every thought that pops into your head is freely willed by you?
Hmm. I've commented elsewhere on arguments that assume ontology and epistemology are incommensurate. I don't find that line of reasoning at all convincing. Causation does not imply determinism, for a start, and intention implies responsibility. And we have Frankfurt's examples of free choice without alternative possibilities.
So what do you make of:
Quoting litewave
An inability to make decisions must make dieting hell.
Quoting litewave
What a muddle. It remains that you chose the cookie; the existential fact of having no choice but to choose. Kidding yourself that you did otherwise is fraught. Litewave wants to be able to choose and yet not chose.
Think I'll leave you folk to it. Have fun.
Well, in physics the outcome is determined by the joint influence of all present forces. It seems similar with my decision/action - it is determined by the joint influence of all my present drives. In quantum mechanics the outcome may also be partially undetermined by the forces - there can be different outcomes in the same situation (with the same forces present). Maybe my decision/action is partially undetermined by my drives too, but then again, to the extent it is undetermined by my drives, it is unintended and hence unfree.
nothing pops into the head, as if from nowhere. I think; and whatever contents could be said to be found in that act are freely generated by me and no one or nothing else.
To choose from a set of choices, we must be affected by the choices themselves before we make any choice. No?
Now, I think a completely independent action would require an absolute lack of interaction with our environment. So, I'd say absolute free will does not exist.
The overarching goal that facilitates you choosing between two alternative lesser goals (e.g., seeing a documentary or reading a book) could either be something you chose for yourself previously (e.g., to learn about subject X rather than not so learning about subject X) or, else, could be something ingrained that operates within you subconsciously and teleologically drives all your choices (though I disagree with the details, a common enough example of this could be the goal/intent of self-preservation - I in part disagree because unfortunately some do choose the opposite while yet holding the intent of not suffering in mind).
Either way, be it something youve previously chosen for yourself of something ingrained that is beyond your choosing, it does not nullify the logical possibility of free will in the choices you do make at any given juncture.
Quoting litewave
Thats the crux of the matter for many: a perceived conflict between a causally deterministic physics and the occurrence of free will. Still, ones preference between these two alternatives does not resolve the issue of whether free will i.e., the ability to choose otherwise in a selfsame situation - is real or not. Nor would the occurrence of free will necessitate that causal determinacy does not take place in the world - it would only necessitate that the world is not one of (complete) causal determinism.
Interesting; neither do I but I did mistakenly presume that you did.
Quoting Banno
A correction: Frankfurts examples and like cases are ones in which one could not choose otherwise between alternative possibilities yet supposedly retains moral responsibility for what was effected - basically arguing for the occurrence of moral responsibility in the absence of free will.
One possible objection among others is that such examples presuppose the condition of causal determinism in attempting to evidence that free will is unnecessary for moral responsibility. Whether or not free will occurs is thereby not addressed by such examples.
If interested in a reference: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/#FreeDoOtheVsSourAcco
Do you know of any established philosopher or philosophy that makes a distinction between absolute free will and non-absolute free will?
To my knowledge free will simply expresses the ability to choose otherwise than what one ends up choosing - such that the adjective absolute doesnt add any apparent meaning to what free will signifies.
Perhaps, I'd have said the patient chooses to vote for Clinton, yet could not have done otherwise. I'd have to drag out the article to check. The wording in the SEP is decides to vote for Clinton on his own, which seems compatible with my "chooses on his own".
I take the Frankfurt examples as further argument for the incoherence of free will, which seems to be an invention of theologians.
This seeming ... well, as a non-theologian that sees considerable merit to the notion, I disagree. Babies and bathwater sort of thing.
I'd suggest that our actions are physically caused yet not physically determined. Free will is from early 13c, and apparently related to arguments concerning the problem of evil.
Can you elaborate? Do causes not determine their effects?
Quoting Banno
I counter that with reference from the same SEP article previously linked to: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/#AnciMediPeri
[metaphor]The brain is a gland that secretes the mind.[/metaphor] Are you asking if the mind controls the mind? How would that work? To oversimplify, the mind perceives, feels, thinks, believes, and decides. It is us.
Quoting javra
No. My intention was to highlight that there is no independent action, and thus any decision we make is influenced by some external factor. Free will would entail that at the moment of choice we do not interact at all with our environment, including the choices we are presented with; otherwise, any interaction we participate in would affect our choice, for the interaction would necessarily affect us, and whatever it is that makes the choice would make such choice under the effect of the interaction - in contrast to the absence of such effect. So, because we are in constant contact with our environment, which is changing, the choices we make are necessarily and constantly influenced by such changes. No choice I make is fundamentally/entirely/absolutely mine and only mine for that would require that I receive no external influence, at all, no?
Yeah, noted. Looks a bit like a back construction, but might leave it as a moot point.
Quoting javra
Causality, Determination and such stuff. I argued that causation does not imply determinism. Add that to the incoherence of free will, and a preference for some form of anomalous monism...
But there are other fish here to fry. See
Quoting T Clark
Of course the mind controls the mind.
I don't follow the entailment proposed. As per existentialists such as Sartre, someone could hold a loaded gun to my head and tell me that if I don't choose A rather than B he'll shoot. This being a rather extreme influence upon what choice I make. And yet I still have the existential freedom to choose B over A. So external influences, though notably important, play no essential role in determining whether or not we are endowed with free will.
Quoting Banno
Duly noted. If I remember right, the issue was one of how actions can be physically caused without being physically determined (by their physical causes) - this having nil to do with determinism as an ontological worldview wherein everything is deemed completely determined causally.
Quoting Banno
Cool. I'm myself preferential to neutral monism when not in my "objective idealism" mood.
Quoting Banno
True.
I don't think it works that way, that is, I don't think that because we can't have two ideas in our minds at the same time - at least not in a very clear manner, does it follow that we can't control our thoughts.
Put another way, there are times in which we can't control our thoughts: we are obsessing over something, upset, sad and much else. In such moments, we can't do much.
But a good deal of the time, we can choose how to react to the thoughts we have. Let me consider this from a different angle, perhaps this person is having a bad day instead of being a jerk, and so on.
In my experience, you can simply say to yourself, I want to think about something interesting: many options open up: music, books, travelling - whatever you like. So free will is untouched here, as far as I can see.
I do not follow your response.
I think two distinct issues are being conflated. There is what's needed to make a choice. There you have claimed (controversially - I'm not endorsing the view, just accepting it for the sake of argument) that you need to select from options.
Well, in order, then, to make a choice I simply need options. I do not need to have selected the options. I need only to select from them.
But the other issue that you are conflating with this one, is that of ultimate sourcehood. My choices will be a product of prior factors, and those of yet earlier factors and so on.
I take it that the real reason you think we lack free will is because we lack ultimate sourchood - that our choices are the causal product of events external to ourselves. My choices, whatever they may be, are all the product of my having a certain nature in a certain environment. And, ultimately, I did not choose my original nature or my environment. That's the threat to free will, is it not?
Ive already argued that the actions we take while slipping on a banana peel are myriad, but invariably have to do with avoiding slipping. The moment a slipping action occurs, everything from our inner ear, our brain, our flesh and bone, move to avoid the act of falling and injury. Slipping, falling, colliding with the ground, and breaking ones arm are not the free acts of the agent because those are the actions he is trying to avoid.
Im not sure why one has to be isolated from his environment for this to be the case.
Even if your choice is driven by a goal you chose previously, the choice of that goal itself was driven by something ingrained in you or by another goal which however must ultimately be driven by something ingrained in you too because you cannot have an infinite regress of goals. So ultimately all your choices are completely determined by factors that are out of your control or maybe are partially undetermined, which precludes your control too.
Quoting javra
To the extent that your action is not determined by your (ultimately ingrained) goals, it is unintended and therefore unfree. Indeterminacy doesn't save free will, it just makes you do things you don't intend to or hampers your ability to do things you intend to.
Can the agent choose not to avoid those actions? If he cannot, is he acting freely?
Yes.
This topic of concern is not "your choices" but "you (as the agent which enacts your choices)". It's not your choices that are partly undetermined - your choices are here fully determined by you the agent - but, rather, it is you who is partly undetermined in the choices you make. Makes a world of difference, since the latter grants you (at least some meaningful measure of) control in the choices you make.
Quoting litewave
To try to make this clearer: What Im suggesting is that there isnt a strict logical dichotomy between completely determined (hence no free will) and completely undetermined (hence no intentionality); that there logically can very well occur something in-between, a partly determined and hence partly undetermined state of being that (partly) defines us as agents; and that our free will - if real - would necessarily be of the latter state of affairs: e.g., always partly determined by intents (among other possible factors), but never completely determined. This latter state of being, while of itself being beyond the control of the agent, will yet nevertheless endow the agent the existential freedom to choose otherwise given the same set of intents and cognized alternatives.
Trying to evidence this is no easy task, I grant. But then I'm only affirming the logical possibility of this being so.
It is logically possible that we as agents are not completely undetermined, for there is always a telos or teloi that "set limits or boundaries" to what we end up choosing, making our choices intentional; but that neither are we as agents completely determined (causally and in all other manners) in which alternative we end up choosing - making our choosing this alternative rather than that contingent on us as agents, rather than being contingent on the set of all factors which would otherwise be deemed to completely determine us as as agents (as would for example apply in a system of causal determinism).
Its a variant of compatibilism, though I take it you're not much enamored with the prospect of compatibilism.
Are you saying that the agent can act freely even though all his actions are completely determined by his ingrained predispositions?
Is he not his ingrained predispositions?
Choice is not instantaneous.
I believe it is wrong to hit children. I hear other opinons over time on the subject and weigh up the different viewpoints and decide what I now believe which may or may not be my original belief.
A lot of these free will debates simply mischaracterise the phenomenon especially the issue of how choices are made.
I can book a holiday a year in advance and change my plans anytime over the year. I am not constrained any previous thought or decision I have had. I am not forced to go on the holiday I booked a year in advance.
Then our actions are partly intended and therefore partly unfree, and also partly unintended and therefore partly unfree too. So they are wholly unfree.
Quoting javra
I think compatibilist version of free will has some merit because it says that we have free will if we can do want we want. But it also admits that our actions may still be completely determined by factors that are ultimately out of our control (we do what we want but our wants are ultimately ingrained in us), which seems to conflict with what we usually mean by free will when we bother to talk about it: a free will that gives us ultimate control and moral responsibility that can override all circumstances.
Yes, you could say that the agent is his ingrained predispositions (as well as his experiences in the course of his life). So the agent has free will even though all his actions are completely determined by his ingrained predispositions?
If the agent determines all of his actions then yes he has free will.
I never claimed this, did I. Our (intentional) actions are always fully intended. But this does not signify that we are fully determined in what we enact. Intents don't establish which of two or more alternatives we choose (with all viable alternatives being able to satisfy said intents).
For example, your intent is to learn about subject X; how does this intent of itself establish whether you choose a) to read a book about X or b) to see a documentary about X?
Quoting litewave
It's a different variant of compatibilism. One that is more in-line to my interpretations of Hume - who to my knowledge was to first to propose the impossibility of a) free will devoid of determinacy (but do note that determinacy does not equate to determinism) and b) responsibility devoid of free will.
I may stumble upon a good book review and then the information from the review together with my intent to learn about subject X create in me the intent to read the book about X and this intent drives me to read the book. Where is free will?
So it's said, in my opinion, if there are no cognized alternatives to choose between, then there is no choice being made ... hence, no enaction of free will.
What question do you mean?
If ones definition or conception of "free will" has anything to do with violating physical, logical, or mathematical laws then there is no such thing. If on the other hand ones definition were to reflect the natural order of the universe then it would be acceptable. In my opinion the simplest question in regards to "free will" is to ask by what mechanism would it be possible to violate a law of the universe and break the chain of causality? What are the observed instances of such a violation? Even if there aren't any examples of such violations, what could be a possible mechanism (of any type) that would be capable of achieving such a feat?
Remember that there are two options as to how the universe fundamentally works. Determinism and indeterminism, and neither option leaves room for "free will". If one states that the universe is deterministic then "free will" is precluded because everything would happen according to some universal law or laws including ones will. If one says that it's indeterministic then this also precludes the possibility of "free will" because there would not be enough order if any in the universe (infinite randomness) to even make a determination about anything to even have a will which is contingent on order, and much less "free will".
There is one will in the universe and it is what the universe WILL do through every part of itself including humanity. To think one has free will is to say that they are free from the confines of the universe.. not so. Not even the universe itself has free will, it has no choice to follow the complexity trajectory it started on at its inception or Big Bang.
It is interesting to stop and think about whether it is possible to choose thoughts as a precursor to actions. It may be about the extent which focus is taken in thoughts. They may arise as a stream flowing but it is possible that in the observation of thoughts it is possible to be selective in intent as which to give attention to as an aspect of inner mastery. However, it may be a fairly difficult art because fighting unwanted thoughts may be a hindrance, potentially making them stronger and fiercer, but, at the same time the potential to follow through certain thoughts may be developed as an aspect of inner exploration and in the development of philosophical ideas and insights.
A baby's brain is born pretty much a blank slate in the sense that all it's synapses and connections are initially random. The brain functions in certain emergent ways by virtue of the underlying structure of the nerve and brain cells that make it up. The only information that comes into the brain neural network are signals caused by sense organs mixed with self-generated signals from within the body.
As the first signals in life come through the brain certain initially random activations occur in the brain network directly correlated with what was received by the sense organs. The newly correlated neural pattern is strengthened and stabilized with every sensory exposure and self-activation. This initial random neural pattern becomes the representation (symbolic interface) of that form in the world, in other words a memory. From this point on we think from the symbolic perspective of our memories (ego formation), we "are" our memories.
Now that the brain has a catalog of patterns correlated to the outside world and a sense of self it can re-member things in part or in whole and manipulate them by mixing and matching different neural patterns correlated to other past perceptions and pattern activations. The qualia of mental experience is an emergent quality of neural network patterns interacting within the overall brain network substrait (self-interaction = self-awareness). The entire representational mosaic of neural patterns produces the feeling and sense of what you call real.
In summary: A thought is a neural network pattern interacting with other neural network patterns within the whole network. It is what the brain's activity looks like to the brain's activity. All the emergent properties and phenomena that come out of the brain's activity is called mind.
Several posters have taken exception to the abstract notion of freely choosing from among equal options : door A, B, or C. One objection is that we don't create the options we are faced with. That's true, but an un-forced situational choice is "free", if it is made with personal needs & preferences in mind. A convict may be given the preferential choice between life in prison (more options ahead) or immediate death (no more options).
Generally, Nature randomly shuffles the cards from which we must choose : the luck of the draw. In gambling, the blind choice is also random. But more often our choices are not quite so arbitrary. For example, if we encounter a fork in the road, presumably we chose the original road because we assumed it would lead to a willed destination. So, the choice of left or right is made on the same pragmatic basis. It's not a blind draw, but a goal-driven decision made with eyes wide open. In choosing between options, we may decide, for teleological reasons, against the path not taken. Likewise, our various thoughts & feelings may emerge instinctively or intuitively, but we still have the rational choice to act or not.
SKEPTIC magazine editor Michael Shermer coined the term "Free Won't" to emphasize that often there is no perfect option, so we accept the most promising path, and reject the one that doesn't lead to our goal. Moreover, our goals are not necessarily limited to the destination. For example, sometimes how you get there, a learning experience, is as important as the envisioned objective. So Free Will involves both positive & negative choices from among less than perfect options, for less than clear reasons. :smile:
Free Won't : Volition as self-control exerts veto power over impulses
"But if we define free will as the power to do otherwise, the choice to veto one impulse over another is free wont."
https://michaelshermer.com/sciam-columns/free-wont/
"When you come to a fork in the road, take it."
___Yogi Berra
I don't think we can choose our thoughts.
For example don't think about a pink elephant!
What are you thinking about right now?
However, we can choose what value to place on a thought. Whether we believe its worth treasuring (memorising) or discarding as absurd (forgetting).
We do this by either networking it, making connections and associations between it and the rest of our mentalscape, or we can leave it very temporarily and weakly connected where it is easily lost or overwritten with more important thoughts.
This can be done involuntarily/subconsciously by strong emotions or it can be done voluntarily through concerted effort/concentration/focus.
I am not sure what this means. Are you saying that sensory signals can preserve accurate and factual information about the world without interpretation?
I don't know what information means or if it has a strict definition but I think the meaning of information can invoke consciousness or not invoke consciousness. I think mental representations invoke consciousness which is an added layer of mystery and we are conscious of our thoughts quite clearly (which is enabling me to post them here lol)
I don't know why anything in the brain would become symbolic. For example if we see a foot print in the sand it usually tells us a human has walked by but we are using a non symbol as a symbol and interpreting it through consciousness. We are creating the notion of symbolism.
Some people have an (incoherent?) epiphenomenal view of consciousness were we have no free will and just observe. It would beg the question of why we would be conscious if we could function as automatons.
Conditions affecting conscious perceptions do indicate we need consciousness such as how people that don't experience pain injure themselves. That to me proves that we need to freely act on stimulus and need to be consciously aware of it.
How are you defining an emergent property and its relationship to a substructure?
A large pile of sand has emergent properties but these are quite similar in some ways to a small pile of sand and with the same physical character of a grain of sand and not particularly mysterious.
But the kind of properties that thoughts have to be correlated with in neural properties have no similarities. My memories of my Grandmother tell me nothing about neural properties and can not be observed or correlated with neural properties.
People have advocated a Grandmother neuron where each person and or each aspect of a mental image is directly correlated with an individual neuron. I think these view of thought is to restrictive.
It would mean you abruptly forgot your grandmother when one neuron or a few were degraded which doesn't tend to happen but also I think for truth to be meaningful we need to be able to evaluate our thoughts so that we can under stand why 2+2 =4 and not just forced to believe 2+2=4 because we are in a particular brain state.
I think evaluating thoughts is where free will comes in.
Yes, the initial neural patterns which are random for the most part at birth serve as the first order of representation within the whole of the network. It is self referential because it has nothing else to refer to than itself within itself. The brain is locked in the skull and has no direct access to the outside world except for signals that come through certain channels... that's it, no more no less.
It is as it is with language because language is an emergent phenomena of mind and inherits that quality from it. Consider how a word may be created that is correlated to some physical pattern in the world like a tree for example. The symbol that we choose to use to signify a tree is arbitrary, you can choose to scribble a random pattern on a piece of paper and then commit to that scribble as "tree". As soon as this is done the random scribble becomes information and is no longer random from an internal perspective. The next time you want to refer to a tree that's not there you can use that initial random scribble as its representation. More over a random sound can be assigned to the scribble, and then use those sounds to communicate intelligibly with others that agree on the same sounds and scribbles. This is essentially the same process that goes on in the neurology of the brain.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
It's in the word. "In-form-ation" is essentially form, shape, structure, order, and thus function. The meaning of information comes from it's function which is a property of its structure or pattern. Information (order) is born of chaos and processed, modified, divided, and multiplied through time or evolution into more complex forms.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
First of all the meaning of "con-scious-ness" is "knowing together". The emergence of consciousness is produced when at least two things that can act and react like charged particles, cells, and people are connected as nodes to each other (simplest network possible). In this way they "know together" and new higher forms of consciousness are produced. In talking about the brain there are billions of nodes (neurons) connected in very complex networks, and the connections number in the trillions resulting in very high order consciousness.
Memories defined as neural patterns in turn can produce higher order networks within it's own symbolic space (mind) as opposed to the neural space (brain). The brain by virtue of the functioning of its neurons produce or create symbols out of connection patterns. When you see a foot print in the sand you are activating a specific neural network pattern correlated to footprints which the brain uses as a neural symbol that it can manipulate by interacting with other neural patterns correlated to other things.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
I believe that being conscious or being an automaton are not mutually exclusive. What i think you mean more specifically is self-awareness as opposed to just simple awareness. Awareness like in insects lizards and fish is simply the "watcher" while self-awareness is the watcher that watches the "watcher". Self-awareness is a finer and more sophisticated form of conscious functioning (network within the network) developed over the course of evolution to improve our chances of survival. That's what it's for.
You are going to feel as though you have free will (its the only way anyone knows how to feel), but it is really an illusion in the sense that all the activity in your body and being is determined by physical unbreakable laws. The results of all this activity in the context of a high order consciousness like a human is the feeling of "doing what you want" or in other words "free-will". Of course you are aware of some of what you are thinking (not everything a la the subconscious mind), but that does not mean you have violated any causal principles. Everything would feel natural as if you were free because nothing else can occur to you other than what is already happening in you by natural law.
Emergence in the universe is fundamental for the production of higher orders of complexity in the following way. Atoms emerge from the interaction of sub-atomic particles, molecules emerge from atomic interactions, cells come about from molecular interactions, then tissues, organs, systems, etc... With every emergent level a new order is formed with new possible interactions not possible at the lower levels of emergence. Emergence is the creative capacity of the universe, and anything that is not fundamental or pure energy is an emergent form.
If we believe everything started in some basic simplistic state then we would need a theory of emergence.
But emergence can seem like magic if you don't have a solid causal, testable/predictable explanation from property (A) to Property (B)
from Wikipedia:
"Some thinkers question the plausibility of strong emergence as contravening our usual understanding of physics. Mark A. Bedau observes:
Although strong emergence is logically possible, it is uncomfortably like magic. How does an irreducible but supervenient downward causal power arise, since by definition it cannot be due to the aggregation of the micro-level potentialities? Such causal powers would be quite unlike anything within our scientific ken. This not only indicates how they will discomfort reasonable forms of materialism. Their mysteriousness will only heighten the traditional worry that emergence entails illegitimately getting something from nothing."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence
This is a long article and there is an even longer one on the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, so it's a contested issue.
I have heard of there being laws of physics but not in biology and neuroscience. I don't think people are describing thoughts accurately. For example a thought could be like "Is the Universe infinite?" or "The Estonian economy is booming"
I can't see how these can be reduced to neural activity coherently or reductively. Even something basic like colour seems to be created by the brain and can only be reduced to colourless electromagnetic wave lengths scientifically speaking. Then there are the various illusions we have that pose questions about the veridicality of perception.
It is not clear what the world looks like not from our perspective or without us in it. Theories of atoms have continually changed so every model we create in science is usually adjusted so we don't appear to have some final physical substrate behind our perceptions to refer to.
The idea that there are lots of things going on in the unconscious seems irrelevant because if they are truly unconscious we can never know about them.
But we do have a huge range of knowledge and access to millions of articles on the internet and vivid experiences. I would not demote consciousness to an epiphenomenon.
What an awesome, awesome question. Just curious, is there a branch of philosophy that studies/investigates choice and how we make them? I know that free will is a big, big topic, especially in religion, but as far as I know there's no "choiceology" like there's e.g. theology.
While I am slightly inclined to disagree with your premise, that is a very good point. Suppose it is the case that all our decisions stem from uncontrollable thoughts. Wouldn't those subconscious thoughts be an integral part of our identity? We would essentially be forced to acccept those actions, because that is what the decision-making thought entails. It would lead our blind conscious, which thinks it is in control. And while this may seem like coersion, wouldn't those subconscious thoughts constitute who we truly are? My entire life and self would be centered around the subconscious. If our conscious is not in control, but just pretends to be, I would really be the hidden underlying functions. And since those functions which I essentially am are in control, I myself am in control. To the conscious, which pretends to be the self, it would seem like lack of freedom, but to the true self, the subconscious, of which the conscious is unaware, it is actually freedom. I don't really know what to make of these thoughts, so take from it what you wish.
My own position on thoughts is that we don't know what they are and cannot characterise them in a way to causally and deterministically explain them.
But here is the Long Wikipedia article on thoughts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought
This is the Initial definition:
"In their most common sense, the terms thought and thinking refer to conscious cognitive processes that can happen independently of sensory stimulation. Their most paradigmatic forms are judging, reasoning, concept formation, problem solving, and deliberation. But other mental processes, like considering an idea, memory, or imagination, are also often included"
I think the processes mentioned need freewill such as reasoning and problem solving and a thought relies on consciousness which is a mystery in itself.
Are you not using that exact function of characterisation of one's thoughts by the writing you put down here. I have access through your post to how you think and what you believe.
Language is a communication system between thoughts, albeit an imperfect one but one nonetheless. I believe we can know our own thoughts. As if we could not self reflect on them we would not be aware of ourselves and thus have no basis for argument or concordance with others thoughts (minds).
We determine our thoughts through which we choose to ignore/not value, and which we choose to take on board and store/value. We cause thoughts by communicating to other thinkers, invoking in them the thoughts we have ourselves for their personal interpretation (processing, ignoring or accepting).
I don't think language captures the phenomenology of thoughts. I am not saying we are not in contact with our thoughts but that we cannot properly characterise the phenomenology.
The inner speech theory of thought does view all thought as language but that seems to take thought into the realm of meaning and semantics and outside the realm of physical causality.
Causality between beliefs and language seems unrelated to physical causality. My belief that London is the Capital of England should be independent of a brain state and relate only to an external fact hence why I don't think thoughts are causally determined.
It doesn't. And I didn't say that. Language is an approximate manifestation of one's thoughts on paper or spoken but isn't their thoughts exactly. It is at most a best attempt to capture them.
I can imagine a scene, and speak of it, describe it, but never will what I speak capture exactly what I imagined in my thoughts. It will never reflect the image. The best artists are those that can portray the image in paintings. But even then it is never absolute, only interpretation by viewers.
That is the indestructible nature of one's privacy of mind and privacy of thought. For to have the exact same thought at the same time would be to be the same person. Not even identical twins have identical thoughts. As their perspectives are fundamentally different, they are two different people existing in different spaces and points of reference.
The closest thing we have to discrete, accurate and communicable thought is mathematics. Where nothing about the functions are supposedly open to interpretation. They are deterministic.
1 = 1 and + is + for all involved. However even maths does not exist in isolation from great overlaps with other disciplines such as science, philosophy etc. And even those maths may be our most precise language it is a language nonetheless and deals with such things as irrationality, infinities, and the likes. Which are open to interpretation as they are in philosophy.
Maths is incomplete. And contradictions have been found within it.
Other mathematical paradoxes include Russell's, Braesses, parrondos and Richards paradoxes.
I agree there is a relationship between language and thought but I am not sure it is and I think language is also mystery so it doesn't demystify what thought is.
I am discussing this in relationship to the threads question about choosing thoughts.
I am also interested in the phenomenology of thought. We can observe that it is raining outside and we can state in language "It is raining outside"
The mere observation of rain could lead us to pick up an umbrella. The statement "It is raining outside" could be uttered by a character in a novel.
How we characterise thought will depend how we answer the questions regarding the causes of thoughts.
I think language is more formal than thought where we plan to attempt to communicate something precisely to others.
Applying mathematics to thought seems to lead to infinities such as that we could produce an infinite number of different sentences and responses but we are not usually aware of that when we speak and select from a limit number of responses.
But thought does seem to expose us to the infinite and I have thought about the infinite since I was a young child. In this sense I think thought has more freedom than physicality and physicality is usually the basis for determinist theories of things.
I think writing down thoughts or verbally exchanging ideas does expand the realm of thought possibly making some thought a group activity.