The Illusory Nature of Free Will
Or a musing on free will if you like. The second post is very clear on the problem regarding free will.
It is clear to me that I made a choice (on creating this topic)
Does that detract from my free will or affirm that I have free will?
The fact that a choice exists and the execution of such a choice means that to me not writing this topic was also a choice but by the existence of this topic it demonstrates the slightly illusive (or illusory) nature of free will.
This however applies only when were consciously aware. Me waking up from my sleep or nap demonstrates the inevitability of that event (even if I had set no alarm) so the question of free will from that respect has no meaning.
Lets proceed
It is clear to me that I made a choice (on creating this topic)
Does that detract from my free will or affirm that I have free will?
The fact that a choice exists and the execution of such a choice means that to me not writing this topic was also a choice but by the existence of this topic it demonstrates the slightly illusive (or illusory) nature of free will.
This however applies only when were consciously aware. Me waking up from my sleep or nap demonstrates the inevitability of that event (even if I had set no alarm) so the question of free will from that respect has no meaning.
Lets proceed
Comments (61)
How could a choice be illusory when by deciding to take it we make it real? For example John doesnt have a car. He has two choices buy a car or dont.
Buying a car has now created a reality in which John has a car.
From this angle it only makes sense to talk of free will in terms of events that come into being and then applying the question post fact as to whether John buying a car was in fact inevitable.
I dont know John or the choices he is facing yet his choices will impact me and my choices later down the line or at least they have the potential to.
In any case choices affect future reality (e.g. I could crash into johns brand new car some day)
It would make sense to talk of non-choice here too. The choice of not buying a car still is very much a choice.
But does it affect reality ? Yup I could run John over whilst he is crossing the road.
Non-choices are completely different to choices. Imagine choice being two forks in a road and non-choice just a straight road.
The question of free will then only applies when we come to that fork in the road.
Objections to the bit in bold ?
Yes, objection. Choice is always conflict, and conflict is the end of freedom.
It is always will that is supposed to be free, but my experience is the opposite. Freedom for me is pottering about in the garden doing the next job that comes along, not choosing, not deciding or thinking, but responding to the situation -- weeds to the compost, weed roots into a bag to rot in the dark, stones to a bucket, litter to another bag. Tidying, tidying... Freedom is the road, not the junction; planting the seeds, not browsing the catalogue.
The junction imposes a decision, so one has to make a determination, and then one is free again.
Quoting invicta
You made the same choice that everyone makes, to conjoin the same misbegotten pair freedom and will. Except it was not a choice. Although you could have separated them, you never considered it, because the dilemma was already formed, and the impossibility of either free will or determinism already fixed. Although your two posts at least open the possibility of a surgical separating of, not freewill and determinism, but freedom and wilfulness.
How so? Imagine a society where only one type of car was available to its citizens. Red Model B
By your argument a citizen in this society would be free by fact of not having to make a choice what model car to buy.
I argue the opposite. Imagine now a society where various models of cars are available, the citizen here can choose any model, colour he likes.
This choice is the real freedom for instead of colour of car being the variable, it is price. For in the former society that is fixed and the citizen would have no choice but to pay that price.
That's right. As it is, the poor chap must choose between various compromises between fast, safe, comfortable, reliable and affordable. One buys a car and then one is stuck with it. One minute of freedom and years of tyranny? And why does one want a car? - it promises the freedom of the road, apparently, but it does not deliver.
Why do you value this choice? It is a fake, because whatever you choose, the car has already been made, not to your specification but to someone else's. The one you want does not exist, and you could not afford it if it did.
Do you feel deprived that there is only one voltage of mains electricity available? Of course not; it is a boon, because all your devices will work anywhere. You don't have to think about it until you travel abroad. And that is freedom.
Nobody needs a choice of 100 different brands of factory made biscuits. It's oppressive and a burden. Have one of my home made biscuits, and next week, I'll make some different ones. The freedom of the consumer's choice is a fake freedom that produces the opposite, addiction.
Now thats tyranny and actually occurred in plenty Eastern bloc countries. But thats communism for you. Lack of choice which is what Im hinting is the very definition of such a system.
Choice (consumer choice) is in fact a natural trait of capitalism.
If youre critiquing that then thats fine.
@unenlightened oh and please try not to lecture me on the merits of communism over democracy and liberalism.
Communism was tried, tested, failed. Cuba, China Russia all failed and who suffered ? The People.
The very people that communism was meant to empower.
Yes. A driverless car, approaching a fork in the road, would normally plow straight ahead. But with natural or artificial intelligence, it could choose to take the fork that leads to its intended destination. Unless of course the destination has not been pre-selected by an intentional agent. :smile:
The situation often is that, for example, given the choices A and B, B is chosen.
If you put up another choice C, so that there are A, B and C and the decision changes to C this is a _clear_ indicator that B was never really wanted. The whole "choice" abstraction is something that may apply to roads but already cancel or restrict freedom. "Having to decide" is a crystal-clear indicator that the choice is not free. The car standing on the road in front of the fork may be the last outpost of freedom a rational individual might have. "I want neither A or B. I'll just stay here". This is why most enforcement of decisions is usually done with clauses that say what will happen if no active decision is made. That way the exercise of power can disguise itself as free decision. It is clearly said that an active decision is not really needed. This is like the judge who lets you freely sign a piece of paper or go into jail until you do so. That is power of definition: If anyone else would do that to you it would be coercion. If the state does it, it is your free choice and you can be free in jail.
Such argumentation was seen by the German Ethics Council when discussing a vaccine mandate for Covid 19 - of course it was not "jail" there but the restriction on participation in public life.
It happens I have to do one thing out of two and I don't prefer or want any of the two to an extent I could just flip a coin to chose my destiny. But then I would feel unfree somehow...
How do you know you could have chosen to do anything else other than what you have done? And if you don't know it, what grounds do you have to assume that you could have not created this topic?
Because Im a thinking rational and lazy creature and the thought of not bothering also occurred to me.
Yet here we are
Seems you need me to elaborate.
Before creating the topic I asked myself should I bother? This being a free will topic I realised, anticipated and responded with the creation rather than non-creation of the topic.
The matter of creating this topic was a conscious choice to do so as it was not to do so.
Sounds like an ex post facto rationalization to me. You don't know you had a "choice", just assume confabulate it, no? :chin:
You are querying my knowledge and Im saying I did KNOW I had a choice.
Rationalisation occurred prior to its creation.
Should I shouldnt I thats all the rationalisation that occurred in my mind.
Are you calling me a liar ?
All organisms are reactionary creatures, the physical world is the cause of all their reactions and their reactions are as cause to the physical world. When one states that there is free will, one needs to ask free will from what. The whole idea is absurd.
Some creatures are not reactionary but creative what is the question of the topic a reaction to ?
:up:
Quoting invicta
It does not follow from your ignorance of the cause/s of your decision to post this "topic" that there was not any extrinsic (i.e. unconscious, involuntary) cause/s and that instead apparently it was only the effect of your spontaneous, or "creative", whimsy. Sorry, invictus, appeals to ignorance or incredulity are fallacious; and a 'transcendental (e.g. libertarian, ensouled) ego' is just another humunculus-of-the-gaps. :smirk:
Imagine if all that effort formatting your text has gone into composing an intelligent response :rofl:
Quote marks, italics, brackets although nothing in bold. Slacking today are we?
9/10
Reaction is the process of being part of something larger than oneself, being of the earth. In order to move without, one needs to be moved within, in other words, one needs to be motivated and motivated movement spell's reaction not action. Evolutionary adaptation works on the processes of reaction for without said reactions it would not be possible. Diseases are reactions to chemical or biological invasions of the body and immune reactions are natural solutions. Free will is humanity's expression of egocentricity an understandable development in the sense that everyone feels themselves the center of their own universe; but it is delusional to think that one is in control. There is no such thing as human action, there is but human reactions. You would do well in trying to understand human behavior to ask yourself, what is the individual reacting to? This is not always discernable, but it is the only shot you have at understanding a given behavior that is not itself instinctual; which only means hardwired reactions. I invite anyone to give me an example of a human ACTION that is clearly not a reaction outside of say an epileptic convulsion.
No. It is a synthetic judgement. If "will" is not (perceived) as free then it isn't "will" at all. This has a meaning in the subjective dimension. You ought to know if you want to post in this thread, if someone better came to your rescue or if you need some kind of therapy.
I don't agree and Schopenhauer wrote a complete philosophy on the basis of the blind will. The way I see it, it is the ever coming into being. Like you might cut your lawn on a summer's day it doesn't give up because every Saturday you cut it down, it keeps coming into being. Sex itself is involuntary, it is not an intellectual decision or consciously willed to be sexually attracted, often it's rather inconvenient. Sex is basically the blind will of the species. Nature plays its species like a violin; the melody it plays upon us only we hear, and call it our apparent reality. As I stated elsewhere, the concept of free will is an egocentric delusion that we come by naturally, in that; we sense we all are at the center of our own universe; but to believe we are in control is a little like madness. If we could understand and accept this perhaps, we could live then in a sacred environment not isolated from it. As we are played by our environment, we call this experience/knowledge and meaning but again it is a melody only the conscious subject hears.
May be, but I was not speculating about metaphysics.
The declaration of will of an individual must be assumed as free expression. It makes no sense otherwise: Any form of coercion nullifies it as such.
You may see it as the expression of accordance between the state of affairs expressed on the piece of paper and the biological determination of your organism. That doesn't matter at all.
However, if you say that your signature is expression of external forces acting upon you - like the force of gravity overcame the autonomy of the small mass of your biological system, dragging your hand around making figures on the paper - that would matter.
The line of distinction is exactly the self-perception of the individual; being able to make such a distinction - subjectively - implies a meaningful concept of freedom and will.
So to repeat
Quoting boagie
I cannot agree with that - the discussion about it's meaning may be. It doesn't matter one way or the other...
The control the human body has over itself is near total. Every action, weather its the heartbeat, the creation and secretion of hormones, the production of white blood cells, hair growth, breathing, talking, eating, walking, sexual arousal, digestion, is controlled and regulated and caused by a single entity: the human organism. Under these conditions, how can the will be unfree? What else in the universe controls the will?
Thus we fracture it into mind/body, involuntary/voluntary, conscious/unconscious, and posit ourselves in one and not the other. This, here, is the fundamental delusion.
Yes, freedom as a concept presupposes its own negation. In making any choice, the choice itself is a constraint. You can move up and down; have your cake and eat it too.
Freedom as pure abstract freedom from constraint is contradictory. Hegel's Philosophy of Right covers this quite well in the Introduction, I think after the opening sections on the will (so probably after section 8 at least, you can find it free online, but the writing is pretty bad).
Freedom also requires rationality. One cannot choose if one thing in the world doesn't follow from another, i.e. if relations are arbitrary. If tying my shoes sometimes results in my legs disappearing, and at other times teleports me to Paris, then I cannot make any choices based on my actions because my actions entail nothing consistent. Choices must have logical consequences for there to be freedom. This is why Liebnitz developed the principle of sufficient reason as a precondition of free will, although today it is more popular to see it as presupposing the illusory nature of free will.
Suppose I argue that free will is illusory, and you wish to show that you are free by waving your hand. Even if we assume that mind is not necessarily causally tied to the external world, you would still be moving your hand because of what I had said. This is a causal connection, but that doesn't presupposes a lack of freedom, rather it is a requirement for it. Pure arbitrariness is not freedom.
More specifically, when we talk about freedom in the practical sense, we often care about freedom from certain things, freedom from hunger, freedom from oppression.
But we also care about a positive freedom, freedom to choose rationally, not driven by instinct, desire, or arbitrariness. Positive freedom necessarily constraints, since it comes with duties. One cannot choose be a soldier without agreeing to follow certain duties. One cannot become a carpenter without others who want you to build or repair things for them in some sort of contractual arrangement. Thus freedom requires constraint and social relationships (which in turn constrain).
I think Frankfurt was on to something with the wanton/person distinction. Very briefly, persons are defined by their ability to want to have certain desires, e.g., someone wants to want to be an attentive parent (even if they aren't). This ability to reflect on and have desires about our desires is key to a certain type of freedom. I don't think his theory is complete though.
Some are determined to believe that "free will" is an illusion.
Some are determined to believe that "free will" is compatible with being determined.
And some are determined to think that 'whether or not we have "free will"' is a distinction that does not make a significant practical difference in our everyday lives.
At a certain moment you made a choice. Where did that choice come from? Did you choose to make that choice? Did you choose to choose to choose, or did the choice merely arise?
Let's say you are free to act according to your nature, your inclinations. Did you create that nature, those inclinations? Did you create yourself?
:up:
Quoting NOS4A2
I can't be. Not under those conditions you just specified.
Now do you want to discuss the actual conditions which prevail in the real world? Or continue to make up whatever shit comes into your head and then say "hey, if this bullshit I've just 'reckoned' is true than some other bullshit I also reckon must be true too" and pretend that's serious thought?
Al those things you listed are the activities of the human organism. The organism regulates its activities, but it is not a "single entity" if by that you mean there is some overarching central program. You make if sound as if there is a super-organism over and above the organism, a super-organism that controls the organism
Go for it.
I just said it regulates itself. Im not sure how that implies two organisms. How do I make it sound as if there is?
When you say this:
"and caused by a single entity: the human organism" you are saying the activities of the human organism are caused by the human organism, which sounds redundant. They are just the activities of the human organism. and in any case are also caused and conditioned by external influences such as oxygen, food, water, sunlight, trauma, injury and so on.
Are the activities of the human organism uncaused or caused by something else?
Free will is delusional, and it is agreed the acceptance of this reality creates chaos for society in the forms of religious sin and legal responsibility for one's behaviors. It is perhaps an impossible task for our evolutionary development. All creatures are reactionary creatures including humanity, humanity's greatest error is their belief in themselves as in control. The fact the all movement is motivated movement spells reaction not action. Perhaps if this is accepted, we might live sanely in this world.
Is this you trying to say that certain reflexes are controlled by hammers, and not, say, a reflex arc?
We, of the Voluntarist Delegation, are willing to agree to 90+% of this statement, with some minor edits (see above). All in favor of moving the question, choose to say "aye."
However, the delegation seems split in:
"Some choose to be determined to choose to..." and "some are determined to choose to be determined to..." We may need to adjourn while they discuss the compromise position of "some choose to be determined to be determined to choose what they are determined to choose to be determined to..."
Your claim...
Quoting NOS4A2
It's not. The reflex is caused by the hammer.
Here's a nice user-friendly diagram of the various TRP channels at the skin boundary and the way external agents cause neuronal responses.
But isnt the rising of the leg caused by the contraction of muscle?
All a hammer can do is compress the tendon.
What causes the contraction of the muscle?
A motor neuron
And what causes a motor neuron to release sufficient acetylcholine to innervate that muscle?
Im not sure, but I suspect that youre going to eventually say the body is like a Rube Goldberg machine, or that the body does not govern, control, or cause any of these actions. Is that what were getting at?
Look at the diagram I posted above of the electro-chemical reactions at the skin surface in response to external stimuli.
You've agreed that at one end of the neural chain acetylcholine is released which innervates a muscle fibre causing it to move.
You see from the diagram, that at the other end of the chain external stimuli cause electro-chemical responses in neurons.
Each nueron has an axon. Each will either cause a neighbouring neuron to fire or it won't (depending on signal strength)
The only way that motor neuron is going to release acetylcholine is if it's been stimulated to do so by a preceding neuron (barring random noise).
So. Where's the break in the chain? Because I've studied the human neurological system quite closely and all I see are more neurons, each connected to the preceding one and each only stimulated to fire by that preceding one (again, barring random noise).
So where's the 'will' get in?
And where do those externally generated signals get stopped?
And the above is all about 'will' of course. We needn't even go that far.
Your nonsense is shown simply by the first diagram alone. There is an external stimuli, heat, which deforms the nonselective Ca2+ channel in the cell membrane... We can stop right there because this very first stage immediately disproves your claim that...
Quoting NOS4A2
It isn't.
The opening of the membrane's Ca2+ channels at the epidermis is caused by heat. External heat.
Cocky Libertarian gets humbled by Neuroscientist on the Reality of (the nonexistence of) Free-Will.
edit: I'm going to actually try to say something substantive, sorry for the cringeworthy jokes
Do you think externally generated signals must be stopped at some point in order for free-will to exist?
What if there is some function by which beliefs, for example, are stored and represented at least partially by some sort of stochastic factor and then this sort of moderately understandable randomness results in enough deviation to allow one to say, with moderate certainty, that their beliefs are not formed only from external signals and personal valuation, but rather also a number of hidden factors that may or may not be physiological? What if we couldn't even observe the means by which beliefs are formed and acted upon, at least not on the right level?
Maybe we can do all that, and after reading about this I think the credition model of belief is probably accurate, but it seems to me that there is enough elbow room for us to posit that maybe not knowing everything about the brain could allow free will to creep in, even if it could be viewed as grasping at straws.
edit: this is my best argument for free will, and I'm not even committed to it; I know it is weak.
Your causal chain begins rather arbitrarily, at the point where the hammer strikes the tendon, and not in the doctors brain for instance. It begins exactly where it suits you, somewhere in the environment. But that the environment can affect the body is a given. Im speaking about the body, so all I can say is your hammers impact causes the compression of the tendon. Thats it. Your causal chain begins precisely where it ends, because every causal link you can muster to describe after that is caused by the body, utterly contingent on its being, structure, function, and so on. There is no hammer in there firing neurons and constricting muscles, Im afraid.
Quoting 180 Proof
Corrected.
An activity of the human organism may be caused by previous activities of the human organism (endogenous events), and may or may not also be caused by exogenous events.
Random noise, duh! :gasp:
That's basically the argument I made. Not my best, by far. I seem to remember hearing about an essay by Dennet that says something similar.
To be honest, I think talk of free-will and talk of CNS signals are from two different worlds and don't have much corroboratory overlap. We use words like 'free-will' to talk about coercion by others, it's a word used in a social context when entertaining concepts of blame, responsibility, and autonomy. the only overlap I can see with neuroscience or cognitive science is where we can identify a pathology to say "he would have acted differently had it not been for X" and then show that by reference to a 'normal' CNS functioning without this pathology.
All I'm saying here with the examples I've given to @NOS4A2 is that if one were to theorise a 'free-will' in a physiological sense (which is the sense in which @NOS4A2 introduced it), then it would have to somehow interrupt that chain of action potential > action potential which seems to run all the way from sensory input to motor output.
Quoting ToothyMaw
There's certainly a lot of stochastic activity in the brain. Neurons will fire randomly just due to depolarisation as a result of gradual leakage of Na+ through some non-selective membrane channels (as well as a few other, less significant causes). There are also damages which can make it more likely for these random firing to occur in clusters. But we have tow main mechanisms to prevent this from having any effect. first most neurons will be wired such as to require a number of preceding neurons to fire in order to raise sufficient action potential, so one random firing in that set is unlikely to do anything. the second is more complex. Various cortices act together to 'interpret' the signal entering them before sending on some 'result' to the cortices above them in the brain's hierarchy. As part of this process they have backward acting neurons which suppress signals that don't fit an 'expected' pattern, This way signals which are likely to be noise never reach the next stage in the processing hierarchy.
It's possible that some signals make it through all of these controls and I think it likely that these may be interpreted post hoc (when detected by interoceptive cortices) as 'spontaneous thought'). But I don't see any way these could be frequent enough, nor from a complex enough source to hold our beliefs.
In addition, lesion studies and, more recently, single neuron probing studies, seem to have a greater evidence base for our beliefs being encoded in quite normal parts of the brain taking up positions in the chain of CNS processing which we can identify with some degree of certainty.
But, yes, there's a lot we don't know about how brains work.
Which would still be external to the system under analysis.
Quoting NOS4A2
So your argument is "if we limit ourselves to speaking about the body... then we find that all events are caused by something in the body". well, no shit.
That would be randomness then. Not 'will'.
And just as arbitrary.
Does talk about the will have to do with anything else? For some reason youve limited the discussion to cause only, but the body also controls, regulates, orders, directs such activity, and it does it under no other influence.
I didn't say it wasn't arbitrary. That's the point. Any step in a causal chain could be called 'the cause' there's no right answer, it depends on the context.
Quoting NOS4A2
Not if you beg the question, no. But if you're asking if there is such a thing, then talk about it very much does have to do with forces outside the body. Those being among the alternative explanations for action you'd have to dismiss the possibility of to prove your position.
Quoting NOS4A2
Again, just spouting nonsense you happen to reckon is not a substitute for a rational argument. Have you studied human physiology? Have you put any effort at all toward checking if your 'reckon' is correct, have you examined these 'controls, regulations orders, and directions' to see if they do indeed occur without any outside influence?
No.
You just spew up whatever you happen to think and expect to be taken seriously. If you want to discuss human regulatory physiology, then learn about it first.
Way to make neuroscience make sense to someone scientifically illiterate like me. I half expected to be grouped in with NOS because of my lack of understanding, although perhaps I didn't make as many, or perhaps any, overly specious claims - or so it would seem from the way you broke it down.
I have no other arguments for free will and will now step aside so people with your knowledgeability can keep fighting the good fight.
:up: