Do I really have free will?
Seems to me I can control what I can or cant do or decide to do or not do in the future. For example I did not shoplift today
does this mean I have a choice over my actions or is this merely an illusion?
How could it be an illusion though, seems to me I have an array of choices. Tomorrow for example I have the choice of either of either having or not having breakfast does this not imply that I have free will? If so why not ?
How could it be an illusion though, seems to me I have an array of choices. Tomorrow for example I have the choice of either of either having or not having breakfast does this not imply that I have free will? If so why not ?
Comments (101)
Excellent question. Either things are as they appear and you truly choose between options, or your act of choosing is an illusion, that is you go through the motions of "choosing", but it's not really a "choice" since you are destined to always "choose" a particular "option? due to your brain-state at the moment of choosing.
But thats not free will. Free will is simply the ability to choose between different courses of action or inaction.
Lets say I have two brainstates of whether to have breakfast in the morning Yes and No what youre saying is that my choice was influenced by my brain state well lets dig a little deeper what is and constitutes a brain state ? What if I was to introduce external events such as flipping a coin clearly this is not a brain state but a random external event
Seems to me we either must have free will, or we will never be able to KNOW we do not have free will without a lingering acquiescence to that fact, and so a lingering agency.
But I dont like the idea of a will as an organ like a liver or faculty of the mind even. We are willing and out of those acts we construct what we will to construct. There is an agent, but it is in the act of doing something that we simultaneously are doing something that we are willing to to do. You cant really separate the specific act from the willing act when you are acting on your free will.
Not really a formed idea yet, but me Im willing to keep considering.
Consent is the better word. Take all the determined forces around us completely out of our control that wash us down the speeding river into the violent ocean, and just give your consent (or not) to the same ride that was going to happen anyway. Thats where the will is born.
No it's definitely not. That's Determinism. And no, your "choice" isn't "influenced" by your brain-state, it's determined by your brain-state.
You can choose to flip a coin, you can choose to follow through with the choice determined by the coin or you can choose to go against what the coin is telling you to choose. Thus there are choices within choices. But in a Determinist universe, all of these choices feel like choices (to you), yet were always going to end up being the "choice" determined by the chemical, electrical and anatomic state of your brain at the moment of choosing. Thus not a "real" choice as most folks understand the definition of the word.
Determinism seems flawed in that regard because it looks backwards to the present and says the sum of all my choices lead to me having or not having my breakfast.
Please note that I havent had my breakfast yet this means the future is undetermined yet Ill be damned because whether I do or dont, once that decision has been made (whether to have breakfast or not) then it appears that I didnt really have a choice yet the choice was there.
Bit of a conundrum indeed.
It does this forwardly too. We just don't know the outcomes because we don't have the calculating power or access to the data (in fact, we might have teh calculating power come to think of it).
If evolution has provided a brilliant illusion, as so many believe, that we make choices proper, this would acceptable on current understandings, as would free will. I don't think its a conundrum at all. You essentially play a little film in your head about making a choice you've already made.
Libet seemed to 'discover' this fact though that's been thrown out mostly from what I can tell.
due to "counter-predictive mechanisms" built into the deterministic thesis we can never know our own future no matter the computing power, that is so even if one accepts determinism as true.
You do. Each of us wills, controls, determines, decides, etc. our actions for the simple fact that nothing else does.
Yes, but it's an illusion. Your body and brain make the decisions a split second before you're actually aware of them.
But it doesn't matter: You experience the preceding indecision, consider the options, then act on what has been decided. Other people judge your actions as if you had been free to do otherwise.
You may as well believe in free will, since we live as if we had it.
If the physical universe is completely predictable from its (unknown) theory, then there is no free will.
If it isn't, then it means that there is more than one universe that interprets the same theory. The existence of inexplicable truths such as free will therefore implies that our universe is part of a multiverse.
The universe of the natural numbers is replete with inexplicable truths. Therefore, it is certainly not far-fetched to believe that they also exist in the physical universe.
If the theory of the physical universe contains a copy of Robinson's Q fragment of arithmetic theory, then the physical universe is guaranteed to contain inexplicable truths and to be part of larger multiverse. So, a copy of the theory of the physical universe would reveal the answer.
In terms of religion, if free will exists, then there is also a heaven and a hell. Conversely, if there is no heaven or hell, then there is also no free will.
Are you not your brain and body?
Sure. But the brain-body is an iceberg: most of it is beneath the level of consciousness.
If the body and brain make the decisions, and you are the body and brain, how are you not making decisions?
"An illusion" is that which is not what it seems to be. "An array of choices" is, in fact, only some predictions based on inertia, biases, assumptions, incomplete / incorrect information and do not determine (cause) actions or outcomes (effects).
If you chose to not shoplift today, did you have an explicit thought process that led to that choice?
Complete gibberish.
The argument is based on model theory. The original phrasing is probably even more impenetrable:
(In this context, we can use "models" and "universes" interchangeably.)
Specifically, for arithmetic theory, there are several ways in which to prove the existence of alternative universes ("models"), the simplest of which is in my opinion Godel's incompleteness theorem:
The arithmetical multiverse contains an infinite number of universes, one of which is the universe of the natural numbers.
Any first-order theory that can express a Godel sentence, i.e. an unpredictable truth, will necessarily be interpreted by a multiverse and not a single universe.
Free will must by definition be a Godelian fact. It must be essentially unpredictable. Otherwise, it is not free will to begin with. If the theory can predict it, it is not free will.
Quoting Lionino
Let's see if that post-grad talk about math is backed by undergrad knowledge.
You fail to understand the discussion about non-standard models of arithmetic.
Quoting Lionino
Parts of model theory are my personal interest. It is my hobby. I am semi-retired. I can royally afford to spend my days reading up on what I like. Of course, I did not waste my time on additional degrees. Why would I?
By the way, how do you make money from your post-grad? Is it about the $12/hour as an associate assistant student tutor? Do you actually have any money? Or have you had to apply for student debt relief because of your overall poor finances?
By the way, I am not interested in vector calculus. I am using model theory to make a particular point. Who the hell cares about your irrelevant question? If you do not want to meaningfully engage, why don't you talk with someone else? For example, go and discuss student debt relief with the suicide prevention hotline.
So basically, things outside of our control exist and are "a thing". That's correct. I had no control over who my biological father impregnated and where and what circumstances I was raised in prior to receiving an education that allowed me to think properly for myself. Meaning, if I happened to have been raised in a household without a consistent presence of food in fridge, I very well may likely turn out to be a thief. If the opposite is true, and I happened to have been raised in a household with more sports cars in the front yard then there are fingers on my hand, I would likely have turned out to be a person of admirable morality. None of that matters when we are given opportunity to choose morality or immorality. Or at least, environment to foster and develop a distinction between the two.
By the fact your conscious awareness, which is only in the top 10% of the brain, doesn't know all the processes that lead to a decision, only the final result. Yes, it's 'you' deciding, but you can't have decided differently.
It doesn't matter. We feel as if, think as if and act as if we were making original, independent decisions, so we may as well believe it.
Ok. I believe that I make decisions based on a process of reasoning. This belief is itself (per now) a process of reasoning. So you are saying that this process of reasoning now is completely determined? In what sense can that possibly be true? Or is it only true if I come to a decision? i.e. I "decide" now that I am free. So I am wrong? I "decide" that I am determined. I am right? Kant says the "idea of freedom" is sufficient to freedom.
There is nothing to understand. You are writing gibberish about free will and Gödel.
Quoting Tarskian
This is the same script run by the clinically online on welfare everytime they are pressed about their non-existant qualifications.
Quoting Tarskian
The crank cannot solve a simple mental computation that every single person in science and technology learns in their undergrad. And yet he insists that he understands things that would only be taught to people in mathematics post-grad.
No one who seriously studies foundations of mathematics is ignorant of nabla and the cross product operator it is like solving quadratic equations and not knowing how to calculate the area of a triangle. Unserious crank rambling nonsense about a field he hasn't been introduced to.
I am considered a ultra-high net worth individual. What about you?
Quoting Lionino
Vector calculus was not a subject in my degree. It is of absolutely no use in operations research. They may teach it elsewhere, but so what? By the way, how much money have you already made from vector calculus?
Quoting Lionino
I became stinking rich from writing code that deals with elliptic-curve cryptography (ECDSA) at a point at which no university even taught it. At that point, (only some) universities dealt with RSA and DSA (if even) which is the old system based on the intractability of prime-number factorization. Some part of ECDSA was actually still patented, which created trouble and still does till this day. That is one reason why we can only now start using Schnorr signatures.
Post-grads are people who don't make money and who will never make money. I don't want to be compared to them.
Quoting Lionino
There are plenty of degrees that don't deal with vector calculus. Furthermore, vector calculus has nothing to do with the foundations of mathematics. So tell me, how much money have you in the meanwhile made from vector calculus?
Seriously, you are more stupid than you think.
I choose the subjects that I want to talk about. I choose the subjects that I want to investigate. Why would you choose them for anybody else? What have you got to show for? Seriously, what is your net worth?
So, how much student debt do you still drag along? Will you ever be able to pay it off? If you can't sleep at night, and if the antidepressants no longer work, seek help.
You write like someone who is on welfare. The words "ultra-high net worth" have never come out of the mouth of a rich person.
Quoting Tarskian
Yeah, I would imagine that someone in "operations research" does not know basic calculus or can't even go to an online calculator to plug it in like any high schooler would.
Quoting Tarskian
The supposedly pious believer turns out to be a degenerate who needs to lie to online strangers about his Calvinistic god: money. Not shocking.
Quoting Tarskian
No, you didn't. Good job confessing your economic status, which no one is interested in or asked about, by compensating.
Quoting Tarskian
Vector calculus is essential for the operation of the machine you use to write uneducated nonsense on.
Quoting Tarskian
No shit.
Quoting Tarskian
Did you win many pizza coupons at the "operations research" department, SEAsia sexpat?
You are truly ignorant, aren't you?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-net-worth_individual
It is a standard term in financial services. People in private banking need a way to distinguish between the rich, the very rich, and the extremely rich. It is obvious that they would never talk to you. You are clearly not even on the lowest rung of the ladder. Otherwise you would know.
Quoting Lionino
Again, you don't know what you are talking about.
Model theory deals with the foundations of mathematics. Vector calculus does not. It is even irrelevant to the foundations of mathematics.
Quoting Lionino
With your ad hominems, you just prove that you are stupid.
I don't care about operations research. That was decades ago. I have never used it in any shape or fashion. There was no money in it. So, why bother?
Quoting Lionino
For a starters, I was raised a Catholic. I don't mind Calvinism, but I can hardly be called one. Furthermore, I believe that the reformation most predictably failed. It raised serious issues with the Holy Apostolic Church, but it did not solve them in any way.
In this world, every living being will have to put in effort to survive. So, every person, especially every man, will have to make money. I just turned out to be much better at that than most other people. That is why I am wealthy. No other reason. If you are going to do something, you could as well do it properly.
You obviously have to do that too. So, how good are you at it?
That's a nice position to take outside a prison cell.
Of course you're not wrong. If you believe it, you experience it and it's true for you.
The fact that 13 billion years of atomic interaction have led up to your existence, your environment and your reasoning process need not intrude on that experience. We didn't witness all that, don't know about the details. It doesn't intrude on my experience, or most other people's.
Or inside. Consider Boethius.
Consider him considered. Plus Paul the fake apostle. That's two, I suppose you can add Socrates and Darrell Standing - still not a universal condition.
Doesn't asking the question itself imply that you do? It is like asking "Am I conscious now?"
i.e. it is the difference between Cogito ergo sum being a declaration and a question. If you can't be certain of that, then there can be no certainty.
The following paper makes the same connection between free will and Gödel:
For free will to be possible in a particular universe, it is necessary that not all facts in the universe can be predicted by the universe's theory. Otherwise, free will is simply not possible.
If Gödel's incompleteness theorem is provable from the theory, then we have exactly that situation required for free will: the existence of facts that are unpredictable from the theory.
Hence, the connection between Gödel and free will.
Denial or acceptance doesn't change anything. If you believe in free will, you can rationalize and justify your actions; if you don't, you can excuse yourself on those grounds. The benefits are either available or not; they're neither gained nor lost through belief.
I too think we should believe it. Nothing else in the universe is making these decisions, so in fact they are original and independent. Given this, we can conclude we could have acted differently for the simple reason we are not limited to only one act.
Rather, it appears that conscious awareness is the illusion.
In any given situation, you are, quite literally limited to only one act. Thinking you 'could have' acted differently is natural: if the act turned out to be incorrect, you can regret it and wish you could back and choose a different path. But you can't. If it turns out to be right, you can congratulate yourself. No harm in that.
It simply doesn't matter.
Exactly. Determinism basically is a self fulfilling prophecy in the sense that you can never "go back" and do a "do over" and make a different choice (thus disproving Determinism). Though there are numerous examples of making choices in ALMOST identical situations, yet come up with different choices, where it makes an unbiased observer wonder just how different those brain-states really are.
You arent limited to one act. At each moment there are an unfathomable series of acts being committed.
And it does matter. In one case the basic biology and metaphysics is dead wrong. Nothing else determines ones actions. So why believe something else does?
Right. No doubt about it, one's past experiences alters one's brain-state which at least influences decision making moving forward.
Quoting kindred
To the degree you (we) are not coerced by other agents or constrained by either internal and/or external conditions, you (we) "have" free actions.
Could you have done otherwise? Yes in principle, but only if the sum of all the enabling constraints on your past actions (outside of your awareness or control) had been otherwise than it was.
Can you choose to do A rather than B? Yes hypothetically, but only if the sum of all the enabling constraints on your present actions (outside of your awareness or control) do not, in effect, deselect some or all of the options presently available to you.
Existentially, that's how embodied volition (re: compatibilism) seems to cash out.
How many of those have you committed in the past second? Each of your reasoned decisions can only result in one action.
Quoting NOS4A2
Prove it. We simply cannot know from internal experience what confluence of factors caused all the previous experiences.
You believe one version of events, I believe another. No winners or losers - it just is.
Have you read Sapolskys book? Pretty convincing.
Yet when we talk about freedom we tend to think that we are speaking of our ability to make choices based on what we believe, what we feel, or "the type of person we are." We would like to think things like: "I married my spouse because I love them, and I love them because of who they are." Yet for this to be true it has to be the case that our spouse, and "who they are," conditioned our actions.
At the same time, indeterminism throws up another threat to freedom on the other side of the equation as well. If our actions didn't have determinant effects, if when we chose to do something we could have no clear idea what the outcome of that action would be, then we would lack the freedom to actualize any plan we had for our lives. For example, if putting my infant son into his crib might as likely cause him to burst into flames as to let him sleep then I am not really free to "be a good parent."
Thus, some form of determinism would seem to be a prerequisite for our actions to be "ours" and for our actions to embody our will (i.e. producing consequences we want to produce).
So when people talk about freedom in terms of "science" what they really seem to be asking about is not so much determinism but the principle of causal closure. The question can be reframed as: "do my intentions and feelings play a causal role in my behavior? Does my self-conscious decision making process affect my choices? Do people have sex because it 'feels good' or is all feeling a mere 'epiphenomena' with no causal efficacy?"
Note that being "self-consciously self-determining" seems like it should be a matter of degree, not a binary state. No one creates themselves ex nihilo, but it seems like it might be possible for the behavior of any physical system to be more or less determined by what is external to it. If that system is conscious and thinks through decisions, it seems possible that this plays a role in that system's behavior. And since we can change our enviornment and shape it in ways that accord with our will (e.g. writing a post-it note to remind us to get milk) it's also unclear if we can simply throw up some sort of naive "body versus enviornment " dichotomy here to help determine what is "self-conscious self-determination," and what isn't.
Now under causal closure there is no freedom in this sense because the mental can never, upon violation of the principle, cause anything to happen. But there are lots of good reasons to think causal closure is an inaccurate picture of the world. For one, if it is true, then sex can never feel good and food can never taste good "because" it motivates us to engage in certain behaviors. All the evidence for how natural selection shapes our preferences suddenly becomes very hard to explain. If the mental NEVER has causal efficacy then it can never affect behavior and so natural selection can never select on the contents of phenomenal awareness. At the same time, "mental phenomena," would apparently be the lone, totally sui generis thing in our universe that exists but is causally insignificant.
Yet there is a great deal of evidence to the contrary here, not to mention that causal closure also brings with it a host of deep epistemic problems. At the same time, the resurrected 2,400 year old view that our world can be naively explained as "balls of stuff" bouncing around in a void is also a view that has some significant problems. Yet it's generally the desire to buy into this view that motivates advocates of causal closure in the first place.
I started reading it, but it basically seemed like a rehash of 1940s style atomism ? determinism with causal closure ? no free will arguments. Skimming ahead didn't make me want to keep going (neither did reviews, which sort of confirmed my suspicions). I was not impressed. Just from my notes:
"show me a neuron (or brain) whose generation of a behavior is independent of the sum of its biological past
I mean, the idea that things are just "what they are made of," is a pretty bold metaphysical assumption, and I don't even know how well it holds up with majority opinion in physics/philosophy of physics these days (certainly there are lots of views that go against this sort of "building block" view). But aside from that, the argument seems to be that if there isn't magical uncaused action going on "in the brain" then freewill is impossible. This is at worst a strawman and at best a dramatic misunderstanding of how free will is generally discussed in contemporary philosophy.
But, like many eliminitivist texts, it seems to mistake complexity for good argument, and a deluge of empirical facts seems to do little more than muddy the waters.
Couldn't agree more
No, I haven't. I'll put it on the list.
Quoting Vera Mont
What distinguishes reductive determinisms from those that allow for the evolution of freedom is whether an effect is determined by a cause in a unidirectional manner, or whether the nature of the cause reshaped by the effect. This is how complex dynamical systems operate. Put differently, in complex systems the past is changed by the present that it functions in.
Sure events are rewritten in partisan histories, time travel stories and human memories. I've never seen it in a chemical reaction; thus remain unswayed.
Looking at the level of detail of a chemical reaction will only reveal a chain of linear causality. Looking at the level of global self-organizing processes of a living system will reveal a non-linear reciprocal causality that moves between the global and the elemental.
As Alicia Juarrero explains:
But Hume and Kant showed there is no cause and effect - they are just constructions that might have nothing to do with the world in itself.
So free will is defeated by a world utterly determined by the cause/effect mechanism, and the cause/defect mechanism is defeated by a critical understanding of how the mind inserts cause and effect for its own categorical purposes.
But how would the defeat of physical cause and effect by a mind so detached from the world it knew nothing in itself, set one free in the physical world?
Huge conundrum.
My mind is made up. I am completely free to accept that I am not as free as I thought I was. Recognizing ones limitations sets one free.
Freedom is a possibility.
My mind is made up, until something changes it, for me to claim it as mine again.
Quoting Fire Ologist
You dont need a mind detached from reality to defeat physical cause and effect. You can get to the same goal by looking at the non-linear dynamics of self-organization in living systems. Efficient cause doesnt apply here.
Aha. It also oscillates backward and forward in time. Well, why not?
Of course, I don't know what self-organizing means in any global context, nor how Kant or Hume could have demonstrated that events in the world are uncaused. But that's okay; I'm not wedded to any philosophers, only to a physicist.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
What is it you are envisioning as the structure of the mental? Does it have parts, elements, sub-components?
Are you defining it in terms of a neuro-cognitive organization? If so, then question comes down to whether the global neural organization can have top down effects on its components, and the answer is yes. Not because of any special status allotted to the mental, but because of the non-linear properties of living systems.
I mean, they claim to show these things. I think Hume is mostly engaged in elaborate question begging on this topic, and Kant's critical philosophy itself rests on dogmatic assumptions. But TBH, I find very little to like in early modern metaphysics in general. I take Hume mostly to be pointing out how his time's conceptions of causation and "natural laws," is flawed, but not much more than that.
Kant meanwhile I seen as hopelessly hung up on the weird early modern fascination with knowledge of "things-in-themselves," as the paradigmatic gold standard of knowledge, rather than what it actually is, irrelevant and epistemicaly inaccessiblea comedy of errors leading back through Locke and on to Bacon. But that's just me; there is other good stuff in there outside the metaphysics anyhow.
I'm not really sure what sort of difference this sort of theorizing is supposed to make. This is an area of inquiry where there is a great amount of disagreementan area that seems to be getting less, not more unified each decade. I think it's enough to point out that it's implausible to say that people never eat the food they choose to eat because it tastes good, don't have sex because it feels good, or that their self-conscious reflections never affect how they act.
Causal closure itself isn't based on any deep theory of how physics works. It's based on a few presuppositions (probably bad ones) about how thing's properties must inhere in what they are composed of. It's enough to show that accepting it leads to serious explanatory problems vis-á-vis psychophysical harmony and serious epistemic issues.
Maybe these problems can be worked out. As it stands though, there is no good reason to "assume it's true until proven otherwise." The same is true of smallism in general. But it's commonly asserted that smallism and causal closure is "how science says the world is," with the assertion being precisely that it should be assumed true until proven otherwise, nevermind that the basics of chemistry still haven't been reduced to physics over a century on, etc.
I was hoping youd say a bit more about what the mental
means to you , taken as a cause. I agree theres a lot of disagreement within psychology about the nature of the mental ( the subjective , consciousness, the feeling of what its like, etc). Yet I dont agree with your claim that this is an area of inquiry where there is a great amount of disagreementan area that seems to be getting less, not more unified each decade. On the contrary, I suggest there is emerging a general consensus among active inference and 4EA researchers in cognitive neuroscience concerning the embodied , embedded and non-representational nature of consciousness and affectivity. I wonder how your thinking about the mental as cause relates to or differs from this consensus, which also integrates important facets of phenomenonological philosophy.
Can it ever be exclusively and continuously one or the other?
This where Nietzsche's aphorism of, to paraphrase, "my heaven/paradise is in the shadow of my [two sided] sword [which cuts/effects me just as it cuts/effects the other, if not the astral/abstract/above]" might be seen to come into play, depending on its interpretation. At any rate, all life shapes the world in part, be this in line with consciously willed intentions or not.
I can see that as our source of attachment to free will; but here's what I wonder/currently believe.
What about situations where you think or say something without having willed it? As in something followed by the thought, "why did I say that?" Or a sudden unplanned desire? A recurring image or song? Or impulsive action? Are these pathological exceptions? Or are they instances where the always decentralized and autonomous processes mistaken for so called "will" become manifest because, for instance, they were "allowed" to surface, projected, without the usual mechanism of the Subject?
As for not shoplifting, is there not an underlying self-congratulatory tone, as in you didnt shoplift against an otherwise desire to do so (if not in the particula, then in general)? Don't you imply that you "know" it is wrong to shoplift. Thus, isn't that "knowledge" a force acting upon your behavior. Sure, not the only force, giving you tge illusion that among the "forces", or in the end, is free choice. But the moral force is just one among thousands determining the final choice. There is no free agent actually deciding.
Do you agree that this nonrepresentational, non dual consciousness cannot be the one in mind when we think of free will in philosophical terms? Because, among other things, such cognition is necessarily nonconceptual. Choice is even in practice, conceptual in that it requires difference. Whereas embedded consciousness would involve sensations, drives, feelings and organic reactions which only appear to conceptual thinking as choice.
If so, and barring actual mind/body dualism, "free will" as we conventionally think about it, is an "illusion" as is the Ego it is necessarily tied to.
Makes you wonder. If we had free will it seems like we wouldnt make so many bad choices.
Well, there's other stuff at play. Stupidity and ignorance limit the range of freedom to choose. So do physical constraints and emotional entanglements. Sometimes the choice as we perceive it is not the real choice available, and sometimes reason is the least significant factor in a decision.
Isnt our will not free because of limits, constraints, and entanglements?
0 citations, 10 downloads. Not shocking.
Certainly, there are isomorphisms between leading theories of consciousness, but there are nonetheless many and it's not common to see conferences with 6+ different theories being advanced: HOT, various forms of CMU, (e.g., GWT), IIT, re-entry, Bayesian Brain theories, various quantum brain theories, biosemiotics versus pan-semiotics, recoveries of formal (and thus final) causation through thermodynamics, panpsychism, pancomputationalist spins on the aforementioned, etc. These theories are also often in conflict to some extent. For example, per pancomputationalism, everything can be thought of as a "computer" of sorts and so the special explanatory value of CMU becomes somewhat hazy.
TBH, I think the isomorphisms are more due to everyone working off the same suggestive research findings than all of these sharing some sort of deep connection.
I forget who it was, but I recall one conciousness researcher likening the field today to the vast proliferation of theories drawn up to explain the findings that led Einstein to GR/SR in physics. In a mature fields, people don't announce a new paradigm shift every year or soevolutionary biology for example has one major power struggle that has slowly built around the same lines for decades now.
Of course, there are a great many partisans who claim that their camp has already solved problem, but they can't even seem to even convince their own teammates of this fact, let alone the other camps.
I would agree that challenges to representationalism have gained market share, but representationalism remains, I would guess, still a majority paradigm for looking at perception. Folks like Bickerton, Hoffman, etc. Even if it isn't, it's still a quite popular way to think about things. Vision in particular is very often described in this manner.
Hence, while I find this area interesting, I'm not sure it's a particularly profitable way to analyze freedom. I think it's enough to point out that an explanation of consciousness where our experiences and volitions have no causal role in our behavior faces a host of issues and shouldn't be assumed. Attempts to describe awareness in terms of neurology themselves seem prone to slipping into the mistake of positing that "brains = minds," which in turn abstracts the enviornment out of the analysis. But brains won't produce any conciousness if placed into the vast majority of environments that exist in the universe (e.g. the bottom of the sea or the surface of a star).
Also, what would be the practical consequence of knowing that one has no free-will? It would seem that the answer must be, none.
Finally, what is the motivation for even asking the question? The only one that I can think of is "denial of responsibility for the consequences of ones' actions."
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I would hope they would be in conflict, just as is the case with contemporary philosophical positions. Its nice to have so many alternatives to choose from. But that diversity seems to bother you, as though you need a consensus of significant size in order to take a theory seriously.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Evolutionary theory has undergone a number of significant transformations since Darwin presented it, no less so than cognitive science, which has evolved from its origins in the 1950s. Enactivism is one of its most recent incarnations. But all mature sciences must start somewhere. Are you suggesting that we ignore scientific approaches that arent mature? Do you think their maturity protects them from eventual replacement? Since youre borrowing Kuhns term, you might take a page from his philosophy, which holds that the maturity of a science says nothing about its truth in relation to the way things really are, only that it generates productive research for a period of time.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
This is not true of the leading figures of enactivism. Writers like Shaun Gallagher, Matthew Ratcliffe, Hanna De Jaegher, Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, Thomas Fuchs, Dan Zahavi, Jan Slaby and Anthony Chemero all agree on the importance of phenomenology, hermeneutics and pragmatism in structuring the concepts of enactivism. One can find such shared philosophical commitments as well among the leading lights of active inference.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I suggest it would be a more profitable way to analyze freedom if you could take the lead from the enactivist writers I mentioned above and see how they integrate scientific naturalism with the phenomenology of perception that Merleau-Ponty , Heidegger and Husserl introduced. Slipping into the mistake of positing that "brains = mindsis precisely what enactivism does not do. As Thompson writes:
This is the sort of self-confidence that makes the Universe laugh. In my humble but highly valued opinion, we should just shut the fuck up about "free will" -- not because we certainly do (or do not) possess it, but because we can never be in a position to prove it, one way or the other.
Free will is not just the ability to make choices. If thats how you define it then even computers have free will, as choices are made by machines all the time, we program them to do so via algorithms or even with AI models we cant understand.
The ability to choose is will. *Free* will is the ability to choose without influence from any other thing. However, the problem you face is that such a process is impossible. The form and function of an entity which can choose is dependent upon factors it did not decide. Computers can make choices, but they did not program themselves, they have no choice but to do as they decide from their very nature.
Now we are not programmed, but our existence is nevertheless influenced by factors outside of our control, since we did not bring ourselves into existence. Our personality, preferences, economic environment, social environment, and health, are factors we do not decide and yet are the foundation of our choices. Hence, while we have will, it is not free. A person who shoplifts chooses to steal, but they did not choose to want to steal.
Among other things. There is all that previous cause-and-affect stuff threading through the universe since its inception - bang or whimper, who knows? There are all the other influences, noticed and unnoticed, that have affected our thinking, perception, judgment and desires. There are a million things we don't know about that may have a bearing on every decision we make, every action we take....
I have no faith in the freedom of will, but I live as if it were a constant reality - because: What are the options?
Interesting - we have no choice but to live as though we make choices.
What's instrumental value? Could you give an example?
Quoting Pantagruel
It's an intellectual challenge in its own right.
That's it!
Good and successful ones as well as bad. And everyone else's. There is no advantage to be gained.
The motivation is an irresistible human drive to ask questions, even the silly ones, the too-diffucult ones and the ones that have no answers.
Yes, you do have free will.
Also yes, your choices are determined by your brain-state and many factors. How could they not be? To call these your "will" is not completely accurate. I would argue that your will is the power you possess to make choices. Even if everything is deterministic, that doesn't mean you don't have the power to make choices, so you have will. Whether your will is free is another question, one that is more involved in this argument.
I would ask someone who believes you don't have free will "What is stopping your will from being free? What is stopping you from making the choices you want to make? The fact that many factors determine the choice you will end up making?"
If this isn't free will, I don't know what is. What would free will look like then?
If you believe we don't have free will (whether or not everything is predetermined, which is also a scientific question) and can't define what free will is, then what is your argument?
Consider this as spoken to an arbitrary person who believes there is no free will.
Does anyone?
Imagine that you install an app on your phone that can tell you minute by minute what you will be doing at any point in the future along with all possible details?
The existence of this app would prove that you are just an automaton, i.e. a robot. In that case, it would be ridiculous to claim that you have free will.
Conversely, you can prove the existence of free will by proving that it is impossible to construct such app. Hence, the existence of free will is a mathematical problem. It is effectively about an incompleteness proof.
Free will is about possibility. If you're going to make a choice, there must be multiple possibilities, as if time is a branching thing and you can choose the path you'll take.
But every event has only one outcome. That outcome was the only one that was actually possible. All the others were merely logically possible. Hence the existence of free will is about actuality.
I was using the constraint of incompatibilism to define free will:
I am not doing this because I necessarily believe or disbelieve in incompatibilism but because it is eminently actionable. As far as I am concerned, a good definition does not need to be entirely correct. First and foremost, it needs to be predicable. In that sense, a predicable definition is better than a correct one.
So, by defining free will as incompatible with predeterminism, it is possible to investigate the matter as a computer science problem:
We can define free will in other ways, but there is a risk that we won't make any progress if we do that.
You define the terms for the sake of progress?
For the sake of keeping things predicable. If it is not predicable, we cannot implement it. Nothing will be actionable. So, we have no other option than to build on the best predicable definition.
No, and diversity doesn't "bother me." I said it doesn't make sense to try to define "mental life" and "freedom" in terms of particular neurological theories, when such theories remain highly speculative and the point being made doesn't involve the particular details of any of them.
I think we are just talking past each other because enactivism is much broader than accounts that try to posit some specific 'mechanism' by which first person experience emerges. I may have misunderstood what you were asking about in the first place.
To my mind, representationalism, indirect realism, enactivism, etc. are all broad enough to allow us to be much more confident in our analysis than something very specific like brain wave oscillation theories or quantum conciousness or what have you.
Sure. If you know Archimedes principle of the lever then you can lift something you otherwise couldn't. Practical knowledge is inherently instrumental. In doing so, it creates a greater "degree of freedom" in the system - i.e. it expands the phase space of the system that includes it.
I agree. The evidence is so overwhelmingly on the side of freedom of will (it is the basis of all law, qua responsibility for actions, which is the foundation of civilization) that the burden of proof is certainly on the side of the unfree....
I take it you're a compatibilist?
A lot of people don't intuit, for various reasons, a compatibilist take on free will, so for those people, the thing stopping them is, I guess, the fact (they would believe it's a fact, anyway, whether they're right or wrong) that their actions are the consequence of things like "physics" happening - things which their will has no control over.
Doesn't that seem circular to you? The proof for free will is in the institutions predicated on the presumption of free will.
Yes, we feel, think and act 'as if' - so we may as well believe it. Whether it is objectively true makes no difference to our subjective experience.
I guess you mean that if I have the knowledge to build a bridge, it makes it easier for me to cross the river, and so I'm more free?
The proof isn't in the institutions, it is in my immediate perceptions. If I tried to lift my arm, and it didn't elevate, then I would wonder. If I was paralyzed, then if I tried to think a thought, and I didn't think that thought, then I would wonder. Except no, I wouldn't wonder, because, per the thought experiment, the intention of the thought and the realization of that intention would not coincide. Ergo I would not be thinking the thought I am thinking. Which is absurd. Cogito ergo sum.
Yes, that would be one way of describing it. Phase space is a physical characterization of the possible states of a system. A bicycle-rider system can assume various trajectories in phase space - i.e. rolling along the path that is defined by the rotation of its wheels, the turning of its handlebars, etc. But a bicycle ridden by someone who knows how to ride a bicycle has more possibilities - more degrees of freedom - than one ridden by someone who doesn't know how to ride a bicycle.
How do you mean exactly? Certainly, I'm construing it within the composite framework of the subject-object system. As such, it is measurable and quantifiable. More radically, I think it may be a feature that is "conferred" by subjectivity on the system. But it is still in evidence as a systemic feature.
You're saying that if I have more choices, I have more freedom. The way I think about free will is that it's about the ability to choose at all. To me, it's fundamentally about unity vs duality.
I think this issue is good for revealing how people think and what biases they have. Notice how each participant in this thread has their own take on what it means.
Absolutely. The core of Scepticism revolves around the recognition of deep (epistemic) subjective relativism, which extends so far as to be able to shape what we are able to perceive. Which is why Scepticism touts the suspension of judgement to the greatest extent possible.
Perhaps free will and determinism both exist as a mutual duality/ neccessary dichotomy. Seems contradictory but:
The past is fully determined and unchangeable, the future is fully undetermined, uncertain.
The present moment (where we actually exist and do all our thinking and perception) is the point at which there is transfiguration of the "undetermined" (future) into the "determined" (past). A boundary between the two.
In that way - one can rationalise the past as having determined the present. But we can also assert the existence of the uncertain future as the factor that fuels possibility/potential, imagination, desires, aspirations and dreams, choices and intent going forward (An act of free will because the basis -ie what the future might hold - is entirely uncertain, unlike the past. It is aspirational despite what may happen, ie hopeful/expectant but not based on something concrete and certain/established -like the past).
In this way perhaps the mind has both deterministic and free-will methodologies to perceive and understand reality. Neither one nor the other, but a dynamic, an interplay between the two influences.
And I think this is the rational approach. Human beings do act "automatically" in the sense that they enact their own physical "habits", but they can also (to varying degrees) modify their own habits. Life isn't "transactional" it is cyclical. We are constantly re-enacting in a kind of cybernesis into which free will can be injected, with varying degrees of success depending on the individual.
Subjective experience, yes. We all have this. It's sufficient to convince us - to the point of basing all our institutions on it. We cannot do otherwise.
Good point.
Quoting Pantagruel
I tend to agree with this. The determinism argument is significantly less useful as a concept actually utilized than the idea that everyone has agency.
Quoting Tarskian
That is exactly what I would say, but not for that reason. I agree with this point completely, and since I have mentioned the difficulties of defining free will, I will define a lack of free will instead.
In my mind, a lack of free will would look like having that app, and knowing those things, you are incapable of changing the outcome. So, the app is not a factor, because you are not able to respond to it. I would argue that a lack of free will means not that your choices are essentially determined by outside factors (which is arguably inevitable whether or not free will exists) but actually the opposite, the inability to respond to or make different choices when new information (or anything that should influence you) is revealed.
So, yes, this app's existence would mean a lack of free will, because if the app existed it would cause a continuous change in the future (meaning it would be impossible to show only one outcome because the outcome displayed would change the real future once someone sees it) assuming that there is free will. Without free will, you would see the outcome and be powerless to stop it, making the same choices you would have made without seeing it.
The only other possibility here is that you see the outcome, and are influenced by it to take actions that assure that outcome. This raises a problem, (unless that thing would have been the future anyway) that the app doesn't actually show the future, but instead the only possibility that would happen if it was shown (and it has to be the only one, because if not what would the app show?). Then I would argue that it is the app that has free will, not you (if it chooses what outcome to show).
This is not a contradiction but an expansion of your idea.
Quoting flannel jesus
Maybe a little bit? I sort of believe in causal (or soft or whatever) determinism, but whether everything is causal (which it seems to be) is not actually as significant of a question as the others in the free will discussion.
Quoting flannel jesus
This idea is interesting to me because if having the ability to react and be influenced (and having your choices be influenced) by stimuli seems to be the only way you could have free will. I understand why some people think that but it seems to be a question of whether you have will, not whether it is free.
Sounds like compatibilism to me. If you think the question of free will is independent of the question "do we live in a deterministic universe", I consider that compatibilism.
I'm a compatibilist myself, I agree with a good deal of what you've said here.