Free Will
This is a spin-off from Freedom Revisited, @L'éléphant's thread.
Free will: One possesses it when you make a choice that is yours and not part of a causal web with causes external to and beyond your control.
Determinism: Your choices are effects of causes external to you and are not in your sphere of control.
Suppose determinism is true.
Now consider the fact that, given a choice node (the point at which we're offered a choice), we judge the pros and cons of each possible option, something people say is essential to making the right choice.
How do we do that? My understanding is we make virtual choices. We imagine thus: If I select x (a choice), this is what'll happen; if I go for y (another choice), this'll happen; and so on.
That we can test every choice, simulate their effects for analysis, even the ones you don't like, must mean something, oui? If we come with preinstalled preference packages (no free will), your choice will be determined by them, obviously, but the point is virtual choices seem not to be affected by one's preference package.
Conclusion: Our virtual choices (simulations, hypotheticals) are independent of our likes and dislikes and for that reason we possess free will even if only in thought/thinking. Nonetheless, making an actual choice could be determined because the preference package we come with will play a significant role when doing so.
Free will: One possesses it when you make a choice that is yours and not part of a causal web with causes external to and beyond your control.
Determinism: Your choices are effects of causes external to you and are not in your sphere of control.
Suppose determinism is true.
Now consider the fact that, given a choice node (the point at which we're offered a choice), we judge the pros and cons of each possible option, something people say is essential to making the right choice.
How do we do that? My understanding is we make virtual choices. We imagine thus: If I select x (a choice), this is what'll happen; if I go for y (another choice), this'll happen; and so on.
That we can test every choice, simulate their effects for analysis, even the ones you don't like, must mean something, oui? If we come with preinstalled preference packages (no free will), your choice will be determined by them, obviously, but the point is virtual choices seem not to be affected by one's preference package.
Conclusion: Our virtual choices (simulations, hypotheticals) are independent of our likes and dislikes and for that reason we possess free will even if only in thought/thinking. Nonetheless, making an actual choice could be determined because the preference package we come with will play a significant role when doing so.
Comments (61)
According to Jay Schulkin, in his Possibilities and Constraints,
Another passage from his essay:
Coming to the gist of my OP, what I want to impress upon the reader is the capacity to make virtual choices (ones we make in the safety and security of our minds; simulations, if you will, of a choice/decision node where we can choose any one of the options, even the ones we may find most undesirable). Yesterday, I did this little experiment on myself. I'm a chain smoker, a nicotine junkie, can't go 10 minutes without lighting a cigarette up. So, as I lit one death stick, I had to, I saw myself (in my imagination), throwing away all my coffin nails, my smoking paraphernalia (my lighter, my matches, etc.). In effect I had quit smoking albeit only in my imagination. Isn't that amazing? My virtual choice, the one I imagined I'd made, was totally unaffected by my physical dependence on nicotine.
But wow! Virtual choice sounds great! Especially about quitting smoking or other undesirable habits.
I think this ‘preference package’ is not so much ‘preinstalled’ as based on a temporal distribution of limited attention and effort at the moment any action is determined and initiated.
Our will is potentially free, but actually determined.
Can you not imagine doing the exact opposite to what you actually do? In the little experiment I performed on myself, tobacco, I don't touch that stuff; in reality, I chain smoker!
The distinction as herein relevant: virtual choice vs. actual choice.
As for the potential-actual dual concepts, they do apply but note that a virtual choice is made even if only in one's mind. If that feels like potential and not actual, no problemo, fine by me.
Are they not also susceptible to external influences, conscious or unconscious?
Okay - I see the difference now. You’re talking about entertaining a possibility. Potential choice is how you get from this ‘virtual choice’ to a new actuality.
Flip a coin! Roll a die! Or something.
We could spin the bottle but a mentally random sequence of heads and tails, or 1s and 0s is impossible to make without external agents. Try and discover. I say 1, what say you?
Mulgere hircum, eh?
Non sono mica Mandrake!
For someone who seems willing to test his/her own limits, cognitive or otherwise, you seem a bit (too) conservative.
Whatever floats your boat.
I tried my dear! Rolling the mental dice isn't a random throw. It's impossible! A truly random (thr)row cant be thought up. Our minds are not random number generators (which arent truly random either).
Why Agentus, why??? Just try tow write it. I tried in vain. If I succeed in writing a random sequence of 1s and 0s, it would a true coincidence!
Both our energies and times could be spent doing something else, hopefully something better, oui?
oui oui! :rofl:
Have something in mind dear...,?
I mean, without determined processes no free will in the first place. Only a tiny amount of determined processes is predictable. If a researcher can predict which finger you raise before you are aware, is your free will gone? Could you deceive them?
Is it determined that "I'm afraid of Americans. I'm afraid of the world? I'm afraid I can't help it?" Was I free in that feeling...?
What is very important to understand is that though we can never escape fate (at least not in this current era of time) we may be able to approach a pure and free autonomy of choice.
How we can approach this, almost superhuman like ability would be a wonderful topic. In my current work, I actually ponder whether or not humans already have this ability. It may be that humans already have this incredible ability and it may actually be a mere given of universal cognition.
Materialists already have a lot on their plate by denying the whole existence of that which is beyond mere explanation, so I figure it's better left to the idealists to figure this one out. :nerd:
I also wonder whether or not fate can be overcome by way of idealistic, universal notions.
When presented with choices, most would say they assess the pros and cons of each option. This involves judging the consequences of every available alternative and we then make selection that best suits our overall aim in life.
In our imagination, we make all the choices offered. In actuality, we make only one that, as I said, is best for us. Please remember not to confuse a best choice with a pleasurable/joyful one.
To cut to the chase, in the virtual environment of our minds we've travelled down all possible paths branching out from a choice node (a point where one has to make a choice) but in the real world, we're limited to only one of them.
Can both of these (virtual choices & actual choices) be determined? Don't forget, the actual choice is aligned with our will (re Schopenhauer), but the virtual choices need not be so; in fact, virtual choices are completely unrestricted as we can simulate every possibility. That's freedom, virtual free will, as far as I can see.
1: Decision is mine vs it being made by something else, sort of like an autonomous robot and a remote control drone. Free will is the former.
2: Free will is action not part of a causal web external to control. By such a definition, a nucleus has the free will to decay at no time that is determined by any cause. Kind of thin: free yes, but not exactly 'will', is it?
Again the begging definition, assuming that caused choices are somehow not your own.
My typical example is two people wanting to safely cross a busy street. The first guy uses causal physics, and waits for a gap in the traffic and chooses that moment to cross, apparently without free will by your definition.
Second guy ignores all input and takes his marching orders from, um, apparently somewhere else, essentially crossing blind at a random moment. Second guy is naturally selected out as not being fit. That kind of free will is not beneficial.
Gosh, that sounds almost like you're utilizing the causal web, input that is out of your control...
So far, nothing a completely deterministic robot can't do. If you want to feel special, you need a description of some decision the robot can't make, preferably a moral one.
This has little to do with free will though. I've had similar struggles, and have found that I have multiple parts to my mental functions, and the one that humans have (the rational part not nearly as developed in most other species) is probably the one doing the imagining, and the willing to quit, but it is the other part, the more primitive animal part, that actually makes the decisions, and those decisions are no more rational than decisions made by a rabbit. Free will has nothing to do with it. It's just that the part of you that wants to quit is not sufficiently in charge in this instance.
It isn't a deep instinct, so it can be done. The rational part can, with effort, exert its will upon the situation, but its often extremely difficult and beyond most people, myself included. There are some things that no amount of rational will can overcome. (Almost) Nobody can commit suicide by just holding their breath. The primitive part will override this. It is the boss after all, however much we like to think otherwise.
Please bear in mind that there are two stages when it comes to making a choice:
Stage 1. Deliberation on the available options
Stage 2. Actually making a selection
It's an incontrovertible fact that in stage 1, we ponder upon all options and we imagine what each one leads to, as best as we can given what we know and what we don't. This is what I've termed virtual choice. For n options, we can make n virtual choices.
In stage 2, all the choices have been processed and the one that we like is selected. It's in this stage, our preferences come into play, preferences we had no hand in determining i.e. we're not free now.
But you have had a hand in determining your preferences. You just haven’t been paying attention.
Freedom is a quality of variability. Our imagination has a high degree of variability, our potentiality less so, and our actuality is less variable again. You can imagine a choice, but it isn’t just what it leads to that’s important in making the selection. It’s also what making that choice requires from us in terms of available time, effort and attention. This needs to be part of the processing.
Compared with our imagination, our actions are not free. They depend on the energy made available to muscles and other bodily systems at any one time. This is determined by affect, an ongoing distribution of changes in effort and attention, which is determined by a prediction of what we probably need based on sensory data in relation to past experiences. We have more freedom here than most of us are aware of. Our imagination can be utilised in constructing simulations and scenarios to determine what our bodily systems would probably require in order to effect a particular change. From this, we can construct a conceptual prediction of affect most likely to be preferred, which can then be applied to our bodily systems over the time required.
It’s like an internal system of marketing. It’s not just about the attractive packaging - it’s about making it relevant to your current situation, easy to access and ultimately beneficial.
You've left out stage 3, and that is what you actually end up doing. And stage 3 might be contrary to what you decided in stage 2, like if you decided not to smoke anymore, and you actually light up a cigarette. That stage 3 is not necessarily forced by something subconscious, nor is it necessarily forced by the conscious decision, is evidence that the will is free.
Pfft! :grin:
How could you choose what one likes and dislikes? These are, as far as I can tell, formed way before one is even conscious about them. I, for example, didn't opt for heterosexuality, but, from what I can gather, I have. The same goes for homo/bisexuals. This proves my point to my satisfaction.
Thanks for bringing that to my notice. Stage 2 covers that phase of the choice-making process. Looks like it didn't quite satisfy your high standards of accuracy and truth. I've been accused of wooly thinking. So there.
The problem is that there is a division between decision and whatever it is which motivates, or initiates action (will). So for instance, you decide what you are going to do, but you do it later, or you don't do it at all. The decision does not necessitate action. That's why we need to assume a separation between what we call "will" as the initiator of action, and the decision making.
Quoting Agent Smith
When you pay proper respect to the separation described above, whether or not you choose your likes and dislikes is irrelevant. Your likes and dislikes may have influence over your decision making, but your will, which initiates your actions, is not necessarily determined by your decisions. So whether or not you have control over your likes and dislikes is irrelevant to whether your will is free, because your will is not determined by your decisions.
I said you had a hand in it - not that you consciously chose them. You seem determined to absolve responsibility for changing behaviours, based on some supposedly unbridgeable gap between imagined choice and actualising preferences. I have already suggested there are limitations to what we can change. It’s not a matter of choosing, but rather re-conceptualising what it is we like or dislike.
There are people who have developed a sexual preference for young children - do you believe them inherently incapable of a healthy adult relationship? Or do you think it’s possible for them to reconfigure their preferences in an alternative direction?
Our dark history of suppressing homosexual behaviour has shown us that it’s not a matter of choosing or judging preferences, but rather understanding them. In some cases, it is society’s conceptualisation that needs to change. In other cases, it is our own.
On a less controversial note, I grew up as a fussy eater, developing a strong dislike for most vegetables. As an adult, I eventually recognised that this aspect of my ‘personality’ was inhibiting my quality of life. There are always more options available than we’re initially aware of - we just need to seek them out, to get creative. I soon learned that it wasn’t the vegetables I didn’t like in most cases, but often the way they were cooked. After considerable experimentation, I will now eat most vegetables, although for some I remain particular about the cooking process.
Then we're on the same page. :up:
Probably less than 1% of all choices are made by such a cumbersome and formal mechanism, including the smoking example. But as you say, besides the point of free will. The older chess playing programs made almost all their decisions exactly as you describe above, and they hardly have what most people like to qualify as free will, so a decision made this way (by virtual choices as you put it) is not necessarily free, by your definition.
I have a different definition, but I'm trying to reply to the OP, not my own ideas.
So in stage 1, you examine the options and rightly conclude that quitting smoking would be in your best interest, and in stage 2, the immediate-gratification-monkey (a waitbutwhy term) totally ignores the output of stage 1 and reaches for the ciggy. Still not an example of free will or the lack of it, and not anything that cannot occur with a deterministic robot, a supposedly not free-willed thing.
So my point is: what distinguishes a supposedly free willed human (or squirrel if you want) from something else that isn't free willed?
Look at the example. At the end of stage 2 the person might reach for the ciggy or not reach for the ciggy. Therefore the person's will is free. If the person was a deterministic robot there would be only one way which the person could go after stage 2.
A squirrel feels hungry and immediately starts foraging.
A human feels hungry but doesn't necessarily make a beeline for the kitchen!
OK, you seem to be interpreting it as a statement of determinism. Under a completely deterministic interpretation of QM (such as Bohmian mechanics), the future action any robot, human or squirrel is completely determined by the state at a given time. Unless you can falsify such an interpretation, your statement above is a mere assertion, not any kind of evidence that a human can in any way do something other than what is utterly determined.
If on the other hand the statement is not about determinism but instead about predictability, then I can trivially create a device that reaches for the ciggy with far less predictability than the human who has made a rational decision to never do it again. All you need is a quantum amplifier, something not evolved in any biological creature since it holds no benefit. There are creatures which utilize pseudo-randomness such as a moth that chooses its flight path far more randomly than does the path chosen by a human. By a predictability definition, the moth has more free will than you do, but you seem to be using the determinism definition, not the predictability one.
Quoting Agent Smith
Nonsense. It usually forages whether it is hungry or not, and only if it passes phase 1 first where it might prioritize another task due to time of day, weather, danger, or being horny or something. But it certainly isn't a straight hunger-causes-foraging relationship.
I brought up the squirrel in case you included it in your list of things with free will. Apparently you don't, which is what I wanted to know. This tells me you're not one of those 'biology is special' types, but instead take an anthropocentric stance. At what point in our evolution do you suggest that the change from deterministic animal to free-willed creature,and more specifically, what distinguished the one physiology from its immediate predecessor? Or are you in denial of evolution?
Ok, mea culpa. It (the squirrel) eats when it's hungry. We can resist the urge to eat even when we're dying of hunger (hunger strikes).
This is easily falsified, as you request. A "state at a given time" cannot by itself determine any future activity. This is because a state is static, without activity, and any future activity of the thing in this state is dependent on what forces are applied to it. Therefore it is clearly false to say that the future action of a thing is "completely determined" by its present state, because it is also dependent on whatever forces are applied to it.
:scream: :scream:
I do think we have free will, but only because I define it more sensibly. I find nothing distasteful about my decision making mechanism being a product of physics, hence my initial reply in this topic.
Quoting Metaphysician UndercoverThis does not follow from any hard-deterministic physics. Quite the opposite in fact, by definition.
Perhaps you should give an example where the forces are not a function of the state at a given moment. The above quote uses the word 'clearly' to justify a statement which cannot otherwise be backed, a tell-tale sign that either you don't understand the subject, or simply refuse to accept the premises.
Hey, I don't buy Bohmian mechanics either, but I'm not so naive to assert it is wrong because it 'clearly' doesn't do something that it in fact does.
Your argument also seems entirely classical, not referencing QM at all. Classical physics is deterministic, but you suggest otherwise.
You're right!
In any physics, a force is required to change a state. I'm very surprised that you would try to deny this.
Quoting noAxioms
From Wikipedia: "In physics, a force is an influence that can change the motion of an object." So, in physics, a "force" is what what would change the state which exists at "a given moment". Therefore it is clearly not "a function of the state at a given moment", because that would mean that the change has occurred to the state before the force was applied. You are attempting a misrepresentation.
Changing the motion is not the same as changing the state. The thrown rock is still heading in the same direction after a second (unchanged motion) and has the same spin (unchanged motion) but has a different location and orientation (both changed states). Yes, force is required to change its linear and angular momentum, per Newton's 2nd law, and is that to which your wiki quote refers), but no force is required to change its location, orientation, temperature, etc, all of which are part of its classic state.
This has absolutely nothing to do with the falsification of deterministic physics. Why are you going on about this?
If there are no forces acting on it, then at a second later in time, it is not in a changed state, it's state is exactly the same as before. That's Newton's first law of motion, it's called the law of inertia.
Quoting noAxioms
It seems you are using "state" in an unconventional way.
Quoting noAxioms
I'm trying to bring to your attention the fault in what you stated.
Are you still stuck with "free will"?
Or you have reached a conclusion? I would like to hear about it ...
We really believe that we make decisions and the only way to deny that is by making certain decisions. Determinism or free will can only obtain in an anthropomorphic universe.
Quoting Agent Smith
No. Metaphysical/psychological claim. What does it mean? It means we can't measure it, nor conduct a scientific experiment to show proof of it. It could only be surmised.
Time for Newton's Flaming Laser Sword aka Alder's razor!
Very well applied! To be honest, I've never heard of Alder's razor until now.
So, in essence, we do not dispute what can only be surmised.
We should really discuss how to handle questions like the will or freewill that isn't on par with empirical evidence. Often, I think, the dispute stems from incorrect application of method of examination: one person would challenge the existence of free will by literally asking for scientific evidence. Of course the other could not provide it because there's no scientific evidence of free will.
But, the lack of scientific evidence doesn't prove its lack of efficacy. And here is where philosophy could gain traction and win over the charge of falsity.
Comply with what? If this is your conclusion, can you elaborate it a little or provide me with a link? Thanks.
https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/free-will-or-free-wont-what-neuroscience-says-about-the-choices-we-can-and-cant-make/
I meant a link of a comment of yours! Anyway, thanks.
So, I'm assuming that you meant "comply with fate" or "comply with everything" ...
From the article you linked to:
'Libet, however, didn’t see his results as a total refutation of free will. He instead pointed out that during the 500 milliseconds leading up to an action the conscious mind could choose to reject that action. While impulses would be dictated by the subconscious, the conscious mind would still have the capacity to suppress or veto them; something that most people would say they do everyday. This model has been referred to as “free won’t”.'
This looks dodgy. Libet seems to be assuming that the conscious mind can veto a subconscious action almost instantaneously. But a conscious veto must itself require a buildup of electrical potential, which must also take time. And in fact for this veto to permit free will, it would have to start AFTER the conscious mind understands what the action is that it is vetoing. So we would need:
1. Brain starts to build electrical potential for a subconscious action AND for a conscious awareness of that action.
2. Conscious awareness of the subconscious action occurs.
3. Brain starts to build electrical potential for a conscious veto.
4. Conscious veto occurs.
Can all this really fit within Libet's 500 milliseconds?
For what it's worth, I don't believe in free will, for the same reasons that I don't believe in God or an afterlife, i.e.:
1. There's no evidence for it.
2. We have no idea how it could work.
3. We don't need it to explain anything that happens.
Festina lente (make haste slowly)
Haste makes waste
Look before you leap
That's all I can think of at the moment.
The idea is to well slow down to gain some control over the subconscious/unconscious. Vetoing its proposals then become possible.