The Illusion of Freedom
Is free will an illusion? Are our lives already mapped out?
Well ... allow me to explain a proposition.
The possibility that our lives are already planned out cannot be proven or disproven. Let’s say God (or some other being) possesses the quality of omniscience (that is, he knows everything). Well, if he know everything then he know the future before it takes place.
So, let's think of the following scenario:
Someone offers you an option: want an apple or an orange? Well, God knows what you are going to choose before the options are even presented. Is it your choice then? How can I be 100% sure that it is me choosing and not God for me? In other words, if God knows the future is he creating it or is he just accessing it? Or do they mean the same thing? And how will we ever know?
You can argue that such illusion don’t exist. But you would be falling prey to such illusion. Why? It might be so strong that it feels like your choice. Also pride further enhances the illusion as well. If you’re a businessman and have made a ton of good decisions for your company that resulted in heavy profits, would you really like to believe you didn't cause those profits? No, because it will take away both your sense of pride and sense of purpose.
Side question:
Well, if arguing against the illusion enhances it, does arguing for it diminish its effect?
Well ... allow me to explain a proposition.
The possibility that our lives are already planned out cannot be proven or disproven. Let’s say God (or some other being) possesses the quality of omniscience (that is, he knows everything). Well, if he know everything then he know the future before it takes place.
So, let's think of the following scenario:
Someone offers you an option: want an apple or an orange? Well, God knows what you are going to choose before the options are even presented. Is it your choice then? How can I be 100% sure that it is me choosing and not God for me? In other words, if God knows the future is he creating it or is he just accessing it? Or do they mean the same thing? And how will we ever know?
You can argue that such illusion don’t exist. But you would be falling prey to such illusion. Why? It might be so strong that it feels like your choice. Also pride further enhances the illusion as well. If you’re a businessman and have made a ton of good decisions for your company that resulted in heavy profits, would you really like to believe you didn't cause those profits? No, because it will take away both your sense of pride and sense of purpose.
Side question:
Well, if arguing against the illusion enhances it, does arguing for it diminish its effect?
Comments (164)
What do you believe?
Keep in mind I am not religious and these thoughts are not based on any thoughts about participation by God.
If you look through all my posts (not a suggestion) you'll see a theme that pops its head up over and over - metaphysics is not true or false. It's useful or not useful in a particular situation. Different metaphysical viewpoints are just different ways of looking at, talking about, the same things. Free will vs. determinism is a metaphysical issue. Sometimes it's useful to think one way, sometimes the other.
To me, the question of whether or not I have free will is not relevant to whether or not I should be held responsible for my actions. If that's true, why does it matter?
For what it's worth, not many people have agreed with my thoughts about metaphysics.
If everything is determined, that includes determinism.
Therefore, if determinism is assumed to be true, one's position on free will vs. determinism is determined.
Finally, if everything is determined, that would include physicalism/materialism. What determined physicalism/materialism?
How do you know?
I was going to suggest that we just shut down the forum since all of the discussions were already determined, but then I remembered it was beyond our control since the bouncing particles are making all of the illusory decisions. The proceeding statement is in itself an illusion since everyone knows bouncing particles don't know how to write or talk to each other. They have no interest. They just like bouncing around.
I guess the only remaining question that I have (everything is were clear) is why some bouncing particles (btw, there is no such thing as a particle) make some people think they have free will, while others create the opposite illusion. Is it because they have a sense of humor?
Physics.
Quoting Rich
You again! Haha, I had just mentioned to the OP that I was discussing this same topic here recently. Speak of the devil and he shall appear, as they say.
This issue has been on my mind a lot since we talked last, and I'm trying to figure out how to make sense of things from a non-deterministic viewpoint. No breakthroughs yet, unfortunately.
Quoting Rich
Are you referencing some sort of religious belief? Or the fact that all matter is composed of electrons and the like--things that don't actually have mass? I've always found that fascinating.
I've been thinking on causation and something doesn't seem right. Causation seems to be an inference. There is no deductive force behind causation. It isn't logically necessary that, say, temperature falling below zero leads to formation of ice. Rather, the connection between sub-zero temperatures and ice could be just a coincidence.
Yes, multiple observations of the same connection (sub-zero temperatures and ice) is unlikely to be a coincidence but do focus on the word "unlikely". There's no actual certainty in what we think as causation. At worst, it's just a habit of mind. At best, it's a local Earthly phenomena.
Please be specific.
Example:
You are sitting under a tree. An apple falls from the tree and hits you in the head. What set this event in motion?
There are many lines of causality for this event (and all events) but let's just follow one. The apple was "caused" by the tree. The tree grew in that spot because an animal which had eaten an apple defecated apple seeds in that spot, and the conditions allowed the tree to grow. The animal defecated the seed because it had eaten an apple from another tree. That apple came from a tree which was also a product of an animal defecating seeds, and so on and so forth. Within all of these events there are numerous other events which allowed for things to happen specifically the way they did--the animals, what and where they ate, the weather conditions, the geological conditions...honestly too many factors to comprehend. All of these things create a sort of web of interconnected causality, so that everything that happens is caused by everything else that happens, all the way back to the beginning of the universe.
[b]"It is easy to sympathise with those philosophers who have come to regard causes as, well, a lost cause. The venerable idea that everything that happens is caused to happen by other, distinct and separate, previous happenings – going right back to the First Cause, the mysterious Uncaused Cause (God or the Big Bang according to taste) that got happening to happen – has been under increasing attack for nearly quarter of a millennium. While it has fought back valiantly (mainly by re-defining itself), things are looking pretty bad for the idea of causation...
At any rate, physical reality is seamless and law-governed, (possibly) unfolding over time, not a chain or network of discrete events that have somehow to be connected by causal cement. Causes, far from being a constitutive stuff of the physical world, are things we postulate to re-connect that which has been teased apart..."[/b] -- Raymond Tallis, "Causes As (Local) Oomph", Philosophy Now, Issue 100
I don't see the relevance of this distinction. Isn't saying "physical reality is seamless" just a more concise way of stating what I said? That everything in the universe is inescapably and necessarily interconnected?
Quoting WISDOMfromPO-MO
Can you elaborate on what you mean by this?
Quoting JustSomeGuy
They are not my words.
They are Raymond Tallis's words.
Editing is being extremely difficult, but I have the complete quote and the link now.
What about the quote do you not understand? It is basically saying that causation/causes do not exist in nature. It is saying that causation/causes are something that we humans create to make isolated observations fit together, when in reality everything is seamless and not steps in a chain.
In a completely different article that I have read it was pointed out that we do not observe causes--we only observe relationships.
Have you observed causes? Have you empirically sensed such a middle man between events? Please share the details with us.
Are there many chains of causation determining everything that happens, and clear causation (earth and apple attracting each other until the stem of the apple fails, falling on your face as you lay sleeping on your back under the heavily laden big-apple tree, breaking your glasses, and causing a severe injury to your eyes which causes you to go blind, preventing you from writing, etc...)? Can a system of causation create openings of non-determined situations which an animal can make a choice in?
There is no way to make sense of Determinism. It was simply a story made up hundreds of years ago when some scientist/atheists hoped that they could control the whole universe with Newton's Laws (never considering that under determinism there is nothing to control). There is much economic advantage for certain industries to perpetuate the myth of Determinism in academia so that is what is funded by Big Industries such as Big Pharma.
Philosophically though, Determinism is farcical and to try to make sense of it (and why would bouncing particles which to make sense of themselves in the first place?), Is absolutely impossible. Why in heavens name would the Laws of Nature create a forum to discuss whether it exists?
As a religion, Determinism makes all the sense in the world.
Are you saying each individual event is isolated and unconnected, unrelated to all other events? When I eat, and then my hunger is satiated, those two events are unrelated? Despite happening one after the other, every time? And despite us knowing exactly how and why they happen in sequence thanks to our scientific understanding of how the body works?
Determinism means much more than causality. It is exactly what it is named. Everything is determined. Causality, other than the Big Bang, is irrelevant, other than some amusement for the bouncing particles - that are following which Laws exactly?
You can have causality and choice, which is exactly what we experience in our lives. A Mind is making choices based upon memory.
That's not accurate. If everything is the result of a cause, there cannot be true freedom of choice. A choice in itself does not imply free will. We need to look at the choice and ask: if literally every single thing leading up to that choice were exactly the same, everything in the history of the universe had happened exactly the same, could you possibly have made a different choice than the one you made? If everything that happened is the result of causation, the answer would be no.
Sure there can be, it is just not determined.
I want to cross the street. I look left and then I look right and I decide to go right. That is what happens. My mind makes the choice. Determinist reject this description because the reject mind, even their own mind that is doing the rejecting. They have transferred all decision making to some outside mystical forces, presumably the Laws of Nature, that is guiding and determining everything.
Having a Mind that is making choices is exactly what we experience in life.
There's that magical Mind again, that is uninfluenced by the experiences it has experienced, and unaffected by the results it expects. Just because there are too many determinants, both conscious and sub-conscious, doesn't mean the determining factors don't exist. (To which Rich will reply, "There's that magical Determinism again, determining everything that happens. Mind is what you experience every day. It's what you are experiencing right now. Ruminate."
By the way, are you standing on the median in this example?
Quoting Rich
Otherwise, I think you're still going to be walking on the sidewalk instead of crossing the street...
Isn't this totally opposite of what I wrote?
Someone's bouncing particles are having a bad day.
Maybe when taken out of context. You still attach some magical quality to Mind that is the final factor in decision-making, independent of the experiences and expected results.
Quoting Rich
True, but my comments still stand! haha
According to physics, the answer is YES!
I don't particularly like the flavour of quantum mechanics that the Free Will and the Strong Free Will Theorems are expressed in, but Kochen and Conway explicitely cover this. The freedom they claim to have identified is not a function of the past.
You can't have determinism and causality. Quantum mechanics has shown them to be incompatible. In the language of entanglement and the Bell inequalities, local (i.e. causal) realism (i.e. determinism) is ruled out.
What if the mind is capable of setting its own initial conditions?
What information would be considered when choosing the initial conditions? It would have to rely on expected results based on existing information, once again leading to determinism...
No.
When something is seamless that means there are no gaps in it.
You are saying that there are gaps with events being effects of events that preceded them.
"There are no gaps in nature", Tallis says.
And you are injecting necessity into nature. Tallis shows how necessity is highly questionable.
Read the article.
Quoting JustSomeGuy
No.
I am saying that causes exist only in the imaginations of humans. We observe an event, we observe another event, and we say that one caused the other. But that process of causing is never observed. Or have you empirically sensed/observed the process of causing? You see event E1, you see event E2, and you see P, the process of E1 causing E2, in a gap in between? Please share with us what P looks, smells, sounds, feels and/or tastes like.
P does not exist in nature.
The gaps that P supposedly fills do not exist.
Am I not understanding your definition of 'cause'? If I grab a pin and poke myself in the arm, am I not causing myself to experience the pain of being poked by a pin?
If the mind operates in the manner of evolution (we know epistemology works that way, so why not) then there is no requirement for information, or expected results.
If I recall, in genetics it is impossible to transfer information to the genome, which is called the Central Dogma of Molecular Biology. If the mind operates in a similar fashion, there will be some kind of randomizer in the brain, whose output will require the attribution of meaning, which could also be random.
If its actions are truly random, then the mind would not be "setting its own initial conditions". To set its own initial conditions in any coherent way, there would have to be some consideration of inputs and expected outputs. Even a random number generator requires a seed before it can generate a meaningless random number.
No
Quoting CasKev
That would be a pseudo-random number generator.
How does the Butterfly Effect play a role in this ? Is it just a coincidental phenomenon we made up to make sense of the world or does it actually “exist”?
What is the cause, and what is the effect?
It may be difficult to pinpoint the root cause... but I could say that this discussion caused the idea of poking myself. I could say my intent to poke myself caused me to pick up the pin. I can definitely say that the pressing of the pin's point into my arm caused a pain signal to reach my brain! There is no gap to be filled, other than the fraction of time it takes for the signal to reach the brain and be interpreted.
That's not what I'm saying, though. I am saying nature is seamless, that's what "interconnected" means--when two things are connected it means they lead directly to one another with no space in between. I'm saying literally everything in nature is interconnected so that there is no space in between anything.
Quoting WISDOMfromPO-MO
No I'm not. "Necessarily interconnected" means they cannot be disconnected. Everything is dependent on everything else, nothing can be isolated from the rest.
I'm familiar with the notion that causality is an illusion; this Tallis person is not the first to come up with this idea. I just don't find it to be a very compelling claim. But you seem to be misrepresenting the argument you're in opposition to. With the kind of causation I'm talking about, there are no gaps between events--that's the whole point. Maybe this is just a semantic issue, though. We seem to have different understandings of some of the terms we're using.
The root cause of everything would be the event which began the universe, "the unmoved mover" as Aristotle said.
Certain theories in Quantum Mechanics claim that there is randomness, but randomness isn't the same "freedom". Or are you referring to something other than randomness that I'm not aware of?
The butterfly effect describes the fact that in some situations, a very small action may lead to a very large reaction in an unpredictable way. In my understanding it is associated with phenomena described in chaos theory, which I understand very marginally. Quantum mechanics has been around for a bit more than 100 years, chaos theory less. To say that any recent scientific results answer metaphysical questions that have been around for thousands of years is not justified. It shows a misunderstanding of the difference between facts in the world and metaphysical principles. That's a common and understandable misunderstanding given the disorienting changes in our understanding of the world in the past 100 years.
An understandable misunderstanding resulting from changes in understanding. Yes!
Free will can be totally incoherent. Determinism can be utterly and unexceptionally correct, and it also be true that our lives are not mapped out.
Since our paths ahead, fully determined, are unknown, then the idea that it is mapped out is false.
This only becomes an issue if you posit an omnipotent omniscient god. And in fact it is historically that this issue between dichotomy between freedom and causality has come to us.
The future remains unknown.
In astronomic terms nothing we shall ever do will have a noticeable effect, so nothing matters.
I haven't participated in this thread except back at the beginning, but I've read all the posts. It's an interesting discussion - better than most dealing with free will and causation. I have gone back and forth thinking about causation. I get the idea of saying there is none, but that runs up against very simple situations where it seems silly not to use the idea of causes, e.g. the usual suspect - billiard balls.
We can go all Aristotelian on it and talk about proximal, immediate, ultimate, or whatever those damn things are, but we can decide not to. Let's keep it a closed system - Me, the cue, the balls, the table. I hit one ball. It travels over the table and hits the other ball. The other ball moves. Saying I caused the second ball to move makes sense. Saying the first ball made the second ball move makes sense. It depends on context and which I am interested in. Of course there are other factors, even other causes, but it makes sense for there to be a word, "cause," for such a common human experience. It would be silly not to.
That doesn't mean the idea that there are no causes is wrong. That might make sense in some situations also. As I said, I get it and I think it can be useful.
The verb "matter" is a human concept. For that reason, it is most applicable to events affecting humans. Whether or not we are pimples on the ass of microbes living for microseconds on a small planet about to crash into its star in one of an infinite number of multiverses is irrelevant.
As I said in one of my other posts, conflating causal issues related to QM with causal issues that are metaphysical and have been around for thousands of years shows a misunderstanding of both science and metaphysics.
You always seem to want to describe scientific thought as the result of a conspiracy. It undermines your argument, some of which I agree with all of the time and all of which I agree with some of the time.
Actually, most QM theories don't claim randomness. As far as I'm aware, only GRW does.
As I think I mentioned, The Free Will theorem considers actions to be free if they are not a function of the past. This is different from randomness.
Anyway, QM makes it clear, you can't have determinism and causality, unless you dispense with collapse, and and accept the wavefunction corresponds to a feature of reality.
I forgot, you are the only one who understands these things,
But for the rest of us, particularly if you read the works of J.S. Bell and others, perhaps a few well known philosophers of physics like David Wallace, and even the recent papers by 't Hooft (for the unaware, he's the Nobel Prize winning "father of the Standard Model") on superdeterminism, you will find they are the same thing.
It is funny that you should mention the "conspiracy" because Reality is indeed a conspiracy under determinism.
J.S. Bell coined the term "Superdeterminism" to describe the sort of determinism that must exist in the light of quantum entanglement. Under questioning in an interview he admitted that superdeterminism was no different from what philosophers call determinism.
Sadly, Bell could not anticipate the fact that he would be undermined by devastating critiques such as:
Quoting T Clark
Why the snot?
Why would a physicist be good source for information on metaphysics? Most of them deny the value of philosophy. There are a lot of scientists out there with some pretty goofy ideas when they get out of their area of expertise. I'm with Emerson:
To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men,— that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for always the inmost becomes the outmost—and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment.
When he says "genius" he doesn't mean like "Einstein is a genius." He uses the term to mean sort of your essence, mind.
You should make your own argument, not just depend on what others have said who agree with you. There are a lot out there who disagree too.
Snottiness may be an effective rhetorical device in some situations, but it is not reason and it is not a valid response to a serious argument, even if you disagree with it. Grow up and be a philosopher.
What exactly does it mean for something not to be a function of the past?
Determinists exhibit as much faith and dogma as the most fanatical of any religious and by degrading humanity have enabled some of the worst holocausts.
I have to second this, @tom, you're displaying a very juvenile attitude with the tone of some of your comments. Being a smartass is extremely detrimental to intelligent conversation.
I keep seeing you say the same things over and over again in discussions about determinism and free will, but I still have yet to see any actual argument provided in support of your assertions.
Try to convince me that your position is valid using reason. Provide a logical argument instead of conjecture.
I have been very serious in my posts. I mean what I say. Can you point out a comment I made, other than those about @tom's snottyness, that is juvenile or which constitutes being a smartass. I stand behind my characterization of his posts to me as "snotty."
I was agreeing with you and addressing tom. I feel like that was made perfectly clear.
Superdeterminism is not a religion. It is a consequence of the laws of physics being interpreted in a certain way. But you are right about the inability to comprehend bit. In fact it is worse than that: Reality IS a conspiracy!
And you have the audacity to complain about "snottiness"?
Allow me to rephrase:
You misunderstand quantum mechanics and metaphysics.
Better?
The only Law of Physics that I know of is Quanum Mechanics and it would take a great myth maker to interpret QM into superdetermiminism. In fact, it would take an act of your faith.
You want some help understanding one of the most important mathematical results of C21?
Quoting JustSomeGuy
So, you're not really interested are you.
Not only did your rephrasing of the comment fail to alter its tone, but there is very clearly nothing wrong with the tone of the comment in the first place. If you took offense to what T Clark said there, that's your own fault, not T Clark's.
Quoting tom
Quoting tom
You seem to have a very fragile ego.
That's why 't Hooft, who got the Nobel Prize for instigating and developing the Standard Model is a Superdeterminist.
The Copenhagen Interpretation is entirely compatible with Superdeterminism.
And there are other Laws of Physics - specifically General Relativity, which are Superdeterministic.
So, no faith is required, just some education.
I reread it and I agree it was clear. Sorry for jumping.
Everything is compatible with Super-Duper-Determinism. God is all powerful.
Let's give some credit to those of religious faith. At least they are aware enough of their faith that they don't deny it. Determinists are swimming in their own admitted illusions.
What the heck does GTR have to do with Super-Duper-Determinism?? It's a simple equation to explain some effects of gravity. It is not even compatible with QM and had zero to do with bouncing particles (that don't even exist) somehow, someway determining everything. What's nice about Determinism is, like the Bible, anything can be interpreted and used in any way, to justify their faith. No depth of knowledge or inquiry is required. Just make up stuff on the fly.
How is what you quoted from me snotty? For me to say I think you misunderstand something is a perfectly civil and reasonable thing for me to say. I wasn't abusive and I didn't attack you. I don't see how it's disrespectful. I can't think of another way I could have said what I was trying to get across.
I can't say I understand quantum mechanics, although I'm interested and I try. But I do know what QM is - it's science. I also know what free will vs. determinism and causality vs. none are - they're metaphysics. Never the twain shall meet. Well, never the twain should meet.
Classical mechanics is not super-deterministic. Or rather, the completion of quantum mechanics, to render it compatible with classical mechanics would not be superdeterministic.
Quoting Rich
What you could do is demonstrate that the laws of physics are not deterministic.
Quoting Rich
According to GR we inhabit a stationary block space-time. This is as super-duper-deterministic as you can get.
Quoting Rich
In what way is GR not compatible with QM?
How would you show that?
How is it anything more than speculation?
Quoting CasKev
Again, how do you know?
Quoting CasKev
How can you say that?
You are not saying that after A occurred B occurred. You are saying that one caused the other. How do you know?
Did you empirically sense through sight, smell, sound, taste and/or touch the act of one causing the other? Or did you only empirically sense two different occurrences and then add something non-empirical--the act of causing--with your imagination?
Quoting CasKev
If there is no gap to be filled then why do you bring an act of causation into it?
It's impossible. It would be like demonstrating God does not exist. It is all based upon faith in the Super-and-All-Powerful-Laws of Nature. Inscrutable, impenetrable, undefinable, and inexhaustible. Declaring that QM and GTR explains everything is quite an amazing leap of faith.
[Quoting tom
It says no such thing. It's a simple equation. The rest of the story is just made up. In fact, there isn't even time in the equation. It is all about time as expressed in clocks and how acceleration affects then. There is nothing there about human experience of duration. Humans are not clocks.
Quoting tom
Google it.
Sorry, but GR predicts many things like, the big-bang, time dilation, gravitational waves, and that we inhabit a stationary block universe.
Quoting Rich
The last refuge of the bull-shitter.
The Big Bang thing is just Genesis and GTR makes no such prediction. It only concerns itself with measurements by clocks. As it turns out clocks are affected by gravity as are photons. I'm not surprised. So are waves in the ocean.
I love it when Determinists have to defend their faith. You figure all you have to do is throw out you God (Super-Duper-Determinatism) and people are going to fall over trying to be converted? Truly bathing in their own self-admitted illusions. You are living a life of illusions right?
How does one request a "Mute" or "Block" feature on this forum?
There is space between chain links, yet they are connected.
And we are talking about events, happenings, occurrences, etc., not about objects. That means we are talking about gaps in and/or between events, happenings, occurrences, not space between objects.
Furthermore, just because one thing is followed by another with nothing in between does not mean that they are connected. It could mean that they are related, but it does not necessarily mean that there is any connection. Something could have, for example, been spontaneously generated.
Quoting JustSomeGuy
If we can't isolate two things then we can't say that one caused the other.
Quoting JustSomeGuy
If there are no gaps between events, how can one be an antecedent cause of another?
Your initial statement is rendered irrelevant by the proceeding paragraph, so I'm not sure why you included it.
Quoting WISDOMfromPO-MO
Give me a real-world example of this; an event occurring spontaneously, without cause. The only time this could possibly have happened was the universe coming into existence.
Quoting WISDOMfromPO-MO
Quoting WISDOMfromPO-MO
When I consume food, my hunger is satiated. Whether you believe these are actually two separate events or not is irrelevant. This is a clear, demonstrable case of cause and effect. And there are no gaps between them. One leads directly to the other through various biological and physiological processes and reactions.
This is the kind of thing I'm talking about.
Quoting WISDOMfromPO-MO
You're going to cause me to put you in a class with Rich if you keep going on like this...
Cause isn't a physical thing to be sensed. It's a term describing the link between one thing that happens due to another thing having preceded it. I would even venture to say that a cause need not be true 100% of the time (i.e. if 85% of people who are sexually abused experience depression, I would label sexual abuse as a partial or probable cause of or contributor to depression). Again, cause is a description of a chain of events, not a physical thing to be observed.
I think it would be amiss to say there are cases where cause does not exist, at least to some extent. Even if we introduce probabilities, cause is still relevant. Consider a man approaching an intersection when the light turns yellow. This happens 10 times when he is exactly the same distance away, at the same time of day, in the same weather conditions. There are no other cars or pedestrians. If he stops 9 out of those 10 times, we could say that the combination of his innate biological traits, his previous experience in such a situation, and his expectation of results, governed his responses. There may indeed be a random element, but the combination of circumstances is heavily weighted toward stopping.
Now change the experiment, and put a woman in his place. She would probably blow the light 9 times out of 10, because females cause way more accidents.
Chain links are objects, not events. But they are connected and there is space between them. You said that when something is connected to another there is nothing between them.
Quoting JustSomeGuy
How do you know the latter statement to be true?
Quoting JustSomeGuy
It sounds tautological, or something like that. It sounds like "This effect was caused by that cause because effects are caused by causes".
If we are being intellectually honest, we don't really know why things happen. We just know that certain things, like ice, appear after certain other things, like temperatures dropping below a certain level. We don't know why or how. It could be that an omnipotent being intervened and acts as a middle man or a bridge through which ice appears. Saying that decreased temperatures caused the ice is saying that we know everything there is to know about the relationship between temperature and ice. We don't know if we know everything.
I believe that that is a flaw in determinist thinking. How does a determinist know everything that contributed to a thought, action, state of existence, etc.?
Exactly, and as you pointed out we're talking about events; not objects.
Quoting WISDOMfromPO-MO
That's not at all what I said, you seem to be reading into things what you want to see. The claim was that one event was caused by another event because "one leads directly to the other through various biological and physiological processes and reactions." Like dominoes, one "thing" causes a chain reaction which results in another "thing". Are you saying that the final domino falling down after being hit by the domino before it--and that one before that one, and so on, all the way back to the initial domino--is not a direct result of the initial domino falling down?
I think you misunderstand the concept of cause and effect. If you want to claim that we can't know one thing truly causes another because there could be an omnipotent being intervening and tricking us, be prepared to be taken about as seriously as Descartes when he claimed that an evil demon could be deceiving us about the nature of reality. You're essentially saying the exact same thing. And if you actually took your own claim seriously, you would be completely and totally unable to function in the world. It would mean that humanity should give up on doing science, and throw everything we think we understand out the window, because who's to say that an omnipotent being hasn't been deceiving us this whole time? Why are you typing things on your computer? None of the users here are real. This forum isn't real. Your computer isn't real. It's all just the deception of an omnipotent being.
"One significant finding of modern studies is that a person's brain seems to commit to certain decisions before the person becomes aware of having made them. With contemporary brain scanning technology, other scientists in 2008 were able to predict with 60% accuracy whether subjects would press a button with their left or right hand up to 10 seconds before the subject became aware of having made that choice."
Our premotor cortex moves our bodies before we are even have made the decision to move. I very much think we have an illusion of free will.
Have you ever watched a skier run moguls? The decisions the skier makes are based on what his body understands, its training, its memory, the same habitual movements. I think the phenomena you are referring to is similar. It does not impinge on the notion of an existential will, in my opinion.
My guess is that the scientists are suffering from determined illusion.
I have just been banned from another philosophy forum for over performance, every thread I engaged ending with my answer?
It is worth noting the details. First the task set-up...
From: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.520.2204&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Note the demand that one or other button should be pushed "on impulse". The urge was to be "conscious" when it happened, but the choice not consciously debated or timed or justified. There was no external complexity to be handled - like make a decision if also X and not Y.
Also attention - that limited high level resource - did have a specific job to do. It needed to note the particular letter in a flow of letters that happened to coincide with the emergence of the urge. So attention was kept out of the button choice as much as possible by the experiment's design.
It was a good test of our ability to dissociate between habitual and attentional level action. But ordinarily, the two might go together in integrated fashion.
Then the more detailed results of what lit up when...
So the task demand was to find a way to push the button without a feeling of overtly planning and controlling the act.
And then we see BA10 kicking off a preliminary connection with the precuneus. So this is frontal working memory - a scratchpad for future intentions - talking to the bit of the brain that is concerned with a high level orientation towards locations in space. An intention to go left or right has been warmed up as a coming direction of action.
Next that fires up the SMA, the high level motor area needed to turn an intention in regards to a direction into a physical act - a motor instruction that will drive the hand.
But still no actual go signal. The SMA has to go through the premotor and the motor cortex yet, not to mention recruit all the lower brain anatomy, like the basal ganglia and cerebellum.
And the task shaping the subject's mindset demands some kind of "unconscious" or unattended delay period to ensure that the eventual go signal is not a voluntarily timed act. So the experiment is a test of just how long a future intention can be kept on the back burner using working memory scheduling. Inserting a delay was part of the task demand - of which the subject was thoroughly aware if he/she was listening to the experimenter.
Then the impulse can be held dormant no longer. Something relaxes. The balance tips. At this point, to actually release the action, the motor cortex must broadcast the feeling of what it is going to be like - warn the rest of the brain that your hand is going to suddenly reach out and hit a button.
We have to be told in advance what our body is about to do just so that we know it is "us" who are the cause of some sensation, and it is not the world causing those feelings. So consciousness of the urge is just the standard reafference messaging which must precede all motor acts. We are experiencing at a reportable attentional level the advance warning of an imminent sensation - the feeling of a hand reaching out.
And of course, given the right attentional set-up, we could be keep a close eye on such impulses. There might be - in some other experimental situation - the demand that we be ready to shut down the impulse because the moment is "not quite right" for other reasons, also stored in working memory as part of the intentional mindset.
But again, that is not the case in this experimental set-up which is designed to show how great a dissociation between habit-level and attentional-level control over "decisions" there can be. So here, there is nothing that should stand as a filter on the expression of the urge - except that it was held back without conscious deliberation as long as possible. Long enough not to seem at all controlled or planned. And then attention was kept busy to make that easier. Subjects had to fixate on a stream of letters and catch the one letter that happened to show when the urge also happened to show.
The take-home is thus that we are very clever at meeting experimental task-demands. We can take a normally integrated functionality - a seamless feeling marriage of habit and attention - and turn it into the kind of strongly dissociated outcome that makes people go "wow" in the context of the standard folk psychology notion of the freewill debate.
"Hey. We are meant to actually be the "I" who makes the decisions in here. So it is very disturbing to admit that this "I" is somewhat a fiction."
But a better response is to recognise that this "I-ness" is an integrated combination of all our learnt habits and our attentional capabilities. We are usually conscious of what we want to get out of life in terms of what may happen in the next seconds and minutes. Then we just get on doing that with as little deliberative oversight as we can get away with.
It is inefficient to over-think things. So the brain is cleverly set up to avoid that.
Quoting Cavacava
Yep. Indeed, if we didn't let habit do its thing, we would be as helpless as babies still. We completely rely on habits so that we then can do more interesting things with our limited attentional capacities.
I never can fully understand sleep walkers phenomena. Can the set of habits and attentional capabilities be used to explain them?
Thus in sleepwalking, you can be semi awake with some confused intentionality that has some very loose connection with the facts, and yet quite capable of acting with awake levels of habit. Some sleepwalkers have got in cars and driven miles.
So the attentional level of forming intentions and remembering consequences might be dazed and confused. But habits just need the eyes open and the body awake enough to respond automatically to a world of familiar clues.
There is this great tale of A.A. Gill cooking elaborate meals during alcoholic blackouts. A similar story... http://www.esquire.com/food-drink/a46904/a-a-gill-memoir/
PS: will read the article, thanks.
An excellent idea to scrutinise the details of the experiment. So often people take only the 'headline' and further investigation reveals the experiment actually showed nothing of the sort.
I would like to address a couple of points though where I not sure I entirely agree with the conclusions you draw. It's important to note first that the experiment was set up specifically to address questions raised by the original Max Plank Institute experiment on the precocity of SMA signals so many of the specific details you mention are the result of trying to answer specific questions including trying to rule out the possibility of unconscious higher decision functions other than SMA areas.
Most of the design elements you describe which limit the relevance of the experiment to Free will, in the larger sense are the result of this refinement. As far as these experiments tell us anything about free will, they really should be seen as part of a continuum of study on the neurological markers of decision making processes, rather then in isolation.
Quoting apokrisis
I don't think it's entirely fair to say that attention was kept out of the button choice "as much as possible". The subjects were only given a simple reading task to act as an allocator for their decision, it's not exactly calculus. I gather the experimenters added this part of the experiment to answer the question about higher sub-concious function by adding a potential initiator. They're intention was not to obfuscate by distracting the attention of the subjects, subject paying their full attention to the task had already been tested in the Max Plank experiments so there was no need to repeat that.
In all I agree with your approach to analysis, but I think it's a little unfair to suggest the conclusions of these experiments taken as a whole are just to provide a "wow" factor in the free-will debate. They are collectively very important and this particular experiment furthered some important questions resulting from previous investigations.
Like all proper scientific investigation, it is about hypothesis testing. If your hypothesis is that we have free-will, then this experiment is of no interest to you, be cause it is designed to prove concious functions precede action, hence proving the hypothesis. This experiment is important, however, for anyone whose working hypothesis is that we do not have free-will, because is has helped to support that hypothesis by trying to prove otherwise and failing to do so.
Quoting Abdul
so we will never know is the easiest answer, not in anyway feckless.
Still, exploring a simpler example may help somehow:
A computer programmer knows there's the "runtime" unknowns, at least when the data is not fully predicted as usual. Would we perceive the program has free will, bearing along a lot of if-then-else decisions?
Another second thought:
Quoting Abdul
why does he need to know? maybe he can but is he supposed to watch you all around? More probable is if he accidentally follows you, then probably he knows how your will and actions are being laid out, not strictly before or after. What changes would that suggest to the whole dispute then?
Yes. I’ve been following this story since the 1980s. The important thing is that the subjects are always fully conscious of the experiment’s demand to “let an impulsive choice surface”. And surprise, surprise, we can choose to do just that. We can disengage a sense of oversight.
Readiness potentials were uncontroversial when Kornhuber and Grey Walter reported them. They slotted nicely into the dominant behaviourism of the time. But then Libet came along with his dualistic agenda and managed to create a little sensation in philosophy of mind circles.
So it’s all social history as much as science. ;)
And to sleepwalk more than a few moments would only happen in adults with a neurological condition or in kids with, presumably, less developed habits of conscious self regulation.
As I said, if you are testing an hypothesis that we have free will, the experiments will be meaningless as their results can be explained some other way; 'disassociation' as you suggest. There is, however, nothing metaphysically wrong with holding an hypothesis that we do not have free will. To some this is the only 'scientific' hypothesis as it does not require the creation of some phenomenon we have not yet demonstrated the need for. If one is testing the hypothesis that we have no free will, one would do so by trying to prove we do, and failing to do that. These experiments try to show that free will (conscious control over decisions to act) is necessarily present, but fail to find it. Thus they constitute good scientific justification for continuing with the belief that we have no free will. If you didn't have that belief in the first place you would need to look to other experiments to test your hypothesis.
The issue after that concerns people’s dualistic take on conciousness. So they want awareness to be something above and beyond the meat machinery of habit and attention.
Yet that again is to fail to understand an information processing functionalism.
So it is just science vs folk confusion. And the experiments aren’t great as they buy into the confusion.
If you just want to study the neurobiology of voluntary control, that’s what you should do as a scientist. And that’s what the mainstream does.
Why?
The reasoning is that the "program" your brain runs to process information and make decisions is determined by nature, through your DNA. From the moment you are conceived, this program determines everything about how your brain develops (as well as the rest of your body, of course). Obviously there are all kinds of environmental factors that affect this, as well, but you don't have control over those either so they are irrelevant. Point being, if your brain's processing and decision making are a product of this program, they do what they do automatically, meaning none of your decisions are true decisions because you could not possibly make a different decision than the one you make.
Quoting JustSomeGuy
Yep. So now we have to understand information processing as something more interesting than Turing universal computation.
Also note that you insert this "you" into your questioning as if there really is some dualistic mind-stuff or spiritual element - a res cogitans. So already your metaphysics is presuming a supernatural ontology and abandoning any hope of a properly naturalistic one.
Is this "you" you want to claim the whole of me? A part of me? Do you want to identify your essential being with your attentional-level processes and so exclude your habit-level organisation - all the accumulated wisdom of past attention-driven learning? Is that other half of you some robotic, unthinking, not-you that somehow shares "your" body?
Philosophy of mind is dogged by these kinds of basic folk psychology misconceptions. They are grounded in theology rather than science.
I'm not sure what you mean by "next physical state", but the "program" in my example would clearly be the software in yours.
Quoting apokrisis
It's not a "folk psychology misconception", it's just how we talk about these things. It has to do with language, that's all. I think you're the one getting dogged by being nit-picky about language.
Using the computer analogy, if you're running a program on some hardware, that program has to be pre-written to follow certain parameters and do certain things, and everything it does is a result of the program's code. Even if you bring artificial intelligence into it, a program that can learn, it still does everything it does based on the initial code you wrote. Every "decision" it makes is a direct result of following this code. It is all determined by the code (as well as other environmental/outside factors).
Well you were replying to the point that I made about freewill being problematic because of the LaPlacean implications of Newtonian determinism.
So if physicalism is just about "hardware", then there is a problem. And the computational analogy is a way to show that the physics of matter doesn't get to control everything. There is also the physics of information.
So yes. The program determines its own next physical state. The hardware doesn't. Unless the circuits start misbehaving due to stray cosmic rays or something.
Quoting JustSomeGuy
So now you want to complain about introducing the philosophy that motivates the common conceptions? Are you in the right place?
Quoting JustSomeGuy
Yeah. So now let's again talk about this mysterious "you" you keep wanting to introduce into the scientific or natural philosophy account.
Sure, the formal and final cause of a "program" do come from outside it. It has to be written with a certain design that serves a certain purpose.
The program itself is simply a pattern of material/effective causal entailment. A set of instructions that maps one physical machine state to its next. So that is why computers are only a weak analogy for the neuroscience. It is information processing without the designer or intender.
Actual neuroscience needs to account for that other bit of the puzzle. How and why does the nervous system "write its own meaningful programs"?
To cut to the chase, that is where I would bring up Peircean semiotics and other current neurobiological conceptions of what is really going on with a mind that has "a self that can form plans to meet goals".
Yes, this is just restating part of what I was saying.
Quoting apokrisis
I'm saying that you are being unnecessarily difficult when it comes to something so simple, and it's distracting from the actual discussion. You are making unwarranted assumptions about what I mean by a very common-sense term. This...
Quoting apokrisis
...is exactly what I mean. You act as if it is implicit when I say "your brain", "your DNA", "your decisions", etc. that "your" is referring to some mystical immortal consciousness or something. It is not. You're making that leap on your own for no good reason.
"You" is in reference to your person. Your self, comprised of your body and everything in it. This isn't something I should have to explain.
Quoting apokrisis
Again, this is all just restating what I already said.
Quoting apokrisis
Is the "it" here referencing computers or the brain?
Quoting apokrisis
DNA, as I already stated, is the origin of these "programs". Your DNA determines the "code" for your brain and how it processes things. And what wrote this code into your DNA? Nature. Evolution.
So where is the missing piece?
To bring things back to my original point: how does any of this "kill" determinism? In this model, your decisions are determined by the "program" your brain is running. The "code" for this program is determined by your DNA. All of the information in your DNA is determined by nature through the process of evolution.
Unbunch your panties a little. If you are going to talk about this "you" who decides to push the button, you have to have a proper theory of what constitutes this you. Your hand-waving approach is not good enough for philosophy or science.
Quoting JustSomeGuy
Yeah. But minus the hand-waving. So with the missing rigour.
Quoting JustSomeGuy
Yeah, nah. If you are talking about this mysterious self that runs the show (according to folk psychology), then the full story has to bring in the several levels of semiosis or code.
So yes. There is the DNA and its evolutionary history. But then there is the neural code and the brain's developmental history. And with humans, our linguistic code and its cultural evolutionary history.
I'm familiar with the technique of demeaning someone in order to make yourself look more reasonable. Frankly, it's immature, so I suggest you reconsider next time.
Quoting apokrisis
I can't believe you're still doing it. Do you know how many times you have used the word "you" or a variation on it during our discussion? Just in that paragraph, you used it three times not in reference to my "you". Have I once demanded that you "provide me with a proper theory of what constitutes this you"? No. Because both you and I know what the other means when we use it, and if you honestly don't know what I have been referring to every time I say "you", then you have far deeper issues that I can't help you with.
This has become ridiculous, and I'm very close to ending this conversation since you're either purposefully being uncooperative or you're genuinely just this difficult to converse with. I'm not sure which it is.
Quoting apokrisis
Show me where my hand-waving was.
Quoting apokrisis
I'm going to ignore this because I have already made it painfully clear that that is not what I'm talking about.
Quoting apokrisis
So you're agreeing with me? These are the things that determine our decisions?
And why not? That would be perfectly reasonable.
Freewill is a debate that comes up every week here. Just last week I gave this general account that is worth recycling.
The only one decent name I found is Baron Reichenbach who discovered the earth's magnet field that was accepted. Ironically In connection to this somnambulism, his researches led to Odic force and was badged as uneducated and deceitful - what a praise.
No, many other animals have language and culture, chimpanzees, dolphins, elephants and rhesus monkeys have all been shown to have both language and cultural behaviours unique to their geography, learnt from parents, invented, modified and passed on. So if you want to make an argument that humans are different, you need to do more work than that. The rather clichéd "Our language/culture is more complex" is pretty weak without defining the level at which this happens and why.
I have no argument with this;
but this,
does not follow logically. You have to presume, for this to work, that moral behaviour is in some way opposed to natural instinctive behaviour. I don't see any evidence for this. Much of a social animal's instinctive behaviour is exactly the sort of activity we would define as moral, and much considered actions taken under the illusion of free will are behaviours we would condemn as immoral.
Putting that rather unsubstantiated assumption to one side though, your argument against determinism doesn't seem in any way related to the very neat and well-put outline of the self illusion above. You then say.
This does not follow from anything you've said above about the illusion of self, but rather seems plucked out of thin air. Why would we presume that the brain's ability to model the future isn't entirely determined by the information is has gained up to the present and the current state of it's neural connections which together determine the picture it will generate of the future world?
You seem to have taken a lot of very insightful information about the reason the brain creates such illusions and then simply concluded "therefore no determinism", without explaining your logical process at all.
Cliched? Human language is articulate and syntactic. It is rule based symbolism so capable of unlimited combination. You are talking apples and oranges in claiming other species have “language”.
Quoting Pseudonym
It should be enough to mention #MeToo.
Quoting Pseudonym
Yeah. We might make a guess that is determined by our best information. And then the guess turns out to be wrong.
So I’m not arguing against the ability to constrain uncertainty. I’m attacking the presumption of absolute determinism - mechanistic understanding of physical and informational processes.
The point of having a brain is to make the best choices, given an uncertain world. You seem determined to recover some kind of actual determinacy in what the brain does. But I am arguing from a systems science or hierarchy theory perspective where the causality of reality in general is understood in terms of constraints on degrees of freedom.
It’s not just neurobiology. Even physics is not deterministic.
I understand the position you're arguing from, and the aim of such a position, what I'm lacking is the actual argument.
How is the brain's model of the future not determined entirely by the information it has at the current time and the neurological connections which represent its current responses to all the multitude of stimuli presented in the model?
We frequently hear how physics is not determined, but no one has yet put forward a theory explaining how that has any impact on the human brain. It seems to lead to entirely predictable determined behaviour in everything larger than a single particle, which our brain certainly is.
Explain to me how you think information exists in brains. What is brain information in your book - the kind that you are claiming to be mechanically deterministic?
I'm not making any claims, I'm trying to understand yours. Determinism is a belief of mine. As with any reasonable belief (in my opinion) I test that belief by trying to disprove it, so the only interest to me in your argument is the extent to which determinism is necessary. That's why I'm asking how you reached your conclusion. All you've presented so far is a vague "because fundamental particles cannot be measured, we must have free-will", which is fine if you're looking to simply justify an already held belief in indeterminacy, but not really a sufficient argument to ground its necessity.
If the answer to your question helps you to explain your argument somehow, then for me information is the state of a collection of neurons, no different to the way information is the state of a collection of transistors in a computer. That state, together with inputs from the external system, determines the state in the next moment. Of course, given that this is a transition from one state to another, it could also be described as a process, but I see that as a semantic issue, not a metaphysical one.
Well you are in insisting that brain function is deterministic, even if that just means a deterministic computation, and even if that in turn just means the computations are deterministic guesswork about an undetermined reality.
So you are very determined to make determinism true here, and reject my constraints-based, semiotic, approach where - as a metaphysical generality - all events can be only relatively deterministic and are unable to be absolutely deterministic.
Quoting Pseudonym
Haven't you got that back to front? If my position cashes out at a general metaphysical level against determinism, then in fact it is a necessity that some local bit of complex machinery - like a brain - operates with a constraints-based causality and not a mechanically determined one.
So yes, quantum level indeterminacy is exhibit A. And then chaos theory and non-linear dynamics would be exhibit B.
For me to take a strong position here, it is important that modern physics is now evidence against the Newtonian classical deterministic paradigm.
Quoting Pseudonym
So how would you go about measuring the state that is a collection of neurons?
Or in a collection of transistors in a computer.
And how would you know what the previous state was and the next state was of either. Would your "determinism" allow you to predict that using Newton's laws of motion? If not, what laws are you proposing that would connect one measured state to another measured state?
If you can't answer these questions, you haven't got an argument.
Good point, @TheMadFool. That could be taken one step further. One could posit from extrapolation that there is no actual certainty in anything we think. One might also substitute 'accuracy' for 'certainty', since certainty may be absolute only when doubt exists. In a state of omniscience, no certainty is needed because all things are known. (I am fully aware that the above statement could be used against me later)
This leads into the question of predetermination. If God (or non-personified version) is absolute, then God's knowledge is also absolute. However, possessing foreknowledge of events does not necessarily translate into a predetermination of events. One could decide to believe God created the known substance with knowledge of events from conception. This could also include the multiverse of all possibilities. Having done so, the universe could be left to itself. In the case of choosing either the apple or the orange, it has been predetermined that the chooser be able to choose. Foreknowledge of that choice does not represent force, but passivity. Being also omnipotent, which God must be if 'omni' is to be all-encompassing, God is then free to exercise force, at will.
I imagine in much the same way as the sentence "the next word I'm going to write is the word 'tells'", tells you exactly what state my post will be in next. The state of my post up to that pont contains the information you need to determine the state it will be in next.
So fill in the blank. The next word I’m going to write is the word ...
There is not information in that sentence to tell me what the next word you're going to write is, the information to tell me that is in your brain and the state of the entire universe around you, which is why I can't possibly predict it, but that doesn't mean it's not there. The sentence I used as an example contained within it at one moment (just before I wrote the second 'tells') the information you needed to know what its state would be the next moment (exactly the same but with the word 'tells' added. I don't see what you're finding so hard to understand about that.
Remember the question I actually asked.
Quoting apokrisis
If your version of determinism is informational rather than material, then what law of nature determines the transition from one neural state to the next?
So just saying there is information involved is not an answer. I’m asking what kind of natural law are you imagining ruling the neurobiology. Where is the evidence that the brain is literally a finite state automata that could even sustain that kind of completely constrained or deterministic state mapping?
You seem to be confusing determinism with omniscience. No-one said anything about a human being ever actually knowing what is going to happen next, only that it is determined by the previous state of the universe. No-one had even claimed that this determination should be by virtue of physical laws (though many do claim that). The claim of determinism is solely that somehow the state of the universe in the next moment is determined by its state in the previous moment.
Determinists are not claiming to have sufficient knowledge of the physical laws which cause one state to progress to the next, nor that such knowledge could ever be practically obtainable, only that such laws exist and that they do cause ons state to proceed to the next in a determined manner.
I'm not suggesting that such a world-view is irrefutable, very few world-view are, but that it is an entirely reasonable, well supported and pragmatic approach which has yet to be disproven.
Remember we are discussing freewill. Are you claiming there was a widely discussed problem before Newton’s mechanistic laws of motion?
And while you could take a looser view on determinism - I certainly do - the normal view relies on laws to ensure one state has no choice but to lead to the next.
Then what you actually claimed is that there is informational determinism when it comes to the brain. After all, as I pointed out, no one uses Newton’s laws of motions to say that physics determines any putative finite state transitions.
So again, what ensures that neurons behave deterministically if you are claiming it is information and not physics?
As I said, the design feature of computers is that nothing about the physics of transistors should dictate the way a gate decides to open or shut. Only the program instructions are meant to determine the state transitions. So we certainly know how to build a deterministic finite state automata.
However if it is our free choice about what programme code to write, what rules to create, then the freewill issue can’t be solved by pointing to that kind of machine determinism. We still lurk behind the scene.
So at some point you have to be able to say in what way you think the neurobiology of brains is informationally deterministic. What does such a claim mean?
I'm not claiming it is information, as opposed to physics, in the same way as my example with the sentence would not be considered either information or words, it is both. 'Information' is just a word we give to the effect of one physical state on the physical state of our brains. There's no necessity for it to be non-physical.
Quoting apokrisis
This doesn't demonstrate anything without begging the question. The computer is used as an example of our brain, a metaphor, once it is running a calculation. In the real world you obviously have to have a programmer, but does that programmer have to have free will? Are you suggesting that it would somehow be impossible for a computer to program another computer?
But in answer to your direct question I don't think it's at all inconceivable that the laws of chemistry and physics could dictate the subsequent state of our neurons based on their prior state and the new electrical and chemical stimuli they receive.
What set them into their starting conditions? DNA. what set that to be chemically the way it is? Your parent's DNA and the chemical and physical environment in which the two chromosomes paired (which determine any errors). Go back far enough you get to the first DNA molecule made they way it is by the chemical and physical environment, caused ultimately by the physical laws governing the universe, all the way back to the big bang. Beyond that, who knows?
Quoting apokrisis
As above really, it means that the next physical state of all the neurons in the brain is determined by the prior physical state of those neurons plus all the universe interacting with them. The change from one state to the next being determined by the laws of physics, which themselves are determined by the initial state of the universe.
You will find the argument laid out here ... https://www.informatics.indiana.edu/rocha/publications/pattee/pattee.html
You do realise how utterly pointless it is on a philosophy forum to just say, "you don't get it, it's all written down here" and then point to your preferred commentator. Is Pattee widely considered to be the world authority on how to think about biological systems? No.
If we can't maintain an argument where each post presents counter arguments to the prior post then there's little point in continuing. We might just as well refer each other to the SEP entry for the position we're arguing.
If nothing else, at least you have successful uncovered how pointless academic philosophy has become.
Philosophy is the art of shared observation and discovery. This is simply a manifestation of the nature of Life, i.e, the ability to create, learn, and evolve. To understand and acknowledge this brings us back to philosophy. What academic teaches us pointless, merry-go-round argumentation.
There didn’t seem any point continuing when you just keep making the same bald claim and say nothing about how that could be the case in terms of the actual neurobiology.
If you believe every thought and choice you could have, every next word you could say, was hardwired into the quantum foam at the beginning of time, then you are asking me to take seriously something that is just too silly.
If you were familiar with biology, then you would find that life actually depends on randomness. It needs material instability so that it can have something to regulate with its information. It is made of molecules that will fall apart and put themselves back together so long as they get the right signals.
So just in that you have the fact that life thrives on the edge of chaos. Where things are the most poised and unpredictable, is where information can then point that constructive energy in a predicted or constrained direction.
That is why I urged you to read Pattee. And your response tells me all I need to know about your interest in any actual challenge to your assumed position.
As I have outline repeatedly, philosophy is about finding coherent justifications for beliefs, if you think you can actually 'prove' a metaphysical position then you have not read a sufficient quantity of philosophy. You are trying to justify your belief in some type of free-will, and you can do so using the epistemic cut Pattee talks about. I'm trying to justify a belief in a compatibilist version of free-will and I am doing so by citing the absence of any necessary evidence to the contrary.
We can debate, in the hope of refining each other's justifications, to make them better, but the moment you start suggesting that your evidence makes indeterminism materially necessary, you are no longer debating refinements in justifications, you're evangelising. Why should I provide a detailed neurological outline of the way in which one state transfers to another? It is sufficient justification for me to maintain my belief that no-one has yet provided a testable, pragmatically true, proof that neurobiology does not proceed deterministically, it is not incumbent on me to prove that it does in order to justify my belief.
Statements like;
Quoting apokrisis
are just nonsensical to produce as if they were 'facts'. Show me a single biology textbook which states that life depends on randomness. Try putting "life depends on randomness" into a Google Scholar search and see how many technical biological papers turn up on the topic. The answer is none (at least not for the first few pages I looked at. Top result at the moment is in fact a mathematician who states specifically (about apparent randomness in nature) "I would go so far as to suggest that most of the randomness that we commonly experience arises from these two factors—complexity and independence." Try 'role of randomness in biology'. The top result is a PlosOne article outlining the debate. Key word there being 'debate' i.e not settled fact.
If all you're going to do is suggest that anyone who continues to disagree with you after the presentation of one article must be closed-minded and have no interest in hearing challenging positions, then you might as well go door-to-door proselytising. This site (as I understand it) is for actual debate.
Eh? You can believe what you want without proof because you are free to ignore opposing positions when they offer proof?
Seems radical.
Quoting Pseudonym
Peter Hoffman has written a really good book - Life’s Ratchet: How molecular machines extract order from chaos.
I summed up the guts of it in this post...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/105999
Quoting Pseudonym
I just thought you might appreciate some help with concepts you seemed to be struggling with. Would you think it better if I were to follow your approach of just making up my own shit rather than offering arguments based on actual philosophical and scientific positions?
Quoting Pseudonym
Sure we could debate Pattee when you are up to speed on the biosemiotic position I’m citing.
You seem to have misunderstood the scientific process. Theory - Try to disprove theory - If unsuccessful, maintain theory.
The evidence you cite is not proof, it is some evidence. There is a significant difference between 'some evidence' and 'proof'. Proof requires that the evidence is true by necessity, it cannot be explained any other way. Proof is not something a handful of enthusiasts believe in, it is something the entire scientific community agree on. That biology depends on randomness is not one of those things.
Quoting apokrisis
Peter Hoffman is a physicist, not a biologist, so if he's written a biology textbook I'd be very surprised, but that's not what this discussion is about. You're claiming proof, not a theory, not that some evidence exists, actual proof. How has is the fact that one single physicist has written a book vaguely related to it constitute proof?
In Mark Haw's review of Life's Ratchet he states "Life's Ratchet starts, like my own book Middle World (Macmillan, 2007), with a somewhat revolutionary premise." Note the words 'revolutionary' and 'premise'. Not "Hoffman's book states what all biologists already agree with and can be taken pretty much as the standard text on the subject"
Life's Ratchet has just 50 citations on Google Scholar. Hoffman's paper on nucleation and growth of copper on TiN from pyrophosphate solution has double that. It's hardly that standard go-to text on the subject.
Quoting apokrisis
Are you seriously suggesting that there are no scientists or philosophers who believe in any form of determinism? None who believe that free-will does not exist? That the entire Scientific and philosophical community have adopted the approach of Pattee and Hoffman wholesale without criticism? Determinism is a philosophical position. That neural states are directly causal is a scientific position. That is why the matter remains open.
Quoting apokrisis
This is a standard cop out for people who cannot adequately defend their position, to simply accuse their detractors of not understanding the issue - "when you've finished my reading list we can have a discussion".
Summarise what Patte is saying in your own words and I will attempt to offer counter arguments. If my counter arguments are wrong, explain why they are wrong, in your own words. If you can't be bothered to do that, then this is not a discussion.
You’re right. I’m not bothered.
I'm describable as a determinist; I believe hard free will is a complete illusion. But since the illusion is so complete, pragmatically we're forced to behave in all the same ways that we would if we actually knew we had free will (aside from a couple caveats).
The layman's rebuke of determinism goes something like "Well if everything is pre-determined, then nothing I do matters (or "it's all meaningless"), so I might as well just sit on my couch and do nothing, and even if I didn't want to do that I have no choice in the matter". Functionally though, it's impossible to actually predict future states of overly complex systems with certainty (making any such statement about the future mere speculation), and in-spite of the resentment that a lack of free-will engenders, things do still matter (i.e: pain and pleasure remain powerful motivators).
Just because I think the decisions I will make are inevitable doesn't mean that I don't hope for those decisions to be as optimal as possible for bringing about states of affairs that are intrinsically desirable/good to me (or not bad). (It's not as if I don't think that putting effort into making good decisions is not worthwhile (in fact perhaps I recognize too much the value of planning and well-informed decision making)). And since the total illusion of free will is a pragmatic facsimile of hard free will, why should life be meaningless if all we have is the total illusion? The illusion is so good that people actually "won't believe it's not free-will".
So many people intuitively reject the axioms of materialism and empirical science (that everything has a cause), and meanwhile science carries on demonstrating how the more you know about the basic components, behaviors and interactions of a given system, the more you do actually know about it's possible future states.Free-will is turning into the old "god of the gaps argument" as science continues to clear more and more of it's natural habitat: the tangled forest of ignorance produced by competing historical and contemporary thought leaders.
Apparently it is not so complete. You see right through it. What is odd is that your bouncing particles illusion allows you to see right through it while mine doesn't. One just never knows what bouncing particles might do and what illusions they might create. They are just little magicians. Some even prefer anchovies to pepperoni on their pizza. Probably because they are operating under different Laws of Nature or different Universes.
Philosophy can be so much fun when you put your Mind to it.
I should point out though that nesting free-will in quantum mechanics is a fruitless endeavor because at best all you can argue is that the undetermined behavior of quantum particles in the world and your brain are what's ultimately governing your actions, not you. If you would like to adopt the position that your consciousness and identity ARE those quantum fluctuations, then your will is therefore determined by this quantum flux right?
P.S, why did you capitalize the word Mind after suggesting that tiny ungoverned particles in your head are what dictates your personal preference for anchovies (yuck!)? It seems like a mind full of quantum noise isn't any more appealing than taking in the results of materialist/empirical science as a whole to explain behavior. (along with the indications we are getting out of quantum science).
Nobody thinks that if you throw a rock that the quantum particles it consists of ill ever spontaneously change the rock's direction. Throw a single quantum particle, sure, for now it's behavior is mostly mysterious, but your "Mind" isn't merely quantum particles, is it?
All that said, IF the undetermined behavior of quantum particles is what constitutes free will, then any old rock has free will by virtue of having un-coutnable numbers of those quantum particles. And so it seems that you're agreeing with me and with science in the hope and assumption that cause and effect is all pervasive, but only up to a point. You're then taking exception with the smallest of possible issues and contending that this renders the human mind, your mind, free from "ThE LaWs Of NaTuRe".
Don't sell yourself short. Despite the best efforts if these (presumably) illusionary particles and equally illusionary Laws of Nature (everything is an illusion), you are able (or should I say that the illusion allows you) to see right through it as an illusion. This is no small feat. On the otherhand, understanding that all be is an illusion, then everything you see as materialistic is an illusion, in which case you are having an illusion about illusions as is all is science. My best guess this is the case.
I have no idea what any one is talking about when they talk about Free Will. It is as silly as Determinism. What we clearly have, is the ability to make choices in the direction we wish to take action, but that is all. We have willful energy directed by the mind, both being non-material in nature.
There is no such thing as the Laws of Nature, and the last time I asked someone to enumerate them he just fabricated some. Why not? Would you like to take a stab at it? I don't suppose you are going to include quantum mechanics in your Deterministic theory if nature (which is necessarily an illusion)?
No, free will is an illusion. Can you see how going from X is an illusion to EVERYTHING is an illusion is over-blowing things just a bit?
Quoting Rich
Care to substantiate or explain this "non-material in nature" part? Sounds like metaphysical supernaturalism...
Quoting Rich
We can only better and better approximate the laws of nature using empirical observations, from an epistemological point of view, but if you wish and for example: the strength of attraction between two masses (gravity we call it) is proportional to their masses and the distance between then. If you double the mass of one of the objects, the strength of attraction between them is doubled, and if you double the distance between them, then the strength of attraction is quartered. This is a well tested physical "law" and I can assure it's no illusion.
But that is a useless model for us to use in many instances, because we are a) part of the World and b) many times we cannot evade our subjectivity. Hence we get a far more accurate, or should I say useful model of reality when we assume randomness and free will.
That "I can either write something or don't" has all the possibilities what I can do, hence has the correct model of what I will do. Yet the information is totally useless to me.
All this isn't about existence. It's about perspective.
Really? I am afraid your own illusions have caught up with you. Everything you claim about illusions is still illusion - unless you have somehow self-inoculated yourself against your in admitted illusions. Absolutely everything your mind imagines is an illusion including your illusion that there is no Choices. That's the way illusions work. As much as this may surprise you, but materialism is a kindred spirit to Hinduism. They have all kinds of recommendation in how to break through the Maya that all materialists
are suffering from.
Quoting VagabondSpectre
You are making some major call claims about v the Laws of Nature and how they create materialistic, mind illusions of all sorts, including want of Big Macs. It would be nice if you could enumerate them. Maybe it is just a nice myth?
I'm afraid this isn't an argument ;)
Quoting Rich
I'm claiming that a specific thing is an illusion, not that everything is an illusion. this is a straw-man of my own position at best, and a non-sequitur position in your own at worst. If I say that your belief in something is incorrect because the thing you believe in is illusory, I'm not also tacitly saying that anything and everything is or could be an illusion. Your belief that your choices are not determined by the physical states of the universe is an illusion that results from your inability to imagine how complexity emerges from large systems with basic rules and dynamic elements (see: evolution).
Quoting Rich
You can keep repeating this as if it represents my position, but more likely it points to the gaping hole that is left in your own world view when you imagine removing the cog of free will. I cannot say why free will is so important to you and why without it everything else becomes a false illusion, so perhaps we will get to this another time.
Quoting Rich
Maybe you could enumerate which quantum bits in your brain take part in your decision making processes?
I've given you the first physical law, and it's not mythical. If you want me to provide more you should demonstrate how the first one is a myth!
They all do including the enteric mind.
So what you're saying is that your behavior is determined by a conglomeration of quantum fluctuations (as opposed to some kind of ethereal spirit or eternal soul or otherwise god-like-source of hard free will)?
Interestingly, indeterminacy in the smallest particles must somehow average out overall when they're in large enough groupings, otherwise matter in Newtonian scales would have no consistency.
I've seen you state elsewhere that determinism makes everything meaningless, and so my question to you would be to explain how quantum randomness/fluctuations/indeterminacy/what-have-you actually makes things meaningful???.
I think I said Mind. Quantum fluctuations are Mind.
But we do KNOW that we have free will, for here resides the weight of public perception and knowing.. Sure, we may be wrong in thus knowing, I`m convinced that we are, it may well be known mistakenly, it may well not be that which actuality is, but it is known all the same. Faith is knowing, but those, for instance, that have faith that there is God may still be proven wrong. I know that free will does not exist, but because I do n`t carry this thought around with me it affects me not at all. Should I do it likely would, Just how it negatively affects people is already documented, so there is no philosophy to be done there. Knowing changes nothing for we already know.
We are flooded with data, like a computer, and we have added to this the ability for both decision making and reasoning, but that decision making and reasoning is set in an environment only of total data and total programming, and we are programmed by the early environment in which we live. Beyond this is not philosophy, philosophy directs science, but it stops short of doing the science.
I'm pretty curious as to how these things are similar! How is a field goal illusory like free will is?
I opened with the term "Illusion" because the OP uses it, but perhaps the word I should have used is "delusion". Most people in the west who subscribe to this delusion have originally had it thrust upon them by family/community/religion, etc, and have simply not learned enough about physics, biology, and psychology (human behavior) to imagine things differently.
So your "Mind" doesn't determine your behavior? I'm suggesting that quantum fluctuations are the only possibly undetermined phenomena that you can point to that can be your source of hard free will. So if the quantum fluctuations determines your Mind, and your Mind determines your will, then you don't have "free" will, you have "quantum fluctuating will" which is really quite a silly notion when you think about it.
This is like saying an AI has free-will because it's programming could spontaneously change. Not only would spontaneous changes to programming potentially cause critical failure, there's no existential value difference between an AI and a randomly reprogrammed AI. (Personally I would rather be the AI whose "Mind" isn't subject to the random throes of quantum particles).
P.S: I still really want this answered: I've seen you state elsewhere that determinism makes everything meaningless, and so my question to you would be to explain how quantum randomness/fluctuations/indeterminacy/what-have-you actually makes things meaningful???.
Both are social constructions, which are not constituted in nature, only made real by the existence of society who believes in their reality, same goes for cash.
Knowing that we don't have free will does change a few minor things. The main change it brings is the understanding that our actions do not inherently stem from some eternal blame-worthy soul or intrinsic "nugget of essence of being" that gives rise to free-will. Pragmatic blame is still necessary to dole out, but there is something about belief in souls and free-will that allows to despise someone to their very core. What we really should be hating is the entire set of circumstances that gave rise to a persons despicable actions, not the "person" themselves.
Intuitively most people might give a moral nod to the idea of torturing Hitler (were he not dead), but along with the dissolution of free will, the moral jusitifiability of revenge dissolves too. Intrinsic moral guilt resting in the individual is certainly bonkers once we can understand the kinds of things that drive human behavior, and so rather than punishing (torturing) criminals for their actions what we really ought to be doing is rehabilitating them; (if someone is a criminal and cannot be rehabilitated, then permanent segregation from society would be the next best option). For, if you, lacking free will, one day finds yourself in the situation of committing criminal acts (or your children, friends, etc...) would you not want to be rehabilitated instead of punished to deter others?
Perhaps it arises out of a need to emotionally justify the reciprocation of harmful actions without actually thinking of ourselves as "bad" for committing the same kinds of actions (or worse) as the harmful transgressions inflicted upon us in the first place. It's too easy to forgive when you truly understand someone (morally forgive, not pragmatically forget; rapists still need to be incarcerated and rehabilitated for our own safety). We forgive children all the time because it's so easy to understand their ignorance, but at what point do we actually grow up and free ourselves from pervasive ignorance? (We don't! We just slowly become a bit less ignorant).
Can please think your questions through?
I couldn't have thought them through any differently, but I don't see what the problem is. You can start capitalizing words arbitrarily, and I can pretend you're using those words normally in order to maintain my own sanity.
If capitalized "Mind" has some kind of special meaning that makes my question incoherent, please explain that meaning to us.
And/or, answer this question: I've seen you state elsewhere that determinism makes everything meaningless, and so my question to you would be to explain how quantum randomness/fluctuations/indeterminacy/what-have-you actually makes things meaningful???
To many people seem to just react negatively when you suggest that they don't actually have free will. Instead of arguments in response all I ever seem to get is magical thinking and emotional resistance...
Here's a documentary video of what happens when you suggest someone doesn't actually have free will:
The creative, explorative, evolutionary aspects of the Mind brings meaning to life. Arguing about Free Will vs. Determinism, or whether God is logical, is an amusement of the Mind. Philosophy is about understanding this Mind.
It's what is peering out of your eyes and asking questions.
Can you be more specific? A network of neurons doesn't seem exempt from causation.
To the delusion of what, free will, or determinism? The notion of determinism is thrust upon one but the notion of free will never is. OP? Somebody over the age of sixty six you mean, who`s that, in any event you are plainly rank with age prejudice. Prejudice never exists in just the one area, so much of your thinking then may well be prejudicial, and I`ve never known a person that is afflicted with forwards age prejudice not also to be afflicted with reverse age prejudice. It is just knowing how to bring it out onto the surface.
Determinism does n`t make anything pointless, and without it our lives would be a chaotic nightmare.
If everything is fated then life does become meaningless. At least the Calvinists have a Heaven to look forward to. Determinists seemed determined to wring everything meaningful out of life, most especially the ability to manifest spontaneous creativity. As it happens, pretty much no one really believes it. There are however lots of economic reasons for is continued promotion, both directly and indirectly.
As for this position chaos, all of nature as it exist depends upon both spontaneity as well as learned habits as part of is evolution. What we observe is the result of this evolutionary process. Sometimes a gentle breeze will blow and sometimes there is a tsunami. Neither is determined but rather is a result of continual evolution.
Quoting Rich
You insist that determinism makes things meaningless as if some magical free-will force is necessary for meaning in the first place.
I say spontaneous creativity comes from the complexity of neural networks and their environment, and you say spontaneous creativity either comes from quantum randomness or some magical and indescribable event that makes it even better than the unfathomable complexity we actually can observe in the real world.
This is why I accuse anti-determinists of lacking imagination. They're so concerned with their own fantastical interpretations of the world that they can no longer stand to look at things as they are. The observable universe is already larger than we can ever explore, and beyond the observable, who knows? (probably more of the same though).
Maybe god and free-will exist, but why sit around making assumptions about things for which we have no evidence or indication? There's no hard evidence for god, souls, or free will, but there is evidence that human behavior can be predicted; there's evidence that human behavior is tied into cause and effect.
If you think presuming free will is a better starting assumption (for exploring reality) than presuming determinism, so be it, but behavioral sciences (and science in general) which presume the pervasiveness of cause and effect in some cases can predict your own supposedly free behavior better than you can.
See: https://www.nature.com/articles/nn.2112
Not reading any further. Read about the enteric brain. Then spend your life understanding your body And have done. Bye bye.
I'm really stubborn, admittedly, so you're probably doing me a favor (not that you could have chosen any differently of course, so I don't hold it against you!) Toodles!
Quoting Rich
How can you wring something out when it's not there to begin with? What grand meaning is there to life, aside from what has been biologically programmed (i.e. survival)? Determined or not, fated or not, there's no other real known point to life.
Totally agree with your description of yourself.
Finally we agree on something! X-)
Try it and LEARN about Life. This is real Evolution.
Scientific dehumanization stagnates Life and creates meaningless, depression, bad health, and worse. Movement, spiritual, emotional, mental, and physical creates an harmonious Life.
Life Flows.