The basics of free will
This is the first discussion topic I have started, so go easy on me.
The way I see it, the existence of free will essentially boils down to three assertions, the simplicity of which I find surprising considering the volume of discussion on the subject. So I thought I would just lay them out here in the hopes of generating a discussion of their validity and application among those who have more background in philosophical discussion of the topic than I do.
FREE WILL
Given that I cannot choose to consciously exist in this situation:
The way I see it, the existence of free will essentially boils down to three assertions, the simplicity of which I find surprising considering the volume of discussion on the subject. So I thought I would just lay them out here in the hopes of generating a discussion of their validity and application among those who have more background in philosophical discussion of the topic than I do.
FREE WILL
Given that I cannot choose to consciously exist in this situation:
- I choose to be aware
- I choose to connect
- I choose to collaborate
Comments (332)
Ok, I’m intrigued: How can you choose to not exist in this situation?
The fixed will is that of the instant, 'voting' as it has become up to then; however, the fixed will is dynamic—it can change to a new and different fixed will via learning/experience, plus, truth can be discovered, regardless.
Quoting Possibility
The will can't be free of itself, so isn't the will just the will? If it is only to be free of coercion, that is trivial. If it is then the the will is able to operate, then that, too, is no great shakes.
Learning/experience only occurs when the choice is made to be aware. So, too, any discovery of truth.
what does that even mean?
then why don't you just say "I'm trying not to complicate it."?
It appears to read that the states in the list are automatic happenings and thus unavoidable.
No.
It is inconsistent to post as your first discussion a discussion that has been done to death and then expect people to go easy on you.
I always were my helmet. :-)
Only after I have had my coffee.
But don’t expect me to respond to you venting your frustrations.
Either engage meaningfully in the discussion, or find something useful to do elsewhere.
or you could look to getting a sense of humor.
now look who is venting their frustrations.
an either or command.
relax, dude.
If you believe you do not have free will and you do, then that is just tragic.
So I live my life as if I have free will.
A command implies that I have some control over what you do - consider it a suggestion. Of course, you could choose to ignore it.
So according to you, there is no need for a discussion on whether or not we have free will.
I agree.
I’m happy to discuss whether or not we have free will if you want to dispute the validity of these assertions, for instance. If, however, you’ve already decided how you’re going to live, and see no point in any discussion, then I’m not going to waste my time on a discussion about whether or not we should even discuss whether or not we have free will.
........you might be a metaphysical redneck.
Rhetorically speaking.
This is a logical fallacy. What does free will have with them changing their minds. One can involuntarily say free will is an illusion and involuntarily be persuaded that it exists falsely. There is nothing logically incoherent with that.
I guess you would commit suicide?
Free will is the essence of what we are as thinking beings. Cogito ergo sum.
I figured you’d say that. You still haven’t chosen not to exist in the initial situation - you’ve chosen to take steps to not continue to live from that point onwards.
Technically, you will still ‘exist’ even if you commit suicide - just in a different sense. You exist in the past as a person who was once alive, in relation to who and what you leave behind. But that’s perhaps another discussion.
OR.......
...........Perhaps I’m just trying to fit something onto a T shirt.
“If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.” - Albert Einstein
I am sure the opposite happens all the time. (Your changing your mind on the conviction whether there is free will or not.)
This is patently false.
If you believe you have free will, but you don't, you were caused to believe that you have free will.
There is no magic about it.
Then you don't feel the wind in your hair.
Sometime you have to let your hair down, the wind out, and mix the two.
Or maybe not. Oy.
Technically, you will still ‘exist’ even if you commit suicide - just in a different sense. You exist in the past as a person who was once alive, in relation to who and what you leave behind. But that’s perhaps another discussion."
Well, you can't retroactively make a choice, so if you are saying that all choice moves forward in time, ok. I'm not sure how that is relevant.
As far as "existing in the past" that is definitely not the case. The past exists only as the past of an extant present, so you are equivocating around the definition of existence. If you are saying, I can't make it so that I never existed I'm not really sure how that is germane to the topic of free will?
I'm trying to go with your train of thought as much as possible instead of just offering up a lot of my own thoughts (I can tend to do that sometimes).
"This is patently false.
If you believe you have free will, but you don't, you were caused to believe that you have free will.
There is no magic about it."
That is straight up Descartes. He concludes, and I agree, this is the one thing about which you cannot be deceived.
Well, then, Pantargruel, if you believe in free will, then you can do that only if you throw away the entire set of cause-effect relationships, and also reason and logic, and off you go.
We already agreed to not argue with each other on this topic, on a different thread.
LOL!
One, trivial, but common definition is that the will is free/able to operate normally in the absence of. coercion. Let us move past this, unto the big fuss, which is more about that we don't like being automatons/robots, albeit that the resultant consistency aiding our survival is also desired. This stance creates conflict! But then comes the big thud of the other shoes dropping (the alternatives) that horrify us even more..
Time to gather information rather than just stating things out of thin air and starting more threads.
More later.
Notes:
The more range/inputs (information) in the will, the better its output.
Positing additional inputs to the brain is fine, such as others brain waves, but they're just another input.
Brain analysis and its result takes time, and thus precedes consciousness.
'Random' happenings don't help the will; they harm it.
Consistency of the will is useful for survival, in the good sense.
The will cannot be free of the will.
There is no law that says that life has to be meaningful and so the will cannot be fixed to the instant.
The will is dynamic. Through learning and experience, new, better, fixed wills can arrive.
OK, moving onto the OP, let us take the list as assertions, ignoring that it was said, that "Given that I cannot choose to consciously exist in this situation:", which meant that there was no choosing of what's in the list.
Awareness is inherent in the brain/will, a part of its nature. The will may or may not attend much further to what it is aware of, although it is difficult not to; we see an apple and then think what to do with a bit.
I have to guess at 'connect', but preclude it being with people since that is covered in the next item. Consciousness connects in unity the result of the will/brain doings, and also connects it seamlessly to what it had previously. This would seem to be automatic.
'Collaborate' seems optional, but again I have nothing further to go on about its meaning here.
I'm having trouble understanding how 'changing your mind' is reconcilable with 'determinism'. If you are able to change your mind, then how is that not a free choice? I suppose you could say 'I have no choice but to accept....' but even so, 'acceptance' seems to me a willing act.
I'm having trouble understanding what they have to do with each other. what does changing one's mind have to do with whether or not that change of mind came about due to the voodoo magic called freewill or cause and effect like everything else
Which is why the idea of there being no free will is basically irrational.
This also supports my view that the main reason people disavow free will is because it’s scary. Freedom entails responsibility, and a lot of people can’t deal with it. Easier to think you’re a machine.
Quoting Wayfarer
That reason can be reduced to physical causality if the laws of cause and effect are true. Changing certain brain chemicals should do it
Quoting Wayfarer
I was compelled by a rational argument. Think of it like this: I say or write "I believe in free will". That is the result of the movement of certain muscles and your ears/eyes detecting the results. That movement must have been caused by other movements following strict laws of physics. Ergo free will would require some voodoo magic to MOVE this electron that way or this way such that it results in you saying "I do not believe in free will" or any other opinion
Quoting Wayfarer
This is Ad Hominem and doesn't deserve a reply. Please explain to me how exactly free will operates. If I type "free will exists" what caused that typing other than a physical cause and what caused that other than another physical cause. Where does free will fit in? Did free will physically move a muscle. So are you proposing a new force other than the Strong nuclear, Weak nuclear, Gravitational or Electromagnetic? If so I'd love to hear about this "free will force" you speak of. Please send a peer reviewed paper talking about your revolutionary finding.
We don't know that; it is the operative delusion of materialism. In any case, if I write something that annoys you, like I just did, that changes the chemicals, rather than visca versa - your adrenal glands go off, if it's annoying enough your hands will shake and your pulse increase. That is 'top-down causation' right there; no matter has been transmitted, only ideas. (Whereas if I physically strike a person, then there is a material cause.)
Quoting khaled
That is the operative delusion of materialism. The laws of physics account for only a certain range of phenomena within the very domain in which they're applicable; they have nothing whatever to say about what you decide to write. The main way in which the laws of physics applies to persons is that you will fall at the same rate as an inanimate object!
Quoting khaled
No it's not, because it applies to a type of argument, not you as a person. Although you might react like that because it 'pushes buttons'.
Quoting khaled
At the moment, the 'known laws of physics' account for 4% of the universe. And science is involved in possibly irresolvable arguments about the fundamental nature of matter. I see no way in which any of this should apply to a conversation about free will.
Quoting khaled
There is no electron until it is measured. The 'uncertainty principle' torpedoed any idea of universal determinism.
Everything you're doing here, you're deciding to do. You're weighing things up, trying to persuade, coming up with counter-examples. As it happens, I don't agree with them, but I still say every argument you make, you're making freely.
Quoting Wayfarer
And you would have needed a chemical change to think of and write those things in the first place, or else you wouldn't have been able to move a muscle as that is a chemical interaction
Quoting Wayfarer
We don't know it's not that either. And I'm going with it IS that. Please tell me the metaphysics you're employing so we're on the same page.
Quoting Wayfarer
I understand but no determinism =/= free will either. Random quantum fluctuations aren't a choice.
Quoting Wayfarer
I do not see a viable alternative to materialism (or matter-waveism I guess if you account for quantum mechanics) please enlighten me on what metaphysics you're employing
Quoting Wayfarer
Matter hasn't been transmitted but that isn't the only physical reaction possible. You type, my eyes detect the words. They send electrical signals to my brain. The electrical signals act in deterministic (or random) ways in my brain. The result is that it makes me type something else. Maybe you missed my entire point but my point was that this "transmittion of ideas" can only happen through physical means. And to influence those physical means you'd need a physical cause. Free will is not a physical cause as we have yet to find a free will force. If you find it please tell me
Quoting Wayfarer
It applies to a group of people not an argument. And I thought you included me in that group of people seeing as the reply was directed at me. But I don't care if it's ad hominem or not at any case it's not an argument. Why most people disavow free will is not an argument as to whether or not they're right.
I hear that. The first statement was for the benefit of those who continue to insist that we didn’t consent to existence, and therefore are hard done by, but also those who point to circumstances as constraints to the will.
There are constraints on our current existence which affect what we have been aware of up to this point, and therefore our connections to the universe and how we’ve been able to work together. But they do not constrain our capacity to be aware from this point onwards. You can say ‘I didn’t know she was under-age!’, but the truth is more likely that the thought had crossed your mind, but you chose to not be aware of the truth.
Can you choose to not have freedom? Because if you can you will not have freedom after all and if you cant you already don't have it.
But If you talking about the Christian concept of the Divine provided Free will than that brings it to a whole new discussion about how a God that knows what choices you will make can give you options that he knows that you will not pick.
I am afraid I can't tell you what you want to hear. I could tell you how things in the environment change, which cause you (or me or anyone else) to change their minds. Things are in flux, affecting each other.
But I can't explain that to you, because you don't want to hear that, and when you hear that, then you will not understand something else, and when that is explained to you, you will go back to your rejection of everything being caused and everything causing something else.
You are having trouble understanding how things change when they are caused to change. Well, well.
You're simply throwing out dumb materialism, it's not worth discussing.
Quoting god must be atheist
I think it's more the case that you're having trouble saying anything coherent.
Hey it's just marks on a screen, right? Means nothing anyway.
But other than that, I would appreciate it if you let me make a case in the first place because I like people who seem very sure of their way of thinking because it helps me better mine. Of course I don't know which way your neurons will fall (if you'll reply or not) but my argument against free will would go like this:
P1: All subjectively understood information must be transmitted through a physical means. Be it words on a screen or on paper or sound waves. I cannot "will" an idea into your mind directly, you have to see it/ read it/ etc. One cannot think without those physical means because there would be nothing to think about. I'm basically saying you need a physical brain to think or that you need a brain (or some other processing unit) for a mind. Even mathematics requires a physical brain even though it is not describing anything physical. In order to understand what a line is you need a sense of space which doesn't come without a body and a brain. In order to understand numbers you need to know what counting is or what a "thing" is or what sets are which doesn't come without the ability to distinguish objects, which doesn't come without the physical senses
P2: The production of these physical means requires a physical cause. I cannot "will" ink onto a paper, I need to physically move my arm.
P3: The outcome of a physical interaction is not determined by a subject. It is determined by the laws of physics or by chance. This is not to say the laws of physics we have currently are correct, but that there is SOME sort of combination of laws and random chance that determines the outcomes of physical interactions.
C: Since a subject cannot influence a physical interactions and since physical interactions can only be caused by other physical interactions, the subject cannot influence any course of events unless the subject itself is a physical entity, isolatable and testable.
You could not have read what I wrote without light waves being incident on your eyes, which then changes the chemical formula of retinol in your eyes which causes it to irritate certain neurons etc etc until it reaches your brain. How that reaching your brain bit results in your subjective understanding I do not know but what I do know is HOWEVER YOU REPLY must ultimately be caused by physical effects. If you reply by typing something must have moved your fingers and that something must have been physical all the way back to your brain. When you formulated what you were about to type, there had to have been a physical interaction that culminated in you typing it. I don't know how you formulated what you were about to type subjectively but ultimately, the chain of causailty ending with you typing must have started with a physical cause because typing is physical. That's why I believe if such a thing as free will exists then we could literally find a force or field in the brain which directly causes certain chemical/physical interactions. There has to be a "free will force" whose results you can predict and control beforehand with sheer will and it has to be controllable. That's the only way I can conceive of free will existing. Or else how does it interact with the physical world?
Your ideas didn't cause the words I'm seeing, ultimately your fingers did and something physical must have caused those fingers to move. That's why I believe free will is either a physical force explanable by some formulation of the laws of physics or it is literally voodoo magic because I cannot think of a way something non physical can PUSH something physical.
Probably there is a superordinate framework that encompasses the apparent mind-matter dualism.
Quoting Wayfarer
I beg to differ. I think you have a mental block accepting the causality in the universe. That's a big hindrance in intelligent conversation, when the topics all require the participants to follow a path of cause-effect and hence, reason.
You can't follow reason. You explain your inability to understand with other's inability to express themselves. In my own opinion you are not capable of recognizing your own incapacity to follow arguments that employ logic and reason.
Agree with this 100% This is an excellent pragmatic approach, and I am fundamentally a pragmatist.
Ultimately, if I act with epistemic irresponsibility and allow myself to believe something just because I want it to be the case, the consequences can only be bad for me.
I'll try to zero in on what 'free will' is free to do or what it is free of, since many don't define it, leaving it as some stand-alone phrase not anchored.
For some, it is the ability for the will to operate normally when not forced, this meaning when the will is not coerced. Determinism is not addressed. The depth of coercion, such as (usually) having to stay out of lightning storms and heat waves isn't addressed. That's the end of that one, and so to be clear and not misunderstood, they could declare something like "The uncoerced will is able to operate and thus express itself completely."
I don't think anyone will claim that there is no will or that it can't operate normally when not forced. So, no big revelation here, but just a statement of the obvious that is so trivial that it seems to bee not what is sought by many.
The compatibilists say the same except that they admit determinism. More on that later.
The libertarians, also admitting determinism, mostly, have it that since such as QM shows 'randomness', which mostly cancels out, that some of the 'randomness' might make it into the will's decision-making process, disrupting it, causing an outcome which wouldn't normally happen. However, this harms the will and so it's tough to see how it helps 'free will', for then some decisions might be as 'air-headed', this being not really any help, although they say it can promote variety. Their consolation is that they may have showed that events could have been different if the universe were to be rerun.
We can't rerun the universe. What it already did on its actual run is what it did, this actuality seeming to trump the 'what if' of some fantasy world game situation situation such as 'What if Hitler had developed the A-bomb'.
The 'free' of 'free will' to some might mean that the will is not determined, that determinism in not inherent in its analysis for decisions, that it is somehow undetermined, which doesn't sound useful, but they would have to show something non-libertarian to have a 'free will' that is not a 'fixed will' that still grants us consistency to act as ourselves as we have come to be up to that moment.
If there is another definition of 'free-will', the advocates would have to define it so that we could better size it up.
Of course, we do research first, if luckily it is one of the qualities of our will to seek information and be able to better analyze from both sides. Then our wills gain a wider range and can choose better, even choosing differently later on, changing one's mind. The will usually doesn't freeze into one state, but I appreciate that it may well get stuck for some, with a general, not mental, learning disability, which I leave for cognitive behavioralists to figure out.
Quoting PoeticUniverse
This isn’t libertarian free will.
Quoting PoeticUniverse
This is libertarian free will.
As I see it, free will is just when one is not being coerced. There are strong wills, moderately strong wills, moderately weak wills, and weak wills. This can change within a person from situation to situation, but there is a general average for each person.
I generally have a moderately weak will. I lack conviction and I am apathetic a lot of the time, so I rarely impose my will on the world. Sometimes I do, however, given the situation.
Quoting Possibility
Free = unconstrained
I think we make more of ‘the will’ than it needs to be. We like to think that our will is this complicated process of taking all available information into account and then making an informed decision on what to do, but the initial decision to initiate action, that leads to each step in the process itself, is much simpler. It’s a yes or no to these three assertions. If we say no, then we constrain our own action in that respect, and whatever we do subsequently in relation to thought, words or actions will be constrained by that limitation.
Awareness is a decision that is made before we ‘see an apple’. A decision is made to be aware of sense data - to seek information from our senses - and then to connect that sense data to related information in the brain that we find points to there being ‘an apple’ in that sense data. The collaboration occurs when another decision is made to integrate these related sources of information into the thought of ‘seeing an apple’.
This may sound ridiculously trivial and ‘automatic’ in relation to seeing an apple, but consider the same process with a different example.
Let’s say that someone is blindfolded as part of a game, but when they open their eyes they can see a little bit below the bottom of that blindfold. The sensory system is geared to ‘automatically’ be aware of visual sense data - we’ve given that decision over to subconscious operations - but because of the nature of the game, this person becomes conscious of (paying attention to) the fact that they can still see, and that this not supposed to happen in the game. That person must decide to continue to be aware of this sense data or not. They could adjust the blindfold so that they can no longer see; they could close their eyes beneath the blindfold; they could warn someone in the game that they can still see; or they could choose to stay silent and be aware of this visual sense data as well as their other senses, at any time they feel it’s ‘necessary’.
While they wrestle with this decision, they’ve nevertheless ‘automatically’ become aware of certain visual sense data. They then have to decide whether or not to dismiss that data (because that’s the rules of the game), or to connect it to related information in the brain which helps them determine what it could be. Now, they may have a curious nature or be particularly reliant on visual data, and so be unwilling to dismiss such data - even though it’s against the rules of the game - without first connecting it to information in the brain, just in case. They may rationalise that it’s not their fault the blindfold wasn’t on properly to start with, or any number of rationalisation that might give them moral permission to connect the data they ‘inadvertently’ have.
So they’ve decided to make the connections, and determine that they see a familiar plant in the garden. If they decide to collaborate at this point, to integrate this information with the rest of the information they have from listening to their surroundings, feeling the breeze on their face, etc. then they will be more informed than if they had chosen not to collaborate.
This is what I’ve spent some time trying to reach: what it is about our will that is unconstrained, when every movement by law must be determined by a physical cause? I don’t believe it is something supernatural or externally ‘gifted’ to humans, but neither am I willing to dismiss awareness of it just because I have insufficient information to answer the questions through scientific means.
My theory is that the will - the basic faculty by which any action is decidedly initiated - is fundamental to all matter, and that the diversity of the universe is determined as much by these three ‘decisions’ made at the point of each interaction across spacetime as by ‘randomness’.
Of course, it’s all speculation at this point (and my own ability to integrate information is limited), but I find that much of current theorising across physics, biochemistry, neuroscience, philosophy and even theology - particularly in areas we admit we don’t fully understand (eg. dark matter, abiogenesis, consciousness, altruism, etc) - suggests to me that this theory is worthwhile pursuing.
I may be entirely or at least partly misguided, but I’m willing to find out either way, and make adjustments.
This implies a lot. Does it mean all matter is conscious (a notion I actually like personally)? Also what would explain the regularity we see in matter. Throw the same rock the same way a 100 times and it'll do the same thing. It might have will but that doesn't seem too free to me. What you're describing is basically "energy" not "free will". A definition of energy is capacity to do work. But if you're running real fast, sure you can do more work (move things) but I wouldn't say you have more free will. What I think is needed for free will is literally a FORCE. A literal tiny force in your brain you can push up or down so if in an experiment it is isolated the experiment can ask you "move your free will up" and you'll be able to 100% of the time. The behavior of this force must also be completely uninfluenced EXCEPT by you. It has to be proven that no matter how external conditions change this force still remains and still cannot be influenced by any other physical force or effect. And through all of this it must be completely predictable by YOU. I have no idea how this can be tested
That depends on what you mean by ‘conscious’. I think all matter starts out (at the BB, for instance) with the capacity to make these three yes/no decisions with each interaction. That’s it at base.
Quoting khaled
Okay, a rock is not making a decision to be aware here - but each particle/molecule has already made a number of ‘no’ decisions that have limited its capacity to then make yes/no decisions to subsequent interactions, including its ability to connect with its neighbouring rock molecules and respond to forces in relation to them. ‘No’ decisions are irretreivable for the molecule, though, and therefore for anything non-living.
The thing about humans is that the ‘yes’ decisions made by our ancestors have given us a much, much greater capacity to make yes/no decisions than any other species. But within our current set of collaborations are a number of smaller collaborations that have made ‘no’ decisions that limit their awareness, connection and collaboration with other elements of this larger collaboration - if that makes sense. And within those limited collaborations are a number of smaller limited collaborations, and so on.
But because these collaborations are continually changing in a living organism, we are at least capable of making new and revised yes/no decisions with every interaction, down to a certain level.
Quoting khaled
Remember that we’re still not entirely sure what energy IS. Capacity to do work in relation to will is more than running real fast, because it doesn’t only include ‘work’ at the level of bodily action, but at thought level, and at the level of electrical impulses. The more yes/no decisions you can make, the more ‘yes’ decisions you can make, and so the more ‘free will’ you have.
So instead of saying ‘move your free will up’, perhaps it would be a matter of saying ‘choose to collaborate more/less’ in relation to a specific set of interactions which have already made it through the first two ‘yes’ decisions, and then work our way backwards.
I suppose this sums up a bit proto-man to human development, 'awareness' having now become automatic, along with the other two items. Or maybe it was the other way around, per Damasio, with awareness and then consciousness coming to mind.
We can train ourselves to be more aware, such as would the intelligence operative and the ninja or by following a cat around in the dark.
The way I see it, it boils down to one assertion: I have and can make a choice.
Any choice, always and in every situation?
Me, too. This is my brain's will 'speaking' here and always, for thoughts ever arise therein.
The part of the brain that is called the 'will' comes up with a result, after 300-500 or so milliseconds of subconscious analysis, probably via neural connections, of bio, electric, and chemical, of my repertoire.
It may be sometimes that the result is to ruminate further or to put it all aside and move on to something else. This all seems rather instant, but science has informed of what would not otherwise be known about what underlies and the time it takes. The conscious quaila sequentially follow, when meant to.
It is probably that quaila are the brain's own invented internal language, at least closer to that endpoint. Qualia, too, take a bit of time to build and apply unity to, as will as to stitch them seamlessly to the previous. Perhaps they get remembered as a whole and get fed back into memory as a kind of short cut.
These choices appear to aid my survival through their consistency, generally, when one is not a reckless risk taker, nuts, stupid, etc.
I can't say a lot for sure, though, as the brain, for even I am not privy to my own sub-conscious going-on, although sometime I get an inkling. Other times the thoughts seem to come out of the blue. I have also learned not to take my thoughts as gospel just because I thought of them, but with a grain of salt, meaning, I guess, like count to ten first, reflecting. Other, impulsive types may not be so lucky, missing out on that space, but that's life.
Now, after many more milliseconds signal whirling, I'm not even so sure if I should post all this. I await the choice; oh, here it is: post!
The idea is just that some choices are possible, contra the idea that none are.
oops. Only one choice is possible, no matter how many possibilities are presented.
This is the bread and butter of the "no free will possible" camp.
Having no choice means inactivity, a frozen world with no moviement and no change of anything in it.
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I did not use any references in this opinion. I trust the reader to intuit the meaning of my post without any reference to Socrates, Aristotle, Hume, Kant or Spinoza, to name only a few of them.
BAck to the topic:
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If more than one choice was possible, then that would violate the law of excluded middle. For instance, if I bought a watch (one watch) and chose and bought a Berghammer watch and a Rolex watch, then there would be separate histories happening in time concurrently. That is not happening, so when you set out to buy one watch, your choice is always one watch of the kind that you choose.
On the watch analogy - doesn't it depend on the sequencing? If you set about to buy a watch, but are not aware at that point of a particular watch that your conscious mind has decided on, then when you reach the store and are faced with say 5 watches, then the point at which you become aware of a decision to purchase one particular watch, and then but that one watch, is the point at which your will has decided to act and carries out that act. But you only became aware of that decision at the point at which you were faced with a concrete reality that necessitates a decision regarding the 5 watches. In that sense free will is simply the point at which you were faced with a reality that necessitated a decision to move forward into the future. Whether or not what preceded that "awareness" of that decision is itself "free" is constrained by the fact that we don't really understand how that awareness happens. And whether the process through which that awareness happens is deterministic is constrained by our lack of understanding of it -but the constant requirement to act in the face of an uncertain future means that the idea of "free will" is useful to us and the fact that we use it daily is evidence of its utility as a concept.
Maybe it is simply about the utility of "free will" as a concept which can usefully be applied to a multiplicity of situations and which we therefore use?
??? I'm not following you.
There is more than one choice in that I can choose what album to listen to, I can choose which ice cream to eat, I can choose which film to watch, etc., and I can choose among many albums, flavors, etc.
Quoting god must be atheist
I think we need to be clear about when we use ‘choice’ as:
- the ACT of choosing,
- the VARIETY or range to choose from OR
- the particular OPTION to be chosen,
otherwise this could get messy.
NO FREE WILL, as I understand it, says that there is no act of choosing. Regardless of how many possibilities are presented, you were always going to ‘choose’ the same watch, because this option to be chosen has already been determined. So in fact, what you believe to be the variety or range to choose from is just an illusion.
A standard argument for FREE WILL, as I understand it, says that the act of choosing is indeed yours to make, and regardless of how constrained the variety or range to choose from may be or how much power, influence or control is apparently exerted on you, the notion of ‘free will’ maintains that you are still ‘free’ to choose from at least two options.
My argument is that defining the ‘will’ as the entire thought process behind all the acts of choosing that one makes in life - rather than the basic faculty by which an action is decided and initiated - is what seems to be confusing the issue.
The will, as I understand it, is an underlying faculty that is inherent in every element of matter, but has been permanently constrained to some extent in all but humanity - where it remains entirely unconstrained: FREE.
There are ZERO CONSTRAINTS on the act, the range or the options of choosing whether or not to be aware, to connect or to collaborate - regardless of what your circumstances are. These are the basic, underlying decisions that I believe no-one can take away from you - your will.
The act of choosing, though that obviously requires options that can be chosen.
Quoting Possibility
There couldn't be any real possibilities (aside from one) if no choice is possible (or if no ontological freedom is possible).
Quoting Possibility
Right, which is what I was getting at in the earlier post.
Quoting Possibility
That part I don't understand. One constraint on the act of choosing, for example, is a time constraint. You'd have to make the choice while you are able to--while it's available, while you're capable of expressing it, while you're alive, etc.
This is according to your broad definition of the will, which includes the entire process of thinking about every act, range and option to be chosen.
But when you understand the will to be just those three acts of choosing yes or no, then you realise that it always chooses at each moment of interaction, before time even factors in. Like gates, if you will, that open or close to create causal links. So when determinists look back on the causal flow, they don’t see the gates, they only see the linked chains extending back in time.
Hurray. I subscribe gladly to this. Until a better one comes along.
My proposal for a more precise and more rigorously defined alternative set of words to use before things get messy, is as follows:
- Variety of things available from which to choose - selection
- the act of picking one thing from th e available selection - choosing
- the thing that we decide with and consider our chosen one - realized item
- the entire process of examining, evaluating each or most or some of the items in the selection, and picking one chosen item to be the reallized item - making a choice
Once I argued EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE to a manager of a store when I wanted to return an item, and I suspect he was a Philosophy major, because he conceded all his prior objectoins to giving me a refund, and did issue me a refund after I presented him with this:
"in front of me there are many different kinds of bicycle computers. I take home one. I choose the one that I can afford, can use, and has all the features that I want, or the maximum features that I want. There are seventeen different kinds of bicycle computers on the shelf in your store, and in my previous trip I chose the precise one that was the ONLY ONE POSSIBLE under the constraints of what reasons went into my selection."
Here, the constraints were minimizing the price, maximizing the features, and thus finding the ideal.
I believe that similar constraints are always present whenever we are finding ourselves in a position to make a choice.
I read his proof on Wiki. Descartes proof is a hideously laughable one, sorry to say so.
1. It hinges on having a god. But that is not proven, and there is an equal possibility as far as humans KNOW whether god exists or not. So a proof, if it is to stand, has to have elements that are acceptable to the person to be convinced.
2. Descartes attacks the problem of the LORD'S foreknowledge of any future act, prior to any act, even if it is an act of free will, by saying that he, Descartes, does not know how that is possible, but he trusts that the LORD is so much smarter than he, Descartes, that the LORD has figured out a way of doing it.
That is complete bullshit, and it has no proof value, not even the value of evidence. "It must be done somehow, but I don't know how, but because i want to prove this to be true, I accept and I will you to accept too, that it is possible,otherwise I can't prove my point." That is the parallel of his argument, and it is a complete hoax; it is a null-and-void, invalid way of proving something.
We defined it, recently, here, for example, that the will makes choices, and, thus, so defined, we have free will. 'Defining' is the key to have the words 'free will' mean something, among other possible meanings. (Aside from coercion, as always.)
Quoting Arne
Philosophy, leading to science investigation, is not useless, but can sometimes show high probability findings.
Others are often after something deeper, and so define 'free will' to mean that the result of the will doesn't have to be the same if the exact same situation could be run again—that some measure of variety is inherent, even if this is only due to something truly 'random'. 'Random' disrupts the will's natural flow and so it's seldom touted as any kind of plus toward free will, it being like an anti-will harm.
Aside from 'random', the 'fixed will' proponents have a good case, in that the will does its job exactly according to what it has in it, called 'determined', or at least to the best of its resolution. The black and white only opposite, then, to 'determined' is 'undetermined', which is no will at all.
Since indeterminate states other than 'random' can't even be defined, much less shown, a highly probable conclusion obtains for this second definition, which is that the two hundred trillion brain neuron connections do as they must.
This fixed will would be but of the instant of the decision, it continually growing from new information, thus, one might decide today what wouldn't have been decided yesterday, or even a few minutes ago. Minds can change.
In either case, of free versus fixed, the will widens and thus can make better choices, presuming that learning can happen.
Another philosophical item of interest stemming from this area is that of whether consciousness is an independent, second will, with some similar but alternate mechanism to the brain. Well, it doesn't have to duplicate anything like the brain, for it already has the brain behind it, plus consciousness would be part of the brain, too, reflecting what the brain just came up with, albeit in its own unique language.
Consciousness needs to be something useful to the brain, such as a global result that other brain areas can get to and then comment on, now or later, and perhaps the shorthand notation of qualia is necessary, but we are only in our infancy of finding such things out. Better to look into things than to quit because they might never get resolved.
Even finding that consciousness itself doesn't decide anything would shock the world to its foundations, as would fixed will, too. The good part would be to then have more compassion for those who are really stuck
The courts now seem to lean toward protecting society over punishing the offender.
this is true of whether god exists or not. It is true regarding our knowledge whether tomorrow will rain or not rain. But it is not true of having an infinite three-dimensional space independent of everything. And it is not true of a deterministic universe allowing non-deterministic things to happen. If you accept determinism, then you exclude free will. If you reject determinism, then you accept that things happen without causes. And this last bit is the crux of the stronghold of no-free will arguers. Everything has a cause and every cause has an effect. If you go outside of that, you must necessarily find things in our universe that would not follow physical laws, that would be random beyond explanatory possibility. And you don't find those things in our universe.
Really? I’m sorry, but I don’t recall that discussion, and if I HAD ever ‘subscribed’ to Descartes’ proof of free will, then I’ve since unsubscribed, so I wonder why you even bring it up - or ‘god’ for that matter. I will acknowledge that I am rarely of the same opinion as I was in previous discussions, such has been the progress of my awareness over the last few years, but I’m curious when and where that discussion took place. As I have mentioned to you before, if you paraphrase or interpret what was said, I will ask for direct quotes or sources.
If you want to dispute what I’ve said in THIS discussion, then make your argument. But there’s not much point in bringing past discussions into it. What I’ve written here in relation to free will, I have only been fully aware of quite recently, to be honest - let alone able to articulate with anything resembling clarity. I am learning as I go.
You are absolutely right. My debate I referred to was not with you but with @pantagruel.
I am a complete dolt when it comes to non-associated rote memory stuff. I can't remember faces, names of people, and the older I get, the worse this condition gets.
Here's what I had thougth you had written, inbedded in this short post of debate fracture:
Quoting Pantagruel
I’ve been trying to point out from the start (rather poorly, it appears) that the way we tend to define free will as ‘the capacity to make a choice’ is not necessarily synonymous with ‘the [unconstrained] faculty by which one decides and initiates action’. I’ve suggested a description of the will as three specific ‘gates’ that either allow or disallow the path of causal chains.
All you demonstrated here was that you regretted the decision you made to purchase the item (which was sufficient for the store manager’s purpose), not that your will was/was not free. You could have chosen to leave the store without a purchase, aware that there were other stores and other avenues to a more suitable bicycle computer, but for whatever reason you didn’t. Those reasons were not enforced on you, rather in my view they were a collaboration of connected awareness that effectively closed out any information you freely chose not to collaborate with, connect with or be aware of.
I guess one observation that’s fascinated me when discussions of free will and determinism arise is that there are those who look forward and see the myriad opportunities or choices available, and those who look back and see unbroken causal chains that preclude the possibility of choice. The way I see it, they’re both pointing to an element of truth. So I’ve been looking for a bridge theory in my own understanding of how differences in perspective come about: one that recognises BOTH the subjective experience of unbounded potentiality AND the actuality of seamless causal chains.
how convenient that must be. and that is what is known as garbage in and garbage out. I hereby define the greatest philosopher of all time as Arne and therefore Arne must be the greatest philosopher of all time, since I have already defined it.
1. we define free will as A;
2. we have A.
Therefore, we have free will.
And to think people spent the last 2000 years arguing over the issue.
How silly of them.
Yes, we were attending to definitions back there so we could know more about what the 'free' meant, and then attending to the compatibilists' non-coerced free will definition, which is a trivial one, although better than yours, because what seekers really want to know is if there can be an opposite of 'determined' other than 'not determined at all', and also not 'random' since that disrupts the will.
There are others in this discussion who seem to think that ‘free will’ must be defined as a concept, but I disagree with this, and regret not making this clearer at the outset. I think you need to define ‘will’ and ‘free’ separately first and foremost, and then discuss whether or not the will IS free.
To clarify:
Will: the basic faculty by which one decides and initiates action.
Free: unconstrained.
It is in interpreting the definition of ‘will’ that I think the real dispute lies.
Ha ha. I’m not sure, but I can speculate based on my understanding of what a bicycle is and what a computer is.
I'll have to take 'unconstrained' as indicating no coercion, since the will is constrained by its amount of information plus how good the information is.
A 'not determined will' would be a horror, and, indeed, it wouldn't be a will at all as we know it; so, now, its opposite, the 'determined will' doesn't seem so bad, and it even reflects who we have come to be.
The next worst, although it might be true, is a partially indeterminate, 'random' will having its anti-will say sometimes, even perhaps having someone jumping off of a bridge when they normally wouldn't do so. Variety? yes; helpful? no.
Quoting Possibility
How about a slight change?
Will: what decides and initiates action.
This is why I sought to look deeper into this idea of ‘will’ and get to the primary, initiating faculty behind all decisions and all acts - to see if there is an element that remains unconstrained by the amount or quality/accuracy of information.
Here’s what I found:
1. Regardless of what information you currently have or don’t have, your decision to simply be aware of presented information or not is fundamentally unconstrained. You can subconsciously suppress or even be coerced to disagree with the information or rationalise it away later based on your assessment of the information, but the fact that you CAN either accept or reject awareness in that initial moment, either by a direct conscious act or having previously surrendered that decision to subconscious processes, depends neither on the nature of the information, nor on any previous information you may or may not have. You can resume conscious control of that decision at any time, but once aware of information, you cannot then be unaware.
2. Once aware, your decision to connect with the information at any level is also made freely. This isn’t a question of how you connect with the information or for what purpose, but simply whether or not you connect with it at all. So, you could be aware of a noise, but choose not to connect this sound information received with any other information you may have that could tell you what it might be. You still don’t know what it is, so this decision is not constrained by or dependent on the amount or quality of the information.
3. If you had chosen to connect to the information, then you may determine that the noise wasn’t the cat but something/someone unexpected downstairs. You must then choose whether or not to collaborate with the information: to integrate it and enable it to determine your response, or dismiss it. Again, this yes/no choice is made freely, and exactly how you collaborate is irrelevant at this stage in the decision.
These three simple yes/no decisions constitute the ‘will’ - everything else depends on sensory data, time, memory, relevant information, values and belief systems, etc. Everything else to do with deciding and initiating action can be seen as determined by other factors.
If you describe the will as generally ‘what decides and initiates action’, then you risk equating it with thought, belief, logic, etc., which are all determined by circumstances. Looking back on your decisions you perceive the determining factors only, but not the gates that opened or closed to initiate these causal links and reject others.
I don’t know. My ability to decide to be aware of anything is extremely hampered a lot of the time. I think what I’m aware of at any given moment is due in large part to what is going on in my environment, my current emotional state (which doesn’t seem to me to be something I decide), and what I’m thinking about (which isn’t ALWAYS a choice and is usually due in large part to the current environment and current emotional state). Hence, I still think the will, which I think is the intention to decide or act, is only free when it is not coerced.
That gets into moral responsibility. Would a person who is not totally insane or otherwise hampered (and this can change in the course of a lifetime) intentionally kill in cold blood, for example? If they do, then they are morally responsible, and should be dealt with.
Besides intentional acts of violence, there are negligent and reckless acts to consider. Should people be expected to stop at red lights? Yes. If one is not paying attention, one may run a red light and strike and kill a pedestrian. Should they be culpable? The law says yes and not for an arbitrary reason. They have been negligent because it is expected of people who are not totally insane or otherwise impaired that they should pay attention while driving. Suppose one takes acid and does the same thing. Suppose this person was otherwise not mentally impaired before taking acid, but while under the influence one gets in a car, runs a red light, and kills a pedestrian all the time having an episode of induced insanity. They are guilty of reckless homicide. One should know not to take acid or should have taken steps in order to prevent access to driving (never mind the illicit fact of taking acid). They are culpable.
Now all of these acts could be fully determined by necessary and sufficient causes. So what? Should we let people who do these things off the hook (assuming we could prove determinism)? No. There are matters of deterrence and the safety of the community to consider.
I have to reveal something shocking: no decisions/choices are made in/by consciousness! It is too late in the brain process. What gets into consciousness are always the results/products of the neural processing that is already over and done with, at least for that instance, and that took time (300-500ms), plus there is also part of that time going into unifying the objects/qualia as well as stitching them to what was there previously (via short term memory) to achieve continuity. The objects in conscious are always a view of the past, and the brain is already on to building the next thought.
Other brain areas may then note the result and add information to better collapse the scenario of consequences into an improved result, etc., but then such as I said happens all over again; however, at no time does consciousness itself use any brain-independent machinery to decide things, for it doesn't have any. The brain/will ever is what thinks and outputs to itself, sometimes kind of like it is perceiving itself.
We, as the brain, aren't privy to the brain analysis that occurs subconsciously, so it might seem to us that all goes on rather instantly, had we not been informed by science.
In the courts, ‘coercion vs responsible’ is orthogonal to ‘determined vs undetermined’.
“The universe made me do it,” says the accused,
And the Judge replies, “Well, this does excuse,
But I still have to sentence you to the pen,
Until the universe can’t make you do it again.”
(to protect society)
Hampered - yes. Constrained - not unless you allow it to be. The thing about human awareness is that most of it operates at a subconscious level. We can drive a car while only occasionally paying conscious attention to most of our actions. We can eat a sandwich while totally absorbed in a TV show. We’ve consciously predetermined these actions based on past experience. When you first learned to drive a car, you had to be consciously aware of how far down you pressed the pedal each time. Now you determine that pressure automatically based on bodily awareness that doesn’t need to be consciously attended to. The same with learning how to eat.
But you choose to be aware of your current emotional state or not, for instance, and then you can choose to revoke its capacity to influence decision-making processes when it looks like it could be getting out of hand. Fear is one emotion that tends to shut down awareness, connection and collaboration - but the more you choose to become aware of where this fear comes from and at what point it shuts down useful interactions (and why), the more you are able to consciously revoke its capacity to do this, and choose a different strategy.
So your decision-making processes can be coerced in certain directions when you’re not paying attention, but you only have to pay attention and become more aware of your options to free it up again.
I suppose. That is helpful. I do become less aware not just from fear, though (fear is always lurking under the surface, I think). I obsess over things and perseverate a lot, too. These might be symptoms of fear, too, though. It’s something to consider!
Not so shocking - I’m aware of the research. It’s based on a decision to act in a predetermine way at a ‘chosen’ time. It makes sense that this type of decision doesn’t require conscious thought - what requires a conscious decision is to be aware of the details of the decision, which of course happens after the decision is made.
Objects in consciousness are pre-processed, yes. Once we recognise certain arrangements of sensory data, consciousness fills in the blanks from memory and moves on. If you’ve seen the visual sensory data images replicated, they look like fuzzy, non-descript shapes. New sensory information grabs our conscious attention as it makes its way through the three gates, and we have the capacity to consciously intervene (even with pre-processed information) to change whether or not we choose to be aware of, connect with and collaborate with that information.
Except that there can't be conscious decisions, for the decisions reflected in consciousness have already been made elsewhere. We can't get around this.
What you are talking about is more or less synonymous with "Background processing". John Searle has described how conscious awareness "rises to the level" of background processing. This is certainly true of "performance knowledge." A beginning skier focuses on "shifting weight to the inside leg" making each turn. An advanced skier focuses on "choosing a path down the hill." But the advanced skier does not cease to be conscious of what he or she was conscious while learning, it has simply been internalized.
So could it not make sense to say that the now-internalized mechanisms behind conscious-choice are what once was conscious, and in that sense, still are part of the framework of consciousness?
The choice is still already accomplished and so it precedes the awareness of it. Probably the brain/will process must fully attend to learning skiing by obtaining constant feedback, often to the near exclusion of all else, making for an intense focus.
Learning makes for a new and wider fixed will of the instant that hopefully achieves better choices. It's a good thing.
Right, but what I am saying is, based on the way learning evolves, that choice could still be construed as "conscious" in a more inclusive kind of consciousness. Even in our day to day reality it is clear that some people are "more conscious" of their choices than others.
Consciousness is always blind to the choices made by brain/will networks until they finish and surface, consciousness being as a tourist along for the ride of experience. Experience is still a great thing, a kind of benefit, if you will.
Good one. You are wise and adaptive. Some have better and more fortunate wills than others.
The will is ever toward what it wants. Lots of wills about, doing their thing. If only consciousness was a kind of mini first cause, free of the brain, goes the dream of complete freedom, but, then, what would it have to work with?
Some (wills) still crave the impossible conscious freedom that they might even claim an angelic vapor that drives a living being, provides character, and morality via consciousness alone on top of a burdensome, fragile, and evolutionarily expensive organ such as a brain never to be used.
Between mobility and consciousness there is an
obvious relationship. No doubt, the consciousness
of the higher organisms seems bound up with certain
cerebral arrangements. The more the nervous system
develops, the more numerous and more precise become
the movements among which it can choose ; the
clearer, also, is the consciousness that accompanies
them. But neither this mobility nor this choice nor
consequently this consciousness involves as a necessary
condition the presence of a nervous system ; the latter
has only canalized in definite directions, and brought
up to a higher degree of intensity, a rudimentary and
vague activity, diffused throughout the mass of the
organized substance. The lower we descend in the
animal series, the more the nervous centres are simpli-
fied, and the more, too, they separate from each other,
till finally the nervous elements disappear, merged in
the mass of a less differentiated organism. But it is
the same with all the other apparatus, with all the
other anatomical elements ; and it would be as absurd
to refuse consciousness to an animal because it has no
brain as to declare it incapable of nourishing itself be-
cause it has no stomach.
This seems to be true in cases of choices that involve small movements, but I don’t think it has been established through experiments that this is true in complex tasks such as holding a conversation or writing a paragraph. I could be wrong as I don’t read scientific journals.
My will has decided that it has to look into Henri Bergson due to his being a legend.
For now, we do have a good nervous system that is really a useful extension of the will/brain. For example, the brain can 'actionize' without having to commit to an action.
Subconscious trains of thought vie for attention,
Dueling choirs competing for first place
As actions in the will’s ’I’—to produce
Future, for this is the task of a thought.
The will/brain mediates thoughts versus outcomes,
And is distributed all over the body,
From the nerve spindles to the spine to the brain—
A way to actionize without moving.
As for a 'vital impulse' or a guidance principle, that could be so, and this idea is coming close to the meaning of a 'Poetic Universe'.
Our two brain hemispheres seem to reflect
The nature of the universe itself,
As the grouping order versus and with
The whole of the symmetry order.
(That is, a holistic, parallel view, as well as a detailed, sequential view.)
Note that the sun is not the same sun as it was a trillionth of a second ago, although to us a semblance of the ‘sun’ remains and the sun seems to be a continuous object. There are, strictly speaking, no objects that are identical with themselves over time, and so the temporal sequence probably remains open.
Nature is then no longer seen as clockwork, but only as a ‘possibility gestalt’, the whole world occurring anew each moment; however, the deeper reality from which the world arises, in each case, acts as a unity in the sense of an indivisible ‘potentiality’, which can perhaps realize itself in many possible ways, it not being a strict sum of the partial states.
It appears to us, though, that the world consists of parts that have continued on from “a moment ago”, and thus still retain their identity in time; yet, matter likely only appears secondarily as a congealed potentiality, a congealed gestalt, as it were.
So…
We are both essence and form, like poems versed,
Ever unveiling this life’s deeper thirsts,
As new riches, from strokes, letters, phonemes,
Words, phrases, and sentences—uni-versed!
There is rhythm, reason, rhyme, meter, sense,
Metric, melody, and beauty’s true pense,
Revealed through life’s participation,
From the latent whence into us hence.
Informationally derived meanings
Unify in non-reductive gleanings,
In a relational reality,
Through the semantical life happenings.
Syntactical information exchange,
Without breaking of the holistic range,
Reveals the epic whole of nature’s poetics,
Due to the requisite of ongoing change.
(no stillness, but ever a continuous transitioning,
with nothing particular ever lasting,
the same as we's expect from an eternal,
for as thus it has point for any design,
much less any specific one, leaving it to
have to be a kind of everything, either all at once,
in a superposition of eternalism,
or the little by little of presentism,
but never lasting as anything particular)
So there’s form before gloried substance,
Relationality before the chance
Of material impressions rising,
Traced in our world from the gestalt’s dance.
All lives in the multi–dimensional spaces
Of basic superpositional traces
Of Possibility, as like the whirl’s
Probable clouds of distributed paces.
(such as of an electron cloud)
What remains unchanged over time are All’s
Properties that find expression, as laws,
Of the conservation of energy,
Momentum, and electric charge—unpaused.
The weave of the discrete bits as strokes writes
The letters of the elemental bytes—
The alphabet of the standard model,
Forming the words as the atoms whose mights
Merge to form molecules, as phrases,
Onto proteins and cells, as sentences,
Up to paragraphs of organisms,
And unto the stories of the species.
Via this concordance of literature,
We’ve become Cosmos’ conscious adventure,
As a uni-verse of sentient poems,
Being both the contained and the container.
Our poem is both the thought and the presence,
An object born from the profoundest sense,
An image of diction, feeling, and rhythm;
We’re both the existence and the essence.
(A poem is a truth fleshed in living words,
Which by showing unapprehended proof
Lifts the veil to reveal hidden beauty:
It’s life’s image drawn in eternal truth.)
(Poems are renderings of the soul’s spirit,
The highest power of language and wit.
The reader then translates back to spirit;
If the soul responds, then a poem you’ve writ!)
Welcome to the Poetic Universe!
Oh, especially in speaking do we often not realize some of our insights until we hear ourselves speak them.
Yeah, that actually seems correct from my personal experience.
As far as I can tell, I can't make a decision not to be aware either. I can't just BECOME ROCK. I WILL continue to be aware against my wishes until I sleep. But also I don’t know if being aware is a “decision” either.
Quoting Possibility
Where did this “no decisions are irretrievable” come from. I can sometimes feel like i dont want to think about something right now then become aware of it later. What makes a rock not the same way?
Quoting Possibility
I actually like this model. But it would imply that some people are literally less human than others due to genetics. Also I’m still not convinced one can make the decision not to be aware of something, or to be aware of something for that matter. How does one decide to become aware of X? The decision itself requires him to be aware of X.
Quoting Possibility
Again, I don’t ever see a way to test this. Even if we confirm the existence of some force in the brain that can be controlled by human will how can this be confirmed exactly? If an experimenter tells me “collaborate more/less in relation to.......” how can he confirm that it wasn’t this prompt that made me do that rather than my “free will”. You can’t confirm after an unpredictable action has occurred whether or not it was the result of “free will”, determinism or chance. I just cannot think of a way to conceive of “decisions”. I feel like I’m making them all the time but I don’t know how they make sense. If we had a time machine and I went back in time 10 minutes would the same exact 10 minutes transpire? Or would there be a difference in which case what could have possibly caused that difference? What made me choose different this time? If nothing made me choose differently then what’s the difference between my choice and a random choice? Since I don’t even know myself WHY that idea that made me decide occurred to me then. But if I DO know then isn’t that just deterministic?
Quoting khaled
This is not against your wishes - it just seems that way. You are automatically aware of some information, but not others. The way I see it, you only need to become aware of how you subconsciously decide to be aware or not in order to change it if you wish. Take another look at the blindfold example I described in a previous post.
Thinking about something is not the same as being aware of it. That ‘something’ you don’t want to think about right now? You’ve likely already become aware of it (even if you’ve chosen not to be aware how the decision was made), but you’re choosing not to connect with that information at this point, for whatever reason. That doesn’t mean you can’t recognise (even subconsciously) that the raw information matters somehow, and later retrieve it from memory (or choose to be aware of the same information in a later experience) when it becomes more significant to connect and collaborate with the information.
I think what we call a rock, on the other hand, has a very limited connection between molecules, and these (both collectively and individually) have no memory as such, no sense of time. What a rock molecule ‘experiences’ is not in relation to time, but in relation only to the information in question. A molecule embodies the information it encounters, or it doesn’t. That’s it.
Not the way I see it. The human body is comprised of a complex system of systems: sensory, nervous, limbic, digestive, etc. Each of those systems is limited in awareness, and also comprised of collaborative components (blood vessels, blood cells, plasma, etc) that are themselves limited in awareness. So it’s more like people in general are literally less ‘human’ the deeper you go.
As for deciding to become aware of something: information is basically the answer to a question. You can have a question/entropy - a lack of information - and an idea of where or how to find the answer, but then choose not to pursue that answer. Like closing your eyes or covering your ears.
Hang on here Possibility, let me just understand exactly what you mean by the term "will". You had initially defined it as "the faculty by which a person decides on and initiates action." But in this subsequent post you added to that definition stating that "will, as I understand it, is an underlying faculty that is inherent in every element of matter". That amplifies the concept beyond your initial definition. Can you clarify that for me? Because depending on what you mean I may have a response. Thanks.
Oh, you noticed that? Yes, the original definition that refers to ‘a person’ is copied straight from the dictionary. I figured it was a good place to start. The amplified concept is ‘as I understand it’, which is my developing perspective, and is obviously open for debate.
I hope that helps.
This is a good post and I agree with you. though I am still skeptical that this is an issue amenable to philosophical resolution. Still, it does force partcicipants to "think" and that is always good. Keep the faith and keep up the good work.
Well, I think this topic needs to be addressed in a very differentiated way.
I am not saying that free will is an illusion, but I do believe that our will is not entirely free. The emphasis in this sentence should be on the word "entirely".
So what does "free" mean here? Free, to me, means free from any influence whatsoever except for one's own will. And what does "will" mean? To me, it is the conscious or unconscious resolution to think, do or achieve something that is based on the concerned person's inner self.
We are, in my view, not entirely free, because there is an environment to consider. The environment consists, to name a few examples, of social, economic and political, possibly also religious factors.
As do I. I don't think it is meaningful to speak in terms of absolutes, but many of those who deny the possibility of free will, seem to me to deny free will simply because it's not absolute. Sure, the will is not *absolutely* free, but the degree of freedom we have is still very meaningful.
Agreed.
Quoting Wayfarer
Okay, but I do believe that it is useful at times to recall in what ways we are not free, and don't have an entirely free will. It is, I am inclined to believe, similar to the question whether or not we are objective in our judgements.
It may, it seems to me, be a huge step towards more freedom, if we were conscious of all the restrictions of our free will, and it may be a step towards more objectivity, if we realize in what ways our thinking and believing is indeed subjective.
Quoting Wayfarer
I do agree here as well, at the end. Even if our free will has limits (and it has, as said before), then the whole concept of personality and humanity would seem meaningless, if we totally denied free will.
A simple example of free will is this discussion. People, including you and I, are free to contribute to this discussion or not to do so. The decision is entirely theirs.
Another simple example of free will is the question, whether I get myself some coffee or tea now. My free will may be reduced by the fact that I am thirsty now, and so I have no choice but to get something to drink. But I have a free choice as to what I will drink.
As discussed earlier in this thread, the question is not so much ‘What is the degree of freedom in free will?’ - it’s more along the lines of ‘what is the will, and how is it free?’ To say that ‘our will is not entirely free’ to me defeats the purpose of calling it ‘free will’. You might as well just call it ‘will’.
The way I see it, the problem lies with how we define ‘will’. Some people see the will as our general capacity for decision-making, or the whole notion of choice. Others define it as what we consciously want to do. Still others take ‘free will’ as an indivisible concept, and define it as a variable quantity or degree of freedom one has in choosing.
As far as I can see, we’ve gone round and round for centuries on a questionable understanding of exactly what the will is, that invariably leads to people talking past each other.
But regardless of how we currently define ‘will’, perhaps we can agree on a few statements before we continue (and please feel free to suggest edits here):
1. We are at least capable of CHOICE: an ACT of choosing a particular OPTION from a VARIETY or range.
2. Limitations and/or constraints on choice appear to occur at any or all of the above three points.
3. Some of these limitations/constraints on choice are considered to be SELF-IMPOSED at various levels of consciousness.
4. Other limitations/constraints are the result of EXTERNAL power, influence or control.
5. The current question of FREE WILL cannot be taken as an absolute yes or no, because of the four statements above.
But you do still have a choice to NOT get something to drink, even though you’re thirsty now. Your body may protest in a number of ways, and you may believe that it’s important to listen to your body - but you can still CHOOSE not to drink.
Nevertheless, I must point out that a reduced free will is not free. Also, ‘choice’ and ‘will’ are not interchangeable terms.
I’m not trying to be difficult here - we all seem to be roughly of the same opinion in relation to the existence of free will. But those denying the possibility of free will also have valid arguments that our current descriptions of ‘a will that is free’ fail to measure up against, to be honest.
At least at first sight I see nothing here to disagree with.
Another aspect, however, may be the fact that our free will is reduced by genetics.
I don't know, if that point has already been discussed in this thread, but I believe it to be of some importance.
We are born with a certain DNA, which also determines our character, and so we may think we act freely, while in fact we are determined by our genes.
Let it be granted that the will controls some feelings and is controlled by some feelings.
If the will exercises control, it is a legislative authority.
In such cases as the will exercises its authority, it is the causality for that which it authorizes.
If all causality is conditioned, and the will is an dedicated causality, it must itself be conditioned.
If the will is its own authority, it must be autonomous.
Autonomy is justified as the conditional for the will’s causality.
All conditionals adhere to the principle of cause and effect, but autonomy requires the unconditioned.
No natural unconditional is intelligible to a human, which makes explicit the unconditional for the justification of autonomy can only be thought.
To think “freedom” as the unconditional justification for autonomy, which then justifies the conditioned causality of the will, then the legislative authority of the will with respect to controlling some feelings, stands as justified without any intrinsic contradictions.
The will is an autonomous causality, which carries no implication whatsoever, that it is completely unencumbered, that is a “free will”. In fact, the will may even encumber itself, insofar as its authority controls some feelings by obligating itself to adhere to its legislations at the expense of its own interests, from which, of course, is derived our moral disposition. Feelings, not cognition, is in play here.
And to say free will is a valid conception in itself, disregards all the conditions which make the will a functional faculty whose job it is to legislate, which makes explicit the will absolutely must have the capacity to formulate laws. It isn’t free to make laws, it is required to make laws; it is free to chose which laws to make, but that is merely the fundamental aspect of willing.
Is the concept of freedom a valid justification? If one agrees in principle, sure. If he doesn’t, he must come up with something else, and justify that instead.
No, I think you are quite right here to point out that there is a difference.
To me, will also incorporates the unconscious element. Will is what is wanted or desired, even if it is not formulated in clear language.
A choice is always something that I consciously face or the deliberate act of choosing something.
And I may indeed choose something I don't really want.
For example, when I am in a restaurant, and hungry. So I know I want to eat, but there are no dishes available that I really like.
I may have a choice not to eat at all, but as I am hungry I may prefer having something that I don't really like, as that evil may be lesser than the evil of staying hungry.
Or, another example, I am tired, but have work to do. I may want to go to bed, but if I do so and not finish the work I have to do, I may face consequences that I don't want. So I stay up and do the work.
Ok. So if we go back to the definition of WILL (from earlier in this thread) - the faculty by which one decides on and initiates action - then it seems to me that deciding on and initiating an action is not the same as the act of choosing.
I’m getting the impression that it’s problematic to use the term ‘choice’ in a discussion about will. Because at the moment you choose, the act of choosing has already been decided on and initiated. Therefore the will must be an underlying faculty that initiates the act of choosing.
But then it seems we reach the dilemma of an ‘uncaused cause’. Something decides on and initiates an action in time from a position beyond time. In my view that’s not ‘God’ - it’s human consciousness. But as an evolving capacity, not as some special ‘gift’ that sets us apart.
If I go back to my original post, perhaps it should read:
I can initiate the awareness, connection and collaboration that decides on an action.
In my view, this is the WILL: before we choose, before we think, before we act, there is a point (outside time) at which the human mind is at least potentially capable of freely structuring (ie. initiating and deciding on) the causal conditions of any action.
Yes, it’s difficult to test this. Ideally I’d like to get to that point, but not at the expense of the theory itself. We’re delving into fifth dimension interactions here, so it can get confusing, and we can lose our grounding in physical reality at times. I find great value in continually relating the theory back to subjective experiences - both mine and others. Testing fifth dimension aspects of reality is like determining the position of a photon - all you have to work with is a complex formula of relations to 4D variables.
You may have also noticed by now that I keep re-wording this theory as I go. Many of the contributions here have been extremely helpful in helping me to articulate how it all already fits together in my mind.
Okay, this far I can go along with you. The will as the faculty that initiates the act of choosing. That is fine with me, although I see the difference more in the act of choosing versus expressing that choice, so when you express your choice, you have accomplished the act of choosing before. In my view, the act of choosing is accomplished at the time your consciousness realizes that you have chosen.
Now distinguishing between the act of initiating a choice, which would then be unconsciuous, and the conscious realization of the choice may perhaps by some people be seen as splitting hairs, but I can say, that I do find it useful, especially is the one, as I see it, is unconscious whereas the other is conscious.
Quoting Possibility
Here I find it problematic when you say that the action is initiated from a position beyond time. Why is this?
Quoting Possibility
At this moment, I am more inclined to believe that it is not outside time, but outside consciousness.
There may be more dimensions than the three spatial plus the temporal dimension (although I am not very acquainted with the theories here), but I do still think that whatever choice is initiated and finally made, that takes place in the human brain, and for this action of the brain, a fifth dimension does not seem to be needed.
Quoting Possibility
Yes, this is how philosophical enquiries go. Philosophy, to me as well, is not about knowing, but first about not knowing and wondering, and then later about gaining a better understanding. So I agree again here.
And yet research has been brought up here that points to this very distinction, so for many people it isn’t splitting hairs at all, but has some significance. My argument is that this being deemed ‘outside consciousness’ is a result of it being untraceable in the four dimensions we believe to constitute the limits of our consciousness. Yes, in many situations we are unaware of how this happens - but I believe that’s only because we fail to recognise our capacity to be aware of the fifth dimension and how it operates in the human brain. I’ll try to keep this as clear and brief as I can...
Let’s take a step backwards, first. In order to be aware of a fourth dimension (time), we need to first recognise that it relates to our universe. We need to recognise that the distinction between two elements of sensory data relate to something other than their relative positions in 3D space. We are aware that ‘something’ changes in our experience even when nothing appears to change. That something we have named ‘time’.
So to confirm and better understand the existence of time, we attempt to map it in relation to 3D space. And we realise that our ability to confirm and understand 3D space in the first place is because we have always been vaguely aware of and able to interact with four dimensions - we operate in time. We also begin to realise that everything in our world is better understood in relation to four dimensions: as events operating in time.
In mapping this 4D universe in the brain, we also realise two key things: that time exists well beyond our own 3D physical existence, and that we have a vague awareness of interaction with something not just beyond our physical existence, but also beyond time. It is this vague awareness that helps us to map the four dimensional universe - to conceive ancient history and possible futures, as well as the cosmos, the Big Bang, eternity, God, potential energy, etc. We attempt to give it substance within the four dimensional universe we are mapping, even as we are aware that it exists beyond. This is where most of us get stuck, because we’re looking for 4D empirical proof.
If the fourth dimension is a relation of time, then what is a fifth dimension a relation of? What are we aware of that distinguishes our relation to elements of the world regardless of time, shape, distance, etc? What is it that exists for us beyond time and space that helps us to map our relation to time and space? In my view, it’s value, significance: numbers, words, family, tribe, property, hierarchy, species, etc. None of these have substance except that they enable us to map our relation to the 4D world from a point beyond time and space. This is the fifth dimension.
Just like time, value is not something we’ve made up. We’ve always interacted with the world in relation to significance or value, and everything in our world is more completely understood as experiences of significance rather than simply events in time. We just haven’t yet learned how we interact with the significance of an experience beyond time to effect change in the world - even though we do it all the time, mostly unconsciously. Just as all animals unconsciously interact with time to recognise 3D objects from visual cues.
In short, here are all the projected dimensions:
What’s Everything, detailed? Length, width, depth, 4D—
Your world-line; 5th, all your probable futures;
6th, jump to any; 7th, all Big Bang starts to ends;
8th, all universes’ lines; 9th, jump to any;
10th, the ‘IS’ of all possible realities.
So, we see that the 5th dimension is all of your possible futures—in a kind of a superposition, I suppose.
Not just all possible futures, but yes - I believe it is a kind of superposition. More like all possible events across time: past, present and future understood as a ‘block universe’, arranged in relation to significance rather than time.
1D: length only, awareness of more; a relation drawn between two points.
2D: lines; two points in relation to a third.
3D: space, triangulation; shapes across all distance.
4D: time; 3D objects across space.
5D: value, significance; events across time.
6D: meaning, matter; experiences of significance.
It's more like across all one's life alternatives, as across all one's possible world-lines, which are a heck of a lot if they diverge at every decision point. In some, you live longer; in others you are happier, etc. If this information were available, I don't know what kind of desired paths would go toward making not only better decisions but somehow 'free' decisions.
I think that just about any narrative will do in life, but in the 6th dimension one could try them all in turn.
Does this mean you have 'free will' or just 'will'?
Quoting god must be atheist
That is one way of looking at it. But why couldn't the universe just have infinite possibilities in any given moment, but only some actually occur?
I would point out, I am against the idea of free will. But I don't view the fact that we only know of one reality, as a reason to eliminate choice as a possibility. We can't know for sure this was the only possible reality (in fact believers in free will would automatically assume today would be different if people made different choices).
For me the only problem with 'free will' is the 'free' part. I don't spend much time questioning the existence of will (what purpose would it serve?)
I think the reason it is important to question 'free will' is the elimination of retributive justice. Proponents of 'free will' are more likely to see purpose in punishment for the sake of punishment, whereas others find that logic ridiculous.
I would like to point out that there are also arguments against purely rehabilitative justice, both theoretical, drawing a parallel between rehabilitation and re-education, and practical, pointing out that rehabilitative justice lacks the limiting factor of personal guilt.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
How could an unfree will even exist? That notion seems contradictory to me. Perhaps @Possibility might could also share some thoughts about how it would make sense to call something that's merely part of a causal chain a "will".
To do that, I need to go back to the definition of ‘will’: the faculty by which one decides on and initiates action - which precedes the act of choosing. Anytime the action in question is decided on (determined) and initiated without bringing awareness, connection and collaboration into a conscious act of choosing, then the will (the faculty by which this action is decided on and initiated) still operates as such, but does NOT do so freely.
In my view, the will - the faculty by which action is determined and initiated - operates at a fundamental level in all interactions of the universe, but operates FREELY only in a self-conscious and creative human mind. One that can interact on a fifth dimensional level.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
The ‘infinite possibilities in any given moment’, for me refers to the fifth dimension. We can only verify the existence of one ‘actual’ moment because to do so it must be measured/observed in relation to the rest of the 4D structure of our experience. The photon, for example, is an event whose structure is ‘fuzzy’ until it’s observed, and its wave function collapses to a particle moving through spacetime.
For most of the universe, the infinite possibilities in each moment are not only beyond awareness, but they’re also beyond any deliberate interaction. And yet they exist, otherwise you wouldn’t be asking the question, would you? How are you vaguely aware of them? Mathematically? Emotionally? Was there a possible moment that you would have preferred to have occurred, instead of what actually occurred? Can you experience this preferred moment occurring in your mind? Does that impact on physical events in your bodily systems, even though it didn’t actually happen in time and space? Perhaps the un-actual moment wasn’t so much ‘preferred’ or more valued as calculated to be more probable. Different value/significance system, same dimensional relation - interacting ‘outside’ spacetime, in the fifth dimension.
How does this relate to free will?
Well, what if instead of the regret of experiencing a preferred unactual moment, you had been aware of and been capable of interacting with what you could do differently prior to the moment you did it? It sounds like a big IF, but the fact that we can experience these preferred unactual moments outside of the time they could have occurred at all demonstrates our capacity to experience and interact with any unactual moments outside of time. Even ‘prior’ to the act of choosing, at the point that the faculty of ‘will’ operates.
The thing is, we do this anyway - we just don’t realise how. We give this capacity over to our emotions, to logic and reason, to the various value systems we use to structure our 5D universe of subjective experience. It is the way we structure our world according to hierarchies of value/significance that tend to determine what information, events, people and objects we’re aware of, connecting and collaborating with at the moment that our will determines and initiates action.
If we can learn to be more aware of how and why certain actions are initiated, and more aware not only of the infinite possibilities in each moment at this point, but our capacity to interact there, then we can bring awareness, connection and collaboration that appear to be ‘gates’ of the will (discussed earlier in this thread) more to our conscious attention and into an act of choosing. Then we can develop the capacity to facilitate more freedom in the will and structure the causal conditions of an action ‘prior’ to the moment it occurs. Because the more we are aware, connected and collaborating, the more choices (acts of choosing, options to choose and range to choose from) we appear to have.
If the will operates in all interactions of the universe, how does it differ from causality? You say that the will "decides", but deciding is a conscious action that actors make. In what sense, then, can that will be said to decide?
Free will. Because of the choice part.
It doesn’t, not really. As causality, we’re blind to our capacity to choose different actions when we look back on unbroken causal chains. As ‘free will’, we tend to be blind to how past experiences affect our actions looking forward. The way I see it, it’s only when we look at both concepts together as ‘the will’ that we get a clearer picture in either direction.
Quoting Echarmion
Your’re right, the language isn’t helpful. I should explain again that the original wording has come from a dictionary definition of ‘will’ that was close to where I thought we should start from in developing a more accurate understanding of this will, and of ‘free will’ as a concept.
I agree that to decide implies a conscious, subjective choice - more related to ‘free will’ than to causality. Determine might be a more appropriate term, only because it doesn’t discount either.
So let’s say that the WILL is the faculty by which one determines and initiates an action by structuring the causal conditions that bring it about. This occurs through the awareness, connection and collaboration of all elements involved - in a fifth dimensional relation of experiences hierarchically structured beyond time. Most elements contribute predetermined causal conditions: their past interactions have already determined whether or not they initiate or reject the awareness, connection or collaboration which determines the part they play in an event before any action takes place. A self-conscious and creative human mind, however, can (with conscious attention) develop the capacity to not only become aware of their own awareness, but also to freely initiate OR reject any awareness, connection or collaboration that determines the part they play before any action takes place.
In that case, it seems to me unnecessarily confusing to use two different terms with very different connotations for the same thing.
Quoting Possibility
This sounds a lot like how Kant approaches the antinomy of causality and freedom. But Kants conclusion is that free will and causalty are different sides of the same coin, and equally valid.
Quoting Possibility
This seems like a better formulation. The problem I have with this approach is that it leaves the "developing" part kinda up in the air. I am a compatibilist, so it seems odd to me to juxtapose pre-determined elements with a non-predetermined ability to develop. Because if it's not pre-determined, then what is it? In other word, what determines how the un-determined develops?
Undetermined will wouldn't work. It's bad enough that some 'randomness' might creep in to harm the will. Tapping in to all future consequences in a block universe to find the best decision would obviate the will's analysis, so, the will actually wills, based on what it has become up to then, the dynamic fixed will ever widening its range of choices via learning and experience.
The whole block universe idea, although sensible from GR, has pre-determined events being traversed, this seeming to make the brain's analysis redundant.
As for references to conscious decisions by @Possibility and other herein, what appears to be a decision made in/by consciousness has already been done, the brain analysis having about 300-500 milliseconds ago. We don't see those brain gears churning and turning, and perhaps neither does the brain, it thus having to produce a result in the qualia language that the brain can perceive in total and globally, with other brain areas then able to operate further upon the product.
Personally I identify with the body. That’s why I believe every action I commit, whether it is sitting down, breathing, even every single heart beat, is self-caused because it is performed by me and only me, and therefor not determined by anything else.
Yes, but were we ever responsible for what our wills came to be? Or were our wills shaped by our genetics, environment, and experiences?
But your 'choice' is severely limited, right? "Free" means unrestrained.
"Free" in this case means "not causally determined." If you can choose between two options you have a free--that is, not a causally determined--choice.
I know this is a common one but: Does a robot that determines what it will do based on random nuclear decay have free will? (Nuclear decay doesn’t seem to be causally determined but purely random as far as we know)
For this to make sense perhaps requires a long-winded explanation that has to do with an evolution of consciousness from initial awareness, connection and collaboration. I will say that I think pre-determined elements are not so much juxtaposed as the basis upon which this capacity to structure causal conditions can be developed.
As I mentioned earlier in this thread, I think humans are simply the organism that statistically said ‘yes’ more often to awareness, connection and collaboration throughout evolution. We have not evolved to maximise survival, but to maximise the capacity to be aware, to connect and collaborate with the more pre-determined elements of the universe that have long since closed off this capacity (by saying ‘no’ to further awareness, connection and collaboration). We’re not better in this regard - it’s just that statistically a small proportion of the universe was always going to retain this capacity on a broad scale. When you think about it, it’s actually an enormous responsibility: we possess apparently what remains of the creative capacity in the universe.
So I don’t think it’s a non-predetermined ability to develop. It’s still predetermined as an ability to interact with the undetermined. It is whether or not we initiate awareness, connection and collaboration with the infinite possibilities from the interaction of undetermined and predetermined events that can determine the causal conditions of a not-yet-determined event. Does that make sense? As humans we are potentially undetermined events - we can continue along predetermined trajectories, but we also retain the capacity to initiate awareness, connection and collaboration with other undetermined events (5D experiences beyond time) including ourselves, that enable us to design structures of causal conditions to bring about our preferred possibility as an actual 4D event. We can predict possibilities and then manipulate the environment in such a way as to be confident that the action we prefer WILL happen, even while it is still technically undetermined, uninitiated.
The action is free, but it wouldn't have anything to do with will unless we have some reason to believe that the robot is conscious and has the mental phenomenon of a will.
because probabilities is a human-only oriented knowledge prediction. A mind could potentially foreknow or precognize all events in the future, but a human mind can't as its lack of ability to encompass all that is to know to know the future manifests in less and less accurate predictions with each iteration of the causation process; the further into the future, the less accurate the prediction, the less probable that a foretelling is precise. But it is only from the point of view or from the limited capacity of the human mind. In effect, the future is knowable, and precisely knowable, since there is no cause without an effect, and no effect without a cause.
Your opinion extrapolates from what is knowable by humans, to what is theoretically knowable. That is a mistake.
The fifth dimension? Wouldn't we just call it abstract thought?
Quoting Possibility
Isn't science a LONG way from being able to explain everything about "the existence of one 'actual' moment"?
Once science has completed the chain of determinism then I will be able to get behind these sorts of ideas. Until then I will struggle to accept 'proof' of an absence of choice.
Quoting Possibility
Aren't imagination and abstract thinking a method of deliberately interacting with possibilities?
Quoting Possibility
Well the possibilities certainly exist in the abstract. I can admit that we can not know (yet?) whether they could have existed tangibly.
Quoting Possibility
I am acutely aware of the possibilities that "I" can imagine. I am vaguely aware that there may be infinite possibilities that I have never imagined.
Quoting Possibility
This to me this portion has gone beyond knowing if there are possibilities. You seem to be suggesting that for me to "know" possibilities exist that I would have to "know" the exact outcome of every possible possibility. That is omniscience. Seems different.
Quoting Possibility
Isn't this why we read/watch fiction? It allows us to experience emotions and events we typically never experience. We can then imagine the decisions we would make in those scenarios. Discussing philosophy also brings up many hypothetical situations where we can prepare our wills.
What reason do you have to believe anyone other than you is conscious
Also, defining will as a mental phenomena seems weird to me. Because it is not clear then how it relates to the physical phenomena resulting(?) from it. Do you mean to say that the “will” somehow results in a different physical causal chain or that the feeling/mental phenomena of will results from a physical causal chain?
So because I can't know all the possibilities, they can't exist? I don't get it.
Quoting god must be atheist
I think it mostly extrapolates from an understanding of the common usage of infinite (which is certainly not exactly right...but I am still Ok with it). If a centimeter can be infinitely divided (in the abstract) then so can possibilities. Wouldn't any single 'possibility' have infinite variability (one atom out of position, etc)?
To me, this whole discussion feels like philosophy has delved far further into words like 'possibility' and 'choice' than their definitions can possibly encompass. It is not wrong, but it begins to lose meaning ("there are no possibilities because there is only one reality" suggests that the words possibility and choice should not exist - if I say pick a number between 1 and 10...you are making a 'choice' by defintion...even if determinism suggests there is only one possible answer you could give).
I guess I am saying that science and philosophy need to be far more careful with their words if they expect a significant percent of the population to understand them. Heck I just learned from @Terrapin Stationthat in this discussion "free" means 'not causally determined' but I doubt I could find a dictionary that includes that meaning (the plato.stanford philosophy site suggests Terrapin is right, but they keep it vague and refuse to even say anything as clear as "not causally determined").
I guess I should learn a lesson from some of my other discussions to accept "better than the alternative." I vastly prefer that people believe there is no free will, than believing there is. So even if I think you are too absolute, I should just be happy you are not absolute in the opposite direction :smile:
I still doubt whether that makes will free, but I am happy to be given a definition - so I won't bug you along those lines again.
That is certainly the struggle I am having. I find myself agreeing quite often (with both sides), but still being thoroughly unconvinced.
Years ago I read someone on another site who said something along the lines of, "it seems likely there is no free will, but life operates better if we act as if there is" - they were more eloquent but you get the idea. I am still basically stuck in that view.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
Sure, but does that help us to understand how it happens and how it interacts with everything else? I’m using ‘fifth dimension’ because it relates to other discussions and other areas of philosophy, where ‘abstract thought’ is too vague a concept. For instance, I’m of the belief that a sixth dimension (also involving abstract thought) structures our interactions, too - but that’s off topic here.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
I’m not arguing for absence of choice, and I certainly don’t believe there is any proof. All I have are my subjective experiences in relation to those of others.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
That they exist ‘in the abstract’ is enough. Whether they could/would/should have existed tangibly is something we think/believe subjectively based on value/significance/logic/moral structures, and we internally interact with these abstract possibilities and integrate related information accordingly - even though they may have never had a tangible existence.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
Exactly.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
I’m not talking about ‘knowing’, though - I’m talking about subjective experience: awareness, connection and collaboration. Recognising that there are always infinite possibilities that we may never have imagined precludes any claim to ‘knowledge’. As Rovelli says in relation to QM and Information Theory: ‘There is always more information to be obtained about a system’. So i’m not suggesting that we have to know the exact outcome of every possible possibility - only that it’s out there as information to be sought.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
This is part of the reason for this discussion. The dictionary definition of WILL says: ‘the faculty by which a person decides on and initiates action’, with these obvious assumptions built in that I’ve been trying to eliminate. The dictionary definition of FREE is ‘unconstrained’, and this is the one I have been working with throughout this discussion, despite the tendency for contributors to bring their own meanings with them - include conceptual definitions of ‘free will’ that allow them to delve into apologist style arguments to support its apparent existence.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
I can relate to this, too. My aim here is not to argue one way or the other, but to tease out Hegel’s idea of dialectic process and reach some level of synthesis that is more convincing than compatibilism. I’ve found there are may people who’ve reached an externally manageable/arguable viewpoint that is nevertheless internally unconvincing.
Similarity of structure and behavior. Your antinatalism sure wouldn't make sense if you don't believe that others are conscious, by the way.
Quoting khaled
It seems weird to me that that would seem weird to you. If you don't consider will a mental phenomenon, what the heck would you think it is?
Quoting khaled
I'm not sure what you're asking here. If you're suggesting (strong) determinism, I don't buy that idea in general.
I never said I don’t believe others are conscious I said you can’t know they are. In which case it still makes sense. Though I agree antinatalism wouldn’t make sense if I was the only conscious person but neither would any ethics
Quoting Terrapin Station
I meant weird as in it could be said by a hairline determinist or someone who believes in free will. Ambiguous would have been a better word
Quoting Terrapin Station
Yes that is what I’m suggesting. I’m asking whether the mental phenomena “will” is the cause or result of physical phenomena in your view and in either case how. How does your “will” physically move your arm. Or if you’re a determinist how (which I know you’re not) how would physically moving your arm cause the subjective experience of “will”.
Quoting Terrapin Station
That’s awfully vague. What if said robot I was talking about looked human and acted like a human but essentially just had silicon replace carbon. Let’s say it was so good at acting and looking like a human you couldn’t tell it apart from one just by interacting with it. In that case is it conscious? (Which would also mean it has free will)
I think it's more like: only one possibility exists, but you don't know what it is, therefore you imagine all kinds of different possibilities exist. (You meaning the general you; human.)
Kind of like picking out which porn video to watch. There seems like endless variety and options, but for some reason it was determined at the Big Bang that I would pick the redhead today. :grin:
I'm a physicalist. In my view, mental phenomena are not caused by or the result of physical phenomena. They're rather identical to mental phenomena. Will is a subset of brain states. It's the properties of the brain states in question from the reference frame of being the brain in question.
Quoting khaled
Knowing they are is just a belief that they are where (a) you feel you have a justification for the belief, and (b) you assign "true" to the proposition "Other people are conscious."
Quoting khaled
Sure. Will would still be a phenomenon that occurs even if strong determinism were true. Hence the need for the "free" adjective.
Quoting khaled
Then it's not very similar structurally. It doesn't have a brain made out of the same materials that human brains are made out of. (And contingently, we haven't made things that are structurally and functionally similar to brains, just out of other materials, either.)
Would there be any way to prove or test this idea? (saying "there is only one reality" is a type of reasoning but a long way from actual evidence) Is it any different in actual practice from "there are many possibilities but only one is actualized"? I mean, wouldn't I act the same either way?
This all just feels like a debate about what exactly we all mean when we say 'choice' or 'possibility'. If I eliminate those words and put in 'decision making process', are we good to go? Can we admit that whether or not there are actual possibilities and therefor an actual choice would be made, our minds go through a decision making process? Wouldn't hard determinism include that decision making process?
That there is only one reality is not a reasoning, but an observation. It can only be false if you can show me that there is more than one reality.
Please show me more than 1 reality. Please show me that reality is a multiplicity by and in itself. Evidence suggests there is only one reality.
You almost got it; the sad truth is that it had been predicated by events from prior to the Big Bang. In fact, if time and existence of matter in time is infinitely old, then the history of events by causation has never had a "beginning" point of determinant quality; it has been going on from the infinite past.
It's tough. We can't run the universe again to see it anything different happened, and even if we could, the difference might have mostly been at the beginning where some 'random' happening might have gone a long way, or way later on, some unwashed out 'random' held some big sway, but randomness hurts the will and so we don't care much about that something could be different via randomness in the re-run.
We can, though, say that what did happen, non randomly, trumps as actuality the claims such as "should have", making those to be of a fantasy world stance.
Yes.
That seems possible. It likely stems from some misunderstanding on my part. When I am confused, I argue until the point is clarified :grimace:
Quoting Possibility
Prime example. But I will do a bunch of reading on this topic before I continue to bug you, haha.
Quoting Possibility
Now this I can get. Sounds good.
Quoting Possibility
I may have some minor quibbles/clarification with this portion, but I think you are right that I mostly agree with your overall position (I think if I argued my quibbles we would see that again it was just a minor misunderstanding on my part).
Quoting Possibility
hahahahah. And here I am trying to ensure everything matches definitions perfectly. "So there's your problem!"...thank you for clarifying.
Quoting Possibility
Yep, your position definitely seems close enough to my own that I should not be arguing.
Quoting Possibility
Sounds great (and a rather interesting approach). If I have time, I may even do some extra reading so I can actually add something of value to the discussion.
Have you 'observed' everything? "There is only one reality" is not an observation the same way "the sun will rise in the east" is an observation. Is 'reality' a thing? or a concept?
Quoting god must be atheist
Well grammatically that seems easy. If yesterday's reality was different from today's, haven't we described multiple realities? Is "my" reality the same one as "yours"? What EXACTLY do we mean by "reality"? Can we describe reality IN ANY WAY outside our subjective experience of that reality?
Quoting god must be atheist
Sober, reasonable thinking...in Philosophy? Aren't most of the topics being discussed considered nonsense to 90%+ of humans?
This seems about as sober and reasonable as one could get:
Quoting Terrapin Station
And yet we both disagree with it to some extent.
That seems fine to me. But I would struggle to add: "so there is no choice/decision/other possibility". I think I am viewing these things as existing in reality the same way I view all thoughts as existing in reality. The thoughts are unquestionably part of "reality", even if what is being imagined is not.
:up:
Thanks for helping me think this through. Thanks to @god must be atheist, @PoeticUniverse, and @Terrapin Station as well (although I think Terrapin has solidified his stance on this issue enough that he could have the discussion in his sleep, he still makes a great foil)
But you haven’t answered whether or not they CAUSE physical phenomena. Looking at your answer it seems the answer is “no”, but then it becomes pretty weird to have a definition of “will” that doesn’t include “causes physical changes”. Because a “will” that can’t actually DO anything wouldn’t be called “will” by most. Most people I’ve talked to define will as a CAPACITY to enact physical changes (somehow) based on mental phenomena. It seems your definition of will is that it’s no different from an emotion or a mental phenomena such as hunger or exhaustion. It seems that having your definition of “will” doesn’t grant the subjective entity that has it any agency.
So in my reading your definition of free will would be something like “the emotion resulting from feeling like one has made a decision among many decisions” which says nothing about whether or not people have a CAPACITY to choose based on their mental phenomena (what most would call free will)
Quoting Terrapin Station
K. I was thinking knowing as in “absolutely” knowing, with no room for error (which I think is impossible)
Quoting Terrapin Station
So ONLY humans can be conscious? What about other animals? Going from “I am conscious and these people are similar to me so they are probably conscious” to “only people similar to me are conscious” seems like a big leap to me.
No, sir, yesterday's reality being different from today's reality is still just one reality. If you need to work this out, I may not want to help you. If you can't see that reality is a continuum on a time scale, which is the fourth dimension of spacial reality, then I am sorry, I believe your ability to access the concept of reality is not complete.
This is not something I wish to argue for. If someone does not see this, then I consider that person lost to the world of sufficient insight which mutually comprises itself with philosophy.
No discrimination or exclusivity here; It is the farthest from my intentions to want to label you, @ZhouBoTong, or ostricise you, but with all due respect, I am also unwilling to teach you insight on such basic level.
Sure, will causes physical phenomena. All physical phenomena cause other physical phenomena, unless they occur in a vacuum, but your brain isn't in a vacuum.
Quoting khaled
Other animals have brains that are very similar to our own.
Haha--that's the case for a lot of this stuff. I've had more or less the same views about a lot of philosophical issues for 30 to 40 years, and even longer for a few things. And I've been talking about that stuff with others in the manner that we do here for just about that long, including remotely via computer, starting almost 40 years ago via BBSs, and then for the past 25+ years on the Internet.
So will causes physical phenomena but is not caused by it? You seem to be describing something akin to magic here. Is not caused or explained by the laws of physics yet can directly apply a force here or there. What exactly do you think gives us humans this magical power? Not trying to be a prick but I don’t find this “one way street” causality convincing.
So:
(1) I'm not a realist on physical laws,
and
(2) I'm not a strong determinist in general, in other words, not just when we're talking about free will, but when we're talking about physical phenomena in general.
I think it's possible for there to be ontological free--or random/stochastic--phenomena in general. That's not a rejection of causality in the determinist sense, it's just not a thoroughgoing, "strong," universal acceptance of it. Some phenomena involve freedom/randomness, which is sometimes biased so that it's not just a .50-.50 or .33-.33.-.33 etc. equal chance of all possibilities.
So will would be an example of a phenomenon that's not strongly deterministic. But phenomena that are not strongly deterministic can cause other phenomena without freedom/randomness being a factor.
Me neither. But I have a bad habit of saying “determinism” in place of “no free will”
Quoting Terrapin Station
I think there was a huge amount of handwaving in the dash in freedom/randomness. What you’ve said so far is that you believe that there are random and determined events. But we can both agree that a random event doesn’t amount to a choice right? So now are you saying causality is a mix of random, deterministic AND “free” decisions whatever the latter means. Please tell me what the difference between a “free” and a random event is.
Reading about quantum mechanics, the idea of truly random events is no surprise to me, but randomness =\= free will. Me rolling a die that determines what you will do next hardly amounts to a “choice” by you does it. But you suddenly introduce “freedom” to the mix with a single dash so now there are 3 types of links between one physical phenomena and the next? Or are you saying that freedom somehow arises from a mix of random and deterministic occurrences?
Again, "some phenomena involve freedom/randomness, which is sometimes biased so that it's not just a .50-.50 or .33-.33.-.33 etc. equal chance of all possibilities."
That's not at all controversial scientifically, by the way. For one, it's standard in quantum mechanics.
Just to clarify, I use "free will" so that it's referring to will phenomena, where ontological freedom obtains (ontological freedom involves randomness, but not necessarily equiprobable-among-possibilities randomness). And free will seems to involve non-equal biasing of the possibilities.
This is the thing about ‘reality’. Actuality (the ‘reality’ to which @gods must be atheist seems to refer) includes observable/measurable 4D events, whereas the ‘reality’ I think you refer to also includes internal 4D events such as thoughts, emotions and memories. I think this is a common difference in perspective. Self reflection (internal experience) assures me that my thoughts are unquestionably part of reality - although I cannot produce for you any ‘proof’ that they occur except perhaps to tell you that they do. Or perhaps to show you in my ‘being’.
But how are we so sure these internal 4D events exist? Perhaps it’s because internal experience shows us how they interact with observable/measurable (actual) internal 4D events, such as heart rate.
I don’t know why you’re repeating everything you said about some phenomena involving true randomness. I even mentioned quantum mechanics in my reply. I’m familiar with the idea, I just don’t understand how it can amount to free will to you. So far you’ve said nothing that indicates to me that this “will” thing is different from a naturally decaying atom that just does things based on pure chance. There doesn’t seem to be much CHOICE involved in your “free will”, you’re making it sound no different from any quantum interaction that doesn’t have equal distribution of probability between outcomes.
Your “free will” seems closer to “random will” which I wouldn’t say is very free
I think Terrapin is saying:
1. the will is determined or the will is free (premise)
2. the will is not determined (because of QM?)
3. Therefore the will is free
I agree that the conclusion follows from the premises, but it is not what is meant by the term "free will." If Shroedinger's cat survives the box, it's not because of free will. What I think is overlooked is the meaning of "the will" - which is that functional component of the mind that makes decisions..
Thankfully,
whereas a single particle exhibits a degree of randomness, in systems incorporating millions of particles averaging takes over and, at the high energy limit, the statistical probability of random behaviour approaches zero. In other words, classical mechanics is simply a quantum mechanics of large systems. — Wiki
Quoting PoeticUniverse
I know this. But classical mechanics is completely deterministic. So your will is either completely deterministic or completely random. I don’t think that leaves any room for “free”. I would also challenge someone to define what “free will” is in a way that doesn’t just boil down to “random will”
Didn't you choose to write those particular words? Were you not free to write something different?
I certainly chose to respond in the way I did. In my estimation, that makes it a freely willed decision. What makes it a freely willed decision is that I made it; I wrote what I wanted to write.
Yes. In the sense that there were other options
Quoting Relativist
Depends on what you mean by choice. If you just mean “did you pick this option” then obviously yes. But if you mean “did you pick this option because of some capacity you have that doesn’t have the properties of either random or deterministic choice” then No. It wasn’t a choice, it was a random quantum interaction somewhere in my brain that picked this option among many. At least from what we’ve discussed so far, the world is split into random and deterministic interactions. I don’t see room for “free” interactions.
Let’s try an experiment. Think of a city. Now try answering these questions:
Could you have thought of a city you didn’t know?
Could you have thought of a city you knew but didn’t occur to you?
What, in the end, influenced your decision to pick this city among the cities that occurred to you? And if you know, could you have controlled that influence?
Now say we had a truly random city generator generate the name of a city. What do you think the answers to these questions would be for it?
For me the answers are no, no, I don’t know and for the random city generator it would be no, no, I don’t know
I do know some seemingly random air-heads, but that is just a joke here, but the pearl of the joke is that 'completely random' would be a total disaster, yet, that's what the opposite of 'determined' would be, as 'not determined'.
Now that the other shoe drops, as 'random', and to boot, even harms the will, its saving grace drains away, and the foot now stinks, and thus one rushes to embrace the first shoe kicked away, that of 'determinism', for probably no better reason than 'free will' sounds like a good thing to have to not be a robot, because then one celebrates that a fixed will grants consistency and order, over disorder.
Quoting khaled
The greatest minds have tried.
Quoting Relativist
'Freely willed' is the base definition of 'free will' being that the fixed will able to operate and do its willing true to itself when not coerced otherwise; however, 'fixed will' is dynamic in that it can change to a new and better (or worse, if criminal) fixed will via learning and experience.
But I still think this definition is lacking in the detail it requires to answer the question of whether or not it can be ‘free’. If the will is whatever it is in our mind that makes decisions, then it could very well include the entire mind. After all, what component of the mind is NOT involved in making decisions?
The same when we talk about the will as ‘choice’. As I described earlier in the thread, ‘choice’ refers to several components: the act of choosing, the option chosen or the range/variety to choose from. Which of these is ‘free’? That depends on the decision to be made. In what decisions can all three of these remain wholly unconstrained?
It is at this point we should recognise that our freedom to choose or choose from is determined initially by our awareness of information.
Quoting khaled
These types of experiments are interesting to me, because my own internal experience appears to be different to what you’d expect, and I’m not sure if others have a similar experience.
When you say ‘think of a city’ my mind is filled with a broad range of thoughts: including images, names and rich memories. Even if I force myself to pick one, these other options don’t suddenly disappear. So when you ask your first question, I can think of a number of images of cities that I can’t remember the names of, as well as names of cities I know nothing about. At your second question, I can think of a number of cities that didn’t occur to me at the time I had chosen. The third question I can certainly come up with a credible answer (I chose London because I was remembering my trip there, as well as a movie I watched last night that happened to be set there - there were more thoughts in my mind of that city at the time I chose than any others). And to your fourth question, yes - I believe I could have controlled that influence and chosen a different city.
So I wonder: is this just me, or do others have a similar experience? I have noticed that my son and daughter have two very different ways of looking at the world, that I tend to refer to as the particle and the wave. My son would answer your questions above in the way you’d expect, whereas my daughter, much like me, would be reluctant to commit to one city in her mind, and would ‘collapse the potentiality wave’ only if and when it was necessary to actualise a choice (and even then would wish to reserve the right to change her decision, if she felt a different city would better suit the requirements). To a lot of you, this probably seems like a strange way to interact with the world. It wasn’t until I learned about QM that I realise just how their experiences differed from each other.
Set aside the issue of whether or not the world is deterministic, and think introspectively about choices you have made. Don't you sometimes ponder and weigh your options, consider the consequences and risks, and ultimately choose what you consider the best, or most desirable, option? I'm arguing that this is what makes it your choice: every factor that led to the decision was within you, part of you. It was driven by your beliefs, your background knowledge, your desires, your idiosyncracies. These are part of what makes you YOU. Determinism doesn't remove YOU from the causal chain.
If you have a child that misbehaves, will you refrain from disciplining the child because you know he didn't really have a choice? I'm just asking everyone to get real. When philosophizing leads you to conclusions that are contrary to common sense, it means you need to rethink your philosophizing - because maybe you're overlooking something. I think I've shown what that is.
See my above reply to khaled.
Quoting Possibility
Of course you could, had it occurred to you to take more time or to use Google. But it hadn't occurred to you. Given exactly the same sequence of thoughts (and identical backgound knowledge, desires, etc), you would have had exactly the same answer. This is true even if Libertarian Free Will were true. If there's a reason for a choice, then that choice is determined. If the choice was made for no reason - that is not an act of will
Yes but this doesn't amount to free will. Because I don’t know the WAY in which that choice took place. Do the little thought experiment I said in my last post. You’ll find that your answers to the questions are the same when it comes to your “free will” or the “random will” or a random city generator.
Let’s look at a sample choice for reference. Do you prefer to have a hamburger or a burrito for your next meal. Let’s examine the choices here. Can you choose to have a pizza? No because it’s not part of the choices. Now let’s say you have a preference for burritos, if that is the ONLY factor to be considered (as in you’re not on a diet or there is any other factor) you will DETERMINISTICALLY pick burritos, because said preference is the only factor to consider. Now if you don’t have any preferences whatsoever then you will pick randomly. So, your “free will” is either random or deterministic, there doesn’t seem to be much room for freedom here.
Quoting Relativist
First off, I’d never have a child. Secondly, when did it appear to you that I said that the lack of free will meant no one would get disciplined punished anymore? I don’t care if they chose to do it or not, the main purpose of punishment is to simply discourage behaviors perceived as threatening to society/family/yourself. Whether or not they have free will doesn’t change what the purpose of punishment is or it’s effectiveness. So of course I’d do it.
I’ve never said I wouldn’t punish someone for doing something bad free will or no free will if it were up to me.
Quoting Relativist
This basically.
Quoting Relativist
I wasn’t arguing it wasn’t. Not that I said “no it is not a choice”. Not “no it is not my choice”. The “choice” was made by me certainly but I don’t think it was much of a choice to begin with, that’s what I meant
The question should have been “name a city” instead my bad. That way you’d actually have to “collapse the probability wave” before the questions start instead of do so at each question
Quoting Possibility
Then you know the images of said cities, what I’m asking is: can you think of a city you’ve never heard the name of, seen photos of, and which you didn’t even know existed? I think the answer is no, for how could you?
Quoting Possibility
You obviously know their name though so it doesn’t count as thinking of a city you don’t know
Quoting Possibility
That doesn’t answer the question though. Could you have thought of a city that didn’t occur to you or not AT THE TIME the question was being asked? I think the answer is no. For how could you have thought of it at the time if it didn’t occur to you?
Quoting Possibility
Why didn’t you then? That’s the problem here. You don’t know why you didn’t do you? So your decision to NOT control the impulse as opposed to control it must have been random right? For you don’t know why you made it.
If you don’t know why you picked that city it must have been random.
If you know why you’ve picked that city and don’t think you could’ve controlled that impulse it must have been deterministic.
If you know why you picked that city and think you could’ve controlled that impulse then you don’t know why you didn’t, in which case it must have been random that you didn’t control it. Which ultimately means it’s random that you picked that city.
Where is “free” here because I don’t see it
First you say it’s an influence, then you say it’s an impulse. As it suits your argument, I guess. The thing is, in my view this was neither. It was a choice that I made, partly at random, partly based on arbitrary significance to me that at the time seemed interesting to run with and helped to narrow the choices. Nothing controlled my choice but me: I freely structured the causal conditions that determined the act of naming a city.
I know why I decided to name a city: because you asked me to name one, and I thought it might contribute to the discussion. Which one I decided to name and why I decided on that one instead of others was of no consequence to me, but my answers at least seemed important to you. If the process behind the decision was important to me, then I would have been more systematic and taken more time consciously deliberating over the significance of the act of choosing, the range of options to choose from and the significance of the option chosen. Obviously.
Most people simply don’t value why they make certain decisions. If you had then asked me to name a city in a particular part of the world, or a name one starting with a certain letter, I wouldn’t mind the fact that this decision would no longer be as ‘free’ as the previous one. I simply have more important things to spend my time consciously thinking about.
Your experiment seems to be proof that we allow unimportant decisions to be randomly determined. That doesn’t mean we would never know why we made any decision, or that every decision we make is random.
If you had said ‘name a city and I’ll fly you there tomorrow” or ‘name a city and I’ll drop a bomb on it’, I would not make that decision quite so randomly. It hasn’t affected the freedom: the act of choosing and the range of options to choose are unchanged - what’s changed is the significance of the option chosen. That I can decide to take back control over this decision in such instances appears to be proof of freedom somewhere in the decision process, at least. This is what I’ve been exploring...
What dynamically biases the possibilities, to a point where eventually it's 100% in favor of a particular possibility (at the moment when you make your choice) is you/your will.
Replace the word “impulse” with “influence” if it matters so much to you. As far as I’m concerned they’re just different degrees of the same thing. I didn’t intend to replace it.
Quoting Possibility
This boils down to “random”. Arbitrary and random are synonyms.
Quoting Possibility
Well I guess that’s progress.
Quoting Possibility
Apply the same argument and you’ll find that you’ll never know why you made any decision
Say the decision is between A, B and C(or any number of choices) and say the decision is very significant
Could you have picked D? No. It’s not in the options
Could you have picked C if it never occurred to you? No
So now the choice is between A and B. Let’s say you very carefully deliberate the consequences of both options and decide to pick A. Could you have then picked B? If you say “yes I could have controlled the influence to pick A and still picked B” I would then again ask “why didn’t you”. This final “why didn’t you” you obviously don’t know the answer to. You can do this for any choice
Quoting Possibility
Alright let’s do this one then (the bombing one would be awkward). I’ll do the questions for myself.
“Name a city and I will fly you there tomorrow” Hawai
“Could you have picked a city you couldn’t name” no
“Could you have picked a city that didn’t occur to you” no
“Do you know why you picked Hawaii” yes because I always wanted to go there
“Could you have picked somewhere else though, say Alexandria” yes, I could’ve restrained the influence to pick Hawaii and picked Alexandria
“Why didn’t you” I don’t know (note, if I said something like “because I think Alexandria would be too hot” or any other reason that would make the choice deterministic
Yes but the WAY it does so seems random. Sure it incorporates your beliefs and attitudes etc but whenever a decision is close and you can’t tell exactly way you picked A rather than B that’s just a random choice is it not?
Some choices are epistemically random, sure. And many if not most people (including me) intentionally pursue some choices that seem random.
It can be, sure. Again, I said, "Some choices are epistemically random, sure."
I'm not sure I understand what you're asking, but I wouldn't call something a choice if it's determined.
Here you said a free choice CAN be a random choice. Which I took to mean it can also be deterministic. So for you, a completely random choice is free but a determined one isn’t?
Some choices are epistemically random.
Do you know why the word "epistemically" is in that sentence?
When a choice presents itself, you make it. You say it wasn't "much of a choice", but what you would consider as more of a choice? How would indeterminism change the process or make it more of a choice? You agree that adding some randomness to it wouldn't be an improvement - it would be worse.
My issue is that it wouldn't be better. If determinism was false, we'd still have options before us and we'd still make choices based on our background knowledge, desires, etc. These would still constrain our imagination, and we wouldn't be any smarter, so it wouldn't be any better in any way.
What do you call those things you do every day, in which you make a selection from among multiple options? Obviously you are making a choice. Sure, the factors that go into making those choices are determined, but you still go through the process and make the selection based on factors within you. What would indeterminism add to the process that constitutes an improvement?
A choice.
Quoting Relativist
What I'm talking about is whether the "choice" is determined. It's not. ("Choice" is in quotation marks there because it wouldn't be a choice if determined.)
Whether the factors that go into making the choice are determined would be a different issue. We'd have to look at the factors in each situation to say, and even then we wouldn't be sure, because many phenomena that seem determined/causal might not actually be.
I'm not making any value judgments (re your question about "an improvement")
Aside from choices with reasons for a moment, as I noted, I sometimes intentionally make choices that are epistemically random. There's no reason for those. That's the whole point of them.
This is good. When other considered choices don't come in first, the no 'if' or could have' options didn't make it in actuality, and so they become a fantasy.
I would surmise that the result in consciousness of the brain's prior analysis has a usage to the brain, else it wouldn't have evolved. Thus, the internal method/language of qualia is used by the brain to globally broadcast its recent product so that more of the wider brain might attend to its implications, that presuming the brain may have many separate areas coming up with their own figurings/suggestions.
So, there has to be some use to consciousness; however, the decisions/thoughts seemingly carried out instantly therein were already finished and done beforehand. The subconscious analysis takes 300-500 milliseconds, which is a delay, along with the speed of light delay, which is quite short.
I don't know. That's what I'm asking people who argue for free will. I don't get the concept of "free" and I need them to explain it to me in a way that doesn't boil down to "a mix of random and determined" which I don't think is free.
No, it’s a lack of awareness. Randomness is just missing information about causal conditions, after all.
Quoting Possibility
Quoting khaled
I’d like to clarify something, here: I’m not on either side of the free will or determinism fence (I’m not sure there is one). As far as I can tell, ALL actions are determined, but that doesn’t preclude a will that is free for anyone with the capacity to interact consciously with the potentiality, and therefore the causal conditions, of actions.
I understand that the view of causal chains from the other side of a collapsed potentiality wave leaves no evidence of our interaction at all. So the causal conditions I am aware of and interact with extend into the past as seamless causal chains, and those I am unaware of appear as ‘randomness’, as unknown causal chains.
Yet we often experience some freedom, at least, in a present act of choosing. So this freedom exists in a conscious experience, but not in the temporal event - it cannot be observed or measured in the brain even as it occurs. A physicalist would then be forgiven for concluding that no freedom exists, despite its existence as a quality of our experience.
I’m not a physicalist, though. I don’t believe reality is limited to the four physical dimensions. I think our ability to map all four dimensions in the first place (events across time and well beyond our own direct experience of the universe) should be evidence that we have the capacity at least to be aware of, connect with and collaborate with a fifth dimension. And I believe it is in that fifth dimension that the will (as the faculty by which one determines and initiates action) operates, and can be, for humans at least, unconstrained.
What happened to me explaining biasing a couple times? There's something other than 50/50 random and determined.
I am still wondering why it would matter that the choice first happens subconsciously, given that it still originates in the same brain.
It only matters for those thinking that decisions/thoughts are made in/by consciousness, for that's how it seems.
I hope so. That's what I kept referring to when I said true randomness. Randomness that is not an approximation due to our lack of knowledge
But the decision to bias or not to bias is itself completely random. I never implied there is only 50/50 random and determined.
The word is there because some choices seem random. Some do not. That doesn't mean that the choices that do not seem random are determined. They also do not involve randomness in the sense of flipping a coin. They involve biasing.
I don't know where you're getting the idea from that biasing is a decision (necessarily) or that's "completely random." I certainly didn't write anything like that.
You replied to me talking to someone else. I introduced the idea that the decision to bias a decision is random there. You didn't say it I did.
?
Quoting khaled
Why?
Quoting Terrapin Station
Quoting khaled
You took it from there and I assumed you had read our conversation beforehand
Quoting Terrapin Station
You could go back and read it but I'll try to put it in as few words as possible here.
For any decision you can ask "could you have done (biased the decision) otherwise?", if the answer is no then the decision is not free. For every decision for which you answered "yes" you can ask "why didn't you?". The answer to "why didn't you?" is unknown as presenting any justification for why you chose the option you chose doesn't tell me why you didn't choose the other option if you could have. So you don't know why you chose to bias a particular option in a particular way, even if you know the evidence that led you to that decision (because you can't answer "why didn't you?"). Since you don't know why you chose to bias an option in a particular way even though alternatives were available the decision must have been random.
I didn't even read that. I was responding to this: "But the decision to bias or not to bias is itself completely random. I never implied there is only 50/50 random and determined. "
Quoting khaled
I don't know if anything there makes any sense.
First, if you couldn't have gone another way, it's not actually a decision/choice.
Who knows why on Earth you'd say something like, "presenting any justification for why you chose the option you chose doesn't tell me why you didn't choose the other option if you could have" because that doesn't make any sense. Why wouldn't a justification tell you why someone chose one option over another?
You don't seem to understand the idea of biasing. You seem to just be putting the word into sentences because I brought it up.
Ok. You can reword that in there and it'll still make sense
Quoting Terrapin Station
Because the other option also has justification that could have been used. That doesn't tell me why you chose to bias the decision that had THIS justification.
Quoting Terrapin Station
I don't think you're understanding what I'm saying either.
What? What justification, coming from where?
Assume you're picking between two close options.
We're past that already. What justification would you be referring to re the option not chosen?
Probably, but that justification doesn't exist when you didn't pick that option, which is the scenario you're presenting.
How can justification "not exist".
By the person not thinking it. Justifications exist only insofar as someone consciously has them in mind.
First, this isn't the case you were presenting.
But if you had equal justification for two options, you'd have to choose epistemically randomly.
Most of the time, when people have reasons for choices, they're not equal.
Yes it was
Quoting Terrapin Station
I never said equal
If they're not equal to the bearer, then it would be inexplicable why you'd not be able to understand why the justification for the choice made ruled out the other. The bearer considered those reasons better/stronger. That's what a justification is. Whatever S considers to be good/better reasons for x.
So if the justification for A completely rules out B could the person have picked B?
Justification has nothing to do with whether there are real options.
Justification has to do with why S picked one rather than the other.
Yes, it does. You're asking a question about the implications for justification for whether there are real choices.
The two have nothing at all to do with each other.
Really? If S believed A has more justification than B could S pick B?
How in the world does justification not have anything to do with real options.
Yes, of course. "S could pick B" is about whether it's ontologically possible to pick B.
Justification has to do with WHY someone picked a choice that they picked. It has nothing at all to do with whether it's ontologically possible to pick something else.
So why didn't he. Did he choose A because of it having more justification? But then he couldn't have picked B, because A would have still had more justification. That A had more justification doesn't answer the question "Why didn't he pick B" provided he could have picked B.
Will is a brain function. Freedom can occur anywhere, including brains.
When does freedom occur? (Did I ask this before, I feel like I have)
People often choose what they do because they have more justification (stronger/better reasons, in their opinion, for choosing something) for it.
This doesn't at all mean that it's not possible for them to make a different choice. Whether various options are possible doesn't at all hinge on anyone's justifications.
Quoting khaled
Yes, it does, as that's exactly what justifications are in this case. It's why they picked one thing rather than the other. Saying it doesn't answer that can only suggest not even understanding what justifications are in the first place, or otherwise not understanding the question "Why did you pick A"
This post is essentially just repeating the same thing yet again. Hopefully I won't have to keep doing this.
Are you asking for a literal time, or is that a way of asking "in what circumstances"? If the latter, it's simply a term for phenomena (occurrences) that are not causally determined. That could conceivably occur in any situation, any phenomena.
Yes I'm asking in what cirumstances. So epistemically random counts?
Yes, of course. Freedom necessarily involves randomness. Just not necessarily equiprobable randomness.
What is random but not free. Or what is free but not random. By random I don't mean equiprobably random
Are you one of those people who has a problem with synonyms?
Okay, but that's what ontological freedom/indeterminism is. It's (not necessarily equiprobable) randomness. The only other option, logically, would be causal determinism.
If you define free will like that then I agree everyone has free will (though I don't know whether or not brain functions are epistimically random, I hear they are on the microscopic level)
There has to be ontological randomness involved for it to be free will. Again, the point of bringing up that some choices are epistemically random above is to note that at least some people like making some "whim" choices. The choices that are not epistemically random would still involve ontological randomness if they're choices.
People probably have a problem with saying that it involves randomness because they think that's going to amount to saying that all choices are epistemically random. Many choices are not epistemically random. And those choices involve biasing the odds, based on reasons/justifications, which are (a) not usually decisions themselves (at least not at the point in question), and (b) not random themselves.
I agree. The person I was asking to define this third category of causality called "free" didn't.
Quoting Terrapin Station
I agree
Quoting Terrapin Station
I think it's more than that. It wasn't on this site but when I argued with some real life friends about this they said "But that's just a mix of determinism and randomness, that isn't real freedom" or something to that effect. I think people would still disagree with your formulation here. Though I ask those people to define that third category of causality they claim exists.
Honestly I think it's just more human glorification. There is a whole different way in which events can be caused and only us fantastic humans can utilize it.
It's 9pm here bye
Well, a lot of people think a lot of incoherent shit like thinking that their consciousness is something separate from the physical world, they think that somehow their consciousness is just "occupying" or "driving" their body while not being identical to it, and so on. So who knows what sort of vague nonsense they might have in mind by "freedom" re free will.
Or that we pick up brain waves from other people or beings. 'Fixed will' is immune to all these notions, for they would just be another input, Yes, the more good inputs the better for widening the range of the will, but as fixed the will still wills an output based on all that it has in it to consider, aside from playing dice harming the mechanism.
Well I have only been reading your stuff for a year or two, but you are remarkably consistent.
And 40 years experience makes your patience for nitpickers like me all the more impressive :smile:
I like the actual evidence for internal reality you mention: things like heart rate, etc.
But I also "know" my thoughts exist in the same way I "know" that "I" exist. More specifically, I don't know either. But my thoughts provide me with evidence of my existence more than any external factor possibly could (ANY and EVERY external factor can only be measured if thought occurs...it seems there must be an exception...but how could there be? oh, maybe A.I.? or is that just a different type of thought? Even A.I. could only "measure" for other A.I., any human explanation would require thought).
Sorry if I am rambling. I feel you have a more academic (advanced) understanding of ideas that have been bouncing around in my head for years...So I just keep going to see what else you can add :smile:
Feel free to ignore me, as I doubt I am adding much that will help you:
Quoting Possibility
But I do appreciate hearing your thoughts.
I entirely agree. But remember for the pro free-will crowd, especially if they happen to be religious too, THE PURPOSE of punishment is PUNISHMENT. They are all about retributive justice. This is part of the reason some are so attached to free will. They can't justify THEIR punishments without it. They also believe they DESERVE all the good that has happened to them because they are good.
I like this explanation. I think it’s consistent with how I’ve been looking at it, just described in a MUCH simpler way. I feel like I’ve taken a long and complicated journey to somewhere, only to come across you standing there, saying ‘You do realise there’s a more direct route, don’t you?’
Experience counts for a lot. Thank you for this.
:up:
Those 3 attributes will produce a happier life in the long run but i wish i could say that means that there is free will. I go back and forth on the issue of scientific determinism or predestination. At its core i have the concept but my logic circuits at this present time dictate that it is true.
Google search: scientific determinism
and
Google search: dna and decision making
google search: nurture versus nature or search nurture and nature.
The Other Shoe Drops
Determinism doesn’t sit well, at first;
Its flavor does not quench the thirst,
For then it seems we but do as we must,
But, we’ll see a way that in this we’ll trust.
We wish that our thoughts reflect us today,
Our leanings, for it could be no other way.
To know, let us turn to the ‘random’ say
To see whatever could make its day.
Shifting to this other, neglected foot,
What could make the ‘random’ take root?
It would have no cause beneath to explain
The events, they becoming of the insane.
We could pretend, imitating air-heads,
Posting nonsense on purpose in the threads,
But that then we meant to do this way,
Too, so, such a ‘random’ holds not much sway.
Seems less problem of a determined Nature
Than the same in our individual nature,
But, sense isn’t made from ‘random’ direction
That relies on naught beneath its conception.
[i]Would we wish it to be any other way?
Doing any old thing of chance that may?[/I]
The ‘random’ foot then walks but here and there,
Not getting anywhere, born from nowhere.
The unrooted tree lives magically, unfathomed.
Is not then ‘randomness’ but a fun phantom?
The opposite of determined is undetermined,
The scarier ghost that’s never-minded.
Ramble away - I do. It’s probably only that I’ve bounced these ideas around in a different environment. I’ve really only been playing with philosophy for a few short years - and not very academically, either. Don’t assume that because I drop a philosopher’s name or two I have any more than a cursory understanding of their work.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
What you’re explaining here is, in my view, a five dimensional subjective experience. The ‘conscious self’ (‘I’) exists as an experience of interacting four dimensional events, both internal and externally observable. The ‘evidence’ I have that my self exists consists of the experience of internal events; your ‘evidence’ that I have a ‘conscious self’ comes from your experience of externally observable events. Yet neither of us are certain that what we experience (‘know’) is ACTUAL, except that we agree on the experience (‘knowledge’) that these events interact with what we can agree is actual by its relationship to mutually observable/measurable data: the body, heart rate, etc.
Thoughts exist in much the same way. They’re ‘real’ because of the relationships that exist between 5D subjective experiences of 4D events interacting with 3D observable objects consisting of measurable data.
It is in this 5D structure of the mind that the experience (knowledge or understanding) of any event in spacetime has the capacity to interact with the experience of any other event. It is here that I think this ‘ontological freedom’ is ours: insomuch as we are aware of, connecting and collaborating with the potential in each experience. We have the capacity to intervene, to prevent predicted events from occurring, to change the causal conditions of future events, even to alter the ongoing effect of past causes, etc. by changing how we relate to the significance of an experience.
Logic is one way of relating to the significance of an experience - one of many different systems or structures that we can use to ‘determine’ what is true. Through logic you would see @“Terrapin Station”’s 99-1 odds and discard the 1% as negligible. Yet if those numbers described the odds of your child dying from cancer, for instance, you might be looking for any other way to evaluate the experience than logically. Because a 1% chance of survival has more value to you in this experience than the 99.
Why do you wish there is free will?
As opposed to being caught up in how things happen, it focuses on something apriori: that every event can only have one outcome. The actualist asks what it could mean to say that X was possible if X didn't happen.
It wasn't precluded from happening, given physical facts as they are. Some things are precluded from happening. Those things are (and were) not possible. But not everything possible happens.
Read the article.
I'm familiar with it. It doesn't really address my take on this, which isn't the same as either actualism or possibilism.
That only works if we presume ontological randomness exists though, right? Because otherwise physical facts determine all outcomes precisely.
Willing the Will That Wills?
[i]What is the ‘secret’ of human behavior,
One that’s really so much the savior
That we may even keep it from ourselves
Rather than very far into it try to delve?
What is it that should be so confidential,
Classified, and undisclosed—its potential
Kept under wraps, so very contra;
Informally: hush-hush; formally: sub rosa?[/i]
Well it’s a revelation of splendor,
One that’s often good to surrender
But is also very well to remember.
[i]Is the will free to will one’s actions otherwise?
Can antecedent conditions be ignored?
Can the self be an unmoved mover?
And what of those tendencies of evo’s realm
That have been imprinted on one’s genetic film—
Those of temperament, role preferences,
Emotions, responses,
And even one’s most revered moral choices—
Those invoices from which one rejoices?[/i]
Well these are not choices
At all in and of any free will voices;
In essence, from the basis of one
And from all that one has become
From life’s total behavioral reactions,
There are probabilities of actions—
Some patterns that are very likely
And some patterns highly unlikely.
[i]Is free will a necessary fiction,
A kind of a religion?[/i]
No and yes if it’s to provide an essential berth
For one’s morality, meaning, and worth.
[i]So then, with this ‘free will’ become,
One might then succumb
To systematic deception
About one’s causal connection
To that of nature,
A roadblock, a detour
That’s neither possible,
Necessary, nor desirable.[/i]
The enemies to these willing motifs
Would be the mythical cultural beliefs
That explain behaviors and feelings
In terms of unknowable forces and beings.
[i]But to protect one’s moral virtues
Should one still believe oneself’s purview
To be as an ultimately responsible agent, lo—
A self creation ex nihilo,
A God-like, miniature first cause who chooses
Without it being determined by one’s own muses?[/i]
Well maybe, but nay, really not, nil,
For there is no contra-causal free will.
What the good then of this fix we’re in?
Such it is then that we can gain a measure of peace
Rather than the anger of resentment’s crease
When someone does or says something bad,
Even those close relatives you once had.
Should we imprison for punishment?
For the civil-law-breakers
And all those ungiving takers
We’ll no longer incarcerate
For punishment, being so irate at the jail’s bait,
But so that society will be protected
And that they might emerge corrected
From the swill of a prison mill,
Fulfilled with a new fixed will
That points more toward goodness
Or at least away from badness.
Thus the action
Of metaphysical justification
For a total retribution
Then greatly softens,
A relief from the stress so often,
For it’s no longer induced
From the abuse produced.
Really?
Truly.
Indeed, we become less self-conscious,
More playful, less noxious, more gracious,
Less callow, and less likely to wallow
In the sorrow that is so hollow and shallow
In its excessive self-blame, pride,
Envy, or resentment—now all put aside.
Aren’t we changing the will here as we go?
Yes, but the will adds what we can know.
[i]Then we are learning—
The only hope for larger earnings
From the will’s then wider yearnings![/i]
Yes, we’re overturning.
What if to learning we are averse?
What a curse! Might as well call the hearse.
[i]So then, all in all, though a tempt,
It is that we humans are not exempt
From the laws of physics—as a preempt,
Although we’ve been wired to make the attempt—
A seeming violation by nature
Of its own universal law and structure.[/i]
No, it’s not a violation I would call,
For science still does tell us all.
It’s all part of the structure;
One can never cheat Mother Nature.
Hail, then, to the physic.
Well it’s not so bad, is it?—
Although we can never will the will,
Its motives ever our intent to fulfill;
It is that we have no free will.
[i]True, plus we can expand the will’s horizoning
Through our broader learning’s wisening.[/i]
Yes, learn today and by tomorrow, say,
The will may have a different sway.
[i]I wouldn’t want it any other way,
For then I wouldn’t be me—my screenplay.
What other ways can we improve the play?[/i]
Well, we have patience and delay,
For we don’t have to act right away.
Until a more creative solution appears?
Yes, from any frontier, Shakespeare.
Hear, hear!
Yeah, it doesn't work if one is a strong (thoroughgoing) determinist.
I'm not a strong determinist.
This is not a logic based argument for me, but one based on experience. Every potential event I experience can only have one actual outcome or occurrence, but my capacity to manipulate that occurrence operates in the realm of 5D experience: what is significant, not just logically or physically, but emotionally, culturally, ideologically, historically, etc. This is where I can be ontologically creative, inasmuch as I am aware of, connected to and collaborating with the process of evaluation.
The more aware, connected and collaborating I am with what is significant to the potential of an event in relation to what is significant to me and to other events in my experience (past, present and future), the more freedom I have to interact with the experience both in and beyond its actuality.
The sizing up of all possible world-lines unto all their ends to see what works the best, and then in 6D jump into the best one?
So you aren't really focusing on possibility at all. You're concerned with your own power.
I have never thought of these things as extra dimensions, but it does not seem unreasonable. Aside from having to do a bit of research on dimensions, I think I would agree with everything up to this point.
Quoting Possibility
This is where philosophy gets complicated for me. At first glance, what is said here can only seem true. Especially if we consider common language usage. However, once I am in philosophy mode (haha, whatever the heck that means), I can't help but see questions:
Quoting Possibility
doesn't knowing the prediction give a "cause" for your changed behavior?
All of my other questions would probably be tied to the idea that if we completely understood thought (along with everything in the first 4 dimensions), MAYBE we could establish a causal chain?
I can't fully accept determinism until it is shown (until it is 100% proved, I can't 100% dismiss the emotional feeling of having a choice).
But I don't find arguments for "free will" all that convincing (you are causing me to rethink, but not quite convincing :smile:). I end up feeling like we are just using certain words differently. So, I don't find (the good) free will arguments to be wrong, but more insignificant (sure that MIGHT be true, so what?).
If I had to guess, I would think it is MOSTLY (like 99%) determinism, but it makes sense to leave room for some randomness. However, it starts to feel like a 'god of the gaps' argument the more events are shown to be determined.
To be fair, overall, I don't find the free will argument to matter as long as everyone admits that MOSTLY we did not have a lot of control in who we are today. We were born with 'x' genes and raised in 'y' environment. Sure free will MAY have played a small role in the development of a few humans (mostly those who are naturally inclined to 'buck the trends' so to speak), but I don't see it as a particularly significant force.
Unfortunately, an unfiltered belief in free will (christians, libertarians, et al) leads to bigotry and dysfunction. (if life is ALL free will and ZERO determinism, then everyone DESERVES exactly what they have).
If you want to equate capacity with ‘power’, that’s your choice, not mine. I’m thinking now the word ‘manipulate’ probably brings that connotation. That was not my intention.
Our capacity is always tied to awareness, connection and collaboration: what I have called ‘manipulation’ is achieved only in this way, never as an individual force acting in isolation.
Sorry for the confusion.
Yes, this is why I’ve said that all actions are still determined, even if our will is free. When you look back on actual events where you’ve experienced ‘choosing’, it presents as an unbroken causal chain, with no evidence of your interaction at all. The extent of your interaction is with the causal conditions of the potential event, thereby establishing the causal chain itself.
As I’ve said before, I don’t think this is a case of EITHER determinism OR free will. We need to get away from this dichotomy and the ‘apologists’ of compatabilism in order to understand and develop a practical model of the will.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
I would say that we don’t have ANY control (right now) in who we are up until today, but we have so much more freedom than most of us realise in who we can be in each moment, and therefore in who we can be in the future. Free will isn’t a force, it’s a capacity within us to be aware of, connect and collaborate with the potential in our experience of interacting with the unfolding universe. It doesn’t really matter to the past (that’s already been determined) - only to our experience of what lies ahead.
In 5D it’s more about potential than ‘possible world-lines’ - as I explained to frank. When we see potential, we not only see what’s possible, but also how it can become actual.
I think I follow what you’re saying, but I find the description of ‘jumping’ into ‘possible world-lines’ to be misleading (however poetic). Many-worlds and multiverse theories imply an alternate physical reality, but that’s not how dimensions appear to work. It isn’t a matter of travelling, but of developing the capacity to correlate between multiple levels of integrated information at once.
The brain/will collapses scenarios of consequences into a choice, in regular dimensions.
my question may due to not getting what you wanted to say:
how about the case "I choose not to eat this food"? which of the 3 categories would you place it?
What are you calling "potential"?
I don't think I'm following what you're trying to do with dimensions. It appears that you're positing "4D" as a base reality that you engage through experience? And that this adds another dimension?
They’re not categories, they’re more like gates to enable or disable interaction.
This discussion has been a work in progress - you might need to read further through the thread to follow.
For me to explain the case “I choose not to eat this food”, I’d need to know more about the particular experience of choosing to eat or not eat the food.
For instance, my son always used to turn his nose up at any food he couldn’t identify. He wasn’t a fussy eater: if you could somehow get him to try something, nine times out of ten he would then happily eat it. But his first response was always “I don’t like this” despite never having tried it. Forcing a toddler to eat when they’ve chosen not to is never a good idea, and reasoning with them about health implications has no effect. In his case, a decision to not eat certain food was usually based on a lack of awareness. He needed more information about the option to be chosen.
When he was about three, I got him to taste cucumber by telling him that it was ‘a bit like apple, only not sweet or tangy’. It was his choice to be more aware by listening to someone else describe the experience of eating cucumber. It was his choice to also connect to this information: trusting my word and knowing that he liked apples. And it was his choice to then collaborate with the information: to conclude that he might actually like the experience of eating something ‘a bit like apple only not sweet or tangy’ himself, and act on it. It worked, and he’s eaten it ever since.
Of course, I could choose not to eat this food because I’m aware of how long it’s been sitting in the fridge...
Well I may have missed your first mention (more likely I was just overly focused on some other point), but I definitely like where you are going here. We just need the idea to catch-on.
Quoting Possibility
I like the sound of this. But I would imagine a lot of people (like me) might get hung up on perceived definitions (their understanding of free will); I hope you have a lot of patience (so far so good, haha) as you get this idea out there.
Your final sentence actually brought it together for me and helped really understand what you were getting at...and as of now, to me, it seems accurate.
Is there anything I could be reading, particularly on that last sentence Quoting Possibility, that could help thoroughly explain the idea? Or are you sort of inventing it as you go along? (I hope that doesn't come across negatively, in my mind, all of the now-famous philosophers were "inventing it as they went along")
Absolutely. Under scientific determinism your views and thoughts and the guy who believes in scientific determinism are entirely predetermined. The fact that he/she trys to persuade you of anything is nothing more than a domino effect that started billions of years ago. I find it both liberating and at the same time it just makes me want to play video games all day. To me i compare it to going to work everyday with a slight buzz. No wrong answer, we all have a part to play as Gandhi would say.
Like I said - it's simply an excuse for avoiding responsibility. Nothing is absolutely pre-determined, there is an element of chance in everything. Even physics proves that, it annoyed Einstein, who said he couldn't accept 'god playing dice'.
The bedrock of existence, having no input, whether 'God' or not, would have to play dice.
Yes, Einstein was against QM's randomness/uncertainty/probabilities, thinking that Nature wouldn't play dice (as random), and for hidden variables indicating determinism, when talking to Born.
I'm noting that the Ground of All would produce outputs from no inputs, i.e., random, such as in the posit of quantum fluctuations.
Potential is defined as an ability to develop, achieve or succeed that has not been realised. Many interpret this as that an acorn becomes an oak tree or else it fails in its singular potential. But the way I see it, an acorn that becomes food for a squirrel is not a failure; it simply realises an alternative potential: one the squirrel was aware of, connected with and collaborated with. Absolute determinism suggests that the squirrel’s acorn was always determined to never be an oak tree, but I disagree.
Quoting frank
I don’t see 4D as a ‘base reality’ - I start there because I figure most people would agree that the universe has four dimensions, even if we can’t ‘picture’ how to map it. We can map changes to 3D objects over time, just as we only know a 2D shape is really 3D by how different it appears in relation to a variable viewing direction, increasing awareness of a third dimensional aspect to our viewpoint. So a 3D object that appears different in relation to a variable time of observation is better understood as a 4D event, and increases awareness of a fourth dimensional aspect to our observation. And a 4D event that appears different in relation to a variable observer is better understood as a 5D experience, increasing awareness of a fifth dimensional aspect to the observer.
So it doesn’t really add another dimension - you are developing awareness of another dimensional aspect to how we experience the universe, but it was always ‘there’.
The concept of potentiality I'm familiar with isn't about any success. Success is a judgment. The acorn's potential is something we recognize by looking at it in context. The potential we're really seeing is that of the whole universe. There are thousands of ways the acorn could become a tree. We could think of this as thousands of possible worlds. In each one, the universe was just the way it needed to be to produce the tree in that possible world.
Likewise there are possible worlds in which the acorn was eaten or buried (so as to plant a hickory tree in my boxwoods, which actually happened. :razz: )
Among all of these worlds is a very special one: the actual world.
Our universe works on cause and effect, as all science relies upon. Arguing that there is a "Free Will" boils down to special pleading as far as I can tell. It is basically like saying, "God is an uncaused cause." In order for the will to be free, it essentially must be able to manifest uncaused causes.
We know this is not the case. We know that a person's upbringing and environment play a huge role in determining which choices are available to them. Are you free to choose what you were not aware of, or what did not occur to you, or what was unavailable to you at a given time? The answer is obvious.
Even the most capable philosophers of mind who would fall into the compatibilist camp, (which happens to be a majority of philosophers) have not envisioned a compelling argument in my opinion. Daniel Dennett basically argues that the notion of free will has value in terms of personal psychological coherence and criminal justice. I do not find that a compelling reason whatsoever. I find it to be an avoidance of what to me, appears rather obvious. That everything in our universe operates under conditions of cause and effect, we have no evidence of minds existing apart from brains (or I guess in a few decades, apart from cybernetic neural networks), therefore, phenomenon which can be described as "mind," of which will can be categorized as, also operates under the principle of cause and effect. If the effect (that which is perceived to be willed) is resulting from prior causation, it cannot be said to be free.
And even this hope falls apart, for the uncaused has no information going into it, making it to be random, which also dooms 'God'.
Quoting rlclauer
Justice of 'coercion' versus 'responsible' is fine for protecting society by holding one's unfree will responsible, the philosophers still knowing that the perpetrator had to do it, although the courts don't much get into that, for ‘determined vs undetermined’ is orthogonal. In the same way, we would wish to imprison hurricanes if we could.
I agree you do not [I]need[/I] free will to quarantine criminals. I was simply relaying the argument that Daniel Dennett makes. And I do not agree with Daniel Dennett. However, free will is still a major factor in the way our society views individual humans, and I do believe this is problematic, because it pretends that humans could have done other than they did/do, and so views them through a distorted lens.
And I like your statement about the uncaused having no information going into it, and therefore being random. I never thought of that before! However, I think this is a case against using the phrase "free will," because, as your sentence suggests, even what we would consider free, is not that at all. Hence, why don't people just stop pretending that this idea of free will is even coherent?
Because… such as we want to say "I love you" to a lover rather than something literal along the lines of that our love has to be so because our bonding hormones match. although it is kind understood that there can be chemistry between lovers.
Seriously, though, it is that nature has led us into the illusion that when a thought comes along seemingly out of nowhere that we thought of it instantly in consciousness, thinking we have conscious agency.
…Until, for some, informed by science, who realize that there is an opaque first storey of the neurological beneath our second story.
It sounds like you and I are in agreement.
I agree, "free" will is an illusion. There is no homunculus initiating causation that could be said to serve as some kind of driving force in our minds. We could have an executive function, but this is not a ghost in a machine, but rather, is itself another deterministic program which serves supervisory functions.
Could you elaborate on this?
'Storey' is like as used for the first storey of a house, while 'story', while having truth, has some illusion.
We don't see the subconscious brain gears of neuron connections firing, introspectively, nor do we realize (until informed by science) that these figurings took some time, 300-500 ms, all of this finished by the time our consciousness (also a brain process) always sequential to it receives the product of the figurings, this scene also taking time to get painted, unified, and integrated seamlessly with the previous.
Quoting rlclauer
You hit on it well.
As so, other or higher brain areas can then access the global result/qualia produced and represented in consciousness, and go deeper with it, if need be, this being part of why the brain evolved consciousness as useful. The brain developed its own symbolic internal language, using qualia symbols (which is quite amazing), and so it could be that these are good shortcut notation for the brain to continue on with, and also, as another part of usefulness, would be good to put into memory as a whole, to have more quickness when referenced.
This is very interesting to me. According to this, what we perceive as "the self," could just be the product of this symbolic communication within the brain. Perhaps what appears to be our "self" is also just another program in the brain, a kind of, compiler, or organizer of sorts. Either way, I think it is clear that these processes have evolved to continue the biological mechanics of the body, which is really several different systems working symbiotically (consider the influence of the gut microbiota).
I think it is painfully clear to see, there is no driver, there is no "influencing spirit" and so what humans usually refer to as "free will" or that aspect of the collective organism that is our body, is really just the output of these several inputs, which themselves are causally determined, and thus, there is no such thing as a "free will" or an "agent which causes."
All good stuff. Although reality isn't the way that some fantasize it to be, it appears to be the only way it could be and work (as a consolation prize), via the consistency of the fixed will (of the instant, which can ever progress to a new and better fixed will) helping us to survive.
The 'I' of the moment would be the part of the self currently in the mind and the whole repertoire of the brain would be the whole 'self', potentially, I guess.
Some people talk to themselves, which is perhaps a better fixed will talking to a previous lesser fixed will, or a higher self to a lower self, saying the likes of "What the Hell were you thinking when you did that!"
i guess.
In a lot of respects, I am piecing together an explanation as I go along, but the groundwork is all there in so many expressions of human experience - from the Jesus to The Lion King, letting go of (without completely discarding) past information in order to develop the future is nothing new, really. We have to be prepared to let go of what’s no longer relevant - without throwing the baby out with the bath water - and then find ways to piece together what’s left with the new information we’ve acquired along the way. As Carlo Rovelli says in ‘Reality is Not What You Think’:
[i]“When we acquire new information about a system, the total relevant information cannot grow indefinitely, and part of the previous information becomes irrelevant, that is to say, it no longer has any effect upon predictions of the future.
In quantum mechanics when we interact with a system, we don’t only learn something, we also ‘cancel’ a part of the relevant information about the system.”[/i]
I think you will see traces of this idea in the currently unanswered questions and developing theories across theoretical physics, abiogenesis and consciousness studies. Relating what we can measure/observe to what we subjectively experience requires a better understanding of this fifth dimensional aspect.
I don’t disagree with this. Success is relative to value. As I mentioned to @PoeticUniverse, the ‘possible worlds’ theory implies an alternate physical reality that only confuses the way dimensions work. It’s not incorrect - it just makes it difficult to extrapolate without losing touch with our own experience.
We could think of it as thousands of possible worlds, and que sera sera, we’re stuck in this one. But all that does is absolve us of responsibility for what happens in the future, even though we can easily predict it - we can see it coming from a long way off - and we can also see all those possible worlds where it could be occurring differently, if only something could change.... It’s no wonder anxiety and depression is at epidemic proportions.
Can you move between these possible worlds?
Can you hold an acorn and see yourself at the crossroads of thousands of possible worlds in relation to that acorn? This is what I mean by potential: we can’t ignore our position as an interactive observer.
As I mentioned to @ZhouBoTong, the past, what is actual, is determined - but our will is free in relation to the future. Not what could be - but what can be, when we include ourselves.
Welcome to the discussion. I get what you’re saying. But I don’t think it’s a clear as you believe it is.
I agree that the biological mechanics of the body consist of several different systems working symbiotically. Each system is to some extent aware of, connected to and collaborating with the others. But I think you’re making an assumption that they have evolved simply to ‘continue’ their various processes for as long as possible.
There is more to our collaborating systems than mere biological mechanics. There is an elaborate information processing system, which relies not just on the symbiotic relationships within the organism, but relationships with the rest of the universe. This also consists of several different systems working symbiotically. But this system and these processes have not evolved to continue the biological mechanics of the body, but to acquire information about the entire system.
Humans have not evolved to maximise continuation of the biological mechanics of the body. As individuals, we are some of the most fragile and vulnerable creatures on the planet, and it is only our advanced and collaborative information processing systems that give us any advantage at all. We can process and share more information about the universe in our first ten years of life than many of our ancestors could manage as a tribe in a century. That’s not an accident, and it isn’t geared towards survival.
I’m not arguing against cause and effect, or determinism, for that matter. But the process by which we can predict future events from the information we have about past events is so far below our capacity as human beings that it’s almost laughable to reduce human experience to this.
@PoeticUniverse talks about the progression and improvement of a momentarily ‘fixed will’ through education and self-reflection. It’s a creative way of relating our experience of agency to determinism without a will that is free, and I can see how it makes sense from that perspective. I wonder how one would explain the process of education’s influence on a ‘fixed will’ in anything other than metaphorical language, though.
Personally, I’m trying to get away from metaphor, and look at how our experience of a will that is free fits into the context of cause and effect. Because we can’t pretend that it doesn’t feel free in the act of choosing, despite what science interprets from measurements and observation. And we simply don’t understand the brain, consciousness or the ‘self’ enough to discard experiences just because they don’t fit with what science can tell us. That’s how doctrine operates.
Memory:
The past is never past, at least while we’re alive.
Memories, while re-cognized and ephemeral,
Still have a very basic core of persistence.
How does this past remain,
and what kind of substance
Could there be that lives
so completely outside time?
What makes it so strong that it can ever survive
The merciless climate of the well trafficked brain?
In what storm’s eye does it reside, in the center
Of the maelstrom of the change and growth of cells?
What are these indestructible grains that persist
Among the shifting sands of time, bare and alone?
A memory returns from a taste of butterscotch,
From which Grandma’s olden day’s home
then arises,
And then related connections further become.
Reminiscence stirs connections within the mind,
Each little germ of recollection ballooning
Into a wondrous and glorious revelation.
How do such apparitions reappear, sink and swell,
Float and change,
withering the acids of time’s reflux?
We know why—prions. …
We know how... or why? Prion-like proteins suggest a start, to be sure - but ‘know’ is a bit of a stretch, don’t you think?
Thanks for the prompt, though. I’m intrigued - although biochemistry is a difficult area for me to navigate. All those acronyms...and I’m not one to blindly accept the Scientific American interpretation. Any suggestions of writers in this area along the lines of Rovelli in physics?
I think this is still consistent with fifth dimensional interaction: the way we access memory demonstrates significance irrespective of time; it isn’t structured chronologically, but rather in relation to hierarchies of value. Interestingly, thoughts, reasoning and feelings are also structured irrespective of time. Along with memory, these constitute our 5D experiences. The more aware we are of their value structures and of how they enable us to predict, prevent or predetermine potential events and actions, the more consciously we can interact with them in a way that ‘frees the will’.
I’m thinking it’s not just how educational experiences become memory - but how 5D integrated information as memory, belief and logic interact with somatic and sensory information to form qualia as 5D experiential content: thoughts, feelings, reasoning and memories; how these can then integrate with and improve/alter our structures of memory, belief and logic; but also how conscious awareness of these processes can allow us more creative freedom in this area, opening the mind and challenging the accuracy of these structures (in a 6D context).
I agree that CPEB-3 and other self-assembling proteins that function in a prion-like state demonstrate an important link between biochemistry, information processing and memory. This helps us to further develop our 4D mapping to include internal events. But, like those experiments you keep bringing up - the ones demonstrating a delay in conscious recognition of subconscious decisions - it’s the way the findings are interpreted that I’m wary of: reducing the five dimensional human experience to only what can be measured, to physical change over time, and declaring this to BE ‘what is real’ (and our qualia to be ‘illusion’), rather than recognise that these so-called ‘illusions’ point to further dimensional aspects of our reality that we have yet to map.
Hey, yeah, it is; good collaboration!
Quoting PoeticUniverse
I think the spellchecker changed 'weathering' or 'withstanding' to 'withering' here.
Quoting Possibility
In the brain, cpeb proteins are sturdy enough to resist time, they being virtually indestructible. Yet, they have plasticity, being free of the genetic substrate, to change their shapes, creating or erasing a memory. When we think, the neurotransmitters serotonin and dopamine are released by neurons, which switch the cpeb protein into its active state by changing their very structure. The activated cpeb marks a specific dendritic branch as a memory, recruiting the requisite mrna needed to maintain long-term remembrance.
Memory obeys nothing outside of itself; however, prions have an element of randomness built into their structure due to the inscrutable laws of protein folding and stoichiometry, even becoming active for no reason, so, due to unpredictable and unstable prions, we have some essential randomness. Such contingency is just like Proust predicted: the remembrance of things past may not be the exact remembrance of things as they were.
Thanks - I did wonder about the withering...
Quoting PoeticUniverse
I’m not sure that I agree with this entirely, nor with the ‘virtual indestructibility’ of these proteins. These claims appear to be premature. Experience tells me that even long-term memory is open to new information and adjustment when the right conditions are present - including the interaction of feelings, reasoning and creative thought. The plasticity of CPEB proteins, their potential to switch between monomeric and aggregating forms and their susceptibility to serotonin and dopamine levels seems to support this. I’m also intrigued by their capacity as a repressor OR activator of translation to aggregating forms. I’d like to read more on the serotonin/dopamine release, though - if you can point me towards the research you’re particularly referring to.
I don't know, for all I have are some scratchy notes. …
Our rememberings try to describe reality as it really was experienced, but, that sheer essence may elude, although some general outline remains. Then, too, we add to it, subtract from it And reconnect by association to the new. Lo, the subjective metes out our reality; while the objective lies furthest removed.
Perhaps, we may have a memory that returns from a taste of butterscotch from which grandma’s home then arises, and then of connections further becoming. How do some crumbs, here, and of the past waft back as vapours unto our present? Do the senses of smell and taste, yet more fragile and more insubstantial, bear a unique burden of memory, as more enduring and faithful, rising up past the ruins of the rest? Just noting the butterscotch, back then, without its tasting, would not have made the mark.
Everything is connected within the mind, each germ of recollection ballooning into a revelation. Time mutates some ancient pastimes, and so they are not wholly recaptured, and sometimes rather fallible, even altered more by the call to mind, yet they are there. A memory begins as a changing connection between two neurons; the strength of the synapse changes so that the neurons can communicate. Thus, the taste of memory also activates the neurons downstream to do with one’s childhood days. The neurons have been inextricably entwined, yet, too, reconsolidate upon recall.
The memory making process need proteins for the cellular construction of remembrance, yet the life of a protein is but 14 days. And some hippocampal neurons die, and some are born anew, yet some memory seems immutable. Does the mind constantly reincarnate?
Aye, our memories must be made of a material stronger than cells, and must be quite specific as well. While each neuron has but a single nucleus, it has a teeming mass of dendritic branches, connecting to other neurons at dendritic synapses, such as the branches of two trees touching in a forest. So, it is at these tiny crossings that memories are made. Not in the trunk of the neuronal tree, but in its sprawling canopy. What marks a specific branch as a memory? what molecule awaits the taste of butterscotch?
It has to turn on mrna to help make the proteins.
Thank you for welcoming me!
I agreed with your criticism of my apparently reductionistic description of cogitation. I was merely trying to convey that I believe the consciousness that we experience is sort of a by-product of the brains efficiency maximizing symbol system, which it uses in information processing.
I also accept your criticism of me claiming to understand the brain. We have only begun to develop good knowledge pertaining to neuroscience, and I am not pretending to understand every nuance thereof.
The entire process of evolution seems to make things better at surviving. That is basically how it is required to function. It has two things, an environment, and an organism. The only medium of interaction between those is survivability. So I just cannot accept your argument that "human information processing is somehow geared for some higher thing than survival." In my opinion, your view is highly romantic, and sort-of theological. You are attempting to imbue an importance on human cognitive capacity, which I thing is not justified.
If you are not arguing against cause and effect or determinism, why are you suggesting there is some higher order significance in human cognition? Is cognition a function of the brain and nervous system? If it is, is it not bound to the rules of cause and effect? And if that is the case, isn't imagining all of this higher order stuff just a lack of information. As Sam Harris argues, if we have perfect information about the brain and the physical state of every particle in the body, could we not predict outcomes of human behavior?
I feel like these quotes can only be true...and they certainly add an interesting perspective to the discussion.
Quoting Possibility
But I am still struggling to accept this. To be fair, I think there is still an aspect of what you are saying that I am not understanding.
Are you saying that "will" emerges from a deterministic system, but once it emerges it is not subject to determinism?
I recognise that what I’m proposing here is difficult to accept if you swallow survival and reproductive values as a complete explanation for evolution. But if you take a closer look at evolutionary theory, it fails to adequately explain even all animal behaviour, let alone the intricacies of human social dynamics. And we need to stop making apologist-style arguments about the ‘survival value’ of things like altruism simply because traditional theology is no longer a viable alternative.
The sun seems to revolve around the Earth - but on closer inspection it was discovered that this theory wasn’t perfect. Try to keep an open mind.
It’s a very simple dichotomous view to believe that the universe consists only of an organism and the environment against which it must battle for supremacy. Yours may not be a romantic view, but it’s more tradition-based than you’re making it out to be. It is this viewpoint that has driven humanity to all but destroy the balance in the environment that sustains our existence. Perhaps it’s time to rethink it.
Human cognitive capacity IS important, if only because we’re the only species that has it. That doesn’t make humans more important, it makes us more responsible. When we prioritise survivability, we’re selling this capacity short, really.
Quoting rlclauer
I’m not sure the two are mutually exclusive. Sure, pure determinism says that there is only cause and effect, but it’s better to start there than simply imagine higher order stuff with no attempt to get back to ‘reality’, in my opinion. Following on from Sam Harris, if we could predict outcomes of our own human behaviour, could we not then reassess and restructure the causal conditions leading to our behaviour and effect change to the will - the same way we do with the external conditions? And isn’t that freedom, rendering the will unconstrained?
While we’re arguing from the authority of Sam Harris, I’ll point out that he also said this:
Harris is prepared to explore beyond what science tells us through the realm of subjective experience. That’s all I’m doing here, and Harris was one of those who led me here. He also says: “The way we think about experience can completely determine how we feel about it.”
I think it’s a paradigm shift - and that’s not an easy process. That you’re prepared to try is appreciated.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
I guess what I’m saying is that what we refer to as ‘the will’ is what the deterministic system looks like from the fifth dimension: from an observer position beyond time. Once we fully develop the cognitive capacity to interact with and understand the universe from this position, then the will is potentially unconstrained.
And besides, it isn't necessarily true that they can't be persuaded otherwise if they deny that they post here voluntarily.
Fair enough, my view was a bit based on tradition and perhaps reductionistic. I appreciate your insight. I will have to reevaluate my arguments pertaining to deriving value for human conscious experience, even if it is something that is simply arising out of biological materialism and cause and effect. You have made an effective argument, if only in a pragmatic sense, where valuing human cognitive experience may not be idealistic or theologically-oriented.
Any chance you have seen the South Park episodes about Imagination Land? These lines remind me of that.
When you say "develop the cognitive capacity" are you referring to current individuals or future evolution? Are there intellectual exercises I can do to achieve this? Or when you say "develop" do you mean after a few thousand generations of positive evolution?
Also, when you say 'unconstrained' do you mean "unconstrained except for the laws of physics?" or "truly, entirely, unconstrained"? The second option is why I thought of imagination land.
Perhaps you mean it is unconstrained BECAUSE it is JUST in our imagination?
Again, I apologize if none of these ideas have anything to do with what you are actually saying.
To be honest, I’m not sure how much of what holds us back is due to cognitive capacity and how much is understanding how to access it. As I mentioned before, my two children, raised in the same household, have developed very different cognitive capacity to each other. And yet, the Bible has evidence of five-dimensional awareness from Genesis onwards, so we’ve actually been developing it for thousands of years already. We just suck at it. It’s fear mainly that keeps us from choosing awareness, connection and collaboration at every opportunity...
Quoting ZhouBoTong
I haven’t seen the South Park episode you mention, sorry. But I find it interesting the way we look at the laws of physics, as if they are what limit our capacity to achieve. The process of actualising our imagination starts with what is possible, and is then constrained by what potential we see in how we experience and collaborate with the universe that would enable us to achieve it. Only then would it be constrained by the time we have available, and finally by the laws of physics.
As a history student, I can't help but be reminded of "the secret knowledge of the ancients" and those claims are almost always proved false...unless the "secret knowledge" was how to build a dome or something not so impressive. I get that you are approaching this rather rationally, but all this paragraph says to me is "they used to be able to do it, and we can't". I still don't even know what "it" is.
Quoting Possibility
So I can't fly like superman because I don't believe I can fly like superman? Now that is from the movie Bulletproof Monk (although I would assume it is from some daoist teachings or something).
I am not even sure that is what you are saying, but my other interpretation would be along the lines of "in our imaginations exist unlimited possibilities. We can analyze those possibilities to determine the best course of action. Once a course of action is selected, it is subject to the laws of the universe."
But that doesn't seem to be saying anything much at all?
Or on cognitive capacity: are we talking about something like the movie "Lucy"? You can see why I suck at philosophy with all these pop culture references, haha. In that movie, the girl took a drug that caused her brain to build from using only 10% of capacity to 100%. As she hit different levels, she gained powers. Is that the type of thing you are getting at?
Despite my disbelief (or misunderstanding), if you ever stumble across a process that allows you to reach this higher capacity you refer to, I hope you share with the rest of us (or at least me, haha).
Wow, I didn’t expect that interpretation. Sorry, I meant ‘we’ generally, as in including the Bible authors, not ‘we’ specifically in the modern era.
We access fifth-dimensional awareness all the time: it’s generally anything we can do that animals can’t, from self-awareness and words to mathematics and other higher order thinking. We just don’t realise that’s what we’re doing. We even apply different value structures in relation to different events or experiences. There are certain words, for instance, that one would never use in certain settings. Some people behave markedly differently in various social situations, often without even realising it. Others can be open-minded in some areas of their life, but staunchly traditional or stubborn in others.
There is more freedom now than previously to devise our own value structures, instead of overlaying entire ideologies acquired by being born within a certain nationality, ethnic group, religion, political viewpoint, etc. Logical and scientific value structures also interact more freely with ‘inherited’ beliefs and value systems than we’ve allowed before, enabling us to question, challenge and discard beliefs, or ‘cherry-pick’ from a wide range of value structures as our experiences allow.
It is the experiences we have that provide us with information about alternative value systems, and lead us to wonder if there is such a thing as an objective value system relative even to human experience, let alone to all experiences in the universe across spacetime - or if, like time, even value/significance is entirely relative to the observer. For many, this is an invitation to impose our value structures onto others (whether moral, religious, political, nationalistic or logic/science based), to construct a value system to suit our own personal needs and let everyone else do as they like, or to enclose a ‘world’ (or collection of worlds) for themselves where all their interactions reinforce whatever value structures ‘work’ for them.
But these are fear-based reactions that close the mind to further information. Because if value/significance is truly relative to the observer, then the value structures through which I currently experience the world are all limited and inaccurate. And there is a much broader and more accurate understanding of the universe still to be discovered by increasing awareness, connection and collaboration with observers and experiences vastly different from my own.
Quoting ZhouBoTong
This is maybe closer to what I’m saying. And you’re right, it doesn’t say much like this. But it’s where we ‘determine the best course of action’ that I think we’re falling well short of our potential. Best for whom or for what purpose? What are the value structures by which we determine ‘the best’? And how limited is our viewpoint in relation to alternative value structures, whether or not we agree with them? Who then would disagree that this is indeed the ‘best course of action’, and why? And does their viewpoint matter?
There would undoubtedly be many who’d argue that this line of questioning serves to limit what can be done more than it removes constraints. Yes - it limits the harm that can be done, and encourages us to tread more carefully in the world. Our aim is not to simply do, but to develop, achieve and succeed together. If that means we do less or do it slower, it’s not necessarily less valuable overall. It only appears so from our limited viewpoint.
Practice, practice, practice, for those with the will, along with some pausing, which allows for more creative solutions to appear, in lieu of reactiveness clobbering their space.
But that is all we have. No one on this earth or in history has free will. I argue it doesn't even exist.
That depends on how you define free will. Until we understand our capacity to choose (to increase awareness, connection and collaboration) in every interaction, and then make use of it, then no - our will lacks the freedom it is capable of, and is subject to environment and experience. But that, too, is our choice.
I maintain that the potential for a will that is free does exist. It is this potential that we glimpse whenever we struggle to number all the options laid out before us.
In my view:
Will is defined as the faculty by which one determines and initiates action. In spacetime, we observe this as cause and effect, but the will doesn’t operate in spacetime. All cause and effect is determined and initiated according to what we refer to as potential: the capacity to develop and achieve.
As humans, we’re able to perceive this potential by correlating information from previous interactions, allowing us not only to determine or predict an action based on causal structures, but to arrange the causal structures that will initiate a desired effect. This is the basis of all our scientific and creative achievements. What we’re doing here is manipulating the very faculty by which an action is determined and initiated - before that action occurs in spacetime.
The more we understand about the causal structures of the unfolding universe, the more freedom we have to determine and initiate actions before they occur - even our own actions.
In applying this freedom of the will to our own actions, it helps to describe the process of cause and effect in relation to a yes/no choice with every interaction:
I choose to be aware.
I choose to connect.
I choose to collaborate.
That's something new I never considered before. Interesting.