I don't think there's free will
A simple observation - we sometimes have to resist our urges and the difficulty is proportional to the strength of the urge. This simply goes to show that most of the times we give in to our basic instincts.
Yes, we can resist our inclinations and go against them but it's an uphill battle. Moreover this is strong evidence that we didn't choose our preferences at all.
So, we have no free will and if we do it is subdued by our unchosen inclinations. In essence we're not free.
Close the courtrooms and stop awarding Nobel Prizes. We're all machines programmed to do things that we have no control over.
Yes, we can resist our inclinations and go against them but it's an uphill battle. Moreover this is strong evidence that we didn't choose our preferences at all.
So, we have no free will and if we do it is subdued by our unchosen inclinations. In essence we're not free.
Close the courtrooms and stop awarding Nobel Prizes. We're all machines programmed to do things that we have no control over.
Comments (67)
Hello, fellow robot. We're free of fame and blame and shame. That there are so many differing kinds of robots out there obscures the fact that the will is fixed to what it must do in the instant of its use. At least there is consistency. If I were the opposite, as an arbitrary air-head, I'd be long dead now.
I don't want to expand the scope of coercion here. According to what I see there are two types of forces that affect our decisions. One is internal and usually unseen until the off chance that we feel a need to resist it and the other is external which is what I think you mean by "coercion".
What is important is both types of forces are beyond our control. Don't you think?
Why do you think the alternative to robot is air-head? Self-awareness draws the line between man and machine but it's not necessary that self-awareness comes with free will. We can be non-robots and still reason well.
If we can resist our inclinations, even only some times, isn't that a demonstration of us having at least some free will?
I don't know for sure what I chose or didn't choose, which brings up an issue relevant to the free will discussion: can we determine with certainty whether a given act (choice, decision, action, etc.) was the result of "free will" or "determination"? If we can't distinguish between the two, how can we even begin to discuss the question?
Freedom of the will is never absolute, but it is not less real for it. Most attempts to deny free will strike me as rooted in what Eric Fromm described as 'fear of freedom' . The realisation that we are self-determining carries a big risk - what if I don't succeed, or make the wrong choices? Wouldn't it just be easier to say that I don't have any choice?
Even if we are not free with respect to a certain obligatory action, it is only because the will is free to determine what that obligation ought to be.
The will can be subdued by inclination, but it just as easily thwarts them. If a will can be free and not free, then free cannot be a necessary condition for it. So.....I agree: we do not have free will. What we do have, is a will that acts on its own behalf.
How the will goes about doing that, is a philosophy in itself.
Then what is doing the resisting? What is resisting what?
If not please produce a sentient rock for me to debate with.
I think you are relying on the homunculus fallacy, that we are like some little being inside the body being pushed around by this or that instinct. But in fact, we are also our instincts.
Perhaps the judge has no free will not to be a doosh bag so she thinks she should remain a judge. Perhaps we should try to convince the judge to be less of a doosh bag. Subtlety and Nuance are the name of the game. We can control whether we kill 10 million people but can we control whether we keep the air conditioning budget to a certain level or try not to bully that person we don't like.
We want the judge to protect society by taking the offender out of circulation.
I would agree with this, although I would add an additional element. I would argue that the human is compelled by biological/survival needs which overrides any sort of "volition" we may have. For example, I cannot choose to sleep for 5 days in a row, or when I wake up, I am compelled by my body to eat food.
Like Robert Sapolsky says, what we label as "free will" is just undiscovered biology.
I have heard some people argue that the biological mechanisms may cause the lifting of your hand, but the reason you lifted your hand was because you chose to. So libertarians would try to make a distinction between reasons and causes. I do not find that compelling.
I agree with your general thrust, that behavior seems to be caused, and is therefore, not "free."
What would be the point of human or any organism experiencing pain if they could not freely act on it?
The only explanation of pain that seems to make some sense is that it acts as a warning signal to avoid bodily harm.
Evidence that pain does prevent bodily harm is found in cases of people with congenital pain defect who suffer from severe injury because they are unaware of which actions are damaging their body such as sitting in a bad position or touching something hot. These people do not instinctively react to pain stimuli. The lack of conscious access to negative stimuli means they cannot volitionally move out of danger.
I have other reasons to accept free will as well though..
Any qualia would be the brain's way of broadcasting a product so that other brain areas could attend to the result.
I do not see the point of any qualia if you cannot act on it.
Humans have a vast array of conscious data that they act on including the information that scientists use to propose theories and musicians use to create tunes.
If humans did not need free will there would be no need for consciousness.
The brain would go on to attend to it and to act on it. I don't know why the brain does it this way, if so.
If you think that we are our brain then it is we who are attending qualia. The no freewill position makes consciousness an epiphenomenon helplessly experiencing bodily experiences.
If the brain is just a bunch of mechanical matter spontaneously reacting efficiently to stimuli I see no reason for consciousness.
It is a conscious self entity that experiences quailia. The brain is something explored by biology but not something we experience directly. Neurons were not discovered through introspection.
Hi Andrew,
Qualia cannot be useless, or they wouldn't have evolved. Since the brain expresses results in its own symbol language of qualia, then it has to be in this same language that the product has to go into further usage, such as to memory and as input for further brain analysis (as we the brain) by other brain areas. Perhaps it is a good shortcut due to its holistic form; who knows. Perhaps it's a way for the brain to perceive and experience itself; who knows. Perhaps the brain is a bunch of smaller brains, more of which get alerted by qualia; who knows.
Although qualia are ever but showing what's past and done with, there's no good reason for qualia to just dead-end and not get used, for a heck of a lot goes into the production of qualia, as in their unity and their continuity and more.
Yes, lots of 'who knows', but we do know that conscious is sequential to the brain's figurings of what ends up in it, up to 500 ms after the figurings begin subconsciously.
I am not claiming they are useless. I am claiming the require freewill to be acted upon.
You brought up the term qualia which is not something I ascribe to. I would just say conscious experiences and mental content.
I think it is a confusion when people use the term brain and don't clarify the difference between this and things like consciousness, mental states and the self.
I don't agree with the idea that we are our brain however if you claim we are our brain then we cannot get rid of freewill by saying the brain did this or that. Free will denial lead to dualism where there is an epiphenomenal helpless observer in the brain.
Same as saying 'qualia', for the content is a product of a brain process with consciousness also being a step in the brain process, there being no need to call 'dualism' because the content is so unique.
Consciousness is like a tourist along for the ride if all ended there.
Fixed will is simply the will doing as it must. No one would want to be free of the will.
At the subatomic level (smaller than atoms) particles (and/or waves) have properties that are described by quantum mechanics. In the field of quantum mechanics, the direction and momentum of a particle and/or wave after interacting with another particle(s) and/or wave(s) is not deterministic and is predicted by probabilities that are determined by the interference of the two waves (and their wave function). At the quantum level, interactions between particles and their wave functions, and other particles and their wave functions, are probabilistic and are not deterministic. Because all matter and energy is composed of these particles and waves that are in certain situations, not deterministic, these effects carry up to the large scale, and mean that our universe, and everything in it, is non-deterministic. While some things have properties of determinism, ultimately in the long run, knowing everything about that object will not give you the ability to determine what it’s state will be at a later time.
Because are brains are controlled by the complex interactions of neurons, which are individual cells that are microscopic, the fact that are cells are closer to the scale at which some things are probabilistic, they are more affected by these effects (and use them sometimes in certain cellular processes, an example is that some enzymes use quantum tunneling, which is probabilistic, to move electrons from one place to another in reactions to combine molecules, or break molecules. (This is the emerging field of quantum biology)) which, because of the nature of the brain, and that it is composed of complex networks of microscopic neurons that are affected by the indeterminism at this small scale, means that the decisions that the brain (and the emergence of the mind from the brain, but that is not the topic of this discussion) comes to are not deterministic, even if they are in response to previous outside stimuli, they are eventually determined by non determinate things, which means that we have free will (though I do believe that agency is a better term to use). (I apologize for any imperfect wording of thoughts and ideas in this post. I did my best to put it down in a logical and understandable manner.)
No wonder the free-via-random will sometimes makes big mistakes, for its consistency gets harmed and thrown off. Well, we can't have everything go right, even if it was built to work. 'Random' seems to stem from the bottommost ground of reality having no further inputs, such as the proposed quantum foam.
I wouldn't jump off of a high bridge, but I think it would be best if I never stood on one, for my will might go haywire from a random fluke.
I'll have to seize on the good, creative random deviation results when my will gets disrupted.
Usually worst?
The will is just as ‘free’ as random is.
Though we’re determined to survive each quiz,
A spanner sometimes gets thrown in the works,
Preventing the fixed will from being a wiz.
no, not worst. In the context of attempting to create a case that there is such a thing as "free will" by invoking quantum indeterminism, suggesting the best you can get is something that is obviously not free, is an effective way to show the impotence of such an invocation. If I had said "randomness at worst," that implies there is a better, non-random outcome, which would go against the logic of what I was attempting to suggest.
as far as your poem, I do not understand what you are saying. It seems like you are saying something along the lines of randomness = free, which is incoherent in my opinion. the remaining lines suggest that even though the will is fixed by a deterministic (cause and effect universe), the "will" is only partially constrained by spanners. this does not really make sense in my opinion. perhaps if you stated it in a different way I could follow you, or perhaps my intelligence is not sufficiently high to track with your thought process.
Gambling away your free will, will do you no good - even if you're determined to do so.
More like randomness = harm (to the will).
Ok, then it seems like we both agree, randomness does not generate free will. I had a very hard time understanding your poem, so take that for what it's worth. If you could speak less obscurely it might help my pea brain out.
Yes, and so it turn out that free will, as other than the will being free to operate when there is no coercion (which is trivial and not the same 'free'), has nothing to be free of—it just kind of sounds like a great thing to have.
The will is just as ‘free’ as random is.
(In other words, not free, for random harms.)
Though we’re determined to survive each quiz,
(The consistency of the will aims toward us having a future.)
A spanner sometimes gets thrown in the works,
(A tool falls into a machine, preventing from working as designed.)
Preventing the fixed will from being a wiz.
(The wizard of the will can not effectively collapse scenerios of consequence when disrupted.)
Yeah, it was a bit obscure, as 'spanner' is more used in England and a 'quiz' is our daily labyrinth to be navigated.)
So I guess where you and I would have difference, is you believe there is some kind of meta phenomenon of the mind, some will, which affects reality, you would just quibble with the qualifier "free."
No, no differences, for the 'will' is merely some part of the brain, and the same for the 'mind'. No metaphysics here; all is physical. No supernatural, no intangible, no hocus-pocus. Those distinct realms fail because they'd still have to exchange energy in the materialistic way, and so they wouldn't be non physical. It's like that someone wants there to be 'free will' because we can pick up other people's brainwaves. Well, who knows if that is, but it doesn't matter, for it would just be another input for the fixed will to chew on. The wider the dynamically changing fixed will becomes, via learning and experience, the better its fixed results. We may do or think something tomorrow that we wouldn't have done today.
Well said, and this is why I think the people who argue, "well if there is no free will why are we even having this discussion? You can't convince me to change my mind," are misguided by there belief that "determinism = fatalism." but even if you were deterministically programmed to share your world view, it can still have an affect on another being and their ideas. We are shaping each other in a kind of collective fashion. We are all dominoes forever falling into each other and constantly reshaping each other's velocities and directions of travel.
I really liked your argument that even if you are a duelist or an idealist, the non physical phenomena still has a physical and hence caused mechanic to it, otherwise it would not be able to interact with the physical. You bring a lot of interesting ideas to the table.
In learning this, our fixed will expands to grant us the peace of less worthy blame and shame, although, too, less worthy fame, plus more compassion for those who are really stuck because they can't learn well. Now that the horror of randomness drops as the other shoe, we can better embrace the unliked original shoe of the fixed will's consistency, and because that's, well, how it is, and so it shall be, plus whatever will be will be, pending whatnot, which we could put on statues everywhere.
Fixed unfree will is probably the greatest revelation ever to humankind, if they came to realize it; much of the nonsense would fall.
Not really. I'm only pointing out that most of the time we operate mechanically - indulging our unchosen inclinations.
It's like self-driving cars that retain the option of manual control. Most of the time the car drives itself. Only occasionaly do we take over the controls. I guess this is a statistical viewpoint - we're machine-like following preprogrammed instincts most of the time.
Quoting Wayfarer
I think implications of free will are secondary to whether we have one. I think we're putting the horse before the cart if we look at the implications of rather than the existence of free will.
I'm surprised you didn't give your standard reply viz. that if free will didn't exist then why argue about it?
Anyway I think determinism if true doesn't preclude logic. In fact determinism depends on argumentation - the connection between premises and conclusion is deterministic in a way.
There is no offender or reduced to lowest terms the offender is not responsible.
A very good point. After all who controls this little being inside us? Another homunculus? Can you expand on this a bit. Thanks
I like to think of the situation as an extension of how we already function. Things like walking and balancing ourselves while walking are subconscious events. Our will/consciousness is involved only occasionally when there's a challenge or disruption in the path. Likewise, if freewill exists it's only activated on occasions and not ALL the time or as much as we'd like.
This is very interesting. We decide what is obligatory and what is optional. However, what determines these choices? Are we free to choose our preferences that necessarily influence our thoughts in this case?
I chose not to :grin:
:lol: How'd you do that? :chin:
And that is the gamble.
Without free will, you couldn't take those odds - as there would be no for or against free will; it would be quite homogeneous.
Perhaps the machine may be set on its predetermined path, as extension of some free willed operator?
And likewise, through this extension, the machine may indulge in the free will of its operator?
There is a leader in front of the follower, no?
Impulsively!
Yes, we do. But those two are so different.........
Quoting TheMadFool
Depends on what you call preferences. If by preference is meant innate values, or moral predispositions, then no, we are not free to choose these. They are the ground of personality, an entirely subjective condition. If by preference is meant some inclination to satisfy an empirical interest, then yes, we are free to choose these.
But the qualifier in the query is “...that necessarily influence our thoughts...”, and is most important, for then it must be considered by what means is it possible for preference to influence that which is an entirely personal necessity, as opposed to what means is it possible for preference to satisfy what is merely a subjective empirical interest? In other words, on the one hand we have a imperative determination based on a given condition, and on the other we have a hypothetical determination based on a possible benefit.
What legitimate philosophy would ever deem it reasonable to expect the human will to meet two such disparate, in fact two mutually exclusive and occasionally even self-contradictory, demands? Re: obligatory and optional.
Rhetorically speaking......
I think this is a distinction that isn't real. If the source is corrupt then what ever follows from it, including the emperical, is necessarily corrupt.
Ok.
The adjectives “aware” and “conscious” seem lacking as descriptive terms. Perhaps awareness extends beyond that which we are conscious of, that we are simply unaware of just how aware we really are. Sounds paradoxical, I know. But if we get a virus, we must be in some sense “aware” of the virus’ presence and act accordingly, meaning we kick in our immune responses.
Doesn't entail free will. Randomness is unpredictable.
Here's a thought.
We don't choose who we are, essentially making our ability to choose itself insignificant in the issue of freewill.
That being said I wonder why, sometimes, we resist our urges which arise from the wellspring of preferences we never chose in the first place.
Is that freewill?
Resisting, struggling against our own nature must mean something; like a computer doing something contrary to its hardware and software.
And yet we could say that this resistance too is part of the programming, to use a bit of computer terminology. After all, no matter how you decide you always do it to please yourself.
Have you ever met a person who derives 0 or even negative returns from his mental and physical investments in an intentional way?
I wonder...
I think, in very extreme terms, we need to abandon a hedonistic outlook as you can see it's this that prevents the act of resisting our nature look a sham. Is that even possible? Am I simply trying to win an argument or is there a problem with hedonism which seems to be the prevalent spirit of the times?
Next day, dog sees cat, trainer issues stern "NO", dog struggles with natural urge but finds a way to suppress it.
Same thing but more evolved.
Does the dog have free will? In the sense that there is a fork in the road and he will choose a path, yes. Based on his rudimentary understanding of the situation the dog unconsciously weighs the consequences and takes one path or the other: follow his instinct, or please his trainer. There is no randomness in his choice.
In our case a choice may involve a more complex process and an actively conscious checklist of sorts, but is the end it is nothing but weighing the possible options against the outcome.
Some might argue the deterministic angle that fixed values and predictable thought processes take the freedom out of the choice, but that is overcomplicating things. Choosing between blue pill or red pill will never boil down to a simple formula.
Perhaps your idea of self-restraint and frugality as an antidote to hedonism may provide a sort of veto power. We're not slaves to happiness and our emotions. This might provide a limited sort of freedom in and of itself.
I'm a compatibilist. I think free will might be a complex interplay of determinism, chaos and randomness.
The mind may well have both deterministic and random elements that counterbalance each other. For instance, lets think about cognitive dissonance. This sensation forces us to reconcile our actions with our thoughts. It's a stressful feeling. If one were to try to act on an evil thought that randomly pops into their head, they will be prevented from doing so by this stress reaction. Maybe this stress is deterministic in nature. So the randomness of our thoughts is counteracted by an instinctive feeling of stress and tension if we act against our true beliefs. This makes us responsible for our actions.
If hard determinism is true, then why can't we go on "autopilot" or "cruise control" and sleepwalk to where we need to get to? Consciousness must have a function.
When I was a child, I concluded that you cannot willingly choose to do something other than what you most want to do at that moment. My brother tried to disprove me by slapping himself, and I told him that he wanted to disprove me more than not slap himself, so he slapped himself a little harder. It was kind of fun because my brother usually was the bully.
In all these subsequent years, I have yet to see an example of myself or anyone willingly choose to do something other than what you most want to do at that moment. If you think of an example, take a closer look at what you really wanted to do.
With that, this magical mysterious "free will" starts looking like a simple and deterministic function that can be done by a computer running an AI program. Run all the known options through a goal evaluation function to calculate a metric and select the one with the highest value (or if there is a tie, just pick the first one, last one, or whatever).
Yes, and somebody suggested that we always want what we will, since it reflects us and our wants, but we cannot will the will to be other than it is at the moment; but of course learning can change the fixed will to a new and wider fixed will.
Probably it is the brain's chosen form, as qualia, to broadcast globally to other brain areas and to put into memory.
1. If everything we do is a product of external causes or indeterministic chance, then nothing we do is done freely. (If P, then Q)
2. Everything we do is a product of external causes or indeterministic chance (P)
3. Therefore nothing we do is done freely (therefore, Q)
The problem with it is that though premise 1 is well-supported by our rational intuitions, premise 2 is just a dogma. It may be true, but there isn't any evidence that it is.
Here is a stronger argument, because in this case both premises are well-supported by our rational intuitions (and demonstrably so):
1. If everything we do is a product of external causes or indeterministic chance, then nothing we do is done freely. (if P, then Q)
2. We do some things freely (not Q)
3. Therefore, not everything we do is a product of external causes or indeterministic chance.
Premise 1 is the same as in the previous argument and so enjoys powerful support from our rational intuitions, as even those who deny we have free will must admit.
Premise 2 is also well supported by our rational intuitions. For free will is something we learn about via our reason (we don't hear, touch, smell, taste or see free will - it is something our reason represents us to have). And clearly the reason of most people tells them that they have free will, for humans have believed in free will for as long as they have had powers of rational reflection.
Now, perhaps the intuitions that support 2 are false. But the burden of proof is on the person who makes this claim, for all arguments appeal to rational intuitions and so to just dismiss some because respecting them would lead to a conclusion you do not personally endorse is irrational. The only rational basis upon which one should reject widespread rational intuitions is conflict with other rational intuitions. And those that support 2 do not conflict with any others, so far as I can see. They just conflict with the dogma that eveything we do is the product of external causes or chance.
How do you define "freely" in a way that doesn't just boil down to "a mix of random and deterministic" though?
Quoting Bartricks
It's not so much reason as intuition I think. If there was a reasonable argument for free will as you're presenting it and everyone knew we wouldn't be talking about it
Quoting Bartricks
For as long as laws and punishment existed and needed to be justified*
Quoting Bartricks
The proof is simply that in EVERY OTHER CAUSAL CHAIN in the world, an event happens either randomly or deterministically. I'm pretty sure that puts the burden of proof on the one proposing the magical third method of causation "free"
For an analogy: I have excellent evidence my computer is working - it appears to be working. But I haven't the first idea 'how' it is working. Likewise, I think I have excellent evidence that I have free will - my reason tells me I have it (and it tells other people the same thing, for free will is almost universally believed-in). But when it comes to what having free will involves- well, about that I am far less sure and I think we only get insight into it by listening to our reason.
Anyway, why do most people think causal determinism is incompatible with free will? Well, because they think that if determinism is true then everything they do will be wholly the product of external causes.
Does that follow, though? No. Imagine an object that has always existed. That is, it never came into being - it exists of necessity. Now imagine that determinism is true and imagine that object in the company of other objects. Those other objects causally interact with the necessarily existing object, and the necessarily existing object causes some events to occur. Were those events wholly the product of external causes? No, for there was another ingredient - the nature of the object itself. And that nature, whatever it may be, was not itself the product of prior causes, for this object was never created.
Thus, it does not follow from determinism being true, that everything a person does will trace to external causes, for the person themselves may not have been created - they may be a necessarily existing thing.
So far as I can see, that is the only way it is possible for a thought or desire or will of mine to be something other than caused by external causes or a matter of pure chance. That is, if I am a contingently existing object (an object that has come into being), then everything I do will indeed be either a product of external causes or pure chance. It is only if I am a necessarily existing object that this will not be true. Thus, I conclude - tentatively - that free will requires being a necessarily existing thing.
That's a conclusion that is quite hard to swallow, I admit. But that's just due to intellectual fashions.
For instance, my reason tells me that I cannot be divided. I can have half an apple and half a cake and half a car and half a house. But I can't have a half a mind. Minds are indivisible.
Yet only something that lacked parts would be indivisible. That is, only something simple - something that is made of nothing simpler than itself - would be incapable of being divided.
If I listen to my reason, then, I am being told that my mind is a simple thing.
Simple things, if they exist (and some must), exist of necessity. For they cannot be created (from what could one create one?) or destroyed (for into what could one deconstruct one?). Thus, they exist 'a se' or with 'aseity'.
So, in so many words my reason tells me that my mind is a necessarily existing thing. Which confirms what it told me about my free will - namely that I have it, and that I could only have it if I was a necessarily existing thing.
Shame on those people insulting you.
Seriously, the simplest are covariant quantum fields.
First, not all events can be caused by prior events, for that would land us with an infinity of prior events. So we know by rational reflection that some events must be caused by objects.
Of course, we'd have the same problem if every object had to be caused to exist. So we know that some objects are not caused to exist. And as nothing can come from nothing, we know that some objects exist of necessity. That is, it is in the nature of some objects to exist.
An object of that kind - an object that exists by its nature - has not been caused to exist by anything external or prior. And because it exists of necessity, its existence cannot be said to be chancy either. Thus, if we are objects of that kind, we would be capable of exercising free will.
I conclude that this is exactly what we are.