When does free will start?

For topics such as this, I find it useful to define what definition of free will would be acceptable to you.

Do you define free will as being from causality, or independent of causality?

If it is dependent on causality, then we could in theory, backtrack through that causality and arrive at a moment in which it all starts.

If it is independent of causality, then it means there is no explanation for its being, and its existence is random.

Or is it a combination of causality and randomness?

Whatever you pick, now you must include you. "You" are a combination of many cells, which in turn serve many functions in your brain. You have a certain management capability over portions of your brain. You may find it extremely difficult to choose to stop digesting however. You also must eat, drink, and sleep to live.

So for you, what is the free part? What is "your will"? Define it so that it best fits what you would like out of it, and in a way that is not outright contradictory and your definition will be about as good as anyone else's.

For me personally, I don't think about it much. I suppose it is the freedom to live my life in such a way that is fulfilling to the being that I am. It isn't so much my choices, but the freedom from inhibitions or restraints to make those choices. I don't call this an illusion, but maybe my definition isn't satisfying, or what you are looking for.

Quoting Gregory

Looking over my life, it seems that choice is like driving a car. As you are doing it, you know you are the one in control. Nonetheless, maybe as a decision is in the process of unfolding, the will is really going to fast for the agent to be in control. The agent, so to speak, is swept away with his will but believes he is in control. Wouldn't that mean we live under a huge illusion all the time though?

The psychological machinery at work here is the difference between habitual and attentional processing.

If you operate at the level of habit, you have well-drilled routines for handling life on a learnt and pre-aquainted basis. This is a brain shortcut that ends up doing most of the job. It can "do the right thing" in a fifth of a second. And it can do it subconsciously in the sense we don't even need to notice or remember it.

I often drive long stretches with no awareness of my surroundings. And quite safely as the brain is designed to handle the familiar so long as you are not distracting it with some competing action. Driving while trying to read or talk on the phone become dangerous as other habit structures are getting called upon. But day dreaming idly while driving is just leaving your attentional parts of the brain actually idle and so not producing distractions.

Then the attentional part of the brain is reserved for everything that well-drilled habit can't handle. It is novel, risky, surprising, or in some other way demanding an active hand. That feeling of actually concentrating and being in charge.

It takes about half a second to develop a state of focused attention in a way that might connect sensation to action. So it is much slower. More work has to get done. But it is about an actual choice in which alternatives get eliminated.

So the question of "who is in charge making my decisions" is already complicated at a basic brain architecture level. There are two systems - one driven by routine habit, the other reserved for deliberative choice. And normally they work together so seamlessly we don't notice how they combine to take the credit for everything we wind up doing.

Quoting Gregory

When it comes to children, the West through the Christian religion traditionally said that the faculty of free will comes about at age 7.

This makes some kind of sense in that brains have to mature. The parts involved in being able to make sharp attentive choices - block quick acting habit and hold attention long enough to think actions through - are the late bloomers. The ability to self-regulate the emotions is something that doesn't become fully adult into the late teens.

It is also strongly tied to language learning. So even toddlers show a big step up in self regulation as they get used to speaking and thus talking their actions through.

Seven isn't any special age. But the Jesuits knew that you need to grab a child young, indoctrinate the desired thought habits, the automatisms, before they become too capable of instead thinking for themselves.

Quoting Gregory

On this thread I thought people talk about their experiences with freedoms and why they do or do not believe it is an illusion.

Freewill is an "illusion" in that it arises from the old Cartesian dilemma about whether we can be Newtonian-determined flesh robots or spiritually free-chosers as Christian theology demands. So freewill is a specific cultural construct. Other religions/other cultures don't demand this kind of stark division between "animal desire" and "divine reason".

The socio-biological reality is that we are neither flesh robots nor souls trapped in bodies. We are organisms that have evolved to make smart choices about environmental challenges. And once you are an animal with a brain, you already have that division between reacting by learnt habit vs acting by voluntary deliberation.

Humans just have much bigger brains and thus a greater capacity for both habit formation and attentional planning.

I think a good definition of free will is that it is it's own cause or its own casaulity, the capacity to do something that wouldn't have happened otherwise

Interesting aside imho: I had an older friend a few years a back. Named Glen. He had dementia. He said it was very frustrating because (as he related) many people with dementia feel that are responsible for the changes in their brains. I've found that true of the mentally ill community. It can be so tricky and the mind can be so conniving that knowing for sure where your free will lies at times seems impossible

We need to each have, I think, some definition of free will in our minds to keep our own inner harmony

Quoting apokrisis

But the Jesuits knew that you need to grab a child young, indoctrinate the desired thought habits, the automatisms, before they become too capable of instead thinking for themselves.

I've been there. Nonetheless, I wanted to quote some Bible verses that I thought were relevant to this thread, even for atheists like myself.

Proverbs 28:26
Whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool, but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered.

Jeremiah 17:9
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?

James 3:2
For we all stumble in many ways. And if anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able also to bridle his whole body.

I don't know if Heidegger knew much about biology, but biology wars against our minds. The mind wars against biology too though. What Heidegger wrote in Being and Time about how thinking about death is really desiring a conscience caught my attention. We often kick ourselves for things that aren't our fault as a kind of catharsis. Even with something like exercise, the mind can tell you "you can do it" when the body clearly can't do another rep. There is definitely a divide with in the human psyche. Thanks for the responses

Maybe read some Bhagavad-gita?

“The Blessed Lord said:
No doubt, you are right, O mighty Arjuna, that the mind is hard to control, wavering and restless, but by repeated effort and dispassion it can be done.”

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Quoting whollyrolling

Feeling free is not free will.

:grin:

Free will starts when one realizes that the will is not free from influence, and so begins choosing the influences as wisely as one can...

Quoting Philosophim

Or is it a combination of causality and randomness?

Yes. In my musings on the topic of FreeWill, I like to use an analogy with Evolution. Many scientists seem to think of the Evolutionary process as completely random. But total randomness would be Chaos, not the organized system we see around us. It's true that mutations and such are random, but Natural Selection is what "chooses" the next generation from among the options available. In that case Cause & Effect is not just a series of deterministic accidents, but the step-by-step construction --- from inorganic materials --- of a universe that is like a living organism. So the "Selector" is like a fishnet, it doesn't create the varieties of fish, but it's a negative Cause of what "shall not pass". Therefore, one of the two determinants of evolutionary direction is the Natural Selection evaluation of fitness (weeding out) : an algorithm that decides how big to make the holes in the net. Only Moral Agents, with the rare ability of Rational Choice, can decide to fight Fate. I call it "Freedom Within Determinism".

The question of Conscious Choice has been debated to death. But I think Michael Shermer made a pragmatic point : accepting that Neuroscience has revealed that even the behavior of rational humans is motivated primarily by emotional subconscious processes. Which leaves only the last stage of that process --- to press the Go/No Go button (a moral choice) --- for rational Consciousness to Allow (pass) or to Veto (weed out) the motivating output of lower level competition between non-conscious brain modules. Shermer called that last minute negation "Free Won't". :cool:


Free Will vs Free Won't : So, Shermer intoduces the concept of “Free Won't”. In our contingent world, humans are never totally free to make unconstrained moral choices.
http://bothandblog2.enformationism.info/page63.html

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Reply to Gregory just ask yourself if you went back in time to that decision, could you have made another one? and with that take everything into consideration that factored in your initial decision, and even then you won't be able to account for what you,
and I believe a deterministic conclusion would be reached ultimately under physicalism (materialism).

Quoting Gregory

Wouldn't that mean we live under a huge illusion all the time though?

you do.

Quoting whollyrolling

I'm not sure many scientists think anything is completely without order, or they wouldn't be obsessed with demonstrating order in what seems at first chaotic.

That was not the point. Of course, mainstream Chaos theory asserts that there are orderly patterns within disorderly systems. It's what they call Deterministic Chaos. And the same principle applies to Evolution. But, in their writings on Evolution, atheist scientists tend to emphasize its randomness to avoid any implications of intention or design behind the evolutionary algorithm. They de-emphasize the onward & upward direction of evolutionary progress, because it sounds too much like a goal-directed process. :smile:

Quoting whollyrolling

And how can choice be related to a thing called 'free will' while we undergo automatous physical processes in our brain prior to thinking something?

That question was discussed in the blog post and article below.

Conscious Choice : http://bothandblog2.enformationism.info/page72.html

Free Won't : [i]Libet concluded that participants were using conscious choice to veto the muscle flex at the last moment.
We have free will to abort an action. So, we may better think of volitional action in this case not as free will, but as "free won't." We can stop an action initiated by our brain nonconsciously.[/i]
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/dont-delay/201106/free-wont-it-may-be-all-we-have-or-need

Quoting Gnomon

But I think Michael Shermer made a pragmatic point : accepting that Neuroscience has revealed that even the behavior of rational humans is motivated primarily by emotional subconscious processes.

More correct is that it reveals that habit can be overridden by attention.

The decision to push a button at some particular moment is a habitual act - the mechanics of the motor act can be handled by the mid brain in less than a fifth of a second.

But as part of moving a finger, the feeling of moving that finger must be communicated widely to the sensory parts of the higher brain. Otherwise we would be shocked by the feeling of our finger suddenly moving of its own accord - shades of Dr Strangelove.

That forewarning of what we are in the middle of intending to do does provide a brief opportunity for frontal attentional processes to intercept and countermand. There is free won’t that can catch the act, the rising impulse, and block it.

So the brain is set up to act habitually as its basic mode - just emit behaviours in a learnt fashion without deliberation. And that is fine because all our habits have proven themselves as generally sensible and correct over time.

But then we have attentional or deliberative levels of processing that can inform and even override the simple emitting of stereotyped action patterns. If we are paying attention, we can even detect some rising impulse early enough to suppress is.

So any “willing” had this complex but rational temporal structure.

Unfortunately we talk about freewill and consciousnesses in ways that reflect too little of that actual rational complexity.

Psychasthenia can especially make free will hard to understand

Quoting Gregory

Psychasthenia can especially make free will hard to understand

Disruption of that mid-brain habit vs frontal brain attention axis I was talking about?

Compulsions are the urge to emit stereotyped actions patterns. Anxiety is about attention not being able to focus on "what matters".

That reflects another dichotomy in that attention can be directed either towards some focal "endogenous" course of action (the dopamine-mediated pathway, to be simplistic), or towards a vigilant state of seeking the right such focus - an exogenous or norepinephrine-mediated pathway.

So disruptions to the smooth execution of the habit~attentional system - the automatic vs voluntary behaviour distinction - are explainable by the same neurobiology.

The usually missed part is the two levels of processing are designed to work seamlessly together. We only notice any conflict when this seamless integration breaks down. Or when it is teased apart in some artificial experimental set-up.

Reply to apokrisis

Right. That is why I said on this forum "free will is a type of multi-tasking" and yet "the reason, or super-ego, can propose things as possible which the will cannot do". We have to take choices on a case to case basis. Some people may never have made a free decision in their entire lives

Martin Luther's scrupulosiry created Protestantism. Quietism, although heretical, is often the only answer to such a condition. Have hope it's not despair

Quoting apokrisis

More correct is that it reveals that habit can be overridden by attention.

Good point! I suspect that most of our behavior is habitual and subconscious. So we exercise our "FreeWill" by attending to the proposed actions, and evaluating their consequences based on past experience. The evaluating module of the mind may be what we call "Character", which is also mostly a habit of making good choices. Those virtuous habits (distinguishing good from bad) are learned in advance to be ready at a moments notice. So, the overriding veto is almost instantaneous, and barely conscious. Then, we can construct more elaborate reasons for our behavior after the fact. :smile:


Free Won't : [i]Libet concluded that participants were using conscious choice to veto the muscle flex at the last moment.
We have free will to abort an action. So, we may better think of volitional action in this case not as free will, but as "free won't." We can stop an action initiated by our brain nonconsciously.[/i]
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/dont-delay/201106/free-wont-it-may-be-all-we-have-or-need

Quoting Gnomon

So, the overriding veto is almost instantaneous, and barely conscious. Then, we can construct more elaborate reasons for our behavior after the fact.

Yep. That is the social side of the equation. We must always be able to offer the world some good reason for our actions.

So there is the dilemma. Our brain is designed to just act. It figures out what to do while it is figuring out what is happening. The two things are part of the one integrated process.

And yet society hovers over us demanding we take thoughtful responsibility for those actions/decisions/choices. It sets an impossible standard for control where no detail could have escaped our attention.

The brain is evolved to minimise the need to attend. Society demands attention at every possible step.

Hence freewill as the ultimate paradox so far as many are concerned.

Let me clarify what I wrote (since it's my thread I better keep it neat). I am Catholic by nature in a majority of ways. That's how I was raised. I don't intellectually believe in the Catholic "supernatural order" anymore though. Catholics condemned Protestantism for saying that faith alone was needed for salvation. They thought faith alone was an incomplete human act. The act of salvation instead was a combination of faith, hope, and love (charity). Through ecumenism, especially the Lutheran-Catholic dialogues, Catholics realized that a lot of Protestants were genuinally like them and concluded that the Protestants emphasize faith for psychological reasons but that their actual acts of "faith alone" were in reality acts of faith, hope and love. This old dispute has relevance to my thread. That is, what is needed for virtuous acts? Is Quietism evil? Is Buddhism quietism? What is good and bad meditation? Sometimes I will lie down and just stare at a wall for about an hour. I think it's a mixture of mulling and focusing, but a yoga instructor friend told me once it is not meditation. I really don't know what meditation is then, what the difference between self-hypnosis and meditation is, and how these types of things relate to understanding oneself and one's own free faculty. I come at this issue, again, from a religious perspective because i was raised a traditional Latin Mass Catholic

Quoting Gregory

Sometimes I will lie down and just stare at a wall for about an hour. I think it's a mixture of mulling and focusing, but a yoga instructor friend told me once it is not meditation.I really don't know what meditation is then, what the difference between self-hypnosis and meditation is, and how these types of things relate to understanding oneself and one's own free faculty.

If you are really interested in navel-gazing, without becoming a Buddhist or Hindu, you might enjoy Robert Wright's book, Why Buddhism Is True. Don't let the title throw you. The book is not about Buddhism, but about self-knowledge & self-control. And he examines a variety of traditional methods in the light of modern Psychology, and Evolutionary theory.

Self-hypnosis is intended to be a non-religious method for self-control, such as to quit smoking. And Buddhist meditation is just one of many methods for deep introspection. What you were doing may be more like a monk in his cell, "praying without saying". I'm not sure what this has to do with FreeWill though. Maybe choosing to meditate has evolutionary benefits for creatures that are smart enough to know that they often instinctively do things that are not in their personal self-interest, regardless of their genetic fitness. So over time, they developed a variety of methods for controlling their subconscious primitive urges. :naughty: :pray:

Reply to Gnomon

Thanks! I often feel robotic and am interested in techniques to awaken my consciousness and I guess my free will too. Got to use free will to find free will lol

Choosing to meditate could be selfish or selfless. Our genes are designed for reproduction, but an endless future with no human rights or happiness in the middle is worthless. The paradox of genetic predisposition and love. Sam Harris says scientists can predict human behavior ten seconds before a decision is made. Probably no free will is used in those experimental settings however

Reply to Gnomon There's no such thing as an "Atheist Scientist". If someone is attempting science yet involving gods or no gods in their work, then they're not doing their job properly. Someone may or may not believe in gods, and also someone may or may not be a scientist, but the two are in no way connected.

Reply to Gnomon It doesn't matter to me what blog post said what. I'm not here to go fetch info from some blog.

Quoting whollyrolling

There's no such thing as an "Atheist Scientist". If someone is attempting science yet involving gods or no gods in their work, then they're not doing their job properly. Someone may or may not believe in gods, and also someone may or may not be a scientist, but the two are in no way connected.

I agree, but you missed the point. I was not equating Science and Atheism. I was simply making allowances for Theist scientists, such as Francis Collins. But those who are indeed Atheists are the ones who tend to discount evidence of design in Evolution. I suspect that Molecular Geneticist Collins would have a different opinion. My point was that some scientists do see Natural Selection as an intentional device for directing Evolution.

Francis Collins : advocates the perspective that belief in Christianity can be reconciled with acceptance of evolution and science
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Collins

PS__Ooops! Sorry, I forgot that you don't like links to expert opinions. :gasp:

Quoting whollyrolling

It doesn't matter to me what blog post said what.I'm not here to go fetch info from some blog.

So you don't accept information from people who make it their business to know these things? Do you accept ideas from the non-expert laymen on this blog? If not, why bother to post here? Would it matter if I said the same thing in my own words, right there in the forum reply --- just for your convenience? :cool:

PS__I now see why you so often miss the point of these forum posts : it seems that your mind is already made-up, and you don't want to be confused by alternative opinions. :yum:

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I don't know at what age "free will" starts. I'm not sure if I have much of any free will to mention now. Children are often told what to do, how to do it, and when. Sometimes I tell my wife that we should just let the children do whatever they want every now and then. As adults, we work and do things we don't always want to do in order to have precious moments of "doing whatever we want." So when we have our free time, we often have a limit to our free will by having only a few options available. For example, we may want to have a milkshake while skating around the rings of Saturn, but that is not a choice that is actually available to us.

Most things that we may desire to do have some sort of payment involved. Even just watching TV will require forgoing something else and at least paying for electricity. Suddenly our available choices are quite narrow. We next factor in environmental upbringing factors and genetic predispositions. Finally we add the mechanical movement of chemicals in one's brain that could, for example, compel us to seek a glass of water. We arrive a picture of our daily lives which does not leave very much room for any type of true freedom of choosing between many options for how we will behave and think.

That being said, there may yet be a sliver of free will at the point when two available options are truly equal in preferability and pre-existing compelling factors. Think about that, if all the factors that can compel a human's will to act in a certain way are equal between 2 available options, is that when Free Will can start? Or will the human break down and be unable to choose between the 2 equal choices. I wouldn't call that particular choice randomness. I would choose to call that free will.

Reply to Ash Abadear .

Like the proverbial donkey between two stacks of hay. Ye, i don't know. We aren't donkeys