Do You Believe In Free Will?

or do you think we're no different from waterfalls, every thought and action a result of cause and effect, stemming back billions of years?

I will post my opinion later.

 

Various viewpoints on free will are discussed fairly thoroughly in this recent thread...

http://www.hipforums.com/forum/topic/473092-see-alot-of-different-stuff-here-so/

 

Neither. Though I've changed my mined on this many times my current belief is that neither determinism, nor indeterminism, nor any combination of the two leave room for free will. My conclusion is that robust, so called "libertarian", free will is a confused and ultimately meaningless concept.

 

Yes. But that does not mean most of our decisions are made primarily by free will. It is just that it is not completely absent either.

 

When you changed your mind on this many times, were you predetermined to do so? How curious. Part of the confusion in discussions of free will is deciding what will we're talking about. Steve Harris seems to be impressed by the Libet experiments showing that we make some simple decisions before we're aware of it. These decisions are made by our unconscious. Is that us, or an important part of us? If so, maybe it's the part that has free will. For a practical concept of free will, see Daniel Dennett's compatibilistic two-stage "Valerian " model. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joCOWaaTj4A http://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/two-stage_models.html

 

Yes.
I can walk away from what does work for me, so I most certainly do.

 

Perhaps, perhaps not, perhaps partially. According to my current view on free will it would make no difference. Whether my current attitude is/was determined by the past and the laws of nature, or random chance and fluctuations, or a combination of both (whether if re-living my life a million times identically up to this point I would arrive at a million different conclusions at this point) there is still no room for free will.

Certainly true. I specifically mentioned libertarian, or robust, free will because I think that is what most ordinary people are really thinking about when they talk about free will.

Whatever else these studies may mean, they certainly raise interesting questions about personal identity and decision making even outside the scope of arguments about free will. Is it an important part of us? Absolutely. Consider different but related studies demonstrating that you can greatly influence a person's appraisal of another person's character simply by having them hold a cold or a warm beverage before meeting the other person for the first time. People holding a warm beverage tend to rate the newly met person much more highly than someone holding a cold beverage. But poor judges of ourselves that we are, not one person in the study when asked to defend their appraisal said anything like "Well I was holding a cold drink and I thought, 'this guy probably isn't very charitable'." Says a lot about free will, even outside of philosophy, when we can't even identify the origin of the most basic emotions we are experiencing.

Doubtful. If anything free will would have to come from the conscious part of the mind. Are you comfortable with the idea of freely making choices you aren't aware of? And would it really be 'you' that had the free will, or would consciousness merely be along for the ride with whatever it is that has the free will? At the very least an interesting idea for a short story could be derived from this.

I like Dennett's work, but I have never heard a form of compatibilist free will that is worthy of being called free will.

 

This. Although the illusion of free will seems to be fine for all of us. I certainly feel as though my actions are free.

 

Does the fact that everything is subject to the action-reaction principle make free will an impossibility?

 

Not sure. My assumption would be that every decision you make, or any event that happens in your life happens because it was the only decision or event that was possible at that moment, as determined by everything that preceded it. But I know you love to debate, so I'm open to counter-arguments.

 

it is a matter of degree that is constantly and unpredictably varying. you have more then any one other influence upon yourself, though even that is never a hundred percent.
beyond your own self, you are a voting member, so to speak, among the billions upon billions of other voting members, of the universe, which votes you cast, by how you act, and what your priorities happen to actually be.
again never zero and never absolute either one.

 

no freewill....

 

Richard Holton of MIT uses this term (which I'm not sure if he coined) called "frustrators" which are essentially entities, most notably perhaps people, that intentionally disrupt a system to assert their autonomy.

Now let's consider a few other hypothetical entities...

Wouldn't a 'good' AI automaton (Robot) lack a frustrator quality? I think we might agree that if a automaton was exhibiting "frustrator" qualities we might say that it has 'bugs' or is dysfunctional. Presumably the lack of frustrator quality would apply to a Philosophical zombie as well, because by definition it lacks a sense of autonomy and therefore could not intentionally disrupt the system. However, both these entities would still be governed by causality just like we are assuming with people.

So how is it that people likely not only have frustrator qualities but more remarkably, even benefit from exhibiting such qualities in an environment that we assume is completely determined?

 

Part of the problem is that "free will" is something of an oxymoron. It certainly doesn't mean indeterminacy in the sense of randomness. If I went to the polls to cast my vote for Hillary or the Donald and ended up voting for the opposing candidate, I'd probably consult a shrink. Nor does it mean that every action is the product of conscious choice. Most of our actions are autonomic reflexes, which is a good thing. If I had to rethink every finger stroke in typing this message, or every step in driving to work or breathing, It would be inefficient at best and paralytic at worst. Recent research suggests that our brains are modularized, with different regions specialized for different, sometimes overlapping tasks which can sometimes be competitive. The conscious part of our decisions involves that small part requiring the attention of the ego, but is influenced by sometimes competing messages from mid-level management. (see S. Pinker, The Blank Slate, and How the Mind Works; Michio Kaku, The Future of the Mind; and D. Eagleman, Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain) Biologist E.O. Wilson thinks that human evolution resulted in sometimes competing modules for competition and cooperation, which involve real tension in making decisions. Hard determinists like Harris would say the conflict is a sham, and that it's entirely predictable how the "conflict" would be resolved. But so far no one has been able to prove that. Harris thinks he can do this partly by means of introspection. If we ask honestly how we arrive at a particular decision, we'll soon discover that it was a result of values which we did not actually choose, but were programmed into us by nature and nurture. Fair enough, but irrelevant from a practical standpoint. Like Dennett, I'm willing to accept that, but am more concerned with whether or not I have control over decisions and actions done in pursuit of those values, like voting for trump or Hillary.

For example, I tend to value exercise for the purpose of keeping my body and mind healthy--within reason. I'm not a couch potato like some of my friends, nor am I like others who jog every morning come rain, sleet, snow, ice or 90 degree temperatures. My moderation in this area is, I think, obviously the result of conditioning by various forms of social and possibly genetic conditioning which I can't claim credit or blame for. It's pretty cold today, and I was faced with the choice of going for my usual walk, going to the gym instead, or just skipping it. A friend convinced me that it was too cold to go for the walk, and I would have felt bad about skipping exercise altogether, so I set out for the gym--and ended up going for the walk, because exposure to the air convinced me I could probably handle it without being too uncomfortable, and being outdoors would be more pleasant than working out indoors. Did I freely choose the outcome? I'd say yes, because I ended up weighing alternatives and choosing an outcome which maximized my satisfaction. Whether or not, at some deeper level, that decision was predetermined is irrelevant to me. If somebody else could have predicted the outcome, I certainly couldn't.

You mention the research involving the influence of holding a hot or a cold glass on evaluations of human contacts. There are certainly scads of similar examples of the extent to which we can be and are manipulated by appeals to our unconscious (See Vance Packer's classic, The Hidden Persuaders). The business of advertising is grounded on these, and the best we can do in self-defense is probably to be aware of them. But I like the two-step model, developed by thinkers from William James to Dennett. http://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/two-stage_models.html Astrophysicist Robert Doyle recently outlined a two-stage model in which chance presents a variety of alternative possibilities to the human actor, who selects one of these options and enacts it: first the “free” generation of ideas, then a deterministic evaluation and selection process we call “will". Dennett explains: "when we are faced with an important decision, a consideration-generator whose output is to some degree undetermined produces a series of considerations, some of which may of course be immediately rejected as irrelevant by the agent (consciously or unconsciously). Those considerations that are selected by the agent as having a more than negligible bearing on the decision then figure in a reasoning process, and if the agent is in the main reasonable, those considerations ultimately serve as predictors and explicators of the agent's final decision".

 

Agreed, completely.

Agreed as well. This is why I am so fond of the word autonomous. Free will is a meaningless concept, but being 'self ruled' is very meaningful. As a side note, I think Pinker is absolutely fantastic when it comes to exploring these concepts. His work played an important part in encouraging me to earn degrees in behavioral science and computer information systems. Those combined courses of study have had a massive impact on my views about reality.

 

Of course there is no free will-----do you think at my age I want to be working at McDonald's? I even went to college! I mean, sure some people might argue that I could have actually studied in college, but its not my fault that drugs and parties are every where on a college campus. And how was I to know that a degree in metallurgy was going to not get me into a nice posh upper management job on Wall Street, or that it would be so hard that I would have to actually study? Seriously, everyone knows what metal is----why would we have to actually study it----it's not like I wanted to actually make metal!

Besides I did get a good job when I was younger, but I had no idea the boss would be such a jerk. We had a party at his house and his wife was really coming on to me---no one would have passed her up----she was so hot and sexy and-----drunk! Seriously, there should be some kind of anti-discrimination law that would have prevented him from firing me. So what if he caught me----it wasn't my fault----she was the one that was drunk. And now I have to pay child support for her kid... that just happens to look like me...?

All this bad stuff keeps happening to me---it's not my fault...






No, none of that is true, but if we truly did not have free will, we wouldn't really have to own up to any of our choices.

I do believe in free will, and I understand it in the terms of existential freedom.

What proof is there of this freedom? In other threads on this forum I have discussed the double slit experiment, and the fact that it demonstrates that a conscious observer can change a quantum reality. Specifically, in the case of this experiment, it shows that an observer can change the way light passes through two slits, from passing through as a continuous wave, to passing through as individual particles. Science has had a hard time dealing with this, especially from its materialist perspective. Finally they wrote it off as decoherence----that the measurement of the particles themselves caused the waves to undergo probability wave collapses into particles.

IN truth they did not solve the problem, but the implication seemed too crazy, so they left it at that. They didn't solve the problem because decoherence is always part of the experiment, observer or not. And now we have other experiments that prove that the Zeno Effect actually exists---another quantum reality that takes place because of an observer. In these latter experiments (which deal with the decay of radioactive atoms and that observation can actually stop this decay) decoherence is already inescapable, so it is much harder still to write off the effect because of decoherence.

We speak in terms of an observer, but in truth there is no actual observation by an observer. Instead there is a measurement, or some other observation which produces a conscious awareness of a reality---we understand that it must be a certain way, so it becomes that way. In other words, as scientists originally understood the implications of the double slit experiment to be----we create the reality by our observation.

Now there will be many who will feel compelled to argue this point-----there are several threads where these arguments have recently taken place-----so I am not going to debate it here----but you are welcome to read one of those threads and try to argue your point---if you have something new, or a different perspective, then I will debate it with you there.

So what does all this mean? It means that, 1.) We have the ability to determine, change, or create our own reality; 2.) that the universe already moves on its own course of probabilities---the flow of nature, the flow of the Tao if you will----this is decoherence; and finally, that 3.) there is a certain level of belief, or a certain level of intention, that must exist, in order to overcome the existing decoherence, and also the reality as created by the obervations of others.

Now you are probably wondering, what is decoherence? ...Well, I am falling asleep, so I will continue with this tomorrow, and then discuss just what our existential freedom is...

 

I don't see what this thought experiment has to do with free will. The free will debate is most certainly not about whether a person feels that things happen to them or conversely that they are in control of what happens to them. Neither is it about whether one finds the conditions of one's life favorable or not. To offer a counter thought experiment (one that is true in my case): Of course there is no free will. I love my job. I went to college twice for scientific disciplines, in both cases balancing studying and partying and graduating with high honors. At various points I was in committed relationships, but being surrounded by beautiful women in the dance department led to a lot of temptation. However I refrained from acting on it because it would have gone against my values. Many good things keep happening to me. Some of them dumb luck, others as a result of hard work.

Just as I do not see what your example has to do with free will, I don't see what my example has to do with it either.

I don't see what this has to do with free will either. Forget about observers having effects on 'quantum reality', whatever that term means, and let's focus on the much more robust effect that an agent has on the ordinary world of macro objects. I can reach across my desk, grab a cup, and move it elsewhere. This is a much more massive change to the physical world than altering the way a particular portion of light propagates itself. Everybody is aware that agents alter the world but this doesn't prove in anyway that we have free will. Does the ability to alter propagation of light demonstrate that the Japanese pilot is exercising free will in complying with an order to carry out a kamikaze mission? Does it demonstrate that I have free will in moving the cup? Certainly not. I don't even see how they are related, though I would genuinely like to hear your argument connecting quantum mechanics to free will in the macro world.

But the question remains whether we do so as an act of free will or not.

No argument from me there, but what does it have to do with free will?

If you decide to respond to me (which I sincerely hope you do, because of course this is not the first time I have seen someone argue in this way but I've never been able to get anyone to provide the argument connecting quantum facts to the exercise of free will) please keep in mind that in my particular case my lack of belief in free will has nothing to do with determinism. That is to say I do not argue that the universe is deterministic therefor we have no free will. In fact I would say that free will would only be possible in a world with a high degree of determinism. As okiefreak pointed out, if I went to do X and ended up doing Y because of indeterminism then that would certainly not be an exercise of free will.

To sum up my position: Determinism does not allow for free will, neither does indeterminism, nor does any mixture of the two. I believe then, as I have argued elsewhere, that free will is an unintelligible concept, a contradiction in terms.

 

Steven Pinker, whose work you admire, agrees with Colin McGinn, Noam Chomsky, and the biologist Gunther Stein that the human mind lacks the cognitive equipment to solve the problem. "our minds evolved by natural selection to solve problems that were life -and death maters to our ancestors, not to commune with correctness or to answer any question we are capable of asking. We cannot hold ten thousand words in short-term memory. We cannot see in ultraviolet light . We cannot mentally rotate an object in the fourth dimension. And perhaps we cannot solve conundrums like free will and sentience." How The Mind Works, p.561. What a Killjoy!

But the Quixote/Sisyphus is strong in many of us, who find it hard to give up so easily. The renowned mathematical physicist, Sir Roger Penrose, influenced by Godel's incompleteness theorem, concluded that no mechanical rule-based system could account for the mind's creative capacity, which could be explained only by a still undiscovered theory incorporating both quantum mechanics and relativity theory--the elusive Theory of Everything (TOE). In collaboration with Stuart Hammeroff, he even speculated that microtubules in our neurons might act as vehicles for these quantum effects by carrying our nondeterministic, quantum -based computations. Evaluating such a theory is way beyond my pay grade, but I've been following the back-and-forth between Hammeroff and Michael Shermer, & between David Scharf and Victor Stenger http://www.truthabouttm.org/truth/SocietalEffects/Critics-Rebuttals/StengerRebuttal/index.cfm, http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/Quantum/MythQC.pdf over whether or not such a thing is possible. http://www.skepticalinvestigations.org/Debates/Hameroff_Shermer.html. I've been rooting for Shermer/Stenger, mainly because I think we need to be cautious about abandoning established models and buying into the extravagant theories of physicists like Goswami. But who knows?

Such a theory would fit nicely with Doyle's two-step model in which quantum-based processes generate ("free") alternatives and deterministic processes ("will") make the final decisions. This would be the "mixture of the two" which you say you reject. Admittedly, this is all speculative, but probably good enough to satisfy compatabilists like Dennett.

 

No. I resisted , but I was compelled to post this according to my lineage.