Jimmy
King Phenomenon
Correct but I believe in a human that’s behind it all
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Free will
- Thread starter Jimmy
- Start date
Jimmy
King Phenomenon
The more I think about it I kind of believe in free will and I kind of don’t. Because I do believe I live the same life over and over again. I believe the world starts around 1980 and ends sometime before 2080 I’m an endless cycle. It’s like time travel without the memory. So it is no free will really but it is because all memory is gone if ya know what I mean. It’s weird. It’s the least of my worries. Just enjoy life really.
Oh and The fact that God brings everything back to around 1980 isn’t that hard to believe when you look at the awesomeness of God himself which for me is the universe. Time travel is child’s play. Haha
Oh and The fact that God brings everything back to around 1980 isn’t that hard to believe when you look at the awesomeness of God himself which for me is the universe. Time travel is child’s play. Haha
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I find it hard to believe that God is supporting an endless cycle involving the creation of the Punky Brewster television show. Perhaps it's Satan doing this...
You don't think morality, choosing between right or wrong has anything to do with free will?
Pete in Panama
Well-Known Member
Sure, there is some kind of connection but free will by itself is interesting in its own right. For me the physical observable realities of free will present many fascinating insights. Can we go there?
It depends on what you're referring to when you say "world at large making the choice." I think there are certain parameters of nature which might influence one's choices, particularly if one is fatigued, in pain, or under some other form of duress. There may be some degree of will, but not exactly "free" will (nor is it really determinism either).
Sure but I was trying to understand the intent of the OP. Or, from a, I assume, religious pov. I think in a Christian sense free will is about the idea we can choose to disobey God. How could we possibly disobey an all powerful God.
Otherwise, myself, I tend to believe we have a limited freedom of choice.
The important question is not whether you are free to express your will, but whether you are free to choose it. The first deals with contingent circumstances like being in jail and isn't an interesting philosophical problem. The second asks who or what is deciding what you will want to do in jail. If you have the freedom to choose what you will, you will yourself to not want things you can't have in jail. This is a problem for philosophy and neuroscience. It appears to me that my will is manufactured outside of my consciousness and delivered to it to be discovered with the concomitant illusion that the process was authored by the self - the so-called illusion of free will.
What difference does it make which position a person takes there that causes you to add "sadly"? I consider the question unanswerable at this time and possibly always will be, and don't see why you or I or anyone else should care what others believe about the matter. I lean toward the belief that free will is an illusion, a condition the faithful often disparagingly call being a robot. OK. If we're robots by that definition, then that's how it is and has always been.
Also, notice that we get commands to act from more than one neural network, and these may be conflicting desires. Hypothalamic nuclei inform the conscious agent that he is thirsty, and if his higher centers don't disagree, he takes a drink when he can. But if he's going for surgery in the morning and has been instructed not to drink overnight, he will have two wills - one saying "I want a drink" and the other saying the opposite. Most people will agree that the desire to drink is not willed freely (although the act of taking a drink in the absence of competing messages might be), but what about that other voice? It appears to work in the same manner as the hypothalamus - arriving at conclusions out of view then sending instructions - and when these conflict, the resolution is deterministic, like a tug of war where the more powerful tendency prevails.
Think of somebody trying to quit smoking in those terms. There is the will to smoke and the will to not smoke competing, and sometimes one prevails, sometimes the other, as when the reasoning part succumbs to the urge. This wouldn't happen if will could be freely chosen. There wouldn't be two wills competing, nor would there be any further smoking or desire to smoke.
Pete in Panama
Well-Known Member
It's not my experience that I'm able to understand everything God does, but my bet is that ur not interested in that. The fact that we have any choice at all matters, and given that assumption it makes life pretty interesting...
vulcanlogician
Well-Known Member
Agreed. It's like saying, "Sadly, some people think viruses can cause illness and death."
Even if free will's nonexistence is bad news, the fact remains: the truth is the truth. If free will exists, that's the truth. If free will is an illusion: that's the truth. Whatever the case, it is in our interest to know the truth of the matter, rather than have concluded erroneously.
I hate the fact that viruses cause illness and death. But I'm not going to go around denying the truth of it on those grounds. I find it somewhat troubling and fatalistic when I contemplate the possibility that my free will is (perhaps) an illusion. But that doesn't make it "sad" that I have arrived at the conclusion that free will may not exist. If that conclusion is correct, I'm better informed by accepting it.
If I may be excused for devil's advocate nitpickiness, there is a segment of metaphysicians (compatibilists) who bring up the example of jail or bodily restraint as an argument. But in a different manner than 1137 has done.
The compatibilist points out that all our intuitive ideas about freedom or unfreedom remark on our ability to act how we would in the world if it were possible to act in such a way. For instance, if my hands are bound to a post, I do not have the freedom to do cartwheels... or even walk away from the post. Therefore, a compatibilist would argue that we can be "free" or "unfree" in a deterministic universe depending upon our abilities and/or restraints in that world.
I ultimately reject compatibilism, but I nonetheless like this argument. It makes a good point, and it gets the noodle goin.'
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Pete in Panama
Well-Known Member
The game of chess has a finite number of moves and has been proven to be always winnable by white. Human choice appears to take place on the quantum level and it cannot be analyzed, only approximated. What that means is that nobody can know what a personal choice will be before it's made. imho if that's not freewill then it'll do until real freewill comes along.
That's not a description of free will. We also can't predict the rain except approximately, but that doesn't make the vagaries and vicissitudes of the sky and clouds free will.
You seem to want there to be free will, and if what we have isn't it, then you want something other than what you have without understanding how what you're asking for would manifest differently.
I'm content with what I have, whether that be free will or merely the illusion of free will, and I don't need to know or benefit by knowing which it is. Nothing changes either way. I go on living as I have whatever the answer.
What if we are "robots" as the faithful use the term in discussions like these? What if we really make no choices but merely oversee the brain making choices deterministically and generating an illusion of free will? Is that OK with you? Shouldn't it be if it's not?
Curious George
Veteran Member
Is it possible that we are robots and determinism is correct? Sure, just as it is possible that anything we think we know, we do not.
The consequence of determinism is solipsism. Logic cannot matter if you cannot come to any other conclusion than the one at which you have arrived. Determinism is self refuting in this aspect. And while it may be possible that determinism is true, we all assume we have some degree of control. Therefore, we all assume we have some degree of free will. Is this an illusion? Maybe. But, you cannot rely on an illusion not being so, to assert that the illusion is so an illusion.
Pete in Panama
Well-Known Member
That's a very good point, the fact that physical actions not being physically predetermined is not by itself proof of freewill. Perhaps my best argument for free will is that it's the only intuitively acceptable understanding.
What I mean is that there's no logical reason for me to logically prove that you exist, or for me to prove to you that I'm not some very well programed AI bot. We don't need logic because we bot intuitively opt for both your existence and for me not being some AI. It's this same intuitive indicator that I use to decide that I must have free will, that I decide what my actions will be and I can own my consequences. Sure it's possible to not intuit freewill, just as it's also possible for me to intuit that I am the only existence in the cosmos.
Agreed. Free will is a compelling intuition, and some say illusion. Without philosophical inquiry and contemplation, it's pretty much everybody's belief, like naive reality, or that seeing the world is like looking through a literal window, that if one could open the window, he would see the same thing. But a deeper look tells us that that can't be. For example, there is no light or color out there, just photons, which trigger light and color sensors in the retina that add brightness and color to represent frequency and intensity of the photon stream being experienced as light. Same with sound. There is no sound out there, just percussion waves travelling through material media. Sound and color are the creation of the mind. So are hotness and coldness, and saltiness.
Likewise with free will. Whatever the brain is doing and according to whatever rules govern its processes, the intuition that one has free will may well be a creation of the mind but in fact incorrect.
I just want to repeat, that I consider the problem intractable at this time, just like asking what is the fundamental nature of consciousness, although I expect that the latter to be answered eventually, but never the former. How does one demonstrate that one could have chosen differently? Not by pointing out when one in fact did choose differently (that was a different you and circumstances weren't exactly the same), or by seeing others choose differently (they're also not the same as you at that moment).
It seems to me that you'd need to recreate the universe at that precise moment - perhaps through time travel - to see if the choice could have been otherwise. But that wouldn't work even if you could do that, because you wouldn't remember having been, and wouldn't be aware that you were doing an experiment or remember the other choice and outcome, because that would be a different you with a different mind making the choice.
And even if there were a way to know what had happened before, we still wouldn't be able to decide if things could have been otherwise then because this is different mind now.
This is heady stuff.
Agreed. You have an intuition, and you believe it. I have the same experience of willing and executing that will, but I question the original source of that will. It seems to me that it is generated by (grey) matter outside of consciousness and delivered to the self-aware self, who obeys it unquestioningly and thinks it was his conscious self's creation, just like your other intuitions.
Intuition is the brain delivering compelling conclusions to consciousness without showing its work.
Think of the experience of humor. A joke is heard, and unseen mechanisms evaluate it according to unknown rules to delver a judgment de novo : "funny" or maybe "not funny." Ask him what makes it funny to him, and he can only say, "I don't know. It's just funny to me." That's the sine qua non of intuition: "I don't know how I know it, I just do."
Whenever you hear yourself or anybody say that, think intuition. It's not enough to justify calling the intuition fact, truth, correct, or knowledge. We should require empirical confirmation before doing that, and that requires explicit reasoning and the ability to demonstrate that the belief is correct.
vulcanlogician
Well-Known Member
This is not true. The game of chess has not yet been "solved" and so it is not known whether it is a win for white, a win for black, or a draw. The consensus among chess masters is that it is probably a draw. This theory has a lot of support seeing how when you pit two different computers against each other in a chess match, (let's say 100 games), around 95% or more of those games result in a draw.
It is well known that white has a slight advantage (around half a pawn... or +0.5) But in chess, one needs a 2 point (basically 2 pawns) advantage to win the game. If technology were advanced enough, it may be discovered that white has a series of moves that will always result in a win. But I read somewhere that it would take our current super computers thousands of years to solve the game of chess. This was a piece of professional chess journalism.
In a way, chess has been solved to an extent. Endgames with six or fewer pieces on the board have been solved by something called Tablebase. It took nearly a decade for computers to achieve this, and it is estimated that it will take another decade or more to solve endgames with up to eight pieces on the board. As for 9 pieces... this increases the calculations exponentially and will take nearly a century (with our current technology) for a computer to solve. If you want to solve the game with ten pieces, we're talking thousands of years. Chess is a complicated game. And remember that the game starts with 32 pieces.
I know you were just making a metaphor, but I'm a chess enthusiast, so I couldn't help correcting your factual error. I know. I know. It's an inconsequential bit of trivia, but the nerd in me just had to set the record straight.
But let's address your metaphor, which is a perfectly fine metaphor. For sake of argument, I can imagine that we live in a world where chess has been solved.
I think this argument does a good job of saying that there may be "room for" free will to exist in the universe (at the quantum level). But no evidence present indicates that free will does happen at the quantum level. If someone wants to argue for free will, they are perfectly right to point out the possibility of QM playing a part. But it has not yet been satisfactorily shown that free will takes place there.
Additionally, opponents of free will, (hard incompatibilists, like Derk Pereboom) argue that quantum fluctuations DON"T make it possible for free will to exist in a system. The argument goes that prior states and events lead to subsequent states and events. This is true in both classical and quantum physics. Adding randomness to a system doesn't inject free will into that system.
I tend to reject free will. But the strongest arguments FOR free will (imo) are those that appeal to the fact that we directly perceive that we have control over our actions. This direct perception of our having free will is in no way privileged over our direct perceptions about how causality works in the universe at a physical level as portrayed by the sciences.
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I agree that the existence of quantum fluctuations doesn't make free will possible, just the possibility of partially indeterministic will. For me, the central question in this discussion is whether the subject in self-aware conscious states is the author of its will (authentic free will) or the passive, unwitting recipient of it from unseen neural centers which experience feels like these ideas came from it and not from outside of its theater of consciousness (the illusion of free will). It changes nothing if that message wasn't derived entirely deterministically. It still wasn't created by the subject in the theater of consciousness, the self, which experiences that it was.
I think you would add that that is not a good argument. It can't distinguish between authentic free will and the illusion of free will as described and defined above. What you're describing is an intuition, which I describe as a message from unseen neural networks without showing their work. My go to example of that process is the brain judging whether something is funny or not. We don't know the rules it uses. If we did, we could algorithmically predict whether we will find a joke funny or not before hearing it.
"I'm sure you've seen this: In·tu·i·tion·ism - the theory that primary truths and principles (especially those of ethics and metaphysics) are known directly by intuition."
I don't agree. Intuition doesn't rise to the level of truth before empiric confirmation, in which case it has become knowledge, not intuition. The most compelling intuition besides that we exist because we have conscious experience is that that experience if of something other than ourselves, something "real" out there, and that that reality is like what we perceive it to be. But you know the philosophical objections to naive realism beginning with Descartes.
Yet intuition is fundamental to thought. Where to the laws of noncontradiction come from, or the axioms of arithmetic if not intuition, which we can always recognize when we say, "I don't know how I know it, I just do, and I have no doubt." Isn't that at least in part a statement of faith?
Pete in Panama
Well-Known Member
That would be nice but my thinking is that it's far too basic to verify by observation. It calls to the basic question of just why were checking. If we want to fall into solipsism there's no logical way to avoid it --only intuition tells us that others exist. Same w/ freewill, only our intuition confirms that we can choose.
Thanks for the heads up. I may have been following old, superseded, or erroneous info.
However if there were an observable mechanism it could very well be quantum fluctuations. It's not proof tho, and like I just said above my present thinking is that the question is too basic. Do we really want to observe proof that free will exists, why do we choose to look?
Somehow I'd have thought that this whole question would go to the old predestination paradox: does God know what we're going to do? If he knows then we don't have freewill. Etc. etc. Sure there are ways around that conundrum but it's yet one more word game.
vulcanlogician
Well-Known Member
As I said before, I tend towards determinism/hard incompatibilism in my metaphysics (just like you).
But I would stop short of calling "it REALLY seems like we have free will" a bad argument. True, this argument fails to rule out the possibility that free will is an illusion. But that isn't the goal of the argument. The argument works off of a principle of parsimony. If police storm into a house and find a husband standing over his dead wife with a bloody knife in his hand, it is safest to work with the assumption that he murdered her, at least until all the evidence is in. Now, it's quite possible that his story (he found her like that and simply picked up the knife before police entered) is true. But an investigation needs to transpire before any firm conclusions can be drawn. That's what we're doing now.
In the case of free will, we have some good reasons to think that free will may be an illusion. This has to do with our understanding of how the brain and other matter in the material world works. But you can't dismiss the pro-free will claims based on their appeal to intuition. Why? Because at the very foundations of physics and neuroscience, you will find those same basic intuitions. Science doesn't exist in a vacuum. It is based on basic intuitions about the world. Science may show that plants need water to survive, but this conclusion depends on basic intuitions (ie. things like plants and water actually exist, and when I run an experiment where I water one plant and don't water another I am actually interacting with real objects in the material world.)
At the foundation of any statement about the natural world you will find assumptions about what is apparent. While our basic intuitions about free will aren't the end of the story, they DO in fact deserve some credence.
vulcanlogician
Well-Known Member
If such a proof exists, it is crucially important that we discover it. Why? If we freely choose our own actions, then that means we are morally responsible for all of our actions. That has important implications for how we ought to run our criminal justice system. If determinism is true, then agents have no real control over their actions. If that is the case, then we are incorrect to punish people for the deeds that they commit. After all, if determinism is true, they could not have done otherwise, given their environment and circumstances-- things that we all agree that a person does not choose. As useful as punishment may be as a deterrent, that does not seem to justify inflicting pain or suffering upon someone for things that are beyond their control.
On the other hand, if the will is free, a case could be made for punishing people for the actions they take. This is important because a plethora of people rot in jail cells (or are put to death) because of the actions they've taken. If one cares about justice at all, free will becomes a very important question.
If this question is nothing but a word game, then whether we should incarcerate or put people to death for their crimes is nothing but a word game.
I refuse to believe that.