FREE WILL

yeah, but we don't have to determine how consciousness guides events. in assessing the freedom of the human will, we can limit ourselves to the nature of consciousness itself, setting aside questions about how a free will, if it existed, might extend out from subjective consciousness to influence the objective material world.

so the question is is consciousness an independent actor or are all of its actions governed by other causes...? I don't see how the former is possible, frankly.

yeah, but like, isn't determinism just... part of the big picture, you know? it's like... heisenberg? or, like, that dude's cat? like, we can't even tell what's going to happen because, it's all about, like, i dunno, quarks n shit. it's like we don't know anything at all, man.

you guys i'm so high right now

lol

re shakey:

the question is whether or not people can be meaningfully said to "make their own decisions". there doesn't need to be any more or less to it than that. my take is that even if all human decisions (or decision-like events or whatever) can theoretically be predicted in advance, based on the idea that they are effects of other causes, this doesn't necessarily mean that the decisions in question aren't, you know, real decisions. it merely means that human decision making is another link in the infinite causal chain.

what's the definition of 'real decision' then

Hot dog vs taco

2 C on Ts or not 2 C on Ts

that is the question

http://www.teenidols4you.com/blink/Actors/jjrichter/jjrichter_1215244989.jpg

it merely means that human decision making is another link in the infinite causal chain

seems to me like this implies that the specific will of a specific human involved in decision making has no freedom - it's actions are predetermined

xp

if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice

I really don't care if there's free will or not. We all live as if there were.

what's the definition of 'real decision' then

it's probably just semantic sleight-of-hand, but i'm saying that concepts like "will" and "freedom" don't have much meaning outside of our subjectivity, and therefore to the extent that we subjectively perceive them, they exist in the only way that's really relevant.

i don't imagine that response is going to satisfy anybody but me, so here's another: determinism's negation of free will is based on a failure to realize that the decision-making will is part of the universal web of factors that supposedly binds the will. so if the will is bound, it is, at least in part, self-bound, and that creates a sort of paradox. the determinist argument essentially says, "given that the self is of such a nature, it is predictable that it will do x in situation y." but that formulation is crucially dependent on "given that the self is of such a nature," a formulation which subordinates determinacy to the nature of the self. the relationship of determinacy to the nature of the self becomes a chicken-egg loop.

yer subjecthood is externally bound up in various determinisms - physical through to cultural (tho that there is probably a qualitative leap and at the extremes it probably doesn't make much sense to think one in terms of the other) via whatever else onto whatever else - but regardless, that subjecthood is how we identify ourselves as active beings and so its decisions are 'our' decisions. what sense does it make to wish for a free will that doesn't come from the subject that you are?

i like the last two posts and they align pretty close to my feelings. also i think the best engagement with this particular Mobius strip is Emerson's essay "Fate"--which is a totally awesome essay.

more than that, i still think that thinking about this issue in terms of "Will" is very problematic since it presumes a whole host of things id want to question, most particularly the idea that our actions or "decisions" are transparent even to ourselves.

never got the pun in Free Willy until just now. obviously am not even remotely smart enough to have an opinion on this subject

i think this is one of those subjects so tough that everyone is allowed an opinion! (along with: "why is there something rather than nothing?" and "what is consciousness?")

I think I'm broadly on the same page as contenderizer, but it's a bit hand-wavy "the way that can be spoken of is not the true way" to satisfy hardcore determinists - including the one sitting on my right shoulder.

On another note, I read a real interestin' paper that suggested not only does determinism not imply causation, in fact it's in strong conflict with the idea. In short(ish): macro-level cause-effect events can always be defeated by micro ones - it's not physically impossible that your drink could heat up after putting an ice-cube in, or on a more day-to-day level, you might strike a match and it fails to light, with no conceivable macro-level explanation for the failure. So given that the causal connection has to be necessary, and there is no such necessary connection at the macro level, macro causation is a bust. And it's not certain that we can call what happens at the micro level causation either - consider that current laws of physics are time-symmetrical, so it makes as much sense to say that the future "caused" the past as the past causes the future, and that's a pretty weird kind of causation.

I think this has interesting implications for free will - obv hardcore determinists are prepared to bite the bullet and deny free will, and even though that's a pretty big bullet to bite, would they also be prepared to deny causation and the arrow of time?

full paper here: http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/2071/1/Causality_and_Determinism.pdf

Where are some of those studies about how, in the brain, the muscles and neurotransmitters and everything start firing up to, say, move your finger well in advance of the time that you're "conscious" of making the decision to move it? Like, in a statistically significant way?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will#The_Libet_experiment

half a second, pshaw. ambiguities abound.

reading that fuller explanation i'm more in agreement with 'tenderizer's position, tho i'm not sure that this kind of argument doesn't use "free will" in a way that isn't entirely natural. but the first thing i said upthread - "i doubt free will exists but "free will" undoubtedly exists" - is broadly in agreement with contenderizer.

like ledge, my Tao side always wants to arm-wrestle my strict determinist side

also i'm not particularly wedded to classical causation but i am extremely uncomfortable with "uncaused cause" arguments

given that the causal connection has to be necessary, and there is no such necessary connection at the macro level, macro causation is a bust

this feels like a more science-attuned version of Hume tbh?

No I think they're different enough; Hume says we never observe causation just constant conjunction, that article says even the (macro) conjunction we observe is not reliably constant. The micro point might be more Humean but that current physical laws don't talk about causation is perhaps too oft forgotten.

would they also be prepared to deny causation and the arrow of time?

Excellent point. If the course of the universe has only one possible path, based on the causal factors present at some theoretical 'prime' instant and it must travel that path to some 'final' moment, and all the instants between these two are determined, then causality could be said to flow in either direction. There would be no way to choose between the two directions.

Putting aside whether or not this is true, that is just one fucking awesome thought.

Also, even if the subjective experience of making decisions can be 'proved' to be illusory through some mathematically consistant logic, I think Godel might well dispose of that line of proof.

Re the libet experiment etc...

If vision is a construction why wouldn't our own consciousness be a similar construction? It doen't necessarily take away from the function of the brain as mind nor of something like free-will to note that many of our actions are split-second hard-wirings and that we're not aware (capable of reflection, judgment or memory, let's say) of our quick decisions until they get broadcast on the 'big screen'. It also doesn't mean you can't meaningfully agonize over what color to paint your bedroom for days.

I think we have free will but it's a question of degrees, and it breaks down the more you try to define sharply define the self. Ultimately I think the only path to ultimate free will is in knowing that there is not a 'YOU' that has free will over 'THAT'. Once the distinction between personal control and the uncontrollable arrow of time breaks down then we are talking some real free will.

The universe has free will but the individual Ego at odds with the universe does not. Fortunately the individual Ego at odds with the universe is an illusory state, an emotional reaction that is merely temporal. The fortune of this is called Grace.

There's no evidence I'm aware of that our decisions are immediately caused by anything other than the structure and chemistry of our neural apparatus in the moments before we are aware of a decision.

Given a "conscious" "layer" of neural processing largely tasked with rationalizing decisions taken by other, unconscious circuits, our ancestors were spared the navel-gazing whilst pursued by sabertooth tigers.

This isn't to say that the underlying deciding circuits can't be influenced by their environment, including (unconscious) feedback from the conscious layer. Neural networks possess elegant feedback heuristics for strengthening circuit paths leading to valued decisions and pruning paths with outcomes judged poor. But that sort of learning at the axons takes hours, days, years, while the circuits are yielding decisions in milliseconds. There's a temporal disconnect preventing the self-and-world model our rationalizing, conscious circuits synthesize from having much immediate effect on the subconcious nodes where decisions actually occur.

There are some very bright people who accept determinism occurs elsewhere in the universe but not in the grey jelly of their brains. See physicist Roger Penrose for some belabored books outlining how quantum mechanics can save free will. My take is: 1) stochastic outcomes from quantum interactions only displace the determinism to microscopic realms physicists are unlikely to have access to, and 2) quantum interactions are presently ignored in computer modelling of protein binding without much loss, so at axons were millions of neurotransmitters are competing for thousands of receptor proteins, it all averages out.

One vote for complete psychic determinism over here. I suspect most people still believe in free will, and that isn't going to change until Christianity wanes.

There's plenty of feedback going on between the consciousness and the unconscious parts of the brain, so that "the structure and chemistry of our neural apparatus in the moments before we are aware of a decision" is only a small part of thinking about a decision, especially as decisions become complex.

How that structure and chemistry arrives at that point is what's of interest to me, and if there is sufficient randomness in that process in addition to the feedback effects, then calling that "deterministic" seems like a peculiar application of the word and the concept.

Sure but indeterminism is no saviour for free will either, a random act may be free but it can't be willed.

I thought about this some more and now I think I'm on the side of determinism. Free will implies multiple possible futures, but there can only be one actual future that IS going to happen, i.e. THE future. Otherwise, you get into this whole idea of infinite universes branching off from each distinct 'choice', as if that makes any sense; basically, supernatural beliefs. It makes more sense to just go with the idea that the ball was started rolling when the universe began and time is unfolding the only possible way it can, the way it will and has been.

you are aware of the many worlds theory of quantum physics? don't buy it myself, think it has something of a supernatural taint, but plenty of people do take it seriously.

but anyway i don't see why multiple possible futures implies anyhing supernatural.

Multiverse! Multiverse!

Multiple possible futures is totally compatible with a single actual future, dude.

Though I do like many worlds theory. Not as much as I like David Lewis' modal realist theory, mind you. Lovely crazy David Lewis.

It is one thing to assert that only one future happens, but quite another to assert this proves that no other future could have happened. That conjecture seems to rely on a highly unprovable generalization from the existance of physical laws and the repeatability of experiments. But as soon as you enter that territory you have leapt far, far away from the staid Kansas of science and into the realms of Oz.

our ancestors were spared the navel-gazing whilst pursued by sabertooth tigers

I wanna say, hell yes, I agree with this. But it's a pretty big presumption to make. And we all love to sugar-coat the past, make it a simpler, purer time. It's just as likely they had myths and philosophies that are forever lost in time.

Not to mention those which are still shibboleths for fools

I feel the need for a better definition of free will. Because if you're saying that "free will" means that "an individual is able to select a choice from a range of alternatives, without external duress forcing a particular choice upon them", then free will seems plausible to me. Even if you add the riders that "and the choice will be affected by prior events that happened to that individual", it remains so.

In fact, if you also add "and theoretically, given enough detail/knowledge and ability to integrate that detail, you could say with a shockingly high degree of probability what that choice would be", I think you still have a plausible "free will"

But if you take it to some other level where you insist that "free will" requires that there are "uncaused causes", that an individual can make a decision entirely unaffected by previous events, and especially also that the source of the decision-making is identical to what is felt as consciousness, well then I think you get to definitions that are themselves pretty shaky, let alone trying to use them in any sort of argument.

it's not that choices are affected by prior events, it's that there is nothing but prior events, and no point at which a "free individual" is able to make a choice outside of events. there is nothing but chains of events.

that last sentence wasn't supposed to be there. i think i was gonna say "there is no individual will outside of events". i don't understand what such a will would be.

Sure, and that's a much more interesting question to me. But consciousness strikes me as being irrelevant to it. It's a question of causality, not one of whether or not we are making choices we "feel" we are, nor one of whether our brains are somehow "forcing" us like the second option says.

Xp exactly; I don't understand what such a will would be either, which is why the definitions are so problematic in this topic.

i think the definitions are problematic only if you assume that there must be "free will". i'd argue that the evidence is firmly against that assumption at this point in our knowledge, so people making claims for free will are the ones who need to answer the hard questions.

there seems to be another Descartes-esque problem in that if we posit a will or personality that can take decisions uncaused by events, how do we account for that will's ability to cause events to happen?

Agree, but I'd go one further. To me it's not that the evidence is against free will, but that we're at a position where it's not possible to really define a coherent "free will" for the evidence to be against.

Back to what Shakey Mo Collier noted at the beginning of the thread, the concept of free will first existed to justify why an omnipotent benevolent god would permit evil. Dispense with that god, and much of the rationale for supporting the idea also disappears.

xp

oh i see where you're going now. yeah that seems fair enough, the assumptions behind free will are themselves so blurry and contested that there's a lot of ground to cover before we can decide what free will itself is supposed to mean

In my opinion, if one's theory of how a thinking creature makes choices allows the possibility of non-determinent action, meaning an action that could not have been predicted, no matter how much information was available about on the actor's state at the time the choices were presented, then I am satisfied that "free will" is included in that theory. My key distinction being that, even if the actor is not fully and completely independent from prior conditions, the eventual choice that was made was free from dependence on those conditions.

There's no more moral responsibility in having your strings pulled by dice rather than the cogged wheels of 18th century mechanical determinism.

ah sorry wasn't saying nah to you but to myself, got xp'd

yeah it's addictive

The algorithm is based on recording sequences of five or so key-presses, then predicting that the most often recurrent patterns you produce will reappear. Since pressing f or d is a pointless activity, the average brain will soon tire of producing novel sequences and begin to repeat itself out of boredom with the task. I would predict that the faster you press the keys, the more likely this unconscious boredom effect will assert itself. The more one consciously decides each keypress based on a good understanding of genuine randomness, together with a strong motivation to outwit the oracle by weeding out repetitive sequences, the less effective the oracle will be.

put your theory to the test and show us your results champ

my results square with aimless's theory. going fast and just typing "randomly", the machine was almost 70% accurate. moving slowly and forcing myself to break patterns, i could keep it well under 60%. a good trick is to rotate your keyboard periodically.

A good strategy for lowering the number is to look away from the keyboard and just bash in the general area of D and F.

I can't get it to give me any results, possibly it needs cookies, which I habitually block.

60% is not good btw

A good strategy for lowering the number is to look away from the keyboard and just bash in the general area of D and F.

― jmm, Friday, June 3, 2016 4:39 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha i like this

might try this later once everyone at the office is liquored up

did this for a couple mins and hovered around 45-49%, some wills are freer than others

by the time i got bored it had climbed to 51%, look out everyone i'm literally Joker

getting under 50% is impressive but paradoxically means your sequence may be less random??

teach me how to introduce a little anarchy

xp

getting under 50% is impressive but paradoxically means your sequence may be less random??

my sequence is art and this algorithm is a philistine

i had this about 35% for a while last night - played a lot of long sequences of mostly the same key and broke it up for a little bit when the program started guessing right

dude you needed to screenshoot that

i had no idea what a good score was last night tbh. or how many presses you guys have made altogether. i got bored of it fairly quickly, probably only played < 5 mins

Reviving this thread so maybe we can all choose to use it to discuss free will and return to properly slagging off Richard Dawkins in the Richard Dawkins - Anti-Christ or Great Thinker thread.

one's concept/definition of "free will" seems contingent on so many near-ineffable assumptions about the universe and stuff.. seems like it would be hard not to just be talking past each other

oh that was a dumb post, sorry

hey folks what's y'alls favourite freiwillige selbstkontrolle record

Every debate on free will always fucks off because 1) People begin to use moral arguments in an ontological debate (but without free will, how can society...) and 2) People for some reason think completely free will or complete determinism are the only two possibilities.

otm

3) people who aren't interested in the discussion pile in to tell everybody how not interesting it is

like they're somehow compelled to do so

https://twitter.com/ilikemints/status/840645034978480130

^^^the secret vector of all human compulsions

Pretty sure the quote is from Kathleen McAuliffe's This Is Your Brain on Parasites.

The science on flu viri affecting animal behavior is rather weak, but there's tons on toxoplasmosis. Becoming attracted to cat piss in rodents, but in humans, higher testosterone, more risk taking and road accidents, etc.

It would be crazy to argue that our individual wills exist godlike, floating serenely above all mere physical influence, controlling but never controlled. It is obvious that our will is predicated upon myriads of contributing factors, including the vagaries of vertebrate evolution and whether it is raining at the moment, and it can never be disentangled from them. But even if our will is heavily constrained, nevertheless if one can choose between two nearly indistinguishable actions and effectively act upon that choice, then one's will is not predetermined or predestined and the effects of that choice will propagate into the future.