Do we have free will? (originally posted on Science & Society)

Don't be fool, you are talking about kinetic energy, which is not conserved, opposed to for example to momentum.

Really, I don't know why people say such things in this subforum of Physics & Math. It is a fact that we are composed of atoms, like it or no. Experience is subjective.

Faith would be if someone says we have a soul or such things, come on.

What evidence makes you think this is not the case?

If quantum mechanics has no laws, or some changing laws, then we have a problem.
But in the Universe, it seems until now that energy is conserved, and so are the all the momentums conserved, charge (electric, color), spin, etc., so, this would imply that we are machines! Like anything else.

 

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Your methodology is fatally flawed, and you continually fail to address these reasons why.

1. Even if some sort of "non-material" existed, it would be foolishly illogical to expect to find evidence of it by purely material means.

2. If consciousness and free will are illusions then all science is necessarily in similar doubt, as all empirical evidence is only ever perceived through the same means by which we perceive our consciousness and free will (and you have even admitted the consistency you tried to use to distinguish the two). If you reject a dualism then whatever you accept of the mind is necessarily true of the physical world. Either way, this argument is incoherent and borders on solipsism.

3. Free will is not inconsistent with quantum indeterminism, and you have yet to show any viable reason why it should be.

Again, see #1 above, and #3 provides ample doubt in determinism.

 

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Way to continue the red herring by exploiting my hasty wording. There is nothing about choice that implies any violation of the conservation of momentum. How is that?

 

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It would, but thanks for the heads up with this red-herring. I do not intend to find evidence of the non-material - I expect those who hold to its existence to provide the evidence. I find the material realm more than adequate to either explain or have the potential to explain things. As and when I consider the material realm logically incapable then I shall take that as reason to move to introduce some non-material aspect.

All science is not in doubt at all, as science is an investigation into the consistency of the universe. Where we have consistency we can apply science and reach scientific understanding, even if based on some underlying assumptions. Perhaps you are confusing science with concerns of objective reality, and that scientific answers equate to the objective?? If not I fail to see where your issue lies.

Yes, that the objective reality is different to our perception. What of it?

You have failed to show any incoherence, rather just your disagreement on grounds I can't quite discern other than a personal dislike.

First define free will. Do you hold it to be the ability of consciousness to be ultimate cause of actions (which violates cause/effect or requires non-random uncaused events), or are you talking about our perception that we are the ultimate arbiter of our actions?

I'm sure it does, but since I am not an advocate of determinism I'm wondering who you're actually arguing against??

 

Hummmmm, your use of the word "stupid" seems to indicate a compulsion to respond to this thread....

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I was exploring the meaning of "temporally generating patterns"

Here I can make a conscious choice to see what I desire to see from an optical illusion.

http://www.123opticalillusions.com/pages/Spinning_Dancer.php

 

Yes, and the only evidence you would accept is material, so there is no red herring in saying you would expect only material evidence. You have evaded the point with an erroneous appeal to fallacy. Remember, it was your argument that:

This free will is inconsistent with what we know of the interaction of molecules, atoms etc. It requires the introduction of another layer, between what we understand and what we perceive, that some call soul, spirit etc - some non-material layer.​

You have yet to show it inconsistent with QM, so the non-material is only a distraction at this point. Anyway, where has anyone but you introduced the non-material in this thread? At this point, you are arguing a straw man.

It is simply a matter that the apparent consistency of the universe need be no less illusion if the consciousness we use to infer consistency is as well. You have already admitted consistency in the perception of free will, so you have utterly failed to distinguish the two. And as I told you elsewhere, I am not interested in how you may equivocate "reality".

Do you reject dualism? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dualism_(philosophy_of_mind) Yes or no? Or are you supposing a noumenal existence that is not accessible to any of our methods of evidence?

Way to resort to tu quoque and an appeal to emotion.

I have done this several times now, but free will is, simply, the ability to do otherwise. Even in an incompatibilist view:

Incompatibilists think that something stronger is required: for me to act with free will requires that there are a plurality of futures open to me consistent with the past (and laws of nature) being just as they were—that I be able ‘to add to the given past’ (Ginet 1990). I could have chosen differently even without some further, non-actual consideration's occurring to me and ‘tipping the scales of the balance’ in another direction. Indeed, from their point of view, the whole scale-of-weights analogy is wrongheaded: free agents are not mechanisms that respond invariably to specified ‘motive forces.’ They are capable of acting upon any of a plurality of motives making attractive more than one course of action. Ultimately, the agent must determine himself this way or that. -http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/#3.2​

QM definitely allows for more than one possible outcome "consistent with the past (and laws of nature)". The ability to do otherwise only implies that the laws of nature allow for more than one possible outcome of any given array of influences. It is not necessarily the extreme straw man you make it out to be.

And your "non-random uncaused events" is tired nonsense. The randomness inferred of QM is not the choice itself, but only the indeterminism allowing for choice. Nor is any choice necessarily uncaused, as there can be equivalent reasons and motivations in favor of mutually exclusive options.

You are the only one trying to hedge your bets by relegating free will to perception and illusion, which I have shown is inconsistent with assuming an objective reality if you reject dualism.

 

Really, it doesn't matter how we experience ourselves?
Wow. Way to go, robots!

For you too: http://web.utk.edu/~jhardwig/EpDep.pdf

 

I think freewill exists to varying degrees among different people. Some people have more of it than others. And sometimes we may have more of it than at other times. Genetic predispositions, environment setbacks, hormonal imbalances, social pressures, etc all plague us in varying degrees. But that is not to say we still don't have freewill. Someone with mental illness can choose to take meds and go into therapy to gain more freewill. And an addict may overcome their addiction by choosing to go into rehab. In a strange way physical determinism already pressuposes freedom as the natural state of the human condition. Else how would it make any sense to say you are being determined to do something. SOMEthing has to preexist as undetermined. There must exist a preexistent state wherein it was possible for you to do otherwise than BE determined. In this sense a robot is not being determined to do anything by its own circuitry because there is really nothing else for it to be THAN those circuits. So a robot is really just as free as a human since it never really existed in an indeterminate state to begin with. But a human is NOT just their own brain circuits. They are more than that. They are their minds as well. IOW, they preexist in an indeterminate state. And thus it is intelligible, abeit entirely wrong, to assert that humans have their freedom entirely taken away by the causal events of their own bodies and brains and environments.

 

My pet amoeda has free will.

His name is Spanky.

 

I have not said, nor is it true, that I would only accept material evidence.
It is however the nature of the only evidence I have come across. But that does not mean I won't accept alternative.

QM allows for probabilistic outcomes - not freedom to choose.
There is no "ability to do otherwise" with QM - there are alternative outcomes but no ability to pick one over another. That is why it is inconsistent with QM.

The distinction is between consistency within the illusion and a lack thereof. Free will as more than a mere perception is inconsistent.

I do not currently find dualism to be rational.
And I am supposing that if there is an objective reality that it is only ever evidenced through its interaction with the illusion of our perception. At least that is what I find to be rational.

You misunderstood me - the dislike I refer to is of the position I hold, not of me.

"Otherwise" from which perspective? From the perception of the conscious? Sure - we perceive we can do otherwise and call that free will. But do we actually have the ability to do otherwise, or only perceive ourselves to have the ability to?

QM allows for randomness, not the "ability" to do otherwise. Rolling a dice allows for more than one possible outcome - but would you see free will in the dice?
That alternatives exist prior to an action does NOT necessarily mean that there is an ability to choose. Randomness is no choice.

Yet you have no answer for the logic of it: either a choice is caused (no free will) or it is uncaused. If it is uncaused either it is random (no free will) or it is non-random. The only option for free will would be in the uncaused and non-random. Tired, maybe. Nonsense, no.

How??? You say it but you provide nothing other than equating indeterminism with allowing choice. Indeterminism, as far as my knowledge of QM, provides for randomness.

And again you are left with randomness... or who else tips the scale in favour of a specific outcome if not another cause?

You have shown no such thing, and who is assuming an objective reality?

 

Not only free will but he is smart! Even without a brain.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=brainless-slime-molds

 

IMO, we can speak of FW when planning for the future. If a decision is made from incomplete data, we need to "fill-in" with imagined data.
I believe here is where decisions are not results of existing environment but partly by an anticipated future environment.

While the result is still deterministic a portion of it was achieved by the application free will. Free Will is not incompatible with determinism and result can contain our free will modifications, leading to a deterministic result.

 

Of course it does. You have made such a repeated point out of a magician's illusions that it is obvious that this is what you would consider anything beyond your experience, i.e. only seemingly of non-material cause. You would suspend acceptance expecting some material explanation to be forthcoming, and it is only intellectual dishonesty that you would claim otherwise.

Only if you are naive enough to assume a single synapse firing accounts for a decision. All decisions are global processes that require the collective firings of countless synapses. So far, no inconsistency other than in the logic behind your proclamation.

Unsupported bare assertion.

Again, if you assert that our only awareness of any possible objective reality is through illusion then you have completely failed to distinguish that reality from illusion.

Sure, I personally dislike faulty reasoning.

At most, only single synaptic firings are random. Decisions, or any significant cognitive activity, is a global process requiring millions of such firings.

Yes, your knowledge is lacking, hence your incredulity. Indeterminism means that one specific set of influences can have more than one possible outcome. And in the case of mental activity, it is only random at individual synaptic firing, and the choice is made as a judgment of all available inputs. The quantum indeterminism only allows for more than one outcome, but no one quantum outcome is a decision.

You should read what I quoted:

Indeed, from their point of view, the whole scale-of-weights analogy is wrongheaded: free agents are not mechanisms that respond invariably to specified ‘motive forces.’ They are capable of acting upon any of a plurality of motives making attractive more than one course of action. -http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/#3.2​

Quantum indeterminism is incompatible with an invariable response that "tips the scale", and it does not account for the global process of a decision. Maybe you do not even realize that you said "who... tips the scale" rather than a what.

No idea, as you continually hedge your bets and equivocate: "I am supposing that if there is an objective reality..."

 

None of you have discussed the importance of the ability to QUESTION any dogma or thinking upon any subject

No matter how we view free-will , without the intellects ability to QUESTION all other theories of Free-will are moot ,from my dictionary on the definition of moot

( deprived of practical significance : made abstract or purely academic )

The ability to QUESTION is in the end the very essence of free-will

 

Further

If and when we cannot VOICE this questioning without harm to ourselves , then we have lost the ability of free-will to be heard

And that is a crime to the evolution of thought and Humanity

river

 

But there is such a layer, several of them, between (say) the atomic level and the free will level - layers of pattern and substrate, logical levels of action and reaction.

Substrate may constrain pattern, but it does not cause pattern. And pattern is not material.

So although the patterns of mental event that act and react at the freewill level are - must be - consistent with what we know of atoms, they are not caused by atoms, determined by atoms, fixed in perpetuity by atoms.

 

I am not disputing that I would accept a material explanation over another, but that is simply because no one has produced evidence of anything other than material, nor adequately presented a logical case for acceptance of the non-material. When they do I will be happy to accept it. What I will not do is jump to unsupported conclusions of the non-material where more rational explanations remain possible.

Not at all. Whether it is a single synapse or a vast multitude, the logic is the same. Either they act, as a system, according to natural laws with elements of individual randomness that can lead to a tipping point in activity one way or another (again no room for choice in this, it is automatic merely with elements of randomness) or there is some guiding hand that remains uncaused. You claim faulty logic yet you fail to offer anything other than the claim.

And again you miss the point, whether deliberately or not is hard to fathom.
If your are watching a film... an illusion... and it suddenly flickers or changes film halfway through, the illusion is broken. There is a lack of consistency within that illusion, regardless of whether the greater universe is illusory or not.

Sure, and if individual firings are either determined or random, then for the global collection to be anything other than determined or random then it still needs an uncaused non-random intervention. Sure, the process undoubtedly dampens the underlying randomness, but those processes for dampening are still operating in the same manner - either deterministically or random etc. The processes that do so, one may even call our personality (or aspects thereof), but a global process of deterministic or random processes is still itself going to be only deterministic or random (within a probability function).
You have evidence to the contrary, or just more wishful thinking?

But no ability to select which outcome results.

And yet you fail to show how the collection suddenly gets the ability to make judgements if the mechanism for judgement is not either itself merely another system or is somehow uncaused and non-random. You make claims yet fail to even see the glaring gap in the logic... you jump from a single random event to suddenly a collection of such events suddenly having the ability to make judgements, yet for the judgements to somehow be free rather than just the result over which there is no ability to choose.
You have singularly failed to show any "ability" within the collection.

I read it, and while it explains what a free agent is, it makes no attempt to show how they are possible within a realm that is governed by laws, or even that they actually exist, let alone how they "act" in any way other than randomly (if not deterministically). I.e. you are taking from the quote that mechanisms are only those that are invariable, and that all others are somehow "free".

If you think that mechanisms only exist that have an invariable response then you are mistaken. Do you think radioactive decay is somehow free to choose when it occurs?

I wrote "who" deliberately, referencing that we are still speaking of choice rather than randomness.

And how is that equivocating? Or do you intend to just make assumptions as to my position and then accuse me of equivocation for disputing you?

 

Just for clarity, how does a pattern exist if it is not merely an interaction of atoms perceived by consciousness as a "pattern"?

 

No consciousness was mentioned. Trees falling in the forest make a sound, we are presuming, regardless of consciousness in the affected.

Let's say all patterns are in some substrate (in the case of something like electromagnetic radiation, the substrate appears to be space itself). And example of a pattern that does not consist "merely" of interactions of atoms would be an atom itself in the one direction - a pattern of subatomic forces and particles - and a flock of birds on the other, in which the birds entire do the interacting (no amount of information limited to the atomic level could predict its behavior).