Does Physics disprove the existence of free will?

On the contrary. You have to start with a defintion(or a number of definitions)

And it is folly imo to imagine a "successful" end to a discussion such as this.

It is a bone to pick over and fight over (no harm in that)

Unless ,that is someone can come up with a rigorous definition that could pass for what most of us might understand as encapsulating their idea of "Free will " vs its antithesis and also provide us with some scientific method of testing it.

ps I believe I did provide a definition ,although I cannot claim it to be necessarily workable.I am sure others have made definitions that are better but anyone involved in this sort of a discussion should either provide their own definition or just happily admit to be just shooting the breeze.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

So you're goin to pretend you're an open-minded agnostic regarding freewill while secretly believing freewill to be an illusion? Like I said, that's a clever strategy to get people to define their terms so you can attack their definitions, but it doesn't really say much for your honesty.

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

You can't.
So we can't start?

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

No ,not seriously.But like I said there is no harm in chasing our own tails.It is a common diversion.

But you may be right .It may be as equally foolish to imagine we can set up "workable" definitions in this case as to imagine that we can actually get to the bottom of this question.

Like a mirage it may recede at our approach.

 

Feel free to point out what claim I have made, and where.

Then i guess you'll be stuck playing chicken and egg.

 

I'm not pretending anything, MR. I'm simply willing to discuss the notions people wish to define, irrespective of my own personal definitions of the term. And in discussing i will use their definition, not mine. That you have issue with this I truly find perplexing.
To clarify: I am not here to discuss my view but to discuss other peoples' views. If you can't cope with that, that is your problem to deal with, not mine.

 

I tend to think that the determinist state that all decisions are "determined" in some way by factors ( causes ) therefore freewill may very well be a self illusion.
I believe that our decisions are not so much determined but may be influenced instead.
I suggested earlier that it may be worth considering the distinction between the words determined ( controlled) and influenced.

OK I will argue a case using determinism.

Limitation of determinism theory.
Often from what I have read, and I am by no means a specialist in the subject, determinists fail to consider that the universe of causality is fluid and constantly changing and that what is one cause and effect relationship is another C & A relationship immediately afterwards.

• Approximate ( not exact) cause and effect relationships can only be established in hind sight ( if ever)
• Exact cause and effect is unable to be predicted (infinite regression)
  
• Exact cause and effect relationships are unable to be determined ( see Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle & infinite regression )
• "Probability" is not definitive but simply qualified speculation.

Example:
A billiard ball is struck by another in the vacuum of space, travels 200 light years and it's trajectory is plotted. Cause and effect is established for this instance, and because it has actually happened the cause and effect relationship is 100% (absolute.)
(Say we establish a 10 cm dia target with a bulls eye in the center of less than 1mm dia. at that 200 light year distance and place it exactly where the ball has passed)

Even if it was possible to repeat the initial impact exactly (ball hitting ball in a vacuum) which it is not, changes in ambient causes would cause the ball to follow a different trajectory than that of it's predecessor.

do we agree?

Claim:
Even if you repeated the exercise an infinite number of times the chances of repeating the first experimental results would actually be infinitesimal 1/infinity.

So we are left with a confusion of outcomes from a particular cause.

I would contend that if one takes the determinist seriously, that the freedom of choice is established with in that resultant confusion, a confusion mankind is psychologically, due to his physiology, equipped to take advantage of in the form of freedom of will and therefore choice. That deterministic confusion allows us to self determine.
Our physiology is quite capable of impacting on the trajectory of the ball so to speak. As experiences subconsciously experienced integrate with our inner universe, thus making the ball our own ball...

Summary:
The universe is in constant change and it is the confusion that this change generates that facilitates our ability to determine that confusion by way of self determination and the freewill to do so.

"Confusion is the oil that allows change to happen" - qq 2005

 

I don't believe you don't have personal definitions of freewill and illusion while discussing freewill with other posters. The only way you could not believe in freewill is if you had a very definite definition of freewill to begin with. Nobody eschews a belief without a very clear concept of what they are eschewing.

 

Agrees..
My speculations are that Sarkus does have some definition, but can not explain them with out invoking the paranormal, spiritual, mystical etc and he is seeking a way to define what he knows to be true with out resorting to divine implications. It is a fear of discussing anything that allows the reader to interpret his explanations as having a paranormal (unscientific) flavor.
In response to the OP I believe that the issue of freewill can be addressed inclusive of "physics" in fact it takes physics to allow us to manifest self determination. Therefore physics and freewill are indeed compatible. The human body and how it processes "information" and what it does with that information allows us to self determine our existence with in the limitations imposed by circumstances beyond our control.
A key for the determinist could be:
The distinction between the physics of the human body/mind/life and the physics of his/her outer universe.

 

Among the other dozen places, page one post 18:

where you once again require free will in a physically deterministic situation ("physics"), to be supernatural in order to exist.

 

I do have my own view of what freewill is, how it is defined etc. But, for hopefully the last time (unless you continue to troll, MR), my view is irrelevant here, as I am here to discuss other people's views using the definitions that they provide. I really should not have to explain this to you over and over again like I am.
Separate the person from what they post, MR. Argue with what they say by all means, not what you think of the person. Can you grasp that?

 

And I can only ask you not to second guess, not to argue ad hominem, and to argue what is posted I front of you. I'm not sure how many more times I can tell you that I am here to discuss other people's views of freewill using their definition (if and when) provided and not discuss my own view which has been discussed many times over the past.
Deal with that, QQ. It really isn't too hard to grasp.

If you want to criticise what you think my view is, feel free to do so in one of the threads where I have stated what my view actually is.

 

Maybe you should re-read that without the rather biased spectacles you're wearing. I have merely given an example of an alternative view/definition that might exist. Notice the words "if", "can" (and not "is"), and "for example".
Nowhere was I claiming a view of my own, only possible other views that might exist, thus supporting the need for up-front definitions.
Can you cope with that?

 

Wouldn't that apply to the opponents of free-will just as much as the proponents? It would seem to apply to anyone who wants to express any view about free-will. The alternative would seem to be saying nothing about the subject and having no views about it.

I should add that if we are going to be opposing 'determinism' to 'free-will', 'determinism' will have to be defined (and that definition justified) at some point. The vagueness problem doesn't just concern the idea of 'free-will'. It afflicts both sides of the controversy.

 

It's what we experience in ourselves when we make choices. It's what we assume about other people when we ascribe moral praise or blame. It's expanded on tremendously in ethics and moral psychology. (And in Buddhism, I might add, with its minute phenomenological investigations of the inner process.)

My own view is an outgrowth of the common-sensical idea that our choice is free when it isn't coerced by anyone or anything else. That is, when our choices are the result of our own neural/psychological process. While our free-choices might indeed be made in response to the external circumstances in which we find ourselves, they aren't determined in some precise predictability sense by those external circumstances.

In a nutshell, I'm skeptical about whether all of a person's choices can be accurately predicted merely by consideration (however precise and accurate our data and our knowledge of the laws of physics) of that person's surrounding environment, with no knowledge of what's happening in his or her head. What goes on in that head is important, in my view, and those events are precisely what we describe in our psychologistic vocabulary as beliefs, motivations, choices and acts of will.

Our ideas kind of begin as experiential givens, Sarkus. Then we work back from there. The goal of philosophy is to understand the reality we experience, not to make it go away by denouncing it as mere "appearance". We take the raw material of our experience and then try to make better sense of it, by making it more consistent with our scientific understanding perhaps. So we aren't likely to have a clear and distinct mathematical-style definition of free will. It's much fuzzier, it's inevitably going to be more of a work-in-progress.

Things aren't much different with ideas like 'material object'. We encounter things like the tables and the chairs all the time. But can we precisely define them? Or is it more a matter of investigating them and trying to come to a better understanding of them by considering their composition, whole-part relations, ideas about essences, substance/property distinctions, how these things behave in different circumstances and all that?

I don't think that it adds anything to discussion to play Derrida, to demand that somebody produce a dictionary definition of 'free will', then to pick words out of that definition and demand that they receive a similar definition. You can see that will lead to an infinite regress as we define words in terms of words in terms of words in terms of words... That's not philosophical discussion, it's more of an excuse to avoid philosophical discussion.

The exact same game can be played with a word like 'determinism'.

 

You were claiming, there and in many places, that free will in a deterministic system would be defined as an "appearance" (you have posted "mere appearance" as well). That is a view of your own, derived from the assumption that freedom in a deterministic system would have to be supernatural to exist.

There is no "view/definition" of free will that includes 1) the possibility of its natural existence, and 2) its classification as an "appearance". That is incoherent.
That is highlighted by the conclusions you draw regarding "illusions" of willful action, choices, decisions, etc. From incoherency comes confusion.

 

If one is an opponent and wishes to argue from that position, then yes, they should be defining what it is they are arguing against. Quite often, however, as I suspect will be in this case, those who seem to be arguing against will have/be using a different definition than those who are arguing for.
But hey, enough people here seem to be content to discuss the notion without actually defining what it is they are arguing for/against, so I say they should just go for it and have fun.
When someone defines what it is they are arguing for/against I may contribute on the actual matter, rather than simply having to defend my preference for an up-front definition, and to repeatedly state how I am not actually putting my own view on the matter forward, but will be looking to discuss anyone else's definition with them etc. I don't need to present my own to discuss the matter of their notion with them.

Indeed. I would suggest that it should also be defined by anyone wishing to discuss the matter, as there are many ideas of what free will might be, and just because two people might agree that "free will" does indeed exist, it is no guarantee that their definitions are the same thing, that they are actually talking about the same thing.

But I remain utterly gobsmacked that it has taken this far (and likely to go on much longer given the reactionary nature of some) simply to express a desire that definitions of what people are talking about are provided up front.

 

Ok, here's a couple of examples:

A. I'm walking down the street. I realize that I'm running late and might not arrive on time where I'm headed, so I increase my pace.

B. I fall off a cliff and gravitational acceleration increases the speed with which I'm falling.

I'd say that A. is a good candidate for being a case of free-will, while B. isn't.

Why?

In A., my acceleration is due to a decision process that occurred in my head. It was based on my desire to arrive somewhere at a particular time, on my judgement that I was running late, on my judgment that speeding up might rectify that problem, and on my willing my leg muscles to more vigorous activity.

In B., my acceleration has nothing to do with my inner psychological process (at least subsequent to falling off the cliff). It can be fully and completely explained without any consideration of what's happening in my head at all, simply by consideration of my mass, air resistance, Earth's gravitational field and so on.

 

So you're defining it as a sensation? A feeling? Okay. Do you consider it wholly subjective, or is there an objective nature to it that is consistent from person to person?

Can you explain what you mean by "choice", how this "choice" is characterised, and on what basis do we identify it?
You use the term "coerce" as well: what do you mean by that? Is an interaction at the molecular level "coerced" to behave as it does? Or are you only talking with regard conscious activity?

For those that wish to argue that it is simply an appearance don't make it go away, though. That is to fundamentally misunderstand their position. A mirage might appear to be something that it is not, but the process, the experience itself is very real. The questions would seem to be: what is that experience, what is that process, and does the experience match the process?
Surely if the latter is concluded that the experience does not match the process, then one can still say that the process gives the appearance of X, while not actually being X.
Is that controversial?

Sure. Provide such a definition then, if that is your position?

How can you investigate if you aren't agreed on what it is you're investigating. I'm not saying you need to agree as to what it fundamentally is, only that you define, for purposes of discussion / investigation, the notion.
Scientists investigating compound Z don't need to agree as to what compound Z actually is, how it comes to be, whether it is an illusion or not, or how it will be effected. They only need to agree on what it is that is being investigated.
People here seem to have an aversion to that.

I disagree. While in some situations that approach might be as you say, I think that with issues such as "free will" it is of incredible significance. Otherwise you could simply brush things under the carpet, hoping the vagueness of definition, of clarity, provides the necessary wiggle room to avoid facing what you might otherwise wish to avoid.

Sure, if you wish to understand what the person means and are not happy with their definition, then is it wrong to probe what they mean by the terms they use to ensure understanding?

 

So, based on this, how are you defining free will? As a conscious thought process that arrives at one of at least two theorised futures?
Assuming so - or at least something along those lines - a question: how do you know that the options you consciously rejected, e.g. to not increase pace, were something that you could actually have done, other than being merely something you thought at the time that you could do?