Does Physics disprove the existence of free will?

This question is currently unable to be answered conclusively from a mainstream perspective. They don't know.
One theory I have read about over the years, suggests:
However when you consider that all of the major senses are employed at all times, you can see that experience validation is possible.
For example if you focus on visual information, this is supported by all the other non-focused senses, including logical, rational senses ( mental capacity etc)
If what you see is not supported by what you can touch for example then the conclusion of "hallucination" could be the result.
If you can smell but not taste the salty air near a beach for example, then you will automatically raise a question mark.
Those sorts of sensory feedback mechanisms and other allow us to establish truth or objectivity in what we experience.
Fear, paranoia and fatigue are incredibly influential in how this feedback functions and can lead to further fear, paranoia and fatigue leading on to eventual collapse of the sensory validation system. ( psychotic episode)
So the worst thing you can tell a paranoid schizophrenic is that he is hallucinating, as this further exasperates the situation regarding fear.

Essentially is it theorized that by having multiple sources for validation purposes one sense will either be supported by the other senses or not. Thus a validation and confirmation process can exist.

Hallucinogenics consumed will over ride all sensory validation in extreme circumstances.

...just thoughts.

 

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I have no doubt we can observe patterns that might correspond to a "choice" being made, but how can we know from the observation whether there was a genuine ability to do other than the decision reached. I, for one, could not choose to jump in front of a train for no reason.

Reflex and instinct is not exactly what I would consider a great example of exercising free will, so would avoid trying to describe actions in that manner if the intention is to show "choice".
Furthermore, I'm sure we could all come up with situations where the notion of choice is more obvious, but I deliberately picked the more extreme. Simply whether or not the option, for most people, to jump in front of a train - for no particular reason - is a genuine option. We can think about it. We can intellectualise about what might happen. But how many of us could actually do it? We might say we could. But could we actually do it? (Some may take that course, and some alas do. But I am talking about the majority of people.)
I don't think most people could. I couldn't. There's just no choice to be made. At least not for me. So it shows, to me at least, a difference between what we might initially take to be genuine options and what are probably not.
And if there is a difference, how less extreme does the example have to be before there is a genuine option?
Do we have a genuine choice when picking between box A and box B, for example? And if we do, what is the difference between that and the extreme case?

I think we are all deprived of it in many matters. What we might perceive as genuine choice I am unconvinced always are. Yes, brain patterns might suggest "choice", but that might also only be a matter of how we have opted to identify "choice" within those readings.

 

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I see where you tried. I see specific comparisons between features of my supposed definition and somebody else's, and an argument that rests on that supposition.

That would be referring to acts of will, not freedom of them.
You were talking about the freedom of them, and bouncing between their reality and their freedom as being alike "appearances" and "illusions". That is a confusion. One likely source of that confusion is your assumption that there is no "genuine" freedom of choice in a deterministic physical system, which leads to some difficulty in acknowledging the reality of an act of will.

The specific reference in my posts is to a specific assumption you make in drawing a specific conclusion from specific premises. That presents a clear distinction between assumption and conclusion - an explicit one, no less. Nowhere have I ever even hinted that you have ever concluded that freedom of will in a deterministic system must be supernatural - quite the opposite: I have everywhere recognized that you deny even making the assumption.

 

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I'll leave you two , to it

Interesting discussion

 

But you could choose to do so for a reason.

It is an example of changing one's mind and choosing to jump in front of a train - as many here would.

So? We are talking about having reasons - acting according to one's will.

Sure. That can be easily demonstrated, by providing reasons and changing people's minds - if they had no choice, how could you persuade them to choose differently?

 

I like Anil Seth; "When our controlled hallucinations agree, we call it reality"

 

How many wrong decisions are made each day worldwide. The exception to the rule is "agreement", even in the face of overwhelming evidence. It is a rare commodity.....

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Ants have 100% agreement. They never ask "why"?

Is there a qualitative difference in the exercise of "will" between ants and humans?

 

Yes there is ;

Humans execerise of will is to evolve faster than Nature can provide . Our Intellect .

Ants evolution is restricted by its environment , its brain

 

Yep.... Humans have the freedom to lie. Ants do not ( nor the need to)

 

"compatabilist" ,"incompatabilist" ..... it gets murkier

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(no, I agree. A great idea to cross our bridges when we come to them.)

 

Yah, it's a very old realization dating back to arguably the earliest days of ancient disciplined philosophy in both the East and West. That experience is either an imperfect representation of an archetypal world or the latter is not the case at all. (With respect to the latter, there would supposedly be a provenance for our exteroceptive manifestations, but with what qualifies as an eventually agreed-upon or worked-out "reality" existing for the first time as those experiences of ours, rather than their having the status of being an inferior copy or ectypal world.)

~

 

Until now, I had not heard it expressed in quite such a succinct fashion.

I guess this is what Iceaura was trying to say, but kept skipping over the how it has to be so (literally, that it must not be determined by physical laws) in a sort of short-hand. I gotta say, the putting words in other people's mouths - insisting that other people were literally the instigators of the supernatural invocation - was quite a distraction from that point.

I can see the dots connecting, now that the middle dot has been inserted.

Free will (1) cannot emergent from physical laws (2), since those laws - even if blurred by such things as quantum uncertainty - still result in pre-determined outcomes, or at least predetermined probabilities. (One cannot say the roll of a die is "free", since it's still pre-determined probabilities).

Since (1) can't come from (2), then the only possibility - if free will exists at all - is something supernatural (3).

I do not not believe in the supernatural, so I suppose my stance is that true "philosophically ideal" free will does not exist. While we may still control our lives, it is really an emergent property of a truly vast number of inputs - both externally and internally (memory, experience).