Does Physics disprove the existence of free will?

At the risk of going around in circles though - and rehashing the concept of determinism - the sticking point arises when one asks what it means for an individual to decide something without coercion.

If my current thoughts and feelings and memories are all a product of my brain chemistry, is it not so that every decision I think I make is one that is the emergent property of those fixed biochemical reactions? This is the thrust of the 'illusion' argument.

The fact that I don't know what proportion of my memories / current mood / other contributing factors lead to my decisions- because it all happens below my consciousness - does not mean that I actually had a choice.

Again, I return to the primitive computer example: a simple 286XT could be programmed to have a large number of factors that result in a wide array of outputs (such as the Eliza program of yore). The computer is not "aware" of its own programming, but comes up with a response based on a large (though in this case, not incalculable) number of internal states. It's not hard to envision adding in external inputs, such as a clock, a light/humidity/temperture sensor, etc.

But we wouldn't describe that computer as acting of its own volition; we know it's programmed.

Simply put: how is a human brain qualitatively different?

 

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The question is whether that free will is actually free. We could label a computer program as "free will" but it doesn't mean it is free. It can take in all the internal considerations it wants to - it's own internal temperature, cpu usage etc - but I'm sure you would not refer to it as free. So my point is that whatever you call it, the question remains as to whether it is free. Just calling it free does not make it so. We call it free because, in my view, it appears or seems free, not because it necessarily is. And that is the difference between the the two views: do we judge something as "free" merely on how it feels or on something else, such as the underlying physics?

Labelling something as free does not make it so. I also have zero interest in arguing from consequence. I also never said that it need be interpreted as "an event totally unrelated to causality". Not sure where you got that from.

It is a body of empirical evidence pretty much overturned with the advent of QM, I think, but the apparent randomness of QM still, in my view, doesn't invalidate the argument. If you want to suggest that the argument fails because of the premises - for example you think that physics is not limited to deterministic or probabilistic interactions - then go for it. Suggest alternatives, and let's see where they go. But, as stated, as Baldeee has stated, if you accept the premises, and you think the logic is valid, then the conclusion must surely be accepted, whatever that conclusion happens to be.

Understood. I should probably get into the habit of the same, but I find it lacks the deterministic notion of the same input leading to the same probability function.

No, it really isn't a matter of predictability at all. The argument still stands for probabilistic causation, and that is not predictable in principle, other than probabilistically. So if the argument stands for the case where it is unpredictable in principle, how then can predictability be an important matter?

In the same post as the logic he set out I believe he specifically states that he includes in the term "determinism" the probabilistic variety, and hence predictability is not an important matter. If one wishes to limit the argument to the strict determinism then yes, predictability is just another way of referring to it. But if the argument holds, as he argues, for both a predictable and unpredictable type of interaction, then the matter of predictability does not seem to be of importance.

Yes.

Yes.

I agree.

It still maps to a probability function for Z, though, even if the possible Z's are far more than the possible A's, B's, C's etc.

Yes, but my point is that the argument put forth by Baldeee still holds for probabilistic causation, unless one sees a random choice as being free?
So predictability, or lack thereof, is a red-herring.

I don't disagree with any of this. Probabilistic causation is inherently indeterministic and only probabilistically predictable. However that does not fundamentally alter the argument, unless one sees a random selection as somehow offering the ability for something to be "free".
As JamesR said in seeming agreement to this: "Randomness - even true quantum randomness - can't save the day if you're an incompatibilist." Maybe you have a different view to this?

 

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You should feel free to look up a dictionary to see what most people mean by the word "free".
You will also notice that scientists themselves use the word "free" freely, and in the usual sense.

You are mistaking the views of a few people with what most people mean.
And, of course, if we want to use the word "free" so that there is nothing free in the world, then it's also true there is nothing "red" or "weighing five kilos" either. There isn't even anything that's not free! There aren't even any truth!!! Ah, seems we would be stuck between a rock and a hard place.
EB

 

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No doubt your important point will be missed by those who need to see it.

also
Order = Oppression by laws and regulations ( re: Mathematics for Write4U

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)
Absolute freedom = chaos with out any order.
Absolute freedom = absolute insanity ( mental anarchy )

Thus oppression provides us with functional order and a liberation from chaos

The freedom is a relative term that is always a degree and never a fixed or static state.

Perhaps Sarkus would like to also provide some idea of what he means by the word "Free"?

 

Sarkus,
Perhaps you should start a thread topic called Free or Freedom. So little seems to be written by the major philosophers. ( One of which could be Steiner 1861-1925)
I'd do it myself but I am seriously fatigued and time oppressed at the moment...

 

Among others: It acts on higher logical levels, incorporates chaotic feedback loops, and handles new information in fundamentally different and more complex ways. As with the moth, and the brick, and similar comparisons of the past.

Among other qualitative differences.

They aren't. We observe their production, and it is by patterns of activity - these patterns are not chemicals.

The "if" dismissed, we remark that "emergent property" is vague. The brain chemistry itself is an "emergent property" of quarks, after all, if one wishes to be irrelevant at the smallest available scale.
Meanwhile: In any clear establishment of the "illusion" argument, one must establish the nature of the observer as well as the illusion. That may prove difficult - clearly the observer and the illusion would have to be separate entities, no?

 

That is only valid with the additional assumption. It is not valid from the stated premises alone.

So you have concluded (shaky, but we're giving you this)
that the larger system is deterministic. So far so good.

The conclusion does not bear on freedom of will - unless you make one more assumption.

Depends on how it was "tracked", and what it was. If the self steering system included making decisions based on moment by moment evocations of dreams and split second conscious acquisitions of meaningful information and so forth, so that the "tracking" was being enforced by the dreams, information, and other stuff that is "me", then considerable freedom of will for "me" - the causal agent - seems to be involved. From an engineering pov, anyway.
And it would make absolutely no difference whether this tracking was "beknownst" to "me" or not.

 

And how does one get freely operating patterns to arise out of fixed operating chemistry?

Sure, if the patterns are complex enough, they are virtually impossible to trace back to the biochemical states that created them. But not seeing them doesn't mean the fixed causes aren't there.

Sure. Why not? We know that atoms are made of quarks.
We could not have atoms behave the way atoms do without having atoms be an emergent phenomenon of quarks.
So how does that inform the topic?

No. Why?

 

Internal contradiction, same as last time. At the end you admit it is ABOUT (language, modeling, representation, map, etc). But before that you declare IT IS.

"Mathematical" refers to mathematics, a human discipline. The universe at large does not engage in that activity. It does not work with concepts and abstract affairs. You are reifiying the latter.

reification
http://changingminds.org/disciplines/argument/fallacies/reification.htm

reification


reification
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reification_(fallacy)

If someone points to apples on the ground, and remarks that there are eight under the tree, what is there are the phenomenal objects (apples), not the idea of eight. The latter in everyday application is the conception of the apples as belonging to a set or group, it is a symbol for either a visual or manual measurement (counting) that was carried out using a system for expressing magnitude, etc. You can kick apples, you can kick a box with the sign of "8" written on it -- but you can't kick the idea of eight.

If roads outline an overhead pattern called a square, what's there are the physical details, not the geometrical concept an observing mind is projecting upon the appearances (for recognition and identification purposes).

Abstract entities require a a cognitive and intellective orientation which invents them, finds them interesting, useful, etc. The cosmos as a whole does not possess such. It does contain smaller organisms which do, however.

~

 

So reification is the attempt to concretize something that is actually a metaphor. Huh.

 

Concept, idea, etc would be prior in rank to metaphor (the latter's stomping ground is more specialized, usually of a literary context). Which is to say, metaphor is subsumed under concept, is another type of concept -- not vice versa.

~

 

Yeah, that's a funny one: "We want a tanker of oil delivered in a barrel." Reminds one of its opposite and similarly perverse cousin also bandied around in this place (paraphrasing): "Could you make what was said in a few words clearer by expanding it to several paragraphs?"

~

 

Can I ?
We are very capable of altering our chemistry through the use of micro psycho-somatics, changing our mind states through mental imagery, affirmations etc. Healthy people do it all the time as par of course. It is only when extreme mental/mind/reality situations are involved that this process breaks down and other more "blunt" methods are called for such as medication.

 

Alas, I would like to agree with you, but then we'd both be wrong.

 

You cannot re-present something unless it already exists. You cannot map the terrain unless there is terrain. You cannot model unless there is something to model. Each one of these representations require specific descriptive (symbolic) languages. Even the mathematics of tap-dancing can be represented. The properties of waves can be modelled, because they can be observed.

Humans have discovered a (mathematical) language to express and represent what is inherent in the "patterns" of allowed geometries in spacetime.

Humans do not dictate the mathematics to the universe. It dictates the mathematics to us.....

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. Good for us we are quick learners.......

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I know what most people mean by the term. I am also aware that scientists use the word freely as well. How does that counter the notion that labelling something as "free" makes it so?

No, I'm really not. The argument takes a rather simple notion of what it means to not be free (if something has no option but to act in a specific way, it can not be considered free) and is running with it. I am fully aware that the compatabilist notion of what it means to be free is different from this.

I don't want to use the word "free" so that there is nothing free in the world, but using the notion that the argument does, the conclusion is what it is, that if everything is built from deterministic (or probabilistic) interactions then nothing has that notion of freedom. If you want to argue from conclusion, that is your prerogative.
Similarly if you come up with an argument that uses a pretty average definition of "red or "weighing five kilos" that concludes that nothing is red or weighs five kilos (as understood within the context of the argument) then go for it.

 

If something is constrained such that it can only act in a certain way, would you consider it free?
Perhaps this point will be missed by those who need to see it most.

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Good question. Much research to be done, on top of progress made.

Or the biochemical states they created - that would make more sense.

Do you think quarks cause blood to clot - does that make sense to you?

It helps solidify the insight that substrates do not cause patterns.

So you are positing an illusion without an observer. It's an inherent illusion, which exists without anyone perceiving it.
I have to admit, that's a muddle new to me. I did not expect to encounter anything new in this rut.

 

I might consider the situation to display a significant degree of freedom.

For the third or fourth time: Depends. What did the constraining? When and where and why and how?
Certainly atoms, for example, do not constrain the patterns formed and interacting via them as substrate. The opposite is the case: they are constrained by these patterns.

And so that "notion of freedom" is supernatural.
That "conclusion" only follows from the added assumption that freedom must contravene physical law, that nothing bound by natural law is free - only the supernatural can be free. Drop that assumption, and the entire argument evaporates.

 

I understand every word you say, and I'm sorry, but you are wrong in assuming that the universe does not function in an orderly manner, translatable into symbolic mathematics.
How then does it function? Disorderly? Not mathematical? How then did we invent mathematics? Out of thin air?.......oops......that can be translated into mathematics.

What we have named "mathematics" is the cognition of an orderly chronological aspect to all universal functions, down to the cognition that at quantum scales and in black holes our mathematical language (models) break down.