Chaos and free will...

Lets discuss...

Does true free will exist? Or is your "choice" of having an apple instead of a grape a mere illusion, abeit a comforting one?

If you accept causality, then everything that has occured and is going to occur is predefined by the initial conditions and the laws of nature that govern the cosmos.

Science knows that order always tends to grow out of disorder, no matter how erratic the disorder. Is this significant to free will?

Does someone know how a random number generator in a computer work?

Please enrich me...anybody...

 

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This much I "know." We did not have the option of choosing who or what we would be when we were born; we were simply given the current life we have as well as whatever skills or deficits go along with that life. . .these specific genetics that we have inherited basically decide what our aptitudes and abilities (as well as weaknesses)will be as well as how we understand ourselves and the world around us. To a large extent we are basically "mapped out" from fate, and to a smaller extent we can tweak some of our features.

 

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It all depends how you define "choice." If to chose means to evade natural law, then no, free will does not exist. All though some say that although the entire future is mapped out, there is some significance in our evaluations, even if they are all dependent on causal law.

The most misleading thing about free will is the feeling of conscious deliberation. When we chose an apple over a grape, it is easy to say, "Well I could have just as easily chosen the grape, yet I made a free action and CHOSE the apple instead. Therefore I have free will because there were 2 possibilities." Wrong, there is only one possibility.

Example: The First Big Bang occurs. Billions or trillions of years pass and the universe collapses on itself (I know it will supposedly accelerate into nothingness but for the sake of the argument it doesn't matter). *Poof*, a magic genie reboots the universe and another big bang occurs. Same amount of matter, same energy, some conditions. ALL CONDITIONS are exactly the same as if time restarted itself. Would every event occur as it did before? Or do humans have a magical power to make it different each time? Anyone who choses the ladder should probably abandon philosophy as a thing of interest. (just a tip)

 

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Quantum indeterminacy (which has more or less been proven and is widely accepted by physicists) is sometimes used as an explanation for how humans are able to have free will. Quantum effects could play a role at the sub-microscopic level within the human brain; the level at which neurons communicate with each other.

 

No. Indeterminate quantum effects within the first moments of the big bang could cause a universe to form that would be wildly different.

 

I too am battling with the "free will" idea, but when it comes to causality I have realized that even if the future already exists.... Why does it? and When did the events first play out?

With these two questions one can see that free will still has some hope.

 

This is all very interesting......

I was wondering if the quantum world played a role in free choice...it seems likely it does.

I find it hard to imagine true chaos. How can true randomness be generated? This is a property required by the quantum effect to give us free will, isnt it?

Just watched the old black and white Pi movie again...trying to find order will drive you mad...Maybe we cant see the true patterns or maybe true chaos is part of the universe...

When it comes to the external universe causality makes perfect sense, but whats the purpose of life if only causality is meaningfull. To add significance a good dose of unpredictability is needed it seems.

Of course wed all like to think we are important enough to make choices that are significant...

 

What would it mean to have a perfectly free-will? It would mean that all of our actions originate entirely from within us. That is, no outside agency could have the slightest role in either prompting or determining our response. In fact, we could not have a response and at the same time possess a perfectly free-will. Thus, to outside observers it would appear as though our actions were generated entirely at random. Most of us have observed persons who suddenly blurt-out words or phrases that appear unconnected and non-referential. They might throw their hands about or swat at flies that aren't there. They appear to act rather than react. In other word, they're crazy.

A reaction constitutes a response; and responses are the very thing that perfectly free-willed people are not permitted. A uranium 238 isotope appears to decay spontaneously by emitting an alpha particle at random. Uranium 238 is a good example of an unmoved mover. A rational human is a very poor example of an unmoved mover. We are homeostatic organisms: we respond both consciously and unconsciously to environmental changes so as to maintain an approximate equilibrium condition. If the ambient temperature rises, the sweat pores on the surface of my skin unconsciously dilate in order to lower my temperature. If I notice someone is about to swing a baseball bat at my head I’ll do my best to escape injury. Humans are anything but oblivious to their environment. We are not perfectly free-willed beings.

The other extreme is to imagine that our actions are entirely determined. Given enough data concerning our present state of mind as well as the present external stimuli, a Laplacian intelligence (this idea was famously suggested by Pierre Simon de Laplace) supposedly could predict our future actions.

The decay of the uranium 238 isotope that I spoke of is not an isolated case of apparently random activity. Indeed, the work of Neumann, Bell, Kochen and Specker, among others, suggests that the universe taken in the small (the so-called “quantum world”) appears to be fundamentally (I use the word “fundamentally” with my usual reservations) indeterminate. Quantum mechanics is probabilistic. The reason that we can predict events in the large physical world with a modest degree of accuracy is that large things (humans, stars, galaxies, etc.) are comprised of huge numbers of small things. The so-called “Law of Large Numbers” states that statistical predictions can be made concerning large enough numbers of random events. J.R. Lucas makes the point that while we can not predict when an individual electron will jump into a higher quantum state, we can predict quite well when a human will use his or her legs to jump into orbit around this planet – almost certainly never. Similarly, one might think that since humans are comprised of a huge number of tiny particles that this means we could perhaps statistically determine every aspect of human behavior. Fortunately, or unfortunately, it’s not that simple (is it ever?). In his book, Responsibility, J.R. Lucas writes:

”We are large, and all too often lumpish, but we are also neural networks, capable on occasion of greatly amplifying small variations, and sensitive in some areas (in sight and hearing, for example) at least to only a few quanta of energy.”

I don’t wish to reword the many arguments against the notion of a deterministic world (Heisenberg, Gödel, Turing, Chaitin, et. al.). If you’re interested there is no lack of information on the web on these topics. You might, for example, take a look at The Gestalt of Determinism:

http://www.mathpages.com/rr/s9-08/9-08.htm

I reject both extremes of the free-will vs. determinism argument. We are neither automatic automatons nor are our actions as unpredictable as a pair of thrown dice. We inhabit a world that lies somewhere between these extremes. My current belief is that the human model is captured better by a slightly imperfect determinism than a slightly imperfect free-will.

Michael

 

Reinstein:

Why? Is that what all the gimps at the 101's are teaching now? A's and b's with no shades in between?

What you're doing is pigeonholing. If your genie *POOF* magically rebooted the universe with the same conditions nonplussed, a billion years hence would likely blow your mind away with animal and plant species you'd never seen before.

Its all a matter of all the same factors in flux, and flux has nothing to do with free will.

Sputnik:

Riddle me this: when it dawns in the morning after nightime.....is that causality? Both followed each other. Did night cause day?

I've found that its saner to seperate the material chaos of the universe from that of a conscious being freely moving in that field. True enough that nature gives way to pattern and evolution-wise, if we're to take all those theories circulating and swallow them, there's plenty of evidence suggesting there's no such thing as free will. But I'm a staunch believer in this free will getting bested by the manipulations of its own creation: man.

Nasor:

Way too modern and positivist to stomach. Blegh. No thank you.

 

Quantum indeterminacy (which has more or less been proven and is widely accepted by physicists) is sometimes used as an explanation for how humans are able to have free will. Quantum effects could play a role at the sub-microscopic level within the human brain; the level at which neurons communicate with each other.

What significance would quantum uncertainty have even if it did play a role in conciousness? Our brains are still deterministic in nature, and obviously play a large role in our thought processes. So what if some .0001 % of what makes up our minds are influenced from this quatum realm of uncertainty? Why would this uncertainty be any more profound than the certain nature of our brains? A choatic(or uncertain) area of the universe is no more capable of housing true free will than a newtonion one. Yet some equate the mysterious unknown nature of this quantum world with some sort of magician's hat, where you can conveniently pull anything out that your heart desires- even impossibilities.

So who controls the nature of quantum uncertainty? Surely not us- no more than we control the nature of known physics. In regards to the concept of true free will, an unknown physics is no more capable of manifesting a false concept than a known physics.

 

Quantum indeterminism has been pretty much discounted as a source of human freewill (although 'micro-phenomenalism' asserts that it is IS freewill in action). Good article on freewill and indeterminism at: http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000341/00/FREEDOM.htm

However the idea now being put forward that spacetime is not quantised (search on Peter Lynds - papers also at CERN site) suggests that physical indeterminacy exists at a classical level. It also suggest that at any 'moment' consciousness (and brain state) is smeared over time and is thus never in a specifiable state.

It all sounds a bit unlikely but it may have some bearing on freewill.

Another issue is causation itself. If physical state A is followed by phsyical state B then clearly A is a sufficient condition for B. However it is impossible to show that A is a necessary condition for B. There may have been other outcomes of condition A that were equally allowable.

This means that while our actions must be constrained by physically determined factors (since physical conditions must be sufficient for our actions) it leaves it impossible to prove that our actions are entirely determined (that the physical conditions necessarily entailed our actions).

As Abelard said in the twelfth century (very confusingly but I think correctly, since underneath the complication it's a truism):

For p to entail q the impossibility of (p and not-q) is not enough. In addition p must also require that q be the case.

In other words we cannot prove that freewill does not exist unless we can prove that condition A requires that B is the case. We can never do that by any scientific method, since inferrence is not a strong enough tool for the job.

I suspect freewill can be neither proved not disproved, since consciousness itself has this same property.

However common sense tells me I've got it so I'll stick to that view. It mystifies me why anyone should doubt that we've got it, there isn't a shred of evidence to the contrarary.

Canute

 

Okay, so lets assume quantam indeterminacy has been proven (which it hasn't). This in no way points to evidence of free will. "Neurons interacting?" It is illogical to say that just because there may be subatomic particles that do not obey causal law and that they are contained within the brain that thought patterns are accordingly indeterminate. If what you are saying is true, give an example of how an indeterminate particle can affect the indeterminacy of "choice."

 

Not a 'shred' of evidence? All this shows is your lack of the ability to think analytically. Not going to begin discussing here....

 

I think if you're going to disagree you ought to provide some evidence.

 

Uhh, if we do not have "free will", then what do we use our brains for? If it did not help us to make better decisions, why was this fragile and costly organ not quenched by evolution.

Determinsm. In Determinism, you have two options:

1) Everything was mapped out exactly at the time of creation, and the Universe runs its predetermined, inescapable, predetermined course. In this case, a "reboot" would produce exactly the same result. The future is fully predictable, had we access to all information about the present. Also to make any sense, it requires a creator responsible for this vast and complex piece of programming. Observations of acausal events (in QM) contradicts this idea.

2) No initial mapping, as acausal events enter the equation and make things unpredictable. A "reboot" would produce a different sequence. The Universe is basically chaotic.

Observations about how the Universe behaves point to #2 being closest to the truth, but to account for the fact that we (and other creatures) can create ordered structures, we need to include the possibility of choice. Choice can either happen by evolution, like when ants over uncounted generations "learn" to build hive structures, or willfully, as when a human decides to build, say, a house.

Reinstein:

In principle, nothing has been proved beyond doubt, but we have observations that can only be explained using QM. I invite you to explain phosphorescence and other half-life phenomenon in deterministic terms.

And since we thus must conclude that the shape of the World we see today cannot have been programmed from the initial state, but it is nevertheless not entirely chaotic, something must be the source of the higly organized structures you see around you (e.g. the computer you are using right now). One of these sources of structure seems to be human deliberation = free will.

Hans

 

"Riddle me this: when it dawns in the morning after nightime.....is that causality? Both followed each other. Did night cause day?"

No, they are both caused by the Earth spinning on its axis. That "riddle" is far from supporting your argument. Analagous to saying that an ant died in Africa and 12 hours later a Japanese business man lost his keys. "Both followed each other." Did the ant cause the man to lose his keys? Give me a break.

 

I'm confused. Does anyone have any evidence that freewill does not exist?

MRC_Hans

At least you've argued from the evidence. However I'm not sure that the fact that order arises in the universe proves that there is freewill. If it does then it begs the question of how order arose prior to life on earth (unless you accept panpsychism/microphenomemalism).

Still I've also wondered if organised complexity entails free agents and choice. I believe it doesn't (because if it did we could prove the existences of consciousness, and I don't think we can). However:

“There’s a price top pay in becoming more complex; the system is more likely to break, for instance. We need a reason why biological systems become more complex through time. It must be very simple and it must be very deep.” (Stuart Kauffman quoted in Complexity – Roger Lewin)

I suspect that the scientific jury will always be out.

Canute

 

Just because aspects of QM are chaotic relative to our perception, that doesn't mean that it doesn't follow a strict physics- one that we don't, or can't, understand. Furthermore, even if this micro-world is truely chaotic(whatever that really means), is there a point in scale where this fundamental chaos ceases to have an uncertain effect? In other words, so what if a nueral signal has an uncertain property, as long as the operation of this signal is always certain.

In any case...

Free will is no more "free" with an indeterminate operation than it is with a determinate one. Free will is an illusion either way.

If you take two identical universes, and run them side by side, I suspect they would stay identical. But what if they didn't? Maybe free will would have caused one version of a man to choose something different than his identical version. And what if instead of only two identical universes, there was an infinite amount, all with different outcomes because of free will and indeterminancy. What significance would this have? In the end, is free will any more than just chance? In our single universe, an indeterminable "free will" is indistinguishable from a determined one, and under no more control from what we perceive as our choice than the other.


Randomness is meaningless and erratic. So why contribute this meaningless property to the root of all our decision-making? What meaningful "choosing property" can we contribute to free will? Nothing, because free will is a false concept. It's in our programming to believe that we have a choice. But the only "choosing property" that true free will could have is...well, free will(a loop of logic that our brains are programmed to see as a straight line).

So what exactly is free will? It's abstract, illogical, unthought-out programming of the human mind.

 

Reinstein:

And you give me one, friend, with that genie of yours rebooting the universe and ending up at exactly the same place he started from.

Causality is a pothole many 'determinists' such as yourself fall into and that byword is being thrown around for things it shouldn't be. Just because 'b' follows 'a' does not mean 'a' caused 'b' and that's the point many modernists insist on.

Free will would have it that any rebooting this magical friend of yours did would amount to something entirely different in the long run. And you can't see that.

 

Another way of viewing the universe, is that it's conscious and has a free will of it's own, and that it has put this illusion in front of us to test us. That would pretty much cover the bible

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just kidding of course, but I do believe that it's just a illusion and that there is a greater truth to it all. Maybe it's a test, maybe it's something else, but one thing I know for sure, is that it is something, cause we don't have all the clues, and as long as even one clue is missing everything is just our imagination, I believe that when we solve the final pieces of the puzzle, everything will change, not any physical change, but the way we look at the universe, maybe that change is a realisation that nothing can ever be complete about our knowledge about the universe, and that it will keep changing appearence forever as we find more and more clues. Have you ever been absolutly sure about something, and then found a clue and the whole truth changes? Suddenly everything makes sense, but then you find another clue and everything changes again, and now you think, everything makes sense! Until you find the next clue...and so on...this also happens in science (as I read someone of you pointed out, first the earth was in the middle of the universe, then the sun, then there was no middle and so on...truth changing appearence), but as long as we know that we are heading in the right direction (towards the truth should be the right direction, at least I hope so) we are glad, cause then even if we are moving slowly, at least we are moving forward.

I know...it's frustrating isn't it? However, I believe that the free will eventually is completly free, just at another level...perhaps the quantum level, most of our picture of the free will is just excuses, you did *that* because of *that*, but you don't realize that it wasn't the reason you did it, it was another reason (still intended by yourself) but in a more unaware level, or in a level without memories (it doesn't matter what you do, if you don't remember it then you are totally unaware of it ever happening), I believe that we get access to those levels when we dream. Any way, I believe you are here for a greater purpose, that can't be changed, and when you try to change that purpose you just dig deeper into the illusion (making excuses and so on..).

I agree, but a complex action requires more than just randomness, and maybe randomness doesn't exist at all? Who's throwing the dice? What process is selecting what "numbers" is to show up? No process and no principle would mean that the same number would show up constantly, unless of course it's selected by free will.

If true randomness really exist then there has to be a principle to control it, and that principle must in turn be random as well (ever tried to simulate randomness, you have to get random yourself - but in a way you were never random, and neither were the numbers you selected, you probably just skipped some of the numbers that came to mind and selected some (to make it even more "random") but still, the selection process wasn't random, and neither were the numbers, they were allready pre-selected even before you were aware of it).

What is free will you ask? This is what I think it is:

Free will is based on three things:

Focus
Time (or more correctly - rythm)
Impulse

The focus is like a frequency receiver, it is tuned to a specific class of impulses.
The impulses are selected by this receiver (the ones that match the frequency is selected) and moved to you.
You select the ones you need, (soon you'll find that they come with a rythm, which you learn so that you won't spend so much time picking single impulses from the constant flow, you "tune" in to a specific rythm because you start to know in what order the impulses come in).

That's what I think it is...however some process has to tune in the focus, and that's a free will also...
Also someone has to be you picking the impulses you need...but that may be accomplished by reference to experiance (you don't do things that have had bad consequences to you in the past and so the process won't select these signals)

The further away from within, the more "physical" is the process. Mentality does exist, cause we experiance it...in some way (may be illusion or not) it must exist. That holds with free will as well, we wouldn't get a feeling of it, if the feeling didn't exist. And because the feeling of it is a proof of it's potential existance, then it's likely to have a true nature that the illusion only imitates.

That is how I see it.