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

Science has little to offer in response to this question, which is why it does not belong in the Physics & Math forum. Logically, if free will and consciousness are illusions then we have absolutely not way to verify that anything else, including the external world you attribute cause to, is otherwise than illusion either. It is a solipsist trap that robs you of any grounds for argument.

Empirical evidence is that which we can derive from observation and can be verified by experiment. Free will satisfies both, as we both observe and can mutually verify it to exist. Anything else is only pie-in-the-sky philosophy that shows no accessibility to empirical methodology.

 

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Science shows that the brain decides to do something about 1 second before you are consciously aware of making that decision.

 

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No, it does not. The Libet experiment, and all of its more modern incarnations, have only shown that the brain "gears up" in readiness for activity. Nothing else.

 

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There are legitimate discussions to be had about the experiment, but it wouldn't be correct to say that science has nothing to say about free will.

 

Straw man, as I said, "Science has little to offer in response to this question".

 

But as long as one's theories are based only on the science and not on some wishful thinking or unwarranted assumption then we at least reach rational conclusions.

There is no trap, and the arguments are grounded on consistency within the illusion. In the realm of the illusion that the illusory consciousness creates, science allows us to understand that consistency.
Whether there is an objective reality that we can reach while subject to such an illusion is another issue... but again, science allows the understanding of the consistency.

The only free-will that can be evidenced empirically is one that is defined as the perception by one's consciousness of the ability to make a choice.
If one wishes to define it is as the actual ability of one's consciousness to be the ultimate cause of an action, then no, this has not been proven empirically.

 

Let me ask you, believers of free will:

We are composed of atoms, which follow the law of conservation of momentum, as anything in the Universe. Then, how could we make a decision by ourselves? This would violate the conservation of momentum law, right? If not, why?

 

And where is the inconsistency in the universally perceived free will? All empirical evidence relies primarily on perception. When you cast doubt on the perception of free will, you cast doubt on all mutually verified perception.

There is no proof in science, so that is a pipe dream. We can only functional disprove things, which has not been accomplished in the case of free will, and any claim to the contrary would be intellectually dishonest.

Red herring, as there is nothing about choice that implies any violation of kinetic energy. Acting upon a choice requires the energy to do so, but it is irrelevant where that energy comes from, so long as conservation is satisfied.

 

Yeah that is true, if you accept the premise that all our actions are like marbles, acting and reacting. I dont think that natural laws of physics are obeyed at the quantum mechanics level. Things aren't deterministic anymore, so that is where people believe free will resides. I guess this is why they moved this question to the physics and math forum?

 

That's simply nonsense and a complete deviation from plain logic. Things like conservation of momentum have no more effect on the decision-making process in a physical sense than the amount of snowfall at the North Pole.

Many people here - including you - are attempting to interject completely unrelated things into the topic of free will. Would you also be so silly as to think the freezing point of helium, or any other physical consonants would have ANY effect on a human's ability to think and make choices??? All you and those like you have done here is show just how great your lack of scientific knowledge is AND how great is your general ignorance.

 

Well I'd just like to ask you one thing. Do you believe that there is something beyond matter? Something like spirit, or a soul. I know we haven't discovered how thoughts come about, or how our mind works. But either it comes by some sort of spirit, or by matter. If its spirit, then yeah we don't know anything about that. But if its matter, then that matter in our brain should behave the same as the matter in the ground. I think we'd agree that robots don't have free will. Well liken us to a robot, we have the electrical circuitry, the chemical reactions that transduce into physical movement. Do we just have more complicated circuitry, or do we have something extra, a soul.

 

Aren't you ashamed by saying that?

Let me repeat this:

There are two things that determine ourselves, the enviroment and genetic information (DNA).. There is no evidence for something else.
At the level of atoms, molecular reactions, and biological processes (like metabolism, DNA replication, photosynthesis, and even the function of neurons) nothing violates cause and effect, in other words there is always causality... Free will implies that cause and effect is violated so at wich point do you think that this happens, and why? We know that the mind is resposible of "decission making". Well, what is the mind ? ... In general terms, the mind is the result of complex processes ocurring in the brain, and we don´t undestand it YET because the brain is the most complex thing in the known universe!.. Nevertheless we know that the brain is the result of the evolution of simple biological systems that follow cause and effect...

AND, for those who wrote that is stupid to say that there is no free will or even the possibility that free will may be an illusion:

"Physicist Stephen Hawking describes such ideas in his 2010 book The Grand Design. According to Hawking, these findings from quantum mechanics suggest that humans are sorts of complicated biological machines; although our behavior is impossible to predict perfectly in practice, "free will is just an illusion."[151] In other words, Hawking thinks that only compatibilistic (deterministic) free will is possible based on the data."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will#Physics

 

Causality is not equivalent to determinism, nor does free will imply any violation of causality. We know that quantum systems are indeterminate and that the brain is susceptible to this in the operation of its synapses. We can only, at most, say individual synapse firing is random, so the usual cop-out of "randomly determined" cannot apply to to global mental processes.

For example, a study of patients undergoing awake brain surgery found that by electrically stimulating the appropriate regions of the brain, one could create in the patient the desire to move the hand, arm, or foot, or to move the lips and talk. It is hard to imagine how free will can operate if our behavior is determined by physical law, so it seems that we are no more than biological machines and that free will is just an illusion.
— Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, The Grand Design, Bantam Books, New York, 2010, p. 32.​

Yes, directly stimulating a person's motor control can usurp their own control, but nothing about this is the nail in the coffin of free will, as this only demonstrates that the brain is susceptible to electrical interference.

 

There is no inconsistency with the perception of free will. There is an apparent inconsistency if we want free will to be more than the perception - if we want to define free will meaning that our consciousness is the ultimate cause of our actions, etc, and is not caused to such action / decisions. 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.
If free will is understood just as an illusion (but one to which we are all bound and practically operate according to) then there is no such inconsistency - just a lack of knowledge of how what we do know (the interaction of molecules etc) can lead to what we perceive.

Yes, me bad for using the term. Let's say that there has been no empirical evidence for free-will as the ultimate cause of our actions, only for our perception that this is might be case.

 

Wiki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural

A network of neurons that uses its internal structure to generate temporally structured output, without requiring a corresponding temporally structured stimulus, is called a central pattern generator.
Can this be called a form of free will?

 

Do you experience yourself as being "composed of atoms"?

Or is this just a hypothesis that you have accepted on faith?

 

I don't see it supporting free will. The body carrying out its functions seems rather contrary to free will.

 

The living state and the brain makes use of a fifth force of nature which is called the entropic force. This force can be proven in the lab with osmosis. The osmotic pressure, which is osmotic force/area is generated by water increasing entropy as it diffuses in the direction of higher ionic concentration. Osmosis is considered a colligative property of water, which means it is only dependent on concentration but is not dependent on which ions are present. It is not connected to the EM force, or any of the other three forces, but only to entropy. Osmosis and the entropic force is an example of order from chaos; directed force opposite gravity in the osmotic device.

Existing biology leaves this out because it is more concerned with the organics and tends to downplay the importance of water and the entropic force. Physics also leaves this out because it is not used to dealing with the liquid state, but tends to assume solid or gas analogies in most theories of physics. Philosophically this is how physics departed from chemistry, which is mostly liquids.

In osmosis, the osmotic pressure is pumping one leg of the water to a height, while the pure water leg has a lower height. If we look at the forces at the membrane, there is a push/pull in the direction of the lower leg. However, at steady state, the water ignores the direction of these force vectors, and diffuses on both directs equally at the micro-level. Liquids can show two different effects at the same time, one at the macro (osmotic pressure/force vectors) and an independent effect at the micro-level.

This is not normal to physics theory, since most of what physics is explained with the analogies to gases or solids. A gas cannot be placed up tension, since a gas is defined by partial pressure. A liquid can be placed under tension and pressure at the same time; atmospheric pressure and surface tension. Even though the force vectors add in solid/gas physicl; they can act separately in the liquid state. In the case of the solid, if you apply a pressure to one side of a solid, the atoms of the solid, always move in the direction of the force. Liquids do not have to act that way as shown with an osmotic device.

When biology ignores water and does not give it sufficient weight the entropic force which adds properties to liquid state physics, it ignores some wild card variables that explain the the so-called life force and free will. The osmotic device generated a directed force (opposite gravity) from chaos as water increases entropy; order from chaos due to two separate effects in the liquid state. The liquid state brain creates unique containers; memory, so entropy increase, via the second law, can create order from the chaos.

I usually define free will equals choices without bias, since the rest is entropic force and liquid state physics.

 

The idea of virtual particles begins to express liquid state analogies in physics. It defines matter using solid and gas analogies based on cause and effect and force, but with something else that can depart from the solid-gas analogy.

 

It doesn´t matter how we experience ourselves, why people consider so important what they feel? The brain fool us all the time... Faith has nothing to do with this, faith is for idiots..