Does Physics disprove the existence of free will?

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by M.I.D, Oct 2, 2018.

  1. river

    Messages:
    17,307
    Thats not not what I'm getting at

    What I'm saying is this , the more information you have and get , the more free-will you will have
     
  2. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  3. Write4U Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,069
    No. The more information you have the fewer choices you will have to consider.
     
  4. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  5. river

    Messages:
    17,307
    Explain further
     
  6. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  7. Write4U Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,069
    Information suggest prior experience. Any historical negative results can immediately be discarded as viable options. It is the unknown which presents the choice dilemma.
    In that case we rely on our personal experience and intuition (inherited knowledge), to make a "best guess'' as to course of action. I've made all this stuff available with links to reputable sources.

    In short, insects have only a purely chemical auto-responsive motor control, a few billion years of being an insect has equipped it with sufficient innate abilities to never having to make a conscious decision at all.

    Insects never ask why or how. They know what they need to know to function effectively, including horticulture, air conditioning, husbandry, flight, long distance communication, war.

    The insect is so succesful because it acts without question or decision making at all.
    It is a clear demonstration that conscious decision making is not a necessity in nature.

    The paramecium and slime mold act without making conscious decisions. Yet they remember external repetitive patterns and "learn" to navigate an obstacle faster each time they encounter it.

    A Lemur can count quantity as fast and sometimes faster than humans.
    All living organisms display mathematical abilities and behaviors. It's part of the universal program.
     
  8. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    18,935
    Reporting, to have this split off and moved the the Religion forum.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  9. river

    Messages:
    17,307
    To your first statement , while true that information can be from experience .

    Imagination extends that experience , to beyond just the experience its self .
     
  10. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    Why are you trying to talk about something else?

    The situation described is perfectly real, and deliberately set up to focus on the one issue: the degree of freedom observable in the making of a decision to stop or not stop;

    a degree of freedom possessed by the entity making the decision, observable in a laboratory, recordable by machinery, verifiable by repeated experiment in controlled situations.
    And they too are attributes or features of the physical events we label "mind".
     
  11. Write4U Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,069
    "Mind" is a faculty, not a physical event.
    Did I say the universe has a mind?
     
  12. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    It is a pattern of patterns of physical events. It has a location, occupies a defined volume within a physical space, can be identified and its activities recorded on laboratory machinery. You can destroy a human mind with a sledgehammer, by damaging the physical substrates inhabited by the patterns it comprises. You can also destroy a human mind by physically disrupting the patterns themselves, using electrical fields and other physical means.

    We normally call such things "physical events", where "event" refers to a collective entity comprising all the subsidiary physical events it comprises. The crashing of a wave on a rock, for example, is normally and without objection labeled a physical event.
     
    Last edited: Dec 7, 2018
  13. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

    Messages:
    39,397
    Sarkus:

    Let's start with this, from one of your replies to iceaura:
    It sounds like you think that free will might be possible if the universe is not "just" deterministic. You also make it sound as if the universe not being deterministic is a possibility you haven't ruled out.

    We probably need to get something out of the way first. Earlier in the thread, including in my posts, there was some discussion of quantum randomness. Do you think that might be a source of this non-determinism that you suspect the universe might have?

    My problems with quantum randomness are twofold. First, quantum mechanics is deterministic, is that the wave function (if you like) of anything evolves according to entirely deterministic physical laws (Schrodinger equation, for example). This is conceptually no different to a classical particle obeying Newton's second law of motion. You might argue that when a measurement is made, the outcome is random according to quantum mechanics (although determined to the extent that the wave function defines the probabilities). But do you think this is enough to save free will?

    Second - and this is more a more fundamental objection - I don't think that any random process, quantum mechanical or otherwise, can be considered to be the operation of a conscious, willed choice, such as would be required for free will. Random outcomes are random, not choices.

    So, coming back to your view, you say that you do not assume that the universe is "only deterministic", and you imply that, if it isn't, free will might be possible. In that light, I need to ask you whether you have any particular candidates for non-deterministic processes in the universe in mind, such as might save free will. Presumably you have something in mind other than the supernatural, since you are quite insistent that the right kind of non-determinism is possible without invoking the supernatural.

    Over to you, then, to outline your non-deterministic ideas that are in accordance with physical laws. Which of these ideas might make somebody "able to do otherwise", as you put it?

    If you have no viable candidates for these non-deterministic processes you allude to, then it would seem that your de facto position is that free will is impossible in the absence of the supernatural, regardless of what you claim to believe.
    Moving on to your reply to my previous posts...​

    I fail to see how it could mean anything else, from your point of view. But I'll wait to hear your explanation.

    Please don't patronise me. You complain when you perceive that from iceaura or myself, so do unto others. I have read and understood all of your posts, although I have requested that you expand on your argument on various points.

    In what sense am I not able to do otherwise when I choose wheaties over corn flakes for breakfast? Did somebody other than me really make the choice? Was it the will of somebody other than me that I chose wheaties, say?

    I await your description of non-deterministic physical systems such as would allow free will.

    I have given you my description of free will several times now. I could have done otherwise, if that was the choice I had made. Under this formulation, my will is free as long as it is me who is doing the willing, and not some external force or person. My will is free if my actions are determined by my choices, and not the choices of some other person, entity or thing.

    You do have an issue with that [the formulation I expressed in the preceding paragraph]. You keep telling us that this kind of free will is not "true" free will, but merely the appearance or feeling or illusion of free will. We're telling you that this is actual free will. More importantly, we're telling you that if you don't regard this kind of will as free, then it appears that the only kind of will that could be free, according to you, would be the supernatural kind that can defy physical law. You say there's a third path, but we're yet to get any description of that from you.
     
  14. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

    Messages:
    39,397
    (continued...)

    It has been pointed out many times that this misses the point. We're telling you that even if the universe and ourselves is entirely deterministic, we still have "true" free will in the only sense that matters - i.e. being able to act as we intend.

    When I choose to eat wheaties for breakfast, I don't merely imagine that I can choose to eat them. I actually make the choice and actually eat them. Where's the illusion in that? Where's the lack of "truth"?

    What do you think it means to choose? On the one hand, you appear to think that if your atoms made you do it, then you didn't really choose at all. On the other hand, you try to leave the door open by suggesting that there is some non-supernatural process that would allow you to "really" choose, after all, despite your atoms. I think it is you who needs to sort out what it means to choose, not me.

    What do you think the rest of us are doing here?

    You don't sound happy with it. You sound like you think that it only describes the illusion of free will, and not the real thing.

    I think that's what we're discussing, aren't we? I understand your frustration. Probably you're wondering why iceaura and I are making such a big deal out of your insistence that free will doesn't require the supernatural. Our problem is that the implications of what you write are that there is no other viable option, given your working notion of what free will is.

    It's not about railroading you into holding a certain view. It's about exploring possible inconsistencies in your own position. It goes both ways, of course.

    Is this you agreeing with me then? It doesn't sound like it, from the rest of your postings.

    I have nowhere argued that free choice requires the defiance of physical laws. Quite the opposite. I have argued that choices are freely made all the time, without the need for the supernatural.

    Isn't moral or criminal responsibility predicated on the basis that people make free choices about how they act? If you say that their choices aren't really free at all, doesn't it strike you as nonsensical to punish them for failing to be able to act other than they must?

    Just like you need to decide what "real" free will would look like, I think you also need to decide what makes a person morally responsible for his or her own actions. The two questions are rather intimately related.

    Notice that we routinely mitigate responsibility for people who are perceived not to have made a free choice to commit a crime, on grounds such as diminished mental capacity, insanity, coercion and so on.

    Under the no-free-will argument, people are essentially automatons - puppets of their atoms and the physical laws that govern them. They have no "real" choices, but merely do as they must. Should their crimes not be excused on the same grounds, then?

    It would be nice to get a simple answer from you in this thread. Should people be held morally (or criminally) liable for their crimes, if free will is merely an illusion?
     
    Last edited: Dec 9, 2018
  15. Write4U Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,069
    Could we say "we have freedom to act as we intend, but not free choice what action to take".
     
  16. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

    Messages:
    39,397
    Wouldn't that be a contradiction?
     
  17. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    Choosing is an action. So is intending, in a complicated way - a physical pattern we can monitor via machinery (very crudely so far, but we're getting better).
    Since consciousness - all these illusions, collectively - would be therefore superfluous, while remaining observably expensive, a conflict with Darwinian evolutionary theory arises.
     
    Last edited: Dec 9, 2018
  18. Write4U Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,069
    Not necessarily, IMO.
    If I intend to run, I am able to run, but why should I want to run unless I am internally compelled to make that decision. That decision is wholly dependent on my experience and physical reaction to prevailing conditions, which dictate my decision to run or not.
     
  19. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    18,935
    So, you're not free to make that decision after all. It's dictated to you. How is that freedom to act?
     
  20. Write4U Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,069
    It isn't. That's the point. We are only free to physically act on our deterministic inputs. The inputs determine the decision to act in a specific way, which we are able (free) to perform.

    Fight or flight, we are able to do both. The decision for one or the other is not free, it is deterministic.
     
  21. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    18,935
    So, when you say "we have freedom to act as we intend" it is the cognitive equivalent of "You can buy a Model-T in any colour - as long as it's black."

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  22. Write4U Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,069
    More like, you can (are free to) buy a Model-T in any color, but you have no choice in the color you like best. If black is your favorite color, you will not buy a red Model-T. You will always pick black. "movement in the direction of greatest satisfaction"
     
    Last edited: Dec 9, 2018
  23. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    18,935
    You're missing the point of the analogy. If you say you have the freedom to act as you intend, but then say you have no freedom about what you intend, then you don't have freedom.
     

Share This Page