The illusion of free will

I was almost going to bring up how I thought I agreed with Einstein, but I'm not even worthy to untie his shoelaces, so to speak. So, indeed, I don't believe randomness is inherent at even the quantum level. If we could take into account all going on at the quantum level and everywhere else, we could remove our uncertainty and always make accurate predictions.

 

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Free will is a defining emergent capability that distinguishes us human intellects from lesser evolutionary animal intellects. We can imagine to 'infinity'. We can imaging many 'other' states of being as individuals in their own rights and not just 'part of the environment' an animal has to deal with in whatever way their intellect allows them for best chance of survival.

It is this emergent capability that allows us to PRACTICE and not just 'seemingly appear to' practice, actual free will decision making which involves all the imagination potential of the human intellect. It is that imagination which 'games' all possible altrnatives AND THEN GAME SOME MORE the free will possibilities FURTHER introduced into that initial gaming BY THE HUMAN intellect.

The exercise I posed is the essential demonstration of the 'imaginary gaming' (ie, overlaying free will alternative choices onto pre-existing choices presented by the coin toss and the road. In that exercise you can perform for yourself, it is YOU that decides and pre-decides what 'the game' will BE, not some predeterminism that loses all sense whenever YOU make a 'game' out of it 'just for the hell of it' because you are curious to see what YOU can do to CONTROL the possibilities/choices and not to be CONTROLLED BY them.

You ask what 'caused' me to construct that exercise to 'game' the choices/decision making? I'll tell you....it was my FREE WILL pursuit of a PARTICULAR aspect of the possibilities which I can show that I am NOT CONTROLLED BY the previous possibilities which were available naturally beforehand BUT which I now changed/increased via my imagination and free will 'gaming' of 'my own' localized universal possibilities/configurational outcomes....by making a 'game' out of it with rules which my free will 'made up' as well as the game.

The 'recursion' of 'causes' STOPS at my imagination in this instance I posed...because my FREE WILL MADE that 'recursion' stop with me in that instance. Fair enough? Cheers!

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We can't. Not even in theory. Such a proposal is more unreal than an ideal gas. Chaos theory, Heisenberg uncertainty, quantum indeterminancy, each level of cause and effect has its own limits of even theoretical accuracy, and each level communicates by cause (down) and constraint (up) with all the others, so that the indeterminancy is always available for recursive amplification.

The central philosophical problem is the unwarranted elevation of just one of the several basic human shorthand approximations or heuristic models of aspects of the world - the notion of a "cause" - to some kind of abstract and perfect validity beyond all the others. A "cause" is usually an identified single factor apparently or conveniently most responsible or closely associated with the establishment of a very high probability for some event. The notion of "probability" is more fundamental than that of "cause", if we want to pick one such human notion for deification.

The obvious symptom is the overlooking of the appropriate level at which to ascribe "cause" to something - ideas cause ideas, not neurons. If you want to answer this question: "But at the level below appearance, there is the question of what caused you to select X or Y " the answer will be at the appropriate level of mental event, one of the causes of mental event - one or more of the neuronal firing patterns in time and mind that act as causes for the patterns we identify as "selecting X or Y". And by "caused" there we mean as always "established sufficiently high probability".

Sure you have your "deterministic" universe in a sense - but the determining factors include dreams, ideas, the influences of music and literature, memories of overheard conversations on the subway, and so forth - all of them influencing your will, creating degrees of freedom or constraint. Nothing's changed - once the error of ascribing supernatural character to the will is abandoned, there is no illusion here.

The current evidence and theory refutes that - if the nature of the universe is not probabilistic, somebody has to refit all of modern physics with a new and radically different theoretical base - and current theory has been remarkably accurate in its predictions.

The experimental confirmation of Bell's Theorem, for example (which Einstein did not live to see), would have to be explained as a consequence of deterministic influences of hidden variables - not an easy thing to do, apparently, as the best and the brightest have come up empty for decades now, and the natures of the possible such explanations are even less comfortable than the initial weirdness they would replace.

What we have discovered is not that God plays dice with the universe, but that God plays universe with dice. And such means are determinate beyond anything in the human imagination - there is no more intractable inevitability than the consequences of the laws of chance. It's just not how humans are used to thinking.

 

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Nope, not "fair enough" as you have failed to show how any of the decisions made within the game is free from influence, conscious or otherwise.
All you seem to be advocating is the human ability to make predictions, to imagine ourselves in the future, and make a selection according to the weights and measures we apply to those predictions. Computers can do that - we can just do it better.

As I said previously, your experiment only goes back as far as how it appears to us, and at that level no one can dispute that freewill as defined in that way is real. It speaks nothing for what is going on beneath the level of appearance.

 

I think it's about time to post something that occurred a few years back. A group of scientists took a nesting female bird and her eggs and placed them in an enclosed, prepared environment. They had installed a 'snake', a stuffed hawk (or owl?) on a string that could also launch a fake 'attack' and a sprinkler to simulate rain.

First they tried the snake - the mother bird attempted to drive it off. They got the same result from the hawk/owl. Next, they tried the rain - the bird settled down deeply on the nest and allowed her feathers to sweep the water away from the rain.

Then they repeated all the experiments over the next few days and got the same results each time.

Finally, they did all three things at once. Unable to decide which crisis to deal with first, the bird simply 'threw up her hands', so to speak, and sat calmly on her nest and just preened her feathers.

Later, they duplicated the experiment with students as subjects. This time there were a number of factors brought to bear on the students - things like unreasonable deadlines to meet, someone rushing in for help, multiple phones on their desk ringing at the same time, and a few others. When the students were placed on 'overload', they reacted just as the mother bird did. Several actually left the room, some just kicked back in their chairs and ignored everything, etc.

My point is simply this: no one could ever convince me OR THOSE RESEARCHERS that free will is simply an illusion.

 

The causes of mental events - patterns of patterns of neuron firings taking place in time - are other mental events, other such patterns. Dreams influence decisions, as do conscious thoughts, various registered environmental influences as they affect these firing patterns, etc.

Degrees of freedom of the will exist at that level. Some people have more than others.

 

Got some sleep at last. Back now. Wow, what a difference a few hours sleep makes!

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At that level of human intellectual process/imagination exemplified/demonstrated in my exercise above, the onus is now on YOU to demonstrate a refutation in practice of what my exercise showed (ie, that free will is occurring at every turn of our "mind's eye" above and beyond mere trigger-driver responses "on auto pilot' as you keep suggesting but not demonstrating).

I will give a real-time example of free will: I returned from Sydney very early this morning; I had been awake since yesterday morning; I was tired and wanted sleep badly; I made a (PRIMARY) free will choice) to read/post here anyway before going to bed; I consequently made a (SECONDARY) choice to get a cup of coffee; this secondary choice was the 'circumstances-caused choice (ie, the circumstances being that if I wanted to read/post here before going to bed I knew I needed a cup of coffee).

My initial PRIMARY choice was INdependent of circumstances other than MY FREE WILL to read/post before retiring, despite my being extremely tired and sleep deprived). The SECONDARY "forced choice" was not altogether 'free will' because the coffee would be necessary to staying awake and completing my INITIAL altogether free will choice. One choice (the primary free will one to stay awake instead of just following the body's imperative signals to SLEEP NOW) created a necessary condition causing the non-free will choice (dependent choice) of GET COFFEE if I want to STAY AWAKE and read/post purely from my OWN CHOICE against all the body's physiological need/desire to sleep now.

These sorts of primary and dependent choice-chains occur at the subconscious and conscious levels all the time, only you are not aware of them. Close examination will tease out the primary free will and the secondary and further-down hierarchy of dependent choices not as free will as the initial/primary one which set a particular choice-chain going.

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Again, if you have a concrete refutation example to offer, please provide. Thanks.

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PS: That sort of thing (ie, human imagination and unpredictability and ability to go 'against programming') is what's so cool about FUZZY LOGIC state/processes which the human intellect has harnessed to great efficacy to solving problems crucial to survival/progress from animal-programming state 'software'. It's precisely because we DO have FREE WILL, to go counter to seemingly logical and/or socially accepted assumptions and practices and demands, that makes us so successful survivors/innovators and capable of encompassing infinity' concepts and universal phenomena sets in a consistent/complex theoretical MIND-CONSTRUCT. Be proud of your free will, mate; and use it whenever you reach an impasse or unsatisfactory situation which non-free will-logic cannot help you advance from.

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Your initial "choice" of posting on the forum was determined by your pre-existing brain-state that was curious about the forum. It's as much innate for you at that moment as your need for sleep. It doesn't prove a thing.

 

They will be perceived to exist, but each is still caused. Their interactions still abide by the laws of physics at the microscopic level.
You are defining freewill as the appearance of freedom at that level. And I would concur that we do indeed have that sense of freedom. People who see freewill as an illusion do not make claims that what you define as freewill does not exist, they merely see that however it is perceived to work, the underlying structure and nature of the universe does not seem to allow an event to happen (including choice) that is not in some way itself caused, or if it is non-caused then it as best random.

You say thoughts cause thoughts, and that may be the case in terms of that level of construct/complexity. But the individual thought is still a pattern of activity that is made up of interactions at the micro level. It may be a downward causation, sideways or upwards, but the thought is still caused, and at the microscopic level it is still adhering to the laws of physics.

 

There is no refutation necessary of what you showed because, as stated, your definition of freewill starts from the point of view of conscious appearance.
I fully agree that we have what you define as freewill.
But I do not consider it a genuine freewill, and consider it nothing but an appearance, required by our consciousness to make sense of what it is aware of.
The refutation, that it is not genuine, is in the core assumptions (which you are of course free to dispute and reach an alternative conlusion) of everything being caused (whether upward, downward, sideways etc) and that at the micro level the only uncaused things are random.
Once you accept those assumptions then every level of complexity is initially caused by lower levels, even if it then immediately becomes sideways causing (as per iceaura's view: thoughts cause thoughts etc).

No need, as your working definition is already inherently just a perception by our consciousness.

I have never disputed the existence of this definition of freewill.

I dispute nothing you say, given the definition of freewill you are using.
When I (or others) argue that freewill is an illusion, we do not say that this freewill (as you have exampled) does not exist, and that it does not operate exactly how you example above. We merely say that you are only viewing it from the conscious level above, basing everything on how it appears to be. And your arguments define the reality to be as it appears in this case.
When we argue that it is an illusion we merely ask whether what we perceive is reality? And so we look at the underlying assumptions, and realise that our consciousness is hiding from us the workings of our freewill, giving us the appearance that you exampled.

That is all.
You can of course (and undoubtedly will) disagree, but if so then please do so with more than just further examples that do not go beneath the level of appearance.
If one is trying to work out whether it is illusory or not, one must establish what the underlying workings are, one must get to the heart of the matter.
In the same way that if two paths (A and B) lead to the same point (C), you don't find out which route someone took by asking them at point C where they are.
All your examples, en route to or back from Sydney or not, sleep-deprived or not, are merely cases of asking people at C where they are.
Whether freewill is ultimately illusory or not, your examples would be and show the same. And as such do not get to the crux of the issue one way or the other.

 

We certainly can't, and that's because of our limitations. There wasn't a proposal, just a notion that we work with probabilities (benefit from probabilism) because we can't do well enough to take every applicable physical thing into account. We use conventions like Chaos Theory because it's all we have right now and that doesn't seem likely to change anytime soon.

Deification of cause seems foreign to this discussion. We apply probabilities to what we think will happen in the future because we can't zero in enough onto everything that is really going on. We can't look at the chain of events in complete detail. It's what we have to do because it's all we got. Nothing wrong with that except that we should want to advance so as to need it less and less. For example, the weather forecast might call for a 50% chance of rain. Yet, by looking at the present radar image, that figure can be moved close to either 0% or 100% for a period into the future longer than what just looking at the sky can provide. Scientific advances lessen the need for looking at things in terms of probabilities.

ideas alter the connections of the neurons, and we might experience the connections of the neurons as ideas.

May as well just call that supernatural. Otherwise, those things are how we experience neural activity. Neurons of different people interact in the physical world. Maybe calling it illusion is open to interpretation. It's what we experience as a result of underlying processes. It's an illusion in so far as there is a physiological explanation not determinable without the hard underlying scientific explanation being known, in a similar way to how a mirage has a scientific explanation. To less knowledgeable people than us, illusion seems an appropriate description for what they experience as brain activity.

The current understanding is based on conventions limited by our lack of knowledge. Our conventions are basically workarounds for our shortcomings. Indeed, it works better than the alternatives available. The shortcomings might one day get fixed if we can get advanced enough.

Indeed, the unknown tends to be some of the weirdest stuff. Sometimes the best we can do is replace the weirdest explanation with the weirder.

It's not hard thinking in terms of probability. We give weather forecasts in terms of probability because it is beyond our ability to take the everything into account; au contraire, it can even be the easiest option. We are probably stuck with this type of limitation for a long time to come, and yes, maybe always but to some hopefully lesser extent. The hard thing is advancing beyond the need for using probabilities, except for such times like when dice are rolled for expediency.

 

Undefined, just as Sarkus points out, described something which would be EXACTLY the same with or without the illusion of free will.

There is ONE thing that needs to be considered here; the ONE thing Sarkus, myself and others can NOT be wrong about and that is: our own proposition in this argument. It is our proposition that the illusion of free will is a PERFECT illusion, and given how our proposition is whatever we say it is I just don't see how anybody can attempt to argue this on their subjective experience of free will.

If you are listening to what we are asserting and agree we ARE asserting that, then nothing whatsoever from our sensory experience can be used to refute it. A perfect illusion means exactly that: it is 100% INDISTINGUISHABLE from the experience of non-illusory 'free will'.

This is the religious argument, and as yet has not been featured in this thread. On an earlier page somebody noted that nobody here is suggesting animals don't have it except for homo sapiens. And as I myself don't believe that God made us in His image, I must ask Undefined to expand on his reasoning here. Are we supposed to accept a religious argument for free will here, or is there something else prompting you to think that some animals differ with regards to free will because of their lesser intellects?

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@Iceaura... Einstein did indeed talk of God not playing dice but he was attempting to refute the work of other scientists whose findings were disproving some of his. Later ,he accepted the new findings but sadly that quote lives on.

 

If you look at the theory of evolution, the basis for change is connected to natural selection and the persistence of features is connected to the DNA. The DNA is the template molecule which has the data that defines how life manifests its physical and instinctive impulses. Free will is unique to this, in that it allows humans to choose apart from the DNA based control system, as well as apart from the natural selection of evolution.

For example, science has reached a point where mind over matter allows humans to tweak the DNA with technology. Humans are like gods able to choose apart from the genetic constraints that rules the rest of life on earth. We can choose unnatural selection. For example, nature has most resources going to the strong and healthy yet we spend more on the sick. This is choice apart from the DNA and natural selection.

This choice apart from our genetic based body and natural instinct is connected to human consciousness. Consciousness is not material like the DNA, which is why consciousness is not as easy to pin down as the DNA. Consciousness is traditionally associated with spiritual because it exists apart from the tangible of matter.

According to ancient thinking, Adam was formed from the dust of the earth. The ancient assumed that human consciousness formed from matter (dust is small; atoms). But that of itself could not explain everything. A breadth of life was added to the material. It was different.

Free will and choice is connected to consciousness, which emanates from the genetics of the brain. Yet, since it can override the genetics, it has features that are more than the sum of its material genetic parts; breath of life. Human consciousness is like a team that is more than the sum of its material players, with the additional team aspect, able control the players. This extra allows human to choose unnatural behavior and call it natural. Such beliefs get conjured in the matrix of the mind, where it is more than the sum of its material parts.

If you look at a dog, or other domestic animal, humans can train them to do things beyond what they would do in the wild. One will not see a wild dog running obstacle courses just for fun. Or acting like a seeing eye dog for other animals. This extra occurs because an external agency (human owner) added these additional programs to the natural.

The ancients saw this parallel and applied it to humans, when we act in ways that are not part of our natural training. They saw the owner of this human dog as God or Satan. Instinctively, they saw determinism, like the DNA determines many feature of life. They could not accept a free moral agent that was apart from an owner. They added the owner God or Satan as an external explanation.This POV was because they were much closer to natural human instinct which is not based on choice but the determinism of the DNA.

 

That is not correct Wellwisher. It is the nature of DNA to change. Natural selection has a relatively minor role in that change.

 

IOW, you question the reality of your experience of your own internal states based on an assumption: that the internal state of certainty that comes from thinking everything has a cause is NOT itself in question. You are refuting your own argument here. If the experience I have of freewill is an illusion or an appearance, how are you sure everything you are conscious of isn't just an illusory appearance? How can you dismiss the self-evident internal state of freely willing our own actions in favor of the internal state of certainty that your assumption creates regarding everything having cause? For all we know that may just be an illusion too. So you have thrown the baby out with the bathwater. Since logic would also have to be reducible to microphysical events in the brain and therefore is caused by hidden factors, it cannot be a valid source of certainty for us about anything. You may have the conscious appearance of having reached a conclusion purely by logic, but in your determinist world that's not possible. The conclusion was not caused by the sequence of thoughts itself but by the sequence of brain states composing the thoughts.

 

It may be. But as I have stated from the outset, if those are the assumptions we work with the conclusion I have reached is that our freewill is but the appearance of it, which is all well and good if that is your definition of it (that it is a matter of appearance).

Nope, baby is still there. You have to be sure the water you're throwing out is not actually the dishwater.

Why would logic have to be that?
Many would argue that logic is inherent within the universe... So why should it be reducible to such events in the brain?

So what? How does that alter the conclusion or otherwise of what I have reached? Whether or not the argument is reached through logic, through deterministic chains of events, or any other cause or reason, or even (if I am wrong) through my own freewill that is actually more than just an appearance... such a journey is irrelevant: only the arguments as given are applicable, not the route travelled.

If a man shoots you, are you going to invalidate the bullet because the path he said he travelled suggests he can't be sure he is actually there? You can say what you want about the journey he travelled... but you still got shot.

Am I certain of my position? Only in so far as I can be certain about the validity and soundness of the arguments from the assumptions I began with.

 

Well God is good so free will is real.

 

That's an assumption based on you taking as real the certainty of the proposition that everything is caused by microphysical brain process. IOW, you dismiss the internal state of certainty that freewill is real for another internal state of certainty that your own own assumption is. What allows you to arbitrarily pick and choose which internal state is genuine and which internal state is illusion? Particularly in light of the fact that logic itself, in your own view, would have to a mere effect of preexistent causal chains and NOT valid in itself.

I thought that was your premise as a determinist: that all internal mental states are reducible to events in the brain. Are you now positing some mental states as NOT being reducible to brain states? IOW, what makes logic sacrosanct and essentially "free" from being a process of mere physical cause and effect? And if logic isn't an illusion, why is freewill necessarily an illusion?

The argument cannot be valid if it's logic is merely a series microphysical cause and effects. What to you SEEMS like "A therefore B therefore C" would really be this set of neural firings leading to that set and then to another set. Logic, and the certainty that springs from it, would therefore be as much an illusion as freewill.

You're saying the path of logic thru which you reached your conclusion is irrelevant? That's ridiculous. The path you follow in your logic is everything. If that path is invalid or in anyway not seen as sequentially following from its premises to the conclusion, then the conclusion is invalidated.

The soundness of the argument could just be an illusion generated by neural processes in the brain. The certainty of your logic may be no more valid than a schizophrenic's certainty that aliens are transmitting thoughts into his head. Certainty certainly seems to be an internal mental state. Why would it be any less illusory than any other?

 

No, it's an assumption. It is quite possibly an incorrect assumption, but the argument flows from that assumption. If you want to argue the validity of the assumption, do so.

No, it is an assumption.
Do you know what an assumption is?

I don't pick. Whichever is right will be right irrespective or arguments made one way or the other.
I start from assumptions. If those assumptions are valid, I think the conclusion holds.
Now you seem to have issue with me making assumptions??

You are confusing determinism with reductionism. I am not necessarily a reductionist.
Nor am I a strict determinist.

I haven't said logic is or is not an illusion. But if you care to define it we can have a look?

And why would the logic not pervade the microphysical as well in the same way? I.e. in what way does logic appear to be something that it is not?

No, I'm saying that the means by which I put the argument together is irrelevant. The argument is the bullet, not just the conclusion I reach.
Whether or not I think logic illusory or not is irrelevant: it is how it appears to you that matters.
If you accept the logic as not being an illusion, then you must accept the conclusions reached from the premises, or else show how the logic is unsound.
You have yet to do that.

It could be. But as said, if you accept that the logic is not illusory, then follow the logic from the premise to the conclusion and show where it is flawed.
That is the argument presented to you. It doesn't matter one jot whether I consider it illusory or not (and I haven't claimed or agreed it to be either), and that is the "journey" that I consider to be irrelevant.

Think of it this way: does it matter if I made up the argument myself from scratch, or read it in a book? In what way would the "journey" it took invalidate the argument as presented?

 

Just as I thought. Backpeddling to cover your ass. "Oh it wasn't ME that was arguing from the determinist premise that there is no freewill because it is caused by microphysical processes." Right. If you were arguing that you were arguing for determinism. And since the certainty created by the logic of your argument would be just as caused by those microphysical processes, you essentially have no grounds to base your argument on anything.

Feel that breeze? That's from the gaping hole I just blew thru your position. lol!

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You're the one that is arguing mental states are reducible to physical processes of the brain not me. If you are now changing that position to make an exception for logic, then you need to show why logic is not as illusory as the other mental states you dismiss as illusory. Own your position. If you don't want to argue for it anymore, then I'm done with you.

Snippy when backed into a corner aren't ya? Do YOU know what a logical argument supporting your assumption is?

Presumably you have some logic to guide you from your assumption to your conclusion. Otherwise I'm just waisting my time here. Can you show why the certainty gained by that logic is any less illusory than any other mental state?