Why free will is impossible

Of course.
They talk about it in order to maintain the illusion, that they're free to discuss the subject.

 

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Right.

 

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I know what you're thinking, sonny, but it's turtles all the way.

 

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Sure. But how do they know they aren't compelled to argue that?

How do you know what you posted, or what I'm posting, is a free choice?
Can you prove free will really exists? I think you'll find that there isn't much evidence for it, other than a commonly held belief.

If you knew everything, you would know what's going to happen next, and you would know there is no "random" event, since you would know exactly why any event occurs.

You don't know, in fact you can't know, because you can't know everything about causes and effects.
Your brain is limited, by inefficient senses and by a limited amount of storage. This gives your consciousness an "out", and the sense of freedom to be the cause of an event which would not be caused unless you choose to cause it.

 

I initially worked with that definition myself:

Even so, the analysis called for an eventual abandonment of the idea that a p-zombie was the equivalent of a conscious entity by virtue of the fact that a conscious entity was indeed selected for with what would be a neurologically expensive extraneous feature if it didn't provide a survival advantage.

 

There's the rub.
We're talking about something that doesn't seem to have an exact definition. Everyone understands what having free will means, but they can't really explain what it's supposed to be.

Nobody lives in a completely unhindered "free" state; everybody is tied to something, even if it's just the need to survive. Life isn't really "free" at all.
Our belief in freedom to choose is an advantage, but that's about it.

Predicting a quantum event (in your future) isn't the same thing as knowing why it occurred (in your past). It wouldn't be random because prediction wouldn't come into it.

Random means unpredictable; but you would know the event occurred and why it did, the unpredictability would vanish. IOW you wouldn't have any sense of time, and since you do have a sense of time, you cannot be aware of everything

 

I think the Catholics would agree that free will must be intentional, although they didn't note it in their definition.

 

The argument in the OP is independent of physicalism.

 

In the morning, when leave the house, you have two options to go left or right.
Q: Where do you go?
A: I go to the right.

Q:Why go to the right?
A:Since this is the way to my job.

Q:But why is this your job?
A:
1. I have this qualification.
2. I read the newspaper announcement.
3. They accepted me after I gave the interview.

Q:
1. Why you have this qualification?
2. Why you read the newspaper announcement?
3. Why they have accepted you?
A:
Because 1.1,1.2 ; 2.1,2.2 ; 3.1,3.2

Q:
Why 1.1,1.2 ; 2.1,2.2 ; 3.1,3.2 ?
A:
Because ....

If in this causal chain is not a random somewhere means that it is a determinism and no free will.
I personally do not find any a random, so my logic leads to no free will.
However I choose there is free will.
Motivation:
-Just I feel so, that's my inspiration.
-At first glance that is obvious.
-And most importantly, I believe that the principles must be reflected in actions. (To me it seems unfair if the principle is not reflected in actions.) Seems to me socially unacceptable, putting into practice the principle there is no free will.

Also, the characterization of free will as an illusion, is an evasive answer to the question "there is free will? Yes or no?".
So I chose "there's a possibility to choose", because I do not have anything else to choose.

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Consciousness allows the brain to simulate an action without committing to that action, this involving all of the nerve spindles of the body.

It is also useful for learning, it then being used intensely until the actions become more automatic, such as when one learns to drive a car.

Some say it’s greatest use is so we can globally know what we’re doing, thinking, or feeling.

We are just along for the ride, but at least we know about it.

Are there two of us in each person? I suppose, for there is the 'I' of the witness, as well as the overall self of the brain.

 

So do (man-made super)computers.

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Random does not mean entirely unpredictable. If I flip a fair coin, it may come up "heads", it may come up "tails," but it won't come up "zebras". There is a probability distribution about which definite statements can be made and predictions definitely formed.

Anything governed by probability means, by definition, that one can make predictions, subject to the probability distribution one is looking at.

If one's brain generated results according to a probabilistic model, then, the results could still be very stable and understandable in everyday terms. There might be only a 20% chance that I will wear jeans to work on Monday, but that probability creeps in does not mean that my apparent "choices" are completely unpredictable. The odds that I will go to work naked from the waist down, for example, are still vanishingly small.

 

I agree. A random choice wouldn't be any more free than a non-random one. It would allow us to face similar situations and take very different actions in the face of them, but so would a completely deterministic system (especially if the system were (mathematically) chaotic).

 

"Come up heads or tails", is possible because you aren't aware of which side is "up" while the coin is spinning. If you were aware of this, you wouldn't need to "predict" it, in fact, that notion would be meaningless.

 

My point is that it is not quite correct to say that random things are unpredictable. Quantum processes, like firing a photon through the double slit experiment, will yield very predictable pattern for the photon distribution. The location at any photon will strike the detector is "random", without question, but the distribution of photons obeys very uniform stochastic mechanics. So it is possible that thought could contain random elements or that the impetus for a given thought could be random, that would nonetheless lead to predictable and non-arbitrary behavior in a human being.

 

This is in violation of the appeal to authority logical fallacy in that you have not identified the authority.

 

An interesting article/interview about/with Daniel Dennett and his 2003 book "Freedom Evolves" can be found here: http://reason.com/archives/2003/05/01/pulling-our-own-strings

It seems that there are quite a few people around who are very willing to jump to the conclusion that free-will is nothing more than an illusion, almost as if it were the preferred state of affairs. I've always found that rather perplexing.

In any case, drawing any definite conclusions at this point in time is beyond premature, since there's still so much about the brain and consciousness that we don't understand.

 

zombies are not people
thanks