Free Will

[termrork]

A lot of people think our mind is only controlled by our environment and by chance. Why so? Well if you take any since we know, they are connected and each sience part has an underlying science part with fluent borders... E.g. biology has chemistry underlying. You can do this for any science till you will reach physics. So in PRINCIPLE you could explain everything with physics. Ok if this is fine for you and you lived 150 years ago, then you might think, we have only deterministic principles in our theories which try to describe nature. But if everything is deterministic you have to know the universe at one time and know it for all times in the past and future (considering you have infinite simulation power). But this allows to say our brain is also simply deterministic and one can predict what it will think if you know all the input it has. Ok if you live today then you might know something about quantum mechanics and the true random events it introduced. So our world (including our mind and thoughts) might be not 100% deterministic but a mixture of determinism and chance. So my question is now:
What do you think how much percent in our daily life depends on determinism and how much on chance?

If you know any scientific work about it please write it, if you have no clue just guess... Time has shown that the truth usually is between 0, what people guess and 100 percent :).

[Jaxxoon R]

Depends on the context, I guess.

[Memfis]

I don't know and maybe there is no way to know. But if I said that everything is determenistic and I'm not responsible for my actions and therefore you can't judge me for them, well... that would be kinda lame, wouldn't it? I think it's better to think that you have 100% free will, makes you more responsible as a man. Even if this choice was predetermined.

[Phobus]

I think we always have a choice. Some of those choices may be so unattractive (for one reason or another) that we'd never choose them, but they are there. I think I read somewhere that all slaves technically chose to be enslaved, as they didn't die trying to be free - it's an awful choice to have to make and a position I never hope to be in, but it is a point of view I can agree with

That's not the same as saying I control everything that happens to me, mind. If the company I work for goes under tomorrow, then I've lost my job whether I try to keep it or not. The choice comes in how I react. I could seek the same type of job in a new company, find a different type of employment, go into training, give up on life, go travelling... The choices are limitless. Obviously the choices of others may limit how effectively I can do what I want - that's the whole point of laws, rules and regulations - but that is how things are. If everybody was successfully attaining or achieving what they wanted, an awful lot of societally necessary stuff wouldn't be getting done.

[termrork]

Of course we have choices, but what we will choose we cannot decide (in a sense that is not predetermined and just random). The feeling of free will is ofc real.

Punishing people for misbehavior is a part of the system. If we would argue that we should not do this because he had no choice, then this would also be part of the system so we cannot complain. But since this is very unlikely the successful concept of being responsible for anything will survive till the end of humanity.

[fraggle]

Few people seem to be able to provide a meaningful definition of what "free will" is even supposed to mean. I think it's a meaningless question.

[termrork]

as usual you can define free will to be anything you want, but you have to clarify it... apart from that my intention of this thread was not to talk about free will, although the title is free will since such questions like the one I asked are usually asked in the context of free will (and I had no idea how I should make a good title).

[Doomkid]

I'm definitely not convinced of this determinism theory. It's heavily tied to excuse making, specifically people claiming helplessness about things they do in fact have power over.

[Clonehunter]

What do you mean Goat Lord didn't write this thread?

[HavoX]

^ I'm more curious on what he has to say about it :P

[FireFish]

We learn from others and we chose for ourselves how we use that knowledge, there seems to be no chance involved. People chose to drink alcohol, people chose to inject substances to become giants, people chose to wear what they want, and so on. We just balance our choices against what we know, and what we know to be acceptable.

To be realy blunt... If we had no free will then all men with an erection would have forced it into something every time they had one.

If one would have no free will one would just do without ever realizing what was going on, and would not have had a choice. Determinism would mean that there is no free will and only a fixed set of outcomes resembling a video game A.I.

Determinism sounds like something which could be tied to the usage of computers where a limited set of options in the software they run will only produce a fixed outcome.

[termrork]

this thread went completely in a different direction I wanted to point.., so if you want to discuss whether we have a free will or not, go on, but I am out of this conversation now. Only Jaxxoon R tried to answer my question. I will for sure check this thread if somebody goes with my concerns, but I will not comment on post whether we have a free will or not, sorry for that.

@FireFish, Doomkid, Phobus please rethink your posts and ask yourself if it makes sense (only if you want to ofc).

[FireFish]

termrork said:

A lot of people think our mind is only controlled by our environment and by chance. Why so?

Here you start a Thread titled "Free Will" with you wondering if the human mind is controlled by the environment and by chance. The way this is written shows the reader that your are wondering if humans have free will or not.

termrork said:

Well if you take any since we know, they are connected and each sience part has an underlying science part with fluent borders... E.g. biology has chemistry underlying.

Then you go on about the bio-chemistry, or at least chemistry in science in an attempt to elaborate your wondering if the mind is controlled by the environment.

termrork said:

But this allows to say our brain is also simply deterministic and one can predict what it will think if you know all the input it has.

Then you go on towards the thought that the human brain is a simple deterministic existence... So it might be predictable if you know the input.

termrork said:

Ok if you live today then you might know something about quantum mechanics and the true random events it introduced. So our world (including our mind and thoughts) might be not 100% deterministic but a mixture of determinism and chance.

Here you claim that the mind might not be 100% deterministic but rather based on chance... which yet again negates a solid and self chosen thoughtline. because if it was by chance then we would not have chosen it ourselves.

termrork said:

So my question is now: What do you think how much percent in our daily life depends on determinism and how much on chance?

To then end with a question which asks if people want to grade how much free will there is depending on Determinism which means no free will, and by chance which means you have not chosen it based upon your free will but it happened at random.

The only result i could ever see comming from this is that people vote for two options which claim there is no free will, or people starting to discuss the idea behind "free will" because thats what your entire opening post was about, including the title... untill the final question.

[termrork]

everything before my question was meant as an introduction for people who are not familiar with this. For example if I had only written the question, somebody who has never heard about these theories could not respond to the answer. Take it as background information WHY this question arises.

You are right that a vote might be not very satisfactory. Therefore I prefer links to works who are dealing with this question rather than just votes like: 50/50. That is also not what I am interested it, I am wondering if it is 1/100000 or 1/1000 or 1/10. I admit I might presented the question wrong with that motivation, but I still do not know how I should have done it better.

and @FireFish, by saying you might over think your response I meant it this way: the arguments you are taking to confront determinism, are they really arguments against it? Apart from that I think your first sentence of your first post is really good.

[Creaphis]

I can't hook you up with any specific articles, but I've heard of scholarship that identifies some structures in neurons that could potentially be affected by quantum mechanical processes. My personal understanding is that all of the functions of the brain (when viewing it through the lens of current scientific theories) are controlled by Newtonian, macroscopic, "deterministic" physics. I know next to nothing about biology and quantum mechanics, but still; of all of the data that we've been able to gather about the human brain, it isn't necessary to look to quantum mechanics to explain any of it. It's just a bunch of molecular chemistry. I'm not convinced that particle superposition has any influence on the chemical bonding that creates new neural pathways in the brain, or on the changes of ionic charge that determine when a neuron fires a signal down a particular pathway.

I could be biased, because when an author argues that the brain is influenced by quantum mechanical processes, I question their motives. Behind the statement "The brain isn't deterministic!" lies a hope that there's room for a soul in there somewhere. If the brain isn't deterministic, but partially "random," then maybe some other unobserved force is also present, unique to intelligent organisms that experience qualia, that "controls" that randomness. Since we all like to see ourselves as the makers of our own destiny, it can be an unpleasant blow to our sense of identity to see ourselves as rule-driven machines, leading us to come up with elaborate theories that create room for some definition of "free will." Does such an unobserved force exist? Maybe. But, if you want to be a scientist you need to find evidence first and make a theory second. If you start with a theory and look for evidence to match, you're a Bigfoot investigator.


Off topic:

If anybody here doesn't like having your free will taken away by physics, the ultimate oppressor, here's a list of assumptions made by the scientific process.

• There is a reality underlying our sensory perceptions.
  
• This reality operates via a set of consistent, unchanging rules.
  
• These rules can be discovered (or closely approximated) through careful observation.
  
• More complex theories about the rules of reality have historically been more likely to be proven wrong by future evidence; therefore, simpler theories are more likely to be true.
  

In this universe, there are no authorities over truth and meaning besides human minds, just like yours. Feel free to make your own assumptions.

[termrork]

@Creaphis thank you for your post! Very interesting thoughts. If I would guess I would also think that processes in our brain are pure deterministic in almost all cases (if they would be random our thoughts might not make sense at all, but maybe there circumstances in which sometimes a coin has to be flipped in order to know which way the ball rolls down the hill (could be a small decision for example)). Nevertheless, even if the brain is 100% deterministic because it is a sufficiently macroscopic object, then the interesting part is in the input. What I meant in daily life is that the interaction of your brain and the environment trigger for sure random inputs. Weird example: You are sitting infront of a true quantum experiment (e.g. double slit experiment). Now assume you could copy the whole situation, so 2 times you sitting infront of the experiment. In the first setup you watch the outcome with the experiment and see that it is truely random -> you invent quantum mechanics. In the second setup you see the outcome which lets you believe that your classical theory is correct (the outcome is the classical pattern just by chance). Now your life has significantly changed through the random appearance. So my question is if we take a life from a random person, how much is random and how much is determined?

[jute]

Whether determinism is the right word to describe causal processes or not, I think it's obviously true that there is no such thing as human agency. Humans are not set apart from the chains of causality as if inside some magic bubble. Once you've come to terms with the fact that there is no free will, consider that there are also no "selves": http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Self_models There are only brains creating and manipulating self-models according to endless chains of arbitrary, meaningless causality.

[40oz]

Is it free will or is it slavery to the evil tyrant in our mind that we associate with feelings of want?

[wildweasel]

Wait, this thread isn't about movies about killer whales...

[FireFish]

jute said:

Whether determinism is the right word to describe causal processes or not, I think it's obviously true that there is no such thing as human agency. Humans are not set apart from the chains of causality as if inside some magic bubble. Once you've come to terms with the fact that there is no free will, consider that there are also no "selves": http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Self_models There are only brains creating and manipulating self-models according to endless chains of arbitrary, meaningless causality.

I does not matter what your brain is doing behind the curtains. the end result is a mental entity making its own choices. The only thing a mental disconnect from that process could lead to are mental instability, losing track of yourself, and a big list of psychiatric problems. Schizophrenia and split personalities come to mind when the brain loses track of who or what it is.

Also... Causality is no excuse to negate free will with events like ; "you see your reflection, you know what you look like, your brain stores that, and so on."

termrork said:

What do you think how much percent in our daily life depends on determinism and how much on chance?

I will explain why i cant even answer it while looking at it from such an extremist standpoint where it is A or B while both mean there would be no free will. The brain is a system... But that system creates the thoughts inside of it, and the individual on which psychological studies could be based. Who cares if the system is limited to basic operations if it produces an individual that can make his or her own choices (free will).

I dont care if my brain would be doing 1+1 the entire day, the end result is a brain containing thoughts, the indvidual, the psychological entity, the me making the choices. I chose if i live or die. every choice we make proves that the brain system produces a free will. I can kill my own brain with alcohol and the body will not like it. I dont see a lot of trees killing themselves, or individual ants. I am an end result produced by the brain system, and i am able to change the way i function. In crude terms ; a self altering program.

[hardcore_gamer]

I think free will exists partially but not fully. Biological factors and genes will probably always have a massive influence on our decisions, so anybody who thinks they are in full control of their actions are lying to themselves. That said, that doesn't mean we don't have any control at all.

The problem with claiming that things like biology affect people's free will is that by accepting that we open a huge can of worms that many people don't want to open. For example, what is stopping people from claiming certain races think differently (in a worse way) than others or that one gender is smarter than the other?

Don't get me wrong I still think pure free will is bullshit, but one must be careful when exploring the concept of "biological intelligence".

[jute]

FireFish said:

I does not matter what your brain is doing behind the curtains. the end result is a mental entity making its own choices. The only thing a mental disconnect from that process could lead to are mental instability, losing track of yourself, and a big list of psychiatric problems. Schizophrenia and split personalities come to mind when the brain loses track of who or what it is.

Also... Causality is no excuse to negate free will with events like ; "you see your reflection, you know what you look like, your brain stores that, and so on."

The end result is a mental entity doing or not doing things, sometimes* accompanied by an epiphenomenal conscious feeling of having chosen. I say "epiphenomenal" because this feeling occurs after the doing - it is only an ex post facto rationalization, not a cause. A particularly striking example of how this works occurs in people who suffer anosognosia due to hemiplagia. See this from V.S. Ramachandran (PDF warning): "Patients with right hemisphere strokes sometimes vehemently deny their paralysis... Curiously, when asked to perform an action with their paralyzed arm, they often employ a whole arsenal of grossly exaggerated 'Freudian defense mechanisms' to account for their failure (e.g. 'I have arthritis' or 'I don't feel like moving it right now')." (Italics added for emphasis)

*But sometimes not, as in situations where the brain operates without a self-model (consciouness) actived, like somnambulism; or sometimes a mixture of feeling and not feeling agency, as in a diminished self-model situation like alien hand syndrome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_hand_syndrome

I'm not sure what you mean by the second paragraph I've quoted. Is this a response to the article on self-model theory I linked? While Metzinger, like most neuroscientists, is a determinist, the self-model topic is not directly related to the free will discussion. That said, a quote from the last link demonstrates the relationship between the two topics: "As a neuroscientist, you've got to be a determinist. There are physical laws, which the electrical and chemical events in the brain obey. Under identical circumstances, you couldn't have done otherwise; there's no 'I' which can say 'I want to do otherwise'. It's richness of the action that you do make, acting smart rather than acting dumb, which is free will." If this sounds to you like a rather hollow definition of "free will" ("We are not one output-one input beings; we have to cope with a messy world of inputs, an enormous range of outputs. I think the term 'free will' refers to the complexity of that arrangement"), quite unlike the experiential (and "common") sense, I agree.

[Doomkid]

hardcore_gamer said:

I think free will exists partially but not fully. Biological factors and genes will probably always have a massive influence on our decisions, so anybody who thinks they are in full control of their actions are lying to themselves. That said, that doesn't mean we don't have any control at all.

I agree with this bit entirely. I didn't mean to suggest that genes / circumstances had no effect on our decision making, rather that I hate when people use this determinism theory as an excuse, claiming they aren't responsible for their actions as if they had no power over them.

[FireFish]

i know the original poster of this thread did not feel like discussing Free Will, but it was unavoidable. just as i predicted. ;)

jute said:

...

The brain is a biological machine, in a certain way it is a highly advanced biological computer. I do understand that. The input generated by the mental plane is on its own the output from that brain system. So in a sense our sense of "free will" is an output from that underlying system, which could very well be a new input. The longer i philosophize about our sentience in terms of being able to think, the more i percieve it as a self-altering program.

However, a creature which is able to completely ignore the "built in" instincts has a form of free will, even if it is limited by what our brains can handle. As long as my brain choses something with which i agree on a mental plane then i will call that my "free" will. (think about it.)

Cells will be limited, but together they make what we are and make up for what they miss.

jute said:

meaningless causality.

Yes that second paragraph was a response to your writing about the meaningless causality which forms the self model. i think they called that "residual self image" in the Matrix movie. haha.

[termrork]

FireFish said:

I dont see a lot of trees killing themselves, or individual ants.

That is a good one. But why not? There might have been suicide trees, but considering theory of evolution, that species died out. For example there might have been flying elephants, but they were too heavy, fallen to the ground and died -> no second generation.

Doomkid said:

rather that I hate when people use this determinism theory as an excuse, claiming they aren't responsible for their actions as if they had no power over them.

Does this really happen? Are there people arguing like that?

FireFish said:

i know the original poster of this thread did not feel like discussing Free Will, but it was unavoidable. just as i predicted. ;)

haha yes you did, it is ok for me, I just wrote I do not want to answer this debate so nobody is wondering why I do not answer. Apart from that I am also interested in your opinions about free will, but I do not want to be a part of this conservation. Nevertheless, maybe after you discussed free will, we could come back to my question and discuss about it (maybe only those who think there is no free will, since my question is in the section of no free will).


edit: if you talk about free will, make always sure what you mean by saying free will, otherwise you all talk about the same word but mean something different.

edit2: if someone is interested what my answer to my question would be, then I would take an hour and will write it down (it will not be a short answer).

[Quasar]

I had a weird thought about this once, from a physics perspective. In the theory of gravitation, the force of gravity between two objects drops off exponentially with distance but on a curve which only approaches, and never reaches, zero as distance increases toward infinity.

So, if every object in the universe is exerting a "negligible" force on all other objects in the universe, what is the ultimate sum of all those negligible terms (from a practically infinite number of objects) on each individual object, and what does this imply about the actual degrees of freedom for objects with mass? Is everything in the universe exactly and precisely where it could only be given the past and the position of every other object in the universe? Maybe quantum uncertainty at the subatomic level is enough to balance or cancel this out to some degree?

Arm chair physics, feel free to refute or revise :P

[Kontra Kommando]

[termrork]

@Quasar

Not sure where you want to go but unfortunately the gravitational force only never becomes zero at infinity is if you take the time to infinity. If you move one particle in a direction, the second particle will see this movement through gravitational force after a given time, not instantly. This at least is our current knowledge, that you cannot send information faster than the speed of light.

[Dave The Daring]

Free will is an illusion. Free Willy is a film about a killer whale. Just sayin'.

[FireFish]

Your thoughts are the live representation of a certain system in your brain while it is being active. In a certain way it could be seen as a running process. I am as a psychological being the brain while it is functioning on that level. As long as the entire functioning of that brain is aware of itself as a being while making its choices, the person is makes his choices. It is one and the same thing.

It does not matter if one single component of the brain is limited, together those components make it possible. I chose to do whatever i want and where i want as long as its physically possible and within reach of the situation. I make that choice. Answering this thread, watching tv, insult some cops, go to work, and so on... its a choice. As long as we are able to chose what we do... we have a free will.

Nothing is forcing you to read this. you. you the brain. you the live process running on the brain had a free choice to do so.