Three possibilities come to mind:
Is there an evolutionary purpose?
Does it arise as a consequence of our mental activities, a sort of side effect of our thinking?
Is it given a priori (something we have to think in order to think at all)?
EDIT: Thanks for all the responses! Just one thing I saw come up a few times I’d like to address: a lot of people are asking ‘Why assume this?’ The answer is: it’s purely rhetorical! That said, I’m happy with a well thought-out ‘I dispute the premiss’ answer.
Confabulation.
Look at split-brain patients: divide the corpus callosum down the middle, and you effectively have two separate brains that don’t communicate. Tell the half without the speech centre to perform some random task, then ask the other one why they did that - and they will flat-out make up some plausible sounding reason.
And the thing is, they haven’t the slightest idea that it isn’t true. To them, it feels exactly like freely choosing to do it, for those made up reasons.
Bits of our brains make us do stuff for their own reasons, and we just make shit up to explain it after the fact. We invent the memory of choosing, about a quarter of a second after we’ve primed our muscles to carry out the choice.
I think a chunk of this comes down to our need to model the thoughts of others (incredibly useful for social animals) - we make everyone out to be these monolithic executive units so that we can predict their actions, and we make ourselves out to be the same so we can slot ourselves into that same reasoning.
Also it would be a bit fucking terrifying to just constantly get surprised by your own actions, blown around like a leaf on the wind without a clue what’s going on, so I think another chunk of it is just larping this “I” person who has a coherent narrative behind it all, to protect your own sanity.
We invent the memory of choosing, about a quarter of a second after we’ve primed our muscles to carry out the choice.
Where can I read more about this?
There was a relevant post on Lemmy the other day:
The origin and nature of existence is an epistemological black hole that some people like to plug with “a
wizardgod did it”.The sensation of free will is an emergent property of a lack of awareness of the big stuff, the small stuff, the long stuff, and the short stuff.
Couldn’t it also be argued that our lack of awareness of the big stuff also leaves open the possibility of free will?
On a sufficiently large billiards table, it does become hard to prove that some balls don’t spontaneously sink themselves.
That is a clever point but I think it also overly simplifies the nature of reality to such a point that it’s not likely to change any minds.
Here’s my take: the answer is emergent phenomena. We live in a very complex system and in complex systems there are interactions that can only be predicted using systems of equal or higher complexity. So even in case everything is predetermined, it would still be unpredictable and therefore your decisions are basically still up to you and the complex interactions in your brain.
I think this is probably it. I think this argument is strongly related to the idea of consciousness as an emergent property of sensory experience. I find it simple to imagine the idea of a body with no will or no consciousness (i.e., a philosophical zombie). But I find it very difficult, almost impossible, in fact, to imagine a consciousness with no will, even if it’s only the will to think a given thought.
Do we have free will to think a given thought? All of my thoughts just suddenly appear in my mind or are connected to previous thoughts that suddenly appeared in my mind.
I mean, if I said to you, ‘Calculate 13x16’ (or some other sum you don’t know off the top of your head) you could either do it or not do it. That would be a willed choice, whether or not you knew the answer.
My thoughts would be presented based the fact that you’ve asked me to calculate something. At that point, past experiences would guide my path forward. If I felt like doing math, I may do it, if I had poor childhood experiences in math class, I probably wouldn’t. At the end of the day, it’s all based on history or current questions/feelings. In every scenario my thoughts are presented to me. To prove it, ask yourself what your next thought will be. If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll see you can’t answer that question and when you try and force a thought direction, that direction itself is based on your knowledge from the past and that thought was also presented to you.
It’s wild because it absolutely feels like we have free will, but it sure doesn’t look like it. 🤷♂️
This is the problem of original intentionality. There are studies on it, for instance they found that with an mri they can detect when you have come to a decision before your conscious mind realizes you have. Some processes in our brain are outside of our control, because the brain is not just the neocortex but also includes tens of other structures that evolved separately with specific hard-coded purposes, but that doesn’t mean they are not working as a team. I think in any case you are still reaponsible for the decisions you take.
exactly. that for me is in fact the definition of free will
actually this is the definition that first came up on a search
“the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one’s own discretion”
so yeah we do have free will. the rest is philosophical masturbation
You can also find the definition of magic or telekinesis, but that doesn’t mean we have them, and not all philosophical question are just “masturbation”. It is an interesting question. It is worth taking free will at least axiomatically as our perception of that freedom even if it is truly deterministic.
A better question is, is there any difference between the illusion of free will and actual free will. Is there some experiment you could conduct to tell the difference?
Depends, who’s choosing the experiment?
If it’s the illusion of free will then whoever constructed it most likely made sure we wouldn’t have access to those kinds of experiments, or we wouldn’t think of or choose to do them.
Why assume that an illusion must have a constructor?
Roger Penrose is pretty much the only dude looking into consciousness from the perspective of a physicist
He thinks consciousness has to do with “quantum bubble collapse” happening inside our brains at a very very tiny level.
That’s the only way free will could exist.
If consciousness is anything else, then everything is predetermined.
Like, imagine dropping a million bouncy balls off the hoover dam. You’ll never get the same results twice.
However, that’s because you’ll never get the same conditions twice.
If the conditions are exactly the same down to an atomic level… You’ll get the same results every time
What would give humans free will would be the inherent randomness if the whole “quantum bubble collapse” was a fundamental part of consciousness.
That still wouldn’t guarantee free will, but it would make it possible.
There’s also the whole thing where what we think of as our consciousness isn’t actually running the show. It’s just a narrator that’s summarizing everything up immediately after it happened. What’s actually calling the shot is other parts of our brains, neurons in our gut, and what controls our hormones.
We don’t know if that’s not true either. But if it was, each person as a thing would have free will, it’s just what we think of as that person does not have free will.
Sounds batshit crazy and impossible, until you read up on the studies on people who had their brains split in half at different stages of mental development.
There’s a scary amount of shit we don’t know about “us”. And an even scarier amount we don’t know about how much variation there is with all that
Roger Penrose is pretty much the only dude looking into consciousness from the perspective of a physicist
I would recommend reading the philosophers Jocelyn Benoist and Francois-Igor Pris who argue very convincingly that both the “hard problem of consciousness” and the “measurement problem” stem from the same logical fallacies of conflating subjectivity (or sometimes called phenomenality) with contextuality, and that both disappear when you make this distinction, and so neither are actually problems for physics to solve but are caused by fallacious reasoning in some of our a priori assumptions about the properties of reality.
Benoist’s book Toward a Contextual Realism and Pris’ book Contextual Realism and Quantum Mechanics both cover this really well. They are based in late Wittgensteinian philosophy, so maybe reading Saul Kripke’s Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language is a good primer.
That’s the only way free will could exist…What would give humans free will would be the inherent randomness if the whole “quantum bubble collapse” was a fundamental part of consciousness.
Even if they discover quantum phenomena in the brain, all that would show is our brain is like a quantum computer. But nobody would argue quantum computers have free will, do they? People often like to conflate the determinism/free will debate with the debate over Laplacian determinism specifically, which should not be conflated, as randomness clearly has nothing to do with the question of free will.
If the state forced everyone into a job for life the moment they turned 18, but they chose that job using a quantum random number generator, would it be “free”? Obviously not. But we can also look at it in the reverse sense. If there was a God that knew every decision you were going to make, would that negate free will? Not necessarily. Just because something knows your decision ahead of time doesn’t necessarily mean you did not make that decision yourself.
The determinism/free will debate is ultimately about whether or not human decisions are reducible to the laws of physics or not. Even if there is quantum phenomena in the brain that plays a real role in decision making, our decisions would still be reducible to the laws of physics and thus determined by them. Quantum mechanics is still deterministic in the nomological sense of the word, meaning, determinism according to the laws of physics. It is just not deterministic in the absolute Laplacian sense of the word that says you can predict the future with certainty if you knew all properties of all systems in the present.
If the conditions are exactly the same down to an atomic level… You’ll get the same results every time
I think a distinction should be made between Laplacian determinism and fatalism (not sure if there’s a better word for the latter category). The difference here is that both claim there is only one future, but only the former claims the future is perfectly predictable from the states of things at present. So fatalism is less strict: even in quantum mechanics that is random, there is a single outcome that is “fated to be,” but you could never predict it ahead of time.
Unless you ascribe to the Many Worlds Interpretation, I think you kind of have to accept a fatalistic position in regards to quantum mechanics, mainly due not to quantum mechanics itself but special relativity. In special relativity, different observers see time passing at different rates. You can thus build a time machine that can take you into the future just by traveling really fast, near the speed of light, then turning around and coming back home.
The only way for this to even be possible for there to be different reference frames that see time pass differently is if the future already, in some sense, pre-exists. This is sometimes known as the “block universe” which suggests that the future, present, and past are all equally “real” in some sense. For the future to be real, then, there has to be an outcome of each of the quantum random events already “decided” so to speak. Quantum mechanics is nomologically deterministic in the sense that it does describe nature as reducible to the laws of physics, but not deterministic in the Laplacian sense that you can predict the future with certainty knowing even in principle. It is more comparable to fatalism, that there is a single outcome fated to be (that is, again, unless you ascribe to MWI), but it’s impossible to know ahead of time.
Even if they discover quantum phenomena in the brain
There 100% are…
Penrose thinks they’re responsible for consciousness.
Because we also don’t know what makes anesthesia stop consciousness. And anesthesia stops consciousness and stops the quantum process.
Now, the math isn’t clean. I forget which way it leans, but I think it’s that consciousness kicks out a little before the quantum action is fully inhibited?
It’s been a minute, and this shit isn’t simple.
Unless you ascribe to the Many Worlds Interpretation
This is incompatible with that.
It’s the quantum wave function collapse that’s important. There’s no spinning out where multiple things happen, there is only one thing. After wave collapse, is when you look in the box and see if the cats dead.
In a sense it’s the literal “observer effect” happening our head.
And that is probably what consciousness is.
It’ll just take a while till we can prove it. And Penrose will probably be dead by then. But so was Einstein before Penrose proved most of his shit was true
That’s how science works. Most won’t know who Penrose is till he’s dead.
There 100% are…
If you choose to believe so, like I said I don’t really care. Is a quantum computer conscious? I think it’s a bit irrelevant whether or not they exist. I will concede they do for the sake of discussion.
Penrose thinks they’re responsible for consciousness.
Yeah, and as I said, Penrose was wrong, not because the measurement problem isn’t the cause for consciousness, but that there is no measurement problem nor a “hard problem.” Penrose plays on the same logical fallacies I pointed out to come to believe there are two problems where none actually exist and then, because both problems originate from the same logical fallacies. He then notices they are similar and thinks “solving” one is necessary for “solving” the other, when neither problems actually existed in the first place.
Because we also don’t know what makes anesthesia stop consciousness. And anesthesia stops consciousness and stops the quantum process.
You’d need to define what you mean more specifically about “consciousness” and “quantum process.” We don’t remember things that occur when we’re under anesthesia, so are we saying memory is consciousness?
Now, the math isn’t clean. I forget which way it leans, but I think it’s that consciousness kicks out a little before the quantum action is fully inhibited? It’s been a minute, and this shit isn’t simple.
Sure, it’s not simple, because the notion of “consciousness” as used in philosophy is a very vague and slippery word with hundreds of different meanings depending on the context, and this makes it seem “mysterious” as its meaning is slippery and can change from context to context, making it difficult to pin down what is even being talked about.
Yet, if you pin it down, if you are actually specific about what you mean, then you don’t run into any confusion. The “hard problem of consciousness” is not even a “problem” as a “problem” implies you want to solve it, and most philosophers who advocate for it like David Chalmers, well, advocate for it. They spend their whole career arguing in favor of its existence and then using it as a basis for their own dualistic philosophy. It is thus a hard axiom of consciousness and not a hard problem. I simply disagree with the axioms.
Penrose is an odd case because he accepts the axioms and then carries that same thinking into QM where the same contradiction re-emerges but actually thinks it is somehow solvable. What is a “measurement” if not an “observation,” and what is an “observation” if not an “experience”? The same “measurement problem” is just a reflection of the very same “hard problem” about the supposed “phenomenality” of experience and the explanatory gap between what we actually experience and what supposedly exists beyond it.
It’s the quantum wave function collapse that’s important.
Why should I believe there is a physical collapse? This requires you to, again, posit that there physically exists something that lies beyond all possibilities of us ever observing it (paralleling Kant’s “noumenon”) which suddenly transforms itself into something we can actually observe the moment we try to look at it (paralleling Kant’s “phenomenon”). This clearly introduces an explanatory gap as to how this process occurs, which is the basis of the measurement problem in the first place.
There is no reason to posit a physical “collapse” or even that there exists at all a realm of waves floating about in Hilbert space. These are unnecessary metaphysical assumptions that are purely philosophical and contribute nothing but confusion to an understanding of the mathematics of the theory. Again, just like Chalmers’ so-called “hard problem,” Penrose is inventing a problem to solve which we have no reason to believe is even a problem in the first place: nothing about quantum theory demands that you believe particles really turn into invisible waves in Hilbert space when you aren’t looking at them and suddenly turn back into visible particles in spacetime when you do look at them.
That’s entirely metaphysical and arbitrary to believe in.
There’s no spinning out where multiple things happen, there is only one thing. After wave collapse, is when you look in the box and see if the cats dead. In a sense it’s the literal “observer effect” happening our head. And that is probably what consciousness is.
There is only an “observer effect” if you believe the cat literally did turn into a wave and you perturbed that wave by looking at it and caused it to “collapse” like a house of cards. What did the cat see in its perspective? How did it feel for the cat to turn into a wave? The whole point of Schrodinger’s cat thought experiment was that Schrodinger was trying to argue against believing particles really turn into waves because then you’d have to believe unreasonable things like cats turning into waves.
All of this is entirely metaphysical, there is no observations that can confirm this interpretation. You can only justify the claim that cats literally turn into waves when you don’t look at them and there is a physical collapse of that wave when you do look at them on purely philosophical grounds. It is not demanded by the theory at all. You choose to believe it purely on philosophical grounds which then leads you to think there is some “problem” with the theory that needs to be “solved,” but it is purely metaphysical.
There is no actual contradiction between theory and evidence/observation, only contradiction between people’s metaphysical assumptions that they refuse to question for some reason and what they a priori think the theory should be, rather than just rethinking their assumptions.
That’s how science works. Most won’t know who Penrose is till he’s dead.
I’d hardly consider what Penrose is doing to be “science” at all. All these physical “theories of consciousness” that purport not to just be explaining intelligence or self-awareness or things like that, but more specifically claim to be solving Chalmers’ hard axiom of consciousness (that humans possess some immaterial invisible substance that is somehow attached to the brain but is not the brain itself), are all pseudoscience, because they are beginning with an unreasonable axiom which we have no scientific reason at all to take seriously and then trying to use science to “solve” it.
It is no different then claiming to use science to try and answer the question as to why humans have souls. Any “scientific” approach you use to try and answer that question is inherently pseudoscience because the axiomatic premise itself is flawed: it would be trying to solve a problem it never established is even a problem to be solved in the first place.
If you choose to believe so, like I said I don’t really care
What?
We literally and scientifically know that it does…
I just want to thank you for typing that ahead of all that other shit you pulled out of your ass.
No one’s reading it anyways, but at least they won’t feel bad for skipping it
No, we don’t know the brain is making use of any quantum phenomena. At best if there is any quantum phenomena in the brain it would just contribute noise. The idea that interference phenomena is actually made use of in the brain for computation is just not backed by anything.
There are quantum phenomenon in a piece of bread. That doesn’t mean bread is conscious.
Penrose has never proved that the quantum effects affect neurons macroscopically.
Quantum computers run at near absolute zero temperature and isolated from all vibrations in order to maintain superposition. The brain is a horrible environment for a quantum computer.
Anesthesia is a chemical signal blocker. If consciousness was quantum, it couldn’t affect it.
Penrose’s work is “God in the gaps” or in his case “quantum in the gaps” explanation of consciousness. His claims were made before we had functional quantum computers and precise categorization of neurotransmitters that anesthesia chemicals bind to to block your natural neurotransmitters.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-does-anesthesia-work/
Even if the brain is a quantum computer, it’s quantum dice rolls controlling your neurons. So quantum consciousness doesn’t enable the possibility free will.
Maybe look up “compatibilism”. It’s a philosophy proposing that both exist.
TIL!
I just made up my own term for it in another post :)
I have heard somewhere that some people seemed to believe that behind each human’s actions, there is some kind of “daemon” that is invisible, but moving the humans like puppets.
This is conceptualized in the theater mask, through which one can speak.
The daemon speaks through the human as a theater actor would speak through a mask. (The latin word for that mask is “persona” (literally “sound-through”) and that’s why we call a person a person today (because they are controlled by a daemon who speaks through them)).
Because it’s not an illusion.
Determinism seems reasonable only because people have an inaccurately simplistic conception of causation, such that they believe that consciousness and choice violate it, rather than being a part of it.
Causation isn’t a simple linear thing - it’s an enormously complex web in which any number of things can be causes and/or effects of any number of things.
Free will (properly understood) is just one part of that enormously complex web.
How is our experience of decision making different to one where we reach an inevitable outcome based on a complex set of parameters?
Because there are points at which, exactly as seems to be the case, we consciouly choose to follow one particular path in spite of the fact that we could just as easily have chosen another.
Even in that scenario, the “conscious choice” happened via some particular arrangement of neurons/chemical messengers/etc. Your argument is a “god of the gaps” argument- science doesn’t know everything about how the brain works, therefore some supernatural process called “free will” is the cause of the stuff science can’t explain yet.
(No knock on you, you’re having a good faith debate :)
god of the gaps
supernatural
Without those obvious pejoratives, that would’ve been a pretty good summation of at least that aspect of my position.
With those obvious pejoratives, it was reduced to an unfortunate expression of bias.
I believe that it’s not simply that science doesn’t yet fully understand how the brain works, but that it’s not even really equipped to deal with consciousness, which while clearly a manifestation of physical processes, is not itself physical.
That and we’re in an era in which “science” (scare quotes because part of the problem IMO is a misunderstanding of what science can do and does) has largely moved to the forefront of the pursuit of understanding, but humanity is still to some significant degree stuck in a quasi-religious mindset, so all too many have merely shifted from a devout faith that their religion provides every answer to everything ever to a devout faith that “science” provides every answer to everything ever.
The problem then comes when they run up against something for which science can’t provide an answer. And the common response then is to blithely insist that that thing must not and cannot exist at all, since the alternative is to face the fact that science potentially cannot provide every answer to everything ever. And that’s generally accompanied by an immediate assignment of whatever it is that’s in question to the other half of their wholly binaristic worldview - if it’s not amenable to science, it must and can only be religion/magic.
Reality, IMO, is vaster than that.
Neither of those are pejoratives, they’re just the words for your positions
https://www.askdifference.com/natural-vs-supernatural/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps
Everything you just wrote in your followup reply here continues to fit into those categories as far as i can tell.
That’s unfortunate - you credited me with debating in good faith, yet won’t do the same.
You rather obviously knew that the way you attempted to frame my position was disparaging - if you hadn’t, you wouldn’t have felt the need to add that proviso to the end of your post. What you clearly attempted to do with that was to disparage the position, while asserting that you didn’t mean it personally.
Ah well.
I didn’t do what you said. Did you read the links?
I agree that it “seems to be the case” that we consciously choose, but I don’t understand where you found justification to state that there really are such points. How do you dismiss the idea that our conscious choice is not simply an application of the myriad parameters?
I don’t understand where you found justification to state that there really are such points.
Because I experience them, and not just at times, but moment-to-moment, every waking day. And so do you. And so does essentially every single human in existence.
That indicates two possibilities - either it’s a universal illusion, and in both senses of the term - one experienced by everyone and one experienced without exception by each individual, or it’s a real experience.
And I just find the former to be so ridiculously unlikely that the latter can be safely said to be near certainly true.
How do you dismiss the idea that our conscious choice is not simply an application of the myriad parameters?
I don’t. I simply include consciousness, and all it entails - reason, value, self-interest, preference, mood, etc. - among those parameters.
Because I experience them, and not just at times, but moment-to-moment, every waking day. And so do you. And so does essentially every single human in existence.
Or, as you acknowledged before, it seems like you experience them. That experience of weighing up all the inputs, applying your mood and whatever else you bring, feels like making a decision freely.
I simply include consciousness, and all it entails - reason, value, self-interest, preference, mood, etc. - among those parameters.
These parameters are all examples of the complex inputs that precede a decision. And each of these inputs could be understood as the inevitable result of a causal chain.
It’s super complex and likely involves technology that we don’t yet possess, but if I could perfectly simulate a brain identical to yours, with the same neural states, and the same concentrations of relevant chemicals in its simulated blood at the moment of the decision, that simulated brain would have to produce the same output as as your meaty one.
Or, as you acknowledged before, it seems like you experience them.
Yes.
If I’m to be precise, it seems that I exist on what seems to be a planet in what seems to be a universe. On that seeming planet it seems as if I am surrounded by what seem to be things - some of which seem to be alive and others of which seem not to be. And among the ones that seem to be alive, there are some that seem to share the classification I seem to possess, as a human being.
In my seeming experience as what seems to be accurately desgnated a human being, I seem to experience some things, among them the process of seeming to make choices. And that process of seeming to make choices is a thing that I seemingly perceive the other seeming humans who seem to exist seemingly relate to be a part of their seeming lives as well.
And so on. Since I, as seems to be the case with all other beings that seem to exist, live behind the veil of perception, I cannot know for certain that any part of what I experience represents an objective reality. So every single aspect of my experience of life, most accurately, can only be said to seem to be as I perceive it to be.
And each of these inputs could be understood as the inevitable result of a causal chain.
I simply don’t believe that to be the case, if for no other reason than that that would appear to make creative reasoning impossible. If reason was merely the manifestation of a rigid causal chain, then all reason would follow the same paths to the same destinations. The fact that human history is, viewed one way, a record of new chains being followed to new destinations, means that there must be some mechanism by which consciousness can and does effectively “switch tracks.” Or even introduce entirely new ones.
It’s super complex and likely involves technology that we don’t yet possess, but if I could perfectly simulate a brain identical to yours, with the same neural states, and the same concentrations of relevant chemicals in its simulated blood at the moment of the decision, that simulated brain would have to produce the same output as as your meaty one.
Nor do I believe that to be true, since while consciousness appears to be a manifestation of the mechanical workings of the brain, it is not itself merely those mechanical workings - it is a “thing” unto itself. And I believe, quite simply, that the relationship between consciousness and the brain is not unidirectional, but bidirectional - that just as the physical state of a brain can be a proximate cause of a chain of thought, a chain of thought can be a proximate cause of a physical state of a brain.
And in fact, I would say that that’s easily demonstrated by the fact that one can trigger a response - fight or flight for instance - merely by imagining a threat. There’s no need for any physical manifestation of the threat - a wholly conscious, wholly non-physical imagining of it is sufficient. That says to me, rather clearly, that consciousness can serve as a cause - not merely as an effect.
And on a side note, thanks for the responses - this subject particularly fascinates me, but I find intellectually honest debate on it to be vanishingly rare.
You’re welcome. I too find it very interesting, though my expertise in it is below amater level.
I am a little confused about your model of continuous and the brain: you speak of consciousness appearing to be a manifestation of the brain’s processing, but talk about what seems to be a communicative relationship between the two. My understanding is that consciousness is entirely an emergent property of the brain, impossible to distinguish from the squishy mechanics. If yours is significantly different to this, then it is no wonder that our beliefs diverge.
deleted by creator
You’re conscious of the decisions you make. Sure they’re the result of a million different variables, chemicles, memories, and predetermined traits, but some of that is active. You are making the choice. Whether you could have made a different one or not doesn’t affect what the choice feels like
Look into Kurt Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, and the philosophical implications of that.
A lot of times, when we’re dealing with the assertion that we don’t have free will, we’re analyzing that according to rule-based systems. The system that we use to evaluate truth isn’t entirely rule-based, and is necessarily a superset of what we can consciously evaluate.
In effect, some less-complex system that is a subset of your larger mind is saying ‘you have limits, and they are this.’ But your larger mind disagrees, because that more rule-based subset of rights is incapable of knowing the limits of its superset. Though, we just feel like it’s ‘off’.
If it feels like it’s off, there’s a good chance that the overall way you’re thinking of it isn’t right, even if the literal thing you’re focused on has some degree of truth.
In short, it’s possible to know something that is technically true, but that isn’t interpreted correctly internally.
If you accept the model that you have no free will without processing the larger feelings it evokes, then whether or not your internal sense of free will is rule-based, you’ll artificially limit the way you think to filter out the internal process you think of as free will. …and that can have massive consequences for your happiness and viability as an organism, because you’ve swapped away that which you actually are for labels and concepts of what you are - but your concept is fundamentally less complex and led capable than you are as a whole.
Fortunately, rule-based systems break when faced with reality. It’s just that it can be very painful to go through that process with what you identify with.
Help me understand if I am interpreting you correctly:
We have free will in a deterministic universe because feelings?
I’ll help:
You are not interpreting me correctly.
Edit: give a snarky response, get a snarky response.
If you can reword you initial post, that would be great. I was also having trouble following what you were saying.
If the concept of the universe being deterministic interferes with one’s concept of free will, then one of these must be true:
- the universe is nondeterministic, or has nondeterministic elements
- one’s concept of determinism is incorrect
- one’s concept of the impact of determinism on one’s own free will is incorrect
But of course, that begs:
- ones concept of free will is incorrect
But that cannot be, because your notion of free will is for you to decide, even if the universe is somehow determinate.
But that doesn’t mean the universe is or is not deterministic, it just means one or more of the above three things.
Ultimately, though, I was not making an argument concerning the fundamental nature of free will and determinism, or whether or not the universe is deterministic. I was arguing for completely processing fundamental concepts before you accept them to be true, because often times we accept a lot of false implications alongside the true things we accept.
One’s world view holds immense power in one’s own life. People do not intentionally act in accordance with things they do not believe to be the case. To accept determinism without fully processing the implications thereof, particularly if it “feels wrong but seems true” is to enter into and sign up for those internal conflicts writ large in one’s own life.
I also don’t believe that the universe is absolutely deterministic, but that’s a different argument that others have made better than I likely would.
Okay, in other words we need to consider our assumptions and definitions of “Free will” and “Determinism” when answering this question?
I really enjoyed this video on Compatibilism, and the view of Patricia Churchland (around 5:50) where she says we should reframe the question away from “what choices we have” to “how much control do we have”.
Close enough. This topic deserves significant care - of course, in the end, though, people buy into whatever they buy into.
Thanks for the link, I’ll check it out when YouTube is working for me again
For the same reason that I feel like I’m still right now, while I’m actually spinning and hurtling through space at incredible speed.
The most accurate answer is: We don’t know.
But there are pieces of scientific evidence that suggest our sense of free will is just another perception process that happens in our brains. Specifically I’m thinking about people who have problems in their brain that make them feel like they AREN’T the one controlling what they do. For example people suffering from derealization - https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/depersonalization-derealization-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20352911
EDIT
As to why our brains have a process that gives us a perception of free will, that’s a much harder question that i think science currently only has conjecture on. If i had to guess I’d guess that either there’s an evolutionary advantage to it, or it’s an emergent property that arises from all the parts of the brain being connected in the way they are
Assuming we don’t have free will, why do we have the illusion that we do?
You experience the world through your senses.
What sense that your body has would you expect to give your brain a different set of inputs if your brain’s actions were not deterministic, not set by the laws of physics? How would you expect it to feel different?
You wouldn’t expect to feel like some invisible force is in control of your limbs, which I think is perhaps what some people intuitively expect if someone says that their actions are pre-determined.
It’s not talking about anything that your brain can sense; it’s talking about how your brain works.
Yeah, this is it.
And to take a slightly different tack, if the biochemical and electrical activity in your brain were not deterministic, how would you ever know? It’s one thing to believe that you made a decision on your own “Free Will”, but how could you possibly rewind the entire universe (or at least some sufficiently small portion of it), including your brain’s exact atomic state, and re-run the experiment to know for sure? At that point, what would “Free Will” even mean?
There are many thing my body does which I’m aware of, but that I don’t will, and others that I have some control over, i.e., my will appears to play a role, but not the only role.
I don’t think it creates any kind of contradiction to suggest that, hypothetically, there could be more (or less) of either of those types of things, without my perceiving an invisible (external) force of some kind to be involved. After all, I don’t ascribe my heartbeat to an external force, but I am aware that I don’t will it.
After all, I don’t ascribe my heartbeat to an external force, but I am aware that I don’t will it.
No, but you have the ability to sense your heartbeat, so you can tell that it’s there.
You don’t have the ability to sense electromagnetic emissions in the X-ray frequency range, so you can’t tell that they’re there. You wouldn’t know if X-rays of a given intensity were present at a given moment. It’s like asking “why is there the illusion that there are no X-rays” when you wouldn’t expect to feel differently regardless of their presence or non-presence.
But my body also takes actions which I don’t control and of which I’m not conscious. E.g., normal cell death and replacement (granted, I would eventually notice if this stopped, but not in the short term). I don’t have the illusion of control over those actions, but I do have a sense (real or not) of control over others. My question is, why do I have that sense if it’s not real?
The premiss involves the idea that it would feel different, that my deliberate acts would feel (like cell replacement) like a thing that happens, rather than a thing I’m doing. Granted, if I were unconscious of all my acts, it wouldn’t feel like anything (like my experience of x-rays, which is a non-experience), but then I would be unconscious. So, if I’m interpreting you correctly, are you suggesting that the sense of will is a property of consciousness, and that consciousness is itself an emergent property of sensory experience?
Why are we assuming we don’t have free will? We do. Its not total freedom, our freedom is contingent on existing circumstances, but hard determinism is easily disprovable.
The idea that there is no free will is a mind fuck that keeps you from questioning your reality. You might as well ask, “assuming the earth is flat, why does the stick disappear on the horizon?”
This is a nice and brief video that I’ve found persuasive. https://youtu.be/eELfSwqJNKU
Noone believes that people have full freedom with no context, no extenuating circumstances. What makes arguments like this seem convincing is how uncommon it is for people to think dialectically.
Here’s a very good essay that steps through all of the different parts of the problem, and looks at different views historically. https://www.marxists.org/archive/plekhanov/1898/xx/individual.html
To the hard deterministic explanation that “something always came before,” it asks “what is the role of the individual in history?”
This excerpt isn’t a substitute for reading the whole essay but it makes a point pretty concisely:
But let us return to our subject. A great man is great not because his personal qualities give individual features to great historical events, but because he possesses qualities which make him most capable of serving the great social needs of his time, needs which arose as a result of general and particular causes. Carlyle, in his well-known book on heroes and hero-worship, calls great men beginners. This is a very apt description. A great man is precisely a beginner because he sees further than others, and desires things more strongly than others. He solves the scientific problems brought up by the preceding process of intellectual development of society; he points to the new social needs created by the preceding development of social relationships; he takes the initiative in satisfying these needs. He is a hero. But he is not a hero in the sense that he can stop, or change, the natural course of things, but in the sense that his activities are the conscious and free expression of this inevitable and unconscious course. Herein lies all his significance; herein lies his whole power. But this significance is colossal, and the power is terrible.
If I found out that I don’t have free will, I would start trying to gain it back immediately.
What if you found out that free will is an inherently flawed concept and therefore impossible to conclusively obtain
if you found out that free will is an inherently flawed concept
I also cannot imagine finding out that the hole in my ass is bigger than I am.
Then I have some bad news for you, about calculating the interior volume of a cylinder. You’ve got a lot of hole coiled up inside you
What if you never had it and never can have it because its not a havable thing
Pot kettle black
We know.
