Free Will

[Opethian]

I do believe that we have free will (in your current definition), but not because I belive in supernatural.

You define "free will" by taking a snapshot of the universe at some moment, say t0, then make an exact copy of it and then run two of them in parallel and see if there are differences.

Yes, there will be differences just because our universe is not deterministic.

Yes, I agree with you. I also understand why you probably haven't read the whole thread, since it has become pretty vast . Since my first post I've added to the definition, as only applicable to humans (and perhaps other animals with a certain level of consciousness). My initial definition was flawed because, like you say, the uncertainty principle makes sure that this free will can exist. The problem is that it would exist not only for humans, animals, but also for example, for rocks, rivers etc... Therefore, I have narrowed it down: the differences have to be explained by a phenomenon which is only applicable to humans (and any other organism that someone - who claims free will exists as a natural phenomenon - thinks, is capable of "free will decisions"). I think you will probably agree that once the definition is altered like this, it is not rational to say that this free will exists.

Edit: I have edited my opening post to include this definition alteration.

 

[Upisoft]

Since my first post I've added to the definition, as only applicable to humans (and perhaps other animals with a certain level of consciousness). My initial definition was flawed because, like you say, the uncertainty principle makes sure that this free will can exist.

I say your initial definition was fine. What you see as "flaw" I see as "taking into consideration what matters".

The problem is that it would exist not only for humans, animals, but also for example, for rocks, rivers etc...

"It is not bug. It is a feature", said God.

Therefore, I have narrowed it down: the differences have to be explained by a phenomenon which is only applicable to humans (and any other organism that someone - who claims free will exists as a natural phenomenon - thinks, is capable of "free will decisions").

Your new definition tries to describe us as deterministic machines or perhaps to search undeterminism not in the quantum mechanics, but somewhere else. I will agree that we have no "free will" in such imaginary situation, if the original meaning of ":free will" is preserved.

I think you will probably agree that once the definition is altered like this, it is not rational to say that this free will exists.

Yes, I agree. But I think that the question becomes strictly hypothetical this way and does not reflect the reality.

 

[TimmyPage]

I'll say one thing - even if we didn't have free will, we would never know.

Even being in the act of thinking about 'free will' would be predetermined.

 

[Lifesaver]

I mean, don't you think it is a little silly to attack determinism by saying that "it rests on the materialist assumption that all there is is physical events, and that the mind therefore is nothing but the product of physical processes" when that is basically the definition?

Not at all.
First because there is a version of determinism, the stronger version, which does not rely on the materialist assumption. It is psychological determinism: the person chooses as he does because the interaction between all his opinions, memories, inclinations and current data leads him to that choice.

Secondly because materialism is flawed on its most basic assumptions about reality.
I meant, in my past post, to link to a very well written argument showing the inherent absurdity of materialism (that is, the belief that the mind is a product of the brain, or of physical conditions in general), but I forgot to.
Here is the link:
http://www.mises.org/books/ufofes/ch1~7.aspx

This is not compromised by determinism. Choices continue to be made. They are just made in the way that they are by necessity.

"Choices" continue to be made, but now with no rational justification.
Why get out of bed and go to work? That we do that means that, considering the alternatives which we might have taken, we thought this the best course of action to follow.
Once one accepts that there is only one possible course of action to be taken, that it will be chosen by necessity, the act of choice becomes meaningless, as it loses its essential character: setting aside possible actions to pursue one that seems best.

 

[DoubtingThomas29]

I believe I can actually prove the answer to the opethian's question in the affirmative. I might have to take more philosophy classes after this.

You see I know you have heard of artificial intelligence, well there has been some head way on it, and some robots that have been built do have free will. I'll give you an example and we will answer your question in the affirmative.

There were two robots built. They had exactly the same programing and even the same look to each other. They were made of the same plastic and metal, but whatis important to remember is that they were built by the same computer programmer and team of technicians. These robots had exactly the same programming and method for making decisions, nothing was different between the two at all, in their programming.

Here is what happen, they were cleaning a room and they came to a task where only one robot could complete one of the chore and both robots came together and both knew it had to be done, and both knew only one could do it, however both could do it in exactly the same way. The two robots then decided on who would complete this task and who would go off and do something else. This is how advanced science has come, it is absolutely amazing. These robots had free will to decide on who would do what.

So here is a fact, if some how some super smart scientist could build a robot that had exactly everything in it's programming that makes it mind/Central Processing Unit the same as your mind, and the scientist sent the robot over to your house to help you clean it. You have no idea what the robot is going to want to clean first, because it has free will to clean whatever it wants to. It is true, you have no way of knowing, because you have free will and the robot has free will, so you both can do as you please cleaning what ever you want.

This is why if there is a God, there is no way he can predict the future of any human while they are alive. The human can make a choice as to what it wants or feel it must do, and God can in no way predict what this person, or even a robot with free will is going to do. God may be able to say to a certain degree of likely hood what this person may do but nothing definite, he probably could not even give you probabilities to likely hood of out comes. Nor can the scientist with the artifically intelligent robots she or he programs.

With free will the person has a choice and can base that choice on any number of things, what ever it's will is at the moment.

What do you think?

Doubting Thomas29

 

[Opethian]

I believe I can actually prove the answer to the opethian's question in the affirmative. I might have to take more philosophy classes after this.

You see I know you have heard of artificial intelligence, well there has been some head way on it, and some robots that have been built do have free will. I'll give you an example and we will answer your question in the affirmative.

There were two robots built. They had exactly the same programing and even the same look to each other. They were made of the same plastic and metal, but whatis important to remember is that they were built by the same computer programmer and team of technicians. These robots had exactly the same programming and method for making decisions, nothing was different between the two at all, in their programming.

Here is what happen, they were cleaning a room and they came to a task where only one robot could complete one of the chore and both robots came together and both knew it had to be done, and both knew only one could do it, however both could do it in exactly the same way. The two robots then decided on who would complete this task and who would go off and do something else. This is how advanced science has come, it is absolutely amazing. These robots had free will to decide on who would do what.

This is certainly not free will as I defined it in my opening post. You see, those 2 robots will never receive the exact same input from their environment at any given time. On top of that, there will always be tiny differences in their construction, leading to differences in the processing of already different input information. Something that would prove free will, is two robots, each in completely identical, seperate universes, at the exact same time and the exact same space (from the perspective of the identical universes), doing 2 different things. There are many simple explanations for your robot example. One explanation could be, since the 2 robots would be in a different place in the room, that they calculated which robot already had the best position to start cleaning, and acted accordingly. As far as I can tell, there's nothing special about these robots, at least in regards to free will.

So here is a fact, if some how some super smart scientist could build a robot that had exactly everything in it's programming that makes it mind/Central Processing Unit the same as your mind, and the scientist sent the robot over to your house to help you clean it. You have no idea what the robot is going to want to clean first, because it has free will to clean whatever it wants to.

No, it will calculate what is best for it to clean first, in the same way that humans do. There will be differences in past experiences and environmental input, and body structure, therefore it is possible for you and the robot to make a different "decision", or should I say calculation.

It is true, you have no way of knowing, because you have free will and the robot has free will, so you both can do as you please cleaning what ever you want.

And what you want to clean first depends on what, from your perspective, is best to clean first. Your perspective is different from the robot's because of your different environmental input, past experiences, and body structure.

This is why if there is a God, there is no way he can predict the future of any human while they are alive. The human can make a choice as to what it wants or feel it must do, and God can in no way predict what this person, or even a robot with free will is going to do.

If there is an omniscient god, he should be perfectly able to predict what humans or robots are going to do (he/she/it would have created the universe so should know a way around the uncertainty principle, and as we all know, this uncertainty goes for all matter, and free will from a human perspective is only relevant when talking about conscious beings, so uncertainty as a possible source of free will has no relevance, as we need a source limited to conscious beings).

God may be able to say to a certain degree of likely hood what this person may do but nothing definite, he probably could not even give you probabilities to likely hood of out comes. Nor can the scientist with the artifically intelligent robots she or he programs.

I really don't see how you can rationally come to this conclusion.

With free will the person has a choice and can base that choice on any number of things, what ever it's will is at the moment.

Its "will" is the result of what it conceives to be best. What it conceives to be best is dependant on the information it receives and the way it processes this information. It has one outcome (when disregarding uncertainty, for reasons already stated). There is a perceived choice, by way of evaluating information which is constantly changing, and processing it, but the outcome is determined.

What do you think?

I think your argument is quite flawed, but it was interesting to read.

 

[Hnefi]

"Choices" continue to be made, but now with no rational justification.
Why get out of bed and go to work? That we do that means that, considering the alternatives which we might have taken, we thought this the best course of action to follow.

You seem to be arguing against yourself here. If determinism is true, then every choice is made for some reason. So under complete determinism, every choice is necessarily rational (assuming a functioning mind) and under determinism with a degree of randomness, choices are rational with a degree of nonsense noise added in.

Look at your own question: "Why get out of bed and go to work?" The answer is, in a deterministic universe, something along the lines of "To earn money." As soon as you introduce a "why", you imply a "because". Whenever there is a "because", there is determinism.

As an aside, as I wrote in the other thread, the concept of free will is nonsense from a logical standpoint. We know for certain that at least two basic types of systems exist or could hypothetically exist - deterministic systems and random systems. Deterministic systems are systems where every effect has at least one cause and random systems are systems where no effect has any causes.

We can also describe a mix between those systems, where there is some degree of determinism and some degree of randomness. The latter is simply added as noise onto the deterministic process. Many decision-making computer algorithms work under this premise. But this is not free will, it is simply a softer version of determinism.

We know what free will is not. It is not determinism. It is not randomness. It is not a mixture of both. But this is not a coherent definition. There is an infinity of things that everything isn't. In order to properly define free will and argue for/against it, we must have a definition that is not a listing of negatives and is not applicable on anything else. In short, a unique, positive description of the free will hypothesis.

I assert that such a description is impossible, simply because free will is logically absurd.

 

[Opethian]

I say your initial definition was fine. What you see as "flaw" I see as "taking into consideration what matters". "It is not bug. It is a feature", said God.

Ah, that's another way of looking at it.

Your new definition tries to describe us as deterministic machines or perhaps to search undeterminism not in the quantum mechanics, but somewhere else. I will agree that we have no "free will" in such imaginary situation, if the original meaning of ":free will" is preserved.

Yes, I agree. But I think that the question becomes strictly hypothetical this way and does not reflect the reality.

I don't think that the question becomes strictly hypothetical this way. I just think we have eliminated the possibility of Heisenberg indeterminacy being a mechanism behind free will. Therefore we can assume that the universe is determined, in our search for an answer to the question "does free will exist?", until someone proposes a new mechanism of indeterminacy.

 

[Upisoft]

I don't think that the question becomes strictly hypothetical this way. I just think we have eliminated the possibility of Heisenberg indeterminacy being a mechanism behind free will. Therefore we can assume that the universe is determined, in our search for an answer to the question "does free will exist?", until someone proposes a new mechanism of indeterminacy.

Excluding Heisenberg indeterminacy have to be justified. I don't see any evidence that it does not affect us. In fact I see evidence that the quantum noise do affect us. Some old people do have tremors in their limbs. It is caused by disfunction of the nervous system, but it do show that our nervous system is capable of amplifying the quantum noise to visible effects.

 

[elman]

Ah, that's another way of looking at it.



I don't think that the question becomes strictly hypothetical this way. I just think we have eliminated the possibility of Heisenberg indeterminacy being a mechanism behind free will. Therefore we can assume that the universe is determined, in our search for an answer to the question "does free will exist?", until someone proposes a new mechanism of indeterminacy.

Why would you assume the universe is determined?

 

[Opethian]

Why would you assume the universe is determined?

This is my reasoning:

1. We are debating the question: "does free will exist?"
2. If free will exists, there has to be a principle to explain it. Free will implies indeterminism, so we need a principle that causes indeterminism.
3. This free will should be exclusive to animals with a certain level of consciousness, or at least living things (otherwise the question becomes quite meaningless). Therefore the mechanism that explains free will has to be exclusive to animals with a certain level of consciousness, or at least living things.
4. The Heisenberg principle is what explains indeterminism in our universe, but it is not limited to animals with a certain level of consciousness, or even living things. Therefore the Heisenberg principle cannot explain free will.
5. In our search for a principle explaining/allowing for free will, we can assume that the universe is determined, until someone finds a different principle that can account for indeterminism, and is limited to living things/animals with a certain level of consciousness.

 

[elman]

This is my reasoning:

1. We are debating the question: "does free will exist?"
2. If free will exists, there has to be a principle to explain it. Free will implies indeterminism, so we need a principle that causes indeterminism.
3. This free will should be exclusive to animals with a certain level of consciousness, or at least living things (otherwise the question becomes quite meaningless). Therefore the mechanism that explains free will has to be exclusive to animals with a certain level of consciousness, or at least living things.
4. The Heisenberg principle is what explains indeterminism in our universe, but it is not limited to animals with a certain level of consciousness, or even living things. Therefore the Heisenberg principle cannot explain free will.
5. In our search for a principle explaining/allowing for free will, we can assume that the universe is determined, until someone finds a different principle that can account for indeterminism, and is limited to living things/animals with a certain level of consciousness.

My problem with this is that while you are looking for this principle let's assume free will exists because I can observe it and experience it.

 

[Upisoft]

This is my reasoning:

1. We are debating the question: "does free will exist?"
2. If free will exists, there has to be a principle to explain it. Free will implies indeterminism, so we need a principle that causes indeterminism.
3. This free will should be exclusive to animals with a certain level of consciousness, or at least living things (otherwise the question becomes quite meaningless). Therefore the mechanism that explains free will has to be exclusive to animals with a certain level of consciousness, or at least living things.
4. The Heisenberg principle is what explains indeterminism in our universe, but it is not limited to animals with a certain level of consciousness, or even living things. Therefore the Heisenberg principle cannot explain free will.
5. In our search for a principle explaining/allowing for free will, we can assume that the universe is determined, until someone finds a different principle that can account for indeterminism, and is limited to living things/animals with a certain level of consciousness.

Why do you assume that(the bold part)? If you insist that we are in control of our free will, then you have a problem. How something that is controlled is free? I see the things quite differently. Free will controls us.

 

[elman]

Why do you assume that(the bold part)? If you insist that we are in control of our free will, then you have a problem. How something that is controlled is free? I see the things quite differently. Free will controls us.

Free will is part of us and who we are, not a separate entity to itself. How can free will control us? That makes no sense to me.

 

[Upisoft]

Free will is part of us and who we are, not a separate entity to itself. How can free will control us? That makes no sense to me.

Maybe I should say: Free will is part of us, which controls our 'self'. The free will is part of us just like molecules we're build of are part of us.

 

[elman]

Maybe I should say: Free will is part of us, which controls our 'self'. The free will is part of us just like molecules we're build of are part of us.

If free will is part of who we are, that means we have some control over our decisions. It is not the same as our molecules. Without our consciousness functioning, our molecules would still be there, but we, our self, would have left the building. Without our free will, our abillity to make decisions, we would be gone and no longer a part of the molecules.

 

[Upisoft]

If free will is part of who we are, that means we have some control over our decisions. It is not the same as our molecules. Without our consciousness functioning, our molecules would still be there, but we, our self, would have left the building. Without our free will, our abillity to make decisions, we would be gone and no longer a part of the molecules.

There are interactions between the atoms and molecules. But they're as real and observable as the molecules. I gave the molecules only as an example.

 

[Hnefi]

My problem with this is that while you are looking for this principle let's assume free will exists because I can observe it and experience it.

Can you? My problem with this is that while my experiences are likely very similar to yours, I can't say that they indicate free will.

The question, I suppose, is this: if you were a deterministic machine, how would you know? What makes you think a sufficiently advanced robot would feel any different than us? And if you yourself suddenly lost your free will, how would you know? And how would you feel?

I assert that you wouldn't know and you wouldn't feel any different, because free will has nothing to do with how we experience the world. We obviously cannot sense ourselves being "forced" by circumstance to make a particular decision, because the decision is a direct consequence of said circumstance. Tthe only way for us to act differently would be if we were in another circumstance, in which case we wouldn't know about the first one which again hides any feeling of limitation from us.

 

[Opethian]

My problem with this is that while you are looking for this principle let's assume free will exists because I can observe it and experience it.

You can observe and experience an illusion of it. You can't assume that something exists in a search to answer the question whether it exists or not.

Why do you assume that(the bold part)? If you insist that we are in control of our free will, then you have a problem. How something that is controlled is free? I see the things quite differently. Free will controls us.

In that case, aren't we talking about "random will", and is it even "will"? If you are talking about an indeterminacy for all matter, and thus that all matter has free will, I will agree with you, this type of free will exists, but it has lost all meaning from a human perspective. It's not free, it's random, and only on a very small schale.

If free will is part of who we are, that means we have some control over our decisions.

I think you still have some trouble with the concept of "we" and "I". Please do tell me, what is "you"? Does it include a supernatural entity or not? If it doesn't, "you" are just a collection of particles of matter, subject to the laws of the universe. There is no control of "you" over the matter particles of which "you" are composed, "you" are the matter particles.
I think Upisoft sees free will as the indeterminacy in our actions as a result of the indeterminacy inherent in the behaviour of the matter of which we are composed. For myself, I would never look upon this as free will, because it isn't "free" from our point of view, nor is it our "will", it's just something we are subject to.

It is not the same as our molecules. Without our consciousness functioning, our molecules would still be there, but we, our self, would have left the building.

Your consciousness is a result of the material structure of your brain. It is not something which you can "separate from the molecules", it is the result of a certain organisation of material particles.

Without our free will, our abillity to make decisions, we would be gone and no longer a part of the molecules.

Ability to make decisions does not equate free will. Ability to not just contemplate, but to make ANY decision is free will. You may perceive options, but you will always pick the most optimal one from your point of view.

 

[Upisoft]

In that case, aren't we talking about "random will", and is it even "will"? If you are talking about an indeterminacy for all matter, and thus that all matter has free will, I will agree with you, this type of free will exists, but it has lost all meaning from a human perspective. It's not free, it's random, and only on a very small schale.

You understand me correct, at least partially.

But let us discuss the meaning of 'free will' from human perspective. Since I am a human and I have different perspective, it is clear that such thing like 'human perspective' does not exist. End of discussion.

What now? OK. Let us discuss your perspective of 'free will'.
Please, define what you consider 'free'. Define what you consider 'will'. Define how both ideas merge to become 'free will'.