200 replies to this topic

[Cyberbrain]

Scott Adams

Check it out [tung]

[cognition]

(idea) by Xeger (4.2 d) (print) ? 2 C!s Fri Jan 25 2002 at 22:57:32

Probably one of the most hotly contested issues in science, philosophy and religion, the question of free will has plagued humanity in one form or another for thousands of years--at least, the portion of humanity whose basic needs are taken care of, and who have enough idle time on their hands to waste it sitting around discussing lofty philosophical notions. For the portion of humanity that spends their days making mud bricks or field-stripping their AK-47s the issue is of no immediate concern.

In the beginning, was the Word. The Word came in different guises, depending on one's culture. For the Jews, the Word came on an immense scroll called the Torah, to be lovingly reproduced and passed to future generations. For Muslims, the Word was the Qur'an; the Christians had their Bible.

In a society which has grown accustomed to the idea of the Word as absolute truth, to question free will makes little sense. When you take it for granted that God created you and is telling you how to live your life, it is only natural to make the minor jump to believing that God is directly controlling your life.

As the years passed, technology and science evolved from obscure tools of the literati to religions in their own right, and people began to ask: what's so sacred about the Word, anyway? At about this time a number of early scientists, known at the time as natural philosophers, tried to unify the ideas of God and Nature. Within a few hundred years of each other, Anselm, Aquinas, Kant and Paley all took a crack at it. Suddenly, the appropriateness of determinism was in doubt--because the idea of God's very existence was in doubt!

Then came a chain of radical new ideas, completely at odds with convention, that yielded Newton's laws of motion, and eventually, Rutherford's model of the atom and Freud's nurture-over-nature explanations for human behavior. Suddenly we were all living in a clockwork universe, our actions dictated by easily derivable laws, and it was only a matter of time until we understood the working of the universe down to the last subatomic particle. In 1906, the dean of Harvard physics was heard to remark to prospective incoming freshmen that physics was a very poor career choice for aspiring young men, because there remained only six unsolved problems in the entire field.

Within thirty years, those six problems had turned classical physics upside-down. The work of Bohr, Einstein, Maxwell and Heisenberg (among others) fueled a paradigmatic shift; in this brave new world the universe is random, chaotic and unpredictable. Alan Turing showed us that, not only are some problems unsolvable, but some problems cannot even be determined to be solvable, or unsolvable. In the brave new world of 20th-century physics, free will was suddenly on very shaky ground. The straw that broke the camel's back was the development of quantum physics, which buggered the entire problem by suggesting that things might be deterministic and unpredictable. In the end, nobody was sure of anything regarding free will, and a lot of people threw up their hands in disgust.

Not me, though. Growing up, learning the history of science and coming to think about the world from a modern point of view, I was always fascinated by the concept of free will. And, after a great deal of thought, I have come to a conclusion: the question of free will is irrelevant.

Consider:
Before you have made some decision, there is no way to predict the outcome of your decision, because you have not made it yet. This is true whether or not free will exists.
On the cusp of your decision--as you are making it--there is no way to prove, or disprove, that your decision is the result of your own free will.
After your decision has been made, the outcome has been decided. Because the outcome can never be changed and the decision can never be exactly repeated, there is no way to determine whether a different outcome was possible.

In other words, having or not having free will makes no difference in your day-to-day life. Your best bet is to act as if you have free will, and not to fret about what might be coming in your future if you don't have free will. The future is impossible to predict, irrespective of free will. The past cannot be changed, irrespective of free will. Worrying about it isn't going to make a whit of difference.

Check this out too. Go to everything2.com and search for "free will".

[platypus]

What is consciousness needed for if we have no freedom at all in anything we do? Couldn't we as well be zombies then? Consciousness undoubtedly exists. As it's a product of an evolutionary process, it's either useful for something, a byproduct of something useful, or a freak coincidence. I would like to think that consciousness has been selected for as it is somehow necessary for "free" will.

[cognition]

There is a possibility that we are zombies, being conscious of our actions and thoughts but not having any control over our thoughts and actions. Consciousness may be something that arises out of a certain brain structure or a network of information. It may not have any bearing on us being able to "choose" what to think. Consciousness may not be "selected" for anything. It may just be there because it is necessary for consciousness to arise through deterministic scientific laws. It is doubtful that we have complete free will, if we have it at all.

[JonesGuy]

We don't have a detailed enough consciousness to determine if we have Free Will. If my crankiness is a function of my blood sugar, but I cannot directly discern my blood sugar levels ... well, how much control do I have over crankiness?

[gashinshotan]

We don't have free will. We are limited by our bodies. For example, do we really have a choice on whether or not we should see, hear, feel, and taste? Do we really have free will over our breathing, eating, emotions, and excretions? Everything we do is determined by the reality that we are human. Nothing we do can be considered free will because everything we do derives from the human nature; our physical, psychological, and mental needs to continue living. Sure you can go into the specifics of social and psychological choices, but the fact that we make those choices solely because we are humans and not higher or lower beings already denigrates this claim of "free" will to merely a symptom of being human.

[abolitionist]

Nothing is free or independent. There is no willful control of genes interacting with environment just the resulting person - noone has the power to choose their genes and environment freely or independently.

However, our pleasure drive is related to self perception within a context. We're happiest when we believe we are in control of our lives.

So how to use the knowledge of no-free will in a positive way?

We can focus on systemic problems rather than attempting to solve problems ineffectively through 'will power'

Society benefits when we focus on systemic interactions rather than putting blame on individuals. Presently we put blame on 'willfulness' due to inability to solve problems - which stems from ideological barriers (which affirm the doctrine of free-will)

Edited by abolitionist, 02 December 2007 - 10:02 AM.

[platypus]

However, our pleasure drive is related to self perception within a context. We're happiest when we believe we are in control of our lives.

So how to use the knowledge of no-free will in a positive way?

If we have no free will it does not matter in the slightest whether we think positively or negatively about it.

[Kalepha]

If we have no free will it does not matter in the slightest whether we think positively or negatively about it.

But if you feel it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter that you feel it doesn't matter, since you could still validly feel that it matters. Also what's valid in a deterministic world is the realization that deterministic processes can be beneficial. Therefore, not all appeals to determinism are in vain.

[Kalepha]

Presently we put blame on 'willfulness' due to inability to solve problems - which stems from ideological barriers (which affirm the doctrine of free-will).

Might some body expand on this from abolitionist?

First, depending on an initial assessment of context and outlook scopes, we should assume that we can't persuade the other side, because we might unproblematically assume that by the time we have true predictions to persuade with, they'd have no way of being as certain by the time they process the same results (let alone that they don't have a reason to go out of their way to process the results without, first, the results they need to process themselves), where the waiting period could indicate that trying to persuade had been pointless to begin with. In other words, conflicting staunch beliefs can't be resolved formally if at all.

What this might mean to Abolitionist is that one should consider whether it might be better to help the akratics more directly, bypassing the wasting of resources confronting their oppressors.

From those entries you can see that I find some logic and science that seems to suggest there may be such a thing as free will only we first of all have to choose to have it. It comes synergistically through cooperating for the benefit of all, possibly.

Agreed, as long as we assume incomplete cooperation.

[platypus]

If we have no free will it does not matter in the slightest whether we think positively or negatively about it.

But if you feel it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter that you feel it doesn't matter, since you could still validly feel that it matters. Also what's valid in a deterministic world is the realization that deterministic processes can be beneficial. Therefore, not all appeals to determinism are in vain.

Determinism flew out of the window with quantum mechanics.

Edited by platypus, 03 December 2007 - 01:45 AM.

[Kalepha]

If we have no free will it does not matter in the slightest whether we think positively or negatively about it.

But if you feel it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter that you feel it doesn't matter, since you could still validly feel that it matters. Also what's valid in a deterministic world is the realization that deterministic processes can be beneficial. Therefore, not all appeals to determinism are in vain.

Determinism flew out of the window with quantum mechanics.

Determinism is a conditional for certain discourses involving implications, and the particular implication there still stands, regardless of your attitude about science versus philosophy.

Any examples of current belief systems (or claimed as such any ways) that profess there is a free will?

Ones I can think of immediately are compatibilism and libertarianism. I happen to be a compatibilist, but with some sugar and spice.

[platypus]

If we have no free will it does not matter in the slightest whether we think positively or negatively about it.

But if you feel it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter that you feel it doesn't matter, since you could still validly feel that it matters. Also what's valid in a deterministic world is the realization that deterministic processes can be beneficial. Therefore, not all appeals to determinism are in vain.

Determinism flew out of the window with quantum mechanics.

Determinism is a conditional for certain discourses involving implications, and the particular implication there still stands, regardless of your attitude about science versus philosophy.

Sorry, I don't really understand your point. My point was that as far as we know the world is not completely deterministic on a fundamental level.

Edited by platypus, 03 December 2007 - 04:09 PM.

[Kalepha]

Observe that your first point was in the form 'if p then q', where I responded first with a statement of an equally true value 'if p then not q'. However, assuming p, 'q and not q'. This derivation shows that your statement is false, while whatever else you believe propositionally never enters into it and perhaps should've never entered into it to avoid this situation. In the meantime, we learned to care.

[abolitionist]

If we have no free will it does not matter in the slightest whether we think positively or negatively about it.

But if you feel it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter that you feel it doesn't matter, since you could still validly feel that it matters. Also what's valid in a deterministic world is the realization that deterministic processes can be beneficial. Therefore, not all appeals to determinism are in vain.

Determinism flew out of the window with quantum mechanics.

Determinism is a conditional for certain discourses involving implications, and the particular implication there still stands, regardless of your attitude about science versus philosophy.

Any examples of current belief systems (or claimed as such any ways) that profess there is a free will?

Ones I can think of immediately are compatibilism and libertarianism. I happen to be a compatibilist, but with some sugar and spice.

Quantum mechanics is poorly understood, thus many theorists use the lack of knowledge to support a wide range of beliefs.

But even quantum particles are not free operating in a bubble without interaction from the rest of the universe - nothing is free.

[Kalepha]

I think you'd be talking past me, but not to me. Where there's a level with a deterministic system, free will is possible in this system if

a. its given volitional agents can avoid disasters or reach goals, and
b. its given volitional agents don't have as their only goal the desire to be the highest-order controller, because it's logically impossible to know if this particular goal has been attained [1,2].

Edit:

1. a post in "Personal Identity Theories"
2. a post in ""Greetings . . .""

Sorry.

Edited by Kalepha, 09 December 2007 - 06:21 PM.

[Mind]

Time to dredge up an interesting old discussion.

Have Libet's results been contradicted.

From this pop-media article, it seems the conditions of the new experiment were slightly different than Libet's. I don't think it is even close to settling the argument.

Long sceptical of Libet's interpretation, Jeff Miller and Judy Trevena of the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, attempted to tease apart what prompts the RP using a similar experiment, with a key twist.

They also used scalp electrodes, but instead of letting their volunteers decide when to move, Miller and Trevena asked them

to wait for an audio tone before deciding whether to tap a key. If Libet's interpretation were correct, Miller reasoned, the RP should be greater after the tone when a person chose to tap the key.

While there was an RP before volunteers made their decision to move, the signal was the same whether or not they elected to tap. Miller concludes that the RP may merely be a sign that the brain is paying attention and does not indicate that a decision has been made.

Miller and Trevena also failed to find evidence of subconscious decision-making in a second experiment. This time they asked volunteers to press a key after the tone, but to decide on the spot whether to use their left or right hand. As movement in the right limbs is related to the brain signals in the left hemisphere and vice versa, they reasoned that if an unconscious process is driving this decision, where it occurs in the brain should depend on which hand is chosen. But they found no such correlation.

[Mind]

And this reminds me of another gem of an paper written by an Imminst member a few years ago. Kip Werking (John Doe): "The Transhuman Condition". Kip eventually disowned his line of thinking (kind-of), based on the creation of a straw man in the argument, or something along that line. Still, I found the paper enlightening and a bit frightening.

[Mind]

And this reminds me of another gem of an paper written by an Imminst member a few years ago. Kip Werking (John Doe): "The Transhuman Condition". Kip eventually disowned his line of thinking (kind-of), based on the creation of a straw man in the argument, or something along that line. Still, I found the paper enlightening and a bit frightening.

Time to dredge up an old topic again, lol. And remind everyone to read "The Transhumaist Condition". In world with Amazon's Mechanical Turk, how close are we to rewarding maladaptive behavior? Turkers generally do not know who they are working for. They could be finding the best way to murder the most people, just by answering innocent-sounding questions.

What made me dredge up this thread is a recent add-on to the Libet critique from 2009. Here is some new information on interpreting Libet.

By the way, my candidate for the 4th anthropogenic conceit is different than Werking's. I think the 4th anthropogenic conceit is that we will be able to prove whether free will exists. Since all knowledge and perception is subjective, we will never be able to objectively prove the existence or non-existence of free will.