Free Will

take everything

Hi.
There was a thread over in AH about Free Will that got me thinking about this old chestnut.
Was hoping to get some views about it.

Free Will: by that i mean, given the exact same conditions, could you choose differently.

So:
As far as i can possibly see, the notion of Free Will is nonsensical. Or at least it violates causality.
People talk about Free Will being dependent on whether the universe is deterministic or indeterministic (quantum indeterminacy ala Copenhagen interpretation of QM). But surely Free Will has nothing to do with any of this. It constantly comes up and i can't help thinking it's a complete red herring, stuck in to deliberately confuse the argument.

As far as i can see, Free Will seems to do with something more fundamental. It seems to have to necessarily invoke a "supernatural" contra-causal universe inside the brain, immune, as it were from events that happens in the universe outside the brain. That is the only way i can reconcile this. But of course, this reconciliation is obviously fanciful and deeply unsatisfactory.

I honestly thought this was a quaint notion long since rejected. But after searching a number of threads on these Boards and elsewhere, there does seem to be a strange fondness and acceptance of it. Even in the supposedly hardheaded A and A forum threads. I'm genuinely baffled. It feels like i'm going mad. :pac:

Just want to get some views on this.
Thanks.

raah!

Most people like Free Will, for obvious reasons. If they think they can maintain a materialistic or physicalistic philosophy and maintain free will, then it's only because they are wrong.

Also, quantum mechanics does not alleviate in any extent the degree to which our being part of the physical universe strips us of free will.

nyarlothothep

yup, we have free will. Now I want major disagreements, not the usual consensus that we don't have free will and are just biological robots, that's just so cliched and boring and predictable, it almost invalidates my point. I want a philosophical war on this thread. Fight.

wylo

take everything wrote: »

Hi.
There was a thread over in AH about Free Will that got me thinking about this old chestnut.
Was hoping to get some views about it.

Free Will: by that i mean, given the exact same conditions, could you choose differently.

So:
As far as i can possibly see, the notion of Free Will is nonsensical. Or at least it violates causality.
People talk about Free Will being dependent on whether the universe is deterministic or indeterministic (quantum indeterminacy ala Copenhagen interpretation of QM). But surely Free Will has nothing to do with any of this. It constantly comes up and i can't help thinking it's a complete red herring, stuck in to deliberately confuse the argument.

As far as i can see, Free Will seems to do with something more fundamental. It seems to have to necessarily invoke a "supernatural" contra-causal universe inside the brain, immune, as it were from events that happens in the universe outside the brain. That is the only way i can reconcile this. But of course, this reconciliation is obviously fanciful and deeply unsatisfactory.

I honestly thought this was a quaint notion long since rejected. But after searching a number of threads on these Boards and elsewhere, there does seem to be a strange fondness and acceptance of it. Even in the supposedly hardheaded A and A forum threads. I'm genuinely baffled. It feels like i'm going mad. :pac:

Just want to get some views on this.
Thanks.

Hi Take everything, it comes down to honesty, free will implies a self to have free will, this self is the , as you say "supernatural" contra-causal universe inside the brain". i.e. there is none to be found.

The A + A forums take pride in their dispelling of beliefs, but when pushed , would probably not give into their dispelling of their belief of free will or self.
Heres the general response I get from an atheist regarding self/free will.
me: There is no self, no you.
them: what do you mean?
me: There is no controller, no ownership, no seperate entity in charge of that body, but you believe there is.
them: No I dont, I know that, yea sure, no soul, no spirit , whatever
me: So is there free will?
them: Yea of course there is.
me: Who controls the body?
them: I do.

so on so forth, they will never admit they believe in something make believe.

But if you look for this self , it cant be found, if you're interested in taking it further and actually cracking that belief of self. Give us a shout by pm or whatever.
If you know there is no free will, well then there is no you to have free will. Investigating this is a way of breaking that belief of you, and genuinely experience life without free will.

nyarlothothep

wylo wrote: »

Hi Take everything, it comes down to honesty, free will implies a self to have free will, this self is the , as you say "supernatural" contra-causal universe inside the brain". i.e. there is none to be found.

The A + A forums take pride in their dispelling of beliefs, but when pushed , would probably not give into their dispelling of their belief of free will or self.
Heres the general response I get from an atheist regarding self/free will.
me: There is no self, no you.
them: what do you mean?
me: There is no controller, no ownership, no seperate entity in charge of that body, but you believe there is.
them: No I dont, I know that, yea sure, no soul, no spirit , whatever
me: So is there free will?
them: Yea of course there is.
me: Who controls the body?
them: I do.

so on so forth, they will never admit they believe in something make believe.

But if you look for this self , it cant be found, if you're interested in taking it further and actually cracking that belief of self. Give us a shout by pm or whatever.
If you know there is no free will, well then there is no you to have free will. Investigating this is a way of breaking that belief of you, and genuinely experience life without free will.

Completely wrong.

wylo

nyarlothothep wrote: »

Completely wrong.

loll you got off to a good start...

that's just so cliched and boring and predictable, it almost invalidates my point. I want a philosophical war on this thread. Fight.

Morbert

take everything wrote: »

People talk about ee Will being dependent on whether the universe is deterministic or indeterministic (quantum indeterminacy ala Copenhagen interpretation of QM). But surely Free Will has nothing to do with any of this. It constantly comes up and i can't help thinking it's a complete red herring, stuck in to deliberately confuse the argument.

It is a red herring. Even if we assume quantum mechanics is a fundamentally stochastic theory, this just means our actions are governed by probability distributions, as opposed to explicit functions of time. It does not leave open any window for free will.

raah!

Here is a logical form of determinism, due to aristotle:

12. Time and Necessity: The Sea-Battle

The passage in Aristotle's logical works which has received perhaps the most intense discussion in recent decades is On Interpretation 9, where Aristotle discusses the question whether every proposition about the future must be either true or false. Though something of a side issue in its context, the passage raises a problem of great importance to Aristotle's near contemporaries (and perhaps contemporaries).

A contradiction (antiphasis) is a pair of propositions one of which asserts what the other denies. A major goal of On Interpretation is to discuss the thesis that, of every such contradiction, one member must be true and the other false. In the course of his discussion, Aristotle allows for some exceptions. One case is what he calls indefinite propositions such as “A man is walking”: nothing prevents both this proposition and “A man is not walking” being simultaneously true. This exception can be explained on relatively simple grounds.

A different exception arises for more complex reasons. Consider these two propositions:

There will be a sea-battle tomorrow
There will not be a sea-battle tomorrow
It seems that exactly one of these must be true and the other false. But if (1) is now true, then there must be a sea-battle tomorrow, and there cannot fail to be a sea-battle tomorrow. The result, according to this puzzle, is that nothing is possible except what actually happens: there are no unactualized possibilities.

Such a conclusion is, as Aristotle is quick to note, a problem both for his own metaphysical views about potentialities and for the commonsense notion that some things are up to us. He therefore proposes another exception to the general thesis concerning contradictory pairs.

This much would probably be accepted by most interpreters. What the restriction is, however, and just what motivates it are matters of wide disagreement. It has been proposed, for instance, that Aristotle adopted, or at least flirted with, a three-valued logic for future propositions, or that he countenanced truth-value gaps, or that his solution includes still more abstruse reasoning. The literature is much too complex to summarize: see Anscombe, Hintikka, D. Frede, Whitaker, Waterlow.

Historically, at least, it is likely that Aristotle is responding to an argument originating in the Megarian School. He ascribes the view that only that which happens is possible to the Megarians in Metaphysics IX (Θ). The puzzle with which he is concerned strongly recalls the “Master Argument” of Diodorus Cronus, especially in certain further details. For instance, Aristotle imagines the statement about tomorrow's sea battle having been uttered ten thousand years ago. If it was true, then its truth was a fact about the past; if the past is now unchangeable, then so is the truth value of that past utterance. This recalls the Master Argument's premise that “what is past is necessary”. Diodorus Cronus was active a little after Aristotle, and he was a Megarian (see Dorion 1995 for criticism of David Sedley's attempt to reject this). It seems to me reasonable to conclude that Aristotle's target here is some Megarian argument, perhaps an earlier version of the Master.

It's from here http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-logic/#TimNecSea

Now, obviously this is not mine, but I can't see any good arguments against it, other than throwing logic out the window. Perhaps we can discuss this! Since the other ones are all so easy.

And maybe this isn't quite determinism, but it's at least fatalism, which is the worst part of determinism. Although it's been a while since I've actually read this, perhaps I'm wrong.

Joe1919

Dont forget that there is a position called 'Compatibilism' , the thesis that free will is compatible with determinism.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism

http://www.google.ie/search?hl=en&source=hp&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=compatibilism&meta=&gbv=1&btnG=Google+Search

take everything

Joe1919 wrote: »

Dont forget that there is a position called 'Compatibilism' , the thesis that free will is compatible with determinism.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism

http://www.google.ie/search?hl=en&source=hp&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=compatibilism&meta=&gbv=1&btnG=Google+Search

Compatibilists (as far as i can see) use a loose definition of free will.
I'm more interested in the definition in the OP, which (to me at least) would seem a valid definition of free will.

That stanford article goes on about Quantum Mechanics (possibility of indeterminism) vs Classical Mechanics (determinism) and i'm left wondering again is all this moot?

take everything

The only thing that has unsettled me in my thinking in this is "strong emergence".
I've only recently seen it so what i say may be appear ignorant.

This seems to be the notion that some complex systems are too complex to be reduced to be understood.
That you would need a computer larger than the universe to compute certain complex problems. And that consciousness may be one of these.

It's intriguing (and i might be way off about this, but i've just come across it) but i still wonder if its moot.
Incalculability/lack of omniscience (or degree of this)- should this really impact the fundamental issue here which to me seems to be causality.
In other words, just because you may never be able to "calculate" or model consciousness, does that mean you can infer free will could well be contracausal.

Anyone know anything about strong emergence and if it's relevant to this issue?

take everything

http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=409406&page=4

This is an interesting discussion.
One of the posters invoked the concept of retrocausality :eek: (apparently demonstrated in a QM experiment, i dunno tbh ), which would definitely throw a spanner in the works.
They also offer opinions on how consciousness is indeed important in QM (the physicists here, i'd imagine might dispute this).

Anyway, just more stuff there if anyone wants to thrash it out.
Retrocausality... possible? Relevant?
Emergence... Just pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo? Relevant?
I'd love to get more views on this.

Lucy8080

just saw this thread and it reminded me of something i read a couple of years back.

faculty.virginia.edu/consciousness/.

the guys name is stanley sobottka and he is emeritus professor of physics university of virginia.

lots of reading adressing ..freewill, is there a self, god ,consciousness ..et al...from a scientific standpoint...i think it takes some eastern nondual perspectives as the basis ...and goes on to see if science is coming to the same conclusions....if i remember correctly.

very interesting stuff.

Lucy8080

i just checked to see if its still there.

google " a course in consciousness stanley sobottka" and you will find it.

seems he keeps it updated regularly. its all free to read. might take a read of it again meself now..lol.