Free Will

[GordonOverkill]

Well, yes, I do think of myself as making a choice. But that doesn't necessarily mean that free will exists, if it was inevitable that I reached that choice, and similarly inevitable that I would reach the decision that I did. And while I might like to say that, were I in the same place again, I might want to make a difference choice, that is only true with the benefit of hindsight--"if I knew then what I know now, I'd choose differently". Sure, but then it's not the same choice, because you have access to different information. What's interesting is that we have limited, but good, testing of this. Patients with anterograde amnesia are unable to form new memories (think: Memento), and can experience a set of identical circumstances on multiple occasions. One man, for example, has been recording the same thoughts in his journal for over two decades.

Every single person I know acts as if he believes in the existence of free will. I never met anybody for whome the absence of free will was more than a sophisticated mind game.
But like you say, that's not a prove for itself. But there are logical reasons to believe in a free will, or rather not to believe the opposite. If all our actions were predeterminated, that would include all our cognitiv processes, including all our knowledge. Under these circumstances all our knowledge would lose it's reliability because we could never say for sure if it is really true (=that there really is a law of nature that we observed) or if we just think so because of whatever predeterminations of the process of "discovery" in our brain. There would just not be an outsider position that the scientist himself could hold. If knowledge had no reliability, that would include our knowledge about the freedom of will... so if there really was no freedom of will, we could consequently never find out about that.

[Stingray1]

An interesting experiment would be to take two identical twins biological clones and give them the exact same life from birth. Then give them the same choices. This only possible in a laboratory with mice maybe. Too evil to consider doing with humans.

[Silfir]

JellySlayer doesn't have to pretend to know more than what he does. Whether free will exists or not, neurologically, is not useful knowledge outside of neurology. Determinism doesn't have practical applications, since even though the future is determined, we lack even the theoretical ability to know what happens, with perfect accuracy, before it actually happens. That's why natural sciences are still useful, because finding out the ways the world works allows us to guess. Our laws, our ethics, our societies, our languages assume the existence of a concept of free will because it's integral to our "best guess" on how humans actually act. Acknowledging that we have no absolute knowledge that free will exists doesn't necessitate abandoning free will as a guideline for our actions, and in turn assuming free will as a guideline for our actions doesn't require absolute knowledge that free will exists. Even if free will is just an illusion all of us humans share, we cannot break free from it.

[JellySlayer]

You said that better than me. Yes, I agree with all of that. In fact, you haven't said much that I do disagree with. I guess my point is that the idea of free will is the only thing that "works" in everyday life. And I guess my question is, if it works so well, shouldn't that make us consider that it might actually be real? Even if we can't explain how it exists?

Well, in practice, that's pretty much what we do--most people consider free will to be a real thing. Though, I'll point out, this isn't actually a universal belief. There are some belief systems, Calvinism for example, that explicitly reject the concept of free will. I don't have enough knowledge of the day-to-day workings of believers of such faiths to understand the practice in detail. For religions, you can move to divine command theory--given situation X, the rule says to perform Y.

As far as the criminal justice system goes, my understanding it that in most cases, we are not able to identify a specific genetic marker that predisposed someone to commit a crime in any sort of straightforward way. But I may be wrong, that is admittedly not my area.

There's nothing definitive yet, no. But say hypothetically, if such a marker did exist, should it make a difference? Or not genetic, but even something more substantive? Let's make this example more concrete. How about a man whose brain tumor led to uncontrollable paedophilia? The tumor was removed and the problem went away. Should this be considered a mitigating circumstance? Or absolve him of guilt?

And this may seem like a dumb question, but, as far as Mr. Wearing, how do we know he isn't using his free will to choose the same thing over and over again? If he is faced with the exact same situation, why wouldn't he make the same decision? Even with a working memory, there are lots of questions that you would answer the same way, no matter how many times you were asked, right? And I don't think anyone would say that means you don't have free will.

Well, but then what's the difference between having free will and not? If given the same set of circumstances, you always perform the same action, then in what sense is your will "free"?

I suspect you know a lot more about this topic than I do, but I mentioned before, I also suspect that you live your life as though you have free will. Isn't that irrational, if you know you don't?

EDIT: I guess my point is, if you really believed your own argument, wouldn't you be living your life in a way drastically different from everyone else?

Maybe I do. It's not clear how believing versus not believing in free will would affect my decision-making algorithms. I can't really perform any analysis about this on myself, because the analysis will be intrinsically biased.

Every single person I know acts as if he believes in the existence of free will. I never met anybody for whome the absence of free will was more than a sophisticated mind game. But like you say, that's not a prove for itself. But there are logical reasons to believe in a free will, or rather not to believe the opposite. If all our actions were predeterminated, that would include all our cognitiv processes, including all our knowledge. Under these circumstances all our knowledge would lose it's reliability because we could never say for sure if it is really true (=that there really is a law of nature that we observed) or if we just think so because of whatever predeterminations of the process of "discovery" in our brain. There would just not be an outsider position that the scientist himself could hold. If knowledge had no reliability, that would include our knowledge about the freedom of will... so if there really was no freedom of will, we could consequently never find out about that.

Well, that doesn't actually imply that we should believe free will exists. The premise that all of your knowledge is inherently suspect is plausible, just uncomfortable. I don't know much about epistemology, but that's basically the whole problem.

A random process makes a decision not determined by fixed "stored information" alone, but throws a coin into the air or die into the air resulting in a choice.

But random processes don't exist either, so that is also moot.

Well, there are certainly processes that, to the very best of our knowledge and understanding, appear to be completely random, yes. Nuclear radioactive decays are the quintessential example. Many other quantum processes appear to be purely random. It may be that there is some very deep deterministic properties that somehow give rise to this randomness, but along the way, we'd be forced to give up some other concepts that seem pretty fundamental to our understanding of reality as well.

[Stingray1]

Well, there are certainly processes that, to the very best of our knowledge and understanding, appear to be completely random, yes. Nuclear radioactive decays are the quintessential example. Many other quantum processes appear to be purely random. It may be that there is some very deep deterministic properties that somehow give rise to this randomness, but along the way, we'd be forced to give up some other concepts that seem pretty fundamental to our understanding of reality as well.

Well, if you aren't 100 percent certain that you have discovered all the atomic elements, quantum particles and forces then I suppose some things might appear random.

It is still feasible that some forces and interactions are undetectable if your understanding of quantum mechanics and those particles are flawed as a species.

[JellySlayer]

Well, if you aren't 100 percent certain that you have discovered all the atomic elements, quantum particles and forces then I suppose some things might appear random.

It is still feasible that some forces and interactions are undetectable if your understanding of quantum mechanics and those particles are flawed as a species.

That's true. But Bell's theorem requires that in order to have a hidden variable theory that is consistent with quantum mechanics, you have to give up causality.

[Greyling]

There's nothing definitive yet, no. But say hypothetically, if such a marker did exist, should it make a difference? Or not genetic, but even something more substantive? Let's make this example more concrete. How about a man whose brain tumor led to uncontrollable paedophilia? The tumor was removed and the problem went away. Should this be considered a mitigating circumstance? Or absolve him of guilt?

Jellyslayer, I completely accept the idea that in some very, very extreme situations people can lack free will. That is the exception and not the rule, though.

Well, but then what's the difference between having free will and not? If given the same set of circumstances, you always perform the same action, then in what sense is your will "free"?

I think free will is the ability to make choices. My point before was that no matter how often you were asked some types of questions (like simple math problems) you would give the same answer. I don't think anyone would say that means you do not have free will.

Maybe I do. It's not clear how believing versus not believing in free will would affect my decision-making algorithms. I can't really perform any analysis about this on myself, because the analysis will be intrinsically biased.

I think it is possible for you to perform an analysis on yourself. If you really believed free will didn't exist, it would mean no human being, including you should ever feel guilty about any of their actions. Anyone else did something to hurt another person wouldn't be able to help it, so there would be no reason to feel bad about it.

I guess you could argue that you would still feel bad in a way, because you would see that their situation was unfortunate, but it would be the same way you feel bad for a victim of a natural disaster, not a sense of guilt.

I assume you would feel morally responsible and guilty if you did something terrible to someone else, jellyslayer?

[Greyling]

JellySlayer doesn't have to pretend to know more than what he does. Whether free will exists or not, neurologically, is not useful knowledge outside of neurology. Determinism doesn't have practical applications, since even though the future is determined, we lack even the theoretical ability to know what happens, with perfect accuracy, before it actually happens. That's why natural sciences are still useful, because finding out the ways the world works allows us to guess. Our laws, our ethics, our societies, our languages assume the existence of a concept of free will because it's integral to our "best guess" on how humans actually act. Acknowledging that we have no absolute knowledge that free will exists doesn't necessitate abandoning free will as a guideline for our actions, and in turn assuming free will as a guideline for our actions doesn't require absolute knowledge that free will exists. Even if free will is just an illusion all of us humans share, we cannot break free from it.

I'm not sure I understand what you are saying here, Silfir. Are you saying that it makes sense for Jellyslayer to say he doesn't believe in free will but act like he does?

[Greyling]

Well, in practice, that's pretty much what we do--most people consider free will to be a real thing. Though, I'll point out, this isn't actually a universal belief. There are some belief systems, Calvinism for example, that explicitly reject the concept of free will.

Wait a minute. I remember reading that Calvinists believe people can only become a member of the elect by being chosen by god, but don't they also believe people can be kicked out of the elect if they make the wrong decisions? If that's the case, it seems like they do believe at least some people have the free will to reject god. Also, I didn't realize that Calvinists believed they had no free will in any situation, I thought it was just in relation to the elect thing.

EDIT: Even Calvinists believed in the complete absence of free will in all situations, I bet they still felt guilty when they stole, or lied, or killed. So, here again, while some people do claim to believe that there is no such thing as free will, I can't think of much of anyone who really lives their lives as though that is the case.

[Silfir]

I'm not sure I understand what you are saying here, Silfir. Are you saying that it makes sense for Jellyslayer to say he doesn't believe in free will but act like he does?

Eeeeeeyup.