Free will - Truth or Illusion?

[kwerk]

The absence of free will does not necessitate determinism, i.e. everything that will happen in the universe can potentially be predicted. The uncertainty principle takes care of that.

However, no, I do not think that human beings are free autonomous agents. I think the evidence is overwhelming, and one can perform so many simply thought experiments to test (albeit not conclusively) the idea that our conscious mind is the producer of our thoughts, and what not... None of them are able to do just that.

The universe can't ever be predicted because in order to do so you'd have to:

A. Compute the entire universe as a single system
B. Have the same computing power as the universe itself, physically impossible
C. Be able to run that computer faster than the universe runs itself

You couldn't even retrodict it.

Even to create a sim of the quantum states of 1 human brain you'd have to include the forces acting on it from the body, the earth acting on the body, the sun acting on the earth, the milky way, the entire universe.

 

[Kamwah]

There's free will and freedom to an extent. It's slowly disappearing though.

 

[kwerk]

I choose to quote your post and no1 stopped me. There is a level of free will but where it ends is up to the person choosing the choice and decision making themselves.

What makes them choose though? It's just the arrangement of particles in their head. Nothing magical. Both quantum and classical physics are deterministic, there can only be one new state from that current state of particles. It gets murky because of the fact we never really know the current quantum state, that's where probability comes in.

 

[Smoking Man]

Morality is meaningless in the absence of autonomy. If we have no free will, how can criminals be held accountable for their crimes?

And morality and freewill are impossible in the absence of the existence of God.

 

[Deleted member 77746]

What makes them choose though? It's just the arrangement of particles in their head. Nothing magical. Both quantum and classical physics are deterministic, there can only be one new state from that current state of particles. It gets murky because of the fact we never really know the current quantum state, that's where probability comes in.

The choice based on decision making. I may think of something I want to do because I like it. Others may not like it.

I choose A because..
I choose B because..
e.t.c

 

[rz30]

What makes them choose though? It's just the arrangement of particles in their head. Nothing magical. Both quantum and classical physics are deterministic, there can only be one new state from that current state of particles. It gets murky because of the fact we never really know the current quantum state, that's where probability comes in.

It doesn't mean the universe can't be predicted just we at this moment in time we can't predict it.

 

[elmarko]

We have free will

1. Define free will.

2. Evidence please.

 

[Castiel]

1. Define free will.

2. Evidence please.

1. You can define it however you choose.

2. See 1.

 

[elmarko]

Morality is meaningless in the absence of autonomy. If we have no free will, how can criminals be held accountable for their crimes?

It depends on how you define morality, also accountable is pretty meaningless.

But regardless of freewill, criminals still need to be incarcerated to reduce the chance of harming others.

I'll propose a situation, if we knew for a 100% fact that if a child is raped/beaten & tortured until the age of 10 they would become serial killers upon reaching maturity, would you say a child who endured that, then went on to murder is really accountable?.

Or are they just another organism responding in a predictable way to outside stimulus?

As our understanding of the motivations & causes of human behaviour expands the room for free will diminishes.

Free will is how primitive man attempted to understand complex behaviour, it's an idiots way out of a complex situation.

As if somebody believes in free-will, then they have already answered half of the question - it's an intellectual short-cut.

 

[elmarko]

1. You can define it however you choose.

2. See 1.

That's hardly the level of reply I'd expect from you.

All you are saying is that you have free will because you can define it as whatever you want, but in reality you can't.

You have a preformed view as to what you think it is, regardless of what you type here - a view I might add you are not simply free to change.

No more than you can suddenly decide to prefer blondes, women over men, tea over coffee or anything else.

 

[kwerk]

It doesn't mean the universe can't be predicted just we at this moment in time we can't predict it.

How could it ever be predicted? No amount of technology could ever do it.

Even if we could create a 1-1 sim of the universe, where would you store the data?? Because that sim would have to include the sim itself, because that's part of the universe!

In order to create predicitons that sim would then have to run faster than the law of physics in our universe allows.

It's impossible.

 

[bhavv]

In reality you can define things however you want. If l get a dog, I have the free will to call it a cat or a pigeon instead of dog. This doesn't make me right, but I do have the free will to do that.

 

[elmarko]

Absolutely right. If we succumb the the neuroscientific consensus on this question, we have to admit that criminals are merely individuals that have been unlucky enough to have had a certain set of genes, a certain set of life experiences, etc, that have, in turn, produced a conscious mind that has committed a criminal act. The idea of 'punishment' becomes a meaningless, useless word. Putting someone in prison for that reason is completely pointless (something I would argue, even if free will did exist), but if you put someone in prison to rehabilitate, or to keep out of circulation due to their danger; with the aim of rehabilitating, then it serves a real purpose.

I have to agree 100% with everything here.

 

[Castiel]

That's hardly the level of reply I'd expect from you.

All you are saying is that you have free will because you can define it as whatever you want, but in reality you can't.

You have a preformed view as to what you think it is, regardless of what you type here - a view I might add you are not simply free to change.

No more than you can suddenly decide to prefer blondes, women over men, tea over coffee or anything else.

To be honest I am not in the right frame of mind to engage in a deep philosophical discussion on the relative definitions and objective values of such definitions with regard to Free Will.

While my answer may appear flippant, it was not intended to be, rather it was just me being whimsical.

I think we do have Free Will, only that it is limited by a whole range of internal and external factors that influence and shape our ability to exercise it...this includes our ability to decide whether Free Will even exists.

I am free to change my mind on it......I do so all the time, even on this forum I have argued both sides of the argument at one time or another.

 

[kwerk]

The choice based on decision making. I may think of something I want to do because I like it. Others may not like it.

I choose A because..
I choose B because..
e.t.c

The appearance of choice is an illusion. It's just states of particles changing.

if you took drugs you could have abnormal thoughts right? It's just because there are new chemical reactions affecting the particles in a abnormal way.

There is no choice involved. There can only be one outcome determined by physics. A human mind can't change that, only experience it. It's all chemistry/physics. What you're talking about is basically MAGIC.

 

[elmarko]

To be honest I am not in the right frame of mind to engage in a deep philosophical discussion on the relative definitions and objective values of such definitions with regard to Free Will.

A fair point, it's not the lightest of topics on a best day.

While my answer may appear flippant, it was not intended to be, rather it was just me being whimsical.

Then my apologies for the abrupt reply, it seemed a somewhat bold assertion.

I think we do have Free Will, only that it is limited by a whole range of internal and external factors that influence and shape our ability to exercise it...this includes our ability to decide whether Free Will even exists.

I put free will in the same category as god, currently unknowable & as no evdence exists in it's favour I simply don't believe it exists.

But so much in society seems to indicate that free will does not exist, bad choices, poor decision making, obese people wanting to be thin, drug addicts wanting to quit - if you look around at any aspect of human behaviour people know what they should be doing, but on the whole seem unable to do it.

Then adding on the side that the current school of through from neuroscience seems to agree with this observation - if I had to wager - I'd put money in the "no camp".

I can understand the resistance - it completly undermines most social belief systems, all religious belief systems & most political belief system (personal responsibility promoting ones) - all concepts of "justice" & punishment.

Not exactly something people are jumping to accept.

On a side note, I think the lack of free will is a great thing.

If people simply are not "making a choice" to do terrible things, we can actually stop most destructive behaviour - if we can understand the causes of child rapists & killers we can prevent it - as without free will it's just another cause/effect relationship we have to understand to stop it occurring.

In a world with free will, social problems will never be solved.

 

[Redz]

I think we do have Free Will, only that it is limited by a whole range of internal and external factors that influence and shape our ability to exercise it...this includes our ability to decide whether Free Will even exists.

Yes, that's actually a determinist view. well soft determinism; that we have free will but within constraints.

Free will is how primitive man attempted to understand complex behaviour

It's actually determinism that does that, attributing causality to every event.

 

[kwerk]

All the mind can do it recognize/predict vague probability distributions of outcomes from the current state. They appear like options, but really it's not. Only one outcome can happen (the one that does happen).

Well I could walk left or right at a junction, both are possible. The act of you making the "choice" to go left was already determined from the state of the particles in your brain. The experience of predicting going right instead was also already determined.

An extreme example is the choice of standing still or jumping up and touching the moon. You can predict both as potential outcomes of your the current state but only one is going to actually happen, because of physics.

It's like an experiment. You set the parameters you want and set the initial low entropy state (big bang) then let it unfold and see what happens. Free will doesn't come in to it. Basically everything that every will happen has already been determined since the big bang or whatever by the original parameters. Nobody inside the universe can accurately predict what is going to happen though because there's no way to compute it. The only way to change an outcome (free will) would be to change the operating parameters of the universe itself, like change the speed of light.

 

[Castiel]

I actually, to some extent anyway, find the concept of predetermination kind of comforting....it absolves me of any responsibilty for my actions.

Unfortunately from my own experiences I think that while we may be predetermined to some extent, how we react to that predetermined path, be it internal or external to the individual, is largely influenced by our own innate freedom to decide.......for every drug addict that fails to quit, there is one who succeeds......maybe the predetermination of existence is inherent in the relative strength of the individuals ability to exercise their Free Will in reaction to it.

 

[elmarko]

I actually, to some extent anyway, find the concept of predetermination kind of comforting....it absolves me of any responsibilty for my actions.

Unfortunately from my own experiences I think that while we may be predetermined to some extent, how we react to that predetermined path, be it internal or external to the individual, is largely influenced by our own innate freedom to decide.......for every drug addict that fails to quit, there is one who succeeds......maybe the predetermination of existence is inherent in the relative strength of the individuals ability to exercise their Free Will in reaction to it.

If it's based on an inherent strenth - (something which by definition is predeterimined) which also isn't something people choose to have - how is that free will?.

People don't decide to have good self control, they just do or don't - if a person who suffered from substance abuse & then quit (just posing a theory) - did they choose to be the kind of person who could quit? - of course not.