The Free Will Thread

It's okay my free will bros, I have good news:

NSFW

Cad_sl said:

This whole thing seems like a definitional argument where we want to define free will and consciousness in such a way that we can proclaim that for a certain set of accepted definitions, we have no free will. No free will sounds edgy! Proclaim it! Now buy my interesting book on philosophy.

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It seems to me the opposite is happening; when has free will meant anything but a conscious decision to do something? The argument for free will here seems to be that, since the brain is part of the biological system of the person who thinks they're making the choice, then free will exists for that biological system. By that logic, I have free will over my heart function too

Phazael_sl said:

Photon transmission through an uneven medium is unpredictable to a point, but not random, because we don't have a complex enough predictive model. Just because we lack the tools or knowledge to understand a pattern does not make it random. Or are you seriously arguing that two identical particles in identical closed systems will behave completely differently under identical circumstances? Because that pretty much flies in the face of the basics of scientific physical laws.

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It's my (limited) understanding that the direction of an emitted photon is completely random. Either way, it doesn't change the original point

Cad_sl said:

This whole thing seems like a definitional argument where we want to define free will and consciousness in such a way that we can proclaim that for a certain set of accepted definitions, we have no free will. No free will sounds edgy! Proclaim it! Now buy my interesting book on philosophy.

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I don't think it sounds edgy, I think it sounds nihilistic and depressing on its face. Thinking it through, it loses that at some point. At least for me. To declare "free will exists" is to basically declare that magic exists. And maybe one day we'll see that it does and is just hidden from us in some respect. But given what we know right now, it's just not there. There's no little man in your head or mine, things just happen and occur, independent of what we will.

Jive Turkey_sl said:

Harris isn't making a distinction between the brain and the mind. He's a materialist through and through. But there is a fundamental difference between believing you're making a conscious decision and actually making a conscious decision. He's saying you can no more take credit for the thoughts and actions that enter your brain than you can for your liver filtering your blood. The difference being that we don't feel like we're responsible for the action of our livers. He's not arguing a sort of soul, but is saying we have a biological sense of "me". And we all feel like the "me" is driving, but when we look closer, it seems it is not.

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Unless the liver malfunction is flooding my brain with pneumonia, then it has no link or affect on my personality or the 'biological sense of me'. And there in lies the difference. I can illustrate tons of inexorable links between 'who you are' and your brain function. You're attempting to separate an organism that is not functionally separable. Your consciousness is PART of your brain, that 'biological sense of me' simply does not exist as a separate entity--it is all 'one thing'. In order to make this argument, he needs to construct that sense of me and then deconstruct it to 'blow everyone's minds'.

But he'sconstructingan abstraction (Or pointing out many of us have constructed this sense fallaciously). That 'biological sense of me' is built off of how your brain operates, it was never separate. It is a function of the structure of your brain. More than that, it feeds into the determinism he's talking about. Take depression, it's as real a disease as diabetes. Yet we know how it displays is different based on many environmental factors most likely due to how thought processes mold the brain (IE Religion has a big effect on how likely someone is to off themselves).

Harris sees the causality chain like this. Stimuli-->Choice Making-->Action-->Thought/Cognition.....And extrapolates that because thought/cognition comes after choice making, there is no free will, because somehow 'we' are not the organism making the choice. But I not only disagree with that (Because the brain which our 'consciousness' is a reflection/part of IS our free will), I also think breaking it down to moment to moment determinism is..obtuse and not productive at all (Done mostly as a thought experiment). In reality, cognition offers another stimuli that obviously has a large impact on our choices in the future. What you're seeing is not a discrete causal chain, but actually a loop, feeding back on itself and changing a plastic brain. Yes, our cognition might not determine the next action; but WE are not our cognition, we are the WHOLE system, the cognition is merely a step in that system. It's a step informs later choices (Which is why, most likely, it was selected for through evolution.)

Jive Turkey_sl said:

And in the case of blame and justice, he brings up brain tumours all the time. The man who develops a tumour and ends up with a criminal fetish is no more or less at fault for his brain physiology than the man who is born with a brain that results in the same desires. Only we give the man with the tumour a break (that's not to say the tumor-free man shouldn't be thrown in jail. I'm with Chaos in that lack of free will shouldn't have any bearing on our current justice system)

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Do we give the man with a tumor a break? I mean, we pity him the same way we pity someone who had a childhood where cigarettes were put out on his skin and locked in a dark room, and then became a serial killer. The organism fundamentally changed, the function by which it made choices did change--yes. But it can still make choices, right? So it does have 'free will'. In order to deny this you have to attempt to 'separate' cognition from the organism, as said though, they are linked, your cognition changes with brain structure. It's not a separate thing.

This is difficult to grasp in the same way that space and time are fundamentally the same thing, we don't see them that way due to perception, but they are the same thing all the same.

Jive Turkey_sl said:

What is free will if not a conscious decision?

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Decision. You're adding 'conscious' to it, again, your consciousness is merely a product of the sum of your brain, these two things can not be separated anymore than time can be spoken of without space. People sometimes have a fundamental inability to grasp what being 'me' is, and we do this with a lot of abstract concepts that are difficult to think about (Again, time and space...It's useful for us to think of them as separate but that doesn't mean that they are.)

Jive Turkey_sl said:

It seems to me the opposite is happening; when has free will meant anything but a conscious decision to do something? The argument for free will here seems to be that, since the brain is part of the biological system of the person who thinks they're making the choice, then free will exists for that biological system. By that logic, I have free will over my heart function too

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Not at all. Your heart does not affect your cognition directly. Your cognition is baseddirectlyoff of the structure of your brain. They are linked in a loop that makes the choices for the organism. It is your decision making body, and thus that is where your 'free will' comes from. Your heart doesn't affect that chain.

Take Harris' City exercise again, he asks'where did your three final cities come from?'...'do you even know WHY you picked them? If not, then was it really a choice'?Since when does knowing 'why' something happened changed thecausalityof choices made? I still selected the city, no? Therefor I had the will to do it. This is different than saying "I still pumped blood with my heart, thus I had the will to do it" becauseI can not choose NOT to pump blood with my heart, my heart can't give me ideas topump blood a different way(Like my brain gave me a menu of cities to select, I know, I know, I didn't "pick" said menu, thus it was automatic like the blood--but that's not the case, it had many options, just because it arrived at one doesn't make it the same as an organ that only has one option on how to function).

The heart can pump one way, it is not plastic unless you're talking about its eventual break down. Your brain can fundamentally change in operation. That small list of cities your brain gave you to pick from? "it gave you'--is theimportantdistinction. Some process within that darkness of your brain made choices and selections from an obvious list of potential choices, and in different settings those selections might be different. It illustrates your brain can make choices. Your consciousness is a product of that same organization in your brain, and thus it is linked to 'you' in a fundamental way, 'you' can't be taken from your brain, and thus 'you' make choices. (Meanwhile, clearly your heart can be taken without altering 'you' in a heart transplant or bypass machine, or even a new mechanical heart like Cheney had)

When I sleep walk into the living room and piss all over the couch, am I demonstrating free will?

Jive Turkey_sl said:

When I sleep walk into the living room and piss all over the couch, am I demonstrating free will?

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Yes. An alien didn't jump in and take over your brain. This is disconcerting the same way people who realize how time truly is, find it disconcerting. (Edit: Because, people show the ability to navigate complex tasks while sleep walking. You can make choices, you piss on the couch one night, the next you go eat peanut butter. You're making choices.)

Beyond that though, can your cognition of these events (Later) alter your will in the future? Clearly yes. If you're a sleep walker, you can choose to lock yourself in the room or even to your bed in a manner that makes it difficult to do so again, and impossible to remove while sleep walking. Illustrating your cognition of events affected your choices in the future--which represents even 'conscious free will' outside of moment to moment determinism.

Lithose_sl said:

Yes.

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Your bar for free will is set extraordinarily low. We probably won't get anywhere with this

Lithose_sl said:

Beyond that though, can your cognition of these events (Later) alter your will in the future? Clearly yes. If you're a sleep walker, you can choose to lock yourself in the room or even to your bed in a manner that makes it difficult to do so again, and impossible to remove while sleep walking. Illustrating your cognition of events affected your choices in the future--which represents even 'conscious free will' outside of moment to moment determinism.

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And this is completely irrelevant. A lack of free will doesn't affect cognition of events. The lack of free will would be demonstrated in where the idea of locking yourself in the room came from. (eg, why did it only come on the 3rd time you pissed on the couch and not the second? Why was locking the door the solution and not wearing a diaper? etc)

Stumbling around in a fugue is not "making choices". That is just taking actions.

Jive Turkey_sl said:

Your bar for free will is set extraordinarily low. We probably won't get anywhere with this

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My bar for free will is essentially the capability to take actions that are more complex than the stimuli presented (IE it's not a simple cause/effect relationship). Sleep walkers can take any number of actions depending on what their mind is constructing, just because its not based on outside stimuli doesn't mean it isn't will. You're confusing the ability for humans to distinguish reality with actions taken.

In the Matrix, is what is happening free will? (Even though your physical body is is doing nothing.)

Jive Turkey_sl said:

And this is completely irrelevant. A lack of free will doesn't affect cognition of events. The lack of free will would be demonstrated in where the idea of locking yourself in the room came from. (eg, why did it only come on the 3rd time you pissed on the couch and not the second? Why was locking the door the solution and not wearing a diaper? etc)

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This is just Reductio ad absurdum ask why enough and you'll deconstruct reality. There is a reason why determinism needs to attempt to whittle this down from moment to moment, the problem is, just like a single cell won't give us the picture of how an organ works--determinism's abstraction of 'time space' doesn't give us the full picture of choice.

You're taking a very complex thing and asking why a single part moves--someone answers 'because this' and you'll ask 'but why that?" into absurdum. Is that useful? That is an argument style that's been used to entertain for thousands of years.

chaos_sl said:

Stumbling around in a fugue is not "making choices". That is just taking actions.

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It's a fugue state to you, the outside observer. You have no idea if he's making choices in whatever reality he's observing. Again, this is less about free will, and more about free will through the abstraction of 'what is reality'. As I said above, if I plugged you into the Matrix, and you made choices, you obviously have free will--but to me, on the outside, staring at your body not moving? You don't. You're just displaying the concept is relative.

Sentagur_sl said:

You just expanded the definition of "Free Will" so much that includes everything including no free will as well.
By free will at least I usually mean a conscious decision not something that got foisted upon us by our subconscious or by chemical process of our brains.

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Again,what is consciousness? Your consciousness is made up of those chemical processes--this isn't something you can take apart. If the chemical processes in your brain interpreted photons differently, you consciousness would beradicallyaltered. These are not discrete concepts outside of basic function. Consciousness is an aspect of the brain. Discussing it alone is like trying to explain abstract concepts of space time without relativity; it breaks down because these concepts are the same thing.

Lithose_sl said:

Not at all. Your heart does not affect your cognition directly. Your cognition is baseddirectlyoff of the structure of your brain.

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You missed my point. Your heart function is controlled by your brain. The unconscious "decisions" you're making are controlled by your brain. You have no free will over either. if you're taking credit for the latter, you have to take credit for the former

Lithose_sl said:

It's a fugue state to you, the outside observer. You have no idea if he's making choices in whatever reality he's observing. Again, this is less about free will, and more about free will through the abstraction of 'what is reality'. As I said above, if I plugged you into the Matrix, and you made choices, you obviously have free will--but to me, on the outside, staring at your body not moving? You don't. You're just displaying the concept is relative.

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Reality exists, but we don't see it. We perceive it through our meat sensors. If you plugged me into the matrix, I didn't make choices anymore than I did in real life. I reacted to stimuli via a process that no one can comprehend, based on factors I'm not even aware of. That's not relativity.

Sentagur_sl said:

That maybe a bad example as some people can learn to control their heart rate to at least some degree.

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Perhaps... lets go with gall bladder then

Jive Turkey_sl said:

You missed my point. Your heart function is controlled by your brain. The unconscious "decisions" you're making are controlled by your brain. You have no free will over either

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I think the problem here is I'm not communicating what I mean. Your consciousness, who you believe you are, is based off of those functions. Depression, for example, is a stress reaction--something in your 'unconscious' is broken and sending you stimuli that you are under stress or in emotionally traumatized. This changes your cognition. Depressed people think differently, we know this. In essence, who you 'believe you are' is just an abstract of those processes...The choices those processes make,isyou.

The difference with how your heart plays into it is that there is no feedback loop. How your heart beats, generally, doesn't change your mood. "You", as a 'person' is not a function of these commands. So separating out those commands from we consider 'you' is reasonable. Separating out your consciousness from the very structure that informs it seems like an distinction without difference, they aren't separate concepts.

Which is precisely what he's trying to say, really (Harris is trying to convince people of, that we act as organisms, not the 'soul' concept of a pilot in a body). Except I don't take that an absence of free will, because I have never seen myself as different from the 'organism' which survives and attempts to pass on its genes. The choices I make have always been 'that organisms'. I selected a group of cities, I might not know why, but I did it--I am not fundamentally different from the organism which did so, I will cease to function when the organism does, I only exist because the organism does. If I got a tumor and radically changed the way I perceive myself, it would only be evidence that "I" was never different from that organism, that it was always one in the same.

The "I" most people refer tosimply doesn't exist. Like Time, it is a useful way to think about things, it doesn't mean it exists in the way we think it does. This does not affect my free will though, as an organism I still make choices that to an outside observer illustrate cognition--proving that the whole of the parts is what matters. I mean I get what you're saying, Jive. I do. But I think the fundamental disconnect here is 'the concept of me'.