Free Will and Determinism

[Fist and Faith]

What you're doing is missing my point. You seem to think that I am equating the illusion of free will with an absence of consciousness.

As I said, I knew I was misunderstanding you. While I find the entire topic fascinating, I find it difficult to keep all of its components from blending together inappropriately. My apologies.

You state that you can feel your free will. All you can feel is your decision making process. That process, I am arguing, is entirely dependent upon experiences/education (memories) and the genetic makeup of the brain.

OTOH, I am arguing that something is going on that nobody can explain. H.M. had his hippocampus removed. Because of that, he lost both his memories from 2 to 4 years prior and his ability "to store new memories for facts and events." But he retained his personality. He also retained awareness (even if Malik/Avatar and I do not agree on how many levels there are ). Phineas Gage lost a chunk of his left frontal cortex. Because of that, he lost his personality (he went from kind, level-headed, friendly, and charismatic to arrogant, opinionated, impulsive, rude, and selfish), but he retained his memory. He also retained his awareness.

So that which makes us aware is not the hippocampus, nor is it at least the part of the left frontal cortex that Gage lost, although those parts are extremely important to our higher brain functions. Nor are those parts a necessary component of a possible system that gives us awareness. I'm sure there are many thousands of other examples of traumatic brain injury, to many other parts of the brain, where awareness was retained, so those areas are neither the seat of awareness nor a necessary component. So where is awareness? If we cannot detect a certain type of brain activity that always accompanies awareness, and does not seem to be involved with any of the specific activities that we are aware of (math, language, observation, etc), then is there at least a particular part of the brain whose loss always results in loss of awareness, even though it doesn't show activity in the way I'm asking about?

Your position is based on the belief that nothing that arises from strictly cause & effect rules can be free of cause & effect. Believing it cannot be otherwise means you look for explanations that fit neatly into it. And yes, I see how my belief that that isn't the case seems a little odd. But only on the face of it. My first reason for believing otherwise is, as I've said, my direct experience.

A supporting idea is that life arose from non-life. Something we cannot accomplish. Forget about trying to do so while limiting ourselves to the conditions we believe existed back when we believe abiogenesis took place, nobody's been able to make non-living stuff into living stuff under what they thought were the best conditions. (I sure hope nobody's managed to do that without me having heard of it. ) And what's more, the laws that govern the interactions of subatomic particles have not just produced life from non-life, but life that is aware; can debate the definition and existence of awareness; can postulate the existence of God; and on and on. IMO, that's on the level of free will arising from a cause & effect system.

Finally, there's the fact that we dont seem to have answers to what I think is a pretty big question about our awareness. And if that is an unknown, my above two reasons are enough for me to accept the possibility that free will exists.


The entire quote of Robert Gulack seems self-contradictory. On the one hand, he says there is no such thing as free will. And on the other, he says all of these famous people who thought it was a fact that there is no free will chose to base their feelings and actions on that fact. But that's having it both ways. Either free will allowed them to choose how they would feel and act; or they had no choice but to believe there is no free will, and feel and act as they did. If the latter, then you and I are having this discussion for no reason other than because our past experiences and brains' hardwiring force us to 1) hold opposing "beliefs" in this matter, and 2) type out our words about those beliefs. And I can not "choose" to believe your side of the debate unless, without choice, I "move to new environments that will re-program [me]." And even though I understand that being re-programmed need not necessarily involve a literal "move to a new environment," but could be accomplished by something like the words of Gulack, Spinoza, you, and many others, such does not seem to be happening. And I do not see how you could view what might appear to some to be stubbornness on my part as stubbornness, because I don't know how you could say I have the free will to choose any other belief.


(Holy moley, I've been working on this post for a few hours. I hope it makes as much sense to any of you as it does to me. At the moment, I don't think I can explain myself any better, so I'm hitting Submit. )

[Queeaqueg]

I read a report into people who get things stuck in their heads. They had nails, hammers, chair leg, saw and other stuff. The point is a neuroscientist said that jokingly "I might have to change my view on awareness". No matter many different things stuff in these people head... their personality and awareness didn't change(though lots and lots of things like Memory,etc).

[Loredoctor]

Then explain pinball to me. Or table tennis. Or Donkey Kong.

Any activity that requires fast reflexes and includes making decisions in split seconds process would be totally impossible if it took 1.5 seconds to make a decision.

You're missing my point. They analysed wave patterns - there is a very large difference in brain activity between quick reactions and decisions to move a finger.

BTW, it is fallacious to argue understanding how we think and make decisions means that there is no such thing as free will. A process that is describable eis not necessarilly predictable.

I think I am perfectly entitled to debate this issue from 'my side of the fence'. I'd rather you not tell me what is fallacious or not.

Pick an example from quantum physics.

Funny how I did that earlier. Did you miss my refence? No offense, but ineffective analogy. There's a world of difference between the microscopic world of quantum physics and the macroscopic universe. In short, the underlying uncertainty of the quantum world does not result in measurable or acceptable uncertainty on larger scales. I think that I am entitled to argue that in a universe of laws and cause and effect, the issue of free will is questionable.

[iQuestor]

I read a report into people who get things stuck in their heads. They had nails, hammers, chair leg, saw and other stuff. The point is a neuroscientist said that jokingly "I might have to change my view on awareness". No matter many different things stuff in these people head... their personality and awareness didn't change(though lots and lots of things like Memory,etc).

actually, there was a really famous case back in the 1800's, I studied in college psychology. I forget the guys name, but he was in a mining accident, and an explosion blew something really big into his brain. He lived on, but his personality totally changed. He had been quiet, honest, etc, but he changed dramatically. i am sure Lore or someone here can remember who I am talking about, if not I will find a link.


edit: phinias gage. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage

there are many others, so there is a definate link between brain trauma and changing of personality.

[Queeaqueg]

Interesting, there are criticism at the bottom. The report I read was more about how these people were walking around with objects stuck in their heads and they didn't even know about it. I also looked at the Wikipedia definition of Consciousness but that doesn't give many clues but lots of interesting information. Even so, I still believe that Consciousness has an independentish(heh) existence from the body.

[wayfriend]

Then explain pinball to me. Or table tennis. Or Donkey Kong.

Any activity that requires fast reflexes and includes making decisions in split seconds process would be totally impossible if it took 1.5 seconds to make a decision.

You're missing my point. They analysed wave patterns - there is a very large difference in brain activity between quick reactions and decisions to move a finger.

Last I checked, decisions to move a finger are pretty much a part of playing Pinball and Donkey Kong. I assume that decisions to move hands and arms are similar enough that we can include ping pong in here, too.

So if I'm missing a point, I'm still missing it. If we could not decide to move a finger without waiting 1 to 2 seconds, none of those human achievements would be possible.

Pick an example from quantum physics.

Funny how I did that earlier. Did you miss my refence? No offense, but ineffective analogy. There's a world of difference between the microscopic world of quantum physics and the macroscopic universe. In short, the underlying uncertainty of the quantum world does not result in measurable or acceptable uncertainty on larger scales. I think that I am entitled to argue that in a universe of laws and cause and effect, the issue of free will is questionable.

The underlying uncertainty of free will in individual decisions very certainly does result in certainty on larger scales. Almost all sciences about how humans work have tended towards the idea that human nature is the same across the board, even while individual humans vary. So that, too, seems the same to me.

[Loredoctor]

Last I checked, decisions to move a finger are pretty much a part of playing Pinball and Donkey Kong. I assume that decisions to move hands and arms are similar enough that we can include ping pong in here, too.

So if I'm missing a point, I'm still missing it. If we could not decide to move a finger without waiting 1 to 2 seconds, none of those human achievements would be possible.

Wayfriend, forget the time. Ignore it, for time being (no pun intended). The researchers investigating the primacy of organic processes are measuring the type of waves detected using an ECG. Conscious thought - or, complex thought patterns from simple decisions to reasoning - are different from many other behaviours 'operated' by the brain. The difference, besides the nature of cognitions or operations is quantifiable by analysing electro-encephalic graphs - that is, the waves that represent neural activity.

[Loredoctor]

H.M. had his hippocampus removed. Because of that, he lost both his memories from 2 to 4 years prior and his ability "to store new memories for facts and events." But he retained his personality. He also retained awareness (even if Malik/Avatar and I do not agree on how many levels there are ). Phineas Gage lost a chunk of his left frontal cortex. Because of that, he lost his personality (he went from kind, level-headed, friendly, and charismatic to arrogant, opinionated, impulsive, rude, and selfish), but he retained his memory. He also retained his awareness.

None of this disputes that free will might be an illusion. In fact, it adds credence to my arguments. Namely, that it shows the brain is compartmentalised (acknowledging double dissociation). For you to dispute my claims, you would have to argue that those regions removed or damaged were theorised to be the 'seats' of awareness.

Using the double dissociation argument in terms of localising brain functions, one cannot specify that a part of the brain does x or y unless you can compare brain injuries in different areas. Thus, if function x is impaired with injury A, and function y is impaired with injury B, you can make some reasoned theories on the localisation of cognitive functions. The importance for this type of logic cannot be understressed due to the extreme complexity of the brain. Because the brain is interconnected, many functions happen to be 'localised' in discrete but separate regions, or spread out, so to speak. This is why, arguing for awareness and citing patient H.M. and Phineas Gage does not disprove nor prove the organic basis for awareness.

So where is awareness? If we cannot detect a certain type of brain activity that always accompanies awareness, and does not seem to be involved with any of the specific activities that we are aware of (math, language, observation, etc), then is there at least a particular part of the brain whose loss always results in loss of awareness, even though it doesn't show activity in the way I'm asking about?

You are making a mistake here. Your definition of awareness is too broad - can I suggest defining it better as arousal, perception, attention and active memory processes? That would seem to me and others a good basis to look at the vague problem of awareness. I can cite plenty of examples where aspects of awareness - from attentional processes, theory of mind, awareness of space and one's locality in space, imagining images, perceiving sensory stimuli, etc etc - have been identified in regions. Again, the evidence shows that awareness is not tied to one specific region and that it is instead spread out like within a network. Awareness has been shown to be affected by chemicals, which is strong evidence for a biological basis. There are many many many cognitions 'tied' down to regions or networks of the brain, why is it that awareness cannot be? There are incredible studies in the Intergrated Theory of Mind, where these processes (and the ones I mentioned above), are seen to bind, and that gestalt is perhaps the mind.

Your position is based on the belief that nothing that arises from strictly cause & effect rules can be free of cause & effect. Believing it cannot be otherwise means you look for explanations that fit neatly into it. And yes, I see how my belief that that isn't the case seems a little odd. But only on the face of it. My first reason for believing otherwise is, as I've said, my direct experience.

You argue that my position is based upon a myopic one, and yet in this same paragraph then sum up your own position with personal experience: You can't just critique my, and others', theory (and I welcome critique), and then pull the 'faith' or 'subjective' experience technique. I am trying to understand the basis for your position; you cannot expect anyone to accept 'direct experience' as a rebuttal to reasoning.

And what's more, the laws that govern the interactions of subatomic particles have not just produced life from non-life, but life that is aware; can debate the definition and existence of awareness; can postulate the existence of God; and on and on. IMO, that's on the level of free will arising from a cause & effect system.

But you still haven't shown how that it arises. You seem to take the stance that 'we can debate about God, etc' as though free will miraculously appears.

And if that is an unknown, my above two reasons are enough for me to accept the possibility that free will exists.

Possibility, yes.

The entire quote of Robert Gulack seems self-contradictory. On the one hand, he says there is no such thing as free will. And on the other, he says all of these famous people who thought it was a fact that there is no free will chose to base their feelings and actions on that fact.

No offense, but that's not a contradiction. In fact, whether they base their feelings and actions is beyond the argument. Feelings and actions are irrelevant; the logic is all that matters.

If the latter, then you and I are having this discussion for no reason other than because our past experiences and brains' hardwiring force us to

And what's wrong about that?

And I can not "choose" to believe your side of the debate unless, without choice, I "move to new environments that will re-program [me]."

Or perhaps your own memories and background either bias you to your views (as much as my own memories affect my choices). But the key factor is here that you made a choice based upon who you are. Who you are is the product of an ordered universe.

I understand that I have come across as being rather harsh, but I am simply discussing my position and trying to understand yours. However, this whole thread has been thoroughly entertaining.

[Fist and Faith]

I might have time to get into the rest of this tonight. Maybe not for a couple days. But I want to make this part clear:

I understand that I have come across as being rather harsh, but I am simply discussing my position and trying to understand yours. However, this whole thread has been thoroughly entertaining.

You haven't been harsh. In fact, considering the level of education on this topic you're dealing with when you're dealing with me, you're being rather patient, and I appreciate it. I'm sure it would be easier and more fun for you to have this conversation if you were able to speak in technical terms that were more precise. I'm just a guy who's put some thought into this fascinating topic. Not that that means I can't have any legitimate points. But it means I may be reinventing the wheel, and it means you have to work harder to talk with me about it. Instead of saying, "You have to factor in the Makakamack Principle," you have to give a 200-word explanation of what the MP is.

[Avatar]

None of this disputes that free will might be an illusion.

Emphasis mine. At least you're open to the possibility.

--A

[Queeaqueg]

Fist and Faith wrote:
So where is awareness? If we cannot detect a certain type of brain activity that always accompanies awareness, and does not seem to be involved with any of the specific activities that we are aware of (math, language, observation, etc), then is there at least a particular part of the brain whose loss always results in loss of awareness, even though it doesn't show activity in the way I'm asking about?


You are making a mistake here. Your definition of awareness is too broad - can I suggest defining it better as arousal, perception, attention and active memory processes? That would seem to me and others a good basis to look at the vague problem of awareness. I can cite plenty of examples where aspects of awareness - from attentional processes, theory of mind, awareness of space and one's locality in space, imagining images, perceiving sensory stimuli, etc etc - have been identified in regions. Again, the evidence shows that awareness is not tied to one specific region and that it is instead spread out like within a network. Awareness has been shown to be affected by chemicals, which is strong evidence for a biological basis. There are many many many cognitions 'tied' down to regions or networks of the brain, why is it that awareness cannot be? There are incredible studies in the Intergrated Theory of Mind, where these processes (and the ones I mentioned above), are seen to bind, and that gestalt is perhaps the mind.

Where awareness is? Sounds like that Uni example about someone going round a uni, being told where all the building are and then say 'yeah, but where is the Uni?'.
Doing to Chemicals stuff, I guess you can have all sorts of stuff(drugs, drink, etc) but at no time does the strong feeling of your existence disappear, you know you're still aware(even if your view is blurry) and Near-death expirenece is meant to show that you can be aware of your existence even in death(though I know is this a Controversial stance to take). Sorry

[Zarathustra]

Loremaster, re: freewill (maybe this topic deserves its own Close thread . . . )

Let’s start with a common sense approach. Clearly, we make decisions. Now whether these decisions are the product of free will or a complex chain reaction of cause-and-effect depends entirely on whether or not a decision could have been otherwise. That’s the “free” part of “freewill.” Regardless of how decisions emerge—even if it’s via a complex chain of electrochemical reactions—they are deterministic only if the resultant decision is the only possible outcome. That’s what determinism is. Given one’s DNA and one’s experiences, only one outcome is possible in a deterministic universe.

So let’s say I’m deciding between steak and beer. That’s a hard choice. I mean really hard. But if there is only one possible outcome, why is the choice hard? Why don’t my DNA and my experiences kick in to lead the way without hesitation? It’s not like picking a college to attend; the variables to consider aren’t very numerous. If it’s merely a chain reaction of neurons firing, then why wouldn’t this happen as quickly as a finger movement?

But let’s say, after a very long time (in terms of neural activity), I finally decide upon beer. Does that mean it was impossible for me to choose the steak? According to your position, you’d have to say yes. But clearly I can choose which ever I want. There is nothing in my DNA which forces me to choose one over the other. I’ll grant you that my “wants” may be “programmed.” But given two competing wants, nothing about our DNA or our environment can be used to predict which we’ll choose.

So is it random chance like the robot rolling dice? No, not unless you suppose that Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle actually applies to decisions. It doesn’t. It applies to subatomic particles. Nothing in quantum theory mentions decisions.

In addition, I can “change my mind.” I can reverse any decision. I do it all the time. If my choices are deterministic, how could I ever be uncertain? How could I ever reverse my decisions? Are you saying there’s a deterministic process which, in a determined fashion, contradicts itself immediately after functioning?

Okay, that’s the common sense argument. Now let’s talk some science. The problem with your account is that it assumes reductionism is a valid scientific viewpoint.

In THE MIND OF GOD, p. 182, physicist Paul Davies says:

“Thus nature is attributed a sort of freedom which was absent in the clockwork universe of Lalpace. This freedom comes about through the abandonment of reductionism: the world is more than the sum of its parts. We must reject the idea that a physical system, such as a rock or a cloud or a person, is nothing but a collection of atoms, and recognize instead the existence of many different levels of structure. A human being, for example, certainly is a collection of atoms, but there are many higher levels of organization that are missed by this meager description and which are essential for defining what we mean by the world “person.” By viewing complex systems as a hierarchy of organizational levels, the simple “bottom-up” view of causality in terms of elementary particles interacting with other particles must be replaced by a more subtle formulation in which higher levels can act downward upon lower levels too.”

Nothing in the laws of physics can account for these higher levels acting downward upon lower levels. Nothing. They aren’t actions of particles, but of the order and structure that arises within systems of particles. For instance, the way that biology is built on top of physics. Biology is consistent with physics, but it doesn’t arrive from it. The situation is even more obvious with sociology and physics. Nothing we do in our societies can be predicted from the laws of physics—but neither does it violate the laws of physics.


Page 191-192:

In modern physical theory, rationality is reflected in the existence of fixed mathematical laws, and creativity is reflected in the fact that these laws are fundamentally statistical in form. To use once more Einstein’s well-worn phrase, God plays dice with the universe. The intrinsically statistical character of atomic events and the instability of many physical systems to minute fluctuations, ensures that the future remains open and undetermined by the present. This make possible the emergence of new forms and systems, so that the universe is endowed with a sort of freedom to explore genuine novelty.

[snip]

. . . one man’s irrationality is another person’s creativity. And there is a difference between stochasticity [Definition: the quality of lacking any predictable order or plan.] and anarchy. The development of new forms and systems is subject to general principles of organization that guide and encourage, rather than compel, matter and energy to develop along certain predetermined pathways of evolution.

Gulack admits that there is an inherent randomness in nature—due to quantum mechanics—but the way he dismisses it as an inroad into freewill is very misleading and disingenuous. When we make decisions, we are not simply rolling dice. He asks us to imagine a robot shooting a gun whenever the dice come up snake eyes. And then he asks, “Would we say such a robot had free will?” Well, of course not. But no one is saying that freewill is anything like this. You could substitute a human for the robot, and have him roll the dice to determine whether or not to shoot, and the same exact question could then be asked, “Would we then say that such a human had free will?” Well, of course not! And yet, there’s a huge difference between the robot and the human in these two examples. For one, the robot must be programmed to respond to the dice, whereas the human chooses whether or not to participate. This difference is disguised by the misleading equivalence he’s trying to draw between the two.

The dominoes and dice metaphors are misleading, too. He assumes that science only deals with causality and chance. But this is not correct. Causality is an inference we draw from the statistical nature of collections of individual random events. There is not a clear-cut dichotomy between the two, but a mysterious blend which scientists themselves do not know how to explain. This is one of the great mysteries of quantum theory. By pretending that these are the only two choices—rather than the third, actual alternative of a complex and unknown interaction between randomness and statistical “lawfulness”—Gulack presupposes the very thing he’s trying to prove (begging the question). No, you can’t build freewill out of dominoes and dice. But neither can you build a universe out of them, because this isn’t an accurate metaphor for how the universe works.

Page 30-31

. . . a number of key experiments . .. have confirmed that uncertainty is indeed inherent in quantum systems. The universe really is indeterministic at its most basic level.

But this doesn’t mean “random” like the robot with dice.

“So does this mean that the universe is irrational after all? No, it doesn’t. There is a difference between the role of chance in quantum mechanics and the unrestricted chaos of a lawless universe. Although there is generally no certainty about the future states of a quantum system, the relative probabilities of the different possible states are still determined. . . This statistical lawfulness implies that on a macroscopic scale where quantum effects are usually not noticeable, nature seems to conform to deterministic laws.”

Note that on macro scales quantum effects “aren’t noticed,” NOT “don’t happen.” Also note that “nature seems to conform to deterministic laws,” but this is merely an apparent pattern that falls out of statistical probabilities. The idea of a strictly deterministic cause-effect chain is an illusion. There's nothing more than a pattern, and we describe these patterns mathematically. But as Hume pointed out (which Gulack) ignores or doesn't understand) causality itself is an invalid inference. There is only, always, correlation of statistical events. Causality is a human invention.

“The job of the physicists is to uncover the patterns in nature an try to fit them to simple mathematical schemes. The question of why there are patterns, and why such mathematical schemes are possible, lies outside the scope of physics, belonging to a subject known as metaphysics.

[Fist and Faith]

This is getting crazy!

None of this disputes that free will might be an illusion. In fact, it adds credence to my arguments. Namely, that it shows the brain is compartmentalised (acknowledging double dissociation). For you to dispute my claims, you would have to argue that those regions removed or damaged were theorised to be the 'seats' of awareness.

My point is that there is no "seat." The scientific community cannot explain awareness. It is a mystery. It is not enough to say, "We cannot find it anywhere, so it must be everywhere." That's all well and good, and it's what I believe. But you are saying that it is all explainable by the laws of interacting particles. I will not agree to that until I hear that explanation.

Because the brain is interconnected, many functions happen to be 'localised' in discrete but separate regions, or spread out, so to speak. This is why, arguing for awareness and citing patient H.M. and Phineas Gage does not disprove nor prove the organic basis for awareness.

No, it does not. It merely shows a couple of things that awareness is not. Or, rather, where awareness is not. And there are many other places that awareness has been proven to not be. Also, I'm sure, there are many processes that have been proven to not be or contain awareness.

But there is no place that is even suspected to be the seat of awareness, and no process that is suspected to be awareness.

You are making a mistake here. Your definition of awareness is too broad - can I suggest defining it better as arousal, perception, attention and active memory processes? That would seem to me and others a good basis to look at the vague problem of awareness. I can cite plenty of examples where aspects of awareness - from attentional processes, theory of mind, awareness of space and one's locality in space, imagining images, perceiving sensory stimuli, etc etc - have been identified in regions. Again, the evidence shows that awareness is not tied to one specific region and that it is instead spread out like within a network. Awareness has been shown to be affected by chemicals, which is strong evidence for a biological basis. There are many many many cognitions 'tied' down to regions or networks of the brain, why is it that awareness cannot be? There are incredible studies in the Intergrated Theory of Mind, where these processes (and the ones I mentioned above), are seen to bind, and that gestalt is perhaps the mind.

Alas, I don't even know what most of what you just said means. If the regions or networks that these cognitions are tied down to are damaged, so that these cognitions no longer exist, does awareness still exist?

Whatever the answers are, they must explain how Eric is aware of the facts that: he is adding numbers in his head; he is visualizing a purple cow; he is looking at a chain-link fence; he remembers cutting his throat while trying to climb one as a child; etc; etc. There is a me that is aware of all these things. The different parts of the brain are not merely connected, and able to act in conjunction. My brain does not only see a fence, remember getting injured trying to climb a similar fence, and go through the gate this time. I am aware of all these things, and the process. Which means I don't just go through the gate; I know why I go through the gate.

You argue that my position is based upon a myopic one, and yet in this same paragraph then sum up your own position with personal experience: You can't just critique my, and others', theory (and I welcome critique), and then pull the 'faith' or 'subjective' experience technique. I am trying to understand the basis for your position; you cannot expect anyone to accept 'direct experience' as a rebuttal to reasoning.

I'm saying we both hold to our positions for non-scientific reasons. The difference is that mine is based on the direct experience of every person who ever lived. I'm not talking about any sort of religious faith, which some have and some don't. Raise everyone with no religion whatsoever, without even a word about the topic in general. When they're adults, explain it to them, and ask if they have any religious feelings at all. How many would say, "Ah! That's what I've felt all my life! I just didn't know what it was!"

Now raise everyone with no mention of free will, no concept of any of the stuff we've been discussing here. When they're adults, explain it to them, and ask if they feel that they have free will. Even you would have said Yes. Your belief that you do not have the power to choose is not something you felt; it is something you believe because, after learning a LOT of scientific facts, you will not consider the notion that a cause & effect system can give rise to something that is outside of the cause & effect system. I'm saying the fact that everybody feels this thing that is beyond cause & effect suggests that a c&e system did give rise to something outside of c&e.

And what's more, the laws that govern the interactions of subatomic particles have not just produced life from non-life, but life that is aware; can debate the definition and existence of awareness; can postulate the existence of God; and on and on. IMO, that's on the level of free will arising from a cause & effect system.

But you still haven't shown how that it arises. You seem to take the stance that 'we can debate about God, etc' as though free will miraculously appears.

I do not believe we can know how awareness/free will appeared. I do not believe we will ever create an artificial awareness/free will. At least not intentionally. Or rather... How to say it? Nobody will ever say, "I have written/gathered all of the necessary components/programs. This is the last one. When I throw this switch, we will have an artificial awareness!" If we ever create one, it will be more like this: "Let me add this. *program* And this. *solder wires* Now... Hey... Wait a second! What just happened?? It's aware????? *ahem* I mean - It's aware!! I did it!!" And that's how I think we became aware and got free will. Evolution eventually added enough "programs" to our brains for it to "wake up" in a way that is more than the sum of those programs; in a way that let's it step outside of the system. We all feel it, so why not consider that it's real? Why am I not just a thing that goes through the gate now? Why do I know why? The safety of my physical being would be just as assured without knowing the why of it. How is it an advantage for the cause & effect system to have the illusion that it is outside of the system? What is the advantage to you and I being forced to have this conversation?

The entire quote of Robert Gulack seems self-contradictory. On the one hand, he says there is no such thing as free will. And on the other, he says all of these famous people who thought it was a fact that there is no free will chose to base their feelings and actions on that fact.

No offense, but that's not a contradiction. In fact, whether they base their feelings and actions is beyond the argument. Feelings and actions are irrelevant; the logic is all that matters.

It is a contradiction to say, "I choose to base my feelings and actions on the fact that there is no free will." If there is no free will, then Lincoln, et al, did not choose to base their feelings and actions on the fact that there is no free will. And I cannot choose to do so either. My DNA and experiences either:
1) Force me to falsely believe we all do have free will, and force me to act in ways that might appear that I am choosing to hold them responsible for their actions.

Or

2) Force me to falsely believe we do not have free will, and force me to act as though I believe they cannot be responsible for our actions.

For the life of me, I don't understand why anyone's DNA and experiences would 3) force them to believe there is no free will, but also force them to hold everyone responsible for their actions as though they actually were.

And I can not "choose" to believe your side of the debate unless, without choice, I "move to new environments that will re-program [me]."

Or perhaps your own memories and background either bias you to your views (as much as my own memories affect my choices). But the key factor is here that you made a choice based upon who you are. Who you are is the product of an ordered universe.[/quote]

[Loredoctor]

I'm saying we both hold to our positions for non-scientific reasons. . . . . Your belief that you do not have the power to choose is not something you felt; it is something you believe because, after learning a LOT of scientific facts, you will not consider the notion that a cause & effect system can give rise to something that is outside of the cause & effect system.

This really annoys me, Fist. I'd rather you not place words in my mouth. I have repeated again and again and again that I am contemplating a theory and not a belief. There is no faith, no belief, that I am right. I am merely putting forth arguments as to why the theory might be right. And please do not state that I will not consider that a cause & effect system can give rise to something that is outside of the cause & effect system. At least from my position I have given you the benefit of asking you to explain your position and to listen to it. You have failed to even give any evidence apart from your faith, your experience, for to your theory. I have never admitted 'truth' and am peeved you equate my reasoning with faith.

[Loredoctor]

Let’s start with a common sense approach. Clearly, we make decisions.

Which I haven't disputed.

Now whether these decisions are the product of free will or a complex chain reaction of cause-and-effect depends entirely on whether or not a decision could have been otherwise. That’s the “free” part of “freewill.” Regardless of how decisions emerge—even if it’s via a complex chain of electrochemical reactions—they are deterministic only if the resultant decision is the only possible outcome. That’s what determinism is. Given one’s DNA and one’s experiences, only one outcome is possible in a deterministic universe.

Given a universe with thousands of variables impacting an individual, replicate the state of those variables, you have determinism. That's been my argument.

So let’s say I’m deciding between steak and beer. That’s a hard choice. I mean really hard. But if there is only one possible outcome, why is the choice hard? Why don’t my DNA and my experiences kick in to lead the way without hesitation? It’s not like picking a college to attend; the variables to consider aren’t very numerous. If it’s merely a chain reaction of neurons firing, then why wouldn’t this happen as quickly as a finger movement?

For the simple fact that some decisions are complex. To use a loose analogy - a computer takes longer to process more complex operations. If the mind is organically derived, is it so hard to imagine that the networks take a while longer to make that decision? And even if your theory that it's something 'more', what is making that decision. Until you can answer that, our theories remain on equal standing.

But let’s say, after a very long time (in terms of neural activity), I finally decide upon beer. Does that mean it was impossible for me to choose the steak? According to your position, you’d have to say yes. But clearly I can choose which ever I want. There is nothing in my DNA which forces me to choose one over the other. I’ll grant you that my “wants” may be “programmed.” But given two competing wants, nothing about our DNA or our environment can be used to predict which we’ll choose.

So is it random chance like the robot rolling dice? No, not unless you suppose that Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle actually applies to decisions. It doesn’t. It applies to subatomic particles. Nothing in quantum theory mentions decisions.

In addition, I can “change my mind.” I can reverse any decision. I do it all the time. If my choices are deterministic, how could I ever be uncertain? How could I ever reverse my decisions? Are you saying there’s a deterministic process which, in a determined fashion, contradicts itself immediately after functioning?

Okay, that’s the common sense argument. Now let’s talk some science. The problem with your account is that it assumes reductionism is a valid scientific viewpoint.

Biology is consistent with physics, but it doesn’t arrive from it.

Are you suggesting that biology is not the product of chemical processes, which are the product of physics?

“The job of the physicists is to uncover the patterns in nature an try to fit them to simple mathematical schemes. The question of why there are patterns, and why such mathematical schemes are possible, lies outside the scope of physics, belonging to a subject known as metaphysics.

It seems metaphysics and the quantum world is the ultimate 'moving goalpost of arguments' against determinism. And misappropriately applied, too. Physics is a scientific process to work out how the world works. You just can't say that ultimately it will fail because some stuff lies outside of its domain. We can't possibly know that. Science is always striving to know more, and until we reach that barrier you can't sit there and claim that the whole process is doomed from the start. That's illogical.

But why is it that you keep moving back into the quantum world to justify free will? is it because determinism is so offensive to you that you just have to find some defensive philosophy where your position cannot be breached? I have stated several times in this thread that I am inclined to think that consciousness/some part of the mind, or perhaps the soul, might reside there. However, the uncertainty of quantum mechanics does not necessarily result in free will. There are processes operating there and it is not pure chaos. Any quantum physicist will tell you that. Heck, the formulae even support this notion.

The universe is built up from the quantum world, and it is not that we find patterns in chaos. Ask anyone who understands chaos - nonlinear systems - and you'll find that patterns from chaos not because of it pure chaos, but because it's a system of many many variables. Global or local systems create patterns because the dynamics settle into them. If the mind is located in the quantum world - and you have to admit that there is no basis for this theory - it could not exist from chaos. It just wouldn't arise from an unstable system. If there is something there, what is it and what procedures created it. That's what I am interested in.

[Fist and Faith]

This really annoys me, Fist. I'd rather you not place words in my mouth. I have repeated again and again and again that I am contemplating a theory and not a belief. There is no faith, no belief, that I am right. I am merely putting forth arguments as to why the theory might be right.

And please do not state that I will not consider that a cause & effect system can give rise to something that is outside of the cause & effect system.

You said: "the very organ - the brain - has evolved within the universe. That brain develops within the universe, and if the universe does indeed follow laws and is 'built upon' antecedents, then all of human experience is understood." Am I misinterpreting you? I thought you meant the universe has certain natural laws, that the brain is a result of those laws, and that it operates only within those laws.

My position is that we have something that does not operate within the laws. Therefore, perhaps the laws you are studying are only a part of a larger group of laws. (Or something like that. )

At least from my position I have given you the benefit of asking you to explain your position and to listen to it. You have failed to even give any evidence apart from your faith, your experience, for to your theory. I have never admitted 'truth' and am peeved you equate my reasoning with faith.

My position is that what is self-evident to every human being is, indeed, the case. Just as, by and large, humans have two arms, we have free will. Both appear to be simple facts. I see no reason to give evidence supporting either. But if you want to dispute something that is self-evident, whether it's number of arms or free will, you need to give evidence.

You say you have been doing this. I apologize if I cannot see that you have, and this is also my response to your first quote of this post, which I did not answer. But it seems obvious that knowing the location and/or nature of some, or even all, of our mental abilities does not begin to tell me how they all work together to give us awareness and free will - regardless of whether those things are real or illusion. You mention an Intergrated Theory of Mind. Is it possible for you explain this theory? I imagine I could google it, and come up with dozens of incomprehensible sites to read.

Yes, my lack of education is shining through. I apologize, and regret it (and am currently attempting to remedy it), and I hope you will be able to find a way to explain any of your ideas to me. Because I am greatly fascinated by all of this, and would like to know more about it. And I believe your knowledge of the brain is amazingly greater than mine, and, even if I never believe you on this topic, I'm sure I'll learn plenty of other fascinating things.

Let’s start with a common sense approach. Clearly, we make decisions.

Which I haven't disputed.

Saying we make decisions, but that we have no choice but to make the decisions we make, is sort of the same thing as saying we do not make decisions.

[hierachy]

I dislike open debates... but I can't just sit here and watch the way this is going...

First, I am going to define the terms by which I enter this discussion:

1. A is A.

2. Reality is absolute. Nothing acts despite or outside of reality.

3. The principle of cause and effect is valid.

4. It has been established that cause and effect mechanically determines macroscopic systems.

5. Randomness at the quantum (and sub-quantum) level is disputed. Since we do not posses the sufficient technology to effectively observe the most fundamental processes of the Universe, it cannot be argued with any certainty what so ever that the apparent randomness is truly random.

If these terms are accepted, I will enter the discussion. If they are not, I won't waste my time.

[Zarathustra]

Fist, I don't see any "lack of education shining through." You're making excellent points. While I wouldn't go so far as to claim that freewill is obvious to everyone, therefore it is real (remember that the geocentric solar system was "obvious to everyone" at one time), I DO think it's an excellent question to ask why evolution would have added this "illusion" of freewill--or even consciousness--when everything we do could be mechanically performed without that illusory, ghostly phenomenon. My awareness of my actions isn't necessary in order to perform them. In fact, a lot of the actions I perform don't involve awareness (well, not "full blown" awareness--the kind necessary to invoke freewill).

Think about driving down the road while holding a conversation with a passenger in the next seat. If it's a really good conversation, you might find that you don't even remember the miles that just went by. You don't remember turning the wheel and adjusting the accelerator. You just do it. This kind of "autopilot" could apply to nearly everything we do. Consciousness isn't necessary. [If fact, if Loremaster's theory is correct, I don't even see how consciousness could exist. Everything would be "automatic." That's what determinism is: automatic, inevitable cause-effect.]

But here's the real question: if consciousness and freewill aren't necessary--indeed, they are merely illusions--then how could natural selection possibly have selected it? If it's not necessary, then it can't convey a survival advantage. And yet, not only did evolution select for us to have this completely internal, illusory, unnecessary feature which has no impact upon the external world (the world in which selection, mutation, and reproduction happens), but evolution has "fine tuned" it to the point where we can apply our consciousness in such a sophisticated manner that we're actively pursuing how to produce it ourselves with machines and artificial life.

There's more than deterministic processes going on here. WE are taking an active role in our own development. We're not merely being shaped by blind processes. We're shaping ourselves.

I wrote:
So let’s say I’m deciding between steak and beer. That’s a hard choice. I mean really hard. But if there is only one possible outcome, why is the choice hard? Why don’t my DNA and my experiences kick in to lead the way without hesitation? It’s not like picking a college to attend; the variables to consider aren’t very numerous. If it’s merely a chain reaction of neurons firing, then why wouldn’t this happen as quickly as a finger movement?

Loremaster wrote:
For the simple fact that some decisions are complex.

But that was the whole point of my choosing a simple decision. Even simple decisions can stump us, make us hesitate. Do you have a theory to account for indecision in a world where decisions are deterministic occurrences? It can't be the complexity in the required processing or number of variables. It's a simple choice: would you like steak or beer? That ought to be easy for my DNA to figure out.

But let's go with complex examples, like choosing a college. If this decision process is decided by my DNA and my environment, then why do I have to mull it over? Why don't my DNA and my environment do it for me? Why can't I decide in my sleep? Why does it take my conscious participation in such a decision process to come to a conclusion? Why don't I just find myself at a particular college one day and realize, "Oh, THIS is where my DNA and my environment wanted me to go. Good choice DNA!" ???

Are you suggesting that biology is not the product of chemical processes, which are the product of physics?

Yes, indeed I am suggesting that. Doesn't biology include evolution? Show me from which physical law you can derive the fact that cows come into being. You can't. Natural selection doesn't proceed due to chemical or physical laws. Yes, it selects organisms in a way that doesn't violate the laws of chemistry or physics. But natural selection can't be reduced to these equations. The dynamic of predator vs prey has nothing to do with chemical reactions or nuclear forces. That's why we explain it in terms that aren't mathematical at all. We talk about survival strategies.

And it has nothing to do with the complexity of the particles which are interacting. The laws which bind particles together have nothing to do with the ways in which some species survive whereas other species do not. Much of a species' survival depends not only upon its biology, but also upon its behavior--the strategies it devises to make use of its particular biology.

The situation is even more obvious when you get to human culture. Much of our ability to survive--at least in the last 50,000 years--has been due to the evolution of memes, rather than genes. If you can come up with a physical theory, in terms of physics, chemistry, or biology, to explain the evolution of memes, you would have made a bigger leap forward than Newton, Einstein, and Galileo combined. It simply can't be done. The evolution of ideas and practices will never be reduced to a physical explanation which can be modeled with precise mathematical formulas. We're talking about a level of organization and meaning which has nothing to do with particles. Ideas. Knowledge itself doesn't conform to physical theories, because knowledge itself includes the awareness of those theories. Nowhere in any equation of physical sciences is there a variable for awareness of the entire equation. You're talking apples and unicorns (REALLY different, in other words ).

If this weren't true, then we'd have to admit that at some point in the future, we could derive the works of Shakespeare solely from physical theories alone. Art doesn't derive from a mathematical equation, no matter how many variables you stick in there. The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, for instance, can't be reduced to a mathematical formula. And it's meaning, it's worth, certainly doesn't depend upon a mathematical formula, because even if one exists out there from which you could derive it, I'm completely unaware of it while I'm reading Donaldson's works. So how could I possible derive the meaning of the story if I'm unaware of this formula? Clearly, there are levels of order, meaning, and organization which transcend reductionistic explanations.

You just can't say that ultimately it will fail because some stuff lies outside of its domain.

I never said science will fail. I was implying that there are some questions it can never answer because they lie outside the realm of science. For instance, why the universe exists at all, rather than not existing, is beyond science. Science is like forensics. It explains what has already happened by looking at the physical evidence, not WHY it happened in the first place. Motive is up to lawyers and juries to decide.

One of the things physics can't explain is why the world seems to "conform" to a mathematical description at all. There is no logical necessity requiring that the universe behave in a way that can be easily modeled with mathematical formulas. And yet, this ability to precisely model is where we get the idea that deterministic cause-effect mechanisms are in play. (For instance, if the universe were truly random and couldn't be "compressed" with these algorithms, i.e. equations, then we couldn't conclude that one event leads deterministically to another event.) But that cause-effect inference is unwarranted. All we really see are patterns of concurrent events. We never witness causation, no matter how deeply we look. We infer it from the pattern. But, again, this pattern is essentially inexplicable. Cause-effect is itself a metaphysical concept, originating in psychology more than physics. It has no more scientific grounding that the idea you're arguing against: freewill. In fact, it has LESS, because we do in fact experience and witness our freewill in action (even if it is an illusion--which is different from an inference).

But why is it that you keep moving back into the quantum world to justify free will? is it because determinism is so offensive to you that you just have to find some defensive philosophy where your position cannot be breached?

Wow. And you got irritated by Fist using the word, "belief"!! That's quite an accusation there. Why are you trying to deconstruct my motives? Let's just stick to my points.

However, the uncertainty of quantum mechanics does not necessarily result in free will. There are processes operating there and it is not pure chaos. Any quantum physicist will tell you that. Heck, the formulae even support this notion.

I agree completely. And that was my point. It's NOT pure chaos. Order arises from random quantum events. That is a mystery. It doesn't mean that the randomness can be dismissed. But neither does it mean that order is assured. For some strange reason (which no scientist on earth understands) order arises contingently from random processes. Schroendeger's wave equation is a deterministic equation. It describes the way quantum systems evolve in a deterministic fashion. But it can't account for how those systems arise out of random events of the quantum world . . . a random nature that is real. I'm not talking about apparent chaos due to too many variables for us to comprehend. I'm talking about experimetnally verified random nature of quantum events. So patterns DO arise out of this real chaos (not nonlinear systems).

Does that prove freewill exists? Certainly not. But it defeats the argument that freewill can't exist because everything in the universe is either deterministic or random. In reality, everything is BOTH.

[I'm Murrin]

Can I just say the argument that it is unnecessary for survival is an irrelevant one--a lot of things that have evolved in various species are completely unecessary for survival, yet they still arose through natural selection.


And though it's necessity is irrelevant, I can still argue that it is a survival trait. I'll start with a related function: imagination. It is, first of all, a side effect. The original reason for the development of imagination--the ability to conceive of situations that are not presently occuring--was in the genesis of forethought. The ability to plan ahead is quite a powerful survival trait, I think you'll agree. But to plan ahead one needs to be able to conceive of events that are not occuring at the exact moment in which you are existing--you need, in other words, to be aware of the past and future. You have to have the mental capacity to realise that certain things will--or may--occur: the ability to imagine is a more developed expression of this ability. And it, as well, requires you to be aware of your own behaviour, to know what you have done and will do in future. It requires consciousness.
Hence, without consciousness forethought would be impossible, and so an important survival trait would be lost to us. Thus, consciousness conveys an advantage to survival. QED.

[Zarathustra]

Murrin, good points. Now, do you think that imagination is a deterministic function, or is it creative?

One point on quantum mechanics: counter-factuals have real effects. This means that a mere possibility of something occurring on the quantum level can actually effect a real occurrence, even though it never happened (this has been experimentally proven).

Again, this undermines a strict cause-and-effect relationship necessary for determinism. Surely determinism can't rest upon things that never happened.

And yet, imagination and planning ahead certainly make use of counter-factual reasoning.