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Forums - General - Is free will a myth?

Teeqoz on 25 June 2016
RolStoppable said:
Teeqoz said:

Yup, that pretty much sums it up. It should be noted that you don't have any control of your conciousness either.

It's depressing to apply that to the man and wife example. The men who stayed loyal didn't make the choice to stay loyal; they had no other choice.

Then again, such a man could take consolation in the fact that he is better than other men. Even if he had no influence on the outcome, he's better.

Well, I don't really find it depressing, just peculiar. But yes, you are right. On the other hand, if he takes consolation in it, he had no choice but to do so.



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KiigelHeart on 25 June 2016
Teeqoz said:

snip

Ääh stop with those teapot examples, those are what I use when discussing about possible existence of god :) What I was trying to say, I don't think I'm asking you to prove a negative, because making decicions and have a free will to act (to some degree) is something we all do everyday and feel the existence of it. You are claiming that something we can feel actually doesn't exist, that's more like asking me to prove that this discussion doesn't exist. If you know even the basics of how chemicals and signals in our brain work, do share because I want to know how it's enough to see free will doesn't conform with the laws of physics.

"We don't know everything, because we don't know how all the reactions interact, but that has no effect on wether we have free will." Why doesn't it have any effect on wether we have free will? Do scientists agree that free will doesn't exist and we are pretty much programmed or is it just a theory?

Unfortunately my english isn't good enough to listen to that book you recommended.

Mind you, I'm not religious at all and for all I know what you are saying could be true. I think it's just another possibility. I can't say god, any higher power, afterlife, soul or whatever doesn't exist even if I don't believe in them. Why am I telling you this? Because I've no interest whatsoever to have a debate with you or prove you wrong, I just want to learn about this thought more.

 

edit. I'll add a quote from VXIII´s comment here about emotions: "Why?  Complexity of the chemical reactions? How and why? Was each chemical reaction linked to a certain behavior? Such a statement cannot be thrown like that without factual evidence. It brings more questions than answers." Factual evidence is what we need here.



SkepticallyMinded on 25 June 2016
VXIII said:
SkepticallyMinded said:

Why would anyone in their right mind agree with this?

Because other beings like animals also have brains with said chemicals and electrical signals. But they lack the consciousness of humans.

No they don't. If they have sufficiently complex nervous systems, they have consciousness. This is an anti-scientific view that you hold which is quite alarming.

http://fcmconference.org/img/CambridgeDeclarationOnConsciousness.pdf

http://www.cogs.indiana.edu/spackled/2010readings/griffin-speck-consciousness-evidence.pdf

https://animalconsciousnessharvard.com/about/



SkepticallyMinded on 25 June 2016
RolStoppable said:
I've thought about this some more today, so here's what crossed my mind. The proponents of "free will is a myth" use science as their proof. Science is taken as the truth because it provides an explanation for why things are as they are.

When I was in school, I was taught that the human tongue can discern four different tastes: sweet, sour, salty and bitter. This was the scientific truth. Nowadays science says that there are five tastes, so what does it mean? Back then when it was only four tastes, there was no better explanation, so it was accepted as the truth of how it works because scientists had agreed upon that. This example can be taken further by looking at the areas of the tongue that recognize the different tastes which nowadays is a very different picture from it was back then.

Back to free will, when a man betrays his wife by having sex with another woman, the proponents of "free will is a myth" would say that the man ultimately had no choice despite weighing option A (don't do it) and option B (do it) before committing the act. They would say option B won out despite option A being considered the better course of action by the man, therefore free will does not exist. I stand by it that that is nonsense. My explanation is that option B won out because the man allowed his instinct to take control. Another man might go with option A when facing the exact same choice and my explanation for that is willpower. Not everyone has it to the same degree, but it most certainly exists. Willpower goes hand in hand with free will. Yes, people can choose their behavior.

Saying that free will is a myth... well, the scientific proof for that assertion is merely the best explanation science has come up so far for how our brains work, how humans work. It doesn't mean that the explanation is correct, just like the scientific work on the human tongue that I've been taught in school wasn't correct.

The explanation that people cannot choose their behavior is idiotic at a fundamental level already (fundamental = considering only two options, not a more complex scenario). When a man betrayed his wife with another woman and his excuse to the wife is that he had no choice and may even point to "free will is a myth", the answer he's going to get is: "Of course you had the choice!" And the woman is right. The man had the choice and no amount of talk of neurons and the like is going to change that. The reason why I think that this is a good example is because it deals with one of the most basic instincts of humans, so people have to make such a choice on a frequent basis, and they most certainly can make that choice.

It's not only in science that this concept of free will is assessed. Philosophy has pretty much rejected this view, or at least failed to provide sufficient support for it.

3.3 Do We Have Free Will?

A recent trend is to suppose that agent causation accounts capture, as well as possible, our prereflective idea of responsible, free action. But the failure of philosophers to work the account out in a fully satisfactory and intelligible form reveals that the very idea of free will (and so of responsibility) is incoherent (Strawson 1986) or at least inconsistent with a world very much like our own (Pereboom 2001). Smilansky (2000) takes a more complicated position, on which there are two ‘levels’ on which we may assess freedom, ‘compatibilist’ and ‘ultimate’. On the ultimate level of evaluation, free will is indeed incoherent. (Strawson, Pereboom, and Smilansky all provide concise defenses of their positions in Kane 2002.)

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

If you can get your hands on Galen Strawson's The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility you would understand better why free will is so incoherent.



VXIII on 25 June 2016
SkepticallyMinded said:
VXIII said:

Because other beings like animals also have brains with said chemicals and electrical signals. But they lack the consciousness of humans.

No they don't. If they have sufficiently complex nervous systems, they have consciousness. This is an anti-scientific view that you hold which is quite alarming.

http://fcmconference.org/img/CambridgeDeclarationOnConsciousness.pdf

http://www.cogs.indiana.edu/spackled/2010readings/griffin-speck-consciousness-evidence.pdf

https://animalconsciousnessharvard.com/about/

I think the only alarming view is when we ignore the limits and scope of our knowlege and jump to conclusions without having the data to support it all the way. I'm saying that we don't have enough knowledge.

"complex" is such a simple word that is being thrown around easily without any kind of explination. How, and why it is concidered more complex? Humans don't have the biggest brains, not the biggest brian to body ratio. Not even the most neurons which transmitting the impulses ( African elephants have more ). Whales and Dolphins have more complex aspects about thier brains than humans as well. None of these "complex" brains offer any other species a sense of morality, character, appreciation of beauty.... Conciousness in general. I took a quick look at these links, and as expected I saw some interesting observations about the intellegence of some animals. I will get back to them later but I'm not expecting much to be honest.



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KiigelHeart on 25 June 2016
SkepticallyMinded said:

It's not only in science that this concept of free will is assessed. Philosophy has pretty much rejected this view, or at least failed to provide sufficient support for it.

I don't think anyone here suggests that will is completely free, I think it's obvious that your personality is shaped by outside influences. It's an ongoing progress from birth to death. I also don't think you have a free will to do anything you want, even if you are able to imagine doing anything. But OP suggests that we can't even make a choice ourselves.

I was watching first half of Croatia - Portugal match and thought about this stuff more. So it could be that while watching the game, my brain is one second ahead processing what I see before I'm aware of it. What if my consciousness then actually plays an important part on how these chemicals and signals react? You know, without my awareness brain wouldn't be able to make most of the information it gets.  

Heres a real life example of why I agree with RolStoppable:

When I was a teenager my father had this problem that he was sleepeating. True story :D He would occasionally wake up hungry but decided not to eat even if his instincts told him to eat. But when he was a sleep he would eat, I did witness this myself while watching a movie and trying to talk to him while he was eating. So, obviously his subconscious was able to give him signals to move and crab a sausage, but without him being conscious he didn't have an opportunity to choose not to eat.

ah fuck it, the match continues, I'll continue this thought later if anyone is interested...



Peh on 25 June 2016
Eagle367 said:
Peh said:

I've read most of the posts here, so it actually comes to this:

People who believe in Free Will have issues to understand the part of physics in this equation or ignore those completely. But what I miss most of the time is your lack of understanding your choice. If you can choose between 2 different things and go for one of them and argue you could also go for the second, than why didn't you in the first place? <- That's the main question in this debate. Why did you choose? When your answer is: I don't know, I felt like it, then you are ignorant of your own thoughts and are unable to provide any deeper insight of how you work. I would even go as far and tell you, that you don't understand yourself.

People who don't believe in Free Will like me, using methods like logical deduction, known laws of physics, knowledge of neuroscience, observation and skepticism (to some degree) in the equation. I for instance question every thought I make. Why do I think that way, what made me think that way. Where does these thoughts came from. And all I see is the trail and chain of previous thoughts and informations leading to the ones I currently have. Thus, I can see what previos thought made my choice.

Your consciousness is always the last one who receives information. Several parts of your brain, which you cannot alter at any given time, determine what your senses receive from the outside world. And according to those information, the brain will release specific Hormons and trigger specific behaviour depending on what it receives. Again, you (let's say as the consciousness) have mostly no influence to this. That's the subconsciousness. After that is done, you will be made aware of those things. Meaning, you also have a lag to reality, because of the processing time your brain needs. That's a fact. 

When we talk about triggers in the brain, laws of physics and causality. We go down to the neuron level, the part where electrons are traveling from one cell to the other one. The part which makes you think. What triggers thoughts. When we say that Free Will could break the laws of physics, then the following will happen at that level.

Causality should be a term everyone should understand by now. The simple cause and effect. The way everything physical works in this world. I would even go further, but let's stay a bit away from quantum mechanics, because it is unnecessary. If someone would possess the ability of Free Will. Meaning, acting differently in the same specific situation, it would look like this:

You have the option to choose between to different things. Your brain receives certain information through your senses for these 2 different things and makes you aware of it. Different thoughts will emerge in your consciousness making a debate of what to choose. You going through a list of pro's and con's to determine your choice. During your debate of thought more information perceive through your senses and going constantly into your thought process building an equation. At one point you become aware of the time which went by and decide to (another choice being made) ...due to your other tasks which have to be done (Chilling, working, having fun, whatsever) you have to come to a conclusion. All the thought processing is done and your choice should go to A. Well, you go for B and don't understand why. Something in your brain triggered on it's own without a cause which changed your decision and threw all your reason over board. You didn't wanted to go for B, but all of a sudden you did. That's what you would call Free Will. So, what the fuck happened? It seems some neurons triggered randomly which led you to choose one over the other by completely ignoring the causality of your brain and overwrote your thought process.
But, wait, something is not right. You didn't went with B. You went with C. But that didn't was a part of the debate. What the hell is going on? Nothing makes any sense anymore. Why did you stopped breathing? Are trying to kill yourself? For fucking sake, Neurons! Stop shooting randomly.

Later at the Hospital: Congratulations, you have Free Will. Nah, I'm kidding, that's tourette. Something is triggering your Neurons to shoot, and we can't figure out what it is.

OK, just to sum up this strange example. Free Will wouldn't wait for the choice to be made, it would be active all the time and randomly trigger thoughts and everything without ever being a cause for this. A neuron shooting is caused by another one doing the same and so on and so on and from the beginning your brain as been built.

 

Hope that helps... more or less.

First of all, don't be the guy that claims only he is rational and uses logic and his side is logical.

Never said that and not trying to. I just elaborate what I perceive.

Its because you don't have a complete understanding of the human brain and how the thought process works and we don't as well that there is something to debate at all. No human has complete understanding of the brain and how everything works. Hell scientists don't know how memories work and how we are able to so quickly and accurately recover them in so small a time after not having thought about them for so long. That makes you seem self righteous.

Yes, that's true. No one has a complete understanding of how a brain works by 100%. All I do is observe and analyze my own brain and thought processing. Why do I think the way I do. Why do I act the way I do. That's hardly something you can present as a scientific evidence. It's not testable. But I have my share of experience and knowledge in how a brain works. Split Brain Experiment, Retrograde Amnesia, Lucid Dreaming, Sleep Paralysis.  All these stuff and more lead to the way how I am thinking and what I think a human is.   

Secondly what you described in the first part was what we call involuntary actions that the brain controls directly anyways. We are talking about voluntary actions and the fact that maybe those neurons you are talking about are not so random but are controlled. Just because you say they are random does not mean they are.

Controlled by whom and how? Care to elaborate?

Also what part of the argument regarding the metaphysical do you not understand? It seems like you are avoiding that to fit your narrative. Just because you can't experiment on something doesn't mean its not there. It could be there or It could not be there. Lack of physical evidence for something that may not be physical at all does not mean its not there.

When it's not physical, what is it then?

 



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Peh on 25 June 2016
Eagle367 said:
Let me throw this into the mix.
What if our universe is a complex simulation run by some other being or beings. Then whatever illusions we have are all wrong since we are not even real let alone physical and are only a form of data with the basic unit being the smallest particle and that particle just being a code. In that argument our free will becomes zero and everything in this universe becomes not random and is leading up to something. What if we are like an animated TV show that beings are watching to make fun of our idiocy and the stupidity man kind does on this planet? The point being a number of scenarios could be true but you cannot disprove them you just believe you are in the right and you believe because you don't know and have proof and that believe could again be predetermined or your own choice and free will. If free will is not real then the chaos theory is applied to the universe and with enough data you could see a 100 years from now but if free will is real then the humans become an anomaly and perhaps that is what life is. It is an anomaly to the creation that is the univweae

That cannot be denied. I have similar thought. And I cannot deny them. But these thought are just there for the moment until they become relevant or dismissed.

I am also thinking that God, while not believing in one, could create this world to explain his own existence. Who knows.



Intel Core i7 8700K | 32 GB DDR 4 PC 3200 | ROG STRIX Z370-F Gaming | RTX 3090 FE| Crappy Monitor| HTC Vive Pro :3

Peh on 25 June 2016
deskpro2k3 said:
Peh said:

What do you expect to find there? First we differentiate between organic and unorganic materials. The difference in both lie in the moleculs and chemical compounds.

Look at how the DNA is made off. And than compare it to air and light. If you go only by atoms, you won't see a difference, because this world we live in is made of matter and energy. But at some level, the difference occur at how it interacts which each other.

 

Anything organic is made up of carbon, and carbon itself is not organic. Still not deep enough.

You are not a big help in this.



Intel Core i7 8700K | 32 GB DDR 4 PC 3200 | ROG STRIX Z370-F Gaming | RTX 3090 FE| Crappy Monitor| HTC Vive Pro :3

SkepticallyMinded on 25 June 2016
VXIII said:
SkepticallyMinded said:

No they don't. If they have sufficiently complex nervous systems, they have consciousness. This is an anti-scientific view that you hold which is quite alarming.

http://fcmconference.org/img/CambridgeDeclarationOnConsciousness.pdf

http://www.cogs.indiana.edu/spackled/2010readings/griffin-speck-consciousness-evidence.pdf

https://animalconsciousnessharvard.com/about/

I think the only alarming view is when we ignore the limits and scope of our knowlege and jump to conclusions without having the data to support it all the way. I'm saying that we don't have enough knowledge.

"complex" is such a simple word that is being thrown around easily without any kind of explination. How, and why it is concidered more complex? Humans don't have the biggest brains, not the biggest brian to body ratio. Not even the most neurons which transmitting the impulses ( African elephants have more ). Whales and Dolphins have more complex aspects about thier brains than humans as well. None of these "complex" brains offer any other species a sense of morality, character, appreciation of beauty.... Conciousness in general. I took a quick look at these links, and as expected I saw some interesting observations about the intellegence of some animals. I will get back to them later but I'm not expecting much to be honest.

The irony with you anti-scientific people is often times so profound that it boggles the mind wrestling with what it's like to maintain mutually exclusive perspectives simultaneously. 

You cannot on the same hand declare that non-human animals do not have consciousness while simultaneously maintaining the position that we don't have enough knowledge to assess the situation. Congratulations, you just contradicted your own position.

All of the evidence to date supports the idea that some non-human animals have consciousness, but I'm sure some nobody on the internet has it all figured out, nevermind the countless published science and plethora of scientists who agree.