Free Will, whatever its scientific basis, must be believed in insofar as it is felt. My will feels free, I feel the power of choice, I feel the tension of uncertainty, I feel the spontanaity of creation. It is important to recognize and celebrate this experience, the feeling of power. It is important to realize that whatever science may reveal about the mind, we already know all we need to know to live happy lives. This is the sense in which we know the will is free.
Glad you made it to the forum! Hopefully your post will drum up some new participation here…
How are you defining free will?
Are you suggesting that people must believe in free will even if it’s an illusion? Why?
Should beliefs be based on feelings if there is scientific evidence that contradicts the feeling?
On what basis do you assert that we already know all we need to know to live happy lives? If so, why are so many people miserable?
To define free will as an uncaused cause is nebulous. How could we know what the will was, or locate it in our scientific framework, without investigating it in matter? I am talking of the experience of will. Will feels free, hence it is. The scientific evidence relevent to the experience of will woudl be experiential psychology. Does belief and celebration of the power and freeness of will improve our happiness? I believe it does for me?
Whatever the scientific facts behind the will, and I know we will plumb them someday, these don’t matter to our experience of the will now. The ancient Greeks knew enough to fulfill their lives. So to did the ancient Persians, chinese, etc. In this sense, we already know what it is to live happy lives. As for the miserable people, I know them by rumor only. The people in my life seem self-sustaining, happy, ambitious, and glad to be alive. What miserable people were you referring to?
Glad you made it to the forum! Hopefully your post will drum up some new participation here…
How are you defining free will?
Are you suggesting that people must believe in free will even if it’s an illusion? Why?
Should beliefs be based on feelings if there is scientific evidence that contradicts the feeling?
On what basis do you assert that we already know all we need to know to live happy lives? If so, why are so many people miserable?
I will read the article you mentioned. Let me have another crack at your questions, since what I said isn’t what you are loking for.
Freewill I will define as the absolute unpredictability of conscious decision. By this, I claim that it is impossible to ever correctly predice every choice a will (consciousness) makes. This definition is an attempt. You have head about how certian quantum behavoir is unpredictable. I am saying that free will is free from being determined. And we know this because we cannot determine it.
Should we base beliefs on feelings if scientific evidence contradicts feelings? This is a weird question. If a feeling is a scientific fact, thatn we must merely interpret it correctly. A feeling cannot determine the truth unexamined. That i want eternal life cannot prove that there is eternal life. But the feeling of the will is the freedom of the will. Scientifically we may call it nonpredictable, but in experience it is the feeling of freedom as opposed to external coercion that makes the experience of will.
I know that we as a race do know enough to lead happy lives because so many people do. More to the point, they have in the ancient past. Knowledge is a good, but knowledge is not needed for happiness. The pursuit and achievement of some knowledge is necessary. For instance, I do believe that 2000 years from now the human race will be more knowledgable. I doubt they will be much happier. Because the world is a happy place already, and those who complain will always invent something to complain about.
The article you suggested is a brief description of two experiments and a mention of a book by Searle, suggesting vaugely the implications that Determinism has on morality.
The experiments consist in this: ONE Before we are aware we are making a decision to raise our arm, electrons are already activated in the brain. TWO by prodding the brain, a decision can be made for a person, who still feels he has made it.
The problems with these experiments and their implications is their lack of rigour.
ONE perhaps the electron congregation is the heralding of a decision about to be made, but does not determine the decision.
TWO If the feeling of choice can be caused by a prod, that does not mean it is always caused deterministicaly. For intsance, I can be brain-prodded to see blue. This does not deny the factuality of blue light. If we are tricked into feeling free once, that does not deny that we are normally free. We have already seen this in hypnotist tricks.
If matter at its elementary levels can be spontaneous, then this suggests that there is something determining about matter.
When is free choice executed? Is it every time I make a decision, or just the first time I install the habit of deciding? Is it in every time I raise my hand or in making the system that includes hand-raising? If electrons congregate before a decision, what caused them? A prior decision? And if the particular track an electron is chosen by a decision, then the electricity itself is caused by will. What if the electrical movement itself is a decision, which we later feel consciously?
Therefore, I am perplexed but not convinced by this style of experimentation.
On the experiment about decisions: There’s a difference between making a conscious (and maybe free-willed) decision about X - where you’re concentrating on X, and how to get it, or avoid it, etc. - and concentrating instead on your *decision*, and deciding if it was freely willed or not. So the fact that there’s a signal in the frontal lobes isn’t decisive - for the question was ‘is there free will? not ‘can one be directly observing that one has freely willed at the same time one has freely willed?’ Those seem like two distinct actions of the mind (or brain), and it’s not surprising that they don’t happen together. (We have all had the experience of saying something even we know to be false - there’s a diff between knowing, and speaking what we know, as any public speaker who does it a lot *ex tempore* recognizes).
So, this experiment only proves we can’t fully, consciously observe our decision-making at the same time that we make desicions. But that’s okay for the free will claimants, since the claim isn’t that free will is observable at the very moment it’s done, but only the weaker claim that it exists. It’s probably necessary that we can observe it, but it’s nothing against free-will decisions that they are not observable exactly in the same way and time as they’re made. self-consciousness is not identical to free will. (However, there does seem to be some connection between being self-consciousness and free will; and many phenomenologists point out that even while you’re concentrating on X, there’s a background, so to speak, of being self-conscious of that activity of concentrating on X.)
the article jeff led us to seems extremely speculative. And note that the reviewer says that the neuroscience ‘suggests’ - well does it prove we have free will or not? apparently not, or they could have said so.
Tell me, how am i supposed to judge this research? Take the example the review gives: thelma and louise both discover their husbands are cheating; thelma doesn’t kill her husband, louise does. both had brains that ‘made’ them do what they did, and so, if we are assuming that free will is something you’re not ‘made’ to do, then either both T and L must be blameworthy or both are off the hook.
When does some informal, intuitive sense get to trump this? Assume it’s a classic crime of passion, and not due to some identifiable organic damage, or drugs, or etc. She’s just Louise, like I’m just Kirk, and my roommates are just Josh and Avi. I’d *like* to say ‘Oh, come now, then we’ve obviously made a mistake if we think brain-scans are telling us anything. *Somehow* Louise deserves jail rather than a hospital, assuming she’s otherwise normally functioning. *Somehow* it’s worthless to claim a drug, or the right surgery, will make her ‘better’.
Here’s another problem. the reviewer notes that (assuming the research’s ‘suggestion’ pans out) jails are ‘where we put people who’s brains are not functioning right’. I now appeal to anyone who’s watched too many *Law and Order* episodes. The expert for the defense takes the stand and produces The Research showing that muderers’ brains tend to look like *this*, and Mr A has just that look to his brain, therefore Mr A couldn’t help himself. Then the prosecution’s attorney gets up and says - remember? This is a statistic; there are other murderers (or rapists or whatever) who nonethless have brains that do *not* scan like the research, and people who’ve never murdered and have no thoughts of doing so, even tho’ their brins *do* look like this, so no cause can be assigned just because mr A has this scan to his brain. Correlations are not causes, tho of course they are interesting (suggestive, even) for researchers.
So, i’m not really sure where the research *takes* me. nothing pops out of the data and grabs me by the mental throat liek good data will do.
Btw, i wouldn’t call Aristotle a compatibilist as the reviewer does (compatibilism: your ‘will’ is free only in the sense that things pan out that you get what you happen to want.) Compatibilism (’soft’ determinism is another word) is a modern, not an ancient category. His theory is more like Aquinas’, where we’re free to choose in our minds, but once we’ve chosen, our emotional apparatus shall ineluctably move us, until and unless we think of something else. Ex: I love coffee, but it gives me a tummy-ache. if i think of coffee’s luscious mocha goodness, i *shall* be moved toward it, until i choose instead to think of its effect on my stomach, which then ‘*shall* move me away from it. that’s more free than a compatibilist version, but less free than ‘radical’ free will.)
sorry, i’m not feeling well today, so i’ll blame my sour-pussed posts on that, rather than being free-willed. maybe i’m ill-willed? None of what i’ve said proves that wills are free, btw.
kirk, who’s come down w/ a touch of flu, and so has too much time to post for a newbie.
Knowledge is a good, but knowledge is not needed for happiness. The pursuit and achievement of some knowledge is necessary.
Not true. People get a sense of happiness and accomplishment when they learn new things. Our entire lives are about learning, and overcoming problems. The miserable people that someone else referred to are, in this society, the lazy slobs who drool their lives away on a couch, whining about relationship problems and arguing over which American Idol contestent should win. They think they are unhappy because they are not consuming enough. Or they work at mindless jobs that bring no intellectual satisfaction. Only they don’t know why they feel emptiness in their lives. Commercials tell them it’s because of not being accepted, loved or from some other problem.
But that’s not it.
As humans, it is in our nature to evolve. As cultures grow, we invent things and explore more etc. And though it may be true that we have all we “need,” people cannot stagnate and still feel good.
From the time we are babies our happiness has depended on personal evolution. Those who have all their “needs” handed to them often end up less happy than those who learn to struggle and overcome problems early on.
A toddler is sincerely happy when they figure out that the square block doesn’t fit in the triangle hole, but it does go in the square hole. They don’t know that humanity discovered this long ago.
A musician is happy when they play a song all the way through with no mistakes for the first time, even though instruments are an old technology.
Even you, and your ability to write a post on a forum makes you happier than many others. And if you were to suddenly turn out a complete dissertation on the uselessness of learning and evolution, you would be proud of yourself and happy.
Our accomplishments please us, subconsiously, because the survival of the species requires us to evolve. Our evolution as humans is far from over. There are always things to learn, and I guarantee you that the people who ignore the couchpotatoes of society and are passionate about their fields of interest are much happier than those who are living the american dream, or struggling to aim for it. I have recently begun doing research into transgendered people and you’d be amazed at how medicine has advanced in terms of letting people change their bodies and reproduce non-traditionally. And that is just one area where our knowledge is improving.
I don’t know that there are people who would feel equally happy watching the Sopranos and creating or inventing some amazing thing. But if there are, I truly feel sorry for them. And I just hope they will stay the f*ck out of the way of the people who really do live for the betterment of humanity and themselves.
the article jeff led us to seems extremely speculative.
I didn’t like how strongly i worded this, and it might appear i’m criticizing jeff, but i’m not. Let me adjust it. The research the article talks about is certainly interesting; and certainly the *review* of the research (the article isn’t the actual research) claims something like free will is an illusion, so it was natural for Jeff to call it just that, an article about ‘the illusion of free will.’ My point is that the reviewer is incorrect in claiming that free will is an illusion, just on the basis of that research. The research doesn’t prove that at all, and to be scientific, we oughtn’t to let the reviewer tell us otherwise.
If free will’s an illusion, so be it. But the research hardly proves anything like that, and the reviewer is to be faulted for getting overexcited. That isn’t a rational approach. In fact, considering how many centuries such debates have gone on, it seems very improbable that a single research paper ‘tells’ us much of anything about the will being free or not - altho’ of course it can tell us much about the mechanism by which a will, free or not, makes action happen, and in turn is influenced by this or that. Slow and steady wins the race, and for the reviewer to latch onto this research is like claiming that *this* time, the lottery ticket will make me rich. Now *that’s* an illusion.
btw: I’m not sure how one can have ‘free’ thought if one’s will to believe this or that isn’t free in any interesting sense. It seems to make a hash out of ‘learning’ ‘changing my mind for good reasons’, ‘being convinced by evidence’, and in general, being rational. So i’d like to know how the Unfree Will people on this forum deal with this problem.
Tell me, how am i supposed to judge this research? Take the example the review gives: thelma and louise both discover their husbands are cheating; thelma doesn’t kill her husband, louise does. both had brains that ‘made’ them do what they did, and so, if we are assuming that free will is something you’re not ‘made’ to do, then either both T and L must be blameworthy or both are off the hook.
That’s the clincher for me—how to judge people, if at all. It’s what brings the question of free will out of the abstract.
I have friends who are outright social morons. Or they’re just plain opposite-of-smart. Whatever the case, I (And I assume I’m not alone) always subtley feel like nitpicking at people who are different from me. Just yesterday I discovered INTPCentral.com, a website for INTP Myers-briggs personalities. It’s a huge forum with a lot of variety… but I doubt anybody would get pounced on for complaining about their family or friends who seem “totally inable to cogitate their own actions,” since most INTP’s will probably feel like they do more thinking than most people.
I digress. I mean, in facing the personal figure-outs of how to handle and/or think of other people, what do you do? If friend ‘A’ can squarely and obviously point to his crappy family life, diagnosed manic depressive and sociopathic disorders, etc… how can I blame him for being the way he is? Or if friend ‘B’ has a controlling personality type and volatile emotions/temper combined (Like an ENFJ), I can’t really confront him on it. What is he supposed to do? Change for me? First of all, that’s immensley arrogant on my part. Second, change of personality isn’t something that happens easily, and even when it does it’s in small amounts, remaining mostly static over a lifetime, just like IQ. People who are just plain stupid can get annoying… but kids and cats are cute in their ignorance, they just can’t help it. Adults may not be “cute,” but there’s still a ‘can’t-help-it’ factor to consider.
If people are really a “blank slate,” as John Locke proposed, or if rewriting that slate were a simple process, then I should be able to say “I chose to be the way I am, and I would encourage you to conform to my perspective, though I wouldn’t force it.” But there seem to be so many excuses offered!
Speaking of Locke… From what I understand from An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, he held that there was no explanation for thoughts to arise out of deterministic, mechanical interactions, and said that God must serve as an intermediate between brain and qualia. From what I can tell he’s also the originator of “the universe had to have a cause, ergo: God” argument which is so commonly echoed from the pulpit. “God of the gaps,” I think is what many of us would call it today.
I’m a Computer Science major, spending a good deal of time studying the very sorts of mechanical-logical processes that Locke was unable to imagine. I have no problem with the concept of a deterministic brain. Sure, it’s amazing and difficult to imagine consciousness and the rich perception of reality we enjoy as nothing but a complex, hardwired program… but it’s not unthinkable. The implications of determinism on social interactions, specifically responsibility, are of far more interest to me nowadays.
Tell me, how am i supposed to judge this research? . . . either both Tina and Louise must be blameworthy or both are off the hook.
That’s the clincher for me—how to judge people, if at all. It’s what brings the question of free will out of the abstract. . . .
. . . . If friend ‘A’ can squarely and obviously point to his crappy family life, diagnosed manic depressive and sociopathic disorders, etc… how can I blame him for being the way he is? . . . . What is he supposed to do? Change for me? First of all, that’s immensley arrogant on my part. Second, change of personality isn’t something that happens easily, and [it remains] mostly static over a lifetime, just like IQ. . . . Adults may not be “cute,” but there’s still a ‘can’t-help-it’ factor to consider.
If people are really a “blank slate,” as John Locke proposed, or if rewriting that slate were a simple process, then I should be able to say “I chose to be the way I am, and I would encourage you to conform to my perspective, though I wouldn’t force it. . . .” SigmaX
Hi Sigma. I mixed ideas together, based on the original article. (1) Some action can be free chosen, but not (2) my business to judge or evaluate (some poor wretch in Paris steals bread, for instance, and I live in GR - it’s none of my business to even figure out if he’s blameworthy or not). Next, it might well be my business to judge, but (3) not my business to do anything in particular about it (I definitely know that my neighbors are fighting, and as a neighbor it may well be my business to know that, but that doesn’t mean I ought to march over and ‘solve’ it.) My problem was about blame*worthiness* - going from (1) the action to (2) making a judgement about that (was it a freely-chosen wrong, or not). And what applies to others applies here especially to oneself. You want to ‘fix’ your program, and so rather uncontroversially you evaluate the parts of your programming. You mght not fix all the sub-optimal parts, though, for various reasons (more important parts need fixing first, for instance).
By basic problem with the research cited was, if I argue from it to something like “No one has any control at all over any part of themselves” then that leans *so* hard on another belief, “I do have control over at least some parts, at least some of the time” that I cannot keep both beliefs. The difficulty is, which belief to reject? Reject the argument that led to such an absurd conclusion and so keep my informal, provisional belief that at least some of the time, there’s free actions? Or reject the more informal belief, and keep the conclusion reached by interpreting that research in the way the reviewer wanted us to? I’d say reject the argument, for the reasons I gave in an earlier post. If that research is all I’ve got to go on, then free will (whatever it is) isn’t rejected yet.
I’m a big believer in informal reasoning, and that formal reasons have to work hard to trump informal beliefs. I have many instances of making choices that would be widely accepted as free willed, and so informally pretty good evidence that I *do* freely will at least some of the time. Such observations are at least partly testable, of course. But the research cited doesn’t do that - or at least if it does, it’s very murky how to get there, and the reviewer sure doesn’t get us there. I suppose that’s the original poster’s idea. We all have this informal idea ‘hey, i’m making a free choice, and I could choose differently’. If formal argument can trump that so be it. (Think of the old chestnut ‘The earth does not move.’ One really does need a couple of good arguments to trump that perfectly reasonable ‘observation’.)
On Locke -
Well, I think there’s room for you and Locke. It’s doubtful he meant to say that we can change just anything about ourselves with equal ease. So long as there is *some* change possible, and it’s done (or started, or activated, or channeled, or guided) by something observers reliably identify as free-will, then it still isn’t absurd to posit a will that’s not just internally free but can make things happen in the physical world somehow.
A teeny correction: It’s the *mind* - the non-physical part - that Locke is claiming is a blank slate. He denies that our minds have innate ideas - such as mathematical ideas. That’s why he’s so concerned to describe (unsuccessfully) the move from empiricalc sense-data to ideas. He’d agree with any modern psychologist or doctor who talks about physical dispositions, or brain-differences, etc.
(1) To define free will as an uncaused cause is nebulous. . . . (2) I am talking of the experience of will. (3) Will feels free, (4) hence it is. (5) The scientific evidence relevent to the experience of will would be experiential psychology. Does belief and celebration of the power and freeness of will improve our happiness? I believe it does for me.
Daniel
I numbered the statements.
The definition in (1) is at the least paradoxical. Let’s be kind to it, and note that there is more than one kind of ‘cause’ to be considered (and maybe rejected). There’s efficient cause - the mechanical kind of one billiard-ball striking another, or my fingers typing at the keyboard. But there used to be other relations called ‘causes’ that aren’t efficient ones. (For the record, there’s a material ‘cause’ - what something’s made of; a formal cause - what makes a thing what is; and there’s final causation - the goal or purpose for something. A rough example: A heart is (formal) a pump (material) made of special muscle; (efficient) by working a certain way (final) it keeps the circulatory system running.) So to call a result of free will an ‘uncaused cause’ is better called a ‘non-efficient cause’. There still may be no free will, but it’s not completely crazy to call it something that does cause things without doing it as billiard-balls or circuits do it.
I find the argument (3,4) unconvincing, without a better definition of ‘feels’. Here’s a counter-example of the argument: (3*) I feel like pins are pricking at my foot, (4*) hence they are. However, it turns out my foot is falling asleep. So, it’s wrong to go from 3 straight to 4. You can make a probability arg out of it, maybe: (3**) I feel X, and (3 1/2) More often than not, what I feel reflects what is; (4**) hence, it probably is X. The problem with putting it this way is that probability arguments like this rely on empirical observation - but we cannot independently check up on our free will apart from our feelings we act freely. So, we can’t use this probability argument either to prove free will.
There *is* another way to fix the argument: the word ‘feels’ is ambiguous. I suggest that none of us ‘feels’ our will just like we ‘feel’ pins pricking at our feet. I have great trouble *describing exactly* this feeling i’m free (or that i’m thinking of a number between 1 and 20, or that I’ve got Georgia on my mind, etc.) I just *do* these things - my feeling seems utterly unmistakable, or *always* mistaken. Even the feeling of pin-pricking is like that - I just *know* i’m having a certain experience, *always*, or I don’t. This is different from the feeling *that a pin is pricking me.* - I can be mistaken about this. (Usually it’s a pin stuck in the carpet; sometimes not, however.) So the argument (3,4) can be fixed, but by acknowledging that there’s a clas of ‘feelings’ that are either always right, or always mistaken. This kind of feeling seems to be at the base of our conscious life - they’re *self* conscious feelings.
There can be free will without every, or *any* act being *totally* free. I start wiggling my foot, for example, with very little thought behind it - i never stopped after adolescence, and it’s just a nervous habit. Then I notice it, and make a little command Stop. Lo, it stops. Now it’s true, I don’t like wiggling my foot, it’s a bit embarrassing to still be wiggling my foot at my sedate age, etc etc. Yet, it seems undoubted that stopping my foot involved less compulsion than how it started, and less compulsion might well equal more free will. (I say this because my foot doesn’t just slow down a bit, but *stops*, suddenly. The command is just as effective as the original compulsion to start the wiggling.)
kirk
PS: Who here believes that free will entails a God? I’m curious because the two issues don’t seem automatically tied together, though denying (6) free will is one part of denying (7) an immaterial part of human beings, which is usually called (8) an immortal soul, and if we don’t have souls, then (9) God seems less likely. None of the moves from (6) to (9) is necessary. (If you are an aristotelian theistic philosopher, for example, you won’t move from (7) to (8) - that is, you don’t believe in ‘cartesian’ immortal souls. Dead is dead - otherwise resurrection isn’t really a miracle, for you *are by definition immortal* in Cartesian metaphysics.)
A review in Spiked magazine about a book that assumes that brains cause (the illusion of) free will, but the reviewer himself argues that brains are necessary but not sufficient for free will (most dualists seem to argue that brains aren’t even necessary for free will):
