Free Will

[AltF4]

One of the very first philosophical ideas ever to be considered is the nature of “Free Will”. What exactly is it? Do we as humans possess it? These are questions that we will explore today. I will show you that despite our very natural tendency to believe we have choice, the evidence we have demands otherwise.

In order to talk about free will, we must first know a little bit about what it is. Free will is the notion that an agent can decide what action to undergo, unrestrained by outside influence. We all have an intrinsic understanding at least at some level of what it means to have choice. Your computer for example does not have free will. Everything it does is a direct result of what is put into it. Often these effects are intended to look as if it had Free Will (Artificial Intelligence) but this is all just smoke and mirrors. What I am talking about is your real ability to choose what your actions for yourself, without being forced to by physical laws or any other source. I will introduce now a hypothetical example that I will use through the rest of this writing to illustrate some of the ideas that are brought up.

Imagine playing billiards with a friend. You are playing 8 ball and it is your shot. There are two balls that look to be open shots, the 3 and the 5. You decide to take the 3 ball so you strike the cue with your stick causing the cue to bounce into the 3 which in turn falls into a side pocket.

Now typically what we would assume happens is that you as a human “choose” to hit the 3 ball. But after having struck the cue ball, everything happens “deterministically”. Meaning that the 3 ball did not choose where to go, it was forced to go into the side pocket by the cue ball. This is the stance that we typically take on a day to day basis. It seems perfectly reasonable at the surface, but as we shall see the idea is more complicated than previously thought.

Free will has a couple of problems when trying to reconcile with physics. The most major issue with having choice is that it violates a very fundamental principle of science: Causality. To quote the matrix: “You see there is only one constant. One universal. It is the only real truth. Causality. Action, reaction. Cause and effect.”

Events in the present cause things to happen in the future. Things that are happening in present were caused by events in the past. Every cause has an effect, and every effect was made by a cause. It is a basic, fundamental, essential assumption that must be made for anything to make sense. All of human history can be summarized by the gradual realization that things in the world happen according to physical laws, and not by whim or superstition. It is impossible to stress just how important causality is in science. Without it, there is no reason for anything that happens. Any scientific theory that comes about that contradicts causality is assumed to be false. In fact a typical method of disproving a theory is to show that it violates causality.

To demonstrate how free will violates causality, we will use our billiards example. Let’s see what happens when we introduce free will into the otherwise deterministic series of events after you strike the cue with your stick. We will say now that the 3 ball has “choice” of where to go after being struck by the cue ball. With this choice, the three might go in any direction, regardless of the instructions by the cue ball. It might even chose to stay still. Let’s say it goes a couple of inches and then stops. Well, what caused this action? It certainly wasn’t the cue ball hitting the three, because the three did not follow what should have happened if it did. What we have is a cause without an effect. In fact by definition a choice is without cause. A clear violation of causality.

Another issue with free will is called the problem of emergence. In our billiards example, a good question to ask would be “what makes us different than the billiard ball that gives us free will and not it?” Nobody would suppose that atoms have choice do they? Well then why do we (who are entirely made up of atoms) mysteriously have free will but the billiard ball does not (which is also made of atoms).

Put another way, go down the evolutionary list and ask yourself: “Does this have free choice?” Humans, dogs, rats, flies, ants, grass, bacteria? From a biological standpoint, we are not in any relevant way different from these other organisms that we assume to not have free will.

What do you make of it? Is it still too hard to let go of choice because it feels so apparent? What might make you want to maintain a belief in it? There are still many sides to this topic that I haven’t brought up yet because this post is long enough already.

As always, thanks for reading.

 

[Digital Watches]

While there are some holes in your explanation of causality (at least one instance of argumentum ad consequentiam, etc.) the basic point that you make with this logic is true. However, there are a few things that you are incorrect on. First off, your argument presupposes that "free will" is something that it's not. As we as human beings are nowhere near fully understanding the workings of the human mind, we use "free will" to mean the decisions made by the mind. It's similar to the word "random." No educated person, I hope, would argue that anything happens "randomly" or with no cause, however, when something happens with no cause that is immediately clear to the person speaking, they may use the word "random" as shorthand for "caused by something I cannot explain or understand." Likewise, "free will" can be used as a shorthand for "determined by the mind, which we do not fully understand." Conditioning is a powerful force in human psychology, and at an even more fundamental level, the human mind is, as all things, simply a series of chemical processes.

Ergo while "free will" in the idealistic sense does not exist, it exists for all intents and purposes, as actions are determined by factors too complex for us to grasp given current knowledge.

The belief in free will (a different topic entirely), however, is beneficial, in my opinion. If one makes one's decisions with the assumption that they are not in control of their actions, they tend to ignore consequences of their actions as "inevitable," thus changing their decision-making process, usually for the worse.

I find it funny that I stumbled onto this debate while listening to Rush's "Freewill"

 

[AltF4]

Yes, I understand your point. Perhaps I could spend a bit more time defining what it was that I referred to as Free Will. I meant it in the "idealistic" sense that you mentioned. Of course if you were to define free will as the series of chemical precesses that take place in our brain, then yes that kind of choice takes place.

I also acknowledge that there are ethical and other reasons for the typical person to believe in free will. The entire legal system for example is based on a person's responsibility for his or her actions. Without free will, punishing a mass murderer makes as much sense as punishing the bullets he used. For this alone it is reasonable to act as if we do have free will in our everyday lives. This discussion is about the underlying truth, however. Not about what is "beneficial" to believe in.

But don't be so hasty to say that no educated person would argue that anything happens randomly. Like I mentioned earlier, Quantum Mechanics sheds a new light on to this discussion. It winds up right back where we are now, but it's an interesting talk. I didn't want to bring it up directly because it might go too far from the original topic. But that might be inevitable.

 

[Digital Watches]

But don't be so hasty to say that no educated person would argue that anything happens randomly. Like I mentioned earlier, Quantum Mechanics sheds a new light on to this discussion. It winds up right back where we are now, but it's an interesting talk. I didn't want to bring it up directly because it might go too far from the original topic. But that might be inevitable.

I'd argue that quantum mechanics is simply a very new and relatively unexplored field. While "random" is still the right word, I would say that this is a perfect example of the definition I used.

 

[AltF4]

I don't think of Quantum Mechanics as new or unexplored. It's about a hundred years old and has never produced a prediction that wasn't perfectly in line with observation. I don't want to get too far off topic like I said, so I'll keep the background stuff to a minimun. So if it seems like I'm skipping important parts, I probably am.

The mathematical side of Quantum Mechanics is undeniable. It is unanimously accepted by physicists, and evidence as such is both beyond the scope of this discussion and irrelevant. What is of interest to us is the qualitative side to Quantum Theory. The "interpretations" as they are called. They try to explain what causes the world to behave in such a way as described by Quantum Theory. There are many interpretations that each have their own merits and problems, but the most widely held one is what I sill address here.

The "Copenhagen Interpretation" was born while Neils Bohr and Werner Heisenberg happened to both be in Copenhagen working. The interpretation they formulated states that the present and future positons and velocities of any particle are uncertain. In fact, they do not exist in any real sense. Existence is comprised entirely of probability functions distributed through space. Observing any one of these particles will "collapse" the wave function that represents its existence into one one of the previously infinite possible states.

How this affects the topic of free will is that Quantum Mechanics destroys the previous possibility of determinism. It was thought before Quantum Theory that if you were to know the position and velocity of every particle in the universe at one point in time, you could predict the future from that point forward. We now know that this is false.

But Quantum Theory doesn't simpy say that "everything is random". That would not be completely correct. Essential to Quantum Theory is the notion of "information". Information cannot be lost, this law is tantamount to conservation of energy. Although objects may behave unpredictably, the information about what occurs cannot be lost.

Bringing all of this around, we now have an augmented view of what it would mean to not have Free Will. It does not mean to behave deterministically, it means to behave predictably within the bounds of Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle, but still bound to physical law. Having free will would contradict Quantum Theory by destroying information, which is in violation of causality, locality, and conservation of energy.

All of that got pretty complicated quickly... To summarize, after considering Quantum Theory, we are still left with the same situation we had before: Free Will violates essential physical laws, while abandoning it makes perfect sense.

 

[Falco&Victory]

Nothing in the universe happens randomly. Everything can be mapped, graphed, written, or solved. The reason I consider free will as being true(for the most part), is that we can calculate what is going on in other people's brain. They will make decisions that we did not they were going to make, giving us the possibility to choose our course. Of course, the brain runs basically as a machine, so an equation could have been written out showing exactly which course our brains would take. However, humans have the ability to think, to choose our decisions, even if it can be predetermined what course we will take. Say that free will is not making choices outside of the influence of something or someone else, but that it's our ability to react to the changes around us as well.

Of course the free will violates quantum laws, and the idea should be abandoned. However, until we are aware of the location of every source of mass and energy in the universe we will never be able to see what is going to happen next, meaning our brain will have to adapt as we choose for them to adapt. It is a hard concept to grasp, but everything that happens in out brain, we make happen using our brain.

 

[AltF4]

I updated my paragraph in the first post that defines what free will is. I think there has been some confusion.

Falco&Victory:
I'm not sure I understand your position. You say that nothing is random and that if we were to know the location of every source of mass and energy we would be able to predict the future. That was a view started (or perhaps just made famous) by Pierre-Simon Laplace. It is called determinism and has been proven false as I mentioned in my previous post.

Not only that, but if it were true as you assert Free Will would still be impossible since every action would be determined entirely by physical law, and not the "Will" of a human being.

 

[Falco&Victory]

Not even I understand my viewpoint, I suppose. If we view free will as predetermined, what would most people do? They would act rashly, believing that it's not their fault. I believe our actions are predetermined, but do I act however I want and say it's no ones fault? No, I do not. Our minds do not determine what is going to happen next, they couldn't possibly, basic physics do. However, our brains have the ability to make our bodies manipulate object. The human brain stores energy, controls body mass. I believe that we are masters of our own will, that organic life has the ability to change the outcome of the future.

 

[Erimir]

I basically agree with the OP, although I would've explained my position slightly differently.

I would be more interested as to when the action of free will occurred, what exactly happened, and why. Not when you struck the cue ball, obviously. You were already moving the stick. And the stick was moving cuz your arm was moving. And your arm was moving because of certain signals the nerves in your arm got from your brain. And your brain sent those signals because... You decided to hit the cue ball in the direction of the 3 ball. So what exactly happened there, and how can we distinguish it from an "unfree" action? Why did you decide to hit the 3 ball?

I don't believe I've ever heard a coherent explanation of what libertarian free will would even be. In the end, it always just sounds like randomness.

Compatibilist free will makes sense to me, but it seems pretty trivial. It doesn't solve some of the problems that libertarian free will solves (or is meant to solve). It certainly doesn't deal with the Problem of Evil, for example. I mean, it is a sensible way to define the term, and is in fact often the way we use the word. It just doesn't seem as interesting to me. We all would agree that people perform free actions if that's how you define free will.

Of course, determinism doesn't seem to be compatibile with quantum physics. Although, if you ignore the observer effects. Suppose you had a system where you knew all the positions and velocities without observing them. It's the observing them part that we can't get around in reality. We can't know everything because we have to observe them, which introduces that problem. However, it could be the case that if we had knowledge that is, in reality, impossible to acquire, that we could predict everything that happens.

But I don't really care much about the distinction. Things are largely deterministic even with quantum mechanics. Sure, on the atomic level they're not. That doesn't much affect how things occur with objects that we normally interact with, however.

 

[Banana_Dragon]

Free will... if I'm correct then possessing free will would mean "to be free to want whatever you want" right? Well, you obviously always want what you want and nobody can make you not want what you want, because then you wouldn't want it anymore... So, in that sense, we have free will.

However, feelings like desire, curiosity, lust, love, hunger, thirst, laziness, agression, etc... They are all chemical reactions that cause us to want whatever we want. The way we are raised, the environment we are born in, the friends we meet... They all influence our thoughts and way of thinking and perceiving and we end up wanting different things.

The fact that things in the media such as commercials can have an impact on us wanting or wanting to buy a certain product reveals that our will isn't as free as we think. If it was completely free, then TV or radio commercials would have no effect on us since we would be free to choose what we want anyway.

The fact that a chemical reaction in your body can cause you to fall in love with someone, and therefore want to be with them and spend time with them, also shows that we are pushed towards wanting whatever we want.

We are however free to think what we want. And we can calculate various possibilities and if we would enjoy them or not, if they would be safe or not, if they would be beneficial or not, etc and we can calculate them for however long we want. So, in a sense, we do have a 'certain amount' of control over our will because we have a certain amount of control over our thoughts (for example, consciously starting to think about a nice green field of grass and sunshine to help you calm down) and our thoughts influence what we end up wanting, thus, our will.

I think we have an 'active will' with a limited amount of freedom to it. An amount of freedom that seems huge to us but is rather insignifact in the whole of things, and not capable of violating causality.
I'm pretty certain there's a slight amount of 'uncertainity' that can be applied to our will as well, even if extremely minuscule.
It's just like the planet earth seems huge to us but is really really small in the grand scheme of things. I think the freedom of our will is there to an extent and seems huge to us but is in actuality really really small as well.

 

[AltF4]

Suppose you had a system where you knew all the positions and velocities without observing them. It's the observing them part that we can't get around in reality. We can't know everything because we have to observe them, which introduces that problem. However, it could be the case that if we had knowledge that is, in reality, impossible to acquire, that we could predict everything that happens.

No, that isn't true. It is impossible to know the exact position and velocity of any particle simultaneously. The difficulty in observing them is just an illustration of this law. The reason is because the position and velocity are themselves uncertain.

Don't fall into the trap of what is known as "hidden variables", they are false. Forget what you think you know intuitively about the world and then try to understand quantum mechanics. It's easier that way. What you're saying is "the particles in this room have a definite and determined position and velocity . The problem is that I can never know them for certain." But his is not true. The particles themselves have no definite position or velocity, they are represented entirely by a probability density function. That is why you can't observe them well: they have no definite characteristics.


But you're right in that this doesn't actually wind up affecting the discussion after all, just as I mentioned in my third post in this thread: Free Will violates physical law, while abandoning it doesn't. The problem is that we've grown so accustomed to the notion that we have free will...

 

[Erimir]

I'm not saying that there's evidence for these "hidden variables". It's possible there are hidden variables in a way that is consistent with our observations. But that is an unfalsifiable theory, because we could never get confirming evidence for it. So this is more from a philosophical standpoint than a scientific one - whether there are hidden variable theories that could be confirmed is not what I am discussing. Unless there is evidence that disproves that there could be any hidden variable theory at all that could be possibly true. Could be, I haven't read up on it in depth enough. But just know I'm not necessarily talking about an interpretation that is interested in getting into science books because it makes predictions.

But it's a pretty irrelevant question when it comes to us predicting things, or any practical application of science. It's just a philosophical question which is whether hard determinism could be true, even if we could never know because of the limits of our observations. But just because I'm saying that's possible doesn't mean I subscribe to it. I'm not particularly invested in whether it's determinism or many worlds, or randomness, whatever. I would need to study quantum physics more in depth.

None of them support libertarian free will, as far as I can tell. Except when you get to such New Age silliness of people saying quantum physics somehow lets you affect the world with your will or is an expression of your soul or such hooey (as seen in the idiotic movie, What the Bleep Do We Know?!).

 

[AltF4]

I'm not saying that there's evidence for these "hidden variables". It's possible there are hidden variables in a way that is consistent with our observations. But that is an unfalsifiable theory, because we could never get confirming evidence for it. So this is more from a philosophical standpoint than a scientific one - whether there are hidden variable theories that could be confirmed is not what I am discussing. Unless there is evidence that disproves that there could be any hidden variable theory at all that could be possibly true. Could be, I haven't read up on it in depth enough. But just know I'm not necessarily talking about an interpretation that is interested in getting into science books because it makes predictions.

But it's a pretty irrelevant question when it comes to us predicting things, or any practical application of science. It's just a philosophical question which is whether hard determinism could be true, even if we could never know because of the limits of our observations. But just because I'm saying that's possible doesn't mean I subscribe to it. I'm not particularly invested in whether it's determinism or many worlds, or randomness, whatever. I would need to study quantum physics more in depth.

None of them support libertarian free will, as far as I can tell. Except when you get to such New Age silliness of people saying quantum physics somehow lets you affect the world with your will or is an expression of your soul or such hooey (as seen in the idiotic movie, What the Bleep Do We Know?!).

Nope, Hidden Variable theories are just plain wrong. Every single one that has been proposed has been inconsistent with observation. I know it's a really hard concept. You're not the first nor last scientist to want to believe in Hidden Variables.

Albert Einstein was largely against all of quantum mechanics and its principles out of a religious fervor. He felt that the world described by Quantum Mechanics was simply too bizarre for it to be true. Einstein's famous quote on the matter is "God does not play dice." Essentially saying that god would not have made a world where everything is up to chance.

Einstein even went so far as to try to justify scientifically the Steady State Theory, in which the universe had no Big Bang. It would have just existed infinitely into the past. He felt as if this would be most consistent with a world that god would have made, and spent the last few decades of his life on this topic with no progress. He would later regret this decision to let his religious beliefs get in the way of his science, calling it the biggest mistake of his life.


But yes, "Libertarian Free Will", as you put it, is still impossible even under quantum mechanics. So it doesn't matter.

"What the bleep do we know?" wasn't all that bad. Some of it was transcendental mumbo-jumbo, but some of it was real (but bizarre) science.

 

[Erimir]

Were these proposed theories that were meant to be scientific theories that could be falsified, or meant as simply philosophical exercises?

I just get the impression that hidden variable theories proposed by most scientists would be ones that they would like to be able to falsified (since that's what most scientists are interested in, since otherwise it's not science). I'm still unconvinced that it's not possible to even come up with an unfalsifiable theory that is consistent (but which could never be proven true, of course).

What the Bleep Do We Know!? also contained pseudo-science. Such as that ridiculous study about "beautiful" vs. "ugly" water crystals. It repeats the 10% myth (we only use 10% of our brains). And other such silliness. It might have some good science in it. But taking some good science and surrounding it with New Age mumbo-jumbo and pseudoscience makes it overall bad. IMO.

... I was hoping that at least some of the people from the God thread who use the Free Will Defense (against the Problem of Evil) would come in here. Especially considering that their counterargument falls apart if libertarian free will is incoherent.

 

[Eight Sage]

Alt I had a good time reading your post, very nice.

I think your free choice depends on your physic form. I can choose to walk, but I don't have the free will to fly because I'm not a bird. Obviously, we're talking about living things, the billiards example don't apply here, because, as you say, all happens following this pattern: Action, reaction, cause and effect; our free will starts and ends with the Action. Following that, is all assumptions you made to help you decide what to do.

The problem is that we've grown so accustomed to the notion that we have free will...

And we do. The problem appears when you think that "having free will" is plain simple like that. No, it isn't that simple, your free will is tied with your environment, body, mind and education. Sometimes you forgot about this, and fall into the misconceptions of this phrase.

 

[AltF4]

Okay, I still think we're having a hard time understanding what free will is. (Or perhaps what I'm trying to mean by "free will", so I don't blame anyone) Here is a hypothetical situation.

Suppose you happen to find special TV, one that plays video of the future. You can watch your neighbors do and say the things they will do tomorrow. So suppose you watch two other people have a conversation on your TV, and then you wait for the next day. You then listen in on their conversation in real life, and it winds up being the same as on the TV!

That means that those two people have no free will. What they are going to do and say is already predetermined. If you asked them "why did you have that conversation"? They would respond "I chose to", but that is just an illusion. In fact that very response would have been predetermined as well!


Now, the TV is itself impossible, and don't even try to think about what would happen if you watched yourself in the TV. I used this merely as a method to illustrate what I mean by free will.

Were these proposed theories that were meant to be scientific theories that could be falsified, or meant as simply philosophical exercises?

I just get the impression that hidden variable theories proposed by most scientists would be ones that they would like to be able to falsified (since that's what most scientists are interested in, since otherwise it's not science). I'm still unconvinced that it's not possible to even come up with an unfalsifiable theory that is consistent (but which could never be proven true, of course)..

Well, perhaps. But you might as well say "Hidden Variables exist because pink unicorns make it so". All philosophical theories have the same usefulness: zero.

Alt I had a good time reading your post, very nice.

Oh, thanks! I hoped so.

And we do. The problem appears when you think that "having free will" is plain simple like that. No, it isn't that simple, your free will is tied with your environment, body, mind and education. Sometimes you forgot about this, and fall into the misconceptions of this phrase.

Why do you assume that we have free will? You haven't given any justification for it. What about the problem of emergence that I described? Do dogs have free will? What about flies? How about bacteria? Atoms? What makes us different from these things that gives us free will and not them?

 

[Eight Sage]

What about the problem of emergence that I described? Do dogs have free will? What about flies? How about bacteria? Atoms? What makes us different from these things that gives us free will and not them?

anyone who lives has free will. What makes us different from these things that gives us free will and not them? well, lets say we have conscious about the Action --> Reaction process, other than that, it happens because of necessity.

So, for example, an atom can move fast because it is created for that purpose (without getting scientific) but it can't think before act, like we do, that makes us different.

 

[AltF4]

anyone who lives has free will. .

...you still have yet to make any kind of actual argument. You're just claiming that humans have free will on the basis... that you think so.

What makes us different from these things that gives us free will and not them? well, lets say we have conscious about the Action --> Reaction process, other than that, it happens because of necessity.

So, for example, an atom can move fast because it is created for that purpose (without getting scientific) but it can't think before act, like we do, that makes us different

None of that makes the slightest sense... grammatically and logically.

 

[Erimir]

@philosophical theories being useless - well, they are useless when it comes to giving scientific data, yes. That doesn't mean there's nothing worthwhile to discuss. Choosing between atheism and deism is pretty much useless, with regards to science. But that's not why you discuss them.

Anyway, with regards to Eight Sage's contentless arguments...

Free will often does seem to be a very muddled concept.

It's really just the feeling of being able to go either way before you make your decision. The problem is assuming that there's something special about when you actually do make your decision, just because you felt before you made it that you could've gone either way, doesn't mean that in reality your decision could not have been predicted.

Of course this becomes complicated because when people get the impression that their free will is being questioned. Then they might choose to use some form of randomization, or pick the opposite of what they would normally pick. They might say "Yes, I have free will! Watch me put my hand over a candle even tho it's painful!" (people have actually said to me that the fact that we can do this demonstrates we have free will). But it really doesn't. It just means that we must take into account another cause of people's actions - the desire to reassure themselves that they have free will.

Which brings me to an interesting question: how do you avoid fatalism while not believing in "free will"?

 

[Eor]

Now, the TV is itself impossible, and don't even try to think about what would happen if you watched yourself in the TV. I used this merely as a method to illustrate what I mean by free will.

I'm going to quote this first just to ask, before I post more: If it can't happen, why would you use it to defend your position? I agree it's impossible, but that's because I believe in free will, and that there is no set future. However, I'm going to assume that it could work for this post.

That means that those two people have no free will. What they are going to do and say is already predetermined. If you asked them "why did you have that conversation"? They would respond "I chose to", but that is just an illusion. In fact that very response would have been predetermined as well!

I completely disagree with your conclusion. All that this would mean is that you saw the result of their action, not that they couldn't choose otherwise. If the man had decided to pick to not have a conversation, you wouldn't have seen a conversation. You decided to wear the clothes you're wearing now. You can't change what you're wearing, but that doesn't mean that you didn't have a choice when you put it on, which is just what I see you doing right now.

I also don't see why you decide to label his choice as an illusion. It's not the choice that was the illusion, it was fate that's the illusion. All you saw was the result of his action, making you think that it was predetermined.

Actually, this post is terrible because your analogy is god awful. In order for somebody like me to debate it, I have to accept that your side is right, because that's the only way such a TV could work. It's like if I said 'lets just pretend for a moment that homosexuals are inheritantly evil. Because they're evil, they shouldn't be tolerated. Discuss". There is no way I could debate such a proposition, because it would require me to accept something that is not what I argue.

 

[AltF4]

That analogy was only intended to illustrate what it was that I mean by Free Will, because there was still some lingering confusion. Probably my fault for not explaining myself well enough. You can ignore the magical TV analogy if you wish.

Going forward without it, then:

The problem with free will is that it violates causality, as I said in the first post. To better see why, let's explore two possibilities:

1) You (as a human being) consist entirely of physical matter and nothing else. By this I mean there is no kind of extra-physical "mind" or "soul". (as typically defined in an entry level philosophy class) In this case, the problem of emergence becomes apparent. Humans are completely made of atoms, which do not have free will. Humans, by extension, also do not have free will. Human action is completely dictated by scientific law that governs physical bodies, which leave no room for choice.

2) You believe in some kind of extra-physical "mind" which is capable of making choices which is impossible for a purely physical entity. (Mind-body Dualists, for those philosophers reading) The issue you then run into is the "mind-body problem". Which essentially says "how does the mind affect the body"? It's a problem because in order for the mind to interact with the body, it has to break all sorts of physical laws. Such as conservation of momentum, energy, and mass. But most of all it violates causality.

Either way, you're left with a situation where free will is impossible.

 

[Eor]

I don't see how me deciding to do something affects Casualty. Cause and Effect does not mean every cause results in the same effect. If you have the exact same variables, then yeah.

This is, in my mind, how I would describe it. Lets say I'm dropping a marble down a wooden track. I drop it down, and it falls down. Now lets say I do the same thing, but this time I decide to kick the track. The marble flies off. the kick would be manipulating the result. The kick would be like free will.

Your billiard example does not work because a ball is not a human. It's like me using iron for an experiment, then saying that the results of it disprove some notion about Calcium.

I'm not going to lie, I don't see how you can claim Free Will contradicts Cause and Effect. I see your examples as being false, but I think you're only using them as an attempt to hold back from a full argument that might be too confusing. But basically, I see no reason why free will cannot work with cause and effect. I see free will as just being part of a cause, or being a variable that causes an uncertain result.

 

[cF=)]

This is, in my mind, how I would describe it. Lets say I'm dropping a marble down a wooden track. I drop it down, and it falls down. Now lets say I do the same thing, but this time I decide to kick the track. The marble flies off. the kick would be manipulating the result. The kick would be like free will.

I don't know why you care about the result, you still had to act following a certain order of actions, which all had to be triggered by something else; cause and effect. Moving the track away shows that you don't understand this concept, because it's exactly what Erimir described as "reassuring yourself", when all in all, a chemical reaction in your brain had to be triggered by something in order to kick the track. And atoms are atoms, as we say, they obey the same principles described in physics.

However, AltF4, if we enter the quantum world, couldn't our actions be the result of Heisenberg's principle of uncertainty? We "chose" to act in a certain way (because an endless number of possibilities were available to us), but this choice destroyed the rest of the possibility spectrum associated with what we did at that moment in time. Is this logical?

 

[Eor]

Well that makes sense.

I'm not fully sure, though, what this means. No free will means that, basically, nothing we do is our fault. Not only is life meaningless, but the fact that I procrastinate is not my fault, therefore I shouldn't worry about it, as I can't do anything about who I am or what I do? So is my life just the same as if I'm watching a movie through the eyes of the main character? I'm not trying to use those to disprove anything you're saying, I just want to make absolutely sure that's what the argument is over.

I can't debate with you guys over science from my own perception of it, as CF=) showed I apparently don't understand what the discussion is truly over, which is true. Back later when I find some website that I can steal from

 

[cF=)]

I'm not fully sure, though, what this means. No free will means that, basically, nothing we do is our fault. Not only is life meaningless, but the fact that I procrastinate is not my fault, therefore I shouldn't worry about it, as I can't do anything about who I am or what I do? So is my life just the same as if I'm watching a movie through the eyes of the main character? I'm not trying to use those to disprove anything you're saying, I just want to make absolutely sure that's what the argument is over.

Exactly right, this is why free will's been bugging science for a long period of time.

 

[AltF4]

Eor:

Don't you see that I've already countered your arguments? You assert that marbles don't have free will, but humans do. But what makes us different than marbles in any relevant way?

If you try to say that humans are entirely physical, then we're bound by physical law, which leaves no room for choice. If you say that there is a non-physical mind, then you're left with the mind-body problem.



cF: I talked a bit about this in my third post in this thread, I think. Quantum mechanics at first looks like it leaves a window for free will. There's a bit of randomness involved, and an initial gut reaction is: "What if we humans can make a small change at the quantum level which cascades into an observable macro level?" But that would still violate quantum mechanics.

The positions and velocities of particles are described in great detail in quantum mechanics. And although they involve a bit of randomness, they still have to obey certain probabilities. The position of a particle may, for example, be distributed normally. It has to obey this probability density function. (And not the whim of an outside agent)

Besides, this doesn't solve any issues with the mind-body problem. An outside agent affecting the physical world violates locality and thus causality.


Eor again: The easiest way to prove that free will violates causality is to show that it violates locality. Locality is the principle that "distant objects cannot have direct influence on one another: an object is influenced directly only by its immediate surroundings." -Wikipedia. The effects from one object must commute from one to the other, like falling dominoes. Locality and causality are equivalent. A good explanation for why can be found in "A brief history of time" by Hawking. But I can try to explain why if you don't want to read a whole book just for the answer!

Let's use another quick hypothetical situation to aid us in demonstrating why free will is impossible. Imagine you are standing in a completely dark room, no sensory input. You can substitute this room for something else if you wish, but the gist is that there is no causal reason for you to move, no outside stimuli which would interfere with our situation.

You punch yourself in the face. Why? Let's go up the chain. Your hand obeyed an electrical signal from your brain, which was triggered by a chemical imbalance in certain areas, *the rest gets fuzzy because we don't entirely know every process of how the brain works, but you get the picture* until eventually you're left with just one single atom.

You would like to claim that you *chose* to punch yourself in the face by exploiting the small random effects in quantum mechanics. Let's say in order to punch yourself in the face, the particle would have to move up exactly 1 pm (picometer), and it did.

What caused the particle to move in that direction? If you say another particle caused it, then you're deferring the issue down the causal line. Then what caused that other particle? And you're left with the exact same question.

If you say that the particle moved upwards 1 pm due to an external "mind", then you're violating locality. Only spacially adjacent objects can affect a particle.

If you say that the particle moved entirely due to quantum randomness, then you've violated causality directly because this effect was then without cause.

No matter how you break it down, you violate causality.

 

[Eor]

I'm just going to say right now that no matter what is shown to me, I'm not going to stop believing in Free Will because that's what is needed for me to exist. Even if all the scientific evidence is shown to me that free will is impossible, I'll probably adopt a religion and use it to show free will. And since I know that my way of thinking is impossible to have a debate with because it's not based on evidence, goodbye.

 

[AltF4]

Lol! And I agree with you on the moral and legal implications of free will. We sort of have to go on the assumption that we have free will. Outside of debating this, I kind of hold on to the hope that perhaps there's something undiscovered that might make make choice possible. Stranger things have happened, yes?

 

[Erimir]

Well, this is what I was getting at with my question about how we avoid fatalism if we don't believe in free will.

I'm not fully sure, though, what this means. No free will means that, basically, nothing we do is our fault. Not only is life meaningless, but the fact that I procrastinate is not my fault, therefore I shouldn't worry about it, as I can't do anything about who I am or what I do?

Well... what do you mean by "fault"?

I do not think that the concepts of responsibility and choice are invalidated by there being no libertarian free will. Compatibilist free will provides a framework for discussing those things, and it makes sense for me. If you did something that you are responsible for, then it means you weren't coerced or physically forced into doing it. That is reason enough to treat the person responsible the way we already do. Under that view, the fact that you procrastinate is, in fact, your fault (probably).

And the way I hear libertarian free will explained, it doesn't sound any better to me. I mean, how would it work? And why does it solve this problem any better?