Normal

My point was not that Wolfram had the answers, or that you could find the answers in your "peer reviewed journals on cognitive science". The point is NO ONE has the answers on free will, so who is to say if it exists in the brain or not? The point is you cannot provide conclusive (or even convincing) evidence that says free will exists in the brain. The most you can do is show me the area of the brain that is active as a "choice" is being made, or the area of the brain that is active as "choices" are being considered. That is not even close to conclusive evidence that those "choices" even exist.

And if you're denying quantum uncertainty has a role in the existence of free will, I might as well give up.

Normal

whoops, double post

yguy

But you assume the decision-making takes place entirely within the neurological arena, a fact not in evidence.

One thing that we can say about a living entity is that it is hardwired to desire to live. If this is the case, how is it that on one hand, people have on the one hand been known to accept death by torture rather than give up their beliefs - and on the other hand have done things they knew were stupid (such as drug abuse) and would put their lives at risk for nothing?

Wounded King

As you may recall I was talking about the 'illusion' of free will, I am by no means convinced that any such thing exists.

I cannot make out your stance on the matter though, at the moment you seem to be saying that it cannot be shown to exist, but previously you were saying its existence proves the existence of the soul, going by your definition.

Normal

Let me re-iterate my position for the nth time:

1. Free will might exist. It is unknown to science.

2. I assume free will exists because I have empirical experience making choices.

Wyz_sub10, the original person I was debating with, accepted that free will exists, on similar evidence I assume.

3. Free will, defined in my terms as the "existence of choice combined with the power of making a choice", does not account for the gap between the existence of choice, and the execution of choice. That gap I define as the "soul", or in other words, the operator of free will.

I cannot prove to you, one way or the other, if free will exists, but I have considerably more evidence to suggest it exists (by making choices, which I can empirically observe) then it doesn't exist (by constantly being forced down a path I can't control, which I have never empirically experienced in my life).

The soul, the actual "maker" of those choices, if you will, can not be empirically observed, it is afterall the thing "making" the choices. That is why it is "metaphysical" and lacks empirical evidence. All I have evidence of is the choices, not the chooser.

Neurology counterarguments to the soul must:

1. Prove (or disprove) that free will exists (and specific to neurology: within the brain)
2. Prove (provide evidence for) the function of the brain that makes the choices

In that order

You cannot prove 2 with neurology without even proving 1 with neurology, making all neurology-related claims against my definition baseless.

If you disprove 1, with neurology, or quantum physics, or anything, I will yeild and understand that my definition of a soul has been falsified.

I hope I have made myself clear.

Goober

Normal,

My point was that the brain has free will according to my definition of free will. There isn't a neurologist in the world who would argue that the brain does not take in information and make decisions based on it, hence we have free will according to my definition. Maybe neurologists haven't shown your definition of free will to exist, but you only just posted yours, so how the hell could I know what that was. Now that I actually know your definition for a change, I would be happy to debate it.

Contradiction?

Also, logic is never 'in action'. We use logic, but logic itself does not do anything. We use the number two, but the number two itself does not do anything. None of these abstract concepts actually do anything, so when we use logic to deduce 1+1=2 it is us who does something using the abstract concepts of logic,1 and 2. Logic itself does not do it, it does not come into our brains and go 'hiya, I'm logic, did you know 1+1=2?'. This makes these abstract concepts totally different to your definition of a soul, which is why I think your definition of the soul is not an abstract concept, ie it is not metaphysical.

I'll have a think about free will using your definitions, and I'll try to post a response tonight, and we can let the debate begin!

Goober

Alright, Normal.

Does free will really exist? (according to your definition, of course) It is central to your argument that free will MUST exist, otherwise there can be no operator of free will. It is also central to your argument that there is no naturalistic explanation for free will, should it exist, otherwise there would be no need for your metaphysical soul. Since you are making the positive statement 'free will exists', you need evidence for this otherwise it is ruled out be occam's razor, and hence your soul is ruled out.

I think you would agree that 'the existence of multiple possible choices' is a better statement that 'the existence of choice', because it is always possible that there is only a single possible choice in any given situation, in which case there would be no free will according to the your concept of free will, because you would always have to take the one possible choice.

Now, how do you show that in any given situation there are multiple possible choices? IMO, you can't. To prove this you would need to show that in two exactly identical situations, different choices would be made by the same person. But re-running the exact same situation multiple times in real life is not possible, and merely having similar situtations is not enough, because whether or not free will exists, real life is still a chaotic system where small differences in the initial situation will have large differences in the final decision. The fact that you might think that you could make a different choice does not prove that you could actually make a different choice.

In real life we have only observed that in a set of circumstances, a unique choice is made. You cannot make two choices about one situation, ie I cannot decide to both type this and not type this at the same time. So the empirical evidence before us suggests that in every case the choice is unique, ie only one is made. Therefore there is no evidence that multiple choices do exist in real life, because we have only ever observed one choice being made.

Quantum effects make no differnce to this in my opinion, because we observe that even if quantum effects have an effect on how the decision is made, we still only ever observe a unique choice. You don't see me go into a quantum superpostion of 'having decided to type this out' and 'having not decided to type this out'. So there is still no evidence to conclude that multiple possible decisions exist.

There is no evidence to suggest that multiple choices exist and hence no evidence for free will. With no free will (or free will according to your definition), your soul definition fails.

I think I will just add a postscript here explaining why my definition of free will is different to yours. In mine, you make a choice based on the information available to you, this is free will. However, mine does not say that there are multiple choices possible in any given situation. Mine only says that there is an outcome, and this outcome is freely determined by your brain.

Wait, I just thought of another thing. Suppose that multiple possible outcomes do exist in any given situation due to quantum effects. Now an electron passing through a double slit may end up in any number of positions. It's final position is unique; it always ends up in only one position. But if we are saying there are multiple possible outcomes in any situation, then we can say that multiple possible outcomes exist because it could be that the electron could end up in any number of places. So the electron has multiple choices of where to end up, and since it ends up in a unique place that is not determined by external forces it has the power to 'chose' one of these multiple choices. Therefore for an electron, there is the prescence of choice and the power to chose. Therefore electrons have free will, therefore they have souls!

Now, if you admit the fact that quantum effects mean that there definitely are multiple possible outcomes in a given situation, ie multiple choices exist, then you have to admit that electrons have souls. If you deny that electrons have souls, ie that quantum effects do not prove the existence of multiple possible choices, then you have no evidence.

Goober

Yguy,

There is evidence that some aspects of decision making occur withing the brain, like areas of the brain lighting up in MRI images when a person is asked to make decisions about something, and brain damage leading to poor decision making. Can I prove that decision making resides entirely within the brain? No, I can't, and I don't have to.

You are making the positive assertion that decision making occurs in places other than the brain. You need to prove that decision making occurs outside the 'neurological arena', just like scientists had to prove that decision making occurs within the brain. So I guess you're off evidence hunting, or are you just throwing out another indefensible red herring?

Prove that living entities are hardwired to desire to live. Oh, wait you just DISPROVED this with your own examples.

If you want to discuss this, do it in a new thread in evolution.

Wounded King

Dear Goober,

Doesnt the interference pattern in the unmeasured double slit experiment show that the photon makes both choices in its natural state?

It is only when the experimenter measures the passage of the photon through the slits that a choice is made.

If we want to skirt the realms of wild invention we could always mention the many worlds interpretation of QM. Yous simply perform all the possible actions as your brain state evolves from a given superposition, obviously the reduced brainstates will agree with the world they end up in giving you an illusion of free will.

And to Normal,

Your subjective experience of choice can hardly be considered empirical evidence by anyon else. I will try to find you some references to neurological disorders which are derangements of the experience of free will.

One example is passivity in schizophrenics, often associated with the feeling that ones actions are being directed by alien influences.

Spence SA, Brooks DJ, Hirsch SR, Liddle PF, Meehan J, Grasby PM.
A PET study of voluntary movement in schizophrenic patients experiencing passivity phenomena (delusions of alien control).
Brain. 1997 Nov;120 ( Pt 11):1997-2011.


TTFN,

Wounded

Normal

I have never denied that falsifying free will - will in turn falsify my definition of the soul.

The evidence I provided was empirical, observable evidence of the existence of choices, the existence of me making those choices, and thus, the existence of the soul.

This seems unnecessary to me. The very word "choice" means alternative, and suggests that multiple options are available, so essentially having a choice and having "multiple choices" is the same thing. If there were only one option for you, this would not be considering having a choice at all.

IMO, you can't prove that multiple choices are available either, and this is where science also fails. It is true that there is one unique outcome for every set of choices, but that does not disprove the existence of multiple choices at each choice that was made. If you're lost, you can either turn left at the intersection, turn right at the intersection, or stop and ask for help, or any number of things. The choice (and outcome) will be unique, but that does not falsify the existence of multiple choices existing at the time you made the choice.

You empirically can understand that you have multiple options in any given situation, and you can empirically observe the choice that you made once you make it. You only observe one choice being made, but you can observe more then one choice existing.

Free will is largely dependant on quantum uncertainty, or maybe not. The point is that science, right now, has no idea.

I don't believe you have adequately disproved free will according to my defintion at all. Your main argument is that we can only observe one choice being made, which is obvious, but we can also observe more then one alternative choice we COULD have made, and each would have an alternative outcome. My definition of free will "the existence of choice, and the power to choose", only accounts for one choice anyway, but still allows the existence of multiple choices.

Your definition of free will, combined with your definition of "choice" (meaning a singular choice), does not sound like traditional free will at all. If there are not multiple choices, how is the outcome at all determined, or dependant, on your brain?

Ah, this is an interesting point. Again, science fails to give us any answers here, but I would say that for electrons, their position is dependant on their previous state in a much more linear fashion, so it is not so much a "choice" as it is an "effect we can't track down".

Another thing, electrons are not alive. I would restrict the existence of free will to living things, and specifically, humans. My justification for this is simply the complexity of life, which is still (as of this writing) an unsolved mystery.