jj

Bill's post can say what it wants, but neurons turn on and off due to QM interactions (that's what chemistry is, after all), and all QM interactions appear, to date, to be probabilistic, and describing probabilistic behaviors of a system that does not appear to have hidden states.

This destroys determinism in my view, completely.

Now, randomness plus memory equals learning. This is something that has been demonstrated, even using computer programs, and there is no doubt that the brain adapts by building small structures that change the liklihood of neurons firing. So, these structures are the physical manifestation of memory, and what they literally do is change the PROBABILITY that a neuron fires.

So, is this free will, well, we have a philosophical question to resolve, is free will all of that which is not determinism, or is "free will" something more than all that is not determinism.

I do conclude that our brains function as a learning apparatus that uses random processes, biased by natural processes in the brain, that create thought. Is this free will? Good question.

This certainly does mean that due ONLY to the random processes, different people will think different things, reach different decisions, and so on.

AnthonyAdams45

What is at risk regarding free will that people so devoutly cling to a concept of which they, the adherents, can make no sense?

Randomness is not free will, we know. As it is random, it is not willed.

Determinism is not free will, we are pretty sure. As it is determined, it is not free, we are pretty sure.

Probabilism is not free will, if determinism is not and randomness is not. Dice do not will the numbers they turn up, but their behavior is governed by probability. Indeed, even though the number generated by the dice roll is random, it will not do to say the number was "freely" generated, as causal explanations can be constructed for the actual dice role after the fact, even if not before the fact.

So wills are not free? So what? What is lost?

We, whoever we are have not "lost control of our lives." We, whatever we are, are in the causal chain that leads to the outcome just as surely as the dice are in the causal chain leading to the "boxcars" staring up at us from the table. We, whatever that means, don't cease to exist as an independent thinking thing, a thing that creates meaning, that affects others for good or ill, that lives a life just as surely without a free will as it did with one.

What would you do with a free will if you had one?

jj

I think somewhere in here we're still begging the question of just what "free will" is, now, aren't we?

We can agree on determinism, it's not free will. I think (despite some people's seemingly ungermane responses) that we can falsify determinism. So that one is out.

Is pure randomness free will? Good question. You argue that there is "no will", but in fact if the randomness expresses itself as "I will myself to go down to the Cow and Bucket and have a Guinness", who are we to say that's not free will?

Probabilism (i.e. "filtered randomness", i.e. Markov processes, neural nets, etc), again, has (or can have) a learning component and a random component. As such it leads to experimentation and growth, by allowing the erasure or supplantation of old paradigms with new.

Is this free will? I think that depends on what we call free will.

If you mean "free will" in the sense that there is some overarching thing called a "will", then we're into the supernatural here, aren't we?

If we conclude, as I think we must, that life is a physical process, then we can dismiss that definition of free will as a supernatural idea.

Can you think of a way to falsify the idea "I have free will"? The question is not asked idly, I assure you.

AnthonyAdams45

But I think that's because I do not know what "free will" means. And I do not take this idly.

Here's a story (true, more or less) that I've been trying to deal with for YEARS:

A friend and I were sitting in a Roy Rogers just off the Mall in DC. In came a family of redheads. From Mom and Pop, right down to the babe in arms, a range of red haired people. The eldest appeared to be a 16 year old girl. My friend and I look at her admiringly. He leans over to me and says, "I always wanted to fall in love with a red-headed girl."

What kept him from doing that? If I can't choose who I fall in love with, what sense can be made of choosing anything?

So let's keep working on a definition. Then we'll consider the test.

jj

Ok, I understand your dilemma there, indeed.

I would propose that there are two possibilities, the first would be some supernatural thing called "free will". This would mean that when our neurons said "no" we could still say yes.

The second would result from the probabilistic functions of our brains, is based partially in reasoning, partially in learning, and partially in randomness. This would mean that sometimes we say "yes" when we intended or were likely to decide to say "no".

I will continue to argue that the second is not necessarily due to some hidden variable or unknown force that establishes when the electron tunnels over, takes on a new orbital structure, and the neuron fires, but rather due to the fundamental randomness of particles.

AnthonyAdams45

You may have something there, and I'd have it looked at by a specialist.

But seriously, do you take randomness to mean uncaused? I don't think that's what it means at all. Surely a dice roll is random, but it is certainly caused.

Because "if the randomness expresses itself" I didn't make any choice, and certainly if a free will means anything it means the power to choose.

And if you can falsify deteerminism, and not by asserting free will is the case, why worry about proving free will? What alternatives are left?

jj

Ok, I'm being mathematical here. "purely random" means by definition that there is no underlying cause, and you can not, by any process, predict the next outcome OTHER than in terms of probabilistic behaviors.

This appears to be what QM shows us for electron/orbital shifts. If that's right, and there is presently little suggestion otherwise, then random means random, period.

Dice are another issue, they are an example of a mostly pseudorandom result arising from a very chaotic process, HOWEVER there is also a randomness there because of the thermal motion (small, yes) which involves QM interactions at its base.

Ergo, I will certainly agree that "outcome is unknowable" and as far as we can tell, not only unknowable but also purely random.

So, I think determinism is toast, period, end of discussion. This, however, does not prove free will.

bd-from-kg

jj:
Actually there is considerable dissent from the view (implied by the Copenhagen interpretation of QM) that there is "true" or "intrinsic" randomness built into the "fabric of reality". There are at least two viable alternative interpretations that are completely deterministic: the transactional interpretation (already mentioned by Bill) and the many-worlds interpretation.

Whether one finds one of these interpretations more appealing than the Copenhagen interpretation seems to depend on deep metaphysical commitments. Certainly the question cannot be settled by evidence since they all make the same predictions.

Of course, none of this has anything to do with free will. The kind of "free will" you're looking for cannot exist, any more than a square circle can exist; the whole idea is logically incoherent.

But that doesn't mean that free will doesn't exist. There is a whole school of thought called "compatibilism" (to which I subscribe, as you may have gathered from my previous post) that holds that free will properly understood is perfectly compatible with determinism.

Answerer

Well guys, is there a limit set on our 'free-will'(or choice)? If so, I don't think our daily decision making processes could be defined as 'free' will.

jj

Transactional and many-worlds are irrelevant here, in each world, etc, the result still LOOKS random, so any "structure" is unobservable at the very least. Furthermore, the many-worlds interpretation still does not deny the possibility (nor does it provide any evidence against) that the decisions are random, it simply posits that for each decision, the other decision(s) also happened in some other universe. This does lead to a rather huge number of universes, and to me is hideously un-parsimonious, but that's a different issue, there is no evidence one way or the other.

Now, what kind of "free will" am I looking for, pray tell? I dare say I've ASKED questions, not said what it is.

To argue that free will is compatable with absolute determinism makes sense only if you simply assume hidden variables that underly seemingly random processes, a way to make them visible, and so on. Then you get something that may or may not look like free will (depends on the question of randomness, yes?) but that is actually determined at an unobservable level.