Kachana

I'm afraid this may all seem rather jumbled, not least because I'm not sure what exactly it means to have, and therefore how to define free will, however intuitively appealing and obvious the notion may seem, but here goes......

I'll go with a definition (the incompatibilist position) from the <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/#3" target="_blank">stanford encyclopaedia of philosophy</a> that:

So to bring evolution into it, if we take the following premises:

p1. We humans have the sensation of free will as described above.
p2. The sensation of free will has been selected for by natural selection.
p3. Natural selection selects traits that confer a survival advantage/ increase reproductive fitness.
c1. The sensation of free will is somehow advantageous to human survival.

Now, how might the sensation of free will be advantageous to survival?

The only way I can think of is if it allowed the animal/ human to actually choose outcomes in the way described above. If the animal is merely following a set of behaviours prescribed by a set of physical laws that it could not have chosen differently, why then would we expect the animal to have evolved the sensation of free will?

It could be said that the sense of having free will is a by-product of something else that confers a survival advantage, and thus we don't actually have free will. But in the absence of any evidence that it is a by-product, is this a rational conclusion to hold to?

Comments?

[ February 19, 2002: Message edited by: Kachana ]</p>

Francois Tremblay

Your definition confuses metaphysical free will and the usual definition of free will. Metaphysical free will (that is, to be free from the total causality of material forces) is impossible, since our mind is part of reality. Evolution cannot select against that, for the simple reason that evolution is a material law which "acts" on material beings.

There is only one action that we could have performed given the initial state of reality before our choice. But that has nothing to do with epistemic free will, volition, that is, making choices as we understand it. THAT definitively has been selected for, since we are volitional and most other animals are not except those evolutionary closest to us. It permits an animal to be far more flexible in the acquisition of knowledge and other evolutionary advantages than simple instinct can, in the long run.

Laurentius

AVE
Just as I was going to say it myself, you stated it in your final paragraph:

It kind of seems obvious to me that the sense of being endowed with free will is a by-product. Let us grossly compare:

Animals may behave as follows:
1. sense the need
2. and follow the urge
3. until the need is satisfied
4. or fail, and sense a new need
5. whose urge they follow
6. until the need is satisfied
7. or fail ... (and so on)

Humans may behave as follows:
1. sense the need
2. identify and analyze the options
3. make a decision upon the target and the strategy to reach it
4. follow the plan
5. until the need is satisfied
6. or fail... (and cycle is repeated).

I do not see how Man would be able to reason and make decisions without automatically having the feeling of being endowed with free will.
AVE

Kachana

Ok. Whist I also think that metaphysical free will is untenable, what then does it mean to have non-metaphysical free will?

How does epistemic free will differ functionally from us merely being automatons with the illusion of having free will? It seems that epistemic free will is not really free in any meaningful sense other than to describe our subjective perceptions.

I am perplexed as to why then we have evolved the illusion that we have free will if we do not have metaphysical free will, that is, if we just have the illusion of free will that does not affect our behaviour. How can this type of free will even in principle affect our actions such that a survival advantage is provided?

My question now would be: How can epistemic free will (volition) permit an animal to be gain evolutionary advantages?

If we have epistemic free will but not metaphysical free will (i.e. we are truly bound to make one particular choice given a particular state of reality), then this epistemic free will by definition cannot affect our behaviour such it can confer a survival advantage and be selected for.

Kachana

I can see that it could well be a by product of humans processing data and acting automatically upon them, making the subjective feeling of free will a mere epiphenomenon. However, I'm not sure that this conclusion is certain; computers and neural networks constantly make decisions from environmental input based purely on physical laws whithout the feeling of making those decisions themselves.

excreationist

Well both humans and other animals weigh up their possible actions and make decisions. The difference is that humans can commentate this decision-making process with language. So they can be aware that there is a decision-making process going on - from a detached analytical perspective. And they could decide that they won't do what the best thing initially seemed to be since they want to have free-will. So they explicitly think they are exercising free-will but actually they are still seeking the greatest pleasures and/or avoiding the greatest pains. Perhaps they associate a lack of free-will with boredom and "free-will" with newness and aliveness.

Anyway, our decision making processes are a little different to other animals since we involve a lot of language but we still are limited to maximizing pleasure and/or minimizing pain. And we explicitly think we have free-will - animals wouldn't be capable of thinking those abstract concepts since they don't know language.

excreationist

Well people have generalized motivational drives - I think they seek pleasures such as newness, connectedness and relief and avoid pains like frustration. And all goals that we have can be traced back through associations to these fundamental pleasures and pains.
Computers on the other hand are just told what to do, step by step. Currently I think neural networks are given the goal explicitly, then the neural network works out what to do.
But with animals, they work out for themselves what the goals will be. So they "chose" these goals.
I think that animals that are only "aware" just make decisions and act - they don't ponder the act of making decisions. Conscious animals, like humans who know language are explicitly aware of making decisions because they can describe this internally using language and be aware of those statements.

Laurentius

With intelligence being defined so diferently by experts, and with Artificial Inteligence failing to pass any test that would give it the right to be even comparable with human intelligence, I wonder how much faith should one have in the capabilities of this kind of equipment so as to bring it into a discussion about free-will.

Free-will.
It needs will to exist in order for it to be free. Well, computers have no will of their own. Living things do.
AVE

Francois Tremblay

It means that one can make choices. Pretty simple.


Well, it's not a subjective perception : we are indeed free at the level that we can perceive. We do not perceive atoms banging around, or environmental and genetic factors contributing to a given decision, we make a decision. And that is the basis of cognition : without being able to focus, we could not, for example, be having this discussion.


It is not an illusion : it is quite real. Obviously, we do make choices. So I'm not sure where the illusion comes in.


Laurentius already detailed that process. Instead of solely acting on genetic impulses based on a relatively vague and limited set of circumstances, we are free to analyse and make a decision within the whole range of possible evidence and methods.


I am not sure where you get that idea. The inevitable fact that we are bound to material causality does not make our decision only as valid as the one another animal would take. I think you are confusing the metaphysical and epistemic level. That we are all material does not mean that we all think the same way.