King's Indian

Hello, Torben! Fun, isn't this?
As for your point: Hmmm. I don't think of other large scale phenomena such as the orbits of planets as having to escape the deterministic behaviour of atoms; what makes us different? And although atoms are quite deterministic, the particles that are even smaller aren't: that's why we can only treat their properties statistically.
I'd be grateful if you could elaborate, if you don't mind.
Take care,
KI

Amos

That's OK, in my opinion there exist no free will outside of Nirvana or Heaven or Elysium.

That being the case I don't see why you people think that there is an argument left for you.

John Page

Drugs

beastmaster

I wouldn't say I am an absolute determinist. I hold open the possibility that the non-conscious brain may have some freedom of thought to it (e.g., dreams may be a mixture of memories (determinism) and free creative association (non-determinism)). But I don't believe that the conscious mind -- the locus of perception and self-identity -- has any ability to control this freedom.

I absolutely believe that the fiction of "free will" is practical: for example, it facilitates guilt, which sears certain memories (painfully) into our skull, lest they be forgotton. I think that the fiction of free will evolved, both biologically and culturally, because, even though the conscious mind is impotent to *decide* moral questions, it is remarkably efficient at organizing and applying morality -- by taking "credit" or "blame" for certain actions, the mind builds "happy" or "sad" pathways to those memories, which eases future decision-making.

Determinism is no threat to morality. Admitting the truth of determinism does not make one immoral. If anything, determinism reassures us that people cannot simply "choose" out of "free will" to up and become evil.

Oi, sorry, KI, I don't understand what you are getting at . . .

Hmm, the mystery of motivation.

Probably the majority of our thoughts serve no function other than to *organize* our thoughts. If our memories stay static for too long, they start to fade or the neural pathways get overgrown, etc. So it is essential to rethink and reorder memories to strengthen ties and throw out the ones that are useless.

When my mind saw this thread on "free will," my caveman brain realized that those old thoughts about "free will" that were accumulating dust in my mental attic suddenly had relevance to my intellectual environment. My mind set to work reestablishing ties with those thoughts and relocating them to more luxurious accommodations. For the sake of some good old exercise, it decided to pound out a few sentences summarizing the thoughts for my elucidation, and perhaps incidentally yours.

Well, as in everything I do, I hope against hope on somehow getting laid out this, though I will admit the chances are scarce.

Nah, my hair's thinning too.

Not at all. As I said before, I haven't even thought about this stuff for years, and I appreciate your interest.

Torben

Yeah, that's my point although I don't believe planets to be the best examples as they are behaving in a way predictable to us. How about the weather? No one would claim the weather to be random nor to have a free will -- but it sure is hard to predict. To me the same must hold true for consciousness or free will. But it doesn't really fell that way, does it?


True, as I wrote there are indeterministic quark events and others. But where does that put us? Our free will is made from essentially (as opposed to apparently) random actions of minuscule particles? So what we perceive as our free will is really made up of billions of random events. How does that ever constitute 'will'? It only explains away the deterministic part but doesn't leave us in control of anything.


I have tried, but I don't know any answers, unfortunately.

You too
Torben

flatland

I'm actually curious as to the true indeterminacy of quantum particles. I'm not sure if there's any science to back this up or refute it, but it seems that the observed indeterminacy is a result of our own observations of the particles, not of the particles themselves. As described here , the behavior of quantum particles changes based on whether we interact with them. This suggests to me that there is nothing necessarily in the particles themselves that requires them to be indeterministic. Rather, it's that our observation methods of these particles is so energetic that it affects them tremendously, beyond our ability to anticipate.

As an analogy, imagine trying to observe a meteor in space not by shining light on it, but by hitting it with another meteor at speed. We would get an apparently random distribution, although the meteor would be still be guided by more standard mechanics.

Given this interpretation, the materialist could easily hold with a perfectly deterministic viewpoint. Just a thought.

Torben

Flatland,

I do believe that radioactive decay or the spatial directions of e.g. neutrinos emitted after annihilation events are truly random events; that we have no possibility of predicting the outcome and where we do not really interfere with the system. Even if these examples turn out to be deterministic, Planck's constant still imposes the lower limit to the details of our knowledge in effect rendering the world indescribable below this limit -- random.
What do you think?

Torben

ReasonableDoubt

Sorry to jump in but i find this topic very fascinating. I have yet to see a convincing argument for the existence of free will. Humans are in the causal chain, and all events are either caused or uncaused (random), correct?

Do humans cause their own existence, or origination? No, so humans are in the causal chain.

If our actions are not determined by something in that chain, then they must be random. If they are random, we cannot control them anyway, so having "free will" to decide is not meaningful.

In order to make our "decisions," we rely on the chain of causation, we know that if we step into the street in front of a car, bad consequences will occur. Those consequences determine our choices.

I think someone on this Board wrote awhile ago, Give me an example of anything that is neither caused nor random. No one has been able to do so.

If we believe that we as humans are the originating cause in the chain, we have to acknowledge that there is "something" other than atoms, matter that respond to the laws of physics, that is that cause. What is it?

Can you actually cause your brain to think something? I don't see how that is possible.

i also don't see any problem with this view. As a compatabilist, you acknowledge the illusion of free will and live that way. So we decide whether actions are voluntary or not-and that is the basis for legal and moral culpability. Voluntariness is not antithetical to determinism, however I believe free will is and cannot exist.

flatland

Torben,

I agree, my question was more along the lines of a thought experiment. I'd like to draw a distinction between truly random and simply 'unable to be observed without causing massive fluctuations'. I do not think a lower limit on our knowledge imposes randomness. Our inability to observe does not make an event indeterminate, only inaccessible. If quantum events are in fact predictable, and just extremely difficult to predict, it would make a materialist viewpoint necessarily deterministic, without freedom or randomness, which I think is the way it actually is.

King's Indian

Ha Ha! I won! I won!

(Only joking)
Hi, Beastmaster!
In point of fact, I'm more than satisfied with your answers. Lots to chew on, and if we eventually meet in the middle it'll probably nearer your middle.
Just to add a few points: Good point, and one that I find interesting. Perhaps as complex social creatures ,that's what nature came up with to stop us barging our way through life. You're not a lapsed catholic, by the way?
My point that you didn't understand: hang on a minute. Hmmm... When you say "the laws of nature force us to eat, or have a slash" etc., I questioned such laws as having any real existence in nature. The laws of nature are (to me) something we discover: they don't exhibit the same kind of reality that (for example) trees or rivers do. They are the products of our minds, in an attempt to understand the world. I was wondering if there were any way to accept such laws at face-value, if our ability to make conscious decisions (including scientific ones) was to be held in doubt. I suppose the argument from pragmatism would do just as well here really: they seem to work. Another good point, in that we can imagine that recollecting past experience and using it to form plans of action is an evolutionary advantage. Have to be careful about the hint of infinite regression; but then again, perhaps this is how we can form the concept of infinite regression. We'll have to work on that: It makes the "caveman brain" sound like too much of a conscious actor. I mean, I don't think I use "realize" when talking about unambiguously mechanical objects eg. my car's fuel gauge realized the car needed to stop for petrol (gas, I mean).Cheer up! at least we have enough freedom to dream that we're more endowed than we really are. (What? What?)
Which reminds me: I did have a point about your opening sentence after all...I'll have to get my head around the idea that the only freedom I do possess is in things that don't really affect the world, but where I don't have freedom is the time it does seem to produce real, observable consequences.
Hoping to stimulate your caveman,
KI

[Added]PS: One more thing. The trouble with accepting convenient fictions for pragmatism's sake is fine in moderation, but once started, where does it all end? Us sharing a pew at midnight mass; that's where, mate!