• Ryan B
    8
    Lately, there seems to a high level of certainty among scientists that determinism is the only rational and scientific position one can take in regard to the question of free will. Any defense of free will or volition is seen as anti-scientific in ways similar to the way behaviorists of the first half of the twentieth century thought about subjective experience. The behaviorists, in recognizing that subjective experience could not be easily quantified, concluded that it therefore didn’t exist, and that human behavior could be fully explained in terms of stimulus-response. Similarly, the determinists, in recognizing that free will cannot be easily quantified or explained, have concluded that it doesn’t exist and can be fully explained by the stimulus-response of physical causation.

    Determinists claim that free will is an illusion, that our thoughts and actions are determined by the electrochemical activity in our brains. They ask: If all physical phenomena can be reduced to physical cause-and-effect relationships, then why would our brains and minds be exempt? Everything from the motions of the planets to the circulation of our blood can be explained in terms of physics, chemistry, and biology; and the brain, as part of our body, cannot be exempt from those laws. Further, since, to the best of our knowledge, our minds arise out of brain activity, it holds that our minds should be subject to those same physical, deterministic laws.

    To the determinist, I have no choice but to be typing this and you have no choice regarding how you will respond. Determined by the anatomy, physiology, and biochemistry of our brains, our actions are fully determined and the perception of choice is therefore an illusion. The same holds for everyone; just as my thoughts and actions are determined, the thoughts and actions of others are similarly determined. If you accept the full implications of this (which I think few people do), you realize that this runs counter to the assumption of choice and responsibility that underlies all academic and moral debate, as well as all psychological therapy and counseling. It also contradicts every waking moment of our everyday experience.

    But the fact that it contradicts our assumptions and experience doesn’t necessarily make it untrue. The larger problem with determinism is the structure of the argument and the certainty to which its proponents hold it as the only reasonable conception of truth regarding free will.

    The fact is, science has no satisfactory explanation for how consciousness and subjective experience arises out of the brain. Within the scientific and philosophical community, consciousness is an open question, a mystery that few people pretend to have solved. The subject of free will is inextricably tied to the subject of consciousness, so if we haven’t solved consciousness, it goes without saying that we haven’t solved the problem of free will. It’s an open question as long as consciousness is an open question, and the problem of consciousness is well established.

    Science, for example, can tell us with great precision about the wavelengths of light that produce the color red. Science can also describe the electrochemical propagation of impulses from the retina through the optic nerve to the visual cortex of the brain that the color red produces. MRI imaging can also highlight which parts of the brain are activated in response to the specific object and color. But despite all of this, there is, as of yet, no explanation as to what it means to perceive the color red. We still have no idea how all of the electrical and chemical activity in the brain and all of the neuronal firing actually creates consciousness. Further, if we can’t explain consciousness, then we certainly can’t explain something like free will which depends on our understanding of consciousness and the mind-brain interaction.

    This is where the appeal to ignorance becomes relevant. The appeal to ignorance is “the assumption of a conclusion or fact based primarily on lack of evidence to the contrary.” The argument can take the following forms:

    X is true because you cannot prove that X is false.
    X is false because you cannot prove that X is true.

    Determinism is claiming that free will is false because you cannot prove that is is true, or alternatively, that the mind is physically determined because you cannot prove that it isn’t.

    You cannot use your lack of understanding regarding a subject as a premise for your conclusion. The determinist is essentially making this argument:

    - Science can only explain things in terms of physical cause and effect.
    - Science has no explanation for how consciousness and subjective experience arises out of the brain.
    - Therefore, consciousness can be reduced to physical cause and effect.

    The fallacy is obvious; our lack of understanding of consciousness cannot be taken as a premise for our claim that we understand it to be entirely physically determined. It’s possible that our brains and minds are synonymous and physically determined, but without a conclusive explanation of consciousness we cannot make this claim with any degree of certainty or confidence.

    Until there is conclusive evidence to the contrary, I have no reason to doubt my own capacity for free choice, which is continuously confirmed as part of, in fact the essence of, my subjective experience. I am justified in believing this in exactly the same way I’m justified in believing that the external world and other minds exist. If I want to take skepticism to the extreme, I could doubt all of this, but it would run counter to most of my experience and evidence and would be of no practical value whatsoever.
  • Pierre-Normand
    2.2k
    @Ryan B Your discussion appears premised on the assumption that belief in the existence of free will precludes belief in determinism. However, among the several possible philosophical stances on the problem of free will, determinism and responsibility; compatibilism appears to be the most popular. See the question "Free will: compatibilism, libertarianism, or no free will?" in this PhilPapers survey. Compatibilism is the thesis that free will and determinism are compatible.

    Of course, some philosophers (and many scientists) are hard-determinists who believe that determinism precludes free will, that the laws of nature are broadly deterministic (while quantum indeterminacies are deemed by them to be irrelevant to issue of free will), and therefore that free will is a illusion. And other philosophers are libertarians who also believe that free will is incompatible with determinism, that we have free will, and that, therefore, determinism is false.

    But even among contemporary libertarians, few of them believe that mind/body interactionist-dualism is required in order to account for the possibility of free will. They rather endorse some forms of monist naturalistic accounts of emergence or downward-causation. Just like the compatibilists, those libertarians are focused on describing how mind and body are related as different features of the physical world, characterizing different levels of analysis or organisation of living rational animals, rather than conceiving of mind and body as separate substances in traditional Cartesian fashion.
  • LD Saunders
    312
    With respect to the very first sentence in the very first post, I'm not claiming any expertise at all in this field, but I do recall watching a video of the biologist Kenneth R. Miller, on youtube, where he was interviewed by Gad Saad, a university professor himself. As I recall, since Mr. Miller's most recent book addresses the free-will issue, although not in the depth I thought it would have given the title of the book, he said that he had spoken with a lot of neuroscientists on this topic. The overwhelming response he got was that we know far too little about the brain and consciousness to even be discussing this issue of free will. In other words, most working neuroscientists who are engaged in full-time work at universities were unwilling to even take a position on free-will. Sam Harris may claim he is a neuroscientist, but he simply got a degree in the subject, and does not research in it, and his background was in philosophy, not something like biochemistry. Robert Sapolsky is a professor at Stanford in neurobiology, and he often states there is no free-will, but his actual research has nothing to do with the topic and his reasoning on the issue is rather overly simplistic, and such views have been ripped to shreds by the likes of Massimo Pigliucci, who has 2 biology Ph.D.s and one in philosophy.

    The idea that free-will cannot exist in a causal universe has several problems. For all we know the process that gives rise to consciousness also allows for free-will in the sense that the mind is now a causal agent. That would not prevent a causal chain, it would simply make free-will a part of this chain, and I've never heard Harris or Sapolsky explain why this cannot be the case. Moreover, neither of them has a sophisticated background in math and physics, where topics like non-linear dynamics arise.
  • Relativist
    2.1k

    Ryan - You're engaging in a false dichotomy between libertarian free will and absence of choice. A compatibilist account of free will gives you both free will and determinism. You can read about compatibilism at this link.

    Your choices are freely willed if they are a product of your mind. But your choices are a product of the beliefs you hold and the strength of these convictions, your desires and impulses - and how strongly these are felt. You may decide upon the choice that you believe will make you happiest, or that you believe will have the most beneficial outcome. Or you may make a non-optimal choice because of a streak of perverseness that you have, perhaps to spite yourself or someone you're pissed off at. But all of these factors are consistent with determinism - they are the collective set of factors that determine what you will choose. Determinism doesn't imply you are under the control of something else, or there's an absence of control. It just means that your mental functions are the product of the machinery of your mind.

    "Libertarian" free will is defined as nothing more than "non-deterministic" free will. It is impossible to know whether or not we have it because there is no act of free will that isn't explainable under compatibilism.
  • Rank Amateur
    1.5k
    Amateur question - Can this determinism be viewed as a regression of a series of acts of free will of others ?
  • Damir Ibrisimovic
    129
    Determinism is claiming that free will is false because you cannot prove that is is true, or alternatively, that the mind is physically determined because you cannot prove that it isn’t.Ryan B

    Here we go again... :)

    My old joke:

    Since Libet's findings started to trickle out -
    there was a lot of nonsense about our Free Will... :)
    What???!!! My Free Will is useless???!!! I'll give it up... :)
    Here my friend take it and tell me what to do... :)

    Now, how could I give up something I do/did not have??? :)

    I have started this joke on 22 May 2011. Since then I haven't encountered many discussions still evoking the ancient notion of determinism. The Joke clearly outlines the reasonings that are so simple that we can refute determinism in a caffe... :)

    There is a new paradigm... Cause and effect driven universe is now replaced by agents driven universe... :)

    I know that paradigm change is not easy... But, if we wish to get rid of stale discussions like this one, we need to start somewhere... :)

    Enjoy the day, :cool:
  • Ötzi
    17
    Ask yourself, what are your choices based on? The answer is quite simple: your reference framework. Now this framework exists for a small part in the conscious mind and for a large part in the subconscious mind. Keeping all past experiences alive in the conscious mind would significantly clutter and slow down your decision-making., hence experiences are moved to the subconscious. Each and every choice you make is based on a combination of a metaphorical balance in the subconscious mind and a conscious weighing of perceived options.

    As experiences are derived from physical occurrences. so the law of cause and effect still holds here.

    Does free will in any way enhance your choices? Arguably not. What this problem ultimately boils down to: is there an element of randomness to reality? Albert Einstein did not believe so. On the uncertainty principle he commented: "God does not gamble." I believe he is correct. The fact that certain complementary variables cannot be known in quantum physics does not prove the existence of randomness.

    So there, my debunking of the free will.
  • PossibleAaran
    243
    Hi

    insightfully noted that your discussion of free-will vs determinism fails to appreciate a third position which is very popular in Philosophy at present - Compatibalism. The Compatibalist view is usually expressed by saying that free-will and determinism are compatible. I think that is a misleading way of describing the view as it is defended by its most capable advocates. I understand Compatibalism as making two claims. First, radical libertarian free-will of the sort which classic Theists and Dualists affirmed does not exist. Nobody has free-will in the sense of the ability to make choices unaffected by physical causation. Second, you should not worry about this, because we do have free-will in a different important sense - roughly we can to do what we want to do, and this is the only kind of free-will we need to make morally responsible choice possible.

    I am inclined to think that the first claim of Compatibalism is true, but that the second is false. That is to say, I think that there is no libertarian free-will, but that morally responsible choice is impossible without it. That we have a weaker sort of free-will is not enough.

    PA
  • Rank Amateur
    1.5k
    The answer is quite simple: your reference framework. Now this framework exists for a small part in the conscious mind and for a large part in the subconscious mind. Keeping all past experiences alive in the conscious mind would significantly clutter and slow down your decision-making., hence experiences are moved to the subconscious. Each and every choice you make is based on a combination of a metaphorical balance in the subconscious mind and a conscious weighing of perceived options.Ötzi

    is it fair to say that this "framework" is an amalgamation of the acts of freewill of others. Can't a case be made - that all of the things that go into this "determinism" are a regression of the entire history of acts of free will of others. The way I read this - it appears to be more a random programming installed by the manufacture , and less a personal history of accumulated experiences.
  • Ötzi
    17

    If that were the case, free will must have originated somewhere. Do animals have free will? Bacteria? Primates? When did free will arise and how could free will be an evolutionary success compared to non-free will?

    The way I see it, nature as a whole seeks the most efficient way to get from state A to state B to state C, etc. Apparently sentient beings and cognition are part of this motion. I do see there is a lot of trial and error in behavior, even in animals. Perhaps the trial part could be interpreted as free will. In that case still, free will would be a primal, untamed force that would become fixated once tamed by conditioning.
  • Rank Amateur
    1.5k
    Thanks - pretty sure I don't know enough about this to ask anything reasonably intelligent about it, but I won't let that stop me.

    If that were the case, free will must have originated somewhere.Ötzi

    My very novice question of what is the origin of these restrictions on free will, where did they originate - are they "installed at manufacture" somehow - or are they a personal history of observation and experience - of others, acting on free will inside their history, who in turn are doing the same of other etc etc.

    In my amateur reasoning - this is a regression back to where there is less and less personal history, and less and less restrictions.

    I guess i see this elevation of thought and reason as evolutionary. Similar to trying to find the absolute first instant a man walked upright. We know it had a beginning - but we can't say, with any degree of certainty which individual organism was the absolute first.
  • Ötzi
    17

    You could turn the problem around and look for the origin of restrictions on free will. These restrictions would then be imposed by the surrounding material world and its processes of conditioning. In this case free will must have been present before life was even present. If free will has existed before life and exists in life, then it must also be (one of) the cause(s) of life. Does that remind you of something? ;)
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