A simple explanation of free will.

[apeman]

I'm no solipsist, I have no sense that leads me to believe the whole world is just a construct of my mind.

Just because I believe all is thought does not imply that I think it is all my thought. It is just simpler to believe that the whole of reality is thought based ...so the idea that our minds are a subset (separated piece) of another mind (God/universe) is simpler than believing non-thought can produce thought....plus obviously it knocks the whole free will argument on the head.

If the 'whole of reality' is thought based, the intricate weave of wave/particle construction of objects such as galaxies, stars, planets, people, plants, etc, is not designed by your thoughts or mine, or anyone elses....because beginning with Quantum probability/decohereance up to general relativity, motion, gravity, etc, none of this is subject to your thoughts, your will or your design. It does whatever it does regardless of your thoughts, considerations, desires for design modification and so on.

In other worlds, the world that you say is created by your thought, or even your observations does not cater to your will. It is an objective reality regardless of the desires of the observer.

That is not to say that observation is not an aspect of Reality. It is.

It just doesn't help you with 'free will'

The only power that we know that can harness the world is will. We invent things that take control ( to a degree) of reality all the time.

We know that will can impose order ...the world is order ...the world is willed. That doesn't mean that the world exists because I will it though!

 

[Juma]

Of course it can. Your, and mine, mind is part of the world and often wrong. If you are to discuss these matters then you should read up.

You make an assumption that "Your, and mine, mind is part of the world...". That you are observing the world in no way implies that you are (only) a part of it and that all your thoughts are governed by the world as it is.

If my thoughts are caused solely by the world around me, and not also by my opinions , then my thoughts would necessarily only be a truthful reflection of what I actually sensed...rather than also being based on my beliefs about the world. So, for instance, an ant only reflects the reality around it insofar as it is unable to have its own beliefs...therefore an ant doesn't have free will.

This is so fucked up that I dont where to start.

The brain is an information machine that creates a model of the world from the input signals coming from the senses and from hardwired assumptions.
These functions are the result of evolution in that agents that is capable of createing more useful models also have higher chance of getting surviving descendants.

Thus the coupling between your thoughts about the world and the real world is by evolution.

Thus there is nothing that says that our mind have acorrdct model of reality, just a useful one.

 

[DBT]

Ho, hum, no connection has yet been made between 'random' and ''decision making' - nor 'random' and 'human behaviour' - nor 'random' and 'will' (the drive or impulse to act)...yet you persist in asserting; ''this has already been thoroughly explained to DBT.''

Not even a loose connection has been shown, not even a hint of a relationship between the decision making process, which requires information and not randomness...which is just 'noise.'

Interestingly enough, recent neural net visualizations create various discernible patterns from different batches of white noise fed to them. Inceptionism (google blog post).

Altering a single pixel might change the output radically in these entirely deterministic systems. It's chaos, rather than randomness...

The brain could be described as a chaotic but deterministic system, but none of this helps ryan's case for decision making/free will based on quantum randomness.

 

[DBT]

It is the specific structure and electrochemical activity of specialist cells, connections, transmitters, synapses, etc, that enable decision making, and not the fact that everything is made of waveicles.

It is the changes to macro activity of the brain that determines and alters it functioning as a processor, and not quantum randomness or probability, which is common to all. The difference between you and someone else is not determined by quantum composition/state, being common to all, but your inherited DNA and your life experiences.

"In this paper we present a model for a quantum mechanical trigger which regulates synaptic exocytosis, the regulator for ordered brain activity." see http://www.neuroquantology.com/index.php/journal/article/view/168

For example:
Quote;
When it comes to the human brain, even the simplest of acts can be counter-intuitive and deceptively complicated. For example, try stretching your arm.

Nerves in the limb send messages back to your brain, but the subjective experience you have of stretching isn't due to these signals. The feeling that you willed your arm into motion, and the realisation that you moved it at all, are both the result of an area at the back of your brain called the posterior parietal cortex. This region helped to produce the intention to move, and predicted what the movement would feel like, all before you twitched a single muscle.

Michel Desmurget and a team of French neuroscientists arrived at this conclusion by stimulating the brains of seven people with electrodes, while they underwent brain surgery under local anaesthetic. When Desmurget stimulated the parietal cortex, the patients felt a strong desire to move their arms, hands, feet or lips, although they never actually did. Stronger currents cast a powerful illusion, convincing the patients that they had actually moved, even though recordings of electrical activity in their muscles said otherwise.

But when Desmurget stimulated a different region - the premotor cortex - he found the opposite effect. The patients moved their hands, arms or mouths without realising it. One of them flexed his left wrist, fingers and elbow and rotated his forearm, but was completely unaware of it. When his surgeons asked if he felt anything, he said no. Higher currents evoked stronger movements, but still the patients remained blissfully unaware that their limbs and lips were budging.

Yes, we don't always achieve what we will, and things happen that we don't will. I am well aware of this.

Quote;
Neuroscientists have repeatedly pointed out that pattern recognition represents the key to understanding cognition in humans. Pattern recognition also forms the very basis by which we predict future events, i e. we are literally forced to make assumptions concerning outcomes,and we do so by relying on sequences of events experienced in the past.

Huettel et al. point out that their study identifies the role various regions of prefrontal cortex play in moment-to-moment processing of mental events in order to make predictions about future events. Thus implicit predictive models are formed which need to be continuously updated, the disruption of sequence would indicate that the PFC is engaged in a novelty response to pattern changes. As a third possible explanation, Ivry and Knight propose that activation of the prefrontal cortex may reflect the generation of hypotheses, since the formulation of an hypothesis is an essential feature of higher-level cognition.
A monitoring of participants awareness during pattern recognition could provide a test of the PFC’s ability to formulate hypotheses concerning future outcomes.

I am not sure what this has to do with denying free will.

Remember, I am only making suggestions; it is up to you to prove them false due to your certainty for the negative.

Which I've explained to you numerous times.....but whenever I ask you to explain your claim you dodge and weave and deflect by asking me to explain something I've already explained and which is typically ignored.

I have answered you every time. ***Free will shares the property randomness with QM***.

I have explained the connection many times between randomness and free will. We both agreed, through thought experiment, that free will would probably have the property of randomness.

No you haven't.

I have explained this too many times. Every time I answer, you change the subject and then ask me the same questions all over again.

Where? Where is this explanation?

Do you mean something ike the one above, that ''through thought experiment, that free will would probably have the property of randomness?''

That is not an explanation. It is a vague assertion.

Free will and QM both share the same property, but this does not mean everything that is random has free will. Draw a Venn diagram using two circles that overlap partially. QM is one circle, and free will is the other. Where they overlap is randomness.

Or how quantum randomness even allows decision making....which is specific to cells as processors, and is not random.

I don't claim to know how it works. I only know that QM influences decision making, and that is all I can know at this time.

This is just a repeat of your vibrating micro tubules objection...of course there are quantum inputs such as photon/wavelength reflected from objects and interpreted as people and houses, dogs and cats, as there are quantum interactions on micro scales. But this is common to all brains, from gnats and butterflies to human.

The difference between the attributes of human consciousness and butterflies, et al, is not that they share vibrating micro tubules or that there are quantum mechanical triggers which regulates synaptic exocytosis...this is common to all brain function and it is not the 'free' agent that forms conscious perception and thought, these are not the elements that make the difference between the mind of a butterfly and the mind of a human.

That is determined by genetics and physical structures, number of neurons and the complexity of their structures, connections and interactions.

And as we should know, any disruption to the workings of this macro scale system effects consciousness.

The difference between individuals lies not in the fact that vibrating micro tubules and quantum mechanical triggers are common to all, but in the information encoded in DNA, neural architecture and memory information gained through experience.

This is largely a macro scale process of sorting information, and not a quantum/random activity. In fact 'will' can be manipulated by electrical brain stimulation techniques, aka, Delgado and associates. So will is either rational or irrational, but never free from causation.

 

[DBT]

The only power that we know that can harness the world is will.

Not true. The universe at large works on well defined rules and principles, our conventionally accepted fundamental interactions—gravitational, electromagnetic, strong nuclear, and weak nuclear, general relativity and of course quantum...which has not been reconciled with GR.

Your will or my will cannot alter the rules of physics through an act of willpower, we can alter, reconstruct, modify and separate existing elements though the motor actions of out bodies and extensions, our tools.

We invent things that take control ( to a degree) of reality all the time.

You are confusing 'reality' - matter/energy, the laws and principles of physics, QM included, and the objects and events of the world that we interact with, and are ourselves composed of.

We can modify the latter, but we cannot change the rules and principles of 'reality' - we can work with these rules and principle, but not simply through an act of will.

We know that will can impose order ...the world is order ...the world is willed. That doesn't mean that the world exists because I will it though!

You were saying and implying far more than that in previous remarks:

I'm making the point that there may not be any such thing as mind independent material.

Yes, I'm implying that the universe is the product of a mind.

 

[fromderinside]

I'm making the point that there may not be any such thing as mind independent material.

Yes, I'm implying that the universe is the product of a mind.

I'd go woo, but, everybody knows ancient philosophers presumed that without a mind to perceive and organize there would be no world observed.

 

[ryan]

This is just a repeat of your vibrating micro tubules objection...of course there are quantum inputs such as photon/wavelength reflected from objects and interpreted as people and houses, dogs and cats, as there are quantum interactions on micro scales. But this is common to all brains, from gnats and butterflies to human.

The difference between the attributes of human consciousness and butterflies, et al, is not that they share vibrating micro tubules or that there are quantum mechanical triggers which regulates synaptic exocytosis...this is common to all brain function and it is not the 'free' agent that forms conscious perception and thought, these are not the elements that make the difference between the mind of a butterfly and the mind of a human.

That is determined by genetics and physical structures, number of neurons and the complexity of their structures, connections and interactions.

And as we should know, any disruption to the workings of this macro scale system effects consciousness.

The difference between individuals lies not in the fact that vibrating micro tubules and quantum mechanical triggers are common to all, but in the information encoded in DNA, neural architecture and memory information gained through experience.

This is largely a macro scale process of sorting information, and not a quantum/random activity. In fact 'will' can be manipulated by electrical brain stimulation techniques, aka, Delgado and associates. So will is either rational or irrational, but never free from causation.

The randomness only gives the free part of the free will. The butterflies may be incomplete, thus unable to will their freedom.

 

[Kharakov]

Interestingly enough, recent neural net visualizations create various discernible patterns from different batches of white noise fed to them. Inceptionism (google blog post).

Altering a single pixel might change the output radically in these entirely deterministic systems. It's chaos, rather than randomness...

The brain could be described as a chaotic but deterministic system, but none of this helps ryan's case for decision making/free will based on quantum randomness.

Yeah. First of all, ryan has absolutely no case, and never did. One doesn't will something without goals in mind.

Just a slight disagreement with your wording: quantum chaos would be a bit more appropriate, if we accept inductive reasoning that leads there.

 

[ryan]

The brain could be described as a chaotic but deterministic system, but none of this helps ryan's case for decision making/free will based on quantum randomness.

Yeah. First of all, ryan has absolutely no case, and never did. One doesn't will something without goals in mind.

If you were able to physically trace a goal back to a quantum mechanical origin of the consciousness, then in what sense is it not the person who ultimately wills the goal?

 

[Kharakov]

Yeah. First of all, ryan has absolutely no case, and never did. One doesn't will something without goals in mind.

If you were able to physically trace a goal back to a quantum mechanical origin of the consciousness, then in what sense is it not the person who ultimately wills the goal?

Ok, so the goal exists because someone wills it to exist? This requires that they had the goal of having a goal exist in order to will for it to happen. You can't will without goals.

They wouldn't will the goal to exist if the goal of the goal existing was not something that pre-existed their will to will the goal into existence.

 

[ryan]

If you were able to physically trace a goal back to a quantum mechanical origin of the consciousness, then in what sense is it not the person who ultimately wills the goal?

Ok, so the goal exists because someone wills it to exist? This requires that they had the goal of having a goal exist in order to will for it to happen. You can't will without goals.

Why not?

 

[fromderinside]

If you were able to physically trace a goal back to a quantum mechanical origin of the consciousness, then in what sense is it not the person who ultimately wills the goal?

Weirdly similar to the it has to be design argument there ryan.

- - - Updated - - -

Why not?

OMG. Think man. No goals no need for direction, er, will.

 

[Kharakov]

Why not?

OMG. Think man. No goals no need for direction, er, will.

Maybe he doesn't want to think. After all, a bit of logic would pretty much end the conversation, which wouldn't be logical, would it?

 

[DBT]

Where would we be then?

 

[ryan]

Weirdly similar to the it has to be design argument there ryan.

Why? What is wrong with my question?

Why not?

OMG. Think man. No goals no need for direction, er, will.

Will may come from a quantum process of the consciousness, within some constraints. If that's the case, then it is free will by its own commonly used definition.

 

[DBT]

Ryan, there is no evidence for quantum consciousness.

 

[DBT]

OMG. Think man. No goals no need for direction, er, will.

Maybe he doesn't want to think. After all, a bit of logic would pretty much end the conversation, which wouldn't be logical, would it?

To be fair, the argument from quantum indeterminism is still being used by some physicists. I remember Brian Cox saying words to the effect: ''quantum shows us that the future is not fixed, so we are not subject to destiny, we are free....we have free will.''

Basically:
The future is not fixed.
Because the future is not fixed, we have real choices.
Therefore we have 'free will'

Which is a flawed argument, unchosen brain state reflected in conscious experience/output, etc.

Other physicists have simply defined free will as the ability to make decisions..we are able to make decision, therefore we have free will.

Simple, but flawed for the given reasons.

 

[ryan]

Ryan, there is no evidence for quantum consciousness.

Here is a neutral article published in 2013 on "quantum consciousness", http://www.livescience.com/37807-brain-is-not-quantum-computer.html .

Here is an updated article published in 2014, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140116085105.htm .

 

[ryan]

Maybe he doesn't want to think. After all, a bit of logic would pretty much end the conversation, which wouldn't be logical, would it?

To be fair, the argument from quantum indeterminism is still being used by some physicists. I remember Brian Cox saying words to the effect: ''quantum shows us that the future is not fixed, so we are not subject to destiny, we are free....we have free will.''

Basically:
The future is not fixed.
Because the future is not fixed, we have real choices.
Therefore we have 'free will'

Which is a flawed argument, unchosen brain state reflected in conscious experience/output, etc.

Other physicists have simply defined free will as the ability to make decisions..we are able to make decision, therefore we have free will.

Simple, but flawed for the given reasons.

I wouldn't take anything that Kharakov says too seriously if I were you. He is a good poet and occasionally may even translate fromderinside's posts for us, but as for serious or in-depth conversations, he will eventually become an itch on your ass that you can't scratch.

 

[DBT]

Ryan, there is no evidence for quantum consciousness.

Here is a neutral article published in 2013 on "quantum consciousness", http://www.livescience.com/37807-brain-is-not-quantum-computer.html .

Here is an updated article published in 2014, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140116085105.htm .

Yeah, Penrose. I wouldn't put too much stock in the idea at this point, even though it is probably quite likely that factors such as micro tubules play a role in brain function.

Keep in mind that vibrating micro tubules are not an instance of quantum indeterminism, free will, or consciousness.

It is the brain as a whole that is the agent of consciousness formation as a representation of sensory inputs and memory integration (recognition).

Without the functioning parts working in concert, including micro tubules....which probably respond to the activity of larger scale activity and not the driver of conscious activity, there is no evidence for conscious brain activity.

For example:

The activation of a neuronal assembly is necessary to make the encoded content consciously accessible. This activation is considered to be initiated by external stimuli. Unless the assembly is activated, its content remains unconscious, unaccessed memory. According to Umezawa, coherent neuronal assemblies correlated to such memory states are regarded as vacuum states; their activation leads to excited states with a finite lifetime and enables a conscious recollection of the content encoded in the vacuum (ground) state. The stability of such states and the role of external stimuli have been investigated in detail by Stuart et al. (1978, 1979).

From your link:
''The idea that consciousness arises from quantum mechanical phenomena in the brain is intriguing, yet lacks evidence, scientists say.''