According to Robert Sapolsky, human free will does not exist

[T.G.G. Moogly]

If there were an omniscient third-party observer dwelling outside space and time and looking down at the entire history of the universe, the Minkowski block world with past, present and future all evident and spread out before this observer, he/she/it would see a staggering number of world tubes, including all the world tubes of everyone who ever existed and all the choices that they made. There would be ONE history, putting aside stuff like quantum many world branches. And if such an observer saw the whole history of everything, including everyone who ever lived from birth to death and every single one of their choices, it would be perfectly legitimate for that observer to conclude that each one of those choices was freely made except for the ones compelled, such as with a gun to the head.

An observer with such a perspective would obviously have questions and would likely wonder what is being missed, what else is there, etc. The statement you make is from YOUR perspective looking at the observer. You are not the observer. If I have that much knowledge I am obviously wondering how much knowledge I don't have. So you are right back to square one.

 

[Jarhyn]

If there were an omniscient third-party observer dwelling outside space and time and looking down at the entire history of the universe, the Minkowski block world with past, present and future all evident and spread out before this observer, he/she/it would see a staggering number of world tubes, including all the world tubes of everyone who ever existed and all the choices that they made. There would be ONE history, putting aside stuff like quantum many world branches. And if such an observer saw the whole history of everything, including everyone who ever lived from birth to death and every single one of their choices, it would be perfectly legitimate for that observer to conclude that each one of those choices was freely made except for the ones compelled, such as with a gun to the head.

An observer with such a perspective would obviously have questions and would likely wonder what is being missed, what else is there, etc. The statement you make is from YOUR perspective looking at the observer. You are not the observer. If I have that much knowledge I am obviously wondering how much knowledge I don't have. So you are right back to square one.

This is not entirely true, seeing as how you can in fact be that observed for real of some system though, and this exercise is how I goty own perspective on the problem: I am the observer or near enough.

I can actually RE what's going on enough to say "this dwarf is responsible, as someone who frequently seeks conflict, for seeking conflict in this moment; this dwarf is responsible, after their bad reaction to the rainstorm in year 115, for starting 27 fights. I can respond either by sending them to their doom on the mines (eliminating the negative contingent mechanism violently), or I can respond by locking them in the room with the most generator and hoping their constant state of internal rage resolves, which it won't, so off to the mines it is..."

(This is ignoring the fact that I can probably mind-control the dwarf, too, but this is my game, and I tend to avoid "cheating" if I can help it)

 

[DBT]

No, I don't. You keep insisting on your own terms and conditions regardless of what is being said

Yes you do, and these childish denials and refusal to self evaluate are just tired at this point.

I have explained what you do in some detail. I'm not the only one to point out what you do. It's childish to deny that you have not done it, and just continue to do it regardless.

Even worse, ignore key information on the nature of brain agency and continue to assert your own version.

The condition of progressive and permanent memory loss is real

You seem to be disinterested in actually looking at the process to understand it, to understand why your use of language around it is not-even-wrong.

There you go again. I have posted more than enough information on physical nature of brain function and the consequences of breakdowns in that function.

What you do is skirt around the key point, that behavioural output is a reflection of the physical condition of the system, that if there is a momentary connectivity failure, that may be experienced as a momentary inability to recall a name, where you left your keys, etc.....while a permanent loss of function has all the consequences that have been described. Including what it means for the notion of free will

That is what you don't seem to want to face.

For instance
'Finally, we derived an expression for the variance of the neural spike count that leads to a stable propagation of signal and noise in networks of neurons---that is, conditions that do not impose an accumulation or diminution of noise. The solution implies that single neurons perform simple algebra resembling averaging, and that more sophisticated computations arise by virtue of the anatomical convergence of novel combinations of inputs to the cortical column from external sources.''

Recent findings: Voluntary, willed behaviours preferentially implicate specific regions of the frontal cortex in humans. Recent studies have demonstrated constraints on cognition, which manifest as variation in frontal lobe function and emergent behaviour (specifically intrinsic genetic and cognitive limitations, supervening psychological and neurochemical disturbances), and temporal constraints on subjective awareness and reporting. Although healthy persons generally experience themselves as 'free' and the originators of their actions, electroencephalographic data continue to suggest that 'freedom' is exercised before awareness.

Of course some region of the brain occasionally loses access to a system, but this does not make the system "lose consciousness" or "lose awareness" in some way that applies to some lofty floating general "consciousness" or "awareness", as these are not correct usages of those terms.

I've explained this. Go back and actually READ my posts and rather than getting triggered by the fact that I say "freedom" and "wills" are real, try to understand how that is to see if it makes sense.

I've read your posts and your explanations, I see where you go off into irrelevant tangents that have nothing to do with the issue at hand.

Namely, that the state of the system at any given instance is the state of you.

That you don't choose the state of the system, yet the state of the system determines you, how you think, what you think and what you do.

That is you want to argue that you are the brain and the brain is you, the brain does not and cannot choose its own condition, it cannot choose its own neural architecture, it cannot choose the environment in which it functions, it cannot choose how it functions.

So where does free will come into it? Compatibilists merely define it in their own way, chanting 'it is you doing it without coersion' while ignoring the elephant in the room, you don't have the right control to claim free will, that deterministic mechanisms and processes that are not a choice and do pose as much a challenge to the notion of free will as being coerced or forced.

 

[Jarhyn]

I have explained what you do in some detail.

I keep pointing out that IF you want to have this discussion THEN you have to accept the definitions being used until you can manage to point out a flawed definition.

What usually ends up happening, and I can find examples to embarrass you if you push me hard enough, so don't, is that you admit compatibilism provides definitions (perhaps the only definitions) that work.

Immediately after whenever this comes up, you then resort to some hand-wave "but the terms and conditions" ignoring that you just admitted that those terms target libertarianism, not compatibilism.

Then Pood and I and the rest of us point out how you are committing Modal fallacies and trying to say essentially "imaginary numbers don't exist in reality because they are 'imaginary' and imaginary means 'doesn't exist'." Never mind that we can see that capacitance of the system operates as an imaginary number in the mechanics of the system, that we can observe it.

The reason I bring up imaginary numbers here is the intrinsic link between "unrealized future potential on a contingent mechanism" and "what the system wills, but has not done yet", insofar as I think on a mathematical level, your position actually directly and fundamentally involves the declaration that no "imaginary" number is real, in the same way that arguing over the axiom of choice is arguing over whether there is a God, and that arguing over whether there is a God is an argument over the Axiom of Choice, but that most people having the argument would fail to see the connection.

Math clearly allows the operation you claim is impossible, even for a stupid little computerized ant-brained thing in a much more clearly deterministic simulation on my computer.

I have invited you many times to do the derivation yourself, and you refuse.

 

[DBT]

I have explained what you do in some detail.

I keep pointing out that IF you want to have this discussion THEN you have to accept the definitions being used until you can manage to point out a flawed definition.

Discussion? You ignore most of what is being pointed out. Nor do you have to persist, yet you do and I doubt that you are willing to let go any time soon....perhaps a few more years of repeating the same points over and over?

What usually ends up happening, and I can find examples to embarrass you if you push me hard enough, so don't, is that you admit compatibilism provides definitions (perhaps the only definitions) that work.

Embarrass me? That's amusing. You have yet to grasp the basics of how compatibilism fails as both a definition and an argument;

''Having made my choice or decision and acted upon it, could I have chosen otherwise or not? [. . . ] Here the [compatibilist], hoping to surrender nothing and yet to avoid the problem im-plied in the question, bids us not to ask it; the question itself, he announces, is without meaning. For to say that I could have done otherwise, he says, means only that I would have done otherwise, if those inner states that determined my action had been different; if, that is, I had decided or chosen differently.

To ask, accordingly, whether I could have chosen or decided differently is only to ask whether, had I decided to decide differently, or chosen to choose differently, or willed to will differently, I would have decided or chosen or willed differently. And this, of course, is unintelligible nonsense [. . . ] But it is not nonsense to ask whether the cause of my actions my own inner choices, decisions, and desires are themselves caused.

And of course, they are, if determinism is true, for on that thesis everything is caused and determined. And if they are, then we cannot avoid concluding that, given the causal conditions of those inner states, I could not have decided, willed, chosen, or desired other than I, in fact, did, for this is a logical consequence of the very definition of determinism. Of course, we can still say that, if the causes of those inner states, whatever they were, had been different, then their effects, those inner states themselves, would have been different, and that in this hypothetical sense I could have decided, chosen, willed, or desired differently but that only pushes our problem back still another step [Italics added].

For we will then want to know whether the causes of those inner states were within my control, and so on ad infinitum. We are, at each step, permitted to say could have been otherwise, only in a provision sense provided, that is, that something else had been different but must then retract it and replace it with could not have been otherwise as soon as we discover, as we must at each step, that whatever would have to have been different could not have been different (Taylor, 1992: 45-46).''

Immediately after whenever this comes up, you then resort to some hand-wave "but the terms and conditions" ignoring that you just admitted that those terms target libertarianism, not compatibilism.

Incredible. There you have it, another example of you wandering off into the woods, setting your own terms and running with them.

It is compatibilism that defines free will as - basically - acting according to one's will without being forced, coerced or unduly influenced.

And that is where it fails because it does not take the underlying means and mechanisms that are not a matter of choice, yet produce your will and the decisions that you make, the good, the bad and the downright ugly.

Then Pood and I and the rest of us point out how you are committing Modal fallacies and trying to say essentially "imaginary numbers don't exist in reality because they are 'imaginary' and imaginary means 'doesn't exist'." Never mind that we can see that capacitance of the system operates as an imaginary number in the mechanics of the system, that we can observe it.

Bluff, bluster and attitude is your game. It has been all along.

There is no modal fallacy. You fail to grasp incompatibilism

In principle, this is a simple thing.

Yet Again;

Compatibilists define free will as acting without undue influence, coercion or force....yet fail to account for the nature of the means and mechanisms of how decisions are made.....while incompatibilists - me in this instance - point out that you have no choice in how your brain works, how it processes information or how it makes decisions in any given instance, errors and glitches as well as rational decisions.


''The Soon et al paper jumps right into the middle of these issues. It shows us how limited, even misleading, our introspections are. According to the authors, many seconds before we are aware that we have made a decision, we have -- or at least, our brain has! All of the data of cognitive neuroscience are pushing us to replace the idea of mind-body duality, which is so intuitive, with the idea that mental processes are brain processes. But these results on the neural processes underlying free decisions rub our noses in it! One can assimilate findings about color vision or motor control being brain functions a lot more easily than findings about consciously experienced "free will" being a brain function, and hence physically determined and not free at all!'

 

[Copernicus]

Compatibilists define free will as acting without undue influence, coercion or force....yet fail to account for the nature of the means and mechanisms of how decisions are made.....while incompatibilists - me in this instance - point out that you have no choice in how your brain works, how it processes information or how it makes decisions in any given instance, errors and glitches as well as rational decisions.

It isn't just compatibilists, but ordinary people pointing out that they could have acted differently if circumstances had been different--for example, if they had known then what they knew now. That is, in fact, "account[ing] for the nature of the means and mechanisms of how decisions are made." Agents make their choices on the basis of what they know and the outcomes that they desire at the time. Their choices are causally determined by circumstances. In hindsight, they may judge that an alternative choice would have led to a more desirable consequence, and that's how they learn from experience. Since they are responsible for the choices they make, their behavior may differ when making similar choices in the future.

The problem with incompatibilism is that it denies the limited perspective of the chooser. Hence, it is too often used to suggest that people should not really be held responsible for good and bad choices because they can't help themselves. Nevertheless, the way our minds work is that we learn from experience. Being held accountable for our actions is a necessary part of the learning process. That is how people change over time, even though every choice they make is causally determined from the perspective of someone with hindsight or with perfect foresight. The freedom to choose depends on our ability to imagine outcomes, but the outcomes are never known in advance of our actions, only imagined. So choices and decisions are never free of causal determinism, but the freedom lies in an agent's ability to do what it wants at the time he or she imagines an array of future outcomes. Were it not for that, we would never claim responsibility for bad choices and never try to change our future behavior.

There is a sense in which freedom of choice is an illusion. That sense is when we ignore the fundamental role of imagination in planning a willful act. Unforeseen circumstances will occur no matter what we do, because we can't take them into account. They don't exist yet, and our imagination cannot therefore take them into account. However, if we had foreseen those circumstances, then our behavior would have been different. Therefore, we can look back at a past choice and say that we could have behaved differently, if we had just known. The point of imagining an alternative past is to improve our prospects of making better choices in the imaginary future.

 

[Politesse]

Hence, it is too often used to suggest that people should not really be held responsible for good and bad choices because they can't help themselves.

Is this actually a common idea? I hear it often in apologetic debates in free will, but always as an accusation against the deterministic position, not advocated by scientists themselves. So does anyone hold this perspective? I could see how it might be a counter to Protestant theologies of hell and the like that advocate disproportionate punishment, but I've never met anyone who thinks there should be no law and order at all, simply because some citizens don't believe in the doctrine of free will. If anything, in a determinist universe where uniforitarianism is assumed, one would expect correctional systems to be more effective as a deterrent of behavior, not less so. If there is never any point at which a person's soul magically breaks the laws of the universe to "choose virtue" despite their circumstances, then the only real corrective of a person's behavior is to create a system that pragmatically rewards pro-social behavior and penalizes the bad, thus creating an incentive to fall within social norms to some degree.

 

[Copernicus]

Hence, it is too often used to suggest that people should not really be held responsible for good and bad choices because they can't help themselves.

Is this actually a common idea? I hear it often in apologetic debates in free will, but always as an accusation against the deterministic position, not advocated by scientists themselves. So does anyone hold this perspective? I could see how it might be a counter to Protestant theologies of hell and the like that advocate disproportionate punishment, but I've never met anyone who thinks there should be no law and order at all, simply because some citizens don't believe in free will. If anything, in a determinist universe where uniforitarianism is assumed, one would expect correctional systems to be more effective as a deterrent of behavior, not less so. If there is never any point at which a person's soul magically breaks the laws of the universe to "choose virtue" despite their circumstances, then the only real corrective of a person's behavior is to create a system that pragmatically rewards pro-social behavior and penalizes the bad, thus creating an incentive to fall within social norms to some degree.

I think that most hard determinists find a way to avoid moral nihilism, at least in their own minds, but you are right that it is a common criticism of their position that we don't actually have choice because we are always compelled by circumstances to do what we do. We do not have the freedom to step outside of the causal envelope. I have seen some proponents of causal determinism actually fall into the causal nihilist trap in these kinds of debates, but I don't have any good examples to give you offhand. I don't have a sense of how often that really happens. The Wikipedia article gives some insight into the problem hard determinists face when it comes to moral responsibility.

I think that Patricia Churchland hits the right note when she says that we need to judge moral responsibility in the degree of control that agents possess when they make a choice. So the proverbial gun to the head choice can be considered freely made or not freely made, depending on how we construe the agent's options. Obviously, the agent can imagine refusing a demand under that threat, but the freedom to go along with the demand is limited by the threat of death. Different agents will behave differently under different circumstances. However, the bank teller who hands over a bag of cash to the armed bank robber is not usually held culpable for the crime being perpetrated, because he did not have a viable choice in the matter. Some bank tellers get shot for refusing to hand over the bag, so the free will is not impaired by the gun in that sense.

 

[Jarhyn]

You ignore most of what is being pointed out.

Hahaha pot, kettle.

Hence, it is too often used to suggest that people should not really be held responsible for good and bad choices because they can't help themselves.

Is this actually a common idea? I hear it often in apologetic debates in free will, but always as an accusation against the deterministic position, not advocated by scientists themselves. So does anyone hold this perspective? I could see how it might be a counter to Protestant theologies of hell and the like that advocate disproportionate punishment, but I've never met anyone who thinks there should be no law and order at all, simply because some citizens don't believe in free will. If anything, in a determinist universe where uniforitarianism is assumed, one would expect correctional systems to be more effective as a deterrent of behavior, not less so. If there is never any point at which a person's soul magically breaks the laws of the universe to "choose virtue" despite their circumstances, then the only real corrective of a person's behavior is to create a system that pragmatically rewards pro-social behavior and penalizes the bad, thus creating an incentive to fall within social norms to some degree.

I think that most hard determinists find a way to avoid moral nihilism, at least in their own minds, but you are right that it is a common criticism of their position that we don't actually have choice because we are always compelled by circumstances to do what we do. We do not have the freedom to step outside of the causal envelope. I have seen some proponents of causal determinism actually fall into the causal nihilist trap in these kinds of debates, but I don't have any good examples to give you offhand. I don't have a sense of how often that really happens. The Wikipedia article gives some insight into the problem hard determinists face when it comes to moral responsibility.

I think that Patricia Churchland hits the right note when she says that we need to judge moral responsibility in the degree of control that agents possess when they make a choice. So the proverbial gun to the head choice can be considered freely made or not freely made, depending on how we construe the agent's options. Obviously, the agent can imagine refusing a demand under that threat, but the freedom to go along with the demand is limited by the threat of death. Different agents will behave differently under different circumstances. However, the bank teller who hands over a bag of cash to the armed bank robber is not usually held culpable for the crime being perpetrated, because he did not have a viable choice in the matter. Some bank tellers get shot for refusing to hand over the bag, so the free will is not impaired by the gun in that sense.

Yeah, to me it comes down to evaluating how "strong" an agent is.

What the gun impairs are the degrees of freedom of the person in question. It's like that plate in the two slit experiment, ya? The plate being there does limit where the particle can go. It binds the waveform to create the interference pattern. The gun binds the behavior to a limited set of paths as well: to comply or to die, perhaps to tunnel, but by in large just to comply or die.

So what we are saying about the teller is that they lack the free will to do something not in the presented set of outcomes. They are responsible for something that cannot be said "doing crimes because they want to, independently", they are responsible for "doing crimes out of direct and immediate fear of a gun". This is why filling in those unspoken parts is so important to me, not just saying "it is conscious" but actually discussing exactly what it is conscious OF.

To use another example, the trebuchet example, the trebuchet is a contingent mechanism and will fire if you pull the pin, but it won't fire other than the direction it is aimed, because you lack the energy, the delta-V, to turn it.

 

[DBT]

Compatibilists define free will as acting without undue influence, coercion or force....yet fail to account for the nature of the means and mechanisms of how decisions are made.....while incompatibilists - me in this instance - point out that you have no choice in how your brain works, how it processes information or how it makes decisions in any given instance, errors and glitches as well as rational decisions.

It isn't just compatibilists, but ordinary people pointing out that they could have acted differently if circumstances had been different--for example, if they had known then what they knew now.

Of course.

That is, in fact, "account[ing] for the nature of the means and mechanisms of how decisions are made."

No it doesn't. The assumption is that it is 'you doing it' - and that is true on the surface.

Agents make their choices on the basis of what they know and the outcomes that they desire at the time.

The problem is that the 'you that is doing it' - namely the brain - has no regulative control over its own condition, its neural architecture and whatever is happening at the cellular and network level, lesions forming, brain trauma, chemical imbalances, etc....which of course may be expressed as a 'you' who has cognitive attributes that are not adaptive, willed or wanted'

For instance;

On the neurology of morals
Patients with medial prefrontal lesions often display irresponsible behavior, despite being intellectually unimpaired. But similar lesions occurring in early childhood can also prevent the acquisition of factual knowledge about accepted standards of moral behavior.


Consequently;

''An action’s production by a deterministic process, even when the agent satisfies the conditions on moral responsibility specified by compatibilists, presents no less of a challenge to basic-desert responsibility than does deterministic manipulation by other agents. '

Their choices are causally determined by circumstances. In hindsight, they may judge that an alternative choice would have led to a more desirable consequence, and that's how they learn from experience.

But that's essentially the point. That it is the state and condition (not a matter of choice) of the system, the brain, in any given instance that determines the decision and action taken in that instance....and had the system been in the condition it is going to be in a moments time, we would not have said or done the silly thing we did in the instance of making the blunder, something we may regret the rest of our lives.

That is decision making, but decision making, for the reasons given above, is not governed or regulated by free will.

Since they are responsible for the choices they make, their behavior may differ when making similar choices in the future.

Responsibility in the sense that it is ultimately you as a brain that is generating mind and responding to events around you that makes decisions and acts upon them, but the issue of free will lies with the nature of agency, and that agency is not a matter of free will because ultimately you don't get to choose your own condition.

''The increments of a normal brain state is not as obvious as direct coercion, a microchip, or a tumor, but the “obviousness” is irrelevant here. Brain states incrementally get to the state they are in one moment at a time. In each moment of that process the brain is in one state, and the specific environment and biological conditions leads to the very next state. Depending on that state, this will cause you to behave in a specific way within an environment (decide in a specific way), in which all of those things that are outside of a person constantly bombard your senses changing your very brain state. The internal dialogue in your mind you have no real control over.''

 

[Jarhyn]

the brain - has no regulative control over its own condition

The brain is switches, those switches regulate and control how often switches they are connected to activate. These connections happen recursively, therefore they regulate and control their own condition.

You. Are. Wrong.

Any software engineer, graph theorist, anyone who has ever heard of and understood recursive connectivity understands this.

 

[Copernicus]

...

That is, in fact, "account[ing] for the nature of the means and mechanisms of how decisions are made."

No it doesn't. The assumption is that it is 'you doing it' - and that is true on the surface.

Yes, it does. Because "on the surface" is where 'we' live. It is all about us, our bodies, and how those bodies interact with reality. Eliminative materialism literally buys you nothing when it comes to explaining the nature of human cognition. It just denies the obvious.

Agents make their choices on the basis of what they know and the outcomes that they desire at the time.

The problem is that the 'you that is doing it' - namely the brain - has no regulative control over its own condition, its neural architecture and whatever is happening at the cellular and network level, lesions forming, brain trauma, chemical imbalances, etc....which of course may be expressed as a 'you' who has cognitive attributes that are not adaptive, willed or wanted'

For instance;

On the neurology of morals
Patients with medial prefrontal lesions often display irresponsible behavior, despite being intellectually unimpaired. But similar lesions occurring in early childhood can also prevent the acquisition of factual knowledge about accepted standards of moral behavior.

Consequently;

''An action’s production by a deterministic process, even when the agent satisfies the conditions on moral responsibility specified by compatibilists, presents no less of a challenge to basic-desert responsibility than does deterministic manipulation by other agents. '

I hope you realize at some point that I am not denying the physical nature of brain activity. Of course, you use the term "brain" to refer to brain activity, since brains themselves don't produce any mental activity if they just sit there. Lesions affect brain activity, hence mental activity. Why should a compatibilist have a problem with that? What do you think "compatibilism" refers to? A denial of causality?

Cognitive function is an emergent property of physical brain activity, just like other physical systems have emergent properties. If your car gets a flat tire, that affects your ability to drive it. When you teach someone how to drive, you don't need to teach them how to fix a flat tire, although that skill could come in handy. The point is that the transportation function of the system is affected by how well its components interact with each other to produce that function, just as cognitive function depends on how the physical components of the brain interact with each other. Systems have functional properties that depend on their components but are not directly describable or predictable in terms of their components. You can look at trees or forests, but you shouldn't confuse the two. Forests are large ecosystems with special properties, and trees are much smaller ecosystems with different properties.

Their choices are causally determined by circumstances. In hindsight, they may judge that an alternative choice would have led to a more desirable consequence, and that's how they learn from experience.

But that's essentially the point. That it is the state and condition (not a matter of choice) of the system, the brain, in any given instance that determines the decision and action taken in that instance....and had the system been in the condition it is going to be in a moments time, we would not have said or done the silly thing we did in the instance of making the blunder, something we may regret the rest of our lives.

That is decision making, but decision making, for the reasons given above, is not governed or regulated by free will.

That depends entirely on how one chooses to construe the concept of "free will". I favor basing definitions on actual usage, and people don't actually use the expression to describe control over goals and desires. Hard determinists do. Ordinary people use the expression to describe control over actions that lead to satisfaction of goals and desires. Those are givens in the decision-making process. What isn't a given is which action to take in pursuit of a goal or desire. Given that we have competing goals and desires, we need to calculate likely outcomes before acting. From the perspective of a hard determinist (or omniscient deity), the results of the calculation are as inevitable as the solution to a mathematical equation. To an agent embedded inside of the unfolding temporal sequence, the result is unknown until the calculation has actually been made.

Since they are responsible for the choices they make, their behavior may differ when making similar choices in the future.

Responsibility in the sense that it is ultimately you as a brain that is generating mind and responding to events around you that makes decisions and acts upon them, but the issue of free will lies with the nature of agency, and that agency is not a matter of free will because ultimately you don't get to choose your own condition.

But you do in the course of time, which is what you experience. That's the point. The issue of free will and the nature of agency only make sense from the perspective of someone faced with an uncertain future. The future is inevitable and certain in the imagination of a hard determinist, so free will is neither necessary nor sensible from their perspective. Nothing is uncertain, just a clockwork cascade of causal effects. It is in the nature of agency that free will does exist, because the future is always uncertain to agents. If you want to understand what is 'free' about free will, then you have to understand the nature of agency.

''The increments of a normal brain state is not as obvious as direct coercion, a microchip, or a tumor, but the “obviousness” is irrelevant here. Brain states incrementally get to the state they are in one moment at a time. In each moment of that process the brain is in one state, and the specific environment and biological conditions leads to the very next state. Depending on that state, this will cause you to behave in a specific way within an environment (decide in a specific way), in which all of those things that are outside of a person constantly bombard your senses changing your very brain state. The internal dialogue in your mind you have no real control over.''

Right. Nobody disputes that, but you have misconstrued the concept of free will. It is not about having momentary control over one's desires, only one's actions. Free will is about achieving fulfillment of the desires that one has and perhaps regulating the desires that one has in the future. Our hardwired need to learn from experience is what determines the purpose and function of free will.

 

[Jarhyn]

Ordinary people use the expression to describe control over actions that lead to satisfaction of goals and desires

Not that I disagree with much of anything you said so far but to be fair, I do exert control over my goals and desires, at least to some extent.

There are, to be sure, some or even many such that I don't exert control over; still others, I know how to shut off or turn on, and I do.

To me, such claims as the inability to control and decide upon your goals and desires, to fully abdicate that power, strikes me as a form of supreme laziness, an intractability to the very notion of seeking to become a better person... And further, a crutch so as to ward away the expectations others have of you to do so.

"I can't" isn't a reason, it's an excuse. "I won't" is more acceptable, even.

 

[Copernicus]

Ordinary people use the expression to describe control over actions that lead to satisfaction of goals and desires

Not that I disagree with much of anything you said so far but to be fair, I do exert control over my goals and desires, at least to some extent.

There are, to be sure, some or even many such that I don't exert control over; still others, I know how to shut off or turn on, and I do.

But I was careful to point out that we don't have momentary control over goals and desires, just control over future goals and desires. That is the extent to which you have control over them. From the perspective of a hard determinist, one doesn't have a choice in the past, present, or future. Nothing can be changed, so agents have no free will, as they define it. The problem is that they define it poorly.

 

[Jarhyn]

Ordinary people use the expression to describe control over actions that lead to satisfaction of goals and desires

Not that I disagree with much of anything you said so far but to be fair, I do exert control over my goals and desires, at least to some extent.

There are, to be sure, some or even many such that I don't exert control over; still others, I know how to shut off or turn on, and I do.

But I was careful to point out that we don't have momentary control over goals and desires, just control over future goals and desires. That is the extent to which you have control over them. From the perspective of a hard determinist, one doesn't have a choice in the past, present, or future. Nothing can be changed, so agents have no free will, as they define it. The problem is that they define it poorly.

Again, it depends on how tightly you control the loop of "momentariness".

I can it in this moment change what I am in that same moment. There's a phase delay on the effect of any such decision such that the change happens later. It's always like that.

Of course after a while, while I'm still working on the change, I often discover the change has already happened.

It's idiotic, outright and completely, to expect action on the present from the present, and wholely unnecessary.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Hence, it is too often used to suggest that people should not really be held responsible for good and bad choices because they can't help themselves.

Is this actually a common idea? I hear it often in apologetic debates in free will, but always as an accusation against the deterministic position, not advocated by scientists themselves. So does anyone hold this perspective? I could see how it might be a counter to Protestant theologies of hell and the like that advocate disproportionate punishment, but I've never met anyone who thinks there should be no law and order at all, simply because some citizens don't believe in the doctrine of free will. If anything, in a determinist universe where uniforitarianism is assumed, one would expect correctional systems to be more effective as a deterrent of behavior, not less so. If there is never any point at which a person's soul magically breaks the laws of the universe to "choose virtue" despite their circumstances, then the only real corrective of a person's behavior is to create a system that pragmatically rewards pro-social behavior and penalizes the bad, thus creating an incentive to fall within social norms to some degree.

It's not binary. We certainly all make choices, at least if our brains are operating rationally. It simply is that the chooser does not have total control.

 

[Copernicus]

...
But I was careful to point out that we don't have momentary control over goals and desires, just control over future goals and desires. That is the extent to which you have control over them. From the perspective of a hard determinist, one doesn't have a choice in the past, present, or future. Nothing can be changed, so agents have no free will, as they define it. The problem is that they define it poorly.

Again, it depends on how tightly you control the loop of "momentariness".

I can it in this moment change what I am in that same moment. There's a phase delay on the effect of any such decision such that the change happens later. It's always like that.

Of course after a while, while I'm still working on the change, I often discover the change has already happened.

It's idiotic, outright and completely, to expect action on the present from the present, and wholely unnecessary.

I don't think you understand what we mean by "present tense". Human languages all distinguish between past, present, and future tense and time reference. The past depends on episodic memory, and the present depends on bodily sensations. The future is always imaginary, so future time reference across thousands of languages tend to conflate conditional and counterfactual reference with future reference. Just as an example of that, consider English, which uses suffixes to mark past and present tenses. However, it uses a separate type of syntax--a modal auxiliary 'will/shall'--to mark future reference. Not surprisingly, conditional modals--'can', 'could', 'should', 'must', etc.--use the same syntactic structure to refer to counterfactual (imaginary) phenomena.

How long is a 'moment'? There are ways to describe tense and time reference formally, but the short answer is that it is a gap between perceived sensory and cognitive changes. Cognition is inherently dynamic, since electrochemical brain activity is inherently dynamic. The brain doesn't produce thought if it just sits there and does nothing. There are cycles of brain activity that allow us to record episodic memories as moments in our lives.

 

[Jarhyn]

The past depends on episodic memory, and the present depends on bodily sensations

No offense, I don't think you really have a strong handle on what I understand and what I don't.

I do quite strongly understand the nature of the process going on, but when I look at past, present, and future in THIS discussion, I'm actually talking about what is observed through frame halting, taking a much more precise measure of what is going on in the system in the "moment" of the present, which is itself phase delayed from the time the data was collected.

Clearly we have some methodology to understand, much like a three-body-problem, the near-system effects of the present state.

I would take issue in fact at the idea that a brain can possibly be "live" (in terms of the switches having the momentary energy to fire), and not be producing thoughts.

I would say often those thoughts can be detached from anything that matters, but they will still be flipping switch states so thoughts will still be happening even if there were no way for them to correlate to the outside.

As to "moments", these are in fact discrete passages of time, at least at the "outside observer" position I take when considering it; there is after all a rate of change in our universe, and it may even be a "frame-wise phenomena" wherein momentum and velocity don't exist at the "same time" insofar as a system has a particular state and a frame of calculation of change that happen separately in different systemic phases, and that all simulation-compatible systems operate thusly.

Either way, what we experience is actually the past and a fairly good guess about the present, not "the actual present", and our experiences of our own thoughts, the recursively looped reports ARE even further from the past... But that doesn't change the fact that these past experiences are influencing present states which represent past activities.

At this point though, we might be wandering towards some rather irrelevant discussion to the topic at hand which is whether recursive systems satisfy the time-delayed regulatory control over the system itself that DBT thinks it lacks.

To me just stating "recursion is a thing so DBT is wrong" should stand alone largely separate from this.

The future is always imaginary

I think this perspective is not entirely correct. The future is polar-rotational. It is "real", in the same way the past is, but it's just not predictable in the long term because it has more complications it's prediction than there are moments to calculate on it: it's an intractable computational complexity problem. It's like an asymmetrical math operation wherein the past is like checking a solution (fast), but the future is like factoring a large number (slow, and often completely intractible despite being able to get a general idea of it through known cheats like sieves and calculations that are very difficult to discover and still "known to be slow" methodology).

Given the ubiquity of math in how the universe functions, this may very well be the actuality of it, directly relating to polar-rotational numbers rather than linear components, and operating on the same or similar notions of the damnable undecidability and/or asymmetry of calculation of some systems.

Again, polar components to certain numbers are real. We measure in-phase and out-phase components of numbers all the time and apply them all the time, but they are just damnably weird to work with and calculate on.

I was thinking about this the other night, that the word "imaginary" in discussions like this becomes problematic when dealing with intractable folks who think "imaginary" numbers are as "imaginary" as God and Invisible Pink Unicorns.

 

[Copernicus]

The past depends on episodic memory, and the present depends on bodily sensations

No offense, I don't think you really have a strong handle on what I understand and what I don't.

No offense, but I get the impression at times that you don't have a strong handle on that either.

I do quite strongly understand the nature of the process going on, but when I look at past, present, and future in THIS discussion, I'm actually talking about what is observed through frame halting, taking a much more precise measure of what is going on in the system in the "moment" of the present, which is itself phase delayed from the time the data was collected.

Clearly we have some methodology to understand, much like a three-body-problem, the near-system effects of the present state.

You tend to filter everything through analogies with computer programming, but the need for such analogies isn't clear to me. Frame halting is technical problem in programming not human psychology. And what does it buy you to refer to sensations as "data collection"? Reference to the unsolvable "three body problem" doesn't help me understand what you are on about, but it does suggest that you find the issue complex. More importantly, it doesn't respond to anything I said in my last post.

I would take issue in fact at the idea that a brain can possibly be "live" (in terms of the switches having the momentary energy to fire), and not be producing thoughts.

I would say often those thoughts can be detached from anything that matters, but they will still be flipping switch states so thoughts will still be happening even if there were no way for them to correlate to the outside.

As to "moments", these are in fact discrete passages of time, at least at the "outside observer" position I take when considering it; there is after all a rate of change in our universe, and it may even be a "frame-wise phenomena" wherein momentum and velocity don't exist at the "same time" insofar as a system has a particular state and a frame of calculation of change that happen separately in different systemic phases, and that all simulation-compatible systems operate thusly.

Again, I'm struggling to see what your point is with all of this jargon-laced rhetoric. As an experienced programmer, I get the kind of analogies that you are trying to work into the conversation, but I don't see how they are supposed to clarify what you are talking about.

Either way, what we experience is actually the past and a fairly good guess about the present, not "the actual present", and our experiences of our own thoughts, the recursively looped reports ARE even further from the past... But that doesn't change the fact that these past experiences are influencing present states which represent past activities.

At this point though, we might be wandering towards some rather irrelevant discussion to the topic at hand which is whether recursive systems satisfy the time-delayed regulatory control over the system itself that DBT thinks it lacks.

To me just stating "recursion is a thing so DBT is wrong" should stand alone largely separate from this.

OK, but I don't see what recursion has to do with anything that DBT has said. I don't recall the point at which he disagreed with you about recursion, if indeed he did. I agree with you that recursion can be "a thing", but I don't see its relevance in this discussion. Bear in mind that I'm a Lisp programmer, so I have no problem with recursion.

The future is always imaginary

I think this perspective is not entirely correct. The future is polar-rotational. It is "real", in the same way the past is, but it's just not predictable in the long term because it has more complications it's prediction than there are moments to calculate on it: it's an intractable computational complexity problem. It's like an asymmetrical math operation wherein the past is like checking a solution (fast), but the future is like factoring a large number (slow, and often completely intractible despite being able to get a general idea of it through known cheats like sieves and calculations that are very difficult to discover and still "known to be slow" methodology).

Given the ubiquity of math in how the universe functions, this may very well be the actuality of it, directly relating to polar-rotational numbers rather than linear components, and operating on the same or similar notions of the damnable undecidability and/or asymmetry of calculation of some systems.

Again, polar components to certain numbers are real. We measure in-phase and out-phase components of numbers all the time and apply them all the time, but they are just damnably weird to work with and calculate on.

I was thinking about this the other night, that the word "imaginary" in discussions like this becomes problematic when dealing with intractable folks who think "imaginary" numbers are as "imaginary" as God and Invisible Pink Unicorns.

All of this just tells me that my entire discussion about tense and time reference, including the sense of "free" in the expression "free will", went over your head. My point was that people have real choices because the future is always indeterminate. Free will is not incompatible with events in the future, because the choice depends on outcomes that an agent imagines, not the actual outcome that happens after an action is taken. It is important to understand this in order to understand what compatibilism is about. What you did in your response, was you talked about thoughts that some of my words and expressions triggered in your head as you read my post. But you did not follow what I was saying.

 

[Jarhyn]

Frame halting is technical problem in programming not human psychology.

Nice it's more a physical problem. There is a rate of change and a moment of change, and a momentary state understandable by looking at the thing.

My discussion on compatibilism, honestly, mostly happened the last few years where this was well explored, and honestly, I'm just not interested in having the same discussion again if you didn't read that thread. I even told you where you could read about my thoughts on the subject without me re-hashing it.

The analogy to software and hardware (which you seemed to not actually read, despite me telling you where it was) is apt, because we are computational systems at our core. We have a momentary state, and we have some incalculable but estimated future state, and we in each moment send stuff on to manage our future state based on our identification in the present of our past states and evaluations of them.

My point here has been that this can be directed at our goals, despite the fact that you keep repeating that we can't. I very well can quash or disregard or prevent the return or the first appearance of some proposed goal within the environment of my own experience, and my point in replying to you is merely to say "quit selling such things short".