According to Robert Sapolsky, human free will does not exist

[Politesse]

Good thing your brain is you, then.

A dubious claim at best, but even if it were so, "we" are not free in any reasonable sense of that term.

 

[Politesse]

Compatibilists, of course, reject such magic.

What, precisely, do you mean by the word "free"?

What, precisely, do you mean by the word "will"?

Both of these words strongly imply, if they do not outright require, magic.

 

[Politesse]

Actually, what do you mean by "compatible"? What is compatible with what? Because unless you are lying or deluded about your views on the deterministic universe, your views are no more compatible with the original theological doctrine of Free Will than Sapolsky's are. Orthodox Christians emphatically do not believe that we simply call the deterministic process of decision-making "free will" despite being neither when put under the microscope. They believe that we truly were imbued with a supernatural, more-than-material psyche, our birthright as children of God, that determines our path in life and makes us subject to the righteous judgement of a holy and eternal God. Their theology cannot survive your revision of it, so how is your revision "compatibilist"?

 

[bilby]

But I can decide whether to have them for dinner.

That is simply not true, though. Your brain "decides" what to have for dinner, and your conscious mind generates an explanation for it post facto.

Is my brain not a part of me?

Whose is it, then?

That, at least, is the current conclusion of neuroscientists, based on the preponderence of the data we now possess. This, interestingly enough, is often touted as evidence of free will by incompatibilists. But it is a major problem for compatibilism, as I see it.

I don't see it. I am not just my conscious mind; I am all of me.

The moment we call a "choice" in common language and perception is not the moment when the outcome of a neurological process is first determined, but occurs in the aftermath of it.

Sure. Why does that matter?

So what does it mean to preserve the aesthetic "sense" of free will without contradicting the observations that the science of the mind has produced?

It means I make the choices; Not someone or something external.

We simply do not percieve the world or our mind the way they actually function. Perception is "designed" for (better: coalesced around the evolutionary fitness of) making complex organisms function more efficiently, not for being an accurate gauge of our most intuitive and internal processes of thought.

Sure. So what? I am still me, whether ir not I know how all my parts work and interact.

But we now have the tools to crack open that box, and we shouldn't let 4th century theoogical hangups prevent us from exploring the implications of that.

Indeed we should not. Replacing the daft concept of a soul, that sits in the driving seat, steering us through life, with the equally daft concept of a consciousness that is our true self, but which might be thwarted by subconcious processes in our own brains, but which are somehow not "really" us, and which are somehow overriding "our" desires, is absurd.

We are our entire selves - our complete set of responses, conscious, subconscious, unconscious, reflexive, emotional, physiological, etc. etc.; And our will is the sum of not only all of these internal states, but of the effect of our entire life history on thise states.

If the bit of my brain that I feel is choosing something is, in fact, being overridden by someone or something external to me, then I lack free will; But if it is merely being overridden by a different bit of my brain (or by a hormone generated elsewhere in my body), then the choice remains mine.

Aristotle was not to blame for not knowing about these evidences, which he could not have had access to. But he would be the last person in history to advise ignoring their implications now that we have them.

I am seeing no implications that are relevant to my position. I am not arguing that my consciousness has freedom of will; I am arguing that I do.

 

[Politesse]

Is my brain not a part of me?

Kind of? Self is a complex concept and a discussion in and of itself. You construct your sense of "you" to some degree, but it is also constructed by others, is a component of a culture larger than yourself, and responds to environmental factors well beyond your control. And like "choices", it is definitely posterior to observable neurochemical reactions. If anything, it comes much later in the chain than "choices". You define your narrative of "self" partly as a way to help explain your "choices", not the other way around.

 

[bilby]

Good thing your brain is you, then.

A dubious claim at best,

Why, whose brain is in my skull, if not mine?

but even if it were so, "we" are not free in any reasonable sense of that term.

That rather depends on what you consider "reasonable".

 

[Politesse]

I am still me, whether ir not I know how all my parts work and interact.

This is a statement of faith, not reason.

"Whether or not I understand this phenomenon, I am certain I am right in my absolute claims about it" is an emotional, not rational, stance.

 

[bilby]

Is my brain not a part of me?

Kind of? Self is a complex concept and a discussion in and of itself. You construct your sense of "you" to some degree, but it is also constructed by others, is a component of a culture larger than yourself, and responds to environmental factors well beyond your control.

Nope. My brain is, simply and undeniably, part of me. It is entirely enclosed in my skull.

 

[pood]

Actually, what do you mean by "compatible"? What is compatible with what? Because unless you are lying or deluded about your views on the deterministic universe, your views are no more compatible with the original theological doctrine of Free Will than Sapolsky's are. Orthodox Christians emphatically do not believe that we simply call the deterministic process of decision-making "free will" despite being neither when put under the microscope. They believe that we truly were imbued with a supernatural, more-than-material psyche, our birthright as children of God, that determines our path in life and makes us subject to the righteous judgement of a holy and eternal God. Their theology cannot survive your revision of it, so how is your revision "compatibilist"?

Why would you think I am interested in vindicating theology?

 

[Politesse]

Is my brain not a part of me?

Kind of? Self is a complex concept and a discussion in and of itself. You construct your sense of "you" to some degree, but it is also constructed by others, is a component of a culture larger than yourself, and responds to environmental factors well beyond your control.

Nope. My brain is, simply and undeniably, part of me. It is entirely enclosed in my skull.

That doesn't even make sense. The brain is the hub of a complex neural network, and the purpose of that network is to process information from the environment; if you cut it off from the body, it dies instantly. If you disable its senses, it cannot function.

 

[Politesse]

Actually, what do you mean by "compatible"? What is compatible with what? Because unless you are lying or deluded about your views on the deterministic universe, your views are no more compatible with the original theological doctrine of Free Will than Sapolsky's are. Orthodox Christians emphatically do not believe that we simply call the deterministic process of decision-making "free will" despite being neither when put under the microscope. They believe that we truly were imbued with a supernatural, more-than-material psyche, our birthright as children of God, that determines our path in life and makes us subject to the righteous judgement of a holy and eternal God. Their theology cannot survive your revision of it, so how is your revision "compatibilist"?

Why would you think I am interested in vindicating theology?

Because you are defending free will, or claiming to. Have you really never read any of the literature on free will at all? I get that you think you can discuss Sapolsky without reading Sapolsky, but you haven't even read the fundamental literature on your own side of the debate?

Yes, free will began as, and still is, a theological doctrine. It was invented to solve a theological problem (If the gods know all that we will do before we do it, why should we be held accountable for that which we could not haven chosen otherwise than to do?) and people's angry reaction to its being challenged refelcts their enculturation into a theistic society.

 

[bilby]

I am still me, whether ir not I know how all my parts work and interact.

This is a statement of faith, not reason.

"Whether or not I understand x, I am certain I am right about it" is an emotional, not rational, stance.

No, it's an observation that it is not necessary to know the internal details of a system in order to understand its external interactions.

You can learn to drive without knowing anything at all about how an engine works.

"I know that pushing the right hand pedal makes it go faster" is not an emotional stance, even if I don't have a clue what is under the hood.

My position is that whether or not I understand x, I am certain that I am right about y.

If an understanding of a system required a complete understanding of all of its components, humanity would be totally fucked - we found out most of chemistry before we even had an inkling about quantum mechanics.

I make choices. I don't know or care what exact neurons fire, or what exact qualia I experience, or even what sequence of events between concious or unconcious thought is involved. It remains true that the choice was made by me, as a complete system.

Humans make choices.

Why should I care whether or not conciousnesses make choices? I am a human, not just a consciousness.

 

[bilby]

Is my brain not a part of me?

Kind of? Self is a complex concept and a discussion in and of itself. You construct your sense of "you" to some degree, but it is also constructed by others, is a component of a culture larger than yourself, and responds to environmental factors well beyond your control.

Nope. My brain is, simply and undeniably, part of me. It is entirely enclosed in my skull.

That doesn't even make sense.

I see I misspoke; It is mostly contained in my skull, and entirely contained in me.

My apologies if my casual wording led you to think I was claiming something absurd, such as the total isolation of my brain.

The brain is the hub of a complex neural network, and the purpose of that network is to process information from the environment; if you cut it off from the body, it dies instantly. If you disable its senses, it cannot function.

Yes. But it remains a part of me. Which was the point in question.

 

[Politesse]

"I know that pushing the right hand pedal makes it go faster" is not an emotional stance, even if I don't have a clue what is under the hood.

I think that's an excellent analogue, but not for the reasons you think. That claim, "I know that pushing the right hand pedal makes it go faster" is only a reasonable position insofar as it is deduced from a pattern observed in the real world. It also isn't strictly true. Sure, it will get you through most driving interactions just fine, most of the time. But because it is derived solely from user-end experience, not derived from knowledge of how the car actually works, it does not adequately prepare you for the inevitable day when you press down on the pedal and... something goes wrong and the car does not in fact go faster. In order to fix it at that point, you're going to need more knowledge about the internal workings of the car than "pedal makes car go!". So it is with the brain. No one is arguing that the idea of choices and will can't get you through the day most days just fine, but that doesn't mean they are an accurate enough model to help us explain those situations in which the assumption fails. Because they are based on how you rationalized the pre-existing process, rather than being derived from direct observation of that process. If you only want to be a driver of the mind, free will is all you need. But if you want to graduate to becoming a mechanic, or even an engineer? You're going to need to crack open the hood eventually and learn how an automatic transmission actually works.

Did you know that modern sociology was heavily influenced, if not launched, by a clever little volume called Suicide? Emile Durkheim, its author, knew full well that the brain ought to be oriented, at all time, toward helping its host survive, and maximizing lifespan in all cicumstances long enough for its host to bear offspring and pass on their inherited characteristics (this was before genes) to the next generation. Yet, an ever increasing number of people were, seeming consciously, making the irrational decision to end their own lives while they were still young and fertile. Evolution could not explain this. The church was happy to explain it, but Durkheim was not satisfied with the theological answer (that suicides were the result of a free will choice to reject God's gift of life). So rather than studying people solely as individuals imbued with an immortal soul, he started investiagting the social institutions that varied predictably along with changes in the rates of suicide, and found that suicides, far from being an unpredictable outcome of an immortal soul, were in fact highly reactive to the environmental conditions that surrounded that individual. Suicide was published in 1897. Although his conclusions obviously contradict the very notion of a non-deterministic universe, he never even bothered to remark on free will, he just... didn't employ the concept in any way. Why would he? It was entirely irrelevant to his object of study. Theology doesn't always contradict the sciences, but it is almost never useful to them beyond being a common source of new hypotheses to test.

 

[Politesse]

Yes. But it remains a part of me. Which was the point in question.

It isn't, though. It absolutely requires inputs from beyond your body in order to function at all. A brain without external stimuli and nutrients is just a lump of carbon slowly decaying into the soil, not even salvageable let alone functional.

We look back on our day and think "I was mad at Steve because he was an asshole", not "I was mad at Steve because there was an unpleasant odor in the workroom and it set off my insular function, which then tripped my amygdala, which set off damn near my entire network towards looking for potential threats, which it found in Steve's facial expression precisely because by that point my brain was searching for any explanation as to why it was freaking out, but I'd already habituated myself to the smell itelf roughly three seconds before and therefore no longer perceived it consciously, so Steve's smirking-ass face, which I had just started perceiving, presented itself as the most likely source of my feeling of unease, and because I'm a primate with a typically overactive temporal parietal junction, I assumed agency and intention on his part rather than pondering how my own perception might have been the true source that sense of agency of intention".

One of those scnearios is deeply emotionally attractive, and most people will choose it to explain their day with (or why, six weeks later, Steve asked to borrow their hammer and they passed it to him by dropping it on his hand). But any neuroscientist knows which of those scenarios is far, far more plausible. Common sense is a comforting concept, but an inaccurate methodology.

 

[bilby]

Yes. But it remains a part of me. Which was the point in question.

It isn't, though. It absolutely requires inputs from beyond your body in order to function at all. A brain without external stimuli and nutrients is just a lump of carbon slowly decaying into the soil, not even salvageable let alone functional.

We look back on our day and think "I was mad at Steve because he was an asshole", not "I was mad at Steve because there was an unpleasant odor in the workroom and it set off my insular function, which then tripped my amygdala, which set off damn near my entire network towards looking for potential threats, which it found in Steve's facial expression precisely because by that point my brain was searching for any explanation as to why it was freaking out, but I'd already habituated myself to the smell roughly three seconds before and no longer perceived at all, so Steve's smirking-ass face presented itself as the most likely source of my feeling of unease, and because I'm a primate with a typically overactive temporal parietal junction, I assumed agency and intention on his part rather than pondering how my own perception might have been the true source that sense of agency of intention".

But any neuroscientist knows which of those scenarios is far, far more plausible. Common sense is a comforting concept, but an inaccurate methodology.

Sure. We don't disagree at all on any of this.

Including the fact that in both scenarios it is I who is mad at Steve.

Nobody is so much as hinting that there is uncertainty about which bits of the universe are Steve, which are me, and which are neither of us.

So all of this is irrelevant to the question of whether I (or Steve, or anybody else) makes choices.

I choose things. If nobody forces my hand, I do so freely. I am responsible for my choices and their consequences.

Not the Big Bang; Not the laws of physics; Not the gods or the fates; Me.

 

[Politesse]

Yes. But it remains a part of me. Which was the point in question.

It isn't, though. It absolutely requires inputs from beyond your body in order to function at all. A brain without external stimuli and nutrients is just a lump of carbon slowly decaying into the soil, not even salvageable let alone functional.

We look back on our day and think "I was mad at Steve because he was an asshole", not "I was mad at Steve because there was an unpleasant odor in the workroom and it set off my insular function, which then tripped my amygdala, which set off damn near my entire network towards looking for potential threats, which it found in Steve's facial expression precisely because by that point my brain was searching for any explanation as to why it was freaking out, but I'd already habituated myself to the smell roughly three seconds before and no longer perceived at all, so Steve's smirking-ass face presented itself as the most likely source of my feeling of unease, and because I'm a primate with a typically overactive temporal parietal junction, I assumed agency and intention on his part rather than pondering how my own perception might have been the true source that sense of agency of intention".

But any neuroscientist knows which of those scenarios is far, far more plausible. Common sense is a comforting concept, but an inaccurate methodology.

Sure. We don't disagree at all on any of this

Including the fact that in both scenarios it is I who is mad at Steve.

Nobody is so much as hinting that there is uncertainty about which bits of the universe are Steve, which are me, and which are neither of us.

So all of this is irrelevant to the question of whether I (or Steve, or anybody else) makes choices.

I choose things. If nobody forces my hand, I do so freely. I am responsible for my choices and their consequences.

Not the Big Bang; Not the laws of physics; Not the gods or the fates; Me.

Except that the person who used too much Glen-20 when cleaning the room that morning had a lot more to do with it than Steve did, or even you did. If they didn't overdo it with the damn disinfectant, none of it would have happened. You didn't "choose" to be irrationally angry at Steve, and Steve certainly didn't have anything to do with it. You were never even consciously aware of the real source of your ill emotions, it never rose to your conscious awareness at all. You don't remember choosing to be mad at Steve. You perceive the entire situation as being the result of the choices that Steve made. But it's quite likely Steve didn't even know about the situation until you dropped a hammer on his hand for reasons even you didn't remember anymore and he never understood at all. Your accounts of the argument and whose "choices" led to it will never be reconcilable, and are likely impossible to investigate by the time the most critical incident occurs. The workroom doesn't smell gross anymore, and it wouldn't occur to either you or Steve to look back far enough in time to remember the odor at all, let alone attribute the argument to it, nor would your boss believe for a second a bullshit answer like "the Glen-20 made me do it". Understandably. I wouldn't either. We are captives to our senses. But the answer that involves the insula/amygdala interaction has the important advantages of both lying much closer to the observeable world rather than the world of emotional perception, and also of explaining why both you and Steve feel strongly but inaccurately that the inexplicable "choices" of the other party - the unknown, threatening circumstances of why "Bilby just lost it all the sudden, for no reason" or "Steve's been hounding me for weeks, for no reason" - yet neither of you can present a speck of evidence for your passionate views on the matter. Of course, you will eventually bear the penalty for the incident. But not because Steve's perception is more accurate. Only because at the end of this whole complex neurochemical process beginning in one person's mind (the janitor) and ending in three others (you, Steve, and your boss) the only one left holding a hammer was you.

Well, until you dropped it on Steve's hand of course.

 

[bilby]

Yes. But it remains a part of me. Which was the point in question.

It isn't, though. It absolutely requires inputs from beyond your body in order to function at all. A brain without external stimuli and nutrients is just a lump of carbon slowly decaying into the soil, not even salvageable let alone functional.

We look back on our day and think "I was mad at Steve because he was an asshole", not "I was mad at Steve because there was an unpleasant odor in the workroom and it set off my insular function, which then tripped my amygdala, which set off damn near my entire network towards looking for potential threats, which it found in Steve's facial expression precisely because by that point my brain was searching for any explanation as to why it was freaking out, but I'd already habituated myself to the smell roughly three seconds before and no longer perceived at all, so Steve's smirking-ass face presented itself as the most likely source of my feeling of unease, and because I'm a primate with a typically overactive temporal parietal junction, I assumed agency and intention on his part rather than pondering how my own perception might have been the true source that sense of agency of intention".

But any neuroscientist knows which of those scenarios is far, far more plausible. Common sense is a comforting concept, but an inaccurate methodology.

Sure. We don't disagree at all on any of this

Including the fact that in both scenarios it is I who is mad at Steve.

Nobody is so much as hinting that there is uncertainty about which bits of the universe are Steve, which are me, and which are neither of us.

So all of this is irrelevant to the question of whether I (or Steve, or anybody else) makes choices.

I choose things. If nobody forces my hand, I do so freely. I am responsible for my choices and their consequences.

Not the Big Bang; Not the laws of physics; Not the gods or the fates; Me.

Except that the person who used too much Glen-20 when cleaning the room that morning had a lot more to do with it than Steve did, or even you did. If they didn't overdo it with the damn disinfectant, none of it would have happened. You didn't "choose" to be irrationally angry at Steve, and Steve certainly didn't have anything to do with it. You were never even consciously aware of the real source of your ill emotions, it never rose to your conscious awareness at all. You don't remember choosing to be mad at Steve. You perceive the entire situation as being the result of the choices that Steve made. But it's quite likely Steve didn't even know about the situation until you dropped a hammer on his hand for reasons even you didn't remember anymore and he never understood at all. Your accounts of the argument and whose "choices" led to it will never be reconcilable, and are likely impossible to investigate by the time the most critical incident occurs. The workroom doesn't smell gross anymore, and it wouldn't occur to either you or Steve to look back far enough in time to remember the odor at all, let alone attribute the argument to it, nor would your boss believe for a second a bullshit answer like "the Glen-20 made me do it". Understandably. I wouldn't either. We are captives to our senses. But the answer that involves the insula/amygdala interaction has the important advantages of both lying much closer to the observeable world rather than the world of emotional perception, and also of explaining why both you and Steve feel strongly but inaccurately that the inexplicable "choices" of the other party - the unknown, threatening circumstances of why "Bilby just lost it all the sudden, for no reason" or "Steve's been hounding me for weeks, for no reason" - yet neither of you can present a speck of evidence for your passionate views on the matter. Of course, you will eventually bear the penalty for the incident. But not because Steve's perception is more accurate. Only because at the end of this whole complex neurochemical process beginning in one person's mind (the janitor) and ending in three others (you, Steve, and your boss) the only one left holding a hammer was you.

Well, until you dropped it on Steve's hand of course.

Yeah, sorry, but I still don't disagree with you.

 

[Politesse]

If an understanding of a system required a complete understanding of all of its components, humanity would be totally fucked - we found out most of chemistry before we even had an inkling about quantum mechanics.

We did indeed! Clever, clever monkeys. But if you do encounter a person or book with knowledge of quantum mechanics, you should embrace it as the next step in better understanding the universe, not reject it because late medieval chemistry was good enough for your grandpappy. If you reify a pre-physics understanding of alchemy, your technology will be able to reach exactly, but never exceed, the limitations of premodern alchemy. Good enough to make gunpowder? Yes. Sufficient to produce a nuclear ICBM? Not a snowball's chance in hell.

 

[Jarhyn]

If an understanding of a system required a complete understanding of all of its components, humanity would be totally fucked - we found out most of chemistry before we even had an inkling about quantum mechanics.

We did indeed! Clever, clever monkeys. But if you do encounter a person or book with knowledge of quantum mechanics, you should embrace it as the next step in better understanding the universe, not reject it because late medieval chemistry was good enough for your grandpappy. If you reify a pre-physics understanding of alchemy, your technology will be able to reach exactly, but never exceed, the limitations of premodern alchemy. Good enough to make gunpowder? Yes. Sufficient to produce a nuclear ICBM? Not a snowball's chance in hell.

I think my point on the subject is this: if you encounter a book on computational science (especially on the subject of switched logic), you should embrace that as the next step in understanding the behavior of switch based systems, and neurons are switches.

I think that far too often people discount that the whole point of a big switch made of a bunch of stuff is generally to squeeze out the the irregularity of quantum mechanical interactions, and the noise of (most) kinetic interactions and to instead engage in a system with regular thresholds, AND that such things can be understood in terms of the algorithms they instantiate, and their actions of contingent mechanism on an input state: that the switch's state, thresholds, etc. are responsible for the way the output maps to the input, even if something else was responsible for creating it in the past.

The idea here is that the switch has "freedoms", and constrains "what will happen". The switch is the "subject", the input and activation of whichever contingency is the "experience", and from here we can start to understand the answers to questions classically considered "hard".