Free Will And Free Choice

[Lumpenproletariat]

deciding + consciousness = free will, regardless what causes the consciousness

. . . Plus you miss the point. Which is: decision making is not free will.

It is if accompanied by consciousness. If the decision-maker is conscious of its/his/her decision-making, then it's free will. But if the decision-making takes place without consciousness, then it's not free will.

You are equivocating. Computers are able to select options and initiate response based on the selected option.

Yes, but without consciousness of its selecting and responding there is no free will. Whereas entities having that consciousness and making selections are performing free will.

The ability to make decisions is not 'free will,' . . .

It is free will if the one making the decisions is conscious while doing it, or is conscious of making those decisions.

it is decision making.

And is also free will if the one deciding is conscious of doing so.

If the one processing the information has consciousness while doing this, then it's free will. Such as when you process the information and choose the option to not respond to my walls of text, it's free will, because you're conscious that you're doing this processing.

Or do you claim you're not conscious as you type your walls of text?

The point is that there is no conscious activity without the underlying information processing activity.

Maybe. But even so, it's free will if the conscious activity is there along with the decision-making.

That without prior unconscious information processing there is no conscious activity, no conscious thought and response.

Even so, whenever the conscious activity is happening along with the decision-making, it's free will. Regardless what causes the conscious activity or thought or response.

Which is why some may be conscious but not able to think clearly or reason, and why algorithms and unconscious processing is able to select options and initiate response, driverless cars, chess moves, etc, etc.

In which case, being unconscious, there's no free will. But in other cases when there is conscious processing and selecting and responding, it is free will by the conscious one doing this processing etc.

Your conscious abilities are only as good as the state of the underlying system, your brain.

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.''

None of this changes the fact that decision-making + consciousness = free will.

The significance of free will is perhaps diminished in cases where the consciousness is deceived or experiences false information or misinterpretations. That's not the norm. Probably free will would not be very important if the consciousness always experienced grossly false information, so that everything we're experiencing is delusional and all our sense experiences constantly false.

If nothing we experience is really happening, and if everything we think is happening is totally fiction, then it's true that "free will" wouldn't mean much.

And it's true that some of the decision-making is determined prior to the consciousness of it, or that there are subconscious influences on our decision-making. But once we're aware of it and we make those decisions, it's free will, because we're conscious of the decision, so we're deciding while being conscious of our decision = free will. Even though something might have influenced us which we didn't know about.

There's plenty that we don't know. That doesn't mean we have no free will. If we learn more and it changes our preferences, that just means our will can change as a result of learning more. Free will doesn't mean that we know totally everything, including everything that ever influenced us or made us want something.

 

[DBT]

"None of this changes the fact that decision-making + consciousness = free will."


And Pigs fly on magic wings. You are expressing an assertion.....god is love, Angels dance on the points of needles when bored with worshipping God, etc.

The reasons why decision making is not 'free will' have been described.....or do you believe anything that processes information and selects options has free will?

Keep in mind that consciousness is not the decision maker, that being the role of the underlying network activity that produces both the thoughts and decisions and the related conscious experience.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

It's not free will unless there is also consciousness along with the decision-making or information processing.

"None of this changes the fact that decision-making + consciousness = free will."

And Pigs fly on magic wings.

That's not analogous. "Pigs fly on magic wings" is an empirical claim (probably false) which could be observed with sense perception if it were true.

But "decision-making + consciousness = free will" is basically analytic, or a definition of what "free will" means. No sense observations are needed to confirm or deny this.

I'm claiming that this is what people mean when they claim to be choosing freely. They mean they are conscious and that they are making a choice. They're also claiming that they're not being coerced by someone threatening to harm them, so it's a decision/choice not taken to protect against someone forcing them to do it; and it's a decision they make while being conscious -- not made by a machine with no consciousness.

When is this not what we ordinarily mean when we claim to be choosing freely (with free will)?

You are expressing an assertion.....god is love, Angels dance on the points of needles when bored with worshipping God, etc.

Some assertions are true, others are not. You have to consider them one by one. How is my assertion incorrect? You can't just condemn all assertions as false. Just because some assertions are false or nonsensical doesn't mean all of them are. To refute my definition of "free will" you must show an example where someone claims to be acting with free will but was not making a decision while being conscious. Just because it's an "assertion" doesn't make it incorrect.

The reasons why decision making is not 'free will' have been described.....or do you believe anything that processes information and selects options has free will?

No. Once again, for the 10th time, "free will" means selecting options PLUS BEING CONSCIOUS while doing it. If the decider is not conscious, e.g., a machine, then it's not free will.

Keep in mind that consciousness is not the decision maker, . . .

Maybe, but still -- the one making the decision is also conscious. And the consciousness does enter in to some decisions, even if there are other factors also doing the deciding. Those other factors might be prior -- even so, the consciousness does impact the decisions. When the conscious one observes something happening (becomes aware or conscious of it), this then in turn can impact the later deciding which happens, e.g., decisions a second or two later.

That consciousness can even undo some earlier deciding which might have happened, in the brain cells, etc. So it also plays a part in the deciding -- you can't say it has no impact at all on any of the deciding.

. . . consciousness is not the decision maker, that being the role of the underlying network activity that produces both the thoughts and decisions and the related conscious experience.

No matter what produces the conscious experience, as long as that consciousness is there, and the conscious one is also making decisions, then it is the case that this decision-maker has free will, or is acting freely (if not being coerced, threatened, etc.).

This is free will regardless that there are other factors also causing the decisions and even causing the consciousness.

 

[untermensche]

The insane bicker.

As I will my arm to move any way I choose.

As I will my body to go have fun.

As I will my mind to create ideas in language then will my hands to push specific buttons on my keyboard.

You will never accomplish much without planning.

You can wait for your brain to start the planning.

Or willfully make plans.

 

[DBT]

No matter what produces the conscious experience, as long as that consciousness is there, and the conscious one is also making decisions, then it is the case that this decision-maker has free will, or is acting freely (if not being coerced, threatened, etc.).

This is free will regardless that there are other factors also causing the decisions and even causing the consciousness.

As far as the decision made in any given instance, it doesn't matter if you are conscious or not....your conscious state is still as much production of the brain as the processing of information that preceded it.

Your conscious state doesn't alter information input, processing, the criteria or selection.

Inputs alter outcomes, not consciousness.

Inputs alter parameters.

Inputs provide the feed for conscious experience.

The information state of a brain, not will, determines the expression of its conscious activity.

Will is merely the prompt or urge to act. It is not the Captain or CEO of cognition.

Freedom of will or free will simply refers to our ability to think and decide without external coercion, a phrase that tell us nothing about the nature of decision making or will.

Given the unconscious nature of information processing milliseconds prior to the production of conscious experience, and that will is not the driver of cognition, neither the decision making process or conscious will is an example of 'free will.' There are ample studies to support this.

 

[DBT]

The insane bicker.

As I will my arm to move any way I choose.

As I will my body to go have fun.

As I will my mind to create ideas in language then will my hands to push specific buttons on my keyboard.

You will never accomplish much without planning.

You can wait for your brain to start the planning.

Or willfully make plans.

Read and learn;

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.''

 

[untermensche]

I can easily stretch my arm.

Any time I want to.

Doing strange things to the brain externally will never explain anything.

 

[fromderinside]

Wow.

You can easily stretch your arm? Sez who? It's not easy else ants could do it.

What do you mean by strange things? How does one explain anything?

Conscious minds want to know.

 

[untermensche]

You can excite cells with an electrical current and get strange behavior in the brain that never happens naturally.

It tells you nothing.

I can make the leg kick out by tapping the patellar tendon.

WOW!!

What a miracle.

 

[fromderinside]

It doesn't matter what taps the patellar tendon, when tapped the leg kicks. C and E No miracle 'tal.

Maybe we should first agree on what qualifies as a 'strange thing'.

 

[DBT]

I can easily stretch my arm.

Any time I want to.

Doing strange things to the brain externally will never explain anything.

Doing 'strange thing to the brain' reveals how the brain works to produce your perceptions and motor actions. That these are separate activities brought together to produce a coherent experience of the world and self.

You ignore the means of production.

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

The insane bicker.

As I will my arm to move any way I choose.

As I will my body to go have fun.

As I will my mind to create ideas in language then will my hands to push specific buttons on my keyboard.

You will never accomplish much without planning.

You can wait for your brain to start the planning.

Or willfully make plans.

Read and learn;

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.''

So in that case where the patient was unaware of what was happening, it was not a free will act.

But in other cases where they tried to move and did move and were aware of it -- that was a case of free will.

It's true that there are some strange phenomena going on in our brains ("strange" or unexpected or not normally realized by us), and these can be puzzling to us and happening more than we realize, etc., but these do not negate the fact that other ordinary acts we do are "free will" acts which we do control and know about. There can even be an illusion that we intentionally moved when it really happened before we intended it. But even then there is the intentional part we choose to do, after we first moved and then choose to keep doing the movement rather than stopping it.

So the "free will" acts are there also, as we commonly assume, and the free will is not an illusion or something we just imagine that isn't there. Rather, it's just more complicated than we ordinarily realize, and you can say there is an "illusion" element which can sometimes be detected and which surprises us when we learn of it.

example I remember hearing about: A brain surgeon caused the patient to lift his hand by stimulating a section of his brain, and he asked the patient why he lifted his hand, and the patient "made up" a reason why he wanted to lift his hand at that moment. Maybe in that case there was an "illusion" of free will when it was not free will at all, and somehow the patient believed the story he "made up" to explain why he moved.

Even so, there are other cases where the act done was a free will act, because the conscious person made the choice to do it and it was not a reaction to a brain area being touched by the surgeon's probe.

 

[DBT]

The insane bicker.

As I will my arm to move any way I choose.

As I will my body to go have fun.

As I will my mind to create ideas in language then will my hands to push specific buttons on my keyboard.

You will never accomplish much without planning.

You can wait for your brain to start the planning.

Or willfully make plans.

Read and learn;

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.''

So in that case where the patient was unaware of what was happening, it was not a free will act.

But in other cases where they tried to move and did move and were aware of it -- that was a case of free will.

It's true that there are some strange phenomena going on in our brains ("strange" or unexpected or not normally realized by us), and these can be puzzling to us and happening more than we realize, etc., but these do not negate the fact that other ordinary acts we do are "free will" acts which we do control and know about. There can even be an illusion that we intentionally moved when it really happened before we intended it. But even then there is the intentional part we choose to do, after we first moved and then choose to keep doing the movement rather than stopping it.

So the "free will" acts are there also, as we commonly assume, and the free will is not an illusion or something we just imagine that isn't there. Rather, it's just more complicated than we ordinarily realize, and you can say there is an "illusion" element which can sometimes be detected and which surprises us when we learn of it.

example I remember hearing about: A brain surgeon caused the patient to lift his hand by stimulating a section of his brain, and he asked the patient why he lifted his hand, and the patient "made up" a reason why he wanted to lift his hand at that moment. Maybe in that case there was an "illusion" of free will when it was not free will at all, and somehow the patient believed the story he "made up" to explain why he moved.

Even so, there are other cases where the act done was a free will act, because the conscious person made the choice to do it and it was not a reaction to a brain area being touched by the surgeon's probe.

You are arbitrarily sticking the term 'free will' wherever you please, however you please, willy nilly, slap bang, without regard to the implications of the available research.

Research that shows that it is the underlying, unconscious work of the brain that is producing you and your conscious experience of the world, thoughts,decisions, actions, feeling.....and that this has nothing to do with 'free will' and everything to do with neural architecture and information exchange;


Quote:
''Our brain is not a unified structure; instead it is composed of several modules that work out their computations separately, in what are called neural networks. These networks can carry out activities largely on their own. The visual network, for example, responds to visual stimulation and is also active during visual imagery that is, seeing something with your mind's eye; the motor network can produce movement and is active during imagined movements. Yet even though our brain carries out all these functions in a modular system, we do not feel like a million little robots carrying out their disjointed activities. We feel like one, coherent self with intentions and reasons for what we feel are our unified actions. How can this be?

Over the past thirty years I have been studying a phenomenon that was first revealed during work with split-brain patients,whod had the connections between the two brain hemispheres severed to relieve severe epilepsy. My colleagues and I weren't looking for the answer to the question of what makes us seem unified, but we think we found it. It follows from the idea that if the brain is modular, a part of the brain must be monitoring all the networks behaviors and trying to interpret their individual actions in order to create a unified idea of the self. Our best candidate for this brain area is the left-hemisphere interpreter. Beyond the finding, described in the last chapter, that the left hemisphere makes strange input logical, it includes a special region that interprets the inputs we receive every moment and weaves them into stories to form the ongoing narrative of our self-image and our beliefs. I have called this area of the left hemisphere the interpreter because it seeks explanations for internal and external events and expands on the actual facts we experience to make sense of, or interpret, the events of our life.


Experiments on split-brain patients reveal how readily the left brain interpreter can make up stories and beliefs. In one experiment, for example, when the word walk was presented only to the right side of a patient's brain, he got up and started walking. When he was asked why he did this, the left brain (where language is stored and where the word walk was not presented) quickly created a reason for the action: I wanted to go get a Coke.

Even more fantastic examples of the left hemisphere at work come from the study of neurological disorders. In a complication of stroke called anosognosia with hemiplegia, patients cannot recognize that their left arm is theirs because the stroke damaged the right parietal cortex, which manages our body's integrity, position, and movement. The left-hemisphere interpreter has to reconcile the information it receives from the visual cortex that the limb is attached to its body but is not moving with the fact that it is not receiving any input about the damage to that limb. The left-hemisphere interpreter would recognize that damage to nerves of the limb meant trouble for the brain and that the limb was paralyzed; however, in this case the damage occurred directly to the brain area responsible for signaling a problem in the perception of the limb, and it cannot send any information to the left-hemisphere interpreter. The interpreter must, then, create a belief to mediate the two known facts, I can see the limb isn't moving and I can't tell that it is damaged. When patients with this disorder are asked about their arm and why they can't move it, they will say It's not mine or I just don't feel like moving it, reasonable conclusions, given the input that the left-hemisphere interpreter is receiving.''

 

[untermensche]

I know that damaged brains do not work like undamaged brains.

And strange things can happen to people with damaged brains.

I also know that you can't understand how a normal brain works by looking at damaged brains.

You understand how undamaged brains work by looking at undamaged brains and we already know how undamaged brains work. We see them at work constantly.

With an undamaged brain you recognized left from right easily and consistently and move your limbs at will.

 

[fromderinside]

So a evolutionary change in brain is a 'damaged' brain?

 

[untermensche]

So a evolutionary change in brain is a 'damaged' brain?

Usually.

 

[fromderinside]

Excellent.

So an experience is a subjective frame?

 

[DBT]

I know that damaged brains do not work like undamaged brains.

And strange things can happen to people with damaged brains.

I also know that you can't understand how a normal brain works by looking at damaged brains.

You understand how undamaged brains work by looking at undamaged brains and we already know how undamaged brains work. We see them at work constantly.

With an undamaged brain you recognized left from right easily and consistently and move your limbs at will.

You miss the point, studies using electrical stimulation, chemical changes, lesions, pathologies, etc, reveal how the brain function, the roles that various lobes and structures play in producing a sense of self, you, your experience of the world and self, how you think, what you think, what you decided, how you feel.

 

[untermensche]

I know that damaged brains do not work like undamaged brains.

And strange things can happen to people with damaged brains.

I also know that you can't understand how a normal brain works by looking at damaged brains.

You understand how undamaged brains work by looking at undamaged brains and we already know how undamaged brains work. We see them at work constantly.

With an undamaged brain you recognized left from right easily and consistently and move your limbs at will.

You miss the point, studies using electrical stimulation, chemical changes, lesions, pathologies, etc, reveal how the brain function....

They produce pathological abnormal function, not normal function.

And you or anyone else have no clue what a drug like LSD or any drug is specifically doing to brain function.

All we know is the subjective effect and where the drug binds.

And knowing where a drug binds tells us nothing about the overall effect to the activity creating consciousness.

We don't even know what specific activity is creating consciousness.

 

[untermensche]

Excellent.

So an experience is a subjective frame?

A subject is aware of experiences.

With experience there is knowing.

I know what I am experiencing is what I am experiencing.

I know I am what is experiencing it and my experiences are not visible to another.