In Free Will, What Makes it "Free"

[PyramidHead]

People have wills. They will to do this or that. To say that the will is "free" to do this or that - contra-causal freedom - requires, I propose, three things, at least.

1. A person must have an awareness of the choices available.
2. A person must have some sense of the value inherent in the choices that exist.
3. A person must be able to rationally choose this or that.

With regard to (1), contra-causal freedom says that the most basic choice that is required is A and ~A.
With regard to (2), the person must have a sense of the costs and benefits of choosing A and ~A.
With regard to (3), the person is not forced or compelled to choose A or ~A based on the relative values of A or ~A but rationally considers the choices with their values, and his choice of A or ~A is rational.

Does this work?

If all of the factors in 1, 2, and 3 are reducible to physical properties of the brain, then any choice a person makes is determined by the laws and probabilities that govern matter in the universe. A person may believe they chose ~A, but in reality, the chemical reactions in her brain produced the only outcome they were able to produce, given their initial configuration and the rules of chemistry. A sufficiently advanced alien race, who had mastered the understanding of human brain chemistry, would be able to accurately predict every decision she makes before she makes it. To this race of beings, it would be like looking at the film reel of an entire movie. The characters on the screen appear to be making choices, but if you skip to the end of the film reel, the ending is always the same. In the same way, the chemical makeup of human beings is restricted by nature's film reel, such that even when we appear to make decisions, we are actually merely acting out whatever our brain's chemistry is bound to do according to natural laws. Substitute chemistry with particle physics if you like; it introduces some randomness, but randomness is not free will any more than determinism is free will. Libertarian free will is akin to a character in a movie spontaneously deciding to do something other than what is already laid out in the film reel, hence it is called contra-causal. There is no mechanism we know of that could account for this miraculous occurrence even in principle.

Compatibilism is the position that all of the above is true as far as causes and effects go, but when ordinary people use the word 'free' they mean something less stringent than what libertarians say. If I choose to skip work and watch TV all day, I can get in trouble with my boss because, presumably, I freely decided to be lazy instead of coming to work. Notice that my boss would not accuse me of contravening the natural laws of the universe to interfere with my brain's physical makeup. He uses English like regular people do. He would say I freely chose to stay home from work unless I presented evidence that, for example, my wife was very sick and needed bedside care all day. In that case, I still chose to stay home, but I was partially constrained by my obligation to my wife. Even more obligation could be imagined if someone had me at gunpoint and told me I could not attend work that day. In each of those scenarios, my will is less and less free, but nothing about the universe or its natural laws has changed from case to case. Therefore, people must be talking about something other than the universe or its natural laws when they say somebody acted of their own free will. I like compatibilism because it takes the wind out of determinism's sails. It concedes that our every action may be the inevitable result of what came before it, which is not under our conscious control, but rightly points out that nobody who talks about free will in everyday life uses the term that way, so determinism has nothing to do with whether or not we actually have free will.

 

[Horatio Parker]

Fate and providence are two ideas that relate to free will.

Whatever your situation is your fate. If you examine yourself and discover your fate, and decide you want to escape it, you consider alternatives. The alternatives are providence, existing prior to vision meaning they are there but you're unaware of them until you need them.

 

[DBT]

Chance is the heart of "free".
The fact is the unpredictablility factor is because, first, decisions are mostly unconscious,...

I think free will issues actually deal with conscious decisions - I can choose A or ~A.

That is what free will is commonly believed to be. The problem is that consciousness itself is not the decision making mechanism, but the report (readiness potential) or representation of information that has already been processed. Conscious activity, while active is being fed information from inputs from the senses correlated with memory function. As it is the unconscious processing that determines what is seen, heard, felt, thought and acted upon, the term free will does not represent what is a highly intelligent interactive system, but nothing to do with 'free will'

So the definition of free will as the ability to make conscious selections from a set of realizable alternatives does not represent the cognitive processes of the brain, which are mostly unconscious information processing followed (milliseconds) by conscious representation and motor action.

 

[Perspicuo]

¡ʎʃʇɔɐxǝ 'sǝ⅄

Unconscious mental processing, cognitive and emotional, is a game changer validated by research.

 

[fromderinside]

¡ʎʃʇɔɐxǝ 'sǝ⅄

Unconscious mental processing, cognitive and emotional, is a game changer validated by research.

Prove it's unconscious whatever that happens to be. We presume consciousness when in fact its post hoc aware - a state where stuff is cobbled together to form a social present - rationale. We're (you, me, Swaboda) machines. Get used to it.

 

[Perspicuo]

¡ʎʃʇɔɐxǝ 'sǝ⅄

Unconscious mental processing, cognitive and emotional, is a game changer validated by research.

Prove it's unconscious whatever that happens to be. We presume consciousness when in fact its post hoc aware - a state where stuff is cobbled together to form a social present - rationale. We're (you, me, Swaboda) machines. Get used to it.

I can't "prove" anything outside of mathematics. No one can. You've got your concepts wrong.

In any case, we got the evidence. For example you can check out what I already posted:

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2014/10/28/4115528.htm

http://www.mpg.de/567905/pressRelease20080414

It's not that deliberation does not exist, but research shows unconscious processes tip the scales. And if you add up the rest of the particulars I mentioned, the conscious self is a poor thing indeed.

And lastly, I have no idea what "We're [...] machines" has anything to do with the subject. Please clarify the obscure intermediate steps in your reasoning.

 

[DBT]

Prove it's unconscious whatever that happens to be. We presume consciousness when in fact its post hoc aware - a state where stuff is cobbled together to form a social present - rationale. We're (you, me, Swaboda) machines. Get used to it.

I can't "prove" anything outside of mathematics. No one can. You've got your concepts wrong.

In any case, we got the evidence. For example you can check out what I already posted:

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2014/10/28/4115528.htm

http://www.mpg.de/567905/pressRelease20080414

It's not that deliberation does not exist, but research shows unconscious processes tip the scales. And if you add up the rest of the particulars I mentioned, the conscious self is a poor thing indeed.

And lastly, I have no idea what "We're [...] machines" has anything to do with the subject. Please clarify the obscure intermediate steps in your reasoning.

Conscious deliberation is neural information processing in conscious form, being fed inputs from the underlying activity.

Consciousness is not a choice. There is no homunculus that makes decisions, generates consciousness by an act of will, or shapes and forms thoughts and deliberations.

Neural activity is producing both conscious deliberation, its sensory inputs and information for deliberation. It is not consciousness itself that is the agent of decision making, but the information state of the brain in the instance of making a decision. The brain being the sole agent of perception, thought, deliberation, feeling and decisions that are made (both in conscious and unconscious forms).

''I don't think "free will" is a very sensible concept, and you don't need neuroscience to reject it -- any mechanistic view of the world is good enough, and indeed you could even argue on purely conceptual grounds that the opposite of determinism is randomness, not free will! Most thoughtful neuroscientists I know have replaced the concept of free will with the concept of rationality -- that we select our actions based on a kind of practical reasoning. And there is no conflict between rationality and the mind as a physical system -- After all, computers are rational physical systems!'' - Martha Farah, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Cognitive Neuroscience and a prominent neuroethicist.

 

[Perspicuo]

Regarding unconscious decisions, I will no longer argue in its favor because I presented the evidence. That cake is cooked.

Regarding free will, I don't consider it to be a thing, but I do consider it an interesting problem. The human brain is not mechanistic, it is stochastic, which means that if you were stuck in a temporal loop (like in sci-fi) every time the results of your decisions would be different and therefore unpredictable in every iteration.

P.S. Schrödinger's cat just called to say meow. Or not.

 

[fromderinside]

Regarding unconscious decisions, I will no longer argue in its favor because I presented the evidence. That cake is cooked.

Regarding free will, I don't consider it to be a thing, but I do consider it an interesting problem. The human brain is not mechanistic, it is stochastic, which means that if you were stuck in a temporal loop (like in sci-fi) every time the results of your decisions would be different and therefore unpredictable in every iteration.

P.S. Schrödinger's cat just called to say meow. Or not.

I'm not saying we are not aware. I'm saying the term consciousness does not substantiate free will since the awareness to which it refers is after the fact. As for Schrodinger he's in his own box since he formed his proposal after the fact.

 

[PyramidHead]

Regarding unconscious decisions, I will no longer argue in its favor because I presented the evidence. That cake is cooked.

Regarding free will, I don't consider it to be a thing, but I do consider it an interesting problem. The human brain is not mechanistic, it is stochastic, which means that if you were stuck in a temporal loop (like in sci-fi) every time the results of your decisions would be different and therefore unpredictable in every iteration.

P.S. Schrödinger's cat just called to say meow. Or not.

How do you know this is true? Given exactly the same inputs and exactly the same functional configuration of the brain's parts, right down to the atomic level, what would cause the variation? I have always heard that quantum effects are much too localized to "bubble up" into actual observable changes in the brain. If a quark spins one way instead of the other, for example, you won't see a person choosing Coke rather than Pepsi. Is that view no longer accepted, if it ever was?

 

[fast]

Whether someone is or isn't acting of their own free will depends on whether there is a compulsory reason to act in opposition to what one wants to do.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Whether someone is or isn't acting of their own free will depends on whether there is a compulsory reason to act in opposition to what one wants to do.

I disagree. It's not something which comes as a result of what one wants to do but rather a discussion of how one got to what they want to do in the first place.

 

[DBT]

Regarding unconscious decisions, I will no longer argue in its favor because I presented the evidence. That cake is cooked.

Regarding free will, I don't consider it to be a thing, but I do consider it an interesting problem. The human brain is not mechanistic, it is stochastic, which means that if you were stuck in a temporal loop (like in sci-fi) every time the results of your decisions would be different and therefore unpredictable in every iteration.

P.S. Schrödinger's cat just called to say meow. Or not.

Probabilistic solutions still do not allow for free will because the neural conditions that generate them are not subject to conscious control (if conscious control happens to be one's definition of free will)

The term itself is just not sensible, useful or relevant.

 

[Togo]

Hm.. A few points:

1) Again, it's really a good idea to add to your definition some kind of position as to whether you expect conscious decision making to have an effect. The problem with the definition at the moment is that you could have the sensation of making a decision, that is not in any way connected to either further thought or further action, and which has absolutely no effect on either, and still call that free will. That's not what most people tend to mean by the term.

2) Compatibalist free will does not, I believe, fully capture what people mean by free will, for the same reason as above. Modern popular fiction gives a rich source of examples of situations that would otherwise be limited to philosophical discourse, concerns the extent to which the person's ability to motivate themselves, reach decisions, and act on those decisions. People consistently label a situation in which someone makes a decision that has been predetermined by external events, as not being free will. That's not fatal to employing a compatibilist definition, but I don't think it's consistent with the idea that compatibilist free will is what everyone means by free will.

3) Perspicuo's evidence is two pieces. The first is the same 2008 Haynes study, a reworking of the Libet experiment using a new scanner of his own design. It doesn't prove the point any better than Libet did, and is subject to the usual criticisms. The second is a study about the efficacy of unconscious processing in decision making, which declares that unconscious processing contributes to decision making, but is less effective than conscious processing. What this is supposed to demonstrate is not clear to me.

4) There's a range of opinion on this topic, which is why getting a clear definition down is so important. You'll note that after only a few pages most of the comments are referring to other definitions than the one in the OP. There are good reasons to use particular definitions, but we're already starting to talk past each other, and the thread has only just got started.

 

[tupac chopra]

People have wills. They will to do this or that. To say that the will is "free" to do this or that - contra-causal freedom - requires, I propose, three things, at least.

1. A person must have an awareness of the choices available.
2. A person must have some sense of the value inherent in the choices that exist.
3. A person must be able to rationally choose this or that.

1.A person must feel different about focussing on different imaginings
2.A person must prefer focusing on some things as opposed to others
3.A person must be able to focus on one imagining more than another

 

[rhutchin]

I think free will issues actually deal with conscious decisions - I can choose A or ~A.

Sorreee...

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2014/10/28/4115528.htm

http://www.mpg.de/567905/pressRelease20080414

It's not that deliberation does not exist, but research shows unconscious processes tip the scales. And if you add up the rest of the particulars I mentioned, the conscious self is a poor thing indeed.

Seems a little flaky to me. If one is choosing whether to push the left button or the right button, a lot of things may be happening in the person's mind that have nothing to do with the decision because the decision doesn't require attention. Who is to know?

Let's take a decision with distinct options. A person is offered a job by two companies. The jobs are the same in all respects except that one pays $10K per year and the other $20K. What does he choose? If the person is "free" He chooses the company that will pay him $20K simply because $20K is more than $10K. All things being the same, more should be preferred to less. There is no unconscious activity in his mind that should contribute to this decision (other than to affirm it). At least, i don't see it.

Here, I think having a free will means that the person can choose among known options and chooses consistent with rational decision making - as opposed to making such decisions by flipping a coin or using some other random means.

 

[rhutchin]

Hm.. A few points:

1) Again, it's really a good idea to add to your definition some kind of position as to whether you expect conscious decision making to have an effect. The problem with the definition at the moment is that you could have the sensation of making a decision, that is not in any way connected to either further thought or further action, and which has absolutely no effect on either, and still call that free will. That's not what most people tend to mean by the term.

OK. I think the effect is that benefits (even if only perceived) exceed the costs. At the least, the person reasons that no harm results from the decision.

2) Compatibalist free will does not, I believe, fully capture what people mean by free will, for the same reason as above. Modern popular fiction gives a rich source of examples of situations that would otherwise be limited to philosophical discourse, concerns the extent to which the person's ability to motivate themselves, reach decisions, and act on those decisions. People consistently label a situation in which someone makes a decision that has been predetermined by external events, as not being free will. That's not fatal to employing a compatibilist definition, but I don't think it's consistent with the idea that compatibilist free will is what everyone means by free will.

I still do not understand what people mean by compatibilist free will beyond the idea that decisions are not coerced.

4) There's a range of opinion on this topic, which is why getting a clear definition down is so important. You'll note that after only a few pages most of the comments are referring to other definitions than the one in the OP. There are good reasons to use particular definitions, but we're already starting to talk past each other, and the thread has only just got started.

That leads me to conclude that everyone talks about free will but no one knows what it really means beyond saying that it involves contra-causal choice - the ability to choose otherwise (whatever that means).

 

[rhutchin]

People have wills. They will to do this or that. To say that the will is "free" to do this or that - contra-causal freedom - requires, I propose, three things, at least.

1. A person must have an awareness of the choices available.
2. A person must have some sense of the value inherent in the choices that exist.
3. A person must be able to rationally choose this or that.

1.A person must feel different about focussing on different imaginings
2.A person must prefer focusing on some things as opposed to others
3.A person must be able to focus on one imagining more than another

That's basically what I said - except in reverse order. So, what's the point?? That one's "feelings" should prevail over rational decision making?

 

[fast]

Whether someone is or isn't acting of their own free will depends on whether there is a compulsory reason to act in opposition to what one wants to do.

I disagree. It's not something which comes as a result of what one wants to do but rather a discussion of how one got to what they want to do in the first place.

Even if (and even this is highly doubtful) micro-events necessitate events leading to what one may ultimately want, the discussion of free will ought to be limited to macro events. The gunman still decided to pull the gun (he made a choice), and unless there was a non-micro event compelling that decision, it was a decision of his own free will.

 

[DBT]

There are no choices in relation to neural architecture, sensory information and memory function and content...the determining elements of the decision making process. We are whatever the brain is doing in response to its information inputs and neural architecture. Consciousness being one means by which a brain interacts with the external world and the state of the body as a whole. The term 'free will' is meaningless.