There isn't really a 'freewill problem'.

[Speakpigeon]

I can broadly agree with that and still feel good about saying I have free will.

Whatever I choose to do is of my own choosing. I'm sure it's my brain that is somehow producing that choice. It's not "making the choice", though, that would be inappropriate language, like saying "H2O molecules in the ice are melting" instead of the ice itself. You do it if you like it, not me. So, I say I have free will just because the thing that produces my choices is entirely mine. This brain is mine. It's just a part of me, so it's me making the choice. It's a pragmatic way of talking.

I'm French and in French we talk of "libre arbitre". Same idea. On a "problematic use" scale from 0 to 100, I would rate my use of "libre arbitre" as zero. I use my libre arbitre in the course of my daily life and nobody is even remotely likely to convince me I could not possibly do that because we live in a deterministic universe. It would be as sensible as saying I don't weigh 84 kg (yes, I know, I took 5 kg recently) because it's really my body, or even the matter in my body, that weighs 84 kg. Or that I don't really see anything because it's mine eyes that really see things.

Again, we talk of free nations, free men, free press, free artistic style, free education, free meal, free oxygen (i.e. not chemically bound), free electron (i.e. not in a fixed position), free wind (i.e. favorable wind), free cubicle (i.e. not occupied), and on and on and on. If the use of the expression "free will" is illegitimate because we live in a deterministic universe, then all these expressions are illegitimate. So, please, refer me to the many websites and forums where people argue endlessly about all those illegitimately free thingies.

So, there's absolutely no problem in talking of free will. People who worry about the scientific details of how free will works are welcome to enlighten the rest of us, but keep your distance as to usage. Usage is produced by millions of people in their daily linguistic intercommunication and that's how it should be. Get real. You're not going to change that. And scientists can choose whatever expressions they deem fit to talk among themselves about the neurobiology of decision-making. Nobody will care too much about that.

If people who have an axe to grind about free will were just a little more subtle, they would just accept we have free will and then provide a detailed explanation about how all our "free will" decisions are arrived at essentially through the working of our brain. Nowadays, I'm sure most people would agree with them. The rest who wouldn't would be mostly ideologues and then some. Eccentric people, perhaps?
EB

 

[Treedbear]

I don't know what consciousness is other than the state of being conscious. As such it usually refers to the subjective experience. You seem to insist that consciousness is also the source of control for one's thoughts and actions. I can't agree simply because I don't know how this subjective experience is produced. It's the hard problem. The easy problem seems to be the neural mechanisms responcible for our perceptions as well as (to my understanding) our motivations. I see no clear line in my experiences separating an independent central motivator from the various urges and inclinations generated by the unconscious brain. You apparently claim to have the evidence. My view is that of course conscious awareness effects the brain's processes. It's part of the brain and so must have some influence. But is it the motivator or just the model which provides an input to the various functional areas? A kind of database by which the brain predicts future interactions. I just don't know. I can say that I have thoughts and that I control them or I can say that I don't actually know where they come from. It's clear to me that at times I have thoughts, and even inspirations, ideas, and intuitions that I really can't attribute to my conscious awareness. They just come through fully formed...

I don't insist on anything.

I point out a clear experience.

Try it.

Cause your left arm to move over your head.

What did you use?

My brain and various of its processes? I experienced the desire to move my arm and then I experienced it moving.

 

[untermensche]

Yes your brain followed a command.

The question was, what gave the command?

And what is the evidence for your claim?

 

[Emily Lake]

The common definition of free will is equally meaningless:

1)Free will is the ability to make conscious decisions.
2)Conscious decision making can be experienced.
3)Conscious decision making exists.
4) Free will exists.

There is no given reason to define or conflate Love with God. Love is love, nothing more and nothing less.

Just as there is no given reason to define conscious decision making as ''free will'' - conscious decision making requires nothing additional, it is a function of neural activity, nothing more and nothing less.


So a definition alone or an ontological argument without relationship to evidence proves nothing.

Which is why the issue of free will is an issue of how the brain functions, the actual role of will, how it is formed, etc, and not merely applying words that have little or no relationship to how things actually work.....that is the stuff of Thomas Equines...''the universe would be incomplete without Angels" - except that we are talking about 'free will''

Well... except that a really large number of people, when asked what free will is, will reply that it is conscious decision making (or something so similar as to be indistinguishable). Most people, when asked what god is, won't respond that god is love.

If your personal definition of free will is something materially different than "conscious decision making", then I've got to ask whether you've considered that your definition might well be the outlier here.

 

[Emily Lake]

How Can There Be Voluntary Movement Without Free Will?
''Humans do not appear to be purely reflexive organisms, simple automatons. A vast array of different movements are generated in a variety of settings. Is there an alternative to free will? Movement, in the final analysis, comes only from muscle contraction. Muscle contraction is under the complete control of the alpha motoneurons in the spinal cord. When the alpha motoneurons are active, there will be movement. Activity of the alpha motoneurons is a product of the different synaptic events on their dendrites and cell bodies. There is a complex summation of EPSPs and IPSPs, and when the threshold for an action potential is crossed, the cell fires. There are a large number of important inputs, and one of the most important is from the corticospinal tract which conveys a large part of the cortical control. Such a situation likely holds also for the motor cortex and the cells of origin of the corticospinal tract. Their firing depends on their synaptic inputs. And, a similar situation must hold for all the principal regions giving input to the motor cortex. For any cortical region, its activity will depend on its synaptic inputs. Some motor cortical inputs come via only a few synapses from sensory cortices, and such influences on motor output are clear. Some inputs will come from regions, such as the limbic areas, many synapses away from both primary sensory and motor cortices. At any one time, the activity of the motor cortex, and its commands to the spinal cord, will reflect virtually all the activity in the entire brain. Is it necessary that there be anything else? This can be a complete description of the process of movement selection, and even if there is something more -- like free will -- it would have to operate through such neuronal mechanisms.
The view that there is no such thing as free will as an inner causal agent has been advocated by a number of philosophers, scientists, and neurologists including Ryle, Adrian, Skinner and Fisher.(Fisher 1993)''

Just for consideration, the bolded section seems speculative in nature, and everything that follows from it appears to be supposition. The factual statements seem to end prior to the bolded statements.

 

[Emily Lake]

How does 'freely willed' differ from 'choose' in your statement? To me, they're the same thing.

The way I see it, choices can be coerced. If I put a gun to your head and said that if you didn't eat the banana I gave you, I would shoot you dead, that would be one type (or degree) of coerced choice. You could in theory choose to be shot, of course (if, say, you knew or believed that the banana contained a lethal poison which would cause you to die horribly painfully and slowly).

The 'actual state of affairs' in your life seems to be that all your thoughts and actions are even more coerced than that, the 'degree of coercion' is, it would seem, 100%, because of the (let's say trillions) of prior causes (including ones that were indetermined beforehand or at the time of action or thought) that are 'in play' at any moment of your life. You are arguably just 'following the instructions of the universe' no matter how complicated your 'machine processing' is.

Perhaps we might not, at a pinch, even call that 'choosing' at all, under a certain, perhaps very strict definition. But we could use the word, if we meant something akin to a driverless car 'choosing' to turn right at a certain junction. Simplistic analogy I know, but ultimately, I think, correct, though it feels otherwise to us in relation to our own circumstances. Perhaps it would be better to simply say that our very complicated and sophisticated systems automatically make decisions according to priorities (desires let's say, or 'drives') which are themselves automatically generated by or developed in the system. Whatever. At no moment do you have much (or perhaps any) of what we might call a choice, it seems, let alone a free one, or a freely-willed one.

Now, you may gain some comfort from saying that unlike the driverless car, you can, before you get to the junction, select from a greater range of options, but you would, it seems, still make the turn that you would make. It's a bit of a mind-melter, I know.

I'm running out of steam on this. I've enjoyed the discussion... but I'm just starting to hit the wall where I really don't care.

The approach required to transform choice into coercion, and to make the argument that we can only do whatever it is that we actually did and nothing else could have been possible so the entirety of human and mammal behaviors that are built on the observation of being able to teach other animals to choose a different behavior prior to taking action, to learn how to consider outcomes and make an informed choice, and to argue a position in an effort to change someone else's mind... is all a massive joke played on us by the universe... and we really have no control... but somehow still simultaneously argue that punishment has merit as a learning mechanism because we can learn to choose to behave differently... but it's not actually a choice...

Yeah, it's a mind melter. But it's a mind melter that really seems a lot like the mind melter that we don't really *know* what another person is perceiving and what I see as the color red, you might see as the color green, but because we know it by the same name, we have no way of telling whether we're acutally seeing the same color, so wow man, isn't that a mind melter? Or the way that we can't really prove that there's an objective reality because we can each only *know* our own subjective perception of things, so maybe I'm the only person who actually exists, and the rest of you are totally just imaginary things created by my mindbrain, and wow man, that's a total mind melter.

I get all the arguments. And this one falls into the same "you can't prove it" kind of realm as the other two. There is absolutely no utility in those arguments. Nor is there parsimony. They are neither simpler frameworks nor useful frameworks.

So I'll stick with my current perception that 1) there is an objective reality outside of my own mind, 2) there is substantial consistency of perception between entities with the same type of perception apparatuses, and 3) we have an actual and meaningful ability to make choices that aren't dictated by ancient stars exploding (ETA but those choices aren't limitless - they're bounded)

 

[ruby sparks]

How does 'freely willed' differ from 'choose' in your statement? To me, they're the same thing.

The way I see it, choices can be coerced. If I put a gun to your head and said that if you didn't eat the banana I gave you, I would shoot you dead, that would be one type (or degree) of coerced choice. You could in theory choose to be shot, of course (if, say, you knew or believed that the banana contained a lethal poison which would cause you to die horribly painfully and slowly).

The 'actual state of affairs' in your life seems to be that all your thoughts and actions are even more coerced than that, the 'degree of coercion' is, it would seem, 100%, because of the (let's say trillions) of prior causes (including ones that were indetermined beforehand or at the time of action or thought) that are 'in play' at any moment of your life. You are arguably just 'following the instructions of the universe' no matter how complicated your 'machine processing' is.

Perhaps we might not, at a pinch, even call that 'choosing' at all, under a certain, perhaps very strict definition. But we could use the word, if we meant something akin to a driverless car 'choosing' to turn right at a certain junction. Simplistic analogy I know, but ultimately, I think, correct, though it feels otherwise to us in relation to our own circumstances. Perhaps it would be better to simply say that our very complicated and sophisticated systems automatically make decisions according to priorities (desires let's say, or 'drives') which are themselves automatically generated by or developed in the system. Whatever. At no moment do you have much (or perhaps any) of what we might call a choice, it seems, let alone a free one, or a freely-willed one.

Now, you may gain some comfort from saying that unlike the driverless car, you can, before you get to the junction, select from a greater range of options, but you would, it seems, still make the turn that you would make. It's a bit of a mind-melter, I know.

I'm running out of steam on this. I've enjoyed the discussion... but I'm just starting to hit the wall where I really don't care.

The approach required to transform choice into coercion, and to make the argument that we can only do whatever it is that we actually did and nothing else could have been possible so the entirety of human and mammal behaviors that are built on the observation of being able to teach other animals to choose a different behavior prior to taking action, to learn how to consider outcomes and make an informed choice, and to argue a position in an effort to change someone else's mind... is all a massive joke played on us by the universe... and we really have no control... but somehow still simultaneously argue that punishment has merit as a learning mechanism because we can learn to choose to behave differently... but it's not actually a choice...

Yeah, it's a mind melter. But it's a mind melter that really seems a lot like the mind melter that we don't really *know* what another person is perceiving and what I see as the color red, you might see as the color green, but because we know it by the same name, we have no way of telling whether we're acutally seeing the same color, so wow man, isn't that a mind melter? Or the way that we can't really prove that there's an objective reality because we can each only *know* our own subjective perception of things, so maybe I'm the only person who actually exists, and the rest of you are totally just imaginary things created by my mindbrain, and wow man, that's a total mind melter.

I get all the arguments. And this one falls into the same "you can't prove it" kind of realm as the other two. There is absolutely no utility in those arguments. Nor is there parsimony. They are neither simpler frameworks nor useful frameworks.

So I'll stick with my current perception that 1) there is an objective reality outside of my own mind, 2) there is substantial consistency of perception between entities with the same type of perception apparatuses, and 3) we have an actual and meaningful ability to make choices that aren't dictated by ancient stars exploding (ETA but those choices aren't limitless - they're bounded)

No prob.

And I will finish off by saying that I think that both you and I are living under an illusion.

Daniel Dennett, by the way, a prominent compatibilist philosopher, who says we have free will, agrees that the future that is going to happen is going to happen anyway. Go figure.

Ciao.

 

[DBT]

How Can There Be Voluntary Movement Without Free Will?
''Humans do not appear to be purely reflexive organisms, simple automatons. A vast array of different movements are generated in a variety of settings. Is there an alternative to free will? Movement, in the final analysis, comes only from muscle contraction. Muscle contraction is under the complete control of the alpha motoneurons in the spinal cord. When the alpha motoneurons are active, there will be movement. Activity of the alpha motoneurons is a product of the different synaptic events on their dendrites and cell bodies. There is a complex summation of EPSPs and IPSPs, and when the threshold for an action potential is crossed, the cell fires. There are a large number of important inputs, and one of the most important is from the corticospinal tract which conveys a large part of the cortical control. Such a situation likely holds also for the motor cortex and the cells of origin of the corticospinal tract. Their firing depends on their synaptic inputs. And, a similar situation must hold for all the principal regions giving input to the motor cortex. For any cortical region, its activity will depend on its synaptic inputs. Some motor cortical inputs come via only a few synapses from sensory cortices, and such influences on motor output are clear. Some inputs will come from regions, such as the limbic areas, many synapses away from both primary sensory and motor cortices. At any one time, the activity of the motor cortex, and its commands to the spinal cord, will reflect virtually all the activity in the entire brain. Is it necessary that there be anything else? This can be a complete description of the process of movement selection, and even if there is something more -- like free will -- it would have to operate through such neuronal mechanisms.
The view that there is no such thing as free will as an inner causal agent has been advocated by a number of philosophers, scientists, and neurologists including Ryle, Adrian, Skinner and Fisher.(Fisher 1993)''

Just for consideration, the bolded section seems speculative in nature, and everything that follows from it appears to be supposition. The factual statements seem to end prior to the bolded statements.

It is not speculation that it is the brain and the brain alone that processes and stores information from the senses (and body parts), in order to build a representation of the external world and self in order to interact with it.

It is not speculation that all higher animal lifeforms, being in possession of brains and central nervous systems, exhibit willful behaviour. They have needs and wants and act in order to fulfill their needs and wants, they have will, just like humans....except that they are not so inventive.

So all animals with a higher order CNS have will, humans have will, other animals are not highly inventive, Humans are inventive, all have will in common, not all are inventive.....so what is the difference.....gosh, could it be the architecture of the human brain and not ''free will' that enables inventiveness?

Surely not. haha.

 

[DBT]

What do you think the debate on free will is about?.............

So that's a "no".

No, it's not a no.

You mean you can cite other sources but choose not to? Or did you misunderstand the question?

So you ignored everything I said about word meaning and usage and just repeated your objection, making no attempt at understanding my terms and references or the articles I provided as examples (freedom as regulative control, the ability to have don otherwise, etc)

It is you yourself who insist on saying - 'can you cite any other source (literature/serious philosopher) for your 'disproof of free will by dictionary definition?- when I have already pointed out that dictionary definitions reflect generally accepted definitions and meanings of words.

I am not trying to ''disprove free will by dictionary definition,'' as you claim, I am arguing against the validity of the term free will according to the concept and meaning of 'free' or ''freedom'' by using acceptable terms and definitions.

Instead of constructing your strawman objection of 'disproving free will by dictionary definition,' you should explain why the given definitions are not acceptable.

 

[The AntiChris]

So that's a "no".

No, it's not a no.

You mean you can cite other sources but choose not to? Or did you misunderstand the question?

It is you yourself who insist on saying - 'can you cite any other source (literature/serious philosopher) for your 'disproof of free will by dictionary definition?- when I have already pointed out that dictionary definitions reflect generally accepted definitions and meanings of words.

It's not the definitions that are in dispute it's the invalid conclusions you draw from them (exemplified in your post #898).

There's a very obvious reason why you won't find any serious commentator/philosopher making the "cannot logically be defined as free" argument.

 

[DBT]

No, it's not a no.

You mean you can cite other sources but choose not to? Or did you misunderstand the question?

It is you yourself who insist on saying - 'can you cite any other source (literature/serious philosopher) for your 'disproof of free will by dictionary definition?- when I have already pointed out that dictionary definitions reflect generally accepted definitions and meanings of words.

It's not the definitions that are in dispute it's the invalid conclusions you draw from them (exemplified in your post #898).

There's a very obvious reason why you won't find any serious commentator/philosopher making the "cannot logically be defined as free" argument.

Again, when I said that will ''cannot logically be defined as free'' I meant that the term free will is invalid for the given reasons, based on the provided meaning of free and the nature of will in relation to brain state and condition.

This is basically what serious philosophers, commentators/neuroscientists are arguing, Which I have quoted numerous times only to have everything ignored.....getting in return another one of your proclamations of truth.

You yourself never offering an actual argument or description against what is a standard argument, freedom versus determinism or random causality, only assertions.

 

[Speakpigeon]

<snip>
I'm French and in French we talk of "libre arbitre". Same idea. On a "problematic use" scale from 0 to 100, I would rate my use of "libre arbitre" as zero. I use my libre arbitre in the course of my daily life and nobody is even remotely likely to convince me I could not possibly do that because we live in a deterministic universe.
<snip>
EB

There's been much free wind in my little sail lately.

The latest just came blewing four hours or so ago. Our very own Prime Minister, here in France, Edouard Philippe himself, made a speech on new government policy for fighting "radicalism". Now, one new direction the government is going to strike out as a result will be training people to exercise their free will. Yeah, you can read that again, that's right, training people to exercise their free will. Hey, it's almost as if Edouard had just read my previous post here in this thread. Or maybe it's just that I am him. Who will know?

So, here it is, in French, in Edouard Philippe's own words: "La formation du libre arbitre doit permettre de rejeter tous les obscurantistes".

And here is my translation for the few here who don't exercise their constitutional right to speak French often enough to get the gist of it: "Training free will should allow us to reject all obscurantists".

Specifically, the government will put in place measures to make sure young people receive a training to develop their ability to exercise their free will, and in particular to resist indoctrination by obscurantist propagandists of whatever obedience. Obviously, it's mainly directed at militant Islam, but once you have free will, you're unlikely to limit your use of it to anything in particular like rejecting "militant Islam".

Personally, I take this as the brightest idea these people have had so far, one which goes much beyond politics as usual. But, we'll have to wait to see how it will work out exactly because it's no piece of cake.

Now, how's that at all interesting exactly relative to this thread?

Well, first, it's not some idiot religious preacher saying it, it's the PM of one of arguably the most enlightened countries in the world. The other big guy around here is the President, Emmanuel Macron, who is also a tough cookie and a very rational mind as far as I can tell.

Second, this is official government policy. So, whatever the PM says about it, you need to imagine a score of tough cookie high ranking officials discussing at length not only the policies themselves but also the language. So, you have to realise they all agreed that the PM could use the expression "libre arbitre", i.e. "free will". And Macron himself probably discussed it as well. This shows they're all comfortable with the expression itself, but also, crucially, with what they think the French electorate will think about this expression and about the PM using it. This confirms my claim that the use of "libre arbitre" in French is uncontroversial, i.e. legitimate and unproblematic. And this in the country of laïcité, which is rather touchy about anything sounding woo-woo or religious.

Now, If you happen to think free will doesn't exist, or merely that it's somewhat dodgy, you should right away call the PM's office to tell them they're making a mistake. Go on. Do it now. Contribute to save one of the few democratic countries in this obscurantist world! It's your day of glory. France will be forever grateful to you! You might even end up being buried at the Panthéon. Think about it!
EB

 

[Treedbear]

Yes your brain followed a command.

The question was, what gave the command?

And what is the evidence for your claim?

The brain created the command. It resolved some problem, some conflict or contradiction, and produced a resulting action calculated to maximize harmony, efficiency and general serenity. That's my theory. But it's based on the fact that we have a brain which receives sensory inputs and produces muscle reactions via a nervous system. It's a complex system that is optimized to create adaptive solutions in a changing environment. The best model I know of to achieve that purpose is the theory of evolution. And for that same reason I find it highly probable that there is nothing extra-cogito involved, based on the evidence that such theories relating to cause and effect within the natural world always turn out (when the evidence comes in) to be false.

 

[untermensche]

Yes your brain followed a command.

The question was, what gave the command?

And what is the evidence for your claim?

The brain created the command. It resolved some problem, some conflict or contradiction, and produced a resulting action calculated to maximize harmony, efficiency and general serenity. That's my theory. But it's based on the fact that we have a brain which receives sensory inputs and produces muscle reactions via a nervous system. It's a complex system that is optimized to create adaptive solutions in a changing environment. The best model I know of to achieve that purpose is the theory of evolution. And for that same reason I find it highly probable that there is nothing extra-cogito involved, based on the evidence that such theories relating to cause and effect within the natural world always turn out (when the evidence comes in) to be false.

You created the command with your will.

You can do it any time you want.

Just tell your arm to move, give the command, and it will move.

 

[Treedbear]

Yes your brain followed a command.

The question was, what gave the command?

And what is the evidence for your claim?

The brain created the command. It resolved some problem, some conflict or contradiction, and produced a resulting action calculated to maximize harmony, efficiency and general serenity. That's my theory. But it's based on the fact that we have a brain which receives sensory inputs and produces muscle reactions via a nervous system. It's a complex system that is optimized to create adaptive solutions in a changing environment. The best model I know of to achieve that purpose is the theory of evolution. And for that same reason I find it highly probable that there is nothing extra-cogito involved, based on the evidence that such theories relating to cause and effect within the natural world always turn out (when the evidence comes in) to be false.

You created the command with your will.

You can do it any time you want.

Just tell your arm to move, give the command, and it will move.

Show me your evidence of a will that is independent of the brain.

 

[Speakpigeon]

Show me your evidence of a will that is independent of the brain.

A brain wouldn't go on and on like he does here. It must be that his mind is really on its own. It has lost its mooring. It's definitely independent of the brain.

QED, I guess.

Demonstration by example.
EB

 

[Emily Lake]

Daniel Dennett, by the way, a prominent compatibilist philosopher, who says we have free will, agrees that the future that is going to happen is going to happen anyway. Go figure.

Ciao.

You know, that sounds very profound... but it isn't, not really. It's akin to saying that whatever the dice roll ends up being is whatever the dice roll ends up being. Or to saying that whichever hole the electron goes through is the hole that the electron goes through. It's a naively tautological statement that simply states that what one observes is what one observes.

 

[Emily Lake]

Show me your evidence of a will that is independent of the brain.

That's silly - nobody (not even untermensche) thinks that will is independent of brain. That's like saying that walking is independent of gravity. Gravity is a necessary component of walking... but is insufficient in and of itself to provide walking. A brain is a necessary component of will... but a brain all by itself is insufficient to produce will. A brain is a hunk of cells tied together with goo held inside a ball of bone. A mind (which possesses will) occurs within a brain, but is NOT a brain.

A processor is a collection of conductive and resistant lines arranged in a fancy pattern on a plate of silicon housed inside some plastic. A program (which can do things) occurs within a processor, but is NOT a processor.

 

[fromderinside]

You created the command with your will.

You can do it any time you want.

Just tell your arm to move, give the command, and it will move.

Still tryig to fill your balloon in a vacuum I see. Don't tell Emily Lake you're doing it on purpose - the dead pool - though .....

 

[Treedbear]

Show me your evidence of a will that is independent of the brain.

That's silly - nobody (not even untermensche) thinks that will is independent of brain. That's like saying that walking is independent of gravity. Gravity is a necessary component of walking... but is insufficient in and of itself to provide walking.

To my understanding Descartes and the other dualists believe the mind is independent from the brain. Many contemporary ones too, such as David Chalmers.

A brain is a necessary component of will... but a brain all by itself is insufficient to produce will.

I don't agree. It is sufficient. (Now subjective consciousness is still a mystery to me. But I think that's a different issue.)

A brain is a hunk of cells tied together with goo held inside a ball of bone. A mind (which possesses will) occurs within a brain, but is NOT a brain. A processor is a collection of conductive and resistant lines arranged in a fancy pattern on a plate of silicon housed inside some plastic. A program (which can do things) occurs within a processor, but is NOT a processor.

I don't think the will is like a program. A program is a linear set of instructions. The mind is the result of the massively parallel structure of the brain. It's more like an ecosystem which is constantly changing in response to internal and external conditions. So it's more similar to an analog computer in that one respect. But they are both still fundamentally deterministic.