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What is free will?

Free Will is a human experience. It describes the feeling that what I do matters. In actual fact all that can be done by a human being that affects the future is to make plans and make those plans happen. The planning can be from a moment to an hour to a day to a year to a lifetime.

If a robot like Data or Daneel has the ability to control his/its future does that robot have free will?

Two identical seeming "twins" appear before the court. One is a robot, and the other a human being (in some sense a robot assembled during embryology). How to distinguish between them?
 
George S said:
Free Will is a human experience. It describes the feeling that what I do matters. In actual fact all that can be done by a human being that affects the future is to make plans and make those plans happen. The planning can be from a moment to an hour to a day to a year to a lifetime.

If a robot like Data or Daneel has the ability to control his/its future does that robot have free will?

Two identical seeming "twins" appear before the court. One is a robot, and the other a human being (in some sense a robot assembled during embryology). How to distinguish between them?
Click to expand...

I'm partial to the man in the machine, Mazie, actually.

Now you have two problems. Is the man in the machine or is the machine something with a man inside it doing stuff leading you to believe the machine is manlike.
 
Togo said:
Nah, he's just being disingenuous.

He's an eliminative materialist. That is, he believes that non-measureable states are not just not measureable, they literally don't exist. Hence his statements like this (Towards the end, 4.08)

If you can not tell me the empirical distinction between something that has free will and something that does not, then there simply is no distinction between those two states.

As such the problem isn't really free will at all, but the idea of anything not measureable whatsoever. Logic, for example. Theoretical mathematics. Whether someone has 'answered' the challenge. And so on.

If he really has never met anyone who is capable of meeting 'his' challenge, then he must have been extraordinarily selective in who he meets. Particularly since the challenge itself is a variation of the cognitive zombie thought experiment, which points out that there isn't any way to tell, based purely on observation and measurement, whether someone has free will or not. And the use of a time machine is a reference to the use of a time machine in free will thought experiments to identify whether the universe is determined or not, a necessary condition for some aspects of free will. So he knows enough about the philosophy to adopt an eliminative position and quote key arguments, but has never met anyone who can point out that he's not commenting on free will at all, but the existence of internal states? I find that hard to credit. Hence the disingenuous comment above.

But the real question raised by the video is not free will in particular, but whether it's reasonable to believe in anything you can't measure. So here's my challenge: Explain to me why it is reasonable to restrict human inquiry things that are measureable. And then I'll explain to you why the explanation you gave isn't measureable, and therefore doesn't exist. Fair?
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I've got to say that I think that is a very insightful reply, thanks.:)
 
George S said:
Free Will is a human experience. It describes the feeling that what I do matters. In actual fact all that can be done by a human being that affects the future is to make plans and make those plans happen. The planning can be from a moment to an hour to a day to a year to a lifetime.

If a robot like Data or Daneel has the ability to control his/its future does that robot have free will?

Two identical seeming "twins" appear before the court. One is a robot, and the other a human being (in some sense a robot assembled during embryology). How to distinguish between them?
Click to expand...

I agree with this post too. Free will involves an emotional (valued) choice. We all react in day to day events (like driving a car) in an automatic way, but it involves free will to deliberately drive it off a cliff.
 
Free will is what results when you include the concept that you are responsible for your actions into your decision algoritm.
 
Juma said:
Free will is what results when you include the concept that you are responsible for your actions into your decision algoritm.
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All of this time arguing against free will and you don't even know what it is?! Or do you get to redefine it?

You should be kicked out of TF just for wasting everyone's time.
 
ryan said:
Juma said:
Free will is what results when you include the concept that you are responsible for your actions into your decision algoritm.
Click to expand...

All of this time arguing against free will and you don't even know what it is?! Or do you get to redefine it?

You should be kicked out of TF just for wasting everyone's time.
Click to expand...

Missed the basics did you.

D>NFW
D+SR>SFW

Come on. Get with the learning program. Read, think, do something other than just post reactions.
 
ryan said:
Juma said:
Free will is what results when you include the concept that you are responsible for your actions into your decision algoritm.
Click to expand...

All of this time arguing against free will and you don't even know what it is?! Or do you get to redefine it?

You should be kicked out of TF just for wasting everyone's time.
Click to expand...

Sigh. Sorry that I didnt say that I was here refering to the folk psychology "free will". I thought that the context made that obvious.
 
fromderinside said:
ryan said:
All of this time arguing against free will and you don't even know what it is?! Or do you get to redefine it?

You should be kicked out of TF just for wasting everyone's time.
Click to expand...

Missed the basics did you.

D>NFW
D+SR>SFW

Come on. Get with the learning program. Read, think, do something other than just post reactions.
Click to expand...

I may not know I have free will and still have free will.

There needs to be more than just the belief that one is responsible for one's own actions when making a decision. It needs to be the case.

Let's just stick with the more common definitions of free will.

Britannica has, "Free Will, in humans, the power or capacity to choose among alternatives or to act in certain situations independently of natural, social, or divine restraints.".

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has:

“Free Will” is a philosophical term of art for a particular sort of capacity of rational agents to choose a course of action from among various alternatives."

and

"On a minimalist account, free will is the ability to select a course of action as a means of fulfilling some desire.".
 
Juma said:
ryan said:
All of this time arguing against free will and you don't even know what it is?! Or do you get to redefine it?

You should be kicked out of TF just for wasting everyone's time.
Click to expand...

Sigh. Sorry that I didnt say that I was here refering to the folk psychology "free will". I thought that the context made that obvious.
Click to expand...

I would rather you disclose that you don't know what you're talking about before you begin every post.
 
ryan said:
Juma said:
Sigh. Sorry that I didnt say that I was here refering to the folk psychology "free will". I thought that the context made that obvious.
Click to expand...
ft

I would rather you disclose that you don't know what you're talking about before you begin every post.
Click to expand...

Is that all you have left? Bitter cynical retorts?
 
ryan said:
fromderinside said:
Missed the basics did you.

D>NFW
D+SR>SFW

Come on. Get with the learning program. Read, think, do something other than just post reactions.
Click to expand...

I may not know I have free will and still have free will.

There needs to be more than just the belief that one is responsible for one's own actions when making a decision. It needs to be the case.

Let's just stick with the more common definitions of free will.

Britannica has, "Free Will, in humans, the power or capacity to choose among alternatives or to act in certain situations independently of natural, social, or divine restraints.".

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has:

“Free Will” is a philosophical term of art for a particular sort of capacity of rational agents to choose a course of action from among various alternatives."

and

"On a minimalist account, free will is the ability to select a course of action as a means of fulfilling some desire.".
Click to expand...

Neither of theese citations give a fair representations of the articles. Remeber that those entries are NOT definitions of free will but simply broad descriotions s o the reader can get a grip of what type of concept it is.

If you want to get a definition you should look up "liberian free will", "compatibilist free will" etc.
 
You cannot tell if your will is free except by experiment. Make a plan; watch it happen.
 
Only problem being that any plan that is hatched is cooked up by the brain in response to its stimuli and experienced as conscious thought, decisions made. The brain of a drug addict may plan to rob a servo using a replica handgun, the brain of a stockbroker may cook up an insider trading scheme and a developer may see an opportunity to build a block of units...the plans form and enter consciousness complete with the drive or impulse to carry them through....viola! So there we have it...Will that is freer than free can ever be. :joy:
 
Free will is another of those odd fictions, like 'sin' or the 'soul', developed by religions for the purpose of providing people with a highly desirable rationalisation for why, despite the purported existence of a God who is powerful, knowledgeable and loving, life often sucks.

The mechanism for doing this is to persuade people that they are special and different.

"But if God could have acted to prevent the tornado from killing my family, why did he forsake me?"
"Because he loves you too much to abrogate your free will".

The broken logic is papered over by the instinctive impulse of the human to think of himself as intrinsically more important than everything else in the universe put together. And if God agrees with that assessment, who can deny it?

Free will is no more real than souls, sins, or Gods. But like those other fictions, it's very, very popular; So not being real is, at worst, a minor and easily excusable flaw.
 
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