What is the actual free will humans have?

[ruby sparks]

You cannot study anything objectively until you at the very least know what it is.

Is it necessary to know consciousness is objectively to know what is sense objectively.

I say one can find sense objectively using objective control of stimuli to elicit subjective responses about whether, what, how, that which is being presented is sensed by observers. otherwise we couldn't develop the following relationships between color temperature, light frequency, and perceived color

This is so obvious it hardly needs saying.

In fact, if we had to know what something was before studying it, I doubt we would have studied very many things at all in the history of human inquiry.

 

[untermensche]

You cannot study anything objectively until you at the very least know what it is.

Is it necessary to know consciousness is objectively to know what is sense objectively.

I say one can find sense objectively using objective control of stimuli to elicit subjective responses about whether, what, how, that which is being presented is sensed by observers. otherwise we couldn't develop the following relationships between color temperature, light frequency, and perceived color

This is so obvious it hardly needs saying.

In fact, if we had to know what something was before studying it, I doubt we would have studied very many things at all in the history of human inquiry.

Give me an example of objectively studying something and not even knowing what it is you are studying.

Not studying effects, studying the objective cause of the effects.

If we study consciousness objectively, and not merely look at effects, what are we studying?

 

[untermensche]

You can only test senses through subjective feedback.

You cannot test them objectively. You cannot see what any other person is seeing.

You do not know how the phenomena of having an experience is generated. You do not know what consciousness is. You cannot study it objectively.

You cannot study anything objectively until you at the very least know what it is.

To test something objectively speaks to organized methodology; it's not to deny the use of an agent in the process.

Testing effects and having no idea what is behind the effects is like dropping a ball and having no idea why it falls. You know it falls, but you know nothing objectively about gravity. You have no model for gravity.

To study something objectively requires knowing what you are studying first.

 

[DBT]

But we know nothing about it objectively. We do not even know what consciousness is objectively.

Testing the functionality of our senses is objective...

You can only test senses through subjective feedback.

Not true. The eye chart is objective. The letters on the eye chart are objective. They are the same letters for all observers. The person being tested describes the objective letters that he she sees on the objective chart. The examiner objectively hears what the subject describes, A,C, F, etc, (this can be recorded or confirmed by any number of witnesses) and the examiner objectively matches the given description (objective) of the letters to the objective letters on the objective chart, noting when and where the person was correct and when and where the person was incorrect, thereby assessing the eyesight of the person being tested. This can be confirmed by a room full of witnesses.

 

[fast]

You can only test senses through subjective feedback.

You cannot test them objectively. You cannot see what any other person is seeing.

You do not know how the phenomena of having an experience is generated. You do not know what consciousness is. You cannot study it objectively.

You cannot study anything objectively until you at the very least know what it is.

To test something objectively speaks to organized methodology; it's not to deny the use of an agent in the process.

Testing effects and having no idea what is behind the effects is like dropping a ball and having no idea why it falls. You know it falls, but you know nothing objectively about gravity. You have no model for gravity.

To study something objectively requires knowing what you are studying first.

I think you've just used "objectively" in two different ways. The first is objective vs subjective and the second is objective vs arbitrary.

 

[fast]

I think I missed that...

There's three notions:

1) Your honor, I didn't want to do what I did. I feel I had no reasonable choice under the circumstances but to do what I did. Surely, you can see that I didn't do what I did of my own free will.

2) Your honor, it was an awful choice I had to make. Even though I was threatened, I ultimately did what I thought was right.

3) Your honor, what I did was caused, not just on the macroscopic scale, but on the microscopic scale as well. The actions, the intentions, the thinking, everything, boils down to atoms in motion which themselves are caused, so of course I did what I did, just as you must (not will but must) take the very singular path you must take. There is no free will when it's already written in the stone of physics.

I agree with the first notion, which carries with it a refined notion of free will.

Yes, I guess (1) is definitely better than (2) or (3)...

Still, I think the wording you used is misleading, and I would rephrase like this: 1) Your honor, I certainly didn't want like what I did. But I couldn't find any alternative course of action acceptable to me under the circumstances. So, I guess I have to accept I did what I did of my own free will.

It's certainly a different conception of free will compared to your own but it seems more in line with our expectation about what the accused could possibly say in the context.
EB

There's a slight of hand occurring by the compatibilist that arrives at the scene as a third party long after the party had started. The free will debate has long been between the determinist and the indeterminist. The free will to which they speak of is highly similar to your definition, but the free will introduced by the soft determinist compatibilist is more aligned with mine.

There are two free wills at play, the long standing traditional one fought over and the newer slightly altered one. I like the altered one, but I'm afraid it's not spot on in addressing the original feud.

Free will was originally introduced as if born to oppose strict causality. The hard determinist leaves no room for free will as introduced as it's set up to be contrary to determinism. Any mention of choices we make is a linguistic circle between choices that MUST be made and therefore no real but rather illusory choices being made; hence the idea that free will is an illusion.

The compatibilist shifts the stilts upon which the foundation was built. The soft compatibilist alters the very meaning to align with lexical usage such that free will has to do with wants and compulsion--not as a contrary to causation.

When the labels are buried, the burning issue remains, could we have done otherwise, even in times of making choices while not under any kind of duress? The compatibilist says TEST ME and I'll show you that I can defy whatever choice you think I MUST make, and the hard determinist says, awe but whatever choice you make is not a contingent event but a necessary one, so your show of defiance proves nothing.

So, even if we do in fact have free will (even as portrayed by compatibilists), there's a special lurking darkness that must leave the hard determinist in the grip of fear, as free will would not merely be illusory but manicially so.

There seems to be little room for comfort when the raging river comes because contingent truths share no assistance in the interruption of the waters flow. It seems quite so that things will transpire just as the laws of nature allow. I take comfort in thinking that at the micro level, we as conscious beings have the ability to interact with nature such that the interplay disallows for the notion that our future thoughts and actions were as if written in stone or the script of a movie.

 

[ruby sparks]

If we study consciousness objectively, and not merely look at effects, what are we studying?

Ok you're right. There's no way we could study consciousness.

But thank you for reminding me why I stopped discussing this with you.








Ps put 'gravity' into your last sentence there while you're at it.

Consciousness and gravity. Two things that have never been studied in the history of mankind. Because it wasn't possible. Especially for Newton.

 

[ruby sparks]

The compatibilist shifts the stilts upon which the foundation was built. The soft compatibilist alters the very meaning to align with lexical usage such that free will has to do with wants and compulsion--not as a contrary to causation.

Like many, I used to object to compatibilism on the grounds that it was a fudge and wasn't describing actual/complete free will. I still think that, but I've mostly stopped objecting out loud. Let them use the 'wrong' word if they must. I doubt the redefinition will ever catch on among humans generally, because 'the capacity it feels like we have' is (often assumed to be) what I will call actual/complete free will.

As for compatibilism, I think it describes the capacities we do have rather well, even if they are not actual/complete free will.

So we can't (it seems) choose to do differently in the same circumstances but we can chose to do differently in different circumstances. Both of these, the can't and the can are useful to understand, imo. The former reminds us that when it comes to viewing 'transgressions' by others, 'there but for the grace of circumstances go I' and the latter describes what may be a unique human capacity, even if it isn't free will.

 

[DBT]

Behaviour always comes down to brain condition. Sensory input always comes first with conscious will emerging toward the end of the process of cognition, after inputs, after distribution and processing, after memory integration, recognition, etc, not at the beginning, not being the decision maker or the regulator of decision making. Decision making not being an example of free will or conscious will, this being the drive or impulse to act shaped by prior unconscious processing of information.

 

[ruby sparks]

Behaviour always comes down to brain condition. Sensory input always comes first with conscious will emerging toward the end of the process of cognition, after inputs, after distribution and processing, after memory integration, recognition, etc, not at the beginning, not being the decision maker or the regulator of decision making. Decision making not being an example of free will or conscious will, this being the drive or impulse to act shaped by prior unconscious processing of information.

I generally agree, but I might want to add a couple of caveats.

First, can we easily say that this or that decision process has a beginning, given the amount of continuous flux and feedback?

Second, does sensory input always come first? What about internal processes? I read that in seeing, there is much more activity generated from within the brain than is entering via the senses.

Finally, I don't think we need to or can say that all processing starts by being non-conscious prior to becoming conscious. Placebos for example appear to have an effect that initially enters the system as consciously-experienced input.

 

[Hermit]

I'm mostly interested in the actual conception of free will most people have. So, first, I'd like to start a conversation on possible definitions.

Most people seem to understand 'free will' as capable of breaking causal chains. In my opinion causality in human behaviour cannot be broken. Can I prove it? No, I can prove the nonexistence of free will no more than than the nonexistence of god, and for the same reason. On the other hand, I cannot prove the existence of causality either. All I can do is to say that I regard causality in relation to human behaviour as all-pervasive and total. Please spare me arguments referencing quantum physics, Brownian motion or any other stochastic processes. None of them relate to free will as traditionally conceptualised.

There is a way we can steer our fate, though, but it does not involve a break in a causal chain. In fact it relies on the realisation that we are subject to it. To illustrate, here is a copypasta job of something I posted at the Secular Café:

There's a story I like to tell, with some embellishment, to illustrate how we can use causality in order to control, at least in part, our destiny as an individual.

There's this woman who lived across the hallway from me. She was one of the regulars at the pub 300 metres up the road. Everybody she knew drank at that pub also. Every day. Eventually she married one of them. One afternoon I came home from work to see her lying flat on her back in the corridor with her husband punching her in his drunken rage. I dragged him off her, shoved him into their flat, frogmarched her into my place and called the cops. He was arrested and charged with assault. While on bail, he travelled to his father's place, borrowed his shotgun and blew his brain out.

A year later this woman married again. Once more a fellow alcoholic from that pub. She moved in with him and before long he finished up beating the living daylights out of her too. She knew I had a truck, so she asked me if I could help her move out on a day he was doing a twelve hour shift. She had arranged to move well out of Sydney. On our way to Katoomba, a couple of hours away in my hill detector that was struggling to do 100 kilometres an hour on a flat road with a tail wind, we had plenty of time to talk. At the end of the trip I had her convinced that as long as she picked her partners from the crew of drunks she was a part of, there'd be a good chance that she'll finish up beaten to death one day. Why not take up a hobby, join a club that caters for it, or do something like that? Of course she'd have to stay away from pubs.

She regarded me as a saviour because not a single one of her so-called friends turned up to help her move. She kept sending me postcards for years. So I found out that she took up photography. Yes, there was a club for that in Katoomba. She got some freelance work illustrating flyers and catalogues for small businesses there. The local paper used her as a social reporter/photographer. Then she got involved with one of the shop owners she had done some work for. Fiery red hair, Irish parents, teatotaller. Thy eventually married. Child on the way in due course. She did well in the five years since she left Sydney. Her husband treated her well, and there was no problem with the fact that her first born from her second marriage was part of the package. She had manipulated her environment quite successfully to finish up with a better outcome for herself.

Bit of bad news followed. Her son was the victim of a hit-and-run accident. Critical condition. That was the last postcard I got from her. A brief letter arrived from her husband, though. The news got worse. After one of her hospital visits she ducked into a nearby pub for a quick drink to calm her nerves. Three hours later she wobbled back out, probably not realising that after years of not drinking the alcohol would have affected her judgement more severely than when she drank every day. As she stepped out between two parked vans to cross the road she got hit by a bus and killed instantly.​

 

[untermensche]

If we study consciousness objectively, and not merely look at effects, what are we studying?

Ok you're right. There's no way we could study consciousness.

But thank you for reminding me why I stopped discussing this with you.

Ps put 'gravity' into your last sentence there while you're at it.

Consciousness and gravity. Two things that have never been studied in the history of mankind. Because it wasn't possible. Especially for Newton.

Gravity existed for a while before Newton.

But it couldn't be studied objectively until Newton.

You can't study something until you at least know what it.

 

[beero1000]

If we study consciousness objectively, and not merely look at effects, what are we studying?

Ok you're right. There's no way we could study consciousness.

But thank you for reminding me why I stopped discussing this with you.

Ps put 'gravity' into your last sentence there while you're at it.

Consciousness and gravity. Two things that have never been studied in the history of mankind. Because it wasn't possible. Especially for Newton.

Gravity existed for a while before Newton.

But it couldn't be studied objectively until Newton.

You can't study something until you at least know what it.

Umm, Galileo?

And here I was thinking that you can't know what something is until you study it. So silly of me.

 

[untermensche]

Gravity existed for a while before Newton.

But it couldn't be studied objectively until Newton.

You can't study something until you at least know what it.

Umm, Galileo?

You can't know what something is until you study it.

What did he say about gravity?

I know he looked at effects.

But did he know why the effects were occurring?

A link would be nice.

Not running away would show you were serious and not merely playing at something.

 

[beero1000]

Gravity existed for a while before Newton.

But it couldn't be studied objectively until Newton.

You can't study something until you at least know what it.

Umm, Galileo?

You can't know what something is until you study it.

What did he say about gravity?

I know he looked at effects.

But did he know why the effects were occurring?

A link would be nice.

Not running away would show you were serious and not merely playing at something.

Do you know why the effects were occurring?

Galileo said quite a bit about gravity and his theory of terrestrial gravitation laid the foundation for Newton's theory of universal gravitation, which laid the foundation for Einstein's theory of general relativity.

There's a reason he's the father of modern science. Maybe you should study a bit more before making your proclamations.

 

[Hermit]

Gravity existed for a while before Newton.

But it couldn't be studied objectively until Newton.

You can't study something until you at least know what it.

Umm, Galileo?

You can't know what something is until you study it.

What did he say about gravity?

I know he looked at effects.

But did he know why the effects were occurring?

Newton also looked at, and exclusively described the effects of gravity. We still cannot explain what gravity is any better than Galileo or Newton did. We can just describe what it does with greater precision. Galileo corrected Aristotle's misapprehension that weight determines the speed of an object's fall. Newton corrected Galileo's misapprehension that the fall of objects occurs at a uniform speed. Einstein described gravitation in terms of warping the geometry of the surrounding spacetime.

Nobody - not Aristotle, not Galileo, not Newton, not Einstein - advanced our knowledge of what gravity is. Each succeeded to describe in increasing detail what gravity does.

 

[untermensche]

What did he say about gravity?

I know he looked at effects.

But did he know why the effects were occurring?

A link would be nice.

Not running away would show you were serious and not merely playing at something.

Do you know why the effects were occurring?

Galileo said quite a bit about gravity and his theory of terrestrial gravitation laid the foundation for Newton's theory of universal gravitation, which laid the foundation for Einstein's theory of general relativity.

There's a reason he's the father of modern science. Maybe you should study a bit more before making your proclamations.

This is an evasion. Hand waving.

Show me that Galileo had a clue he was dealing with some force of attraction between two bodies.

You can study effects.

But you can't study anything objectively until you know what it is.

 

[untermensche]

What did he say about gravity?

I know he looked at effects.

But did he know why the effects were occurring?

Newton also looked at, and exclusively described the effects of gravity. We still cannot explain what gravity is any better than Galileo or Newton did. We can just describe what it does with greater precision. Galileo corrected Aristotle's misapprehension that weight determines the speed of an object's fall. Newton corrected Galileo's misapprehension that the fall of objects occurs at a uniform speed. Einstein described gravitation in terms of warping the geometry of the surrounding spacetime.

Nobody - not Aristotle, not Galileo, not Newton, not Einstein - advanced our knowledge of what gravity is. Each succeeded to describe in increasing detail what gravity does.

No. Newton changed the whole perspective of the situation.

An attraction between the earth and an object is a whole different perspective.

Newton was criticized in his day for introducing occult forces.

He was accused of not being scientific.

Now we understand that he was the first to understand what gravity is. A force. A fundamental force.

At last gravity could be studied objectively. And this opened the door for eventually Eistein to follow.

 

[beero1000]

What did he say about gravity?

I know he looked at effects.

But did he know why the effects were occurring?

A link would be nice.

Not running away would show you were serious and not merely playing at something.

Do you know why the effects were occurring?

Galileo said quite a bit about gravity and his theory of terrestrial gravitation laid the foundation for Newton's theory of universal gravitation, which laid the foundation for Einstein's theory of general relativity.

There's a reason he's the father of modern science. Maybe you should study a bit more before making your proclamations.

This is an evasion. Hand waving.

Show me that Galileo had a clue he was dealing with some force of attraction between two bodies.

You can study effects.

But you can't study anything objectively until you know what it is.

I'll just leave this here and let everyone make up their own minds...

I begin by saying that a heavy body has an inherent tendency to move with a constantly and uniformly accelerated motion toward the common center of gravity, that is, toward the center of our earth, so that during equal intervals of time it receives equal increments of momentum and velocity.

 

[Hermit]

Now we understand that he was the first to understand what gravity is.

No. Newton just described what gravity does more accurately than previous minds and less accurately than a later one.