Thread: The Illusion of Free Will

Originally Posted by malmomike77

I walked into a bar, there was a chimp, a dolphin and an Irishman...

A chimp, a dolphin and an Irishman walk into a bar
The bartender looks at them and says
"Hey what's this? some kind of a joke?

Originally Posted by Troy

That's the point I was trying to make. If there was no 'free will' and everything was 'cause and effect' then everything would play out the same.

Might as well add fatalism to the mix.

But yes. If we rewind the clock and all inputs are the same, why would anything turn out different ?

Originally Posted by Looper

What about free will in Neanderthals or a Homo-Sapiens/Neanderthal half-breed?

Or a human being with brain damage?



What about Thai chickenheads. Do they have free will?

Now you are choosing
to be facetious just for the sake of it. If you want to start a different topic, you can do if you want to.

My suggestion is to try and contai just one complex and contentious issue per OP.

You might feel that adding more supposition suits your purpose?

Originally Posted by DrWilly

I think you need to look into the meaning of the phrase scientifically proven.

Its useful sometimes to remind him of his shortcomings, but his lack of free will doesn’t allow him to stay out of it.

Originally Posted by Looper

How do you mean time travel outside a lifespan?

What do you mean by 'you' travelling in time?

'You' are a configuration of particles at a point in time 'q' that gives rise to the phenomenon of consciousness at a point in time 'q' with memories of past and imagination of the future.

If 'you' go back in time from now to a time the past 'p' is the 'you' at the end of that time travelling journey back to 'p' the configuration of particles that existed before at time 'p' or is the 'you' at the end of the journey back to time 'p' the configuration of particles that exists now at time 'q' with memories of a past that has yet to unfold?

If you are merely the you that previously existed at time 'p' then what is the causal driver that would make the history since time 'p' play out any differently on the 2nd run?



I hope you are not trying to throw the Three Body Problem in the mix Topper

We are already juggling Free Will and Quantum Reality and we are only on page 2.

In that case, K.I.S.S.

Originally Posted by Buckaroo Banzai

A chimp, a dolphin and an Irishman walk into a bar
The bartender looks at them and says
"Hey what's this? some kind of a joke?

A chimp, a dolphin and an Irishman walk into a bar
The Floridian says
"Hey what's this? some kind of a GOP convention?

Originally Posted by Backspin

Scientifically proven not to exist

Except it isn't . . . you know you can't just make something up and that makes it real.

Originally Posted by Switch

Its useful sometimes to remind him of his shortcomings, but his lack of free will doesn’t allow him to stay out of it.

Mathematically it is possible to move backwards or forward in time. Unfortunately noone has told entropy..

We need the opinion of a black hole

Originally Posted by Backspin

Scientifically proven not to exist

A little ambitious to say it has been proven not to exist. Safer to say that many scientists, including Einstein, do not believe in free will.

Originally Posted by Switch

Now you are choosing to be facetious just for the sake of it.

I was joking about the Thai Chicklenhead, but not about chimpanzees or neanderthals.

If you agree that humans are the product of an evolutionary process then you would also agree that free will is an evolved feature of human psychology.

Evolved features do not appear overnight like an on/off switch, they gradually appear.

So the proposition that we either do or do not have free will seems to me not to make sense.

What would it feel like to have half as much free will as we do today?

Or 25%

How much free will did Neanderthal man have?

How much free will do chimpanzees have?

When I say free will I am referring to the sensation of being able to ponder the future and juggle future behavioural options mentally before executing them. I think 'free will' is a generous and self-flattering label for this mental capacity.

I suspect that this internal mental process is probably essentially an illusion. The decision making probably takes place at a subconscious emotional level (like all the goal driven choice-making behaviour of other pre-human ancestral animals). The conscious human self is a recently evolved module and it is unlikely to have wrested executive control of the behaviour of the creature quite as fully as we imagine.

The conscious juggling of options that we feel we engage in does, I suspect, actually happen in reverse. It is still the subconscious goal driven modules that jostle with each other to grab the attention of our 'conscious self'. Our conscious self accepts whatever our subconscious throws at it most forcefully and paints some rationalising on it and then serves it up as behaviour that can be retrospectively explained to oneself and to others.

Our conscious self is not the grand CEO of our mental faculties that it imagines itself to be. It is more like the humble press agent.

Originally Posted by Backspin

So there's something special about humans. Want to call that a soul or something ?

I concur with the Spinner, just like the medieval soul (which seems to be an illusion conjured by the mysterious quality of internal reflective consciousness) I think that Free Will will also prove to be largely a conjured illusion.

Free will is a combination of environmental evolution and genetics. The ability of Homo sapiens to reason, gives rise to free will.
As reasoning and free will are quite recent additions to humanity, our genetic ancestors did not enjoy this option.

This is proven by backspin’s lack of free will and Neanderthal level of development.

Originally Posted by Troy

A little ambitious to say it has been proven not to exist. Safer to say that many scientists, including Einstein, do not believe in free will.

Uncle Albert was on the money I think.

We may not have free will but we have an evolved pre-frontal cortex and one of its key functions is impulse control.

This ability varies widely between individuals.

Impulse control is a term I am much more comfortable with than Free Will.

There are sound evolutionary reasons why a creature with highly developed cognitive functionality would develop the ability to resist impulsive behaviour and attempt to weigh up the strategic consequences of that behaviour.

We have developed the ability to mediate our impulses and ponder the consequences before acting, because this behaviour gave our ancestors a competitive advantage.

I would say the chimpanzee that refuses the grape for fear of making the other chimpanzee more angry is thinking ahead in a strategic way and demonstrating a surprising degree of impulse control compared to what we normally expect from non-human animals.

Our level of impulse control is more highly evolved than that of the chimpanzee.

But at no point to do I see a magic thresh-hold being crossed where a creature can be said to have achieved the god-like power of Free Will.

Freedom from what? The vagaries of emotionally driven behaviour? We are very far from free in this respect. Emotions are the currency that drive all behaviour in all sentient biological life. Even life that has developed skills of impulse mediation.

Even if we have evolved this higher degree of impulse control than any previous creature, our behaviour is still constrained by the deterministic fact of the physical reality of the biological substrate it runs on.

The sensation of Freedom (or merely uncertainty) we feel in the moment while we ruminate before we act is still essentially an illusion. Whatever action we take in the next moment is already determined by the physical structure of our cognitive apparatus in the moment before rumination even begins.

Originally Posted by Looper

Uncle Albert was on the money I think.

We may not have free will but we have an evolved pre-frontal cortex and one of its key functions is impulse control.

This ability varies widely between individuals.

Impulse control is a term I am much more comfortable with than Free Will.

There are sound evolutionary reasons why a creature with highly developed cognitive functionality would develop the ability to resist impulsive behaviour and attempt to weigh up the strategic consequences of that behaviour.

We have developed the ability to mediate our impulses and ponder the consequences before acting, because this behaviour gave our ancestors a competitive advantage.

I would say the chimpanzee that refuses the grape for fear of making the other chimpanzee more angry is thinking ahead in a strategic way and demonstrating a surprising degree of impulse control compared to what we normally expect from non-human animals.

Our level of impulse control is more highly evolved than that of the chimpanzee.

But at no point to do I see a magic thresh-hold being crossed where a creature can be said to have achieved the god-like power of Free Will.

Freedom from what? The vagaries of emotionally driven behaviour? We are very far from free in this respect. Emotions are the currency that drive all behaviour in all sentient biological life. Even life that has developed skills of impulse mediation.

Even if we have evolved this higher degree of impulse control than any previous creature, our behaviour is still constrained by the deterministic fact of the physical reality of the biological substrate it runs on.

The sensation of Freedom (or merely uncertainty) we feel in the moment while we ruminate before we act is still essentially an illusion. Whatever action we take in the next moment is already determined by the physical structure of our cognitive apparatus in the moment before rumination even begins.

Complete short term reactionary supposition. Based on what you think a chimp might do about a grape?

I am equally certain that we have all had to make short, and long term decisions in our lives. The consequences of those decisions are based on our choices. It doesn’t really matter if it is short or long term. Our choices will be considered based on knowledge, understanding and experience. The 3 factors that give rise to free will.

You can build any scenario you like, we still have choices based on those 3 factors. When you are younger, the consequences of such, impulsive decisions are more marked and varied, simply because you lack the experience, knowledge and understanding of consequences. The older and more experienced you get, the fewer erroneous decisions you are likely to make. It helps individuals make more effective choices using free will.

Looper you present a worthwhile argument, however Switch makes compelling sense. I’m going with Switch.

Originally Posted by Switch

You can build any scenario you like, we still have choices based on those 3 factors. When you are younger, the consequences of such, impulsive decisions are more marked and varied, simply because you lack the experience, knowledge and understanding of consequences. The older and more experienced you get, the fewer erroneous decisions you are likely to make. It helps individuals make more effective choices using free will.

Animals that live longer also gain more experience which effect decisions they make.

So again , you aren't making arguments that separate animals from humans.

Humans are animals.

Originally Posted by Backspin

So again , you aren't making arguments that separate animals from humans.

Originally Posted by DrWilly

Humans are animals.

The basics . . . the absolute basics . . . he can't even get that right

Originally Posted by Backspin

Animals that live longer also gain more experience which effect decisions they make.

So again , you aren't making arguments that separate animals from humans.

Where animals have been used in this context, I have deliberately chosen to use higher, more intelligent life forms, because they
are the ones which generally give rise to humanity.

For most people, that would make the context easier to understand. For you however, it creates greater confusion! No surprise there then.

Originally Posted by Iceman123

Looper you present a worthwhile argument, however Switch makes compelling sense. I’m going with Switch.

Green owed. at least one forum member can follow logic.

Looper’s definition leads us to being witnesses to reality but not true participants, therefore any ability for us to do good or evil is not possible.

The ramifications of such a belief would tear down all our knowledge and progress and make for a very different reality.

Originally Posted by Iceman123

The ramifications of such a belief would tear down all our knowledge and progress and make for a very different reality.

I understand that the idea that free will is an illusion seems unpalatable at first.

It seems to leave a sense of meaninglessness at the heart of our personal short 80 year project on earth.

It also feels like information that should not be disseminated, since it may cause people to abandon their effortful striving participation in the human project, which we deem to be a worthy project.

But I seem to recall similar arguments being mustered in the previous debate about the existence of God.

If God does not exist then that renders life meaningless since we are not going anywhere when we die. Our sense of having an immutable soul is wrong and therefore my own life has no true purpose.

This was seen as information that should not be disseminated since it would lead people to abandon socially positive behaviour. People would pursue lives of selfish abandon if God did not exist.

And here we are 50 years later and Atheism is commonplace and people still pursue worthy meaningful socially positive lives. Atheists find lots of reasons to engage in socially meaningful participation in the human project without God or their own immutable soul.


I would say that we stand in relation to the Free Will question in the same place that Atheists stood 50 or 100 years ago in relation to the immutable soul.

If it could be demonstrated by some experiment that Free Will truly is an illusion and events will play out identically each time if you rewind the clock (leaving aside speculation on the nature of time and many worlds realities) how would that change how you behave when you get out of bed tomorrow?

I think people would be able to swallow the, at first unpleasant, notion that Free Will is an illusion without as much disruption to the human project as we at first fear.

Indeed it has some positive consequences: Most people say that the satiation of anger and revenge are the least pleasant side of the justification for a system of justice and law and order. Punishment should be only for the 1st 3 reasons listed in the OP.

However, if free will is an illusion then there is not really much reason to get angry at people who trespass against society's norms. We can punish them for much cooler rational reasons than hot-blooded vengeance.

We can even observe our own personal anger in a more measured detached way. If someone trespasses against us we can maybe start to feel our blood begin to boil but we can then cool off a bit in the knowledge that their behaviour was programmed into them in the moment of their actions. We can engage in cooler and more measured efforts to get the wrong righted, since a lack of true free will shows that anger is just an evolved tool available to primitive troops of monkeys who need to organise themselves socially but who do do not understand the underlying deterministic nature of reality.

I think there is the possibility of moral benefits from recognition of the possible absence of true free will. Just as most atheists would argue that their are moral benefits to the recent relegation of God and the immutable soul to the realm of myth.

Originally Posted by Iceman123

Looper’s definition leads us to being witnesses to reality but not true participants, therefore any ability for us to do good or evil is not possible.

If you agree about the reality of your own existence in this moment within the world of other humans, who can be either trespassed against or helped then you are destined to be doing good and/or evil from now until your expiry date, regardless of the reality or otherwise of the magical essence of Free Will.

Originally Posted by Looper

If you agree about the reality of your own existence in this moment within the world of other humans, who can be either trespassed against or helped then you are destined to be doing good and/or evil from now until your expiry date, regardless of the reality or otherwise of the magical essence of Free Will.

...destiny has nothing to do with free will...thread title needs a change: A Chat in the Weeds...

Originally Posted by Looper

I understand that the idea that free will is an illusion seems unpalatable at first.

It seems to leave a sense of meaninglessness at the heart of our personal short 80 year project on earth.

It also feels like information that should not be disseminated, since it may cause people to abandon their effortful striving participation in the human project, which we deem to be a worthy project.

You have raised a very interesting philosophical discussion, however that is all it is. No scientific back - up whatsoever. There many philosophical discussions that leave us with an unsolvable paradox, however this one is possibly easier to debunk.
If it were proven that your supposition was indeed fact, then the genie would be out of the bottle. There would be no conspiracy that would shield the general populace from this discovery.

The ramifications would be plain and as you note, our striving and participation would cease as any efforts would not make one damn bit of difference. Why work? Why strive to be the very best in any field/sport/politics whatever? If the results are all pre -ordained no effort will make any difference. Society would collapse under these circumstances.

Originally Posted by Looper

If God does not exist then that renders life meaningless since we are not going anywhere when we die. Our sense of having an immutable soul is wrong and therefore my own life has no true purpose.

This was seen as information that should not be disseminated since it would lead people to abandon socially positive behaviour. People would pursue lives of selfish abandon if God did not exist.

And here we are 50 years later and Atheism is commonplace and people still pursue worthy meaningful socially positive lives. Atheists find lots of reasons to engage in socially meaningful participation in the human project without God or their own immutable soul.


I would say that we stand in relation to the Free Will question in the same place that Atheists stood 50 or 100 years ago in relation to the immutable soul.

The religious argument is a gargantuan leap from the free will discussion, free will was never debated by religious zealots, "the God makes us good supposition" was never taken seriously by intellectuals and did not even apply to the billions of "never had been believers"


[QUOTE]
1 protect society
2 change offender's future behaviour
3 deter other individuals from similar behaviour[QUOTE]

Originally Posted by Looper

Punishment should be only for the 1st 3 reasons listed in the OP.

You have blown a rather large hole in your own thinking, if you support your 3 punishable reasons above. There will be no protection of society as everything is pre determined, No point in punishment, the perpetrators crimes were pre ordained and their future behaviour cannot be altered.