free will

[Vegosiux]

As always I'll say that if you argue hard determinism, you're either wrong, or irrelevant.

It is literally impossible for it to be the superior intellectual position, since it's either wrong, or a result of factors that have nothing to do with your intellect.

Huh suddenly this is starting to look like a very weird variant of Pascal's wager to me.

 

[WoW Killer]

Haven't read the thread, because it's long and I'm drunk. Anyway, the only hard opinion on this I've ever come to a conclusion about is that determinism doesn't mean a lack of free will. Free will means that you make decisions based upon reasons, whether that be emotion, experience, logic, or whatever. What free will doesn't mean is that you make decisions based on a dice roll.

Just think for a moment that you get up and get ready for work. Like a lot of people, you don't always have the breakfast that you should have (according to the latest medical advice anyway; I hate breakfast personally, but you've gotta do it). So you have to make a decision on whether or not you're going to put some bread in the toaster. That decision is based on certain information like how much time you have, and how hungry you feel.

Now lets pretend for a moment that the world was non-deterministic. That would mean, that given the same initial data, that's how much time you have, how hungry you are, the cost of bread etc., that, on occasion, you could make a different decision. In other words, with everything else kept the same, you could replay the same day (like Groundhog Day, but without keeping the data from previous encounters), and randomly decide to do it differently (e.g. putting or not putting bread in the toaster). That is not free will; that is a dice roll.

Free will is to base decisions on information and preference, and that is entirely compatible with determinism.

 

[II2]

It's always struck me the more important question is, does the answer matter?

I suppose what I mean, is regardless whether you'd like to think the glass if half empty or half full, you're still thinking on the same glass. Wherever the 'truth' falls, would your thoughts on the subject be different? The answer is the expression of either truth valid.

 

[PromethianSpark]

Haven't read the thread, because it's long and I'm drunk. Anyway, the only hard opinion on this I've ever come to a conclusion about is that determinism doesn't mean a lack of free will. Free will means that you make decisions based upon reasons, whether that be emotion, experience, logic, or whatever. What free will doesn't mean is that you make decisions based on a dice roll.

Just think for a moment that you get up and get ready for work. Like a lot of people, you don't always have the breakfast that you should have (according to the latest medical advice anyway; I hate breakfast personally, but you've gotta do it). So you have to make a decision on whether or not you're going to put some bread in the toaster. That decision is based on certain information like how much time you have, and how hungry you feel.

Now lets pretend for a moment that the world was non-deterministic. That would mean, that given the same initial data, that's how much time you have, how hungry you are, the cost of bread etc., that, on occasion, you could make a different decision. In other words, with everything else kept the same, you could replay the same day (like Groundhog Day, but without keeping the data from previous encounters), and randomly decide to do it differently (e.g. putting or not putting bread in the toaster). That is not free will; that is a dice roll.

Free will is to base decisions on information and preference, and that is entirely compatible with determinism.

Like all people who believe in free will, you presuppose its existence in your very argument for it. You are making the assumption there exists a special kind of thing that is you, that exists independently from all the many determining factors (and believe me, there are many), and then in turn negotiates with these determining factors in a 'choice/decision-making' process. What the determinist is claiming, and it really is just simple materialism, is that you are not some ethereal thing separate from the world, but are rather the composite of all the these determining factors. That is to say, you are a composition of the physical, the genetic, the epigenetic, the environmental, the psychological, the sociological, and the neurological, all of which determining factors that make you. How can you be anything else other than this with out some reference to the soul? For only a plea to something that exists external to this world, but some how mediates with it, could possibly liberate you from what you otherwise are.

As for your point about randomness, you are completely right, and this is why those believing in free will can find no solace in the findings of Quantum Mechanics, as they only offer the cold randomness of indeterminism in place of determinism.

 

[PromethianSpark]

As always I'll say that if you argue hard determinism, you're either wrong, or irrelevant.

It is literally impossible for it to be the superior intellectual position, since it's either wrong, or a result of factors that have nothing to do with your intellect.

Huh suddenly this is starting to look like a very weird variant of Pascal's wager to me.

It seems then that you value intellectual superiority rather than truth, leading you then to a position where you must refuse hard determinism, for if you do not, you can not have the luxury of feeling superior to others. Yes I can imagine a Pascal's wagers as such for this topic, it would be titled: The Guide to the Free Will Vs Determinism Debate for the Conceited.

 

[Gormech]

In truth, we are all slaves to the existing laws of physics.
Chance and luck exist only as the lack of adequate information to calculate an event.
So, let's think about this as a program being fed data to be sent into an endless string of IF/THEN/OR statements.
If we were able to know the initial data before the program was run, then all chance/free will would cease to exist.
As time continues, the ability to retrieve that data grows more and more corrupted or should I say, encrypted to the point where it reaches closer and closer to infinite obscurity. There's an algebraic thing that shows if something is infinintely close to something, that it can be taken as such. Like 0.999... = 1 or .000...1 = 0. I believe that this is not an error in our way of understanding physics but rather that it is mathmatical evidence that with infinite fuel working at with rather an infinite amount of speed or time in which to work, an infinitely small output greater than the input can be made. That output, throughout time, probability, and in the existance of known barriers in the medium that we exist, is your free will.

 

[Vegosiux]

As always I'll say that if you argue hard determinism, you're either wrong, or irrelevant.

It is literally impossible for it to be the superior intellectual position, since it's either wrong, or a result of factors that have nothing to do with your intellect.

Huh suddenly this is starting to look like a very weird variant of Pascal's wager to me.

It seems then that you value intellectual superiority rather than truth, leading you then to a position where you must refuse hard determinism, for if you do not, you can not have the luxury of feeling superior to others. Yes I can imagine a Pascal's wagers as such for this topic, it would be titled: The Guide to the Free Will Vs Determinism Debate for the Conceited.

Apart from calling me arrogant and conceited in a very roundabout way, was there a point you were trying to make? (By the way, did you choose to do so, or did you do so because that's the only thing you could have done in that particular state of the universe?)

With hard determinism, there's no point in talking about "valuing truth", because whether you value it or not is a direct result of the mechanisms at play that are outside your (non-existant) sphere of control, and not a matter of personal choice or value priorities.

 

[PromethianSpark]

Apart from calling me arrogant and conceited in a very roundabout way, was there a point you were trying to make?

The point being that I can't see any value in this variant of Pascal's wager, other that claiming one should not believe in determinism, because if free will happens to be true, one has the right to feel intellectually smug about it. Whereas if the determinists are right, they can't feel smug about it because it was nothing that they 'did' that made them a determinist. Enlighten me if I am wrong.

(By the way, did you choose to do so, or did you do so because that's the only thing you could have done in that particular state of the universe?)

Why do you ask a question that you already know the answer to? I am a determinist after all. Maybe you don't already know the answer. There is after all, something very condescending about the way you ask it, as if you think I haven't really considered my philosophical position to its logical conclusion. Maybe you are arrogant.

With hard determinism, there's no point in talking about "valuing truth", because whether you value it or not is a direct result of the mechanisms at play that are outside your (non-existant) sphere of control, and not a matter of personal choice or value priorities.

While someone is determined in that particular moment of time to value something or not, it is not unreasonable for us to discuss in anyway that they do or don't value X or Y. It is after all, an condition of their being in that moment. You are confusing the term 'you value' with 'why do you value', and 'you do not value' with 'why do you not value'. In each case the former is a statement merely meant to reflect the perceived reality of a given situation, and the latter is morally laden, evoking the idea of your freedom to be as you please. So by that token if I am discussing what you value with strict adherence to the former, I am not in any way contradicting determinism. But even still, I can use the latter, for is not social interaction a part of those factors that determine who you are, do my words not create processes in your brain that have some (granted very little) impact on the over all cognitive system that is you. It is erroneous to believe judgement has no place for those who believe in determinism. Judgement may be among the greatest social forces in the overall system of determining factors that make you, You.

 

[PromethianSpark]

In truth, we are all slaves to the existing laws of physics.
Chance and luck exist only as the lack of adequate information to calculate an event.
So, let's think about this as a program being fed data to be sent into an endless string of IF/THEN/OR statements.
If we were able to know the initial data before the program was run, then all chance/free will would cease to exist.
As time continues, the ability to retrieve that data grows more and more corrupted or should I say, encrypted to the point where it reaches closer and closer to infinite obscurity. There's an algebraic thing that shows if something is infinintely close to something, that it can be taken as such. Like 0.999... = 1 or .000...1 = 0. I believe that this is not an error in our way of understanding physics but rather that it is mathmatical evidence that with infinite fuel working at with rather an infinite amount of speed or time in which to work, an infinitely small output greater than the input can be made. That output, throughout time, probability, and in the existance of known barriers in the medium that we exist, is your free will.

Let us examine this. If I am not mistaken, what you are proposing is as follows:

1. We need data on initial starting conditions to make predictions.
2. Any such data on initial starting conditions becomes obscured over time.
3. According to a law of algebra (we will take this for granted), if something is infinitely close to something, it counts as it*.
[Hidden premise]. Sufficient time has passed for data to have become infinitely close to being totally obscured.
Therefore
4.Data on initial starting condition is infinitely obscured.
Therefore
C. We have freewill

Now I will begin with my formal criticism, though it has already begun by me formulating your argument into a logical sequence, because the flaw should have become clear.

Premises 1 and 2, we can find no immediate flaw with, only in relation to the premises that follow. So I will begin by attacking premise 3.

I believe that this is not an error in our way of understanding physics

There is an inherent problem with this truth, because it is actually something that we derive from the logic of Pure Mathematics. Physics does not entirely adhere to Pure mathematics most notably in that it abhors infinity. Infinity is not something that is taken to exist in nature, and any equation resulting in it is taken to be in error and requires rebalancing. However, where premise 3 sound it would still not be logically followed by premise 4, where it not aided by the hidden premise:

(H.P). Sufficient time has passed for data to have become infinitely close to being totally obscured.

We know this can't be the case because we do have data on the starting conditions of the universe, albeit little data. But we shall proceed none the less. Where the links between premise 3 to 4 correct we still have made a fatal deductive leap to our conclusion. This of course is because the flow of the argument can only establish premise 4 as:

4.Data on initial starting condition is infinitely obscured

Obscured, even where it infinitely so, is in no way the same as meaning that there was no data for the initial starting conditions, it only means that it is beyond our reach to obtain. I suspect however that your confusion over premise 4 is that you believed that it naturally followed so that:

4.There is no initial starting conditions.

Perhaps not though, as no one can believe this. Your confusion might actually be(most likely so I imagine) in premise 1:

1. We need data on initial starting conditions to make predictions.

You see, from this very starting premise we can not in any way arrive at our conclusion that we have free will. If we where to reformulate the argument to work, It should look like this:

1. We need sufficient data on initial starting conditions to make predictions.
2. Any such data on initial starting conditions becomes obscured over time.
3. Sufficient time has passed for data to have become too obscured to make predications on human life.
Therefore
C. We can make no predications of human life.

You see the inability to make any predictions about human life does not equate in anyway to human life not being determined. We could imagine for example a super intelligence that eclipses anything we could achieve in this universe, that in fact pre-dates the universe, witnessed the big bang, and could predict the entire life span of that universe right down to how human beings on a planet called earth behaved.



*so 9.999999 recurring = 10.

 

[Gormech]

In truth, we are all slaves to the existing laws of physics.
Chance and luck exist only as the lack of adequate information to calculate an event.
So, let's think about this as a program being fed data to be sent into an endless string of IF/THEN/OR statements.
If we were able to know the initial data before the program was run, then all chance/free will would cease to exist.
As time continues, the ability to retrieve that data grows more and more corrupted or should I say, encrypted to the point where it reaches closer and closer to infinite obscurity. There's an algebraic thing that shows if something is infinintely close to something, that it can be taken as such. Like 0.999... = 1 or .000...1 = 0. I believe that this is not an error in our way of understanding physics but rather that it is mathmatical evidence that with infinite fuel working at with rather an infinite amount of speed or time in which to work, an infinitely small output greater than the input can be made. That output, throughout time, probability, and in the existance of known barriers in the medium that we exist, is your free will.

Let us examine this. If I am not mistaken, what you are proposing is as follows:

1. We need data on initial starting conditions to make predictions.
2. Any such data on initial starting conditions becomes obscured over time.
3. According to a law of algebra (we will take this for granted), if something is infinitely close to something, it counts as it*.
[Hidden premise]. Sufficient time has passed for data to have become infinitely close to being totally obscured.
Therefore
4.Data on initial starting condition is infinitely obscured.
Therefore
C. We have freewill

Now I will begin with my formal criticism, though it has already begun by me formulating your argument into a logical sequence, because the flaw should have become clear.

Premises 1 and 2, we can find no immediate flaw with, only in relation to the premises that follow. So I will begin by attacking premise 3.

I believe that this is not an error in our way of understanding physics

There is an inherent problem with this truth, because it is actually something that we derive from the logic of Pure Mathematics. Physics does not entirely adhere to Pure mathematics most notably in that it abhors infinity. Infinity is not something that is taken to exist in nature, and any equation resulting in it is taken to be in error and requires rebalancing. However, where premise 3 sound it would still not be logically followed by premise 4, where it not aided by the hidden premise:

(H.P). Sufficient time has passed for data to have become infinitely close to being totally obscured.

We know this can't be the case because we do have data on the starting conditions of the universe, albeit little data. But we shall proceed none the less. Where the links between premise 3 to 4 correct we still have made a fatal deductive leap to our conclusion. This of course is because the flow of the argument can only establish premise 4 as:

4.Data on initial starting condition is infinitely obscured

Obscured, even where it infinitely so, is in no way the same as meaning that there was no data for the initial starting conditions, it only means that it is beyond our reach to obtain. I suspect however that your confusion over premise 4 is that you believed that it naturally followed so that:

4.There is no initial starting conditions.

Perhaps not though, as no one can believe this. Your confusion might actually be(most likely so I imagine) in premise 1:

1. We need data on initial starting conditions to make predictions.

You see, from this very starting premise we can not in any way arrive at our conclusion that there is no free will. If we where to reformulate the argument to work, It should look like this:

1. We need sufficient data on initial starting conditions to make predictions.
2. Any such data on initial starting conditions becomes obscured over time.
3. Sufficient time has passed for data to have become too obscured to make predications on human life.
Therefore
C. We can make no predications of human life.

You see the inability to make any predictions about human life does not equate in anyway to human life not being determined. We could imagine for example a super intelligence that eclipses anything we could achieve in this universe, that in fact pre-dates the universe, witnessed the big bang, and could predict the entire life span of that universe right down to how human beings on a planet called earth behaved.



*so 9.999999 recurring = 10.

I do not disagree with your correction of my earlier post. However, I think that there is another issue that needs to be addressed. This is the assumption that free will requires that it must be able to change the coarse of future events in order to exist. Like if one were to look at time as Line 1 and were to go back and try to do something, that they would have to be able to make that line branch off into a seperate path (Line 2) in order for their actions to carry any sense of free will.

I propose this:
Free will does not exist in the context of changing the timestream's path through will alone.
Free will does exist as the percieved choices made by an individual when they are not completely informed of all the contributors to their decisions.

Back to my program analogy, I percieve reality as a sort of program that's in the process of being run but has not yet gone to the output stage. The results may be predetermined by the construct of the program itself, like running it again and again even though one has seen what comes up in the output, but I would not go so far to say that there is no possibility of outside force altering the program while it is being run.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

Nothing in my genes, surroundings or environment would lead any observer watching me to conclude that I would someday randomly drive to San Fransisco on a very personal trip. A trip that I'm still feeling the effects of. A trip that only I could decide to make, that wasn't predetermined. Choices like this are made daily, even hourly, with plenty of variables. People go against what is predictable for them all the time. Nobody who knows me very well in the real world will be unsurprised by my decision this September. It was incredibly out of character for me and I know it. I made that choice.

I believe I'm taking my life in a way that is unique and undetermined. That whatever is in my direct control in my life is decided by my conscious thought and not predictable based on my physical makeup as a person. You can think differently, that's your choice. I can not ever comfortably live with the idea that I am not in control.

 

[generals3]

Nothing in my genes, surroundings or environment would lead any observer watching me to conclude that I would someday randomly drive to San Fransisco on a very personal trip. A trip that I'm still feeling the effects of. A trip that only I could decide to make, that wasn't predetermined. Choices like this are made daily, even hourly, with plenty of variables. People go against what is predictable for them all the time. Nobody who knows me very well in the real world will be unsurprised by my decision this September. It was incredibly out of character for me and I know it. I made that choice.

I believe I'm taking my life in a way that is unique and undetermined. That whatever is in my direct control in my life is decided by my conscious thought and not predictable based on my physical makeup as a person. You can think differently, that's your choice. I can not ever comfortably live with the idea that I am not in control.

But don't you think it's possible you believe that simply because you have so little no knowledge of the variables at play? After all we're talking about an amount close to infinity here.

 

[2012 Wont Happen]

Scientifically, the OP is correct. However, our minds give us the illusion of choice, and that illusion is all I need.

 

[PromethianSpark]

I do not disagree with your correction of my earlier post. However, I think that there is another issue that needs to be addressed. This is the assumption that free will requires that it must be able to change the coarse of future events in order to exist. Like if one were to look at time as Line 1 and were to go back and try to do something, that they would have to be able to make that line branch off into a seperate path (Line 2) in order for their actions to carry any sense of free will

I for one do not believe in alternative time lines as well. When it comes to time travel into the past I am quite taken by the Moebius theory as seen in the soul reaver series. That is, that should you find yourself back in time, it was because you where always there. There is no possible way that you couldn't of been there, and all your actions actually contribute to the history you know, rather than contradict it. This is of course in line with my determinist way of thinking.

Free will does exist as the percieved choices made by an individual when they are not completely informed of all the contributors to their decisions.

If we define free will like this, then it most certainly exists. For even determinists perceive they have free will when they are not thinking rationally about it. However, in the context of philosophical debates regarding free will vs determinism, it is not taken to mean this. It is taken to mean that a person can choose is spike of the factors that are influencing his/her decision.

Back to my program analogy, I percieve reality as a sort of program that's in the process of being run but has not yet gone to the output stage. The results may be predetermined by the construct of the program itself, like running it again and again even though one has seen what comes up in the output, but I would not go so far to say that there is no possibility of outside force altering the program while it is being run.

For free will as it is defined in the context of this debate to exist, it would require some kind of outside force. Something that is external to this reality but yet mediates with it. Traditionally this has been taken to be the soul, but I am not sure that is what you meant. Whatever it is, it has to be in some way a component of us, something that is external to this world, but somehow linked to the very core of what we are.

 

[FalloutJack]

Was hoping someone could give me a real example of free will, or point me in the direction of a good study that disagrees with me.

I've come to believe we do not have free will. Genes, surroundings and experience dictate every action we make. This has not made me enjoy life less, I find it liberating.

However I love being surprised and am always looking to improve my rational. I challenge you to disprove me!

To take this on a somewhat serious note, I give you human curiosity.

It is my belief that without it, without the desire to grow beyond oneself, we would stagnate and be as the primates we humans came from, changing and doing nothing. It is that existence that I must state has no free will, for it does not think, learn, and grow. But everywhere in life from then on was one humanform or another thinking "No, I want to do something better, or make this more convenient, or figure out why this does what it does!". Nobody told us to do that and nothing in genes made it so. In fact, if you want to go biblical on this, the very god - our frigging creator - said not to pursue this, but to live in peace and harmony with the world forever. We did not, we continue to not, and we will not in the future I'm sure...because we will it so. It's a double-edged sword and very slippery on that slope, but nonetheless true.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

SNIP

Some variables aren't worth filling my mind with when other things in my life matter so much more than this one question. If some scientist wants to pay me and my family an outrageous amount of money for permission to study my entire life and the entire history of my genesis as an individual going back to the earliest roots of all the bloodlines involved... so be it. I'd take the money and continue as I was. Even if he presented me with evidence that every choice I made was a logical conclusion of my entire Earthly history, I would believe I have free will.

The inner workings of an individual human's mind and imagination cannot be calculated. That is something I will never concede to science. Therefore I believe in my free will.

I can not be logically argued out of this view. Maybe my stubbornness is predictable but I don't care. I choose not to care.

I choose.

 

[PromethianSpark]

Nothing in my genes, surroundings or environment would lead any observer watching me to conclude that I would someday randomly drive to San Fransisco on a very personal trip.

You included yourself a very telling detail about the variables that where at work in the decision making process. Not to mention any of the others that you aren't aware of.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

SNIP

See above for how I feel about the variables.

 

[generals3]

Some variables aren't worth filling my mind with when other things in my life matter so much more than this one question. If some scientist wants to pay me and my family an outrageous amount of money for permission to study my entire life and the entire history of my genesis as an individual going back to the earliest roots of all the bloodlines involved... so be it. I'd take the money and continue as I was. Even if he presented me with evidence that every choice I made was a logical conclusion of my entire Earthly history, I would believe I have free will.

The inner workings of an individual human's mind and imagination cannot be calculated. That is something I will never concede to science. Therefore I believe in my free will.

I can not be logically argued out of this view. Maybe my stubbornness is predictable but I don't care. I choose not to care.

I choose.

Nono you have the illusion you choose. (Had to say it)

This said, i'm not saying anyone could actually have predicted what you would do. After all I don't think humans ever will be able to process (and be aware) of all the data necessary to do so. You have to realize even the smallest thing may have an impact. For instance the composition of the air you breath, the food you ate, the temperature, and so on. (And let's not forget that one also has to know how these factors interact with you but also how specific combinations interact with you... I think you can see how complicated such a task would be)

 

[PromethianSpark]

SNIP

Some variables aren't worth filling my mind with when other things in my life matter so much more than this one question. If some scientist wants to pay me and my family an outrageous amount of money for permission to study my entire life and the entire history of my genesis as an individual going back to the earliest roots of all the bloodlines involved... so be it. I'd take the money and continue as I was. Even if he presented me with evidence that every choice I made was a logical conclusion of my entire Earthly history, I would believe I have free will.

For a start, you just admit that you don't care to really consider the argument, and that even if it was logically proven to you, you would stick to your blind faith. You believe this is because you 'choose' to. It is interesting however to note that there are many scientific studies that suggest that we do not in fact choose to believe things. In many ways its like our believes choose us.

The inner workings of an individual human's mind and imagination cannot be calculated. That is something I will never concede to science. Therefore I believe in my free will.

Just because calculating and predicting human behaviour is beyond our capabilities does not mean that the behaviour is not in fact determined.

I can not be logically argued out of this view. Maybe my stubbornness is predictable but I don't care. I choose not to care.I choose.