Does Physics disprove the existence of free will?

[Baldeee]

Or you could read the by now half dozen posted rebuttals, beginning with its assumption of freedom being of necessity supernatural.

There is no such assumption.
The word "free" does not make an appearance in the logic.
There are also no rebuttals thus far, other than some rather evasive claims of lack of clarity... of words that are either adequately defined within the premises or don't appear in the logic.
Is that your idea of rebuttal?

Which would of course include - since it is a "whole" - any freedom of will possessed by human beings.
One must make room for observation and event, should they appear, in one's "whole" - no?

Sure, which is why it would be more accurate to say that it would include "any sense of freedom of will...".
And yes, this would indeed be included.
Doesn't make it any less deterministic a system, and unable to be other than it must.

Wherein lies being our will be "free" other than a sense we have, the appearance of being free.
And if we have a sense of being free in a system that has none, that sense is... well, we have a word for it.
hint: begins with "Illusor" and ends in "y".

 

[iceaura]

There is no such assumption.
The word "free" does not make an appearance in the logic.

The word "determined" does, and its meaning to you established immediately:
"If it is valid, and the premises not disputed, where is the freedom, other than in veiled illusion only, masking the determined nature of our actions?"
You regard processes or events that obey natural law - "determined" - as having no freedom. By assumption.

Doesn't make it any less deterministic a system, and unable to be other than it must.

What it "must" be includes - for example - human beings making decisions and behaving willfully according to the meanings of words, the contents of dreams, both the observation and the memory of information from their surroundings, the lessons gleaned from stories they have heard or read, the mood swings attendant on music both remembered and currently playing, and so forth.

From an engineering point of view, quite a bit of freedom there. There's so much that it's hard to even measure or theoretically handle - the standard dimensional analysis doesn't work for patterns at that level. We face unsolved problems in high level combinatorics, topology, graph theory, and neurobiology - and that's just what we know about.

From an observational or scientific point of view, that freedom will dominate the data if not carefully restricted - it is famously difficult to design experiments that exclude enough of it to allow conclusions about some one factor or another.

And if we have a sense of being free in a system that has none,

We have a sense of being able to make decisions and will behavior based on our dreams, moods, ideas, observations, calculations, assessments, expectations, and goals. That is in fact the case, apparently. What - exactly - is this "illusion" you keep talking about?

The only candidate for "illusion" that I can see here is the notion that we can willfully abrogate natural law - that our will is capable of acting independently of natural law, in violation of it somehow. That our will is supernatural. And indeed that seems to be a common illusion. But not a necessary one, surely?

There is plenty of visible freedom in this system of the "whole". It's just not supernatural. So you don't recognize it as freedom.

 

[Baldeee]

The word "determined" does, and its meaning to you established immediately:
"If it is valid, and the premises not disputed, where is the freedom, other than in veiled illusion only, masking the determined nature of our actions?"
You regard processes or events that obey natural law - "determined" - as having no freedom. By assumption.

If you want to argue about what the logic in post #130 means, let's stick to what it says.
The meaning of "determined" is established in the premises: can not do other than it must.
I have made no reference to natural laws in the logic, so please don't argue that strawman.
The logical argument is quite clear: it sets out a definition of determined, that a system built from determined interactions is itself determined, and that the mind, the will etc, are systems built from determined interactions.
Where is the mention of "natural law"?
If you wish to dispute one of the premises, feel free, but so far you have tried to simply claim lack of clarity of language.
Do you dispute the premises?
Maybe you think the mind, the will etc are not built from determined interactions etc?
Or maybe you think a system built from determined interactions is not determined?

What you commented on above is my commentary to the logic that was presented.
And yes, within that, I used the term "freedom", as in lacking the ability to do other than one must.
If you must act in a certain way, do you think you have freedom?

What it "must" be includes - for example - human beings making decisions and behaving willfully according to the meanings of words, the contents of dreams, both the observation and the memory of information from their surroundings, the lessons gleaned from stories they have heard or read, the mood swings attendant on music both remembered and currently playing, and so forth.

From an engineering point of view, quite a bit of freedom there. There's so much that it's hard to even measure or theoretically handle - the standard dimensional analysis doesn't work for patterns at that level. We face unsolved problems in high level combinatorics, topology, graph theory, and neurobiology - and that's just what we know about.

From an observational or scientific point of view, that freedom will dominate the data if not carefully restricted - it is famously difficult to design experiments that exclude enough of it to allow conclusions about some one factor or another.

And where in any of this, even in the engineering term of degrees of freedom, is the notion of actually being free, of doing other than one must?
Again, refute the logic in #130, or step aside, because you are simply talking about the possible configurations that the will can inhabit, not whether it is free.
The sense of freedom you are chasing is to utterly miss the point of whether one is free.
As exampled, a free-floating object in space has 6 degrees of freedom, yet is not free.
The will may have freedom in terms of possibly inhabiting a vast number of states/decisions, but is no more free (per the logic) than a dice being rolled.
And the issue here is the matter of whether the will is free, not whether it has degrees of freedom in the manner that an engineering structure does.
The latter is a trivial matter.
But maybe it is that you agree that the will is not actually free, and that "degrees of freedom" is the best sense of "free" you can hold out for?

We have a sense of being able to make decisions and will behavior based on our dreams, moods, ideas, observations, calculations, assessments, expectations, and goals. That is in fact the case, apparently. What - exactly - is this "illusion" you keep talking about?

I've explained this numerous times already.
If something appears to be one thing but is actually something else, then the appearance is an illusion.
The brain can be tricked by illusions rather easily, from optical to aural etc.
Things might appear to be different but in fact are the same.
Even when we know full well on an intellectual level that it is an illusion, we might still only see and behave according to the illusion and not the reality of the situation.

The will appears free... but the logic (of #130) suggests otherwise.
Appearance of being free on one hand... not being free on the other.
Conclusion: appearance of being free is just an illusion, or the logic is wrong.
Feel free to argue and demonstrate the latter.

The only candidate for "illusion" that I can see here is the notion that we can willfully abrogate natural law - that our will is capable of acting independently of natural law, in violation of it somehow. That our will is supernatural. And indeed that seems to be a common illusion. But not a necessary one, surely?

There is plenty of visible freedom in this system of the "whole". It's just not supernatural. So you don't recognize it as freedom.

I'm not talking about degrees of freedom in the engineering sense, but of being free, of being able to do other than one must.
If one must do something, and can not do otherwise, is one free?
Imagine a dice roll: "freedom" for it to land on any of the faces.
Is the dice free, or will the dice do what it must, irrespective of any engineering degrees of freedom the dice might possess?

And stop going on about supernatural!
It is a red-herring and has zero place in this argument, and it really seems as though you are simply introducing it to try and poison the well.

 

[iceaura]

If one must do something, and can not do otherwise, is one free?

That possibility would be the thread topic - once "one" and "must" and "do" are clearly understood. Does that puzzle you?
- - - -

The meaning of "determined" is established in the premises: can not do other than it must.

That just kicks it down to the words like "can" and "must". Meanwhile, the meaning established in your immediate explanation - quoted - is acting according to physical law. That's your visible criterion for "determined".

The logical argument is quite clear: it sets out a definition of determined, that a system built from determined interactions is itself determined, and that the mind, the will etc, are systems built from determined interactions.

And that from the guy who was sure he could never fall victim to naive bottom up determinism, and denied he was dealing in substrates causing patterns.

I'm not talking about degrees of freedom in the engineering sense

And you aren't going to. Because.

Conclusion: appearance of being free is just an illusion, or the logic is wrong.

The first is an incoherent muddle unless "free" means supernatural, as described above. The second is either undecidable without clarification, or basically irrelevant here (as noted above, repeatedly) - nobody is claiming here that willful behavior disobeys physical law.

If something appears to be one thing but is actually something else, then the appearance is an illusion.

But in this case things are as they appear, to those who agree that acts of will and so forth obey natural law. As already noted:

human beings making decisions and behaving willfully according to the meanings of words, the contents of dreams, both the observation and the memory of information from their surroundings, the lessons gleaned from stories they have heard or read, the mood swings attendant on music both remembered and currently playing, and so forth

That is the appearance, and the measured and recorded physical reality. Both.

 

[DaveC426913]

If you must act in a certain way, do you think you have freedom?

This gave me pause for thought.

The evolution of self-awareness brought with it the concepts of past and future.

A mind with access to such concepts has a qualitatively different set of decisions open to it.

Gathered around a fresh kill, an animal mind might weigh the fear of a lion's swipe over the hunger in its belly. Those two stimuli are warring with each other, and one will win. But that mind is doomed to only think in the present.

A human mind can weigh the options differently; remember what worked before, improve on it, and lay out a new path - say lure the lions away, then circle around for the prize.

Is not freedom of will then, tied directly to having access to past and future?

At some point, it seems to me that - even laying on a substrate of determinism - this provides a form of decision-making that is qualitatively more advanced.

One could metaphorize a hyena's thinking as a point on a line that sort of has access only to the points immediately adjacent to it (it has one-dimension of access).
A human's thinking is a point on a line that has access to any point along the line (two or three dimensions of access).

(It's a lousy metaphor - taking something concrete and metaphorizing it to something as abstract as mathematical lines).

 

[DaveC426913]

At what point does the deterministic substrate cease to matter?

Is it like saying the creativity of LEGO is illusory?

LEGO blocks only fit together certain ways. That means there is an upper limit to the possible combinations of X number of blocks.

What if I had 100 billion pieces (the number of neurons in the brain)?

Does that mean creativity with it is an illusion? Because the combinations - while fabulously large - aren't infinite?

 

[iceaura]

At what point does the deterministic substrate cease to matter?

It is almost always a constraint, almost never a cause, of patterns formed on it. The sense in which it is "deterministic" remains to be clarified.

 

[Baldeee]

That possibility would be the thread topic - once "one" and "must" and "do" are clearly understood. Does that puzzle you?

It puzzles me that you struggle with the words in the context.
"One": a thing, any thing
"Must": can not do otherwise
"Do": Act, react, move, interact, behave etc.

That just kicks it down to the words like "can" and "must".

"Can": is able.

Really, these words are relatively simple.
What exactly is it that you have issue with with regard these words?
What to you understand by "do", or "must" that makes the words ambiguous here?

Meanwhile, the meaning established in your immediate explanation - quoted - is acting according to physical law. That's your visible criterion for "determined".

FFS, iceaura, stop putting words in my mouth!
No wonder DaveC thought you don't argue in good faith!
I have not mentioned physical law.
If that is how you are seeing it then it is you, once again, introducing the assumption.
The logic makes no assumption nor assertion that physical law is deterministic, either in part or wholly.
It simply starts with premises and reaches a conclusion.
If you want to argue that the mind, the will etc are not deterministic in nature then that would be for you to rebut.
And I welcome such.
But FFS stop raising strawmen.

And that from the guy who was sure he could never fall victim to naive bottom up determinism, and denied he was dealing in substrates causing patterns.

Where am I?
Answer: I'm not.
There is no mention of it, no allusion to it, other than through assumptions that you bring to the table.
If your rebuttal is along the lines that a system made up of determined interactions is not deterministic, then FFS state that.
If it isn't your rebuttal then at least have the decency and honesty to argue what is in front of you, not what you want it to be, and not with assumptions you have introduced.

And you aren't going to. Because.

Because it is trivial.
And because it has zip to do with the logical argument I presented in post #130.

The first is an incoherent muddle unless "free" means supernatural, as described above.

If you see it as an incoherent muddle then I am sorry I have wasted your time.
I thought I was discussing with someone honest.
Free: able to do other than it must.
[sarcasm]Yep, utterly incoherent to me. [/sarcasm]

The second is either undecidable without clarification, or basically irrelevant here (as noted above, repeatedly) - nobody is claiming here that willful behavior disobeys physical law.

Where have I said that willful behaviour disobeys physical law?
Again with putting words in my mouth!
The second would not be irrelevant because it would say that willful behaviour, obeying physical laws, is not free.
How more relevant do you want to get on the topic of "free will"???

But in this case things are as they appear, to those who agree that acts of will and so forth obey natural law. As already noted:

That is the appearance, and the measured and recorded physical reality. Both.

I give up.
You're lost in your own little world and clearly unable / unwilling to debate honestly about the matter.

 

[Baldeee]

At what point does the deterministic substrate cease to matter?

At the point consciousness emerges, I imagine.
This drives how things appear.
This is when appearance starts to diverge from what it actually is.

Is it like saying the creativity of LEGO is illusory?

No.
Lego doesn't operate in a way that is contrary to appearance, does it?

LEGO blocks only fit together certain ways. That means there is an upper limit to the possible combinations of X number of blocks.

That's a matter of degrees of freedom, not of whether something can only do what it must.

What if I had 100 billion pieces (the number of neurons in the brain)?

Does that mean creativity with it is an illusion? Because the combinations - while fabulously large - aren't infinite?

No.
Lego works in a certain way.
But it never appears to work in any other way.
Now, if we created something in Lego that seemed to show it was working in a way that was contrary to the way Lego actually works, that would be an illusion.

 

[geordief]

At the point consciousness emerges, I imagine.
This drives how things appear.
This is when appearance starts to diverge from what it actually is.

That is amusing. While some will say that the conscious mind is the universe staring itself in the face your take is a bit like the universe losing the run of itself and creating an actor that fundamentally lives off illusion.

A bit of a religious theme (we are cast out of the garden of true representation and spend our lives trying to get back)

Obviously poetic license but it seems to suggest that the dumb rocks are truer than we are in a sense (that we are all liable to gross error should come as no surprise I suppose )

Have I replaced "supernatural" with "infranatural"?

 

[Baldeee]

Hadn't seen it like that.
An interesting take, for sure.
And yes, dumb rocks are perhaps truer than us, I guess, in the same sense that ignorance is bliss...
... if only the dumb rocks knew what bliss was.

And surely "infranatural" is just... "natural"?

 

[geordief]

Hadn't seen it like that.
An interesting take, for sure.
And yes, dumb rocks are perhaps tr

Hadn't seen it like that.
An interesting take, for sure.
And yes, dumb rocks are perhaps truer than us, I guess, in the same sense that ignorance is bliss...
... if only the dumb rocks knew what bliss was.

And surely "infranatural" is just... "natural"?

uer than us, I guess, in the same sense that ignorance is bliss...
... if only the dumb rocks knew what bliss was.

And surely "infranatural" is just... "natural"?

If I'd said "natural" it would have felt a bit earnest.

And it would have lost the "contrast and compare" element.

 

[iceaura]

It puzzles me that you struggle with the words in the context.

Your terms make no sense in the context you establish. There is no "one" to which "illusions" can "appear" in your bottom up deterministic system. The word "must" implies a command or cause - but a locked in "determinism" that regards mental patterns as illusions has no more room for cause than it has for free will: all you have is the illusion of causes, at any level above the bottom substrate.

"One": a thing, any thing
"Must": can not do otherwise
"Do": Act, react, move, interact, behave etc.

And that clarifies nothing.

FFS, iceaura, stop putting words in my mouth!

I'm reading your arguments, and comprehending them, and discussing them. I'm using my own words, because unlike yours they are not confused and in conflict.

It simply starts with premises and reaches a conclusion.

The conclusion makes no sense without the assumption that freedom is necessarily supernatural. Without the assumption that "free" means "supernatural", the conclusion does not follow from the premises.
I'm willing to repeat that indefinitely, you know. I went into more detail earlier, such as explaining how I could tell what the premises and conclusion were, but now you are just parroting.

If you want to argue that the mind, the will etc are not deterministic in nature then that would be for you to rebut.

I don't.

Where am I?
Answer: I'm not.

I quoted you, so you could not possibly miss it. Read your own post - it's naive bottom up determinism, explicitly.

Free: able to do other than it must.

In other words, supernatural. Just as I keep telling you.

Where have I said that willful behaviour disobeys physical law?
Again with putting words in my mouth!

Never said you did. Again with this inability to read what I actually post.

The second would not be irrelevant because it would say that willful behaviour, obeying physical laws, is not free.

In other words, free means supernatural.
That makes it irrelevant. Everyone agrees that nothing supernatural is involved here.

You keep repeating it, and denying it, and repeating it - you are apparently unable to rid yourself of that presumption.
As noted long ago: progress is going to be slow.

 

[iceaura]

I'm not talking about degrees of freedom in the engineering sense
- - -
Because it is trivial.

The triviality:

There is an alternative to this tail-eating snake: we can begin by expanding and extrapolating from the engineering concept of degrees of freedom, rather than the religious concept of a supernaturally "free" will. We can then talk about patterns in substrates as if they shared a reality, rather than being real only up to a certain level and illusory from then on. We can recognize the ad hoc, heuristic, and only contingently relevant nature of the concept of "cause and effect" in the first place.

 

[Sarkus]

At the point consciousness emerges, I imagine.
This drives how things appear.
This is when appearance starts to diverge from what it actually is.

I agree. Write4U posted a classic example of that divergence in another thread: despite knowing that A and B are the same colour in the below, we can not help but see A as darker than B when viewed in the context of the whole picture.

As you know, I'm in agreement about the illusory nature of free will. And just like the image above, we can't help but sense our free will as actually being free, even though (by the logic you laid out previously) it doesn't seem to actually be free.

 

[DaveC426913]

I'm using my own words, because unlike yours they are not confused and in conflict.

Iceaura you are not unintelligent. It is not lost on you how your own words can make perfect sense to you but still remain confused and in conflict to others - how you are simply on a different side of the fence than an opponent. To express the conceit that it works in only one direction is deliberately inflammatory on your part - designed to end discussion rather than encourage it.

We could disagree on this subject and still debate constructively, but you would have to stop being so damned condescending as to pretend your view is the only rational view there is - and to build strawmen for everyone else.

If what you're trying to do is end discussion, you win. I'm out.

 

[iceaura]

We could disagree on this subject and still debate constructively, but you would have to stop being so damned condescending as to pretend your view is the only rational view there is - and to build strawmen for everyone else.

Asserting the single view I am criticizing is
1) wrong, for specific reasons explicitly posted,
2)expressed in confused and conflicting terms (which explain its existence, and the fact that it is not immediately dismissed)

is not at all the same as pretending I have the only rational views around.

That's kind of of obvious, no?

Nowhere in any of my posts,

every single one of which is an invitation to rational discussion between people with different views of freedom of the will,

every single one of which encourages and recommends simply avoiding one basic and fundamental error, not so that the argument is ended but simply in order that a reasonable discussion can begin,

is there a hint of pretension to sole residence on Mount Reasonable.

As you know, I'm in agreement about the illusory nature of free will. And just like the image above, we can't help but sense our free will as actually being free, even though (by the logic you laid out previously) it doesn't seem to actually be free.

If you drop the assumption that freedom of will is necessarily supernatural, all of that evaporates. There is no illusion any more, there is no separate illusory image being viewed by a deluded ghost of some sort, and none of that posted logic has any bearing on the central matter of discussion.

It all depends on assuming "free" means not bound by physics, by natural law, by determining reality. Quit assuming that, and a discussion can begin - with all kinds of different views reasonably on the table.

 

[iceaura]

btw:

you would have to stop being so damned condescending

"Condescending" my ass. I've been civil in the face of trolling and direct insult.

 

[Sarkus]

Asserting the single view I am criticizing is
1) wrong, for specific reasons explicitly posted,
2)expressed in confused and conflicting terms (which explain its existence, and the fact that it is not immediately dismissed)

is not at all the same as pretending I have the only rational views around.

The only manners in which you have criticised the view is the false notion on your part that it is introducing free will as being supernatural, and in claiming words are confusing to you. While this latter may be true for you (I can not speak to your ability to comprehend such words as "do", "can" or "must", or even "illusion") I and others seem to have no difficulty in understanding the view put forth by Baldeee.

If you drop the assumption that freedom of will is necessarily supernatural, all of that evaporates. There is no illusion any more, there is no separate illusory image being viewed by a deluded ghost of some sort, and none of that posted logic has any bearing on the central matter of discussion.

There is no such assumption on my part that freedom of will is necessarily supernatural. There was no such assumption in Baldee's original logical formulation.
The only time such an assumption arises is when you start with the assumption that freewill must exist. With that assumption, then if the logic presented concludes that freewill does not exist, then and only then could one add in the additional conclusion that ergo freewill is necessarily supernatural.
But that is all of your own doing. It is not in the logic Baldeee put forth. There is no assumption from the outset that freewill exists. There is simply assumptions about what a deterministic system is, that a system composed of deterministic parts is itself deterministic, and that the mind etc are such systems.
Can you seriously not comprehend that it is you introducing the notion of the supernatural through your own a priori assumption that free will exists? Your continuing effort to pass it off to others, to me, DavidC, Baldeee, does you no favours.
So I don't have any such assumption to drop. If you still honestly think I do, please lay out the logic from Baldeee's post and show where the hidden assumption should go.

From my perspective what you are doing is altering the logic and the argument to something along the following:
P1: free will exists
P2: a system that operates according to physical laws is not free
P3: the will is such a system
Conclusion: free will exists but does not operate according to physical laws, and is thus supernatural.

If you disagree, set out what you see as the logic with this added assumption you think we are all introducing.
And then I, or someone else, will happily show you where you are introducing strawmen, or simply misunderstanding, the argument presented.

It all depends on assuming "free" means not bound by physics, by natural law, by determining reality. Quit assuming that, and a discussion can begin - with all kinds of different views reasonably on the table.

I'm making no such assumption. The logic Baldeee presented makes no such assumption. It may come out as a conclusion that this is how "free" is being used, but it is not an assumption.
The assumptions are with regard determinism.
If the laws of physics are deterministic then sure, you could reach that conclusion, but the logic makes no such assumption that the laws are determinsistic. It simply states what determinism is (in the context of the logic presented), that a system comprised of deterministic parts is itself deterministic, and that the will is one such system.
Now, it could be that there are laws of physics that are not deterministic (or probabilistically so, although at this stage I think it's well understood that when we have been referring to determinism it includes the notion of probabilistic determinism as well), and a rebuttal could be that the will is not deterministic. Or that systems comprised of deterministic parts are not necessarily deterministic etc.
"Free" is being understood in regard to determinism... that if something can only do what it must then it is not free. That seems like a reasonable understanding of free to me. And seemingly to others. You could try to argue that we should be talking about degrees of freedom, but Baldeee seems to have kicked that into touch by exampling the object in space having degrees of freedom. Although perhaps you think the object is "free"?

Yes, there are different understandings of "free" within the two positions, and it is what I stated from the outset of my involvement, that one view of what is "free" is the other's "illusion of free". But you want one side to drop their view of what free means, you want them to adopt your view. You want to argue with them that their position is wrong yet you can't bring yourself to use their understanding of the term in their context.
You even claim their position and argument is irrelevant, which shows just how much you are actually open to engaging them in discussion.

 

[NotEinstein]

Baldeee: If you don't mind, I would like to ask you about the definitions you just posted.

"Must": can not do otherwise
"Do": Act, react, move, interact, behave etc.
"Can": is able.

Free: able to do other than it must.

(For clarity, I'll explicitly underline the words when I'm referring to those using your definition.)
If objects cannot do otherwise than they must, it then follows that if I formulate a sentence "Object O must do A" that A will have to include (at least, but preferably exactly) all the do's an object can do.
Let's say I (object O) approach a crossroads, and I can either go left, or go right. Then A must be a set of "go left" and "go right". Object O (me) only gets two options, 1 (go left) or 2 (go right), and one of these options will be what object O does.
If that's the case, then how can any object O be free? How, if object O gets only options 1 and 2, can it ever do 3? It's literally not in the set of possibilities. In other words, object O does as it must, and thus can never be free, because that would be a contradiction.

I haven't been following this thread too closely, so I don't know your position in this "free will" discussion, but doesn't this make the definition of free rather useless (or bad)? I mean, why define an attribute in such a way so that literally nothing can have that attribute, because that would violate basic logic?

(Note that I have no alternative definition; I, up to this point, have yet to encounter a satisfactory one.)​