Does Physics disprove the existence of free will?

[river]

No, you don't get to go back in time and make different decisions than you made in the first place, based on what you learned in the future.

That would be cheating and probably would cause a fatal spacetime paradox.

Thats not not what I'm getting at

What I'm saying is this , the more information you have and get , the more free-will you will have

 

[Write4U]

Thats not not what I'm getting at

What I'm saying is this , the more information you have and get , the more free-will you will have

No. The more information you have the fewer choices you will have to consider.

 

[river]

No. The more information you have the fewer choices you will have to consider.

Explain further

 

[Write4U]

Explain further

Information suggest prior experience. Any historical negative results can immediately be discarded as viable options. It is the unknown which presents the choice dilemma.
In that case we rely on our personal experience and intuition (inherited knowledge), to make a "best guess'' as to course of action. I've made all this stuff available with links to reputable sources.

In short, insects have only a purely chemical auto-responsive motor control, a few billion years of being an insect has equipped it with sufficient innate abilities to never having to make a conscious decision at all.

Insects never ask why or how. They know what they need to know to function effectively, including horticulture, air conditioning, husbandry, flight, long distance communication, war.

The insect is so succesful because it acts without question or decision making at all.
It is a clear demonstration that conscious decision making is not a necessity in nature.

The paramecium and slime mold act without making conscious decisions. Yet they remember external repetitive patterns and "learn" to navigate an obstacle faster each time they encounter it.

A Lemur can count quantity as fast and sometimes faster than humans.
All living organisms display mathematical abilities and behaviors. It's part of the universal program.

 

[DaveC426913]

It's part of the universal program.

Reporting, to have this split off and moved the the Religion forum.

 

[river]

Information suggest prior experience. Any historical negative results can immediately be discarded as viable options. It is the unknown which presents the choice dilemma.
In that case we rely on our personal experience and intuition (inherited knowledge), to make a "best guess'' as to course of action. I've made all this stuff available with links to reputable sources.

In short, insects have only a purely chemical auto-responsive motor control, a few billion years of being an insect has equipped it with sufficient innate abilities to never having to make a conscious decision at all.

Insects never ask why or how. They know what they need to know to function effectively, including horticulture, air conditioning, husbandry, flight, long distance communication, war.

The insect is so succesful because it acts without question or decision making at all.
It is a clear demonstration that conscious decision making is not a necessity in nature.

The paramecium and slime mold act without making conscious decisions. Yet they remember external repetitive patterns and "learn" to navigate an obstacle faster each time they encounter it.

A Lemur can count quantity as fast and sometimes faster than humans.
All living organisms display mathematical abilities and behaviors. It's part of the universal program.

To your first statement , while true that information can be from experience .

Imagination extends that experience , to beyond just the experience its self .

 

[iceaura]

And what do these colors stand for in traffic law handbooks. How do you know red from green, in the first place. Suppose you're colorblind?

Why are you trying to talk about something else?

The situation described is perfectly real, and deliberately set up to focus on the one issue: the degree of freedom observable in the making of a decision to stop or not stop;

a degree of freedom possessed by the entity making the decision, observable in a laboratory, recordable by machinery, verifiable by repeated experiment in controlled situations.

There are always subjective reason (causalities) for our separate actions.

And they too are attributes or features of the physical events we label "mind".

 

[Write4U]

And they too are attributes or features of the physical events we label "mind".

"Mind" is a faculty, not a physical event.

Reporting, to have this split off and moved the the Religion forum.

Did I say the universe has a mind?

 

[iceaura]

"Mind" is a faculty, not a physical event.

It is a pattern of patterns of physical events. It has a location, occupies a defined volume within a physical space, can be identified and its activities recorded on laboratory machinery. You can destroy a human mind with a sledgehammer, by damaging the physical substrates inhabited by the patterns it comprises. You can also destroy a human mind by physically disrupting the patterns themselves, using electrical fields and other physical means.

We normally call such things "physical events", where "event" refers to a collective entity comprising all the subsidiary physical events it comprises. The crashing of a wave on a rock, for example, is normally and without objection labeled a physical event.

 

[James R]

Sarkus:

Let's start with this, from one of your replies to iceaura:

There is no assumption of the supernatural in there. Only if one adds in, as you are doing by stealth, a further assumption that the universe is only deterministic, that determinism therefore equates to the physical laws, can you possibly conclude that labelling something as going against determinism is supernatural. You see the assumption (of being supernatural) because you are making other assumptions that the logic (as presented initially) does not do, and that I do not do.

It sounds like you think that free will might be possible if the universe is not "just" deterministic. You also make it sound as if the universe not being deterministic is a possibility you haven't ruled out.

We probably need to get something out of the way first. Earlier in the thread, including in my posts, there was some discussion of quantum randomness. Do you think that might be a source of this non-determinism that you suspect the universe might have?

My problems with quantum randomness are twofold. First, quantum mechanics is deterministic, is that the wave function (if you like) of anything evolves according to entirely deterministic physical laws (Schrodinger equation, for example). This is conceptually no different to a classical particle obeying Newton's second law of motion. You might argue that when a measurement is made, the outcome is random according to quantum mechanics (although determined to the extent that the wave function defines the probabilities). But do you think this is enough to save free will?

Second - and this is more a more fundamental objection - I don't think that any random process, quantum mechanical or otherwise, can be considered to be the operation of a conscious, willed choice, such as would be required for free will. Random outcomes are random, not choices.

So, coming back to your view, you say that you do not assume that the universe is "only deterministic", and you imply that, if it isn't, free will might be possible. In that light, I need to ask you whether you have any particular candidates for non-deterministic processes in the universe in mind, such as might save free will. Presumably you have something in mind other than the supernatural, since you are quite insistent that the right kind of non-determinism is possible without invoking the supernatural.

Over to you, then, to outline your non-deterministic ideas that are in accordance with physical laws. Which of these ideas might make somebody "able to do otherwise", as you put it?

If you have no viable candidates for these non-deterministic processes you allude to, then it would seem that your de facto position is that free will is impossible in the absence of the supernatural, regardless of what you claim to believe.
​

Moving on to your reply to my previous posts...​

​

I, and I presume neither Baldeee as well, is using the term "only to mean freedom from physical laws". That is a possible conclusion, however, from the nature of "free" that I am using: able to do otherwise. If you conclude that "able to do otherwise", or "do other than it must", equates to "freedom from physical laws" then that is your conclusion.

I fail to see how it could mean anything else, from your point of view. But I'll wait to hear your explanation.

And as said in many posts that I am presuming you haven't read: different notions reach different conclusions.

Please don't patronise me. You complain when you perceive that from iceaura or myself, so do unto others. I have read and understood all of your posts, although I have requested that you expand on your argument on various points.

Personally I think "able to do otherwise" is a reasonable understanding of what it means for something to be free.

In what sense am I not able to do otherwise when I choose wheaties over corn flakes for breakfast? Did somebody other than me really make the choice? Was it the will of somebody other than me that I chose wheaties, say?

This is your error, JamesR. I make no such assertion, or assumption, that physical systems are all deterministic.

I await your description of non-deterministic physical systems such as would allow free will.

How about "able to do otherwise"? It is, after all, the notion that I, and I believe Baldeee, have been alluding to from the get-go.

I have given you my description of free will several times now. I could have done otherwise, if that was the choice I had made. Under this formulation, my will is free as long as it is me who is doing the willing, and not some external force or person. My will is free if my actions are determined by my choices, and not the choices of some other person, entity or thing.

Sure. I have no issue with that.

You do have an issue with that [the formulation I expressed in the preceding paragraph]. You keep telling us that this kind of free will is not "true" free will, but merely the appearance or feeling or illusion of free will. We're telling you that this is actual free will. More importantly, we're telling you that if you don't regard this kind of will as free, then it appears that the only kind of will that could be free, according to you, would be the supernatural kind that can defy physical law. You say there's a third path, but we're yet to get any description of that from you.

 

[James R]

(continued...)

As said, in many posts that you have clearly not read: different notions, different conclusions. The argument from determinism looks at whether one is truly able to do otherwise, not merely think or feel that they are able to.

It has been pointed out many times that this misses the point. We're telling you that even if the universe and ourselves is entirely deterministic, we still have "true" free will in the only sense that matters - i.e. being able to act as we intend.

When I choose to eat wheaties for breakfast, I don't merely imagine that I can choose to eat them. I actually make the choice and actually eat them. Where's the illusion in that? Where's the lack of "truth"?

Although you are rather begging the question of what it means to choose, and you're never actually answering the question of whether the "choice" is one where you could actually do other than you choose.

What do you think it means to choose? On the one hand, you appear to think that if your atoms made you do it, then you didn't really choose at all. On the other hand, you try to leave the door open by suggesting that there is some non-supernatural process that would allow you to "really" choose, after all, despite your atoms. I think it is you who needs to sort out what it means to choose, not me.

Shoot me for looking at things from a philosophical point of view.

What do you think the rest of us are doing here?

Again, not to beat you around the head with not having read the many posts since you were last here, or for that matter from before you merged threads, but I have repeatedly said that I am quite happy with the compatibilist notion of free will.

You don't sound happy with it. You sound like you think that it only describes the illusion of free will, and not the real thing.

This shouldn't be where we get railroaded and hounded into holding certain views just to appease the masses. This is where we get to... you know... discuss things. And some of those things are the incompatibilist view of free will, the notion that free means "able to do otherwise", and the argument from determinism.

I think that's what we're discussing, aren't we? I understand your frustration. Probably you're wondering why iceaura and I are making such a big deal out of your insistence that free will doesn't require the supernatural. Our problem is that the implications of what you write are that there is no other viable option, given your working notion of what free will is.

It's not about railroading you into holding a certain view. It's about exploring possible inconsistencies in your own position. It goes both ways, of course.

Your personal incredulity aside, you need to actually read what was written.

"From the determinist PoV..." i.e. from the perspective of making a choice that is "free" according to the argument from determinism... the argument that you said has effectively defined free will as being supernatural.

Is this you agreeing with me then? It doesn't sound like it, from the rest of your postings.

So I ask you, in all sincerity JamesR, when did you last experience a choice that was "free" in the sense of the word that it defies physical laws (since that is the meaning you have ascribed it from the determinist PoV)?

I have nowhere argued that free choice requires the defiance of physical laws. Quite the opposite. I have argued that choices are freely made all the time, without the need for the supernatural.

We can blame them for that. And we do. Just as they might argue they have no real choice for their actions, so others have no real choice but to punish them. It is (usually) enough that they (all parties) think they have choice.

Isn't moral or criminal responsibility predicated on the basis that people make free choices about how they act? If you say that their choices aren't really free at all, doesn't it strike you as nonsensical to punish them for failing to be able to act other than they must?

But questions of moral responsibility are simply an appeal to consequence, not to truth, of whether or not we have a genuine ability to do otherwise. Sure, we can define away the matter so that our language implies moral responsibility, and that is, to an extent, what we have done.

Just like you need to decide what "real" free will would look like, I think you also need to decide what makes a person morally responsible for his or her own actions. The two questions are rather intimately related.

Notice that we routinely mitigate responsibility for people who are perceived not to have made a free choice to commit a crime, on grounds such as diminished mental capacity, insanity, coercion and so on.

Under the no-free-will argument, people are essentially automatons - puppets of their atoms and the physical laws that govern them. They have no "real" choices, but merely do as they must. Should their crimes not be excused on the same grounds, then?

Feel free to raise the question in another thread.

It would be nice to get a simple answer from you in this thread. Should people be held morally (or criminally) liable for their crimes, if free will is merely an illusion?​

 

[Write4U]

we still have "true" free will in the only sense that matters - i.e. being able to act as we intend.

Could we say "we have freedom to act as we intend, but not free choice what action to take".

 

[James R]

Could we say "we have freedom to act as we intend, but not free choice what action to take".

Wouldn't that be a contradiction?

 

[iceaura]

Could we say "we have freedom to act as we intend, but not free choice what action to take".

Choosing is an action. So is intending, in a complicated way - a physical pattern we can monitor via machinery (very crudely so far, but we're getting better).

Under the no-free-will argument, people are essentially automatons - puppets of their atoms and the physical laws that govern them. They have no "real" choices, but merely do as they must.

Since consciousness - all these illusions, collectively - would be therefore superfluous, while remaining observably expensive, a conflict with Darwinian evolutionary theory arises.

 

[Write4U]

Wouldn't that be a contradiction?

Not necessarily, IMO.
If I intend to run, I am able to run, but why should I want to run unless I am internally compelled to make that decision. That decision is wholly dependent on my experience and physical reaction to prevailing conditions, which dictate my decision to run or not.

 

[DaveC426913]

Not necessarily, IMO.
... which dictate my decision to run or not.

So, you're not free to make that decision after all. It's dictated to you. How is that freedom to act?

 

[Write4U]

So, you're not free to make that decision after all. It's dictated to you. How is that freedom to act?

It isn't. That's the point. We are only free to physically act on our deterministic inputs. The inputs determine the decision to act in a specific way, which we are able (free) to perform.

Fight or flight, we are able to do both. The decision for one or the other is not free, it is deterministic.

 

[DaveC426913]

It isn't. That's the point. We are only free to physically act on our deterministic inputs. The inputs determine the decision to act in a specific way, which we are able (free) to perform.

So, when you say "we have freedom to act as we intend" it is the cognitive equivalent of "You can buy a Model-T in any colour - as long as it's black."

 

[Write4U]

So, when you say "we have freedom to act as we intend" it is the cognitive equivalent of "You can buy a Model-T in any colour - as long as it's black."

More like, you can (are free to) buy a Model-T in any color, but you have no choice in the color you like best. If black is your favorite color, you will not buy a red Model-T. You will always pick black. "movement in the direction of greatest satisfaction"

 

[DaveC426913]

More like, you can buy a Model-T, in any color but you have no choice in the color you like best. If that is black, you will not buy a red Model-T.

You're missing the point of the analogy. If you say you have the freedom to act as you intend, but then say you have no freedom about what you intend, then you don't have freedom.