Does Physics disprove the existence of free will?

[Write4U]

"Fate guides the willing, but drags the unwilling" ~ Cleanthes 300-220BC

The sheer brilliance of the ancients is staggering when you think on it.
In only 8 words too...
The emphasis being the use of the word "Guides" as distinct from "controlled" or "determines".

Bohm's "Guiding Equation"

 

[Write4U]

People don't make choices based on astrology as such. Astrology is premised on determinism and choices are already predetermined.
If a choice is made based on what the Astrologist foretells then that is also predetermined.

Ahh yes, from that perspective, you're right.

Example of Astrological sooth:

The Mayan Prophecy for 21st, December 2012 is premised on Astrological determinism.
Brief: "The universe will be destroyed or God will emerge to save it"

Well ....as per climate change etc from a human perspective at least half of the prophecy seems to be valid...

"We are just puppets to the stars" ~ anon

Ultimately the "proper" Astrologist must presume a predetermined reality exists. That the future he sooth's is unavoidable. If the stars were closer the soothsayers would be right.
The sun is a star and is certainly causal to life itself.
]quote]The Stoics I mentioned earlier attempted to reconcile the paradox of both freewill and rigid determinism.

Opinion:
Ultimately when you get down to the very core of the issue a paradox will always be demonstrated. It is accepting the reality of a paradox that finally ends this debate. That allows the Stoic interpretation to hold true.

Explaining this paradox is beyond the scope and capacity of this forum. The logic involved is extremely difficult to grasp. Heisenberg got close but failed to go deeper. IMO

As you know science is unwilling or very reluctant to accept a real paradox and so too philosophy...so I guess the endless debate will continue. (as the paradox requires)

Grist for thought. (using an incongruent conflation")
http://www.conflations.com/pages/incongruent.html

 

[Sarkus]

It has degrees of freedom, as observed.
Not in the supernatural sense, of course - in the engineering sense.

So does a brick floating in space. Not in the supernatural sense, of course - in the engineering sense.

They have. They point out that once the supernatural presumption is set aside, the fact of the entity at issue - the person - actually choosing between actually available alternatives is an observation. So a degree of freedom exists.

They certainly are able to highlight the process that we call "choosing" or "making a decision", but they simply don't speak to whether it is actually free, only to the appearance of being free. Until you can explain how something that is chained to a certain course of action, even though we are unaware of being so, is actually free, then you may be able to offer something. Until then all you seem to have is notions based on the appearance of being free.

If the universe is a closed system, that's obvious - human beings are an open system.

All our actions are necessarily closed. Otherwise you are arguing for us being an indeterministic system, and you'd need to offer something that supports the notion of an indeterministic system being created from strictly deterministic interactions. You would then, after all the last 30-odd pages, finally be denying one of the premises of the argument as initially formulated: specifically you would be denying that a deterministic system that is built from deterministic interactions is itself deterministic.
Are you denying this?
Human beings only appear to be open in as much as it seems to them that their decisions are based only on that aspect of the system that they are aware of. If you are only aware of part of the closed system then it might appear open, and being open it is capable of appearing indeterministic, i.e. the same considered inputs to the decision can lead to different outcomes.

It's not a logical conclusion, unless one is arguing from an assumption of freedom being supernatural.

Yawn. This has been responded to almost ad nauseam in the previous 30 pages. I suggest you simply re-read any one of those responses.

There is no such part of reality. So you have simply defined the human being as coextensive with all of reality - nonexistent, as a separate entity.

My apologies, I thought you had an understanding of physics? If something is 100 light years away it can not have an impact on me for at least 100 years. This is commonly understood with the notion that information can not travel faster than light.

Nonsense. Nothing I posted even fails to contradict that.

Eh? You stated "the decision is not set in stone in the decider" (post #705). I commented that you must therefore think that the decider sits outside of reality - the clarification by me being that the reality of a strictly deterministic universe is that everything is set in stone. There is no place that it is not. It is just that the decider is unaware that it is, and they believe they are free.
So the conclusion to draw is that you think the decider, where the decision is not set in stone, sits outside of reality, where the decision is set in stone.
Simples, really.

So?
The universe after the decision is predetermined in part by the decision.

And that decision, in the strictly determined universe, is predetermined by preceding events. There is no actual decision being taken, only the appearance and belief, by the decider, that a decision is being taken.

You were talking about closed systems. Human beings are not closed systems.

Answered above.

How they appear to laboratory equipment, replicable research reports, and everyone basing their assessments on observed physical fact rather than handwaving.

There is no handwaving on my part, just the following of the logic. You, however, continue to wave supposed replicable research reports that demonstrate that the will in operation is an actual case of being able to do otherwise, rather than merely the appearance of being able to do otherwise. I'm still waiting for the links.

What it does is clarify what you are talking about when you wave your hands and say "set in stone" and "predetermined".

How are those terms handwaving? Do you not understand what "predetermined" means? Do you not know what the idiom "set in stone" means? What vagueness is there to the notion that everything is fixed. The only handwaving here is in your accusations of me handwaving, a diversionary tactic on your part.

You appear to be trapped in a bottom up delusion, in which substrates determine patterns.

Again your misunderstanding. There is no bottom up causality being assumed, delusion or otherwise. I consider the holistic state, as explained, and my argument is consistent with this.

Right there in the mind, as "set in stone" from all that came before. You can watch it happen on brain scanning equipment.

Even though this decision was set in stone well before the decision appeared to be made? So you consider something set in stone is free?
While you seem to grasp that in a strictly deterministic universe things would run exactly the same if re-run from the beginning, and you thus state that if the decision was re-run in the lab with the same inputs then you would get the same output, you don't seem to be grasping the predetermined nature of the universe and the implications. If the output of the decision was determined aeons ago, how is it free? How is there in the decider an actual ability to do otherwise, rather than just the appearance (e.g. by lab testing) or belief by the individual that they can do otherwise?

Their ability to do otherwise has been verified in the laboratory, as recorded physical fact, without the slightest reference to anyone's "beliefs".

The theoretical capability to do otherwise when we aren't aware of the inputs (because we only consider an open system and not the necessarily closed system governing the decision) is not in question. So your bleating on about the lab testing really is irrelevant. It only speaks to the existence of a process and the appearance of the nature of process.

People actually do decide whether to stop or go based on the color of the light, and they actually do have the ability to either stop or go depending on that information, and it makes no difference what they "believe".

I'm sure we all believe that we have the ability to do otherwise. You are simply asserting that the belief equates to reality. You are asserting that the appearance of being able to otherwise is an actual ability to do otherwise, and despite the explanations for this (that we are only considering an open system and not the closed one that governs the decision) we can come to the conclusion that, at least as far as we can tell, we are free.

Researchers haven't just scratched that surface - they've compiled a very large volume of research and findings and analysis in the matter.

So you keep saying.

 

[Quantum Quack]

How does the universes galaxies and stars etc determine our choices?
By what means?
How does solar radiation effect our freedom to choose?

How does determinism stack up in physics?
What method, means or other is the causality that is so often referred to by determinsts?

 

[Write4U]

How does the universe's galaxies and stars etc determine our choices?

Comes to mind a few immediate causalities.
The galaxies and stars and especially their demise gave birth to the sun and the earth in its orbit and provided the biochemistry that allowed life to evolve from inanimate matter. Job well done.

By what means?

Abiogenesis.

How does solar radiation affect our freedom to choose?

Cannot choose to not get sunburned after long exposure. Eventually you must seek shelter, or die. The desert is full of carcasses of warm blooded mammals. They had no choice in the matter.
OTOH, cold blooded reptiles are only able to move during the day. They have no choice in the matter.

How does determinism stack up in physics?

If this-->Then that?

What method, means or other is the causality that is so often referred to by determinists?

If this-->Then that. It isn't complicated.

There is no instance of If this-->Then not that.
Causality always precedes Effect. Effect always follows Causality.

IMO, the mathematics of any and all universal physical events are causal and deterministic to the result. It seems an inescapable (deterministic) function to me.

Just a few random thoughts on this grand question......

 

[iceaura]

So does a brick floating in space.

Orders of magnitude less, on a different logical level, not involving (for example) information.
A human being makes decisions - a brick does not.
The consistent overlooking of logical levels is one of the crippling effects of adopting bottom up determinism, btw.

They certainly are able to highlight the process that we call "choosing" or "making a decision", but they simply don't speak to whether it is actually free, only to the appearance of being free.

They observe degrees of freedom, and they do not require them to be supernatural to be "actual". That's your criterion, and it doesn't bear on the matter at hand.

All our actions are necessarily closed.

None of them are. Human beings take in information continually.
The smallest closed system in a deterministic universe is the entire universe.

Otherwise you are arguing for us being an indeterministic system, and you'd need to offer something that supports the notion of an indeterministic system being created from strictly deterministic interactions.

Now you are mistaking open for indeterminate. I am not. Any small system defined and thereby separated from the rest of a deterministic universe is necessarily open - that doesn't make it indeterminate.

There is no bottom up causality being assumed, delusion or otherwise

You keep making arguments that make no sense otherwise, as above (trying to equate the degrees of freedom of a brick with those of a human decision, for example). When listing determining factors, the highest pattern level you came up with was molecules - in the context of a conscious human decision, even. That's striking.

Even though this decision was set in stone well before the decision appeared to be made?

Yep. You are overlooking the manner in which it is set. Logical levels, patterns in substrates, etc.
And notice how easily you slipped from an appearance of freedom to an appearance of decision. Not only is the freedom mere appearance, the decision itself does not "actually" happen - and that transition is taken for granted, sets off no alarms.

At what level of pattern in substrate do the patterns stop being "actual" and become mere appearances? You listed atoms and molecules as actual things whose status determined events - so up to the pattern level of molecules we have actual events. The patterns that form in the substrate "molecules", now - are they mere appearances?
- - - -

You, however, continue to wave supposed replicable research reports that demonstrate that the will in operation is an actual case of being able to do otherwise, rather than merely the appearance of being able to do otherwise.

You are denying that a driver approaching a traffic light has the ability to decide whether to stop or go, depending on the color of the light. Reductio ad absurdum.

you don't seem to be grasping the predetermined nature of the universe and the implications

You are denying the nature of the system you continue to label a human being.

How are those terms handwaving?

You aren't paying attention to the physical mechanisms you are invoking, for starters. You have no clear idea how high level patterns of events are determined in your deterministic universe, how the entities emergent from fifteen billion years of evolutionary pattern complexification function. So you decide classifying something as "predetermined" excludes the very mechanisms that are determining it.

It only speaks to the existence of a process and the appearance of the nature of process.

It is the nature of the process.

I'm sure we all believe that we have the ability to do otherwise.

Belief is not involved, in the research. We can demonstrate it. Change the color of the light, and record the change in the decision.

(that we are only considering an open system and not the closed one that governs the decision)

There is no closed system involved, short of the universe entire. You cannot define one for the example at hand, notice.

 

[Quantum Quack]

Causality always precedes Effect. Effect always follows Causality.

But of course you realize that every effect is also a cause and every cause is also an effect.....

 

[Write4U]

But of course you realize that every effect is also a cause and every cause is also an effect.....

It just keeps rolling , rolling along.

In 14.5 billion years and continuation of possible cause/effect events by an unimaginable amount of matter, all possible things will come to pass eventually.

 

[Speakpigeon]

Sorry, I'm not actually free to make any comment.
Oops, too late. I just did it. Sorry!
Still, I'm sure it was nothing actually free.
EB

 

[cluelusshusbund]

I'm sure it was nothing actually free.

Yep... an even after supposedly readin this thred it seems that even the brightest among us ant able to understand that

 

[Write4U]

Sorry, I'm not actually free to make any comment.
Oops, too late. I just did it. Sorry!
Still, I'm sure it was nothing actually free.
EB

Apparently you were in fact compelled to make this humorous remark......

 

[Sarkus]

Orders of magnitude less, on a different logical level, not involving (for example) information.
A human being makes decisions - a brick does not.
The consistent overlooking of logical levels is one of the crippling effects of adopting bottom up determinism, btw.

I'm sure you think it is. But given that I'm not adopting bottom-up determinism, it's not actually relevant.

They observe degrees of freedom, and they do not require them to be supernatural to be "actual". That's your criterion, and it doesn't bear on the matter at hand.

They observe degrees of freedom in an object in space. But it is not free. In a strictly deterministic universe it does nothing more or less than what it has been predetermined to do. Just like a person. Just like any other object in the universe. Irrespective of what that object might think.

None of them are. Human beings take in information continually.

So what? The closed system for any given decision is as I've already explained.

The smallest closed system in a deterministic universe is the entire universe.

Only if one is considering the entire timeframe of the universe. If one looks at the system relating to a decision to be made in 10 seconds time then the closed system is 10 light-seconds from the point of the decision being made. This volume necessarily includes all the information that could possibly be pertinent to that decision. No information can be lost from it, or added to it, that could affect the decision. As such it can be considered closed.

Now you are mistaking open for indeterminate. I am not.

No, I'm not. An open system in this regard is one where not every relevant input is considered. A deterministic process can thus appear indeterministic as a result. An indeterministic system can also be closed, but not in a strictly indeterministic universe, because in such a universe every process is deterministic, and something can only appear to be indeterministic due to not ever relevant input being considered (hence open).

Any small system defined and thereby separated from the rest of a deterministic universe is necessarily open

Not with regard the information necessary for the decision in question, as already explained.
[/quote]- that doesn't make it indeterminate.[/quote]I didn't say it did make it indeterministic. I said that if one is not considering all the inputs to a system then the system can appear indeterministic, even though the system itself is deterministic. Just take the system of driver, lights, car... same input (light colour) can result in the driver either carrying on or stopping. This would thus appear to be an indeterministic system.

You keep making arguments that make no sense otherwise, as above (trying to equate the degrees of freedom of a brick with those of a human decision, for example).

They do make sense, just not to you it seems. Try looking at things not as bottom up or top down but simply as the entirety of state A being the input. Thus patterns do not determine substrates, substrates do not determine patterns, but both patterns and substrate determine the pattern and substrate. It's really no more complex than that.

When listing determining factors, the highest pattern level you came up with was molecules - in the context of a conscious human decision, even. That's striking.

Because I'm not making any assumption as to top-down or bottom-up. I could have easily just have said quarks, electricity, neurons, and the patterns thereof.

Yep. You are overlooking the manner in which it is set. Logical levels, patterns in substrates, etc.

The manner in which it is set is irrelevant. If something is set in stone then it is set in stone. All our decisions, in a strictly deterministic universe, were set in stone before the first life developed on the planet. Before the planet was formed. Before our sun was even formed. What manner of setting things in stone do you think I am overlooking that has any bearing on whether or not something is set in stone?

And notice how easily you slipped from an appearance of freedom to an appearance of decision. Not only is the freedom mere appearance, the decision itself does not "actually" happen - and that transition is taken for granted, sets off no alarms.

If everything is already predetermined then the "decision" is simply a process that our brain goes through. It is not free. So it's not saying anything different whether one says that the decision doesn't happen (if one means by that a "free" decision) or that it does happen but is not free. So no, the transition sets of no alarms as it's saying the same thing.

At what level of pattern in substrate do the patterns stop being "actual" and become mere appearances?

The patterns are actual as soon as they emerge.

You listed atoms and molecules as actual things whose status determined events...

I can list anything and everything in the universe as things whose status determines events. So I wouldn't take the list I did provide as exhaustive by any means.

- so up to the pattern level of molecules we have actual events. The patterns that form in the substrate "molecules", now - are they mere appearances?

No, they are actually there.

You are denying that a driver approaching a traffic light has the ability to decide whether to stop or go, depending on the color of the light. Reductio ad absurdum.

I am saying that the outcome of their decision was set in stone. They still have to go through the process of "deciding", but that process, and the ultimate decision is not free; it was set in stone aeons ago. If you want to view that as me saying that they have no ability to decide, well, that's your interpretation.

You are denying the nature of the system you continue to label a human being.

No, I'm not. I'm merely understanding it differently to you. And I don't look at the conclusion of an argument and then use that to claim the argument flawed.

You aren't paying attention to the physical mechanisms you are invoking, for starters.

In a strictly deterministic universe (i.e. the scenario under consideration here) it is enough to know that those mechanisms are strictly deterministic. That is all that is required.

You have no clear idea how high level patterns of events are determined in your deterministic universe...

It's not necessary for the argument. To require that level of detail is a red-herring. It is enough to know they are strictly deterministic, that the state of the universe at any point in time is determined from any point in the past.

how the entities emergent from fifteen billion years of evolutionary pattern complexification function.

Again, it is not necessary.

So you decide classifying something as "predetermined" excludes the very mechanisms that are determining it.

No, I am classifying something as predetermined because, in a strictly deterministic universe, everything really is predetermined.

It is the nature of the process.

To be indeterministic? In a strictly deterministic universe? So you disagree with the premise of the initial formulation that says that a process made up of strictly determined interactions is itself deterministic?

Belief is not involved, in the research. We can demonstrate it. Change the color of the light, and record the change in the decision.

Change the temperature of a room and watch the thermostat click on/off. The observation of a process in operation is not evidence of that process being free.

There is no closed system involved, short of the universe entire. You cannot define one for the example at hand, notice.

I already have defined one, you're just choosing to ignore it. The system for a given decision in x seconds time will be a volume x light-seconds in radius. This volume includes every possible thing that could affect that decision.
I am not referring to open/closed with regard a perpetual system but with respect to a specific decision, and "closed" as in there can be no loss of, or additional information necessary for the decision than that which is contained in the volume. As such, one could argue that the closed system that we each have for the duration of our lives, covering all our individual decisions, is one that is a radius from our brain/body that starts at x light-years radius (x being our lifespan) when we are born and which decreases at the rate of 1 light-year per year.

 

[Write4U]

Wow, just found a comprehensive summation of viewpoints from a variety of authoritative sources, which set my original thinking back a few notches.

The Physics of Free Will
For information philosopy, the classical problem of reconciling free will with physical determinism is now seen to have been the wrong problem. The real problem is reconciling free will with indeterminism. The physical world is fundamentally undetermined, it began in chaos and remains chaotic and random at the atomic scale (as well as some macroscopic regions of the cosmos)

http://www.informationphilosopher.com/freedom/physics/

This article describes several perspectives from renowned scientists. Good stuff.

 

[iceaura]

I already have defined one, you're just choosing to ignore it. The system for a given decision in x seconds time will be a volume x light-seconds in radius. This volume includes every possible thing that could affect that decision.

That includes information generated by the entire universe from its beginning.

It includes patterns that are not mutually visible - the decision is being affected by factors not visible to each other, and unpredictable by each other, meeting for the first time ever at the decision time and place.

And measuring it at an instant assumes the ability to make an instantaneous observation of direction of change, which is theoretically impossible. That is: if you are talking about predetermination, things set in stone from the beginning, you are talking about all the changes that take place over the time scale in which they take place at the logical level in which they take place from the beginning. There may be patterns in there whose "phase settings" play out discontinuously over millions of years, and are invisible to each other as well as any observation on any shorter time interval.

In what sense is that either "closed" or a "system"?

Or from the other direction: let's give you the handwave, and say you have somehow defined a "closed system" smaller than the universe - it's nowhere near the size of a human being. The system "human being" is open.
- - - -

Change the temperature of a room and watch the thermostat click on/off. The observation of a process in operation is not evidence of that process being free.

It has degrees of freedom. The thermostat has the ability to click on or off and still be a working thermostat.
If this concept is extrapolated or extended to logical levels of pattern at which events such as "human being making decision" exist, what would they be?

They would include dreams, for example, in some extension of the way that a thermostat includes a spring or solenoid or transistorized circuitry.
---- - - -

No, I'm not. An open system in this regard is one where not every relevant input is considered. A deterministic process can thus appear indeterministic as a result.

Not to me. None of these processes appear indeterminate to me - I automatically assume that all inputs, observed or unobserved, are natural and follow the laws of physics etc.

It is enough to know they are strictly deterministic, that the state of the universe at any point in time is determined from any point in the past.

Not if you are trying to discuss the concept of degrees of freedom in a working system at the logical level of the human mind.

No, I'm not. I'm merely understanding it differently to you.

Your understanding is in conflict with itself. For one thing, you can't have a human being making a decision on one hand, and a system having no degrees of freedom - no ability to do otherwise - on the other. You can't use a claim of "holistic" determinism to slough off the problems with bottom up causality, and then label examples of high level top down causation - such as the decision making abilities of the human mind - "illusion" because they are not bottom up causation.

 

[Quantum Quack]

I just wanna know how determinsm can force a decision on any one..... I would then sell it to either of the worlds super powers for a tidy sum as they would just love to be able to "mind control" a human being.
Lets face it, that is exactly what the determinist is suggesting... mind control. Either by a divine being or some butterfly flapping it's wings at the dawn of time....

 

[Write4U]

They would include dreams, for example, in some extension of the way that a thermostat includes a spring or solenoid or transistorized circuitry.

Sleepwalking is an expression of free will or free choice? Clearly it is a free physical ability.

Is there a difference between free will function and automotor function?

 

[Michael 345]

Is there a difference between free will function and automotor function?

I would say yes

If you are running on autopilot so to speak nothing about will of any flavour involved

 

[Write4U]

I would say yes

If you are running on autopilot so to speak nothing about will of any flavour involved

Exactly, it is purely deterministic chemistry......

 

[Michael 345]

Exactly, it is purely deterministic chemistry......

With the lot of determined physics if you step into the air at the top of the staircase

I'm still working on a response to the thread in general

But laziness, just back from 3 weeks holiday, and repacking for March holiday, arranging who to meet and for how long with a sore back at times in the forefront keeping me busy

Along with general living

 

[DaveC426913]

... repacking for March holiday...

If you're packing three months in advance, you may want to reconsider your priorities...