Good formulation, very succint!
Why free will is impossible
- Thread starter litewave
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Good formulation, very succint!
Pandaemoni
Valued Senior Member
It's am interesting read. My reading of other sources on the Orch-Or model (by no means an extensive reading list) leaves me a bit wary of placing too much hope in it. I am still confused by what they mean by "consciousness" since that term is used in different ways by different people. (They could mean "the ability to control the brain", for example, or they could mean "awareness of the self," or something else entirely.)
I am not opposed in theory to the notion that a physical seat of consciousness could be found, though if they mean it to be the seat of free will I am still confused. As Regular0ldGuy and I previously discussed, that there could be a quantum element to the thought process doesn't establish free will...it more likely establishes a random element to thought. But is my thoughts form based on random inputs (and hence have a degree of randomness themselves), how am I free?
I would need to be able to influence the outcome of the quantum state reduction/collapse of the wave function, in order to be able to direct my other thoughts (and then, regression, where does the ability to direct the quantum state reduction reside in the brain).
I also have to wonder , if there is a structural basis for believing in quantum consciousness in the brain, and if those structures exist in non-human animals, if that shouldn't cause us to worry that non-human animals might not be just as sentient as we are.
No, it doesn't, and didn't intend to.
The point is that just looking at our conscious perception of choice does NOT tell us about the underlying nature of choice, but merely the conscious perception of it.
Yet all you are using to support your position is your conscious perception of the act of choosing. It is all you seem to put forward: "We have choice... we use it every day!"
And, as stated, if you define free-will along the lines of "a pattern of activity that has the conscious appearance of self-determination / decision-making" then there is no problem and free-will exists (albeit as what I would term as illusory).
But this definition does not look at the underlying nature of the patterns. And neither are you. Yet you try to argue that free-will exists and is more than illusory. :shrug:
Yes it does - and I have tried to explain why previously.
Just stating your objection does not alter this.
For causation to not equal compulsion there must be a non-caused driver in an action. But you... yes YOU... set up the question to be in relation to a universe with PERFECT causation (i.e. everything is caused... i.e. nothing is non-caused).
Without a cause, nothing can happen (since you set it up such that everything is caused).
And determinism means that for given causes there is one possible output.
So take all causes at moment 1 (M1) - this leads inexorably to the next moment (M2) - and it can ONLY lead to this moment (determinism).
M2 will then lead ONLY to M3.
In YOUR scenario - the one YOU raised - determination equates to predetermination.
For predetermination not to follow you either need to allow for uncaused events or random events.
Do you actually even understand what determinism means??
I'm getting that you probably don't fully understand the scenario you set up, or the terms you're throwing around.
Succinct yet flawed, so not a good formulation.
This is not about perception in any way. You only think it is about perception because our perceptions differ so dramatically from the conclusion which this famous problem has driven you to.
You believe that if I do exactly what I want to do, after thorough analysis, reflection and evaluation, that I have been hindered in some way from performing a free act. That is how far your philosophically created concept has driven you from your own knowledge. You don't know what freedom is anymore.
If I had the perfect insight into everything that causes me to take an action, I would almost always take it anyway, because it is caused by what I want it to be caused by. My desires, values and priorities. That is the opposite of being compelled by anything.
And you seem to think that I can't "know" the future. Well, let's see who knows the future. I predict you will respond further in this thread.
Odd, now you can either spite me and change the future, or prove me right and post further. You have that free choice. You know your urges. You are conflicted. You get to pick which influences win. How do you want the future to turn out? It's your choice, at least up until you make it and act on it, and then it is history (which IS immutable).
Intentional action based on predictive ability alters the course of the future. And because my predictive ability results in many cases from knowing my own influences, I am not "trapped" by them. Determinism (in hindsight) yes, predetermination, no.
You believe that if I do exactly what I want to do, after thorough analysis, reflection and evaluation, that I have been hindered in some way from performing a free act. That is how far your philosophically created concept has driven you from your own knowledge. You don't know what freedom is anymore.
If I had the perfect insight into everything that causes me to take an action, I would almost always take it anyway, because it is caused by what I want it to be caused by. My desires, values and priorities. That is the opposite of being compelled by anything.
And you seem to think that I can't "know" the future. Well, let's see who knows the future. I predict you will respond further in this thread.
Odd, now you can either spite me and change the future, or prove me right and post further. You have that free choice. You know your urges. You are conflicted. You get to pick which influences win. How do you want the future to turn out? It's your choice, at least up until you make it and act on it, and then it is history (which IS immutable).
Intentional action based on predictive ability alters the course of the future. And because my predictive ability results in many cases from knowing my own influences, I am not "trapped" by them. Determinism (in hindsight) yes, predetermination, no.
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Thanks Signal. I appreciate it. I still like the Rothko.
Given that your entire line of argument is based solely on what we percieve... :shrug:
If you define "free act" as being what the consciousness perceives as an action "free from knowable compulsion" then I have no issue - the same way I have no issue with the definition of free-will that is also a perception of the conscious.
But NONE of what you argue speaks about the underlying nature of the universe. You refuse to even peek behind the curtain of consciousness to see what might be going on.
Then define it, and do so not at the level our consciousness perceives "freedom"... but at the underlying nature of the universe. What is it between the interaction of molecules, of atoms, or even of smaller units, is "freedom"?
Or are you finally going to admit that your definition of "free-will", "freedom" etc is a perception of our consciousness that speaks NOTHING of the underlying nature?
All this is with regard to the conscious perception of activity - but speaks nothing of the underlying nature.
Are you for real?? You really think that if you predict something then that is THE future, that it exists? And if that "future" is not carried out then the future has somehow changed?? Seriously???
Or does that "future" exist only within the mind of the person predicting, and doesn't actually exist as a moment until it transpires?
All this is with regard to the conscious perception of activity - but speaks nothing of the underlying nature.
You really are serious, aren't you? You genuinely think that the future exists before a conscious action alters it, rather than that "future" merely being a conscious assessment of possible futures, that only exists as a conception?
All this is with regard to the conscious perception of activity - but speaks nothing of the underlying nature.
And yet you still hold to your first line: "This is not about perception in any way."???
:shrug:
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Pandaemoni
Valued Senior Member
That's a valid position, but it's not obviously true, and that's the problem. Perhaps he has the freedom to choose. Perhaps his brain is hardwired to sort out the competing options based on preferences that resulted both because of the hardwiring in the brain and accumulated data picked up over the course of decades.
That your prediction alters his action doesn't change anything. That others affect what I will do next is no different than the weather affecting whether my sprinklers will turn on to water the grass tomorrow morning. (My sprinklers are computer controlled, and if there has been rain or sufficient dew, the sensors will note that and my sprinklers won't activate.)
Strangely, for all the talk of determinism, you clearly adopt the compatibilist view that seems unpersuasive to me. To say something is "deterministic retroactively" is to say that you don't really believe in determism, in my opinion.
Causal Determinism says that the state of the world at any one time can be completely determined by the prior states of the world. Because "choices" arises as a spontaneous creation not controlled by the prior physical states of the brain, though, that is not the case in your model (or in any compatibilist model) in any situation where someone makes a choice.
In a truly causally deterministic world, if Al hates Bob and Al buys a gun, you should, in principle, be able to determine whether Al is going to shoot Bob eventually and the trajectory of the bullet. It doesn't matter whether the event has already happened or not. The timing doesn't matter. Obviously, making that prediction is a practical impossibility, but so is determining the precise orbit of three celestial bodies in the classic three-body problem (unless you assign certain very special orbits to each).
In the compatibilist view (and in yous, I take it), because Al has a choice in his actions, human actions cannot be said to be entirely "caused" by pruior events and circumstances. In retrospect, you can say what a person actually did...but that is true of non-deterministic events as well in many cases. If I set up a detector to determine which of two slits an electron passes through, a priori I cannot say which slit the electron will take. After the fact, my detector will reliably have told me which way the electron went. Beforehand, which slit the electron went through was non-deterministic and randomly determined. After the event the fact was fixed, but that doesn't make quantum mechanics "retroactively" deterministic because there was no underlying mechanical feature of the world that "caused" the electron to go through one slit or the other...it was still randomly determined. (Here I am ignoring Bohm's interpretation or other hidden variable theories of quantum mechanics, which would preserve determinism.)
In short if you believe in a causal chain, then whenever you insert an uncaused event into the causal chain, you really do make it impossible for the world to be truly causally deterministic. Assuming determinism works at the macroscopic level, I can look at a arrow flying through the air use that information to calculate where it came from. However, if I open up the scenario to include the possibility that God willed the arrow to make a right-angle turn mid flight, then I cannot reliably predict the path of the arrow in the past prior to the moment I observed it. To be clear, assuming God caused such a mid-flight turn in the arrow's path, that is a "fact" that is now fixed in history...if I know God did that I can calculate around it, but only on the assumption that God didn't do that multiple times. Further, without the exogenously arrived at knowledge of what God did, I'd never be able to trace the path of the arrow.
The reason compatibilism doesn't seem sensible to me is that it says, in effect, "the world is causally deterministic, except for certain times when it isn't, based on human choice." You mentioned your dislike of redefinition above, but imo compatibilism requires requires the same sort of gamesmanship with the definition of "determinism."
In defending free will, I personally would prefer to chuck determinism as a concept than to assume that the entire universe is deterministic (at least at a macroscopic level), except for human choice. The human ability to choose is (for some reason not well explained) the one thing that is not causally determined in that view.
The truth is determinism is already on shaky ground because of quantum mechanics. It already has the status of, at best, a rule of thumb that usually but not always applies. Truth is that there is a non-zero chance that the Moon will vanish tomorrow under the rules of quantum mechanics, even though it is macroscopic in size. The odds of that are so low we can (and rightly do) functionally ignore it, but we know there is the theoretical possibility.
As we discussed, quantum mechanics doesn't rescue free will in and of itself (since rolling dice to arrive at an action is not the same as choosing an action), but at least it gives us pause over our simplistic view of the universe as strictly deterministic. Compatibilists seem merely to be on a mission to save this naive view of the world by redefining determinism in a very silly way.
happythoth
Registered Member
and there's the key word.. nature
the audacity of man to think that "freedom" means to be free of nature.. thun of a thilly perthon!
Pandaemoni and Sarkus, I have addressed each of those points before. You misunderstand me. Uncaused will never work. Incomplete prediction limits my information, but not my ability to act on it freely.
However, the thought experiment of the person with complete information proves there is no predetermination. God (or the perfectly informed genius) is not predetermined is he? He knows everything and had perfect predictive power, then he makes a choice as how he wants it to go. He has no "illusion" of freedom, he really gets to do what he wants, based on understanding his wants, the source of his wants, the short and long term consequences of his wants, and all that same information about is needs, and his priorities, instincts, tendencies, training, etc. He can look at all that info and say "Hey, I'm a hell of a guy" or "I'd like to improve in this and that area" and so "I'm going this direction." Caused? Yes. Predetermined? No. In the sphere of intentional action, the future won't go in a particular direction until it is either directed by volition and action or inaction. If the "real" god set it up on moment 1 to turn out a particular way, and my genius then figures out the plan, he gets to change it. That's what we can do that a "hardwired" robot can't.
However, the thought experiment of the person with complete information proves there is no predetermination. God (or the perfectly informed genius) is not predetermined is he? He knows everything and had perfect predictive power, then he makes a choice as how he wants it to go. He has no "illusion" of freedom, he really gets to do what he wants, based on understanding his wants, the source of his wants, the short and long term consequences of his wants, and all that same information about is needs, and his priorities, instincts, tendencies, training, etc. He can look at all that info and say "Hey, I'm a hell of a guy" or "I'd like to improve in this and that area" and so "I'm going this direction." Caused? Yes. Predetermined? No. In the sphere of intentional action, the future won't go in a particular direction until it is either directed by volition and action or inaction. If the "real" god set it up on moment 1 to turn out a particular way, and my genius then figures out the plan, he gets to change it. That's what we can do that a "hardwired" robot can't.
You have not adequately addressed those points... as the criticisms raised still apply. And if we misunderstand you then I sincerely think it is because you do not fully appreciate either the scenario you set up or the words you use.
Your following paragraph helps demonstrate your lack of understanding...
You still can't get past the viewpoint of the conscious perception... "he makes a choice" is merely a conscious perception of what is going on - it is an ILLUSION of the underlying nature.
You insist on the line of argument of "well, I perceive it as free-will, therefore it must be, therefore we must have free-will" without seeming to accept that this is speaks NOTHING of that underlying nature.
Yet you persist.
Why?
All of this stems from his conscious perception and speaks nothing of the underlying nature.
"Volition" is begging the question.
Not much of a God, then, is it. :shrug:
Your search for your square circle goes on... you set up a universe that simply does not allow what you seek without concluding that "free-will" is merely a conscious perception. And your only counter to the arguments against this position stem from a definition of "free-will" that is a conscious perception.
We understand your words just fine, Regular0ldguy.
Do you?
:shrug:
I'm done, the argument is laid out clearly. Have fun.
It is indeed... flaws and all.
But given that you can't seem bothered to address the points raised against your position, but instead just regurgitate it, perhaps your action is for the best.
Or posit that we are real agents, not illusory ones or matters of perception.
The same question can be asked of you: Why do you persist in your view that our agency is merely illusory?
You don't get it . How you going to know you could have made another choice . Except Me I can make both choices at the same time . Like chewing gum and walking . Now her something to think about . Me and Fraggle are cut with the same cookie cutter . I bet you dollar if put in front of a situation Him and I would just about mimic each others actions . We are controlled by the same American culture. Influenced by the same conditioning by living in the same bubble of time and information flow . Are we free of the conditioning that controls our decisions. I think not ! Well maybe I am A little a head of fraggle . I know he thinks he knows more , but that can be deceptive to the untrained ear .
You could posit that, but then you would need to show how us being "real agents" follows from the scenario as given.
Since noone that posits such a position, especially Regular0ldguy, has been able to dip below the level of perception... :shrug:
I am assuming that by "our agency" you mean "our free-will"...
Since noone, especially Regular0ldguy, has been able counter the position other than to continue to promote free-will / choice as a perception while still clinging to (but unable to support) the claim that it is more, and are subsequently unable to dip below the level of perception... :shrug:
O.K. lets look at it another way . You make a decision. How many people today make the same decision. We will call you group A . O.K. how many people made the opposite decision ( or second choice decision ) We will call you group B
Now we have you pigeon holed into 2 groups . O.K. which group had free will ?
Now we take and find out why group A chose and why Group B chose . How many are going to have the same answer for there reason . O.K. lets take the the one that I think has moved the closest to freedom . He/She be the one with an answer you don't understand, or comprehend. Some might even change there mind and agree and some will fight it tooth and nail . Why? There conditioning is why . Were did the conditioning come from ? Living in there spot in time . All controlled by silos of information that makes up there life . Like Minded is what I call it . No one is independent from influence . Influence makes us choose. Right now I know if you are reading this it is influencing you whether you like it or not . You may reject all or part or you may except all or part yet you are influenced never the less . You have no choice . To late . you read it! Blam!!
its free to post here, and i willed myself to post this..the rest of the argument,you are free to do as you will..
A person with complete information can only prove that they don't need to predict anything (actually they can't predict anything), because they are aware of every "outcome". In that case they would not even require a concept of "predetermination", because they would know "the determination of everything" in their universe.RegularOldguy said:
No, he doesn't make any choice, because he knows there is no choice to be "made". The concept of "wanting it to go" one way or another is meaningless; there is only one outcome according to their picture of complete knowledge.