Why free will is impossible

[SciWriter]

This is just a statement, or you act according to this principle?

I act by it when considering why some people are stuck and unchanging, forever crashing into the wall of life, for then comes understanding rather than declaring what they ought to do.

Other times I just let it go, having life flow without any concentration on the no free will impossibility. Besides, learning ever widens my will.

 

[litewave]

The subtlety that you might be missing here is the difference between the awareness of an action you took after you took it and the awareness of the action that you are about to take after the pre-conscious motor preparation associated with that action has already occurred. In the latter case you have a small window of opportunity during which you can choose to override the default action.

But I suppose that this overriding is an intentional action, and so it suffers from the problems I described in my OP. An agent that does an intentional action cannot be the ultimate controller of this action.

 

[Dywyddyr]

Besides, learning ever widens my will.

Huh?
If you sincerely subscribe to this:

There is No Free Will…

Then you certainly don't think that "learning widens your will" since you are constrained to "learn" (which boots nothing anyway) and there is no "will" to widen.

To wit:

Will is fixed to the instant but we can easily obtain a newer and wider fixed will via learning and experience.

This is self-defeating nonsense.

 

[SciWriter]

Then you certainly don't think that "learning widens your will" since you are constrained to "learn" (which boots nothing anyway) and there is no "will" to widen.

Yes, some are fortunate to have learning ability and the desire to learn and so they can then take in more information, thus widening their range of choices and reasons, their new fixed will doing something different today than yesterday.

Those who can't learn just stagnate.

Either way, one goes on as they have become, changing or not.

Uninformed will as a first cause would have nothing to go by.

 

[wellwisher]

Originally, the free will had to do with humans developing the conscious chocie to act with or apart from instinct. The animal acts using instinct, since this behavior is programmed within the brain, having been optimized by evolution over millions of years. Free will appeared when human were able to modify long term programming via will and choice.

Free will first appears due to the onset of human subjectivity, not objectivity. In other words, instinct is a product of millions of years of optimization. The objective person can see the merit in this test proven programming. Subjectivity, by being out of touch with cause and effect, allows one to chose differently, thinking it is even a better choice without knowing the difference. It only has to feel right.

This original free will, because it was subjective and did not have to be in touch with cause and effect, was like a random idea generator that allowed will power to grow in the form of a widening range of choices.

Further progression within free will become more objective. In other words, of all the possible random subjective free choices, not all are optimized. Objective free will tries to reduce the random possibilities to a narrower set o fchoice that are more optimized. That is still will power and choice.

In the limit, the combination of subjective free will to generate random choices and objective free will, to narrow this set for optimization, should eventually lead to a new version of human instinct.

 

[Dywyddyr]

Etc

You're still contradicting yourself.
If the will is "fixed to the instant" then we don't have the choice as whether we "learn" or not.

 

[Rav]

But I suppose that this overriding is an intentional action, and so it suffers from the problems I described in my OP. An agent that does an intentional action cannot be the ultimate controller of this action.

Well, the other way to look at all this is to assume that all choices, even last minute choices that override default actions, are all ultimately unconscious events. This would situate the "self" (along with free-will) squarely in the physical processes that precede conscious awareness. When you really think about it, this doesn't mean that we don't have free-will, only that we become aware of the execution of it after the fact, perhaps simply because conscious awareness is an expensive physical process that introduces latency. But because conscious awareness is also a real physical phenomena, there is a continuous feedback loop between the self and the experience of the self. This is why we tend to be at the mercy of our unconscious minds while dreaming much more so than when we are awake.

Note that I am only speculating here. The Neuroscience of free will is far from an exact science at this point, at least so far as the correct interpretation of experimental data is concerned.

 

[SciWriter]

Subjectivity, by being out of touch with cause and effect, allows one to chose differently, thinking it is even a better choice without knowing the difference. It only has to feel right.

What feels good is still subject to what one has become, and there are those who decide by emotion, with little or no reflection, and this is still true to what they have become.

It always gets down to dependence on something within one's self, whether instinct or learnings, associations, and memory.

We can try to claim the real existence of air-heads, but their odd behavior (to us) still has a mechanism, albeit perhaps an impaired one.

 

[SciWriter]

You're still contradicting yourself.
If the will is "fixed to the instant" then we don't have the choice as whether we "learn" or not.

Of course we don't have a choice whether to be inclined to learning or not, since learning or not is an aspect of the will that represents the self as it has become rather than the will of the self being based on nothing at all.

If will is not based on information in the brain, then of what is it based on?

 

[Dywyddyr]

In which case whatever learning we do is not based on free will. And whatever we've learned (unfreely), although it leads to more "choices", still doesn't lead to free will since those "options" are still, according to you, constrained by the moment.

There may be more "options" (actually "branches of the possible") but they are not taken freely nor are they constructed freely.
If one subscribes to your view.

 

[arfa brane]

Is the "illusion" of free will just an artifact of our inability to know everything?

In particular, our inability to trace the effect of "now" to a set of causes "then"?
Since we can't determine every past cause of the event we label as "now", we imagine that we have this "freedom" to choose which of the causes are relevant, you see?

Or not?

 

[SciWriter]

In which case whatever learning we do is not based on free will. And whatever we've learned (unfreely), although it leads to more "choices", still doesn't lead to free will since those "options" are still, according to you, constrained by the moment.

There may be more "options" (actually "branches of the possible") but they are not taken freely nor are they constructed freely.
If one subscribes to your view.

Right. Nothing can lead to free will. There is only fixed will, whether its repertoire increases its range or not.

 

[SciWriter]

Is the "illusion" of free will just an artifact of our inability to know everything?

In particular, our inability to trace the effect of "now" to a set of causes "then"?
Since we can't determine every past cause of the event we label as "now", we imagine that we have this "freedom" to choose which of the causes are relevant, you see?

Yes, and as Rav hints, our consciousness is even the last to know of the will. The brain's subconscious analysis takes time, although not a whole lot. Then the result surfaces, and one says "I thought of that", and one did, but it didn't really come out of thin air, as it may seem to.

 

[SciWriter]

Originally, the free will had to do with humans developing the conscious chocie to act with or apart from instinct. The animal acts using instinct, since this behavior is programmed within the brain, having been optimized by evolution over millions of years. Free will appeared when human were able to modify long term programming via will and choice.

Free will first appears due to the onset of human subjectivity, not objectivity. In other words, instinct is a product of millions of years of optimization. The objective person can see the merit in this test proven programming. Subjectivity, by being out of touch with cause and effect, allows one to chose differently, thinking it is even a better choice without knowing the difference. It only has to feel right.

This original free will, because it was subjective and did not have to be in touch with cause and effect, was like a random idea generator that allowed will power to grow in the form of a widening range of choices.

Further progression within free will become more objective. In other words, of all the possible random subjective free choices, not all are optimized. Objective free will tries to reduce the random possibilities to a narrower set o fchoice that are more optimized. That is still will power and choice.

In the limit, the combination of subjective free will to generate random choices and objective free will, to narrow this set for optimization, should eventually lead to a new version of human instinct.

What is the “secret” of human behavior, one that’s really so much the saving grace that we may even keep it from ourselves rather than very far into it try to delve? What is it that should be so confidential, classified, and undisclosed—its potential kept under wraps, so very contra; informally: hush-hush; formally: sub rosa?

Well, it’s a revelation of splendor, one that’s often good to surrender but is also very well to remember. Is the will free to will one’s actions otherwise? Can antecedent conditions be ignored? Can the self be an unmoved mover? Not really, but… and what of those tendencies of evo’s realm that have been imprinted on one’s genetic film—those of temperament, role preferences, emotions, responses, and even one’s most revered moral choices—those invoices from which one rejoices?

Well, these are not choices at all in of any free will voices. In essence, from the basis of one and from all that one has become from life’s total behavioral reactions, there are probabilities of actions—some patterns that are very likely and some patterns highly unlikely. Is free will a necessary fiction, a kind of a religion? No and yes if it’s to provide an essential berth for one’s morality, meaning, and worth.

 

[Emil]

Originally, the free will had to do with humans developing the conscious chocie to act with or apart from instinct. The animal acts using instinct, since this behavior is programmed within the brain, having been optimized by evolution over millions of years. Free will appeared when human were able to modify long term programming via will and choice.

If I understand correctly, humans have free will, but not animals?

 

[Emil]

So you sustain the menu that I choose in a restaurant is not my choice?

 

[litewave]

Well, the other way to look at all this is to assume that all choices, even last minute choices that override default actions, are all ultimately unconscious events. This would situate the "self" (along with free-will) squarely in the physical processes that precede conscious awareness. When you really think about it, this doesn't mean that we don't have free-will, only that we become aware of the execution of it after the fact,

While I agree that all our choices are ultimately unconscious events, such events are usually not regarded as free will. How can we say that someone is morally responsible for his action and deserves a punishment for it, when this action originates from beyond his consciousness?

 

[SciWriter]

So you sustain the menu that I choose in a restaurant is not my choice?

It is your fixed choice, ever dependent on your likes and diet and more, whatever is the situation of the moment, which may change from day to day, as every day nor you is exactly the same. You may have something other than you recently had in order to have variety. Others might always order macaroni and cheese (my kid). You probably won't order something you hate, except to try to show something like having free will.

Mine is often to order the first thing I lay my eyes upon, unless I have a favorite there which I never get tired of, or haven't had lately, while my partner must always ask the wait-person what they prefer, even though they may have different taste buds, but I guess she thinks they know what's prepared well and ordered by a lot of people.

There is always something behind the selection.

 

[Dywyddyr]

How can we say that someone is morally responsible for his action and deserves a punishment for it, when this action originates from beyond his consciousness?

I agree.


Then again, how can we not do that since our actions also originate there.

Catch-22.

 

[Michael]

an agent that does an intentional action can never be the ultimate controller of this action, because the action is determined by an intention (and possibly also by some influences affecting the agent). For example, if raising of my left arm is my intentional action, then it must be determined by my intention to raise my left arm. But how does the determination of an action by the agent's intention rule out the agent's ultimate control over the action?

If you told your right arm to move, the initiation of the movement would occur in the left primary motor cortex. The planning of the movement would take place in your left premotor cortex.

If you are knocked unconscious, your premotor cortex will begin randomly discharging to your motor cortex, thus you start to move. When you move, you get feed back from your environment. This feedback is integrated and sent to your premotor cortex which uses it to better plan the next movement. Soon you are moving in the world and receiving sensory feedback as you would normally. This is when the illusion starts