Why free will is impossible

[Pandaemoni]

Pascal's wager.

I have always hated Pascal's Wager.

If I tell you that a a giant purple space dragon with a puppies' heads where his claws should be lives in the center of the Moon, and then if you believe in him, then when you die he will transport your spirit to a magical world of bliss...Pascal's Wager clearly indicates that you should believe me without question. (After all, there is no downside to believing whether I am right or not, and a huge upside to it if I am right.)

 

[Gustav]

Second, merely asserting that you "know" you have choices is not a logical argument, it's just begging the question.

i did not assert i have choices per se
the scenario was outlined (cliff jump)
it was a statement of fact

I also think you'll find that if you really were to try to kill yourself, it would be far more difficult that you seem to be thinking it is.

sorry
you project
find your village idiot elsewhere

Still, if you actually kill yourself, then I ask: Are you killing yourself because you "chose" to do so, or because you saw my post and my post caused your zombie brain to want to refute the possibility, and so your zombie brain forced you to kill yourself?

this is the height of absurdity and muddled thought

look at your semantics

my zombie brain took the initiative to kill "myself" due to the fact that "i" apprehended your post which in turn caused "my" zombie brain to kill "myself" in order to make a refutation of said post

thats some schizo shit right there brother

you then go on to explain all that away with what?

that i am a biological robot with some rather unusually self-destructive coding?

pardon me if i chuckle at the goalposts being raised

/chuckle

i mean look at your default state...

Whether one believes in free will or not, it makes sense to continue one's life. In one case you do so because you feel you have free will. In the other you do so because neurological activity forces you to and you have no real choice.

...and your attempt to explain away my account of free will.
"irrationality" is explained away by errant coding?

/lmao

you lot also scare the hell out of me
ja, i know where the road leads
all it takes is one charismatic leader and an outstretched arm
i mean, i can already whiff a faint scent of thuggery already

If you think there is proof that the real answer is that you "chose" it, then present the proof.

why should i?

it is readily apparent to most that we have free agency,the ability to choose between varied options. that is our natural state. some however will tell the rest of us that all what we think about free and conscious agency is necessarily illusory as we are completely determined beings

you are the one with the wild claims since it is radically counter-intuitive. you are the one unnecessarily multiplying entities by introducing "elaborate deceptions" and "magic tricks" enacted by some cells in the human head, for a purpose that defies any rational explanation.

you violate occam
not me

i mean,is it even efficient for us from an evolutionary standpoint to debate this crap for "millennia" as you put it?

so
what proof do you have?
some unusually self destructive coding?
or like sarkus, some promissory materialism?

your consciousness was not aware of the underlying nature of the interactions... of one atom interacting with another... and the cascading of those interactions through your body, through your neural pathways, resulting in your "choice"

 

[Gustav]

oh, alright
here
a bone

i always thought i freely chose to eat baloney sandwiches
turns out it was what mummy packed as lunch
y'know, comfort food

i rest my case

illusion 1
free will 0

 

[wynn]

i mean,is it even efficient for us from an evolutionary standpoint to debate this crap for "millennia" as you put it?

Apparently, it is. Being able to outsmarten others clearly has evolutionary advantages.

In situations where physical fighting and material destruction are not feasible for some reason or other, the battle moves into the mental field.
Hence the notion of "mental warfare" or "spiritual warfare."

There are streams in Western psychology that maintain that psychological disorders are closely linked with poor communication skills (such as Bateson's theory of schizophrenia and further approaches based on it). This line of reasoning suggests that if a person isn't good at communication, they will suffer and become dysfunctional.

 

[wynn]

And all those things are conscious perceptions, speaking nothing to the underlying nature.

This "underlying nature" - the distinctions between the micro and macro level - are your assumptions, based on, it appears, a particular brand of empiricist reductionism in which "who we really are" is reduced to physicalism - molecules and such.

Not everyone subscribes to this kind of reductionism.

If you wish to get behind the perception then you need to offer arguments that speak to it, rather than continually offering examples that merely beg the question with circularity.

I can't override your free will. :shrug:

There's more than just the "mundane"???

Yes, according to some people.

 

[Sarkus]

This "underlying nature" - the distinctions between the micro and macro level - are your assumptions, based on, it appears, a particular brand of empiricist reductionism in which "who we really are" is reduced to physicalism - molecules and such.

If you wish to counter what you see as assumptions... feel free.
But merely to point out that you see them as assumptions and where they may stem from... :shrug:

Not everyone subscribes to this kind of reductionism.

So your argument is "not everyone agrees"?

I can't override your free will. :shrug:

Yes, according to some people.

And how does this "non-mundane" interact with cause/effect and allow for free-will?
If an atom interacts with another atom according to laws that have no "non-mundane", and there is no "free-will" at this level... you're still going to struggle to explain how the introduction of the "non-mundane" affects the micro-world to give rise to "free-will" that is anything more than a conscious perception.

But, if you want to give it a go...?

 

[Pandaemoni]

i did not assert i have choices per se
the scenario was outlined (cliff jump)
it was a statement of fact

I am not sure why my argument upsets you so much...but okay, I will respond with the same discourtesy...Of all the people arguing in this thread, you are clearly the least sophisticated. Why bother to argue if you won't present actual, ya know, arguments?

You assert the jumping off the cliff hypothetical, but what you need to refute is the notion of the complex automaton (not really a "zombie" that was your inaptly chosen term) could not jump off a cliiff...that the jumping requires free will.

Suppose there were an android and it was programmed to try to convince people that it had free will. Could such a robot jump off a cliff if doing so helped it's case ? (Hint: Yes.) Does the robot have free will? If the robot was following a complicated program, we can assume not.

So far the best argument your "superior" mind has generated is "it's obvious". That argument suggests you have read nothing on the current state of neuroscience and haven't really thought about the issue in sufficient depth. It's obvious that we feel like we have free will. It's obvious that we feel like we have bodies, but perceptions and reality need not be one and the same, because perceptions can be faulty.

It is not completely impossible (and you cannot completely demonstrate to the contrary) that we are all "living" in a vastly complicated computer program. This is the old simulism argument that has been around for a few thousand years. (See for example here or more completely here.)

In that case, it is possible that we are artificially intelligent subroutines within the simulation. If that is the case then we have as much free will as it is possible to program into a computer subroutine. That might be "none." We may believe we have free will because the programmer of the simulation expressly decided to program us to feel like we have it.

It doesn't matter that you or I do not accept that this conjecture as our actual reality (I am also skeptical of it, as stated). What matters is whether you can prove the conjecture logically impossible. You really can't, because no one has ever been able to.

sorry
you project
find your village idiot elsewhere

Dodging an argument is not the same thing as "winning" an argument.

this is the height of absurdity and muddled thought

look at your semantics

my zombie brain took the initiative to kill "myself" due to the fact that "i" apprehended your post which in turn caused "my" zombie brain to kill "myself" in order to make a refutation of said post

thats some schizo shit right there brother

Sorry that I went too fast for you. I'll simplify so that even you can grasp the point. If you and I are in a room and I yell "Lookout!" you would look around. My action causes a reaction in you. You may feel you "choose" to look around, but that is not clear (and that is the point this thread is debating) because there are plenty of actions that you have no conscious control over, and because actions like "ducking" and looking for danger" are so instinctive that our brains do not wait for those sorts of reactions to be processed in the cerebral cortex before acting on the stimulus.

It's possible, that your conscious mind acts in a similar way: that you react to stimuli not because you choose to, but because automatic reactions within your physical brain force you to do so in a way that happens to leave you with the impression that you could have acted otherwise.

The only argument that is responsive to that, is one in which you show that it is not possible that your reactions operate in that way. Simply asserting that that is "schizo shit" is about as effective an argument as "not-uh".

you lot also scare the hell out of me
ja, i know where the road leads
all it takes is one charismatic leader and an outstretched arm
i mean, i can already whiff a faint scent of thuggery already

You are laughable. Acknowledging the logical possibility that there is no free will makes us no more likely to fall under the sway of a dictator than you are...save that you'd say you "chose" to follow the charismatic leader.

why should i?

Because, dumb ass, you are posting on an online philosophy forum, not a contradiction forum. Why the fuck are you here is not to present a cogent argument? Contradiction is not an argument. To quote Python, it is just the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes. It's very robotic and not at all flattering to the position you wish to maintain of yourself as a conscious free agency.

it is readily apparent to most that we have free agency,the ability to choose between varied options. that is our natural state. some however will tell the rest of us that all what we think about free and conscious agency is necessarily illusory as we are completely determined beings

I have said before (though perhaps you skipped the earlier posts given the length of the thread) that I do not believe the universe is wholly deterministic. That said, while it seems "obvious" to BOTH you and me that we have free will, there is no way to distinguish what "feels" like free will from a complex decision making algorithm which does not allow for genuine choice. As I said in earlier posts, a chess computer like Deep Blue considers many moves before it settles upon the move it will actually make in a game. If Deep Blue were self-aware, it might well think that it had a "choice" of moves because it remembers considering (and rejecting) so many possible options. At the end of the day, though we *know* that Deep Blue does not have free well, because it's final "choice" is ultimately 100% determined by its program.

While conjecturing that there is no free will leaves us with the conundrum of why we would feel like we have free will, that conundrum doesn't rule out the possibility that no free will exists.

I am sorry if you can't understand that, but I can't dumb it down any further for you.

Since my position is, "it is possible that free will exists and it is possible that free will is an illusion," there is not really much for me to prove. I cannot prove that free will exists. I don't see how to do that. Likewise, proving that there is "no" free will is proving a negative and likely impossible even in theory. At the very least I don't see how to prove that either.

Since your position is "there is definitely free will" it seems like your absolute certainty should be accompanied by some proof. If you are not absolutely certain, then you and I actually agree and we'd have to be talking past one another. That said, you seem pretty certain that there is free will, and pretty lacking in any argument that backs that up.

 

[Regular0ldguy]

I have always hated Pascal's Wager.

If I tell you that a a giant purple space dragon with a puppies' heads where his claws should be lives in the center of the Moon, and then if you believe in him, then when you die he will transport your spirit to a magical world of bliss...Pascal's Wager clearly indicates that you should believe me without question. (After all, there is no downside to believing whether I am right or not, and a huge upside to it if I am right.)

That's a great argument for all supernatural entities being BS. I hate Pascal's wager too. It is rooted in a kind of ethnocentricity that assumes a single obvious religious choice (probably stemming from the catholic/universal church of the time).

 

[Regular0ldguy]

One thing, somewhere above someone again made the point something like "whatever I choose is determined by the influences on me." I think that overstates the power of influences. I am influence by many things in a lot of my decisions. I like some of those influences and dislike others. I am aware of a whole lot of them. This is far from being determined or compelled by them. I can resist influences. On the other hand it is gibberish to say I can or cannot resist causation. Certainly we can resist and control particular causes. But causation in general is like the laws of physics. I can live through them, but I can't resist them, in the sense of trying to use something else. I can resist a particular force, but I can't live outside that force is some way. A particular force may be there, and I can go with it or resist it. But I can't jump outside of the system. Just as I can't jump outside of the causal nexus. And it's not like a game, where I can choose to play by the rules or ignore them. They can't be ignored. I'm in the water and can't leave it, but I can move around in it an unlimited number of ways or remain still. Being in the flow of time/causation/physical laws doesn't "control" me. They are just the raw materials for all the possibilities.

 

[Gustav]

You assert the jumping off the cliff hypothetical, but what you need to refute is the notion of the complex automaton (not really a "zombie" that was your inaptly chosen term) could not jump off a cliiff...that the jumping requires free will.

perhaps a request to refute might help? well let me oblige anyway
where did i assert that jumping off cliffs is an activity reserved for those that claim to have free will? i mean isn't it common knowledge that we can program stuff to self destruct in a myriad of ways? why is that notion of such import? i simply cannot comprehend the significance

the real question is why would something commit such an action? why would something be programmed to behave irrationally? is there some evolutionary advantage that i do not know about?

i mean you did say....

Whether one believes in free will or not, it makes sense to continue one's life. In one case you do so because you feel you have free will. In the other you do so because neurological activity forces you to and you have no real choice.

ja, it makes sense if one is born to live rather than die. i mean we are going thru the motions right. and it has been this way for millions of years?

do we intentionally program glitches into a system so it can self destruct?
you obviously do not think so as evinced by the quote above... "it makes sense to continue one's life."

irrationality is something we do not expect in these systems but.... what about us?

i mean, i am relatively well off with a clean bill of health living in a environment conducive to maintaining a high quality of life. all biological and mental predispositions, the history of, so far indicate a continuation of the status quo.

yet, i know that i can commit this act of suicide simply by making a decision. an intellectual exercise with very real consequences if executed. and no, i do not need an external impetus such as your post to consider such notions.

Suppose there were an android and it was programmed to try to convince people that it had free will. Could such a robot jump off a cliff if doing so helped it's case ? (Hint: Yes.) Does the robot have free will? If the robot was following a complicated program, we can assume not.

helped whose case? the dead robot? the beings that programed it? who are they anyway? more robots or....jesus christ, pande, you are dead serious, aren't you? what kind of people? are they also robots? who programed them? who programed the programmers?

So far the best argument your "superior" mind has generated is "it's obvious". That argument suggests you have read nothing on the current state of neuroscience and haven't really thought about the issue in sufficient depth. It's obvious that we feel like we have free will. It's obvious that we feel like we have bodies, but perceptions and reality need not be one and the same, because perceptions can be faulty.

ah, of course
since some perceptions are faulty, all are
to you it is inconceivable that one should hold on to a belief about something simply because there remains a possibility, even the remotest of ones, that we could be wrong

that's a brilliant deduction that gets you nowhere fast. admitting all possibilities is surest way to dumb down the discussion whereas the nuanced and sophisticated way is to select the criteria by its probability; ie what is the likelihood of something being true or false?

for eons, we sapiens have built societies and civilizations foundered on the notion of free agency and you seek to dispute this by introducing a possibility?

Sorry that I went too fast for you. I'll simplify so that even you can grasp the point. If you and I are in a room and I yell "Lookout!" you would look around. My action causes a reaction in you. You may feel you "choose" to look around, but that is not clear (and that is the point this thread is debating) because there are plenty of actions that you have no conscious control over, and because actions like "ducking" and looking for danger" are so instinctive that our brains do not wait for those sorts of reactions to be processed in the cerebral cortex before acting on the stimulus.

i understand
that there are instinctual reactions necessarily imply that the notion of free will is called into question and is on shaky ground

i mean if some, then all
its a possibility

that is your contention, ja?

and that this example is in the same category as introspecting about the notion of free will in the context of a cliff jump

/cackle

I have said before (though perhaps you skipped the earlier posts given the length of the thread) that I do not believe the universe is wholly deterministic. That said, while it seems "obvious" to BOTH you and me that we have free will, there is no way to distinguish what "feels" like free will from a complex decision making algorithm which does not allow for genuine choice. As I said in earlier posts, a chess computer like Deep Blue considers many moves before it settles upon the move it will actually make in a game. If Deep Blue were self-aware, it might well think that it had a "choice" of moves because it remembers considering (and rejecting) so many possible options. At the end of the day, though we *know* that Deep Blue does not have free well, because it's final "choice" is ultimately 100% determined by its program.

you lack reasoning skills
deep blue and you zombies are compelled to follow a script because that is what you were built to do. you have to play

i however am not. i can get up and walk away.
ja, i am cool like that

While conjecturing that there is no free will leaves us with the conundrum of why we would feel like we have free will, that conundrum doesn't rule out the possibility that no free will exists.

...and there are aliens on earth plotting dominion over us hapless zombies. lets not rule out that fanciful conjecture also known as a possibility

 

[Gustav]

.Since your position is "there is definitely free will" it seems like your absolute certainty should be accompanied by some proof. If you are not absolutely certain, then you and I actually agree and we'd have to be talking past one another. That said, you seem pretty certain that there is free will, and pretty lacking in any argument that backs that up.

from #399

i do acknowledge that bias is a possible factor in picking a number off the scale.
it could be as you said, a numeral actually visualized, perhaps heard; recently. it could be a favored numeral due to any number of reasons. it could also be..... an actual, random pick.

i see no logical reason to discount that last possibility

anyways, i would say i am mostly confident, to a very high percentage, that my choice of number was not influenced by biases, biological or otherwise

the possibility however remains
as does the matrix
or the unfolding of god's immutable plan

how do you interpret that?
more dumbass shit?

/curious

 

[chimpkin]

Pandaemoni said:
If you and I are in a room and I yell "Lookout!" you would look around.

Funny that...when I first started running, it was all I could do to run at all, and my wife came along with me one night.

For some reason I wasn't paying attention to what side of the street I was on...I was kind of out of it...
I turned around and saw a pickup coming up behind us, and the driver didn't see us.
I said "Look out!" and she immediately started to do her usual stammering "What do you mean by that?" thing, so I had to literally grab her by the shoulders and whip her out of the way.

Regular 0ld Guy said:
A particular force may be there, and I can go with it or resist it. But I can't jump outside of the system. Just as I can't jump outside of the causal nexus. And it's not like a game, where I can choose to play by the rules or ignore them. They can't be ignored.

Limited free will...precisely.

 

[wynn]

I am not sure why my argument upsets you so much...

There is a reason why "armchair philosopher" is a derogatory term.


Note:
How many skeptics does it take to change a light bulb?
Actually, they won't do it--they have no sense of urgency about the situation--they aren't sure they're really in the dark...

See also this thread.

 

[wynn]

So your argument is "not everyone agrees"?

In the world where truth, or at least logical soundness, are deemed to be arrived at by way of discourse among different parties, agreement and disagreement play a considerable role.

And how does this "non-mundane" interact with cause/effect and allow for free-will?

This is not the idea. Free will is not conceived of as something that would be "allowed for" or "given rise to". Instead, free will is conceived of as a constitutional ability of the living being. Whereby the living being exists as such, as a real entity, on the micro-level, as opposed to being a conglomerate of matter or macro-level epiphenomenon.

The idea is that a living being per default has free will, but the living being can function either in a mundane way, or in a non-mundane way. In the first case, it effectively cannot act on its free will (and the being's actions are effectively predetermined), but in the second, it can.


I am mentioning this as an elegant conceptualization of the issue of free will.

 

[Gustav]

There is a reason why "armchair philosopher" is a derogatory term.

oh please
these zombies are not armchair philosophers, they are armchair shrinks of the worst kind. just marvel at their presumptuous attitude about biological etiology, their dehumanizing and paternalistic attitude towards humans and the fanatical insistence that their right to diagnose supersedes our right to liberty and ownership of self

 

[chimpkin]

There is a reason why "armchair philosopher" is a derogatory term.

Which I guess makes Signal a full-contact philosopher?

 

[Sarkus]

In the world where truth, or at least logical soundness, are deemed to be arrived at by way of discourse among different parties, agreement and disagreement play a considerable role.

My point is that you have merely said "I disagree"... which is in and of itself no argument at all. It offers no counter to what has gone before and does not further any discussion.

This is not the idea. Free will is not conceived of as something that would be "allowed for" or "given rise to". Instead, free will is conceived of as a constitutional ability of the living being. Whereby the living being exists as such, as a real entity, on the micro-level, as opposed to being a conglomerate of matter or macro-level epiphenomenon.

If you claim life exists as a real entity on the micro-level then what do you cite as support for this... that quarks, electrons, muons have "life"?

And whether you see it as the idea or not, the implication is there - whether you realise or not: that your mysterious ability must somehow interact with the micro (and thus macro).

If it does NOT interact - as you would otherwise claim - then how does a choice, an exercise of free-will, manifest in physical changes?

The idea is that a living being per default has free will, but the living being can function either in a mundane way, or in a non-mundane way. In the first case, it effectively cannot act on its free will (and the being's actions are effectively predetermined), but in the second, it can.

And you are thus left with the need to explain how the "non-mundane" way of operation - the one that includes free-will - INTERACTS with and causes change in the micro (and thus macro).

I am mentioning this as an elegant conceptualization of the issue of free will.

And one that raises a rather serious question that you are either oblivious to or refuse to acknowledge: How does the ability of free-will cause a change in the micro world?

It might sound elegant... but it is grossly flawed.

 

[Sarkus]

oh please
these zombies are not armchair philosophers, they are armchair shrinks of the worst kind. just marvel at their presumptuous attitude about biological etiology, their dehumanizing and paternalistic attitude towards humans and the fanatical insistence that their right to diagnose supersedes our right to liberty and ownership of self

I see nothing here but appeals to consequence and arguments through fear.
Perhaps if you understood what was being argued, and understood the consequences. :shrug:

 

[Regular0ldguy]

Limited free will...precisely.

I'm afraid you miss the entire point.

 

[Yazata]

One thing, somewhere above someone again made the point something like "whatever I choose is determined by the influences on me." I think that overstates the power of influences.

Some versions of determinism seem to be suggesting that individual human organisms can kind of be snipped out of consideration along their skin-line, and that all the details of the missing individual's behavior could still be predicted through knowledge of the individual's environment alone. If we know their society, what they were taught, what they personally saw and heard, in absolutely precise detail, then they would be entirely predictable automatons.

I don't think that vision is very likely at all.

A great deal of what generates our behaviors is internal. It's our desires, our emotions, our memories and our beliefs. And I'm not convinced that human internal states can be predicted with 100% accuracy, even in principle, simply by minutely describing external environmental conditions surrounding the person.

It may or may not be true that a person's observable behavior can be accurately predicted if we know everything about his/her environment, and also have full knowledge of his/her internal desires, beliefs, feelings and motivations at the precise moment a decision was made.

Let's assume that psychological entities like beliefs, feelings, desires and motivations are the kind of things that enter into causal relationships, or alternatively, that they are internal representations of neural states that in turn are causally determined.

The point is, is it really inconsistent with the idea of free-will to say that our decisions and actions are determined in some large and inescapable part by our own desires, motivations, beliefs and feelings? Isn't that precisely what free-will insists happens? What's the alternative to motivated self-determination? Jerking around spastically and convulsively?

I'm not convinced that free-will and determinism really need to be antithetical to each other.