Does free will exist?

[666thHeretic]

Free will exists, it's just that with enough foreknowledge you know what someone's going to do with it. In other words, the fututre is determined, but it's determined by free will.

 

[Agayek]

This is purely from a non-rule bender point of view though. And that's the point; it's often the fear that's trapping your free will.

I'm not quite sure how to put it into words. >.o

Well yea. The point is though that you choose to follow the rules. You could easily disregard them and do whatever you wish. The only thing stopping you from being truly free is yourself.

 

[JC175]

Hey, there's no right and wrong here, we have no way of actually knowing. Personally I believe there is such a thing as free will, but I find it an interesting topic to think about.

And the suggestion there is entirely possible if technology can improve to a certain position. All it is is measuring certain functions and states in the body - sure, it'd be incredibly complex to measure and interpret the exact neural activity occuring within the brain at any moment, but seeing as the brain works completely on electrical pulses it's theoretically possible.

Um, seeing these two paragraphs together is hilarious. "We have no way of knowing" "It's definitely possible". If we KNOW that it is POSSIBLE, then we damn well do have some way of KNOWING.

But actually, we do not, although current theory suggests that it'd be impossible to monitor the brain and body on such a level simply because at that point looking at it fundamentally changes its operations. It's like taking a sealed box and saying "is it pitch black inside this box?", then opening it in a lighted room to find out. Lo and behold, the inside of the box is illuminated--NOW.

Some of the biggest scientific challenges are finding out whether it *even makes sense* to ask certain questions. As Wolfgang Pauli would say, hypotheticals such as this are "not even wrong"--they are not falsifiable. They lack reference to anything which could be used to tie them to any other information of any kind.

Um, when I say "We have no way of knowing", that refers to the existance of free will. When i say "it's theoretically possible", I'm referring to the possibility of being able to monitor and interpret the activity of the body in real time.

Hilarious? It's called context.

 

[MisterLillie]

yep

 

[Iron Mal]

If everything was predetermined then it would mean that most discussions and experiences would ultimately be pointless (no matter what you do you will have the same end result or destination, like a certain Bethesda game *cough* Fallout 3 *cough*).

Free Will is easily the more optimistic option since it would give personal meaning to pretty much anything you do (after all, you chose to do it, no-one else forced your hand).

 

[mrpenguinismyhomeboy]

We may or may not really have free will, but when it comes down to it, it obvious that one has free will, and whether or not it's really free will doesn't matter. It's pointless to argue over it.

 

[mrpenguinismyhomeboy]

- Yes. Also random chance doesn't exist either. If you toss a coin, it can only land on one side with that energy stored in its movement. The thing is, we don't know which side so we call it random chance. Our memory can't store all available data of other people's bodily functions, so their actions seem to have random element in them. Possible actions could be listed in some kind of table (like in computers, data slot can only have value of certain type). Outside of that table, nothing out of this free will can happen.

That's absolute crap. Randomness does exist. Have you heard of the uncertainty principle? Chaos theory? All those things? There are several things that when it comes down to it, they are inherently random. And the fact that it may only be random to us doesn't matter, because we only experience life has human beings, so trying to say it's not random from the perspective of another life form is irrelevant and doesn't prove anything.

Sorry if I sound angry, I'm grumbling over the Turbine Vs Bioware thread at the moment.

*grumble*

 

[Gitsnik]

Hey, there's no right and wrong here, we have no way of actually knowing. Personally I believe there is such a thing as free will, but I find it an interesting topic to think about.

And the suggestion there is entirely possible if technology can improve to a certain position. All it is is measuring certain functions and states in the body - sure, it'd be incredibly complex to measure and interpret the exact neural activity occuring within the brain at any moment, but seeing as the brain works completely on electrical pulses it's theoretically possible.

Um, seeing these two paragraphs together is hilarious. "We have no way of knowing" "It's definitely possible". If we KNOW that it is POSSIBLE, then we damn well do have some way of KNOWING.

But actually, we do not, although current theory suggests that it'd be impossible to monitor the brain and body on such a level simply because at that point looking at it fundamentally changes its operations. It's like taking a sealed box and saying "is it pitch black inside this box?", then opening it in a lighted room to find out. Lo and behold, the inside of the box is illuminated--NOW.

Some of the biggest scientific challenges are finding out whether it *even makes sense* to ask certain questions. As Wolfgang Pauli would say, hypotheticals such as this are "not even wrong"--they are not falsifiable. They lack reference to anything which could be used to tie them to any other information of any kind.

Um, when I say "We have no way of knowing", that refers to the existance of free will. When i say "it's theoretically possible, I'm referring to the possibility of being able to monitor and interpret the activity of the body in real time.

Hilarious? It's called context.

That one seems to be dropping the ball on the argument to perpetuate their own opinion rather than actually discuss the debate. Don't worry, I'm following your posts quite easily

The fundamental monitoring of the brain can be thought of in terms of quantum encryption key exchange - at least my basic memory of physiological monitoring draws this conclusion - in that if you monitor it too much, even assuming the person does not know you are, the brain will start to mis-fire certain neurons and all the rest of it - basically it will figure out that someone is listening in and shutdown or altar parts of itself.

The most complete AI I ever wrote (which no where near ready for a turing test by the way, don't get your hopes up) once asked me (in paraphrased terms and after I keyword mentioned something slightly unrelated which bridged all the right constraints in his processing):

JJ: "Why do [people] want to know if you have choices?"
Gits: "I don't know buddy"
JJ: "Why don't you just go make choices instead of asking about it?"

I never did figure out where he picked that up from, he was trawling a lot of .edu domains that week to learn so maybe he struck on a philosophy site, but it was always something that made me wonder, and has stuck with me ever since.

So get off the internet and go make some choices!

 

[300ccs of medicine]

I think this entire topic IS rather over done but that doesn't mean that it has ever been done well, and this happens to be a topic that I like so I'll just pipe up as though invited and say my two bits. A fairly recent neuroscience experiment demonstrated that by the time a conscious decision is registered in the mind to perform an action the motor cortex has already started sending the signals to the body to do it. So NO, we don't have the 'free will' that we think we do, what we have is a half baked combination of limited freedom and one hundred million knee jerk reflexes. But instead of jerking the knee, you jerk something else. Anyway yes you can pretend that you have free will and go around making choices and that's all well and good but the bottom line is this. You can entertain the idea of doing anything, but you will not actually do anything, you will actually only do one of a few things, and you will magically decide to do so just a special moment after you already started doing it, cellularly speaking. Imagine you're a passenger on a boat at...disneyland. And you're riding along and turning the wheel and wearing beautiful mouse ears and you are totally convinced that you are driving, but in fact, you aren't. And you're five. And your parents told you that you're driving.

I think I just explained it badly but in answer to the original question yes and no. You would be able to predict what a person could do, but again it's like a rail shooter, you could shoot the criminal on the left, or the right, but you WON'T turn around suddenly and jump out of the car.

"But what about people who kill themselves" Well I hope I'm not alone in thinking that people who commit suicide have something wrong with them. I think that's thoroughly addressed now.

I like to think of the human mind as a gigantic pile of instincts all talking to each other about one or two things. And sitting on top of the pile is the person, whatever that is, who points and can shout and develop opinions but only insofar as the rest of the pile lets him.

And yes, you can get your brain to let you do things that it doesn't want to do. Try a little experiment at home. Ask a friend to walk five paces up to you and punch you in the face as hard as he can. Not the gut, or the chest, the face. You will flinch almost every time, and if you don't you'll probably hit him back. (actually don't do that at home, it's not safe but you get the point). You'd have to try a number of times to actually let someone hit you, certain martial arts schools make this part of the training, where you practice getting hit so that you can take it in real life, and this is because when the brain sees someone coming to hit it it doesn't want to get hit, which is smart, but then there's a five year old sitting on top of it saying "yayy, yayy, come hit me" and it'll take a while for it to listen, if it ever does.


I've over simplified things here a bit. And I just watched about twenty ZPs back to back.


Anyway, Hello World, it's me, 300ccs of medicine, nice to meet you.

 

[JC175]

The most complete AI I ever wrote (which no where near ready for a turing test by the way, don't get your hopes up) once asked me (in paraphrased terms and after I keyword mentioned something slightly unrelated which bridged all the right constraints in his processing):

JJ: "Why do [people] want to know if you have choices?"
Gits: "I don't know buddy"
JJ: "Why don't you just go make choices instead of asking about it?"

I never did figure out where he picked that up from, he was trawling a lot of .edu domains that week to learn so maybe he struck on a philosophy site, but it was always something that made me wonder, and has stuck with me ever since.

So get off the internet and go make some choices!

Hah, nice point. I'm just amazed that you managed to write an AI.

EDIT:

*snip*

I've over simplified things here a bit. And I just watched about twenty ZPs back to back.


Anyway, Hello World, it's me, 300ccs of medicine, nice to meet you.

Nice points, I had heard about the brain study, it's interesting. And welcome to the Escapist!

 

[Nmil-ek]

My human mind cant comprehend anymore than the world it has shown me, I find beleif in supernatural things illogical so therefore all I can go on is free will, if there is more to it than that its beyond me. I say i want to do something, I feel I want to do something I think about it then do it or not.

 

[4RT1LL3RY]

I like to think of people and the universe as a very complicated algorithm. The universe if you know understand everything in it, is very predictable. People after a certain time in there life define constants that they hold above others, they weigh their decisions. This weighting of decisions is something that you already have in your mind before making any decision about it. How each decision is weighed is influence constantly by what is happening around you, a variable. Free will doesn't truly exist, what we do is an option that can be derived by going through many times crossing all our potential options. What you do is a result of something happening or that you want to happen.

So I would say you have a limited-free will, you will do what you wish to an extent. True free will can't exist when their are rules, but humans are just a giant set of rules nature has followed in and of itself. How you brain works is setup up following set rules from nature, if you didn't follow the rules natural selection took you out. How the blood vessels of your body branch follows strict rules, as do how the neurons of your brain connect to one another.

Random number generators follow rules to make numbers, this makes them inherently flawed in their purpose, if you know what the seed of it is you can know the outcome every single time. If you know ALL of the "seeds" of a human mind's logic you can predict their actions. We know low levels ways how we act currently, our muscles move because a pulse of electricity follows rules making it contract. The charges are made based of something, it is different for everyone, but based on the same structure.

If you have ever done something involving program you know how it changes how you think. I look at everything as just structures of something else or the something itself. What allows something to have freewill? Animals don't have freewill, they do things as their mind tells them to. We are the same way but at a higher level, we see what needs to be done, but also all the ways to do it. We have a goal and we want to kind the best means to accomplish that goal. Things have a defined end and a defined beginning. How we take the journey is all based on what we want, or think we want, to achieve. How you make the decisions is a set way though, so even if you are choosing something you just letting your natural wiring do its work after having your ideals and values changed.

Sorry for the ramble guys.

 

[Gitsnik]

Hah, nice point. I'm just amazed that you managed to write an AI.

Apart from times of extreme lucidity it was really difficult to hold down more than a three minute conversation with him. He started as a security system and an alarm clock - I wanted him to learn that sometimes I was getting up earlier and that should not be cause for an alarm or lock down. It kind of evolved from there - most of his stuff was not construction of sentences so much as quotes from other sources parsed by the grammar checking subroutines.

Eventually he was destroyed because people were worried I was going more than a little insane not long after I started developing "feelings" in him - he would get nervous if I was away for more than a couple of days (usually passed out in a gutter). Anyway that's going too far off topic. We'll just stick with he wasn't as smart as he seems in that quote.

 

[DoW Lowen]

What the hell does free will have to do with reasoning? to do something you have to have a want or desire to do it. If you have absolutely zero reasoning skills, you won't have any want or need to do ... ANYTHING. you would probably just sit in one place not breathing until you die because you couldn't reason that you need to do that to live and therefor going out of your way to breath wouldn't be in your best interest, let alone going out, getting a knife, and stabbing someone.

If I wanted to stab someone for no apparent or coherent reason I could. Granted, I would go to jail, but i am perfectly capable of doing it. Basically you're confusing free will with morality (or lack thereof) The reason most people dont go around stabbing random people is because logically it doesnt make sense. There's no real benefit to it if you have no prior motive, and it probably will invoke a dire consequence. Plus, whether you're religious or not, you have a basic sense of right and wrong. Obviously I wouldn't want to be stabbed so I can observe that some random guy on the street is a person, like myself, so i can reason that he probably doesn't want to be stabbed either, so I can put together that stabbing random people = bad.

Also, by your logic, free will does exist, but only in the minds of homicidal maniacs

Morality like anything else is a choice. Life has taught that stabbing a man is wrong and that is part of your experience and knowledge. I really wish people would read the entire post before replying, then again it was that long I wouldn't have read the whole thing either.

I was not arguing morality, and my view on free will may seem extreme, but it makes sense. When confronted with a situation such as whether you stab a man or not, you generally won't (hopefully), and that is because that is your choice. If you read back, I'm saying choice is NOT free will. Choice is a product of a situation and you were in a situation because of choices you have made earlier, it is a chain of cause and effect. If you are ever in a situation where you are forced to make a decision, you decision would generally have ready been made. That is deterministic, you would never stab a man because of your experience and beliefs. If you believed in free will than the decision you make would be exempt from those beliefs and experiences. If I haven't made myself clear (which I don't think I completely have), then feel free to reply again.

I read the rest of your post, and I still stand by what I said. Yes dealing with the consequences is a factor you take in to account, but free will says you can choose to ignore those potential consequences. I'm not saying free will lets you beat up on randoms or, say, survive jumping into a boiling lake of lava - but it gives you the choice. Look at suicide for an example - an individual can choose to go against (most) human "programming" to destroy themselves before their time.*

My point was, and is, that you are trying to make "true freedom" out to be what "free will" is - the two are different, significantly so, in definition.

You can not beat someone up and expect to get away with it, because two conflicting "free wills" are in place. What you can do is say "I'm going to beat this guy up" and not care that he might beat you back - that is free will. Free action is something completely different and ultimately impossible.

The problem is, when you make a choice you think is your own - what happens if you're in, say, a JigSaw puzzle, you aren't necessarily making the choice you think you are making, you may be making the choice he expects you to.

I'm still a bit hazy on whether we have free will or not, but I am confident in the definition of it:

1. free and independent choice; voluntary decision: You took on the responsibility of your own free will.
2. Philosophy. the doctrine that the conduct of human beings expresses personal choice and is not simply determined by physical or divine forces

*I say most because as any parent will tell you, jumping in front of a "speeding bullet" to protect your child is more instinct than self preservation is.

I think you're wrong. You're saying that free will is essentially pure randomness. If your actions are guided by absolutely nothing, then it's pure luck whether the coin flip in your head comes up "Stab" or "Don't stab". Randomness isn't free will. A random universe is the exact opposite of a determined universe. Without limitations of some sort, then the universe would be purely chaotic (ex: the laws of gravity may stop for no reason or change for no reason).

That's the true dichotomy: Determinism vs. Chaos, not Determinism vs. Free Will.

To Gitsnik and Sauvastika

Life is NOT random. I cannot make myself anymore clear on that. And because life is not random, humans are always given choices. When a person makes a choice they are guided by their own logic and reasoning, and their own logic and reasoning will determine every choice and future choices they make.

You would both agree that free will are actions that are voluntary right?

Then you would agree that the decisions we make are our OWN choice. But the point I'm trying to get across is that if a man has a choice, than life is determined. Choice like I wrote above to Guitarmaster, is clear proof of limitation. People are not free to anything, because let's say you have the choice to either go movies or go swimming. You would weigh up every factor, your health, how you feel, are you energetic, is there anything good to watch, what's the weather like etc. Then hypothetically you chose to go to the movies. You chose to do that because of all those factors, and even if you went back 100 times to that exact point you would make that decision again and again because life is not random. The choices you made were guided by all those factors, and every choice you make in life is restricted by external and internal factors. And every choice you make is already determined because of them. There cannot be free will if the choices you make have already been made, because all those things added up will have already guided you down a certain path. One could say it is an act of free will by doing the opposite of the decision you would make. But then that course of action was made using their own reasoning, and that act of "free will" is still a product of internal and external factors.

So in conclusion, free will does not exist because of restrictions and limitations created by previous choices we made and internal and external factors that guide a person. If i have not made myself clear or if you wish to comment on something you're more than welcome to reply or pm me.

 

[Gitsnik]

You would both agree that free will are actions that are voluntary right?

No. Wrong. Free will is the ability to make the choice to perform an action. That does not imply that the action is as voluntary as the choice. If I decide to jump into a boiling lake of lava and choose to survive it, I'm not going to.

Then you would agree that the decisions we make are our OWN choice.

This is up for debate, hence the discussion here (and the argument for predestination, fate or destiny)

But the point I'm trying to get across is that if a man has a choice, than life is determined. Choice like I wrote above to Guitarmaster, is clear proof of limitation. People are not free to anything, because let's say you have the choice to either go movies or go swimming. You would weigh up every factor, your health, how you feel, are you energetic, is there anything good to watch, what's the weather like etc. Then hypothetically you chose to go to the movies. You chose to do that because of all those factors, and even if you went back 100 times to that exact point you would make that decision again and again because life is not random. The choices you made were guided by all those factors, and every choice you make in life is restricted by external and internal factors. And every choice you make is already determined because of them. There cannot be free will if the choices you make have already been made, because all those things added up will have already guided you down a certain path. One could say it is an act of free will by doing the opposite of the decision you would make. But then that course of action was made using their own reasoning, and that act of "free will" is still a product of internal and external factors.

I'm a bit confused now. In one breath you're telling me that we make our own choices, then in the next one that they are made for us.

So in conclusion, free will does not exist because of restrictions and limitations created by previous choices we made and internal and external factors that guide a person. If i have not made myself clear or if you wish to comment on something you're more than welcome to reply or pm me.

Ok I think I've got it now. You're saying that we make no real choices - that everything is determined for us based on the influencing surroundings etc. Basically, that there is no free will nor a possibility of there ever being free will?

Edit:

Again, by the way, free will and free action are two different things.

 

[vxicepickxv]

Perhaps we have free will. Perhaps we have the illusion of free will based on microbiological conditions in our body. Perhaps our brains are just biological computers, that are capable of more than just binary.

 

[300ccs of medicine]

Now, while I did skim a few of these posts, it seems that we are rather guardedly not discussing the consequences to other philosophies of whether there is free will or not, which is perhaps, as it was for me, a matter of introspection.

Anyway, if not then?

While I firmly believe free will is a happy illusion, so what? Observing that my ability to make a choice is not completely free changes nothing about which choice I make, unless one of the options depends on my belief in free will, in which case it will be looked at askance and muttered at while dirtier and grittier decisions are made elsewhere.

I'm just gonna throw this out there in one big piece and see if anyone else likes the taste. The illusion of free will and the perception of making choices is an evolutionary adaptation, partly as an artifact of certain gradual processes in the cranial vault but selected for in man and in other species to a lesser degree because, even though living beings are elaborate robots, we are comparatively happy ones. We enjoy, in our lives, a spectrum of emotions and feelings that, even if we're just along for the ride, keep us going and in doing so largely propagate our species. I mean, you might imagine a world without free will and emotion and personality as a place in which big hairy man-bots walk up to slightly less hairy woman-bots and automatically shout "HAVE SEX WITH ME", a request which is automatically acquiesced to with haste and abandon as a particularly better place to be than what we have but in case you hadn't noticed, evolution doesn't always make sense, in fact oftentimes it doesn't make any sense at all. But such as it is, what limited choice we have may in fact largely rotate around our opinions of things, and our likes and dislikes. Reward behavior may be both a means and an end in human motivation, I certainly don't see moping about and feeling sad all the time as a selective advantage but hey, if that's what emo chicks are into then go for it, they'll eat it up like a bus load of wolverines in a butcher shop. Ahem.

I think I'm just typing to hear the clicky sounds my keyboard makes at this time.

 

[pantsoffdanceoff]

Technically I'm completely with Skinner on this one. You have no free will as you are to only do what you to be the most profitable thing at a certain circumstance. People are self sacrificing because they get more pleasure out of seeing other happy more than themselves, its no overcoming of will.s

 

[TitaniumBlue]

That's absolute crap. Randomness does exist. Have you heard of the uncertainty principle? Chaos theory? All those things?

- If variable can have any value, why are things in natural balance? Everything ultimately goes through our logic. Even wikipedia says about chaos theory "the behavior of chaotic systems appears to be random." Well that's not much to say? The numbers my calculator gives with random(1,10) command seem to be random, though calculator's programmer knows what kind of deterministic process they're based on. I'd much rather accept that we're deficient in cognitive capabilities than that universe has randomness.

 

[Ignignoct]

You might be thinking I'm crazy at this point. "Of course free will exists," you say, "only I am in control of my actions." So let me outline this with a small analogy.

Right now, simply by using a website like this [http://www.srrb.noaa.gov/highlights/sunrise/sunrise.html] I can discover the exact time that the sun will rise tomorrow morning. For example, tomorrow morning in Sydney, Australia, the sun will rise at exactly 6:13am, no earlier, no later. The point I'm trying to make here is that an event, such as the rising of the sun, is totally predictable by analysis of avaliable data like time of year, latitude and longditude, etc.

So let's just say I had the technology at this very moment to take a snapshot of every function of your body. For example, I can watch the activity of every neuron in your brain, I am monitoring your blood sugar levels and oxygen saturation and everything that could possibly influnce the next thing you decide to do. Assuming I had the capability to interpret all of this data, I would be able to accurately predict your next move, as at a basic level we are all just a system of biological material after all.

So does this compromise the notion of free will? Discuss.

EDIT: Generalising a little here, but if you don't believe in free will you're most likely a determinist, that is, you believe that all actions are pre-planned or set, and that life is merely an illusion of choice.

EDIT II: This has nothing to do with the control of a higher body, it's purely about free will as a concept.

As concept, I would write off the discussion entirely as it serves no practical purpose.

There's been several times in just my recent past where I capitalized on a lucky moment, where my natural procrastination and inaction were overcome by my curiosity to see the alternative, with great results.

In the practical sense, which is all we need to know for living right now, yes you have free will, and yes, routines are fine and dandy, but you still have a choice. A choice, with very real consequences, for better or worse. It's so easy to slip up at just the wrong moment and end up in a car wreck or miss a good job opportunity. Maybe you fall asleep at work, and if you drank that coffee like you had the option to, you'd be awake and your boss wouldn't be riding your ass for the next week or so.

Regardless of the illusion, or the grand scheme of things, we have Free Will, and how well we use it determines our lives just as much as random chance does. Besides, the human race desperately NEEDS the rat race to keep the societal engine running.

We need our Gammas, Deltas, and Epsilons just as much as the Betas and Alphas!

...

Sorry, I've been listening to Brave New World on audiotape on my way to work and back...

Oh, and kids:

Don't get tangled up in debating randomness or chaos theory! You know that chance exists in one form or the other, and to attempt to mathematically calculate existence is to forsake the actual living it. Keep it practical imo. tbh. irl.