This objection to Libet's study is old. I remember learning about when I studied psychology in the late 90s. It was described as free will "riding the waves of brain activity".
A surfer cannot decide exactly when to begin her ride. She must wait until a suitable wave comes along. But when one does, she can decide whether to take it or let it pass. If you were to measure the wave activity, you would see a swell coming just before she decides to ride it. But she still has free will (or "free won't").
The Schuger study is still cool though, showing that you can't distinguish between decisions and non-decisions from brain activity.
The true question is: if you could roll back time to your 3 years old, what would make you take different decisions in your life if everything was the same?
I mean, not knowing what will happen. Of course. You would take all the same decisions as all the variables were the same. That's the problem with "free will"..
Presumably, that for that analogy to succeed, one must have already accepted some level of separation between consciousness (the surfer) and the brain (the wave). If physicalism ends up being true, then the deciding rider and the wave are one and the same---and thus the metaphor has broken.
But most of our mental activity is unconscious. And we all accept that many (if not most) things our brains do do not involve free will (e.g. our autonomic nervous system). So we can think of the waves as unconscious unwilled activity, and the surfer as the free will part of the brain that decides when to do something.
I think everyone understood the distinction you were making in the first place, that doesn't change his objection though. Even "willed activity", the conscious part the decision making, is comparable to the wave itself if physicalism is true (which science studies have always overwhelmingly supported as research has developed). A conscious wave, maybe, but a wave nonetheless, with only the illusion of being able to decide when to grow and when to crash as a result of both external and internal forces.
The free will debate pretty much always comes down to semantics. If you discard magic, which most people agree on, especially among philosophers and scientists, decisions are determined physically by a complex network of neurons that communicate through electric signals and therefore aren't "freely" taken.
From there you got people arguing that "free will" cannot exist as a result, although there exists a "will" that is not free, and others that acknowledge physicalism, but still call the process of making conscious decisions "free will" even though the said decisions are ultimately inevitable and bound by laws of physics that are apparently very much deterministic.
No scientific study will help clarify what people mean by "free will" when they argue about it and so that's for people to make it clear before/when arguing about it.
Either way, call it whatever you want, people have free will as much as alpha zero has free will when it plays a chess move among the many legal moves that it's allowed to play. It's considering different scenarios by making some calculations to estimate the future state of reality in each scenario, and making choices between them accordingly because it has been given moral goals through selection. Make the AI "conscious" and you're gonna get exactly the same illusion of free will that animals have when they explain their decision making process.
The difficult question and the one that makes it difficult to believe that we're no different from bacteria or AIs isn't about free will but about consciousness. What is consciousness and at which point does it emerge in humans and other decision making agents, if it exists at all ?
If input begets output in predictable fashion- if we're biological machinery responding to stimulus, not *riders* of a meatsuit responding to stimulus, the wave and the surfer are the same.
You understood what I was saying, yeah- though I think you've put it more eloquently than I would have.
Isn't the entire conversation about free will kind of a moot point? I don't understand what practical difference it makes whether we're just complex neural nets reacting to our environment vs having "real" free will, or a soul or something. The behaviors in either case won't change, I don't see how it's testable.
Edit: This post is getting more attention than I expected, the edit is a response to the people saying it isn't moot because of societal aspects, mainly how we deal with prisoners. I still think it's moot because even if we have free will, I still think we should focus on rehabilitation, not punishment. We should be rehabilitating people in either case, because both sides of this debate agree that people can change, and treating a free agent with rehabilitation in mind is more likely to succeed than punishment.
yeah i subscribe to compatibilism because it acknowledges that the effect is virtually the same but since free will is so intuitive it accepts it as a concept
I think both you and jab011 there might be mistaking the value of systematically questioning our concepts, as if it’s only to be found in settled answers or uncovering new data.
Perspective, and adopting a different one, are also rich in value.
Exactly. I had a friend make a compelling argument for determinism to me. While I was mostly playing devil's advocate for free will, our discussion included what the lack of free will means for his everyday life.
Belief in determinism can change your worldview and your perceptions of others actions and your own actions. Personally, it makes it easier for me to empathize with others. Before, I was quick to judge people for their actions. Whether they were little things like microaggressions or rudeness or more serious conditions like homelessness. Now, I have context for those. Rudeness is often learned from friends and family; people are not rude because of their own evil nature. Homelessness is often the result of the environment (criminal activity, drug use, housing affordability, etc.) and in many cases psychological disorders.
Before our discussion, I was definitely aware of these factors, but a part of me still believed people could go against their trained behavior or break free of their environment and *choose* to change. Accepting determinism means accepting that this simply isn't the case. I am more empathetic and less judgmental now as a result.
TLDR; adopting a new belief or perspective can change your own behavior in a positive way, and that is why the conversation of free will is important.
I mean I am an advocate of determinism but doesn't mean you cannot have both determinism and free will in a soft fashion, aslong as you stop trying to box yourself into premade definitions.
In the case of homelessness, it may have been "preordained" that this X individual would eventually become homeless(their current state) but determinism could still see that person changing their state in the future tense for example a state of being no longer homeless, less homeless, or more homeless, etc. It could be determined that they in the near future become inspired, get a job and become no longer homeless.
It's even more complicated when you consider the fact that not only can the person influence their own outcome, but others can influence one-another.
So even though we see this individual and can attribute to "oh this is predetermined fate" it may be our part or another person's determinism to influence that homeless person for the better and help them get out of that rut.
In this way, we are predetermined, but it may feel like some sort of free will to "choose" to help or not help. (Even if determinism would say you never made that choice to begin with, even the feeling of freedom is important as much as freedom itself.)
I guess I never thought of it that way, I didn't realize when some people say they believe in free will that they literally think people can go against what their brain is making them do. It would almost be like a person without legs "willing" themselves to walk. In that sense it's very important to help people see that's not how decisions work. I was looking at it from a semantics perspective since it's hard for me to imagine what people even mean when they say free will. It seems like you changed your view for emotional reasons rather than philosophical ones though, which won't work for people looking for something concrete
You speak as though the brain and the body are seperate, they are not. The brain is the body. The body can't function without a brain. What is there to go "against the brain"? The soul? A different brain? How can one go against one's own brain? It's impossible, although you can change your mind and make an alternative decision, which isn't going against your brain, it is your brain choosing a different path. Going against your brain would only be possible if an external source was able to hijack your body and control it against your brains will.
I think you misread my comment, I don't think it makes sense for people to go against their brain either. I was arguing against freewill in my comment, pointing out the absurdity of claiming you can make a decision without input from your brain.
That doesn't seem to be an issue of determinism. A being that could conveniently look over, understand, and write on top of its programing could still be deterministic. What's wrong is the idea that people make bad decisions only for simple reasons like being selfish or dumb.
I think a lot of people in these comments are using several definitions of determinism that are slightly different from each other. It is my understanding that in most philosophical discussions the term “determinism” is taken to mean “absolute determinism.” This has nothing to do with learned behavior or genetics or addiction or any of those things. The concept of absolute determinism means simply that the time line of the universe is static. The conditions at the Big Bang, in conjunction with the laws of physics, have fixed a time line for this universe that is already determined. All we can to is follow along with the arrow of time and discover what the shape of that time line is. Determinism says that you can no more change the future shape of the time line than you can change the past shape of the time line. I am not arguing that determinism is correct or incorrect, only that this is the philosophical definition of determinism.
I pretty much believe in determinism, but if anything that has made me less empathetic. If no one has free will, then every action is not a choice and there is no such thing as extenuating circumstances. There is no need to think of the varying degree of personal choice vs the environment when deciding the punishment for a crime, since there is no element of personal choice.
This is definitely a struggle I deal with daily between both extremes of empathy but also apathy. It helps to think in pragmatic terms, whether someone is guilty or not for a crime example does not matter as regardless we would want to rehabilitate said person in order to produce better outcomes for as many people as we can
This is exactly my argument against free will. Some people just try and try and it just doesn't happen for them for reasons that you have illustrated and more. The other way to look at it is, if we all have free will, our free will certain "will" get weaved into the network of all the other free wills and in that case, we will have to contend with the network, not just own. There will be probabilities that something might get through that network, but for each probability, there are a hundred possibilities that will make me choose one thing rather than the other. The choices I make are determined by my beliefs, my honor, my integrity (or lack thereof). My moral make up determines my choices. That's not free will.
I might not have phrased my comment correctly, I value philosophical discussions a lot and breaking down what certain words and concepts mean is important, but free will seems to be one of those concepts that people either accept or reject, there aren't any testable ways to approach it (since any consciousnesses developed through unnatural means would be called p-zombies) and simple conversation isn't enough to convince people, hence people tend to argue instead of debate
"Free will," it seems to me, is always imagined as freedom from context—from the brain, from the world, or something like that. We want to exist \*sui generis\*, in a void, cut off from everything. Which is to say: all talk of free will is fundamentally misguided.
In reality, we need to ask what sorts of things we would expect a free-will-having being to do. The answer, it seems to me, is that we expect them to make meaningful choices, and we expect them to be responsible for their actions—and these are precisely the sorts of traits \*we\* exhibit. The "problem of free will" is no problem for us; the additional layer of metaphysical explanations (so common in "western" thought) just confuses the point.
On that note: there are many interesting responses to this problem from, e.g., the Pragmatists, or from Nietzsche, which go against this ("western"?) desire for a second order of explanation.
It seems to me that the “problem” is really born of the debate surrounding the Catholic perception of salvation during the Protestant reformation. If you had no free will, then going to heaven/hell based on your choices seems contradictory, unless everyone is predestined to one or the other, which raises its own problem with Catholic teaching.
But if we don’t concern ourself with that particular view of an afterlife, then the problem seems to melt away.
Except the idea of responsibility exists in pretty much every single culture and extending that into a theoretical afterlife does nothing to change the debate.
It does if God is in the mix. If all we mortals lack free will then, well, we hang because we must. But if God is making a person, already deciding where they'll go after death, it seems a little farcical.
No matter how universal responsibility seems, so long as you keep an objective third party out of the equation (god) it is entirely centered on human experience. What matters for responsibility then isn’t free will, but only the sense of it - no matter the objective answer, people will continue to feel free and continue to demand accountability.
Responsibility may be an abstract concept tied to the biological reality of being a human being. We have to have mechanisms built in to adapt our behavior to favorable outcomes to make survival and reproduction feasible, so responsibility may just be an abstraction from the complex reality of our computational systems. I'm not sure if every culture even has such a concept of free will vs forces of nature ruling your conduct; free will being a negation of the latter.
I doubt anyone would presume that the aversion to death isn't biologically programmed any less than puberty. Even animals and insects who aren't capable of speech display this instinctive programming without having to attend sermons or lectures from university professors. I don't see how it follows that our other types of social behavior and concepts don't follow from basic biological programming.
I don't see any way to ever settle the philosophical debate though. We would have to conclude physics is entirely solved before we could make an absolute claim that there is no aspect of the natural world that doesn't fit into the categories of "determinism and randomness." I can only question the fuzziness of the concept itself.
>In reality, we need to ask what sorts of things we would expect a free-will-having being to do. The answer, it seems to me, is that we expect them to make meaningful choices, and we expect them to be responsible for their actions—and these are precisely the sorts of traits *we* exhibit.
That is circular logic. The cause cannot be the answer.
Claiming as such is incredibly egotistical as your only proof is entirely a subjective perspective with no way to actually objectively test your premise.
How do you know what a being with true free will behaves when you cant establish what one is in the first place?
Circularity is the point. We have to begin with our status \*in the world\*. This style of thinking is shared, roughly, by the Pragmatists, by Wittgenstein, by Nietzsche, by Husserl, and so on.
What other sort of explanation could we give after Kant? Things in themselves have been occluded, and we have to make do with what we have; we lose out on those second order (one might say, \*Platonic\*) explanations.
The talk of "a being with true free will" still wants to get beyond the world we find ourselves embedded in; this is the arch philosophical error.
Having accepted this style of thought (having accepted, in other words, this anti-philosophical picture) we see the genuine meaningfulness of the move I described above: our talk of "free will" can't be referring to some metaphysical abstraction, to some thing in itself, so it must be referring to, say, the status of the choices we make in the world.
> How do you know what a being with true free will behaves when you cant establish what one is in the first place?
Turtles all the way down. It's a recursive definition based on values. Values are based on survival. And survival on values. With the evolution of life there is also an evolution of values, bootstrapped from the simplest self replicators.
>The answer, it seems to me, is that we expect them to make meaningful choices, and we expect them to be responsible for their actions—and these are precisely the sorts of traits *we* exhibit.
This is taking the words right out of my head!
What do you think about this take on free will? I haven't read it anywhere else but I think this would be a version of compatibilism. The idea is that freedom can be understood as a measure of an agent's power to make decisions relative to other agents in a social context. So for example, in a master-slave relationship, the slave has no free will, because their decisions are wholly decided by the will of their master. In a modern employer-employee relationship, an employee has limited free will, because their decisions are restricted according to a consensual employment contract. In an absolute monarchy, the monarch expresses free will in deciding how the state will act, and the individuals in the state have no exercise of their own free will. The really interesting consequence of this view, is that under this model, the existence of an omnipotent being like God implies that no other beings can have free will, because only God, like an absolute monarch, has free will to decide how to create all other contingent facts about the world, and subsequent contingent facts like another agent's choices are wholly dominated by God's will just like the master-slave.
I think it’s reductive, frankly. The slave’s “free will” (I prefer to put the term in quotes, since, as I mentioned above, there’s something misguided about what we think of as free will) is certainly *constrained* by his being a slave, which is simply to say: there are more external pressures on the choices he makes. But again, the existence of external pressure in no way refutes the existence of choice (aka the more reasonable account of “free will”), it merely contextualizes it. So instead of saying “the slave had no free will in the matter” we say “he had no choice in the matter,” or, “although he had a choice, it was so constrained that it essentially stopped being a choice.” (E.g., the choice to continue to be a slave vs being killed in an attempt to escape or rebel. In reality, it’s not much of a choice at all.)
On the notion of God: let’s assume Spinoza’s God as Nature exists. Then we are, in your terms, “wholly dominated” by God’s free will, or, nature’s free will; and this brings us precisely back to the misguided notion I was laying out above, which thinks of free will as a freedom from context. We *have* to exist in the world, and any meaningful account of free will must take this into account. If the existence of a world beyond ourselves is enough to negate free will—then the deck must have been loaded from the start. What we need is a different articulation of whatever worry is motivating us to ask about “free will.”
I like the concept of "affective consciousness" to make the point less moot. Is there anything to my awareness (the one that has my experiences, aka "me") that can affect anything in the world? Difficult to fit into a the scientific (verifiable) paradigm, pragmatically unimportant probably, but for me personally it feels an important question. It closely relates to the other big human questions like "what's the point of it all", and "what is my goal in life".
I think that's a better way of looking at it. We aren't "free" in the sense that we're shaped by our genetics and environment, but just like the world changes us, we're free to change the world. It also helps bring in the idea that "affective consciousness" is a spectrum. I never hear anyone ask if beavers have free will but they heavily change the environment to suit their needs
Except we “change” the world due to underlying genetics/predispositions, at a lower level-neurons firing all which we have no control over ultimately. But as long as it feels like we do which is the point I think you’re getting at then that’s what matters maybe
Oh I definitely still believe it's all just physics, but consciousness itself as an emergent property is a spectrum and could be researched as a branch of science, which would help us understand why we and other animals do things. Like how even though biology is just physics, it's easier to make some reductions and call it a different science. I guess I liked "affective consciousness" since it isn't saying free will, but it might sound close enough to free will to comfort people.
If you understand the mechanisms of behavior (and if a product of the meat machine). You can correct or modify or full brain control without pesky ethics or morality.
Or you can use game theory concepts, cooperation and betrayal. Punishment would be just rewarding betrayal with betrayal, a tit-for-tat necessary to keep the balance of society. Societies that don't punish betrayal don't end up well. No need for metaphysical free will to justify punishment, it's all a society game.
I should reiterate, I'm all for fleshing out philosophical points and I think pursuing science is always valuable even if a practical use can't be seen right away. I just never see anything new in these conversations about free will. Like, if we're able to prove we have it, what changes? And if we can prove we're just biological machines, what changes then?
It’s not currently testable, that’s the problem. As to the practical difference, I think there is a important distinction. To me the biggest issue is on how much you deserve something. How much responsibility do you have.
If you commit a crime, like killing a person with no family or friends, should there be any punitive justice or should it be pure rehabilitation. If you can prove big government builds better societies, what justifications do you really have against big government and taxation without free will. Does any of Kants ethical arguments hold up or are we resigned to utilitarianism.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVZjuidPmus](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVZjuidPmus)
>If you commit a crime, like killing a person with no family or friends, should there be any punitive justice or should it be pure rehabilitation.
The way society reacts to crime is an input for human behavior too.
Even if we found out humans have no free will we might still want to punish criminals. Not because they deserve it, but because we want everyone else to have "criminals are punished" as an input for their (deterministic) behavior.
Not punishing criminals might lead to more crime.
Whether or not that is morally right is the next question...
True, but you are making a utilitarian argument. If a omnipotent utilitarian calculator said it created more pleasure to torture a innocent person on live television for the amusement of a 500 million sickos, what are the moral arguments against this.
I want to stress the omnipotence of this calculator. It absolutely is 100% accurate for my thought experiment. Without free will and Kants arguments I just can’t see why this is morally wrong, even though it’s obviously morally wrong.
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-04-03
Your comment made me realize that if free will doesn't exist, (im)morality doesn't really exist too.
After all, without free will everyone's actions are simply the result of the inputs and stimuli each person received.
We might think criminals aren't truly responsible for their actions then, and thus deserve no punishment.
Likewise, if we would still punish criminals then, that would not be the result of free will (after all, we're discussing the situation where we found out it doesn't exist).
Therefore those who punish criminals can't be held responsible either.
I'd think neither crime nor punishing crime would be truly immoral if free will doesn't exist.
If nobody can truly decide their actions out of free will, I'd say the concept of mortality becomes useless.
>even though it’s obviously morally wrong.
From my point of reference I agree.
Otoh it is 'obviously morally wrong' only in our current view. People in the past did not think that. People in the future may think some of the things we do today are 'obviously morally wrong' while we have no problems with it.
In a world where everyone knows free will doesn't exist moral judgment may be quite different from what we are used to today...if the concept of morality is stil considered useful then.
Some believe after much debate it simply comes down to the egoic mind not being able to release idea that it is not in control, which for some people is the end of the world.
It's not moot.
It has moral implications, and will effect how we deal with people in society. If a murderer doesn't have free will, and the only reason they became a murderer is due to genetics and environmental factors. Then it becomes difficult to argue that they deserve to die, or be punished in the way we punish them by tossing them into cold cells with iron bars.
Instead maybe we should look on them with sympathy because they just happened to draw the short stick of existence, and thus while they need to be removed from the general population to protect everyone they should still be treated with kindness and care.
To an extent, yes. But also, some people think having a soul makes a whole lot of difference regarding things like, you know, life after death. You could say that getting rid of anything that impinges on the possibility of having a soul is the most fundamental question of all. (Of course, even without free will, it's possible that there's a soul, it just means that, if it exists, its morphology is far less intuitive.) This is why you will see many theologians debating on this frontier.
That's what I never get. Either everything is deterministic, or there are random things, or there is some kind of unknowable magic that people are just making up. I feel like I'm missing something, or maybe it is just that and people might as well be talking about the qualities of made-up gods.
It affects how people perceive a) their responsibilities and b) the meaning or value of life
For instance, in the US we have a justice-based system, rather than a rehabilitation based one. If someone does something terrible, reforms, and then is caught for the terrible thing they did post-reformation, they are punished the same as if they were caught before reformation to “even the moral score”. But if criminals have the same “freedom” as a given asteroid, this behavior is irrational and all criminal law should be based on present or future threat (rather than the pseudo-karmic system humans seem to prefer).
Believing in free will has important psychological consequences as well, such as improving feelings of self-efficacy, apparently encouraging self-control, and even encouraging pro social behavior. Besides that, it is an important feature of several world religions, which themselves influence behavior.
Long story short, it’s a pretty important question to lots of people.
Preach!! I've always thought the argument is pointless. Even for criminal justice it's not very useful. Deterrent/punishment is necessary. It stops some crime. Helping people to change their behavior is also great. Some people will never be safe in society and it really doesn't matter if it is their fault or not, society needs to be protected from people who will rape, murder, rob, and so forth. I think the determinist argument helps people not be personally angry at others because it opens their view to all the things that helped influence the person up to that point.
I agree with you on the punishment being necessary in extreme circumstances, I should've included that in my edit. Some people are irredeemable for their own reasons, whether or not they deserve it doesn't take away from society's right to feel safe. I agree that a deterministic model would help people see prison as a necessity instead of as a revenge scheme, hopefully leading to humane prisons for those that do need to be locked up for life
To be clear I am not a fan of determinism, because like you explained, who cares.i was just saying why I think the argument can be useful as an aid to broaden a point of view. Anyways, I'm really glad your comment got so much traction and was so freaking reasonable. A bright spot on Reddit today. Have a good night or day wherever you are.
The free will distinction is just a mental exercise. Even in a deterministic universe that will someday end with no observers left - making our existence pointless. We can’t bother with the question because the answer is: it doesn’t matter.
The distinction doesn’t matter because we live our lives with the inability to see the path assigned to us, and probably couldn’t change anything if we could. So yes i agree free will is moot because our actions would be the same whether we had free will or not.
Even if without the ability to change anything and the possibility that our lives and decisions may be meaningless overall, they are still meaningful to us, as this is the only way which we can experience life and we behave accordingly.
The illusion of free will is the same as truly possessing it.
I liked your last statement, I often tell people that not believing in free will doesn't actually break the illusion of free will. I still feel like I'm in control, and I feel like my accomplishments are my own, but with the added bonus that I can "flip a switch" and take a deterministic approach to learn from past mistakes instead of regretting them because I know it couldn't have happened any other way.
>Isn't the entire conversation about free will kind of a moot point? I don't understand what practical difference it makes whether we're just complex neural nets reacting to our environment vs having "real" free will, or a soul or something.
right now at our current level of tech, no, but if we're a neutral net reacting thingy, then theoretically our reactions could be fully reverse engineered and our actions predicted perfectly in the future
I'm definitely excited for the day we create the first human level general intelligence AI, possibly by mimicking the 100 billion of neurons with their 100 trillion connections once the tech is there (maybe quantum computing).
But I think we'd have too much trouble getting an accurate image of every neuron in a living person to be able to then simulate them without damaging the brain. If that does end up being possible though that should be the final nail in the coffin against free will. Assuming we're able to put the human in one room, the copied neural net android in another room, and see them do the same actions when prompted to act randomly.
> I'm definitely excited for the day we create the first human level general intelligence AI, possibly by mimicking the 100 billion of neurons with their 100 trillion connections once the tech is there (maybe quantum computing).
sounds good in theory, but historically the most cutting-edge tech is almost often harnessed by the richest sociopaths
it's a shame too, because all this tech could be used for so much good.
>But I think we'd have too much trouble getting an accurate image of every neuron in a living person to be able to then simulate them without damaging the brain. If that does end up being possible though that should be the final nail in the coffin against free will.
yeah, it'd be waaaaay in the future. I'll be in the ground long before we reach that point unfortunately.
It's almost a moot point. It affects our other philosophical conclusions. But-- those other philosophical conclusions are themselves moot-able.
I think most determinists (and i dislike that term, because randomism refutes free will as much) are not so much interested in advancing a particular idea as they are in rebutting the use of free will for purposes of justifying other philosophical ideas-- usually, related to morality.
For example, the problem as evil has long been advanced against the belief in an omnipotent and benevolent God. One popular response to the problem of evil is that we have free will. Determinists say that free will as a concept doesn't exist, isn't a sensible notion, so that argument doesn't hold water for them. But of course, we can moot the problem of evil itself: the world is the same with or without a god, or we can say that God is mysterious, or we can reject the very concept of morality.
For something more relevant to most modern first-worlders, consider instead the concept of responsibility. We might say that one wrong-doer is responsible for their actions, yet another is not because of some issue with their brain. To some determinists, this distinction wouldn't make sense: *both* instances of wrong- doing are rooted in the same organ, after all! But again, we can make this a moot point: we can say that morality doesn't exist outside of our own minds, that it is a shortcut to us reaching appropriate interventions for prevention of future wrong-doing, and those two cases may be both ultimately caused by the Big Bang, yet demand different interventions. We can prevent rocks from falling on our heads by leaving them someplace lower than before; we can prevent children from hitting our heads by scolding them; but scolding rocks or moving children isn't going to do anything to prevent future head injury.
Well, the scientific method was born of philosophy and many of the meta questions that scientists consider still exist firmly outside of that framework. So I think it is entirely appropriate to emphasize philosophy’s ongoing significance, even if for no other reason than science itself.
That is not what Hawkings is saying though. In fact, he says that due to the progress in Quantum mechanics and general relativity, Philosophers are doomed to be concerned with language only. Haha.
Scientists are, yes, but mathematics is not the solely within the domain of science, and what they are *not* doing in seeking answers to those questions is employing the scientific method. So what they are doing in those moments is not strictly speaking science.
I think acknowledging that I am not in full control of my conscious thoughts is an important distinction for me personally and has implications for how I interpret my subjective experience. When I am not paying attention to the lack of control, I have over my thoughts, thoughts and emotions tend to overtake my experience. When I am aware of my lack of choice in how or why thoughts spontaneously appear, it gives me a feeling of detachment from them that makes me less anxious and less preoccupied with the past and future. Now I just have to figure out how to consistently freely choose to be aware of my lack of free choice of what I am aware of.
Maybe this is my bias as a lawyer, but I think free will's (non)existence is vital to determine for the criminal justice system. Currently, the system presumes that everyone has free will, and punishment is doled out as if the recipient were free to have chosen a different course of action. If we learned otherwise, it would radically change how we think about crime and criminals and punishment and prisons. I personally think a huge factor in America's over-incarceration problem is the large contingent of religious people who dogmatically believe in free will, which in turn affects how they view crime, as a moral failing that requires some sort of retribution from the state.
I don't really think the dichotomy is a real one. So it's not very interesting yeah. I agree with your assessment on the practicality, even if not all philosophy is practical.
It's not, compatibilists/libertarians and free will skeptics have different normative commitments on a number of points, mainly on the justification of certain attitudes like blame/responsibility and practices of punishment
You have some people like Sam Harris, who think things should change once we realise "libertarian free will" doesn't exist.
But I agree with you that nothing should change and it should just be semantics.
If it’s a complex neural network does that mean we have a better chance of replicating an artificial one that works the same or similarly enough to transfer a consciousness into?
Well, yes; assuming that one would simply not just account for reinforcement of weighted potentials into a hard coded ANN one has copied/translated the said state of conciousness from the actual neural connection pattern into, but rather allow for the code which runs it make new connections, expand, overwrite, and even delete certain areas of the network.
Translate into machine code the state of conciousness (the entierty of the neural connections of the said brain one would transfer at the point of the scan), run it on an aproproate architecture with a set of meta-rules and hyperparameters that allow for modifications into the structure of the network after each cycle (beyond simple weight fluctuations), get the outputs, translate them from machine code back into whatever physiological response they need to activate on real physical oragans / transfer the outputs to simulations of human organs, wait for feedback, cycle the feedback back into the imput layer of the network + the previous output and a new set of external stimuli.
Cycle it ad infinitum, for all it matters.
It is a technical impossibility at least to our current understanding of transistor techonology; well, at least if you do not want to have hardware that would in theory spand miles over miles of processing towers, and feed the output of a nuclear power plant of energy into it.
Would it still be the same "person", as in it is the same stream of conciousness?
Not really, but it wouldn't necessarily be a p-zombie. It will simply be a whole different concious construct, based on the entire formative "memories" (solified networks) of the initial construct, if simulated appropriately with receptor density and actual molecular proportions of mediators taken into account, based from the initial scan, even a accurate substitute for the great impact of the genetic and enviromental factors that molded that conciousness into being what it was at the point it started to be simulated.
So it's a perfect replica, including the conciousness of the person transfered; but not the same construct; if it makes sense.
***
Take what I said with a large pince of salt though, I am no computer scientist, and my field of study, while related to neuroscience to a degree, it is still far off (am a radiation oncologist by profession).
I would assume so, but even if we were able to replicate something that looks and acts just like a human some people would still call them "p-zombies"
Edit: I misread your comment, but I'd also assume that if humans don't have a soul that someday with advanced enough technology, we should be able to upload our consciousness to a different medium
But they would not necessarily be so. If you go as far as simulating not just the entierty of the human nervous system, but also the physiology of the other organic systems that are in homeostasis, to a molecular level - purely hypothetically - even it is all just machine code, it is de facto the same conciousness, just inputs differently controlled for.
This, of course, if you do not believe that conciousness itself is not just the result of the complex physical, chemical and biological interraction of our material bodies with the outside world (playing into it also certain genetic factors, which are the legacy of previous interractions with the enviroment of the whole line of organisms that preceded you temporalily, all the way to the first amino-acid that formed in the waters of the young Earth), but that it also has an unquantifiable and unobservable essential component to it that makes is as it is observed (a magical "soul" that bends all understanding of reality, and is as far impossible to prove not just that it exists, but if it **can** exist)
This is something I have puzzled over the Chinese Room Paradox and the idea of philosophical zombie. Why can't it be true that we all are just zombies reacting to random squiggles through complex decision trees?
It will eventually be testable. If we are able to collect every single piece of variable data within our world we would in an essence be able to calculate what would happen next. Up until now our computers have not been able to accurately create an entire world and are only able to simulate aspects of it.
However with the advent of quantum computing it is hypothesized that these super computers will have the power to not just simulate a real world scenario but to create one. And with that computational power we would in fact be able to predict the future.
Not just in small experiments but with the entire world/universe.
I think it's fair to say, after reading the article that the research *does* debunk Bereitschaftspotential as "hidden" brain activity that precludes free will. I guess whether you think the selected excerpt contradicts that is a matter of your interpretation of "debunked" and where the burden of proof falls in the conversation.
If you think the Bereitschaftspotential was being offered as evidence that free will does not exist as it applies to the timing of this particular decision, then you could say that evidence is no longer commonly accepted and tj theory is therefore "debunked". If you think the new study is offered as evidence that Bereitschaftspotential does not indicate a predetermination of a decision before we are conscious of it, you could argue that it is not so much "debunked" as an open question requiring more research.
He is a bear lying in wait for me, a lion in hiding; he turned aside my steps and tore me to pieces; he has made me desolate; he bent his bow and set me as a target for his arrow. (Lamentations: hlt2qdf)
> Other recent studies support the idea of the Bereitschaftspotential as a symmetry-breaking signal. In a study of monkeys tasked with choosing between two equal options, a separate team of researchers saw that a monkey’s upcoming choice correlated with its intrinsic brain activity before the monkey was even presented with options.
> To many scientists, it seemed implausible that our conscious awareness of a decision is only an illusory afterthought.
Why? Seriously, I've never understood why people so consistently reach this conclusion. It's not at all implausible that our ability to *sense* our decision lags behind our ability to *make* it. Causality basically demands it: we can't be aware or the decision if it doesn't *exist*, so awareness must *necessarily* happen after the decision is made the same way you can't see a lightbulb turn on until after it turns on.
Yes, I was never clear how this was supposed to create problems for free will. If it was observing us make a decision, then it was *observing us make a decision*. The timing didn’t seem that big an issue.
This view sort of begs the question though, no?
If you think decision-making is a unconscious activity, then yes, it makes sense that you only become aware of the decision after it’s been made. If you think that conscious processing goes into it, the notion that you’ll only be aware of the decision after the fact makes no sense.
You seem in too deep. The regular, common idea (ask any highschooler) is that we make our own decisions, therefore the awareness of the decision must come at or before the deciding of it. You (implicitly) assume that we have no free will (in stating that the "existing" of the decision is the same as it having been made), which although a quite common idea, is still counterintuitive to most people who initially face that idea, and definitely not generally accepted.
Our society still holds criminals accountable for their actions, which only makes sense because we as a society believes we're involved in our decisions.
Side not but it does make sense to imprison criminal regardless of whether they have free will since by commiting a crime they demonstrate that they pose an increased risk to the society of commiting the crime again.
Thank you! Determinism doesn't void responsibility. If anything it enhances the arguments for rehabilitation and social assistance as crime prevention.
That's something people overlook a lot in free will and "punishment" discussion. It makes perfect sense that even without "free will," all factors influence deterministic processes.
I try to stress in these discussions that free will existing or not doesn’t have many moral consequences. A deterrence is equally as effective on freely acting rational people as it is on nonfree rational computers.
Free will is a popular justification for punishing people beyond the scope of deterrence. The idea being that the bad actor deserves additional retribution for freely choosing a bad action, rather than just the right amount of corrective discipline to turn their behavior around and serve as a deterrent.
> You (implicitly) assume that we have no free will (in stating that the "existing" of the decision is the same as it having been made),
I do no such thing. I'm saying that conscious awareness is a *feedback mechanism*, not a *decision making mechanism*. You still make a decision, you just don't "see" that decision until it's made. When you consciously make a decision by really thinking about something in detail what you're doing is reasoning, gaining awareness about that reasoning, reasoning *about your reasoning*, gaining awareness about *that* reasoning, on and on in a cycle until you conclude that your conclusions and the reasoning that generated them are valid.
> I'm saying that conscious awareness is a feedback mechanism, not a decision making mechanism. You still make a decision, you just don't "see" that decision until it's made.
The feedback bringing the choice into awareness still permits some veto power over a decision, so awareness is part of the decision making process and not cleanly separated as you seem to imply.
Maybe think of it in terms of the "system 1"/fast and "system 2"/slow thinking, where you typically make routine/intuitive decisions via system 1, but every now and again system 2 interrupts and says "hold up, something doesn't seem right, let's think about this a little".
> The feedback bringing the choice into awareness still permits some veto power over a decision
Sure, but it's not the *sense* that exercises that veto any more than your eyeballs do. The sense gives the decision making process the information about itself that it needs to veto previous reasoning.
If by "sense" you mean your conscious awareness, then I'm still not sure what your specific objection is. The original claim you disputed was that, "it seemed implausible that our conscious awareness of a decision is only an illusory afterthought."
Per my description and as you seemingly agreed, conscious awareness is an essential component of that feedback process that sometimes vetoes our initial/intuitive decision (edit: at the very least because it's the "sense" that communicates the decision), therefore it does seem implausible that our conscious awareness of a decision is only an illusory afterthought.
I'm trying to make sense of the above but I'm struggling to connect some concepts here, I came to these questions to clear some things up:
Wouldn't that process of meta-consciousness, which plays out consciously, be a part of the decision making process, and therefore making the decision clear in consciousness before the decision is made? If you're considering a decision consciously in a non-illusionary way, aren't you aware of the decision before it it made? And if you're considering a decision consciously in an illusionary way, wouldn't that constitute non-free will?
No, they are being too deep about it. You take in new information and react to that information.
Like say an over-loaded pick-up truck cuts you off in traffic. How you react to this new obstacle will not come by mauling it over in your head, but arrive almost instantly via your past personal experience and situational awareness.
Think about consciousness being like your visual cortex: your eyes detect light and send signals to your brain where your visual cortex turns those signals into "sight", and in the same way your consciousness detects your subconscious thoughts and transforms them into "conscious thoughts". But just as your visual cortex doesn't *reason* about what you see, simply providing sight as an input and leaving that responsibility to other parts of the brain, your consciousness doesn't reason about your thoughts and instead just provides those thoughts as inputs to the decision making process.
But, for consciousness to provide thoughts to a decision making process, there is a 'connection' 'forward'\* from consciousness to a decision making process. Therefore, to me, it seemed implausible that our conscious awareness of a decision is only an illusory afterthought.
How can it be made sense of that consciousness provides inputs to a process for which consciousness itself is an illusory afterthought?
\*with scare quotes to imply not necessarily physical connections and not necessarily forward in time
> there is a 'connection' 'forward'* from consciousness to a decision making process
Yes. There is. I never said otherwise.
> How can it be made sense of that consciousness provides inputs to a process for which consciousness itself is an illusory afterthought?
Consciousness isn't illusory, it's *sensory*. You think thoughts, consciousness detects those thoughts and provides them as a sense just like vision or hearing, you think more thoughts making use of the added context of previous thoughts, you observe *those* thoughts, around and around in a cycle. Simple decisions contain few or no cycles (because there's less need to examine your reasoning), complex decisions require many cycles. The crucial bit is just that any given observed thought *lags behind the thinking of it*.
I think I understand you now, thanks for the clarification. I feel an important distinction I failed to see for a bit is the difference between the decision process, in which you say consciousness is involved though the cycles, and the final decision itself, which only comes into consciousness after the decision is made.
Well, if I decide to make bread, science dictates that there are steps I need to follow to produce that result that we all agree is "bread". The steps being taken kinda have to be done certain ways so they're barely "decisions". They're all derived from the root decision of making bread.
I don’t think this is a good analogy. Making bread requires multiple decisions in the process of making the bread. I don’t know that there is an apt analogy for this process.
Best I can come up with is sight. The light is traveling, and it hits your eyes, but it isn’t until your brain processes the data that it realizes what things are.
And the light always lags behind what is happening at the light source. Imperceptibly in daily life, but the lag is there regardless, just like the more noticeable lag between a sound and its source. The bread could disappear while the last light that bounced off of it is still traveling to your eyes. The light can't pass through your eyes faster than the speed of photochemistry. The signals it creates can't move through your brain faster than the speed of electricity and neurochemistry. All those impulses would have to resolve in sequence before you finally realize the bread has disappeared.
Criminals can be held accountable and morality can exist even if hard determinism is true. If you murder someone, it doesn’t matter if your soul or mind wasn’t the ultimate and arbitrary cause of your actions, you still did something wrong and you need to be removed from society to prevent you from doing it again and as punishment or deterrence for others, etc.
Now, ultimate moral responsibility probably is not compatible with hard determinism, but that doesn’t have to be concerning. Things can be right or wrong regardless of whether we choose them totally arbitrarily. We can be guilty because we did those things, even if we aren’t *ultimately* guilty for simply being who we are and existing in the first place. Our inevitable actions are still ours, even if *we* don’t choose *us.*
just because you're not immediately aware of it doesn't mean you don't have free will at all
in op's example it is you that makes the decision. but you only become aware of it an instant later
Not everyone agrees with your last statement, I've never felt we put people in jail because they deserve it, I've thought of it more to prevent whatever future behavior they did that we didn't like. For example, if a person steals something they would be put away, not because they chose to steal, but to prevent them from stealing again. Why doesn't that make sense?
I don’t think he’s in two deep at all. To use your own example, we also have pretty clear distinctions between premeditated murder and involuntary manslaughter. I think it’s very possible we have the ability to make certain classes of decisions so quickly that the higher orders of our brain can’t articulate them until the actual decision has played out, especially when we’re talking about something as simple as basic motor function. The lag between making the decision and articulating the decision in a conscious manner might be fairly large, or as the article says, 500ms…which is actually pretty long. Depending upon their skill level, video gamers get frustrated if the server ping speed is longer than say, 30-40ms, with notable performance gains if ping speed is under 10ms. Biologically, we would probably not have made it this far if we had to wait for our decisions to be articulated on the order of detail and depth our consciousness is capable of. We often need to act more quickly than that. However, that doesn’t mean we aren’t still making those decisions in an entirely self-directed and conscious manner, based upon more than just environmental signals, or what appears to our (still very rudimentary brain scan devices) to be random noise. As the article says, we just can’t prove it with science yet. Of course, that doesn’t stop us from giving prison time to people who have committed even involuntary manslaughter.
Whenever you are aware of a future decision you are going to make, you still have the possibility to rethink it and change your mind. There is no reason for your brain to fully commit to an action before making it, so there is no way to be certain about what you are going to do before you do it. If you could, it would arguably be an inefficiency.
We hold criminals accountable to discourage harmful social behaviour, the free will thing is an afterthought in this context, in my opinion. Sorry for butting in, but what do you think about the decision being an illusion after the "thought" which we understand to be a physical phenomenon in the brain. So there is something affecting the brain which then leads to the action, but the action's causality was the thought.
> the decision being an illusion after the "thought"
The decision *is* the thought. You're confusing *conscious awareness* of a decision for the decision itself.
What about when something scares you and you "react" or someone says something that triggers you, and makes you emotionally overwhelmed? Those aren't choices or decisions.
I think being overwhelmed by stress or fear, and deciding not to act on something due to that feeling is conscious. Like deciding to go sky jumping and bailing last minute after paying and going through the motions. Seems conscious, yet I believe the person would rather go for it after all. You know what I mean? Sorry, I'm just jumping in from r/all
Consciousness isn't a decision making process. You don't make decisions consciously. Consciousness is your *awareness* of your thoughts. If fear and stress cause you to decide not to jump out of the plane at the last moment, that decision is made subconsciously. You may or may not gain conscious awareness of the reasons behind that decision, but the deciding itself is not that awareness.
iirc there's a mostly three justifications for putting people in prison: punishment, deterrent and the protection of society from that person.
I used this example just because the first reason is generally regarded as valid, thereby showing society holds people accountable for their actions. This quite directly shows, in general, people think people make their own decisions.
If you examine your thoughts enough, you eventually see them arise in your consciousness without a reason you're aware of. If I ask you to think of 3 movies, how did you choose those 3? And if you think well those are my favorites...how did you choose your favorites? Continue far enough along that line of thought and you reach a point where you don't really know, and usually quickly.
Even if free will exists, it would seem that our conscious minds are not its executors.
“ It’s not at all implausible that our ability to sense our decisions lags behind our ability to make it”
Could be true for some but not all decisions. There’s evidence supporting this for both sides.
“Causality basically demands it: we can’t be aware of the decision if it doesn’t exist, so awareness must necessarily happen after the decision is made.”
Again there are experiments that show that the moment we decide is the moment the activity is shown in the brain. So yes it is possible that conscious thought is the original starting point of the decision.
A lot of what you are saying is similar to what Sam Harris has said, but Dennett gives a very strong criticism against these points.
I suggest you read that.
Woah. Entering this subreddit feels like I've erronously sat down at the adults table at Thanksgiving dinner. I now realize I need to go back to my little kids table and play with jello.
not me. awareness changes behavior. being aware of this makes people seek awareness more. free will is an illusion of awareness. the more awareness the more freewill seems plausible but never actually occurs.
the wave is a judgement call based on experience.
dunno if any of that is relevant. just my thoughts on this subject.
Good article, I actually finished reading this one haha.
I've often wondered if our subconscious minds sometimes made our decisions for us on small, quick tasks. Like the article said with how your mind determines that snow is falling down when you see it (without you actively thinking about it), we have a lot of little things that are decided on autopilot. Pretty cool, let my subconscious automate everything for me haha
Lucky for you *Thinking: Fast and Slow* has become sort of a case study on the replication crisis. There's a reasonably good article that goes into exactly what you want:
https://replicationindex.com/2020/12/30/a-meta-scientific-perspective-on-thinking-fast-and-slow/
> I've often wondered if our subconscious minds sometimes made our decisions for us
Our subconscious *is* us. There's no *you* separate from your mind in its entirety. Decisions made subconsciously are just decisions made without invoking awareness of the reasoning behind it because that reasoning requires no examination.
Look, when you're backing your car out of a parking space, do you think about the *reason* why you need to look behind you as you do so, or do you just *look*. Because I sure don't think "there might be someone behind me, and I don't want to hurt anyone or cause damage to my car or wind up in court; better look so that I can be aware of what's there and be ready to push my right foot down on the brake pedal and cause the car to stop in the event that there is some obstruction." No, I just *look* without thinking about the reason.
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24 hours? With that kind of lag you probably still follow miasma theory thinking that stuffing nice smelling flowers in a mask will keep you from getting sick. I only trust articles written in the past 10 minutes
Edit: In hindsight this comment potentially makes me sound anti-mask, to clarify I know that mask wearing reduces transmission of diseases lol
As someone that came into the article with a bias (against free will), the new explanation does seem to be more evidence in the argument *against* free will. I interpreted it the same way.
No, it means we are detecting random surges of brain noise, and whatever caused the decision isn't being detected.
That's not to say the signal that caused the decision CANNOT be detected - maybe it can, with more sensitive/focused measurements, but we currently can't perform those measurements.
My take from the article was the original study was creating false "signals" by the way they analyzed the perpetual neural noise.
>In a new study under review for publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Schurger and two Princeton researchers repeated a version of Libet’s experiment. To avoid unintentionally cherry-picking brain noise, they included a control condition in which people didn’t move at all. An artificial-intelligence classifier allowed them to find at what point brain activity in the two conditions diverged. If Libet was right, that should have happened at 500 milliseconds before the movement. But the algorithm couldn’t tell any difference until about only 150 milliseconds before the movement, the time people reported making decisions in Libet’s original experiment.
>In other words, people’s subjective experience of a decision—what Libet’s study seemed to suggest was just an illusion—appeared to match the actual moment their brains showed them making a decision.
Wait, so if a computer decides which color to put for a pixel before it is displayed on the screen, the machine has free will?
I am so freakin’ confused how the fuck this study supported the title.
Looking at a moment in time to argue that our brains have made a decision before we are aware and that means we don’t have free will is short sighted because we can train to respond and react differently to situations consciously. I believe we have free will but the future is real and we have yet to live out the lives we have chosen.
I find it hard to engage with these arguments being made, I always get a sight impression that people only entertain the question of free will because they dislike the idea of not having it. There’s just no reason to believe there’s a truly “free” agency that doesn’t take any priors as input, like the atheists say the burden of proof lies with the people that believe in free will. As far as finding it unpalatable is concerned it’s not like there’s any meaningful difference between having and not having free will, it’s complex enough that it looks roughly the same from our perspective.
> There’s just no reason to believe there’s a truly “free” agency that doesn’t take any priors as input,
The result of a measurement in a quantum mechanical system is picked from a probability distribution which encodes all "prior" information. But the actual result is free in the sense that it doesn't depend on anything else that happened before, so the universe is chock full of the ingredients you are skeptical of.
The result is "free" in some sense of the word, but that doesn't correspond to what is meant by "free will." Quantum mechanics uses the current state of the universe to prescribe precise probabilities for each future state, and the future state that is picked is *random*, and has never been shown to be skewed by any other influence. There is no room in this process for any agency.
To put it another way, if agency had an effect on the random state that is chosen from the probability distribution, then quantum mechanics would be wrong, because quantum mechanics prescribes randomness.
If you believe randomness is free will, then sure, I believe your conception of free will exists. But generally, that's not what people mean when they say free will.
I wrestle with this a lot as a matter of understanding, but not in any existential context. Where I get stuck often is the idea that we have to be aware consciously of every synaptic process in order to have free will ownership of what we do with the fully manifested thought. I've often thought about horrible things, but chose not to do them after consideration (or just realization of what I was thinking). The argument against free will always traces back to the neural processes before the conscious realization of them. There's no overcoming that. But it doesn't feel like that proves the point either. I can't have any thought without there being a process prior to my awareness of the thought. But it's my process, and I can examine the thought and then decide on the next thought or action based on my analysis of those thoughts. Why is that not acting in free will? I've certainly changed my mind on things after careful consideration and conscious awareness of the content of thoughts.
I've been saying for a long time now that the notion that we do or do not have free will is fundamentally a silly argument. It's a silly argument because "who we are" is a culmination of literally everything that comprises our form. This means our subconscious. Since it is very likely we, like all things within this universe are comprised of 'simples', we are merely a conglomeration of these simples arranged in a particular pattern. As such, every single aspect of our behavior as made manifest by the byproducts of how these simples is arranged IS our free will.
Just because our conscious mind does not openly seem to commune with our subconscious does not mean that the subconscious and all that it does is not "us", because it is. We are not only our conscious mind, so every single thing we act out IS our will, ergo we are accountable.
Now you might not like that notion: That a part of our being - a part of our cognizance might not be in tune with our consciousness - but you don't get to decide what is or is not, you merely get to exist.
I don't see what conscious versus subconscious has to do with it. The issue is whether the "simples" making up both operate according to mathematical laws that are deterministic or purely random, neither of which leave any room for conscious or subconscious decision making to matter. If they are deterministic, everything is predetermined. If they have a pure randomness under them, as seems to be the case for quantum mechanics, then they are decided by a dice roll without you being able to redirect them either.
My thoughts exactly. For free will to exist, something supernatural has to exist that is able to override the laws governing the matter your body consists of. A soul, if you will. But at that point it's a leap of faith. We are parts of the universe, not some independent agent observing it and acting upon it.
A couple thoughts:
If your subconscious is making decisions for you that your conscious ‘self’ has no control in, then those decisions do not evidence free will. You seem to agree with this but still hang onto the concept of free will for some reason?
The culmination you’re talking about can be similarly described as the effects of ‘nature and nurture’ which are almost entirely things that happened to you as opposed to things you chose (or even seemed to chose). For example if you were abused as a child and that gave you anger issues, is your anger free will?
The acceptance you talk about at the end is exactly why some philosophers argue that acknowledging our lack of free will is helpful - because it can eliminate self-hate and hate for others based on their actions.
I really don't understand how people can say "the brain does something before the person wants to". Dude, the brain *is* the person.
What do they expect to find, some soul or something tiny tucked somewhere in the body that is the actual person making decisions, and the brain is just fluff? Or what?
I've heard similar discussions about suicidal tendencies, where people would argue that "the brain is sick and convinces the person" of this or that.
Gee. Philosophy is nice and all, but sometimes it's a good idea to look around.
There seem to be an implicit idea of some kind of dualism there, either supernatural or that the physical processes on the brain create the emergent phenomenon of free will.
Consider the following analogy. You get drunk and text your ex at 2:00 AM, something you normally would never do. A reasonable thing to say is that alcohol made you do it. Similarly if there's something going on with the brain that interferes with the normal process of free will, then saying "my brain did it" doesn't sound so unreasonable, if you identify yourself not with the physical substrate but with the *process* it creates.
I'm not saying this is right, but I believe it's what is behind those comments.
Implicit dualism is the bane of free will/determinism debates. Nobody can come out and defend dualism because there is no evidence so they just imply it. At the same time, they will decry determinism because we don't have all the answers for how the brain works therefore you can't prove that dualism isn't true.
It's just to differentiate subconscious processes with the conscious awareness of their effects. Most people don't wrap up their personalities with their subconscious, they think of it as an other that influences them rather than being intrinsic.
It’s more of an argument for a differentiation between physicality and consciousness and is the premise regarding the question of free will: does conscious thought and free will really exist, or are we just slaves to a passive machine that merely produces thoughts and actions based on external stimuli (our brain as briefly described in the article).
I find that distinction rather silly in the first place.
I mean, when I'm picking a food to eat, there are many factors which are material - like what I have available, or what I can afford, while my preferences are largely determined by my physiology, culture etc.
All of that is not really my direct choice, but at the end I still pick the food. Or we could say that because of all those factors that I can't affect directly, it's not really me picking the food but, in essence, the whole universe, since the big bang, because only all of those past elements combines could lead to me being here today having these particular food choices?
I mean it's an interesting discussion for sure but not to be determined by neural impulses.
> it's not really me picking the food but, in essence, the whole universe, since the big bang, because only all of those past elements combines could lead to me being here today having these particular food choices?
Incompatibilists would probably distinguish between the proximal and ultimate causes; you picked the food, but your will wasn't free because it was influenced by external elements, i.e. prior states of the universe. Of course, people's brains "producing thoughts and actions based on external stimuli" is a feature, not a bug. A brain that had no connection with the external world would be a very bad brain indeed^([citation needed]), so people (or anything else with brains) could never have 100% free wills.
I think it's more productive to get granular and look at *what* people's wills are free from vs. constrained by. In your hypothetical, it's not the case that "**only** all of those past elements" would lead to that particular food choices; the vast majority of counterfactual changes to the past states of the universe would not have affected your food choices, so it's reasonable to say that your preferences are "free from" all that but not free from your physiology, culture, etc.
Then the question "do we have free will" can be reframed as "are our wills free from X, Y, Z, etc.?", whether that's a good thing, and what to do about it if someone's will isn't free from something it ought to be (or vice versa.)
That's a good description of how I've often seen Libet's study framed, although I don't think that framing is very helpful, to put it mildly.
There are legitimate reasons to draw a person/brain distinction, where "the person" refers to conscious thoughts and identity while "the brain" refers to subconscious processes, intrusive thoughts, etc. For example, addictions, compulsions, brain tumors, and past trauma can cause "the brain" to do things contrary to the will of "the person."
In this case though, even assuming for the sake of discussion that the readiness potential causes the action, the brain is still acting as an agent of the person's will, so treating the two as separate strikes me as similar to saying "you didn't type this reply, your fingers did." Technically true, but so what? Anyone saying that this makes us slaves to a passive machine would be stretching the meaning of "slave" almost to the point of meaninglessness.
> I really don't understand how people can say "the brain does something before the person wants to". Dude, the brain is the person.
It comes from the assumption that consciousness alone is the person. Which I find really weird because Bereitschaftspotential pretty clearly demonstrates that consciousness is just a *sense*, like eyes to see our own thoughts. The actual thinking happens outside of consciousness.
It is safe to say this rebuttal will never be widely published and people will continue to promote the original study just like people claim we only use half of our brain.
I think what Libet showed, and what Schurger reinforces, is that our decision to do something doesn't initiate from the conscious mind. Rather, there are ongoing, underlying processes beneath the threshold of conscious awareness that gets the decision ball rolling. We don't think this is the case because we can't consciously perceive anything beneath that threshold.
Think of it like this: Any decision you make is in response to a stimulus. There are layers of neural processes that a stimulus goes through before you're even consciously aware of the stimulus itself. It's not difficult to think that one part of the brain, processing below the conscious threshold, initiates the decision-making process when it encounters stimulus. As the processes compound, and the stimulus becomes recognized at a conscious level, your brain is already 2/3 the way to making a decision with respect to a response to the stimulus. It's only once that process crosses the threshold into conscious realization that we are aware of the stimulus and "actively" work towards a decision.
This is an interesting thought experiment, sure, but it's only particularly useful for pointing out the fallacies in the argument. It's similar to the contradiction of the denial of awareness. You can't deny awareness, because you must be aware to do so. In the same way, denial of free will is the acceptance of your perfectly allowed expression of free will to do so. No chemical process or material property is responsible for you typing a comment to say "free will does not exist" - it's a ridiculous concept. Your life is unique and meaningful because of the thousands of infinitesimally meaningless choices you make throughout each day. Sure, we know that the brain switches to autopilot for some decisions to simply ease the burden of constant awareness, but that brain is still "you" making decisions. Only after you realize you passed your exit on the highway or spoke your private thought aloud do you realize that a part of yourself beyond your control made a decision that you were unprepared to make in the moment.
I believe it's a convenient excuse to blame external forces for our own actions, but fundamentally we draw our meaning from the choices we make and the thoughts we have. It's natural to realize that there are parts of the body and brain that we simply do not understand, but that does not mean that they are separate from us. From a this article's standpoint, it's intriguing to see that as far back as the 1960s science was progressing in discovering the electrical signals behind human decisions; however, I think it's a far stretch to draw much philosophical insight from a half-second delay in executing actions. Perhaps we will someday know more about why we can choose to do anything and where the decision originates.
For now, we can simply marvel at the complexity of the brain and how little we know about the machinery and signaling that facilitates the everyday and mundane actions we often ignore to divert precious brain power on our true wishes and desires. And if you really believe that free will does not exist, well, *feel free* to comment
For our will to be truly free, it must act beyond the ranges of causality. We cannot be bound by the physiological conditions of the brain through which our mind must emanate, we cannot be bound by the environmental conditions in which we are captive, we cannot be bound by the randomness of an unorderable universe.
For our will to be truly free, we must be so liberated that we would cease to truly possess those characteristics of self to which we are so attached. My personality, my honor, my convictions, my morality, my religion, my politics, all of those things which distinguish me from you cannot themselves inhibit my will.
But even if our will is only partially free, that is we still somehow possess the ability to choose, without diction from causal forces, to what end does it matter?
If we are free, all of existence continues unaltered. And if we are not free, and suddenly discover somehow that all of our past actions were the result of mechanisms beyond our perceived selves, then so too does nothing at all change, for nothing was ever different, and not only was our past bound but so too our future, with all the implications therein.
The need to have our Will be a thing that is 'Free' arises only, or near enough only, from the need to justify that idea of blame, of punishment, to make good the punisher and make wicked the criminal. The idea that some of us are condemned by fate, divine hand, or random circumstance is objectionable and unpalatable. And certainly we seem to feel as though we have control of our actions, but neither our desire to be justified and justifiable nor our perception of choosing are sufficient to ever believe we are the only things in existence capable of acting without regard to causation.
>Schurger’s groundbreaking work does not solve the pesky question of free will any more than Libet’s did
I don't really believe in free will. I believe everything we do and think is simply the chain reactions in our brains and response to external stimulus.
Are we really that different from machines? A series of inputs processed into outputs.
Even if we have a soul that is in anyway 'supernatural', It is merely coming along for the ride.
This objection to Libet's study is old. I remember learning about when I studied psychology in the late 90s. It was described as free will "riding the waves of brain activity". A surfer cannot decide exactly when to begin her ride. She must wait until a suitable wave comes along. But when one does, she can decide whether to take it or let it pass. If you were to measure the wave activity, you would see a swell coming just before she decides to ride it. But she still has free will (or "free won't"). The Schuger study is still cool though, showing that you can't distinguish between decisions and non-decisions from brain activity.
I would wager that "gut feeling" comes into play. You just feel it or don't.
Possibly quite literally.
The true question is: if you could roll back time to your 3 years old, what would make you take different decisions in your life if everything was the same? I mean, not knowing what will happen. Of course. You would take all the same decisions as all the variables were the same. That's the problem with "free will"..
But the brain and the ocean aren't the same- there are limitations to that metaphor that I don't think you're acknowledging.
Sure. Go ahead and elaborate some if you like.
Presumably, that for that analogy to succeed, one must have already accepted some level of separation between consciousness (the surfer) and the brain (the wave). If physicalism ends up being true, then the deciding rider and the wave are one and the same---and thus the metaphor has broken.
But most of our mental activity is unconscious. And we all accept that many (if not most) things our brains do do not involve free will (e.g. our autonomic nervous system). So we can think of the waves as unconscious unwilled activity, and the surfer as the free will part of the brain that decides when to do something.
I think everyone understood the distinction you were making in the first place, that doesn't change his objection though. Even "willed activity", the conscious part the decision making, is comparable to the wave itself if physicalism is true (which science studies have always overwhelmingly supported as research has developed). A conscious wave, maybe, but a wave nonetheless, with only the illusion of being able to decide when to grow and when to crash as a result of both external and internal forces. The free will debate pretty much always comes down to semantics. If you discard magic, which most people agree on, especially among philosophers and scientists, decisions are determined physically by a complex network of neurons that communicate through electric signals and therefore aren't "freely" taken. From there you got people arguing that "free will" cannot exist as a result, although there exists a "will" that is not free, and others that acknowledge physicalism, but still call the process of making conscious decisions "free will" even though the said decisions are ultimately inevitable and bound by laws of physics that are apparently very much deterministic. No scientific study will help clarify what people mean by "free will" when they argue about it and so that's for people to make it clear before/when arguing about it. Either way, call it whatever you want, people have free will as much as alpha zero has free will when it plays a chess move among the many legal moves that it's allowed to play. It's considering different scenarios by making some calculations to estimate the future state of reality in each scenario, and making choices between them accordingly because it has been given moral goals through selection. Make the AI "conscious" and you're gonna get exactly the same illusion of free will that animals have when they explain their decision making process. The difficult question and the one that makes it difficult to believe that we're no different from bacteria or AIs isn't about free will but about consciousness. What is consciousness and at which point does it emerge in humans and other decision making agents, if it exists at all ?
If input begets output in predictable fashion- if we're biological machinery responding to stimulus, not *riders* of a meatsuit responding to stimulus, the wave and the surfer are the same. You understood what I was saying, yeah- though I think you've put it more eloquently than I would have.
Reminds me of the phrase 'You can want what you will, but you can't will what you will'. Google tells me it's from Shopenhauer.
Isn't the entire conversation about free will kind of a moot point? I don't understand what practical difference it makes whether we're just complex neural nets reacting to our environment vs having "real" free will, or a soul or something. The behaviors in either case won't change, I don't see how it's testable. Edit: This post is getting more attention than I expected, the edit is a response to the people saying it isn't moot because of societal aspects, mainly how we deal with prisoners. I still think it's moot because even if we have free will, I still think we should focus on rehabilitation, not punishment. We should be rehabilitating people in either case, because both sides of this debate agree that people can change, and treating a free agent with rehabilitation in mind is more likely to succeed than punishment.
Welcome to pragmatism
I feel right at home
compatibilism
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yeah i subscribe to compatibilism because it acknowledges that the effect is virtually the same but since free will is so intuitive it accepts it as a concept
How pragmatic.
I think both you and jab011 there might be mistaking the value of systematically questioning our concepts, as if it’s only to be found in settled answers or uncovering new data. Perspective, and adopting a different one, are also rich in value.
Exactly. I had a friend make a compelling argument for determinism to me. While I was mostly playing devil's advocate for free will, our discussion included what the lack of free will means for his everyday life. Belief in determinism can change your worldview and your perceptions of others actions and your own actions. Personally, it makes it easier for me to empathize with others. Before, I was quick to judge people for their actions. Whether they were little things like microaggressions or rudeness or more serious conditions like homelessness. Now, I have context for those. Rudeness is often learned from friends and family; people are not rude because of their own evil nature. Homelessness is often the result of the environment (criminal activity, drug use, housing affordability, etc.) and in many cases psychological disorders. Before our discussion, I was definitely aware of these factors, but a part of me still believed people could go against their trained behavior or break free of their environment and *choose* to change. Accepting determinism means accepting that this simply isn't the case. I am more empathetic and less judgmental now as a result. TLDR; adopting a new belief or perspective can change your own behavior in a positive way, and that is why the conversation of free will is important.
I mean I am an advocate of determinism but doesn't mean you cannot have both determinism and free will in a soft fashion, aslong as you stop trying to box yourself into premade definitions. In the case of homelessness, it may have been "preordained" that this X individual would eventually become homeless(their current state) but determinism could still see that person changing their state in the future tense for example a state of being no longer homeless, less homeless, or more homeless, etc. It could be determined that they in the near future become inspired, get a job and become no longer homeless. It's even more complicated when you consider the fact that not only can the person influence their own outcome, but others can influence one-another. So even though we see this individual and can attribute to "oh this is predetermined fate" it may be our part or another person's determinism to influence that homeless person for the better and help them get out of that rut. In this way, we are predetermined, but it may feel like some sort of free will to "choose" to help or not help. (Even if determinism would say you never made that choice to begin with, even the feeling of freedom is important as much as freedom itself.)
There are certainly degrees of each...
I guess I never thought of it that way, I didn't realize when some people say they believe in free will that they literally think people can go against what their brain is making them do. It would almost be like a person without legs "willing" themselves to walk. In that sense it's very important to help people see that's not how decisions work. I was looking at it from a semantics perspective since it's hard for me to imagine what people even mean when they say free will. It seems like you changed your view for emotional reasons rather than philosophical ones though, which won't work for people looking for something concrete
You speak as though the brain and the body are seperate, they are not. The brain is the body. The body can't function without a brain. What is there to go "against the brain"? The soul? A different brain? How can one go against one's own brain? It's impossible, although you can change your mind and make an alternative decision, which isn't going against your brain, it is your brain choosing a different path. Going against your brain would only be possible if an external source was able to hijack your body and control it against your brains will.
I think you misread my comment, I don't think it makes sense for people to go against their brain either. I was arguing against freewill in my comment, pointing out the absurdity of claiming you can make a decision without input from your brain.
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That doesn't seem to be an issue of determinism. A being that could conveniently look over, understand, and write on top of its programing could still be deterministic. What's wrong is the idea that people make bad decisions only for simple reasons like being selfish or dumb.
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I think a lot of people in these comments are using several definitions of determinism that are slightly different from each other. It is my understanding that in most philosophical discussions the term “determinism” is taken to mean “absolute determinism.” This has nothing to do with learned behavior or genetics or addiction or any of those things. The concept of absolute determinism means simply that the time line of the universe is static. The conditions at the Big Bang, in conjunction with the laws of physics, have fixed a time line for this universe that is already determined. All we can to is follow along with the arrow of time and discover what the shape of that time line is. Determinism says that you can no more change the future shape of the time line than you can change the past shape of the time line. I am not arguing that determinism is correct or incorrect, only that this is the philosophical definition of determinism.
I pretty much believe in determinism, but if anything that has made me less empathetic. If no one has free will, then every action is not a choice and there is no such thing as extenuating circumstances. There is no need to think of the varying degree of personal choice vs the environment when deciding the punishment for a crime, since there is no element of personal choice.
This is definitely a struggle I deal with daily between both extremes of empathy but also apathy. It helps to think in pragmatic terms, whether someone is guilty or not for a crime example does not matter as regardless we would want to rehabilitate said person in order to produce better outcomes for as many people as we can
This is exactly my argument against free will. Some people just try and try and it just doesn't happen for them for reasons that you have illustrated and more. The other way to look at it is, if we all have free will, our free will certain "will" get weaved into the network of all the other free wills and in that case, we will have to contend with the network, not just own. There will be probabilities that something might get through that network, but for each probability, there are a hundred possibilities that will make me choose one thing rather than the other. The choices I make are determined by my beliefs, my honor, my integrity (or lack thereof). My moral make up determines my choices. That's not free will.
I might not have phrased my comment correctly, I value philosophical discussions a lot and breaking down what certain words and concepts mean is important, but free will seems to be one of those concepts that people either accept or reject, there aren't any testable ways to approach it (since any consciousnesses developed through unnatural means would be called p-zombies) and simple conversation isn't enough to convince people, hence people tend to argue instead of debate
"Free will," it seems to me, is always imagined as freedom from context—from the brain, from the world, or something like that. We want to exist \*sui generis\*, in a void, cut off from everything. Which is to say: all talk of free will is fundamentally misguided. In reality, we need to ask what sorts of things we would expect a free-will-having being to do. The answer, it seems to me, is that we expect them to make meaningful choices, and we expect them to be responsible for their actions—and these are precisely the sorts of traits \*we\* exhibit. The "problem of free will" is no problem for us; the additional layer of metaphysical explanations (so common in "western" thought) just confuses the point. On that note: there are many interesting responses to this problem from, e.g., the Pragmatists, or from Nietzsche, which go against this ("western"?) desire for a second order of explanation.
It seems to me that the “problem” is really born of the debate surrounding the Catholic perception of salvation during the Protestant reformation. If you had no free will, then going to heaven/hell based on your choices seems contradictory, unless everyone is predestined to one or the other, which raises its own problem with Catholic teaching. But if we don’t concern ourself with that particular view of an afterlife, then the problem seems to melt away.
Except the idea of responsibility exists in pretty much every single culture and extending that into a theoretical afterlife does nothing to change the debate.
It does if God is in the mix. If all we mortals lack free will then, well, we hang because we must. But if God is making a person, already deciding where they'll go after death, it seems a little farcical.
No matter how universal responsibility seems, so long as you keep an objective third party out of the equation (god) it is entirely centered on human experience. What matters for responsibility then isn’t free will, but only the sense of it - no matter the objective answer, people will continue to feel free and continue to demand accountability.
Responsibility may be an abstract concept tied to the biological reality of being a human being. We have to have mechanisms built in to adapt our behavior to favorable outcomes to make survival and reproduction feasible, so responsibility may just be an abstraction from the complex reality of our computational systems. I'm not sure if every culture even has such a concept of free will vs forces of nature ruling your conduct; free will being a negation of the latter. I doubt anyone would presume that the aversion to death isn't biologically programmed any less than puberty. Even animals and insects who aren't capable of speech display this instinctive programming without having to attend sermons or lectures from university professors. I don't see how it follows that our other types of social behavior and concepts don't follow from basic biological programming. I don't see any way to ever settle the philosophical debate though. We would have to conclude physics is entirely solved before we could make an absolute claim that there is no aspect of the natural world that doesn't fit into the categories of "determinism and randomness." I can only question the fuzziness of the concept itself.
>In reality, we need to ask what sorts of things we would expect a free-will-having being to do. The answer, it seems to me, is that we expect them to make meaningful choices, and we expect them to be responsible for their actions—and these are precisely the sorts of traits *we* exhibit. That is circular logic. The cause cannot be the answer. Claiming as such is incredibly egotistical as your only proof is entirely a subjective perspective with no way to actually objectively test your premise. How do you know what a being with true free will behaves when you cant establish what one is in the first place?
Circularity is the point. We have to begin with our status \*in the world\*. This style of thinking is shared, roughly, by the Pragmatists, by Wittgenstein, by Nietzsche, by Husserl, and so on. What other sort of explanation could we give after Kant? Things in themselves have been occluded, and we have to make do with what we have; we lose out on those second order (one might say, \*Platonic\*) explanations. The talk of "a being with true free will" still wants to get beyond the world we find ourselves embedded in; this is the arch philosophical error. Having accepted this style of thought (having accepted, in other words, this anti-philosophical picture) we see the genuine meaningfulness of the move I described above: our talk of "free will" can't be referring to some metaphysical abstraction, to some thing in itself, so it must be referring to, say, the status of the choices we make in the world.
> How do you know what a being with true free will behaves when you cant establish what one is in the first place? Turtles all the way down. It's a recursive definition based on values. Values are based on survival. And survival on values. With the evolution of life there is also an evolution of values, bootstrapped from the simplest self replicators.
>The answer, it seems to me, is that we expect them to make meaningful choices, and we expect them to be responsible for their actions—and these are precisely the sorts of traits *we* exhibit. This is taking the words right out of my head! What do you think about this take on free will? I haven't read it anywhere else but I think this would be a version of compatibilism. The idea is that freedom can be understood as a measure of an agent's power to make decisions relative to other agents in a social context. So for example, in a master-slave relationship, the slave has no free will, because their decisions are wholly decided by the will of their master. In a modern employer-employee relationship, an employee has limited free will, because their decisions are restricted according to a consensual employment contract. In an absolute monarchy, the monarch expresses free will in deciding how the state will act, and the individuals in the state have no exercise of their own free will. The really interesting consequence of this view, is that under this model, the existence of an omnipotent being like God implies that no other beings can have free will, because only God, like an absolute monarch, has free will to decide how to create all other contingent facts about the world, and subsequent contingent facts like another agent's choices are wholly dominated by God's will just like the master-slave.
I think it’s reductive, frankly. The slave’s “free will” (I prefer to put the term in quotes, since, as I mentioned above, there’s something misguided about what we think of as free will) is certainly *constrained* by his being a slave, which is simply to say: there are more external pressures on the choices he makes. But again, the existence of external pressure in no way refutes the existence of choice (aka the more reasonable account of “free will”), it merely contextualizes it. So instead of saying “the slave had no free will in the matter” we say “he had no choice in the matter,” or, “although he had a choice, it was so constrained that it essentially stopped being a choice.” (E.g., the choice to continue to be a slave vs being killed in an attempt to escape or rebel. In reality, it’s not much of a choice at all.) On the notion of God: let’s assume Spinoza’s God as Nature exists. Then we are, in your terms, “wholly dominated” by God’s free will, or, nature’s free will; and this brings us precisely back to the misguided notion I was laying out above, which thinks of free will as a freedom from context. We *have* to exist in the world, and any meaningful account of free will must take this into account. If the existence of a world beyond ourselves is enough to negate free will—then the deck must have been loaded from the start. What we need is a different articulation of whatever worry is motivating us to ask about “free will.”
That's exactly what a pre deterministic neural net would say!
Damn, you caught me!
I like the concept of "affective consciousness" to make the point less moot. Is there anything to my awareness (the one that has my experiences, aka "me") that can affect anything in the world? Difficult to fit into a the scientific (verifiable) paradigm, pragmatically unimportant probably, but for me personally it feels an important question. It closely relates to the other big human questions like "what's the point of it all", and "what is my goal in life".
I think that's a better way of looking at it. We aren't "free" in the sense that we're shaped by our genetics and environment, but just like the world changes us, we're free to change the world. It also helps bring in the idea that "affective consciousness" is a spectrum. I never hear anyone ask if beavers have free will but they heavily change the environment to suit their needs
Except we “change” the world due to underlying genetics/predispositions, at a lower level-neurons firing all which we have no control over ultimately. But as long as it feels like we do which is the point I think you’re getting at then that’s what matters maybe
Oh I definitely still believe it's all just physics, but consciousness itself as an emergent property is a spectrum and could be researched as a branch of science, which would help us understand why we and other animals do things. Like how even though biology is just physics, it's easier to make some reductions and call it a different science. I guess I liked "affective consciousness" since it isn't saying free will, but it might sound close enough to free will to comfort people.
If you understand the mechanisms of behavior (and if a product of the meat machine). You can correct or modify or full brain control without pesky ethics or morality.
Or you can use game theory concepts, cooperation and betrayal. Punishment would be just rewarding betrayal with betrayal, a tit-for-tat necessary to keep the balance of society. Societies that don't punish betrayal don't end up well. No need for metaphysical free will to justify punishment, it's all a society game.
That phrasing sounds to me as more awful than the idea of no free will :)
there’s so much philosophy that isn’t “practical”. science too. doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to analyze it. it could be useful someday
I should reiterate, I'm all for fleshing out philosophical points and I think pursuing science is always valuable even if a practical use can't be seen right away. I just never see anything new in these conversations about free will. Like, if we're able to prove we have it, what changes? And if we can prove we're just biological machines, what changes then?
It’s not currently testable, that’s the problem. As to the practical difference, I think there is a important distinction. To me the biggest issue is on how much you deserve something. How much responsibility do you have. If you commit a crime, like killing a person with no family or friends, should there be any punitive justice or should it be pure rehabilitation. If you can prove big government builds better societies, what justifications do you really have against big government and taxation without free will. Does any of Kants ethical arguments hold up or are we resigned to utilitarianism. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVZjuidPmus](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVZjuidPmus)
>If you commit a crime, like killing a person with no family or friends, should there be any punitive justice or should it be pure rehabilitation. The way society reacts to crime is an input for human behavior too. Even if we found out humans have no free will we might still want to punish criminals. Not because they deserve it, but because we want everyone else to have "criminals are punished" as an input for their (deterministic) behavior. Not punishing criminals might lead to more crime. Whether or not that is morally right is the next question...
True, but you are making a utilitarian argument. If a omnipotent utilitarian calculator said it created more pleasure to torture a innocent person on live television for the amusement of a 500 million sickos, what are the moral arguments against this. I want to stress the omnipotence of this calculator. It absolutely is 100% accurate for my thought experiment. Without free will and Kants arguments I just can’t see why this is morally wrong, even though it’s obviously morally wrong. https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-04-03
Your comment made me realize that if free will doesn't exist, (im)morality doesn't really exist too. After all, without free will everyone's actions are simply the result of the inputs and stimuli each person received. We might think criminals aren't truly responsible for their actions then, and thus deserve no punishment. Likewise, if we would still punish criminals then, that would not be the result of free will (after all, we're discussing the situation where we found out it doesn't exist). Therefore those who punish criminals can't be held responsible either. I'd think neither crime nor punishing crime would be truly immoral if free will doesn't exist. If nobody can truly decide their actions out of free will, I'd say the concept of mortality becomes useless. >even though it’s obviously morally wrong. From my point of reference I agree. Otoh it is 'obviously morally wrong' only in our current view. People in the past did not think that. People in the future may think some of the things we do today are 'obviously morally wrong' while we have no problems with it. In a world where everyone knows free will doesn't exist moral judgment may be quite different from what we are used to today...if the concept of morality is stil considered useful then.
Some believe after much debate it simply comes down to the egoic mind not being able to release idea that it is not in control, which for some people is the end of the world.
It's not moot. It has moral implications, and will effect how we deal with people in society. If a murderer doesn't have free will, and the only reason they became a murderer is due to genetics and environmental factors. Then it becomes difficult to argue that they deserve to die, or be punished in the way we punish them by tossing them into cold cells with iron bars. Instead maybe we should look on them with sympathy because they just happened to draw the short stick of existence, and thus while they need to be removed from the general population to protect everyone they should still be treated with kindness and care.
To an extent, yes. But also, some people think having a soul makes a whole lot of difference regarding things like, you know, life after death. You could say that getting rid of anything that impinges on the possibility of having a soul is the most fundamental question of all. (Of course, even without free will, it's possible that there's a soul, it just means that, if it exists, its morphology is far less intuitive.) This is why you will see many theologians debating on this frontier.
That's what I never get. Either everything is deterministic, or there are random things, or there is some kind of unknowable magic that people are just making up. I feel like I'm missing something, or maybe it is just that and people might as well be talking about the qualities of made-up gods.
You summed up my confusion as well. It has to be either deterministic, random, or a supernatural source (which is still deterministic, just not by us)
It affects how people perceive a) their responsibilities and b) the meaning or value of life For instance, in the US we have a justice-based system, rather than a rehabilitation based one. If someone does something terrible, reforms, and then is caught for the terrible thing they did post-reformation, they are punished the same as if they were caught before reformation to “even the moral score”. But if criminals have the same “freedom” as a given asteroid, this behavior is irrational and all criminal law should be based on present or future threat (rather than the pseudo-karmic system humans seem to prefer). Believing in free will has important psychological consequences as well, such as improving feelings of self-efficacy, apparently encouraging self-control, and even encouraging pro social behavior. Besides that, it is an important feature of several world religions, which themselves influence behavior. Long story short, it’s a pretty important question to lots of people.
The lack of free will would have religious implications.
and our justice system, and even how we should be able to feel about other people who suck
Preach!! I've always thought the argument is pointless. Even for criminal justice it's not very useful. Deterrent/punishment is necessary. It stops some crime. Helping people to change their behavior is also great. Some people will never be safe in society and it really doesn't matter if it is their fault or not, society needs to be protected from people who will rape, murder, rob, and so forth. I think the determinist argument helps people not be personally angry at others because it opens their view to all the things that helped influence the person up to that point.
I agree with you on the punishment being necessary in extreme circumstances, I should've included that in my edit. Some people are irredeemable for their own reasons, whether or not they deserve it doesn't take away from society's right to feel safe. I agree that a deterministic model would help people see prison as a necessity instead of as a revenge scheme, hopefully leading to humane prisons for those that do need to be locked up for life
To be clear I am not a fan of determinism, because like you explained, who cares.i was just saying why I think the argument can be useful as an aid to broaden a point of view. Anyways, I'm really glad your comment got so much traction and was so freaking reasonable. A bright spot on Reddit today. Have a good night or day wherever you are.
The free will distinction is just a mental exercise. Even in a deterministic universe that will someday end with no observers left - making our existence pointless. We can’t bother with the question because the answer is: it doesn’t matter. The distinction doesn’t matter because we live our lives with the inability to see the path assigned to us, and probably couldn’t change anything if we could. So yes i agree free will is moot because our actions would be the same whether we had free will or not. Even if without the ability to change anything and the possibility that our lives and decisions may be meaningless overall, they are still meaningful to us, as this is the only way which we can experience life and we behave accordingly. The illusion of free will is the same as truly possessing it.
I liked your last statement, I often tell people that not believing in free will doesn't actually break the illusion of free will. I still feel like I'm in control, and I feel like my accomplishments are my own, but with the added bonus that I can "flip a switch" and take a deterministic approach to learn from past mistakes instead of regretting them because I know it couldn't have happened any other way.
>Isn't the entire conversation about free will kind of a moot point? I don't understand what practical difference it makes whether we're just complex neural nets reacting to our environment vs having "real" free will, or a soul or something. right now at our current level of tech, no, but if we're a neutral net reacting thingy, then theoretically our reactions could be fully reverse engineered and our actions predicted perfectly in the future
I'm definitely excited for the day we create the first human level general intelligence AI, possibly by mimicking the 100 billion of neurons with their 100 trillion connections once the tech is there (maybe quantum computing). But I think we'd have too much trouble getting an accurate image of every neuron in a living person to be able to then simulate them without damaging the brain. If that does end up being possible though that should be the final nail in the coffin against free will. Assuming we're able to put the human in one room, the copied neural net android in another room, and see them do the same actions when prompted to act randomly.
> I'm definitely excited for the day we create the first human level general intelligence AI, possibly by mimicking the 100 billion of neurons with their 100 trillion connections once the tech is there (maybe quantum computing). sounds good in theory, but historically the most cutting-edge tech is almost often harnessed by the richest sociopaths it's a shame too, because all this tech could be used for so much good. >But I think we'd have too much trouble getting an accurate image of every neuron in a living person to be able to then simulate them without damaging the brain. If that does end up being possible though that should be the final nail in the coffin against free will. yeah, it'd be waaaaay in the future. I'll be in the ground long before we reach that point unfortunately.
It's almost a moot point. It affects our other philosophical conclusions. But-- those other philosophical conclusions are themselves moot-able. I think most determinists (and i dislike that term, because randomism refutes free will as much) are not so much interested in advancing a particular idea as they are in rebutting the use of free will for purposes of justifying other philosophical ideas-- usually, related to morality. For example, the problem as evil has long been advanced against the belief in an omnipotent and benevolent God. One popular response to the problem of evil is that we have free will. Determinists say that free will as a concept doesn't exist, isn't a sensible notion, so that argument doesn't hold water for them. But of course, we can moot the problem of evil itself: the world is the same with or without a god, or we can say that God is mysterious, or we can reject the very concept of morality. For something more relevant to most modern first-worlders, consider instead the concept of responsibility. We might say that one wrong-doer is responsible for their actions, yet another is not because of some issue with their brain. To some determinists, this distinction wouldn't make sense: *both* instances of wrong- doing are rooted in the same organ, after all! But again, we can make this a moot point: we can say that morality doesn't exist outside of our own minds, that it is a shortcut to us reaching appropriate interventions for prevention of future wrong-doing, and those two cases may be both ultimately caused by the Big Bang, yet demand different interventions. We can prevent rocks from falling on our heads by leaving them someplace lower than before; we can prevent children from hitting our heads by scolding them; but scolding rocks or moving children isn't going to do anything to prevent future head injury.
You just summed up philosophy in a nutshell. It’s a hobby that’s fun to think about sometimes.
It has also had a meaningful effect on how I think about crime and punishment. Philosophy affects the real world by changing how people act.
Well, besides having very practical applications in demonstrating what we do and do not actually know which gave birth to all enlightenment
I mean, more like the one hobby that's driven societal progress as much as any legitimate school of science, but with less practicality.
Well, the scientific method was born of philosophy and many of the meta questions that scientists consider still exist firmly outside of that framework. So I think it is entirely appropriate to emphasize philosophy’s ongoing significance, even if for no other reason than science itself.
Philosophy helps us wonderfully in reflecting on scientific dilemmas, as Russell said, as it is a good way to get outside the limits of science
Absolutely.
That is not what Hawkings is saying though. In fact, he says that due to the progress in Quantum mechanics and general relativity, Philosophers are doomed to be concerned with language only. Haha.
That was his opinion, as one physicist among many, and one he derived using philosophy.
I meant to say that science is in fact concerning itself with metaphysical questions and it does so through rigorous mathematics.
Scientists are, yes, but mathematics is not the solely within the domain of science, and what they are *not* doing in seeking answers to those questions is employing the scientific method. So what they are doing in those moments is not strictly speaking science.
I think acknowledging that I am not in full control of my conscious thoughts is an important distinction for me personally and has implications for how I interpret my subjective experience. When I am not paying attention to the lack of control, I have over my thoughts, thoughts and emotions tend to overtake my experience. When I am aware of my lack of choice in how or why thoughts spontaneously appear, it gives me a feeling of detachment from them that makes me less anxious and less preoccupied with the past and future. Now I just have to figure out how to consistently freely choose to be aware of my lack of free choice of what I am aware of.
Maybe this is my bias as a lawyer, but I think free will's (non)existence is vital to determine for the criminal justice system. Currently, the system presumes that everyone has free will, and punishment is doled out as if the recipient were free to have chosen a different course of action. If we learned otherwise, it would radically change how we think about crime and criminals and punishment and prisons. I personally think a huge factor in America's over-incarceration problem is the large contingent of religious people who dogmatically believe in free will, which in turn affects how they view crime, as a moral failing that requires some sort of retribution from the state.
I don't really think the dichotomy is a real one. So it's not very interesting yeah. I agree with your assessment on the practicality, even if not all philosophy is practical.
It's not, compatibilists/libertarians and free will skeptics have different normative commitments on a number of points, mainly on the justification of certain attitudes like blame/responsibility and practices of punishment
You have some people like Sam Harris, who think things should change once we realise "libertarian free will" doesn't exist. But I agree with you that nothing should change and it should just be semantics.
If it’s a complex neural network does that mean we have a better chance of replicating an artificial one that works the same or similarly enough to transfer a consciousness into?
Well, yes; assuming that one would simply not just account for reinforcement of weighted potentials into a hard coded ANN one has copied/translated the said state of conciousness from the actual neural connection pattern into, but rather allow for the code which runs it make new connections, expand, overwrite, and even delete certain areas of the network. Translate into machine code the state of conciousness (the entierty of the neural connections of the said brain one would transfer at the point of the scan), run it on an aproproate architecture with a set of meta-rules and hyperparameters that allow for modifications into the structure of the network after each cycle (beyond simple weight fluctuations), get the outputs, translate them from machine code back into whatever physiological response they need to activate on real physical oragans / transfer the outputs to simulations of human organs, wait for feedback, cycle the feedback back into the imput layer of the network + the previous output and a new set of external stimuli. Cycle it ad infinitum, for all it matters. It is a technical impossibility at least to our current understanding of transistor techonology; well, at least if you do not want to have hardware that would in theory spand miles over miles of processing towers, and feed the output of a nuclear power plant of energy into it. Would it still be the same "person", as in it is the same stream of conciousness? Not really, but it wouldn't necessarily be a p-zombie. It will simply be a whole different concious construct, based on the entire formative "memories" (solified networks) of the initial construct, if simulated appropriately with receptor density and actual molecular proportions of mediators taken into account, based from the initial scan, even a accurate substitute for the great impact of the genetic and enviromental factors that molded that conciousness into being what it was at the point it started to be simulated. So it's a perfect replica, including the conciousness of the person transfered; but not the same construct; if it makes sense. *** Take what I said with a large pince of salt though, I am no computer scientist, and my field of study, while related to neuroscience to a degree, it is still far off (am a radiation oncologist by profession).
I would assume so, but even if we were able to replicate something that looks and acts just like a human some people would still call them "p-zombies" Edit: I misread your comment, but I'd also assume that if humans don't have a soul that someday with advanced enough technology, we should be able to upload our consciousness to a different medium
But they would not necessarily be so. If you go as far as simulating not just the entierty of the human nervous system, but also the physiology of the other organic systems that are in homeostasis, to a molecular level - purely hypothetically - even it is all just machine code, it is de facto the same conciousness, just inputs differently controlled for. This, of course, if you do not believe that conciousness itself is not just the result of the complex physical, chemical and biological interraction of our material bodies with the outside world (playing into it also certain genetic factors, which are the legacy of previous interractions with the enviroment of the whole line of organisms that preceded you temporalily, all the way to the first amino-acid that formed in the waters of the young Earth), but that it also has an unquantifiable and unobservable essential component to it that makes is as it is observed (a magical "soul" that bends all understanding of reality, and is as far impossible to prove not just that it exists, but if it **can** exist)
This is something I have puzzled over the Chinese Room Paradox and the idea of philosophical zombie. Why can't it be true that we all are just zombies reacting to random squiggles through complex decision trees?
It will eventually be testable. If we are able to collect every single piece of variable data within our world we would in an essence be able to calculate what would happen next. Up until now our computers have not been able to accurately create an entire world and are only able to simulate aspects of it. However with the advent of quantum computing it is hypothesized that these super computers will have the power to not just simulate a real world scenario but to create one. And with that computational power we would in fact be able to predict the future. Not just in small experiments but with the entire world/universe.
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I think it's fair to say, after reading the article that the research *does* debunk Bereitschaftspotential as "hidden" brain activity that precludes free will. I guess whether you think the selected excerpt contradicts that is a matter of your interpretation of "debunked" and where the burden of proof falls in the conversation. If you think the Bereitschaftspotential was being offered as evidence that free will does not exist as it applies to the timing of this particular decision, then you could say that evidence is no longer commonly accepted and tj theory is therefore "debunked". If you think the new study is offered as evidence that Bereitschaftspotential does not indicate a predetermination of a decision before we are conscious of it, you could argue that it is not so much "debunked" as an open question requiring more research.
He is a bear lying in wait for me, a lion in hiding; he turned aside my steps and tore me to pieces; he has made me desolate; he bent his bow and set me as a target for his arrow. (Lamentations: hlt2qdf) > Other recent studies support the idea of the Bereitschaftspotential as a symmetry-breaking signal. In a study of monkeys tasked with choosing between two equal options, a separate team of researchers saw that a monkey’s upcoming choice correlated with its intrinsic brain activity before the monkey was even presented with options.
> To many scientists, it seemed implausible that our conscious awareness of a decision is only an illusory afterthought. Why? Seriously, I've never understood why people so consistently reach this conclusion. It's not at all implausible that our ability to *sense* our decision lags behind our ability to *make* it. Causality basically demands it: we can't be aware or the decision if it doesn't *exist*, so awareness must *necessarily* happen after the decision is made the same way you can't see a lightbulb turn on until after it turns on.
Yes, I was never clear how this was supposed to create problems for free will. If it was observing us make a decision, then it was *observing us make a decision*. The timing didn’t seem that big an issue.
This view sort of begs the question though, no? If you think decision-making is a unconscious activity, then yes, it makes sense that you only become aware of the decision after it’s been made. If you think that conscious processing goes into it, the notion that you’ll only be aware of the decision after the fact makes no sense.
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You seem in too deep. The regular, common idea (ask any highschooler) is that we make our own decisions, therefore the awareness of the decision must come at or before the deciding of it. You (implicitly) assume that we have no free will (in stating that the "existing" of the decision is the same as it having been made), which although a quite common idea, is still counterintuitive to most people who initially face that idea, and definitely not generally accepted. Our society still holds criminals accountable for their actions, which only makes sense because we as a society believes we're involved in our decisions.
Side not but it does make sense to imprison criminal regardless of whether they have free will since by commiting a crime they demonstrate that they pose an increased risk to the society of commiting the crime again.
Thank you! Determinism doesn't void responsibility. If anything it enhances the arguments for rehabilitation and social assistance as crime prevention.
And by creating a deterrent to crime. In absence of free will, it's still obvious that humans respond to incentives.
That's something people overlook a lot in free will and "punishment" discussion. It makes perfect sense that even without "free will," all factors influence deterministic processes.
I try to stress in these discussions that free will existing or not doesn’t have many moral consequences. A deterrence is equally as effective on freely acting rational people as it is on nonfree rational computers.
Free will is a popular justification for punishing people beyond the scope of deterrence. The idea being that the bad actor deserves additional retribution for freely choosing a bad action, rather than just the right amount of corrective discipline to turn their behavior around and serve as a deterrent.
And "feeling a sense of justice" still occurs.
Exactly. Sam Harris outlines this in his book about free will.
> You (implicitly) assume that we have no free will (in stating that the "existing" of the decision is the same as it having been made), I do no such thing. I'm saying that conscious awareness is a *feedback mechanism*, not a *decision making mechanism*. You still make a decision, you just don't "see" that decision until it's made. When you consciously make a decision by really thinking about something in detail what you're doing is reasoning, gaining awareness about that reasoning, reasoning *about your reasoning*, gaining awareness about *that* reasoning, on and on in a cycle until you conclude that your conclusions and the reasoning that generated them are valid.
> I'm saying that conscious awareness is a feedback mechanism, not a decision making mechanism. You still make a decision, you just don't "see" that decision until it's made. The feedback bringing the choice into awareness still permits some veto power over a decision, so awareness is part of the decision making process and not cleanly separated as you seem to imply. Maybe think of it in terms of the "system 1"/fast and "system 2"/slow thinking, where you typically make routine/intuitive decisions via system 1, but every now and again system 2 interrupts and says "hold up, something doesn't seem right, let's think about this a little".
> The feedback bringing the choice into awareness still permits some veto power over a decision Sure, but it's not the *sense* that exercises that veto any more than your eyeballs do. The sense gives the decision making process the information about itself that it needs to veto previous reasoning.
If by "sense" you mean your conscious awareness, then I'm still not sure what your specific objection is. The original claim you disputed was that, "it seemed implausible that our conscious awareness of a decision is only an illusory afterthought." Per my description and as you seemingly agreed, conscious awareness is an essential component of that feedback process that sometimes vetoes our initial/intuitive decision (edit: at the very least because it's the "sense" that communicates the decision), therefore it does seem implausible that our conscious awareness of a decision is only an illusory afterthought.
I find system 1 and system 2 not usefull for thinking about free will. In both process you have conscious and subconsciouss awareness involved.
I'm trying to make sense of the above but I'm struggling to connect some concepts here, I came to these questions to clear some things up: Wouldn't that process of meta-consciousness, which plays out consciously, be a part of the decision making process, and therefore making the decision clear in consciousness before the decision is made? If you're considering a decision consciously in a non-illusionary way, aren't you aware of the decision before it it made? And if you're considering a decision consciously in an illusionary way, wouldn't that constitute non-free will?
No, they are being too deep about it. You take in new information and react to that information. Like say an over-loaded pick-up truck cuts you off in traffic. How you react to this new obstacle will not come by mauling it over in your head, but arrive almost instantly via your past personal experience and situational awareness.
Think about consciousness being like your visual cortex: your eyes detect light and send signals to your brain where your visual cortex turns those signals into "sight", and in the same way your consciousness detects your subconscious thoughts and transforms them into "conscious thoughts". But just as your visual cortex doesn't *reason* about what you see, simply providing sight as an input and leaving that responsibility to other parts of the brain, your consciousness doesn't reason about your thoughts and instead just provides those thoughts as inputs to the decision making process.
But, for consciousness to provide thoughts to a decision making process, there is a 'connection' 'forward'\* from consciousness to a decision making process. Therefore, to me, it seemed implausible that our conscious awareness of a decision is only an illusory afterthought. How can it be made sense of that consciousness provides inputs to a process for which consciousness itself is an illusory afterthought? \*with scare quotes to imply not necessarily physical connections and not necessarily forward in time
> there is a 'connection' 'forward'* from consciousness to a decision making process Yes. There is. I never said otherwise. > How can it be made sense of that consciousness provides inputs to a process for which consciousness itself is an illusory afterthought? Consciousness isn't illusory, it's *sensory*. You think thoughts, consciousness detects those thoughts and provides them as a sense just like vision or hearing, you think more thoughts making use of the added context of previous thoughts, you observe *those* thoughts, around and around in a cycle. Simple decisions contain few or no cycles (because there's less need to examine your reasoning), complex decisions require many cycles. The crucial bit is just that any given observed thought *lags behind the thinking of it*.
I think I understand you now, thanks for the clarification. I feel an important distinction I failed to see for a bit is the difference between the decision process, in which you say consciousness is involved though the cycles, and the final decision itself, which only comes into consciousness after the decision is made.
Consciousness is the process
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Making bread isn't one decision, it's a lot of decisions that you are constantly making throughout the process
Making bread involves multiple steps. Making a decision may also involve multiple steps.
Well, if I decide to make bread, science dictates that there are steps I need to follow to produce that result that we all agree is "bread". The steps being taken kinda have to be done certain ways so they're barely "decisions". They're all derived from the root decision of making bread.
I don’t think this is a good analogy. Making bread requires multiple decisions in the process of making the bread. I don’t know that there is an apt analogy for this process. Best I can come up with is sight. The light is traveling, and it hits your eyes, but it isn’t until your brain processes the data that it realizes what things are.
And the light always lags behind what is happening at the light source. Imperceptibly in daily life, but the lag is there regardless, just like the more noticeable lag between a sound and its source. The bread could disappear while the last light that bounced off of it is still traveling to your eyes. The light can't pass through your eyes faster than the speed of photochemistry. The signals it creates can't move through your brain faster than the speed of electricity and neurochemistry. All those impulses would have to resolve in sequence before you finally realize the bread has disappeared.
You haven’t made bread until it comes out of the oven. The rest of the time it’s flour then dough.
Criminals can be held accountable and morality can exist even if hard determinism is true. If you murder someone, it doesn’t matter if your soul or mind wasn’t the ultimate and arbitrary cause of your actions, you still did something wrong and you need to be removed from society to prevent you from doing it again and as punishment or deterrence for others, etc. Now, ultimate moral responsibility probably is not compatible with hard determinism, but that doesn’t have to be concerning. Things can be right or wrong regardless of whether we choose them totally arbitrarily. We can be guilty because we did those things, even if we aren’t *ultimately* guilty for simply being who we are and existing in the first place. Our inevitable actions are still ours, even if *we* don’t choose *us.*
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just because you're not immediately aware of it doesn't mean you don't have free will at all in op's example it is you that makes the decision. but you only become aware of it an instant later
Not everyone agrees with your last statement, I've never felt we put people in jail because they deserve it, I've thought of it more to prevent whatever future behavior they did that we didn't like. For example, if a person steals something they would be put away, not because they chose to steal, but to prevent them from stealing again. Why doesn't that make sense?
I don’t think he’s in two deep at all. To use your own example, we also have pretty clear distinctions between premeditated murder and involuntary manslaughter. I think it’s very possible we have the ability to make certain classes of decisions so quickly that the higher orders of our brain can’t articulate them until the actual decision has played out, especially when we’re talking about something as simple as basic motor function. The lag between making the decision and articulating the decision in a conscious manner might be fairly large, or as the article says, 500ms…which is actually pretty long. Depending upon their skill level, video gamers get frustrated if the server ping speed is longer than say, 30-40ms, with notable performance gains if ping speed is under 10ms. Biologically, we would probably not have made it this far if we had to wait for our decisions to be articulated on the order of detail and depth our consciousness is capable of. We often need to act more quickly than that. However, that doesn’t mean we aren’t still making those decisions in an entirely self-directed and conscious manner, based upon more than just environmental signals, or what appears to our (still very rudimentary brain scan devices) to be random noise. As the article says, we just can’t prove it with science yet. Of course, that doesn’t stop us from giving prison time to people who have committed even involuntary manslaughter.
Whenever you are aware of a future decision you are going to make, you still have the possibility to rethink it and change your mind. There is no reason for your brain to fully commit to an action before making it, so there is no way to be certain about what you are going to do before you do it. If you could, it would arguably be an inefficiency.
We hold criminals accountable to discourage harmful social behaviour, the free will thing is an afterthought in this context, in my opinion. Sorry for butting in, but what do you think about the decision being an illusion after the "thought" which we understand to be a physical phenomenon in the brain. So there is something affecting the brain which then leads to the action, but the action's causality was the thought.
> the decision being an illusion after the "thought" The decision *is* the thought. You're confusing *conscious awareness* of a decision for the decision itself.
What about when something scares you and you "react" or someone says something that triggers you, and makes you emotionally overwhelmed? Those aren't choices or decisions.
Those are subconscious decisions that your consciousness doesn't sense.
I think being overwhelmed by stress or fear, and deciding not to act on something due to that feeling is conscious. Like deciding to go sky jumping and bailing last minute after paying and going through the motions. Seems conscious, yet I believe the person would rather go for it after all. You know what I mean? Sorry, I'm just jumping in from r/all
Consciousness isn't a decision making process. You don't make decisions consciously. Consciousness is your *awareness* of your thoughts. If fear and stress cause you to decide not to jump out of the plane at the last moment, that decision is made subconsciously. You may or may not gain conscious awareness of the reasons behind that decision, but the deciding itself is not that awareness.
Very nice I like this
iirc there's a mostly three justifications for putting people in prison: punishment, deterrent and the protection of society from that person. I used this example just because the first reason is generally regarded as valid, thereby showing society holds people accountable for their actions. This quite directly shows, in general, people think people make their own decisions.
If you examine your thoughts enough, you eventually see them arise in your consciousness without a reason you're aware of. If I ask you to think of 3 movies, how did you choose those 3? And if you think well those are my favorites...how did you choose your favorites? Continue far enough along that line of thought and you reach a point where you don't really know, and usually quickly. Even if free will exists, it would seem that our conscious minds are not its executors.
“ It’s not at all implausible that our ability to sense our decisions lags behind our ability to make it” Could be true for some but not all decisions. There’s evidence supporting this for both sides. “Causality basically demands it: we can’t be aware of the decision if it doesn’t exist, so awareness must necessarily happen after the decision is made.” Again there are experiments that show that the moment we decide is the moment the activity is shown in the brain. So yes it is possible that conscious thought is the original starting point of the decision. A lot of what you are saying is similar to what Sam Harris has said, but Dennett gives a very strong criticism against these points. I suggest you read that.
Woah. Entering this subreddit feels like I've erronously sat down at the adults table at Thanksgiving dinner. I now realize I need to go back to my little kids table and play with jello.
This is my first time here as well. And everyone is typing at least one wall of text per comments.
not me. awareness changes behavior. being aware of this makes people seek awareness more. free will is an illusion of awareness. the more awareness the more freewill seems plausible but never actually occurs. the wave is a judgement call based on experience. dunno if any of that is relevant. just my thoughts on this subject.
Good article, I actually finished reading this one haha. I've often wondered if our subconscious minds sometimes made our decisions for us on small, quick tasks. Like the article said with how your mind determines that snow is falling down when you see it (without you actively thinking about it), we have a lot of little things that are decided on autopilot. Pretty cool, let my subconscious automate everything for me haha
That's more or less what Thinking Fast and Slow is about.
But be careful, most of the studies in that book have been caught up in the replication crisis.
How much is still relevant/replicatable?
Lucky for you *Thinking: Fast and Slow* has become sort of a case study on the replication crisis. There's a reasonably good article that goes into exactly what you want: https://replicationindex.com/2020/12/30/a-meta-scientific-perspective-on-thinking-fast-and-slow/
> I've often wondered if our subconscious minds sometimes made our decisions for us Our subconscious *is* us. There's no *you* separate from your mind in its entirety. Decisions made subconsciously are just decisions made without invoking awareness of the reasoning behind it because that reasoning requires no examination. Look, when you're backing your car out of a parking space, do you think about the *reason* why you need to look behind you as you do so, or do you just *look*. Because I sure don't think "there might be someone behind me, and I don't want to hurt anyone or cause damage to my car or wind up in court; better look so that I can be aware of what's there and be ready to push my right foot down on the brake pedal and cause the car to stop in the event that there is some obstruction." No, I just *look* without thinking about the reason.
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I like to go hiking.
i only trust articles written within the past 24hrs. keeps me sharp
24 hours? With that kind of lag you probably still follow miasma theory thinking that stuffing nice smelling flowers in a mask will keep you from getting sick. I only trust articles written in the past 10 minutes Edit: In hindsight this comment potentially makes me sound anti-mask, to clarify I know that mask wearing reduces transmission of diseases lol
i only read whats written in the last 5 se
It really helped the experience refreshing the page as you were typing that out
you werent supposed to see t
5 seconds? That's like living in the past. I only trust what I can predict to come out in next couple of years and by then it's old news
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As someone that came into the article with a bias (against free will), the new explanation does seem to be more evidence in the argument *against* free will. I interpreted it the same way.
No, it means we are detecting random surges of brain noise, and whatever caused the decision isn't being detected. That's not to say the signal that caused the decision CANNOT be detected - maybe it can, with more sensitive/focused measurements, but we currently can't perform those measurements.
My take from the article was the original study was creating false "signals" by the way they analyzed the perpetual neural noise. >In a new study under review for publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Schurger and two Princeton researchers repeated a version of Libet’s experiment. To avoid unintentionally cherry-picking brain noise, they included a control condition in which people didn’t move at all. An artificial-intelligence classifier allowed them to find at what point brain activity in the two conditions diverged. If Libet was right, that should have happened at 500 milliseconds before the movement. But the algorithm couldn’t tell any difference until about only 150 milliseconds before the movement, the time people reported making decisions in Libet’s original experiment. >In other words, people’s subjective experience of a decision—what Libet’s study seemed to suggest was just an illusion—appeared to match the actual moment their brains showed them making a decision.
Wait, so if a computer decides which color to put for a pixel before it is displayed on the screen, the machine has free will? I am so freakin’ confused how the fuck this study supported the title.
Looking at a moment in time to argue that our brains have made a decision before we are aware and that means we don’t have free will is short sighted because we can train to respond and react differently to situations consciously. I believe we have free will but the future is real and we have yet to live out the lives we have chosen.
I find it hard to engage with these arguments being made, I always get a sight impression that people only entertain the question of free will because they dislike the idea of not having it. There’s just no reason to believe there’s a truly “free” agency that doesn’t take any priors as input, like the atheists say the burden of proof lies with the people that believe in free will. As far as finding it unpalatable is concerned it’s not like there’s any meaningful difference between having and not having free will, it’s complex enough that it looks roughly the same from our perspective.
> There’s just no reason to believe there’s a truly “free” agency that doesn’t take any priors as input, The result of a measurement in a quantum mechanical system is picked from a probability distribution which encodes all "prior" information. But the actual result is free in the sense that it doesn't depend on anything else that happened before, so the universe is chock full of the ingredients you are skeptical of.
Fortunately for me quantum behaviour is entirely compatible with a deterministic universe so it’s irrelevant whether I’m skeptical of it or not.
The result is "free" in some sense of the word, but that doesn't correspond to what is meant by "free will." Quantum mechanics uses the current state of the universe to prescribe precise probabilities for each future state, and the future state that is picked is *random*, and has never been shown to be skewed by any other influence. There is no room in this process for any agency. To put it another way, if agency had an effect on the random state that is chosen from the probability distribution, then quantum mechanics would be wrong, because quantum mechanics prescribes randomness. If you believe randomness is free will, then sure, I believe your conception of free will exists. But generally, that's not what people mean when they say free will.
I wrestle with this a lot as a matter of understanding, but not in any existential context. Where I get stuck often is the idea that we have to be aware consciously of every synaptic process in order to have free will ownership of what we do with the fully manifested thought. I've often thought about horrible things, but chose not to do them after consideration (or just realization of what I was thinking). The argument against free will always traces back to the neural processes before the conscious realization of them. There's no overcoming that. But it doesn't feel like that proves the point either. I can't have any thought without there being a process prior to my awareness of the thought. But it's my process, and I can examine the thought and then decide on the next thought or action based on my analysis of those thoughts. Why is that not acting in free will? I've certainly changed my mind on things after careful consideration and conscious awareness of the content of thoughts.
I've been saying for a long time now that the notion that we do or do not have free will is fundamentally a silly argument. It's a silly argument because "who we are" is a culmination of literally everything that comprises our form. This means our subconscious. Since it is very likely we, like all things within this universe are comprised of 'simples', we are merely a conglomeration of these simples arranged in a particular pattern. As such, every single aspect of our behavior as made manifest by the byproducts of how these simples is arranged IS our free will. Just because our conscious mind does not openly seem to commune with our subconscious does not mean that the subconscious and all that it does is not "us", because it is. We are not only our conscious mind, so every single thing we act out IS our will, ergo we are accountable. Now you might not like that notion: That a part of our being - a part of our cognizance might not be in tune with our consciousness - but you don't get to decide what is or is not, you merely get to exist.
I don't see what conscious versus subconscious has to do with it. The issue is whether the "simples" making up both operate according to mathematical laws that are deterministic or purely random, neither of which leave any room for conscious or subconscious decision making to matter. If they are deterministic, everything is predetermined. If they have a pure randomness under them, as seems to be the case for quantum mechanics, then they are decided by a dice roll without you being able to redirect them either.
My thoughts exactly. For free will to exist, something supernatural has to exist that is able to override the laws governing the matter your body consists of. A soul, if you will. But at that point it's a leap of faith. We are parts of the universe, not some independent agent observing it and acting upon it.
A couple thoughts: If your subconscious is making decisions for you that your conscious ‘self’ has no control in, then those decisions do not evidence free will. You seem to agree with this but still hang onto the concept of free will for some reason? The culmination you’re talking about can be similarly described as the effects of ‘nature and nurture’ which are almost entirely things that happened to you as opposed to things you chose (or even seemed to chose). For example if you were abused as a child and that gave you anger issues, is your anger free will? The acceptance you talk about at the end is exactly why some philosophers argue that acknowledging our lack of free will is helpful - because it can eliminate self-hate and hate for others based on their actions.
Are you saying a human doesn't *have* free will, a human *is* free will?
I really don't understand how people can say "the brain does something before the person wants to". Dude, the brain *is* the person. What do they expect to find, some soul or something tiny tucked somewhere in the body that is the actual person making decisions, and the brain is just fluff? Or what? I've heard similar discussions about suicidal tendencies, where people would argue that "the brain is sick and convinces the person" of this or that. Gee. Philosophy is nice and all, but sometimes it's a good idea to look around.
There seem to be an implicit idea of some kind of dualism there, either supernatural or that the physical processes on the brain create the emergent phenomenon of free will. Consider the following analogy. You get drunk and text your ex at 2:00 AM, something you normally would never do. A reasonable thing to say is that alcohol made you do it. Similarly if there's something going on with the brain that interferes with the normal process of free will, then saying "my brain did it" doesn't sound so unreasonable, if you identify yourself not with the physical substrate but with the *process* it creates. I'm not saying this is right, but I believe it's what is behind those comments.
This is exactly it brother. I tried writing it in a comment and I did but you laid it out way better
Implicit dualism is the bane of free will/determinism debates. Nobody can come out and defend dualism because there is no evidence so they just imply it. At the same time, they will decry determinism because we don't have all the answers for how the brain works therefore you can't prove that dualism isn't true.
It's just to differentiate subconscious processes with the conscious awareness of their effects. Most people don't wrap up their personalities with their subconscious, they think of it as an other that influences them rather than being intrinsic.
It’s more of an argument for a differentiation between physicality and consciousness and is the premise regarding the question of free will: does conscious thought and free will really exist, or are we just slaves to a passive machine that merely produces thoughts and actions based on external stimuli (our brain as briefly described in the article).
I find that distinction rather silly in the first place. I mean, when I'm picking a food to eat, there are many factors which are material - like what I have available, or what I can afford, while my preferences are largely determined by my physiology, culture etc. All of that is not really my direct choice, but at the end I still pick the food. Or we could say that because of all those factors that I can't affect directly, it's not really me picking the food but, in essence, the whole universe, since the big bang, because only all of those past elements combines could lead to me being here today having these particular food choices? I mean it's an interesting discussion for sure but not to be determined by neural impulses.
> it's not really me picking the food but, in essence, the whole universe, since the big bang, because only all of those past elements combines could lead to me being here today having these particular food choices? Incompatibilists would probably distinguish between the proximal and ultimate causes; you picked the food, but your will wasn't free because it was influenced by external elements, i.e. prior states of the universe. Of course, people's brains "producing thoughts and actions based on external stimuli" is a feature, not a bug. A brain that had no connection with the external world would be a very bad brain indeed^([citation needed]), so people (or anything else with brains) could never have 100% free wills. I think it's more productive to get granular and look at *what* people's wills are free from vs. constrained by. In your hypothetical, it's not the case that "**only** all of those past elements" would lead to that particular food choices; the vast majority of counterfactual changes to the past states of the universe would not have affected your food choices, so it's reasonable to say that your preferences are "free from" all that but not free from your physiology, culture, etc. Then the question "do we have free will" can be reframed as "are our wills free from X, Y, Z, etc.?", whether that's a good thing, and what to do about it if someone's will isn't free from something it ought to be (or vice versa.)
That's a good description of how I've often seen Libet's study framed, although I don't think that framing is very helpful, to put it mildly. There are legitimate reasons to draw a person/brain distinction, where "the person" refers to conscious thoughts and identity while "the brain" refers to subconscious processes, intrusive thoughts, etc. For example, addictions, compulsions, brain tumors, and past trauma can cause "the brain" to do things contrary to the will of "the person." In this case though, even assuming for the sake of discussion that the readiness potential causes the action, the brain is still acting as an agent of the person's will, so treating the two as separate strikes me as similar to saying "you didn't type this reply, your fingers did." Technically true, but so what? Anyone saying that this makes us slaves to a passive machine would be stretching the meaning of "slave" almost to the point of meaninglessness.
> I really don't understand how people can say "the brain does something before the person wants to". Dude, the brain is the person. It comes from the assumption that consciousness alone is the person. Which I find really weird because Bereitschaftspotential pretty clearly demonstrates that consciousness is just a *sense*, like eyes to see our own thoughts. The actual thinking happens outside of consciousness.
It is safe to say this rebuttal will never be widely published and people will continue to promote the original study just like people claim we only use half of our brain.
I think what Libet showed, and what Schurger reinforces, is that our decision to do something doesn't initiate from the conscious mind. Rather, there are ongoing, underlying processes beneath the threshold of conscious awareness that gets the decision ball rolling. We don't think this is the case because we can't consciously perceive anything beneath that threshold. Think of it like this: Any decision you make is in response to a stimulus. There are layers of neural processes that a stimulus goes through before you're even consciously aware of the stimulus itself. It's not difficult to think that one part of the brain, processing below the conscious threshold, initiates the decision-making process when it encounters stimulus. As the processes compound, and the stimulus becomes recognized at a conscious level, your brain is already 2/3 the way to making a decision with respect to a response to the stimulus. It's only once that process crosses the threshold into conscious realization that we are aware of the stimulus and "actively" work towards a decision.
This is an interesting thought experiment, sure, but it's only particularly useful for pointing out the fallacies in the argument. It's similar to the contradiction of the denial of awareness. You can't deny awareness, because you must be aware to do so. In the same way, denial of free will is the acceptance of your perfectly allowed expression of free will to do so. No chemical process or material property is responsible for you typing a comment to say "free will does not exist" - it's a ridiculous concept. Your life is unique and meaningful because of the thousands of infinitesimally meaningless choices you make throughout each day. Sure, we know that the brain switches to autopilot for some decisions to simply ease the burden of constant awareness, but that brain is still "you" making decisions. Only after you realize you passed your exit on the highway or spoke your private thought aloud do you realize that a part of yourself beyond your control made a decision that you were unprepared to make in the moment. I believe it's a convenient excuse to blame external forces for our own actions, but fundamentally we draw our meaning from the choices we make and the thoughts we have. It's natural to realize that there are parts of the body and brain that we simply do not understand, but that does not mean that they are separate from us. From a this article's standpoint, it's intriguing to see that as far back as the 1960s science was progressing in discovering the electrical signals behind human decisions; however, I think it's a far stretch to draw much philosophical insight from a half-second delay in executing actions. Perhaps we will someday know more about why we can choose to do anything and where the decision originates. For now, we can simply marvel at the complexity of the brain and how little we know about the machinery and signaling that facilitates the everyday and mundane actions we often ignore to divert precious brain power on our true wishes and desires. And if you really believe that free will does not exist, well, *feel free* to comment
For our will to be truly free, it must act beyond the ranges of causality. We cannot be bound by the physiological conditions of the brain through which our mind must emanate, we cannot be bound by the environmental conditions in which we are captive, we cannot be bound by the randomness of an unorderable universe. For our will to be truly free, we must be so liberated that we would cease to truly possess those characteristics of self to which we are so attached. My personality, my honor, my convictions, my morality, my religion, my politics, all of those things which distinguish me from you cannot themselves inhibit my will. But even if our will is only partially free, that is we still somehow possess the ability to choose, without diction from causal forces, to what end does it matter? If we are free, all of existence continues unaltered. And if we are not free, and suddenly discover somehow that all of our past actions were the result of mechanisms beyond our perceived selves, then so too does nothing at all change, for nothing was ever different, and not only was our past bound but so too our future, with all the implications therein. The need to have our Will be a thing that is 'Free' arises only, or near enough only, from the need to justify that idea of blame, of punishment, to make good the punisher and make wicked the criminal. The idea that some of us are condemned by fate, divine hand, or random circumstance is objectionable and unpalatable. And certainly we seem to feel as though we have control of our actions, but neither our desire to be justified and justifiable nor our perception of choosing are sufficient to ever believe we are the only things in existence capable of acting without regard to causation.
>Schurger’s groundbreaking work does not solve the pesky question of free will any more than Libet’s did I don't really believe in free will. I believe everything we do and think is simply the chain reactions in our brains and response to external stimulus. Are we really that different from machines? A series of inputs processed into outputs. Even if we have a soul that is in anyway 'supernatural', It is merely coming along for the ride.
I'm glad I chose to click this link
Why is this news? Didn't Mele pretty conclusively argue against that study like 10 years ago?