IM A FLUFFY UNICORN WITH A FLOWER HAT WHO EATS BURRITOS!
Does that not say we have at least some free will?
Does that not say we have at least some free will?
You are free to speculate if free will exists.
I just...don't....
My brain doesn't understand why this is a thing on lichess
I need explaining
I couldn't even read half the main message
My brain doesn't understand why this is a thing on lichess
I need explaining
I couldn't even read half the main message
And also
Free will does exist
God lets us do what we want
He just hopes we'll do the right thing
Free will does exist
God lets us do what we want
He just hopes we'll do the right thing
Whether you believe we have free will or not depends on what your definition of a human is.
Some religions believe that humans do not have free will, and that everything is predestined. Others believe that you can still have free will while also having a God - since just because we are constrained by time does not mean a divine entity has to be too. (Basically that God will be able to see into our future, and see what decisions we will make, but that doesn't mean that He is making said decisions for us.)
On the other hand, you don't have to believe in God to believe in free will either. We all have the ability to make choices in our daily lives. Not every choice we make is purely evolutionary - after all, there are many things we consider "good", that wouldn't make any sense in a purely "survival of the fittest" context. Therefore, we do indeed have free will - because we are able to choose things that might be against what would be the "best" thing to do for ourselves. We are able to choose things that might not make sense if we think selfishly, yet are for "the greater good".
Of course we don't always do that. That is also our choice.
Every choice has consequences. But we are free to choose things, although we might not be able to alter the consequences.
Some religions believe that humans do not have free will, and that everything is predestined. Others believe that you can still have free will while also having a God - since just because we are constrained by time does not mean a divine entity has to be too. (Basically that God will be able to see into our future, and see what decisions we will make, but that doesn't mean that He is making said decisions for us.)
On the other hand, you don't have to believe in God to believe in free will either. We all have the ability to make choices in our daily lives. Not every choice we make is purely evolutionary - after all, there are many things we consider "good", that wouldn't make any sense in a purely "survival of the fittest" context. Therefore, we do indeed have free will - because we are able to choose things that might be against what would be the "best" thing to do for ourselves. We are able to choose things that might not make sense if we think selfishly, yet are for "the greater good".
Of course we don't always do that. That is also our choice.
Every choice has consequences. But we are free to choose things, although we might not be able to alter the consequences.
People seem to be talking largely about beliefs. These seems little or no attempt to talk about science or empirical knowledge in this debate, as opposed to a priori belief systems. Sure, the philosophical questions about science and empirical knowledge and their dependability and objectivity (or otherwise) are also complex. But none of that has been raised either. I am wondering. Isn't science taught anymore? I sort of thought some here might be interested in the sciences (perhaps especially evolution and neuroscience).
The conflation of simple choice (or selection) with free will is an error in my opinion. Choice or selection can exist without free will. This is unless "choice" is predefined as a selection made by a being assumed to have free will. The Lichess Stockfish program for example makes move choices or at least move selections. It chooses or selects moves according to its programming and even maybe from what is derived from its AI learning algorithms. I doubt that this fact would lead anyone to say Stockfish has free will.
The conflation of simple choice (or selection) with free will is an error in my opinion. Choice or selection can exist without free will. This is unless "choice" is predefined as a selection made by a being assumed to have free will. The Lichess Stockfish program for example makes move choices or at least move selections. It chooses or selects moves according to its programming and even maybe from what is derived from its AI learning algorithms. I doubt that this fact would lead anyone to say Stockfish has free will.
@Wodjul said in #26:
> People seem to be talking largely about beliefs. These seems little or no attempt to talk about science or empirical knowledge in this debate, as opposed to a priori belief systems. Sure, the philosophical questions about science and empirical knowledge and their dependability and objectivity (or otherwise) are also complex. But none of that has been raised either. I am wondering. Isn't science taught anymore? I sort of thought some here might be interested in the sciences (perhaps especially evolution and neuroscience).
>
> The conflation of simple choice (or selection) with free will is an error in my opinion. Choice or selection can exist without free will. This is unless "choice" is predefined as a selection made by a being assumed to have free will. The Lichess Stockfish program for example makes move choices or at least move selections. It chooses or selects moves according to its programming and even maybe from what is derived from its AI learning algorithms. I doubt that this fact would lead anyone to say Stockfish has free will.
interesting!
I didn't read all the comments in the thread. Also, my English is really problematic so I hope I properly understood the arguments of the opening message. Tell me if I understood correctly:
You are trying to argue for a separation between the question of "free will" and the question of "free choice". A "will" even if it is an illusion is still a will, the question is whether this "will" is "free", it is possible that the action is inevitable and the will is still free, that is, for the most part we feel a desire to do the inevitable action but this is a psychological mechanism/ evolutionary.
A kind of compatibilist argument according to which there is no contradiction between determinism and free will. (And if we speak in terms of punishment, the punishment is not for the action but for the desire to do it.)
I want to argue that this separation is incorrect (or at least incomprehensible to me) for 2 main reasons, which are 3. But before I tear my keyboard apart in vain, first I want to know if this is indeed your intention.
> People seem to be talking largely about beliefs. These seems little or no attempt to talk about science or empirical knowledge in this debate, as opposed to a priori belief systems. Sure, the philosophical questions about science and empirical knowledge and their dependability and objectivity (or otherwise) are also complex. But none of that has been raised either. I am wondering. Isn't science taught anymore? I sort of thought some here might be interested in the sciences (perhaps especially evolution and neuroscience).
>
> The conflation of simple choice (or selection) with free will is an error in my opinion. Choice or selection can exist without free will. This is unless "choice" is predefined as a selection made by a being assumed to have free will. The Lichess Stockfish program for example makes move choices or at least move selections. It chooses or selects moves according to its programming and even maybe from what is derived from its AI learning algorithms. I doubt that this fact would lead anyone to say Stockfish has free will.
interesting!
I didn't read all the comments in the thread. Also, my English is really problematic so I hope I properly understood the arguments of the opening message. Tell me if I understood correctly:
You are trying to argue for a separation between the question of "free will" and the question of "free choice". A "will" even if it is an illusion is still a will, the question is whether this "will" is "free", it is possible that the action is inevitable and the will is still free, that is, for the most part we feel a desire to do the inevitable action but this is a psychological mechanism/ evolutionary.
A kind of compatibilist argument according to which there is no contradiction between determinism and free will. (And if we speak in terms of punishment, the punishment is not for the action but for the desire to do it.)
I want to argue that this separation is incorrect (or at least incomprehensible to me) for 2 main reasons, which are 3. But before I tear my keyboard apart in vain, first I want to know if this is indeed your intention.
@devastatingly-hot said in #27:
> interesting!
> I didn't read all the comments in the thread. Also, my English is really problematic so I hope I properly understood the arguments of the opening message. Tell me if I understood correctly:
>
> You are trying to argue for a separation between the question of "free will" and the question of "free choice". A "will" even if it is an illusion is still a will, the question is whether this "will" is "free", it is possible that the action is inevitable and the will is still free, that is, for the most part we feel a desire to do the inevitable action but this is a psychological mechanism/ evolutionary.
>
> A kind of compatibilist argument according to which there is no contradiction between determinism and free will. (And if we speak in terms of punishment, the punishment is not for the action but for the desire to do it.)
>
> I want to argue that this separation is incorrect (or at least incomprehensible to me) for 2 main reasons, which are 3. But before I tear my keyboard apart in vain, first I want to know if this is indeed your intention.
No, I am not arguing the above but thank you for seriously engaging. I am most definitely positing that humans have no free will at all. In my original post, I put forward the position that free will is incompatible with both determinism and indeterminism. Determinism (or bottom up causation from basic physical, chemical and electrical interactions) would mean there is no way our brain could possess free will. Macro determinism plus quantum indterminism (quantum randomness) would mean many of our actionc are determined and some minority of our actions are stochastic (random). But this would still not add up to or generate free will.
I further put forward the ideas that (1) consciousness is real but (2) the apparent experience of free will within consciousness is an illusion. Consciousness is arguably self-proving. Being conscious of being conscious is a self-proving identity. Consciousness in this sense proves its own existence. But being conscious of the feeling of freely willing to do A or B is an illusion. I argued that that illusion evolved and the evolved illusion of free will was necessary in the higher mammals or at least in humans. Without the feeling of free will, existence for a self-reflective intelligence would feel intolerable. In other words, as intelligence increased in human evolution, those proto-humans who stemmed from a mutation or mutations for developing a feeling of free will survived and reproduced. Those that did not died out.
But why was the illusion of free will (if illusion it was) selected for and the lack of that illusion selected against? That is the harder part of my theory to justify, at least in detail. The closest I can get at this stage is the supposition that the feeling of free will is part of the evolved error processing in human brains which plays a part in preventing healthy humans getting trapped in endless brain processing loops. We see people with OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) for example get trapped in endless loops or at least behavioural loops which are very hard for them (meaning their brain processing apparatus) to terminate.
I place an emphasis on physical mechanism, for which reason one commentator called me an ultra-materialist (which is an interesting argument and worth examining too). I argue from the scientific point of view that if people hold the free will thesis then they ought to be able to describe the mechanism. In science generally, an idea is considered a theory until experiments, repeatable empirical results and a full enough exposition of mechanism (a chain of causes and effects) are all found and delinaeated and fit both the known facts and the rest of the edifice of "settled" scientific knowledge.
But I find many people simply argue from belief. If they believe something it is ipso facto true (to them). They start from an a priori belief and assume its plain obviousness and absolute truth. For sure, my theory is just a theory and it has its own a prioris (initial assumptions) but it is an attempt to place such ideas in the scientific arena where empirical testing may become possible. To simply assume what you believe - from personal feeling and cultural inculcation - is true, is not the path to new discoveries. Of course, the path to new discoveries might be dangerous. But to be true to my theory, I would have to argue that people don't have free will in the whole matter anyway. It is evolution which makes the choices and that is not an exercise of free will either. But it is an exercise in myriad random walks across the fitness landscape where at least one walk might find a higher peak on the fitness landscape.
A paradox arises for sure. I hold that humans are programmed. First, programmed by genetics and epigenetics and then programmed by enculturation (being brought up in a culture). Yet at the same time, I would wish that we could change our programming for the better. Changing our programming would in a sense be an action of meta-will. We cannot perform except as per our programming but can we change our programming? The only way out of this paradox that I can see is to posit evolution as the possible way forward. It is clear that humans entertain many illusions and incomplete models about themselves and their world, Human survival is not least a competition of illusions. Which illusions or incomplete models paradoxically turn out to be useful for survival? Which illusions turn out to lead humans to death and non-reproduction? Again, we cannot project but evolution can and will select.
> interesting!
> I didn't read all the comments in the thread. Also, my English is really problematic so I hope I properly understood the arguments of the opening message. Tell me if I understood correctly:
>
> You are trying to argue for a separation between the question of "free will" and the question of "free choice". A "will" even if it is an illusion is still a will, the question is whether this "will" is "free", it is possible that the action is inevitable and the will is still free, that is, for the most part we feel a desire to do the inevitable action but this is a psychological mechanism/ evolutionary.
>
> A kind of compatibilist argument according to which there is no contradiction between determinism and free will. (And if we speak in terms of punishment, the punishment is not for the action but for the desire to do it.)
>
> I want to argue that this separation is incorrect (or at least incomprehensible to me) for 2 main reasons, which are 3. But before I tear my keyboard apart in vain, first I want to know if this is indeed your intention.
No, I am not arguing the above but thank you for seriously engaging. I am most definitely positing that humans have no free will at all. In my original post, I put forward the position that free will is incompatible with both determinism and indeterminism. Determinism (or bottom up causation from basic physical, chemical and electrical interactions) would mean there is no way our brain could possess free will. Macro determinism plus quantum indterminism (quantum randomness) would mean many of our actionc are determined and some minority of our actions are stochastic (random). But this would still not add up to or generate free will.
I further put forward the ideas that (1) consciousness is real but (2) the apparent experience of free will within consciousness is an illusion. Consciousness is arguably self-proving. Being conscious of being conscious is a self-proving identity. Consciousness in this sense proves its own existence. But being conscious of the feeling of freely willing to do A or B is an illusion. I argued that that illusion evolved and the evolved illusion of free will was necessary in the higher mammals or at least in humans. Without the feeling of free will, existence for a self-reflective intelligence would feel intolerable. In other words, as intelligence increased in human evolution, those proto-humans who stemmed from a mutation or mutations for developing a feeling of free will survived and reproduced. Those that did not died out.
But why was the illusion of free will (if illusion it was) selected for and the lack of that illusion selected against? That is the harder part of my theory to justify, at least in detail. The closest I can get at this stage is the supposition that the feeling of free will is part of the evolved error processing in human brains which plays a part in preventing healthy humans getting trapped in endless brain processing loops. We see people with OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) for example get trapped in endless loops or at least behavioural loops which are very hard for them (meaning their brain processing apparatus) to terminate.
I place an emphasis on physical mechanism, for which reason one commentator called me an ultra-materialist (which is an interesting argument and worth examining too). I argue from the scientific point of view that if people hold the free will thesis then they ought to be able to describe the mechanism. In science generally, an idea is considered a theory until experiments, repeatable empirical results and a full enough exposition of mechanism (a chain of causes and effects) are all found and delinaeated and fit both the known facts and the rest of the edifice of "settled" scientific knowledge.
But I find many people simply argue from belief. If they believe something it is ipso facto true (to them). They start from an a priori belief and assume its plain obviousness and absolute truth. For sure, my theory is just a theory and it has its own a prioris (initial assumptions) but it is an attempt to place such ideas in the scientific arena where empirical testing may become possible. To simply assume what you believe - from personal feeling and cultural inculcation - is true, is not the path to new discoveries. Of course, the path to new discoveries might be dangerous. But to be true to my theory, I would have to argue that people don't have free will in the whole matter anyway. It is evolution which makes the choices and that is not an exercise of free will either. But it is an exercise in myriad random walks across the fitness landscape where at least one walk might find a higher peak on the fitness landscape.
A paradox arises for sure. I hold that humans are programmed. First, programmed by genetics and epigenetics and then programmed by enculturation (being brought up in a culture). Yet at the same time, I would wish that we could change our programming for the better. Changing our programming would in a sense be an action of meta-will. We cannot perform except as per our programming but can we change our programming? The only way out of this paradox that I can see is to posit evolution as the possible way forward. It is clear that humans entertain many illusions and incomplete models about themselves and their world, Human survival is not least a competition of illusions. Which illusions or incomplete models paradoxically turn out to be useful for survival? Which illusions turn out to lead humans to death and non-reproduction? Again, we cannot project but evolution can and will select.
@Wodjul said in #28:
> No, I am not arguing the above but thank you for seriously engaging.
(Tell me if something is not clear, I used Google Translate and I didn't have the power to check later if the result was good :))
Well, first of all, why do I think that the separation of free will from free choice is incorrect:
Note: I refer to the "I who want and/or choose" as a separate entity from the body and the brain activity for 2 reasons: 1: You yourself made this separation and even contributed Descartes' cogito to that end. 2: If we treat the choice or the will as a mechanical function of the mind we will only get stuck in our own mud. This is a complex issue in itself.
A) Suppose there is no choice and all actions are deterministic. Now I will ask about your claim that it is still possible to say that there is free will:
- If we "know" in advance what the action is that will happen and according to this our desire for this action is determined precisely then we will find that the will is certainly not free at all because this "knowledge" is certainly not conscious knowledge and that means we know something that is not aware of us (which is also something that needs understanding) And according to this information we "want". That is, the desire is causal and depends on the fact that the action is causal!
-And if we don't "know" in advance what the action is that will happen, how is it that we know how to "will" what will happen? (And again, we have no interest in "willing what will happen" because the will is free) How do I know before I moved my hand, that the hand will move and therefore feel a "desire" to move the hand? And if you say that this is a statistic, it is certainly not true because every action has at least 2 options so that at least in half of the cases your desire will not come true!
And I don't think it's possible to say that indeed in most cases it doesn't work unless there is a psychological mechanism that makes us "understand" that it didn't work for a side reason. It is impossible to say yes: 1) This is not true because in the vast majority of times in certain types of actions our desire does correspond to reality. 2) According to this again it turns out that the desire is not controlled by a conscious "I who want" but is a product of psychological mechanisms!
(The Libet experiment you alluded to in your opening message and I will refer to it later, will not help you here both because of the reason I will write when I talk about it and because it is the first side)
-Summary: if we know what the deterministic action is: the will is not free. If we do not know what the deterministic action is: the will is not possible or not free.
And in addition, this is without going into the question of how it works, since the basic questions about "choice" are also asked about "will" if I have a reason to want it specifically, then it is not free. If I don't have a reason, then it is random and certainly not free. That is: in order to explain free will, one must first explain free choice (philosophically. not physically)
-Conclusion: There is no separation between free will and free choice.
b) If there is free choice, then this surely forces free will because if the will is not free, the choice is certainly not free! And vice versa, if there is no free will, surely there is no free choice.
Conclusion: The condemned should not be separated. If I talk about free choice, I will also talk about free will and if I talk about free will: the opposite.
> No, I am not arguing the above but thank you for seriously engaging.
(Tell me if something is not clear, I used Google Translate and I didn't have the power to check later if the result was good :))
Well, first of all, why do I think that the separation of free will from free choice is incorrect:
Note: I refer to the "I who want and/or choose" as a separate entity from the body and the brain activity for 2 reasons: 1: You yourself made this separation and even contributed Descartes' cogito to that end. 2: If we treat the choice or the will as a mechanical function of the mind we will only get stuck in our own mud. This is a complex issue in itself.
A) Suppose there is no choice and all actions are deterministic. Now I will ask about your claim that it is still possible to say that there is free will:
- If we "know" in advance what the action is that will happen and according to this our desire for this action is determined precisely then we will find that the will is certainly not free at all because this "knowledge" is certainly not conscious knowledge and that means we know something that is not aware of us (which is also something that needs understanding) And according to this information we "want". That is, the desire is causal and depends on the fact that the action is causal!
-And if we don't "know" in advance what the action is that will happen, how is it that we know how to "will" what will happen? (And again, we have no interest in "willing what will happen" because the will is free) How do I know before I moved my hand, that the hand will move and therefore feel a "desire" to move the hand? And if you say that this is a statistic, it is certainly not true because every action has at least 2 options so that at least in half of the cases your desire will not come true!
And I don't think it's possible to say that indeed in most cases it doesn't work unless there is a psychological mechanism that makes us "understand" that it didn't work for a side reason. It is impossible to say yes: 1) This is not true because in the vast majority of times in certain types of actions our desire does correspond to reality. 2) According to this again it turns out that the desire is not controlled by a conscious "I who want" but is a product of psychological mechanisms!
(The Libet experiment you alluded to in your opening message and I will refer to it later, will not help you here both because of the reason I will write when I talk about it and because it is the first side)
-Summary: if we know what the deterministic action is: the will is not free. If we do not know what the deterministic action is: the will is not possible or not free.
And in addition, this is without going into the question of how it works, since the basic questions about "choice" are also asked about "will" if I have a reason to want it specifically, then it is not free. If I don't have a reason, then it is random and certainly not free. That is: in order to explain free will, one must first explain free choice (philosophically. not physically)
-Conclusion: There is no separation between free will and free choice.
b) If there is free choice, then this surely forces free will because if the will is not free, the choice is certainly not free! And vice versa, if there is no free will, surely there is no free choice.
Conclusion: The condemned should not be separated. If I talk about free choice, I will also talk about free will and if I talk about free will: the opposite.
@Wodjul said in #28:
> I further put forward the ideas that (1) consciousness is real but (2) the apparent experience of free will within consciousness is an illusion. Consciousness is arguably self-proving. Being conscious of being conscious is a self-proving identity. Consciousness in this sense proves its own existence. But being conscious of the feeling of freely willing to do A or B is an illusion.
I don't agree with that. I think if you agree with Descartes' cogito you are
I must agree that there is free will (and also choice) I will write below about choice (and will, as I wrote above, I do not separate the subjects) and its complexity but my personal opinion is that the cogito does force it. After all, if there is no choice, the conclusion of the thought is not a product of the thought because it is not the thinker who thought and "decided" something but that you could know in advance what he would think and what the conclusions of the thinking would be (and it cannot be said that "ideas and conclusions" are not at all "determinism" from 2 Reasons: 1: it turns out that you do agree that the cogito forces "free will" 2: because our very correspondence is a product of these "understandings" and therefore if they are not deterministic, our correspondence is also not deterministic and we find that not everything is deterministic even in things that are not "thoughts" " and the like.)
My point is that Descartes' "cogito" forces the existence of consciousness, as you said. And if so, we need to discuss what are the basic components of which consciousness is composed, one of which is: there is no consciousness, and the cogito also forces them because their refutation will come from the consciousness of which they are a part. And I think that free choice (which, as mentioned above, also includes free will) is a foundation of consciousness and is included in cogito.
> I further put forward the ideas that (1) consciousness is real but (2) the apparent experience of free will within consciousness is an illusion. Consciousness is arguably self-proving. Being conscious of being conscious is a self-proving identity. Consciousness in this sense proves its own existence. But being conscious of the feeling of freely willing to do A or B is an illusion.
I don't agree with that. I think if you agree with Descartes' cogito you are
I must agree that there is free will (and also choice) I will write below about choice (and will, as I wrote above, I do not separate the subjects) and its complexity but my personal opinion is that the cogito does force it. After all, if there is no choice, the conclusion of the thought is not a product of the thought because it is not the thinker who thought and "decided" something but that you could know in advance what he would think and what the conclusions of the thinking would be (and it cannot be said that "ideas and conclusions" are not at all "determinism" from 2 Reasons: 1: it turns out that you do agree that the cogito forces "free will" 2: because our very correspondence is a product of these "understandings" and therefore if they are not deterministic, our correspondence is also not deterministic and we find that not everything is deterministic even in things that are not "thoughts" " and the like.)
My point is that Descartes' "cogito" forces the existence of consciousness, as you said. And if so, we need to discuss what are the basic components of which consciousness is composed, one of which is: there is no consciousness, and the cogito also forces them because their refutation will come from the consciousness of which they are a part. And I think that free choice (which, as mentioned above, also includes free will) is a foundation of consciousness and is included in cogito.
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