So if there is no free will, care to explain how you can make decisions?
A biological version of a series of if and switch statements.
I don't quite follow.
In other words, if condition X, result Y. How does this account for someone changing their mind later? Condition X occurs but then you don't do Y.
You're acting on your own discretion. If you mean that what you do is ultimately based upon your biology, you are not accounting for the fact that what you do very well may affect said biology. It's like a chicken and the egg problem.
On July 08 2013 10:10 Myrddraal wrote: "It means you'll always make the same choice no matter what, which means there was never a choice to begin with." It means that given the exact same circumstances from the beginning of your life to now you would yes, however something in your life had gone differently, you may have made a different choice. Either way you participate in the act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities, either way you have the illusion that you had control over that choice. There was a choice, just because your conscious being was not the one who ultimately decides what to choose, does not make it any less of a choice.
Except, this is where it breaks.
This assumes your decision-making process is deterministic. If it's not (suppose it's probabilistic) then you can have exactly the same set of conditions twice (assuming that were possible) and two different choices as a result.
edit:
also, you have to clarify the bolded. If it wasn't you who chose for you, who did? Some supernatural force? If it was in your biology, then...it was you? I don't quite follow.
On July 01 2013 10:12 aksfjh wrote: As far as we can tell, yes. Although, one hopes there is more to it than that.
Why? Why does one need anything more when what we have is already so wonderful?
one who understands physics, even to a small degree needs no more. Everything you have ever seen, ever touched, smelt tasted or heard was all electro-magnetism interacting with the universe in different ways.
every interaction we experience, with the exception of gravity, is electro-magnetical. every time you touch something, your experience of touch is simply the electric forces in the atoms repelling each other and the subsequent information being transferred to your brain electrically where it is interpreted as an electronic signal which is send to another part of your brain and you experience it as the sensation of touch.
everything is, on its most basic level, the electro-magnetism. only if we could experience the quantum world would we never experience anything else.
I dont know why people need more than that, its freaking awesome that every phenomena you have ever or will ever experience (exception gravity) can be explained in terms of one fundamental force of nature. Chemistry is just a manifestation of that same electro-magnetic force.
As Sheldon Cooper would say "I'm a physicist, I understand everything" and in many ways, its true. All things in the universe are manifestations of the fundamental physical laws of the universe, including life.
So if there is no free will, care to explain how you can make decisions?
A biological version of a series of if and switch statements.
I don't quite follow.
In other words, if condition X, result Y. How does this account for someone changing their mind later? Condition X occurs but then you don't do Y.
You're acting on your own discretion. If you mean that what you do is ultimately based upon your biology, you are not accounting for the fact that what you do very well may affect said biology. It's like a chicken and the egg problem.
The inputs change and when the conditions are checked again, the results are different.
So if there is no free will, care to explain how you can make decisions?
A biological version of a series of if and switch statements.
I don't quite follow.
In other words, if condition X, result Y. How does this account for someone changing their mind later? Condition X occurs but then you don't do Y.
You're acting on your own discretion. If you mean that what you do is ultimately based upon your biology, you are not accounting for the fact that what you do very well may affect said biology. It's like a chicken and the egg problem.
The inputs change and when the conditions are checked again, the results are different.
Right, so now we have a problem of where the inputs are coming from.
You're choosing what goes into the function.
e:
Imagine I do this.
Everyday suppose I have a choice to make, to go to a restaurant I like, X, or to a second restaurant, Y, that I haven't been to before.
The exact same day repeats itself over and over, and I have no memory of what I did the previous day-thus, the conditions for the decision making process are perfectly repeated every time.
My decision process works like this:
I flip a fair coin. If it lands heads, I pick one of the two restaurants. However I pick doesn't really matter-some days I may pick the restaurant I like, some days I might not.
If it lands tails, I flip it again to determine which restaurant I will go to-heads, I go to X. Tails, I go to Y.
On July 08 2013 10:10 Myrddraal wrote: "It means you'll always make the same choice no matter what, which means there was never a choice to begin with." It means that given the exact same circumstances from the beginning of your life to now you would yes, however something in your life had gone differently, you may have made a different choice. Either way you participate in the act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities, either way you have the illusion that you had control over that choice. There was a choice, just because your conscious being was not the one who ultimately decides what to choose, does not make it any less of a choice.
Except, this is where it breaks.
This assumes your decision-making process is deterministic. If it's not (suppose it's probabilistic) then you can have exactly the same set of conditions twice (assuming that were possible) and two different choices as a result.
Well I should have specified, if you believe it is deterministic then yes the same result would be expected, if you believe it is stochastic then there are multiple possibilities with the same conditions, (I don't fully understand the stochastic theory, but SergioCQH tried to explain it in the first few pages of the thread, where it's a matter of neurons firing and which happens to fire/arrive first, though he could not say with certainty if it is truly random, or if it just appears random because we don't have the technology to know any better)
Nonetheless, assuming we believed in a deterministic or probabilistic approach, how does this break the idea? The only way for free will to exist if we believe in a probabilistic solution, is if we were somehow able to control the randomness. I am not suggesting that we can or we can't, but I don't see how you could say for sure that we can. The only evidence that you can really give is your own experience, but I would argue that if we don't have free choice, we still have the illusion of free choice, so your own experience does nothing to disprove the no free will argument.
edit:
also, you have to clarify the bolded. If it wasn't you who chose for you, who did? Some supernatural force? If it was in your biology, then...it was you? I don't quite follow.
Well I'm not trying to argue for my own belief, I am trying to argue for the concept of no free will in general. I think the most common answer would be a combination of biology and circumstance, (nature + nurture if you will). So yes it would be "you" essentially, as an entity, but not the conscious "you" that lives in the present. The definition of free will that seems most fitting to me, is one that means the conscious "you" is able to make decisions. You can subscribe to a different meaning of free will if you wish, and if yours does not allow for the concept of no free will to exist then that is fine too. But it doesn't make yours any more valid, or anyone else's any more ludicrous.
On July 08 2013 10:10 Myrddraal wrote: "It means you'll always make the same choice no matter what, which means there was never a choice to begin with." It means that given the exact same circumstances from the beginning of your life to now you would yes, however something in your life had gone differently, you may have made a different choice. Either way you participate in the act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities, either way you have the illusion that you had control over that choice. There was a choice, just because your conscious being was not the one who ultimately decides what to choose, does not make it any less of a choice.
Except, this is where it breaks.
This assumes your decision-making process is deterministic. If it's not (suppose it's probabilistic) then you can have exactly the same set of conditions twice (assuming that were possible) and two different choices as a result.
edit:
also, you have to clarify the bolded. If it wasn't you who chose for you, who did? Some supernatural force? If it was in your biology, then...it was you? I don't quite follow.
Probabilistic doesn't really change the free will aspect of it, though. It's not as if there's different choices. That would just be random or probabilistic. There's still no choice involved.
Changing deterministic to probabilistic doesn't really get you anything.
So if there is no free will, care to explain how you can make decisions?
A biological version of a series of if and switch statements.
I don't quite follow.
In other words, if condition X, result Y. How does this account for someone changing their mind later? Condition X occurs but then you don't do Y.
You're acting on your own discretion. If you mean that what you do is ultimately based upon your biology, you are not accounting for the fact that what you do very well may affect said biology. It's like a chicken and the egg problem.
The inputs change and when the conditions are checked again, the results are different.
Right, so now we have a problem of where the inputs are coming from.
You're choosing what goes into the function.
e:
Imagine I do this.
Everyday suppose I have a choice to make, to go to a restaurant I like, X, or to a second restaurant, Y, that I haven't been to before.
The exact same day repeats itself over and over, and I have no memory of what I did the previous day-thus, the conditions for the decision making process are perfectly repeated every time.
My decision process works like this:
I flip a fair coin. If it lands heads, I pick one of the two restaurants. However I pick doesn't really matter-some days I may pick the restaurant I like, some days I might not.
If it lands tails, I flip it again to determine which restaurant I will go to-heads, I go to X. Tails, I go to Y.
I don't make the same choice every time.
The input you receive from your eyes certainly wouldn't be the same.
On July 08 2013 10:10 Myrddraal wrote: "It means you'll always make the same choice no matter what, which means there was never a choice to begin with." It means that given the exact same circumstances from the beginning of your life to now you would yes, however something in your life had gone differently, you may have made a different choice. Either way you participate in the act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities, either way you have the illusion that you had control over that choice. There was a choice, just because your conscious being was not the one who ultimately decides what to choose, does not make it any less of a choice.
Except, this is where it breaks.
This assumes your decision-making process is deterministic. If it's not (suppose it's probabilistic) then you can have exactly the same set of conditions twice (assuming that were possible) and two different choices as a result.
Well I should have specified, if you believe it is deterministic then yes the same result would be expected, if you believe it is stochastic then there are multiple possibilities with the same conditions, (I don't fully understand the stochastic theory, but SergioCQH tried to explain it in the first few pages of the thread, where it's a matter of neurons firing and which happens to fire/arrive first, though he could not say with certainty if it is truly random, or if it just appears random because we don't have the technology to know any better)
Nonetheless, assuming we believed in a deterministic or probabilistic approach, how does this break the idea? The only way for free will to exist if we believe in a probabilistic solution, is if we were somehow able to control the randomness. I am not suggesting that we can or we can't, but I don't see how you could say for sure that we can. The only evidence that you can really give is your own experience, but I would argue that if we don't have free choice, we still have the illusion of free choice, so your own experience does nothing to disprove the no free will argument.
Well based on current understandings of the universe, probability has a huge part in physical reality. It's a key feature of quantum mechanics. If you subscribe to modern physics then you accept the idea that the universe is not governed by wholly deterministic phenomena.
Thus it's not a stretch to consider that free will can exist. Probability leads to uncertainty, and the reason we view things deterministically is partly because the very act of observation affects results.
You can influence probabilities (or randomness as you've said) pretty easily-people do it every day whether or not they realize it. In fact, people do it merely by existing.
On July 08 2013 10:10 Myrddraal wrote: "It means you'll always make the same choice no matter what, which means there was never a choice to begin with." It means that given the exact same circumstances from the beginning of your life to now you would yes, however something in your life had gone differently, you may have made a different choice. Either way you participate in the act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities, either way you have the illusion that you had control over that choice. There was a choice, just because your conscious being was not the one who ultimately decides what to choose, does not make it any less of a choice.
Except, this is where it breaks.
This assumes your decision-making process is deterministic. If it's not (suppose it's probabilistic) then you can have exactly the same set of conditions twice (assuming that were possible) and two different choices as a result.
edit:
also, you have to clarify the bolded. If it wasn't you who chose for you, who did? Some supernatural force? If it was in your biology, then...it was you? I don't quite follow.
Probabilistic doesn't really change the free will aspect of it, though. It's not as if there's different choices. That would just be random or probabilistic. There's still no choice involved.
Changing deterministic to probabilistic doesn't really get you anything.
Sure it does.
When a process is not deterministic you have an element of uncertainty. If things were completely deterministic then of course there would be no free will. Given the evidence, though, there is no basis to believe that the universe is completely deterministic.
So if there is no free will, care to explain how you can make decisions?
A biological version of a series of if and switch statements.
I don't quite follow.
In other words, if condition X, result Y. How does this account for someone changing their mind later? Condition X occurs but then you don't do Y.
You're acting on your own discretion. If you mean that what you do is ultimately based upon your biology, you are not accounting for the fact that what you do very well may affect said biology. It's like a chicken and the egg problem.
The inputs change and when the conditions are checked again, the results are different.
Right, so now we have a problem of where the inputs are coming from.
You're choosing what goes into the function.
e:
Imagine I do this.
Everyday suppose I have a choice to make, to go to a restaurant I like, X, or to a second restaurant, Y, that I haven't been to before.
The exact same day repeats itself over and over, and I have no memory of what I did the previous day-thus, the conditions for the decision making process are perfectly repeated every time.
My decision process works like this:
I flip a fair coin. If it lands heads, I pick one of the two restaurants. However I pick doesn't really matter-some days I may pick the restaurant I like, some days I might not.
If it lands tails, I flip it again to determine which restaurant I will go to-heads, I go to X. Tails, I go to Y.
I don't make the same choice every time.
The input you receive from your eyes certainly wouldn't be the same.
Sorry? I don't understand how you came to that conclusion or what relevance it has to the experiment.
On July 08 2013 10:29 Myrddraal wrote:
Well I'm not trying to argue for my own belief, I am trying to argue for the concept of no free will in general. I think the most common answer would be a combination of biology and circumstance, (nature + nurture if you will). So yes it would be "you" essentially, as an entity, but not the conscious "you" that lives in the present. The definition of free will that seems most fitting to me, is one that means the conscious "you" is able to make decisions. You can subscribe to a different meaning of free will if you wish, and if yours does not allow for the concept of no free will to exist then that is fine too. But it doesn't make yours any more valid, or anyone else's any more ludicrous.
Sure it does-if my concept is logically consistent, and the other concept is not, then of course one is more valid than the other.
So far, based on the arguments in favor of no-will, it doesn't actually seem to be logically consistent.
So if there is no free will, care to explain how you can make decisions?
A biological version of a series of if and switch statements.
I don't quite follow.
In other words, if condition X, result Y. How does this account for someone changing their mind later? Condition X occurs but then you don't do Y.
You're acting on your own discretion. If you mean that what you do is ultimately based upon your biology, you are not accounting for the fact that what you do very well may affect said biology. It's like a chicken and the egg problem.
The inputs change and when the conditions are checked again, the results are different.
Right, so now we have a problem of where the inputs are coming from.
You're choosing what goes into the function.
e:
Imagine I do this.
Everyday suppose I have a choice to make, to go to a restaurant I like, X, or to a second restaurant, Y, that I haven't been to before.
The exact same day repeats itself over and over, and I have no memory of what I did the previous day-thus, the conditions for the decision making process are perfectly repeated every time.
My decision process works like this:
I flip a fair coin. If it lands heads, I pick one of the two restaurants. However I pick doesn't really matter-some days I may pick the restaurant I like, some days I might not.
If it lands tails, I flip it again to determine which restaurant I will go to-heads, I go to X. Tails, I go to Y.
I don't make the same choice every time.
The input you receive from your eyes certainly wouldn't be the same.
Sorry? I don't understand how you came to that conclusion or what relevance it has to the experiment.
In one case, you see heads, and in another you see tails, and you make a decision based off of that. I could make a robot do the exact same thing. It doesn't mean my robot now has free will.
So if there is no free will, care to explain how you can make decisions?
A biological version of a series of if and switch statements.
I don't quite follow.
In other words, if condition X, result Y. How does this account for someone changing their mind later? Condition X occurs but then you don't do Y.
You're acting on your own discretion. If you mean that what you do is ultimately based upon your biology, you are not accounting for the fact that what you do very well may affect said biology. It's like a chicken and the egg problem.
The inputs change and when the conditions are checked again, the results are different.
Right, so now we have a problem of where the inputs are coming from.
You're choosing what goes into the function.
e:
Imagine I do this.
Everyday suppose I have a choice to make, to go to a restaurant I like, X, or to a second restaurant, Y, that I haven't been to before.
The exact same day repeats itself over and over, and I have no memory of what I did the previous day-thus, the conditions for the decision making process are perfectly repeated every time.
My decision process works like this:
I flip a fair coin. If it lands heads, I pick one of the two restaurants. However I pick doesn't really matter-some days I may pick the restaurant I like, some days I might not.
If it lands tails, I flip it again to determine which restaurant I will go to-heads, I go to X. Tails, I go to Y.
I don't make the same choice every time.
The input you receive from your eyes certainly wouldn't be the same.
Sorry? I don't understand how you came to that conclusion or what relevance it has to the experiment.
In one case, you see heads, and in another you see tails, and you make a decision based off of that. I could make a robot do the exact same thing. It doesn't mean my robot now has free will.
Not true-in the first case, if you see heads you make a decision.
In the second case, where you see heads, the coin makes the decision. (you make the decision to let the coin make the decision)
Same conditions, two decisions. Both equally likely.
(You could make the argument that you will always make the decision to flip the coin, but the idea of the analogy is to make the decision-making process "physical". In essence the coin is some probabilistic aspect of a part of your brain).
If your brain functioned completely deterministically, I would agree that you have no free will. The decisions would be completely based upon a particular state of matter, the matter that makes up your brain. However, the problem is that, matter doesn't work that way. Matter is not deterministic. Quantum mechanics tells us that-at a fundamental level, particles do not behave deterministically, and it's possible for something to be in a superposition of states. It's not a stretch to think that if basic atoms don't necessarily behave deterministically then it's very possible for the neurons in your brain to be governed by stochastic processes. In fact, I'm pretty sure the best models we have for neural networks are all stochastic.
e: and yes, the robot could flip a coin, but it can't do the A case. It can do the B case.
In the future, it may very well be possible that robots can be sentient and have their own decision-making processes. We might not actually be that far away from it (maybe 50-100 years). We're already at a stage where the human brain is limiting the amount of information we can process.
So if there is no free will, care to explain how you can make decisions?
A biological version of a series of if and switch statements.
I don't quite follow.
In other words, if condition X, result Y. How does this account for someone changing their mind later? Condition X occurs but then you don't do Y.
You're acting on your own discretion. If you mean that what you do is ultimately based upon your biology, you are not accounting for the fact that what you do very well may affect said biology. It's like a chicken and the egg problem.
The inputs change and when the conditions are checked again, the results are different.
Right, so now we have a problem of where the inputs are coming from.
You're choosing what goes into the function.
e:
Imagine I do this.
Everyday suppose I have a choice to make, to go to a restaurant I like, X, or to a second restaurant, Y, that I haven't been to before.
The exact same day repeats itself over and over, and I have no memory of what I did the previous day-thus, the conditions for the decision making process are perfectly repeated every time.
My decision process works like this:
I flip a fair coin. If it lands heads, I pick one of the two restaurants. However I pick doesn't really matter-some days I may pick the restaurant I like, some days I might not.
If it lands tails, I flip it again to determine which restaurant I will go to-heads, I go to X. Tails, I go to Y.
I don't make the same choice every time.
The input you receive from your eyes certainly wouldn't be the same.
Sorry? I don't understand how you came to that conclusion or what relevance it has to the experiment.
In one case, you see heads, and in another you see tails, and you make a decision based off of that. I could make a robot do the exact same thing. It doesn't mean my robot now has free will.
Not true-in the first case, if you see heads you make a decision.
In the second case, where you see heads, the coin makes the decision. (you make the decision to let the coin make the decision)
Same conditions, two decisions. Both equally likely.
(You could make the argument that you will always make the decision to flip the coin, but the idea of the analogy is to make the decision-making process "physical". In essence the coin is some probabilistic aspect of a part of your brain).
If your brain functioned completely deterministically, I would agree that you have no free will. The decisions would be completely based upon a particular state of matter, the matter that makes up your brain. However, the problem is that, matter doesn't work that way. Matter is not deterministic. Quantum mechanics tells us that-at a fundamental level, particles do not behave deterministically, and it's possible for something to be in a superposition of states. It's not a stretch to think that if basic atoms don't necessarily behave deterministically then it's very possible for the neurons in your brain to be governed by stochastic processes. In fact, I'm pretty sure the best models we have for neural networks are all stochastic.
Physics nowadays considers the universe a combination of determinism and probabilism. There we go again with what I wrote in that first post: If your decision making process works with the rules of a (semi) probabilistic universe then it means that your choices are (partly) random. Where exactly is the room for free will in that? Just because there is uncertainty in the possible outcomes do we suddenly proclaim ourselves separate from the rest of the universe by claiming our actions are neither defined by what has been up to now nor randomness? What sort of brain process that works with neither probabilistic nor deterministic principles does the choosing of the different random scenarios? I think much of the obsession with free will as a concept lies in this; we just want to feel special as unique uninfluenced agents, separate/different from the rest of the world.
On July 08 2013 10:10 Myrddraal wrote: "It means you'll always make the same choice no matter what, which means there was never a choice to begin with." It means that given the exact same circumstances from the beginning of your life to now you would yes, however something in your life had gone differently, you may have made a different choice. Either way you participate in the act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities, either way you have the illusion that you had control over that choice. There was a choice, just because your conscious being was not the one who ultimately decides what to choose, does not make it any less of a choice.
Except, this is where it breaks.
This assumes your decision-making process is deterministic. If it's not (suppose it's probabilistic) then you can have exactly the same set of conditions twice (assuming that were possible) and two different choices as a result.
Well I should have specified, if you believe it is deterministic then yes the same result would be expected, if you believe it is stochastic then there are multiple possibilities with the same conditions, (I don't fully understand the stochastic theory, but SergioCQH tried to explain it in the first few pages of the thread, where it's a matter of neurons firing and which happens to fire/arrive first, though he could not say with certainty if it is truly random, or if it just appears random because we don't have the technology to know any better)
Nonetheless, assuming we believed in a deterministic or probabilistic approach, how does this break the idea? The only way for free will to exist if we believe in a probabilistic solution, is if we were somehow able to control the randomness. I am not suggesting that we can or we can't, but I don't see how you could say for sure that we can. The only evidence that you can really give is your own experience, but I would argue that if we don't have free choice, we still have the illusion of free choice, so your own experience does nothing to disprove the no free will argument.
Well based on current understandings of the universe, probability has a huge part in physical reality. It's a key feature of quantum mechanics. If you subscribe to modern physics then you accept the idea that the universe is not governed by wholly deterministic phenomena.
Thus it's not a stretch to consider that free will can exist. Probability leads to uncertainty, and the reason we view things deterministically is partly because the very act of observation affects results.
You can influence probabilities (or randomness as you've said) pretty easily-people do it every day whether or not they realize it. In fact, people do it merely by existing.
On July 08 2013 10:10 Myrddraal wrote: "It means you'll always make the same choice no matter what, which means there was never a choice to begin with." It means that given the exact same circumstances from the beginning of your life to now you would yes, however something in your life had gone differently, you may have made a different choice. Either way you participate in the act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities, either way you have the illusion that you had control over that choice. There was a choice, just because your conscious being was not the one who ultimately decides what to choose, does not make it any less of a choice.
Except, this is where it breaks.
This assumes your decision-making process is deterministic. If it's not (suppose it's probabilistic) then you can have exactly the same set of conditions twice (assuming that were possible) and two different choices as a result.
edit:
also, you have to clarify the bolded. If it wasn't you who chose for you, who did? Some supernatural force? If it was in your biology, then...it was you? I don't quite follow.
Probabilistic doesn't really change the free will aspect of it, though. It's not as if there's different choices. That would just be random or probabilistic. There's still no choice involved.
Changing deterministic to probabilistic doesn't really get you anything.
Sure it does.
When a process is not deterministic you have an element of uncertainty. If things were completely deterministic then of course there would be no free will. Given the evidence, though, there is no basis to believe that the universe is completely deterministic.
So if there is no free will, care to explain how you can make decisions?
A biological version of a series of if and switch statements.
I don't quite follow.
In other words, if condition X, result Y. How does this account for someone changing their mind later? Condition X occurs but then you don't do Y.
You're acting on your own discretion. If you mean that what you do is ultimately based upon your biology, you are not accounting for the fact that what you do very well may affect said biology. It's like a chicken and the egg problem.
The inputs change and when the conditions are checked again, the results are different.
Right, so now we have a problem of where the inputs are coming from.
You're choosing what goes into the function.
e:
Imagine I do this.
Everyday suppose I have a choice to make, to go to a restaurant I like, X, or to a second restaurant, Y, that I haven't been to before.
The exact same day repeats itself over and over, and I have no memory of what I did the previous day-thus, the conditions for the decision making process are perfectly repeated every time.
My decision process works like this:
I flip a fair coin. If it lands heads, I pick one of the two restaurants. However I pick doesn't really matter-some days I may pick the restaurant I like, some days I might not.
If it lands tails, I flip it again to determine which restaurant I will go to-heads, I go to X. Tails, I go to Y.
I don't make the same choice every time.
The input you receive from your eyes certainly wouldn't be the same.
Sorry? I don't understand how you came to that conclusion or what relevance it has to the experiment.
Well I'm not trying to argue for my own belief, I am trying to argue for the concept of no free will in general. I think the most common answer would be a combination of biology and circumstance, (nature + nurture if you will). So yes it would be "you" essentially, as an entity, but not the conscious "you" that lives in the present. The definition of free will that seems most fitting to me, is one that means the conscious "you" is able to make decisions. You can subscribe to a different meaning of free will if you wish, and if yours does not allow for the concept of no free will to exist then that is fine too. But it doesn't make yours any more valid, or anyone else's any more ludicrous.
Sure it does-if my concept is logically consistent, and the other concept is not, then of course one is more valid than the other.
So far, based on the arguments in favor of no-will, it doesn't actually seem to be logically consistent.
Can you point out where the logical inconsistency lies? So far all you have said is that, it breaks because there is randomness, at no point have you stated where randomness means that there can not be no-will, you have only stated why it means there can be free will.
Actually my argument is more logically consistant than yours, unless you can fill in the logic gap that allows our brain to control the probabilistic process.
Your argument as far I can reason it: The universe has probabilistic aspects. The processes of the brain may be probabilistic. We are able to affect some probabilistic processes. <Insert logic gap here> Therefore we are able to affect probabilistic processes in our brain in the process of free will.
So unless you can fill in that logic gap (with solid evidence), your point of view is the ludicrous one from my perspective.
"Thus it's not a stretch to consider that free will can exist" - I may have made a mistake, from your posts on the last page, I thought you were arguing for why no-will is impossible, I was only trying to say that it is possible, I am not trying to argue against the possibility of free will, as I believe at this stage, that either is possible until we can some time in the future get enough information to figure out which is actually the case.
When a process is not deterministic you have an element of uncertainty. If things were completely deterministic then of course there would be no free will. Given the evidence, though, there is no basis to believe that the universe is completely deterministic.
Okay, let's go through a simple example. You're trying to convince me the sky is green. You give some really compelling evidence, but I'm pretty stubborn. So maybe some neuron has some probabilistic chance of firing that is 50/50, and whether I believe the sky is green is 50/50. Let's do a coinflip.
Tell me: Do you feel like you're involved in a coin flip? Do you feel like the coin is making a choice while flipping?
Saying something is probabilistic doesn't grant you what you are looking for. There's no free will in a dice game. There's no moral responsibility or freedom granted in coinflips and dice. It simply doesn't work like that.
And I disagree with the second part. I am a compatibilist. I see no conflict with determinism and free will (because I think the definition you're using for free will isn't very good or useful). But saying something is probabilistic instead of deterministic doesn't change anything about free will. I don't see any difference.
On July 08 2013 10:10 Myrddraal wrote: "It means you'll always make the same choice no matter what, which means there was never a choice to begin with." It means that given the exact same circumstances from the beginning of your life to now you would yes, however something in your life had gone differently, you may have made a different choice. Either way you participate in the act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities, either way you have the illusion that you had control over that choice. There was a choice, just because your conscious being was not the one who ultimately decides what to choose, does not make it any less of a choice.
Except, this is where it breaks.
This assumes your decision-making process is deterministic. If it's not (suppose it's probabilistic) then you can have exactly the same set of conditions twice (assuming that were possible) and two different choices as a result.
Well I should have specified, if you believe it is deterministic then yes the same result would be expected, if you believe it is stochastic then there are multiple possibilities with the same conditions, (I don't fully understand the stochastic theory, but SergioCQH tried to explain it in the first few pages of the thread, where it's a matter of neurons firing and which happens to fire/arrive first, though he could not say with certainty if it is truly random, or if it just appears random because we don't have the technology to know any better)
Nonetheless, assuming we believed in a deterministic or probabilistic approach, how does this break the idea? The only way for free will to exist if we believe in a probabilistic solution, is if we were somehow able to control the randomness. I am not suggesting that we can or we can't, but I don't see how you could say for sure that we can. The only evidence that you can really give is your own experience, but I would argue that if we don't have free choice, we still have the illusion of free choice, so your own experience does nothing to disprove the no free will argument.
Well based on current understandings of the universe, probability has a huge part in physical reality. It's a key feature of quantum mechanics. If you subscribe to modern physics then you accept the idea that the universe is not governed by wholly deterministic phenomena.
Thus it's not a stretch to consider that free will can exist. Probability leads to uncertainty, and the reason we view things deterministically is partly because the very act of observation affects results.
You can influence probabilities (or randomness as you've said) pretty easily-people do it every day whether or not they realize it. In fact, people do it merely by existing.
On July 08 2013 10:30 DoubleReed wrote:
On July 08 2013 10:17 wherebugsgo wrote:
On July 08 2013 10:10 Myrddraal wrote: "It means you'll always make the same choice no matter what, which means there was never a choice to begin with." It means that given the exact same circumstances from the beginning of your life to now you would yes, however something in your life had gone differently, you may have made a different choice. Either way you participate in the act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities, either way you have the illusion that you had control over that choice. There was a choice, just because your conscious being was not the one who ultimately decides what to choose, does not make it any less of a choice.
Except, this is where it breaks.
This assumes your decision-making process is deterministic. If it's not (suppose it's probabilistic) then you can have exactly the same set of conditions twice (assuming that were possible) and two different choices as a result.
edit:
also, you have to clarify the bolded. If it wasn't you who chose for you, who did? Some supernatural force? If it was in your biology, then...it was you? I don't quite follow.
Probabilistic doesn't really change the free will aspect of it, though. It's not as if there's different choices. That would just be random or probabilistic. There's still no choice involved.
Changing deterministic to probabilistic doesn't really get you anything.
Sure it does.
When a process is not deterministic you have an element of uncertainty. If things were completely deterministic then of course there would be no free will. Given the evidence, though, there is no basis to believe that the universe is completely deterministic.
On July 08 2013 10:36 Tarot wrote:
On July 08 2013 10:23 wherebugsgo wrote:
On July 08 2013 10:21 Tarot wrote:
On July 08 2013 10:11 wherebugsgo wrote:
On July 08 2013 10:00 Tarot wrote:
On July 08 2013 09:25 wherebugsgo wrote:What?
So if there is no free will, care to explain how you can make decisions?
A biological version of a series of if and switch statements.
I don't quite follow.
In other words, if condition X, result Y. How does this account for someone changing their mind later? Condition X occurs but then you don't do Y.
You're acting on your own discretion. If you mean that what you do is ultimately based upon your biology, you are not accounting for the fact that what you do very well may affect said biology. It's like a chicken and the egg problem.
The inputs change and when the conditions are checked again, the results are different.
Right, so now we have a problem of where the inputs are coming from.
You're choosing what goes into the function.
e:
Imagine I do this.
Everyday suppose I have a choice to make, to go to a restaurant I like, X, or to a second restaurant, Y, that I haven't been to before.
The exact same day repeats itself over and over, and I have no memory of what I did the previous day-thus, the conditions for the decision making process are perfectly repeated every time.
My decision process works like this:
I flip a fair coin. If it lands heads, I pick one of the two restaurants. However I pick doesn't really matter-some days I may pick the restaurant I like, some days I might not.
If it lands tails, I flip it again to determine which restaurant I will go to-heads, I go to X. Tails, I go to Y.
I don't make the same choice every time.
The input you receive from your eyes certainly wouldn't be the same.
Sorry? I don't understand how you came to that conclusion or what relevance it has to the experiment.
On July 08 2013 10:29 Myrddraal wrote:
Well I'm not trying to argue for my own belief, I am trying to argue for the concept of no free will in general. I think the most common answer would be a combination of biology and circumstance, (nature + nurture if you will). So yes it would be "you" essentially, as an entity, but not the conscious "you" that lives in the present. The definition of free will that seems most fitting to me, is one that means the conscious "you" is able to make decisions. You can subscribe to a different meaning of free will if you wish, and if yours does not allow for the concept of no free will to exist then that is fine too. But it doesn't make yours any more valid, or anyone else's any more ludicrous.
Sure it does-if my concept is logically consistent, and the other concept is not, then of course one is more valid than the other.
So far, based on the arguments in favor of no-will, it doesn't actually seem to be logically consistent.
Can you point out where the logical inconsistency lies? So far all you have said is that, it breaks because there is randomness, at no point have you stated where randomness means that there can not be no-will, you have only stated why it means there can be free will.
Actually my argument is more logically consistant than yours, unless you can fill in the logic gap that allows our brain to control the probabilistic process.
Your argument as far I can reason it: The universe has probabilistic aspects. The processes of the brain may be probabilistic. We are able to affect some probabilistic processes. <Insert logic gap here> Therefore we are able to affect probabilistic processes in our brain in the process of free will.
So unless you can fill in that logic gap (with solid evidence), your point of view is the ludicrous one from my perspective.
"Thus it's not a stretch to consider that free will can exist" - I may have made a mistake, from your posts on the last page, I thought you were arguing for why no-will is impossible, I was only trying to say that it is possible, I am not trying to argue against the possibility of free will, as I believe at this stage, that either is possible until we can some time in the future get enough information to figure out which is actually the case.
you are not wrong on that last part, consider it a personal victory because shortly after you started posting he changed his defending position drastically :D Now he thinks it's not absurd to believe in free will because the universe is not fully deterministic. At first he thought even decisions couldn't be possible with no free will...
When a process is not deterministic you have an element of uncertainty. If things were completely deterministic then of course there would be no free will. Given the evidence, though, there is no basis to believe that the universe is completely deterministic.
Okay, let's go through a simple example. You're trying to convince me the sky is green. You give some really compelling evidence, but I'm pretty stubborn. So maybe some neuron has some probabilistic chance of firing that is 50/50, and whether I believe the sky is green is 50/50. Let's do a coinflip.
Tell me: Do you feel like you're involved in a coin flip? Do you feel like the coin is making a choice while flipping?
Saying something is probabilistic doesn't grant you what you are looking for. There's no free will in a dice game. There's no moral responsibility or freedom granted in coinflips and dice. It simply doesn't work like that.
And I disagree with the second part. I am a compatibilist. I see no conflict with determinism and free will. But saying something is probabilistic instead of deterministic doesn't change anything about free will. I don't see any difference.
out of curiosity what sort of essay/book/lecture would you recommend that supports compatibilism? I like your line of thought and I have read a few things but I haven't been convinced by compatibilism yet
Something being governed by a stochastic process does NOT mean that you cannot influence said process.
A good example is artificial selection. You can influence the outcome of artificial selection despite not being in full control of it. It has random elements, but you can use constraints to force these random elements to take on certain values within a range that is predictable. This is precisely how farmers breed fatter animals and hardier crops, despite genetics being non-deterministic.
In the case of quantum mechanics it generally means that when you observe something its probability function gets squished to a spike at the location it's most likely to be (because your observation affected the probability density)
Your argument as far I can reason it: The universe has probabilistic aspects. The processes of the brain may be probabilistic. We are able to affect some probabilistic processes. <Insert logic gap here> Therefore we are able to affect probabilistic processes in our brain in the process of free will.
There's no logic gap, because given our current evidence, processes of the brain ARE stochastic. The current prevailing ideas all support that. None of them suggest that the brain operates deterministically, and there are no prevailing physical theories that suggest the universe is deterministic, either. (if it were, then everything else would be deterministic too-but because it's not, nothing can be)
The problem is when you say there is NO free will. When you say there is no free will, that means you accept that decision-making must be deterministic. Why? Because in the same definition you used for saying there is no free will, you said that given the same operating conditions, the same choice would result no matter what.
The problem is that this is impossible with a stochastic process. By definition, you cannot know the result of a stochastic process until after it has been calculated (i.e. after its results have been observed). Thus, you can get the exact same conditions multiple times and get different results each time.
All I'm doing is saying that by your own definition of what it means for there to be "no free will", the idea that there is "no free will" does not actually conform to physical reality as we know it.
On July 08 2013 10:10 Myrddraal wrote: "It means you'll always make the same choice no matter what, which means there was never a choice to begin with." It means that given the exact same circumstances from the beginning of your life to now you would yes, however something in your life had gone differently, you may have made a different choice. Either way you participate in the act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities, either way you have the illusion that you had control over that choice. There was a choice, just because your conscious being was not the one who ultimately decides what to choose, does not make it any less of a choice.
Except, this is where it breaks.
This assumes your decision-making process is deterministic. If it's not (suppose it's probabilistic) then you can have exactly the same set of conditions twice (assuming that were possible) and two different choices as a result.
Well I should have specified, if you believe it is deterministic then yes the same result would be expected, if you believe it is stochastic then there are multiple possibilities with the same conditions, (I don't fully understand the stochastic theory, but SergioCQH tried to explain it in the first few pages of the thread, where it's a matter of neurons firing and which happens to fire/arrive first, though he could not say with certainty if it is truly random, or if it just appears random because we don't have the technology to know any better)
Nonetheless, assuming we believed in a deterministic or probabilistic approach, how does this break the idea? The only way for free will to exist if we believe in a probabilistic solution, is if we were somehow able to control the randomness. I am not suggesting that we can or we can't, but I don't see how you could say for sure that we can. The only evidence that you can really give is your own experience, but I would argue that if we don't have free choice, we still have the illusion of free choice, so your own experience does nothing to disprove the no free will argument.
Well based on current understandings of the universe, probability has a huge part in physical reality. It's a key feature of quantum mechanics. If you subscribe to modern physics then you accept the idea that the universe is not governed by wholly deterministic phenomena.
Thus it's not a stretch to consider that free will can exist. Probability leads to uncertainty, and the reason we view things deterministically is partly because the very act of observation affects results.
You can influence probabilities (or randomness as you've said) pretty easily-people do it every day whether or not they realize it. In fact, people do it merely by existing.
On July 08 2013 10:30 DoubleReed wrote:
On July 08 2013 10:17 wherebugsgo wrote:
On July 08 2013 10:10 Myrddraal wrote: "It means you'll always make the same choice no matter what, which means there was never a choice to begin with." It means that given the exact same circumstances from the beginning of your life to now you would yes, however something in your life had gone differently, you may have made a different choice. Either way you participate in the act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities, either way you have the illusion that you had control over that choice. There was a choice, just because your conscious being was not the one who ultimately decides what to choose, does not make it any less of a choice.
Except, this is where it breaks.
This assumes your decision-making process is deterministic. If it's not (suppose it's probabilistic) then you can have exactly the same set of conditions twice (assuming that were possible) and two different choices as a result.
edit:
also, you have to clarify the bolded. If it wasn't you who chose for you, who did? Some supernatural force? If it was in your biology, then...it was you? I don't quite follow.
Probabilistic doesn't really change the free will aspect of it, though. It's not as if there's different choices. That would just be random or probabilistic. There's still no choice involved.
Changing deterministic to probabilistic doesn't really get you anything.
Sure it does.
When a process is not deterministic you have an element of uncertainty. If things were completely deterministic then of course there would be no free will. Given the evidence, though, there is no basis to believe that the universe is completely deterministic.
On July 08 2013 10:36 Tarot wrote:
On July 08 2013 10:23 wherebugsgo wrote:
On July 08 2013 10:21 Tarot wrote:
On July 08 2013 10:11 wherebugsgo wrote:
On July 08 2013 10:00 Tarot wrote:
On July 08 2013 09:25 wherebugsgo wrote:What?
So if there is no free will, care to explain how you can make decisions?
A biological version of a series of if and switch statements.
I don't quite follow.
In other words, if condition X, result Y. How does this account for someone changing their mind later? Condition X occurs but then you don't do Y.
You're acting on your own discretion. If you mean that what you do is ultimately based upon your biology, you are not accounting for the fact that what you do very well may affect said biology. It's like a chicken and the egg problem.
The inputs change and when the conditions are checked again, the results are different.
Right, so now we have a problem of where the inputs are coming from.
You're choosing what goes into the function.
e:
Imagine I do this.
Everyday suppose I have a choice to make, to go to a restaurant I like, X, or to a second restaurant, Y, that I haven't been to before.
The exact same day repeats itself over and over, and I have no memory of what I did the previous day-thus, the conditions for the decision making process are perfectly repeated every time.
My decision process works like this:
I flip a fair coin. If it lands heads, I pick one of the two restaurants. However I pick doesn't really matter-some days I may pick the restaurant I like, some days I might not.
If it lands tails, I flip it again to determine which restaurant I will go to-heads, I go to X. Tails, I go to Y.
I don't make the same choice every time.
The input you receive from your eyes certainly wouldn't be the same.
Sorry? I don't understand how you came to that conclusion or what relevance it has to the experiment.
On July 08 2013 10:29 Myrddraal wrote:
Well I'm not trying to argue for my own belief, I am trying to argue for the concept of no free will in general. I think the most common answer would be a combination of biology and circumstance, (nature + nurture if you will). So yes it would be "you" essentially, as an entity, but not the conscious "you" that lives in the present. The definition of free will that seems most fitting to me, is one that means the conscious "you" is able to make decisions. You can subscribe to a different meaning of free will if you wish, and if yours does not allow for the concept of no free will to exist then that is fine too. But it doesn't make yours any more valid, or anyone else's any more ludicrous.
Sure it does-if my concept is logically consistent, and the other concept is not, then of course one is more valid than the other.
So far, based on the arguments in favor of no-will, it doesn't actually seem to be logically consistent.
Can you point out where the logical inconsistency lies? So far all you have said is that, it breaks because there is randomness, at no point have you stated where randomness means that there can not be no-will, you have only stated why it means there can be free will.
Actually my argument is more logically consistant than yours, unless you can fill in the logic gap that allows our brain to control the probabilistic process.
Your argument as far I can reason it: The universe has probabilistic aspects. The processes of the brain may be probabilistic. We are able to affect some probabilistic processes. <Insert logic gap here> Therefore we are able to affect probabilistic processes in our brain in the process of free will.
So unless you can fill in that logic gap (with solid evidence), your point of view is the ludicrous one from my perspective.
"Thus it's not a stretch to consider that free will can exist" - I may have made a mistake, from your posts on the last page, I thought you were arguing for why no-will is impossible, I was only trying to say that it is possible, I am not trying to argue against the possibility of free will, as I believe at this stage, that either is possible until we can some time in the future get enough information to figure out which is actually the case.
you are not wrong on that last part, consider it a personal victory because shortly after you started posting he changed his defending position drastically :D Now he thinks it's not absurd to believe in free will because the universe is not fully deterministic. At first he thought even decisions couldn't be possible with no free will...
Actually, I still think this.
No one has yet been able to adequately explain how a world without free will is even possible. That logical hurdle has not been crossed yet.
E: I should clarify that my definition of "decision" is significantly different from what I think your definition of "decision" is. Maybe that's why you think I've changed my position.
When a process is not deterministic you have an element of uncertainty. If things were completely deterministic then of course there would be no free will. Given the evidence, though, there is no basis to believe that the universe is completely deterministic.
Okay, let's go through a simple example. You're trying to convince me the sky is green. You give some really compelling evidence, but I'm pretty stubborn. So maybe some neuron has some probabilistic chance of firing that is 50/50, and whether I believe the sky is green is 50/50. Let's do a coinflip.
Tell me: Do you feel like you're involved in a coin flip? Do you feel like the coin is making a choice while flipping?
Saying something is probabilistic doesn't grant you what you are looking for. There's no free will in a dice game. There's no moral responsibility or freedom granted in coinflips and dice. It simply doesn't work like that.
And I disagree with the second part. I am a compatibilist. I see no conflict with determinism and free will. But saying something is probabilistic instead of deterministic doesn't change anything about free will. I don't see any difference.
out of curiosity what sort of essay/book/lecture would you recommend that supports compatibilism? I like your line of thought and I have read a few things but I haven't been convinced by compatibilism yet
I posted this earlier in the thread. I always find this conversation very strange. The only stance I've heard that makes any sort of sense to me is Daniel Dennett's viewpoint:
Quote from the end:
What I claim is that all the varieties of free will that are worth wanting, we can have in a deterministic world. I can define varieties of free will that are incompatible with determinism, but they're pointless. They don't give you anything that matters. They aren't needed for moral responsibility. They aren't needed to give your life meaning. They are completely gratuitious. These are bizarre metaphysical conceits. They don't pull their weight. You don't need them. Who cares?
On July 08 2013 11:23 wherebugsgo wrote: Something being governed by a stochastic process does NOT mean that you cannot influence said process.
For you to show that free will must exist, you still need to show evidence that the brain does influence the process.
A good example is artificial selection. You can influence the outcome of artificial selection despite not being in full control of it. It has random elements, but you can use constraints to force these random elements to take on certain values within a range that is predictable. This is precisely how farmers breed fatter animals and hardier crops, despite genetics being non-deterministic.
In the case of quantum mechanics it generally means that when you observe something its probability function gets squished to a spike at the location it's most likely to be (because your observation affected the probability density)
Your argument as far I can reason it: The universe has probabilistic aspects. The processes of the brain may be probabilistic. We are able to affect some probabilistic processes. <Insert logic gap here> Therefore we are able to affect probabilistic processes in our brain in the process of free will.
There's no logic gap, because given our current evidence, processes of the brain ARE stochastic. The current prevailing ideas all support that. None of them suggest that the brain operates deterministically, and there are no prevailing physical theories that suggest the universe is deterministic, either. (if it were, then everything else would be deterministic too-but because it's not, nothing can be)
The problem is when you say there is NO free will. When you say there is no free will, that means you accept that decision-making must be deterministic. Why? Because in the same definition you used for saying there is no free will, you said that given the same operating conditions, the same choice would result no matter what.
No, I accept that it is stochastic, I was only using the deterministic approach before as a theory for why no-will "could" exist, because you are arguing that it "couldn't" and I find the deterministic argument simpler to explain and I haven't seen any evidence to show that it makes a difference, except that determinism means definitely no free will and stochastic means "maybe" free will.
And yes there is a logic gap, because you still have not provided proof that our brain can affect the probability. You don't have a leg to stand on until you can fill that gap, and until then you must accept that your argument is not logically sound.
The problem is that this is impossible with a stochastic process. By definition, you cannot know the result of a stochastic process until after it has been calculated (i.e. after its results have been observed). Thus, you can get the exact same conditions multiple times and get different results each time.
All I'm doing is saying that by your own definition of what it means for there to be "no free will", the idea that there is "no free will" does not actually conform to physical reality as we know it.
On July 08 2013 10:10 Myrddraal wrote: "It means you'll always make the same choice no matter what, which means there was never a choice to begin with." It means that given the exact same circumstances from the beginning of your life to now you would yes, however something in your life had gone differently, you may have made a different choice. Either way you participate in the act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities, either way you have the illusion that you had control over that choice. There was a choice, just because your conscious being was not the one who ultimately decides what to choose, does not make it any less of a choice.
Except, this is where it breaks.
This assumes your decision-making process is deterministic. If it's not (suppose it's probabilistic) then you can have exactly the same set of conditions twice (assuming that were possible) and two different choices as a result.
Well I should have specified, if you believe it is deterministic then yes the same result would be expected, if you believe it is stochastic then there are multiple possibilities with the same conditions, (I don't fully understand the stochastic theory, but SergioCQH tried to explain it in the first few pages of the thread, where it's a matter of neurons firing and which happens to fire/arrive first, though he could not say with certainty if it is truly random, or if it just appears random because we don't have the technology to know any better)
Nonetheless, assuming we believed in a deterministic or probabilistic approach, how does this break the idea? The only way for free will to exist if we believe in a probabilistic solution, is if we were somehow able to control the randomness. I am not suggesting that we can or we can't, but I don't see how you could say for sure that we can. The only evidence that you can really give is your own experience, but I would argue that if we don't have free choice, we still have the illusion of free choice, so your own experience does nothing to disprove the no free will argument.
Well based on current understandings of the universe, probability has a huge part in physical reality. It's a key feature of quantum mechanics. If you subscribe to modern physics then you accept the idea that the universe is not governed by wholly deterministic phenomena.
Thus it's not a stretch to consider that free will can exist. Probability leads to uncertainty, and the reason we view things deterministically is partly because the very act of observation affects results.
You can influence probabilities (or randomness as you've said) pretty easily-people do it every day whether or not they realize it. In fact, people do it merely by existing.
On July 08 2013 10:30 DoubleReed wrote:
On July 08 2013 10:17 wherebugsgo wrote:
On July 08 2013 10:10 Myrddraal wrote: "It means you'll always make the same choice no matter what, which means there was never a choice to begin with." It means that given the exact same circumstances from the beginning of your life to now you would yes, however something in your life had gone differently, you may have made a different choice. Either way you participate in the act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities, either way you have the illusion that you had control over that choice. There was a choice, just because your conscious being was not the one who ultimately decides what to choose, does not make it any less of a choice.
Except, this is where it breaks.
This assumes your decision-making process is deterministic. If it's not (suppose it's probabilistic) then you can have exactly the same set of conditions twice (assuming that were possible) and two different choices as a result.
edit:
also, you have to clarify the bolded. If it wasn't you who chose for you, who did? Some supernatural force? If it was in your biology, then...it was you? I don't quite follow.
Probabilistic doesn't really change the free will aspect of it, though. It's not as if there's different choices. That would just be random or probabilistic. There's still no choice involved.
Changing deterministic to probabilistic doesn't really get you anything.
Sure it does.
When a process is not deterministic you have an element of uncertainty. If things were completely deterministic then of course there would be no free will. Given the evidence, though, there is no basis to believe that the universe is completely deterministic.
On July 08 2013 10:36 Tarot wrote:
On July 08 2013 10:23 wherebugsgo wrote:
On July 08 2013 10:21 Tarot wrote:
On July 08 2013 10:11 wherebugsgo wrote:
On July 08 2013 10:00 Tarot wrote:
On July 08 2013 09:25 wherebugsgo wrote:What?
So if there is no free will, care to explain how you can make decisions?
A biological version of a series of if and switch statements.
I don't quite follow.
In other words, if condition X, result Y. How does this account for someone changing their mind later? Condition X occurs but then you don't do Y.
You're acting on your own discretion. If you mean that what you do is ultimately based upon your biology, you are not accounting for the fact that what you do very well may affect said biology. It's like a chicken and the egg problem.
The inputs change and when the conditions are checked again, the results are different.
Right, so now we have a problem of where the inputs are coming from.
You're choosing what goes into the function.
e:
Imagine I do this.
Everyday suppose I have a choice to make, to go to a restaurant I like, X, or to a second restaurant, Y, that I haven't been to before.
The exact same day repeats itself over and over, and I have no memory of what I did the previous day-thus, the conditions for the decision making process are perfectly repeated every time.
My decision process works like this:
I flip a fair coin. If it lands heads, I pick one of the two restaurants. However I pick doesn't really matter-some days I may pick the restaurant I like, some days I might not.
If it lands tails, I flip it again to determine which restaurant I will go to-heads, I go to X. Tails, I go to Y.
I don't make the same choice every time.
The input you receive from your eyes certainly wouldn't be the same.
Sorry? I don't understand how you came to that conclusion or what relevance it has to the experiment.
On July 08 2013 10:29 Myrddraal wrote:
Well I'm not trying to argue for my own belief, I am trying to argue for the concept of no free will in general. I think the most common answer would be a combination of biology and circumstance, (nature + nurture if you will). So yes it would be "you" essentially, as an entity, but not the conscious "you" that lives in the present. The definition of free will that seems most fitting to me, is one that means the conscious "you" is able to make decisions. You can subscribe to a different meaning of free will if you wish, and if yours does not allow for the concept of no free will to exist then that is fine too. But it doesn't make yours any more valid, or anyone else's any more ludicrous.
Sure it does-if my concept is logically consistent, and the other concept is not, then of course one is more valid than the other.
So far, based on the arguments in favor of no-will, it doesn't actually seem to be logically consistent.
Can you point out where the logical inconsistency lies? So far all you have said is that, it breaks because there is randomness, at no point have you stated where randomness means that there can not be no-will, you have only stated why it means there can be free will.
Actually my argument is more logically consistant than yours, unless you can fill in the logic gap that allows our brain to control the probabilistic process.
Your argument as far I can reason it: The universe has probabilistic aspects. The processes of the brain may be probabilistic. We are able to affect some probabilistic processes. <Insert logic gap here> Therefore we are able to affect probabilistic processes in our brain in the process of free will.
So unless you can fill in that logic gap (with solid evidence), your point of view is the ludicrous one from my perspective.
"Thus it's not a stretch to consider that free will can exist" - I may have made a mistake, from your posts on the last page, I thought you were arguing for why no-will is impossible, I was only trying to say that it is possible, I am not trying to argue against the possibility of free will, as I believe at this stage, that either is possible until we can some time in the future get enough information to figure out which is actually the case.
you are not wrong on that last part, consider it a personal victory because shortly after you started posting he changed his defending position drastically :D Now he thinks it's not absurd to believe in free will because the universe is not fully deterministic. At first he thought even decisions couldn't be possible with no free will...
Actually, I still think this.
No one has yet been able to adequately explain how a world without free will is even possible. That logical hurdle has not been crossed yet.
E: I should clarify that my definition of "decision" is significantly different from what I think your definition of "decision" is. Maybe that's why you think I've changed my position.
This bolded part is important, because you dodged my question and you state this, so I will ask again.
Can you point out where the logical inconsistency lies? So far all you have said is that, it breaks because there is randomness, at no point have you stated where randomness means that there can not be no-will, you have only stated why it means there can be free will.
EPT
