Free Will

[Sternwallow]

Kate wrote

"It's penguin-turtle-frogs all the way down..."

[Sternwallow]

thomastwo wrote

Thanks for a clear answer. I think you are saying that you view humans to be systematic devices that blindly go through a set of responses to stimulation from their environment. And that one of the side-effects of that system is an impression of choice and self-determination.

Add that each response changes us and so changes the condition on responses that follow. We learn from the consequences of our acts just as a computer chip can learn your favorite restaurants and TV shows.

This is what keeps the next situation we encounter from being exactly the same as this one so we may not behave the same way twice. This does make us, I admit, a little less fixed and mechanical than a wind-up toy.

[Sternwallow]

thomastwo wrote

To my mind the perceptions and desires of the moment are part of the self, and part of the self-determination.

They are parts of the self that are determined and so are not free choices.

[Sternwallow]

thomastwo wrote

Could we add to your list of hard-wired functions to choose actions from a range of potential actions? I think that's what I mean when I say I am self-determined.

One could add an automatic volume control (AVC) to a radio receiver so that it could choose settings from a range of possibilities to achieve a goal. In the process, the radio could not have opted out of the upgrade nor can it choose settings different from those determined by the new circuit.

Another way to ask the question would be "If I don't determine my actions, what does?"

Again the answer is simple:I, being determined by my make-up and experiences, am constrained in determining my actions. The choice of actions is mine but the choice is not free.

[Sternwallow]

Professor Chaos wrote

Define "I".

[Sol]

Gnosital wrote

Do I detect another physiological psychologist perchance???

Biology, with special interest in biological psychology.
Can I assume you are a fizzy cyclist ?

[dogpet]

thomastwo wrote

Are you saying that your choice to be an atheist was not a conscious choice? Or at least that what appeared to be a conscious choice was pre-determined by the evaluation of your unconscious mind?

I didn't make any choices. Alterations to the default mean you are a victim of circumstance.
You are what you meet. //ching ching!//

[thomastwo]

Philboid Studge wrote

I don't quite see how that example is independent of external influence, but never mind. Imagine a driver pulling into a wide open parking lot and parking wherever, since any one space is as good another. If that's true, how can his parking be said to be a "choice" at all ? Put another way, if you wish to remove external influences, even hypothetically, I think you've removed even the illusion of free will, since it doesn't involving "choosing" at all.

Do it?

It's relatively free of external influence in the sense that those influences don't make a major difference to the selection for any one individual.

It's a choice because there are multiple contingent futures prior to the action. And the choice is determined by the individual involved.

Philboid Studge wrote

ADDING: Re "I don't see a material difference between reacting and determining." -- me neither.

Right, the reaction of an individual is, as you defined it, making a wilful choice.

[thomastwo]

Sternwallow wrote

Again the answer is simple:I, being determined by my make-up and experiences, am constrained in determining my actions. The choice of actions is mine but the choice is not free.

Are you trying to say that in some sense your make-up and experiences are not part of you?

I'm anyway not arguing that choices are free of any external constraints. Only that they are not completely bound by those constraints.

[thomastwo]

dogpet wrote

I didn't make any choices. Alterations to the default mean you are a victim of circumstance.
You are what you meet. //ching ching!//

Can I choose what I meet?

[ubs]

Thomastwo, do you also object to the idea that an amoeba is responding to it's environment? How about guppies? How about dogs?

In other words, at what level of complexity does life have fee will?

If I force psychotropic drugs on you, are you operating under free will?

[dogpet]

thomastwo wrote

Can I choose what I meet?

What made you ask that?

[Victus]

thomastwo wrote

It's a choice because there are multiple contingent futures prior to the action.

You have a choice between eating a red pill and a blue pill. Your defacto preference is the blue pill (it's your favorite colour, or something); however, under the condition that you happen to remember a blue spider you once saw, you are so disgusted that will choose the red pill. Now, without your knowledge, I have implanted a bio-mechanical thingy that will force you to eat the blue pill, but I will only activate it if I detect the spider memory. The spider memory does not arise, and you eat the blue pill without me activating the device.

Was it a free choice?

t2 wrote

And the choice is determined by the individual involved.

Couldn't a determinist just as easily say that the inter-individual variance in choice outcomes simply be the result of the state variance among the individuals, such that exposing the exact same individual to the exact same inputs would produce the exact same outputs?

[Sternwallow]

thomastwo wrote

It's relatively free of external influence in the sense that those influences don't make a major difference to the selection for any one individual.

It's a choice because there are multiple contingent futures prior to the action. And the choice is determined by the individual involved.



Right, the reaction of an individual is, as you defined it, making a wilful choice.

That might be so except that the "person" making the "choice" is in a state that determines the choice and the state itself was predetermined.

Put another way, an individual who seems to make a choice based almost entirely on their state of mind at the time has no free will if it is a computer. To have free will, then requires an ability to act contrary to what would otherwise be determined. Such an ability would have to be in-place and operating at the time of the maverick decision and it would, by deflecting the decision away from the expected, determine (control) the act.

Here is a scenario: you are offered tea or coffee and you choose coffee because your experiences have conditioned you to prefer coffee. If I offered you tea or coffee, you might choose to counter my expectation and choose tea. This desire was necessarily stronger than your ordinary preference and it controlled or determined your choice of tea.

My assertion is that any mechanism to be used to deviate from a predetermined outcome would, itself, be a determining element and therefore would be self-defeating. All that is needed to refute my assertion is to identify a process that operates both non-causally and under personal intention. Flipping a coin to make a decision is not exercising free will because the choice in that case is not intentional, it is not your choice.

The Coyote is running full speed down the road. It forks ahead, bending to the left in the open and to the right through a tunnel in the rock wall on that side. For a variety of deterministic reasons, he takes the left fork having no idea that the tunnel was only painted on the wall and he really had no choice at all. Such is the illusion of choice in this free choice free world.

[Sternwallow]

thomastwo wrote

Are you trying to say that in some sense your make-up and experiences are not part of you?

No, I am saying that all parts of you (your decision making faculties specifically) are, at each moment, products of prior events, none of which were formed by free will. I yam what I yam and no part of me has been shown to be both acausal and intentional.

I'm anyway not arguing that choices are free of any external constraints. Only that they are not completely bound by those constraints.

Choices are determined by both external and internal constraints. What behavior can you identify that is purely intentional and is neither causal nor random?