Free Will

Free will is human agency and volition. There's nothing mysterious about it. It doesn't mean that the "laws" of physics are being violated nor does it mean that any chains of causality are being broken.

Free will requires causality. Acausal events are random. There is no choice in randomness, only chance. Therefore anyone still hung up on the notion that free will is free from causality is simply wrong. Free choices aren't random, they aren't free from being caused but rather they are caused in the right way based on the beliefs and desires of the agent. A choice is made freely when the agent could have chosen otherwise if the agents beliefs and desires were different.

Now that determinism and causality are out of the way some people still might point to neuroscience as proving we don't have volition and they would be wrong.

If you want to get at the real scientific data and read what neuroscience has to say on the issue then read The Volitional Brain: Towards a Neuroscience of Free Will by Anthony Freeman, Benjamin Libet and Keith Sutherland.

As for actual scientific journals that have had articles that agree with human agency:

Volition and Conflict in Human Medial Frontal Cortex
Current Biology, Volume 15, Issue 2, 122-128

"Controversy surrounds the role of human medial frontal cortex in controlling actions [1, 2, 3, 4 and 5]. Although damage to this area leads to severe difficulties in spontaneously initiating actions [6], the precise mechanisms underlying such “volitional” deficits remain to be established. Previous studies have implicated the medial frontal cortex in conflict monitoring [7, 8, 9 and 10] and the control of voluntary action [11 and 12], suggesting that these key processes are functionally related or share neural substrates. Here, we combine a novel behavioral paradigm with functional imaging of the oculomotor system to reveal, for the first time, a functional subdivision of the pre-supplementary motor area (pre-SMA) into anatomically distinct areas that respond exclusively to either volition or conflict. We also demonstrate that activity in the supplementary eye field (SEF) distinguishes between success and failure in changing voluntary action plans during conflict, suggesting a role for the SEF in implementing the resolution of conflicting actions. We propose a functional architecture of human medial frontal cortex that incorporates the generation of action plans and the resolution of conflict."

Human volition: towards a neuroscience of will
Nature Reviews Neuroscience 9, 934-946

"The capacity for voluntary action is seen as essential to human nature. Yet neuroscience and behaviourist psychology have traditionally dismissed the topic as unscientific, perhaps because the mechanisms that cause actions have long been unclear. However, new research has identified networks of brain areas, including the pre-supplementary motor area, the anterior prefrontal cortex and the parietal cortex, that underlie voluntary action. These areas generate information for forthcoming actions, and also cause the distinctive conscious experience of intending to act and then controlling one's own actions. Volition consists of a series of decisions regarding whether to act, what action to perform and when to perform it. Neuroscientific accounts of voluntary action may inform debates about the nature of individual responsibility."

To Do or Not to Do: The Neural Signature of Self-Control
The Journal of Neuroscience, August 22, 2007, 27(34):9141-9145

"Voluntary action is fundamental to human existence. Recent research suggests that volition involves a specific network of brain activity, centered on the fronto-median cortex. An important but neglected aspect of intentional action involves the decision whether to act or not. This decision process is crucial in daily life because it allows us to form intentions without necessarily implementing them. In the present study, we investigate the neural correlates of intentionally inhibiting actions using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Our data show that a specific area of the fronto-median cortex is more strongly activated when people prepare manual actions but then intentionally cancel them, compared with when they prepare and then complete the same actions. Our results suggest that the human brain network for intentional action includes a control structure for self-initiated inhibition or withholding of intended actions. The mental control of action has an enduring scientific interest, linked to the philosophical concept of "free will." Our results identify a candidate brain area that reflects the crucial decision to do or not to do."

We have free will. It just isn't anything magical like some might have thought.

[Kate]

[ubs]

But even observing the extra energy a person expends when faced with different choices does not tell you if they would or would not make the same choice every time. If they always come to the same conclusion, having the same history and given the same options, they aren't exercising free will.

ubs wrote

But even observing the extra energy a person expends when faced with different choices does not tell you if they would or would not make the same choice every time. If they always come to the same conclusion, having the same history and given the same options, they aren't exercising free will.

That's because you think free will equals randomness. It doesn't. Having the same history means having the same beliefs and desires. Given the same beliefs and desires why would you expect me to make a different random decision? Why do you think free will means leaving things up to chance?

[Sternwallow]

KnowledgeIsPower wrote

That's because you think free will equals randomness. It doesn't. Having the same history means having the same beliefs and desires. Given the same beliefs and desires why would you expect me to make a different random decision? Why do you think free will means leaving things up to chance?

Free will does not mean leaving anything up to chance. That would be making choices by flipping a coin and it is still causal to the decision.

You have eliminated all of the forces under which causality works and you have eliminated randomness (and I agree), so now what is the process of free will? Is it (as some have suggested) a fifth physical force whose effect on matter is measurable and predictable yet which can psycho-analyze the agent to evaluate his beliefs, desires, biases, immediate needs, mood, and his historical experiences of love and hatred?

Renaming free will "volition" and saying that it may manifest itself in some parts of some brain activity does not define it very well.

Sternwallow wrote

You have eliminated all of the forces under which causality works and you have eliminated randomness (and I agree), so now what is the process of free will?

The physical laws work just fine as descriptions. They don't control anything. There's nothing being forced at all. Whatever happens in nature, there are true descriptions of it. There are regularities in nature but that's just the way nature is. There's no need for hidden forces or laws that govern the universe. That's a throwback from religion.

Causality remains but it's a description of what happens, not something that controls it.

[Sternwallow]

ubs wrote

But even observing the extra energy a person expends when faced with different choices does not tell you if they would or would not make the same choice every time. If they always come to the same conclusion, having the same history and given the same options, they aren't exercising free will.

You are right, but even different choices (outcomes), under those conditions, do not demonstrate free will because there is no way to account for all of the influences to be sure they are always the same.

This time, instead of the large, I chose the medium PopCorn because, on very deep introspection, I had a small stone in my sock this time.

There is also the cumulative factor: even with everything else held constant, the choice of a second box of PopCorn has to be colored by having had the first.

[Sternwallow]

Kate wrote

Large, please, with extra cinnamon!

[Kate]

[Sternwallow]

Kate wrote

Y'know what goes real well with beer (yes, of course more beer)? Hot buttered popcorn with Cinnamon.

[Kate]

Sternwallow wrote

Y'know what goes real well with beer (yes, of course more beer)? Hot buttered popcorn with Cinnamon.

[WITHTEETH]

So your free will has a cause huh? lol

I dont know man, your argument seems odd to me. I dont think its a radical freewill. I think your trying to describe a soft determinism type of freewill, that still is determinism to me.

WITHTEETH wrote

So your free will has a cause huh? lol

I dont know man, your argument seems odd to me. I dont think its a radical freewill. I think your trying to describe a soft determinism type of freewill, that still is determinism to me.

So you're saying that humans behave exactly as if they are agents and have volition but they don't really because of [insert some unprovable philosophical garbage about determinism here].

[PanAtheist]

[Tenspace]

PanAtheist wrote