Does Physics disprove the existence of free will?

Acts of will are generally thought to be intentional actions. They aren't just random tosses of the dice. So it would be false to imagine human action as being unrelated to anything else. Obviously it's closely associated with our purposes, our understanding of the situation we are in, our knowledge base, our emotional state, and all kinds of things like that.

That's basically what "free-will" means, most of the time the phrase is used. It means that our acts of will, our choices and decisions, are the result of our own intentions, not somebody else's. The choices we reach weren't imposed on us coercively by some outside force. They arose in our own minds, out of our own understanding and desires.

If we assume a physicalist stance (as I do) and if we basically reduce our psychologistic concepts to events occuring in the underlying neurophysiology (as I'm inclined to try to do), then the idea of acts of will arising from our prexisting intentions, desires and understanding may all receive causal interpretations, without doing any real damage to the free-will idea. We aren't denying that our own knowledge and intentions shape the decision processes that arise from them, we are just giving a causal account of how that happens.

It doesn't even mean that some modest determinism is inconsistent with our intuitions of free-will. Our wills do seem to be determined to some large extent by our desires and by our understanding of the situations we find ourselves in. Nobody needs to deny that, and probably shouldn't if we want to make sense of human behavior. And our internal states, and the external states that surround us, don't arise from nowhere.

What I'm suggesting is that the free-will intuition isn't really inconsistent with causality and even with determinism, provided that they remain temporally local, restricted to short time scales. Everyone agrees that free actions arise from the actor's own understanding, intentions and will. Our understanding and intentions are in turn shaped by our previous life histories.

What does seem to do violence to the free-will intuition is the strong-determinististic speculation that all of this stuff was already fully predetermined in all of its specifics long before any of it happens. The state of the universe at time A fully determines the state of the universe all the way out to time Z, such that any idea we might have that a particular organisms' own internal real-time cognitive processes are what's guiding the organism's behavior is merely an illusion. Everything it does was all fated to happen precisely that way at the very beginning of time. That's where any (presumably divine) free choice that might have occurred was actually made, back at creation, when the laws of physics were enacted and the universe's initial conditions specified. Everything else follows inexorably from that.

The idea of probabilistic causality seems to me like it might be a way to avoid that strong-deterministic conclusion, without denying causality and even determinism entirely. It allows us to continue saying that event A causes event B causes event C... Every event has a preceding cause. But event A might not totally determine event B, there might be some unpredictability in what happens. As the universe evolves and events proliferate, small indeterminacies multiply into big ones, eventually to the point where more temporally distant states of affairs can't be said to have been determined by early ones at all, even if continuous chains of probabilistic causation still link them. Event A simply doesn't permit us to accurately predict event Z. The universe's timeline might penetrate into possibility-space in a fundamentally unpredictable way. There will still be causal chains determining things, but for highly complex systems the temporal range of exact determinism might be relatively short, getting fuzzier as timescales expand.

So, if an organism in this less rigidly deterministic kind of ontological environment still wants to behave appropriately in whatever situation it finds itself in, pursuing food, avoiding predators, or making it through another day of work, it's own internal onboard data-processor, however neurophysiological, causal and even deterministic it might be, is still going to have to size up the surrounding situation in the light of the knowledge it's acquired, factor in its own goals and purposes, decide on and then initiate a course of action, making continuous mid-course corrections as events require. What's happening inside that organism's head still matters. It will still seem to possess what we think of as a will, will display volition and will essentially be steering itself.

That's what free-will means to me.

 

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Subjectively it seems to me ,that when I make a decision there is always an element of tossing a coin unless I really have no time to think.

Some actions are merely contracted out to the autopilot (maybe most) and when I have to make a decision "on my own account" ,as it were I scrutinize the terrain ,balance the pro and cons and then trust to luck...

So it is a combination of accepting responsibility and going with the flow but certainly not "master of my destiny".

That is my personal take from the depths of my mind

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(Apologies, I won't quote the whole thing, as it's only a post or so above).

And I don't disagree with any of it, really.
However, it still remains that if the system is built from deterministic components, and the whole is thus deterministic, then any sense of free will (and I do agree that we all have this sense of free will) does not match its non-free nature, other than through appearance by our conscious selves.
In this way I, and others, consider it illusory.
Even if others dislike the term, it adequately describes what it is (in my view).
I.e. it exists but is contrary to what it seems to be.
It seems to be that we can choose between options A and B when given that choice, but the reality is that our actions are determined, that we must do what we end up doing.
The conscious thoughts, the notion we have of being free to choose, all form part of that determined action.
Any notion we have of patterns being causal appear true, but it is the whole that determines the next moment of the whole.

So free-will does exist.
But we have to define it away from referring to the deterministic nature (probabilistic or otherwise) of the system itself, and define it according to how it feels, how it appears.
And it appears as if we make choices.
It appears as if we can decide between A and B.
It appears as if dreams are causal etc.

But this doesn't stop it being illusory with regard the deterministic system that gives rise to those appearances.

Hence, through that understanding, the two are compatible.

 

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For me, this is the crux.

How can it be real and illusory at the same time?

 

Subjective reality, objective illusion, perhaps?
Or it is the way we view a stage magician (to continue Sarkus' valid example): the illusion is real (i.e. we see the magician perform an illusion) but it is also still an illusion (things didn't really disappear as they seemed to).
What we see and react to is the illusion.
That is the subjective reality.
That's how I see it, anyway.

 

What I want to do is make an argument for philosophical compatibilism by distinguishing between 'causal' and 'deterministic'.

A might cause B, but A needn't totally determine B. Quantum mechanics seems to work that sort of way, resulting in probabilities of various outcomes.

Of course introducing a bit of randomness and unpredictability into our decision making process doesn't seem to look very much like free-will. Free will isn't random, it isn't a roll of the dice. So I need to argue for the relevance of probabilistic causation.

At this point it's important to inquire more deeply into what free-will is all about, what it wants to claim, and what it is that we are saying when we make a choice of A, yet insist that we could have chosen B.

If I choose A, generally speaking it isn't entirely random and it doesn't happen in a vacuum. I chose A because I wanted to. To some extent, my desires determined my choice of A over B. My saying that my choice of A was a free choice means that nothing external to me coerced my behavior. I wasn't pressured into choosing A by anything outside my own decision process.

When I say that could have chosen B, that means that I could have chosen it, if I had wanted to. Which in turn would suggest different desires, different understanding of the situation, a different mood or whatnot. That's all internal stuff in me, suggesting that nothing outside me is forcing my choice.

So my point here is that our everyday understanding both of ourselves and other people kind of presupposes some kind of local determinism internal to our own psychologies that ties our actions together with our own desires, emotions and understanding of the situations in which we find ourselves. That seems consistent with most people's understanding of free-will, and I don't think that most people would want to deny it.

The place where most people rebel against the determinist picture is larger scale determinism, where the idea is that we are nothing more than puppets being jerked around by our environments. At it's most extreme, it's the idea that the "big bang" somehow established a set of deterministic dynamical equations and a set of initial conditions, that in turn determine everything that will ever happen in the entire history of the universe.

This is where the idea of probabilistic causality comes back into the picture. The idea there (as I conceive of it) is that the longer we extend our causal chains, the less deterministic they are. Conditions at time A might very well allow us to predict events at time B pretty accurately, but knowledge of events at time A might be little help in predicting what happens at temporally-distant time Z. In other words, the details of state A (along with the dynamical equations) don't determine state Z. The tiny uncertainties at each instant compound and multiply and the whole thing starts to behave chaotically and unpredictably.

So knowledge of the physics and initial conditions of the "big bang" some 15 billion years ago (no matter how complete and accurate that knowledge) is of no value in predicting what I'm going to choose to do this morning (or even that I will exist). Knowledge of events in 1900 (no matter how accurate) won't tell you very much, though it might allow you to place some rather weak constraints around what might happen. But knowledge of events yesterday might place much tighter constraints on the prediction. (You will know not only that I exist, you will have my habits and lots of stuff like that.) Knowledge of events 10 seconds ago might allow you to make a very accurate prediction of what I'm gonna do right now. And we find ourselves back at the inner causality thing that I argued up above that free-will fans don't want to deny.

 

Which, as I see it, is the crux of the OP's question.
Is free-will really a very elaborate illusion?

And yeah, it's really a philosophical question.

 

It's only an illusion to those who require it to be supernatural to exist.
- - - -

This is not appearance. This is measured physical reality. This is what is "determined", and "determining".

Substrates do not cause patterns. They do not determine patterns. The presumption that any substrate causes the patterns formed within it is physically, measurably, repeatedly and intersubjectively verifiably false. Patterns are formed via interactions with outside agency.

The action is determined, in part, by that consciousness and the other patterns at that level. That's the level of cause and effect involved.
It's not an illusion that when approaching a semaphore controlled intersection one has the freedom to choose whether or not to stop, for example. The choice will be made depending on the meaning of various observations of the world as recognized in the conscious mind - those patterns. That's where the cause and effect lies, and that is exactly the same as making a choice based on criteria.

You are refusing to acknowledge that system, to recognize what its components are and how they are determined.
Your conscious self is part of that system, part of what's doing the determining. All the "appearances" are part of that system. The "components" include the conscious self, the appearances, etc.

Those "components" are your thoughts, the high level patterns of patterns of firing that form your mind, formed in the substrate of lower level firing patterns of neurons, in turn formed in the substrate of the connections and chemistry of those neurons. They are causal, at their level.

 

Then you are withdrawing all those confused assertions of "illusion". You changed your mind.

 

Then how does it exist per the logic of post #130.
If a system as a whole is deterministic, there is no freedom, period.
All you have left is the illusion.

Dismissing it as irrelevant doesn't cut it.
Until you can get past that argument, the logic that concludes that there is zero freedom, then all you are left to play with is semantics.

No, it really isn't a measured reality.
What is measured is the appearance of the will acting according to what appears to be causes.
You are assuming freedom within that.

Where have I said that substrates cause patterns?
I am talking about systems.
If you wish to change what I am talking about just let me know beforehand so I can put you on ignore.
Otherwise have the decency to respond to what I'm typing.

I have no disagreement with that, other than the level of freedom involved.
And until you can satisfactorily talk about, and counter, the logic of post #130, you're just assuming freedom.

One has the appearance of choice.
It is an appearance so ingrained in our consciousness, I think almost certainly an aspect of of our consciousness.
But that doesn't stop it being an illusion.

Far from it.
The logic in post #130 clearly sets out the argument, and included in there is the premise that if a system is made only of components that are deterministic in behaviour then the system as a whole is deterministic.
I.e. lacking freedom to do other than it must (albeit probabilistically).

Indeed.
And the "appearance" is what we casually consider to be "free will".
Yet the logic suggests that this is no more free, other than by appearance, than a snooker ball in motion.

Causal, sure.
Causal =/= deterministic.
If something is deterministic, probabilistically or otherwise, then it lacks freedom.
If you wish to insist on there being freedom then you are talking mere appearance only.
Because the system is deterministic.

Unless you hold to something other than a (probabilistic) deterministic universe?

So, if you want to simply argue the illusion as non-illusory reality, you first have to get past the logic set out in post #130.
I'm not saying it's necessarily right - it is merely my current thinking - but don't expect to gloss over it and have me take you seriously.

 

I'm withdrawing nothing.
The whole affects the whole on a (probabilistic) deterministic basis.
One moment of the system determines the next.
As such there is no freedom.
Other than as appearance.
Since there appears to be freedom where there is none (per the logic of post #130) then it is quite accurate to call that freedom illusory.

 

Oohkaay - - - lessee:

The components affect the components on a combinatorial, pattern making pattern, basis. The dreams are causal. The "whole" includes the meanings of words, as a component.

As such, the meanings of words and the contents of dreams and the decisions of the will are causal, if causality is your obsessive frame.

There is nothing for anything to "appear" to, that stands outside the "whole" that is doing the determining. There are no "appearances". The notion of an "appearance" is a causal pattern, along with the meanings of every other word in that sentence.

There is whatever freedom is inherent in choosing between alternatives at will. There is whatever freedom is inherent in classifying some patterns as illusions, and others as real - these are causes and effects of the patterns at their level.

The logic of post 130 required - to come to its conclusion - all freedom of will to be supernatural. As long as you insist on that, you will be victim of naive bottom up determinism -

per the logic of 130 snooker balls are illusions, and the "cause and effect" explanations of their travels a fantasy of those who pretend quarks aren't determining everything

(and the idea of a quark is an illusion created by the quarks themselves, who don't exist either),

and somewhere in vaporland there is a supernatural reasoning entity coming to conclusions about the ridiculously illusory pile of illusions that is the "whole".

There is an alternative to this tail-eating snake: we can begin by expanding and extrapolating from the engineering concept of degrees of freedom, rather than the religious concept of a supernaturally "free" will. We can then talk about patterns in substrates as if they shared a reality, rather than being real only up to a certain level and illusory from then on. We can recognize the ad hoc, heuristic, and only contingently relevant nature of the concept of "cause and effect" in the first place.

 

Specific notes:

Among other places, right here:

You declare that the people measuring some of the patterns of activity that form in the substrate of the brain are measuring "appearances" only. That the brain is real, and the individual firings are real, but the patterns affecting the other patterns in these substrates are appearances only - not causes and effects themselves, but caused and effected by lower level stuff.

There is zero supernatural freedom, just as you argued. I stipulated to that from the beginning.
If you insist that the concept of degrees of freedom within a natural system is playing with semantics, then we are done - you may as well put me on ignore.

 

Be sure not to equivocate causal with deterministic.

They are only causal in as much as any part of the whole is causal.
It is not that one of component parts is causal but the whole being causal.
State @ t=0 is causal for state at t=1.
And this causation is deterministic (probabilistic or otherwise).

Indeed.

And by the logic of post #130, that you have notably failed to address once again, there is no actual freedom.
If something does only what it must do (random or otherwise) then there is no freedom.
Using this notion of freedom, and the logic of post #130, where is the freedom in our will other than the appearance to ourselves of that freedom?
I,e, illusion.

1. It is not bottom up determinism.
If you insist on wanting a direction then it is holistic determinism: the whole determines the whole.
I have stated that this is what I am saying, yet you choose to ignore it.
2. I am not insisting on anything being supernatural.
There is a difference, that you can't seem to grasp, between stating something must be supernatural, and stating that it doesn't exist, or exists only as illusion.
You seem to be starting with the a priori assumption that free will exists.
Any argument that seems to conclude that free will doesn't exist you thus assume is saying that free will must be supernatural.
Because it exists, yet they argue it doesn't naturally exist, it must be supernatural.

Just drop the issue of supernatural already.
No one holds anything as being supernatural.
If that requires you to drop your a priori assumption that free will actually exists, then do so.
And change "requires it to be supernatural" to "suggests that there is no actual freedom" and you might start to get somewhere.

Why are snooker balls illusions?
Where do they claim to be something they are not?
If, however, something claims to be free yet is ultimately deterministic in nature and thus lacks being free...?
and the "cause and effect" explanations of their travels a fantasy of those who pretend quarks aren't determining everything

Yawn.

Degrees of freedom is simply the number of parameters that define its configuration... it speaks of nothing about whether the system is free to choose etc.
An object floating in space has 6 degrees of freedom, after all.
So are you saying it somehow has a choice?

And there is no religiousness in this argument, no supernatural notion.
So drop those strawmen from your repertoire, please.
And again, please stop equivocating between causality and determinism.

And it is still noted, throughout your response, that you have failed to address the logic of post #130, other than to continue to dismiss it as resulting in free will being supernatural.
At least answer these two questions about it:
Do you refute the premises?
Do you consider the logic valid?

 

What I said in no way assumes or claims that patterns are caused by substrates.
My stance is that the whole causes the whole.
Sure, patterns can cause patterns to the cows come home, but that doesn't alter the deterministic nature of the system.
And appearance is what we all work with, whether that appearance is illusory or not.
Simply referring to the appearance of something makes no claim to it being illusory.
The illusion is in something having the appearance of freedom actually having zero freedom to do anything other than the deterministic system must do.

We are in agreement: there is zero supernatural freedom.
Both DaveC and myself have agreed with this,
Either something has freedom or it does not.
Zero supernatural.
You have only brought in the matter of supernatural because you have the a priori assumption that free will has any freedom.
Neither DaveC nor myself did that.
None of us, yourself included, accept that there is anything supernatural.
So for £&@#'s sake drop that strawman and realise that it is you who is introducing it because of your a priori assumption!

Should I take this as you having no rebuttal of the logic in #130?
If you don't then how can you talk of our will being "free" other than through semantics?
If you do, post it already.

 

Could there be any analogy to General Relativity where there is no curvature at the most local level (geometry is Euclidean even near a black hole at the most local level--any curved line is made up of straight segment) ?

So our belief in a personal free will is actually valid but only insofar as it applies to that precise instant in time,The "free will" components of its effects get dissipated as soon as they have any but immediate consequences but our consciousness is limited to the immediate region around any thought or action and we are blind to this at a particular level of our thought process.

 

One does not "equivocate" things with other things. Your language is suffering from the confusion.

That suggestion is exactly what requires it to be supernatural. That's where you make the requirement - by insisting on that suggestion. Nothing in your argument suggests that a natural law bound freedom of will does not exist. Only a supernatural one.

In addition to dismissing it on its major flaw (which is not a "result", but an assumption), I also addressed the oversight of not having clear meanings for its terms and overlooking the central matter of logical levels.

No. They are too vague for refutation. You have no clear meaning of "determination", and no explicit handling of logical levels - which one cannot assume for you, because you get into trouble elsewhere on that matter.

If granted the assumption of "free" implying "supernatural", it's valid. You continue to assert that no such assumption is present. So the conclusion does not follow from the premises, even if granted in some vague sense.

I'm not.
I'm trying to respond to posted arguments in which causality is sometimes the basis of determination and sometimes denied as "illusion", depending on the logical level of the pattern involved.

You keep repeating that stupidity as if it will someday have an effect. It won't.

Does that mean the parts are not causal, or does it grant that acts of will are causal?

So? Nothing follows from that.
All you have accomplished is assert that anything with a cause is determined by that cause - which is ok if you have some idea of what these things are, and what you mean by causation, so that it all makes sense in a world in which the meanings of words cause behavior. If you are going to claim that therefore substrates determine patterns via causality, as you have in the past, it becomes a false assertion.

I didn't say it was. I said you will be victim of it.

1) That "whole" would then include any freedom of the will we find reasonable to describe and define. So no problem - we return to the topic of the thread.
2) I'm not ignoring that - I'm pointing out that it is inconsistent with your take in - say - 130.
And this leads you into error - such as declaring high level patterns in the human mind to be "illusions", while lower level patterns in the world are granted status as causes etc.

"per the logic of 130", as noted above.

? Now what?
Are you actually confusing having an illusion with being an illusion?
Acts of will make no claims about their own nature, either - whether or not, and to whatever degree, they possess freedom.

 

Or you could read the by now half dozen posted rebuttals, beginning with its assumption of freedom being of necessity supernatural.

Which would of course include - since it is a "whole" - any freedom of will possessed by human beings.
One must make room for observation and event, should they appear, in one's "whole" - no?

 

It seems you may have overestimated the status of agreement - not "everyone".

 

No, it is suffering from constant poor spelling on my part and a rather ambitious auto-correct on the tablet I'm having to use.
I mean, of course, equate, and will try to be more careful in future.

Non existent does not equate to it being supernatural.
Only those who conclude the non-existent does actually exist are requiring it to be supernatural.
From my side of the chasm, that is you.

Other than post #130, which you conveniently continue to overlook.

Which major flaw is that?
That it concludes free will to have no freedom about it, in that the deterministic system must do as it does?

You disagreed with the term "illusion", which is not part of the actual logic.
Which other terms are you struggling with, exactly?
As for logical levels... logic is logic, and if you can't even get past the first hurdle...

FFS.
The term "deterministic" is defined in the premise: can not do other than it must.
And wtf do logical levels have to do with the price of eggs?
If you can't get past the rather basic logic presented....

Utter garbage.
Where in the logic presented have I even used the term "free"?
Or even "determination" for that matter?

So I ask again: do you think the logic valid?
Do you agree with the premises?

If you claim you're not then please stop doing it.
Patterns can cause patterns can cause anything else... but if the system is determined then there is no freedom, per the logic of post #130.

I'm not the one repeating any stupidity.
You seem to insist there is free will, yet rather than see a conclusion which suggests nothing is actually free you say that it instead assumes it is supernatural, and since no one accepts anything supernatural it must be wrong.
That is all on you and the assumption you are bringing to the table.
I am sorry that you can not see that, as it seems to be a rather significant roadblock.

What is or is not causal between elements of the system is ultimately irrelevant, as it is all determined.
We can point to what appears to be causal ("appear" as in not making claim one way or other as to the veracity) but if it is still ultimately determined then, per #130, things do what they must.

Why does one need an idea of what those things are?
It is simply enough to say that it is determined.
And as such the effect must be what it is.
If this is true, that an effect must be what it is, then any sense of being able to do otherwise must be false.
But since we adhere to this false sense as though it is reality (and we all do) then it is legitimate to consider it and refer to it as an illusion.

No strawmen, please.
And no, I have not claimed substrates necessarily determine patterns.
I have pointed out and explained your misunderstanding in that regard previously.

It would include any "sense of freedom of the will".
And sure, no problem, but it then gets back to the request that Sarkus raised some pages ago that you define free will.
Which you refused to do.
And any definition you come up with will include within it, from my and other perspectives, that you are only referring to the illusion.

How is it inconsistent?
#130 simply refers to a system, and whether it is determined or not.
The whole is the system.
Is this system determined or not.
That is the crux of #130.

I only consider something to be an illusion if it's outward appearance is at odds with the underlying logic.
If something gives a sense of ability to do other than we must, yet the underlying whole is deterministic ("can not do other than it must") then the sense must be illusory.
What other patterns have I described as illusory?

Nope.
Snooker balls don't claim to operate contrary to the their underlying logic.

No, and how does one "have an illusion"??
What I meant was that a snooker ball operates, and we think it operates, in line with how we understand the underlying logic.
We don't think it is operating in one way yet actually operates another.[/quote]