I'm not going to turn this into theistic debate like so many threads have become despite that I have numerous disagreements with your statements.

Regarding free will, I don't see the logical connect between your premise and conclusion. The proximal causative agent in your decisions is still you, in the sense that it is the matter that we've distinguished as comprising you. It may be true that the ultimate causative agent is physical mechanical interactions between particles, but for all practical purposes, it is you that is making the decision. You have to make a distinction in the order of magnitude. People often make this error.

It's like saying "You know, it's funny, if I hadn't missed that bus, I would have never met my wife." This is a more proximal cause to the two people meeting. One could equally point out the myriad of less proximal causes that led to their meeting, "You know, it's funny, if my grandfather hadn't died of Alzheimer's I wouldn't have been motivated to study neurology and consequently take up this resident position so that I have to take the route 45 bus to work and because I miss it; meet my wife" or "You know, it's funny, but if my 32nd generation ancestor's first partner hadn't died of that diarrheal disease and so found a new partner to create my 31st generation ancestor I would have never existed to miss that bus and meet my wife" or "You know, it's funny, but if that first lunged fish hadn't crawled on to land..."

You have to appreciate the significance of orders of magnitude and the fact that we live in the practical middle world of things. Something like a teaspoon of cerebellar brain matter contains more neural connections than there are stars in the galaxy. Each individual synapse is host to innumerable chemical interactions each governed by physical law. Saying we're "really complicated machines" is the ultimate understatement.

The idea that some ghost in the machine sits in us and governs only executive decisions conveniently at the exact level of complexity required for these decisions is absurd and denies the complex role of your development, your genetics, the intricately complex biological processes, and the all but uncountable chemical and physical interactions that are required so that you move Knight to E4.

Often people respond hostilely to the idea that there is no supermaterial deciding agent as though it somehow logics away their values, their emotions, and their relationships with others. It's like a puppet that suddenly notices the strings and violently revolts or sits in sad dejection as though it were not still the strings that made them violently revolt or sit in sad dejection.

Chrispminis - Even if we were a really, really, really complex machine, if that machine is still finite (which we obviously are) and deterministic, then it makes no real choices; it just follows directions. The order of magnitude is completely irrelvant if we are nothing better than an ubercomputer that runs some sort of program that just reacts to a wide array of interrupts. My laptop does not make decisions per se (even though that is the word often used). It merely does exactly what it is programmed to do. The fact that a lot of this is timing dependent and governed by all sorts of interrupts does not matter at all; the computer does not get to "decide" if it wants to do what I tell it to do, it just does it in conformity with its programming (just as we would do if we were purely deterministic and material).

It essentially comes down to this - if the entire universe is purely deterministic (no matter how complex) - then the future is set in stone for ever and you (as an individual) can not do anything to change that future whatsoever because you can't really choose anything at all. If we do not have real choices, then even if our choices appear to us to be real, they are not. Rather, they are just our materially predetermined outputs that have no more objective meaning than what my laptop does.

I, however, do not believe that we are purely materal beings and as a result we are not governed by purely materials laws. Rather, our existence is a union of both matter and spirit (and while I don't know the details of how this works, that is not really important) in which we make choices that are not just the results of a complex chain of chemical/electrial impulses.

nola, I understand the argument you're making because everyone who's ever thought about free will vs. determinism has thought of it. Orders of magnitude are actually quite relevant. You're tying meaning to free will in a way that I don't believe is logically valid. You're saying, oh look at computers, they're finite and deterministic and you can tell computers don't process information in the meaningful subjective fashion in which we humans do. But you can't make the assumption then that a machine no matter how complex will never be able to do such a thing. Complexity is not that simple (harhar) and you can't simply extrapolate from computers to say whether an extremely complex machine can be conscious and meaningful or not. I don't see why determinism suddenly makes life less meaningful. I mean, I see why that is a gut reaction, and I certainly had that at first, but there's no real logical connect between the two.

I think you would accept the fact that our decisions can be quite easily be influenced by how much sleep we got last night, how our friends and family have shaped us, and our genetics, etc. Yes? These are merely more proximate causes and don't violate our concept of free will because they occur on a familiar order of magnitude.

When I say decision I mean exactly the proximal process of decision with which we are all familiar. That is, you take the information that you have and compare your options with your preferences and expected outcomes and whatnot, and you make a decision. I'm not talking about decision on some grand scheme. I would indeed say that we do not have some ultimate free will in the sense that we transcend matter, but you're still making choices and they are real in the sense that they arise most proximally from your own judgement. You have free will in the sense that no other person can force you to do anything. Even if someone points a gun at you, you can always choose to fight back or get shot. You have free will in the sense that it is only your will that can proximally dictate your actions, and no other wills can impinge upon this, they can only inform your decision, but defiance is always an option. What more can you practically ask of free will?

I'm really arguing against the assumption that so many people make when they realize they don't have ultimate free will and they assume they've now logicked away their proximal free will. In my view, the distinction between the two is a useless one in practical terms and ought not to affect one's personal responsibility or the meaningfulness of their life. I'm reminded of an anecdote where a magician is asked whether or not his tricks are "real magic". In that light, "real magic" is the kind that really doesn't exist, and the magic that does exist isn't "real". The proximal free will that we exercise on a day to day basis is seen as not "real free will".

In the context of this entire thread, I would argue that ultimately there is no objective meaning, there is only proximal subjective meaning created by consciousness, but I think we differ fundamentally in this premise and I said I wouldn't get involved in a theistic debate, despite I feel there are a lot of internal theological contradictions revolving around free will. I'll stick to defending my position, which is that you don't need "real free will" to lead a meaningful life.

@Chrispminis
You talk about how our complexity allows us to consider all options and make judgements, but actually, when you admit that all we are is matter, you are forced to admit that what we think of as "options" and "logic", and other things that might contribute to our "decision" are nothing more than neurons, chemicals, firing in our brains. There is no actual judgement made in any sense, When you say we can choose to resist someone who holds a gun to our head, all that really happens is a very complex reaction within our head, and the outcome of that reaction is completely predictable in the same way that any chemical reaction is predictable.

There is no difference between my "free will" and the free will of a tree to fall over when it is cut down, because both my actions and the tree's are simply unavoidably caused by the laws of nature.

"To your side note on free will, you have free will in the sense that it is mostly the bundle of matter that comprises you that is involved with the decision making, so that it can be said that you made the choice. However, the choice is still the marco result of mechanistic micro-interactions. There's no part of you that is somehow above this interaction and can make the choice from some metalevel vantage point, but it is still you that makes the choice." yeah i know +1, infact a lot of what you said is interesting...


"if we don't have a legitimately free will (i.e. not bound by matter), then everything, and I do mean literally everything, is meaningless because we are nothing more than really complicated machines that don't make decisions any more than my computer 'decides' "
And yes i agree with this too - except that our free will is what we like to call an emergent phenomina - it is more than the sum of it's parts... and while it only evolved because being able to assign meaning to things is a useful trait which has evolved, (and sometimes thinking too much can be less useful because we can't figure out what were are supposed to do - but if we had a value system which promoted reproduction over anything else then we might not need as much intelligence...)

"there is only proximal subjective meaning created by consciousness" and creating meaning, and being able to logically deduce causation is a useful evolved trait.

"If we do not have real choices, then even if our choices appear to us to be real, they are not." - but if free will iss just an illusion - however it is not something which we are capable of understanding because of the levels of complexity (And we are only capable of finite reasoning) then it becomes an unbreakable illusion and thus we lose one of the most important traits of illusion. (and when i suggest it is unbreakable, i mean the way the brain works you can't observe your own thought process by itself - lets say the process takes place in a series of steps, with each step being an observation (information in) and/or a processing, to see it yourself you need to also observe each state change of the system and interpret it - but these are steps which must also be observed and processed... like xeno's paradox...) I think our brains actually does this in parrallel but still each thread working independently and not able to observe all the other threads while also observing themselves. So instead our brains interpret a grainier picture and create a narrative history of our decisions and record them into memories - we actually expierence a different thing to the story we remember about our expierences.

which is by the way really cool!

@Chrispminis - from reading this thread i am convinced you are a scientist, or at least understand a great deal of scientific concepts (perhaps better than some scientists who specialise in tiny limited practical fields...) but i'd like to know what kind of scientific background you have.

"You talk about how our complexity allows us to consider all options and make judgements, but actually, when you admit that all we are is matter, you are forced to admit that what we think of as "options" and "logic", and other things that might contribute to our "decision" are nothing more than neurons, chemicals, firing in our brains."
Yes, I agree that this is what options and logic and decision boil down to, but the fact remains that you're consciously pondering your options and coming to a decision. You wouldn't deny that you experience this. The experience doesn't evaporate once you realize that it's just neurons firing. They're inextricable from each other. These things only have significance as concepts in the realm of our subjective experience.

"There is no actual judgement made in any sense"

Again, it seems that our subjective judgement that actually occurs is not seen as "actual judgement" where as whatever "actual judgement" might be does not exist. It is still you making the decision. The matter interacting with itself to produce your experience and your decision is exactly you. The matter is you. You are making the decision. The subjective experience of decision making isn't an illusion, it is actually a direct correlate of the bundle of matter that is your brain also deciding. You are your brain.

You keep saying things like "all we are is matter" or "all that really happens is a very complex reaction" as if those were tiny reducible factors. Complexity makes a huge difference. I seriously doubt it's completely predictable in the same way a simple chemical reaction is predictable because of computational irreducibility. You can't find out what will happen next without actually running it. In fact, this happens with phenomena much, much, much simpler than human experience. Eg. the chaotic dynamics of the iterations of simple equations. That said, I do recall some evidence that researchers can somewhat predict the choices of say, which button a monkey will press, based on their fMRI activity. I don't recall the exact conditions, but same implications.

Yes, "all that really happens is a very complex reaction within our head", but that cannot be reduced to a tree falling over. Maybe if the tree's had axes, could right themselves after being cut down, cause chain reactions whereby falling trees cut other tree,l and the forest is patterned in a sense that such reactions produce meaningful outputs in reaction to external stimuli, such as trees on the outer rim of the forest directing the flow of rivers to prevent the spread of fire into the forest...

Current scientific evidence supports a deterministic (or at best deterministic with random inputs) view of the universe. In fact, a lot of headway in cognitive sciences has been made by viewing the brain as an extremely complex computer, though the limits of the metaphor have been made clear. This is not just a philosophy, but our understanding of the workings of the human mind do not require us to assume the existence of a spiritual pilot to our material cockpit and indeed many successful treatments for neurological disorders have been based on this completely monistic and deterministic view of the universe. It may be that further evidence will undermine this understanding, but I think it's reasonable to base conclusions on current evidence rather than on our intuition (sure feels like free will!) or theology (but im not going to press the point).

"the outcome of that reaction is completely predictable in the same way that any chemical reaction is predictable.
<snip>
my actions and the tree's are simply unavoidably caused by the laws of nature."

But we can understand complex systems in their every detail and still not be able to predict them (even without needing to refer to quantum mechanics) Weather systems can be accurately predicted for about three days - then the later state is very specifically dependant on the initial conditions - which we can't know to an unlimited accuracy - thus unlike a chemical reaction we can't predict complex (chaotic) systems - this is really interesting, and we've only known about it for 40 odd years - in the same way a given experience could have a small effect on the brain which could leads to a feedback loop when triggered many years later and causes a person to make a different decision which was not predictable.

Your actions are caused by the laws of nature, but they are more complex and chaotic than you can imagine - look at the complexity which arises in conway's 'game of life' and that is a simple system built on very basic rules.

You amy not agree with the conclusions, or "that we are purely materal being" - but i still think the ideas which we are understanding about nature in this area are really f**king cool. Chaos, complexity, self-organised criticality, emergence are just some of the topics which (as i said even without quantum mechanics) should really make us think about how a deterministic world works, and the thigns which can arise in them...

Chrispminis - I have to agree with Dave Bishop on this one. If I somehow "knew" at one instant the position and velocity of all matter within your general vicinity (including you) and all of the laws of physics, then if we are purely material, I could predict with perfect accuracy (assuming of course that I possessed the computing power to do so) your reaction to any and all situations that would happen to you. The fact that you might have thought you made a decision is just your perception, it is not real. If I can always predict what you are doing, you clearly did not make a choice but just followed your (immensely complex) programming.

Now, in a materialistic universe, we might perceive that we have "proximate free will" as you put it (which I have never heard of by the way, though it seems to be a self-contradiction), but we really don't. We just react to any and all situations. The fact that we "think" we decide what to do is not important; we don't think at all, the various chemicals just react and something happens (even if it is complex). Perception is not reality. If someone who is color blind sees two items that are different colors but perceives that they are the same color, that does not make them the same color. Each item still reflects light at different wavelengths, so the person's perception is not relevant even if they think it is. Actual reality is what truly matters, not perceived reality.

on a very interesting side track about trees - 'bullthorn acacias' trees encourage 'Pseudomyrmex ants' to live in them, they use chemical signals to make the ants attack herbivores, and to make them retreat when they want bees to come and eat their pollen - these trees are using the same sorts of chemical signals which most plants use to attract insects for spreading their pollen, and these are also similar to the chemical signals which ants use to communicate with each other...

At this point the Ant colony (which lives in, and is thus provided shelther by, the tree - but also feeds on the sap) is being controlled via chemical signals from the tree. The tree is just an automatic system which is responding to stimuli (animals coming along and biting off the leaves) and sends useful signals - at this point is the tree or the ant colony 'making decisions'? Sure they are just responding to stimuli - but as this symbiosis evolves the two speices become so closely invovled with each other that they will both be doing things which benifit both of them - it is infact easier to understand them as one creature which makes it's own decisions, not as two different things which each has their own goals...

"The fact that you might have thought you made a decision is just your perception, it is not real. If I can always predict what you are doing, you clearly did not make a choice but just followed your (immensely complex) programming."

So if you can simulate every particle - with the position and velocity which you have stored somewhere in memory - if you can simulate all these interactions at a rate faster than they are happening in the universe - then you can predict - you need to actually have a piece of aparatus which has at least all the pieces which the original had, and also interacts faster - the least comlicated way of doing this calculation is by actually running it in the universe(ie experimenting, not simulating) - in this sense an experiment is just a very realistic simulation. Instead of simulating something in a computer or in your head you are simulating in reality - but this can't go any faster than the original system so no prediction is possible only postdiction. Even with a more complex system (one with more parts) it is not clear how to simulate all the physics at the correct rates in a quantum universe...

And in the universe you can't find anyhting which has more parts than the universe itself - so you may think you can predict the local behaviour of a local part of the universe within the universe, but even then it is only out to the light radius of the time predicted (so if you want to predict forward ten minutes you will need to be further away from the locality by the distance it takes light to move in ten minutes and once there after you make your prediction (even if it took zero time) you can't communicate back into that locality (it will take the light you send back ten minutes to give the result of your prediction and thus what you are predicting will already have occured - so it's no longer a prediction)

The nature of the universe and information makes this an impossibility - you HAVE to be outside the light radius you are talkign about because you can't predict the result of your own prediction machine before it makes it - and that would be required if you were inside the locality.

So in a magical universe of omniscient, information processors then YES this is true, but in this universe it doesn't matter. No information can be predicted (though as in the case of weather patterns you CAN give rough predictions based on limited information by simplifying the system... that works well enough to be useful for humans, but we live in this middle world...

"If I somehow "knew" at one instant the position and velocity of all matter within your general vicinity (including you) and all of the laws of physics, then if we are purely material, I could predict with perfect accuracy (assuming of course that I possessed the computing power to do so) your reaction to any and all situations that would happen to you."

Ignoring the absolutely enormous ifs in that statement that practically throw reality out of the window... you could not predict what I would do because your simulation of me could not oustrip me if its running on the same laws of physics, in fact you'd be lagging behind by the amount of time needed to set up the simulation after you've sampled the data. You'd have only succeeded in replicating me at that instant and you'd see us make the same decisions for a very short span of time. If you've only got my general vicinity and the real me continues moving about, the simulation and I would then already be in different conditions and the further validity of it would break down. However, as an interesting theoretical sidepoint, I would argue that your simulation of me is equally as conscious as I am.

"The fact that you might have thought you made a decision is just your perception, it is not real. If I can always predict what you are doing, you clearly did not make a choice but just followed your (immensely complex) programming."

I think your point still remains regardless of whether or not you can predict what I will do. The fact remains that I follow deterministic rules, yes? Following my immensely complex programming is exactly the same as me having made a choice. They are not mutually exclusive concepts.

"Actual reality is what truly matters, not perceived reality. "

I agree with you, perception is not reality. At best, it's an interpretation of reality, and I wouldn't argue we do a very good job of that either. However, I'm not saying we "perceive" that we have proximate free will, I'm saying that we actually do have proximate free will. In fact, I would say that we "perceive" that we have ultimate free will, but we don't. Better than that, I would say the perception of ultimate and proximate free will are indistinguishable. Proximate free will gives us the same function of ultimate free will except that we are not above material interaction. I think it would be better that our decisions be informed by material interactions given that our lives revolve around interacting with the material world, rather than have some spirit come in and make an executive veto.

In the context of this thread, the "actual reality" provides no meaning to us. All meaning is ascribed on to reality by consciousness, who's domain is firmly that of "perceived reality". In that sense, why would our lack of ultimate free will lead to less meaningful lives?

orathaic, I'm but a humble student of Neuroscience, just finishing up my sophomore year at McGill University. I've always been very curious so I quite actively seek out new knowledge on a variety of subjects. I read a lot as a child and had relatively early exposure to some powerful ideas at a young age (eg. evolution). Actually, I read so much that at one point, my teachers held an intervention against my reading because I would completely ignore them in class and keep reading on my own. Imagine that! Teachers intervening to stop a student from reading! Nowadays most of my new knowledge comes from the internet. I get free access to a lot of journal articles while on campus, which is absolutely fantastic given how expensive they would be if I had to pay for all the ones I've read. So no, I'm not a scientist, it's just that my curiosity has a hell of an appetite.

orathaic and Chrispminis - My simulation suggestion was a though exercise. I am not suggesting that such a machine actually exists, but for the purposes of discussion we can assume that it could exist, and that is all that really matters.

Also, Chrispminis - does my computer make choices when it just follows its programming? I guess you could say that it does, but they are pretty meaningless since it made a choice when it really had no other options. Heck, maybe it thinks it has free will, but since it has not figured out how to talk to me, I just don't know that it thinks this is the case.

Also, your view of how the spiritual part of our being works I think is a bit removed from what those of us who think this is true believe. Our spirit is in union with our body and is not some foreign entity exercising "executive veto." Rather, our spirit works in unison with our body to take the inputs from the body (which is governed by material rules) and synthesize them with our intellect and will to produce some sort of action. I don't really know how this works, but I don't know how a lot of things work and that does not prevent them from working anyway.

Finally, the problem with your proximate/ultimate free will argument is that if you really believe that, then you know for a fact that your free will is a complete illusion and that you really don't make choices. If that is the case, how do you live in a seemingly paradoxical state in which you act as though you have free will (and maybe even think you do), but at the same time also believe that you don't have any real free will?

@nola2172
"I have to agree with Dave Bishop on this one."
No need to say it like its you regret it!

"how do you live in a seemingly paradoxical state in which you act as though you have free will (and maybe even think you do), but at the same time also believe that you don't have any real free will?"
There is no other option available. You can't live as if you don't have free will.

@Chrisp
But what is it about our complexity, even if it is feasibly un predictable, that gives us any more free will than a tree or a computer. Just because the reactions in our head are harder to track, more complex and take longer, they are still unbreakably bound to the laws of physics like any other part of the universe.

You seem to argue we have free will "based on ourselves"- i.e. something happens to us and the way the chemicals in our brain (governed by the laws of physics) react dictate our "choice" as we are our chemicals.
But in the same way, a tree will 'react' to having a shortage of water by slowing down its transpiration stream due to its chemicals and the laws of physics (probably not true- just an example!), and a computer creates a "d" on my screen when I tap the button for the same reasons.
Therefore does everything have freewill, just because its own chemical make up dictates how it responds to different situations and stimuli?

Gah. Not to demean by debators who have argued admirably but this is getting frustrating. We're both saying the same things over and over in different words. I'll type out a full response later but I've got errands to run.

Chrispminis - I think some of the continued reiteration of their point by everyone (in particular Dave Bishop and I) is related to you insistence on using "free will" to describe human actions given your position. If you would say "humans have no free will, but they think they do" then that would be fine, but I think the major contention is that you can't have your cake and eat it too. Either we have free will or we don't.

Also, I would be interested in your thoughts on my previous question, specifically in regards to how you (or if you are just arguing a point, then some generic person) would continue to have meaning in your life if you knew that you really did not have a free will and the appearance of it was just an illusion.

Free will's a rather silly concept.

We have free will - yes, we are able to choose what we do (no reason to presume there's an evil scientist sitting in my mind manipulating me.

At the same time we have no free will. We simply do what we would do. After all, a person is simply the sum of what he has done and thought up to this point. Once you have arrived at a given juncture in existence, the history of your existence will determine how to react to that juncture and how you will resolve it.

SteevoKun - You can't have and not have something simultaneously. We do make choices, but so does everything (plants "make choices" if that is how you define it). Free will as a philosophical concept (or a real one for that matter) means the ability to choose independent of the constraints of our materal existence (but still limited by what we are physically able to do). I gave a rough overview of how this works in a previous post, so I will not repeat that here.

I seem to be having trouble getting my point across. I'm pretty sure I know what you mean, but I'll try to condense my points. I think my language and use of terms also added to the confusion.

We don't have free will, at least not free will as you've defined it. My point is that the distinction between free will as you've defined it and the will that we do exercise on a regular basis is not a useful one. I'm not trying to have my cake and eat it too, I'm saying that we don't have cake, but we can eat other things. The distinction has no bearing on the meaningfulness of our lives. For the sake of continuity with my previous posts with outline my reasoning for this, I have called free will as you defined it as "ultimate free will" while the will that we are familiar with I've called "proximate free will".

Now just to address the more recent points.

"My simulation suggestion was a though exercise. I am not suggesting that such a machine actually exists, but for the purposes of discussion we can assume that it could exist, and that is all that really matters."

No, I understand that, but if we're assuming that we're working within the confines of the universe then it's not actually a valid thought experiment. I've already said that I think your point stands irregardless of the validity of this thought experiment, so it's not really a useful point of the argument.

"Also, Chrispminis - does my computer make choices when it just follows its programming? I guess you could say that it does, but they are pretty meaningless since it made a choice when it really had no other options. Heck, maybe it thinks it has free will, but since it has not figured out how to talk to me, I just don't know that it thinks this is the case."

Well, I would say choice is a pretty meaningless concept outside the realm of consciousness. I wouldn't say any of the computers we've built are conscious so I don't think they would subjectively think they had free will. Consciousness is an emergent phenomenon and requires a complexity and integrative network that our computers clearly lack at this point.

"Also, your view of how the spiritual part of our being works I think is a bit removed from what those of us who think this is true believe. Our spirit is in union with our body and is not some foreign entity exercising "executive veto." Rather, our spirit works in unison with our body to take the inputs from the body (which is governed by material rules) and synthesize them with our intellect and will to produce some sort of action. I don't really know how this works, but I don't know how a lot of things work and that does not prevent them from working anyway."

My apologies. However, we may differ fundamentally here because intellect and will I regard as the domain of brain function. It's quite easy to damage a person's intellect and willpower through brain lesions and this is not just a "the cockpit's broken so the pilot can't control the plane properly" sort of phenomenon. People with such lesions are often completely convinced that they have no such deficit, and show no sign that they have some spirit trapped within them that is desperately trying to communicate to the material world. Your argument that it might be possible, just because you can't explain it doesn't mean it's not possible is not really a very good argument for your cause. I could have easily laid back and said I don't know how the material interactions can cause an emergent phenomenon as complex as consciousness and free will, but that doesn't mean it's not possible. In fact, I would say that argument is more valid because it doesn't assume the existence of a spiritual entity that lies beyond all current understanding.

"Finally, the problem with your proximate/ultimate free will argument is that if you really believe that, then you know for a fact that your free will is a complete illusion and that you really don't make choices. If that is the case, how do you live in a seemingly paradoxical state in which you act as though you have free will (and maybe even think you do), but at the same time also believe that you don't have any real free will?"

"Real free will" as it is, does not exist, in the same sense that "real magic" does not exist. I do not have ultimate free will. Nobody does, to the best of current scientific understanding. I do make choices. The things that are deciding are exactly the things that constitute me. These processes and my conscious experience of them are inextricable from each other. I am both subjectively and physically making a decision as far as the word "decision" has any practical value at all as a word. The "decision" that you're referring to does not exist.

You agree that we either have ultimate free will or we do not, right? It doesn't really matter what we believe in that sense, because no amount of belief changes reality. You can't say I believe that I have free will because without it I would not have meaning in my life, and then work backwards to say that this proves that we have free will, correct? Now let's just pretend for a moment that we do not in fact have ultimate free will, which I do not think is unreasonable given that current scientific evidence, which has given us so many boons on the basis of its predictions, does not posit supermaterial interactions.

What then, would you call the regular experience that we have of making decisions? Is it not from this experience that we draw the idea of ultimate free will? It's at least apparent that we have this experience of decision, and this experience is what we call choice. We built our notion of ultimate free will on the basis of this experience, not out of some arbitrary theoretical skyhook. But now we've built this notion, we've knocked out the foundational experience as not "real" or not "actual", when in fact, it is the only thing that we could call choice or decision that *is* real. The theoretical notion is just that, a theoretical notion. It's not an illusion, ultimate free will is the illusion.

I live my life with meaning the same way we all do. It certainly helped that I inherited a lot of faculties from my ancestors that allow me to ascribe meaning to the world around me. My brain constructs my sensory experience in a useful manner such that I can distinguish most things on a similar order of magnitude as I am and I can categorize and recognize various objects. My brain is a powerful correlation detector, such that I can readily discern patterns and tendencies and use them to essentially predict the future. My brain has a powerful executive seat by which consciousness can integrate disparate areas of the brain to create a cohesive experience and through which I can direct and veto the lower areas of the brain. It also helps that I was born into a society of humans already with a fully formed culture with which I can interact and also draw meaning from. My existence is contingent. I was not born with purpose, and I certainly didn't choose to be born, but I consider myself very much priveleged to be given the opportunity to exist. All purpose and meaning I manufacture internally or borrow from what other humans have manufactured internally.

*nola

It is all based on how you look at it. As an independent entity, we do have free will in the given moment in which a decision is made.

However, if you look at an individual temporally only (as a collection of adjacent moments in time, only considering that individual), then we have no free will, for we are a slave to our past - while the determining of a certain outcome can be determined statistically, the fact is everything happens for some sort of reason (however unapparent that reason may be).

we make decisions based on where we are at the moment... our history, our past learning, our emotional makeup, and our current data... and we make what we think is the best choice (whatever "best" means)... If you reproduce the situation identically (including no memory of the previous decision, etc.), presumably we would make the same best choice... this sounds deterministic... but how would it be any different with "free will"? Wouldn't we still make the best choice (given our information, emotional makeup, etc.)? If one purposely does something that we as observers think is not the best choice (stepping in front of a train, for example), I submit that it is only because we are not in the head of the person making that decision. Even people doing things purposely "random" or "self-destructive" are simply doing things that confirm to them their beliefs about themselves and the world... and this is an important thing... as any recovering drug addict with low self esteem will tell you. So - how exactly would the world look different with "free will" and without? I suggest that regardless of the concept, we will do what makes the most sense to us for a myriad of reasons both conscious and subconscious. "Free will" for one thing assumes that we are separate from the rest of the universe... and that itself is an illusion. Is it us in the driver's seat somehow divorced from the rest of the universe or is it we are simply part of the universe that is in all driver's seats at the same time... either way, the actions work themselves out in a sensible (though hugely complex) pattern... with the same result.

...and thanks to all for a very interesting read in this thread over the last couple of pages... I've come to new views about the topic thanks to reflecting on this conversation.

Chrispminis - I am not attempting to argue that free will can be proved by examing how we view it. I would, however, add that there is precisely zero scientific evidence to show that we lack a free will as well though, and, as it tends to be on these sorts of topics, it is a matter of faith (though I would say faith informed by reason). However, since you believe that we have no real free will, I guess the question I would have (which you answered somewhat), is how do you add this input into your being (the input that you don't have a real free will) with the full knowledge that all of your actions are predetermined and still enjoy the fact that you are doing something over which you appear to have control but know you really don't? That just does not make any sense to me. If I knew I really did not have a choice (even if it "felt" like I did), I would more or less be forced to cease caring (though I guess I would not have a choice in how I reacted either) about much of anything.

However, since I both believe that we do in fact have ultimate free will as you describe it (though there are some other theological effects there that are not relevant here), I can pretty easily live my life knowing that I make real decisions that are not just the output of a bunch of subatomic particles moving around.

Dexter_Morgan - I think what you are saying (correct me if I am wrong) is that even if we had a spritual component, that component would still be governed by its own rules based on where it has been in the past. While I certainly agree that our past influences our present, (and this is about to get theological), it is our creation "in imago Dei" that allows us to be free agents not bound by deterministic laws just as God's will is not bound by laws. Now, we obviously have limits (I can't just start flying through the air or do things my physical being is incapable of doing), but within those limits we can act freely and choose what we want to do.

Finally, and this was brought up, individuals with brain injuries really do have something similar to a broken joystick on an airplane. When the controls don't work right, the whole thing does not fly very well.

"they are still unbreakably bound to the laws of physics like any other part of the universe." - you seem to think that being bound by the laws of physics doesn't mean we can appear to make choices which benifits ourselves or even choices which destroy ourselves...

"is how do you add this input into your being (the input that you don't have a real free will) with the full knowledge that all of your actions are predetermined"

Predetermined seems to mean you think you have no control over your future - THIS is not the case because what it is that you are is part of this system you ARE the predetermining thing - if you understood all of the information about yourself then you could perhaps predict what you will do in the future, but instead you witness yourself doing these things...

Maybe that isn't exactly clear, IT maybe possible to predict (but not tell anyone about it because information can't travel faster than the speed of light) precisely what someone will do, but it isn't possible for them to know what they will do. (if in the thought experiment you were told what you would do this result would have to already have been feed into the original calculation - that would mean the calculating machine would have to work out the result before hand and calcualte what effect this information would have on the information - but no calculating machine can simulate itself faster than it can do the calculation - thus again for the purposes of predicting human behaviour it doesn't matter to us PRACTICALLY - because it is impossible to gain any useful information)

"the full knowledge that all of your actions are predetermined" - not predetermined - nothing can know what your actions are before they happen You may be in a deterministic system which has not been determined BEFORE - so i'd like to remove the pre, from your statement.

I have the full knowledge that (barring any quantum mechanical behaviour) all of my actions are Deterministic. That doesn't mean they are Predetermined, i can't know what my actions will be until i choose them - this expierence of choice is an emergent phenomina - it is not described by reducing to the fundamental parts, it is impossible to describe some things entirely through the individual parts - look at a flocking simulation - many birds each following simple rules and only knowing local information about the other birds who are nearby will tend to organise as a flock which appears to have a higher purpose - none of the individual birds are directing the flock but the flock itself appears to have direction and purpose.

Here we can describe what each bird is doing, but this will not be a full description of the system - it will lack the macroscopic state of the system - in this example being what the flock is doing.

"[we] are still unbreakably bound to the laws of physics like any other part of the universe." - YES, and this leaves us with amazing emergent behaviour - it is as if we are acting on our own will, and the illusion that we have a will of our own is a useful thing for brains to first identify what is 'ME' and what decisions it is the 'ME' should be responcible for, and how to make these decisions.

It is probably most useful in social situations where we can project our idea of what a person is onto other humans and predict what they will choose to do. (In fact i would guess that most social creatures probably develope some sense of personal identity - though ants seems to act on chemical signals from each other and have a different sort of society... some maybe social isn't the context i'm looking for)

In short, i think the expierence of 'free will' is real, and what it means is that we are rational, emotional creatures capable of acting. The idea that we are unable to change our behaviour is not a useful one - we are infact capable of reinforcing different habits, and losing other ones, it is possible to train our brains but i think that is a feature of our higher brain funcitons.

Does the idea that you are only capable of doing the things you are capable of doing somehow limit you? You are still capable of doing and chossing the same things. What it is that you are is infact determined by your history, previous expierences, and the various neural networks which make up your brain, and every human is able to make choices and take actions which we can attempt to predict, but we KNOW other humans are self-interested actors pursueing their own agenda - what that might be is determined by themselves and their histories... IF i was to build a robot which could behave in all the ways humans do would that be enough to satisfiy you? (at the moment we are able to build neural networks into robots so they can learn to walk, but we're not yet able to teach them to talk, and a lot of AI research has failed because it attempted to build a knowledge system rather that a system for learning meaning - Alife is the way to build this kind of robot brain and it will not be possible to predict what it will learn, how it will develop and what decisions it will make...)

Hm. I think dexter summed it up much better than I did. I have a tendency to belabour my points I think. "So - how exactly would the world look different with "free will" and without?" This especially is a point I've been trying to make.

I didn't say that there was scientific evidence that ultimate free will does not exist. I said that scientific understanding is such that there is no need to posit that ultimate free will exists. There's no evidence that it does exist either, and so I don't believe its existence should be assumed. The progress we've made on a purely monistic materialist view is leaps and bounds ahead of any made upon dualistic grounds. All modern treatments of neurological and psychological treatments are based upon the idea that you are your brain. The truth is not based upon what is easier to live with.

I still don't want to turn this into a theological argument, so I hope you'll also refrain, or I'll have no choice (Ha! Get it?) but to engage. =(

"Finally, and this was brought up, individuals with brain injuries really do have something similar to a broken joystick on an airplane. When the controls don't work right, the whole thing does not fly very well."

No, no, no! That is exactly wrong! Your brain is both pilot and cockpit! There innumerable disorders that disprove your point. This is my area of expertise, as far as I have any, so I'm comfortable debating this. For example, let's just talk about corpus callosotomy, a last resort procedure used to treat severe epilepsy. Your brain is divided into left and right hemispheres which are connected by a bundle of axons known as the corpus callosum. The surgery essentially severs the corpus callosum and it leads to a condition known commonly as split-brain. This results because the two hemispheres can no longer communicate with each other. Patients with this condition exhibit peculiar behaviour that is completely in line with neuroscientific understanding, and not at all consistent with the brain as a cockpit view.

For example, only the left hemisphere can talk due to left hemisphere dominance of language areas. The right hemisphere is more involved in such functions like drawing. This leads to funny situations where the patient is asked to fixate on a point in the middle of the screen and two images are shown, one on either side of the fixation point. Say, a hammer shows up on the right, and a saw shows up on the left side. The right eye provides sensory information to and is controlled by the left brain, as much control of muscles is done by the contralateral brain, while the left eye provides information to the right brain. Now, when the patient is asked to name the object they saw, they say hammer, because their left brain is doing the talking. However, when they are asked to draw the object, they draw the saw, because the right hemisphere is doing the drawing. Then the left hemisphere can see the drawing and name it. When asked why they drew a saw and not a hammer the left hemisphere is at a complete loss and admits, "I don't know."

As another example, only the left hemisphere can read. This leads to unique behaviour when a split brain patient is reading a book held in its left hand. The talking left brain can express its interest in th book but will find to its great surprise and displeasure that their left hand is continually putting down the book. This is because the right brain, which controls the left hand (again contralateral control) cannot read, and so finds the book to be extremely boring.

In the case of a split brain patient, which hemisphere is the pilot in? Are there now two spiritual pilots? If the left brain is choosing to read, but the right brain is choosing not to read... which spirit is the one with free will? This is just one example of a disorder that disproves the brain as a cockpit idea. There are many, many others, and they're all incredibly interesting and have profound philosophical ramifications.

orathaic great post. I feel that you've made the same point with much more clarity. I'll remember some of it so that the next time I'm trying to explain my view of free will to someone I'll actually get my message across. =D

Oh here's a decent video regarding split brain and corpus callosotomy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMLzP1VCANo

The patient's own narration is perhaps most interesting. It represents the perspective of the left brain.

"Finally, and this was brought up, individuals with brain injuries really do have something similar to a broken joystick on an airplane. When the controls don't work right, the whole thing does not fly very well."

This is an interesting thing, because it can be shown that different parts of the brain do different things - I'm pretty sure that you can remove the moral sense from someone - take away inhibitions, which in effect change your physical brain and hence change the decisions which we make - there is some cool research http://www.ted.com/talks/rebecca_saxe_how_brains_make_moral_judgments.html

seriosuly watch this!

Oh here's an even better video with the same patient! Fascinating stuff, I could do this all day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfGwsAdS9Dc&feature=related

Also nice link orathaic, I've seen that talk before. TED is a great resource.

Man, the way the left brain rationalizes his experience is fantastic. It's great the way we fool ourselves. =D

Ok, I'll stop posting so much.