Why do people care about free will and is there such a thing anyway?

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Determinism has always seemed to be one of those weird concepts in that it may exist, but you cannot rationally believe in it.

Here's a fun little mental exercise: try to define satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) with a particular outcome of events...without acknowledging or implying the possibility of any other outcome of the same events.

edited 24th Nov '12 7:02:59 PM by TotemicHero

Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)

That's easy- satiation of an internal impulse or need. I crave sugar, I find sugar, I eat sugar: I am happy. Just about any subjection reaction can be explained as a side-effect of motivations that have evolved over time. Much more difficult, IMO, is explaining why one should get up in the morning if all life is just the outcome of pursuing self-interest interacting with random events.

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

There's one key problem with that logic. How do you know that something makes you happy or satisfied without a point of comparison? And how can you envision a point of comparison without, in some form, envisioning an alternate scenario (and thus implying you are "choosing" a outcome)?

edited 24th Nov '12 7:17:11 PM by TotemicHero

Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)

The organism has some sort of sliding scale, like a thermometer. The higher it is, the more "satisfied" the organism feels; the lower it is, the more the organism is motivated to seek out the thing being desired. It's a simple cybernetic regulator, no more complicated than a thermostat. It doesn't require any conceptual thinking at all.

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

You seem to keep missing the key point, so let me break this down to the simplest terms. How do you, consciously or subconsciously, define a positive emotion like happiness or satisfaction without having another emotional state to compare it to?

The point is that on a subconscious level, we compare multiple emotional states all the time, meaning that emotionally we're built to behave as if we have free will. So either free will exists in some form and we act on it, or hard determinism exists and we act as if it doesn't. YMMV on which is better.

Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)

Hmm, I sort of get it, but not really. Do you have a reference you can share? I guess "Satiation = 0 vs. Satiation = 1" is comparing two different emotional states, but why would that imply free will? My comparison to a thermostat is literal, that really is how it works.

Trying really hard to parse this out, it seems to me that comparing two emotional states to one another only implies a choice if it is theoretically possible to prefer either one. That isnt possible in my thermostat example (more is always better). Can you give me an example of one where it is?

edited 24th Nov '12 8:00:56 PM by DeMarquis

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

Hmmm... seeking out conflicted states? Humour. That's a function of multiple, contradictory and conflicting desires meeting... and, to cope, being found "funny". Which, in turn, people can find enjoyable, so seek out... even though it requires underlying conflict.

Hard determinism is based on the concept that there is only one possible outcome for every event, determined from the beginning of all time.

So, for someone who subconsciously believed in it, there would be no "Satisfaction = 0", only "Satisfaction = 1". It's not a case of preferring one over the other, it would be a case of being unable to realize there was an other. (This is the root behind a number of mental disorders related to lack of empathy.)

To acknowledge alternate states of being (and thus alternate outcomes) exist, is to imply that these outcomes are possible, therefore shooting determinism in the foot.

Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)

Not necessarily. According to hard determinism, we make think we consider other options, however, if we were to undergo the exact same situation-and I mean exact, with no changes, we'd pick the exact same choice every time. After all, assume we act as we do for a reason, and assuming we're the same person (both mentally, and physically), there's no reason to assume we'd pick differently. I could probably explain this better...damn. I'm trying to say, that, although we have the illusion of choice, we don't make choices. Our neurochemical makeup, combined with the laws that govern the universe mean that there is only one path to everything ever's existence.

Oh, I'm beginning to see. You shouldn't be upset over negative outcomes, because you were doomed from the beginning of the universe. If there is one piece of food, and two people who need to eat it, it should be possible, under strict determinism, to predict who will inevitably eat it. The loser should feel philosophical knowing that there was no other possible outcome. But they probably wont be. Is that it?

I see two potential problems with that line of reasoning. Technically, this isn't an argument against determinism, it's an argument against the possibility that anyone believes in determinism, irregardless of whether or not it is true. Everyone acts as if they think they are a free agent, even if they claim that they don't. We also act as if we think other people are free agents as well (ever feel gratitude for an unexpected gift?). But, as I say, this isn't really a weakness of determinism itself.

Also- determinism doesn't actually eliminate all randomness. There can be outcomes, within a completely pre-determined set of initial conditions, following a completely pre-determined set of simple rules, that are themselves not predictable. These are so-called "dynamic systems" which are modeled with a type of algorithm called "non-linear differential equations". Sometimes known as "Chaos Theory." In other words, the outcome is still pre-determined, but no one can possibly know what that outcome will be, so everyone is still forced to act as if it is undecided. But that's really a nit-pick.

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

I did say in my first post (at the top of this page) I was talking about the believability of determinism, didn't I?

Ultimately, hard determinism isn't empirically provable, neither is free will, and I doubt either viewpoint will ever be so. So the question becomes which to believe in, and as I've indicated, I think hard determinism is too cognitively dissonant to be all that healthy a viewpoint to have.

Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)

Psychologist's maxim works for me: "People are weird... and fascinating. Let's prod and find out more!"

Doesn't answer the big questions immediately, but it's good at breaking the problem down so you don't wake in sweat wondering if you really exist in any meaningful way... or not.

Hmm, no there I have to disagree. Not about how healthy it is (look up "depressive realism"), but about the necessity to "prove" hard determinism. It's the most simple theory consistent with the facts as we know them. By "simple" I mean it's the most logically consistent, easiest to explain with the fewest metaphysical assumptions. That's the scientific standard of proof, determinism meets it, and nothing else does.

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

Hard determinism is empirically false, because of quantum. There is zero empirical evidence to support dualism, therefore it is presumed false until said evidence shows up.

You don't have to be an empirist to believe that everything was predetermined; that's called Fatalism and it's Older Than Dirt. When people are fatalist and believe in Free Will, you get some weird stuff. Presbyterianism/Calvinism ring a bell?

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

That is Penrose and Hameroff's Orch-OR theory, which says that microtubules cause quantum randomness in neurons; but at the moment, if I am understanding the matter correctly, this is very much a minority view — the overall opinion seems to be that at the temperatures and speeds of neurons, decoherence effects kick in way before these fluctuations can affect the firing rates of neurons.

Depends what you mean by "dualism", I think. If you mean the view according to which the human mind is some sort of vaguely "spiritual", ghostly thingie driving the human body through some unspecified way, then not only there is no empirical evidence towards that, but it's pretty conclusively disproved, I think. Human behaviour is the result of the interactions between the neurons, that much is clear.

However, if you mean something like form/matter dualism, it seems to me that it is a solid philosophical assumption. Our world is not composed simply of matter, but of matter arranged into patterns. Hence, a full description of the nature of reality must talk not only of matter, but also of patterns and arrangements.

edited 25th Nov '12 1:36:34 AM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

Oh, you mean information? Yeah, I can live with that.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Yeah, that's precisely what I mean.

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

Quantum uncertainty only applies at the quantum level, above that the effect cancels itself out and doesnt affect the cause-effect relationship of all phenomena. Determinism restored!

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

Frak me! Now I feel dumb!

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Usually.

With the right device, you can definitely measure quantum phenomena and use the resulting randomness to drive the behaviour of macroscopic objects. We already have such things as quantum random number generators, for example, which use quantum mechanics to generate numbers that are guaranteed to be random (that is, if quantum physics is correct):

In principle, nothing prevents you from, say, hooking up such a quantum random number generator to, I dunno, a radio-controlled car and have it move in a truly random way.

But at the moment, as far as I know, there is little to no reason to think that neurons exploit quantum phenomena in similar ways; and, by the way, I would not say that such a radio-controlled car would have "free will" simply because its behaviour would be truly unpredictable.

EDIT: Silly science-fictiony idea: what if in the future, some people will hook up in some way such "quantum noise generators" to their very brains, so that their overall behaviour is provably non-deterministic? And what if these people ended up believing that they alone have free will, while non-modified humans don't?

edited 25th Nov '12 7:46:35 AM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

I have sudden urge to write a fanfic about Asimov's Foundation series using that concept.

A community of two-faces?

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

Go ahead if you feel like doing so. As I said, it is just a silly random idea.

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

Even if there is a degree of quantum sorcery randomness involved, is it so significant that it prevents Orwellian mind reading a reasonable guess about people's behavior?

Probably not, in most cases. Especially not if one is interested in statistical behaviour, psychohistory-style: after all, quantum phenomena do certainly have their own statistical laws.

edited 25th Nov '12 12:01:49 PM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.