The philosophy thread general discussion

Does the idea that free will is an illusion go hand in hand with the idea that time is an illusion?

Following on from that, if free will is an illusion, what is the extent of the illusion? Does it cover only external actions or does it also cover internal contemplation and self reflection ? Like, do I CHOOSE to think about something in some way at some time ? What about identity?

Obviously this is very broad and I would doubt anyone will ever know, considering the subjective nature of the ego, but I thought it was worth asking

Well, free will is held to be an illusion on grounds of strict determinism (if every action, including willed actions are strictly the outcomes of prior chains of cause and effect then there is no room for a will to be "free"). So it's absolute: if you hold to strict determinism, then there is no "freedom" of any kind.

This is known as the "incompatibalist" position. There are "compatibalists" who disagree- arguing that free will can be redefined in a way that is compatible with determinism. We have had many of these arguments right here in this thread, as you can see if you search on the right terms.

Time is also sometimes thought of as an illusion but for somewhat different reasons. Within science, time is a variable in mathematical equations that predict the outcome of physical events. Every moment in time is treated equally, with no special status given to a moment called "now". It's possible to model the universe such that all moments in time exist together within one objective system. That would mean that the "flow" of time is an illusion (not, technically, time itself). Of course, your opinion about this would depend upon what status you confer upon mathematical models of the universe: are they just a map or true reflections of reality?

I personally think that free will is incompatible with strict determinism, but I do not think that mathematical models necessarily prove anything. So I hold that objectively speaking free will is an illusion but the flow of time is not.

Make sense?

Is this related to the discussion of whether mathematics is a feature of the universe or a man-made construct?

Yes, it is. If math is simply a man-made construct, then the idea that time is an illusion would seem to be undermined.

If free will is an illusion, does that change anything ? Would it be the same as if the universe was discovered to be a simulation ? We would still have responsibility for our actions since every thing that leads to them is so complex it's useless to find the ultimate cause. Plus you also have to take into account the emergent properties of the consciousness. Am I choosing to write this sentence right now or was it always going to happen based on this conversation?

While we're at it, I thought I'd bring up the Rietdijk-Putnam argument

edited 30th Jun '15 8:42:00 AM by Xopher001

Objectively speaking, if free will exists then actions that result from it would appear completely unpredictable based on prior causes- they would be "uncaused actions" spontaneously appearing out of nowhere. Presumably this would take the form of neurons firing by themselves, with no input. Note that the actions that arise out of free will are not random or arbitrary- they are the result of comprehensible choices made by the person involved. If we could eliminate the influence of all other factors then presumably science could correctly identify these actions.

I'm not very familiar with the "Rietdijk–Putnam argument", but offhand it sounds like philosophers arguing about a scientific theory (relativity in this case) that they themselves dont understand very well.

Maybe arguing about "free will" is just meaningless.

For example, we could go down all the way back into the thinking process, right into the molecular and subatomic level, and come with some quantum theory of chaos or what not.

If events from the future affect events from the past, according to quantum mechanics, then the causality and effect of thinking, viewed from this reductionist point of view, would be meaningless.

That's not really what QM says, and anyway, quantum effects only apply at the sub-atomic level. They "average themselves out" so to speak, at the macro level.

but if determinism is a chain of events you would eventually need to go all the way back to the event that sets all events in motion. Wouldn't that be at the quantum level?

It seems to me that is a problem of causality.

They may average out, but they still mean that the "perfect knowledge of initial conditions" required to predict outcomes is impossible because some of the data simply doesn't exist.

The universe appears to have begun in a state where matter and antimatter were not spread out completely evenly. If I'm not mistaken the current consensus is that this imbalance - that made the existence of the universe as we know it possible in the first place - would have to be due to quantum effects. So yes.

That doesnt affect the status of hard determinism now, though, provided you could trace the chain of cause and effect back to the initial state where things took on structure.

Except that's sort of an ongoing process. You get matter/antimatter collisions every so often and they spew out new stuff in totally unpredictable ways so you can never really predict if a proton is going to get bumped slightly off-course and trigger a gene mutation that leads to a species taking over a planet or whatever.

It's not clear to me what position you are arguing. Are you claiming that cause and effect are indeterminable in our universe?

Yes.

Or more poignantly, unintelligible to humans. Newton used to hold this view.

"“Newton regarded the discovery of action at a distance, in violation of the basic principles of the mechanical philosophy, as ‘so great an Absurdity that I believe no Man who has in philosophical matters a competent Faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it.'”

But Newton had to conclude that absurdity did exist, because there there was no strictly physical explanation. And so his contemporaries accused him of introducing occult qualities into science. In order to defend himself from the charge, Newton abandoned the search for the “first springs of natural motions” in favor of developing “the best theoretical account we can.”

- See more at: http://mereorthodoxy.com/the-unintelligible-body-chomsky-on-galileo-and-newton/#sthash.bQKIfEaN.dpuf

edited 1st Jul '15 9:02:01 PM by BAFFU

I'm saying that cause and effect has sufficient wiggle room that while a hypothetical perfect initial conditions snapshot of a system can tell you the immediate future of that system, the further away from the moment that snapshot was taken the fuzzier and less accurate your predictions are going to become.

If you're arguing that humanity is unable to collect enough data to perfectly predict the future state of a system, you are absolutely correct, although it isnt clear to me what implications that could have for free-will vs. determinism. If, however, you are claiming that the universe itself, in actual objective fact, is indeterminate, well, that's something else.

No scientist that I know of, including those involved in QM, holds that position. Quantum uncertainty is mathematically certain to average itself out at any scale above the sub-atomic- that's why we don't fall through chairs when we sit on them, even though they are technically made up of nothing more than wave functions of indeterminate value. The uncertainty effect technically only applies to individual particles.

But even if that weren't true, even if the universe could be shown to act in an indeterminate way in some large scale sense- it's not clear that this provides any room for free-will. After all, people don't perceive themselves as acting randomly- we see ourselves as acting deliberately and rationally, acting on decisions that make sense to us. That's the "will" part of free-will. Free will can only be preserved if you can argue that people make decisions independently of outside mechanical forces, but in accordance with some decision making aspect of their conscious mind. That's a tough argument to make.

Now if you want to try to combine both notions: that the universe contains some indeterminant element in it, and that the brain somehow builds on that to produce decisions (not necessarily conscious ones) that are inherently unpredictable ahead of time- that would work, but the indeterminancy has to originate in the brain- it cant be quantum particles. If you can propose a mechanism by which neuro-chemical patterns our brain creates in response to experience are themselves "indeterminent" (the technical term is "non-linear"), then please propose it. That would represent a significant advance in psychology.

Well its complicated.

But the fact that hard determinism seems to be very machinistic is problematic when you consider things like gravity.

Remember, gravity is not quantum yet defies cause and effect. This is the famous O'reilley "tides go in tides go out, you can't explain that".

Also, what if our decisions change the world itself. Thus, the world we chose is determined by us. Maybe if we made a different decision the universe just splits, and so on in an infinite fashion.

edited 2nd Jul '15 10:39:00 PM by BAFFU

Jump to 1:19 if you want to avoid the question of "can there be free will".

edited 2nd Jul '15 10:42:55 PM by BAFFU

My argument is that subatomic scale events can have an effect on macro-scale reality. It's only a tiny one, but eventually they build up. It's a wobble in causality. At small time scales it's the difference between two barely-distinguishable events, but as you go along subsequent wobbles can make everything slowly veer off course.

Imperceptible differences adding up over time. Kinda like evolution, really.

Silly things happen when physicists try to solve philosophical questions, without the background to know what has been argued already first. I've already explained why MK is wrong- uncertainty alone does not preserve free-will, because it doesnt explain how you get from quantum randomness to a rational will. What's the connection between the "wobbleness" of the universe and how we make decisions? Unless you have a mechanism, it isnt very persuasive. Again- people do not act randomly.

@Elfive: Are you suggesting that QU acts like a non-linear complex dynamic system, a la "chaos theory"? It's my understanding that quantum particles do not form a dynamic system, meaning that the uncertainty of the position or momentum of one particle is not an input into the uncertainty of the next one. The probabilities do not add up. Do you have a different understanding?

The brain, on the other hand, may work differently.

How does gravity defy cause and effect? That doesnt make any sense to me?

edited 3rd Jul '15 6:52:36 AM by DeMarquis

Isn't the quantum stuff all there is? Big objects don't work by Newtonian physics until the don't. They work by something much closer to quantum mechanics, which just tends to make large collections of particles act mostly as if by Newtonian physics.

In one sense, yes, quantum particles are all that exist, in the sense that everything is made of them. But obviously these particles are capable of building structures that posses stability and consistency.

The real question I'd ask is:

If things are not predetermined, then are we not slaves of random chance?

Well, that's the question. What else is there?