Board index ‹ Free Will

[Rude and Indebted]

prove free will to me.

[jimwalton]

We know that all of our thoughts and consciousness have a biological base, but at the same time we reach far beyond biology and chemical reactions.

At what point do waves become sound? At what point does sound become music? At what point does music become art? At what point does art become beauty?

At what point does data become sequences? Sequences become information? Information becomes useful, and then becomes science?

At what point do letters become language? Language is interpretable and becomes meaningful? At what point does meaningful language become literature?

There is more here than biology, even complex biology, can define and describe.

At what point do chemicals reactions turn into consciousness? At what point does consciousness yield thinking? At what point does thinking yield reasoning? At what point does reasoning yield free will? We reach the point where self-awareness necessarily includes self-direction, which necessarily means free will.

Our definition of conscious, self-aware human beings is dependent on free will for science, art, beauty, language, love, justice, and meaning. Without free will, reasoning and science are impossible. Without free will, I have no reasoning ability. All I can do is process data, like a calculator. But I can't truly reason. I can't filter data, create hypotheses, weigh the import of data, eliminate meaningless data, evaluate various explanations, or arrive at a conclusion. Without honest choice and free will, none of this is possible, and therefore reasoning and science can't exist. If we are nothing more than biological machines that execute data programming coming through our senses, then our sense of conscious agency is an illusion.

It is not possible that all is determined. We are left with the conundrum of how one has determined that all is determined. If he decided to be a pure determinist, then he's not a pure determinist. If he's a pure determinist, then he does not believe it for rational reasons. He believes it because he was determined to believe it. It is impossible to believe it for rational reasons. The only way you can believe in determinism for rational reasons is if determinism is false. If determinism is true, then it doesn't make any sense for him to say that determinism is true, because if it is true, then you are assuming there are rational reasons for believing it. Fine, believe it, but if you're right, then your position is no better than the opposite, rationally, because you believe people believe things aside from any rational basis. If, as a determinist, you cannot distinguish between true and false on rational grounds, and so you can't say determinism is true. There HAS to be free will.

Maybe think of it this way: I'm sitting here making my hands move to type this post. This series of movements is caused by my volitions: my brain is sending signals to tell them to do this. One difficulty of this view is that volitions, being themselves actions, has a causal mechanism which involves another one, which involves another one behind it, ad infinitum. We end up with a infinite series of volitions involved in every single action—which is absurd.

Instead, there must be a beginning for such an event and action. We perform wast numbers of these intentional actions all the time. While I'm typing I'm adjusting my seat, glancing outside, scratching my arm, moving my toes, tipping my head, etc., all within a few seconds. These are all coming from my brain states, but they can't all be infinitely regressive. That doesn't make sense. Our brains would be overwhelmed with synaptic activity from which no new state or action could arise. Rather, these things arise—like a see a commercial about Coke and so I realize I'm thirsty and I made a decision to go get a Coke and drink it.

Richard Swinburne writes, "Here’s where it truly fails: The basic idea of all the theories is that an agent’s bringing about an effect intentionally, i.e., meaning to do so, is indubitably to be analyzed as the causing of that effect by some state of the agent or some event involving him. But all such analyses fail because an intention (or wish or desire) of P (a personal agent) to bring about an effect E, if it is some occurrent state or event, could bring about E without P’s having intentionally brought about E. Causation by an intention does not guarantee intentional action." Of the two explanations (biological/chemical or personal/volitional), on the personal/volitional has sufficiency of explanation.

[Rude and Indebted]

you didnt answer my question. what is free will? where does it come from? i can explain why isnt one without problem: your brain is build to process information and then do what is optimal. this doesnt violate the laws of physics and reflects what we know about it. now you explain how a cause can come from nothing.

[jimwalton]

You didn't ask what is was or where it came from. You said "prove free will to me." So I did.

Free will is pretty tough to define without allowing any loopholes. I can only sort of describe its characteristics and its necessity. It's the modulation of ongoing action, the distinguishing of potential courses, the ability to reason, the exercise of autonomy, and the consequent self-direction of thought and behavior.

Where does it come from? it's part of our consciousness, inherent in human nature, just like consciousness.

> your brain is build to process information and then do what is optimal

Ah, but to "do what is optimal" requires weighing options and making a choice. And yet we know the choices we make aren't always optimal, which gives evidence that factors other than optimality are in the mix. So if it's not automatically what is optimal, then we are making choices by weighing context, fears, intuitions, memories, pros and cons, etc.

> explain how a cause can come from nothing.

Suppose I raise my right hand in the air. We have two choices. This action was a result of an infinite chain of causes and effects based on biological and chemical stimulus and response, or I was able to originate the motion in my conscious thought. The former leads us to an endless regression (and infinite endless regressions with every movement we make); the latter says that consciousness can initiate and create causality. Since infinite endless regressions is an insufficient explanation for an infinite number of phenomena, then conscious causality is the more plausible.

Either we have only infinite regressions, or we have the possibility of personal first causes. If the former, we have an infinite series of volitions involved in every action, chemical and data processing that would vastly overwhelm the biological capacity of the brain. If, however, we have personal first causes, then we have a plausible explanation for the movements we see along with sufficiency of explanation as to where they come from and how they arise.

Without authentic free will, we have no capacity to think, love, forgive, or show kindness. There is no such thing as reason, science, justice, or even crime. We are all just machines playing through an inevitable cause and effect sequence. We have no humanity, only organic robotics.
Neuroscientists tell us that reductive (mindless motion of molecules) physicalism is an insufficient explanation of the emergence of high-level causal properties in complex systems. A more plausible explanation is non-reductive conscious causality creating new systems that are emergent.

Free will is necessary for us to be human, and it's the most plausible explanation of the phenomena we observe.

[Rude and Indebted]

dude you keep dancing around the fact that you break the rules of physics.

[jimwalton]

Such as? Please explicate which rules of physics and how I'm breaking them by what I've claimed.

[Rude and Indebted]

you are saying that something can be caused by "free will". but free will really isnt anything. where does that cause come from? just give me a straight answer and stop with the 10 paragraphs were halve is just a waste of space.

[jimwalton]

> free will really isnt anything.

Free will is just as real as love, fear, time, consciousness, darkness, and a million other things that don't have any materiality.

> you are saying that something can be caused by "free will". but free will really isnt anything. where does that cause come from?

It comes from our consciousness, as I explained.


> just give me a straight answer and stop with the 10 paragraphs were halve is just a waste of space.

Not every subject can be covered in sound bites and one paragraph. Sometimes it justifies and requires more reading and thought.
Besides, the question at hand that you need to answer is: "Please explicate which rules of physics and how I'm breaking them by what I've claimed." I'm thinking through gravity, energy conservation, thermodynamics, energy, mass, velocity, and trying to figure out what laws of physics I've broken by claiming that free will is essential to humanity, reason, and science.

C'mon. Give me a real conversation here.

[Rude and Indebted]

love is in your brain: real. consciousness : we dont quite understand it yet so dont make any assumptions. im pretty sure time is just how we describe the direction our universe goes in. darkness is just what we call a place where there is no light and that place exists. dude you cant cause something out of nothing. please stop with this game and show me where that cause is. i know time is real because it effects everything, but how do i know free will is real?

[jimwalton]

You say love is in your brain. The question is: Is love real? Does it exist?

You say we don't understand consciousness, but does consciousness exist? Is it real?

Darkness, you say, is the absence of light. But is it real? Does it exist?

So the conclusion comes to this: whether free will is in your brain, part of consciousness, or the absence of something, it could still be real. And I have not only claimed such, but I have given evidence of it.

> how do i know free will is real

I've already explained it and shown evidence. Re-read the thread.