Board index ‹ Free Will

[Book Mitten]

You'll have to be more specific. What kind of decision are you referring to? Broadly I might say conscience, experience, interest, knowledge and values. Beyond that it depends on the situation.

[jimwalton]

If I interpret you correctly, you feel that we have will, but not free will, and I don't understand the distinction. If we have a will that is able to evaluate and decide things, how is that different from free will?

You don't believe that we are biologically determined, but instead determined by our experiences. And yet our experiences only aim us in certain directions, they don't make our decisions about alternatives set in stone. I'm still able to decide even against my experiences.

You say our will can change, our intentions can change, and we follow the influences that have had import in our lives, but isn't that free will? We pilot our own lives. We can even use our intent and will to change directions if we choose.

I am trying to understand, but not getting it. How is what you believe about will different from what I am calling's free will? Yes, I am compelled by my worldview, personality, experiences, and desires, but I truly get to make bona fide decisions about what comes next. These are generally within the confines of my worldview, personality, experiences, and desires, but they don't have to be and sometimes are not, because I both have and exercise free will.

The immediate reference to my question was your comment, "for me this doesn't prove free will, only that certain decisions can vary." I asked, "What is it in you that is deciding, and how does that work?"

[Book Mitten]

Before anything else, let's discuss the following:

I'm still able to decide even against my experiences.

What do you mean by this? Can you give an example?

[jimwalton]

Sure. A little girl is physically abused by her father, so whom does she marry? Someone who physically abuses her. She gets divorced and gets out of that situation. Her experiences have taught her that she makes bad choices based on her experiences, so this time when she remarries—you guessed it—she picks another abuser. Despite her experiences, she seems to have radar for abusive men.

Here's another example. Have you seen the movie "Thanks for Sharing" with Mark Ruffalo and Gwyneth Paltrow? It's about sex addiction. Ruffalo plays a character who is trying to escape the addiction. He meets Paltrow and they get involved. Then she finds out he's an addict. As it turns out, she had been previously involved with an addict and decided never to do that again. Her experience taught her, and she now has intent to avoid that again. But—you guessed it—she decides against her experience and intent and gets more deeply involved with Ruffalo. Go figure.

But that's an example of how someone decides against their experiences and even their intent. Something inside of us is the captain and exhibits a will that is free to choose its direction.

[Book Mitten]

The examples you give would have factors in the mix unmentioned in your wording. Paltrow's character will be drawn to Ruffalow's, which is of course defined as attraction, itself an experience. It is something which in that case is an experience more compelling than the conflicting factor of past troubles, something which as a memory might otherwise provide the push towards avoiding the man were the attraction not as strong.

[jimwalton]

Of course there are other factors. Every situation is complex. Every environment, every thought, is the result of a mosaic of elements and influences. Nothing is simple, especially in the human brain. But there is a governor in our brain that takes the input, filters it, evaluates it, includes our "gut" feelings, tries to consider the future effects, etc. etc. The governor is my conscious self, my identity, and my free will that is able to impose intentions on my world.

If experiences regulate my will, and my will regulates my experiences, but no one is really in charge, we have an endless sequence that never allows me to act. It's an infinite regression. But this is not the case. My conscious self is able to initiate action, like raising my right arm to be parallel with the ground. I can be a personal first cause. That's free will. Even such a simple action is proof that it's not an infinite regression. I can do this at will. And if I wait for biology, experiences, attractions, memories, or any other force to self-lift my right arm, it will never happen. I will die in this position. I am the initiator.

You need to prove otherwise if you think this is not the case. I have supported my claim. You need to support yours.

[Book Mitten]

> Of course there are other factors. Every situation is complex. Every environment, every thought, is the result of a mosaic of elements and influences. Nothing is simple, especially in the human brain. But there is a governor in our brain that takes the input, filters it, evaluates it, includes our "gut" feelings, tries to consider the future effects, etc. etc.

What I'd say is that these things are part of the process that you were describing as making volition impossible, as you thought we are just following a process if we don't have free will. (If I understand you correctly). I would say that our volition is part of the process/movement/flux itself.

> The governor is my conscious self, my identity

I'm saying that the conscious self cannot be other than what it is. You can't choose to not be conscious, at least.

> If experiences regulate my will, and my will regulates my experiences, but no one is really in charge, we have an endless sequence that never allows me to act. It's an infinite regression.

Not necessarily. I'd say that there's ontological feedback between different elements of reality. Have you heard of Karl popper's three world ontology? That would be an example. Also think if George Ellis in his comments on emergent properties (such as circuit boards, which are made of smaller parts which influence the nature of the circuit board, but are influenced themselves by the nature of the board which they make up). I would say a similar situation applies to human life. We are parts of reality that influence other parts of reality which influence us. These things feedback off each other and form things from there.

[jimwalton]

> I would say that our volition is part of the process/movement/flux itself.

This is what you need to explain. What is volition if it's not free? What is the process that allows flux but not free will?

> I'm saying that the conscious self cannot be other than what it is. You can't choose to not be conscious, at least.

We're not talking about choosing to be conscious or not. We're not talking about choosing to teleport yourself to Saturn either. We're talking about the choices of life and how consciousness and self-direction work.

When you say "the conscious self cannot be other than what it is," are you claiming that we have no participation in the direction our life takes or even in how we assess data in our environment (science, for instance, not simple reaction)? If we don't, then what do you mean by volition? If we do, then how is that not free will?

> there's ontological feedback between different elements of reality.

I've mentioned this that, if it were true, there would be an infinite regression and never any action. I sit here with my computer and choose to raise my hands to the keyboard. What initiated that action? Unless there is a starting point, the action never happens (akin to Kalam's cosmological argument). And if there's a starting point, isn't that free will?

> emergent properties

My problem with this concept is that if intelligence is reducible to brain functions, which in turn are reducible to chemical processes, I have no grounds for trusting intelligence. If intelligence is the product of physical and chemical processes that don't aim at truth, can't understand, and are incapable of making judgments, then reason is unreliable. Physical processes don’t lead us to meaning, judgments, values, and logic (entities that do not exist in the subatomic, chemical, biological, or molecular phenomena). This reductionist-materialist objection is self-defeating.

Here's a sequence I got from a workshop with Dr. Warren Brown, neuroscientist:

• Will (agency) is not about initiation action from inaction, but it the modulation of ongoing action.
• Modulation occurs by comparison of the outcomes of ongoing action with criteria for evaluation.
• As we move up the nervous system more and more complex levels of criteria come into play.
• The anterior frontal lobes evaluate and modulate action with respect to long-term perspectives (past and future).
• Human nervous system is largely a self-organizing complex dynamical system that acts from its own point of view.
• Behavior and thought emerge from complex patterns related to current or imagined environmental situations.
• The very slow physical development of the human brain means it is maximally open to being formed by interaction with the physical and social environment.
• The capacity to simulate action off-line and evaluate the results allows for choice (agency).

His conclusion was that "There is an increasingly large domain of resources within the current understanding of neuroscience that support human moral agency and free will.

> We are parts of reality that influence other parts of reality which influence us. These things feedback off each other and form things from there.

Richard Swinburne comments, "If the universe is infinite, the only causes of its past states are prior past states which ultimately have no cause and so no explanation. Even though each state of the universe will have a complete explanation, the whole infinite series will not have an explanation, for there will be no causes of members of the series, lying outside the series.

"Further, the universe will have during its infinite series certain constant features (even though it could potentially have a different set of features), such as the conservation of matter or energy. These features will also be ultimately inexplicable, because we will not know their cause, and so no explanation.

"So each state of the universe at each instant of time has a complete explanation which is a scientific explanation, but its having certain permanent features have no explanation at all. Therefore, neither in any one single thing, nor in the whole aggregate and series of things, can there be found sufficient reason of existence. If the series is infinite, we shall never come upon a full reason of why there is something rather than nothing, for instance, or why it should be such as it is.

"The reasons of the world, then, lie in something different from the chain of states, or series of things, whose aggregate constitutes the universe. ... God qualifies for the Principle of Sufficient Reason, whereas nature does not.

"Since the ultimate root much be in something which is of metaphysical necessity, and since there is no reason of any existent thing except in an existent thing, it follows that there must exist some one Personal Being of metaphysical necessity, that is, from whose essence existence springs; and so there must exist something different from the plurality of being, that is, the world, as we have allowed and have shown, is not of metaphysical necessity.

"Nature has no sufficient explanation outside of a personal, metaphysically necessary being. God is the terminate of explanation."

[Book Mitten]

> My problem with this concept is that if intelligence is reducible to brain functions, which in turn are reducible to chemical processes, I have no grounds for trusting intelligence. If intelligence is the product of physical and chemical processes that don't aim at truth, can't understand, and are incapable of making judgments, then reason is unreliable. Physical processes don’t lead us to meaning, judgments, values, and logic (entities that do not exist in the subatomic, chemical, biological, or molecular phenomena). This reductionist-materialist objection is self-defeating.

You seem to have misunderstood my position. (Sorry if I'm mistaken on that); I'm arguing against precisely the atomistic view you disagree with here. What I'm also arguing against however is what I think is a type of reductionism that claims there must be a starting point for motion/action. I'm not always sure, but I think I'm inclined to agree with the likes of Henri Bergson that movement is primary rather than being the consequence of something unchanging. Again, the flux that Heraclitus mentioned, if you will.

More to follow, but that's my first comment.

[jimwalton]

Thanks. I'll keep waiting, then, for your clarification of the last post and answering some of my questions. I'm having a hard time understanding your position.

I was trying to read up on Heraclitus's flux theory. I get the part about the river that keeps moving and the necessity of opposing forces and flows, but maybe it would help me if you explain again about his relation to will.

I'm not familiar with Bergson, but read a little. It wouldn't be fair to treat him so superficially, but I see a part of the marriage of free will and causality. Perhaps you could explain that to me.