Do you believe in free will?

[Angrboda]

Quantum- anything does not have a noticeable effect on dice, they're a bit too large. By "a bit", I mean by many orders of magnitude, of course. The same goes for our "free will" generating apparatus. You know I'm actually very frustrated with all the quantum this and thats being bandied about in service of randomness. ...

I agree. Proponents of "quantum consciousness" need to plant their ghost-in-the-machine in a mysterious netherworld, and quantum probability fields are sufficiently mysterious and poorly understood to qualify. Earlier spiritualists planted ghosts in the ether, once a widely accepted notion in the theory of electromagnetic waves. Nowadays, physicists see no need for an ethereal medium carrying electromagnetic waves (akin to the air carrying pressure waves [sound]), but when the notion was current, the ether was a convenient medium for immaterial souls as well.

Not surprisingly, the word "spirit" itself descends from Latin meaning breath, so earlier understanding planted the soul in the air when this life-giving medium was more mysterious. The soul entered the body when a babe took its first breath. Of course, few people take this idea seriously today.

— Martin Brock at (Skeptic Magazine)

(I'm not sure he's correct on the part about the breath and the soul, but the point I think is sound. These quantum consciousness theories are essentially God of the gaps theories of free will. As soon as it is clearly demonstrated that free will cannot hide in the quantum mechanical gap, free will theorists won't abandon free will, they'll just look for some other place to hide the McGuffin.)

[Anomalocaris]

Even if quantum uncertainty does effect will, it merely make the will theoretically unpredictable to an accuracy finer than a certain boundary. It does not make the will free, any more than a truly unpredictable dice having any free will. Quantum consciousness is an obfuscation that doesn't even address the charge.

[toro]

Note: This is my interpretation of the world, I am simply trying to clarify my point of view.

Could you please elaborate on that? It sounds interesting and I want to understand more about how you see consciousness being confused with social norms, etc.

Social norms are responsible for how we describe and conceptualize things. As these norms change, so do our conceptualizations. We think of ourselves as individual people living inside a head because that is how everyone else does and how we grew to understand it. We use the term "I", differentiate between singular and plural, past and present, objective vs. subjective, etc. because our society does. We assume we are "conscious", ascribe identity to things, and differentiate between "conscious" and "unconscious" existence because that is the current model of western society. That's all.

What the hell does entropy have to do with this? Are you just using fancy words to try to make yourself seem smart?

Entropy is responsible for our interpretation of time as moving. On a fundamental level reactions are all symmetric in time (there is no "forward or backward" on a basic level, hence time doesn't "pass"). Yet as entropy only increases, all the components in chemical reactions have a tendency to statistically be at lowest energy at points further in time. Hence, organisms, which are composed of large constantly reacting chemical structures have evolved to innately interpret the the world following this chemical increase, as it makes it easier to organize themselves to gain more energy and survive: time doesn't move forward, we organize thoughts/predictions/actions according to the change in entropy to see it as doing such.

(Sorry that took so long, but it's difficult to conceptualize)

If there were no free will they would be constrained to make the same choice as the others.

Only if they were in the identical situation. That would of course require them to be that person, otherwise something is different. Given how complicated and inter-connected human decision-making is with the body and the physical and social environment, you couldn't feasibly test that other than on a statistical level.

All such tests being done seem to be contradicting that statement. Not only is "conscious" decision making predictable statistically, but it is actually externally controllable on an individual level.

Even if quantum uncertainty does effect will, it merely make the will theoretically unpredictable to an accuracy finer than a certain boundary. It does not make the will free, any more than a truly unpredictable dice having any free will. Quantum consciousness is an obfuscation that doesn't even address the charge.

Agreed. QM consciousness is a stop-gap that doesn't add anything new. Everyone uses quantum "randomness" for this purpose: spiritualists, fundamentalists, scientists (professional, Christian, and -ologists*). Furthermore, "randomness" is only one of many QM interpretations. Uncertainty is the real fundamental property, and that simply is a limit of obtainable information/definition, just as the speed of light. Odds are they actually are the same thing describing the inverse of one another (toro's opinion). It doesn't mean things are "random", it means there is a limit to how well a system can be defined. If you define your system as being probability, that translates into "randomness" because you have defined your metaphysics as such.


*that was a joke.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Sincere question to all...do you consider free will necessary for rational thought? If your thinking must follow a pre-determined course does it even matter how beliefs and conclusions are reached?

[The Grand Nudger]

Only insomuch as the claims illustrate. Whether or not I have a choice in my preference for evidence has very little do with there being none.

[Angrboda]

I'd have to know what "rational thought" is first. Best I can tell it's a folk psychological concept having no valid or coherent definition.

[NoMoreFaith]

I'd have to know what "rational thought" is first. Best I can tell it's a folk psychological concept having no valid or coherent definition.

It's not that complex.

http://howtothinkforyourself.co.uk/

[Zen Badger]

Randomness isn't the best thing to leverage as far as free will is concerned, I think it was either this thread or the other wonderful free will thread that I might have mentioned the "mad scientist" theory of being forced to make decisions at random, which still wouldn't qualify as free will, but does, sometimes, line up with the observations people make about what "free will" is, or can do. Random does not equal free.

Free will is the opposite of deterministic(or pre determined if you prefer)

So that the choices you make are not part of a clockwork universe playing out it's inevitable program, like a record that will always play the same set of tracks.

Rather, since we live in a chaotic universe where the rules of operation don't automatically determine the outcome of a given event our choices are of the moment.

As always they will be constrained by circumstance, (I want to get a new bike but I don't have the money) but they are our freewill in action.

[The Grand Nudger]

Again, random does not mean free. As a poster above has mentioned, dice would have free will by this definition. Everything we know suggests an exceedingly coerced will, tons of trained responses, mountains of "choices" that can be assigned a reliable statistical value. Constrained on all sides by circumstance (some that we can see, or notice, and others that we may be blissfully unaware of personally, but are nevertheless present, and can be explored at length by a person so inclined). If we were willing to limit our definition of free will to being nothing more than unpredictability then we could point to some of that, but in most cases we wouldn't be able to point to our "will" as being the cause of that unpredictability, nor is that field so incredibly large as some would imagine. Even more than this, we're only talking about our ability to predict something at this point, we're not addressing why any given decision was made. That's fairly well removed from any classical notion of free will, wouldn't you agree? Our universe is chaotic, we are not.

Now, the amusing bit is this, I understand the many criticisms of the free will concept, obviously I don't think we actually have any free will whatsoever. I don't like the idea of not having free will, and I certainly feel that I'm making choices of my own accord, but it is impossible for me to determine whether or not this is just a ghost in the machine (and it's been similarly impossible for anyone interested in it from a scientific perspective, where the notion of a free will is pretty much completely out of favor, instead deferring to varying levels of conditioning operating over some standard responses to which we are not 100% privy, and which are capable of generating a vast amount of potential "choices" from those simple starting conditions.) I don't like the idea of being an automaton, but I can't confidently proclaim to anyone that I'm not. There is nothing to suggest that our thoughts or personalities arise from any place other than our brains, that they are anything more than an effect, and this being the case, when, precisely, can you be said to have "changed your mind"?

[downbeatplumb]

I'm just looking to get some insights as to how most of you feel about free will and how exactly it fits into the materialist world view. If we are composed of nothing other than matter then doesn't that mean all that we are as humans is a bunch of chemicals and particles being governed by physical laws? Do we have no more control over ourselves then a rock does when falling down a hill, or a computer governed completely by our programming?

It seems like that is the only option if materialism is true, however it just doesn't seem like that explanation fits in with the universal experience of free will. I mean if an object is dropped it must necessarily fall to the ground because of gravity. But there is no physical law that makes it necessary for me to post on this forum, it seems like I freely chose to do it myself.

Any way if any one feels up to it please explain your thoughts on the topic for me. Thanks

You have a very simplistic view of materialism. One that is shared by many people so there is no shame in it.
Your question comes down to "if we are only physical how can we act in complex ways" .

The answer is "emergent complexity", simple laws can have unexpected affects.

Rules, or laws, have no causal efficacy; they do not in fact “generate” anything. They serve merely to describe regularities and consistent relationships in nature. These patterns may be very illuminating and important, but the underlying causal agencies must be separately specified (though often they are not). But that aside, the game of chess illustrates precisely why any laws or rules of emergence and evolution are insufficient. Even in a chess game, you cannot use the rules to predict “history” — i.e., the course of any given game. Indeed, you cannot even reliably predict the next move in a chess game. Why? Because the “system” involves more than the rules of the game. It also includes the players and their unfolding, moment-by-moment decisions among a very large number of available options at each choice point. The game of chess is inescapably historical, even though it is also constrained and shaped by a set of rules, not to mention the laws of physics. Moreover, and this is a key point, the game of chess is also shaped by teleonomic, cybernetic, feedback-driven influences. It is not simply a self-ordered process; it involves an organized, “purposeful” activity. (Corning 2002)