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Author
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Topic: Free Will (And I Don't Mean the Whale)
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Dave Thomer
Guardian of Peace and Justice in the Galaxy
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posted 12-23-2000 09:26 PM
   
This is tangentially related to stuff we've brought up in the What Does It Mean to Be Human thread, and a topic that my Intro to Philosophy classes usually wind up discussing in some detail, so I wanted to kick it around a little here. We seem to have two notions about how the mind/brain/will/whatever you want call it works. On the one hand, we talk about the choices we make and the attitudes we have being a result of physical processes -- we talk about various chemicals impairing judgment, we have drugs to treat depression and mental illness, if you have some sort of disorder we talk of you "not being responsible for your actions." On the other hand, we talk about people having free will, that at any particular moment there is real doubt and uncertainty as to whether I will choose one course of action or another. Is it possible to reconcile the two?The way I see it, the more we try and understand human thought in terms of mechanistic processes, the more we close the possibility of spontaneity, which seem to me to be fundamental to there being any true free will. Is there some way of reconciling the two that I'm not seeing? |
Ray Bossert
One of the Regulars
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posted 01-17-2001 09:57 AM
What more appropriate thread for me to CHOOSE to make my return to the boards with...A great source for discussion on this matter is Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter.
He spends several chapters theorizing on artificial intelligence and basically boils free will down to a mechanistic model. However, there's one minor problem with the mechanistic model...it assumes we can really find the initial causes of all the physical phenomenon which generate human behavior. I know I'm about to step out of my field into Star Trek pseudoscience, but once you get down to the subatomic level...and the electric charges going through are brain are all effected by those little nasty electrons and quarks and whathaveyou...things become much less predictable and still open up some room for some non-physical forces to be at work. I just think it's a little cheap when scientists point to chaos theory and say that's an opening for God because it seems to just keep pushing God onto the fringes of science and use him to account for that which we don't understand. I think one of the difficulties with "studying" free will is that we can only do it by observing physical phenomenon. We're talking about describing the terminal between the spiritual and the physical, but we can only really observe half the equation...in other words, it should always look like a physical reaction to stimulus simply because that's all we see. On the other hand, I'm not sure that a mechanistic model needs to totally blow free will out of the water. To say that choices operating on a physical level denies free will is simply to separate the human from their body, as if "we" were something beyond this pesky body which is constantly trying to do things we'd really rather not do. An alternative is to take more responsibility for the actions that this body does and accept that it is us...whatever that means. The fear of bodily action independent of some spiritual free will is the materialists equivalent of saying "the devil made me do it." The fact of the matter is that even when we have options laid in front of us, we still use particular stimulus and desires to choose are response. So though we might still be free to choose which option to take, how free is that choice? Or is free will merely the ability to perform tasks without immediate repricussion. For instance, if I feed a computer a program and allow it to spew output regardless of whether it is right or wrong, then perhaps I have allowed it to operate freely even though it is merely following a patterned code.
If I reprogrammed the computer every time the computer gave me an answer I did not want, I do not allow the computer to behave indepently. Perhaps this is what we mean by free will...that the Head Programmer doesn't jump down and rewire us everytime we make a mistake. Rather, (assuming there are moral standards to which we can compare our output) we have to rewire ourselves when we realize we are coming up with the wrong answers. |
Dave Thomer
Guardian of Peace and Justice in the Galaxy
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posted 01-17-2001 01:24 PM
John Locke actually thinks that the phrase "free will" is nonsense -- he says it makes no sense to talk of the will being free, because the will is just the faculty by which we attempt to translate our desires and preferences into action, and there is no way we can refrain from making judgments or having preferences. In his mind, freedom only applies to external forces -- if I want to walk down the street, and I am not in prison or otherwise constrained, I am free. But I can only talk about freedom, in his terms, in my relationship to other forces.As far as taking responsibility for what this body does under a physicalistic, mechanistic model -- isn't taking responsibility another action that we are or are not constrained to do? And doesn't the whole notion of responsibility assume that there was some possibility that we did not perform the action we did? As for the possibilities of quantum science -- the problem, so far as I've been able to determine, with hanging free will on that is that it might be difficult to determine how the randomness of quantum particules reflects itself in a conscious decision process. But I am aware of the possibility that quantum science might make the physical world less deterministic than we currently assume it is for the purposes of scientific investigation -- in fact, it's something I'm counting on. That instability, though, is something I think many people have not yet come to terms with. |
Ray Bossert
One of the Regulars
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posted 01-17-2001 09:40 PM
I don't see why external influences, even one's which seem compulsory, ought to mitigate responsibility.
I think the idea is that even if our ability to judge is obstructed by some other force, we can still make a choice.
I can choose not to obey the orders of someone holding me hostage.
I can choose not to obey a perverse appetite.
Or, at least, I'd like to think I can.More damaging to free will, however, even if it does exist, are its simple limitations.
My range of choices are limited by my physical and mental faculties. I might want to fly, but cannot. I might want to think of a solution to world poverty, but the solution does not make itself apparent. And on a smaller scale, it might simply never occur to me that there are better ways of doing things I take for granted. I'm not really sure what the implications are even if our behavior is predetermined, which I don't think we could ever prove anyway. Speaking from an English major's point of view, this is one of the reason's why we abandoned old historicism. There's just too many factors involved to ever know precisely what caused an action. [This message has been edited by Ray Bossert (edited 01-17-2001).] |
Dave Thomer
Guardian of Peace and Justice in the Galaxy
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posted 01-17-2001 11:38 PM
quote:
Originally posted by Ray Bossert:
I think the idea is that even if our ability to judge is obstructed by some other force, we can still make a choice.
That's certainly the idea -- my questions are 1) is that an illusion, and 2) how do we reconcile the idea of free will with the deterministic vocabulary we often use. quote:
I can choose not to obey the orders of someone holding me hostage.
I can choose not to obey a perverse appetite.
Or, at least, I'd like to think I can.
For the record, I agree with you here. I'm just saying that this position is in conflict with other positions often held by members of our society. quote:
More damaging to free will, however, even if it does exist, are its simple limitations.
My range of choices are limited by my physical and mental faculties. I might want to fly, but cannot. I might want to think of a solution to world poverty, but the solution does not make itself apparent. And on a smaller scale, it might simply never occur to me that there are better ways of doing things I take for granted.
Now, what about the possibility that, rather than being limited to a few possibilities, you are limited to only one? quote:
I'm not really sure what the implications are even if our behavior is predetermined, which I don't think we could ever prove anyway. Speaking from an English major's point of view, this is one of the reason's why we abandoned old historicism. There's just too many factors involved to ever know precisely what caused an action.
Well, for one thing, it might be possible to establish that we are determined, or at least hold that as a core assumption, without actually being able to articulate every determining factor. This is certainly what many determinists and some physicalists do. More importantly, if we're going to embrace the alternative -- that human beings are free agents -- there are a host of things that follow from that, some of which may be in tension with other commonly held beliefs, and that's worth talking about. |
Ray Bossert
One of the Regulars
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posted 01-19-2001 01:12 PM
Well, I think we have to distinguish a little bit between predeterminism, which implies some kind of fate, and the other deterministic notin that implies we are just a series of neurological switches. The former seems to remove responsibility in that the individual is more or less forced into a position by some higher will, whereas the latter still implies that the individual is in fact making choices...it just says that an individual in certain circumstances will chose a particular alternative -- even if we can't be certain why.
But even if the choice is based on the bodies' microscopic structure, the fact of the matter is that we are our bodies, so we still made that choice.We keep going along this line and suddenly Old Testament stoning seems to make more sense... |
Dave Thomer
Guardian of Peace and Justice in the Galaxy
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posted 01-19-2001 01:44 PM
All right, let me explain why I don't think we can be said to make choices if we are physically or in any other way determined.Let's say that I'm sitting here at my computer at 1:30 in the afternoon. It occurs to me that I can either keep typing, or go start getting some lunch. Now, "choice" to me implies that at 1:30, it's possible that at 1:31 I'll be typing and it's also possible that at 1:31 I'll be making lunch. I must make a choice to transform one of these possibilities into reality. If I keep typing and later my stomach yells at me, I bear responsibility for that because I could have made the lunch possibility actual, but I did not. Now, if I'm determined, let's say because my brain is configured in a certain pattern of synaptic connections and neuron firings, at 1:30, typing and lunch are both not really live options, even though I imagine them to be. Let's say I'm determined in such a way that my brain will respond to the situation by typing. At 1:30, there is no chance that the lunch "possibility" will be made actual -- meaning it never really was a possibility at all. How can we really say I chose to keep typing? To me, choice implies alternatives, and I had no alternatives. And furthermore, you keep saying "we need to take responsibility" for the actions of our bodies or whatever . . . but doesn't that imply that taking responsibility and not taking responsibility are themselves both live options? If we're determined, then either we will take responsibility or we won't, depending on how we are configured. Choice doesn't enter into the taking-responsibility level any more than it enters into the original action. |
Ray Bossert
One of the Regulars
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posted 01-19-2001 07:08 PM
On responsibility...I'm not sure I'm fully grasping where you are going with this because my initial response is to say that your statement implies that assuming responsibility is an automated response. Yet we could not do this without the socially constructed concept of responsibility.
I think a necessary component of free will is this idea that even if we are only being conditioned, we can have responses beyond just instinct.It also begs the question of what the point of the "illusion" is if we are not actually choosing an option...after all, if our choice is not conscious, then neither are the actions which follow...why bother knowing what could possibly happen at all. Might as well sign onto the nihilism fan club.
Or maybe consciousness allows us to arrange the elements which our brain will end up using to determine the value of action...so even if we don't flip the switch, we are somehow rewiring the electricity...
I'm treading on field of pure speculation at this point, but then again, how can any of us non-neurologists not. Perhaps your body wouldn't know that it could keep typing or have lunch...or your body wouldn't know what non-choice to perform...unless it had conscious input, since neither of those actions (punding plastic buttons to alter a pattern of light or arranging refridgerated carbohydrates in a rectangular pattern) are fully instinctive. |
Dave Thomer
Guardian of Peace and Justice in the Galaxy
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posted 01-19-2001 11:34 PM
All of your points are very good indications of why it seems so essential that we preserve the notion of free will. My only point is that accepting determinism of any sort necessarily makes believing in free will impossible. In a determined universe, taking or not taking responsibility is just as much an automated response as anything else. Of course, so is believing or not believing in free will.  The reason I bring this up at all is not to deny free will -- I'm a firm believer in it, and it's one of my starting assumptions. It's to suggest that there are certain other positions, like the idea that a change in chemical structure necessarily leads to a change in thought/belief/action, that we take that conflict with the notion of free will without our realizing it. And this suggestion: quote:
Or maybe consciousness allows us to arrange the elements which our brain will end up using to determine the value of action...so even if we don't flip the switch, we are somehow rewiring the electricity...
is actually remarkably similar to what I believe. I think a lot of our conceptions of science as it relates to the mind are going to seem as outdated in a hundred years as the notion of humors and demonic possession are today. |
Ray Bossert
One of the Regulars
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posted 01-21-2001 12:35 AM
Well, I'm thinking the whole question of how we actually decide things might be too big for two humanities majors to tackle alone.
But I had another related thought, that might end up another thread...and that's with consciousness...
If choice is an illusion, then perhaps so is consciousness. Nothing new or original there...But I just thought I'd make a freudian invocation. We have that subconscious thing going, which means we are having thoughts all the time that we don't know about. The original thought I had, however, was to question whether it is possible that if we do have spiritual, non-material components...that those components might be equally capable of performing actions we are not consciously aware of.
Obviously, this is no more provable than the materialist notion, and clearly requires one to assume spirit exists...but it's just a thought I had.
We don't think about beating our hearts, but they do it all the time...or rather, I should say, we beat them all the time.
Who knows what our souls are doing that we just can't perceive? Incidentally...this can also serve as a response to Mr. Thomer's quick dismissal of demonic possession. Though clearly previous generations often made too many misdiagnoses, I don't see why this means it doesn't happen. |
Dave Thomer
Guardian of Peace and Justice in the Galaxy
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posted 01-21-2001 01:23 AM
I'm not dismissing demonic possession per se (that is, unless it lays eggs in my salad), although I would reqire some serious evidence to be convinced of it. I do think it beyond dispute that many things that were not, in fact, exampled of demonic possession were misdiagnosed as such.And as for the question being too tough for humanities majors to tackle: uh-uh. Scientists can't start proposing solutions to these issues until they have a sense of how to frame the questions, and that's what philosophy is all about. So while I'm not gonna propose a full-fledged theory, I can sure as heck say what kind of theories are and are not going to be acceptable or consistent with other principles. |
Ray Bossert
One of the Regulars
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posted 01-22-2001 08:04 AM
Ah, but our boys have already questioned the very principles of how we frame acceptable evidence and theory.
What is not acceptable to one time, place, group, might be acceptable to another time, place, group. So who is to say what is acceptable and what is not in the end? Anywho... I still think the most profitable lines of argument here is to further press the point of the difference between behavior in humans and animals...it worked for the past several thousand years, after all.
Clear differences can be established between humans and the invertebrates which simly have no imaginative structures for overcoming obstacles. They'll simply do the same thing over and over because all they have to work with are hardwired programs. Even the higher mammals often show a certain lack of initiative...those big brained dolphins never jump the tuna nets, which, assuming it is not a political statement of solidarity with their aquatic brethren, most likely shows a certain lack of freedom of action apart from instinct.
We, however, despite not even being dolphins, can already imagine ourselves as dolphins, and conceive of jumping the net without ever even having been in the situation. Granted, we can train dolphins to jump nets.
We can even train killer whales to jump reefs (we can even digitize those whales to make it look like they are jumping reefs...sorry, Dave, couldn't resist...or could I?).
So, our realization that we can jump things might come from our formal training.
Maybe.
Creative originality (which is often just synthesis) seems the next place to go since that is what truly allows us to break with the scripts we are given...or at least seem to break with the script. Gee...that post almost seemed to have clarity. It's amazing what eight hours sleep can do to one's intellectual prowess. |
Dave Thomer
Guardian of Peace and Justice in the Galaxy
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posted 01-25-2001 11:40 PM
Exactly how we "break the script" isn't my concern as much as whether we do indeed break it or merely seem to break it. Now, my position is that it's best to assume that we do "break the script", and that therefore no mechanistic or deterministic explanation of the world is possible. But I'm open to hearing why anyone thinks to the contrary. |
Ray Bossert
One of the Regulars
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posted 01-27-2001 10:55 PM
Though I guess making assumptions is all we can do since all of our beliefs and knowledge come from initial assumptions, I think I'd feel more comfortable if we had stronger language.
I guess, partly, I would wonder why our brains would bother with all this hardware to create the "illusion" of choice if we weren't really choosing anything...I mean, even the appendix most likely had a use at some point. Bodies don't usually waste energy evolving traits that don't help in survival.
Though, now I guess I am asking questions about consciousness... |
Dave Thomer
Guardian of Peace and Justice in the Galaxy
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posted 02-01-2001 11:54 PM
quote:
Originally posted by Ray Bossert:
Though I guess making assumptions is all we can do since all of our beliefs and knowledge come from initial assumptions, I think I'd feel more comfortable if we had stronger language.
Heck, one of my professors refers to making "philosophical bets" -- he's not guaranteeing that something's true, but he's willing to wager it is. And I think a word like that or "assumption" is better than a word like "axiom" or something because it reminds us of the tentative and revisable nature of knowledge. quote:
I guess, partly, I would wonder why our brains would bother with all this hardware to create the "illusion" of choice if we weren't really choosing anything...I mean, even the appendix most likely had a use at some point. Bodies don't usually waste energy evolving traits that don't help in survival.
Though, now I guess I am asking questions about consciousness...
Well, look at it this way -- if the deterministic thesis is true, then there's much about the universe that runs contrary to how it appears to us. So who's to say that our beliefs about what does and does not make sense, or what does or does not constitute "good" design are valid? I mean, if we are determined, the whole effort to make sense of the world makes no sense, so why bother? This is, of course, why I make my wager in the opposite direction. Nothing to lose, everything to gain. | |
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