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You are a bit dense, dimreepr. We have control. I have argued that several times. We have control over our actions, and so we can e.g. control our car. This is no illusion at all. But we, as persons, have control, as whole organism. One cannot apply the concept of control on the internal workings of the mechanism that exercises the control. That we are determined does not mean that we have no control over our actions. You suffer under the illusion that for control you must omnipotent, even over the conditions that caused you. That is absurd. And why it matters: that we should live in such a way that we can practice to take as much responsibility as we can, to respect others as responsible persons too, and not as objects to be manipulated as puppets; and that we should not be too harsh with others and oneself, knowing that we only partially can determine what and who we are. Seeing free will as an illusion can lead to fatalism and scientism (e.g. Soviet psychiatry). Edit: Just saw that Bender makes the same point about control. If you, dimreepr use this idea, about the illusion of control, again, then you should show us why we are wrong in stating that a thermostat has control.

I think the discussion would be more fruitful, if you all get acquainted with some philosophical jargon. First one must distinguish between compatibilism and incompatibilism. Compatibilists believe that free will and determinism are compatible, incompatibilists of course that they aren't. Under incompabilists there are two opposing standpoints: one is that free will shows that the universe is not completely determined, that there is, so to speak, a hole in the causal structure of nature. When we decide what we do, we make use of this hole. As Wikipedia puts it: The second group of incompabilists is the so called hard determinists: as science shows that (for all practical purposes) natural processes are causally determined, we are obviously too. So we might have a feeling of free will, but actually this is an illusion. On the other hand, the compatibilists state that there is no such opposition. Both kinds of incompatibilists use a definition of free will that is simply said, 'outlandish'. Both presume that free will must be a causal factor that in itself is not caused. Libertarians believe that something like that exists; hard determinists deny that. Compatibilism however uses different variations of the definition I already gave a few pages back: A person is said to have free will if he is able to act according his own motivations. The question where our motivations come from is irrelevant. I have no idea why I like cauliflower and despise Brussels sprouts. I assume it has something to do with my genes. But to act freely means that if I have the choice, I can take the cauliflower, and nobody forces me to eat Brussels sprouts: I can act according to my own motivation. That's it. That's all. The definition of free will used by incompatibilists, by both camps, is a metaphysical construct: it has no basis in what we in daily life mean with free will, and it has no basis in science. So why would a scientific inclined person adhere to such an outlandish definition of free will? Why would a scientific inclined person think it is necessary to show that consciousness follows brain processes, in order that we have no free will? Of course consciousness has a causal foreplay. What other can a naturalist expect? Magic? A soul? I can think of two possible reasons why people adhere to such an absurd notion of free will. First a historical one: the problem of evil in the world (the theodicy). This is a real problem for believer in an omnipotent, just, and omniscient God. As a solution theologians came with the idea that God gave us free will: the capability to do good or evil independent of natural causes. God is not responsible for the evil in the world: free humans are, using their gift in the wrong way. Many people might have done away with God, but kept this notion of free will. Second: there is in my opinion a connection with the political ideology also called libertarianism. In libertarianism, everybody is responsible for his own life. If somebody is poor, and cannot get out of his miserable circumstances, it is his own responsibility: he uses his free will badly. So we, successful, relatively rich and good living people, have earned our richness. (Just sayin': the USA has a long history of protestant sects that believed in the inherently goodness of hard working. And that God rewarded them with richness. Richness was a sign of pleasure in God's eyes.) When we get rid of this ideological loaded non-empirical idea of free will, the so called problem of free will evaporates. There is no problem of free will: there is free will in the normal daily sense, and there is no contradiction with determinism at all.

Delta1212 already said it in all clearness: If Derren Brown can confuse me with his careful social manipulations, it does not mean that nothing what I do is according my will. A limited free will does not mean no free will at all. Reread my definition of free will. If I want to have an apple tree, I can certainly plant an apple tree. And if I plan to go home after writing this sentence, I certainly can do (it is 16:45 here now, it was enough for today).

Hmmm... I thought I was very philosophical too. And the context is free will. The point is that I do not agree with what is written in the topic title: we have free will, and consciousness plays a role in it. One argument against free will is that we are not in control of our brain processes: that consciousness always follows brain processes, not the other way round. But I showed (here and here) that this is an invalid use of the concept of control. 'Control' can only be applied to mechanisms (ie. persons, in our case) as a whole, and then you see we have (a certain amount) of control. Please reread, and if you still do not agree, tell me why. And I also showed that the exact order of brain processes and consciousness is not relevant. None of this is included in the daily use of the concept of 'free will', as I argued here. None of the examples is in contradiction with the daily meaning of 'free will': A person is said to have free will if he is able to act according his own motivations. Not every action of us is a free action. Some actions may come from me, but they do not agree with what I normally want. Reflexes surely belong to this category. Of course things might go wrong. But more than enough projects succeed. The Dutch did gain land from the sea, and the Hubble telescope worked in the end, and the Hadron Collider at CERN works to. Was that all done without planning, deliberating, correcting, without consciousness?

The concept of control is not illusory at all. Do you step in your car without controlling the speed and the direction you are driving? Try to drive a car without controlling it. Or take the thermostat out of your heater. Doesn't it control the temperature of your house? Every negative feedback system exerts control. The error you make is to state that a controlling system should control out of thin air. But behind every negative feedback system there is a mechanism. Applying the concept of control to the internals of the system is a category error. And this is exactly what you are doing when you say that consciousness is not in control of the brain: of course not! You are looking into the mechanism! Of course you only find causally determined processes there! But that does not mean that we, as a whole, have no control. Life is everything about control. Plants try to grow higher to get more light. Animals move to another environment, where temperatures are better for them. Beavers build dams so they adapt their environment to their needs. And the Dutch did the same with gaining land from the sea, in long term, carefully planned projects. In long term projects, of course consciousness is involved. So I have really no idea why you say that control is illusory. And of course you should not apply the concept of free will to the internals of the brain. Somebody who is not in control surely does not act from free will. On the opposite, having control is a necessary condition of having free will (but not a sufficient condition!) Yes. If you are not interested in looking into your philosophical assumptions, then this is a waste of time. To think you have no philosophical assumptions, because you wholly stick to science, is a huge self deception. That you understand what I wrote. That you see that I understand what you wrote. We do not have to agree. But to do this based on some straw giants, is very unsatisfactory. Then take your time. Or do you prefer to stay in your philosophical dreams?

I think the main point I want to get across is that free will has not so much to do with the order in which brain processes, consciousness and actions occur. One can formulate what free will is independent of any metaphysical assumptions, and that is what I did: A person is said to have free will if he is able to act according his own motivations. Note I put 'his own' in italics. If I want to drink beer, and I can take a beer from the fridge, then that was a free action. I nowhere refer to where exactly my lust at a beer comes from: if it is because of my genes, comes from my subconscious, or is the result of a long conscious deliberation doesn't matter. But then, if my wife stops me, and forces me to drink water, then my drinking of water is not a free action anymore. I drank water, because I did not act according my own motivation, but because of my wife's. Another confusion is that 'free will' is supposed to mean free from any influence. But that is simply wrong. 'Free will' is the capability to act according your will. So this has nothing to do with that you are who you are: that is determined by your biological, cultural, and personal history (including past decisions you made). Free will is not 'free from': it is 'free to'. It also makes no sense for this to 'dive into the brain'. The only reason one can say one is not free is when one is coerced by something else. But you are your brain. To think it makes sense to say that the brain causes consciousness, and therefore consciousness is not free is a category error. Unless you are a dualist. Somebody who defends libertarian free will because he thinks that consciousness can dictate what occurs in the brain is a dualist. But just the other way round: somebody who defends that the brain dictates what occurs in consciousness is also a dualist. And of course opposed to the libertarian he will say we have no free will. But the distinction becomes absurd when you realise that consciousness is the functioning brain. It makes no sense to say that something is forced, or caused, by itself. The discourse of free will has nothing to do with the brain, the same as literature analysis has nothing to do with the chemical composition of ink. Just think of the examples 1-6 I gave in my previous posting: those are all examples of free will as it is used in daily life. How these actions arise from my sub- or unconscious systems is in normal cases of no importance. (it can be in abnormal cases, like OCD, or in science fiction examples of philosophers). So as a neurologist cannot decide what beauty is, he cannot decide what free will is. What a neurologist can do, is find out what happens when I have an experience of beauty, or act freely. But he must trust on subjective reporting to correlate this reporting with what happens in the brain. (This method is called heterophenomenology by Dennett). I can formulate it positively: when I make a difficult decision consciousness is involved. I think, talk, read, (maybe even dream) about it. In all these activities consciousness is involved. But do not interpret this dualistically! Consciousness is just a part of what the brain does. I do not just state it. I am not even interested in the exact order, as said above. And of course there might be actions in which you rationalise something you did. But I think that is just a psychological mechanism to keep up your self image. And one can construct manipulations so that people think they act according their own motivations, but in fact do it because of other people's motivations. But to generalise from such cases to all our actions is methodologically unjustified, and certainly has nothing to do with how we use the concept of free will in daily life. I think I have answered this question now. And I think also that your own experience says so. Or do you drink a beer and only afterwards discover that you did this because you were thirsty? Warm. I am saying that iNow's use of the concepts of 'control' and 'free will' is wrong. I have no idea how he scientifically wants to research in what the meaning of these concepts are. I showed how these concepts are used in daily life, and not in the metaphysical dreams and ideologies of scientists and a whole class of philosophers, who think there is a contradiction between determinism and free will. iNow hides his philosophical assumptions behind his scientific knowledge. For the rest he really does not even understands what I am writing. He assigns ideas to me (that I think that he suffers from magical thinking) which only can be explained by superficial reading. Just note: I did not deny one single neurological fact he brought in. I invite him to show with citations from my posts where I understood him wrongly.

Sorry, that was not meant to you. I am a bit frustrated, because iNow does not read my posts very well. I am glad with every thoughtful post, like yours. Sorry it seemed to point at you. Hopefully more contents later.

At least you are reading my posts... There are many different kind of actions, which can be free or not: conscious decisions (e.g. deciding if you will marry, which subject you want to study, if you will become vegetarian or not, etc). In these you are weighing pros and contras, you even might talk about it with others. Such decisions can be stretched over long periods (days, months) decide to make a drawing to understand some complex geometrical drawing, and so solving it. direct reactions on some state you are conscious of, e.g drink water while you are thirsty, or go to the bar you know is a few streets away for the same reason changing gear, braking, give gas etc on your way to work react on smash in tennis to play the ball back conscious decisions that are 'break even' and you just choose one of the options because you must choose something (Bordeaux or Primitivo) For 1. and 2. it is absurd to assume that the decision comes after consciousness. Conscious thinking and discussing about the pros and contras can per definition not be pre-conscious, and I never met a mathematician who solved mathematical problems completely unconscious. In 3. I also do not see how this can happen unconscious. And I am not bothered at all if some neurologist can predict that I will decide to go to the bar before I even know I am thirsty. It is still my action, i.e. according to my motivations: it is my thirst, and my choice to go to the bar, nobody else's. This already shows that neurologists' findings are not relevant for free will at all. 4. and 5. are different levels of automatic actions. They have in common that one must train them. Some actions are very fast, and consciousness is notoriously slow. A tennis player would nearly never catch a ball if he first must be fully aware of the direction and speed of the ball. But it is still his action, it is according his motivations. So again: free will is not touched at all. Even that the tennis player would only become conscious of what he has done a fraction of a second later. 6. is the kind of choice that is often used in experiments of neurologists. Take as example the Libet experiment. First research subjects are instructed what they have to do (no idea how this would be possible without consciousness...). The task is to flex a hand spontaneously on a self chose time, for no reason at all. So clearly the most important aspect of free will drops out: to act because of reasons. Even the tennis player has his reasons, even if his consciousness is too slow to be involved: but he wants to get the ball, because he wants to win. So he will recognise his action as an expression of his will. So what is the difference between free or not free actions? Let's do a little science fiction. The perfect neurologist is able to map all brain states to mental events, and also how the brain will develop further based on its neurological state now. So he can perfectly predict what I will do (given he knows what input I will get). Then there are two categories of actions: * those that fit to what I usually want to do * those that are not according to it, but are motivated by e.g. fears for other's possible retributions, or by manipulation by others, etc. Both categories are determined of course. Both categories can be predicted by the neurologist, measuring my brain. But the first can be categorised as free actions, because they are coming forth from motivations I recognise as my own. So having free will or not has nothing to do with 'decisions being made before they are conscious', or even with the capability of neurologists to predict them. But it has everything to do with my actions being in accordance with my own wishes and beliefs.

You may be a productive writer, but you are a very bad reader. Why would I assign to you that you believe in the 'magic of free will' where it is obvious that you deny every form of free will. But that is the problem: you see the concept of free will as some form of magic, and thus deny its existence. (If it were magic, you would be right, but it isn't.) No, sure you do not assign anything to magic. But you expect from a kind of free will that you think would make sense, that it precedes events in the brain: You describe how consciousness follows the decision made by the brain. This means that you expect from free will that the brain follows consciousness, or is at least at the same time. But this would mean at least logical precedence of consciousness over the brain: you think that for free will to exist, consciousness must cause brain processes. And of course that would be magic, so sure that is nonsense. I agree with that. But your nonsense lies in your ideas about what control and free will are. Reread my post, and react on the substance of it, and do not react like a bull on a red cloth on superficial reading of my posts.

iNow, you use a few assumptions, and by doing this, you take a philosophical stance, but think you do as if you are purely scientific. Two examples, in one sentence: you define free will as consciously being in control: You deny this on basis of the fact that experiments have found decisions are made before they become conscious. First you apply the idea of control on the wrong level. Being alive has everything to with control. Just showing that the mechanism behind it is causal does not mean a (biological) system has no control. A Google car is in control of the way it takes through the traffic. If it wouldn't have, the car would crash immediately. And even a thermostat controls: the temperature. Of course there is a mechanism behind it, but without the thermostat, the heating might never turn off and on at the right moment. So being in control can only applied to a system as a whole: not on the mechanisms behind them. (Note: I did not say that a Google car and a thermostat have free will, or are conscious. They are only meant to show that your application of the concept of 'control' is wrong.) Second, you use free will as it must be some kind of magic, but it isn't. (To ridicule this idea I used the word 'soul'.) And consciousness must not always be involved. In the end a lot of our actions are more or less automatic: walking or driving through the streets we do many things we are not conscious of. But we recognise them as actions that agree with out own motivations. And this perfectly fits to a good definition of free will: A person is said to have free will if he is able to act according his own motivations. As you see, the word consciousness does not appear in this definition. But as said above, to say that an action was my free action, I have to recognise it as being in accordance with my intentions. There of course consciousness plays a role. About evolution: the evolutionary advantage of animals is that they can anticipate the future: they can picture themselves in their environment, their possible actions in this environment, and what the possible consequences of these are (my cat scratches on the door, because he knows someone will come and open it for him; I drink no beer tonight because I know I drive worse then, and I want to drive home). Obviously, from our own experience we know this is consciousness. You call this an 'emergent property'. That's fine. There is no logical ground to say that then this is consciousness. But we know, by our own consciousness, so on empirical grounds, that these capabilities are consciousness, at least in us, human animals.

Of course. But I said 'mental events': The point here is that you assume a naive notion of free will, namely one that is based on dualism: a soul interferes with the normal causal run of events, and no events can be found that in its turn have causal influence on that soul. That such things do not exist can hardly be called a neurological discovery. Of course mental events have a causal history: they do not pop out of nowhere! Great that neurologists now slowly are getting able to measure this causal history. So now this is my philosophical conception of free will: A person is said to have free will if he is able to act according his own motivations. Now you tell me why this somehow collides with determinism or the observations of neurologists. Think about it: The opposite of determinism is randomness The opposite of free will is coercion You are mixing up different language games. Now, as this is in the Evolution forum: consciousness developed in an evolutionary process. That means consciousness must have causal impact. Natural selection can only 'work' on natural objects. The whole confusion disappears if you see that consciousness is implemented in the correct functioning brain. Brains give animals the ability to picture themselves in their environment, and evaluate consequences of their possible actions. And obviously, this capability 'feels' as consciousness.

That's ok. But do you now understand my posting here? I think I pretty clear said that mental events need a physical substrate in which they are implemented. So to answer your original question again: free will is not at all disconnected from underlying neural processes. The comparison with the same software running on different operating system, in their turn running on different hardware is quite apt.

A bit of a stretch? But there is also an interesting hidden assumption in your science fiction scenario: that somebody can read the book, i.e. understands the symbols and the language. Pf... At least one person who understands me. Thank you.

It was clear. For me it is also clear that it has no relevance for the main argument: the essence of an algorithm does not lie in the way it is implemented (and if outcomes are different, then in some cases it was not implemented correctly). So the original question of iNow is answered: it is not wholly disconnected, because it must be implemented in some way. But that is not the essence of it. The essence of a work of literature is not the paper on which it is printed. But if it is not printed anywhere, nor exists in another form, nor anybody remembers it, then of course the work does not exist (anymore).

I do not think your argument is very relevant, but I will make mine a bit more precise to avoid loopholes for clever clogs: Say one implements an algorithm for a mathematical calculation. One can write it in Basic, Algol, Cobol, Fortran, C++, C#, Java, etc. Some of these can run on Macs, others also on PCs under Windows, and others on Ubuntu. If the algorithm is implemented correctly, will the outcomes of the calculations be different in the different environments? Doesn't that mean that algorithms are conceptually independent of their implementation? Same for mental events: of course they must exist in some physical substrate. They must be implemented somewhere to exist. But their essence is not the actual implementation. That means that the context in which the concept of free will has a meaning, lies not in the actual implementation, in this case the chemical processes in your brain. Of course, on higher level these chemical processes are your motives, beliefs, thoughts and wishes. (they do not cause them, that would imply some form of dualism) But one makes a category error if one looks for free will by searching for 'free chemical processes' (whatever they would be).

And? Is this relevant to the point being made? How?

445 +675 = ? Is the outcome dependent on the physical substrate used?

So I suggest, read again. Or answer this question: is the outcome of a calculation dependent on if you do it in your head, or using an abacus, program it in C++ or Basic, and run that program on a Mac or a PC with Ubuntu? Is the outcome connected to the underlying process? Or the other way round: does a small part of our brain have exactly the same configuration when we think about pink unicorns?

Look.....dots. +10 on the crackpot scale.

This a misconception about what anti-matter is. Anti-matter is exactly the same as our matter. If one would like to make fun, one could say that our world is made up of anti-matter, and there is nearly no matter in the universe. You couldn't tell the difference (ok some tiny effects...). An anti-electron (a positron) has exactly the same mass as an electron, but it is opposite in nearly all its properties: it is positively charged, where the electron is negative (but imagine that in history people would have used opposite conventions for what is positive or negative, then we had negative atomic nuclei, with positive electrons around it); its lepton number is -1, where the electron has +1. This means that when an electron and a positron get together, conservation laws of charge and lepton number allow anything to happen, as long as the nett result is zero. But their mass (or energy) cannot not just disappear: so if they are moving slowly, no other particles than photons can appear, taking away the energy of the electron and the positron. But a world of anti-matter would have exactly the same gravity as our matter. Anti-matter is matter build up from anti-particles, but it is not anti-mass. Newton's laws are exactly the same for stones and anti-stones.

Are you sure? Say you have a dummy book (a book with empty pages) and a real book with text. Physically they are almost the same thing. But in the dummy is missing exactly that which it makes a real book. Even better, this essence is conserved if you convert into a completely different physical form, e.g. an ebook. The same with free will. Speaking of free will makes only sense in the context of other concepts, like motivations, actions, coercion, responsibility, culpability etc etc. Looking for free will on the level of chemical reactions, is looking at the wrong place. All these concepts describe higher order phenomena, which essence does not lie in its physical substrate. I think it is very easy to understand what it is: it is the capability to act according your own wishes and beliefs. What you probably mean is that it is almost impossible to understand how the brain can give rise to such phenomena. There I would agree with you. The inevitability of chemical reactions has nothing to do with inevitability of events, when consciousness and will are involved. Remember the example of the stone, the rock and the cat I gave before. Well, yes and no. If you equal our free will with chemical reactions, then every chemical reaction has free will? That makes no sense of course. It is an extremely special configuration, and in the light of above one can say that it is only the configuration that is really important. Every physical substrate that can implement such configuration might be said to have free will. Therefore we cannot exclude the possibility of conscious machines, with free will. (In fact they already exist: we are such machines). Again, you are looking at the wrong place. For free will we need a more or less deterministic physical substrate, no magical influence on chemicals. But 'ownership' is not enough. I already gave the example of mentally retarded people. Exactly. From this article: I fully agree with them. The article is not about free will at all. It is about how the brain functions. It only disproves naive dualism, in which our thoughts, motivations, and beliefs have no causal history.

What the hell would be 'overriding your underlying neural chemistry to execute it'? Are mentally disabled responsible for their actions? I know of no scientific evidence that such a thing exist. It is like God, the celestial teapot, or the flying spaghetti monster.

Hi Delboy, This depends on what you think free will is. If you think it must be some soul that can interfere with the (practically) causal universe, then of course it does not exist. However, if you think the 'soul' is nothing else then the functioning brain, you have another problem. Saying you are your brain implies that you cannot say that you are forced by your brain in acting in certain ways: something cannot force itself. So whatever free will is, you are not forced to do anything by your brain processes. You must realise that actions are higher order phenomena. And the same holds for inevitability. Say, you throw a stone perfectly to a rock: then in a certain sense, it is inevitable that you will hit the rock. But try the same with a cat: it can run away, and so it is 'evitable' for the cat to be hit. Everything in evolution is about reducing inevitability: move to places where is more light, more food, or (top of the top), avoid to sit in a cold house by ordering burning oil timely (anticipation of the future). It is in these higher orders that you must look for a correct concept of free will: namely the ability to act according to your wishes and beliefs (hopefully justified true beliefs, i.e. knowledge). In this sense we surely have free will. I just had a glance at your website: it is interesting that you name your newest blog entry 'Our Unique Responsibility'. What is responsibility without free will?

Yep: These are computers: