Current state of the debate between free will and determinism in philosophy and neuroscience

[iNow]

8 hours ago, studiot said:

Have you heard of Fire Walkers ?

Does it matter when viewed in context of the validity of my point?

Yes, though. What you mention is no different. Fire walkers also will involuntarily leap from the coals if they remain there too long (unless they pass out first and collapse into them). 

A good overview of a good book on the subject here:

https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2023/10/22/robert-sapolsky-gets-interviewed-about-his-new-book-on-free-will-and-determinism/
 

Quote

To most people, free will means being in charge of our actions. What’s wrong with that outlook?

It’s a completely useless definition. When most people think they’re discerning free will, what they mean is somebody intended to do what they did: Something has just happened; somebody pulled the trigger. They understood the consequences and knew that alternative behaviors were available.

But that doesn’t remotely begin to touch it, because you’ve got to ask: Where did that intent come from? That’s what happened a minute before, in the years before, and everything in between.

For that sort of free will to exist, it would have to function on a biological level completely independently of the history of that organism. You would be able to identify the neurons that caused a particular behavior, and it wouldn’t matter what any other neuron in the brain was doing, what the environment was, what the person’s hormone levels were, what culture they were brought up in. Show me that those neurons would do the exact same thing with all these other things changed, and you’ve proven free will to me.

So, whether I wore a red or blue shirt today — are you saying I didn’t really choose that?

Absolutely. It can play out in the seconds before. Studies show that if you’re sitting in a room with a terrible smell, people become more socially conservative. Some of that has to do with genetics: What’s the makeup of their olfactory receptors? With childhood: What conditioning did they have to particular smells? All of that affects the outcome.

 

[Eise]

On 10/16/2023 at 5:26 PM, martillo said:

I stay with that last definition of "free will" as "to be able to make decisions independent of any previous condition".

So that is like 'unicorn'. the word is in every dictionary (I assume), even the concept exists (there are stories with unicorns in it). But unicorns do not exist! Same with your definition of free will: it might be that such a definition exists, that there are (philosophical) stories woven around it, but that doesn't mean that it reflects some aspect of reality. And so here I am fully with @iNow:

On 10/17/2023 at 2:47 AM, iNow said:

This is literally impossible. 

If your actions would be 'independent of any previous condition', they would be absurd, having nothing to do with the situation you are in.

On 10/16/2023 at 5:26 PM, martillo said:

Science is always based on cause-effect relations but this does not imply beings cannot take their own decisions "uncaused by any previous condition" sometimes. I think even animals can take such kind of decisions following an own "conditioned will".

Here you seem to contradict yourself: I more ore less read: 'sometimes decisions "uncaused by any previous condition" occur, which means they are caused (conditioned) by previous conditions". That makes no sense.

So free will is always a "conditioned" free will: conditioned by external circumstances, but also by your own (true) beliefs, values, motivations, reasons, etc. And if you can act according to them, your action is free, so you have free will.

Change of personality is not an obstruction of free will. 

On 10/16/2023 at 4:30 PM, iNow said:

This leads me to conclude that calling this process in any way a "free" one is a mistake, and the concept of "freedom" that I hold in no legitimate way applies here IMO. We are not free, but instead are subject to these chemical interactions and aggregate patterns. I feel this deeply myself as a diabetic who is often hypoglycemic and become a totally different person akin to Jeckyl and Hyde.

Both Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde can be free in their actions. The free will lies in the relation between your personality an your actions. You cannot choose who you are, but you can choose what to do. The decisive criterion is if you recognise your actions really as your actions: they are according your own (true) beliefs, values, motivations, reasons. How these are implemented in your body and causally lead to your actions is not a decisive criterion.

Maybe Dr Jeckyll does not recognise Mr Hyde's actions as his, because it really was another person.

The point with my definition of free will is that it fits to our experience of free will, has (nearly?) no 'metaphysical ballast', and is not in conflict with determinism (quite the opposite!). It doesn't suffer from the conceptual inconsistency of "uncaused by any previous condition", or 'being able to do otherwise".

[martillo]

2 hours ago, Eise said:

The point with my definition of free will is that it fits to our experience of free will, has (nearly?) no 'metaphysical ballast', and is not in conflict with determinism (quite the opposite!). It doesn't suffer from the conceptual inconsistency of "uncaused by any previous condition", or 'being able to do otherwise".

On 10/15/2023 at 11:04 AM, Eise said:

The even more simplified definition would be 'to be able to do what you want'.

I think the definition cannot be changed so easily.

That could be a definition of simply "will", not of "free will". "Free" means without conditions.

I stay with the dictionaries' definitions. "Free will" and "determinism" are, by definition, mutually exclusive. They cannot coexist at the same time.

Edited October 25, 2023 by martillo

[studiot]

7 hours ago, iNow said:

Does it matter when viewed in context of the validity of my point?

I am sorry I have not been making my points clear, what with one thing and another recently.

I suggest that the problem is that the original proposition is flawed.

It is not a two horse race between 'free will' and 'determinism'.

Other factors also play a part.

Not only do they play a part but humans actively exploit these factors when deploying 'free will'  (I will elaborate below).

Eise is correct in identifying one of these factors, notably circumstances or conditions, +1.

1 hour ago, Eise said:

So free will is always a "conditioned" free will: conditioned by external circumstances, but also by your own (true) beliefs, values, motivations, reasons, etc. And if you can act according to them, your action is free, so you have free will.

However I disagree with his later statements as they stand.

 

1 hour ago, Eise said:

The free will lies in the relation between your personality an your actions.

 

Another factor is of course randomness.

2 hours ago, Eise said:

The point with my definition of free will is that it fits to our experience of free will, has (nearly?) no 'metaphysical ballast', and is not in conflict with determinism (quite the opposite!). It doesn't suffer from the conceptual inconsistency of "uncaused by any previous condition", or 'being able to do otherwise".

In the  ultimate; free will implies  having a point of view, making a decision, coming to a conclusion ie the result of some thought process, whereas determinism introduces the eternal clockwork universe since you can always ask the why quest 'what determines the determinant ?' (turtles all the way down).

 

31 minutes ago, martillo said:

I think the definition cannot be changed so easily.

That could be a definition of simply "will", not of "free will". "Free" means without conditions.

I stay with the dictionaries' definitions and "Free will" and "determinism" are, by definition, mutually exclusive. They cannot coexist at the same time.

Will, free or otherwise must be about something.

Otherwise it is about nothing at all.

But that something must also come with some baggage of its own to add into the mix.

[AIkonoklazt]

Some quotes from SEP https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill

Meaning of the term "free will":

Quote

The term “free will” has emerged over the past two millennia as the canonical designator for a significant kind of control over one’s actions.

Pre-determination of human behavior isn't decisively supported by current science:

Quote

It is possible that indeterminacy on the small-scale, supposing it to be genuine, ‘cancels out’ at the macroscopic scale of birds and buildings and people, so that behavior at this scale is virtually deterministic. But this idea, once common, is now being challenged empirically, even at the level of basic biology. Furthermore, the social, biological, and medical sciences, too, are rife with merely statistical generalizations. Plainly, the jury is out on all these inter-theoretic questions. But that is just a way to say that current science does not decisively support the idea that everything we do is pre-determined by the past, and ultimately by the distant past, wholly out of our control. For discussion, see Balaguer (2009), Koch (2009), Roskies (2014), Ellis (2016).

The following goes along with my own thoughts on the matter. Influences are heavily underdetermined, and influences don't make determinants:
 

Quote

we are subject to myriad causal influences, but the sum total of these influences doesn’t determine what we do, they only make it more or less likely that we’ll do this or that.

We often assume probable causes to _be_ causes. We can correlate, but do those correlations make cause? With competing influences, do the purportedly stronger ones necessarily prevail? Doesn't infinite regression assume a mechanistic mind?

[martillo]

32 minutes ago, studiot said:

Will, free or otherwise must be about something.

Otherwise it is about nothing at all.

But that something must also come with some baggage of its own to add into the mix.

As I said before the server got down for a week:

On 10/16/2023 at 7:47 PM, martillo said:

Right, just some degree of freedom exist in making choices and not always is possible. We can only make choices in the degrees of freedom the conditions leave to us. That's why I talk about a "conditioned will".

We must first agree in some definitions, if not, how to discuss anything? The dictionaries' definitions are fine for me in this case. The problem is in how much degree of freedom we can have in reality to make choices.

Thinking about it, comes a good definition of "conditioned will" to me: "the ability to make decisions in the degree of freedom the conditions allow".

There would be no "free will" nor "determinism", just a "conditioned will".

 

Edited October 25, 2023 by martillo

[studiot]

10 minutes ago, martillo said:

Right, just some degree of freedom exist in making choices and not always is possible.

I agree +1  but my post made it stronger than this.

 

Can you offer an example of will, free of anything else at all, without any precursor at all ?

34 minutes ago, AIkonoklazt said:

Doesn't infinite regression assume a mechanistic mind?

Yes +1

 

Should we not be critically examining outside definitions of free will critically ?

Is that not what this thread is about ?

[martillo]

6 minutes ago, studiot said:

Can you offer an example of will, free of anything else at all, without any precursor at all ?

What about:

On 10/16/2023 at 12:26 PM, martillo said:

I think even animals can take such kind of decisions following an own "conditioned will". For instance a dog or a cat can freely decide to play with a ball and how to play it.

 

Edited October 25, 2023 by martillo

[studiot]

12 minutes ago, martillo said:

What about:

 

Not an example of what I asked for.

 

You also stated that

On 10/16/2023 at 4:26 PM, martillo said:

I stay with that last definition of "free will" as "to be able to make decisions independent of any previous condition".

So I feel justified in asking for an example of such nirvana.

[martillo]

17 minutes ago, studiot said:

Not an example of what I asked for.

 

You also stated that

So I feel justified in asking for an example of such nirvana.

I'm thinking on: 

Please remember that I said that actually a total "free will" actually does not exist. Just a "conditioned will" would exist. We can talk about degrees of freedom in making choices. I think that in the case of the video the dogs have a good degree of freedom...

Edited October 25, 2023 by martillo

[Eise]

1 hour ago, martillo said:

That could be a definition of simply "will", not of "free will". "Free" means without conditions.

Nope. Say, you give a robber your money under threat of a pistol. You made a choice, but it was not free. The robber created a situation in which you did something you would never do based on your own motivations. So one can say you act according your will, but not your free will. Your action was coerced.

58 minutes ago, studiot said:

Another factor is of course randomness.

Actions done under free will are not random. Randomness, one could say, is the opposite of free will, it goes in the same direction as 'unconditioned decisions'.

1 hour ago, studiot said:

In the  ultimate; free will implies  having a point of view, making a decision, coming to a conclusion ie the result of some thought process, whereas determinism introduces the eternal clockwork universe since you can always ask the why quest 'what determines the determinant ?'

And why should this whole thought process not being determined, working like a (very complex) clockwork? My definition of free will has no problem with that.

 

14 hours ago, swansont said:

It’s called the Liedenfrost effect

Leidenfrost effect... One of my sons did a science project about it.

[martillo]

5 minutes ago, Eise said:

Nope. Say, you give a robber your money under threat of a pistol. You made a choice, but it was not free. The robber created a situation in which you did something you would never do based on your own motivations. So one can say you act according your will, but not your free will. Your action was coerced.

That's an example on no "free will" of course. What about the case of the video of the dogs above? Don't you think the dogs have a good degree of freedom in playing that way?

[Eise]

4 minutes ago, martillo said:

That's an example on no "free will" of course.

It shows the distinction between a free and coerced action. 

5 minutes ago, martillo said:

What about the case of the video of the dogs above? Don't you think the dogs have a good degree of freedom in playing that way?

I did not look at the video, and I do not understand what you want to say here: that some form of free will still exists? But how are they, or humans, able to 'escape determinism'? And if they don't then they have no free will at all, according your definition of free will. 

[martillo]

9 minutes ago, Eise said:

I did not look at the video, and I do not understand what you want to say here: that some form of free will still exists? But how are they, or humans, able to 'escape determinism'? And if they don't then they have no free will at all, according your definition of free will. 

As I mentioned in some previous post some degree of freedom in the dynamics of the universe exist to allow some "conditioned will". Not a totally free will because some conditioning always exist but some degrees of freedom to make choices do exist sometimes, not always may be, but sometimes do.

[studiot]

33 minutes ago, martillo said:

Please remember that I said that actually a total "free will" actually does not exist. Just a "conditioned will" would exist. We can talk about degrees of freedom in making choices. I think that in the case of the video the dogs have a good degree of freedom...

You said several things and I'm sorry to tell you that some of these are contradictory.

That is why I quoted certain of your passages.

Yes eise has introduced what I call free will.  +1

Free as opposed to forced.

It must also be remembered that you are not the OP and we are off topic if we change the actual OP question, although I have already stated it to be flawed and given my reasons that no one seems to want to address.

 

Here is a good example of what how I distinguish between free and forced will.

It is good because it can also introduce where randomness comes into the picture.

 

When I was first at university, HIFi was de rigeur.

In the pub, at parties gatherings of technical people discussed and compared hi fI.

The Dutch company Philips did a lot of research into this and published a book about Audio (that unfortunately I have lost).

The book included lots of experimental results, and the developed several measurement criteria.

One such experiment involved evaluating loudspeakers.

They invited a huge audience to rate lots of loudspeakers for preference.

These were arranged on a stage behind a sound transparent curtain and the audience did not know which ones were playing at any time.

Now for the purposes of this thread let us consider only two speakers, speakers A and speakers B.

If the audience were asked to rate the first speaker and second speaker they heard in order of preference with a typical modern IT computer choice box 1 or 2,

(remember they did not know it 1 was A or B)

That we be an example of a forced evaluation

If they were offered a third choice of equal or even a fourth of didn't like at all etc that would be a free choice.

 

40 minutes ago, Eise said:

Actions done under free will are not random. Randomness, one could say, is the opposite of free will, it goes in the same direction as 'unconditioned decisions'.

I will address the role of randomness more fully in a later post and just point out that some students use randomness (guessing) when attempting multiple choice exams.

 

[Eise]

2 minutes ago, martillo said:

As I mentioned in some previous post some degree of freedom in the dynamics of the universe exist to allow some "conditioned will".

How is this 'degree of freedom' possible in a deterministic world?

[martillo]

1 minute ago, Eise said:

How is this 'degree of freedom' possible in a deterministic world?

The world and the universe are not deterministic. I repeat, there would be a degree of freedom in the universe to allow that.

6 minutes ago, studiot said:

You said several things and I'm sorry to tell you that some of these are contradictory.

They are not contradictory at all. Seems you are not well understanding my posting. 

 

[Eise]

1 minute ago, martillo said:

The world and the universe are not deterministic. I repeat, there would be a degree of freedom in the universe to allow that.

And where does this 'degree of freedom' stems from? Randomness?

1 minute ago, martillo said:

They are not contradictory at all. Seems you are not well understanding my posting. 

I think you have not thought through what you are writing here. 

 

[martillo]

6 minutes ago, Eise said:

I think you have not thought through what you are writing here. 

Not thought? If you don't understand what I'm posting seems useless for me to continue...

[Eise]

34 minutes ago, martillo said:

Not thought? If you don't understand what I'm posting seems useless for me to continue...

No, I state you don't know what you yourself are posting. Therefore you should answer my question: how can there exist a 'degree of freedom' in a deterministic world? I think it is the same that Studiot wants to know.

[studiot]

1 hour ago, martillo said:

They are not contradictory at all. Seems you are not well understanding my posting. 

 

1 hour ago, martillo said:

Not thought? If you don't understand what I'm posting seems useless for me to continue...

 

I think the problem is that you are not providing full and complete answers to others or paragraphs in support of your own posts.

 

For instance I asked for an example of free will  -  according to your stated definition, which I quoted from your earlier post.

You have not yet done so.

In fact the last thing you offered was a video with no supporting explanation of how exactly it is an example.

[iNow]

22 minutes ago, Eise said:

how can there exist a 'degree of freedom' in a deterministic world?

I would not call this freedom, only highlight that even in a deterministic world there is still some quantum weirdness and probabilistic / nondeterministic activities at the smallest scales. Eventually, those random micro events will aggregate and effect macro scale events, especially in context of the vast epochs of time and universe-level distances under consideration.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting strong effects of quantum randomness in human behaviors and thought (which I lean heavily toward being deterministic at our scale).

Again from my link above:
 

Quote

Sapolsky is a “hard determinist”, who thinks that all our actions are determined by the laws of physics. (I prefer “naturalist”, because if quantum mechanics be true, there are some small-scale phenomena that are fundamentally indeterminate, and thus our futures, insofar as quantum mechanics can affect macro phenomena, are not predictable even in principle. But quantum mechanics that affects behavior still doesn’t give us “agency”.)

And like me, Sapolsky has no truck with compatibilism, the fiction that we can have a sort of free will by redefining what the term means.

Where I remain unclear in understanding the position of others who say we DO have free will: ("Free will is always a "conditioned" free will: conditioned by external circumstances, but also by your own (true) beliefs, values, motivations, reasons, etc. And if you can act according to them, your action is free, so you have free will")... is how they square such a conclusion with the fact that we are meat robots ourselves guided by the laws of physics.

Our quarrel seems to be semantic, calling this free when it is deterministic. 

Edited October 25, 2023 by iNow

[Eise]

4 minutes ago, iNow said:

I would not call this freedom, only highlight that even in a deterministic world there is still some quantum weirdness and probabilistic / nondeterministic activities at the smallest scales.

Me neither, not under Martillo's definition. 

5 minutes ago, iNow said:

Eventually, those random micro events will aggregate and effect macro scale events, especially in context of the vast epochs of time and universe-level distances under consideration.

But randomness is even contradictory with my definition of free will. It breaks (however lightly) the connection between me and my actions. 

8 minutes ago, iNow said:

Our quarrel seems to be semantic, calling this free when it is deterministic. 

Well, it doesn't make much sense to define something in a way that is useless in a context where it is used most: in the practice of blaming and praising, of responsibility, ethics, justice, psychotherapy, etc. A neurologist doesn't need the concept at all to study the nervous system.

18 minutes ago, iNow said:

Quote

And like me, Sapolsky has no truck with compatibilism, the fiction that we can have a sort of free will by redefining what the term means.

The only fiction is the illusion of libertarian free will, that determinism is not valid for human actions. If previous conditions are not completely determining our actions, then what does? Randomness is no option.

[studiot]

32 minutes ago, iNow said:

Our quarrel seems to be semantic, calling this free when it is deterministic. 

So please explain in detail how I would determine the response of some particular audience member, selected in at random,  from my Philips example.

The test of the determination would be that it has to be made at the point of entry to the auditorium.

[iNow]

21 minutes ago, Eise said:

it doesn't make much sense to define something in a way that is useless in a context where it is used most: in the practice of blaming and praising, of responsibility, ethics, justice, psychotherapy, etc. A neurologist doesn't need the concept at all to study the nervous system.

Something being unuseful doesn’t negate something being valid and accurate. 

20 minutes ago, studiot said:

The test of the determination would be that it has to be made at the point of entry to the auditorium.

It would actually have been made well before that, and if we have a complete enough set of information available then I suggest we COULD determine that response of the audience member in advance (and in fact we’re already doing something quite similar in laboratory conditions with a high degree of accuracy with electrodes and real-time measurement devices connected)

Edited October 25, 2023 by iNow