What are the benefits of understanding our free will?

[Peterkin]

1 hour ago, dimreepr said:

If we understand where free will, which is the point of this topic, actually exists in the human condition, then that knowledge when accepted by society, would automatically lead to a more refined understanding of justice and how to more appropriately deal with the perpetrator.

Like savages?

Quote

The purpose of a justice system in an Aboriginal society is to restore the peace and equilibrium within the community, and to reconcile the accused with his or her own conscience and with the individual or family who has been wronged.

http://www.ajic.mb.ca/volumel/chapter2.html

[Sensei]

1 hour ago, dimreepr said:

If we understand where free will, which is the point of this topic, actually exists in the human condition, then that knowledge when accepted by society, would automatically lead to a more refined understanding of justice and how to more appropriately deal with the perpetrator.

Are you able to explain your thought path that led you to such extraordinary conclusions.. ?

 

[mistermack]

To shorten it all down for me, I think we have a will, but it's certainly not free. 

[TheVat]

2 hours ago, Bufofrog said:

I more or less agree with that.  I find philosophical discussions tedious and boring.  I think I have reached my limit on this particular thread.  

I enjoy some philosophy of science, but agree the free will stuff has a way of going in tedious loops.  As you trenchantly point out, we have to go with our gut.

10 hours ago, geordief said:

You just couldn't resist ,could you?

Determinist!  😀

2 hours ago, dimreepr said:

Prisons as we know them today would be gone, replaced by secure holiday (for want of a better word) camp's.

I feel we do want a better word.  But I'm not really sure what you are suggesting there. 

I like @Peterkin citing of how aboriginal society deals with these problems.  It underscores, among other things, how modern urban society depersonalizes the relation between miscreant and their victim.

[Anirudh Dabas]

On 11/12/2023 at 5:37 PM, dimreepr said:

If philosophy can determine just how much free will we actually have (I think it may not be as much as I think (50%ish), and I'm bloody sure it's not as much as you think (90%+)) and can persuade our populous, IOW politicians, of that knowledge; then prison's could become obsolete, because most people would have a better understanding of what justice actually means...

4 hours ago, dimreepr said:

 Prisons as we know them today would be gone, replaced by secure holiday (for want of a better word) camp's.

Hey there, So, you're suggesting that if philosophers could just magic up a consensus on how much free will we have, we'd all skip happily into a utopia where prisons are transformed into secure holiday camps. Well, color me skeptical!

Let's not pretend that human behavior is as predictable as a toddler's tantrum. I mean, give people a bit of credit; we're not all just puppets waiting for a philosopher to cut our strings.

keeping it real – utopia might be overrated, but so is the idea that we're all just innocent victims of our non-existent free will.

Cheers

[Peterkin]

How justice is administered is never a question of determining the freedom of will: all justice systems act as if  individuals were in control in their actions, just as all individuals experience our own actions as if  they were autonomous. Really, whether we have or have not free will makes no difference. 

The administration of justice: its principles, its aims, its forms and application all depend on the society's view of mankind and how each member fits into a society.

This sounds much too familiar. I guess we've been here before.

[dimreepr]

19 hours ago, Anirudh Dabas said:

Hey there, So, you're suggesting that if philosophers could just magic up a consensus on how much free will we have, we'd all skip happily into a utopia where prisons are transformed into secure holiday camps. Well, color me skeptical!

Nope, I'm saying if "we" (which includes neuroscientist's) come to understand free will and therefore provide a metric, by which we "could" measure individual culpability, then the world would be a slightly better place.

Besides, why are you so skeptical that philosopher's can learn?

22 hours ago, Sensei said:

Are you able to explain your thought path that led you to such extraordinary conclusions.. ?

 

 

15 hours ago, Peterkin said:

How justice is administered is never a question of determining the freedom of will: all justice systems act as if  individuals were in control in their actions, just as all individuals experience our own actions as if  they were autonomous. Really, whether we have or have not free will makes no difference. 

The administration of justice: its principles, its aims, its forms and application all depend on the society's view of mankind and how each member fits into a society.

This sounds much too familiar. I guess we've been here before.

We have indeed, at length.

But this is a different question, the clues in the title...

 

19 hours ago, Anirudh Dabas said:

Let's not pretend that human behavior is as predictable as a toddler's tantrum. I mean, give people a bit of credit; we're not all just puppets waiting for a philosopher to cut our strings.

keeping it real – utopia might be overrated, but so is the idea that we're all just innocent victims of our non-existent free will.

Indeed it is, but guess where all the prisoners comes from?

We all have free will, but some are freer than other's, for instance... 🧐

Jim sum's it up quite neatly.

 

[Anirudh Dabas]

1 hour ago, dimreepr said:

Nope, I'm saying if "we" (which includes neuroscientist's) come to understand free will and therefore provide a metric, by which we "could" measure individual culpability, then the world would be a slightly better place.

Besides, why are you so skeptical that philosopher's can learn?

Right.

Well, I'm not saying philosophers can't learn—I mean, they've been grappling with the meaning of life for centuries, right? It's just that reaching a consensus on free will sounds a bit like herding cats. You know, philosophers and their love for debating the nuances of everything.

But hey, if we could quantify free will and turn it into a neat little metric, that'd be quite the party trick. Imagine measuring your culpability score on a scale of 1 to 10 before entering a courtroom. "Your Honor, I may have committed a crime, but my free will score is off the charts, so cut me some slack!" It's like turning ethics into a game show.

As for prisons becoming secure holiday camps, I would say that it is a bit too simplistic. There are many reasons why people end up in prison, and not all of them are due to a lack of free will. Some people are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, while others are victims of circumstance.

1 hour ago, dimreepr said:

Indeed it is, but guess where all the prisoners comes from?

We all have free will, but some are freer than other's, for instance... 🧐

 I would argue that this is a dangerous and misleading generalization. It suggests that some people are more deserving of punishment than others, simply because they have had more opportunities to make different choices. This is not only unfair, but it also ignores the complex factors that contribute to criminal behavior, such as poverty, mental illness, and addiction. A more nuanced approach would be to recognize that free will is not an all-or-nothing proposition. We all have some degree of freedom, but it is constrained by a variety of factors, both internal and external. Our choices are not always easy, and they are often influenced by forces beyond our control.

 

[Sensei]

On 11/13/2023 at 4:52 AM, geordief said:

You just couldn't resist ,could you?

Does he have free will or is he predestined to utter such words..?

Look at Swansont's minature - "resistance is futile"..

 

[studiot]

11 minutes ago, Anirudh Dabas said:

Well, I'm not saying philosophers can't learn—I mean, they've been grappling with the meaning of life for centuries, right? It's just that reaching a consensus on free will sounds a bit like herding cats. You know, philosophers and their love for debating the nuances of everything.

The thing I have against formal philosophers is that they have been debating for thousands of years, yet Philosophy has no developed a growing and increasingly coherent body of a subject. As each generation discards what went before they are no further forward than they were millenia ago.

Perhaps this contrast with Science is because Philosophy do not have the reality check of compliance with observational data.

[Anirudh Dabas]

I do agree with most of what you just said.

Only that I think that philosophy is a worthwhile endeavor. While science may be able to provide us with answers to some of our questions, it is philosophy that can help us to make sense of those answers, to ask the right questions, to challenge our assumptions, and to think more critically about the world around us. They aren't mutually exclusive disciplines.

2 hours ago, studiot said:

they are no further forward than they were millenia ago.

I think Philosophy's journey is not about reaching a final destination but about the continuous process of intellectual exploration and the pursuit of deeper understanding.

but yeah, Science has a more tangible and immediate impact on our lives and a better track record of success. 

[studiot]

18 hours ago, Anirudh Dabas said:

I do agree with most of what you just said.

Only that I think that philosophy is a worthwhile endeavor. While science may be able to provide us with answers to some of our questions, it is philosophy that can help us to make sense of those answers, to ask the right questions, to challenge our assumptions, and to think more critically about the world around us. They aren't mutually exclusive disciplines.

I think Philosophy's journey is not about reaching a final destination but about the continuous process of intellectual exploration and the pursuit of deeper understanding.

but yeah, Science has a more tangible and immediate impact on our lives and a better track record of success. 

Thank you for your reply.

Note I said formal philosophers.

Such as Plato, Kant and Wittgenstein.

Archimedes and Bacon stood out because they embraced the formal but went further.

 

By formal I mean those who believe that they can form a worthwhile opinion on anything and everything by sitting in their armchair and pontificating.

To my way of thinking this is like taking a blind man to a known beauty spot viewpoint and asking him to describe the scenery.

Something (a lot ?) will be missing; something will be wildly wrong in his description.

[Knowledge Enthusiast]

Our personalities often give rise to our values and our values give rise to our perspectives. Once we make a decision on our perspectives, it transforms the perspectives into action in the physical world. Therefore, the mind preps the physical body to give rise to a thought-out physical reply to the environment. That is my perspective at least. Deciding upon such a perspective and playing it forward makes sense to me because for example, if I can imagine the lion eating me before I get to food out on the horizon, my response will be to avoid the food. Avoiding the food is a more thought-out response and it could allow me to survive and reproduce at some point in the future, passing on the genes for the same mind that can plan for the future.

[dimreepr]

On 11/14/2023 at 2:11 PM, Anirudh Dabas said:

As for prisons becoming secure holiday camps, I would say that it is a bit too simplistic. There are many reasons why people end up in prison, and not all of them are due to a lack of free will. Some people are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, while others are victims of circumstance.

You should read my "what is justice?" thread, that I linked to in my previous post, it's explained there in. Off topic here though.

On 11/14/2023 at 2:11 PM, Anirudh Dabas said:

Right.

Well, I'm not saying philosophers can't learn—I mean, they've been grappling with the meaning of life for centuries, right?

Right, and in every century we contrive to forget what's been learned, which is rather well explained by Nietzcher in his "parable of the mad man", and by Shelley in his poem Ozymandias

On 11/14/2023 at 2:11 PM, Anirudh Dabas said:

But hey, if we could quantify free will and turn it into a neat little metric, that'd be quite the party trick. Imagine measuring your culpability score on a scale of 1 to 10 before entering a courtroom. "Your Honor, I may have committed a crime, but my free will score is off the charts, so cut me some slack!" It's like turning ethics into a game show.

What makes you think we can't?

On 11/14/2023 at 2:11 PM, Anirudh Dabas said:

 I would argue that this is a dangerous and misleading generalization. It suggests that some people are more deserving of punishment than others

No it doesn't, as suggested by Jim "we're all dumb cunts", what I'm actually suggesting is, we need to acknowledge the statistic's and build a model that helps us all defend our culpability; when we all finally understand what "there but for the grace of God, goes I" actually fucking means... 🙄

Edited November 15, 2023 by dimreepr

[dimreepr]

On 11/15/2023 at 11:49 AM, studiot said:

By formal I mean those who believe that they can form a worthwhile opinion on anything and everything by sitting in their armchair and pontificating.

To my way of thinking this is like taking a blind man to a known beauty spot viewpoint and asking him to describe the scenery.

Something (a lot ?) will be missing; something will be wildly wrong in his description.

It depends on what you mean by "anything and everything", I think it's perfectly possible to understand the human condition while sitting in an armchair (metaphorically speaking) I could read some book's or just watch the TV; one doesn't need to travel to understand that different culture's just produce different versions of me.

What did I miss? 

[studiot]

15 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

It depends on what you mean by "anything and everything", I think it's perfectly possible to understand the human condition while sitting in an armchair (metaphorically speaking) I could read some book's or just watch the TV; one doesn't need to travel to understand that different culture's just produce different versions of me.

What did I miss? 

Firstly I'm pretty sure you are not devoid of practical experience so will bring that to your thinking armchair.

The first three names I mentioned, Plato in particular, wanted to strip philosophical analysis of all such experience and replace it with dreamt up  ideals.

Secondly I did not say that such proceedures, or the blind man's scenery description,  would be totally wrong.
Just that it would be substantially wrong and miss out many things.

I would imagine that the law of averages would mean you would get some thing right.

[dimreepr]

3 minutes ago, studiot said:

Firstly I'm pretty sure you are not devoid of practical experience so will bring that to your thinking armchair.

Indeed, that's why I said "metaphorically", but that's not my point, we need to have been taught well enough to understand the flaws of the teacher's,, which usually takes a bit of living/time, all of which could be done from an armchair.

12 minutes ago, studiot said:

Secondly I did not say that such proceedures, or the blind man's scenery description,  would be totally wrong.
Just that it would be substantially wrong and miss out many things.

Again you miss the point, the blind man's description would be from a different perspective, not wrong at all...

[studiot]

3 hours ago, dimreepr said:

Indeed, that's why I said "metaphorically", but that's not my point, we need to have been taught well enough to understand the flaws of the teacher's,, which usually takes a bit of living/time, all of which could be done from an armchair.

Again you miss the point, the blind man's description would be from a different perspective, not wrong at all...

Sadly you  missed both of my points.

 

By your own admission, anything you do from an armchair will be coloured by your experience.

The blind man was an analogy and no analogy is perfect. Again I repeat the blind man must omit feature of the landscape.

[Engineeer]

Free will is a privilege not a right. 

[Knowledge Enthusiast]

Our personalities often give rise to our values and our values give rise to our perspectives. Once we make a decision on our perspectives, it transforms the perspectives into action in the physical world. Therefore, the mind preps the physical body to give rise to a thought-out physical reply to the environment. That is my perspective at least. Deciding upon such a perspective and playing it forward makes sense to me because for example, if I can imagine the lion eating me before I get to food out on the horizon, my response will be to avoid the food. Avoiding the food is a more thought-out response and it could allow me to survive and reproduce at some point in the future, passing on the genes for the same mind that can plan for the future.

@dimreeprIt does not matter whether or not the brain has free will. If after even the best attempts to get the mind to understand it still fails to do so then a grave problem arises. This is because a mind that cannot understand will certainly be compelled to act on its own impulses and perspectives instead of the shared and agreed-upon perspective where we all respect and are kind to each other as a rule.

[dimreepr]

17 hours ago, studiot said:

By your own admission, anything you do from an armchair will be coloured by your experience.

Anything you do from an aeroplane will be similarly stained, there's no way round that; a newborn can't be a philosopher...

17 hours ago, studiot said:

The blind man was an analogy and no analogy is perfect. Again I repeat the blind man must omit feature of the landscape.

I get that, but the analogy still work's, because the blind man knows that he's blind, so he just describes what he sees, it's not his fault that you're blind to that world; my point has always been, the lucky ones are those that can see their blindness.

17 hours ago, studiot said:

Sadly you  missed both of my points.

I don't think I did.

9 hours ago, Knowledge Enthusiast said:

Our personalities often give rise to our values and our values give rise to our perspectives. Once we make a decision on our perspectives, it transforms the perspectives into action in the physical world. Therefore, the mind preps the physical body to give rise to a thought-out physical reply to the environment. That is my perspective at least. Deciding upon such a perspective and playing it forward makes sense to me because for example, if I can imagine the lion eating me before I get to food out on the horizon, my response will be to avoid the food. Avoiding the food is a more thought-out response and it could allow me to survive and reproduce at some point in the future, passing on the genes for the same mind that can plan for the future.

@dimreeprIt does not matter whether or not the brain has free will. If after even the best attempts to get the mind to understand it still fails to do so then a grave problem arises. This is because a mind that cannot understand will certainly be compelled to act on its own impulses and perspectives instead of the shared and agreed-upon perspective where we all respect and are kind to each other as a rule.

What's this got to do with the topic? Whatever it means...🙄

21 hours ago, studiot said:

The first three names I mentioned, Plato in particular, wanted to strip philosophical analysis of all such experience and replace it with dreamt up  ideals.

Not every question/quote is a gem; I bet when Oscar Wilde went through customs the first time, he just said no to the question, and on the way out he said "fuck, I just thought of a bloody brilliant answer" 😣

[Bufofrog]

On 11/13/2023 at 7:32 AM, dimreepr said:

I agree that some people have some free will,

That is a weird thing to say unless you define free will differently than me.  How do you define free will.

[dimreepr]

10 hours ago, Bufofrog said:

That is a weird thing to say unless you define free will differently than me.  How do you define free will.

What's weird is that you think we already understand how free our will is; for instance, when we have a sherry or two our definition is both positive and negative...

How would you define a blind man's freedom?

[Bufofrog]

58 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

What's weird is that you think we already understand how free our will is; for instance, when we have a sherry or two our definition is both positive and negative...

How would you define a blind man's freedom?

I thought this was about free will as opposed to a deterministic future.  I see I am wrong and this is a discussion that is going down several philosophical rabbit holes.  

[sethoflagos]

On 11/9/2023 at 3:35 PM, dimreepr said:

But what could it mean scientifically other than just knowing?

What are the benefits of understanding our free will?

I suspect the quick answer is that a true understanding of the nature of free will would take us close to a true understanding of the nature of consciousness which would be no small achievement.

One of the major challenges seems to be determining the sphere of influence of free will to which end it may be helpful to identify where free will has no observable scope of application. So if you will bear with me... 

Practically the entire Tree of Life outside of clade Holozoa (and many members of Holozoa) arguably thrive without any recourse to free will. Their activities can perhaps be simplified to a set of spontaneous reactions to stimuli (both external and internal) ultimately mediated by their genetic preprogramming.

A great diversity of viable ecosystems could be constructed of such purely impulsive communities that we would see as being dominated by plants and fungi.

Within such communities the following hierarchy of advantageous evolutionary development can be considered:

a) development of a nervous system to communicate stimuli and response by faster means than chemical diffusion/convection.

b) development of a centralised brain to better coordinate communication between sensory and endocrine systems.

c) expansion of the brain to facilitate development of learned responses (ie those not easily built into genetic coding).

These seem to be sufficient for the evolution of phenotypes capable of language and the ability to observe a written code of conduct (among many other behavioural characteristics).

To this extent, free will is not necessary. A societal training programme based along the lines of 'spare the rod and spoil the child', has historically been more or less sufficient to persuade individuals to resolve conflicts between subconscious impulse and social code in favour of the latter levering on natural fight or flight and pleasure/pain responses.

If we want to isolate free will, I think we need another level in the developmental hierarchy:

d) further develop the brain to generate reasonable, novel responses to novel stimuli.

This is clearly distinct from level c) as the response cannot be explicitly specified in advance of the experience - on post hoc ergo propter hoc grounds.

Specific types of training (eg the scientific method) may provide an approach to dealing with novelty when encountered, but this doesn't strike me as enough to guarantee a good outcome. Deduction has to be augmented with imagination I think. It is the imagination, free of dogmatic constraints, that generates the variety of possible responses in the mind of the individual. And I would tentatively propose that it is in the evaluation of those imagined possible responses that free will can be found.

If free will is so intimately connected with imagination, then is it not an expression if not the primary expression of consciousness?

I could develop this further, but enough for now.