Scientific Justification for Free Will?

[Divine Insight]

Is there any scientific justification for the notion of Free Will?

Question #1. If you believe their is, can you please state your scientific evidence for the existence of Free Will.

Question #2. If you believe there is no scientific justification for the notion of Free Will, then please explain how we can have any scientific justification for holding anyone responsible for their actions. In fact, wouldn't the very notion of personal responsibility be scientifically unsupportable?

[LarryTheChristian]

[Replying to post 29 by Goat]

That's the problem that there is no problem. You are seeing what God wants you to see. You can't reason God's existence. He will allow you believe in what you want to believe. He is looking for those who really want him and believe in him. You can not have an understanding of God without truly wanting what he has to offer! I have no problem putting God and science together. But I will never be able to convince anyone to Believe unless they want to. Hence free will!

[Goat]

I think asking for a scientific justification for free will is failing to consider what science can and cant do. Science uses observation to understand things. But a universe with amd without free will look the same. So science cant answer the question of if there is free will.

Is free will compatible or incompatible with determinationism? That sounds like a metaphysical claim.. not science.

[Peter]

Is there any scientific justification for the notion of Free Will?

Question #1. If you believe their is, can you please state your scientific evidence for the existence of Free Will.

Question #2. If you believe there is no scientific justification for the notion of Free Will, then please explain how we can have any scientific justification for holding anyone responsible for their actions. In fact, wouldn't the very notion of personal responsibility be scientifically unsupportable?

The type of free will that would support the notion of personal responsibility is completely unsupported by science.

If my brain was organized like a serial killers I would be a serial killer. There is no "soul" floating around choosing what we choose.

We make choices based on our brains programming and some brains consistently make the wrong choices. Like a misbehaving computer these brains can be reprogrammed. Do we attribute personal responsibility to a misbehaving computer?

Sam says it better than I can. Check this out.

[Divine Insight]

I think asking for a scientific justification for free will is failing to consider what science can and cant do. Science uses observation to understand things. But a universe with amd without free will look the same. So science cant answer the question of if there is free will.

I personally feel that it's far more profound than this.

It's not just that science cannot determine the answer to this question. It goes far deeper than this.

If there is "Free Will", then there would need to be a "Free Agent" involved that could not merely be the secular combination of secular properties of a logical material universe.

And secular properties of any secular combination of material that is merely following preset laws of cause and effect and logic could not become a "Free Agent" that is independent of it's underlying secular material construction.

Thus, it's not even a question of whether or not science can answer the question, but rather that in order for the answer to be "Yes we have free will" would require that a "Free Agent" is involved that is not dependent upon a purely secular material physics.

So whether we actually have Free Will or not, is really not even the question.

The question is that in a purely secular universe there could not be any Free Will under any circumstances. Everything would necessarily need to be nothing more than a result of the pure secular laws of the physical world.

So the question of whether science can answer the question is basically moot.

The result being that if we accept that we do indeed live in a purely secular world, then we can't have free will (and therefore it makes no sense to blame anyone for their actions).

The only way it could make sense to blame someone for their actions is to assume that they have Free Will, but that very assumption carries with it the implication that there must be something more to reality that a pure secular material existence that just follows preset laws of physics.

So the very ideal of secularism carries with it the mandatory assumption that there can be no such thing as Free Will, and therefore no reason to blame anyone for anything.

If you want to entertain the concept of "blame" you had better also entertain the concept of some "Free Agent" that has Free Will beyond the mundane need to just react based upon secular laws of physics and materialism.

What I'm saying is that there can be no secular justification for blaming anyone for anything they might do, because from a purely secular point of view we can't even define what it would mean to have Free Will much less claim that anyone has Free Will.

[Goat]

I think asking for a scientific justification for free will is failing to consider what science can and cant do. Science uses observation to understand things. But a universe with amd without free will look the same. So science cant answer the question of if there is free will.

I personally feel that it's far more profound than this.

It's not just that science cannot determine the answer to this question. It goes far deeper than this.

If there is "Free Will", then there would need to be a "Free Agent" involved that could not merely be the secular combination of secular properties of a logical material universe.

Why? Can you clarify this???

And secular properties of any secular combination of material that is merely following preset laws of cause and effect and logic could not become a "Free Agent" that is independent of it's underlying secular material construction.

Really?? How do you know??? Can you show me a way to test for the truth of this statement, or is that one of these, 'unsupported claim' thingies.

Thus, it's not even a question of whether or not science can answer the question, but rather that in order for the answer to be "Yes we have free will" would require that a "Free Agent" is involved that is not dependent upon a purely secular material physics.

I don't think you have supported the concept of 'Free Agent' well enough to make this conclusion... or even defined 'free agent' well enough. It seem hokey to me.

So whether we actually have Free Will or not, is really not even the question.

The question is that in a purely secular universe there could not be any Free Will under any circumstances. Everything would necessarily need to be nothing more than a result of the pure secular laws of the physical world.

Well, some atheist scientists would agree with that, other would disagree. It all depends on just how much determinism is in the world.. and I don't see any way of testing that with our current technology. You see, there is some in-determination going on in the quantum level in some interpretations of QM. There is SOME (not much) indication that MIGHT have an effect on the neurological level.

So the question of whether science can answer the question is basically moot.

What makes it more moot is that philosophy can't answer the question either. That sort of makes the entire concept moot. I see the concept of "FREE WILL" as something that religion trots out to try to unsuccessfully answer the 'problem of evil'.

[Nilloc James]

I think asking for a scientific justification for free will is failing to consider what science can and cant do. Science uses observation to understand things. But a universe with amd without free will look the same. So science cant answer the question of if there is free will.

Is free will compatible or incompatible with determinationism? That sounds like a metaphysical claim.. not science.

sorry, I got misled by the title

I think what happens is compatabilists (between determinism and free will) and incompatabilists define free will differently.

[Goat]

I think asking for a scientific justification for free will is failing to consider what science can and cant do. Science uses observation to understand things. But a universe with amd without free will look the same. So science cant answer the question of if there is free will.

Is free will compatible or incompatible with determinationism? That sounds like a metaphysical claim.. not science.

sorry, I got misled by the title

I think what happens is compatabilists (between determinism and free will) and incompatabilists define free will differently.

Yes,.. and then there are at least a half a dozen different interactions with determinism that I don't know what people think.

[olavisjo]

.

Sam says it better than I can. Check this out.

Sam constantly invokes the very thing he is denying.

I don’t believe I’m the first person to observe that certain truths are best left unspoken, especially in the presence of young children. And I would no more think of telling my daughter at this age that free will is an illusion than I would teach her to drive a car or load a pistol.

Sam has chosen to leave the issue of free will unspoken as far as his daughter is concerned.

[Divine Insight]

Is there any scientific justification for the notion of Free Will?

Question #1. If you believe their is, can you please state your scientific evidence for the existence of Free Will.

Question #2. If you believe there is no scientific justification for the notion of Free Will, then please explain how we can have any scientific justification for holding anyone responsible for their actions. In fact, wouldn't the very notion of personal responsibility be scientifically unsupportable?

The type of free will that would support the notion of personal responsibility is completely unsupported by science.

If my brain was organized like a serial killers I would be a serial killer. There is no "soul" floating around choosing what we choose.

We make choices based on our brains programming and some brains consistently make the wrong choices. Like a misbehaving computer these brains can be reprogrammed. Do we attribute personal responsibility to a misbehaving computer?

Sam says it better than I can. Check this out.

So then you agree than in a totally secular society we can't really speak about "blaming" anyone for anything. We can hold their body responsible for being a 'defective computer' but that's all we can do.

We can't say that a serial killer is an intentionally "bad person". They are simply a malfunctioning computer.

Right?

That's my conclusion. I also see nothing wrong with this. I'm just saying that in a purely secular would that's the conclusion that we'd necessarily need to make. Blaming anyone for anything like as if they chose to do a bad thing intentionally like as if they had a Free Will choice would simply be an unsupportable position.

Like you say, it would be like blaming your computer for malfunctioning.

[Divine Insight]

If there is "Free Will", then there would need to be a "Free Agent" involved that could not merely be the secular combination of secular properties of a logical material universe.

Why? Can you clarify this???

I thought it was pretty straight forward.

What could serve as a "Free Agent" to make a "Free Will Choice" if all that exist is material that necessarily must follow the laws of physics?

And secular properties of any secular combination of material that is merely following preset laws of cause and effect and logic could not become a "Free Agent" that is independent of it's underlying secular material construction.

Really?? How do you know??? Can you show me a way to test for the truth of this statement, or is that one of these, 'unsupported claim' thingies.

What do you mean about testing for the truth of this statement? This is a tautology.

If you premise (or assume) that there is nothing more to this machine (i.e. a biological brain) than the material it is made of that is necessarily following the preset laws physics and of cause and effect and logic, then how could this machine do anything other than follow those laws and forces?

By the very assumption that nothing else is going on you have no choice but to conclude that whatever this brain does it must necessarily be a result of the material it is made of and the preset laws of physics that govern how that material behaves.

This very tautological situation is an example of no free will. Given this situation you really have no choice but to conclude that in this situation there can be no free will.

The only way you could bestow free will upon this situation is to remove the limitation of this machine being solely the result of the material it is made of and the laws of physics that govern that material.

But that would require the assumption or premise that some other "Free Will Agent" is acting on it to make it do something OTHER than what the material and laws of physics would cause it to do.

Thus, it's not even a question of whether or not science can answer the question, but rather that in order for the answer to be "Yes we have free will" would require that a "Free Agent" is involved that is not dependent upon a purely secular material physics.

I don't think you have supported the concept of 'Free Agent' well enough to make this conclusion... or even defined 'free agent' well enough. It seem hokey to me.

A "Free Agent" would be anything that could intervene to change the behavior that would otherwise occur if the only thing in play was the material the brain is made of along with the preset laws of physics that govern how the material must behave.

Even the introduction of pure randomness would not constitute a "Free Agent" that could be said to have "Free Will Choice". Because although randomness might be able to have an affect on precisely how the laws of physics unfold, it could hardly be called a "Free Will Choice". The randomness itself would be completely random by definition of what is being proposed.

So even adding in an element of randomness would not suffice to constitute an actual "Free Will Choice" being made.

What is it that would be making this Free Will choice? That's the question.

If you believe in Free Will, ironically you really have no choice but to also believe in a mysterious "Free Agent" that must be totally independent of material, laws of physics, and randomness. It must exist "outside" or "beyond" any of those mandatory influences.

So whether we actually have Free Will or not, is really not even the question.

The question is that in a purely secular universe there could not be any Free Will under any circumstances. Everything would necessarily need to be nothing more than a result of the pure secular laws of the physical world.

Well, some atheist scientists would agree with that, other would disagree. It all depends on just how much determinism is in the world.. and I don't see any way of testing that with our current technology. You see, there is some in-determination going on in the quantum level in some interpretations of QM. There is SOME (not much) indication that MIGHT have an effect on the neurological level.

But even in-determinism alone would not constitute Free Will.

Suppose there does exist quantum randomness and this randomness can allow a brain to be random and make random choices.

I've thought about this quite deeply. This may actually be a mechanism that is necessarily to allow a "Free Agent" to actually execute a purposeful Free Will in a physical brain. But the introduction of randomness alone would not constitute "Free Will". On the contrary all it would amount to would be random indeterminate choices. You could hardly call that "Free Will".

It might be "Freed" from the otherwise mandatory laws of physics. But it wouldn't be "Free" from total randomness. Therefore it would meaningless to consider it to have been a "Meaningful Choice".

So the question of whether science can answer the question is basically moot.

What makes it more moot is that philosophy can't answer the question either. That sort of makes the entire concept moot. I see the concept of "FREE WILL" as something that religion trots out to try to unsuccessfully answer the 'problem of evil'.

Philosophy can answer the question of Free Will by simply proposing the idea of a spiritual or mystical soul that goes beyond the material world.

In fact, this is the idea behind the Eastern Mystical philosophies.

I do however agree with you that the concept of "Free Will" is totally unsuccessful at answering any problem of "evil".

That's ridiculous.

In fact, the problem of "evil" is far better answered if we assume there is no such thing as Free Will and brains just do whatever they do as a result of the pure physical laws as proposed by secularism.

So the fact that humans seem to do "evil" things is actually a reason to presume that they most likely don't have any Free Will at all.