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?

[keithprosser3]

You must have been reading Dennett. I think he's brilliant, but I usually disagree with him. That probably means I'm usually wrong, but I'm used to that.

I'm saying that the ability to choose any of our wants and desires would be meaningless.

I currently prefer chocolate to strawberry ice-cream. Now my boss likes his employees to consume pink stuff to brown stuff. It would be convenient if I could adjust my preference so I can please myself and my boss at the same time.

In what way is that meaningless?

[instantc]

You must have been reading Dennett. I think he's brilliant, but I usually disagree with him. That probably means I'm usually wrong, but I'm used to that.

I'm saying that the ability to choose any of our wants and desires would be meaningless.

I currently prefer chocolate to strawberry ice-cream. Now my boss likes his employees to consume pink stuff to brown stuff. It would be convenient if I could adjust my preference so I can please myself and my boss at the same time.

In what way is that meaningless?

There would be certain practical benefits perhaps, but that has nothing to do with free will I'm afraid. Again, in that situation your choice would not be free but determined by your bosses preferences. So a scenario where you could freely choose your preferences is not desirable, since that wouldn't be a choice at all but just a random event.

[keithprosser3]

I think you have that backwards. My change of preference (if I could achieve it) would be due to my desire for it to change. Note - my desire to change my taste in icecream, not my bosses preference for all things pink which contributes to my decision to change my taste, but does not cause the change.

But I can't change my preference for chocolate over strawberry, can I? As I say, my "free will" consist of slavishly following preferences I don't have control over.

[instantc]

I think you have that backwards. My change of preference (if I could achieve it) would be due to my desire for it to change.

But then you didn't choose your desire to change your preferences, so that wouldn't be any more free than your current situation. A choice has to logically be preceded by preferences, not the other way around, otherwise it is not a choice but a random event.

[keithprosser3]

So do we have "free preferences"?

[instantc]

So do we have "free preferences"?

I thought we have established that we cannot choose our preferences. I'm just arguing that it is not logically possible to be able to choose one's preferences, since if the choice not preceded by preferences, then it is a random event.

[Nilloc James]

If there is a peraon with a preference for killing people, and he chooses to act on it - can we morally judge him even if he "didnt choose the preference" (whatever that means).

Id say we'd be able to morally judge him.

[scourge99]

You didn't answer the question - can you choose to prefer strawberry over chocolate?
If you don't have that choice, what choice do you have? and without choice, how can there be free will?

I don't obviously, but my point was that having that choice would be trivial and meaningless. Thus, we have all the free will worth having. In other words, my will is free from everything else but myself.

Your response is very confusing and doesn't make much sense. Who or what is this other "myself" who i am not free from? Are you claiming that there is two conscious beings in your head? 1 that decides that you prefer chocolate ice cream and another that obeys what the other has decided?

Let me clear it up. First, the brain is the one making the choice

My brain chooses? Brains are purely deterministic physical entities.

The verb "choose" really only makes sense in reference to a mind. After all, you were the one who made a huge hufflepuff about how the brain isn't identical to the mind in a different thread and now it seems you've gone and directly contradicted yourself here by equating the brain to the mind.

So your attempt to clarify is confusing right off the bat.

and the taste for chocolate that predetermines the outcome is a quality of that brain. Therefore the brain is restrained in its choice by its own qualities.

We weren't talking about a brain's choice. That doesn't really even make sense. We were talking about a mind choosing.

Second, do you see how it would be meaningless and trivial to be able to choose your preferences?

no. Its not meaningless and trivial. Its incoherent. Hence why libertarian freewill is also incoherent when you think about it.

That choice couldn't really be based on anything, since at that point you wouldn't yet prefer anything. Thus, it would be more like a random event.

I can't make sense of this. You'll have to elaborate.

I question your assumption that our choices are actually under our conscious control rather than the result of deterministic processes, thus, beyond our control. I can think of no examples where my choice can be anything other than what it is determined to be. That is, when i make a choice, it really wasn't a choice because i couldn't have chosen otherwise because my choice is bound by determinism. There is no way around this that is coherent without invoking magic or some new force.

Suppose that some mysterious force would let you choose whether you are going to like chocolate or strawberry flavor in the future. Apart from some minor economical factors, what reasons could you possibly have to choose one way or the other? That's why I said that that is not a choice worth having.

How would that work? It seems this thought experiment is asking me to imagine something incoherent but just don't think about it so hard so it doesn't seem incoherent. Like asking someone to imagine a place north of the north pole.

Is it more clear now what I'm trying to say?

Quite the opposite.

[instantc]

I question your assumption that our choices are actually under our conscious control rather than the result of deterministic processes, thus, beyond our control. I can think of no examples where my choice can be anything other than what it is determined to be. That is, when i make a choice, it really wasn't a choice because i couldn't have chosen otherwise because my choice is bound by determinism. There is no way around this that is coherent without invoking magic or some new force.

Can you show that I could or couldn't have chosen otherwise? What does it even mean that I couldn't have chosen otherwise? Future was always going to be what it was going to be, because even free choices are based on reasoning that is predictable, that doesn't mean they are not free choices. It seems to me that my choice is predetermined by the reasons that the choice is based on. I have three different flavors of ice cream in front of me, and I can freely choose which one I'm going to pick. By observing external circumstances one could tell which one I am going to pick, but as far as I can see, it is still a free choice based on my personal preferences.

How would you get around this even with 'magic or some new force'? What is there to get around?

[NoisForm]

I'm saying that the ability to choose any of our wants and desires would be meaningless. Thus, I don't see how one can use that as an argument against free will.

Well this is truly strange, in that I still agree with quite a lot of what you are saying, but you don't seem to see the end result of what you've demonstrated. That is, once you've understood what you seem to have, that there's no where left for that freedom to hide.

We have all the free will worth having.

So, you are saying that there are no choices one makes, that would have a better result if the person were built differently, and could therefore 'choose' differently? It doesn't seem like you'd be saying that, as an example to the contrary is trivially simple (e.g., the pedophile).

I do agree that attempting to speak of some way to 'chose you choice' is indeed incoherent. But that's precisely what you would need to bring about 'free will' in any meaningful sense of the term. You would need be the author of your own desires. If you are not, then you chose nothing freely. There is no such free choice, no way to decide our own desires, and therefore no free will.

Our choices couldn't in principle be anymore free than they are now, could they? Thus, our will is as free as it could possibly be.

No, they couldn't be more free. And the current level of freedom involved = none. This is why your position confuses me. You seem to fully acknowledge that we are utter slaves to our desires and wants, and also that we have no (and could have no) say in what those wants and desires are, even theoretically. The result, as you acknowledge, is completely incoherent. So, what exactly is left that you would call 'free' in this process?

Simply stating that the 'brain is us' in an attempt to rescue free will, necessarily entails that you are also directly responsible for all things that occur in the brain. This includes of course all unconscious events, as well as all mental illness.

Do you really admit such a thing? Are you personally responsible for whatever bizarre dream or nightmare that your unconscious cooked up last night? Is the schizophrenic personally responsible for their break with reality? After all, these things all occur in the brain, and they are all 'us'. So are we responsible for all the goings on in our unconscious minds?

Or are you rather willing to admit that we have no say about any of this, and therefore nothing that could be called a free choice?