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?

[instantc]

And second, if you can, could you tell me exactly what you mean by 'free will'? e.g., free from what, exactly?

That's what I wanted to ask you, what is it that our will could be free from but is not?

[instantc]

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.

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?

Show? That's like asking me to show you that time moves forward. I can't show you determinism. All i can do is point out that everything we know about in reality is deterministic (at least at the macro level, which is all we care about in regards to freewill and brains.). All known evidence supports it and none contradict it. The only objections are philosophical musings.

What does it even mean that I couldn't have chosen otherwise?

If you could choose otherwise it would be the libertarian version of freewill. Libertarian freewill suggests that choice is not completely determined by the given circumstances. There is no experiment or physical evidence to support libertarian freewill. Only navel gazing arguments.

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.

How can a choice be considered free if you could not have chosen other than what the situation determines you will choose? How is that free?

For example, is there a difference between choosing between 5,000,000 options and only having 1 option if you are predetermined to choose only one particular option? There isn't.

It seems to me that my choice is predetermined by the reasons that the choice is based on.

ok, all you've done is kicked the problem down the road. So answer this: where did those reasons that the choice is based on come from? Did you choose them as well? If you didn't then how is your choice free?

For example, you claim you freely chose chocolate over vanilla ice cream because your choice is determined by reasons. Your "reasons" for choosing chocolate was that you prefer chocolate ice cream. Ok, so did you choose to prefer chocolate ice cream over vanilla? If you didn't then you aren't actually freely choosing. You are just an automaton who is blindly following preferences you have no control over. How is that free?

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.

You are starting to get it.

For those who do not understand determinism, it seems as though we can freely choose whichever flavor of ice cream we want. For those who understand determinism, we understand that our choice is not free but instead a result reached by deterministic processes beyond our control. Yes, we make a mental "choice" but there really was no FREE choice. As Sam Harris so eloquently puts it when chastising the word games of compatibilists, "a puppet is free as long as he loves his strings."


If you are predetermined by the situation to choose chocolate, then it makes no sense to say you FREELY chose chocolate.

You are probably right here, but I can't make any sense of your response. Let's start from the beginning. What is it that our will could be free from but is not?

I believe that its because a "free agent" is considered the author of its actions, whereas a "non-free agent" is just an automaton.

What does it mean to be author of one's choice? Outcome of every choice has to be predetermined by something, as long as it is not randomly picked. As far as I can see, my choice is based on rational consideration done by myself, thus I am the author of the choice, regardless of the fact that the outcome of the consideration was predetermined by my rational capability and preferences.

What it comes to you accusing me of contradicting myself in the previous thread, I don't have strong convictions one way or another, I merely defended some arguments for property dualism as in my opinion your criticism was very much flawed there. So, property dualism might be flawed but not for the reasons you brought up I think.

[instantc]

the problem is you guys are debating different notions of free will.

One side has free will defined as "you are free if your choices determine your actions"

one side has free will defined as "if you can act without any external influence from reality"

Bingo, that's the problem. Some people define free will simply as the ability to make a choice. Some people define it as the ability to make a choice without coercion. For me, the kind of Christian free will that unlocks the gates of heaven or hell must be a supernatural free agent that can analyze and understand every choice we make so that, when necessary, it can force us to make a choice we wouldn't make if left to our own electrochemical reactions. Clearly, this type of free will requires a "soul" so again we have a supernatural non-answer.

I don't understand how this soul requiring free will would be anymore free than the one we have. In any case, the choice is always based on reasoning, and thus predetermined by those reasons, whatever they are. Whether it's electrochemical reactions or some magical force that enables us to perform a rational consideration, our will isn't anymore free in either case, is it?

[olavisjo]

.

Whether it's electrochemical reactions or some magical force that enables us to perform a rational consideration, our will isn't anymore free in either case, is it?

Our will would be free if the magical force is us.

[instantc]

.

Whether it's electrochemical reactions or some magical force that enables us to perform a rational consideration, our will isn't anymore free in either case, is it?

Our will would be free if the magical force is us.

I don't see this at all. A choice is either based on reasons or picked randomly, and in the former case those reasons predetermine the outcome.

[Nilloc James]

Im stilling looking for someone to explain what ability a free agent has as opposed to a not free one. What can the former do that makes it morally culpable?

Id really like for someone who thinks we need the magic to tell me what makes an agent with the magic different than one without?

Is this a silly question? Ive asked it a few times now - am I just stupid and am missing something obvious?

[instantc]

Im stilling looking for someone to explain what ability a free agent has as opposed to a not free one. What can the former do that makes it morally culpable?

Id really like for someone who thinks we need the magic to tell me what makes an agent with the magic different than one without?

Is this a silly question? Ive asked it a few times now - am I just stupid and am missing something obvious?

I think the answer is nothing. Not even with the help of souls or magical forces can a choice not be restrained by the reasons that it's based on. That's the problem I have with someone saying that we don't have free will, as it implies that there is a possibility that our choices could be free but they are not.

[Peter]

What does it mean to be author of one's choice? Outcome of every choice has to be predetermined by something, as long as it is not randomly picked. As far as I can see, my choice is based on rational consideration done by myself, thus I am the author of the choice, regardless of the fact that the outcome of the consideration was predetermined by my rational capability and preferences.

Let's see if I can "author" a choice. I'm going to write the next word that comes to mind - umbrella. Clearly, I made a choice but why umbrella bubbled into my consciousness is a complete mystery to me. Was I the conscious author of my choice of umbrella? Absolutely not.

Now you might argue that thinking of a random word on the spur of the moment isn't a good test of free will and I'll grant you that the illusion of free will is greatly bolstered when we consciously consider a decision over time. We can easily convince ourselves that we are the sole authors of our choices but even the reasons for a well considered choice are still a mystery to us at the most basic levels of the mind as demonstrated with - umbrella.

[instantc]

Let's see if I can "author" a choice. I'm going to write the next word that comes to mind - umbrella. Clearly, I made a choice but why umbrella bubbled into my consciousness is a complete mystery to me. Was I the conscious author of my choice of umbrella? Absolutely not.

I think this is a bad example, since 'pick the first word that comes into your mind' does not involve a choice by definition. Nor does 'pick a number between 1-9' involve a choice but an attempt to mimic a random event.

Let's see if I can author a choice, suppose I will pick a color for my new Ferrari. I hereby pick red, since I find that color beautiful. Now, obviously my choice was based on my preferences that are out of my control, but as far as I can see, I am still the author of the choice. Now answer me two questions.

1. On what basis was I not the author of the choice?
2. How would the situation be different in the scenario, where some magical force would give me free will?

[Peter]

Let's see if I can "author" a choice. I'm going to write the next word that comes to mind - umbrella. Clearly, I made a choice but why umbrella bubbled into my consciousness is a complete mystery to me. Was I the conscious author of my choice of umbrella? Absolutely not.

I think this is a bad example, since 'pick the first word that comes into your mind' does not involve a choice by definition. Nor does 'pick a number between 1-9' involve a choice but an attempt to mimic a random event.

Let's see if I can author a choice, suppose I will pick a color for my new Ferrari. I hereby pick red, since I find that color beautiful. Now, obviously my choice was based on my preferences that are out of my control, but as far as I can see, I am still the author of the choice. Now answer me two questions.

1. On what basis was I not the author of the choice?
2. How would the situation be different in the scenario, where some magical force would give me free will?

I didn't choose umbrella? Would it make you happier if I had compiled a list of words that bubbled up from my unconscious and then cross correlated them for effectiveness? Should I have first decided that it should be an animal and only worked with the animals that bubbled up mysteriously from my unconsciousness? Don't you see that it really doesn't matter how much I try to fool myself into thinking I'm the author of the choice? At it's most basic level, the process is a complete mystery to me no matter how much I deliberate at the upper levels.

How can you possibly "author" a preference choice if, as you say, your preferences are out of your control? If your unconscious preferences had wanted pink polka dots that's what you would have picked. Free will implies the ability to make a decision you would not have made based on your unconscious preferences and that is quite impossible without some separate (magical?) free agent that understands your unconscious preferences and is capable of overriding them. In effect, biblical free will is the ability to make a choice I didn't make. This is clearly impossible.

I'm not sure you understand yet that a "free will" choice is a little more complex than just the ability to make a choice.