Free Will and Expereince

[Furrowed Brow]

Hi all,

I am 99.99% a materialist. However there are somethings I also sign up to that are difficult to square with materialism. Free Will is one. Though I can admit much of our behavior is down to cause and effect, I still shy way from the full implications of materialism. However if you are a theist and believe God gaves us Free Will I see that is an empty non answer to the problem How do we have free will? How does it actually work? Again some might want to posit some sort of dualism and an immaterial mind. But then that is just another empty incoherent answer. How does the mind stay tied to the body. How is there mind body interaction? What is the immaterial made out of? and so on. So I am not looking for dualistic answers here.

I cannot offer a fully resolved position. But I think if there is to be free will then there has to be a break in the causal chain. Viz., some causes have no prior causes. For that to be the case, like quantum virtual particles popping into existence out of nothing, we have to start with nothing from which we can get something.

That possibility does not get us Free will, but I think the door opens just slightly to the possibility of free will starting from nothing, than insisting every cause has a prior cause.

It is of course possible to say that materialism forbids the possibility of free will. And to be true Free will is moot. For a materialist it seems safer and probably only valid to say we do not have free will. However there is one aspect of consciousness for which we do not, and probably will never have a material answer. That is the question of experience. Now I can and do accept that all experiences reduce to the brain and nervous system. In this respect I am fully a materialist. If I see a blue triangle, there will be some parts of my brain generating that experience and providing structure to that experience. However, the experience itself. The blueness of the experience cannot be square with a material explanation.

Now this next bit is gonna get weird, so bear with me. I have previously tried this argument on others and they did not really get what I was saying. So let me try another angle.

Pain is perhaps a better example to get ones head around. We experience pain. And some part of our brain and nervous system will be the physical part of the pain experience, neurons firing etc., but what of the feeling of pain itself. We don't feel neurons firing, we feel pain. How does a physical interaction turn into a feeling of.....?

My point is that pain and blue experiences can be causally explained, but "Feeling of...." or "experience of..." cannot be causally explained; and importantly, unlike Free Will we know there is "experience of..." with absolute certainty.

So if we have one aspect of consciousness that is outside/beyond causal explanations, why not Free Will too.

If you are still with me. I am now going to jump off the deep end. So this is the really weird bit.

Being a minimalist I don't like too many exceptions to the rule. So I want to merge "consciousness of..." and Free Will together.

Now I know experience is not a matter of free will. If you shut the car door on your finger it's gonna hurt and you are not free to avoid the pain. So that is not what I mean or imply. I don't mean "Free will is freedom to experience what you want".

However when one reacts to and because of what one feels experiences, does one react to the "Experience of..." which is is non causal, or is that just an illusion, and our actions are just the inevitable playing out of cause and effect and neurons firing etc?

Ask yourself this. If you burn your hand on a stove the "instinctive" action is to withdraw the hand from the stove at rapid speed. However do we withdraw our hand because of electrochemical pulses firing up our arm and setting of neurons in our brain, in a causal chain, or do we pull back our hand because of the experience of pain.

(If it is just cause and effect - what about the masochist or person into pain control who might keep there hand on the stove to prove a point.)

If you think that its just pulses and neurons then you are an epiphenomenalist. Someone who thinks experience is just a by-product of brain activity. I which case - no free will.

If like me you think - no hang on a second - its the pain I'm reacting to - then you are admitting you behavior is a consequence of an experience that cannot be explained causally.

Ok Nuff madness.
Are you a materialist?
Do you think we have free will?
Are you an epiphenomenalist?
Does anything I say make sense to you or is it just rubbish?

[QED]

OK, so some things hurt (unless we are anesthetized). I bet the whole point of pain is to stop us from doing silly things to ourselves. Pain therefore has to be really compelling, i.e. not something we can choose to ignore. Of all the evolutionary attemepts at producing this setup, it is neccesarily only those that go beyond setting a simple "plain flag" that could be ignored that survive today.

No wonder then that one notable property of the feeling of pain is that we can't ignore it, but we could still be left asking what feeling is.

[methylatedghosts]

Ask yourself this. If you burn your hand on a stove the "instinctive" action is to withdraw the hand from the stove at rapid speed. However do we withdraw our hand because of electrochemical pulses firing up our arm and setting of neurons in our brain, in a causal chain, or do we pull back our hand because of the experience of pain.

This depends if it is purposely put on the stove or accidently.

Accidently - and the pain neuronal endings in your hand fire, which causes interneurons in your spinal cord to fire, which in turn cause motor neurons from your spinal cord to fire, and pull away your hand. You don't feel the pain until after your hand has left the stove top, because those neurons do not go to the brain. The ones that go to the brain are much slower and so, you have absolutely no control whatsoever over the reaction. You pull back your hand, entirely out of your own control, because of the pain you do not feel until after you've pulled away your hand.

On purpose - you can willfully place your hand one the stove top, and not have the same instinctive reaction. You can say "this will hurt, but I'm putting my hand on it anyway - because I want to"

If you think that its just pulses and neurons then you are an epiphenomenalist. Someone who thinks experience is just a by-product of brain activity. I which case - no free will.

If like me you think - no hang on a second - its the pain I'm reacting to - then you are admitting you behavior is a consequence of an experience that cannot be explained causally.

To me, it is a result of neuronal activity in a reactive loop in the spinal cord. however, one does have the free will to place the hand back on to the stove.

If my internet is still working properly, I'll be back