Your premise relies on the idea that unpredictability in behavior proves free will however the philosophical idea of indeterminism states that the random fluctuations of quantum mechanics can mean no free will while also being unpredictable.

That's not really a critique of my idea at all. Free will requires unpredictability, but not all unpredictability is free will. Driving a car requires motion but not all motion is driving a car. Get it?
Here are a couple of relevant lines from my paper:

"This paper will not claim indeterminism as a source of free will."

"There are views in which determinism and predictability are both said to be eliminated in the context of human choice by quantum indeterminacy. But critics of these views point out that if the relevant cause of an action is an indeterminate quantum event, then the human agent can not determine what he does, and thus can not be the source of his own actions. I agree with the critics on this point. In contrast to quantum indeterminacy, undecidable dynamics are deterministic, and are a property of the human system taken as a whole, not a property of some little part of a human."

Breaking hard determinism unpredictable chaos

I'm not sure if this really stays within the same philosophy. But I have 2 concerning thoughts about this. I tend to agree with the statements suggesting we have free will. However, many of the modern AI systems seem to keep improving at predicting our preferences and behavior the more data they collect, contradicting the statement of our unpredictability.

Also, the more we look at humans in larger groups rather than at each human individually, the more it becomes possible to predict the overall actions of a group. Which also contradicts said unpredictability and possibly suggests that it's controlled by a complex ecosystem of humanity and its environment as a whole. Rendering free will to be an illusion.

You could easily see that if you just google “all roads lead to Rome” and then you google “circulatory system of a rat”.

Regarding the first one: it took millennia to build, the efforts of perhaps millions of people, with different ideas, objectives, needs, in different times and for different reasons (commerce, love, power, money, craziness, etc).

Also, you could draw a similar map for pretty much every major city in the whole world, it just depends on which road you select and why. You could say that it’s the product of the free will of millions, so it should be unpredictable.

The second one (the rat) we think is just the product of biology, chemistry and physics. No free will at all, in fact it is predictable (it’s the same in every mammal, in every leaf, in every hydrographic system, etc).

So…millions of “free people” were able to recreate a pattern that does not require free will, and they did it without even knowing it, across millennia.

My point being: our brain runs a sophisticated software that gives us a very bright and realistic illusion. We are just organic cells with shoes.

Two interesting concerns. I think I have answers for them.

AI can get pretty accurate, but never completely accurate in its predictions of what you'll do. And many of your actions that are amenable to prediction by AI are also somewhat predictable by other humans. Like I can predict pretty well that you'll have something for dinner this evening. I might be 99% percent sure of it. But I can't really know that you won't skip dinner. You could. So you have the ability to 'do otherwise' even in the case that you do end up eating dinner like I predict. I think the predictions made by AI will be like this.

Some group actions are more predictable than individual actions. But you are not a group. So your free will isn't diminished by this. Also, a group can be made unpredictable by individual action.

When was this published?

If we are "just" organic cells, then who's being misled by the realistic illusion? Can a cell experience an illusion? A cell can't experience anything at all. Only a non-reduced, complete functional pattern of billions of cells can experience something. So that complete pattern has very different properties and capacities than do "just cells."

That complete functional pattern of cells, when taken as a whole is called a person. So a person is not "just" cells. If we want to know whether a person has free will, it's a mistake to change the question to whether or not "just cells" have free will.

Yesterday

I do not think free will and predictability are contradictory. Free will posts that we can make choices and that they are not just pre-determined. Those choices are going to be strongly influenced by our experiences and preferences, but they are still our choices.

Free will allows to make choices even if the majority of them will be predictable.

I think free will simply has to exist because decision making happens in a complex system, brains, which runs on electficity and is affected by quantum states and mechanics. I believe this mechanical fact is what separates us from a purely mechanical system. Even on a very simple level, I believe that quantum mechanics are how we get true randomness into the universe, and even if we spend our wholo lives making the most predictable choices, we made them out of free will because the particle proterties involved in reality and our brains can not physically have been pre-determined.

It was published in the same journal twice? Exactly a year apart?

wow, you actually read it? I commend you.

I'd just ask OP for a summary of his main points. lol

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No, it's in the "Autumn 2022" issue of the journal, but that issue wasn't released until yesterday.

The first time I tried tickling myself, I expected to experience the urge to laugh. Not experiencing that urge violated my own expectations. However, I would not say that I freely chose to not experience the urge to laugh.

I wrote the last sentence with an expectation of what my behaviors and their experienced outcomes would be. My prediction was as reliable as one might expect, yet I feel like my choice free, or at least more free than the earlier not-experiencing of the urge to laugh.

Since I can observe myself, but resolutions of expectated observations seem orthogonal to my sense of freedom, I doubt violations of expectation say much about free will one way or the other.

It’s all pachinko

Predicting yourself isn't relevant to free will because being free means that you aren't controlled (or perfectly predicted) by anything else. You are you. So if you predict you, that's fine. You control you. And you can also be free without actually making any prediction of what you'll do.

So violations of your own expectation of yourself don't say much about free will one way or the other. But violations of Laplace's demon's expectations say a lot.

>So what’s wrong with this line of thinking which is so drawn to molecules and such? Consider the following question as an analogy: Are apples red? Suppose we all agree that apples have color.

And so on. Uh... rigid designators. Taxonomy. Humans are lazy. Oh my god. Bertrand Russel would take you to school on this example like a boss, perhaps like so: 'Of course we mean to speak within a certain generally-accepted range of experiences - possibly limited to only humans, and even then, not definitive, for what of the colorblind? We refer to a sense impression. The simple phrase "it is red" is the peak of a pyramid of unstated assumptions, agreements, and limitations!'

Honestly. Go ahead and try changing a bunch of those molecules and see what happens to "red" back up at the top of that pyramid. Change the molecules in the human eye. Change the molecules in the human brain. So many ways to disrupt the vaunted "red" that are not on the scale of "red," and you want to use it as an analogy for why focusing on the wrong scale is an error, with an eye towards suggesting that various scales possess magical independence from each other.

Yikes, dude. I sincerely hope you do not cavalierly engage in "independent scale" surgery on yourself with confidence that your various "rednesses" will not be affected. That would be a very bad idea. Don't do it. Some "rednesses" are not as lazy and tolerant as others. "Alive" seems like a pretty broad one at the outset, but you might want to do some research on how many "independent and irrelevant scale" changes can disrupt it quite definitively.

>It is caused by many small parts, but only when taken together all at once. And that’s the same thing as the whole person. So my thoughts and actions are deterministically caused by me. The molecules of which my brain is made are deeply irrelevant to this fact.

So it's caused by many small parts all at once, but the molecules aren't even some of those small parts? They're irrelevant small parts? Even though we can measure changes in them as apparent partial causes of actions and partial consequences of other actions?

You're asserting a mind/body divide here baldly. Where's your argument? Where's your evidence?

>If a molecule were the relevant cause of my action, this would not be true in the same way.

You literally just posited that many small parts can all work in tandem, even though you rejected the possibility that molecules are the relevant small parts. This line, therefore, is something akin to a straw man. That accusation can only be perversely rebutted by the fact that we know molecules are not indivisible, and not always stable. Some molecules can "self reflect" (read: not really, because everything is connected, and subject to physical laws) and become not the molecule they originally were.

Re: undecideability

Instead of nitpicking - because it's exhausting, and I could do it all day - let me try to ask you a broader question:

If you do something that surprises Laplace's demon, how on Earth does it not also surprise you? If it surprises you, then doesn't it seem a little odd to call it "free?" It seems much more like we're just almost-infinitely-dumber demons who possess no real awareness of our own goings-on - only comforting illusions, which is a peculiar booby prize of ignorance. Doesn't the definition of undecideability you quoted make the very question you're trying to answer unanswerable? You retreat to what cannot be known to try to convince us that you know how something works.

In situations of weak selection (survival and reproductive chance are not at stake), normal humans can generate any nonsense sequence of behavior at will, I can shout "cat", "-957", pause for 3 minutes and 49 seconds, "0.03", "I don't want a watermelon", "ξ"...so on. Such nonsense is arguably non-decodable. In other words, we have the "ability" of free will, but most people don't necessarily use it due to societal and environmental constraints. Unconscious behaviors or decisions that are made fast without thinking are very much predictable I agree.

My thoughts. You are restricting Laplace's Demon without justification. You called the demon "the ultimate predictor." A reasonable interpretation of that would be that if something is necessarily true from known information, then the demon will know it. I think this would have been the correct understanding of the demon for the situation. Instead, you have gone with the interpretation that if something is algorithmically provable from known information, then the demon will know it. A given program will halt or it will not. One of those is necessarily true. It is not algorithmically provable. That doesn't, in any reasonable sense of the word mean the program is free.

Second I think you fail to show an infinite computational medium. Perhaps a person with an infinite lifespan in an infinite universe would have an infinite computational medium. And so a question like "will he ever take x action" might be undecidable. However, If you restrict the scope to a given timeframe. "will he kiss that girl he likes today", you are restricting your focus to a finite period of time, and a finite space (i.e. a sphere of space 1 light-day in radius). You lose your infinite computational medium, and suddenly you have a decidable problem.

It seems like you mostly refute common arguments for why free will doesnt exist, as opposed to providing compelling arguments for why it does exist.

I personally think that possessing the ability to do otherwise doesn't imply free will exists, but that there is an inherent randomness to determinism. I see determinism as defining the likelihood of certain decisions being made, not necessarily what choice WILL be made. It defines the thought processes that lead to certain things being chosen over others.

I think that, free will exists according to your parameters, sure. But I don't really agree with your parameters. But this then just comes down to, what does free will even mean? Its a semantic debate, and I remain completely convinced its entirely a semantic debate based on that article.

Good read though.

I'm starting to feel that these discussions are meaningless, due to the nature of such words meaning different things to different people. You can only really prove free will or determinism is correct according to what you define them as. Such terms are so hard to pin down..

I also appreciate that this is written in a way so that it can be understood by those who aren't academic vermin. Nice to read a philosophy post without the pretentious wank.

Molecules are the small parts of a person. Or cells are, or quarks are, etc. I never said that molecules are not the small parts of a person. I just used molecules one example of a type of small part that gives you a terrible sense of the properties of a whole person.

I won't take the time to wade through the rest of the the reading comprehension issues here.

But your last paragraph isn't based on a simple misreading. It's an interesting question whether your own decisions surprise you. In a sense they do. If you know what your decision will be before you make it, then you've actually already made your decision. But you don't make your decision before you make your decision. I don't see that as a problem, but it's interesting.

Okay. Basic idea: free will is the ability to do other than expected, where the expect-or is Laplace’s demon. Some human actions meet this condition, because the human brain is an undecidable computational system.

I had a couple of issues.

First, intuitively free will involves the possibility of any of multiple courses of action (looking in the future direction, to use the language is the article). The objection to this in the article is basically, when you’re making the choice, you’re only doing one thing. So, it doesn’t make sense to say there are multiple possibilities open to you. To the contrary, we can say that at time t1, it is possible that at time t2 I am doing A, or that I am doing B, whereas at time t2 it is only possible that I am doing 1.

But I don’t think that matters much, since the project is still interesting.

Second, key to establishing that the human brain is an undefinable computational system is the claim that the brain has infinite state spaces. This is supported by the fact that we can conceive of the natural numbers, which are infinite.

I’m not convinced that this means the human brain has infinite state spaces. We never conceive of each natural number itself. What is true is that for any of we can conceive of any of an infinite number of sets of numbers, but each of those will be of finite size. It is also true that we can think such terms “as infinite”, and various associated ideas, “1-to-1 mapping onto the natural numbers” for instance, but everything we’re ever actually thinking is finite.

Basically, it’s possible to represent some facts about infinite sets with finite information, which seems to be what we actually do.

As an additional comment, the article also contained a discussion of human decision-making being self-referential. It’s a bit long, but you may want to check out this talk by Jenann Ismael, in which she makes the self-referential aspect of decision-making key to an account of free will.

Those are also very good answers! Especially the one concerning the AI, which, as I understand it, attributes it more as a case of probability. I think we need quantum physics to further unfold this, which exceeds my knowledge way too far to say anything meaningful about 😊

I also agree with the argument that I'm not a group. But I don't think I entirely agree with the last sentence. I agree that an individual action can make the group less predictable, but not entirely, and also, this doesn't eliminate the possibility that the individual action was made with free will or that it wasn't determined by the workings of the group as a whole.

The way I see it can be compared to the working of the vast quantity of cells that taken as a group make us who we are... these cells individually are encoded with DNA, which determines how they work. Adding them all together creates a huge and complex entangled group of predetermined actions in which the meaning of the predictability mostly gets lost. Also, the other way around, our actions or external factors we experience can have an influence on the behavior of cells, either individual or groups.

So then the question might become if our collection of cells, or part of them, does the same for us as what DNA does for the cells or if we become an entirely new being that's seperated from the elements of which it's made. In the case of the latter, this also raises the question; with what, where, or how can the separation declared?

Quite right that it's mostly refuting arguments from the other side. But I think I do make a positive argument that my two criteria for free will are met; that I am the source of my actions and that I can do otherwise. If I'm right about being non-reductive in scale, then the whole person is the source of action. And if I'm right about temporal asymmetry and undecidability then the whole person can do otherwise.

But yes, this completely depends on picking the parameters for free will. I also sometimes feel that nearly all philosophy is pointless in a way because so many topics depend on prior agreement on concepts that may be inherently squishy, and are endlessly open to be undermined.

Imprecision in predictions is basically unavoidable in any domain. Weather prediction is a good example.

Take a much more chaotic system than weather, the human mind, and you have more imprecision. Not to mention the hardness of getting informed about the state of human mind which is required for accurate predictions.

With a good enough prediction model and good enough means to be informed about the state of my mind, you can know whether I will skip dinner.

Everything points to the conclusion that we cannot guess because we don't know enough and it's chaotic.

It's certainly a very interesting and possibly valid point that a person is not the same as just the collection of his cells... But then my question is what separates that person from said collection rather than being just a huge pile of complex cooperations between those cells in which the predetermined nature of everything just got a bit lost or impossible to perceive?

The Cartesian approach is always very interesting in this regard. Consciousness implies at least some kind of self.

Out of curiosity:

1. In this case, do you believe consciousness encompasses the entirety of the person, as in the "I" that we can most certainly believe to exist (the one that sees, experiences, feels, etc.) is the same as the one that moves, acts, speaks, etc. and thus there is only one "self"?

2. As a follow-up, what do you think our existence consists of? Non-reductive physicalism, mind-body dualism, idealism, something else?

There's very interesting work in this regard. Roger Penrose put forward a theory and, after criticism, a defense of his theory that our minds are a sort of quantum computer. I haven't looked too far into it personally, but as much as we can and should always maintain initial skepticism, there may be some validity there since the guy is a complete genius and literally won a Noble Prize as recently as two years ago.

Again, it's kind of an appeal to authority fallacy so it doesn't mean he's immediately right. I just like to think of it in the same sense of when I consider people like Aristotle, etc. of like, "Well, that person's pretty fucking smart, maybe there was something there".

Humans don’t have the total self reference you talk about on 313. A computer can’t have perfect record of every process since each attempt to record or log a process must be itself recorded and logged by additional processes, ad infinitum. Humans are not aware of all our processes, down to each cell, as such a thing would be computationally impossible. However, our actual level of awareness is no more impossible than a pc showing you a task manager. Our current level of self reference doesn’t meet this requirement for undecidablility.

You already raised the correct objection to infinite state spaces. I think I can illustrate it with an analogy. Saying “Humans have infinite state spaces because we have an impression left by even very large numbers,” is like saying, “This computer has infinitely more storage space than you think. (hits with hammer) Look, it has stored the imprint of this hammer.” You’re confusing a psychological response to incomprehensible numbers with actual storage of said numbers. Also, even if you were right about humans storing a unique impression of everything they’ve ever experienced and that being equivalent to state space. That’s still nowhere close to the infinity you need to make statements about Laplace’s demon.

And you’re probably wrong about different numbers leaving different impressions. I’d bet money that if we gave you a 3000 digit number your “impression” would be the same (no measurable difference) no matter what the 347th digit is.

A trillion molecules with a trillion different possible combinations is a large number. It is not an infinite number. To Laplace’s demon, this might as well be 8 total combinations. We also have reason to believe that the total number of imaginary objects or scenarios might be similarly finite, if incomprehensibly large. I expect we have a finite list of objects and scenarios we’re determined to imagine.

I don’t understand why you think generating an unsolvable problem means that the being who generated it has an unsolvable will. Stating a paradox doesn’t mean you incorporate a paradox in your own thought process nor does it mean you have violated the genetic and environmental causes which determine your choices and thoughts.

Quantum mechanics point toward determinism not being possible. Not just that, but local realism is false; which means that either reality can travel faster than light,(locality is false) or that particles definitely do not have set values before observation (realism is false)

I personally suspect both to be false, but I am a geek and not an expert so don't take that as more than a hunch. But even if only realism turns out to be false, that is enough to dismantle determinism and, in my eyes, a strong case in favor of free will.

My brain is way too small to get a firm grasp of quantum physics and its mechanisms to form a meaningful opinion with it.

But based on the principles (I think) I understand from it, I also believe it could give us the ultimate answer to this question.

Let's just hope the answer doesn't turn out to be "42", leaving us with the need to find out what the actual question was 🙃

I read the summary and the excerpts of the pdf, but didn't notice the answer to how free will works.

If a set of neurons fire because they're in a situation, and I lift my finger, at what point has free will created the energy to make that happen?

Said another way, if Free Will it didn't create energy, the physics of the system would have kept it proceeding in the non-finger-lifting path, but free will changed that.

That sounds like an infinite energy source, which would be admittedly neat.

Thanks for the link to the site and the pdf contained therein.

To explain, quantum mechanics refer to the behaviors of particles, which work differently than large scale physics predicts. The most important aspect to this discussion is particles behaving differently when measured vs not measured. Light for example is a wave when not measured, and a particle when measured. The photons, before being measured, act as a wave becaue their values are not defined before measurement (or observation). This is the source of true randomness in the universe. Theoretically, you could predict the behaviors of anything in large scale physics by having the starting conditions. Quantum mechanics do not allow you to predict the future even with the starting conditions.

Since our brains are essentially quantum computers, it can not be claimed that our choices are pre-determined. This does not prove free will beyond a reasonable doubt, (randomness being involved in our decision does not entirely disprove the notion that our decision is just a mechanical process) but it is a very strong argument for free will because it at least contradicts the notion that everything that we choose is pre-determined by the starting conditions in a system.

It's all very interesting. I wonder, too if quantum physics is God's way of preventing determinism/predictability and enshrining free will. This is of course under theistic models, though. I'm an agnostic currently.

What about operant conditioning? Do people have "free will" if their behaviors are unconscious incompetence or unconscious competence? What about trauma responses for folks with PTSD?

If someone is outside their window of tolerance, the prefrontal cortex goes offline and their lower brain regions take over. The person experiencing it feels like their body "took over" until the prefrontal cortex comes back online. Sometimes folks have enough bandwidth to consciously practice a regulation exercise to help their prefrontal cortex come back online faster, but it takes training and practice to accomplish. (See polyvagal theory: Stephen Porges and Deb Dana)

I like how your argument about the meaninglessness of these discussions seems to fit perfectly in the picture of a recent essay I wrote about how realistic our perception of reality is and how different it could be to every individual. 🙂

Very well said 👏

I think any theistic model immediately crumbles upon any sort of scrutiny. Sure, a deity itself can not be disproven; but we can explain why religions exists, we can track their origins, their evolutionary value, and on an individual level all major theistic belief systems are full of contradiction. Couple that with a complete lack of evidence that any theistic interpretation of the world could be righr, and that is enough for me to completely disregard any theistic perspective from consideration.

I can't know if there are any reasons quantum mechanics are as they are any more than the reason a photon spins left or right. It just does!

I do not believe we are in a simulation, but I also like the thought experiment of how a simulated universe would need to work, and I like the idea that, in a simulated universe, superposition (light behaving as a wave when the precision of a particle is not needed) is a computational trick to save resources. Like a videogame engine showing you an approximate idea of what a tree looks like from far away, but showing you a fully detailed model of a tree if you get closer and start inspecting it.

This ties everything up in a neat little package that makes sense, that is why it is tempting to believe in it. But making intuitive sense to a human is not required for an aspect of reality to be true, so likely not in a simulation.

While I think it's a slightly more complex issue than just semantics, another undefined term that will likely cause problems for your argument is the assumption of identity you use with "I". One of the more widely discussed issues of late is whether there is a coherent identity you can posit as "I", and if so, what its boundaries and qualities are. Is this something like the Kantian unity of apperception? Does it necessarily include my body and my consciousness? Personally I am sympathetic to the view that "I" is merely a kind of awareness of ourselves after the fact. But my point is, you can see that if I adopt this definition of "I", I am making a subterranean assumption that refutes your criteria, and vice versa. Discussions about free-will are downstream of discussions about consciousness and identity.

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Complete Free will sounds too daunting

It seems like you're defining free will as the ability to make decisions that are fundamentally unpredictable. That's not what the vast majority of people seem to mean by free will. What people seem to mean by free will is something like they can make decisions that are not completely caused by things they ultimately never chose and/or not completely random. That's the type of free will that seems to matter to people, and it's the type that has moral implications, and it's the type that's impossible.

I think that by tickling yourself, you created a beautiful picture of how an observation could both prove and disprove free will simultaneously, determined by how you measure it.

It's almost like saying a photon can be a particle and a wave at the same time, but completely different 🙃

Simulations have a lot to be considered about them, and there's a fair bit of uncertainty there too (the idea of simulated realities simulating realities simulating realities and the probability of us being in one versus the question of whether simulating an entire universe (or even a galaxy) would require an entire universe/galaxy anyway and thus one wonders what difference it would make/could it even continue ad infinitum).

Regarding God, it's more of an idea before even getting to/outside of any big religion in particular. Is the universe/multiverse causeless or is there a being that created it that's causeless? That's where the question lies, and where I don't really know what to believe in either direction.

> Free will requires unpredictability, but not all unpredictability is free will.

Then you may want to update the abstract, because there you explicitly claim otherwise:

> If human action is fundamentally unpredictable, then we have free will.

I'm not exactly certain what you are saying but I think the implication is that you posit that the quantum uncertainty doesn't have an influence on the macro universe in a direct way. Every experiment with quantum mechanics that proves its existence and defines its properties are an undeniable example of quantum effects directly affecting the macro universe and therefore must be taken into account.

But none of this really matters in a discussion of free will. No action can be taken without that action being directly affected by genetic predispositions and environmental influences. You can not have free control over your genetic predispositions nor do you have free control over your environmental influences therefore no action can ever be made that is a free action.

Regarding god, if there were a being that created the universe, I would expect something to suggest that, which is not the case. Furthermore, even if we entertained the idea of a creator it would not be one that stuck around. It is abundantly clesr that the universe has ran itself since its inception, whether that inception was some concious entity's design is interesting, but ultimately unlikely and makes no difference to reality.

The idea of a creator being needed is a human construct, it follows our instinct, nothing else in reality suggests the need for a creator.

No, I think quantum effects do propagate up into the macro world. But that's just beside the point of what I argue in the paper.

Your guesses about what I mean haven't been great so far. I would explain what I mean, but that was the whole point of writing the paper. If you don't want to read it, don't. But it is the explanation of what I mean.

Plot Twist- ChatGPT wrote this.

Ultimately, it's hilarious to posit Laplace's Demon and then try to define it at all.

The author talks about "red." People with sight have a sense of "red" that blind people don't. Laplace's Demon, though? Nah, that guy couldn't possibly know anything about time, quantum mechanics, or anything else that might blow a giant hole in every one of my arguments. Not possible.

Honestly. Even extant philosophy can point towards versions of the demon that wouldn't be surprised by anything - not even these systems that are "undecidable," because that "undecideability" relies upon McTaggart's A-series time being an objective, cosmic truth. The paper itself concedes that we should be wary of that premise because of those weird quantum mechanics experiments.

How hard is it to posit that Laplace's Demon sees the universe via B-series time instead? Nothing's unknowable then, so long as everything is determinate. By brute force, if nothing else, the demon knows every output of the algorithm.

Now, does the demon not knowing why the algorithm produces those outputs count as a surprise? Maybe? But then I repeat my point from my own top-level comment: how in the heck isn't the human "agent" equally, or more, surprised by their own actions?

If we begin to elevate "Holy shit why did I do that? I don't even know!" to a truth of the determined universe, I think we've found yet another argument against free will. Perhaps some clever chap will come along to redefine "free" (yet again, and again, and again) as "totally unmoored from literally everything," thus raising an immediate contradiction with the "will" part.

The point with the molecules it that after acknowledgeing the whole emerges from parts you casually say the parts are irrelevant. And now you're ignoring what the guy said of it.

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Being a writer, I am a little worried about being made irrelevant by the next version of ChatGPT. But a month ago, I actually tried to get the current version to of ChatGPT to generate the main idea of this free will paper. I couldn't get it to succeed without feeding it the answer. That made me feel a little better, but I'm still concerned about the future.

That first part sums up what I've understood about it. Also, I think that despite it not allowing future predictions, you could predict or calculate a certain amount of probability of getting a specific future result and that the result is also subjective to the method of observing it. Which I think can give reasons to suspect determinism

The second part is also a nice clarification of how or why it could suggest free will as far as I understand it. Then again, I've also seen explanations of how it can suggest determinism. And I'm not sure I completely understand any of them. At least I know that at this moment, nobody really knows all the answers yet, still leaving it in a state of superposition until we find a way to measure it.

Anyway, thanks a lot for your clarification! Think I learned something 🙂

Yes, the whole emerges from the parts AND the parts are irrelevant to certain questions.

It's not obvious that would be the case. That's why I wrote a whole paper about it. I want to do a better job of explaining it, but I already put my best effort into the explanations in the paper.

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That reads more like a demonstration of supposed randomness to me.

I think that-given enough raw data and the power to sort and process it-even that animal, number, time etc. might turn out to be not so random.

We are not just the sum of our cells because emergent properties exist, and those always show complex behavior that are not intrinsically present in the individual cell.

Much like an ant: she doesn’t own the whole knowledge needed to run a colony, but sure as hell the whole colony does.

I think the first thing to accept is that we're 3-dimensionally bound beings, and we're still trying to figure out how to grasp the 4th dimension.

Best way to explain why 4D is tricky to grasp, is by going down a level in the comparison: pretend we're 2D beings trying to understand 3D.

If we're 2D beings, then that means we can perceive height and width, but not depth. That means you would be unable to see a sphere, but you would be able to see each 2D circle of it, if you were to slice the sphere into tiny cross sections.

Picture a sphere resting on a piece of paper. The flat circle it imprints on the paper would just be a dot. As you lower the sphere through the paper, the circle it leaves on the paper keeps getting bigger until you reach the middle of the sphere. At which point it will go back to being smaller again as you continue to lower it, eventually ending up back at the dot.

So while you can never actually see the entire sphere all at once for yourself, you would theoretically be able to infer the true nature of the sphere by stacking all these circles on top of each other. However the problem here is that you wouldn't even understand the concept of stacking the circles. The only thing you can perceive for yourself, is the 2D circle increasing and decreasing. It's difficult to try to imagine the sphere, when you've never seen a 3D object.

And it's even worse if a 1D being tries to grasp the sphere. They would only see a dot that grows into a line, which then shrinks back into the dot. To infer that you're looking at a sphere, you would have to take note of the fact that the line expands at a higher rate initially, only to eventually slow down in its growth until it stops. And actually, you don't have enough information available to you to actually conclude that it's a sphere. It could be a cylinder or cone lying on its side with the circle facing you, you'll never know.

So yeah, sorry if this seemed off-topic, but I just think the first thing to wrap your head around when trying to understand quantum physics is that our natural senses are limited. Things aren't supposed to make sense or feel intuitive, when you're punching a dimension above you.

Of course I don’t think that we are the exact same thing as a single organic cell. From a certain point of view we are completely different thing (in fact a cell is not made up of billions of cells).

I was just trying to show that from another point of view, cells show complex behavior as a whole, but you wouldn’t say that the single cell has free will.

I like the analogy.

For all we know, our current state of brain analysis is a blind person sitting in a house, trying to figure out if it will rain tomorrow.

The task seems impossible, though an astute individual could possibly make some accurate prediction based on information that seems invisible to most. However impressive this skill, it would be nothing compared to modern meteorology and its vast array of thermometers, barometers, radars, satellites and dozens of other measuring tools. A few hundred years ago it would have been sorcery.

If your looking for a rabbit hole to go down, explore the concepts of "Slave Morality" and "Master Morality" its a bit of an advanced start but wetting the palette is never a bad thing.

I already had a pretty good grasp of a 4th spatial dimension, not the mathematics behind it, but how to imagine it or how we might perceive certain actions from our 3D point of view. Gave me a lot of new ideas about the universe, especially black holes. However, it didn't help me in trying to grasp quantum physics, but I imagine this could possibly use even more extra dimensions.

Anyway, I understand the point you wanted to make. And now we're really starting to lose track of the topic 😅

I think there are some interesting arguments here and there (fine-tuning's one example). It's interesting to consider because it may have some combination of certain metaphysical implications (mind-body dualism, idealism, afterlife, reincarnation), but it is true that it could be possible that these metaphysics may also exist in a creatorless universe. After all, we've yet to solve such issues as bridging the gap between general relativity and quantum physics, consciousness, etc.

Organized religion, kind of a separate matter, is definitely pretty common for humans, though. Whether for social community or authoritarian inclinations of opportunists.

I would probably start from the classic Schrodinger's Cat example. Let me introduce time into the scenario, say the cat has a 50% chance of dying in the box after 10 seconds have passed. Per your common sense, you would think that after 10 seconds, there will have been an outcome, the cat is either alive or dead.

But here's the weird part, there actually won't be an outcome after 10 seconds, unless you actually open the box to observe an outcome. 20 seconds can have passed, and the cat is actually still either alive or dead. And it will continue to be in this limbo until it's actually observed. It's weird right? You would think that simply observing is a passive action on your part that shouldn't affect or influence any outcomes.

So one theory to explain this is that reality branches into two different timelines, one where the cat dies and one where it doesn't. And this may very well relate to the concept of the 4th dimension.

I don't really find much value in anything metaphysical or spiritual. Growing up surrounded by it as well as religion it has become incredibly apparent that it is all made up. I understand the desire to imagine there is something more to us than matter being funny, but everything we know suggests we are only matter.

I think we have free will and intelligence as an emergent quality of the biochemical processes that we are formed by, conciousness may indeed be more than the sum of its parts. Perhaps conciousness is the result of the quantum superposition of what happens in our brain, but I do not think it is reasonable to entertain the concept of some unmaterial soul, some entity that exists beyond the body and brain. All of our best evidence tells us the only logical conclusion is that there is no afterlife, or karma, or reincarnation. It really is not logical to believe in anything else when we can be pretty certain we already know nothing happens.

People still believe in other things, of course, or they at least entertain some ideas related to spiritualism. That is ok, belief is natural. I personally feel like truth is more important, and I am simply not convinced by "no one can truly know". Just because something can not be proven false does not mean it is possible. I know there is no afterlife and consider that a fact, because that is the only possible option.

That's all fair. I just think of metaphysics as physics potentially not yet realized, and quantum physics has at least put forward the idea of the possibility of extra possibilities beyond things we can currently conceive.

Regarding things that may not be currently falsifiable, I think it depends on the idea. Sometimes the ideas are useless to consider, sometimes we may in time know the truth of them, and some of them are just left in a state of "remains to be seen". In that sense, a lot of that kind of stuff is in the grouping of things I don't necessarily believe in, but are interesting to consider, may be verified in the future, and aren't necessarily worth tossing out straight from the get-go.

How can seperate the 'whole person' from its environment? And if we don't have 'free willpower our environment, how can we have it over ourselves? Does a dog, or am ant have this same seperated freedom from its environment? Or are we simply a process with the ability to reflect, but not change, that purpose.

This, times a million. I'm convinced that human experience/existence is comprised of two separate but connected identities. I've come to think of them as the "perceiver" and the "decider". The decider is the subconscious beyond "my (perceiver)" control, making decisions based on physical composition of my thinking meat at any given time and it's relationship to all available stimulus. So, determinism can still exist or not, and have no bearing. "I" could still have "done otherwise" based on any number of factors, even down to pure random chance at a quantum level as far as when neurological potentials "trip" and I make a discission to say, press either a red button or blue button at a pre determined time. "I" made that choice, but it was the "I" that I don't control. And then I'm left to witness reality play out from a separate "I", namely the "perceiver."

I dunno. I'm not formally educated in philosophy. so I don't know how to present this concept better. But it seems to me I don't often run across this idea often in free will discussion. Determinism seems to be a very enticing red herring. But I do believe the core of why I don't believe in free will is the recognition that there are two separate "me's." And neither one of them can be consciously controlled.

Simply put, you can not choose to not get mad.

If you had free will, you could.

I say "hey, exercise your free will, and don't get mad." Then tell you about some horrendous thing I did that harms you emotionally. You absolutely can not choose your emotional response. Now, you may think you are choosing how you act on that emotional response, but even that "choice" in how you react to the emotional stimulus is dictated by, it or pr dictated on all previous experience which have formed all your responses. And that decision is no more "yours" than is the emotional response itself. Brains are physical electro/chemical systems.

Weather the univers is deterministic or not does not have primary bearing on free will. If you want to prove free will by pointing out "I could have done otherwise" then your missing the point. All that does is discount determinism. But determinism is not required for "no free will" to be true.

That last part helped me get an idea about the connection between these 2 concepts. And to bring this back to the original topic of free will brings a lot of extra questions to think about. Like if we are our own observers constantly deciding freely in which timeline we continue to exist, and if this would count for both the sum of our parts and consciousness, or only for te latter. And so on... 🤕

This gave me a lot to think about for a while 😅

Hey bro this is a great paper and I’m gonna spend some time to try an see if I can find where it’s wrong but in order to do it right I’m gonna have to go point by point and really think about your argument.

I started with “Infinite computational medium” It seems that being able to think of any number is something that a human might be able to do. When I think more about it though it seems like our “dumb” AI can do a similar thing. ChatGPT can handle really any string of words and provide answers for them. You could give it potentially any number or string of letters to work with. So this isn’t unique to us. This doesn’t refute what you say but I imagine this could be relevant later.

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I feel like some aspect of agency is lost here. When do you know you've made it? Our conscious thought is what gives us the sense of free will, but neuroscientists have proven with a few studies that our brain decides before we do. What is free about that?

As any other animal, we came from survivalist routes. I believe our "consciousness" and social abilities have allowed us to reach how far we've come as a species. But I think we can be studied in predictable ways like any other living thing that exists.

If you're referring to the apples redness analogy, here's my thoughts on it. There's indeed no redness to be found in constituent parts of the apple, but there's still a relevant causal connection between those parts properties and the emergent quality of the whole, the redness. So you can't just disregard that connection because you found no redness at that level, something other than the macro property on the micro level caused the macro property. The parts are demonstrably relevant here. The same is true for the main problem.

I don't think philosophy can just ignore science anymore.

Negation-

Moving on to negation, this actually doesn’t seem to me to be what humans do. A human brain is a large number of systems “battling” for power. It seems to me that trying to say that a human being provides an answer that is exactly contrary to the processing is either saying too much or too little depending on what you believe you’re actually claiming. I actually think you’ve smuggled the whole free will claim into this point here.

Take for example chatGPT I think one could argue that ChatGPT could fit this if you’re defining it in the way I would agree actually exists. But I think for this term to do the work you want it to you might need to smuggle magic in.

And on the point of program data duality. I’d be willing to delve into this idea more but it doesn’t actually seem necessary at this time for you to prove this or for me to refute it either way.

So in summation I’d say politely that these are good and interesting points but I believe you’ve smuggled free will into negation.

A DUMB AI could arguably fit these three definitions depending on how you worded them but I think the fact that a “dumb” aI could probably work with an infinite computational medium shows us that this specific point isn’t where the argument comes from because I personally really enjoyed this point.

Plz feel free to push back if you’d like to go over it with me

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I just don't really see why unpredictability should be identified with free will. Seems like a very superficial way of thinking about it. I don't really think there is a possible definition of free will that is both coherent and non-trivial.

Read about the Young/Double Slit experiment. The whole reason why the Schrodingers Cat thought experiment and quantum mechanics came up in the first place was because they were able to cheat the observing condition, in other words they managed to "observe" something without that something knowing it was observed. It also demonstrates the concept of superposition, or having all the possibilities exist at the same time and even interfering and interacting with each other.

Really makes you think about what it exactly means for something to be observed and for all those possibilities to resolve themselves to one outcome. Or if we're the ones that simply branch off to another timeline that represents one of the outcomes.

Lmao I wasn't going to comment anything even though I was tempted to make the general comment of "it's hard to make a compelling argument on something you are wrong about" in response to your article. But here I find you in the comments telling people that the problems in your reasoning and argument are actually comprehension issues on the side of the reader. That's the single biggest hallmark of a bad author - blaming the reader for just "not getting it". Don't do that.

Superficial attempt to shoehorn a bad position into logical language. You don't need to be out here pushing the idea of free will, we've had millennia of religious zealots and other "intellectuals" trying to figure out how to make this illogical and unworkable position work, and we've already figured out a bunch of ways to dress it up in ways that hide the issues. We don't need you regurgitating arguments that are as old as time and easily debunked. Think harder, go deeper. There is no binary between free will and no free will. Having no free will is functionally and experientially identical to having free will.

> quantum mechanics can mean no free will while also

OH...... I thought it just mean free will , where can I read this basing?

Very much agree. Each of us is an observer to our thoughts and actions while our brains actually determine how we react to stimuli.

I agree with you when you say

> One of the central criteria for free will is “Could I have done otherwise?” But because of a temporal asymmetry in human choice, the question makes no sense.

I think that free will is a useful concept that feels true and useful, more true and useful than the alternative of “already written”.

I’ll give the example of watching a recording of a basketball game where I already know the final score. I am watching the deterministic process of things unfold, shots being missed, fouls being called, players getting tired. But at the end of the day, I know that the score will be met, even if that means one team hits 15 three pointers in a row and the other team misses layup after layup. It will happen.

And yet, a coach can say useful things about the deterministic side of things, things like “you’re not turning your hips enough” and “see how the defender turns his head here and there is the possibility for an entry pass?”

But nobody really has anything useful to say about the extra knowledge version where the interplay of actions and decisions is taken off the table. You’re left with inanities like “I guess the home team is going to get hot in the second half” and things like that.

Choosing between which version is more interesting and useful, it’s the deterministic, free will one. (I know that determinism and free will are often put on opposite sides of the debate, so I think it’s interesting that in this thought experiment they are on the same side, against a sort of omniscient pre determination.) Believing in free will let’s us talk about habit formation and deciding who you want to be as a person and all that stuff. It’s William James’s Right to Believe. In a debatable situation, we’re allowed to throw our beliefs behind the worldview that gives us more of a chance of success.

I’m so glad you said this. I have been wondering if anyone else has been going through this. I catch myself after I speak certain sentences thinking, “wow that was a good thought you just said. That was well-articulated…. Where did that even come from?” But I also have those “what the actual fuck did you even just say” moments. Like I am a live studio audience to this animated meat machine that seems to run itself and make decisions seemingly outside of my own control sometimes.

Today driving to work I called 911 after witnessing a woman swerving all across the highway for a few miles. I actually drove past the car and looked inside to see if the person was distracted or what the deal was. Thinking back, it was really stupid of me to drive up next to this person who I just watched drive off onto the shoulder of the road multiple times. But as soon as I saw that it was a zoinked out woman with what looked like a child seat in the back seat, my chest sunk through the fucking floor.

Literally seeming entirely outside of my control, I whipped out my phone and dialed 911. The call took 4 minutes but it felt like 4 hours.

Or there are those times where you just get mad to the point where you say or do something you instantly regret. Some people mention that it’s like they weren’t even in control when they did some horrendous act. Like, where do thoughts come from anyway?

I don’t know, I’m just some nobody on a random rock in a random galaxy in some random universe for no reason and none of it makes sense lol.

What makes you think people can't, in at least some cases, control their emotional responses?

> Now, you may think you are choosing how you act on that emotional response, but even that "choice" in how you react to the emotional stimulus is dictated by, it or pr dictated on all previous experience which have formed all your responses.

I think most accounts of what a "self" or "I" is would say that at least in part, the self is an embodied compression/distillation of learnings from your previous experiences. Saying your previous experiences determine how you respond to something doesn't necessarily remove an "I" from the system - unless, I guess, your idea of a self is some kind of entity that is completely separate from experience, which seems like an unusual way to define a self.

I’ve been writing (and annoying my wife) about this for almost a whole year now. Well said.

Are you really the source of your actions? Everything effects something, what has effected your decision for that action. What effect do those effects, effect "your" free will.

Schrodinger's thought experiment makes the point that a cat being simultaneously dead/alive is stupid and therefore there's aspects of physics involved that are not being understood.

Pop culture media constantly misrepresents this and frames it as if Schrodinger literally thought the cat is in a limbo state when the dude was saying such a thing is ridiculous.

It's one of my biggest pet peeves because Schrodinger basically was going "if we use your logic, look at this stupid cat in a box shit that we would get," and yet now people think Schrodinger held the very view that he was calling out as dumb.

It may be that determinism is robust, but that wouldn’t mean that our deliberative processes don’t affect our behavior. Could be that what we experience as removing us from determinism is just as bound by determinist principles as anything else.

I think free will isn't real. Therefore, it was inevitable that I think that.

I'm not convinced by either the part with the apples or the temporal asymmetry.

I thought the point of asking if you could have done otherwise is to highlight that you cannot choose that which does not occur to you. Or that if a door was closed, you could not have gone through it on will alone.

And the apples seems like you're setting up an analogy and writing those against free will as making a mistake.

The apple reflects specific wavelengths into our eye, a cascade of neurons is triggered. We experience red. Just like we experience agency and a kind of "free will" in how we feel about ourselves.

Claiming free will is real, rather than something we experience, is what introduces the scale shift.

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> There can be no such thing as multiple possibilities which are truly in the present, since we are doing whatever is possi- ble in the present. So any talk of multiple possibilities is referring to the future, not the present.

This doesn’t follow at all. Firstly, if we accept that the present has only one possibility then different possibilities can exist in the past as well as much as in the future (ie they can’t). Secondly, multiple possibilities can exist in the present, if we accept the many worlds hypothesis. It is not necessarily the case that there is only one present.

RemindMe! 3 days

One question i have here is how can you do otherwise? Id argue you can think about doing otherwise, and convince yourself you would be capable to make a different choice should you be confronted with the exact same situation, but at the end of the day you made the other choice and the exact same situation will never arise again as you cannot go back in time.

My favorite Internet talker says there isn't, so your paper sucks.

Scientifically, I think it's hard to argue free will as everything that will ever happen was set in motion from the beginning of time. Every action is just a reaction to something that was set in motion. However, philosophically, I feel free Will exists, but possibly is not able to be proven.

That being said. If we have no free will, but you believe we do have free will. You had no choice as that in itself is your predestined belief.

If we do have free will, but you believe you don't have free will, you are trapped by your belief into a thought process that is closed to all the possibilities in life.

To me, the belief in free will allows for accountability for one's actions and to take control of your destiny. If I am wrong and I don't have free will, I will never know and will have walked the path I was meant to walk.

Could just be that groups of natural and unnatural systems can be seen as predictable while the whole picture is completely unknowable no matter how complex our knowledge of everything becomes. Even if you knew the start state of the universe, could you predict everything? I'd say not purely on the basis that micro and macro do end up meeting in (dare I say) completely unexpected ways. For eg, a bit flip in computing constitutes a binary digit being flipped by something as random as a perfectly timed cosmic ray hitting memory at the perfect moment in the right spot to cause a flip - rewind the universe and let it do its thing for the same amount of time and you MAY get that same flip but chances are, things will be very different purely based off early universe quantum effects. The same happens in biology and is an argument for different evolutionary steps. Maybe humans are the cause of a miraculous bit flip in the cosmic goo. We may not be special in the universe but the fact that we could be made a certain way based on random cosmic rays? 1 bit flip potentially happening on average every 30-something-ish hours to one bit in memory, extrapolated on a quantum yet universal level? I'd also have to say that I personally can see the argument for our own brains as analogous to quantum computing. If you accept certain ideas and some research, maybe brain patterns inherently recognise and interact with quantum entangled states. Is the chance of thought and the fact that it may be able to mediate and navigate these states as changes in thought patterns deterministic? Actually asking tbh...

Determinism always pisses me off, as I'm sure it does to it's arguers lol.

I will myself to not read it.

The idea and existence of reality and my ability to perceive it makes my head hurt....

Humans have free will, but only when observing themselves thinking about free will. That was easy, next!

The real compatibilist objection wouldn't be "you could have done otherwise if you had reasons/wanted to/something", it'd be "you could have done otherwise, period, the natural way we define the word "could", incorporating our uncertainty about our own and each other's thoughts and actions". I think you go into this, but your arguments are way, way too long and complicated when a few words would do the trick.

Yes, but we need to believe that "selves" can be controlled otherwise how could we enact laws and operate as a society?

>I see determinism as defining the likelihood of certain decisions being made, not necessarily what choice WILL be made.

It's that literally the difference between a probabilistic system vice a deterministic system? Why call the probabilistic one deterministic?

>What makes you think people can't, in at least some cases, control their emotional responses?

So, is your assertion then that sometimes Free Will exists and sometimes it doesn't? Seems to me it's a rather binary proposition, I mean if you can exert free will in some cases, why not others? Does the severity of the stimulus affect whether or not you have free will, and therefore the ability to choose your emotional response?

As to what makes me believe that people cannot, in any circumstance, control their emotional response.

Well that's based on 40 years of observation. And a recognition that almost everyone else's emotional responses work relatively similar to my own. That, coupled with being able to formulate hypothetical scenarios which explicitly lay bare the notion that you cannot, in fact, choose your emotional response to any stimuli.

Consider this...

You are at the park rolling around a ball with your most favorite precious little puppy whom you love dearly. You adopted this puppy from a shelter and you and this puppy share a deep emotional bond.

Now,

 Scenario 1 - a man walks by, looks at the puppy, looks at you, then leans down scoops up the puppy carefully holds it against his chest, scratches behind it's ear, then gently sets the puppy back down and continues on his way.

Ultimately, this is a fairly innocuous event. However, you most definitely experienced some emotional response to this event. Perhaps, beer, because you did not know this man's intentions and whether or not he was just going harm your puppy or just walk away with it. Perhaps you experienced happiness, because you assumed that he was doing the very thing he ended up doing and you find it pleaseing that someone else finds your puppy adorable, so you experience some amount of Joy or happiness.

 Scenario 2 - a man walks by, looks at you, looks at the puppy, then proceeds to kick the puppy like a football, looks you straight in the eye, truffles and walks away.

.. An absolutely horrific event. To which you most definitely have an emotional response. Great, anger, abject horror...

Now, in either of these scenarios, did you choose your emotional response? Could you choose to respond to scenario two with joy and happiness? Could you choose to respond to scenario one with absolute furious anger? To be sure, depending on your ability you could outwardly act in a seemingly incongruent manner. But that still would not change the fact that inwardly you had an emotional experience beyond your control. And even in scenario one, we could add additional background information which would alter the most likely expected emotional responses. And these would be the things that influence any given emotional response to any given event you witness no matter how innocuous or impactful it is.

And in the same way in which those previous experiences and your current state of mind dictate the emotional response you will experience, so too does previous experience and current state of mind dictate any action you will or will not take when experiencing any given emotional response.

The emotional response, the action you do or don't take based on that emotional response, very act of having an inner dialogue weighing out potential benefits and outcomes of various courses of action, all these things are beyond your active control. They're all the results of your brains current condition. We can even see this cases of people who experience head trauma. When the rain experiences literal physical alteration it can completely alter someone's personality. And they cannot simply choose to behave in the way they did prior. Their behavior, and thus there responses and actions to the world around them are entirely dictated by the physical composition of their brain which is intern manufactured by all previous experiences.

All these things occur beyond your control and interact in such a way so as to make you feel as though you are actively making these decisions. To be sure, it is a very strong illusion, but it is an illusion nonetheless. Elsewise you may as well be a radio that believes itself to be the world's greatest musician simply because it receives a stimulus processes said stimulus through available circuitry and then generate output based on that processed stimuli.

(Please be assured that no cute little fluffer puppers we're actually harmed in the formulation of these hypothetical scenarios, though unfortunately, neither did any cute little puppers receive ear skritches)

As for the second part of your comment, I'm not so sure anything I've said should have implied that I believe that any of this is removing the "I" from the system. Merely pointing out that human experience is comprised of interconnected identities, however pointing out that neither of which is an "I" that can choose, through free will, to act with disregard the physical composition and current state of mind which it emanates from.

I think that it's correct to use a "backward-looking" point of view: after all, we have to draw conclusions about the future on what has already happened.

However, not in the conditional sense of "what could have happened", or "could I have made any other choice?". To me, not only is that inherently unknownable, but it just confuses what is a very simple matter, that things happen for previous reasons (causes), and nothing happens without either a known reason (not free will) or unknown randomness (which is not free will either).

So, take any decision process that is claimed to be a "free will" process, and just work backwards. Ask why that decision was made. Either the acting party knows or doesn't. i they know, voila, there we have out determinant reason (cause). A different reason (cause) would have led to a different result.

On the other hand, the acting party might have no idea why the decision was made, so that can hardly be called free will. It just happened as if the decision had fallen out of the sky (randomness).

I really think it's that simple an issue. For any decision process there will be a series of "why" questions to determine how one chose this or that decision. Determinism or randomness (where randomness simply means we don't yet know the deterministic cause due to lack of knowledge).

1. I don't think unpredictability is a great definition of free will. Its incomplete imo.

2. The compatiblist definition seems what ur closest too, and this seems like a reasonable free will. Most philosophers believe in compatibalist free will.

3. Libertarian free will is absolute nonsense on par with believing in fairies and only a thought in peoples heads because of religious indoctrination. This requires being able to do different if you hit replay... as you correctly state is nonsense.

Redefinitions of free will are kind of useless imo... as ur simply not talking about what others are. Theres way too much baggage on the term free will causing equivocation on redefinition. Whats the point of redefining free will to some infinite state space predictability stuff that has nothing to do with what others mean... why not use a different term to define a different concept? I think the reason is because we piggyback off the baggage of the term "free will".

Theres issues with scale of predictability as well. Example quantum systems and reality may be fundamentally probabilistic, but for any actual mental decisions and things at human scale they fundamentally aren't probabilistic and are predictable. Similarly unpredictable numerous potential neuron states does not mean unpredictable decisions or actions. Also human action is fundamentally highly highly predictable in many ways, our inability to predict things does not mean they are unpredictable. I guarantee when ai can better measure brain states it can certainly predict our outcomes almost perfectly. As neural nets will make this trivial.

If ur definition relies so heavily on predictability, what happens to your "free will" when ai or a psychologist predict your behavior. Do mentally ill people or people with bipolar have more free will because their actions are fundamentally more unpredictable?

I think there is also massive problems with ur infinite state space claims. Taking the amount of neurons then just adding them as a binary is insanely wrong... thats not how neurons work even remotely, or math, or brains, or physical space. Its akin to saying theres 2^^999999999999999 atom combinations in my body... therefore i have infinite potential of body forms i can take. Its preposterous imo. Theres also assumptions like every neuron can interact, despite that obviously not being even close to true as neurons can only interact with the few in their proximity. Also theres the issue of equating mental representations of physical numbers to a binary brain state, as if our understanding of the number 1 = brain state neural binary 01.. this is not what numbers or how our brain represents them. Then there is the issue of even if i grant all this... that immeasurably large number of neuron combinations is still not infinite... its unreachable... BUT its fundamentally NOT infinite.

Maybe i just don't understand what you mean... but then again thats another problem with redefining words with a lot of baggage.

Determinism, as meaning every choice is hard-coded, sounds very silly to me, and I don't see many people arguing for it.

I think my interpretation is still in line with the thinking behind determinism. That, the agency people feel in their choices is a farce, and really they are selecting from a limited set of options defined by the way their mind works. And that, in most cases, they will make predictable choices, whilst feeling they are choosing freely.

This is for sure probabilistic but I feel it keeps in line with the deterministic thinking that free choice is a farce

But did you choose to be born? Did you say somewhere in the ether “hey I’d like to be born” and then you were born? If not, than either by fate or design it was determined you’d be here. The foundation of your existence on earth was determined, not chosen.

Free will is the argument people make hoping that it’s the individual that makes evil decisions toward others, not the design of fate itself.

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Right? Shit's crazy.

Damn. I didn't consider that.

I didn't have sight before I was born, but now I do.

I didn't have free will before I was born, but now I do.

I choose to be here every day.

I liked the paper. It's a fascinating subject for me, and the one thing my wife and I really disagree upon (and she's a Jungian). I always say "You have all the free will in the world to do the one, exact thing you'll actually do". In my belief, "that one thing" is already written in stone, it just hasn't happened yet but it's the only thing you will do.

So you’re making a faith based argument. You don’t know that you didn’t have free will before you were born - and now you don’t, anymore than, you don’t know that you didn’t have free will before you were born - and now you do.

What IS known is one day you were here - however the means. That’s all you can say definitively - that is true. With that foundation, it’s more of a foundation of something based in determination than one’s choice to be here.

The experiential aspect of thinking you’re choosing to be here rather than offing yourself might be free will, but it’s also equally likely to be deterministic.
Did you get to choose to be in a body that gets chronically depressed?

Two things are true, you’re born and you die, and these are determined experiences that you can’t run away from or use free will to avoid. If this beginning and end of one’s life is determined and destined to happen, however and whenever, than it’s seems unreasonable to believe (because it’s a belief) that you’re in control of the experience of life.

There's several things I disagree with here, but I'll only mention one because I have to go to work.

You're equivocating between all of my potential deaths as if they're all the same event. I can choose a lot of actions that lead to different deaths. So what if I can't choose to never die? I can't choose to fly like Superman either. No one thinking about free will ever thought I could.

I find arguing over free will to be a little pointless, because determinists tend to be people who simply don't understand the concept of emergent properties. It's why things like "the ability to do otherwise" that you mention don't really matter to them - if the universe is at base random and chaotic rather than deterministic, it's still not something that you have control over. Basically, free will is not a property of the universe at a basic level - it just emerges in certain complex systems. It's like "life" or "consciousness" in that respect. But emergent properties are difficult to explain, and a lot of people would rather disbelieve in them rather than admitbto the reality of something they don't understand. Hell, I've seen people argue that consciousness and even life are illusions rather than face having to admit that the world contains things science can't easily explain.

And I’m saying that while you THINK you may be able to choose your death, however that may be, death is a guarantee for you… that isn’t subject to free will… Your beginning and your end are factually guaranteed, determined outcomes, however or whenever. To suggest the experiential aspect in the middle is free will, is also to suggest that you have a choice in the matter of your beginning and your end - but your death is guaranteed, and a determined outcome - no matter what you THINK you can do about it.

True

This is an excellent thread, lots of great comments. You can’t even begin to untangle the semantics of free will, without first clarifying the concept of an embodied “I”.

And I've learned there are two kinds of way or even more that people understand free will, the one that is removed from all causes or the one that is free of obligation (no external force).

Don’t tell me what to do! I have free will.

/joke

I just found this your post in my email, and the mention of "free will" caught my interest as it can dissimulate in such curious ways. Coming from a phenomenological background, I'm sensing the thinking in your paper is very deeply based on von Bertalanffy's General System theory, which is derivative of theoretical Thermodynamics and — as such — is a particular type of temporality characterized as synchronic. It also appears you’re further delimiting temporality as the notorious "arrow of time,” which only moves forward with its implicit assumptions of “free will” based on definitions of an independent self. This is compared to general synchrony temporality that functions as the “infinitely, eternalized equal sign” that metaphorically can be thought of as a digital video file that can be played forwards and backward.

While I certainly don't mean to be negatively critical, I should mention this notion of "radical free will" vs. "situated freedom" articulated by the Economic Philosopher Charles A. Taylor. Particularly since I'm sensing your image of temporal Asymmetry is a negative dialectic of the diachronic existential temporality Heidegger attempted to explicate as his “care structure of comportment” in Being and Time he was deriving from Henré Bergson's “Durée” and his colleague Heisenberg articulated as the “uncertainty principle.” But, of course, Heidegger didn’t complete his masterwork as he hadn’t sufficiently thought through temporality; instead, he brought the Nietzschean shift to psychological understandings of temporality in an age of “post-truth” into sharp relief that your writing about. At least, that’s my sense reading your paper.

More to the point is that phenomenologically your notion of Temporal Asymmetry is very reminiscent of Emmanual Levinas' notions of Time and the Other that fleshes out synchronic temporality as derivative of existential diachrony — where the future is unknown and arises from what his colleague, Maurice Blanchot, articulated as the Infinite Conversation from which all notions of an independent individual with free-will are “always, already situated in” as “the there” — which both thought of as the “Impossible of the Possible.” Personally, I understand this as what Martin Burckhardt refers to as the "dividual" that must be considered within the context of the "Psychology of the Machine,” meaning the rational edifice’s digital metaphysics of Modernity.

Having "said" that, I think you're quite right in noticing how digital metaphysics simulacrums dissimulate as rational machinations without any inherent notion of value, and “as such,” always require human discrimination to give them meaning (which is not to side-step the arguments of AI's achieving sentience — just for all practical purposes, they are currently "dumb" assistive tools that extend human “creation ex nihilo.”) And that humans are always required to make choices without totally understanding the implications of their choices; more importantly humans are not “fated things” as we live in an open filigree of coherency full of possibility, which I think is what you’re articulating as Infinite Computational Medium; and that this design of coherency is a reflection of our inherent antilogy. What I think is possibly missing is understanding how the notion of an independent self is a kind of artifice reflecting the shifting from “rappresentare to representatio” in the Renaissance, which becomes the Cartesian subject/object split. As you continue investigating your question, you may want to consider how the independent individual exercising free will is always derivative of the community background from which the “dividual” sense of self arises. And, more importantly, how our continued transition into Modernity’s digitalization, as Social Media and the like, continues to bring this into sharper relief.

That's a view I share. The two types if "I" are even more prominent on consciousness altering substances, up to completely seperating the observer and the decider. The desicions are viewed by the observer without prejudice, and you can learn lot about yourself that way. Also depersonalisation and derealisation(hope that's right, im German) which i experienced with a anxiety disorder are a separation of the two. You realise that you are actually not in control, you can only observe the action your brain dictates. It's my view that we are the sum of every decision made in our lives, every response we got, in short your past life dictates your actions. which can be very unsettling.

And the point of getting mad, i really thought a while that i can control it. But in reality i can't, i get mad and only afterwards i can readjust my feelings. It pops up, and then I calm down again. Which could be viewed as free will, but again, that's only the sum of everything that happened to me. I can do this, because i had some experiences or whatnot that made me able to do so, and they made me not only able to do this, but they also dictate that i do it, in which situations i do it, and in which not.

On high doses of hallucinogens you can get get in a kind of state that makes you aware of everything your brain is doing. It's really a conceptual space almost in a mathematical sense, It's the last stage(there is another, depending on the substance) of the geometry you perceive on low to high doses. It's fascinating, it starts almost invisible, gets stronger and more vivid, the complexity increases more and more. Then there's a point after you can't get away from it anymore. It's visible with open eyes, at first covering stuff in 2d, then it gets 3d, and then there comes a point where open or closed eyes don't make a difference anymore. The last state is the realization that that geometry IS your conscience. It's too much to grasp, normally we have filters that save us from this. At that point every feeling is connected, all the senses are the same. It's just math at that point. And as someone that has math, physics and such stuff as a serious hobby, it makes sense. Lots of fractal and actually impossible geometry.

But not for mathematics. Impossible to describe i mean. Sadly most people that do this to such an extent have nothing to do with math. I would love to hear the thoughts of a real mathematician, because they are just trained to recognise patterns and propably already know lots of the concepts they would experience.

Why fractals for example? I think that they are representations of feedback loops we see operating, like the oxygen concentration and breathing loop. Or just the image of on Neuron firing, and after x steps it gets triggered again. And again. Untill some other neuron interferes. It's a state of constant fluidity, it changes in (maybe?) infinitesimal small steps, as time has long lost its meaning at that point.

Every thing has meaning, sometimes paradoxical; and everything your body experiences in that state strongly infuences the geometry you ecperience. Like when someone touches you, you don't feel it on yor arm, instead the geometry changes accordingly. Or music... can seriously be too much, but you can see(i use this word in lieu of a better one, experience would propably better, but still not enough.) what the music does to your brain. I think i stop here, i don't belive this is the right place for this.

Go there if you want to know more about the kinds of geometry you'll experience psychedelics.

It's a shame that no one does studies on this, it could reveal so much about the inner workings of our consciousness. Or not, and it' just bs. But i don't think so. They strip your mind one layer of safeguard after another, untill you're exposed to everything your mind can offer. It's not even scary, because at that point "scary" ist just one concept of many, and since you are the observer you can analyze it and what it does to your brain and your body without fear. Without anything actually. You are reduced to something i can't describe. And if the effects wear off, you can't describe what really happened, because we don't have words for it. Not even a concept. That's why im for mathematicians on drugs... They maybe could shed some light on this.

I'm really not sure if it's just bs, but all the connections to math just make sense. In the end, we are nothing more than computers. Biological, but still a computer.

OK, now i really stop.

Full on deterministic i would say...

And have mercy with me, i have nothing to do with philosophy, i just like to read this sub, and once i had something maybe meaningful to share.

By the way, i don't believe in DMT faires or such stuff, maybe a part of yor consciousness gets separated or whatnot. Everything on hallucinogens only happens in your brain.

And a warning to everyone, you all probably can guess where my anxiety disorder comes from... I have HPPD too, so be careful if you think about going on a trip! Please!

I think the reaction is made made by the decider too, and we can only observe our reaction. And again. And again. How should i say, the decider lives a few seconds in the future, or the observer is held back by our brain, he lives a few seconds in the past. So to speak anyway. "We" are always just observing.

I wrote this post, thought about it, thought about what i thought about it, and so on. Untill the decider decided to press the post button.

Practically an infinite loop.

I just remembered, there was a study that proofed the concept of the duality you mentioned. They measured the brain waves(i don't remember how) of people while making decisions. Pressing one of two buttons in this case i think. And it's exactly like you say, the decider acts at least half a second(could be more, but not less.) before the perceiver(or the person in that case?) thought now he makes the decision. Even when they thougt they do it by chance(in their mind rapidly switching between the buttons, and then just smash one of them) the scientists could always tell beforehand which button they will press.

Maybe i find it.

I think you underestimate the task. The possibility space of nonsense is so unimaginably huge, and the thing is, they don't matter one way or the other to your survival.

And what kind of data would you be looking at? Just to make sure you are not using an outcome to predict an outcome i.e., a tautological model.

Spinoza's rock?

Thanks for sharing! I really enjoyed reading arguments from a position that differs from my own. Maybe unsurprisingly, I didn’t find them compelling enough to change my view and I’ll briefly touch on why.

One of the central aspects of your argument is scale – ignore the micro-level interactions and just discuss things at the relevant level. And you decide “agents” is the relevant level. As you put it “The little mechanical parts that make up a human body are not the relevant sources of those decisions.”

This ignores the undeniable link between brain chemistry and decision making. Hungry? High cortisol levels in your mother during pregnancy? Just dropped acid? Damage to the VMPFC (…or any part of the brain)? Tired? Chronic overstimulation of dopamine receptors? Stressed? You cannot say that the brain is irrelevant to decisions, as decisions are produced in the brain.

The fact we deliberate is also not evidence of free will. Deliberation is taking into account available options, weighing them against some decision making criteria and selecting a decision. Computer programs do the same thing – we just call it calculations instead of deliberation. The difference is we assume deliberation has some “freedom” somewhere in it, whereas calculations don’t.

But where is that “freedom”? The available options are limited by my external environment and my decision making criteria is based on my brain state at the time and history leading up to that point. Past decisions that impact my current situation or brain state would be met with the same issue. We can following the chain back in time to a point where we obviously have no control (i.e. dictated by external factors or when we hit our “first” decision which would be based on our brain state we had no control over forming – genes, in utero environment, situation we were born into, etc).

We certainly make decision that are our own and unique to us. We have “personal will” but I fail to see where the “free” part enters in. Assuming “the agent” as the level to discuss free will and ignoring the neuroscience (that is responsible for it) just begs the question.

Thanks for the reply.

The little mechanical parts that make up a human body are not relevant for answering certain questions (like about free will). But I don't mean they're irrelevant in every way.

What I'm saying is that the WHOLE brain (and peripheral nervous system) taken together is the relevant source of decisions. What do chronically overstimulated dopamine receptors produce on their own? Nothing resembling a choice. The choice comes from the irreducible self-referencing loops of interactions between the dopamine receptors and the other mechanical bits of the brain. No particular bit can generate human behavior; only all of the bits and the interactions between them taken together can do that. But taken together as one system, rather than as segmented bits of matter, that's usually called a person.

I don't follow your reasoning.

Dopamine receptors alone don't produce a decision. But make changes to them and it will impact the decisions/behaviour of the person. (ex. chronic overstimulation leads to needing to chase bigger "highs" to get the same level of response.)

The VPMC alone doesn't produce a decision. But remove it/damage it/restrict it's interaction with other parts of the brain and it will impact the decisions/behaviour of the person. (Ex. leads to less emotionally driven decision making, difficulty developing and maintaining friendships/relationships.)

Oxytocin levels alone don't produce a decision. But increase or reduces them and it will impact the decisions/behaviour of the person. (Ex. higher levels lead to more trusting, less aggressive to in-group people (family, friends) but less pro-social to strangers.)

Yes, of course no single element in the brain produces a decision on it's own. But each (that is active for a given decision) does influence, to varying degrees, the ultimate decision. It is the sum of those elements that is ultimately responsible for the decision. And the sum of those elements is usually called the brain.

I agree that it might not be useful or appropriate to talk about the level of VPMC activation when talking about me choosing between soup or salad for lunch, but that doesn't mean you can handwave away the mechanical elements of the brain and assume some special property emerges when you consider the brain as a whole.

(Also, are you implying strong emergence or weak emergence?)

I'm not assuming; I know for certain that some special property emerges when you consider the brain as a whole. Conscious experience exists. It can't be coherently doubted.
But nothing you see when examining a dopamine receptor would tell you that.
So it follows that the properties of the little parts of the brain are not anything like the properties of the whole person.
Free will involves conscious decisions. That means it's a whole person level phenomenon. It's not just useful to think of it at this level. It's the only coherent way to think about it. Anything else would be like failing to find the conscious experience in a dopamine receptor.

Conscious experience ≠ Free will
Making decisions ≠ Free will

You're not disagreeing with anything I've said.
Conscious experience ≠ free will, but free will is a conscious experience.
Making decisions ≠ free will, but free will involves making decisions.

> "Conscious experience exists."

The appearance of it certainly does. What remains an open question is the nature of consciousness and what, if any, casual power it has. Many theories feel that consciousness doesn't drive anything but it a by-product of neural activity (ex. illusionism, identity theory, etc).

You absolutely are making a (big) assumption if you want to treat consciousness as the driver behind decisions rather than the brain. (And need to address some serious questions such as how can an emergent property push around neurons such that "decisions" turn into physical actions.)

​

> "the properties of the little parts of the brain are not anything like the properties of the whole person."

I don't understand how this addresses my point. I'll try to be direct - when we change the "little parts" you change the behaviour of the whole person. So the "little parts" are crucial to the discussion and cannot be hand-waved away.

​

> "Free will involves conscious decisions."

I disagree and I explained why. Conscious decisions (which I called deliberations) are not "free" if the elements are constrained. I don't think you addressed that.

​

> "Anything else would be like failing to find the conscious experience"

Conscious experiences arises from the sum of the "little parts" of the brain and when you change the "little parts" you change the conscious experience. So you can't just ignore the "little parts" and say they are irrelevant when they give rise to and shape the conscious experience.

Free will would be a conscious experience, yes.
Free will would involve making decisions, yes.
However, the fact that we have a conscious experience and make decisions is absolutely not evidence of free will.

I like to think of it like this: your thoughtful-self is a pinball. Your body is the pinball machine (which includes the pinball). The player of pinball you can think of as any of the following: the big bang, your parents at moment of conception, the entire universe and its contents. From the perspective of the pinball you know only that you are rolling around maybe on a trajectory, maybe seemingly at random, all over the place, no apparent cause. But your body subconsciously is a very controlled space with a lot of clearly defined physical rules that actually place your thoughts wherever they are at any moment. And of course, the drivers of all of those bodily events are all things our body interacts with.

The key here is that Laplace's Demon doesn't know what an "otherwise" is. The Demon has no notion of possibility, no notion of an ability (something that "can" happen or that we "can" do). The Demon always knows what will happen and what we will do. If we want to know what will happen we can ask the Demon. But if we ask the Demon, "What can happen?", the Demon will not know what we are talking about. The Demon, being omniscient, has never had any reason to evolve the notion of a "possibility".

It is only because we are not omniscient, like Laplace's Demon, that we have evolved the notion of possibilities. The notion of possibility has these qualities:

1. A possibility exists solely within the imagination. We cannot drive a car across the possibility of a bridge. We can only drive across an actual bridge.
2. A possibility is an essential token for certain logical operations, such as planning, inventing, creating, and choosing. Without this token these operations become impossible. For example: We cannot build an actual bridge without first imagining a possible bridge.
3. Most possibilities will never happen. We may expect one possibility to happen, but we never expect them all to happen.
4. As soon as any possibility is realized, we cease calling it a "possibility" and immediately begin calling it an "actuality". A possibility is the opposite of an actuality.
5. There is a separate language and logic used when speaking in the context of possibilities versus the context of actualities. We smoothly switch from one context to the other when triggered by certain words. For example, when speaking of what "can" happen we are in the context of possibilities, but when speaking of what "is" or "will" happen, we are in the context of actualities.
6. When we know for certain what will happen, we do not use the word "can" or "possible" or "able" and other similar words. It is only when we do not know for certain what "will" happen that we switch to the context of possibilities and use words like "can" or "ability" or "could".

The choosing operation, like addition or subtraction, requires at least two inputs before it can begin. The inputs are called "options" and are logically assumed to be possible to choose. If we believe that we cannot choose an option or that we cannot carry out an option, then it is excluded for not being a "real" possibility. But any option that is choosable and realizable is considered a real possibility. There must, by logical necessity, be at least two real options before choosing can begin.

We must conclude from this that there will always be two inevitable outputs from every choosing operation: (1) The single option that we "will" choose and (2) at least one other option that we "could have" chosen but would not choose.

Thus, "could have done otherwise" will always be true, even though "would have done otherwise" will always be false.

Whenever we discuss what we "could have done", we are switching from the context of actualities to the context of possibilities, which leaves the real world behind and enters the imagination, where all possibilities exist. We are no longer speaking of what we "did" choose to do, but instead we are returning to that point in the past, where we had two or more things that we "could" choose to do. We may even be introducing to this imaginary scenario new possibilities which did not occur to us at the time. The point of this exercise is to evaluate our prior choices in order to make better choices in the future.