Free Will
If intelligence is reducible to chance and necessity and the human mind is the product of non-directed naturalistic evolution, is free will an oxymoron? In the comments of our post on vacuity Allen MacNeill gave his position:
…The reason I bring up the summer course is that for over a decade Will Provine has focused that course on precisely that question, and has forcefully argued in the negative. I must admit that when I first started participating in his course, I disagreed with him, but over the years his arguments (and those of the authors he has used as references) have convinced me that the very idea of human free will is an oxymoron. The problem as I see it is not with the term “will,” if by this we mean that internal neurophysiological state which causes us to behave in the ways that we do (including, of course, having the thoughts that we do). No, the problem is with the word “free.” Free from what? Free from coersion, perhaps, but free from natural/physical causation? Absurd. As Will always points out in his evolution course (and in the summer seminar course when he teaches it), either our actions are caused by the biochemical processes that occur in our nervous systems (in which case they cannot possibly be “free”), or they are “caused” by magic (i.e. “spooky action at a distance” as Einstein called it), which any good physicist should affirm as being completely impossible.
The paradox of course is that even most scientists “feel” like they have free will, and consequently affirm that it exists. However, the “feeling” of free will, as Daniel Wegner has pointed out (see http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?tid=8770&ttype=2), is just that: a “feeling.” As I have argued elsewhere, this feeling (or rather the neurophysiology that underlies it) is probably itself an evolutionary adaptation, in that it allows us to use our own behavior (or rather our perceptions of our own behavior) as guidelines for the formulation of a “theory of mind” which we can then use to interpret and guide our actions.
PvM seems to disagree:
Would you agree then that there is no such thing as free will?
–Nope. What makes you think that?
My answer: simply because it seems to follow directly from your other claims. There are probably few enough issues in which I agree with Prof. Provine; but here he has convinced me as well as Allen and I can’t say I see any reasonable alternative. But I’d love to hear your reasons for accepting free will, while rejecting the possiblity of anything beyond the workings of chance and deterministic natural law in human intelligence, and why you believe your position is logically consistent.
Update: Clarification below
Freawaru:
Wow! I’m VERY impressed! To give up on “free will” is much harder than to give up on God, as Greg Graffin’s book makes very clear. Although the overwhelming majority of evolutionary biologists have done the latter (i.e. they’re atheists or agnostics), to give up on “free will” puts one in a tiny minority, even among atheists. Will Provine suspects that this is because most evolutionary biologists haven’t really thought the idea through, but I suspect it goes deeper than that. Virtually everyone has experienced the “feeling of free will,” but as Daniel Wegner has pointed out, this “feeling” does absolutely nothing to either verify or falsify whether free will actually exists. After all, we all experience ourselves as single entities, when any freshman biology student can tell you that we are actually aggregates of hundreds of trillions of cells (each of them a community of symbiotic prokaryotes, i.e. mitochondria and their eukaryotic hosts). Most people also “feel” like they are one person psychologically, when the work of Sperry, Gazaniga, and other neurologists have conclusively shown that we are actually a “confederacy of mental modules,” often with conflicting (or even outright opposed) motivations.
To quote Obi-Wan, “you’ve taken your first step into a much larger world.”
I will post more on this subject, but tempus fugit (and the 26th of June is looming ever larger)…
Comment by Allen MacNeill — June 13, 2006 @ 3:24 pm
Allen
Will Provine suspects that this is because most evolutionary biologists haven’t really thought the idea through, but I suspect it goes deeper than that.
Comment by Amy Lester — June 13, 2006 @ 6:29 pm
Just a quick amplification of a previous comment (taking a break from other writing):
It’s important to realize that just because when one makes a choice or a decision that it “felt free” is absolutely no reason to think that it was, indeed, “free.” Before one can conclude that, it would first be necessary to define what “free” means in the context of human behavior and cognition. Free from what? Direct physical coersion yes, but free also from genetic predispositions, past experience, learned opinions, habits, etc. And once you’ve decided what you’re “free” from, how does such “freedom” actually affect one’s behavior and cognition, if at all?
The sensation that one usually feels when confronting these questions – like you’ve fallen down an endless rabbit hole – should be the first clue that even asking such questions is pointless, except insofar as asking them illuminates the nonsensical nature of the phrase “free will.”
Comment by Allen MacNeill — June 13, 2006 @ 7:00 pm
The sensation that one usually feels when confronting these questions – like you’ve fallen down an endless rabbit hole – should be the first clue that even asking such questions is pointless, except insofar as asking them illuminates the nonsensical nature of the phrase “free will.”
Well said. Except that the “sensation” may be misleading … ;)
Comment by Amy Lester — June 13, 2006 @ 7:05 pm
Allen–
I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I should have been clearer above– I can’t say I’m sure there isn’t such a thing as free will. Just Provine’s conclusions there seem to me the only logical ones, given his premises. You know how much I disagree on the premises :).
Given design, of course, there still might be no such thing as free will; but I don’t know how strong the arguments are for that.
Comment by Freawaru — June 13, 2006 @ 9:22 pm
Thanks for the clarification, Freawaru.
To follow up (and to bring in the kind of arguments being presented elsewhere), I’m curious what kind of evidence could possibly be forthcoming to either validate or falsify the existance (or non-existance) of free will. Remember, simply having the “feeling” of free will isn’t evidence at all.
Robert Kane ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kane_(philosopher)) has argued forcefully for the existence of free will in several books, some of which have been texts for past versions of the “Seminar in History of Biology” course at Cornell. Ted Honderich has also written extensively on the question, as has Daniel Dennett. None of them, IMO, have presented the slightest bit of evidence either for or against the position that free will exists, or even that its existence could somehow be empirically verified.
On the contrary, all arguments for and against the existence of free will are isomorphic with arguments for and against the existence of intelligent design and an intelligent designer: they are arguments by exclusion in a logical category in which exclusion is impossible. In a word, junk.
Comment by Allen MacNeill — June 13, 2006 @ 9:55 pm
It’s important to realize that just because when one makes a choice or a decision that it “felt free” is absolutely no reason to think that it was, indeed, “free.” Before one can conclude that, it would first be necessary to define what “free” means in the context of human behavior and cognition. Free from what? Direct physical coersion yes, but free also from genetic predispositions, past experience, learned opinions, habits, etc. And once you’ve decided what you’re “free” from, how does such “freedom” actually affect one’s behavior and cognition, if at all?
As I like to put it, is a pig free to be not a pig?
Comment by ivy privy — June 14, 2006 @ 12:20 am
Freewaru misses the point. My statement had no relevance to the issue of free will. While some seem to be quick to presume that free will, whatever that term may mean, cannot exist when processes of regularity and chance govern, it seems clear that we have choice. As Allen points out, and as I have argued as well, human intelligence can very well be captured in regularities and chance. For instance the future actions and behaviors depend strongly on for instance the past behaviors and actions.
I am quite neutral on the issue of free will as I see it as a mostly poorly defined term.
Comment by PvM — June 14, 2006 @ 4:08 am
Let me put it this way. You go further than most of my atheist friends on the chance/regularity thing; they are more often than not willing to allow that there may potentially be something more to human intelligence than chance and deterministic laws, and often this seems to be because of a strong belief in free will. Yet you say that human intelligence is reducible to those forces, and at the same time: “it seems clear that we have choice.”
To me it doesn’t seem logically consistent; but I imagine you must have some sort of logic behind it, since you don’t seem the sort of person who would believe something just for convenience. So what is your logic?
And you don’t need to answer if you’d rather not. Just something that has been puzzling me for awhile…
Comment by Freawaru — June 14, 2006 @ 11:06 am
I imagine that it might be easier here to demonstrate non-existence than existence. If one could determine (as PvM seems to think proved) that the workings of human will and intelligence were completely dependent on chance and deterministic natural law, then surely one would be forced to that conclusion?
But then, while the deterministic part might be half-way manageable, the chance aspect of things makes it perhaps impossible.
Comment by Freawaru — June 14, 2006 @ 11:13 am
Freawaru,
There are some important develoments in quantum physics and mathematical theory which suggests intelligence can not be the product of chance and necessity. If true, it would render some of the discussion about free will a moot point. First, I point out that a mind with a free will may be at the root of reality:
If mind and conscious free will intelligence are primitives of a system, they can not be the products of material chance and necessity.
Morowitz is publicly an anti-IDer (though I suspect he has closet sympathies). The above quote can be found in Mind’s Eye edited by (of all people) Daniel Dennett.
Roger Penrose in Emperor’s New Mind makes some powerful arguments against intelligence (and thus free will) being purely deterministic. Paul Davies book The Mind of God explores the connecting of free will and Godel’s incompeteness.
I wanted to include some of these data points as I think they may be relevant to the discussion of free will. I should also point out, Dembki believes free will choice is the salient characteristic of intelligence:
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — June 14, 2006 @ 5:36 pm
If human consciousness is a necessary component of quantum mechanics, then how did physical processes happen prior to the origin of human consciousness? Even if one is a strict Biblical creationist, humans did not come onto the scene until day five, which means that unless human consciousness were somehow “existing” in nature without a body, it could not possibly have interacted with the quantum structure of physical reality. Of course, if one is an OEC or an evolutionary biologist, the length of time the universe would have had to get along without human consciousness to interact with quantum mechanical processes would be measured in billions of years.
Morowitz suffers from a serious misunderstanding of what exactly quantum mechanics means for human consciousness. Rather than human consciousness being a requirement for quantum mechanical processes, human consciousness is merely a requirement for certain types of measurements of particles in the quantum domain (i.e. at around the Plank length). If such measurements are not made, the quantum universe continues blissfully unaffected.
If, as the result of some catastrophe (perhaps of our own making), humans become completely extinct, then it is pretty clear to most scientists that the universe will continue tooling right along as it did before our arrival on the scene.
Where, then, is human consciousness (and free will, which is not necessarily a part of consciousness at all) in all of this?
Comment by Allen MacNeill — June 14, 2006 @ 5:56 pm
I think a post of mine on UncommonDescent may be relevant here:
http://www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives/1203
My personal take is essentially that of Polkinghorne — that Physics is an open system, and that we are both free and bound. We can’t go beyond the laws of physics, but the laws of physics do not fully determine the outcomes. A good read from Polkinghorne is here:
http://www.starcourse.org/jcp/religion.html
The relevant paragraph is next to last.
Comment by Jonathan Bartlett — June 14, 2006 @ 8:19 pm
We had a thread along these same lines a few days ago on UncommonDescent. Check it out here:
http://www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives/1203
My own view is that physics is an open system, from which intelligent agents can make choices, all of which must be physically valid. We are free as far as physics allows us, but not free in that we do have physical constraints on our actions. The notion that physics is a closed system I think is both a problematic and unnecessary starting point.
For a good discussion of how this idea affects society as a whole, see Philip Johnson’s “Reason in the Balance”.
Comment by Jonathan Bartlett — June 14, 2006 @ 9:24 pm
Roger Penrose in Emperor’s New Mind makes some powerful arguments against intelligence (and thus free will) being purely deterministic.
I read that book, or at least I read a large portion of it before its ridiculousness built to the point that I could take no more. I did not find Penrose’s arguments to be “powerful”. I regard Penrose’s idea that consciousness is somehow due to the actions of quantum gravity on microtubules to be unlikely und unnecessary. I hope that Penrose is embarrassed to have written such a bad book out of his field of expertise, and to have given it such a churlish title.
Comment by ivy privy — June 15, 2006 @ 12:40 am
I read that book, or at least I read a large portion of it
I hope you read fast, ivy! To quote the great Arthur Kornberg, “the time you lost can never be regained.”
I encourage anyone interested in promoting intelligent design to read and re-read the book at least ten times.
Comment by Amy Lester — June 15, 2006 @ 2:05 am
Penrose is a physicist, not a neurobiologist. Speaking as an evolutionary biologist who has worked a lot with neurobiologists (not to mention majoring in it at Cornell as an undergraduate), Penrose’s understanding of neurobiology is tenuous at best (IMO, OC). Daniel Dennett does a somewhat better job in Consciousness Explained, but even there his lack of biology training is often apparent (he’s a philosopher, after all). And Francis Crick fared not much better upon switching from molecular genetics to “consciousness studies.”
When I see how many basic mistakes such people make when writing outside of their areas of expertise, it reinforces in me the conclusion that I should stick to evolutionary biology, and leave the amateur speculation to people with inflated opinions about the extent of their knowledge.
BTW (and forgive me for going somewhat off-topic) has anyone noticed how quickly the opinions and writings of Carl Sagan have evaporated from the public and scientific arenas? I knew Carl when he was here at Cornell, and admired him for his ability to communicate basic scientific concepts to the general public, but his science was definitely light-weight compared with people like Martin Harwit or Frank Drake (whose ideas Carl popularized, and for which he wound up getting a lot of credit).
My guess is, people will still be reading Darwin and Fisher and Haldane and Wright a hundred years from now, but Sagan…an historical curiosity at best.
Comment by Allen MacNeill — June 15, 2006 @ 2:43 am
I assume that you mean to say that you believe that it follows directly from my other claims.
Why can free will not be captured by chance and regularity? Perhaps it would be helpful if you could explain to us why you believe my position is logically inconsistent?
Comment by PvM — June 15, 2006 @ 3:11 am
Unsupported assertions my dear friend. And yes I am aware of your infatuation with Dembski and understand that it may cause some dissonance when people point out the gaping holes in his claims.
Let’s just start with his premise that intelligent design is that which remains after regularity and chance are eliminated. What does this mean for the concept of design?
I’d argue it shows that the concept of design can thus not differentiate between apparant and actual design. And thus we are back at the beginning, with ID being vacuous in providing any understanding of science.
Comment by PvM — June 15, 2006 @ 3:14 am
Why was my comment in response to Allen re Carl Sagan deleted?
Comment by Amy Lester (et al) — June 15, 2006 @ 4:48 am
Those are very good questions, and I was reluctant to get into the details, but here is the gist of the theories that are out there that offer at least some responses to your question. (I don’t necessarily subscribe to all of them):
1. The consciousness of humans in the present shapes physical law in the past (John Wheeler’s Participatory Anthropic Principle). This is possible since in quantum theory, the future shapes the past. This is closer to Morowitz’s position. Thus human consciousness in the present is essential for the laws of physics to exist. Wheeler argues this based on unified guage theory. I’m not saying, I’m in agreement, but that is his position, and a book review in Nature touched on that topic some time ago…. This has been called Wheeler’s self-excited, or self-creating universe.
2. Extending Wheeler’s ideas, Wheeler’s student Frank Tipler posulates the consciousness of humans in the present becomes the consciousness of God in the future, and this future Ultimate cause is what drives past history (Tipler’s Omega Point Theory).
3 An Ultimatate non-material consciousness must exist ( Tipler, Barrow, Belinfante, and others). Some would call this Ultimate consciousness with an ultimate free will, God. Tipler’s God would be different probably from Belinfante’s God, but whoever He is, quantum theory suggests His necessity.
http://www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives/852
4. God acts through His consciousness and the consciouness of humans to shape the physical universe and the laws of physics.
I am sympathetic to #4. I would considered #4 bordering on a theological position, but because of Barrow, Tipler, Belinfante and others, they have made the God hypothesis a legitimate scientific possiblity. Thus, although I have some personal beliefs about the nature of God, in terms of ID discussion, I restict the attributes of the ultimate designer to what can be deduced from physical law alone rather than from religious beliefs.
But back to the question of free will. The fundamental point is that Wigner made a reasonable argument that quantum theory can be found consistent if there are non-material entities apart from the physical universe. He presumed the non-material entity is consciousness. This interpretation of physical laws had obvious metaphysical implications which no doubt have hindered acceptance of Wigner’s conclusions.
Wigner’s solution of invoking conscious free will agents in the universe was given a logical extension by Barrow and Tipler that there must be an ulitimate conscious non-material Mind.
I wanted to get Wigner’s essay on the Mind-Body question, but it was in a collection of essays that cost something like $200 so I guess I’ll have to defer reading that paper.
Pro-ID neuroscientist Jeffrey Schwartz had a peer-reviewed paper which referenced Wigner’s views.
http://www.uncommondescent.com/index.php/archives/189
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — June 15, 2006 @ 7:04 am
And this is supposed to make ID scientifically what? As far as free will is concerned, how does this reconcile with the deterministic nature of the Schrodinger equation and quantum mechanics? What may have hindered acceptance is the lack of empirical or may I see even theoretical foundations.
Is the ‘god’ of Tippler, the God of Christianity? Is this God supernatural ?
And yet you are a young earth creationist. Seems self contradictory. And are you sure that you are not confusing physical law with ‘god’? Is God somehow reducible to deterministic laws? But I am glad to hear that you thus reject Intelligent Design ala Dembski et al and have focused on what you believe are perhaps more scientifically defendable positions.
So how does Tipler identify the nature of his Omega Point?
Yes, purely scientific indeed…
And when/how will this God state be reached and by whom?
At the end of time…
So how is this state of an altruistic god reached>
Review,/a>
Conclusion:
I had no idea you were such a post-modernist yec’er Sal.
And contrary to Sal’s claims, Quantum Theory does not show ‘god’s necessity. At most it shows a possibility.
Needless to say, as Allen has so eloquently argued, the issue of free-will and mind/body is far from resolved. And yet based upon the a-posteriori assumption of determinism, science can be quite productive, even in describing the behavior of humans.
Comment by PvM — June 15, 2006 @ 3:30 pm
Virtually all of this speculation about the interactions between human consciousness and quantum mechanics stems from two related quantum mechanical principles: the Schroedinger equation and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Both of these are based upon the idea that at the quantum level particles exhibit “indeterminacy”; that is, their wave fronts don’t collapse (and thereby exhibit their “particle” nature until they interact with something, such as the apparatus used by an experimenter to determine their characteristics as particles (to determine the momentum of an electron, for example). Both the Schroedinger equation and the Heisenberg principle assert that humans must interact with particles to collapse their wave fronts/”fix” their probabilities so that they can be measured.
However, if humans don’t interact with particles, they continue to interact with each other in ways that are best described using mathematical formalisms that apply to waves, rather than particles. Using these formalisms, there is no necessity to invoke either the Schroedinger nor Heisenberg formalisms, as they are concerned with the particulate aspects of wave/particle entities.
Again, as the geological and fossil record indicates, the evolution and/or continued persistence of humans are certainly not inevitable. Had the K-T bolide been closer to the size of the one that produced the crater recently discovered in Antarctica, or had the K-T transition been accompanied by the kind of super-volcanism exhibited by the Siberian basalt traps, there wouldn’t be anything more sophisticated that cockroaches on the Earth’s surface (and I somehow suspect that cockroach consciousness is not generally concerned with measuring the momentum of electrons). Alternatively, if one of the larger Apollo objects is perturbed ever-so-slightly and strikes the Earth at some point in the future, human consciousness will be completely eliminated from the Universe. Arthur C. Clarke’s “Nine Billion Names of God” notwithstanding, I suspect that the universe will go on without us, as it did before we arrived on the scene.
Furthermore, given our current knowledge of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, it is certain that at some indefinite time in the future (but within the next 10ex100 years), the universe will have reached approximate overall thermodynamic equilibrium, making all consciousness and measurements literally impossible. But 10ex100 years is a drop in the bucket compared with eternity, isn’t it? So once the “heat death” of the universe has settled in, nothing will happen every again, for eternity (as far as our understanding of cosmology can current inform us).
Both Wigner and Wheeler are/were great theoreticians (the former in atomic/nuclear theory and the latter in general relativity), but their ideas about the interactions between human consciousness and quantum mechanics were and are considered both radical and loopy by most physicists. For example:
“The consciousness causes collapse theory can be considered as a speculative appendage to almost any interpretation of quantum mechanics and many physicists reject it as unverifiable and introducing unnecessary elements into physics. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness_causes_collapse
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_interpretation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretation_of_quantum_mechanics
Of interest also is the idea that one resolution of the problems posed by the Copenhagen interpretation is the “many worlds” theory (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation ). String theory also includes a “many worlds” component, which is arrived at independently from the Everett version. This consilience suggests that a “many worlds” formalism (MWT) is perhaps the most accurate (and empirically testable, BTW). And, as you are probably aware, the MWT instantly and completely undermines any possibility of intelligent design or other forms of determinism.
Comment by Allen MacNeill — June 15, 2006 @ 3:59 pm
1. The consciousness of humans in the present shapes physical law in the past (John Wheeler’s Participatory Anthropic Principle). This is possible since in quantum theory, the future shapes the past. This is closer to Morowitz’s position. Thus human consciousness in the present is essential for the laws of physics to exist. Wheeler argues this based on unified guage theory. I’m not saying, I’m in agreement, but that is his position, and a book review in Nature touched on that topic some time ago…. This has been called Wheeler’s self-excited, or self-creating universe.
Since you mention Wheeler, it seems fair to mention that either his position in consciousness and quantum observation has shifted, or else he has not picked a single position and stuck with it. Here’s Wheel on the topic in Discover magazine in 2002:
Andrei Linde is a great physicist and a deep thinker, but he and I do disagree on the role of consciousness in observation. The process whereby the macroscopic world reacts to a quantum event—the process that makes reality—can, in my view, be accomplished with inanimate matter. Following Niels Bohr, I like to call this process “registration” rather than observation (which too strongly suggests human involvement). Like David Schuller, I find it hard to draw a line between the conscious observer and the inanimate one.
Comment by ivy privy — June 15, 2006 @ 6:32 pm
BTW (and forgive me for going somewhat off-topic) has anyone noticed how quickly the opinions and writings of Carl Sagan have evaporated from the public and scientific arenas? I knew Carl when he was here at Cornell, and admired him for his ability to communicate basic scientific concepts to the general public, but his science was definitely light-weight compared with people like Martin Harwit or Frank Drake (whose ideas Carl popularized, and for which he wound up getting a lot of credit).
I read a couple of his books for the first time within the last year or so. The quality is not consistent. A chapter such as “The Amnitic Universe” in Broca’s Brain can ruin an entire book.
Comment by ivy privy — June 15, 2006 @ 6:36 pm
The meaning is essentially the same; it seems to me that it follows directly from your other claims, but you have been asked to set me right there.
Sure… do we agree that deterministic natural laws and chance are both forces that are impersonal? That do not belong, so to speak, to particular people?
Then, if there is no more to the actions of human will and intelligence than chance and deterministic natural laws, i.e., the results of non-personal, outside forces, your thoughts and actions are not determined by yourself but rather either by these laws or by chance.
Supposing there is an entity we can call “you”, this “you” has no more control over your thoughts and actions than does a bit of rock rolling downhill, or a windmill in a desert. There is no sense in which this can be called free.
When you get up in the morning the neurochemistry in your brain determines what you will think and what you will do; but not, as schoolchildren used to consider it; a fine machine working for you as master, rather guided soly by itself. Natural selection has wired this machine to act, in general, according to your best interests, but that is the only connection between “you” and your will. And it is your brain which guides your thinking and acting, nothing more mysterious.
Or? where do I leave your way of thinking?
Comment by Freawaru — June 16, 2006 @ 1:30 am
Laws of chance still allow for a lot of variation. In other words, if your choices are infinite, why would the fact that all can be reduced to regularity and chance require one to accept that there is no concept of choice? Of course, choice may be guided by previous experiences but to argue that there is no free will could benefit from a definition of what free will really is. When I am driving a car down the road, I am constrained by natural law. I cannot go up or down, but I can make decisions where to switch lanes, where to exit and what speed.
Comment by PvM — June 16, 2006 @ 8:28 am
Quantum Computing is very suggestive of MWT. A q-bit can be both true and false simultaneously. One of my co-workers is an expert on the topic (former student of Weinberg). However, aspects of quantum wierdness which makes quantum computing possible (empirically demonstrated already) is plausible under other interpretations.
The transactional interpretation is my personal favorite. John Cramer, advocate of the Transactional Interpretation points out an experimental development may have well spelled the end of Everett’s many worlds.
Many Worlds theory invalidated
an excellent essay by Dr. Cramer is at
The Blind Men and the Quantum
Finally, Barrow and Tipler point out that MWT (if true) does not restrict a final teleology (a quantum computer finally resolves to a single defined state, driven by the teleological goal of the operator), thus they show MWT is not necessarily at variance with intelligence and a final teleology for all worlds.
I do however appreciate your willingness to discuss these difficult topics as the issue of free will and consciousness must necessarily be at the fringe of our scientific understanding. I think you’ve given a very good defense of the view opposite of my own.
Salvador
Comment by Salvador T. Cordova — June 16, 2006 @ 9:21 am
What do you mean by laws of chance? I assume we’re looking at the same thing we were before: simple chance and deterministic law?
If a particular force involved in a choice allows for a lot of variation in outcome, the decision-making is not reducible to that. For instance, suppose a fair coin is flipped. Considering our timeline to be the moment directly after it is flipped to after the time when it sits still on the tabletop, one can analyze the determining forces acting on it. It’s final position and orientation is partly dependent on deterministic law– it will go down, not up– but a lot of variation is allowed– it might be heads, or tail, or perhaps balancing on its edge.
But all of this variation is reducible to chance, and the actions of deterministic law and chance fully determine it. There is no more variation, no more choice, after both those impersonal forces have been factored in.
If, after your laws and chance have been factored in, you still have variation, the decision-making among those choices is then not reducible to chance and deterministic law. But surely this contradicts your position?
It is not the choices alone which can be reduced to regularity and chance. The process of decision-making between them is completely reducible to those forces as well.
You decide that you are going to get up and pour yourself a cup of coffee. There is probably at least an aspect of chance to this decision; it occured to you, somewhat randomly, to get the coffee. You may, ofcourse, be guided by previous experience; consider that to be the programming given by the environment and so detemininistic law. There is also deterministic law influencing the decision… the thirst on your tongue, for instance.
But by our model there is no irreducible intelligence or will taking part in the decision. While the elementary-school way of looking at it might be divided into three neat sections.
………..decision
…. …../… | ……..
chance– law– will
in own diagram of reality the “will” is further determined by chance and law. But either it is fully constrained by them, or it is not. If it is fully constrained, there is nothing “free” about any choices you make– they are completely determined by outside influences. If they are not fully constrained and you have some measure of a choice, your will is not reducible to chance and deterministic law… there is some fraction that is something else.
So a definition of free will might be useful, but I don’t think it’s necessary to prove that there isn’t any. All you need is a halfway-normal understanding of the word free. Are your choices all fully constrained by the action forces of chance and determinism, or are they not? If they are, there is nothing anyone could consider free about them… you think you are making choices, but “you” have in fact no say in them at all. It is all about the actions of impersonal forces .
And yes, they look personal, but that appearance is only an emergent property caused the actions of chance and necessity acting on your particular self for a long time ( on the generations of your ancestors before you were born, starting from the origins of life, we could say; and then on yourself since babyhood). It’s an interesting illusion, really. But chance and natural law are impersonal and even universal, and the concept of a personal aspect to your decision making is completely illusory.
Yes, your actions are constrained by natural laws, but why do you think you can make decisions? Then they are not completely determined by natural laws. The remainder may be determined by chance, in which you have equally no say; or else there is something to will and intelligence that is irreducible.
Comment by Freawaru — June 16, 2006 @ 12:24 pm
Your basic fallacy is that a decision guided by chance and natural cannot be free. If that is your definition then you, as has Dembski in his explanatory, have defined free will as something begging the question.
If I get to a fork in the road and I have two choices, my choices can be defined by my desires. For instance past knowledge has informed me that one road goes to a town while the other one takes me to a forrest. Based on my intentions or desires, I decide that today is the day to visit the town to do buy food and tools. But just when I am about to turn onto the road that leads to the town, the sun comes out and inspired by the beautiful day, I decide to spend the rest of my day in the forrest. I think the problem with the term chance is that many think it to be random and thus there is no choice. Chance to me means variations around a theme (a regularity) and is the ultimate source of choices.
halfway normal understanding??? A bit strong I’d say. so let’s look at the logic. What does it mean that you make choices? There exist multiple outcomes and only one of them can be actualized. In the end it is the one who makes the choice who sets in motion a new outcome. In other words, choice actualizes from a set of possible outcomes. Constraints need not be always enforced but rather constraints set the more limited set (which can still be infinite) of possible outcomes. When driving down a free way, you may ‘will’ yourself to fly upwards or dive into the ground but natural laws prohibit you from taking certain actions. And yet you still have a multitude of directions to take and only one continuous set can be actualized by you (unless one accepts multiverses). Social norms, traffic laws, morality and a multitude of additional reasons may guide your choices. You may refuse to speed because it is against the law or perhaps you decide to violate the law for a variety of reasons. You may chose to hit the brakes despite your knowledge that informs you that such actions can have catastrophic consequences on this busy freeway.
So why should I accept that free will has to be external from chance and regularity? Just because free will is thus constrained and not as free as when it would be external? So let’s turn things around. What would free will external to chance and regularity look like? Could it make different decisions than if it were part of chance and regularity? I can see only one real possibility namely that such outside-natural free will can actuate supernatural processes as it is not constrained by natural law. In other words, the only kind of free will which is not captured by this may be a supernatural kind. Such a concept however raises a myriad of additional problems. For instance, assume that such a free will causes an action which goes against natural law. Quantum theory does not limit all the molecules to line up in a manner which allows the car to ‘fly’. Such an occurrence may be extremely small but small probabilities can still happen. So, even actions which appear to be super natural fall within the laws of regularity and chance. In other words, now we get to the question of: Is there really anything like the supernatural?
I am however unconvinced that the existence of natural laws and chance somehow undermine the concept of free will. We still have infinite choices, just less infinite than if these laws did not exist.
And even though these decisions are constrained, why can they not be free? Only one outcome out of infinite can actually be actualized? Even if the outcome is from a finite set, there is still choice. Even if the choices are based on rationalization, only one of the outcomes can happen and based on the outcome a whole new set of continuous uninterrupted events will take place and large sets of events will never happen.
Comment by PvM — June 16, 2006 @ 5:51 pm
Our main difference lies in the concept of constrained vs. determined. If the outcome of your “choice” is completely determined by something outside your control, you have no free will. You argue that if free will is constrained/guided by those forces, there may still be free will. Certainly there may, but that is besides the point.
Is human intelligence and will completely reducible to chance and deterministic law, and thus its decision making completely determined by those forces, or is it not? If your choice is only constrained or guided, not made, by these forces, it is not completely reducible to them.
If it is reducible, we are not talking about chance and deterministic law “constraining” your set of possible outcomes and changing your choice from an infinite set to one that is probably also infinite (or, at least, finite). We are talking about chance and deterministic law determining your set of possible outcomes– i.e., reducing that infinite set to one. And to select one from one is no choice; there is no room for free will after that.
Another major issue
It makes no difference whether chance is random or not; that is a question for another debate. Chance (as a force) can only be a source of choices if there is some other force to do the choosing.
Would we agree, though, that chance (the force) is impersonal? Or, at least, that though possibly constrained by the natural laws relating you, it is not determined by the “you” in the case (a scenario in which I think you would be the one begging the question)?
Comment by Freawaru — June 17, 2006 @ 12:09 pm
If you have an infinite set of pathways and only one will be taken then whether or not you are constrained by regularity and chance in your choices makes no difference. It is in the end the reduction of infinite to one which you is instantiated by your decision. Your decision sets in motion a whole set of pathways not just affecting you but also the world around you, leading to further constraints for others and choices for others as well. And even though these are your actions which now constrain the options for others, it seems hard to argue that these others have no free will just because you set in motion a particular path. Infinite amount of possibilities remain at ever time/space increment and only one sequence of cause and effect chains can be followed by our world. As such there will be always a material chain of events which can be reduced to chance and regularity. And yet none of the outcomes are fully predictable which means that even setting in motion a particular pathway is no guarantee for outcome. What our mind however allows us to do is to gather information about the present and compare them against past experiences and know constraints to find the best pathway to follow. Sometimes such a decision is of particular importance, sometimes the direct consequences seem inconsequential. If we had no free will in the sense that we get to instantiate one out of an infinite outcomes and we get to affect the world around us, and thus the outcome for others, then the claim that there is no ‘free will’ because you imagine the existence of a force of chance taking making the choice. Is chance ‘impersonal’? I am not sure, chance is very personal as it basically describes the variation in responses from a particular person. If a person were completely predictable then perhaps there may be no room for free will because the environment fully determines the choices. If however the choices by a person form a distribution around a mean value let’s say, then there will be opportunities to affect the world in an unpredictable manner. In other words, every single time instance becomes a new set of initial conditions where in the former case given an initial condition the future becomes fully determined.
If choices are infinite and the choice is initiated by our actions then how can there not be a ‘free will’?
Comment by PvM — June 17, 2006 @ 6:54 pm
PVM wrote:
“What our mind however allows us to do is to gather information about the present and compare them against past experiences and know constraints to find the best pathway to follow. ”
In this case, it seems to me that the decision that one makes as the result of such a comparison is ultimately constrained by one’s past experiences, and is therefore not “free” (if by “free” one means “unconstrained”).
I find Freawaru’s analysis compelling, and since I also agree with Democritus that “all things are the fruit of chance and necessity,” I am convinced that there is no such thing as “free will.”
Freawaru, I congratulate you on the first clear and definitive analysis of this question that I have read anywhere. Daniel Dennett’s assertion in Freedom Evolves that “free will” somehow is “created” by our choices falls apart as the result of a series of internal logical contradictions. By contrast, your analysis is both consistent and apparently airtight.
Therefore, I am compelled to inquire: Freawaru, do you believe in free will? And if so, what (or Who) in the world could make it possible (pun intended, OC)? Feel free to answer via email if answering in this venue would strike you as unseemly.
Comment by Allen MacNeill — June 19, 2006 @ 5:36 pm
Pim wrote
“What our mind however allows us to do is to gather information about the present and compare them against past experiences and know constraints to find the best pathway to follow. ”
and Allen responded:
In this case, it seems to me that the decision that one makes as the result of such a comparison is ultimately constrained by one’s past experiences, and is therefore not “free” (if by “free” one means “unconstrained”).
Read Pim’s sentence more carefully, Allen. It’s not the past which provides the “constraints.” The constraints are provided by reality. In other words, you are not “free” to “choose” to flap your arms and fly into the sun because it is impossible to do so. I believe that is the sort of constraint Pim was referring to when he spoke of “constraints”.
Of course, one is free to TRY to do so. Most human beings would consider such behavior “insane.”
Freawaru, I congratulate you on the first clear and definitive analysis of this question that I have read anywhere.
Huh. What happened to all arguments for and against the existence of free will are isomorphic with arguments for and against the existence of intelligent design and an intelligent designer: they are arguments by exclusion in a logical category in which exclusion is impossible. In a word, junk. ???
Comment by Amy Lester — June 19, 2006 @ 9:37 pm
It can’t have been all that clear or definitive, as the person who needed convincing– PvM– is still unconvinced.
PvM
The choice is made not by any sort of “you” but simply by impersonal chance and necessity, so “you” have no say in it and thus no free will. You are borne along by forces that begun acting long before your existence and will continue acting long after you are gone.
Look at it this way. You acknowledge that your choices are somewhat constrained by chance and necessity acting from the outside… i.e., decisions made in the past effect you, you can only make decisions in line with the rules of nature, and so forth. But after that you seem to think there are an infinite number of choices, and “you” can make a choice from them, thus demonstrating free will. The thing is the decision that ultimately is made is made not by anything more particular than your brain. And your brain is itself the product of chance and necessity, and acts not as “you” bid it but simply as the programming from those forces bid it to.
The neurochemistry that goes on there is constrained by natural law, yes, but it is also defined by chance and necessity working together in the past, when natural selection formed it, and by chance working now. There is no room for a personal “you” to play any part in the decision at all. Your brain belongs to you, and it works, but that is the limit of the connection.
But maybe I have misunderstood what you meant when you said that human will and intelligence were reducible to chance and necessity. To me this means the same as to say, in math, “can be written in terms of”. Those are the only two forces that exist in the universe and act in the observable world, and all forces we observe are various combinations of them. But from your comments here it would seem that all you mean by it is that we cannot act outside the natural laws and are always subject to chance. These two views are very different; which do you hold?
Allen–
My own view would be a bit closer to Plato’s than to Democritus’; that intelligent and natural causes*, while fully compatible with each other and working in the same realm of space, are not, in the end, reducible to each other.
[*i.e., chance and necessity]
Comment by Freawaru — June 20, 2006 @ 1:53 am
Freawaru wrote:
“You are borne along by forces that begun acting long before your existence and will continue acting long after you are gone.”
It’s interesting how similar this viewpoint is to the Buddhist conception of karma. According to Phillip Kapleau (among others), “karma” refers to the “grand field of cause and effect,” extending infinitely into the past and future. According to this view, one’s acts are entirely constrained by one’s karma; that is to say, by the interplay of cause and effect in one’s past, combined with one’s intentions for the future (and the cause and effect relationships that will pertain in the future).
One of the basic principles of Buddhism is that one can “escape” one’s karma (often called “stepping off the great wheel”, implying a kind of recursion similar to Nietzsche’s “eternal return”) by following the path of the Buddha (usually referred to as the “eight-fold way”). In the tradition that I have followed (Rinzai Zen), this usually happens “suddenly,” in an event referred to as “kensho” in Japanese (or “satori” in Sanskrit). The literal translation of this term is “blowing out,” as in the blowing out of a candle.
In the Rinzai tradition, one cannot “reason” one’s way to Kensho, nor can anyone do it for you. Teachers (usually referred to as “roshi,” the Japanese word for “old man”) can point out the way and suggest techniques to reach it (most of which involve some sort of “breathing meditation,” from which Zen derives its name - the Chinese word “chan” stems from the Sanskrit term “dhyana,” meaning “breath”).
Even in this tradition, however, there may be no “free will” involved. Indeed, it appears to me that achieving enlightenment (via kensho) is simply switching from one system of conditioning (i.e. karma, as provided by the entire world) to another (i.e. the eight-fold Way of the Buddha, which bears some resemblance to the Tao of Lao Tzu). Following the Way/Tao is no more “free” than being “driven” by on’es karma, unless “following” a way can be considered to be more “free” than “being driven” by one’s karma.
Comment by Allen MacNeill — June 20, 2006 @ 2:29 am
Perhaps we have different expectations of free will. Yes, of course we are all guided by our past experiences, our education etc, which is why we can in fact detect design in such areas as criminology, archaelogy. And yet, we get to affect the outcome of our own future and the future of others, whether or not this is through regularity and chance processes or not, we do make a choice, and making a choice is makes us intelligent designers. Since the choice is often informed, such a choice differs in some aspects from many choices made in nature. Although, I would argue that evolution can in fact help understand how the knowledge of the past can help in future evolution. This is the concept of evolvability which includes the genome learning what variation and processes have been successful in the past and which may be likely useful in the future. But perhaps the thought that regular and chance processes can make choices and thus appear to have ‘free will’ may be too much for us to deal with. Personally, I have no problems that such processes can exhibit aspects of ‘free will’ as they apply past information, combined with regularities and constraints to make a choice amongst an almost infinite set of possibilities and thus make a difference for better or worse.
Comment by PvM — June 20, 2006 @ 3:20 am
Pim
Perhaps we have different expectations of free will.
Or different definitions, which Allen alluded to above.
If free will is defined as the ability to choose something in the complete absence of any prior chemical influences on that choice then no living creature has free will because living creatures are made of chemicals.
If free will is defined as the ability to use chemicals to consciously make choices with the understanding that we are free to do so, then we have free will.
If you want to pretend that even when we recognize a concept such as “free will” we are incapable of controlling our moment to moment destinies, then go right ahead. I mean: that’s too bad that the vibrating atoms that constitute “you” make it impossible for you to feel otherwise at this moment.
Ah, philosophy! It’s so … useful.
Comment by Amy Lester — June 20, 2006 @ 3:41 am
PvM–
My working definition of free will is quite simple: that your volition is not driven entirely by things outside your control, but that you have some– even a minuscle quantity, perhaps– of say in it. If intelligence is reducible to chance and necessity you have no say, and are driven– driven, not simply guided or constrained– by forces outside your control.
I haven’t any problem with the idea, but “to appear” implies an illusion and is here pretty irrelevant. No-one disagrees that there is at least a superficial appearance of free will; but I am arguing that that is as far as it goes.
Amy-
Do you believe in everything that can be imagined up, simply because it can be imagined?
Comment by Freawaru — June 20, 2006 @ 12:35 pm
By making a choice, you have a say in it whether or not you are driven by internal ‘voices’ of reason and chance.
What would something that is not reducible to chance and necessity look like? Compare the ‘you do nothing’ to the ‘you make a choice’, what is the difference in outcome. So in fact, you have a lot of say in where you and your world is going. If you need an external source of this choice then fine, I personally have no problem with the concept that free will is reducible to laws and chance because it does not ‘force’ me to make any particular choice.
Comment by PvM — June 20, 2006 @ 4:54 pm
Freawaru
Do you believe in everything that can be imagined up, simply because it can be imagined?
No. But you can not dismiss the idea of “free will” I expressed above as “merely” a “superficial appearance” unless you want to dismiss all of our perceptions of reality as “merely” “superficial appearances.”
Get it? Put another way: it’s possible to argue that all this “reality” is just a “dream”. But in my dream I can use chemical energy to make decisions.
We could certainly pretend that there are no such things as “decisions” Freawaru. That seems like a silly thing to do, given our short lifetimes.
Comment by Amy Lester — June 20, 2006 @ 5:45 pm
Freawaru wrote:
“No-one disagrees that there is at least a superficial appearance of free will; but I am arguing that that is as far as it goes.”
That is also the position taken by Daniel Wegner in The Illusion of Conscious Will (see http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262731622/ref=sr_11_1/102-6496270-2592158?%5Fencoding=UTF8 , but beware of the last chapter, where he wimps out). It is very important to distinguish between the “sensation” of free will (which we all feel) and actual free will, and between the ability to make choices (which we all have) and whether that ability requires or involves “free will.” From what I have posted above, it should be clear by now that the sensation of free will is no guarantee that free will actually exists, nor does our ability to make choices have any bearing on the question of whether those choices are made “freely.” As Amy points out, the brain (which is, after all, where all of our thoughts and actions are generated) is entirely composed of “chemicals” (that is, macromolecules) whose behavior is entirely “governed” by the laws of chemistry and physics. The content of our ideas is translated into action potentials in the brain, and our actions are the result of such action potentials interacting with muscles, bones, etc. Nowhere in this highly complex system is there any non-natural (or supernatural) component, nor is any required to cause our ideas or actions to happen.
In other words, the environment (the natural world) constrains the inner environment of the brain when we make choices, and so such choices, while they “feel” free, cannot possibly be so.
Unless one believes in the existence of non-natural (or supernatural) entities that can intervene directly in the biochemistry of human congnition and locomotion…
Comment by Allen MacNeill — June 20, 2006 @ 8:48 pm
Allen
It is very important to distinguish between the “sensation” of free will (which we all feel) and actual free will
For the purposes of discussing “free will”, this is true. But as you pointed out above (or as I understood you to point out) the discussion invariably leads to questions about the “meaning” of “actual” which (in my humble opinion) is a barren rock where beautiful music has not and will not ever be heard.
Unless one believes in the existence of non-natural (or supernatural) entities that can intervene directly in the biochemistry of human congnition and locomotion…
Interestingly, certain psychedelic drugs such as DMT are reported to “reveal” such entities to the human eye and/or soul.
http://leda.lycaeum.org/?Table=Trips&Ref_ID=11
Our perception of reality and “free will” is very much dependent on chemistry. But most humans at any given time are under the influence of their last meal primarily. That is why discussions of “worldviews” are merely divisive and misleading unless one is advocating a life under the constant influence of a brain chemistry-altering drug, or unless one is claiming that massive groups of humans are “wired” in distinct ways that allow them to see deities where others can not. That would be a radical claim indeed.
Comment by Amy Lester — June 21, 2006 @ 3:38 am
To quote “Free” Will Provine:
Compatibilist-free will yields so little freedom to crow about in the first place, but the philosophers up on modern science want free will so badly that writing a whole book (or two of them) is the norm. Their usual practice comes in the form of calling human decision-making “free will”, thus weaseling out of the problem. What truly amazes me is the huge trouble this causes the compatibilist philosophers. They have to write whole book after whole book on free will, because they have chosen their problem in such a way as to require “free will”, which cannot be found or defined.
Comment by ivy privy — June 25, 2006 @ 2:23 am