NationStates Jolt Archive

I've been pondering this for a while. How can free will exist? (in the philosophical sense, not politically) Everything happens because of cause and effect. I simply don't see the place where free will is supposed to come in. Or perhaps some things happen because of random chance in quantum physics, but random chance is still not free will. We make decisions based on chemical reactions encoding information and neurons firing.

I don't believe in a could-have-done-otherwise principle, either. To have done otherwise, you would have had to have different conditions to produce another outcome. Keep in mind, this is not some kind of attack on moral responsibility. I think the idea that people shouldn't be punished for crimes because of societal determinism is absurd and based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the reason for punishment: prevention. No one "deserves" to be punished, but it may be necessary in order to deter by example. Of course, excess punishment without preventative need because someone "deserves" it is barbaric.

So, would anyone like to blow my mind by explaining how free will could happen?

I've been pondering this for a while. How can free will exist? (in the philosophical sense, not politically) Everything happens because of cause and effect. I simply don't see the place where free will is supposed to come in. Or perhaps some things happen because of random chance in quantum physics, but random chance is still not free will. We make decisions based on chemical reactions encoding information and neurons firing.

I don't believe in a could-have-done-otherwise principle, either. To have done otherwise, you would have had to have different conditions to produce another outcome. Keep in mind, this is not some kind of attack on moral responsibility. I think the idea that people shouldn't be punished for crimes because of societal determinism is absurd and based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the reason for punishment: prevention. No one "deserves" to be punished, but it may be necessary in order to deter by example. Of course, excess punishment without preventative need because someone "deserves" it is barbaric.

So, would anyone like to blow my mind by explaining how free will could happen?very rarely do situations arise where there is only one choice. All situations have multiple paths out. just which one do you see or are willing to use?

Punnishment can be seen as an end result of a choice. If you choose to do the crime, then the result is Punnishment. Continue to break the law results in harsher penalties.

however, becuase of circumstances, the law also makes adjustment depending on those circumstance.

"very rarely do situations arise where there is only one choice. All situations have multiple paths out. just which one do you see or are willing to use?"

Of course there are multiple choices that appear to be possible, but you being "willing to use" is still subject to cause and effect. In order for you to be willing to use a certain choice, certain rections had to occur and certain neurons had to fire.

*cues X-files music*

I believe that we do indeed, have free will, but God already knows what choices we make. I think it's impossible to have made a different choice. Meh. It's kind of a touchy subject.

I've been pondering this for a while. How can free will exist? (in the philosophical sense, not politically) Everything happens because of cause and effect. I simply don't see the place where free will is supposed to come in. Or perhaps some things happen because of random chance in quantum physics, but random chance is still not free will. We make decisions based on chemical reactions encoding information and neurons firing. ...
So, would anyone like to blow my mind by explaining how free will could happen?

OK, if youre talking philisophically, youre on your own.. but ill try my best here... similar to cause and effect, is the principle of action and reaction... in physics its "every action yields an equal but opposite reaction (when dealing with forces)", however in reality, its "Every action results in a reaction to the stimulus exhibited".

What this means.. is that every person may have a plethera of choices to make based on an interpretted stimulus. the most simple and basic choice known, is the fight or flight decision. When under enough stress, (for example. the stress of a predator on its prey), an organism will decide to fight back, or try to run away to safety. The decision of the prey, is its own free choice mixed in with animal instinct and survival.

You are absolutely true when you said that all decision are based on chemical reactions and neurological pathways, becuase that is basically, what the brain is. If you think about it, right now, you arent reading this, your brain is interpretting the keystrokes and understanding what i am conveying... the understanding comes from similar neurological pathways that the brain recognizes and uses to read... what this means is your memory and what you know, learn and recognize, its all just a pathway of nerves that creates a motor response based on the chemicals sent through synapses in the nervous system..

i hope this didnt confuse you more...

Pretty much confirmed what I was trying to get across.

"very rarely do situations arise where there is only one choice. All situations have multiple paths out. just which one do you see or are willing to use?"

Of course there are multiple choices that appear to be possible, but you being "willing to use" is still subject to cause and effect. In order for you to be willing to use a certain choice, certain rections had to occur and certain neurons had to fire.


first of all to haloman.. the idea of a god knowin what your going to choose is a completely different topic altogether

and to social auto... stop trying to speak "mystically" (not a diss, jsut a reccommendation so ppl understand what ur saying)

choices appear to be possible because they are possible.. the idea of you picking one of them is based on your knowledge of the situation and the choice that wud result in the most favorable outcome = free will.... you choose, and there is a consequence (can be either positive or negative) depending on the choice you made... you now must deal with the consequence, which may also open up many other problems where free-will decisions must be made.

OK, if youre talking philisophically, youre on your own.. but ill try my best here... similar to cause and effect, is the principle of action and reaction... in physics its "every action yields an equal but opposite reaction (when dealing with forces)", however in reality, its "Every action results in a reaction to the stimulus exhibited".

What this means.. is that every person may have a plethera of choices to make based on an interpretted stimulus. the most simple and basic choice known, is the fight or flight decision. When under enough stress, (for example. the stress of a predator on its prey), an organism will decide to fight back, or try to run away to safety. The decision of the prey, is its own free choice mixed in with animal instinct and survival. thus an example of Free will... Humans can choose either Fight or Flight and with reason (and more complex emotions) Humans can have varying shades between the two.

You are absolutely true when you said that all decision are based on chemical reactions and neurological pathways, becuase that is basically, what the brain is. If you think about it, right now, you arent reading this, your brain is interpretting the keystrokes and understanding what i am conveying... the understanding comes from similar neurological pathways that the brain recognizes and uses to read... what this means is your memory and what you know, learn and recognize, its all just a pathway of nerves that creates a motor response based on the chemicals sent through synapses in the nervous system..that's how the brain works. yes. but take your typing example. someone reads the Topic. they can choose to enter and read or they can choose to skip the topic altogether. the longer they wait, the larger the thread gets. till they can choose to read all of it, or they can Choose to read the end and risk sounding idiotic.

as to replying, I could've chosen to keep your quote as one block and replied under it, or, as I have chosen, I broke it up in hopes that I would be clearer.

i hope this didnt confuse you more... not at all. nice argument tho.

"the idea of you picking one of them is based on your knowledge of the situation and the choice that wud result in the most favorable outcome"

Actually, I think the idea of picking is based on lack of knowledge. The lack of knowledge about the outcome and the lack of knowledge about how you are picking. We think there is free will because we throw information into people minds and crazy stuff comes out: the only difference between the "free will" of a pile of bricks and the "free will" of a person is how complicated and difficult to pin down the reactions are.

"the idea of you picking one of them is based on your knowledge of the situation and the choice that wud result in the most favorable outcome"

Actually, I think the idea of picking is based on lack of knowledge. The lack of knowledge about the outcome and the lack of knowledge about how you are picking. We think there is free will because we throw information into people minds and crazy stuff comes out: the only difference between the "free will" of a pile of bricks and the "free will" of a person is how complicated and difficult to pin down the reactions are.
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What yo ujust said made no sense at all

We make decisions based on chemical reactions encoding information and neurons firing.

Not just decisions, our entire consciousness. Every though,t, feeliong and perception is but a pattern of biochemical and electrical systems occuring. We're not playing the Game of Life here, we're watching the movie.

Proponents of free will often mention the criminal responsibility paradox: if we have no free will, how can we blame criminals for their actions? Surely it wasn't their fault, if they have no free will.

Well, yes, and in exactly the same way a Judge will pass a sentence and a lawmaker will pass a law.

Ok, what people have been talking about is perceived free will. It seems like there are many choices a person could take when in fact there is only one, because it is deterministic. This is because we don't know all of the information we need to know in order to figure out what will happen, so there appears to be a number of possible options. Number of real possible outcomes in a human being's decision: 1.

A pile of bricks doesn't seem like it has free will, because what happens when we do things to it isn't complicated. What will happen when we throw two bricks at each other? They will impact and bounce off of each other. Number of real possible outcomes in a brick's decision: 1.

(again, excluding quantum mechanics because it is random, not free will)

Well, personally I don't believe in free will, but if you're looking for an argument that establishes at least the posibility of free will, i'd recommend reading Kant's "Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals". It's a short, though dense, book that focuses specifically on establishing that free will is a logical posibility. So I strongly recommend reading it if the subject interests you. I found it fascinating because before I read it I thought that free will was logically impossible, but his argument is rock solid.

Of course I still don't believe in free will, but I now believe it may be impossible to establish it's existence or non-existence for certain :D.

I've been pondering this for a while. How can free will exist? (in the philosophical sense, not politically) Everything happens because of cause and effect. I simply don't see the place where free will is supposed to come in. Or perhaps some things happen because of random chance in quantum physics, but random chance is still not free will. We make decisions based on chemical reactions encoding information and neurons firing.
First off you are making a huge assumption that is, philosophically, unjustified.
There is no philosophical reason why anything happens due to a relation of cause and effect. To paraphrase David Hume, show me this property that makes one thing a cause and the other its effect. You can not, because it does not exist in the world. The relationship of cause and effect is a relationship that we impose on the world to be able to make sense of it. It is, in Kantian terms, a transcendental relationship. It is necessary for us, but it is not necessarily real. Given this it is quite easy to see how some things can be free, in the sense of uncaused except by the will.

I don't believe in a could-have-done-otherwise principle, either. To have done otherwise, you would have had to have different conditions to produce another outcome. Keep in mind, this is not some kind of attack on moral responsibility. I think the idea that people shouldn't be punished for crimes because of societal determinism is absurd and based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the reason for punishment: prevention. No one "deserves" to be punished, but it may be necessary in order to deter by example. Of course, excess punishment without preventative need because someone "deserves" it is barbaric.
This is closing the question. If you are going to define all actions as being the result of sufficient cause, then you are, in your presuppositions eliminating the possibility of free will. This presupposition has to be discarded or proven. As it has not been even demonstrated to occur in any case, lewt alone proven to be effective in all cases, the assumption of sufficient cause should, philosophicaly be dropped.

Science is another matter. Science depends upon causal relations as one of its bedrocks. Thus science, up to QM, resented the world as completely deterministic, and some philosophers (Leibniz for example) followed suit. However with the advent of indeterminacy in Quantum Mechanics, even science has had to abandon sufficient cause as a viable concept. There is still a causal relationship, but one where the outcome is not completely determined by the state of the world. There is some chance involved.
Here is where the philosophy and the science can be reunited. Free will is not impossible, it just requires that the world is not rigidly determined, and the world, as far as we can establish, is not rigidly determined.

So, would anyone like to blow my mind by explaining how free will could happen?
You are welcome.

However with the advent of indeterminacy in Quantum Mechanics, even science has had to abandon sufficient cause as a viable concept. There is still a causal relationship, but one where the outcome is not completely determined by the state of the world. There is some chance involved.
For the most part I agree with what you said, but I felt i should throw in a small technical point.

It's true that quantities like the position or momentum of a particle don't evolve in a deterministic way in quantum mechanics, but the more fundamental and in a sense 'real' properties of particles - their wavefunctions - actually evolve in a perfectly deterministic way. It's actually a myth that quantum mechanics is nondeterministic, and while there are versions of QM that aren't deterministic, there are many that are.

I think that it does turn out that to have a deterministic version of quantum mecahnics you have to throw out locality (so things far apart can affect each other instantly). I should double check this stuff, but I think I've got it right here.

You did not show me how free will can happen, you showed me why it may not be impossible, although it was still an interesting point. Is logic completely independent of physical law? If so, how do we reach conclusions? (Factors come together to form an outcome.) The basic point was to ask how outcomes that aren't caused be determinism or randomness (I addressed quantum physics) could be logically explained.

You did not show me how free will can happen, you showed me why it may not be impossible, although it was still an interesting point. Is logic completely independent of physical law? If so, how do we reach conclusions? (Factors come together to form an outcome.) The basic point was to ask how outcomes that aren't caused be determinism or randomness (I addressed quantum physics) could be logically explained.

To show how something can happen it is sufficient to show that it is not impossible.
Logic is completely and totally seperated from the physical world. As such it does not have any dependence whatsoever on contingent laws. It does depend on necessary relationships, and only on these.

How can outcomes that are not dependent upon determinism occur. They just do. If cause is not necessary, the question is a non starter as it presumes a causal relationship. This is very difficult to get a mental grip on as we are set up to think causally. "They just do" seems to be avoiding the question, which is what caused them, but this question is invalid, so it is not avoiding anything.

@Quorm.

Until anyone can show that the Bell inequalities are not violated, I am going to stick with the indeterministic interpretations of QM. Particularly since there is experimental evidence from Aspect et al. in Paris that they are violated.

No hidden variables for me thank you. Uncertainty is here to stay.

The evolution of the waveforms is totally deterministic until collapse. At collapse it is undetermined which state will resolve itself from the superposition. While the superposition exists and the particles are entangled you are right to say that itr is deterministic, but this part of events does not interact with our consciuousness and can have no part in reconciling free will with the laws of physics which is what we are trying to discuss here.