My Basic Thought On Free Will

[gedanken]

I think of free will in terms of responsibility. What are we responsible for? That's free will.

Surely we think people should be responsible for their actions. Treat it as a purely functional question. What is the optimal societal reaction to people who exhibit behaviour X? Do we execute, lock up, or treat sociopaths? What are the criteria to choose one solution or the other? You can't just treat all behaviour equally because it is [random|predetermined], that is absurd public policy.

Treat the mind as a black box, and act acording to the output. Don't try to take apart the clockwork and judge the parts, because each part of the clock is no longer a clock, it's just a gear or spring.

Dawkins writes about this in The Selfish Gene. He's a better writer than I am, but I can't find my copy right now. IIRC, he's suggesting that we are finally having to confront the idea of free will, because we're learning enough about the mind to be able to identify causes of behaviour in some cases. The whole notion of a cause that "made" someone do something clashes with our notion of free will, but it needn't. That cause is still part of the person, not a separate entity.



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Ain't no sense worrying about things you got no control over, 'cause if you got no control over them ain't no sense in worrying. And ain't no sense worrying about things you got control over, 'cause if you got control over them, ain't no sense worrying.

--Mickey Rivers

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[PokerAmateur4]

Piers,
I don't follow. You seem to say "Free will exists, because the illusion of free will should come from evolution." Maybe you can evolve the illusion of free will, but I don't see how what you said proves anything about actually having free will.

Valenzuela,
"Free will implies that having made a choice, it is always possible that one might have chosen otherwise.
If its not possible that one could have chosen otherwise then there is no freewill.
My question to those who believe on free will, how could I have chosen differently?"
That's how I feel. Defining free will in a meaningful way seems to be difficult. I think defining determinism is helpful to do first. I like the definition that:
"there is at any instant exactly one physically possible future"

So all your choices and thoughts are to be, even before you are born.

I agree with the above, as I don't see how anyone can explain to me how a given scenario had the ability to come out differently. Also, if there are probabilities assigned to each outcome, I still don't see that as meaningful, or what I personally would consdier "free" will, as it's just random probabilities and prior circumstances.

[chezlaw]

very good despite the repeated contradiction.

chez

[RayBornert]

It is quite easy to observe that a human has the power of decision wherein the subject is asked to make a selection from two or more choices.

If selected choice is evidence of "will", then the remainder of the discussion has to do with the definition of "free".

Ray

[shemp]

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I'm pretty sure that I have the jist of a proof that free will exists. [...] I might be able to do it myself but I have got a poker tournament to deal with.


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I'm pretty sure I could cure cancer and win the Nobel for Meds-- but my schedule for today has "download porn from the internet" slated for all waking hours. Oh well. Duty calls.

[EnderIII]

so uncertainty about x implies x.

this seems highly implausible for just about anything other than uncertainty and anything that uncertainty implies (thinking for example).

Is the intuition that deliberation (rather than uncertainty) about free will implies free will?

But without assuming free will to begin with, deliberation ought also questioned as whether it legitmately exists. Sure, people reason to conclusions, but is it deliberation if they must end up at one particular answer (is not knowing what the answer will be sufficient to call reasoning deliberation? maybe?)

Without the further elaboration that Russell could provide, this stance is suprisingly uninformative, but at least it recognizes the work required to answer the question well. And since many people have strong feelings about the issue without precise and rigorous definitions, this is worth something.

[David Sklansky]

"Is the intuition that deliberation (rather than uncertainty) about free will implies free will?"

Yes of course that was what I meant.

[pete fabrizio]

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Anyway, it seems to me that somewhere out there in logicland, a proof of free will can be constructed from the simple fact that PEOPLE WONDER (AND DISCUSS) WHETHER THEY HAVE FREE WILL.

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Not really. Discussing and wondering about free will can just be a product of the deliberative process that helps super-smart and incredibly-well adapted beings like humans make very good decisions, taking into account theoretical considerations, etc etc. I.e., the determinist just sees this as a perfectly reasonable (even expected) symptom of high-order reasoning.

I've spent a significant amount of time studying the free will question, and I've come to the conclusion that all sides are just talking past each other using different definitions. Pretty much everyone thinks we have to at least pretend we have free will in order to operate (although this would be true of people who didn't have FW too), and everything past that is kind of spinning wheels.

[river_tilt]

If there is no free will, does it mean that there is an algorithm that will predict all future actions?

Such an algorithm will hit an enormous number of problems. Roger Penrose considers a similar question in a number of his books (e.g. The Emporer's New Mind.) He restricts himself to the question of whether a computer can be programmed to do useful mathematics.

His conclusion stems for Godel's incompleteness theorems. He thinks computers cannot do meaningful maths, whereas humans can.

So humans do have free will.

[pete fabrizio]

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If there is no free will, does it mean that there is an algorithm that will predict all future actions?

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No.