My question is why call it “free” will? Why not simply refer to the will as “will”?
The reason I ask is because it invites dualism. If something is “free” then there must be an opposite - in this case “bound”.
Are there actual bound wills? If not, then we can ask the same of “free” ones.
I think the truth may be that they accept (as fact) the interpretation of what the science is showing.
I see no reason to doubt their conclusions.
Which may signify that you see no reason to think consciousness is not an emergent product of the brain.
Have you seriously delved into the idea that it isn’t a brain creation? If so, what conclusions have you drawn which give you no reason to doubt it is a “a scientific fact”? rather than an interpretation of scientific fact - and - does this reason relate to the function of “free” will?
My point is that the path that is taken depends on the the input, and of course the paths are the encoded program. Different input can result in a different path, and a different program would establish different paths. The result (the output) depends on two general things: the input data and the processing of the program logic.
If determinism is true, the paths we take are also dependent on the input and the processing. The input is complex and the processing is complex. The “program” changes with every experience, so the same immediate input may not result in the same output.
You provided an account that assumed indeterminism. It did not prove the behavior was indeterminate, or in any way violates known physical laws. You assumed the unpredictable delay in pulling the trigger entails a freely willed choice, which I pointed out could be due to non-conscious brain activity.
Let’s assume we’re watching a person pick up a gun and pull the trigger, in a controlled experiment. What evidence would conclusively show that any aspect of the behavior was indeterminate?
(BTW, sorry for the delay in responding. I didn’t see the notification).
So why would you call this a “selection” then? To select means to choose from options, and if the output follows necessarily from the input, despite the fact that different input produces different output, no choosing is being done in this process. Or, are proposing that the system can choose its input? How would this work? By the time the possible input was recognized as possible input, it would have already been input into the system.
As I said in my discussion with Angel, whether the choice is conscious or not is irrelevant to the issue of free will. The issue is whether there is a choice free from causation. The brain cannot cause itself to make a choice at a randomly selected time, because this would not be random, but the predetermined effect of a causal chain. However, we do experience, in the experiment that it is randomly selected.
As in all experiments, it’s a matter of trusting the person’s testimony, and verifying through repetition. The experiment is highly repeatable, and a slightly different version can be carried out by you right now. Hold a small object between your thumb and first finger, and drop it at any random time. Nothing but your choice needs to determine the moment you drop it.
I used the term “select” because the program executes. It is an activity - a process. Different imput produces different output, but a program change also produces a different output:
Input->process->output.
A deterministic will entails a process, but it’s a dynamic one : the “program” is constantly changing.
So…your “experiment” consists of asking the subject if he made a choice?! If he thinks he made a choice, then this proves he made a choice? I just had the following dialog with Anthropic’s AI app, Claude:
Me: choose a number between 1 and 100.
Claude: I’ll go with 37.
Me: Did you choose 36?
Claude: No, I chose 37.
Me: Why did you choose 37?
Claude: No special reason- I don’t have any real randomness or preferences, so I just picked one.
By your reasoning, Claude has an indeterministic free will, because it said it made a choice.
You may be tempted to reply, “But we know an AI is deterministic, so we can’t trust it’s answer”. The flaw in this reasoning is that even if humans are deterministic, they believe they are making choices. Your experiment cannot distinguish between a deterministic act and an indeterministic choice.
If you characterize selection as a process, then it is a special type. The process you describe, input leads to a necessary output, is not selection.
Now you describe a changing program. The process whereby the program changes must be distinct from the process which is the program. So you are talking about the process which creates the program. If this process was deterministic, how would it be distinct from the program, both being what occurs through deterministic causation? Do you see what I mean? This would just be a program which allows itself to evolve through deterministic processes, just like AI. There is still no selection, because the process is just carrying out a deterministic process.
Therefore the process which creates the program must be distinct from the process which is the programmed activity, to allow that the program is actually changing rather than simply carrying out the program (evolving according to what is programmed). Then the process which creates the program could be free from causal determination, as a selective free will process.
it’s not a matter of thinking whether a choice was made or not. It’s a matter of whether the experiment is carried out according to the method, and whether the result is as predicted. Did you try it? If so, did you find that you could drop the item (carry out the action), at any random time, or even choose not to drop it at all?
That’s not true. In a computer, a program is stored in memory- exactly the same as data: 1’s and 0’s. A program absolutely can alter the binary encoding, and/or the disk copy that originated that gets loaded into memory. It’s exactly the same process.
Furthermore, AI can compose software programs that enhance their own capability.
Sure, that’s possible. But it’s also possible that it is deterministic. You’ve provided no basis for ruling out determinism.
If it’s not based on the subject stating his belief that he made a choice (which you define as entailing indeterminism), then what is it based on? You’ve been vague.
Describe the steps in the experiment and the prediction(s) being made. What’s the prediction that can only be true if indeterminism is true?
Then it’s as I said, the program is made to alter itself. There is no selection here.
It’s based on the experience itself. the expression is the means by which we compare, repeat, and justify.
The prediction is that the person can release the object at any random time.
What are the steps? How are you measuring the delay (e.g. when do you start and stop the stopwatch)?
How is the prediction impossible under determinism? (e.g. non-conscious brain activity)
There is no need to measure the time.
The observation is made by the conscious mind, as scientific observations are. And as I explained earlier, the involvement of non-conscious brain activity is irrelevant. As long as the conscious observes the act as random, the experiment demonstrates that determinism is false.
Which conscious mind? The subject’s? An observer?
I searched back through your posts to try to understand why you think it’s irrelevant that the brain generated the randomness. I found this:
Where in your experiment are you identifying an indeterminate choice being made? All you’ve said is that we’re somehow predicting the subject “can release the object at any random time”, and somehow confirming this. How is it confirmed? What does this have to do with indeterminate choosing?
How do you know an indeterminate choice was made, rather than just some determinate path being taken? Randomness doesn’t demonstrate it. It sounds like you are assuming that determinism will result in an identical time in each trial, which is simply false. But this is just a guess, because you have been so vague.
So I ask again: outline the steps in the experiment, and explain what it is that identifies an indeterminate choice being made, rather than a the person just erroneously thinking he’s (indeterministically)“choosing” .
Both, the subject is the observer.
In case I didn’t describe it clearly, the experiment is like this. Hold a small object between your thumb and first finger, having already decided that you will drop it at some random time. Hold it for a while, then choose a random time to drop it. Do you not experience, as I do, that the point of time selected is determined by nothing but your choice. Therefore free will is demonstrated.
It’s observed in my experience. Nothing determines the point in time except my choice. That is the observation made, the conclusion is free will, and the experiment is completely repeatable.
No that’s not the case at all. I am assuming that if something caused my choice to occur at the particular point in time which it did, then I would be able to observe that cause within my experience. No such cause is observed in my experience.
And it cannot be 'the brain" which is the cause, for the reason already explained. The brain is active throughout the entire time, yet not causing the drop. So the cause of the drop is a change to the brain activity. We are looking for the cause of this change in activity.
Do you understand how scientific experiments are carried out? Observation carries the weight which produces the conclusion. Doubt about erroneous observations is the reason why repetition is so important. This experiment is totally repeatable. Have you done it yet yourself? If you still have doubt about erroneous observations, despite the repeatability, then the onus is on you to prove that the observations are erroneous.
You define decide, choose, and select as indeterminate activities, so your scenario ASSUMES libertarian (indeterminate) free will.
I’ll pretend you’re using the terms as I would, so that it includes a computer choosing/selecting/deciding a path. The problem is that you’re basing the result on your own judgement that it seems like you made a choice. That contradicts this statement:
If you’re thinking of falling back to your stipulated semantics (“choice= indeterministic choice”), then you need to reword the “experiment” to correct for this, and allow for the possibility of the experiment having either result. As currently worded, it does not.
I agree that your “choice” (which may or may not be deterministic) is what determines the act you take. If determinism is true, this implies compatibilist free will.
I do not, however, agree that randomness is relevant to any discussion of free will. Free will (whether it’s libertarian of compatibilist) entails agency (either libertarian of compatibilist), not some random event. Yes, you could “choose” (in either sense) to avoid making a conscious “decision” to let the action happen without direct conscious control (seemingly randomly), but that neither confirms nor denies agency (and/or indeterminism). It’s a red herring.
Bad assumption. You do not observe your brain activities. You only observe your conscious activities. When you do drop the object, you do not observe the upper motor neurons sending signals down the corticospinal tract, through the brainstem, and down the spinal cord to the cervical region, through the peripheral nerves in your hand that signal the hand muscles to release the object.
You are conflating consciousness with the brain. It’s well established that 1) brain activity is associated with conscious mental activity; but also 2) there is much brain activity that we have no conscious awareness of. This includes the autonomic nervous system, as well as unconscious motor activities like keeping one’s balance while walking.
Something triggered the firing of the upper motor neurons that led to releasing the object. You have eliminated a conscious “decision” as cause, but you have not, and can not, show that the cause was not some other brain activity.
And as I said, you’ve removed agency as the cause, so there is no basis for using this to support libertarian free will.
Right, that’s what these words mean. If you are talking about something other than indeterminate activities, I suggest that you use different words, to avoid confusion, ambiguity, and possible equivocation.
I’m not interested in your pretense, it’s off topic of the thread.
You’ve veered from the stipulated definition for the sake of equivocation.
As I said, and explained, this is irrelevant. Repeating the same mistake indicates that you do not understand. What is relevant is the selection of the point in time which initiates this activity.
I don’t understand your conclusions at all. How did I eliminate conscious decision? I think I said that the cause is observed as a conscious decision. Did you try the experiment? If so, did you not observe that it was a consciously selected random point in time? How do you exclude conscious decision?
In that case, the scenario you described is not an experiment at all, because indeterministic free-will is a premise. You “decided” to drop it at a random time, and “chose” a random time to drop it. Your conclusion = your premise.
You could instead say, “it seemed like you decided do drop it”, and “it seemed like you randomly chose the time to drop it.” Then we could compare a deterministic explanation for why it seemed this way, to an indeterministic explanation.
But you never like my suggestions, so the burden is on you to back up your claim that indeterminism could be proven through an experiment.
Regarding the randomness, I now see that I have misunderstood. I had thought you were saying you let go of the object at some random time. I now see that you mean that you chose a time, for no particular reason. This clears up that point, but you haven’t established that the time of dropping was “chosen” in your sense of the word - you are stipulating that there was an (indeterminate) choice. Circular reasoning.
I have no objection to this, but it’s just not the way scientific observations are done. We say “such and such was observed”, not “it seemed like such and such happened”. Then we rely on repetition of the experiment to show that what was observed (what “seemed” to have happened by your terms) is what really happened. In other words we verify the observations through repetition.
So, I think it makes no difference to change to your terminology and describe the observation as “it seemed like I decided to drop it”. Then we repeat and verify that “I decided to drop it” (indeterminately) is the accurate description.
As I said, once the conclusion of the experiment is proven through repetition, then the onus is on you to prove that something is faulty, if you want to refute the conclusion. Complaining about the scientific method in general, saying that the observations made in a scientific experiment only describe the way things “seemed” to be, does not suffice as refutation, because we account for this issue through repetition.
This is what the observations show. The point in time, at which the item is dropped, is consciously chosen for no reason whatsoever (randomly). It is not a stipulation, it is an observation. And it is a simple experiment which is highly repeatable, so it is unlikely that the observation is mistaken, or that what was observed is only what “seemed” to be the case.
I’ll rephrase to remove words and phrases that assume indeterminism
:
The point in time, at which the item is dropped, is seemingly consciously chosen for no reason whatsoever.
What your “observing” is that you had not planned to drop the item after some specific delay that you had planned, and you have identified no reason for the specific delay through after the fact introspection.
This is consistent with both indeterminism and determinism.
Indeterminism: nothing caused your the specific delay, other than the act of actually choosing.
Determinism: the cause of when you dropped it was not due to any reasoning or any other conscious activities. It was caused by brain activity that occurred outside your conscious access - fluctuating attention, subtle changes in muscle tension, growing impatience, and/or background neural noise. It’s also possible that it was partly due to some quantum fluctuation in the microtubules of your neurons, which could add a truly random element to it.
Your seem to have erroneously assumed that if you could not identify a conscious reason for point at which you dropped the item, that there could not possibly be a cause.
This is not quite right. There is a reason for the specific length of the delay, the point of time to end the delay was chosen consciously.
The drop was observed to have been cause by a conscious activity, a choice. So this is not a proper representation.
I already explained why “brain activity” does not suffice as the cause. Brain activity is continuous throughout the delay. What we are looking for is the cause of a change in that brain activity, which constitutes the cause of the drop. This is experienced as, therefore observed to be, a conscious choice.
Quantum fluctuations are indeterminate, therefore turning to this as an explanation is consistent with free will, but not consistent with determinism. That is the discussion I had with Angel, who denied that there is quantum phenomena in brain activity, for the sake of arguing determinism.
No, that’s incorrect. The observation is that there is a cause, and that the cause is a conscious choice. It is also observed that there is no cause of the conscious choice. This supports the claim that the will is “free”.
OK, then the neutral description is:
The point in time, at which the item is dropped, is seemingly consciously chosen for reason X.
This was your response to the deterministic account, so “choice” does not apply. Here’s a deterministic account based on there being a conscious reason:
Reason X caused the item to be dropped at Time T.
(I could expand this account in terms of mental causation establishing an action potential at the motor neuron, if you like.)
The rest of your comments are moot, because they related to my misunderstanding the way you were using the term, “random”.
No, the point in time is observed (“seems”, if you prefer) to be consciously chosen, but without a reason for the choice. You need to get rid of “reason X” there, because it is not consistent with the observation (what seems to be). “The point in time is seemingly consciously chosen without a reason for that choice”. That’s why I said it was a randomly chosen point in time.
No, that’s not consistent with the observation (how things seem). The conscious choice caused the item to drop. There is no reason X. You simply made that "reason X’ thing up to support your deterministic perspective. There is a conscious choice to drop the item, that’s it. “Reason X” is a fabrication, not observed, therefore unscientific and requiring rejection.
I already went through this with Angel. “Action potential” does not suffice as cause, because it has been demonstrated that will power can prevent the action potential from leading to the act. So the person dropping the item uses will power to prevent that act, until the chosen time. Then the choice is the cause of the act occurring at that time, not the “action potential” which is just a readiness for the act. The readiness for the act can be cancelled and doesn’t necessarily lead to the act, therefore it is not the proper cause.