Is free-will an illusion?

Frank thank you most kindly for that summary

Freewill is an illusion. At its best it is a metaphor. It can't explain anything. It is a device used to describe decision-making when one is unaware of the variables responsible for a given decision. Once explanations are found, then free-will is tossed aside. It creeps back into arguments like a God-of-the-gaps argument creeps in when science hasn't yet explained a given phenomenon. It is intellectual laziness.

So the conglomeration of behavioral impulses which calls itself Briancrc had no choice other than to post here ?

And presumably those conglomerations which call other conglomerations ''lazy' have as little choice about their 'accusation' than their 'subject' has of 'being lazy'. ?

That is a good philosophical question, fresco. Is the argument about determinism an argument for destiny, and the things that happen to us are unavoidable? It doesn't seem as though you would take that position and I don't subscribe to that viewpoint either. However, I do consider myself a place (i.e., locus) where prior events have prepared certain behaviors to occur. As I am sitting here typing I have not been able to think of all the words before I think them. These bits come from some place (things I have read, conversations I have had, other types of experiences). While I can compose different words and modify the composition, I would not say that there is an inner man responsible for this; just as I would say that there isn't a Mind responsible for how the genes of species are modified over time resulting in diversity and complexity in physical form. In other words I think our histories get the credit for the complexity and diversity of our behavior.

I don't find words like lazy useful when trying to explain behavior. They can be fun to use for comedic purposes or certain social purposes; but I don't think so when it comes to explaining anything. Why didn't he do that important thing? Because he's lazy. What have we learned? There's nothing to explain why certain behaviors did not occur; which I think are to be found in the histories of reinforcement to which a person is exposed.

What you don't seem to understand is that the meanings of words like 'behavior' or 'will' or 'cause' are context sensitive and shift in their import. For example talking about the 'behavior' of electrons is a different ball game to talking about the 'behavior' of living entities, even though so-called 'scientists' pre-occupied by definition with prediction and control, would like to ignore such a distinction. In a similar way it is the contexts in which expressions like 'free will' are utilized which gives their meaning. Without such a concept, other contingent concepts like 'culpability' or 'the justice system' would cease to be meaningful irrespective of religious considerations.

In short, there are different levels of discourse, and different contexts within such levels which decide semantic import. One liners like 'free will is an illusion' merely denote an ignorance of the workings of language, particularly in its role in the construction of dynamic social reality, only part of such reality being 'scientific pursuits'.

I agree with you completely on this. I think it is very important to use agreed upon definitions; or at least know what definition a person is using in the discussion. I use the definition that determinism is the notion that the universe is a lawful and orderly place where phenomena occur as the result of other events. The definition I use for behavior is that portion of the organism's interaction with its environment (internal or external) that is characterized by detectable displacements in space through time of some part of the organism and that results in measurable change in at least one aspect of the environment.

This definition for behavior excludes non-living objects, like the stock market, as you rightly point out. However, I think behavioral scientists have attended to and taken great care in discussing these distinctions.

I disagree with you regarding the justice system perspective. Just because we attribute a person's behavior to something other than an inner man does not preclude our dealing effectively with people who do things that are harmful or potentially harmful to members of a given society. Harm is still a practical matter that needssa to be dealt with.

Not to labor the point....I would merely out out that what where you say 'I think that behavioral scientists...etc' should perhaps more accurately read 'I hope that.....', given your apparent vested interests in that field.

I suggest too that you think a bit deeper about the 'ethics' of the justice system, because if it were merely about 'effectively' ( your word) dealing with 'criminals', then lobotomy would be more effective than imprisonment.

I bet we would agree on many things that a person could do, but shouldn't. Society has to work these types of things out; and I think it would better if we did so as dispassionately and objectively as possible.

You don't get it yet. When you say 'Society has to work these things out, you are assigning anthropomorphic agentive attributes to a social conglomerate. And that shift of level of discourse is exactly the mistake simplistic behaviorists make when they assign concepts of mechanical cause to living entities.
There was a book published in the 1960's called "The Machinery of the Brain" (Wooldridge) with a cartoon clock mechanism shown in a cutaway of the brain on the front cover. Behaviorism still embodies that spirit of the mechanical reductionism.....the age of the Industrial Revolution....the age of power and control. Yet 'science' has moved on. One adage of quantum physics for example is "whatever canhappen, does happen". And who can say whether such a principle does not play a major role in the behavior of organisms despite crude attempts at 'causal' models ?
Remember that nebulous phrase .....'more research is needed' ?

You have latched on to some old world views that seem to have nothing to do with what I have said. But perhaps you could explain:
1. Societies make rules to govern the actions of its members. This does not imply that societies are just an amorphous grouping of organism without individual members. You do understand what a society is, yes?

2. You are not familiar with behaviorism if you believe that it embodies the spirit of mechanical reductionism; however, if you can point me in the direction of what prompted this conclusion, then I'll be happy to look at it.

3. There is no honest inquiry or thoughtful discussion of what might be happening by tossing around platitudes like "whatever can happen, does happen" or cynical views of scientific honesty when researchers list the limitations of their research.

Allow me to rephrase: IF / WHEN better explanations are found, then and only then, free will MAY ultimately be tossed aside.

Until such a time, the concept of free will continues to serve us decently well to explain whatever people chose to do, taking into due consideration learnt or socially imposed behaviors.

How? We have free will as evidenced by what?

“It seems to me a fundamental dishonesty, and a fundamental treachery to intellectual integrity to hold a belief because you think it's useful and not because you think it's true.”


― Bertrand Russell

1.'Society' is word often anthropomorphically used by those who would ascribe the 'logic'of individuals to the actions or dynamics of groups. Margaret Thatcher was on the right track when she rather crudely offered the one-liner "Society does not exist".

2. Read up on holism and reductionism in psychology.

3. If you think QM adage is 'a platitude' you need to do a modern course in the import of QM on the philosophy of science. And therein lies my rejoinder to your assumption of my outdated views.

Finally, in that vein, note that alternative paradigms exist to S-R thinking. Try for example, the systems-theory approach of Maturana, or the Gestaltist approach of Merleau-Ponty. Admittedly these may have limited therapeutic or control import, but as far as I am concerned that is the only area in which behaviorism has any claim to credence as a woking modus operandi.

I don't intend to waste any more time pointing out the futility of would be dissent about 'the existence of free will'. The seeds of that futility lie in philosophical ignorance regarding usage of terms like 'existence', rather than the issue of social scientists trying to establish criteria for their professionalism. And that ignorance would even go back to old fashioned ideas about 'truth' from the sainted Russell, whose one time protege Wittgenstein dumped him together with logical positivism around 1947.

I suspected that this was what you were driving at; which is an old, but fundamental misunderstanding of behaviorism. Some day you may show the courage to admit that you do not know as much as you think you do about this field and spend a little while learning the important differences between S-R psychology and what followed from those early years.

The other unfortunate side-effect displayed from those who cling to their belief in freewill is one's over-inflated sense of self. You exude all the puffery of someone who is full of himself, but for suspicious reasons. It is a curious thing that someone who would pursue an academic career would so cavalierly dismiss the important discoveries of academics, and instead, seek solace in one's belief system.

Our intuition.

And what is the evidence we have no free will?

I do believe it's true we have something like "free will", but if and when someone proves otherwise i shall reconsider.

If you assert the existence of something it should be based on evidence

No, it doesn't need to be based on evidence. It just has to be better at explaining the world than the alternative. The absence of "free will" leads to logical contradictions and needlessly contradicts our intuition.

I actually think "free will" is a misnomer. I prefer "free choice": the capacity to choose freely from a limited number of alternatives the ones we want to pursue.