Is free-will an illusion?

@Olivier5,

Quote:

I bet they even have feelings in their vulva.

I'm sensing additional research required. Generalization studies are next Wink

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@Briancrc,

A morality argument
https://youtu.be/rfOMqehl-ZA

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@Briancrc,

I found the reasoning a non-sequitur. Just because a belief in free will can in a certain country (the US I suppose) be correlated with religiosity or a punitive approach to law enforcement does not mean it causes it mechanistically. There are many people who believe in free will and still disagree with a purely punitive justice system.

In short, that's because undeterminism does not imply the absence of any determining factors or constraints. Of courses there are 'forces' at play in the world. In a non-determinist view, such 'forces' or factors HELP determine a particular outcome, in the sense that the presence of the factor interacting with other factors may RAISE THE PROBABILITY of this outcome, without making it certain to happen. If you jump from 3000 ft high you might very well die (except of course if you jump with a parachute, and it actually opens correctly etc.) so a beliver in free will (almost all of them undeterminists) can take into consideration social factors (poverty, enfancy etc.) to explain a certain educational outcome or a certain course of action, for instance.

We can very well do what the lecturer wants his country to do without getting rid of free will.

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@Olivier5,

I am sorry to say it bluntly Olivier (not to antagonize you) but you utterly and completely fail at understanding MECHANICS !

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@Fil Albuquerque,

What annoys me most is when they overcharge on some car repair and I just can't prove it.

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@Olivier5,

Can you get the key in the locker to start the car ? Wink

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Yes. At 0.1 second after the Big Bang, the universe decided that I, Olivier5, would get the capability of driving a car. I've been grateful to it ever since.

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@Olivier5,

Quote:

I found the reasoning a non-sequitur. Just because a belief in free will can in a certain country (the US I suppose) be correlated with religiosity or a punitive approach to law enforcement does not mean it causes it mechanistically

That's fine as he didn't say it causes anything. He said correlations [2'30"].

Quote:

We can very well do what the lecturer wants his country to do without getting rid of free will.

But this brings us back to why the construct is necessary at all. Why might it be so important to believe that we are the originators of our actions and not something else? If it's not because of our need to garner credit for our accomplishments or the need to blame others for their failures and punish them, then what is it? Is there empirical evidence for free will? What might that be?

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I hesitate to make a post in this thread because I've only read (in a half-assed way) the last couple of pages. I suspect that anything I say has already been said (and disagreed with).

Hume had this to say about causality:

Quote:

There are no ideas, which occur in metaphysics, more obscure and uncertain, than those of power, force, energy, or necessary connexion, of which it is every moment necessary for us to treat in all our disquisitions....

When we look about us towards external objects, and consider the operation of causes, we are never able, in a single instance, to discover any power or necessary connexion; any quality, which binds the effect to the cause, and renders the one an infallible consequence of the other.

We have sought in vain for an idea of power or necessary connexion, in all the sources from which we could suppose it to be derived. It appears, that, in single instances of the operation of bodies, we never can, by our utmost scrutiny, discover any thing but one event following another; without being able to comprehend any force or power, by which the cause operates, or any connexion between it and its supposed effect. The same difficulty occurs in contemplating the operations of mind on body; where we observe the motion of the latter to follow upon the volition of the former; but are not able to observe or conceive the tye, which binds together the motion and volition, or the energy by which the mind produces this effect.

http://www.davidhume.org/texts/ehu.html

Yet many people still glibly talk about "causes" and "effects" as though they are self-evident concepts. They not only take the concepts for granted, but presume to know just how, when, and why these concepts correspond to "objective reality." Good luck with that.

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@Briancrc,

Come on... The guy is saying that American prisons are full to the brim becausd of the belief in free will. Pretty lame logic.

Free will is not really "ncessary" other than to describe what happens to us when we make a choice, the hesitations, possibly the remorse or regrets, all these psychological facts exist, we constantly live through them. We can opt to lift our arm and lo and behold, we raise our arm... which is the best example of causality we can get.... explain that away and you won't need free will.

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@layman,

Good point Lay, and welcome back.

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@layman,

To elaborate somewhat:

The notion that every effect has a preceding cause is a presumption, not an empirically observable or verifiable"fact." This is especially applicable with regard to "mental" phenomena. The fact that a given mental process can seemingly be "explained" by a pre-existing state of affairs does not mean it was "caused" by that state.

If I have long adhered to the notion that I will never give anything to "charity" (not because I'm a miserly misanthrope, of course, but simply because "it's all a scam"), then you can easily predict that I will refuse to give if asked. But in what sense was that refusal "caused" by my predispositions? Would it now be "impossible" for me to ever consent to give something to charity, because my choice on that has been irrevocably determined by prior "causes?"

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@Olivier5,

Thanks for the welcome, Ollie. You and I have had some rather extreme differences on some topics (need I mention special relativity), but I almost always agree with the points you make on other topics.

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@layman,

layman wrote:

I hesitate to make a post in this thread because I've only read (in a half-assed way) the last couple of pages. I suspect that anything I say has already been said (and disagreed with).

Hume had this to say about causality:

Quote:
There are no ideas, which occur in metaphysics, more obscure and uncertain, than those of power, force, energy, or necessary connexion, of which it is every moment necessary for us to treat in all our disquisitions....

When we look about us towards external objects, and consider the operation of causes, we are never able, in a single instance, to discover any power or necessary connexion; any quality, which binds the effect to the cause, and renders the one an infallible consequence of the other.

We have sought in vain for an idea of power or necessary connexion, in all the sources from which we could suppose it to be derived. It appears, that, in single instances of the operation of bodies, we never can, by our utmost scrutiny, discover any thing but one event following another; without being able to comprehend any force or power, by which the cause operates, or any connexion between it and its supposed effect. The same difficulty occurs in contemplating the operations of mind on body; where we observe the motion of the latter to follow upon the volition of the former; but are not able to observe or conceive the tye, which binds together the motion and volition, or the energy by which the mind produces this effect.

http://www.davidhume.org/texts/ehu.html

Yet many people still glibly talk about "causes" and "effects" as though they are self-evident concepts. They not only take the concepts for granted, but presume to know just how, when, and why these concepts correspond to "objective reality." Good luck with that.

If you care to read me on that regard I don't deny nor refute Hume's observations on cause n effect, I am the first speaking of perfect correlation of patterns being confused with causality. Causality is obscure coinage for beings that flow within spacetime....My point was and is that for all practical purposes perfect correlation of patterns between events is indistinguishable from causality !

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@layman,

In Hume's time, as in Descartes', there hadn't been discoveries of the principles that support operant behavior. There weren't evolutionary models; primarily models based on the empirical work of physics and chemistry.

Models based on long causal chains and models based on reflexes were significant ones, but they failed to explain much of what we do. With that, to look back centuries and say that no other sciences with different tools have not been added, and which explain why we do what we do, is fallacious.

To say that because the cause and effect models of physics and chemistry were incomplete the only explanation is that there is a ghost in the machine is not a logical argument either.

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@Briancrc,

Oh dear....now you just splashed yourself all over...you think there was any evolution on that matter since Hume ? How naive of you... Mr. Green

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@Briancrc,

I'm wondering if you have any insight into the Benjamin Libet experiments. He caught my eye a few years ago, but there's been a lot of water under the bridge since then.

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@Fil Albuquerque,

Different theories? Sure. But what's the point?

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@FBM,

I think his work from the early 80's and subsequent studies with different instruments is really interesting stuff. I've heard how philosophers interpret the studies, but wonder what direction the work will take and wonder what the practical outcomes of studies derived from that work might be.

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@Olivier5,

Quote:

Free will is not really "ncessary" other than to describe what happens to us when we make a choice, the hesitations...

That explanation is analogous to looking at something mysterious in nature and saying that it must be that way because of God. All critical thinking usually stops at that point.

1 Reply

Is free-will an illusion?

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