In his book Behave, Robert Sopolsky recounts how people in behavioural studies consistently make one kind of choice over another depending on whether they had a hot drink in their hand as opposed to a cold or no drink, or if there's a faint snell of flowers in the air or a whiff of rotten fruit, or if you play the sound of birdsong from an adjacent room or the sound of roadworks. I'd agree that the notion of free will implies an unencumbered opportunity to choose, but it also looks like there's encumbrances all the way down.

However, I don't think that this renders free will a null concept. Far from it. How else can we possibly proceed if not on the basis that we are independent and free willed, regardless of what neuro- and behavioural science might be telling us about the mechanisms of our choosings?

Neurology and biochemistry, and ultimately physics (it's always ultimately physics!), as expressed in our bodies, are clearly determining factors in our choices, but environment factors are clearly determining too. At the end of the day understanding the mechanisms of how we choose is interesting, but it seems to have little practical impact on what we consider good, freely made choices or what we are being asked to choose from or between.

My sense is that some of the things we mean by saying 'free will' are occurring in some set of specific manners, but a lot of outdated misconceptions are carried by the term too. We can choose between A and B, but A & B are already a constrained selection as a result of all manner of factors, so if free will implies choices and decisions being made absent prior or external causes, then I think it's fictional and logically untenable, like the boogeyman in the sky. On the other, as you say, I don't think this then automatically jumps to the opposite side of the spectrum and means all is pre-determined or could've been predicted prior to the event. I don't think there's any sense in which full knowledge of the system, i.e. all the physical, genetic, cultural, experiential factors, would result in perfect predictability, only very high levels of predictability. Stochastic wrinkles run through everything.

Indeed. We might say that although a system is deterministic it's outcomes are not necessarily pre-determined. As I said earlier, exploring the nature of choice-making is interesting and informative, to a degree, but in itself it speaks little to what we are choosing from and/or between, or whether we are making good choices or not. That's the more important element of free will for me.

THWOTH wrote:Indeed. We might say that although a system is deterministic it's outcomes are not necessarily pre-determined. As I said earlier, exploring the nature of choice-making is interesting and informative, to a degree, but in itself it speaks little to what we are choosing from and/or between, or whether we are making good choices or not. That's the more important element of free will for me.

Sensitive dependence on initial conditions takes care of the question entirely. When we can't specify the initial conditions, it's irrelevant whether or not the process is deterministic, because we can't assess the progress of the system. Unless filosofeezing.

Pitching it in terms of choices just means that the antecedents of those choices are poorly specified. There isn't enough information (anywhere!) and the failure of discussion to focus on this, or at least address the problem in those terms means a lot of useless noise. Unless filosofeezing, which on this issue is entirely constituted by useless noise.

Regarding a "choice" as some sort of initial condition for a deterministic analysis is just... synthetic. I'd say 'artificial', but artificial selection ("choosing") already gets too much press around here.

metacreation wrote:

romansh wrote:

metacreation wrote:
But there is a tangible phenomenon that people try to explain

That phenomenon is our basic ignorance of the biochemistry that goes into forming thought.

I don't understand what you're trying to say here.

OK ... can you describe the biochemistry that went into you typing you don't understand?

Emergence - woo
Saying something is emergent or has an emergent property is not an explanation it is an abdication of an explanation.

THWOTH wrote:............That's the more important element of free will for me.

I'd be inclined to replace the term 'free will' with '(our) capacity to make choices/decisions', because I don't like the term free will, because I believe it's impossible, whereas I would say it's obviously the case that we make choices/decisions (and indeed in a sophisticated way that as far as we know, no other organism has the capacity to make).

Iow, we have some pretty cool freedoms*, but they don't (can't) amount to free will.

For example, most of us can run virtual/mental prediction scenarios about the possible future (eg consequences of our actions) and then act in light of those predictions. The running of the predictive scenarios may be determined, as may our actions afterwards, but the capacity to factor 'future' predictions into our 'real time' decision-making gives us more freedom than, say, an organism that can't run them.



*Ultimately, it would be possible (for me) to object to my own use of the word freedoms here, but it feels ok in the same way that it feels ok to say that this or that non-thinking mechanism or system is said to have degrees of freedom. Another term might be options.

I think it's a useful distinction because whatever is meant by the term 'free will' has to imply more than just the ability to make choices, else insects (like ants and cockroaches) have free will, which I am absolutely sure is not a consequence that proponents of free will would accept.

Cito di Pense wrote:

THWOTH wrote:Indeed. We might say that although a system is deterministic it's outcomes are not necessarily pre-determined. As I said earlier, exploring the nature of choice-making is interesting and informative, to a degree, but in itself it speaks little to what we are choosing from and/or between, or whether we are making good choices or not. That's the more important element of free will for me.

Sensitive dependence on initial conditions takes care of the question entirely. When we can't specify the initial conditions, it's irrelevant whether or not the process is deterministic, because we can't assess the progress of the system. Unless filosofeezing.

I chewed on this, and I guess you're right. Identifying some kind of causal chain after events have taken place doesn't on its own identify a system as deterministic - and it's probably more likely to make us stumble over the edge of the teleological bear pit and into the slavering maw of the beast that awaits us. I think I got away with a mere flesh wound.

Cito di Pense wrote:Pitching it in terms of choices just means that the antecedents of those choices are poorly specified. There isn't enough information (anywhere!) and the failure of discussion to focus on this, or at least address the problem in those terms means a lot of useless noise. Unless filosofeezing, which on this issue is entirely constituted by useless noise.

Regarding a "choice" as some sort of initial condition for a deterministic analysis is just... synthetic. I'd say 'artificial', but artificial selection ("choosing") already gets too much press around here.

But then again, talking about free will in terms of choice is just the way that we have traditionally framed the hows and whys of selecting something-or-other from a range of options. OK, so back in the day, before all this was fields, Free Will was the choice between following the rules of God's representatives on Earth, or not - but people have always had choices to make about mundane things in their everyday lives, and sometimes choice about less mundane things. The Bible thumpers didn't invent Free Will - I reckon they just co-opted it for their ends, along with guilt and shame and race-hatred, and whatever else was to hand. As I said, none of that really speaks to what we are choosing from and/or between, how or why we ended up in the position to choose, or whether we are making good choices or not - which is I think is far more interesting and productive way to consider 'free will' than wibbling on about whether free will is real or if something like NLP really works.

archibald wrote:

THWOTH wrote:............That's the more important element of free will for me.

I'd be inclined to replace the term 'free will' with '(our) capacity to make choices/decisions', because I don't like the term free will, because I believe it's impossible, whereas I would say it's obviously the case that we make choices/decisions (and indeed in a sophisticated way that as far as we know, no other organism has the capacity to make).

That seems like a sensible revision. Then again, we might have the capacity for choice but not the freedom to choose, or maybe the choice is between a dog shit sandwich and a cat shit sandwich - doesn't matter what we choose we still end up eating shit(?)

archibald wrote:[
Iow, we have some pretty cool freedoms*, but they don't (can't) amount to free will.

For example, most of us can run virtual/mental prediction scenarios about the possible future (eg consequences of our actions) and then act in light of those predictions. The running of the predictive scenarios may be determined, as may our actions afterwards, but the capacity to factor 'future' predictions into our 'real time' decision-making gives us more freedom than, say, an organism that can't run them.

*Ultimately, it would be possible (for me) to object to my own use of the word freedoms here, but it feels ok in the same way that it feels ok to say that this or that non-thinking mechanism or system is said to have degrees of freedom. Another term might be options.

Ditto etc etc.