What is free will?

[Vanamonde]

As always, please leave each other's personalities out of it, and confine the discussion to the subject of the thread.

[Francesco]

First of all don't compare physical laws with the legal system. Even though they have a similar name, there the similarity ends. One of those is descriptive, the other is proscriptive and prescriptive.

Secondly you're still just speculating. What makes you think that society is anything more than a meta-system also based ultimately on physics? Machines also consider variables and react to them. The presence of options is hardly a justification for the belief in free will.

Did you consider that that also implies that machines have free will? Or are there more premises you've not stated.

Use Occam's razor.

First of all, explain why I shouldn't.

My point is that there are rules in the universe we are subject to, in a hard deterministic way, like physics;

then, there are "rules" we can choose to ignore.

Our behaviour is influenced and restrained by certain laws, but not completely determined by them.

Hence, free will.

You can't bring up theories and then ask me to disprove them. The burden of proof is on you, not on me.

Machines have free will? I don't know, I didn't talk about that.

Society is based ultimately on physics? You explain us why.

Then, you twist the meaning of Occam's Razor to your own liking: it doesn't mean "my theory is simpler than yours, therefore it's the right one".

Of course they do. They are an influencing force just like everything else your senses tell you.

Of course they do, what, exactly?

[Godot]

Is there anyone here understanding more about how the human brain works who could explain if it is in any way comparable to how an electronic CPU works.

...

It would be rather hard to fit an understandable introduction of the neural system of humans and other animals into the confines of a single posting, as it would have to cover not only an overview of the workings of a single neuron (like synaptic transmission (i.e. transmision of signals from one neuron to the next), signal transmission along myelinated and unmyelinated axonsand neuronal changes during learning), the neurohumoral system, but also the different processing mechanisms the different brain structures employ (or example the provessing of a visual cue from the retina till the processing in the lobus occipitalis).

The next what comes to natural neural networks in the computer world would be ANNs (artificial neuronal networks) ... and these are extremly simple compared to the brain, considering that they only operate with a rather limited number of neurons and layers.

You just cannot match the parallelism and complexity of the human CNS and PNS with its > 50 billion neurons (with its electrochemicalm reactions thatare processed in all neurons just in time [with no central processor schedule that has to be split into slots to give a little bit of processing time for each neuron])

If you are interested in neuroscience a good way would be to get an introductory textbook from the local (university) library ... for example:

Kolb/Wishaw: Fundamentals of human Neuropsychology

Edited October 14, 2014 by Godot
Oops wrote the wrong authors

[CaptainKipard]

First of all, explain why I shouldn't.

Hmm. Well beside the fact that they both influence your behaviour there's very little else in common between them. One is fundamental, and describes nature. The other is a proscriptive and prescriptive system that exists on top of another system.

My point is that there are rules in the universe we are subject to, in a hard deterministic way, like physics;

then, there are "rules" we can choose to ignore.

I know that that's the conclusion you want to come to, but you're not drawing that conclusion. It's a presupposition. It's baseless. You're just repeating yourself without any backing. It's pure speculation.

Our behaviour is influenced and restrained by certain laws, but not completely determined by them.

Again. You're not providing an argument. It's the same assertion over and over.

Hence, free will.

This is not a sound argument. It's only valid. You need both soundness and validity to draw this conclusion.

Edit

Actually it's not even valid. It only opens up the possibility of free will.

You can't bring up theories and then ask me to disprove them. The burden of proof is on you, not on me.

This is ironic. The only theory I brought up is the study and it's supported. I have no other burden of proof.

You're bringing up free will, and there the burden is on you. I keep challenging it and you're doing nothing except rephrasing your presupposition. You have to do better. Otherwise concede.

Machines have free will? I don't know, I didn't talk about that.

Well it's a natural conclusion of what you said. I'm trying to do a reductio ad absurdum, but if you wont acknowledge this problem then what's the use of debating at all? Address it please. Or don't.

Society is based ultimately on physics? You explain us why.

Because of Occam's razor.

Then, you twist the meaning of Occam's Razor to your own liking: it doesn't mean "my theory is simpler than yours, therefore it's the right one".

Everything else being equal the explanation with fewer assumptions should be used. It means there's no justification for injecting a free will into the mix out of nowhere.

Of course they do, what, exactly?

The quote was right above that. What are you doing?

Edited October 14, 2014 by Cpt. Kipard
Oops I made a mistake with quotes.

[SuperFastJellyfish]

First of all, explain why I shouldn't.

My point is that there are rules in the universe we are subject to, in a hard deterministic way, like physics;

then, there are "rules" we can choose to ignore.

Our behaviour is influenced and restrained by certain laws, but not completely determined by them.

Hence, free will.

If you say that we are ruled by physics, then how can you suppose there is free will? Go to one of the smallest scales of size...atoms. They interact with each other following the rules of physics. Then go to the next one...molecules. They interact with each other following the rules of physics. Then go to the next level of complexity all the way up to multicellular human societies interacting with each other following the rules of physics. Where along this chain of physics does a choice come into play?

I'm of the camp that says because we can see how each level of systems operate down to sub-atom level then the conclusion is that there is no choice. If everything was setup the same way(all subatomic particles, atoms, molecules, your brain's arrangement etc) the system would react the same way every time. There is no room for choice unless you suppose there are supernatural effects going on.

[-Velocity-]

First of all, explain why I shouldn't.

My point is that there are rules in the universe we are subject to, in a hard deterministic way, like physics;

then, there are "rules" we can choose to ignore.

Our behaviour is influenced and restrained by certain laws, but not completely determined by them.

Hence, free will.

You can't bring up theories and then ask me to disprove them. The burden of proof is on you, not on me.

According to science, everything that is in our universe must follow the physical laws, all the time. That includes your brain. You're claiming that the brain does not follow physical laws, or it can choose not to. So, you're claiming that the brain has supernatural powers- powers that cannot be explained by the application of any physical laws, whether those physical laws are known to us or not.

As you're the one making an extraordinary claim for something new that has never been seen to exist, the burden of proof falls on YOU. You don't even have evidence for your claim, let alone proof. It's the person who makes claims- YOU- who has the burden of proof. To say otherwise is like claiming that invisible pink polka-dotted unicorns exist and that the burden is on us to prove that they don't. Ridiculous.

[Karla]

Is there anyone here understanding more about how the human brain works who could explain if it is in any way comparable to how an electronic CPU works.

Someone earlier mentioned it is more like an analog system capable of processing data with more states then just 0 and 1 and also that it is working with rather high noise levels.

I read some really horrible papers once that were written in the 60's from the very beginnings of research into synthetic emotions. It was painful. Not because they were difficult or incomprehensible but because they were so wrong. They were trying to argue that emotions acted in the same way that interrupts do in computers. It was wrong because they were thinking only in terms of binary states.

My supervisor explained to me that it was all the rage then to think of the brain working like a computer.

You can apply information theory to understand how the brain works. You can make the case that dendritic trees can implement binary logic and that neurons send off binary spikes. But the brain at its heart is a noisy analog system. Underlying all these mechanisms are analog cells, chemicals and electrical impulses. For example, neurons may fire binary spikes, but they also have continuous firing rates that change over time and go in and out of phase with other firing patterns from other neurons. Neurons habituate and lose voltage over time. Connections between neurons change, strengthen and weaken gradually over time. Throw in neuromodulators, long term potentiation and depression and you have gain controls for different parts of the brain.

Personally speaking I think the brain is best understood as a physical thermodynamical self-organising system.

Edited October 14, 2014 by Karla

[Dispatcher]

Wow. That was very defensive. Where do you get the idea that I'm doing anything other than trying to understand your vague posts. I'm not telling you, I was asking you. If I weren't interested in hearing your thoughts I wouldn't bother asking you to clarify. Get it together and relax.

On the other hand if you've ran out of words then leave the thread altogether. No one is interested in emotional outbursts. Just talk.

Wow. Please read the beginning post to this thread. I believe I responded to that, as have others, including you. As far as "outbursts" are concerned, thanks for defining what I've written as "outbursts". As far as I'm concerned, I'm "just talking", as you have suggested. Cheers.

Edit: I've no ill will towards you, Cpt. Kipard. Clearly the written word is limited in dimension. I tried reading the same sentences using different voice inflections, etc. and the results run the gamut of meaning and intensity. What would be cool is an audio forum... wait ... maybe not. Take care!

Edited October 15, 2014 by Dispatcher
Adding clarity.

[TeeGee]

You don't get it. Who cares about things being 100% certain? The Sun might not rise tomorrow because some unusual phenomenon we haven't yet discovered and have never before observed in nature causes it to collapse into a black hole. Because the probability of this (or something similar) is like 0.00000000000000000001%, do you decide that you shouldn't set your alarm and go to work? Of course not. The reality is that we must act on things that are not 100% certain as though they are 100% certain.

I use Occam's razor to show that your "one mind" universe is highly unlikely, and useless in terms of a realistic model. It's an interesting philosophical idea to ponder, that's all. Because it's so unlikely, we can ignore it as a possibility, and we can safely say that other minds DO exist, even though we can never be absolutely 100% certain that they do. Only 99.99999999%

Did I say you should stop functioning in society if you are an idealist? No.

How can you state that Occams razor concludes "one mind universe" as being wrong? Occams razor merely states that the simplest explaination is usually the correct one. What is more simple than my argument of minds being the only things that truly exist?

We know thought is real. We know emotions are real. We know consciousness is real. All of those conclusions didn't come from objective study; it came from existence itself. A Priori knowledge that BABIES acquire without ANY effort.

It's beautiful how simple everything becomes when you think of them in terms of idealism.

Look at the opposite point.. what is prerequisite for consciousness in a material world (where the external world spawns conscious, subjective entities with UNshared emotions)? Everyone here would argue that a brain is required... well what is a brain? It is a collection of neurons. What are neurons? Neurons are cells that respond in BINARY (on and off) fashions when signalled by a previously stimulated neuron to release neurotransmitters (peptides etc). How does that give consciousness, my cells do that everywhere else in my body (send and receive signals)?

... I dunno why.

I was a neuroscience major in university and the problem of the mind is a big metaphysical issue in neuroscience; so big that it is usually avoided and people just state mind=brain. But the qualities of BRAIN = entirely OBJECTIVE (I can eat it, touch it, smell it)... I can't do that with a mind. When I was dissecting cadavers in med school, when I held my patients brain, I didn't get flashbacks of their lives or what they were feeling when they were 35 years old getting married.

Do brains influence minds? Of course it does. Just like how a videogame controller influences what YOU can do with your videogame character. I look at the brain as a transducer of the mind and visa versa. For some reason, our brains can speak the language of consciousness and emotions. You break the joystick, you won't be able to move your character. You break the A button, you can't talk to NPC's. Same in real life.

I've seen TONS of dementia patients who are SUPER frustrated they can't remember a relatives name, or where they are, or what day of the month it is, or how to even walk straight; your mind is trying to do something but your brain is so damaged, your body won't respond.

What does this have to do with free will? If you believe the mind = brain, you are not allowed by LOGIC to believe in free will. Brains are slaves to physics. If that is true, you are not really responsible for anything that you've done or believe in your life.

If you are a nobel prize winning computer scientist, that achievement doesn't belong to you, it belongs to the physics that predetermined your abilities to walk the path leading to the nobel prize. Your intelligence = predetermined. Your emotions = predetermined, your beliefs = predetermined, your choices = predetermined.

If you steal a car, or kill someone; same thing. You didn't do anything wrong... you were just a slave to physics. Physics makes people do evil things and therefore they are absolved of their "sins" because they never actually chose them in the first place. How UGLY would our planet be if people started to loose faith in their own free will? Responsibility goes out the door. They've even done studies on this VERY issue; people who are convinced they don't have free will, start to act like jerks.

I honestly don't care what you believe because at the end of the day, I am me and you are you. Seperate beings, each with one voice in their heads that cannot talk to one another directly, no matter how hard we tried. Do I believe all humans have minds? No. Do I let that impact how I work or treat others in society? Hell no. But I am the type of person that entertains these awesome metaphysical/epistomological theories in everyday life.

It's the only TRUTH I know to be real in my life; and it makes me smile everyday I realize how much we take things on faith to be true when we really have no idea. It's a society of beliefs built on nothing.

Edited October 15, 2014 by TeeGee

[Dispatcher]

TeeGee, I think you hit on something. Everything we do is predicated on some kind of faith, or expectation. We expect to get up after a good rest, go to work or school or holiday or some activity. We expect to eat the next meal in a timely manner, etc. But we've absolutely no guarantees about anything beyond the current moment. But without those expectations, we would not have attained to anything as a society or as individuals.

[78stonewobble]

I think there is also multiple levels to the debate.

One is offcourse, how the brain works, but the other is also about how we arrange ourself in our societies, to guarantee individuals free will, without letting them negatively impact others people's freedom.

Even if we find out that our brains (as unique as they are from individual to individual) are completely predictable biological machines, that does not necessarily or should not undermine, that a person wanting to be ie. mechanic in ohio, can't... because ie. society believes we have too many mechanics and that person should instead be a farmer in nigeria.

Or in another way, that the brain is just a biological machine, does not mean we can neglect it's impact on an individuals life and quality of life.

[rtxoff]

According to science, everything that is in our universe must follow the physical laws, all the time. That includes your brain. You're claiming that the brain does not follow physical laws, or it can choose not to. So, you're claiming that the brain has supernatural powers- powers that cannot be explained by the application of any physical laws, whether those physical laws are known to us or not.

Science can explain many things in the world but i fear that some things will forever be a supernatural thing not explainable by science. Free will might be such a thing.

While the brain surely follows physical rules it's product might be something that doesn't, as long as science doesn't unlock the very last secrets of the brain we can't know for sure.

As far as i see we won't find an answer here. People are discussing free will since thousands of years and there where no conclusions yet everybody could live with.

[CaptainKipard]

Wow...

Alright. if you say so. Try not to make your posts look so sarcastic.

If you steal a car, or kill someone; same thing. You didn't do anything wrong... you were just a slave to physics. Physics makes people do evil things and therefore they are absolved of their "sins" because they never actually chose them in the first place.

None of this matters. Deterministic brains will still put your arse in jail and rehabilitate you. They have no choice. This has already been addressed a few times.

How UGLY would our planet be if people started to loose faith in their own free will? Responsibility goes out the door. They've even done studies on this VERY issue; people who are convinced they don't have free will, start to act like evil [snip].

Provide those studies. Don't use weasel terms.

Also TeeGee stop derailing this thread. If I want to discuss solipsism then your expression of me can start a new thread.

Science can explain many things in the world but i fear that some things will forever be a supernatural thing not explainable by science. Free will might be such a thing.

While the brain surely follows physical rules it's product might be something that doesn't, as long as science doesn't unlock the very last secrets of the brain we can't know for sure.

As far as i see we won't find an answer here. People are discussing free will since thousands of years and there where no conclusions yet everybody could live with.

Speculating about unfalsifiable things is just a waste of time. Let's put it aside for now.

Edited October 15, 2014 by Vanamonde

[Karla]

Did I say you should stop functioning in society if you are an idealist? No.

What does this have to do with free will? If you believe the mind = brain, you are not allowed by LOGIC to believe in free will. Brains are slaves to physics. If that is true, you are not really responsible for anything that you've done or believe in your life.

If you are a nobel prize winning computer scientist, that achievement doesn't belong to you, it belongs to the physics that predetermined your abilities to walk the path leading to the nobel prize. Your intelligence = predetermined. Your emotions = predetermined, your beliefs = predetermined, your choices = predetermined.

It does not make sense to talk about being slave to your brain or physics. You are your brain. It's like saying that a table is slave to being a table because it has legs and a flat top. It's a meaningless statement that adds no information.

So if I am a Nobel prize winning computer scientist the achievement would belong to me because I am my brain. Without my brain there is no me. My brain is a system that works because of physics. (Also the achievement would go to the person who started giving out Nobel prizes to computer scientists)

Whether the brain is predetermined or not is irrelevant because we do not know the future. It's new to us. And it's not necessarily even accurate but I will leave that up to those that know more about quantum mechanics if they want to go down that rabbit hole.

Even the term predetermined is equivocation. Predetermined by what?

If you steal a car, or kill someone; same thing. You didn't do anything wrong... you were just a slave to physics. Physics makes people do evil things and therefore they are absolved of their "sins" because they never actually chose them in the first place.

How UGLY would our planet be if people started to loose faith in their own free will? Responsibility goes out the door. They've even done studies on this VERY issue; people who are convinced they don't have free will, start to act like evil [snippity snip].

Citation required.

I don't believe in free-will. I don't act like an evil [snip more]because I have empathy. Empathy is an evolved instinct that is implemented by my brain. I am sensing religious overtones from you. I hear this argument the whole time from theists who argue that without their god there is no morality.

Lose faith in their own free will? Faith is belief without evidence. It does not alter reality.

Edited October 15, 2014 by Vanamonde

[Alchemist]

Speaking of attempts to find parallels between brain and computers: cross-platform software.

(I'm not expert on this, so some parts might be a wild speculation, feel free to correct me if there's a misunderstanding)

Unix systems are capable of running on different hardware platforms, working the same way on hardware with different internal logic and interfaces. How? Of course, there's some hardware-dependent code that ensures proper conversion of internal logic of the OS into the internal logic of the hardware. But rest of the programming is the same for all the different hardware! So you can try describing how the system works starting with hardware structure and platform-dependent code (and get unique description for each platform, even if the end results are the same), or you can start with specifications of what interfaces should the platform-dependent code ensure and still fully describe how the OS works the same way for all the platforms without touching the hardware level.

Now, back to brains. The "hardware" level of each of us might be pretty much unique. The biggest proof are cases of practically full recovery after major brain traumas - the "hardware" is even capable of rearranging itself (of course, that implies reconfiguration of "platform-dependent code" as well)! The higher mental processes may be the "cross-platform software" part ensuring that we all process the same data similarly despite all the differences in internal realization, while the "platform-dependent" part (which mostly forms in early childhood through contact with environment and society) is what ensures that the higher processes do run the same way. Of course, for organic brain there's never a clear border between different "software components", but if this works even approximately like that it means that there's really no reasons for it to be impossible to port "mind" onto different hardware (including artificially created) with adequate memory and processing power, we just need to understand how the "platform-dependent" part forms to be able to recreate it (or create prerequisites to its formation) on the different hardware (and the "cross-platform" part will be able to form the same way as with development of our own minds).

As for "free will" in this scheme - it might just be manifestation of some "program component", but if we want to create an artificial mind that thinks like we do we should understand how that forms to ensure the AI will have its mind working properly.

[Vanamonde]

Please watch the language folks, and also, try not to be so mad at each other all the time, eh?

[rtxoff]

Just found this video:

I think it's very interesting and explains many things that are happening with us. Especially the interpersonal madness here in the science labs is explained by the first part.

Give it a go if you have some time to spare.

[Helix935]

Just found this video:

I think it's very interesting and explains many things that are happening with us. Especially the interpersonal madness here in the science labs is explained by the first part.

Give it a go if you have some time to spare.

dang, i'm at school and i don't have headphones

[CaptainKipard]

Just found this video:

I think it's very interesting and explains many things that are happening with us. Especially the interpersonal madness here in the science labs is explained by the first part.

Give it a go if you have some time to spare.

I'm not about to watch a 50 minute video without any description.