I’m an agnostic, but I’m having problems with the idea of free will. I generally subscribe to the evolutionary idea of things, although I admit there are gaps. But if we do indeed have free will, that is, we decide what we do or don’t do, it seems like that has to be because something (call it what you will) gave it to us. (Wow, this is really hard). If everything we do is merely the sum of neurological impulses in the brain, then do we simply act and then rationalize after the fact? Do we only think we act on accord with our desires? Is the fact that I’m writing this sentence because I actually want to, or because a collection of random impulses in my brain is telling me to? I certainly feel like I’m writing it because I want to, but…
For any event that occurs in the universe, whether its a tornado or a mouse eating a piece of cheese or a president giving a speech, it is logical to assume that the event is the result of some other events converging and unfolding over time into this new event. The previous events might not be pinpointable, however they are there regardless.
Consider a bouncing rubber ball. It might appear to be a random path, however if you carefully analyzed the situation before the ball is thrown you would be able to look at the ball’s mass, its trajectory, the surface it is going to hit, the direction of the wind, if there are any moving obstacles that could interfere (and also their mass and trajectories), and once you have all those parameters factored into the equation you would find that the ball will only be able to take ONE path, and that the path is a definite one. Again it is important to realize that it doesn’t matter if you are somehow unsuccessful at factoring in all these factors. What is important is realizing that the factors are there and that they CAN be factored in.
It might sound a little drab and boring to equate your life to a calculable bouncing ball, but I think it makes perfect sense. All of your thoughts and emotions are simply chemical reactions taking place in your brain. And those reactions are only results of OTHER reactions, and so on. Even your ability to fathom “choice” is a chemical reaction. Are you really choosing to read these words? Or is there a part of your brain that sees text on the screen and is highly reactive to text and the “curiosity gland” gives of its hormones which causes your eyes to take in more knowledge?
This leads to the notion that there really is no such thing as choice. I don’t think this is far from the truth.
With my bouncing ball theory i’m not advocating fate. I don’t think its fate at all. Fate implies a conciousness that pre-destined the universe. Initial conditions in a random chaotic state are what spawn the “order” and “choices” that occur later.
Do some research into cellular automata. If you’re a math nerd you’ll love this stuff.
Those chemical impulses are you though, reactions are not reflexes, we have the ability to seperate thought from action, although impulses concerning our survival are too much for many of us to ignore.
Someone on here explained to me once that it could be like a plant, you know it’s going to grow a certain way because of the kind of plant it is, but you can’t exactly know what it will look like but you have a really good idea.
It is possible to know exactly what it will look like. It might not be easy or likely, but nevertheless it is possible. Think about it. If you had a computer with infinite processing speed and capacity, and you inputed the location, trajectory, and energy levels of every single particle in the universe, the computer would be able to accurately plot the path of each particle and exactly where on exactly which leaf it will rest and exactly where that leaf will fall and exactly which child will land on it when autumn rolls around. Of course the computer would be able to track the particles that made up the peanut butter and jelly sandwich that the child consumed prior to jumping in the pile of leaves.
This computer (more importantly its capabilities) is a hypothetical. Just because something is not likely does not mean that it is not possible. Every particle in the universe is affected by every other particle surrounding it. Which means that theoretically a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil years ago started a chain reaction that contributed to your decision to join this forum.
alexmabee–How do you know that indeterminacy isn’t inherent in the universe? Haven’t physicist made cogent arguments for this based on quantum mechanics? If the universe is composed of events that cannot be described deterministically no matter how accurately observed, what makes you so certain that everything is determined?
While it is true that we(given our primitive technology) cannot determine the exact status of a system of particles, the system of particles in question do have a particular status, and only one status. Even if the particles are moving at the speed of light, their velocities and energies are finite. Therefore theoretically it is possible to know their status. I don’t know how to be more clear about the difference between possibility, and liklihood.
In this case the possibility is there to know exactly what will happen in the future AS LONG AS the status of every particle is known at an arbitrary time (t=0). If at t=0 you have at your disposal the locations, energies, trajectories, masses and velocities of EVERY particle in the universe (i’m gonna call this ultimate particle knowledge, or UPK for short), you can then know exactly what the status of the universe will be at any other time t.
UPK is plausible because particles cannot exist in two places at the same time. There is exactly one status of a system. Admittedly you’d need a computer with a hell of a lot of processing speed. You wouldn’t need an infinite amount of processing speed because there is not an infinite number of particles (if that’s wrong then my theory is not very solid).
So, if UPK is satisfied at t=0 and you are going to choose lottery numbers, you can analyze the UPK data and then see how the balls in the hopper are going to bounce around and land in their little slots. With UPK you’d be able to see exactly how and when any object will hit the ball machine, setting each balls path a little off what it was previously.
I’m not confident that your premise is correct, concerning the ability to ever have “UPK.” The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle shows that, "“The more precisely the POSITION is determined, the less precisely the MOMENTUM is known.” In the quantum universe there may not be determinism as we understand it…maybe the rules are just so so complex that we don’t yet understand them, but there may be some true randomness at work. It this occurs at the subatomic level, what kinds of interaction or “quantum rounding errors” would we see in the Universe? They may be minor individually, but if you could rewind the Universe all 13 billions years back to the Big Bang and replay it, how much would things have to change to make you five minutes later for work this morning or make your eyes brown instead of blue? Given the immense scale of the amount of particles in the observable Universe (not to mention the dark stuff) and the degree to which things seem intertwined, it seems pretty unlikely that even the smallest amount of true randomness could avoid some pretty major changes.
For example, being five minutes late to the airport could cause you to miss a flight. Imagine that plane ended up crashing? What might the effects of that be on the history of our society?
Of course, this addresses only the issue of pure causal predestination- it speaks nothing to the question of whether we can have free will in our classically defined sense. Your actions would be free from predestination yet still be outside your ultimate control (ie random isn’t predestined, but nor is it necessarily free).
In your bedroom you have a ball. You are standing out side of your room and you don’t know where in the room the ball is. There are an infinite number of locations, rotations and orientations that the ball can occupy. However it is right to say that you KNOW that the ball is in exactly one location, you KNOW that the balls rotation and orientation is definite.
It is possible to have an undefined yet definite value. Like Pi. It can only have one value, and you know it has to have one value. Because our current methods are unable to define it to a 100% degree of accuracy, it is not totally defined. It is rounded. Pi HAS a definite value, its just not known.
If “a lot” of particles is what is making UPK hard to grasp, pretend you only have 10 particles. If (emphasis on the IF) you know the locations, velocities, trajectories, energies and masses or all 10 particles you can accurately map out exactly what will happen from t=0 to t= whatever. Same goes for 20 particles. And 100, and 1000, and 2593639, and any amount.
You have excellent mastery of illustrative metaphor. I am a fan of using everyday metaphors (except I sometimes use them in shocking content) to make a point that is easier to grasp than simply stating the principle and leaving it at that.
I understand what you are saying: there is an inherent determinism behind things, even if we wrongly claim an “indeterminism” of reality based upon the limitations of our experience. Existence is set in stone, despite our claims to the opposite.
I’ve had to come to that conclusion a long time ago, and I think that I am a better person for it.
It isn’t that we don’t understand what you are saying. It’s that physicists have different interpretations of the facts of quantum mechanics. According to Bohr and others it isn’t a matter of lack of knowledge. It’s a matter of actual indeterminacy at the sub-atomic level.
Could it be that the “matter of actual indeterminancy at the sub-atomic level” might only be a matter of “perceived actual indeterminancy” when there is an actual determinancy at the sub-atomic level that exists beyond our perceptions?
RE the physics I do believe that the current thinking is coming down the on the side of true indeterminacy not “determinancy we can’t see”
Having said that I am perfectly willing to accept that free will is an illusion.
I have been having some thoughts recently on this topic.
One factor I think is crucial in the definition of free will is the ability of our conciousness to project forward in time and create causes for desired effects. This would be my definition of “will” now whether what we desire is truly chosen or determined by other outside causes would determine if that “will” is “free” or not
But sir, what is our outside?
What are “outside-causes”?
Look out of the windows, sir, and there is the will of thousands of other beings, too. Those others are also individuals.
Your outside is their inside.
Phenomenal Realism, as defined by David J. Chalmers (author of: The Conscious Mind and a professor of Artificial Intelligence Studies formerly of Arizona University)—is the view that the properties of consciousness cannot be fully explained by physical laws and physical cause and effect.
Phenomenal realism tempts belief in free will in support of certain versions of existentialism, which hold that what it is to be a human being and to have the power to make choices is not fully explained by scientific explanations for cause and effect based purely on physics alone.
However, an “anti-freewill” philosopher (such as yours truly) can state that causality need not be constrained to the physical, such that there might indeed by only phenomenological causes and effects giving rise to the illusion of a psychophysical covariance and correspondence. (In english, that our experience of the brain and it’s function and it’s supposed power to produce subjective experience might itself only be an aspect of a greater subjective simulation of reality caused by a non-brain agency)
I think the question of free will, regardless of whether or not one is a materialist or phenomenal realist, lies in causal dependency of will upon an external agency in order to manifest—in the sense that “will” cannot manifest unless something else happens first to allow it to manifest.
Independent of causal dependency, it seems that free will is supported by a magical acausality to it’s existence, in the sense that it magically “pops” into experience.
There are questions of how a given act of will, if one accepts the acausality of will, can be so punctual to a given situation and so appropriate, but this is another matter.
Jay M. Brewer blog.myspace.com/superchristianity (A hypothesis of what was going on within the mind of Jesus Christ while dying upon the cross—you’ll NEVER feel the same after reading this stuff!)[/img]
What has persuaded you to reject the perception of your own freedom to choose? Without free will human agency and creativity are illusions. How is consciousness different from what our ancestors called spirit? Could consciousness be our connection to being-in-itself, that is, being not determined by external causes?
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