Does free will exist?

[mosaix]

Originally Posted by kronobot.com

What is "free will"? The term is thrown out there so loosely, mainly in religion to blame man for god's making man fully knowing beforehand that later on he'd consider it an abomination.

However, that's not really a definition for "free will".

How would you define what you call "free will"? It's a free will interpretation.

It's a good question kronobot.

Let's think of writing a computer program to generate a random number. Using conventional computing it's impossible to do because everything the computer does is limited by the fact that it has no free will - everything is based on its programming or some data (seed) supplied to it as a starting point. If the starting point is repeated then the results will be repeated. The computer that provides the random numbers for the Premium Bond winners in the UK uses random emissions from a nuclear source as it's seed - considered truly random.

But, suppose I ask you to think of a random number and you supply one. How have you come up with that number? If it's truly random then free will probably exists.

That's my definition - the ability to provide different results given identical starting points. Something a conventional computer can't do. I don't know how to test for it, but that's how I'd define it.

And because I can't provide a test for it then I don't know the answer to the question 'Does free will exist?'.

[Interference]

A computer can generate a random number, just as it can randomly decide whether it's going to behave today or not. Chaos theory in action?

The human mind stores information in packages that don't appear to be accessible through solely conscious effort. The sub-conscious, unconscious and super-conscious compartments leak into our consciousness sometimes, but not often at our behest. So, ask me to pick a number from one to ten and I'm as likely to pick the number I last registered, whether I registered it consciously or not, as any other. This is a fundament of Derren Brown's mentalism as well as Neuro-Linguistic Programming.

I have my doubts, therefore, as to whether "true randomness" can be proven.

Perhaps we respond to the dictates of our subconsciousness more than we realise. Perhaps the freedom of our will is in the balancing of several factors, some of which are deterministic and others being more akin to random. The final (conscious) choice a person makes is probably the only predictable part of the sequence, after all other data has been processed by the brain. Which perhaps explains why some people occasionally act "out of character" and why we often pride ourselves on having complex and contradictory personalities.

As ever, this is just a Thought In Progress. Hope it helps someone.

[Ursa major]

Maybe, but I've been arguing that our subconscious minds (and whatever other hyphenated consciousnesses there are) are as much a part of "us" as our conscious mind.

[Interference]

Agreed, some might argue that it's our most important part, that it's our conscious mind that misdirects us most often and that is most tethered to the demands of ego-fulfillment. Some might argue that consciousness is the begetter of hedonism at its worst and smugness at its best.

[Parson]

Ah! Now there's the rub. Feelings are undependable and they lie! Your first paragraph could be used as a defense for determinism.

[Interference]

Isn't that the beauty of this discussion? What goes for one side is equally applicable to the other, therefore both are right. A unique (?) example of two opposites being exactly the same. Q.E.D.

[mosaix]

Originally Posted by kronobot.com

It's made up of small little past influences that shaped and predetermine a person's formula for thinking

Ah, but supposing (I know it's not possible) two, or more, people existed that had identical genes, identical past lives and influences so they they had identical formula for thinking (just like two computers of the same model loaded with the same random number generator and the same seed) and you asked them both in an identical fashion and at the same time to 'think of a number!'.

Would they both come up with the same number? If so - no free will.

[mosaix]

Originally Posted by Interference

A computer can generate a random number,

Of course it can, but given the same circumstances, the same random number generator, the same seed, it would generate the same random number the next day.

just as it can randomly decide whether it's going to behave today or not.

If you mean a computer mal-functioning - it doesn't decide to do so - it just mal-functions like, say, a TV breaking down. There's no choice on the part of the TV either. Things just wear out.

But two computers mal-functioning in the same way would produce the same results - no free will.

[Interference]

Originally Posted by mosaix

Of course it can, but given the same circumstances, the same random number generator, the same seed, it would generate the same random number the next day.

LOL That was the joke of early eight-bit computers - randomness was almost predictable

Originally Posted by mosaix

If you mean a computer mal-functioning - it doesn't decide to do so - it just mal-functions like, say, a TV breaking down. There's no choice on the part of the TV either. Things just wear out.

Quite right. I'm sure almost everyone with a computer has had the experience where, one morning, they've switched on and it's needed a re-boot almost immediately. Most times you can figure out why this has been necessary, but there are occasions where you just have to accept that something utterly, randomly coincidental and beyond your ken has happened. You might decide it's a manufacturing flaw in some component of the machine, but then you have to accept that, however high the standards of manufacture, even components are only exactly the same within a certain percentage tolerance.

Because no two things are exactly similar (using the scientific definition of that term).

Originally Posted by mosaix

But two computers mal-functioning in the same way would produce the same results - no free will.

The same could be argued of humans. Given that humans aren't "manufactured" to the same tolerances, you can still see how different representatives of the species often react in like ways to a given set of circumstances, otherwise medicine, psychology, comedy, drama and clothes would all have to be personally bespoke.

Originally Posted by mosaix

Ah, but supposing (I know it's not possible) two, or more, people existed that had identical genes, identical past lives and influences so they they had identical formula for thinking (just like two computers of the same model loaded with the same random number generator and the same seed) and you asked them both in an identical fashion and at the same time to 'think of a number!'.

To prove pre-determination beyond a doubt, both people would need to be identical in so many fundamental ways that you'd just as easily call them the same person.

However, just the fact that they are standing in two different locations of spacetime (be it two inches apart or two miles, a difference of a millisecond between the initiation of each consciousness or of ten minutes) would be enough to introduce a random element to that experiment. Though you might end up accepting results "within a percentile tolerance" and get on with the experiments.

Experience has to have, in my view, an impact on how an individual makes a choice. Colour preferences are often experience-based. Musical tastes are broader, but the preferences of eras of music are almost entirely down to associative experiences.

Different individuals have different tolerances to extreme circumstances, and I don't know if this is because of learned experience or if it's in the original design of their DNA. Certainly a percentage of humanity is "ill" in ways that can only come to light as a consequence of our extending life-spans and some illnesses and mental imbalances are related to how a person relates to circumstances and/or surroundings.

Likewise, no car manufacturer expects their cars to last much more than a handful of years, but a small percentage of practically every model ever made will survive against the odds, either because the owner takes extremely good care of them or because one or two examples are accidentally (randomly) manufactured to the highest of standards. Put the good car in the hands of the good owner and it could give more-or-less predictably good service more-or-less indefinitely.

So, whatever way you choose (or are compelled) to view the answer to this question in the end, it is clear that there are many, many things that lie beyond the power of choice and only a comparative handful that we can exercise that power over. I suspect that the freedom to pick a number randomly from a given range is marginally less essential than the freedom to choose the means and manner of our happiness. Who wouldn't gladly exchange the former for the latter?

Any day.

[mosaix]

Originally Posted by Interference

However, just the fact that they are standing in two different locations of spacetime (be it two inches apart or two miles, a difference of a millisecond between the initiation of each consciousness or of ten minutes) would be enough to introduce a random element to that experiment. Though you might end up accepting results "within a percentile tolerance" and get on with the experiments.

Entirely right, Interference. That's why I've no doubt my suggestion would be impossible to carry out.

I was just trying to give kronobot a definition of "free will". Personally I doubt that it exists but I also doubt that can be proven on way or another for exactly the reasons that you give.

However, I do find interesting (although I'm not sure it proves much) that pollsters can gauge opinion of millions (and in the last general election, in the UK, extremely accurately from the exit polls) by asking questions of just a few thousands.

I suspect that the freedom to pick a number randomly from a given range is marginally less essential than the freedom to choose the means and manner of our happiness. Who wouldn't gladly exchange the former for the latter?

What I was trying to do was somehow examine the process about how we come to decisions and whether we could test that in any way. I wasn't making any judgement on the inherent quality of those decisions.

[Interference]

Which brings us neatly back to Asimov's "Psychohistory"


(If I'd known that one paragraph was all I needed to say, I wouldn't have agonised for hours over the rest of my post ... or would I? )

[Ursa major]

But isn't our decision making the result of a chaotic process (not just in the moments during which we think we're deciding, but in all the time the connections in our brain have been made and reinforced/bypassed).

As such, our decisions should also demonstrate some degree of chaos and so cannot reallt be predetermined or completely predictably.



As for pschohistory, I thought it was nonsense when I read the first Foundation trilogy three-plus decades ago. (And I didn't have to think about free will to come to this conclusion.)

[Interference]

I take heart from the fact that a fiction writer can write "nonsense" and still become revered for his works after his death

[mosaix]

Originally Posted by Ursa major

But isn't our decision making the result of a chaotic process (not just in the moments during which we think we're deciding, but in all the time the connections in our brain have been made and reinforced/bypassed).

Probably true UM. But are you saying that that process is a function, somehow, of the brain?

If it is, given two identical brains with identical histories (I know this isn't possible), would they always reach the same decision (about anything not just random numbers as in my example).

If so what does that say about free will? And if not what does control the decision making process?

[Ursa major]

The whole point about chaotic systems is that their output(s) cannot be predicted from their input(s).

The best explanation I saw of this kinbd of chaos was that of a pendulum swing through a magnetic field. Either system (mechanical or magnetic) is completely predictable. Put them together and prediction is impossible.

Now think of the brain as containing billions of analogues of pendulums and billions of analogues of magnetic fields. Now where's the predictability?