Yeah I put this in the same bucket as religion and freewill. These are things people cling onto because we so desperately want to feel special and magical.
It's similar to learning that the universe doesn't literally revolve around us.
Assuming free will doesn't exist, how would a world where free will does exist be any different? As far as I can tell, our current world is indistinguishable from a world with free will, therefore our world is equivalent to one with free will.
I think you need to define free will before deciding whether or not it exists. People that argue about it are mostly just using different definitions for it. Actually, the whole thing seems to be just a semantic argument, there's no science or anything involved.
IMO, I think free will is just a lie we tell ourselves. The inner workings of our brains are mostly hidden from us. When asked why we did something we just make up some bullshit that's not unlike what ChatGPT does when it helpfully fabricates an answer for us.
Free will is the idea that there is a “you” and you are the author of your thoughts.
If you think “you” is just a bunch of neurons in the brain then most people would not consider that free will because physics is the author of your thoughts.
To be clear that is my view. So I don’t think we have free will. We just feel like we do.
I don't see how we are anything more than just the particles that make up our selves, ie. the neurons in the brain. I can't seem to find a definition of free will that isn't self referential. What does it even mean that:
> Free will is the idea that there is a “you” and you are the author of your thoughts.
I am a "me", and I am the author of my thoughts, but that comes from the neurons in my brain firing and making decisions based on input. It still makes decisions, choices. I just maintain that those choices are not outside the universe. They are either:
1) Entirely causal based on all inputs and particles in the universe. Rewinding the universe and replaying will result in the exact same decisions.
or
2) The universe contains implicit randomness and this feeds into our neurons firing, meaning, rewinding the universe and replaying won't result in the same decisions.
I agree but I think you’re overthinking it a bit. Usually when people talk about free will there’s an implication of a “spirit”, or something similar, that is the source of your thoughts. That’s the “you”.
I guess it depends on how you define it but I would say physics is the author of your thoughts. Physics is what’s making the decisions. Physics is the reason neurons fire.
Well, I can't debate people who believe in the spiritual realm, they can believe in free will and there is not much debate to be had.
But for anyone else, I still don't see how the concept of free will even makes sense. It is either determined, or random. What other options are there?
The dedinition should distinguish free will vs free agency.
We have free agency to do what is possible for us, like ultimately committing suicide to restrict that freedom, but we dont have the freedom to choose how we choose because this will never be fully transparent to us, even though we can approximate it with mindfullness.
So, to answer OPs question how the world would look like with "free will", i imagine a world without all those cognitive biases like this entire tribalistic political bullshit we are seeing around the world with identity infested right (and lesser, left) wing movements as a reaction to ever more complex global problems, so quite a contrast.
I think Free Will basically means that nobody else can force us to will, to desire, to like what we like.
A non-free-will would be something where somebody else controls my mind. Like you could imagine hearing thoughts in your head which you think are thought by someone else, like in schizophrenia I guess.
You can force me to do something but you cannot force me to will/want/like anything.
The core of the flaw in your proposition is the premise of making the determination based on external observation.
The actual question is this: do I have free will or not? Life presents us with choices. To paraphrase the prince of Denmark, 'Do I decide to do x or !x? That is the question'.
Related question is does I (distinct from Reality) even have a real existence?
In the 2 slit experiment, as long as the future state of the system is undecidable, we see light behave as waves. When the future of the system is constrained (by measure, which is a 'means of determination') does light behave like a particle.
> As far as I can tell, our current world is indistinguishable from a world with free will
As far as I can tell, everything in our world is governed by the laws of physics, and free will is an illusion. We "make choices", but only because physics moves our brain from one state to the next, and your "choices" only have one option - the one that follows physics.
(this assumes there's no true randomness in the universe, as it requires a source of true randomness, so infinite regress)
But even with true randomness, it would not suddenly turn will into free will. It would turn it into chaotic/unpredictable will maybe, governed by random events, not free.
To us free will feels real because that’s how our neurons fire. We can refuse because there are patterns of neuron activation that lead to the physical act of refusal.
If you don't have free will, you shouldn't be able to resist my suggestion. That's what it means to lack free will - to obey suggestion. If free will existed in this form, then your claim that free will doesn't exist will be wrong. If you want to say that some forms of free will exist and some don't, feel free to elaborate which do and which don't. If you want to say that compatibilistic free will exist and libertarian doesn't, that's completely reasonable, but "free will exists" is the accurate description of this situation.
Will is affecting, bringing about, one's intent. Intentions are based on thought. Thought is engendered in the mind. A weak mind is susceptible to suggestions. Suggestibility is indicative of an inability to resist 'external' (not necessarily in the physical sense) influences.
The question of free will is meaningful as a dual of the proposition of determinism. I suggest to you :) that you lack clarity of thought and need to work on that.
No, your response is not scientific. The default, rational assumption is that the brain works through normal physical processes.
In order for free will to exist there would need to be some force outside of normal physics that influences the physical world.
No evidence for this force of nature exists. And, at a high level, this is no different from other quackery like psychics, witchcraft and other similar nonsense where people insist that their minds can influence the physical world beyond normal physics.
I think your mistake is to take “free will” to be something that exists or could exist (ie: in the same realm as physical forces). Which is, of course, just as “outside of physics” as the concept of a spirit or God.
“Free will” is a cultural-linguistic construct. How could it be anything else? The very concepts of discrete individuals, let alone agency, is effectively arbitrary as far as physical forces are concerned.
The “things” that free will concern are already many, many layers of abstractions (and cultural-linguistic construction) away from the individual deterministic interactions of what we currently understand to be physics.
And, like all abstractions, these are leaky and imprecise. So trying to model or analyse their behavior in terms of deterministic physical interactions has always seemed misguided to me.
Let's also think about Quantum Mechanics. It says the world is non-deterministic. A photon basically has FREE WILL to decide which slit it goes through in the double-slit experiment.
The Laws of Physics cannot dictate whether Schrodinger's cat dies because an atomic reaction happens, only that there is a specific probability for that happening.
So if the world is not deterministic neither are human brains. Physics cannot dictate what the brains think, it can only dictate what the probabilities for some neuron pathways opening or closing are.
I don't know the whole of the compatibilism arguments but they're just defining a moral framework within which you're still accountable. It doesn't say that free will is real.
It can all be broken down as follows:
Rewind time by a certain amount where the entire universe is exactly as it was at that instant. Start the replay. Do you make all the exact same choices, is the universe exactly the same when we get back to the present time?
If the answer is yes, then most people will accept that rejects the most common understanding of free will.
If the answer is no, then by what mechanism were different choices made? How did the neurons in your brain fire differently to make different choices? It must be random. And if it is just random, then that, to me (and many others) also rejects the most common understanding of free will.
But, that doesn't reject the idea of accountability within this system, because accountability is the feedback that directs the neurons to fire in a certain manner to make choices that soiciety prefers. If there was no accountability, no punishment for behaviour that was harmful to other individuals, it would not have good outcomes. So the system creates accountability. It must, because that accountability is part of the physical process by which choices are made.
It's not an illusion any more than Vegas odds are an illusion. Free will is the (correct) perception by an agent that its actions can't be predicted by other agents. My guess is that there will never be an agent that can predict my moment-by-moment thoughts and actions, so I'll always have free will.
Free will is the idea that there is a "you" and you are the author of your actions, or at least you can significantly influence your actions.
Of course, your actions are authored by the neurons in your brain but most people speak as if there is more to it than that. As if there is a "you" that exists outside the brain.
If you can imagine, say, being imprisoned in a 10x10 cell for the rest of your life, and how that would affect your own internal sense of "free will", I think you'll realize it's not arbitrary.
One of the debates around free will centers on an idea that free will means actions must be physically random. So, I think people understand that probability and randomness are really important pieces to understanding free will.
The missing link is understanding that probability is a state of mind. It doesn't matter that the physics is deterministic. (Deterministic physics is indeed also responsible for my current unique perception of my consciousness, so deterministic physics can do a whole heckuva lot.)
So, yes, my moment-by-moment decisions in the sea of the universe's physics and other conscious agents are determined by physics, but to all possible computational agents my moment-by-moment decisions and their affect on reality are weighted random.
I think it's just most people don't really understand physics. If they get the concept of emergent effects, complexity and how free will vs no free will are basically indistinguishable to the humans, I doubt they would still agree with the same conclusion.
Most people consider free will as an ability to make one's own decisions not coerced by someone else. It doesn't conflict with laws of physics. And even if they believed otherwise, it wouldn't mean much, as it won't be the first wrong belief about reality.
Normal physical processes are not deterministic. You don't need to speculate on a source of non-determinism, it's right there in the substrate. Penrose's entire argument is based on a fallacy (you need quantum effects for a system to be non-deterministic) and we've known this since the double-pendulum.
It's similar to learning that the universe doesn't literally revolve around us.