Free Will - Does it exist?

[brennan]

Random impulses cause us to shoot up schoolyards and strangle our girlfriends and stuff.

We'll be sure to watch out for you in the news.

 

[BasketCase]

Oh, come on, gimme a break.

I don't do that kind of thing any more.

 

[brennan]

...any more?...

OT: if free will is our ability to randomly pick between two possible outcomes then I think it is well explained by our current understanding of Quantum Mechanics.

 

[warpus]

I'm not sure if it exists or not, but I'm also not sure if it really matters. Free will, illusion of free will, is there really a difference, as far as we're concerned?

Having said that, I think we do have a bit of actual free will.. I just don't think we make active decisions - I think we mostly override decisions that our bodies have already made for us.

 

[Brighteye]

Perhaps there should be yet another option, about whether free will only exists partially. Can you have partial free will, or is it a binary situation: there or not there at all?

 

[Souron]

It's nice to say that there's an illusion of free will, but that dodges the question of "what is free will?". In order to talk about free will or it's illusion, it is necessary to define what free will is in the first place. You can't meaningfully talk about an illusion of something that isn't understood in the first place.

Trouble is, while we can mostly agree what free will isn't, it is hard to come up with a non circular definition of what free will is.

 

[Erik Mesoy]

I favor Pratchett's commentary that "free will is the quale of judgement". Certainly that exists. What we're making those judgements on is a different question.

 

[brennan]

Trouble is, while we can mostly agree what free will isn't, it is hard to come up with a non circular definition of what free will is.

Why?

'The ability to make a decision'

 

[Souron]

Why?

'The ability to make a decision'

And what's a decision?

I favor Pratchett's commentary that "free will is the quale of judgement". Certainly that exists. What we're making those judgements on is a different question.

Surely free will has more to do with the ability to make choices based on judgments rather than judgments themselves?

 

[brennan]

The act of reducing more than one possibility to a single actuality.

 

[Souron]

The act of reducing more than one possibility to a single actuality.

So an [wiki]encoder[/wiki], that may also contain state information and a randomizer?

I admit that isn't circular. But you've simplified the definition to include a large number of electronic circuits, and some mechanical machines, that aren't usually considered to have free will.

In a sense I agree with the definition. Computers are said to make choices, and an encoder is the most primitive choice making abstraction. But usually this is meant only as a metaphor to human choice. So for our purposes, the definition of a decision must somehow exclude at the very least simple circuits from the class of things that can make them.

The simplest circuit that we want to exclude is circuit that always picks the first choice, in an array of choices. This is implemented as a set of one or more wires, wired from the designated "first input" to the output.

Aside: That sounds oddly like the quantum mechanical effect of a measurement.

 

[brennan]

So an [wiki]encoder[/wiki], that may also contain state information and a randomizer?

Well, no: an encoder makes no choice, it will always act the same way given the same input. It does not randomly output one of it's inputs - it produces a set output depending upon what the inputs are, that output not necessarily being one of the inputs.

Plus you'd have a hard time convincing anyone a 4-2 encoder was conscious.

 

[warpus]

Free will - ability to produce truly random information?

We all know that humans make decisions - but do we know whether these decisions are deterministic or not?

 

[Berzerker]

free will exists within the confines of nature

 

[Rossiya]

To be honest, it's impossible to know if we have free will or not. We do not have access to a book that has all our life written down on it, so we do not know if what we are doing is written on this book.

 

[Masquerouge]

So here is a question. If there were no sentient beings in the Universe, would there still be a free will issue? Could we still say that the universe is deterministic or not?

 

[brennan]

I think you'd need conscious beings to be present before it would make sense to talk about free will.

I think our current understanding of QM shows that the universe is nondeterministic.

 

[Masquerouge]

I think you'd need conscious beings to be present before it would make sense to talk about free will.

Doesn't that imply that conscious beings are more than physical/chemical reactions?

I think our current understanding of QM shows that the universe is nondeterministic.

So your answer is that without conscious beings, the universe would still be nondeterministic, right?

 

[Souron]

Well, no: an encoder makes no choice, it will always act the same way given the same input. It does not randomly output one of it's inputs - it produces a set output depending upon what the inputs are, that output not necessarily being one of the inputs.

So you're saying that any device that chooses a random input as output, is an agent with free will? I can name that circuit for you. It's called a multiplexer with random select line inputs. I could even design it for you.

But I disagree with that definition of free will. As per the fist post, a choice that is always random is not the result of free will.

Plus you'd have a hard time convincing anyone a 4-2 encoder was conscious.

Your definition made no mention of consciousness. If you are going to argue that consciousness is a precursor to free will, then I challenge you to come up with a definition that does not state that consciousness implies free will. (i.e. don't define humans to have free will)

Free will - ability to produce truly random information?

So if I give reasons for my choices, then they are not the result of free will?

 

[brennan]

Doesn't that imply that conscious beings are more than physical/chemical reactions?

I would describe consciousness as an emergent property of a complex set of physical and chemical interactions.

So your answer is that without conscious beings, the universe would still be nondeterministic, right?

Yes.