Does free will exist for 'you'?
Probably entails deep thinking about several concepts like 'self', thoughts, feelings, consciousness, reality, dream and more.
1
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Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.We make "free" choices that are constrained by the situation we are in.
Orbit
Level 7
Jan 25, 2019
0
And constrained by your internal build and nature.
My choices are either determined by something and I have no free will or my choices are random, like the roll of a dice, and I have no free will. That’s it. Those are the options. To find a third option is to imply that a thing can be neither random nor not random.
MrControversy
Level 7
Jan 24, 2019
2
I can't decide. .............LMAO!!!!
chucklesIII
Level 7
Jan 24, 2019
3
Ok, that was funny.
You actually made a decision that you can't decide!
Free will is inconsistent with cause and effect. If free will exists, it means there must be effects for which there is no cause.
ToakReon
Level 8
Jan 24, 2019
2
IMO you have made a valid conclusion.
There are events for which there are no causes.
@WilliamFleming Are there?
A flipped coin falls heads.
caused by it's initial orientation, it's time in the air, it's rotation rate and it's interaction with the ground,
caused by the speed of your flipping thumb, and the location of your hand when you flipped the coin,
caused by your muscularity, the speed of your movement,
caused by your choices in how you flip the coin, your health, and perhaps your mood,
caused my your reasons for choosing to flip the coin in the first place,
caused by your 'personal culture and experiences' regarding coin flipping,
caused by your interactions with people in the past regarding when, and where, and why you flip coins,
etc.
Look at anything that happens - there is a cause. That cause might be unpredictable, due to huge numbers of factors and extreme complexity, but nothing 'just happens'.
@ToakReon I am in total agreement down to your last paragraph. At the quantum level so called effects can happen before the causes. Also it is demonstrated that consciousness can affect the outcome of a quantum experiment.
Besides that, according to quantum gravity theory there’s no such thing as time, and particles of matter are not things but interactions between fields. It’s looking like our everyday human concept of cause and effect is meaningless at the level of ultimate reality.
I lean toward the idea that conscious awareness is primary and underlies reality in a fundamental way. Many eminent physicists have suggested as much.
There is no such thing as free will; the universe is deterministic and we are no exception. What happens in our brains is dictated by chemistry and physics. At the moment, the reactions are too complex to be able to calculate in advance, so there is every appearance that we do have free will and therefore we must behave as if we do and construct our society and laws accordingly.
ChuckInSuburbia
Level 3
Jan 24, 2019
3
Maybe the universe is not deterministic. Doesn’t quantum physics suggest otherwise? How do you know that the universe is deterministic?
@WilliamFleming At the scales we are talking about (the primate brain), yes the universe is deterministic.
I'm not qualified address questions about quantum physics, but I will say this: quantum randomness does not upend everything we know about chemistry and physics at the atomic level and above. Even though electrons are quantum wavefunctions, there is no randomness involved when I flip my light switch and the light turns on. Electricity still works the way it always has.
This post [physics.stackexchange.com] has a decent answer about the nature of quantum randomness.
Let me talk about an experiment that I remember watching in a series called the 'Brain Games' on Netflix. Here the heads of two subjects are hooked on to electrodes that are sensitive enough to measure brain activity. The task of the experiment is for the subjects to choose either a switch that activates a blue light or a switch that activates a red light while staring into a giant stop watch. The researcher tells them it is absolutely their choice to decide which switch has to be pressed but to let him know at what time they made their decision. The experiment begins, the brain waves are being measured, time tracked and we see two lights shine after a few seconds. The subjects report the time they made the decision about the switch they wanted to press. Later, when the researcher studies the measured brain waves by correlating it with the reported time, it is seen that the signals that decided what switch has to be pressed originated in the brain long before the conscious subject attested to having made a decision. This means that the decision has happened in the brain before the subject realizes but the moment the subject realizes or becomes aware of the decision, he begins to think that he himself, the conscious subject made the decision as opposed to the reality wherein the decision was already made moments before conscious awareness took place.
What this tells us is how free will exists only as an illusion. Although the conscious observer becomes aware of the thought and takes ownership of the thought, it still was not created by the subject itself. It was created by the brain which in-turn depends on several other factors like physiology, emotions and external situations. So if we are not thinking and if thinking is happening to us, how do we actually make decisions? All rational humans know that we can change our thoughts and direct it whichever area we want to. For example, I can choose now to think of a penguin or the sun or my grand mother. Does that mean I am making myself think about all that or actually my brain's pre-conditioned nature throws these random thoughts into my sphere of consciousness while just the feeling of thinking makes me assume I am thinking.
sambathkumaar
Level 4
Jan 24, 2019
2
That time lag is easily understood with conscious awareness and free will. The test subject did indeed make a conscious, free-will decision to press a button. The subject (conscious awareness) assigned to the body the task of pressing a button. Once that assignment was made the body was on its own to figure out which button to press and when. Our bodies are only robots. When I want my computer to accomplish a task, I have to trigger it into action indirectly. Once the computer has been set into its operation I have limited control. Same with my body.
As an analogy think of an infantry division. Suppose the division commander receives orders to occupy a certain area. The commander is consciously aware of his orders and has desire and intention to carry out those orders. (free will) But he clearly can not have total control over all the details of the move. He turns over the problem to his staff. He personally wouldn’t even know what all the various subunits are going to do, or when they are going to act.
Our bodies are an incredibly complex system of cells, and each cell is as complex as a city. We are not our bodies. We are conscious awareness.
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