On the question of free will and pre-determination,

[MineralMan]

it's easy to look at decisions we make and attribute many of them to semi-automatic functions controlled by a wide range of biases and other influences. However, such decisions are not the only ones we make. Yes, much of what we do is handled by parts of the brain that are simply reacting to stimuli and making virtually automatic choices without rational consideration.

However, we also face many decisions that cannot be decided by our brain's primitive limbic system. Here's a very simple example. You are invited to a business lunch, which takes you to an Ethiopian restaurant. There is one of those here in St. Paul, MN, and I was actually invited to a business lunch there. I had never been to a restaurant that serves that cuisine, nor did I know where we would be going. So, there I was, confronted with a menu that was completely unfamiliar to me.

I scanned the menu, noted what the basic ingredients were for the various options. But I was unfamiliar with how those dishes were prepared or seasoned. I could have asked the waiter or the person who invited me, but I decided to choose on my own. So, I did. Not at random, of course, but by comparing the main ingredients of the dishes. I made my choices. I'm a fairly adventurous eater, and enjoyed my lunch. My brain was not familiar with the options. I did not even recognize the names of the dishes on the menu. I ordered after thinking about ingredients and took my chances on the preparation and seasonings.

A small decision? Yes. But one made without reference to previous knowledge.

This example explains why artificial intelligence systems do not function like our brains. I worked for a couple of years developing a chat bot, inspired by the Turing Test. At the time, the technology was limited, so I limited my experiment to handle a specific situation. That chat bot was designed to participate in discussions in a CompuServe forum where operating systems were discussed. Using a database of language related to that subject, the chat bot accepted existing posts in that forum as input, and then used a complex set of algorithms to reply to those posts.

As an experiment, I revealed to some forum members that the poster was a chat bot under development, so as not to be seen as trolling the forum. That also encouraged challenges to its performance. At the time, the battle between Microsoft Windows and IBM's OS/2 were raging. My bot was a Windows advocate.

Over time, the database containing the language elements grew at an almost exponential rate. That was done manually, by me, as the programmer or "creator" of the bot. The algorithms also changed as the experiment continued. Eventually, it got good enough to fool some forum members who did not know that it was a chat bot experiment. However, it never developed to the point that it always performed well. It had no ability to respond to new challenges that it had not been programmed to deal with. It could go on in a thread for a long time, doing just fine, but always failed to react appropriately eventually, and had no way to correct the error. It did not learn on its own, and did not think for itself. It was a collection of algorithms and data. It could decide nothing. It had zero free will.

Further, there was no way to give it that free will. It was a computer program, not a living, thinking being. After about a year, I abandoned the project. By then, if you didn't know it was a bot, it would do a pretty good job of fooling most people. But, it was just a bot. A single question or statement that didn't fit the long list of parameters it could react to would throw it off and leave it unable to respond in any sensible way. That would have always been the case, because it had no way to self-modify or learn. It had no free will.

[ret5hd]

1. Huh...sounds like you and guil.

[MineralMan]

2. Yeah, except that I gave up on creating chat bots years ago.

It was a fun experiment, but got old. However, I still love participating in discussions using my own brain. It's one of my favorite things to do.

It does raise questions, though, doesn't it?

[Voltaire2]

3. If by free will you mean the ability to make

choices you might care to explain which component within you is outside of a deterministic physical universe and not controlled by the natural laws of this universe.

Otherwise, within a closed deterministic universe your choices are an inevitable consequence of preceding events.

In that restaurant at that time and place you would always make the choices you made, no matter how “free” you think they were.

[MineralMan]

4. No, I don't think so.

I don't recognize a closed deterministic universe as an accurate description.

We are variables in that, while existing within it. Unpredictable ones, too. Uncertainty abounds. My decisions have a minuscule effect on that universe, although it is too small to be measured. Just as my mass affects all other bodies through gravity, the effect is so small that it doesn't actually matter.

Uncertainty is part of the universe. Within some pretty limiting boundaries, I can decide things. That doesn't affect the rest of the universe, though, to any degree that matters.

[Voltaire2]

8. Uncertainty is just our incomplete understanding.

A coin flip, for example, is “random” to us only because we do not have enough information to know which way the coin will land. With complete information the flip is entirely predictable. It has to be. That is the way the physical universe works.

If you want to invoke quantum scale indeterminism to claim that the universe is not deterministic, that is fine, but changes nothing much with respect to free choice by humans. We don’t operate at photon scales.

Again you would have to propose that you contain a supernatural component unconstrained by physics to support the “free choice” definition of free will. Otherwise your Brain is just another part of the universe operating within the same physical rules as all other objects.

[MineralMan]

9. The coin flip is effectively random, because even if we knew all the factors

that determined its final rest position, we could not control them well enough to flip coins predictably. In the real world, flipping coins manually results in a random sort.

I know what you're saying, and you're right if you take the determination far enough. But, we don't live in that reality. We live in the reality where a coin flip produces a random set of results.

Free will operates within the restrictions of the practical reality in which we live. Our brains operate on that basis as well. So, we do make choices. They don't matter in the larger scheme of things, but they do within our own reality, and that's all that matters.

As human beings, we are an organized collection of cells that operates for a very short period of time, and then disintegrates into various chemicals. While the organism is active, however, we act independently to a certain degree. I cannot choose to fly on my own, but I can choose to build an airplane in which to fly. Based on information created over time by other humans, I could actually do that in my own garage, which I could also build. I won't, but I could.

We are what we are, a limited organism that has evolved to be able to do unique things. We have whatever degree of free will that fits within the parameters of our existence. The free will I am talking about is experiential, not intrinsic, and it does indeed exist.

I exist as long as I live. I did not exist before I lived and will not exist after I stop living. In between, I have experiential free will. That's good enough for me, I think.

[Voltaire2]

12. If it makes you happy to believe in the illusion

of free will, that is fine, but because we as a society insist that we all have this nonsense of free will, we insist that it is appropriate, for example, to punish people, not just segregate them, for criminal behavior.

[marylandblue]

20. If you punish them, it changes their behavior, it doesn't matter if they have free will or not

Alternatively, you can define free will as responding to reward and punishment. By that definition, we do have free will, and dogs do also.

[Voltaire2]

21. I think the evidence is that punishment

makes people even worse with respect to anti social behavior, if that is what you meant.

You can define free will as responding to reward and punishment but then you are left with amoeba’s having free will. That seems like a remarkably bad definition.

[marylandblue]

23. No that's not what I meant

Last edited Mon Nov 12, 2018, 08:36 PM - Edit history (1)

My point is that free will has to be operationally defined at the level of living things, or at least living things with brains. If you don't provide such a definition, then it's not that we do or don't have free will, it's that the concept is meaningless.

[marylandblue]

10. If there were an indeterministic component to the universe,

how would it look different from the one we have now?

[Voltaire2]

11. It wouldn't at the scale at which indeterminism is possible.

At quantum scales indeterminism is possible, at classic scales it isn’t.

[marylandblue]

13. So if we can't tell the difference between a deterministic universe and indeterministic one

Then the concept is effectively meaningless. We could assume either one is true and the result of any experiment would be exactly the same.

[Voltaire2]

14. Well not as far as I understand

You can conduct experiments that demonstrate quantum indeterminism. But at classic scales the universe is deterministic and that is also experimentally demonstrable.

Some physics experiments have attempted to determine where the boundary is between quantum and classic. It’s larger than a photon.

[marylandblue]

16. What's not demonstrable is that the brain's final state

is deterministically predictable from it's initial state. Also some scientists believe there could be quantum effects in the brain, although is not proven. This idea was dismissed years ago, but there are people trying to work on it again.

[Voltaire2]

18. Sure- we don't have a clue how to determine

a brains current state. Our limitations don’t change the physics.

[marylandblue]

19. My point is that there is no meaningful definition of free will that can be derived from physics

Whatever free will is said to be, it can be totally dependent on physics, but it isn't actually physics. You have to define free will at level we actually talk about and measure such things.

Elephants are also dependent on physics, but knowing the physical state of every particle in the universe will not tell you if there are or are not elephants.

[Voltaire2]

22. Physics invalidates the common free choice

definition of free will. You have to either reject that we exist in a deterministic universe or claim that we have some supernatural component that is not constrained by the laws of physics.

[marylandblue]

24. I am not talking about whatever the "common" definition of free will is

which is usually some poorly defined metaphysical concept that can't be used in any scientific sense. On the other hand, we could come up with a definition for scientific purposes, such that we can test how people make decisions about certain things. If they act in certain ways they have free will, and if they react in other ways, they don't.

[MineralMan]

25. Here's a story from my own life that might illustrate:

When I first went off to college, a state university in California, we were subjected to a whole battery of tests in the first week. It was 1963, and testing was thought to be important, I suppose.

Anyhow, one of the tests we took was a multiple-choice Rorschach test. The standard ink blots were associated with four or five common responses, from which one was supposed to select the best match. Now, even though I was only 18 years old, it was obvious that a multiple choice response to those inkblots was patently ridiculous. But there I was, sitting there, pondering what to do with this.

I quickly scanned through the ink blots and suggested responses. I noticed that for each ink blot, one of the options was a response that had a heavy sexual connotation. Stuff like C. Female sex organs. Other options were, perhaps closer to what I would have said if I were asked to describe the blot in my own words, but the entire concept was ridiculous, so I made a decision.

I marked the answer that had sexual connotations for every blot. I deliberately sabotaged my results.

A week later, I got a note in my dorm mailbox asking me to visit the school's counseling office. I dutifully showed up at the time designated. A nice young woman was there, maybe six years older than myself, and clearly fresh from getting her Masters in Psychology. She told me that my results from that test were troubling and she wanted to understand more about my answers. So, I explained why I had deliberately spoiled the results, since the test was so obviously useless. I reminded her that the Rorschach test is a test of individual perception, and analysis of it depends on the person's actual perceptions, not the selection of one or another stock answer.

I used my free will to make a point about the ridiculous nature of what they were trying to do. The psychologist in the counseling office allowed as how I was correct about the test and said, "Oh, never mind, then."

Individual humans are capable of analyzing situations and making decisions that are deliberately different from what is expected. We are capable of making free will choices, although we often do not.

That test was pretty much abandoned not long after.

[Voltaire2]

33. So do you agree that we exist in a universe

that behaves according to our understanding of the laws of physics?

[MineralMan]

36. Well, it seems to, as far as we know.

Last edited Mon Nov 12, 2018, 08:48 PM - Edit history (2)

But we keep learning more. I try to keep up.

As individual humans, though, those rules have little to do with our experiential existence. We are here, individually, so briefly. Yet, while we are, we are interesting.

[Voltaire2]

38. Our experiential existence might include

experiences of making choices while the reality could be that, like every other thing in the universe, what we do next is wholly caused by preceding events.

Otherwise you have to insert an agent outside of the natural universe, a soul for example, not subject to physics.

[MineralMan]

39. I disagree.

But, it doesn't really matter.

[Voltaire2]

34. Then please define what you mean by free will.

Otherwise we will continue to talk past each other.

[marylandblue]

35. Your brain has a neurological architecture based on genetics

The architecture is designed such that it takes inputs from the environment and internally generated processes that can produce a potentially infinite set of outputs and select one for action. The output is not predetermined by either genetics or the environment and cannot be derived from the laws of physics. The internally generated processes are a combination of conscious and unconscious ones.

on edit: The outputs also aren't random because they are goal-directed.

[Voltaire2]

37. So you are claiming that you have a supernatural

component in your brain?

[marylandblue]

40. No, I am claiming that the system is designed to produce

outputs that are goal directed, not random and not predetermined. If you are reading this, you are engaged in an activity that is goal-directed (trying to read), not random (you didn't flip a coin when you decided to read) and not predetermined by any physical law (it isn't because a bunch of billiard balls hit each other in your brain).

[Voltaire2]

41. Then your system is outside the natural world.

[marylandblue]

42. You are jumping to conclusions without evidence

My system either exists or does not exist. We don't know the answer to that yet, but our neurology does give an appearance that it could work that way based on what we currently know. Nothing in it need violate physical laws but neither could you predict such a system is possible based on physical laws.

You also can't predict the existence of elephants from physical laws. But nothing about elephants violates any physical laws.

[Voltaire2]

44. A system whose next state is not entirely

determined by its current state, ignoring the complications of quantum scale superpositions, is operating outside of our current understanding of the natural world.

[marylandblue]

50. Lot's of systems are not determined by their current state

Weather systems are one. They have a random element. They will always have a random element. You could build a computer as big as the universe and still not be able to compute all the random interactions in the atmosphere. So we make an assumption that the laws of physics control the system in an indeterminate way. The only difference between a weather system and a living system is that living systems, particularly brains, have goal-directed behavior. If you want to call that supernatural, fine with me, it doesn't change the fact that brains appear to this way. It is also a testable hypothesis. If we knew more about how the processes interact, we could see them interact the way I predict, but we still would have limits on our ability to predict the outcome. If on the other hand, we found that a certain set of initial conditions always leads to the same outcome, my hypothesis is proven false.

[Voltaire2]

51. Weather systems operate entirely within

our understanding of classic physics. The fact that we cannot predict what a systems next state will be is a function of our lack of fully understanding what its current state is. The system remains deterministic despite our ignorance.

[marylandblue]

52. A bunch of random movements organizes itself into a hurricane

It becomes a self-organizing structure that is no longer random. We don't know exactly how this happens. We'll probably never know, because there are too many variables. We assume it all follows the laws of physics, but we can't actually prove it, experimentally. We don't know of some other way it could happen. But that doesn't make it deterministic. We just don't know the answer. We use statistics and mathematically modelling to simulate it, but we still don't know for sure.

But we do know that it can self organize into a hurricane. The hurricane exchanges energy and information within itself (through winds) to maintain itself. It has properties that the original random elements didn't have.

You can think of brains as a self organized system itself. It too built itself up from originally random elements into a structure that exchanges energy and information. Unlike a storm, it is goal directed. No single neuron is conscious or could have anything resembling free will, but put all those neurons together in a certain configuration and it has properties that are not found in any of the elements. We don't know exactly how.

It must have something to do with the complex interconnections, feedback loops, ability to imagine goals and take steps to enact those goals that create the properties of the system. It does things that are goal directed but not random. It is self-organizing, self-aware and self-modulating. It can set itself in configurations that are not pre-programmed, not random, have never been seen before, and will never be seen again. I say that a system with such properties is a free will system.

If you think that the only way that can happen is through some supernatural agent, go right ahead and think that. You won't be alone, you'll in fact be in line with what most of humanity has thought throughout time. I can't disprove it. But I don't see how it violates the laws of physics. I don't see how deterministic processes at the molecular level can't produce a non-deterministic structure at the system level. You making an assumption that it "can't happen" but you can't actually prove that assumption. But I don't see how it isn't a free will system, as I've defined it. I also don't see how a system that isn't pre-programmed and isn't random was nonetheless preordained from the beginning of the universe.

To me THAT would be supernatural, like God omnisciently knowing before creation exactly what you'd be doing right now. Somehow I have to believe the universe itself has that God-like property, but I can't trust my own feeling that I can end this post at any time and get up and do something else. Like I am doing right... now.

[MineralMan]

53. Good points. The human brain is a completely natural thing.

It has evolved into a complex-decision making part of our existence. Determinism doesn't really deal with human decision-making at all, really. We can describe the actions of the brain, broadly, in deterministic terms. However, we cannot accurately predict what an individual human brain will decide. The number of variables is impossibly large.

Those who say that we do not make any of our decisions for ourselves, but that they are all explainable through deterministic principles are ignoring the granularity of the human brain in each individual and the complexity of its functions as an additional element of granularity.

No supernatural agent is required for us to have free will, within the boundaries of our limitations. We can, and do, decide on actions, based on completely indeterminable factors. Even working backward from the action, it is impossible to explain exactly how a particular decision was made and why. There are simply too many variables for there to be a direct cause and effect relationship between thought and action.

I once wrote all the content for a massive website for a real estate broker. It included hundreds of pages, each of which had to include a disclaimer paragraph. Due to the idiosyncrasies of the client, he insisted that each of those disclaimers be uniquely written, with no repeated language. It was a stupid request. A boilerplate disclaimer would have been just fine. However, he was the one writing the checks, so I produced over two hundred disclaimer paragraphs, each saying exactly the same thing, but using unique language.

It was an interesting exercise in the use of language. Each new disclaimer required multiple decisions to avoid duplicating the language of previously written ones. Each was organized slightly differently, and explained the information using different words and sentences. Each had to pass muster in terms of legally expressing the disclaimer information. But, guess what? It was easy to do that. I simply wrote them all differently. That's what I do. I'm a writer. My brain can make the thousands upon thousands of decisions needed to produce that result.

We have free will, within the limitations each of us faces. We can decide to do what we choose, within those limits. That does not violate any laws of determinism. Natural variations in results can still function in a deterministic system. It's simply a matter of perspective and what level of granularity you are examining.

I cannot control the length of my life. It will end when it ends. I did not control my birth, nor my genetics. Still, I am a unique individual, and can control my actions through decisions made by the complex system that is my brain. My brain is different from any other brain on the planet in many respects. So, it decides differently.

The only "supernatural" agent involved is my unique personality and life experience. That is where the decisions come from, within the parameters of my limitations. That is free will, but it is limited. Everything has limits.

[marylandblue]

17. There is no way to repeat such an experiment, so there is no way to know

It may make sense based on what we do know, but that's not the same thing.

[MineralMan]

5. A few times every year, on a sandspit near Morro Bay, California

if you go out and walk on the wet sand at night, you leave a trail of glowing footprints behind you, due to bio luminescence. It's an interesting phenomenon. One time, while walking with a woman I would later marry, I walked in a path that drew a glowing heart on the wet sand. My decision to do that was based on a desire to demonstrate my affection for her.

I decided to do that on the spur of the moment. As I walked, I triggered tiny lifeforms into lighting up. They reacted to the change in pressure as I walked. It was my decision to form a pattern. The reaction of the plankton was predetermined, but not the pattern that was created. That was my decision. In the grand scheme of things, it was a meaningless decision, but it was a decision.

[Red Raider 85]

6. I've always found this to be incredibly dopey.

My brain determines what I do, period. I do what it tells me to do.

[MineralMan]

7. You are what your brain thinks, really.

Your brain is you. Without it, you can do nothing at all. In fact, without it, you would not be alive.

So, you are deciding what to do. You are your brain and your brain is you.

Your brain is not part of you. It literally is you. Think about it.

[Voltaire2]

15. Cognitive science currently holds the same view.

The chatter in our heads is a post hoc narrative we create to explain what we did.

[Kurt V.]

26. a few years back my niece had to read Beyond Freedom and Dignity by BF Skinner for her masters degre

she recommended it to me, so i read it, twice. since then, i believe human behavior is contingent on social environment and genetic endowment, period. free will is an illusion. my 2 cents

[MineralMan]

27. I read that book long, long ago.

Skinner had a particular perspective on things. His is, however, not the only perspective. B.F. Skinner was an odd duck, in my opinion, and is not the be-all and end-all of psychological theory.

Here's what Noam Chomsky thought of him:

Noam Chomsky, a prominent critic of Skinner, published a review of Skinner's Verbal Behavior two years after it was published.[78] Chomsky argued that Skinner's attempt to use behaviorism to explain human language amounted to little more than word games. Conditioned responses could not account for a child's ability to create or understand an infinite variety of novel sentences. Chomsky's review has been credited with launching the cognitive revolution in psychology and other disciplines. Skinner, who rarely responded directly to critics, never formally replied to Chomsky's critique. Many years later, Kenneth MacCorquodale's reply was endorsed by Skinner.[79]

Chomsky also reviewed Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity, using the same basic motives as his Verbal Behavior review. Among Chomsky's criticisms were that Skinner's laboratory work could not be extended to humans, that when it was extended to humans it represented 'scientistic' behavior attempting to emulate science but which was not scientific, that Skinner was not a scientist because he rejected the hypothetico-deductive model of theory testing, and that Skinner had no science of behavior.[80]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._F._Skinner

[Kurt V.]

28. skinner was a humble person. he was asking scientist to treat human behavior as a science.

my niece now has her phd. she works with autistic kids and they get amazing results using skinner's methods exclusively. lastly, since that reading of BFaD i followed that with other study to make sure he wasn't a total crack pot. lol

[MineralMan]

29. Skinner has some insights into behavior that can be used

in certain circumstances. He also tends to expand his insights into universal truths. They are not. They are merely insights that have some practical applications.

[Kurt V.]

30. He wasn't alone though

[MineralMan]

31. Of course not. He still has followers who use his

concepts and strategies. But, then, so does Freud. Both also have people who challenge their ideas in one way or another. Psychology and Behavioral Science are extremely interesting. But, there's not a single path to a complete understanding of the human brain and how and why it operates as it does.

There probably never will be.

[Kurt V.]

32. i too find it extremely interesting. peace

[Act_of_Reparation]

43. Not alone, but in a minority.

Behaviorism is problematic. There are obviously internal dispositional factors guiding behavior, but because those cannot be observed the behaviorist model discards them ipso facto. What they have is a stimulus-response model that excludes motivation. You touch a burning candle, you jerk your hand away. The behaviorist concludes you are averse to pain. But they don't ask what on earth would have compelled you to touch the burning candle in the first place. Most psychologists get that, which is why behaviorism is largely passé.

[Kurt V.]

45. the internal dispositional factors don't appear out of thin air.

[Act_of_Reparation]

46. No one says they do.

[Kurt V.]

47. right. so where does the internal disposition come from. a lifetime of experiences.

Social environment. Determinism isn't passe, it's evolved and has been renamed to applied behavioral analyst

[Act_of_Reparation]

48. Determinism isn't passe.

Behaviorism is. These terms aren't synonyms.

[Kurt V.]

49. yep. my bad on that.