/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.7527262]

Does /sci/ believe in free will?

[Anonymous No.7527265]

Depends on the frames of reference

[Anonymous No.7527267]

no

[Anonymous No.7527268]

Yeah free will exists. So does magic.

[Anonymous No.7527269]

Yup
But my choice can be heavily influenced aswell

[Anonymous No.7527320]

>>7527262
Could someone explain the basis for the claim that there is no free will? I can freely make a decision, say, to drink a glass of water instead one of coke. Let's assume there is no pressure from others. How is that decision not freely made?

[Anonymous No.7527338]

>>7527320
The argument is that you came to that decision via some absurd number of processes in your brain/neurons etc which must obey the laws of physics.

[Anonymous No.7527340]

>>7527320
tl;dr to the whole debate: what do you mean by "free will" in the first place?

Having said that,
>I can freely make a decision, say, to drink a glass of water instead one of coke
Some would say there is no "freedom" in this since electrons moving around in your brain (decision making) follow physical laws, they don't have a "choice" to behave differently. Also, quantum randomness =/= freedom.

It depends what you meen by "freedom" though
>Let's assume there is no pressure from others
Like that, for example. But people never really clarify in the beginning what they actually mean.


Relevant quote from Schopenhauer:
>You can do what you want, but you cannot want what you want

[Anonymous No.7527344]

>>7527338
>>7527340
So, in short, its a pointless argument as far as the layman is concerned, right?

Have any popular philosophers talked about this?

[Anonymous No.7527346]

>>7527320
I don't think "free" will is very meaningful is you don't have the option or ability to choose otherwise .You have to drink that water if we are amusing a traditional universe. You couldn't have chosen to drink coke or a beer instead, those ideas may have appeared in your head but they are just as predetermined as your choice to drink water instead. The only way for free will to be truly free is if you could have the ability to chose otherwise with I don't think is possible.

[Anonymous No.7527354]

>>7527346
>you don't have the option or ability to choose otherwise
I do though, don't I? I could choose to not drink anything at all.

But I guess I can see the bigger picture now. All our decisions, from the basic eating, drinking, pooping to bigger stuff like jobs, family etc. can be traced back to some primitive instinct that influences whatever decision we make.

Every "big" decision is a result of some basic, instinctive desire hardwired into the primitive parts of our brain.

Am I right or at least getting close?

[Anonymous No.7527398]

>>7527262

I want to believe

[Anonymous No.7527404]

>>7527354
No, lets take the coke/water scenario again.

Say some Godlike creature that could travel in time, watched you make the choice. Say you'd choose water.

Now, no matter how many times the creature traveled back to the moment you're "making the choice", you would always choose water. Even if you'd feel that you have a choice, the observer would know that you are choosing water, which you would.

But yeah, this is irrelevant to a person in any but the philosophical sense.

[Anonymous No.7527427]

even your last will is not free
because of the registration fee

[Anonymous No.7527428]

>>7527404
How does the presence of an external observer change my decision? I can understand if its destiny/fate/the creature knowing beforehand what decision I would make, but if hes just an observer, how then?

[Anonymous No.7527434]

>>7527428
It doesn't change your decision, but he could observe that you don't in fact have free will.

You'd think "well, I can pick coke or water, so I have free will", but it would actually be predetermined.

[Anonymous No.7527448]

>>7527434
>predetermined
How so? Sorry if I'm annoying, but I don't get it.

Also, is this somehow related to Schrodingers cat?

[Anonymous No.7527473]

>>7527448
tell me, how is your choice "free" if it can be known beforehand?

[Anonymous No.7527474]

>>7527265
This.

It seems to depend how deeply you want to probe reality. Even if our decision making was made by something magical like "our souls", just wrap that concept into the realm of physical inquiry and it doesn't won't seem so "free" anymore.

What matters to me is that what we consider to be "free will" is, at the very least for most people, approximated well enough for us to be held morally responsible for our actions.

[Anonymous No.7527477]

>>7527265
This.

It seems to depend how deeply you want to probe reality. Even if our decisions were made by something magical like "our souls", just wrap that concept into the realm of physical inquiry and it won't seem so "free" anymore.

What matters to me is that what we consider to be "free will" is, at the very least for most people, approximated well enough for us to be held morally responsible for our actions.

[Anonymous No.7527482]

>>7527474
>"free will" is, at the very least for most people, approximated well enough for us to be held morally responsible for our actions.
Even if it weren't, we wouldn't have the choice to hold people morally responsible or not. So what gives?

[Anonymous No.7527488]

>>7527473
>known beforehand
Except it can't. You had to come up with a god like creature to do so.

Sure, you could make an educated guess, but in the end you wouldn't know 100%.

[Anonymous No.7527492]

>>7527488
the god creature doesn't have to exist for it to be true though

you'd still always choose the same in that specific scenario

[Anonymous No.7527495]

do the unexpected

[Anonymous No.7527499]

>>7527482
Honestly, it is likely that whatever plane on which "you" exist is the same plane where your decisions are made, whether that is a cool magical thing or something overwhelmingly chemical.

Or yeah, man, we might just all be along for the ride, with our souls held captive to chemical impulses. Enjoy.

[Anonymous No.7527510]

>>7527499
*underwhelmingly chemical.

>mornings

[Anonymous No.7527511]

>>7527492
>you'd still always choose the same in that specific scenario
For a decision as small as picking a glass of water or coke, would I? Doesn't this bring into question the concept of time and alternate realities?

And still, I chose the water, no matter how many times you look at it. It might SEEM like I had no choice cause every time you look at it, I'll always be picking water, but I still made a decision between two alternatives.

[Anonymous No.7527529]

When thinking about free will, it's helpful to appeal to the concept of the agent.

An agent, in simple terms, is just something that takes percepts from its environment and acts in that environment.

Now consider an agent. Let's say that we have a taxi driver. We also have physical laws acting upon the taxi driver. But, to be sure, not all physical processes working within these laws are deterministic. Many are stochastic in nature (and not just those at the quantum level). Let's say the taxi driver makes a left turn in response to seeing the street she needs to turn on to reach her destination.

How do we describe this decision? Surely both turning left and continuing to go straight are compatible with the physical laws of the world, but perhaps the initial conditions of the universe DID in fact determine that she couldn't have done anything but go left.

[Anonymous No.7527532]

>>7527529 cont.

Even so, it seems a poor way to describe why she turned left. Say I ask why you ate my last slice of cake out of the fridge without asking. It would be a very poor response indeed to say, "well the initial conditions of the universe determined that I couldn't have done otherwise" or "I'm biologically hard-wired to eat cake when I see it." Sure, these things might be true, but they are poor and incomplete descriptions of why you took the cake.

Similarly, any description of the taxi driver acting as an agent that doesn't appeal to some goal of hers (assuming she is acting rationally here) is a very poor one.

The upshot is this: even if we can say that we couldn't have acted otherwise because of physical laws and initial conditions (not all of which are deterministic in nature), it makes little sense to say that's a total description of why we make some particular decision at some juncture.

An extreme case would be that it hardly makes sense to say that we don't have free will simply because we can't choose to do physically impossible things, like turn into a strawberry or accelerate at a rate inversely proportional to force and proportional to mass.

[Anonymous No.7527618]

>>7527320
If I knew the state of every atom of the universe including those of your body, I could calculate all the other states of the universe before and after that point in time.
Your decisions are just result of the interactions of your atoms.

[Anonymous No.7527633]

>>7527320
https://youtu.be/sMb00lz-IfE?t=5m40s

[Anonymous No.7527643]

>>7527340
>>7527338
>>7527320
an easy way to think about it is that; free will implies that at any moment in time you are able to choose which path you live. I.e go to work, or call in sick. Say, hypothetically, you called in sick on Wednesday and you went back in time to that day to observe yourself and the decision you made. If you changed nothing, just watched what would happen? The general consensus is, you'd call in sick since you changed nothing. This then begs the question, is it even possible to go to work without some external catalyst to push the events to that direction? If the universe is random, you will go back in time and either you will go to work or call in sick despite the controlled circumstances. If the universe is deterministic, if you go back in time you will always call in sick because no other outcome is possible in and of itself. The latter is the most rational, and is the reason people tend toward a lack of free will.

[Anonymous No.7527657]

>>7527618

The universe is not build from classical particles. This is wrong.
Your actions are not pre determined. This would go against the Heisenberg uncertainty which is proven.

In a simple model, every choice is in the end one neurotransmitter which crosses the threshold of a neuron to fire. The actions of this neurotransmitter and all the other neurotransmitter which are already bound to a post synaptic protein channel are bot governed by your free will but by physical laws. Therefore you have no free will. You are merely observing where life leads you too.

[Anonymous No.7527660]

>>7527320
Relativity theory

[Anonymous No.7527666]

>>7527262
The fact that I am capable of arguing over free will makes me believe that we do have free will. How would a being without free will ever notice that it doesn't have free will?

[Anonymous No.7527679]

>>7527643
Actually, most people are compatibilists.

[Anonymous No.7527685]

"Free Will", by Sam Harris. Read this book, it is short (about 70 pages) and provides every answer everyone of you is looking for. I highly recommend it.

[Anonymous No.7527689]

>>7527685
Sam Harris is dumb.

[Anonymous No.7527696]

why do scientists have to insist "it's all just chemicals"?

why can't they just admit they don't know? isn't that one beauty of the scientific mindset? willingness to concede ignorance?

it's been shown that there's significant reason to believe our reality is just a simulation, and our consciousness is only experiencing a simulated universe; so why pretend we can know the "true" (natural) reality just from our observations when we haven't yet convincingly explained the phenomena of consciousness itself?

why are so many scientists ready to be so dogmatically materialist?

[Anonymous No.7527705]

the very question of free will is an illusion; it's not possible to answer.

If our mind is just chemical reactions, and these chemical reactions determine our will, then where do we begin to tease apart what aspects of our future were decided "for us" and what we "chose"? What does choice even mean in this context? If our very identity is constituted by those reactions, then how can we "separate" ourselves from them to claim their behavior wasn't our own?

[Anonymous No.7527714]

>>7527705
>the very question of chemistry is an illusion; it's not possible to answer.

>If our chemistry is just subatomic reactions, and these subatomic reactions determine our chemistry, then where do we begin to tease apart what aspects of our chemicals were reactions "physically" and which are "chemically"? What does chemistry even mean in this context? If our very elements are constituted by those subatomic reactions, then how can we "separate" chemicals from them to claim their behavior wasn't just quantum behavior?

[Anonymous No.7527733]

>>7527714
so emergent properties are illusions?

[Anonymous No.7527818]

>>7527696
No scientists ever says so or tries to say it like a fact you dumb nigger.

[Anonymous No.7527864]

>>7527689
Thank you mister I-Dont-Have-A-PhD for argumenting your idea so deeply, i think now i fully understand the real meaning of it.

[Anonymous No.7527910]

>>7527733

mebbe bebbe

[Anonymous No.7527917]

The angst over "chemicals" is due to ignorance

[Anonymous No.7527960]

>>7527864
>assmad Harris fanboy wants an argument

Nice try loser.

[Anonymous No.7528109]

I believe in the irrelevance of asking about free will. Regardless of whether or not I have, I still am going to do the things that I do. I would not know the difference.

[Anonymous No.7528116]

>>7527262
Do I have a choice?

[Anonymous No.7528161]

>>7527262
TANSTAFW

[Anonymous No.7528165]

>>7527864
just because he doesn't have a phd doesn't mean his opinion cant be valid.

[Anonymous No.7528180]

Is the "free will" debate just a roundabout way of arguing whether we have immaterial souls? I mean, we probably don't so I guess there's no "free will" because we're ruled by physical processes like everything else. But then we are a emergent feature of physical processes so doesn't seem like it's saying a whole lot.

[Anonymous No.7528184]

Currently in philosophy there's this effort to show that free will can't exist.

>even if there's randomness, it just means your choices are determined by randomness

To anyone arguing for hard determinism:
What would a universe be like if free will existed? Or is it logically impossible? Can it be shown to be logically impossible?

The presumption is that 'event' precedes 'choice', but that's what the fucking debate is about in the first place. You can't just assume the necesary conditions for you to be right.

The fucked up thing this rules out empiricism as a strategy entirely since a 'choice' is subjective and the event it would cause is objective.

[Anonymous No.7528190]

>>7528180
>there's nothing immaterial because immaterial things come from physical processes
>scientists

Except since one of the first bits of data we necesarily collect is 'there exists a realm of first person facts'.

Either thought precedes material, or material precedes thought. If you want to claim you know one way or the other, you're going to need a better argument.

[Anonymous No.7528223]

>>7528190
You cannot know nuthin, got it.

[Anonymous No.7529703]

https://youtu.be/pH9crjgJLjc#t=40m

From 40:00 to 44:00. The speaker talks about the feeling of volition being a byproduct of the brain's motor system, the predictions it makes, and the system of checks and balances that a hypothetical action goes through before it is acted out.

[Anonymous No.7529725]

>>7527262
The universe is a deterministic structure full of non-deterministic subjective perspectives that interact with it.
It dances between both; polarity on either side is extremism.
Free-will is as real as you let it be.

[Anonymous No.7529735]

>>7527262
FREE WON'T
R
E
E
W
O
N
'T

[Anonymous No.7530126]

yer mom freely willed herself on to DIS DICK

everything else in the universe besides quantum events is deterministic doe

[Anonymous No.7530145]

>>7527262
No need to involve science in this topic. Simple reasoning can help us get to the conclusion that it doesn't exist, because it simply cannot; our will cannot be free. It's always bound to work by something, whether it's a soul, body, genes, or pure randomness.

If you decide to buy a vanilla icecream instead of a chocolate one, and you see other guy buy chocolate icecream instead of vanilla icecream, that pretty much proves that both of your wills differ from each other. And since we don't choose where to be born, we don't choose what kind of will we have.

[Anonymous No.7530165]

>>7527499
>Or yeah, man, we might just all be along for the ride, with our souls held captive to chemical impulses. Enjoy.
this is about the gist of it. our "soul" is that deep, deep part of your conscience that always knows the right thing to do, the right place to be, the right thing to say. the struggle of this physical existence is evolving to the point where that conscience - rather than the selfish, childish, uncaring and unhelpful ego - dictates your words and actions and in a bigger sense directs you throughout life.

[Anonymous No.7530168]

>>7527660
this is some shit right here. if you ever trip very hard on psychedelics you will get a very poignant firsthand experience with this, wherein "time" as we think about it doesn't exist, but rather all times exist on top of each other for several hours.

[Anonymous No.7530172]

>>7529725
underrated post

[Anonymous No.7530270]

>>7529725
>Universe is everything
>Perspectives are something
>Something is part of everything
>Perspectives are part of the universe
>The universe is deterministic
>Therefore, perspectives are also deterministic

As much as being neutral seems cool and correct because it seems like the most objective option in general, in this case, an extreme is the right answer: there is no free will. It could be "free" depending on how you define it though, but that's just semantics.

[Anonymous No.7530290]

>>7530270
This is a part/whole fallacy.

Saying that a set A is a property Phi does not mean that each element of A is Phi.

Let A be the universe and let Phi be deterministic.

Suppose I make a machine that rolls a die and then prints out a number.

The machine takes the number rolled by the die and then prints out a number based on a calculation performed on the number on the die.

Let the number rolled be n.
The machine prints n - (n-1).

The machine will always print 1. The machine is deterministic, however a component of the machine's functioning, the dice roll, is not.

Hence it is a deterministic system with a stochastic part.

In the same way, it doesn't necessarily follow that just because the universe as a whole is deterministic that each part of it is.

[Anonymous No.7530315]

>>7530290
I get the machine example (even though the dice is still deterministic in the way that its behavior is determined by randomness), but the fallacy doesn't apply when we talk about the universe, because the universe is literally "every-thing". Here I explain:

>The universe is everything
>The universe is deterministic
>Everything is deterministic, "every-thing"
>Perspectives are a *thing*
>Therefore, perspectives are deterministic.

If every thing is deterministic, and perspectives are a thing, then they're also deterministic. Simple enough.

It's similar to the Socrates's mortality argument: All humans are mortal, Socrates is a human, therefore Socrates is mortal.

[Anonymous No.7530324]

>>7530315
But when we talk about the universe, we aren't talking about everything that comprises the universe in isolation.

We are talking about the collection of everything that comprises the universe /as a collection/.

Very few people would argue that everything in the universe is deterministic, as this is almost surely false. What people generally mean when they say the universe is deterministic is that the universe as a whole works deterministically (not stochastically), rather than saying that each thing in the universe is deterministic.

If you expand the definition of determinism to include "being determined by randomness" or stochastic processes, then you've weakened the criterion for determinism so much as to not be useful or pertinent to the discussion.

We can just as easily throw in that my will is "determined" by my random whims, predilections, and partially-stochastic genetic disposition. That would make free will completely compatible with determinism, and undermine the whole basis for your argument.

[Anonymous No.7530342]

>>7530315
>>The universe is everything
This is an identity statement. It's also one which is somewhat contentious. Can you establish that the multiverse theory is false?
More importantly, you are using "is" to establish identity. This is an important point. Identity is transitive, symmetric, and reflexive. If this statement is true in the way that you intend, then
>Everything is the universe
is also true.
But it isn't.
Importantly, if you mean to say "The universe is the collection of all the things" i.e. "is" being used to define the universe, your subsequent logic fails.
>>The universe is deterministic
You are using "is" differently here. You are not saying that determinism is identical to the universe, but rather attributing a property to the universe.
>>Everything is deterministic, "every-thing"
This only works if your first statement is an identity statement. Since you can't substitute "Everything is the universe," this substitution is also invalid.
>>Perspectives are a *thing*
Sure they are.
>>Therefore, perspectives are deterministic.
This does not follow, for the above reason.

In an identity statement, such as a=a, you can substitute identities on either side.

So if a=b, a=c, sure b=c. But it is also necessarily true that b=a, c=b, and b=a. They are just different terms that refer to the same thing. Part of your proof depends on an interpretation of your statement as an identity statement. But you equivocate on "everything." In one sense it might be true that everything is the universe, but not in the sense that "every-thing" is deterministic that you hope to demonstrate.

[Anonymous No.7530345]

>>7530324
>We can just as easily throw in that my will is "determined" by my random whims, predilections, and partially-stochastic genetic disposition
>That would make free will completely compatible with determinism

No, because your will wouldn't be free, since it would be bound to work by the elements you mentioned, meaning that your "will" is also determined by these random elements.

Then again, like you said, it's a matter of definitions. I don't agree, however, in that there might be "free will" because random events may be happening in the universe; it would be "free" in the way that it's impossible to predict, or even uncaused, but not in the way that it's controled by a self, because such self would be bound to a will that is caused by randomness (which seemingly means "free" in your book)

[Anonymous No.7530350]

>>7530345

>No, because your will wouldn't be free, since it would be bound to work by the elements you mentioned, meaning that your "will" is also determined by these random elements.

>Then again, like you said, it's a matter of definitions. I don't agree, however, in that there might be "free will" because random events may be happening in the universe; it would be "free" in the way that it's impossible to predict, or even uncaused, but not in the way that it's controled by a self, because such self would be bound to a will that is caused by randomness (which seemingly means "free" in your book)

It's not that randomness allows for freedom; that's not what I'm saying. What's important is that given all the initial states and laws, that you can't predict with perfect certainty what I will do in a situation. This is sufficient for freedom in my book.

I do think that the universe is deterministic, but I don't think that is incompatible with free will in a robust sense. Like I mentioned earlier in the thread, almost no one would say that simply because we can't violate physical laws that we aren't responsible for or can't identify with our decisions as agents acting in an environment with certain goals.

[Anonymous No.7530355]

>>7528109
Bingo

[Anonymous No.7530376]

>>7530350
>>7530350
Well, alright. I guess I can understand that. But this "freedom" you're talking about doesn't mean that "we" control our actions, it just means that the future is unknowable because of randomness.

[Anonymous No.7530388]

in a limited sense, yes. i think we're free to explore.

[Anonymous No.7530448]

>>7530376
But we do control a large portion of our actions in a very real sense.

Let's say I make a program that sorts some parts coming down a conveyer belt according to predefined criteria.

Sure, the program can't do anything that I didn't program it to do or that is physically impossible, but what it actually does in each particular case can be drastically different than the general instructions I gave it. In a very real sense, the program controls which parts go where, and not me. Furthermore, I can program it to learn and test things to generate its own instructions to reach some specific performance measure.

Again, it wouldn't be doing anything that I didn't program it to do, however in a very real sense the program is self-determining which specific actions to take in its environment. It is controlling its behavior within a set of parameters.

This is definitely a case where a program is acting rationally, making decisions, and controlling instances of its own behavior. It might even be the case that it acts differently given the same exact set of percept sequences in the same environment in order to learn and test things.

Maybe this isn't what you are talking about when you mention that we don't control our actions, but there is definitely sufficient evidence that we do make decisions and act in our environments in a very analogous way to this program. Some mistakes the program might make are not its fault. However if its hardware becomes faulty and it starts sorting things incorrectly, we would still blame the agent (perhaps not the program itself, but the whole package) and fix it.

[Anonymous No.7530462]

I don't get how some people are good at kickoffs

[Anonymous No.7530463]

Ok, a few posts mentioned our decisions being deterministic cause elementary particles have limited states to which they are bound, which ultimately means we have limited choices.

I was told here on /sci/ that quantum physics, unlike classical, where you can just plug values into an equation and get an answer, gives you probabilities. Could these probabilities account for the different choices we have?

[Anonymous No.7530476]

>>7527657

Lel, heisenberg uncertainty deals with KNOWING where particles are and where they will go. The particles are not random. Their movements are still objective, just not predictable.

[Anonymous No.7530481]

>>7527262
I believe that people talking about free will are superstitious filth and the Purge would end any argument about free will.

[Anonymous No.7530493]

it's an ill-defined concept