MonteChristo0321 OP t1_jblcsmu wrote
Reply to comment by cryforabsolution in I just published an article in The Journal of Mind and Behavior arguing that free will is real. Here is the PhilPapers link with free PDF. Tell me what you think. by MonteChristo0321
Quite right that it's mostly refuting arguments from the other side. But I think I do make a positive argument that my two criteria for free will are met; that I am the source of my actions and that I can do otherwise. If I'm right about being non-reductive in scale, then the whole person is the source of action. And if I'm right about temporal asymmetry and undecidability then the whole person can do otherwise.
But yes, this completely depends on picking the parameters for free will. I also sometimes feel that nearly all philosophy is pointless in a way because so many topics depend on prior agreement on concepts that may be inherently squishy, and are endlessly open to be undermined.
maritimelight t1_jblo9a9 wrote
While I think it's a slightly more complex issue than just semantics, another undefined term that will likely cause problems for your argument is the assumption of identity you use with "I". One of the more widely discussed issues of late is whether there is a coherent identity you can posit as "I", and if so, what its boundaries and qualities are. Is this something like the Kantian unity of apperception? Does it necessarily include my body and my consciousness? Personally I am sympathetic to the view that "I" is merely a kind of awareness of ourselves after the fact. But my point is, you can see that if I adopt this definition of "I", I am making a subterranean assumption that refutes your criteria, and vice versa. Discussions about free-will are downstream of discussions about consciousness and identity.
Electronic_Agent_235 t1_jbmf7pg wrote
This, times a million. I'm convinced that human experience/existence is comprised of two separate but connected identities. I've come to think of them as the "perceiver" and the "decider". The decider is the subconscious beyond "my (perceiver)" control, making decisions based on physical composition of my thinking meat at any given time and it's relationship to all available stimulus. So, determinism can still exist or not, and have no bearing. "I" could still have "done otherwise" based on any number of factors, even down to pure random chance at a quantum level as far as when neurological potentials "trip" and I make a discission to say, press either a red button or blue button at a pre determined time. "I" made that choice, but it was the "I" that I don't control. And then I'm left to witness reality play out from a separate "I", namely the "perceiver."
I dunno. I'm not formally educated in philosophy. so I don't know how to present this concept better. But it seems to me I don't often run across this idea often in free will discussion. Determinism seems to be a very enticing red herring. But I do believe the core of why I don't believe in free will is the recognition that there are two separate "me's." And neither one of them can be consciously controlled.
Simply put, you can not choose to not get mad.
If you had free will, you could.
I say "hey, exercise your free will, and don't get mad." Then tell you about some horrendous thing I did that harms you emotionally. You absolutely can not choose your emotional response. Now, you may think you are choosing how you act on that emotional response, but even that "choice" in how you react to the emotional stimulus is dictated by, it or pr dictated on all previous experience which have formed all your responses. And that decision is no more "yours" than is the emotional response itself. Brains are physical electro/chemical systems.
Weather the univers is deterministic or not does not have primary bearing on free will. If you want to prove free will by pointing out "I could have done otherwise" then your missing the point. All that does is discount determinism. But determinism is not required for "no free will" to be true.
tuffnstangs t1_jbmyc3s wrote
I’m so glad you said this. I have been wondering if anyone else has been going through this. I catch myself after I speak certain sentences thinking, “wow that was a good thought you just said. That was well-articulated…. Where did that even come from?” But I also have those “what the actual fuck did you even just say” moments. Like I am a live studio audience to this animated meat machine that seems to run itself and make decisions seemingly outside of my own control sometimes.
Today driving to work I called 911 after witnessing a woman swerving all across the highway for a few miles. I actually drove past the car and looked inside to see if the person was distracted or what the deal was. Thinking back, it was really stupid of me to drive up next to this person who I just watched drive off onto the shoulder of the road multiple times. But as soon as I saw that it was a zoinked out woman with what looked like a child seat in the back seat, my chest sunk through the fucking floor.
Literally seeming entirely outside of my control, I whipped out my phone and dialed 911. The call took 4 minutes but it felt like 4 hours.
Or there are those times where you just get mad to the point where you say or do something you instantly regret. Some people mention that it’s like they weren’t even in control when they did some horrendous act. Like, where do thoughts come from anyway?
I don’t know, I’m just some nobody on a random rock in a random galaxy in some random universe for no reason and none of it makes sense lol.
Ok-Cheetah-3497 t1_jcm1c6o wrote
I like to think of it like this: your thoughtful-self is a pinball. Your body is the pinball machine (which includes the pinball). The player of pinball you can think of as any of the following: the big bang, your parents at moment of conception, the entire universe and its contents. From the perspective of the pinball you know only that you are rolling around maybe on a trajectory, maybe seemingly at random, all over the place, no apparent cause. But your body subconsciously is a very controlled space with a lot of clearly defined physical rules that actually place your thoughts wherever they are at any moment. And of course, the drivers of all of those bodily events are all things our body interacts with.
eda_esq t1_jbmwedx wrote
Very much agree. Each of us is an observer to our thoughts and actions while our brains actually determine how we react to stimuli.
ShrikeonHyperion t1_jbpyi4q wrote
I think the reaction is made made by the decider too, and we can only observe our reaction. And again. And again. How should i say, the decider lives a few seconds in the future, or the observer is held back by our brain, he lives a few seconds in the past. So to speak anyway. "We" are always just observing.
I wrote this post, thought about it, thought about what i thought about it, and so on. Untill the decider decided to press the post button.
Practically an infinite loop.
Sellenium t1_jbmzoyl wrote
I’ve been writing (and annoying my wife) about this for almost a whole year now. Well said.
stingray85 t1_jbmyevr wrote
What makes you think people can't, in at least some cases, control their emotional responses?
> Now, you may think you are choosing how you act on that emotional response, but even that "choice" in how you react to the emotional stimulus is dictated by, it or pr dictated on all previous experience which have formed all your responses.
I think most accounts of what a "self" or "I" is would say that at least in part, the self is an embodied compression/distillation of learnings from your previous experiences. Saying your previous experiences determine how you respond to something doesn't necessarily remove an "I" from the system - unless, I guess, your idea of a self is some kind of entity that is completely separate from experience, which seems like an unusual way to define a self.
Electronic_Agent_235 t1_jbo0rur wrote
>What makes you think people can't, in at least some cases, control their emotional responses?
So, is your assertion then that sometimes Free Will exists and sometimes it doesn't? Seems to me it's a rather binary proposition, I mean if you can exert free will in some cases, why not others? Does the severity of the stimulus affect whether or not you have free will, and therefore the ability to choose your emotional response?
As to what makes me believe that people cannot, in any circumstance, control their emotional response.
Well that's based on 40 years of observation. And a recognition that almost everyone else's emotional responses work relatively similar to my own. That, coupled with being able to formulate hypothetical scenarios which explicitly lay bare the notion that you cannot, in fact, choose your emotional response to any stimuli.
Consider this...
You are at the park rolling around a ball with your most favorite precious little puppy whom you love dearly. You adopted this puppy from a shelter and you and this puppy share a deep emotional bond.
Now,
Scenario 1 - a man walks by, looks at the puppy, looks at you, then leans down scoops up the puppy carefully holds it against his chest, scratches behind it's ear, then gently sets the puppy back down and continues on his way.
Ultimately, this is a fairly innocuous event. However, you most definitely experienced some emotional response to this event. Perhaps, beer, because you did not know this man's intentions and whether or not he was just going harm your puppy or just walk away with it. Perhaps you experienced happiness, because you assumed that he was doing the very thing he ended up doing and you find it pleaseing that someone else finds your puppy adorable, so you experience some amount of Joy or happiness.
Scenario 2 - a man walks by, looks at you, looks at the puppy, then proceeds to kick the puppy like a football, looks you straight in the eye, truffles and walks away.
.. An absolutely horrific event. To which you most definitely have an emotional response. Great, anger, abject horror...
Now, in either of these scenarios, did you choose your emotional response? Could you choose to respond to scenario two with joy and happiness? Could you choose to respond to scenario one with absolute furious anger? To be sure, depending on your ability you could outwardly act in a seemingly incongruent manner. But that still would not change the fact that inwardly you had an emotional experience beyond your control. And even in scenario one, we could add additional background information which would alter the most likely expected emotional responses. And these would be the things that influence any given emotional response to any given event you witness no matter how innocuous or impactful it is.
And in the same way in which those previous experiences and your current state of mind dictate the emotional response you will experience, so too does previous experience and current state of mind dictate any action you will or will not take when experiencing any given emotional response.
The emotional response, the action you do or don't take based on that emotional response, very act of having an inner dialogue weighing out potential benefits and outcomes of various courses of action, all these things are beyond your active control. They're all the results of your brains current condition. We can even see this cases of people who experience head trauma. When the rain experiences literal physical alteration it can completely alter someone's personality. And they cannot simply choose to behave in the way they did prior. Their behavior, and thus there responses and actions to the world around them are entirely dictated by the physical composition of their brain which is intern manufactured by all previous experiences.
All these things occur beyond your control and interact in such a way so as to make you feel as though you are actively making these decisions. To be sure, it is a very strong illusion, but it is an illusion nonetheless. Elsewise you may as well be a radio that believes itself to be the world's greatest musician simply because it receives a stimulus processes said stimulus through available circuitry and then generate output based on that processed stimuli.
(Please be assured that no cute little fluffer puppers we're actually harmed in the formulation of these hypothetical scenarios, though unfortunately, neither did any cute little puppers receive ear skritches)
As for the second part of your comment, I'm not so sure anything I've said should have implied that I believe that any of this is removing the "I" from the system. Merely pointing out that human experience is comprised of interconnected identities, however pointing out that neither of which is an "I" that can choose, through free will, to act with disregard the physical composition and current state of mind which it emanates from.
ryclarky t1_jbnzr4b wrote
Yes, but we need to believe that "selves" can be controlled otherwise how could we enact laws and operate as a society?
ShrikeonHyperion t1_jbpwde9 wrote
That's a view I share. The two types if "I" are even more prominent on consciousness altering substances, up to completely seperating the observer and the decider. The desicions are viewed by the observer without prejudice, and you can learn lot about yourself that way. Also depersonalisation and derealisation(hope that's right, im German) which i experienced with a anxiety disorder are a separation of the two. You realise that you are actually not in control, you can only observe the action your brain dictates. It's my view that we are the sum of every decision made in our lives, every response we got, in short your past life dictates your actions. which can be very unsettling.
And the point of getting mad, i really thought a while that i can control it. But in reality i can't, i get mad and only afterwards i can readjust my feelings. It pops up, and then I calm down again. Which could be viewed as free will, but again, that's only the sum of everything that happened to me. I can do this, because i had some experiences or whatnot that made me able to do so, and they made me not only able to do this, but they also dictate that i do it, in which situations i do it, and in which not.
On high doses of hallucinogens you can get get in a kind of state that makes you aware of everything your brain is doing. It's really a conceptual space almost in a mathematical sense, It's the last stage(there is another, depending on the substance) of the geometry you perceive on low to high doses. It's fascinating, it starts almost invisible, gets stronger and more vivid, the complexity increases more and more. Then there's a point after you can't get away from it anymore. It's visible with open eyes, at first covering stuff in 2d, then it gets 3d, and then there comes a point where open or closed eyes don't make a difference anymore. The last state is the realization that that geometry IS your conscience. It's too much to grasp, normally we have filters that save us from this. At that point every feeling is connected, all the senses are the same. It's just math at that point. And as someone that has math, physics and such stuff as a serious hobby, it makes sense. Lots of fractal and actually impossible geometry.
But not for mathematics. Impossible to describe i mean. Sadly most people that do this to such an extent have nothing to do with math. I would love to hear the thoughts of a real mathematician, because they are just trained to recognise patterns and propably already know lots of the concepts they would experience.
Why fractals for example? I think that they are representations of feedback loops we see operating, like the oxygen concentration and breathing loop. Or just the image of on Neuron firing, and after x steps it gets triggered again. And again. Untill some other neuron interferes. It's a state of constant fluidity, it changes in (maybe?) infinitesimal small steps, as time has long lost its meaning at that point.
Every thing has meaning, sometimes paradoxical; and everything your body experiences in that state strongly infuences the geometry you ecperience. Like when someone touches you, you don't feel it on yor arm, instead the geometry changes accordingly. Or music... can seriously be too much, but you can see(i use this word in lieu of a better one, experience would propably better, but still not enough.) what the music does to your brain. I think i stop here, i don't belive this is the right place for this.
Go there if you want to know more about the kinds of geometry you'll experience psychedelics.
It's a shame that no one does studies on this, it could reveal so much about the inner workings of our consciousness. Or not, and it' just bs. But i don't think so. They strip your mind one layer of safeguard after another, untill you're exposed to everything your mind can offer. It's not even scary, because at that point "scary" ist just one concept of many, and since you are the observer you can analyze it and what it does to your brain and your body without fear. Without anything actually. You are reduced to something i can't describe. And if the effects wear off, you can't describe what really happened, because we don't have words for it. Not even a concept. That's why im for mathematicians on drugs... They maybe could shed some light on this.
I'm really not sure if it's just bs, but all the connections to math just make sense. In the end, we are nothing more than computers. Biological, but still a computer.
OK, now i really stop.
Full on deterministic i would say...
And have mercy with me, i have nothing to do with philosophy, i just like to read this sub, and once i had something maybe meaningful to share.
By the way, i don't believe in DMT faires or such stuff, maybe a part of yor consciousness gets separated or whatnot. Everything on hallucinogens only happens in your brain.
And a warning to everyone, you all probably can guess where my anxiety disorder comes from... I have HPPD too, so be careful if you think about going on a trip! Please!
ShrikeonHyperion t1_jbqggyf wrote
I just remembered, there was a study that proofed the concept of the duality you mentioned. They measured the brain waves(i don't remember how) of people while making decisions. Pressing one of two buttons in this case i think. And it's exactly like you say, the decider acts at least half a second(could be more, but not less.) before the perceiver(or the person in that case?) thought now he makes the decision. Even when they thougt they do it by chance(in their mind rapidly switching between the buttons, and then just smash one of them) the scientists could always tell beforehand which button they will press.
Maybe i find it.
SlowJoeCrow44 t1_jbmf7ba wrote
How can seperate the 'whole person' from its environment? And if we don't have 'free willpower our environment, how can we have it over ourselves? Does a dog, or am ant have this same seperated freedom from its environment? Or are we simply a process with the ability to reflect, but not change, that purpose.
TumblrRs t1_jbn2pwd wrote
Are you really the source of your actions? Everything effects something, what has effected your decision for that action. What effect do those effects, effect "your" free will.
datboitotoyo t1_jbnp6cu wrote
One question i have here is how can you do otherwise? Id argue you can think about doing otherwise, and convince yourself you would be capable to make a different choice should you be confronted with the exact same situation, but at the end of the day you made the other choice and the exact same situation will never arise again as you cannot go back in time.
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