What is your position on free will as defined by the following statement?

[Free Speech Enjoyer]

I've been on a bit of a YouTube binge lately, so I ended up revisiting this issue.  Now, I crafted the definition fully aware that some - heck, most of you, probably - may not be satisfied with it.  After all, the means by which we define free will is half the controversy.  However, I thought this was the best possible way of constructing it to encourage debate and maybe fill in the gaps.

I suppose the most common (and perhaps the strongest) argument I've heard against free will is that because we do not choose our preferences, we do not 'choose' anything on which we act freely.  But, I think this observation misses the big picture.  Let's use an analogy.

Imagine someone offers you four cards to pick from: a red card, an orange card, a blue card, and a green card.  You pick the green card.
Let's imagine the same scenario slightly differently: the person simply tells you, "Pick a card," but there are no cards in their hands.  You cannot say you want any color card because you have nothing to choose from.

In the latter scenario, the problem goes unresolved because you had nothing to base your choice on.  You may have not been limited to just those four select cards, but you still could not make the choice precisely because there was nothing to coinstrain you.  In the first scenario, you may not have been able to pick, say, the purple card, because that card was not available to you.  Yet, you still had more 'choice power' than you did in the second scenario because you had something to base your choice on.  In a sense, you needed 'limits' to your free will in order for there to have been free will at all.

Here's a simpler example I found on a YouTube comment: someone tells you to name a politician, and 'Obama' or 'Thatcher' instantly come to mind.  This was not total randomness since it had to be a politician, but it is also not determined.  Free will in the brain, consequentially, involves the setting of such synaptic parameters and a constrained form of randomness.  (Of course, this is where we encounter the problem of defining free will, and determining whether or not 'randomness' has anything to do with it.)

But these examples, of course, illustrate a greater point: that decision-making is possible within the context of the environment that shapes our decisions.  We are all constrained by our biology, our instincts, our medical history, our backgrounds, what we ingest, et cetera, yet those factors do not suppress our ability to consciously make decisions and determine what is in our best interest with respect to those limits.

That, essentially, is how I would apply the definition in the poll.  I'd like to hear thoughts from both those who believe in free will and those who do not on whether it's a sound analogy.

[afleitch]

Sort of. Probably best to lift a little from something I posed about this earlier (I think)

In short, I wouldn’t call what we have ‘free will’ at all; the idea itself should be discarded. We have volition.

‘Free Will’ was defined at a time in which a theistic universe was generally accepted and there needed to be an manner in which to explain away the inconvenient paradoxes within a theistic universe. One of the contradictions in Christian theology (though not exclusive to it) is called ‘theodicy’; why god permits evil. If god is omnipotent and omnibenevolent, then eternal damnation is contradictory. Either god cannot create a world without evil (and we define evil as being contrary to the will of god) which means he’s not a powerful god or he won’t create a world without evil which means he is not a very capable god. But if humans can voluntarily choose to be evil because we have such a thing as a ‘free will’, then it no longer becomes a problem with god but with mankind.  

The problem is that free will doesn’t make sense. Free will; a ‘will that is free’ relies on the concept that there is some extra entity not related casually to the rest of the universe and it’s laws. Only such an entity, free from the confines of the laws of the universe and not subject to casuality could fit the requirements of a genuinely ‘free’ will that is uninfluenced by anything other than itself.

Human beings can not have free will because the very philosophical concept of a free will cannot exist within our universe. Everything is subject to the same laws and cannot be uninfluenced by anything but themselves. You have a ‘will’, yes, because you are a sentient being, but it is not strictly ‘free.’ Your will can never be uninfluenced by anything other than itself, and therefore be truly free, because your will is part your conscience which is rooted in your physical being. Your physical being and your mind are both constantly influenced by factors outside of itself. Therefore more accurately you have what can be called volition. This is a very important difference.  You have a consciousness and this drives and is driven by your body and you have some rational processess (as much as your evolution has afforded you at least) operating in your brain that can reasonably control your bodies behaviour. You, like everything else in the universe are subject to casuality, not free from it, but have the ability to influence it’s future direction. So while you have the control you are afforded you can never have full control. So you can never fully have 100% responsibility for every moral or amoral action that you undertake.

You are a one of countless processes that exist in this universe but you have advantage of being a process that is self aware. You are here because it has been determined, by the sum of all that came before you, that you will be here.  This is called ‘casual determinism.’ It rests on the understanding that the past is fixed and the present is the sum of history. This renders the concept of free will irrelevant. Your brain makes decisions based on it’s physical condition at the time you make the decision. It’s current physical condition is determined by it’s previous states. Therefore we exercise volition limited only by causality and physics to the extent that is both necessary and beneficial to us.

An apologist may fancy the ‘card’ anology. The deity providing you with a set of options, including the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ ones only when they become available. However everyone is born with different ‘qualifications’; male, female, able bodies, diabled, gay, straight, colour blind. Differing cognitive abilities in general. Everyone perceives the world differently and internalises external information on a different level. So the idea of ‘set morals’ for human existance as defined by a revealed text isn’t particularly strong.

From the point of view of the universe all events, whether or not we consider them moral, immoral or neutral are merely particle interactions. It is only us who consider such interactions; from the mind forming an idea to the hand carrying it out, as good, bad or neutral. Good and evil aren’t universal ‘forces’; (therefore if there is a deity, it has to be morally neutral) they are what we determine them collectively and in accordance to our evolutionary need, to be.

[Free Speech Enjoyer]

Afleitch, I think a lot of what you said is compatible with the idea of free will, or at the very least, enough to substitute it for something that makes humans carry the same responsibilities as we would if we had 'free will.'  Free will proponents don't argue that the way we make choices isn't influenced by previous physical states, but rather that humans have a say in the matter in spite of those factors.  Just because we don't have full responsibility for our decisions doesn't mean we let murderers off because their consciousness wasn't the only factor in making that choice to kill.

As far as differing qualifications go, I don't think those are particularly relevant factors in most cases.  Indeed, the way we interact with everyday dilemmas is influenced by our physical and mental states, but that doesn't change the dilemmas themselves.  Whether you are gay or straight shouldn't affect how others view you if you believe the Holocaust was right, wrong, or didn't happen at all.  Even if morality is relative, the facts remain the same, and able-bodied individuals are more or less capable of reaching the same conclusions.

[Randy Bobandy]

I believe that "free will is the ability of agents to make choices unconstrained by certain factors".

[TJ in Oregon]

Afleitch, I think a lot of what you said is compatible with the idea of free will, or at the very least, enough to substitute it for something that makes humans carry the same responsibilities as we would if we had 'free will.'  Free will proponents don't argue that the way we make choices isn't influenced by previous physical states, but rather that humans have a say in the matter in spite of those factors.  Just because we don't have full responsibility for our decisions doesn't mean we let murderers off because their consciousness wasn't the only factor in making that choice to kill.

There is an important distinction in here I think is in need of drawing: the difference between causal determinism and influence from previous states. The idea of causal determinism requires that the previous states not only influence what decisions are made, but actually determine them. This idea is consistent with a number of natural processes, for example if I bring vinegar and baking soda (in quantities of at least the continuum level) into contact under ambient conditions they will react. They do not decide to react; bringing them in contact is enough to determine the outcome that they will.

Now all of that is on the continuum level, whereas more fundamentally, the universe is stochastic but based on probabilities. It just happens that those probabilities often converge to one or zero when considering systems of ~10^20 molecules. Essentially all of thermodynamics is an exercise in statistics at its core. But the main point I want to make here is that there is also the possibility in nature of random outcomes as well as determined ones. In fact, I'm not sure whether the idea that no uncaused or self-caused actions can occur in nature is consistent with quantum mechanics, at least not strictly.

So where does free will fit into all of this? First, I'd like to define free will as the ability to have actually made a different choice than the one made in a given situation and the ability to make it arbitrarily. I do not consider any sort of illusion of free will that isn't mutually exclusive with determinism to be free will. In this context, don't think free will understood as a free choice is consistent with a truly materialist worldview. I don't think it is forbidden by nature either really, but more that something is missing from the strictly material world necessary for free will to actually exist. Statistical mechanics supports events that can occur either by determinism or at random, so a sort of non-determined volition is still possible by random outcomes, but what defines the random outcomes? Are the random outcomes a viable source of free will? It doesn't seem to have quite the same philosophical effect as not to say I have free will, but to instead say I have random will constrained by probabilities. Yet, from the material world, that is the obvious consequence.

Thus far, I have constrained my discussion to the material world, but here I will depart from what science is able to tell us and postulate that there is something more than the material world. As it pertains to this conversation I believe that there is some sort of a non-physical spirit or life force (a human soul) in play that directs the random action and gives rise to a free will that allows arbitrary decisions through the avenue of apparent randomness. This is not contradictory to statistic mechanics but rather in addition to what can ascertained through it. I am, however, not particularly convinced one can really believe in free will without acknowledging something beyond the material world. The material world does not really preclude a free will, but I doubt anyone can come to that belief without a belief in something else.

In short, I do believe in free will but I'm not sure whether it matches the description in this thread because I am not sure whether or not the description in this thread allows the selector the ability in the first scenario to have selected any one of the cards arbitrarily rather than determinately selecting his favorite every time.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

The existence of free will is a necessary condition for there to be morality. Without choice, there can be no good and evil.

[afleitch]

As it pertains to this conversation I believe that there is some sort of a non-physical spirit or life force (a human soul) in play that directs the random action and gives rise to a free will that allows arbitrary decisions through the avenue of apparent randomness. This is not contradictory to statistic mechanics but rather in addition to what can ascertained through it. I am, however, not particularly convinced one can really believe in free will without acknowledging something beyond the material world. The material world does not really preclude a free will, but I doubt anyone can come to that belief without a belief in something else.

The problem is, you can theorise a soul as a sort of spiritual facsimile of your conscious being that isn’t subject to entropic demise. However the fleshy bit of you; the body and the brain and the resulting consciousness are still subject to causality. No human being has exactly the same cognitive and physical abilities as the next person and they partially determine the course of action that you take and the decisions that you make. Therefore no human is ‘fully informed’ of all choices that are available. Again, you are afforded the choices that evolution has granted you and what causality has determined. There is a chunk of the human experience that as someone with very mild aspergers is forever just out of reach. Given that spiritually speaking, that may result in me by default making a ‘sinful’ decision that someone else may exercise their volition and avoid then one would hope that wouldn’t be held against me.

Even if you were to assume that the soul was the ‘fully informed’ part of you then it can be easily inferred from the actions that people take, that this soul is incapable of guiding or informing the rest of you, as your cognitive abilities are still subject to your consciousness which is still rooted in the physical.

[DemPGH]

The issue is with the word "certain."

I believe in "free will unconstrained by supernatural / astrological factors within the context of the limitations of socioeconomic (environmental) and physiological status."

That pretty well encompasses it all. So I vote that I agree with it IF I can define "certain."

To me, it relates to the ages old Nature vs. Nurture argument, and to me it's both. It's talent + your environment (to include those to whom you have access who might be able to help you).   

[Free Speech Enjoyer]

With regard to souls, I think we can make limited inferences on how they work if we accept that they exist.  I believe they do exist, but there isn't a great deal of what we can say about them for similar reasons to why we can't speculate on the afterlife.  If you accept that the soul is you, but on a physical journey, then unfortunately we can only infer from the journey - the 'consciousness part' - itself.  To speculate on the soul and its role in the material world would necessitate being 'on the outside looking in,' that is to say, which is obviously impossible given that our own consciousness is the only evidence we have of our existence.

For that reason, I would say that it could be the 'missing piece' to this, but I wouldn't suggest that the soul is 'incapable' of informing us; rather, that it is simply reacting to the physical experience and informing us of what we can and can't do.  From a religious standpoint, the soul is not free from material constraints until those material constraints become irrelevant at the time of death.  But then the argument kind of comes full-circle; the soul is yet another thing free to act and inform with certain conditions.  For even then, we cannot rationalize the soul to be totally free because humans are not all-powerful entities.

So TJ, I am more or less in agreement with your sentiment so long as we acknowledge that no degree of total 'freeness' is guaranteed for humans at any stage of our existence.  There's always going to be an 'asterisk,' so to speak.  As long as what the soul wants to do can be overruled by a higher power, supernatural or material, there will be limits.

The issue is with the word "certain."

I believe in "free will unconstrained by supernatural / astrological factors within the context of the limitations of socioeconomic (environmental) and physiological status."

That pretty well encompasses it all. So I vote that I agree with it IF I can define "certain."

To me, it relates to the ages old Nature vs. Nurture argument, and to me it's both. It's talent + your environment (to include those to whom you have access who might be able to help you).  

"Certain" is admittedly a nonsense term in the context of my definition and that's why I was hesitant about posting it the way it is, but yes, that's essentially what I meant by "certain."

[TJ in Oregon]

As it pertains to this conversation I believe that there is some sort of a non-physical spirit or life force (a human soul) in play that directs the random action and gives rise to a free will that allows arbitrary decisions through the avenue of apparent randomness. This is not contradictory to statistic mechanics but rather in addition to what can ascertained through it. I am, however, not particularly convinced one can really believe in free will without acknowledging something beyond the material world. The material world does not really preclude a free will, but I doubt anyone can come to that belief without a belief in something else.

The problem is, you can theorise a soul as a sort of spiritual facsimile of your conscious being that isn’t subject to entropic demise. However the fleshy bit of you; the body and the brain and the resulting consciousness are still subject to causality. No human being has exactly the same cognitive and physical abilities as the next person and they partially determine the course of action that you take and the decisions that you make. Therefore no human is ‘fully informed’ of all choices that are available. Again, you are afforded the choices that evolution has granted you and what causality has determined. There is a chunk of the human experience that as someone with very mild aspergers is forever just out of reach. Given that spiritually speaking, that may result in me by default making a ‘sinful’ decision that someone else may exercise their volition and avoid then one would hope that wouldn’t be held against me.

Even if you were to assume that the soul was the ‘fully informed’ part of you then it can be easily inferred from the actions that people take, that this soul is incapable of guiding or informing the rest of you, as your cognitive abilities are still subject to your consciousness which is still rooted in the physical.

Entropic demise on the nanoscale does not necessarily dictate a particular outcome, which is what we're talking about on the scale of individual neurons firing in your brain. It does forbid certain outcomes, obviously, as the Second Law of Thermodynamics still does apply. But causality implies it would forbid all potential outcomes but one. There may be multiple outcomes that increase the entropy of the universe which occur with different probabilities. But since we only have one actual universe (that we can prove anyway; there is always the multiverse interpretation of quantum mechanics as well), only one outcome can actually happen, even though it might not be the most probable outcome, and statistically some will almost certainly not be the most probable outcome. At equilibrium, only the states with the greatest number of possible molecular arrangements (highest entropy) can exist, but we're not at equilibrium and if we were we would be at conditions far beyond what could sustain human life anyway.

Basically, I'm not arguing that we can do physically impossible things through free will, but that there are multiple possible courses of action that are physically possible in any given situation and we can select which to take from those that are possible using free will via an apparent randomness. This is different from causality in that it allows us several degrees of freedom rather than only one possible path.

[compson III]

It's been over a century since determinism ruled the natural sciences.  As little as we know about the brain, it seems very plausible that, ala Penrose, the brain is not entirely in a state of quantum decoherence.  Certainly this would explain why there is still such a gulf between our brain and existing artificial intelligence in many computations.  So why are we still pitting free will against the natural sciences?  This is nothing but amateur philosophy.