There’s a lot we don’t understand about consciousness, but none of the problems we face rise to the level that we should be tempted to distrust our basic understanding of how the atoms and forces inside our brains work.
I don’t consider myself as proposing the existence of free will as an ideological issue, but I am having trouble connecting a causal mechanical system only (that I would call deterministic).
I don’t see it makes sense that arbitrary decision making exists (or even us being conscious of this conversation) if it was possible without any effort just by letting events run their course.
Emergent phenomena are like that. You can track them down, but not up.
For example, consider a complicated piece of software. Sometimes it seems to act on its own, or hate you, or something. I swear that one Linux distro I tried had a thing against me personally. And this behavior is usually unintended by the programmers. Often it even appears non-deterministic and hard to duplicate. However, one can usually trace the weird behavior to a bunch of “bugs”, rather than attribute agency/free will to a piece of code. But it is nearly impossible to predict the weirdness beforehand. Stuff just happens. Apparently even the term “bug” came about because any non-trivial piece of technology appeared to have gremlins inside just trying to mess with you.
Given that humans are probably just glorified computers evolved out of meat, it seems unsurprising that we have developed a mind of our own.
I think that I have two possible errors in my argument:
Deterministic processes do not permit free thinking.
Free thinking needs randomness in its underlying process.
I agree with you that behavior in complex systems seems non-deterministic even though the underlying processes are deterministic (like the software example you give above).
So our perception of consciousness and even the dichotomy “randomness vs certainty” could be a mental illusion.
I think your error is in not being able to define what free will is. My go to approach to “obvious” and “intuitive” statements is to ask to define the opposite. For example, how do you think it feels to have no free will? Can you give a few concrete examples of “not having free will”?
I agree that not to focus on free will first may be a mistake in itself and it makes me ask questions that are irrelevant from the get go.
Just in case you last question is not rhetorical:
In a potentially mistaken model where free will is considered an objective reality then not having free will does not have any feelings and an example is flowing water in a river, it doesn’t think feel, or decide, it just flown governed by gravity, etc.
But again, the above answer is useless if free will is an illusion.
I will try your method of defining the opposite first!
My question was not rhetorical. But it was unclear. Water indeed doesn’t feel, as far as we know.
What would it feel like FOR YOU to not have free will?
Would irresistible voices in your head telling you what to do give you that feeling? Would observing your arm flailing about without your input? Would watching yourself reach for your X-Box despite knowing that you should study for a test? Or knowing that someone else can predict your actions and maybe even thoughts before you aware of having them?
Think about all these very different no-free-will cases and tell me what not having free will means for you. Not for water.
Not to have free will would feel like when I am not conscious of the fact that free will exists. I would actually operate the same way as usual. Free will is just an idea that appears when I think about determinism and randomness in the universe. Also, I think about free will when deconstructing the universe and trying to understand how it works. This is because as a way to compare “dead” physical mechanics to “non-dead” I use as a reference the supposed free will I have in my mind (or the feeling of free will).
Summary: Free will is the name I designate to a group of activities in my mind that result in a decision. But it’s not a thing or something that actually exists anywhere, but in my imagination!
Thank you, great article.
I don’t consider myself as proposing the existence of free will as an ideological issue, but I am having trouble connecting a causal mechanical system only (that I would call deterministic).
I don’t see it makes sense that arbitrary decision making exists (or even us being conscious of this conversation) if it was possible without any effort just by letting events run their course.
Emergent phenomena are like that. You can track them down, but not up.
For example, consider a complicated piece of software. Sometimes it seems to act on its own, or hate you, or something. I swear that one Linux distro I tried had a thing against me personally. And this behavior is usually unintended by the programmers. Often it even appears non-deterministic and hard to duplicate. However, one can usually trace the weird behavior to a bunch of “bugs”, rather than attribute agency/free will to a piece of code. But it is nearly impossible to predict the weirdness beforehand. Stuff just happens. Apparently even the term “bug” came about because any non-trivial piece of technology appeared to have gremlins inside just trying to mess with you.
Given that humans are probably just glorified computers evolved out of meat, it seems unsurprising that we have developed a mind of our own.
I think that I have two possible errors in my argument:
Deterministic processes do not permit free thinking.
Free thinking needs randomness in its underlying process.
I agree with you that behavior in complex systems seems non-deterministic even though the underlying processes are deterministic (like the software example you give above).
So our perception of consciousness and even the dichotomy “randomness vs certainty” could be a mental illusion.
I think your error is in not being able to define what free will is. My go to approach to “obvious” and “intuitive” statements is to ask to define the opposite. For example, how do you think it feels to have no free will? Can you give a few concrete examples of “not having free will”?
Those are two different questions.
I agree that not to focus on free will first may be a mistake in itself and it makes me ask questions that are irrelevant from the get go.
Just in case you last question is not rhetorical:
In a potentially mistaken model where free will is considered an objective reality then not having free will does not have any feelings and an example is flowing water in a river, it doesn’t think feel, or decide, it just flown governed by gravity, etc.
But again, the above answer is useless if free will is an illusion.
I will try your method of defining the opposite first!
My question was not rhetorical. But it was unclear. Water indeed doesn’t feel, as far as we know.
What would it feel like FOR YOU to not have free will?
Would irresistible voices in your head telling you what to do give you that feeling? Would observing your arm flailing about without your input? Would watching yourself reach for your X-Box despite knowing that you should study for a test? Or knowing that someone else can predict your actions and maybe even thoughts before you aware of having them?
Think about all these very different no-free-will cases and tell me what not having free will means for you. Not for water.
Not to have free will would feel like when I am not conscious of the fact that free will exists. I would actually operate the same way as usual. Free will is just an idea that appears when I think about determinism and randomness in the universe. Also, I think about free will when deconstructing the universe and trying to understand how it works. This is because as a way to compare “dead” physical mechanics to “non-dead” I use as a reference the supposed free will I have in my mind (or the feeling of free will).
Summary: Free will is the name I designate to a group of activities in my mind that result in a decision. But it’s not a thing or something that actually exists anywhere, but in my imagination!
So, you don’t think there is any situation where you would feel like your free will has disappeared? None of the cases I described click?
In all those cases I would feel frustration, anger, and a sense of claustrophobia I think. Maybe a deep depression.