The absence of free will seems like a pretty good description of how I’ve felt for the past 8 years or so. “And now, I’m going to do X. … Right? Other half of brain that hears this part giving orders? X? Any day now? You realize that not listening to me means we’ll have to put up with getting yelled at by people who will Fundamental Attribution Error us into oblivion, right?” Though maybe Fundamental Attribution Error isn’t quite right, since there’s a strange enduring “Not much decision-making power” quality rather than the “So you think you’re better than everyone and just blowing everyone off and choosing to do other things?” qualities that I’ve been accused of.
This always reminds me of an incident from first grade, that probably isn’t relevant to the discussion, so I’ll probably post a summary elsewhere.
The trouble seems to be a matter of perspective. From an outside view, with all the relevant data, an intelligent agent should be able to predict the decisions of most humans under most conditions. We have such a phrase as “out of character” for when our models of people do not match their behavior. Out of character moments are considered a sign of poor writing in fiction, and something to fear in human society. When we fail to predict someone’s actions correctly, we usually try to find out what was missing from our model and update accordingly (consider reactions to every mass shooting in America in the past 20 years).
I kinda feel like, by the time “free will” has been reduced to something logical, attaching the word “free” to it ceases to be meaningful. Free from overt coercion? I wouldn’t even go that far; would we claim that a financially secure middle-class member of the local most-privelaged class has free will, whereas a prisoner of an abusive, manipulative overlord does not?
I find it interesting to think about how many of one’s actions trace back to conscious decisions, and how many conscious decisions lead to the decided upon actions. Once college brought my inability to do what I want to the forefront, and I’d put up with people yelling nonsense about it for a few years while fumbling around in search of a solution, I wound up talking to some psychologists. One of them mentioned the emotions → thoughts → actions pyramid, with regards to what we can control. The general idea is that we have most control over our actions, and least over our emotions, and some over thoughts. Apparently this feels true enough for enough people that it translates into something resembling the idea of free will.
Maybe I’m drawing ridiculously large conclusions from one example, but if I had to put those three experiences into order of control, I’d say I have way more control over my thoughts than my actions. I might call it “freedom of thought” and not “freedom of choice”, but “freedom of thought” is as much a misnomer as “free will”. It’s free because it feels like I’m doing it, not like that is the inevitable outcome of the particular arrangement of matter in my vacinity? Even though I’m often frustrated when there is a lot of noise coming from nearby, or loud conversations, etc, because it’s hard not to let them influence my thoughts so as to continue thinking about what I initially wanted to think about?
Something tells me I’ve missed the point of all the other comments, here. :(
[edit]: Looking over the comments again, I feel like I’ve spent way too much time arguing about whether or not the concept of free will is meaningful. The more important part is that I’ve felt persistently like I am not in control of what I wind up doing for quite a while, and I can retrospectively identify similar moments from the past that I didn’t think about in such terms at the time.
The absence of free will seems like a pretty good description of how I’ve felt for the past 8 years or so. “And now, I’m going to do X. … Right? Other half of brain that hears this part giving orders? X? Any day now? You realize that not listening to me means we’ll have to put up with getting yelled at by people who will Fundamental Attribution Error us into oblivion, right?” Though maybe Fundamental Attribution Error isn’t quite right, since there’s a strange enduring “Not much decision-making power” quality rather than the “So you think you’re better than everyone and just blowing everyone off and choosing to do other things?” qualities that I’ve been accused of.
This always reminds me of an incident from first grade, that probably isn’t relevant to the discussion, so I’ll probably post a summary elsewhere.
The trouble seems to be a matter of perspective. From an outside view, with all the relevant data, an intelligent agent should be able to predict the decisions of most humans under most conditions. We have such a phrase as “out of character” for when our models of people do not match their behavior. Out of character moments are considered a sign of poor writing in fiction, and something to fear in human society. When we fail to predict someone’s actions correctly, we usually try to find out what was missing from our model and update accordingly (consider reactions to every mass shooting in America in the past 20 years).
I kinda feel like, by the time “free will” has been reduced to something logical, attaching the word “free” to it ceases to be meaningful. Free from overt coercion? I wouldn’t even go that far; would we claim that a financially secure middle-class member of the local most-privelaged class has free will, whereas a prisoner of an abusive, manipulative overlord does not?
I find it interesting to think about how many of one’s actions trace back to conscious decisions, and how many conscious decisions lead to the decided upon actions. Once college brought my inability to do what I want to the forefront, and I’d put up with people yelling nonsense about it for a few years while fumbling around in search of a solution, I wound up talking to some psychologists. One of them mentioned the emotions → thoughts → actions pyramid, with regards to what we can control. The general idea is that we have most control over our actions, and least over our emotions, and some over thoughts. Apparently this feels true enough for enough people that it translates into something resembling the idea of free will.
Maybe I’m drawing ridiculously large conclusions from one example, but if I had to put those three experiences into order of control, I’d say I have way more control over my thoughts than my actions. I might call it “freedom of thought” and not “freedom of choice”, but “freedom of thought” is as much a misnomer as “free will”. It’s free because it feels like I’m doing it, not like that is the inevitable outcome of the particular arrangement of matter in my vacinity? Even though I’m often frustrated when there is a lot of noise coming from nearby, or loud conversations, etc, because it’s hard not to let them influence my thoughts so as to continue thinking about what I initially wanted to think about?
Something tells me I’ve missed the point of all the other comments, here. :(
[edit]: Looking over the comments again, I feel like I’ve spent way too much time arguing about whether or not the concept of free will is meaningful. The more important part is that I’ve felt persistently like I am not in control of what I wind up doing for quite a while, and I can retrospectively identify similar moments from the past that I didn’t think about in such terms at the time.