Free will, is it just an illusion?

[crispybits]

If by "he" you mean Sam Harris Woodruff, then yes he is. There is a chain of causality leading to that pee and in essence you can do nothing other than what your own chain of causality leads you to. Thinking that you have the choice is an illusion, the societal pressures and biological pressures will interact in such a way that you peeing on the sidewalk is just as inevitable as the path of a ripple on a pond shortly after you throw a stone in the water.

[oVo]

Do not confuse a person's limited options with a lack of free will.

[chang50]

Do not confuse a person's limited options with a lack of free will.

Can you elaborate on that please?

[Dukasaur]

Do not confuse a person's limited options with a lack of free will.

Can you elaborate on that please?

No, don't. You must not.

[Woodruff]

If by "he" you mean Sam Harris Woodruff, then yes he is. There is a chain of causality leading to that pee and in essence you can do nothing other than what your own chain of causality leads you to. Thinking that you have the choice is an illusion, the societal pressures and biological pressures will interact in such a way that you peeing on the sidewalk is just as inevitable as the path of a ripple on a pond shortly after you throw a stone in the water.

In that case, and with the admission that he's certainly far more versed in what he's talking about than I am, I simply reject it. Now, part of that rejection lies in my inability to understand how that makes sense, I will admit. But I reject it based on my own limited understanding (and I do appreciate you guys trying to explain it).

[Woodruff]

Do not confuse a person's limited options with a lack of free will.

Can you elaborate on that please?

No, don't. You must not.

He probably can't, because he's destined not to. Or something.

(Now my head hurts...)

[betiko]

So no one has raised my point.

In a rock paper scissors game, when would your brain decide your next move? Is that irrevocable? Is the fact of changing last minute your move part of you subconscious preplan? Can you not fool your own subconscience? I believe you can, therefore have free. Will.
You can put in conflict you subconscience and your conscience and take a decision -> free will.

I don t remember but for Freud we have 3 entities inside ourselves that we put in conflict.

[BigBallinStalin]

I'm siding with Haggis on this one. If anyone wants to clearly define 'free will', then we can have a discussion about it.

[crispybits]

The ability to choose our own actions from whatever limited subset is actually possible for us to perform/act out/whatever?

[Woodruff]

I'm siding with Haggis on this one. If anyone wants to clearly define 'free will', then we can have a discussion about it.

I thought I did.

[2dimes]

I'm not bothered by the fact that free will is an illusion. As long as it's a good and tangible illusion, I can enjoy it....

As long as some combination of beer, schnitzel, and fellatio lets me pretend that I'm enjoying my life, I'm happy to maintain the pretense.

Totally, how could real free will be any better?

[Haggis_McMutton]

The ability to choose our own actions from whatever limited subset is actually possible for us to perform/act out/whatever?

Ok, I'm still not counting this as my "proper" answer (I want to watch the video first), but here's the main problem that usually arises in this conversation.
What does it mean for "us to be able to choose an action". Just because you can explain the chemical process through which our brain works does that mean there can be no choice? Or is that like saying that just because you can explain the interaction of every atom of a ship with every atom of the surrounding sea that the ship can't actually sail from point A to B?

It's basically a reductionistic vs. emergent property question in the end. Even though we can reduce the ship's sailing to atom-atom interactions, we have no issue with saying the ship can sail. We view the sailing as an emergent property of the atom-atom interaction (in computer speak, we're just looking at a higher level of abstraction in the system).
However, people have trouble applying the same logic to our minds. Just because we can reduce the brain to chemical reactions, doesn't mean the emergent behaviour of choice isn't "real".

So, what I think is that, from the hypothetical pov of an omniscient observer, then there clearly can be no free will, anymore than one of my programs can have free will (it's worth noting that randomness doesn't grant free will. I can incorporate randomness in a program, but that doesn't mean the program is "choosing" in any meaningful definition of the term).
However, from our point of view, as beings inside the system, our ability to choose is as real as it can possibly be. And only this pov matters for anything outside philosophy papers.

To the "no free will" people, I ask this: Is a universe where free will exists(according to your definition) even possible? What are the main characteristics of this universe? What empirical test could we do to distinguish between our universe and this hypothetical universe. If you can't imagine a universe where free will might exist, then I say your definition of free will is meaningless. If you can't think of an empirical test to distinguish between the 2 universes then I say that "a difference that makes no difference is no difference" and would conclude the two are the same.

Nota Bene. The above is written after watching, among others, Kurosawa's Throne of Blood and imbibing a non-negligible quantity of alcohol. So it's probably not your fault if it makes no sense. Also, you should totally watch Throne of Blood, it's pretty awesome.

[BigBallinStalin]

I know what I'll be re-wwatching soon.

[Woodruff]

I know what I'll be re-wwatching soon.

"Free Willy"?

[BigBallinStalin]

Throne of Blood.

[Metsfanmax]

Suppose the speaker of the video wished to be a woman, but couldn't afford the operation and years of speech therapy.

Does this mean he/she doesn't have free will?

Or are financial/physical constraints distinct from free will?

If financial, physical, mental, etc. constraints are distinct from free will, then people have free will. Everyone is limited in some way when it comes to some imagined alternative life we can have (different job, banging scarlett johanson, not 100% control over one's brain/consciousness, etc.), but that's how the world is.

It's not deterministic, in that you could never bang scarlett johanson. If that was your goal, some people are capable of taking that opportunity through much planning and difficult work (other people might not have to face such a high barrier). This doesn't mean they we have 'different' free wills.

Free will is about making choices. The opposite--in my opinion--is the denial of choice. For example, the government attempts to prohibit you from exercising your choice when it comes to illegal drugs, settling outside of court with criminals, etc.

If free will is about making choices, then it doesn't matter what the range of possible choices is, as long as a person is capable of making a choice. I may be physically restrained in a state prison cell, but they can't stop me from making choices. If I believe I have free will even though I do not have a rocket with which I can go the moon and so I am stuck on the prison that is planet Earth, similarly I would believe that I have free will even though I am stuck in the prison that is Sing Sing. The debate about free will is really a question about whether we make choices at all, or whether everything we think and say is the inevitable result of our environment.

[chang50]

Suppose the speaker of the video wished to be a woman, but couldn't afford the operation and years of speech therapy.

Does this mean he/she doesn't have free will?

Or are financial/physical constraints distinct from free will?

If financial, physical, mental, etc. constraints are distinct from free will, then people have free will. Everyone is limited in some way when it comes to some imagined alternative life we can have (different job, banging scarlett johanson, not 100% control over one's brain/consciousness, etc.), but that's how the world is.

It's not deterministic, in that you could never bang scarlett johanson. If that was your goal, some people are capable of taking that opportunity through much planning and difficult work (other people might not have to face such a high barrier). This doesn't mean they we have 'different' free wills.

Free will is about making choices. The opposite--in my opinion--is the denial of choice. For example, the government attempts to prohibit you from exercising your choice when it comes to illegal drugs, settling outside of court with criminals, etc.

If free will is about making choices, then it doesn't matter what the range of possible choices is, as long as a person is capable of making a choice. I may be physically restrained in a state prison cell, but they can't stop me from making choices. If I believe I have free will even though I do not have a rocket with which I can go the moon and so I am stuck on the prison that is planet Earth, similarly I would believe that I have free will even though I am stuck in the prison that is Sing Sing. The debate about free will is really a question about whether we make choices at all, or whether everything we think and say is the inevitable result of our environment.

I agree the heart of the question is whether we are even capable of making a choice at all,and I can't begin to imagine how this question could be tested.But when brilliant men like Harris speak we should listen and attempt to understand,just out of intellectual curiousity if nothing else.

[john9blue]

that was an insightful post haggis, you should tipsy-post more often

[BigBallinStalin]

Suppose the speaker of the video wished to be a woman, but couldn't afford the operation and years of speech therapy.

Does this mean he/she doesn't have free will?

Or are financial/physical constraints distinct from free will?

If financial, physical, mental, etc. constraints are distinct from free will, then people have free will. Everyone is limited in some way when it comes to some imagined alternative life we can have (different job, banging scarlett johanson, not 100% control over one's brain/consciousness, etc.), but that's how the world is.

It's not deterministic, in that you could never bang scarlett johanson. If that was your goal, some people are capable of taking that opportunity through much planning and difficult work (other people might not have to face such a high barrier). This doesn't mean they we have 'different' free wills.

Free will is about making choices. The opposite--in my opinion--is the denial of choice. For example, the government attempts to prohibit you from exercising your choice when it comes to illegal drugs, settling outside of court with criminals, etc.

If free will is about making choices, then it doesn't matter what the range of possible choices is, as long as a person is capable of making a choice. I may be physically restrained in a state prison cell, but they can't stop me from making choices. If I believe I have free will even though I do not have a rocket with which I can go the moon and so I am stuck on the prison that is planet Earth, similarly I would believe that I have free will even though I am stuck in the prison that is Sing Sing. The debate about free will is really a question about whether we make choices at all, or whether everything we think and say is the inevitable result of our environment.

RE: un-underlined, or rather "derlined," as it were.
There's natural constraints (can't jump 20 feet), and then there's externally imposed constraints by other humans. I'm worried about the latter in matters of "free will."

If everything was the result of our environment (i.e. exogenous), then why do the decisions "those who make no choices" influence the environment, which then influences others? It's not unidirectional; it's reciprocal. It's endogenous, so I can't side with those think similar to the underlined.

[betiko]

Well if you watched the video harris is clearly saying that our conscience is driven by our subconscience, which i think is untrue and it s the foundation of his theory.

[chang50]

Well if you watched the video harris is clearly saying that our conscience is driven by our subconscience, which i think is untrue and it s the foundation of his theory.

I have watched it carefully and he talks a lot about consciousness but I didn't notice any reference to the human conscience,which is not,I would say,the same thing.

[crispybits]

To the "no free will" people, I ask this: Is a universe where free will exists(according to your definition) even possible? What are the main characteristics of this universe? What empirical test could we do to distinguish between our universe and this hypothetical universe. If you can't imagine a universe where free will might exist, then I say your definition of free will is meaningless. If you can't think of an empirical test to distinguish between the 2 universes then I say that "a difference that makes no difference is no difference" and would conclude the two are the same.

This is not my proper answer either because I just woke up and still a bit bleary but I would say that this universe would have to be dualistic, and the empirical test would be to find a region of our brain that acts in a way that cannot be explained either by deterministic causality or quantum probability. I'm not a neuroscience expert so I don't know enough about how the brain works to say exactly how that test could be done as we're talking about things like "the good experience you had 7 years ago has a causal effect on the decision you make today" but the fundamental theory is that this would be the test.

[betiko]

To the "no free will" people, I ask this: Is a universe where free will exists(according to your definition) even possible? What are the main characteristics of this universe? What empirical test could we do to distinguish between our universe and this hypothetical universe. If you can't imagine a universe where free will might exist, then I say your definition of free will is meaningless. If you can't think of an empirical test to distinguish between the 2 universes then I say that "a difference that makes no difference is no difference" and would conclude the two are the same.

This is not my proper answer either because I just woke up and still a bit bleary but I would say that this universe would have to be dualistic, and the empirical test would be to find a region of our brain that acts in a way that cannot be explained either by deterministic causality or quantum probability. I'm not a neuroscience expert so I don't know enough about how the brain works to say exactly how that test could be done as we're talking about things like "the good experience you had 7 years ago has a causal effect on the decision you make today" but the fundamental theory is that this would be the test.

I don t think that test could be done cause we would have to use our brain either way and therefore taint whatever experiment we re up to. I think we could imagine such universe but don t see how it could not be just theorical

[crispybits]

Not necessarily, the subject would have to be unaware that they are being observed, or at least observed about this, you could stick them into an MRI and tell them you're looking at something like long term memory so that they don't believe their "decisions" are being evaluated. We'd also need a lot more knowledge and better technology before we attempt it, but in theory there's nothing to stop the experiement being able to be conducted...

[chang50]

An interesting part of the Harris presentation was when he described how some people react to his thesis.I have to confess this is totally beyond my comprehension.Ideas are only ideas,the concept of people feeling threatened by them seems absurd.