Do You Know That You Have NFW? ( ie. 100% GED )

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I didn't know that!

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I do not find the two incompatible. It's rather obvious there is no absolute free-will. I can freely will myself to be living 100 years ago, but it will have no effect on when I actually live.

To me free will is a skill arising from "self-awareness", the awareness that one is some kind of discrete self interacting with things that are not oneself. Just like any other skill, people vary between each other and over time in their capacity to effectively exercise free will, and there are certainly environmental factors at play. But that the degree and extent of someone's capacity for free will are an effect of the environment (including their own genetic material) does not negate its existence. Free will only becomes implausible when does not view it as a variable skill or competency.

Well said... free will is an oar in the river, a rudder in the sea. It gives direction, but is not some superpower that overcomes the other actions set into motion through the complexities of existence.


M.

It's not enough to say that "free will is a skill", nor that it "arises from self-awareness" etc. There are so many skills, ( many or even most of them "arising from self-awareness", especially from "the awareness that one is a discrete self interacting with things that are not oneself", eg. walking, talking, writing, grasping objects, ... ). Which one exactly are you talking about? What does it do?

Here is what the dictionaries say that the power/skill/ability of free will is used for, and what it must be "free of" to qualify as free will ( ie. it must be free of external/environmental constraints/interference/influence, unlike the skill that you refer to ):



NB. Definition of voluntary:

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How can you say X does not exist if you do not know what X is?

Free will occurs because we have awareness of ourselves, and this awareness becomes part of the environment that determines us. We are an agent in our own determining environment, not merely behavers. Our free will has the capacity to be utilized to literally change our brain and neuro-processes. You describe the environment as determinative; free will is the aspect of our influence as an environmental factor determining ourselves.

Dictionaries are descriptive not proscriptive.

Evidently, one of those meanings is actually entirely consistent with what I have described, the information after the semi-colon is actually distinct rather than in conjunction with the preceding information (second definition)

The third definition is entirely consisten, it even utilizes the word agency; note the meaning of the word "partial"

Some of the definitions are positing something supernatural, but that is silly really as this is not what people who do not believe in the supernatural can possibly mean when they refer to free will as extant. Being entirely unconstrained by any external constraint requires supernatural qualities. If in stating you do not have free will, you simply mean you are not omnipotent, this is not exactly a revelation.

I know what the dictionaries say free will is. I was asking you what the skill you referred to was for, what it "does".


I agree that I "have awareness of" myself, and also that "this awareness become part of the environment that determines" me. I also agree that this awareness is "an agent in"/a part of my own "determining environment".

But what is it that determines the quality/nature of my "awareness" of myself?


I had already noted the use of the word. I do not believe that even "partial" free will exists. If some "part" of me is not determined by "heredity, environment, and circumstance" what is it determined by?

If it is determined by my "awareness of" myself, there is still the question, "what is it that determines the quality/nature of my awareness of myself"?

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What it does is consitute agency and render that agency an effective aspect of your "determining" environment.

It really does not matter. An agent is an agent however it came to be.
The partial is not referring to any part of you, it is referring to the non universality, the partiality of the scope of effect of free will.

You seem caught up with the notion of determination, but this tends to overlook the absence of evidence for a determinative universe. How can you be sure our self awareness is not in effect an observation that resolves superposition states to a certain and actual single state?

Just a clarification on my part. I am not into metaphysical arguments

I do not equate lack of free will with pre determined, on the contrary. In nature absolute free will is impossible to achieve. Events are the result of chaos. Yes there can be a certain amount of predictability at times, but that doesn’t make it any less chaotic.

I get somewhat baffled that people would automatically equate free will to no determinism, and lack of free with to determinism. It seems somewhat of a clique activity to do without real substance.

But what makes you think that it is a free agent?


It doesn't matter, ( though I like your suggestion that "self-awareness" might have the same effect on mental activity/events as an observer does on quantum phenomena ), because if the universe is determinative then the "agent"/awareness that you refer to is not a free agent, but determined, ( by the environment, circumstances or your genes ), and if the universe is, ( as 0_equals_true says and you suggest ), non-determinative/chaotic/probabilistic, then any choice/decision "you" make, including any position that you place yourself in as a "self-aware" observer, ( and what you "choose" to observe ), will be the result of processes that "you" have no control over because "random"/undetermined.

Pereboom ( see previous page ) is excellent at exposing how the "non-determinist-universe" defence of free will makes a nonsense of moral responsibility as surely as a deterministic model ( with no free will ) does.
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Last edited by ouinon on 08 Dec 2009, 11:25 am, edited 1 time in total.

But Ouinon has told us that there is no free will, that any seeming choice made is an illusion. This requires that the universe be deterministic, as in a non-deterministic universe it is possible to make a choice. Said choice may be influenced by any number of factors, but it still remains a choice.

As an example, if social environment and the presence of Asperger's Syndrome were sufficient to define all of one's reactions, one would expect that, for instance, all posters to WP from the United States would share one single view, as would all posters from, say, western Europe, all posters from Canada, and so forth. However, a cursory examination of the available data will show that there are nearly as many viewpoints as there are posters (I think that there may actually be more viewpoints emanating from parts of Europe than there are actual posters there).

Now, there are some processes in this universe (stellar fusion, for instance, or atomic decay rates) that are not subject to manipulation by the will. No matter how you feel about the idea, the Sun continues to fuse hydrogen into helium, and by current estimates will continue to do so for about eight billion more years before swelling up to red-giant size, then shrinking again as it switches to fusing helium and wanders off the main sequence. All the desire in the world won't change the lifespan of the Sun by a single day. However, it does not then follow that there are no matters over which you have any control. (Yes, I know Ouinon would tell me that such seeming control is an illusion - but as I pointed out, if you sincerely believe that, then arguing about it is silly, because with no free will at all I can't possibly change my mind, no matter how persuasive your arguments; persuasion also becomes an illusion in that paradigm.)

Depends on what you mean by choice

http://www.engadget.com/2007/03/06/scie ... -seen-nod/
http://gizmodo.com/242008/german-scient ... ng-machine

Predicted 7 seconds before making a decision for the volunteer in a BBC documentary. I can't find information on that exact test, but should be able to find the program through the archives. That was just a left/right test. It has a much higher success rate than 70%. I think it was over 90%.

http://boingboing.net/2009/09/08/how-we ... ind-b.html

What makes you think that I interpret the phrase literally when doing so would be contrary to my assertion that I do not perceive "free will" to be a supernatural thing or to have supernatural qualities? How can something be without any supernatural qualities and be entirely unfettered by the laws of physics?

I reiterate, if by "free will does not exist" you simply mean there is nothing supernatural entailed in agency/volition then this is not exactly a revelation. If you mean the phrase is somewhat of a misnomer, then that is an entirely different assertion to a claim that the referrent itself does not exist.

LOL, I thought that might appeal to you somewhat.


Not really. Not determinative is not the same as random. Take schrodingar's cat. We know that there are two definitive outcomes that are plausible when the outcome is observed and that only and precisely one of these outcomes will be certain at the point of observation. If we were dealing with true randomness, you might find at the point of observation that there is no cat, but rather a bent spoon.


Actually it does not. From a pragmatic perspective, morals are part of the environment you are claiming is determinative. If the existence of moral blame effects behaviour more amenable or useful than would occur in the absence, then it has utility and therefore is not a nonsense but a useful tool.

Free will can't exist as long as there are external boundaries standing in the way of committing an action. If you consider dualism, the mind is imprisoned in the body and cannot get out as long as we are alive. The process of executing a physical action is already a boundary to the effectuation of free will. Besides, there is also constant sensory input and physical boundaries that we always have to consider.

But with the dualism theory, once the body dies, where does the mind go, anyway? If the mind still exists after the body dies, then technically there is free will; there is just no way for the free will to be expressed.

On a physical level, you can't have processes arising in the brain out of nowhere. Hobbes' theory accounts for this. Every process is caused by another process. There are various cycles in our body, both on a large scale and on a minute scale. Blood circulation is a cycle, and a feedback loop involving neurons and the spinal cord is a cycle. The existence of free will would imply the existence of a spiritual matter that exists outside of our bodies. Although it can be postulated, a logical explanation, that is provable and based on real evidence, for the existence of such matter, is not yet available. Natural laws of science can explain what goes on in the body. Even though there is not yet an accurate explanation for imagination and complex feelings such as love, we at least have a rough picture of the processes in the brain that produce thought.

Also, according to Hobbes, our bodies are pre-programmed to respond to the environment in a certain way. Each of us has a unique configuration of atoms in our body. Therefore, each of us responds to these external triggers in different ways. The direction in which the atoms would shift the most can also be affected by past experiences.

Last edited by MathGirl on 09 Dec 2009, 2:04 am, edited 1 time in total.

Free will is a silly idea. What would you do with it? All choices are determined on how a person analyses a situation. That analysis is dependent upon previous experience and personal inclination, both of which are predetermined by circumstance and history. Why would I want to make a choice without making that choice dependent upon my past history and what I prefer? I wouldn't.

Thank you very much for your replies. I realised that I don't know what you are talking about. You have said free will is this and that, and that it is not such and such, and I can "hear" that for you it is a "real" thing, that it makes sense to you, but I literally don't understand/don't "see" what you mean, it makes no sense to me. ( I can not believe that it exists, except by denying my own reality/experience ). And I realised, again, ( I remembered that I had already realised this on another occasion a year or so ago ), that it is a question of belief. You believe, very seriously, in something that although I used to believe in it, ( in a knee jerk, unconsidered, unreflecting way though ), I simply don't recognise. The closest that I can come to understanding this phenomena is how my belief in god strikes some people who can see that I am serious about it, who do not dismiss my intelligence out of hand for doing so, but do not know what I am talking about. It's like we are using the same language but the words mean different things. This is very interesting, ( trying to make sense of your replies last evening I was suddenly aware for a moment of the existence of another person as a truly separate/"alien" ( in the sense of "other/different" ), at the same time as really "real/authentic".


That is a very good point, and worthy of a whole thread in its own right. Whether the concept of moral responsibility is a useful and positive one or not. I currently believe that it is not, ( as far as its "net" effect is concerned anyway ).
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Last edited by ouinon on 10 Dec 2009, 12:51 am, edited 1 time in total.

It just occurred to me to wonder if what you mean ( by "free will" ) is anything like "detachment" ( in the buddhist sense of the word ), which is a kind of skill, but which once again I don't think I would be "praiseworthy" for achieving, because "I" would only ever achieve it as a result of data given me by my genes, my environment, the universe, etc.

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