Why most Asperger don't believe in free will?

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JakobVirgil
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17 Apr 2011, 11:01 am

ryan93 wrote:

JakobVirgil wrote:

ryan93 wrote:

I think it's just anthropocentric arrogance that makes people hold onto free will when tested; why would we be exempt from physical laws? It's abundantly clear we are not.

I think in the complex chemo-electrical soup that is our thoughts
something can emerge that for all practical purposes is free will.

does determinism = predictiblity when the system is chaotic?

if not then the human mind (and the minds of others) is a chaotic
yet technically deterministic system.

we can treat this as free-will if we want to.

I used to take that position, until Orwell rightly pointed out that "subjective free will" is really twisting the idea of free will beyond recognition. Sure, determinism doesn't imply fatalism or predictability.

I think that the "call complexity free will" argument is weak because it is very wrong, and treated as such when applied elsewhere. Is the rustling of leaves in a tree as the wind passes through ungoverned by laws, because we are not resourceful enough to apply them?

For pragmatic reasons, we act as if our will is "free", so in a sense we do label complexity freedom. But that does not imply that the will isn't free. Free Will isn't free, no matter what definition twisting we try to do. The will follows laws.

I think it works better if you treat a certain instance of complexity free-will i.e. the mind.
and call the rustling of leaves an instance of a different emergence i.e. rustling.

both are ultimately deterministic but obviously not identical.
So I agree with you that there is not "free-will" as an Ideal.
although I contend that there is a special emergent quality
that can be called "free will" if one feels like it.
but could be better called the illusion of intent.

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ruveyn
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17 Apr 2011, 11:31 am

ryan93 wrote:

Human action is completely determined by Biochemistry. Biochemistry is deterministic. However, people feel as though they have agency and ownership over their actions.

.

All chemical bonding is quantum mechanical so it is not deterministic.

ruveyn

ryan93
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17 Apr 2011, 11:40 am

Quote:

But again, it is basically lying. We are making the fallacy of calling something complex free of deterministic/stochastic influences, where it abundantly isn't. It's akin to calling the flow of a river or air (fluid movement is incredibly complex, and impossible to emulate down to the last particle) random. There is an emergent property called consiousness, and a perception of the arrow of time, but that does not imply our actions do not follow cause and effect. The Illusion of Intent I can agree with, it does not imply that human will is free from the mechanic processes which govern us.

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All chemical bonding is quantum mechanical so it is not deterministic.

I don't like the word "stochastic/deterministic". In any case, QM isn't a prerequisite for Free Will, so I find the Laplacian point of view easier to deal with, so long as we realise there is a degree of randomness in nature.

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JakobVirgil
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17 Apr 2011, 2:18 pm

ryan93 wrote:

Quote:

But again, it is basically lying. We are making the fallacy of calling something complex free of deterministic/stochastic influences, where it abundantly isn't. It's akin to calling the flow of a river or air (fluid movement is incredibly complex, and impossible to emulate down to the last particle) random. There is an emergent property called consiousness, and a perception of the arrow of time, but that does not imply our actions do not follow cause and effect. The Illusion of Intent I can agree with, it does not imply that human will is free from the mechanic processes which govern us.

lying meaning knowing better and saying anyway
or
lying meaning false?

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ryan93
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17 Apr 2011, 3:08 pm

JakobVirgil wrote:

ryan93 wrote:

Quote:

lying meaning knowing better and saying anyway
or
lying meaning false?

Lying as in being misleading. Bad choice of word, I admit. I wasn't trying to insinuate you were lying, but it came across like that I think.

If we understand that the will isn't free of stochastic/deterministic mechanisms, labeling it free will is a misnomer. We can consider the will to be ours, but to consider it "free" contradicts the evidence.

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JakobVirgil
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17 Apr 2011, 8:59 pm

ryan93 wrote:

JakobVirgil wrote:

ryan93 wrote:

Quote:

lying meaning knowing better and saying anyway
or
lying meaning false?

oh I did not think that you thought I was lying.
I was playing both sides.

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blauSamstag
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17 Apr 2011, 9:40 pm

ryan93 wrote:

Quote:

All chemical bonding is quantum mechanical so it is not deterministic.

To say that all things are predetermined because blind physical forces converged from a singular beginning until the present time and could not, in hindsight, have converged differently - while technically possibly true - would probably be, at least in my opinion, what Emerson would have called a foolish consistency, and a hobgoblin of little minds.

ryan93
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18 Apr 2011, 1:59 am

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The Scientific facts are there, and we are in no way obliged to throw away all notion of agency because of them. However, the question of "Free" will is one of whether or not our actions are predetermined (however unpredictably) in some sense, and they are. So Free Will is a misnomer in the light of Science.

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donnie_darko
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18 Apr 2011, 8:12 pm

I think because our brains are wired in a way that makes it naked to us that it's merely an illusion.

blauSamstag
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18 Apr 2011, 10:35 pm

ryan93 wrote:

Quote:

Right. But losing sleep over it is stupid.

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08 May 2011, 11:31 pm

Perhaps your friend's study just provide one more reason why we are pessimistically and pathetically unable to deny determinism: Aspergers, as an inherent conditions, is eventually correlated to how we perceive this world as an adult.

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09 May 2011, 12:08 am

LibertarianAS wrote:

Only a handful of prominent historical figures denied the existence of free will (at least for non-religious reasons). Yet a disproportionately large number of them had many symptoms associated with the autism spectrum.

Einstein, Russell, and Spinoza (ERS) each denied the existence of free will, and each has been repeatedly “diagnosed” with Asperger’s Syndrome.

One of my best friends(he is a Psychologists student) also conducted a preliminary study with 192 random subjects outside the local public library. He found that a composite score, averaging 10 primary features of Asperger’s Syndrome, was significantly correlated with incompatibilism. Self-reported difficulty with making friends was also significantly correlated with incompatibilism.

From my experience(both personal and online) I met only a very few people who believe in an"100% determinism theory" and most of them are....ehm the weirdest people you can think

I find all of that fascinating, if only suggestive.

If by "Asperger", you mean "Aspergers", and if by that you mean "people with Aspergers",
Autists are quite well-characterized as overly-logical,
and thus would likely concur with philosophers and sociologists that because the vast majority of our decisions are definitively the result of socialization, free will is but an illusion invented to pretend we are not manufactured products of the exact circumstances of our birth.

Your "psychologists student" buddy drawing radical conclusions from a "study" flawed on every possible level of methodology proves nothing, save that he is either a freshman or studying psych in a one-room schoolhouse in Nowheresville.

I'll leave you to guess about the rationality of posthumously and selectively "diagnosing" as Autistic great thinkers for no other reason than that they were great thinkers.

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ruveyn
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09 May 2011, 4:08 am

LibertarianAS wrote:

From my experience(both personal and online) I met only a very few people who believe in an"100% determinism theory" and most of them are....ehm the weirdest people you can think

I find all of that fascinating, if only suggestive.

Reality is not deterministic as has been shown in quantum physics. Even allowing for an inherent indeterminism as indicated by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle this does not equate a lack of free will with strict determinism. The two issues are related but not identical.

ruveyn

NeantHumain
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09 May 2011, 6:49 am

If the universe is deterministic, human will must also be deterministic, being an emergent property of a clump of matter within said universe. Even if you factor in quantum uncertainty (probabilistic properties of quantum phenomena), it's hard to build support for free will from that. To me, free will is more a convenient illusion (even a "noble lie" as Plato would have put it since so much of our society depends on the assumption that it is true) than a hard, scientific truth.

LostInEmulation
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09 May 2011, 10:49 am

donnie_darko wrote:

I think because our brains are wired in a way that makes it naked to us that it's merely an illusion.

I think the fact that we are just so DIFFERENT makes it apparent that there is something else to it...

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phil777
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09 May 2011, 11:10 am

I'd rather call it "free choice" rather than "free will". <.<

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