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I have a hard time taking any argument for free will too seriously without a suggestion for a mechanism that would make it possible.

by addaon 4y ago

syzar 4y ago
As fas as I know there is no known mechanism for why consciousness exists. Do you have a similar view towards arguments in favor of the existence of consciousness? What about the laws of physics? There’s no known mechanism for how they came about. People studied gravity well before they came up with plausible theories for its existence and how exactly it operates (at a large enough scale).
- addaon 4y ago
  I think you would have to have similar arguments for consciousness as well? Certainly I don't think there's much argument that the laws of physics are a moderately good fit for observed phenomenon. They came about by generations of physicists refining previous models. I would consider the question of why mathematical models that fit observed phenomenon exist at all to be an open question.
  - syzar 4y ago
    My point is that before the refined physics theories we have today people had to poke around in the dark, so to speak. I don’t think it’s valid to critique the argument you responded to on the grounds you mentioned. What you require before you will consider something, if adopted by everyone, would impede progress.
    - addaon 4y ago
      But without some level of mechanism, arguments for free will and arguments for God end up looking very similar. They both have massive explanatory power, are consistent with many people's claimed subjective experience, and are unfalsifiable. Why did a meteor wipe out the dinosaurs? God did it; it was the causal result of initial conditions; the asteroid or some other party acted non-causally (free will). Of these, I've seen the most evidence for the existence of initial conditions, Boltzmann brains notwithstanding.
velcrovan 4y ago
Right; the argument is more that free will is beside the point; anyone can interrogate their own experience and verify that it is their desires over which they have no control, so it makes no difference whether you have “free will” or not. (I agree that “free will” probably evaporates at the biological level)
edgyquant 4y ago
I have a hard time taking arguments against it seriously since they all rest on aspects created entirely by your brain. Your arm moving a split second before you decide to move it just means you, and your will, are more complex than we expected. All arguments against free will rely on describing the brain as a mathematical and statistical model that predicts the universe. Yet mathematical and statistical models are a feature of the brain and the actual topology of its mechanisms isn’t even close to understood.
- addaon 4y ago
  But the brain is, at most, incidental to any of this. The starting point has to be causality violation, no? If all observed actions are either direct or no-hidden-variable-random consequences of previous states, what room is there for free will?
  - criddell 4y ago
    That’s a big if there.
    - addaon 4y ago
      It sure is! But an observation contradicting it would be the biggest discovery in physics in at least a century.
      - criddell 4y ago
        I was thinking about the spontaneous appearance of particle anti-particle pairs in a vacuum. Can you say conditions x, y, and z are responsible for those particles appearing at that instant and there's no other way it could have gone?
        addaon 4y ago
        Particle/anti-particle pairs don't really "pop into existence" in any meaningful sense, so probably not the best example of randomness. We do see unpredictable effects (randomness) quite often, though. Bell's theorem provides some constrains on their source. But for one to exercise free will (selection of one of multiple future states from a given present state) to, say, not eat the last oreo by biasing quantum randomness to invoke a whole chain of high-gain non-linear effects (maybe have a sodium ion change it's momentum slightly to cause a neuron to trigger to... etc etc... to send different actuation commands to the muscles to pick up the cookie) would require not just a mechanism for this free-will biasing but also retrocausality to let something in the system "know" that this was the place in its orbital where the electron had to interact in order to choose to leave the cookie until tomorrow. The use of a high-gain effect chain means that the initial instance of free will is smaller, and therefore more likely that we've just not noticed it so far, but it makes it harder to put together a meaningful story for how these free will instances reflect a "choice" instead of just a statistical divergence.
HarHarVeryFunny 4y ago
> I have a hard time taking any argument for free will too seriously without a suggestion for a mechanism that would make it possible. Well obviously there is no known mechanism at this point. As far as we know all matter obeys the laws of physics and our brain is no exception. Even if you want to suppose quantum effects are present in the brain (unlikely), that would at most impart some degree of randomness. The real nail in the coffin for any potential new scientific discovery that could cause free will is that this would have to entail some localized overriding of the currently known laws of nature to work - your motor neurons, or their inputs/etc, not being driven by chemistry but rather by this new "force" overriding chemistry. The problem of course is that no-one has ever observed the laws of chemistry not being observed, not even once, in our brain or elsewhere, which seems a major problem given that "free will" is subjectively happening non-stop. So, while it's not inconceivable that some new force/whatever might be discovered that controls matter in ways we've not seen, the real problem is that in this case there is no problem to solve! It's not like postulated "dark matter" invented to solve a problem with gravity ... in the case of brain/body function there is no mystery to solve, and no need for new physics - our brain/body appears to operate entirely under the control of the currently known laws of nature, which doesn't leave anything for undiscovered physics (or dualistic "souls") to control!

I have a hard time taking any argument for free will too seriously without a suggestion for a mechanism that would make it possible.

by addaon 4y ago

I have a hard time taking any argument for free will too seriously without a suggestion for a mechanism that would make it possible.

syzar 4y ago

As fas as I know there is no known mechanism for why consciousness exists. Do you have a similar view towards arguments in favor of the existence of consciousness? What about the laws of physics? There’s no known mechanism for how they came about. People studied gravity well before they came up with plausible theories for its existence and how exactly it operates (at a large enough scale).

addaon 4y ago
I think you would have to have similar arguments for consciousness as well? Certainly I don't think there's much argument that the laws of physics are a moderately good fit for observed phenomenon. They came about by generations of physicists refining previous models. I would consider the question of why mathematical models that fit observed phenomenon exist at all to be an open question.
- syzar 4y ago
  My point is that before the refined physics theories we have today people had to poke around in the dark, so to speak. I don’t think it’s valid to critique the argument you responded to on the grounds you mentioned. What you require before you will consider something, if adopted by everyone, would impede progress.
  - addaon 4y ago
    But without some level of mechanism, arguments for free will and arguments for God end up looking very similar. They both have massive explanatory power, are consistent with many people's claimed subjective experience, and are unfalsifiable. Why did a meteor wipe out the dinosaurs? God did it; it was the causal result of initial conditions; the asteroid or some other party acted non-causally (free will). Of these, I've seen the most evidence for the existence of initial conditions, Boltzmann brains notwithstanding.

velcrovan 4y ago

Right; the argument is more that free will is beside the point; anyone can interrogate their own experience and verify that it is their desires over which they have no control, so it makes no difference whether you have “free will” or not. (I agree that “free will” probably evaporates at the biological level)

edgyquant 4y ago

I have a hard time taking arguments against it seriously since they all rest on aspects created entirely by your brain. Your arm moving a split second before you decide to move it just means you, and your will, are more complex than we expected. All arguments against free will rely on describing the brain as a mathematical and statistical model that predicts the universe. Yet mathematical and statistical models are a feature of the brain and the actual topology of its mechanisms isn’t even close to understood.

addaon 4y ago
But the brain is, at most, incidental to any of this. The starting point has to be causality violation, no? If all observed actions are either direct or no-hidden-variable-random consequences of previous states, what room is there for free will?
- criddell 4y ago
  That’s a big if there.
  - addaon 4y ago
    It sure is! But an observation contradicting it would be the biggest discovery in physics in at least a century.
    - criddell 4y ago
      I was thinking about the spontaneous appearance of particle anti-particle pairs in a vacuum. Can you say conditions x, y, and z are responsible for those particles appearing at that instant and there's no other way it could have gone?
      - addaon 4y ago
        Particle/anti-particle pairs don't really "pop into existence" in any meaningful sense, so probably not the best example of randomness. We do see unpredictable effects (randomness) quite often, though. Bell's theorem provides some constrains on their source. But for one to exercise free will (selection of one of multiple future states from a given present state) to, say, not eat the last oreo by biasing quantum randomness to invoke a whole chain of high-gain non-linear effects (maybe have a sodium ion change it's momentum slightly to cause a neuron to trigger to... etc etc... to send different actuation commands to the muscles to pick up the cookie) would require not just a mechanism for this free-will biasing but also retrocausality to let something in the system "know" that this was the place in its orbital where the electron had to interact in order to choose to leave the cookie until tomorrow. The use of a high-gain effect chain means that the initial instance of free will is smaller, and therefore more likely that we've just not noticed it so far, but it makes it harder to put together a meaningful story for how these free will instances reflect a "choice" instead of just a statistical divergence.

HarHarVeryFunny 4y ago

> I have a hard time taking any argument for free will too seriously without a suggestion for a mechanism that would make it possible. Well obviously there is no known mechanism at this point. As far as we know all matter obeys the laws of physics and our brain is no exception. Even if you want to suppose quantum effects are present in the brain (unlikely), that would at most impart some degree of randomness. The real nail in the coffin for any potential new scientific discovery that could cause free will is that this would have to entail some localized overriding of the currently known laws of nature to work - your motor neurons, or their inputs/etc, not being driven by chemistry but rather by this new "force" overriding chemistry. The problem of course is that no-one has ever observed the laws of chemistry not being observed, not even once, in our brain or elsewhere, which seems a major problem given that "free will" is subjectively happening non-stop. So, while it's not inconceivable that some new force/whatever might be discovered that controls matter in ways we've not seen, the real problem is that in this case there is no problem to solve! It's not like postulated "dark matter" invented to solve a problem with gravity ... in the case of brain/body function there is no mystery to solve, and no need for new physics - our brain/body appears to operate entirely under the control of the currently known laws of nature, which doesn't leave anything for undiscovered physics (or dualistic "souls") to control!