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The question is never if we have free will or not. The question is if we are in a state where free will is available or not. For example, when I’m aware that t

by miika 3y ago

The question is never if we have free will or not. The question is if we are in a state where free will is available or not. For example, when I’m aware that there is space around myself, then I’m also aware that there are thoughts, feeling in the body, breath etc. In this state, I believe, it’s possible to choose. In this test I can choose the only press the other key and this algorithm doesn’t do so well. Then something triggers my attention, I react, I forget that there is space, breath, thoughts etc. and I start to execute my conditioning, which is highly predictable and free will simply isn’t available at that point. Then eventually something pulls me back to the presence, awareness. I remember there is space, breath, mind, feelings, emotions. I’m home. I’m free.

vasco 3y ago
The universe led up to this moment where you fool yourself into thinking you have free will just cause you sat still for a bit. Doesn't mean much. Think about it, if the universe is all predetermined, how peaceful your mental state is or isn't has no impact on it. We all either have free will or not, but breathing deep isn't gonna trigger it.
- otabdeveloper4 3y ago
  Free will is any random process with an asymptotically infinite number of degrees of freedom, by definition. Are humans such a process? Who knows, but attempts to model individual humans have certainly failed before. (We need lots of humans in aggregate to successfully model them, once the central limit theorem starts working.)
  - vidarh 3y ago
    I challenge you to get any more than a single digit percent of any representative sample of people to agree a random process is free will by definition. It's one of exceedingly few definitions I've heard in decades of discussing the subject that I'll agree doesn't immediately make free will impossible, but at the same time it's one that too me at least exemplifies something that is neither free nor will.
    - otabdeveloper4 3y ago
      If you want to talk about "free will" rigorously, you need to consider the human being as a random process.
      - vidarh 3y ago
        No, I don't. I can reject the notion of free will on the basis that I would never consider a "random process" either "free" nor an expression of "will".
- miika 3y ago
  When you say "you fool yourself" then I have to admit that I don't know who am I or how I could define myself anyways. I have been sitting with that question every day for about 12 years now. Only reason you believe there is a mind is because the mind says it exists. But have you investigated where is that mind and who is that which mind if speaking to?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - vasco 3y ago
    The thing is for this discussion, analysis of the ego and the role of "the mind" or however you want to call it, I simply don't think it matters for the question of free will. It's one of causality at the beginning of the universe for me. The mechanism through which humans would drive their thought process or behavior is besides the point if the cause is the initial state of the universe and how all the particles and forces interact from that point onwards. A rock on the ground's "life" (path through universe) would be as predetermined as ours, it wouldn't change it if the rock had thoughts or an ego. The discussion about the ego and "the mind" and the "who you are" in that sense are then still useful for the human to feel comfortable in feeling like they have agency, and I am aware of Buddhist philosophy in finding peace through detaching from our inner voice and gaining wisdom from not letting ourselves being driven purely by what we think we are or "what the ego says we are", but I think it's besides the point in this context (but very useful to include in a balanced "diet of thoughts"). Maybe the ego is an evolutionary defence against nihilistic traits so we all don't kill ourselves by realising none of what we do is any agency and it's all predetermined by the start of the universe. But anyway this part of the discussion enters into a rabbithole detached from the core discussion of there being free will or not, at least to me, because I cannot accept that a core property of the system "universe" and the definition of it's causality or not could depend on the thought process that goes through minds of humans in some remote part of that very universe. A detail about the higher level thought process of some "blobs of particles" in the universe don't define the way the universe itself works. Our relationship to the self doesn't have anything to do with physical reality of if-this-then-that. In other words the causality doesn't care what we think of it, it's either all pre-determined or not, our opinion doesn't matter. https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1988/06/07 https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1988/06/07
qaq 3y ago
Well you either do something because you are forced to or because you want to. You don't control either.
- miika 3y ago
  There are always more than two choices.
  - qaq 3y ago
    Want to and forced to pretty much covers it.
anon-3988 3y ago
If I ask you to choose A or B, and let you take as long as you want to make this decision, at the point where you make the decision, you still have no idea why you chose what you chose. It is ultimately mysterious to you and anyone else why you chose what you chose. If you had any reasoning, it is still mysterious why that reasoning caused you to choose what you chose and why it didn't have the opposite effect? The impetus to choose A or B in this case arises from the dark pool of the mind, sneaks up behind you and you mistakenly identify with this decision. You simply cannot think to think what to think.
- miika 3y ago
  You say “if I ask you to choose” but if there is no free will then I cannot choose. Also if there is no free will then we cannot judge anyone, no matter what they did, because they didn’t have choice. Actually my argument is that the best evidence for free will is that the world is such a mess. Without free will we would live in perfect harmony with nature, like all the other species do. We are so free that we can even deny the existence of our freedom, hence avoid taking responsibility of our actions.
  - anon-3988 3y ago
    > Also if there is no free will then we cannot judge anyone, no matter what they did, because they didn’t have choice. This doesn't make sense. If there is a rock in the middle of the road, it would make sense to remove the rock from obstructing the road. Are we "judging" the rock in this case? OTOH, if the rock happen to cause a massive accident, it seems absurd to punish the rock and try to cause as much suffering to the rock to compensate for all the suffering it caused. > Without free will we would live in perfect harmony with nature, like all the other species do. Harmony how? Like all the viruses, parasites, do you know what dolphins to pufferfish? What about cannibalism? Or infant mortality in nature? > We are so free that we can even deny the existence of our freedom, hence avoid taking responsibility of our actions. Realizing that free will does not exist does not mean that we don't have to live life anymore. We still have to live it. What it does it remove a lot of unnecessary baggage. Is it necessary to punish a rock for falling over a person? An elephant going on a rampage? What about murder? When you realize that murder (or whatever immoral actions) is just the totality of the universe, you can think of any bad actions as just a very complex case of a brain tumor. You wouldn't blame a person for committing homicide once we learn that they went on a rampage because they have a brain tumor. But if we know enough about the universe, we will realize that pretty much anything that a human ever do is just another complex case of a brain tumor. Why did they do what they did? Well, here's a trillion page explanation of exactly why it happened starting from the Big Bang. Does it make sense to blame them now, still?
clbrmbr 3y ago
My experience is the converse: when distracted, I assume I am the author of my thoughts, the doer of my actions, but when I really pay attention, I notice that thoughts and intentions arise unbidden. I identify with consciousness, and the origins of these intentions is unconscious, therefore I conclude that the intentions do not originate from “me”. It’s still my action, my “choice”, my kamma, but it’s not my “free will”.
criddell 3y ago
> I believe, it's possible to choose What exactly do you mean by choose? Are you saying there are actions that have no discernable cause? That there's a state in the brain that is unrelated to the state of the brain a brief moment ago? If so, is that a type of telekinesis?
- miika 3y ago
  Do you believe it's all about the brain?
  - criddell 3y ago
    Yeah, I think what we experience as free will takes place mostly in what we think of as our brain pretty much by definition. We might be a brain in a vat or even a Boltzmann brain, but whatever it is, the organ that constructs our reality is a brain.
miika 3y ago
Thanks for the comments. Yea I also like to say that if my will is truly free, it's not under anyones control. One thing I want to add: I think will and intention is also a question of scale or perspective. Bacteria is capable of making "their own" decisions but they probably cannot dictate which direction body is going to walk. In similar way Planet Earth is under influence of the Sun, and the Sun is under influence of larger forces of the Milky Way and so on. You could say that every level of existence is probably under a will of some level above and maybe each level can impose their will on levels below them. From this perspective we could say that pure awareness is beyond physical body, brain and mind, so then if you want to really will your body it must be done from the state of pure consciousness - and then the body, brain, mind must follow as they're level below. Anyways, don't take me seriously, this just entertainment.
kbelder 3y ago
I remember reading Rand where she argued that free will existed solely in the decision to focus or not. When you focused, what you thought was determined by your characteristics and history; and when you didn't, the same, although not in the same way. But free choice manifested in the decision to intentionally focus attention or not. I don't know that I agree, but thought it was interesting.

by miika 3y ago

vasco 3y ago

The universe led up to this moment where you fool yourself into thinking you have free will just cause you sat still for a bit. Doesn't mean much. Think about it, if the universe is all predetermined, how peaceful your mental state is or isn't has no impact on it. We all either have free will or not, but breathing deep isn't gonna trigger it.

otabdeveloper4 3y ago
Free will is any random process with an asymptotically infinite number of degrees of freedom, by definition. Are humans such a process? Who knows, but attempts to model individual humans have certainly failed before. (We need lots of humans in aggregate to successfully model them, once the central limit theorem starts working.)
- vidarh 3y ago
  I challenge you to get any more than a single digit percent of any representative sample of people to agree a random process is free will by definition. It's one of exceedingly few definitions I've heard in decades of discussing the subject that I'll agree doesn't immediately make free will impossible, but at the same time it's one that too me at least exemplifies something that is neither free nor will.
  - otabdeveloper4 3y ago
    If you want to talk about "free will" rigorously, you need to consider the human being as a random process.
    - vidarh 3y ago
      No, I don't. I can reject the notion of free will on the basis that I would never consider a "random process" either "free" nor an expression of "will".
miika 3y ago
When you say "you fool yourself" then I have to admit that I don't know who am I or how I could define myself anyways. I have been sitting with that question every day for about 12 years now. Only reason you believe there is a mind is because the mind says it exists. But have you investigated where is that mind and who is that which mind if speaking to?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- vasco 3y ago
  The thing is for this discussion, analysis of the ego and the role of "the mind" or however you want to call it, I simply don't think it matters for the question of free will. It's one of causality at the beginning of the universe for me. The mechanism through which humans would drive their thought process or behavior is besides the point if the cause is the initial state of the universe and how all the particles and forces interact from that point onwards. A rock on the ground's "life" (path through universe) would be as predetermined as ours, it wouldn't change it if the rock had thoughts or an ego. The discussion about the ego and "the mind" and the "who you are" in that sense are then still useful for the human to feel comfortable in feeling like they have agency, and I am aware of Buddhist philosophy in finding peace through detaching from our inner voice and gaining wisdom from not letting ourselves being driven purely by what we think we are or "what the ego says we are", but I think it's besides the point in this context (but very useful to include in a balanced "diet of thoughts"). Maybe the ego is an evolutionary defence against nihilistic traits so we all don't kill ourselves by realising none of what we do is any agency and it's all predetermined by the start of the universe. But anyway this part of the discussion enters into a rabbithole detached from the core discussion of there being free will or not, at least to me, because I cannot accept that a core property of the system "universe" and the definition of it's causality or not could depend on the thought process that goes through minds of humans in some remote part of that very universe. A detail about the higher level thought process of some "blobs of particles" in the universe don't define the way the universe itself works. Our relationship to the self doesn't have anything to do with physical reality of if-this-then-that. In other words the causality doesn't care what we think of it, it's either all pre-determined or not, our opinion doesn't matter. https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1988/06/07 https://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1988/06/07

qaq 3y ago

Well you either do something because you are forced to or because you want to. You don't control either.

miika 3y ago
There are always more than two choices.
- qaq 3y ago
  Want to and forced to pretty much covers it.

anon-3988 3y ago

If I ask you to choose A or B, and let you take as long as you want to make this decision, at the point where you make the decision, you still have no idea why you chose what you chose. It is ultimately mysterious to you and anyone else why you chose what you chose. If you had any reasoning, it is still mysterious why that reasoning caused you to choose what you chose and why it didn't have the opposite effect? The impetus to choose A or B in this case arises from the dark pool of the mind, sneaks up behind you and you mistakenly identify with this decision. You simply cannot think to think what to think.

miika 3y ago
You say “if I ask you to choose” but if there is no free will then I cannot choose. Also if there is no free will then we cannot judge anyone, no matter what they did, because they didn’t have choice. Actually my argument is that the best evidence for free will is that the world is such a mess. Without free will we would live in perfect harmony with nature, like all the other species do. We are so free that we can even deny the existence of our freedom, hence avoid taking responsibility of our actions.
- anon-3988 3y ago
  > Also if there is no free will then we cannot judge anyone, no matter what they did, because they didn’t have choice. This doesn't make sense. If there is a rock in the middle of the road, it would make sense to remove the rock from obstructing the road. Are we "judging" the rock in this case? OTOH, if the rock happen to cause a massive accident, it seems absurd to punish the rock and try to cause as much suffering to the rock to compensate for all the suffering it caused. > Without free will we would live in perfect harmony with nature, like all the other species do. Harmony how? Like all the viruses, parasites, do you know what dolphins to pufferfish? What about cannibalism? Or infant mortality in nature? > We are so free that we can even deny the existence of our freedom, hence avoid taking responsibility of our actions. Realizing that free will does not exist does not mean that we don't have to live life anymore. We still have to live it. What it does it remove a lot of unnecessary baggage. Is it necessary to punish a rock for falling over a person? An elephant going on a rampage? What about murder? When you realize that murder (or whatever immoral actions) is just the totality of the universe, you can think of any bad actions as just a very complex case of a brain tumor. You wouldn't blame a person for committing homicide once we learn that they went on a rampage because they have a brain tumor. But if we know enough about the universe, we will realize that pretty much anything that a human ever do is just another complex case of a brain tumor. Why did they do what they did? Well, here's a trillion page explanation of exactly why it happened starting from the Big Bang. Does it make sense to blame them now, still?

clbrmbr 3y ago

My experience is the converse: when distracted, I assume I am the author of my thoughts, the doer of my actions, but when I really pay attention, I notice that thoughts and intentions arise unbidden. I identify with consciousness, and the origins of these intentions is unconscious, therefore I conclude that the intentions do not originate from “me”. It’s still my action, my “choice”, my kamma, but it’s not my “free will”.

criddell 3y ago

> I believe, it's possible to choose What exactly do you mean by choose? Are you saying there are actions that have no discernable cause? That there's a state in the brain that is unrelated to the state of the brain a brief moment ago? If so, is that a type of telekinesis?

miika 3y ago
Do you believe it's all about the brain?
- criddell 3y ago
  Yeah, I think what we experience as free will takes place mostly in what we think of as our brain pretty much by definition. We might be a brain in a vat or even a Boltzmann brain, but whatever it is, the organ that constructs our reality is a brain.

miika 3y ago

Thanks for the comments. Yea I also like to say that if my will is truly free, it's not under anyones control. One thing I want to add: I think will and intention is also a question of scale or perspective. Bacteria is capable of making "their own" decisions but they probably cannot dictate which direction body is going to walk. In similar way Planet Earth is under influence of the Sun, and the Sun is under influence of larger forces of the Milky Way and so on. You could say that every level of existence is probably under a will of some level above and maybe each level can impose their will on levels below them. From this perspective we could say that pure awareness is beyond physical body, brain and mind, so then if you want to really will your body it must be done from the state of pure consciousness - and then the body, brain, mind must follow as they're level below. Anyways, don't take me seriously, this just entertainment.

kbelder 3y ago

I remember reading Rand where she argued that free will existed solely in the decision to focus or not. When you focused, what you thought was determined by your characteristics and history; and when you didn't, the same, although not in the same way. But free choice manifested in the decision to intentionally focus attention or not. I don't know that I agree, but thought it was interesting.