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Lots and lots of serious thinkers believe free will “is just autocomplete.” Or more precisely, we don’t actually possess free will but we have a convincing-enou

Lots and lots of serious thinkers believe free will “is just autocomplete.” Or more precisely, we don’t actually possess free will but we have a convincing-enough intuition that we have it. It’s a compelling argument because no one seems to have any idea where free will would come from and actually when you pay close attention to your own cognition, it doesn’t feel free-willy at all.

nyokodo 3y ago
> no one seems to have any idea where free will would come from No materialists have any idea perhaps. A more common sense approach is to deduce from our common experience of free will (and consciousness too) and lack of a matter based reason for that experience that we are not merely made of matter.
- taneq 3y ago
  Or that our self-reports of experiences are notoriously unreliable, perhaps.
  - nyokodo 3y ago
    This isn’t a statistical study with questionable methodology or a fleeting observation, it is a constant and personal empirical experience we all have that has been observed and analyzed for all human history. It is not self reported data, you have access to it right now, this is a totally different thing.
    - taneq 3y ago
      OK, here's self-reported evidence that I have precognition. When I'm riding my motorbike I typically have my face shield open (I wear sunnies so no point keeping it down, plus I like the fresh air.) If a piece of grit or something gets past and hits my face near my eyes, it feels like I blink a split second before it hits. Clearly I have precognition. An alternate explanation is that my blink reflex is triggered locally by nerve cells around my eyes, regardless of what my brain does. My brain then receives sensory inputs indicating that I've blinked. It only finds out that something hit my face a split second (say 100ms, that seems to be one 'tick' for most brain things?) afterwards since touch data from that area of skin is fairly low resolution. At this point my brain feels pretty strongly that it wants to blink, to protect my eyes. Here comes the fun bit: Since there's always a strong and seemingly causal link between "something hitting face near eye", "eye has blinked", and "brain wants to blink" my brain is pretty sure it actually decided to blink just before the grit actually hit me. This feels to me like I blink, out of nowhere, then a split second later feel something hit my face. How can you argue with my constant and empirical experience?
- ethanbond 3y ago
  This is just confidently stating you have no idea where it comes from
DougEiffel 3y ago
The only reason I sometimes hesitate to agree with this line of thinking is precisely because we have the ability to think about free will at all. I can take a moment right now to consider whether I want to lift my right hand over my head - to no benefit of my own. I can also consider how free will plays into that and decide to lift my left hand instead, stay with my right hand, or lift no hands at all. When you have the ability to do that, I think you have free will. At least, you have the closest thing to free will anyone can ever have. By the way, I wiggled my right foot. That was my decision after my comment.
- ethanbond 3y ago
  All of your thoughts of lifting your right hand or to wiggle your foot were downstream of reading my comment. You can definitely have thoughts before making actions, but you don’t choose to have the thought. It just appears!
  - Planktonne 3y ago
    Are you not capable of thinking about something deliberately? If so, I would be cautious about generalising that limitation to other people.
    - ethanbond 3y ago
      What was responsible for the idea to think about something deliberately?
      - Planktonne 3y ago
        Any one of a number of things, one of which is volition. The majority of people are capable of determining both proximal and ultimate causes/motivations for their actions. They're influenced by external stimuli, sure, but humans are capable of directing their thoughts deliberately to, for example, perform simple mental arithmetic. Every time someone thinks "What's 20% of 38?" or "How do I spell conceive?" or "What's the quickest way to Dave's house?", they are triggering a mental process. They are choosing to focus their thoughts in a particular direction to get a result that they will then use in future decision making. It's not relevant what caused the thought that led to them making the decision; the decision still gets made and acted on by the person. The sequence of thoughts from the decision point to the result/abandonment is volitional. Is that really not something you can do?

nyokodo 3y ago

> no one seems to have any idea where free will would come from No materialists have any idea perhaps. A more common sense approach is to deduce from our common experience of free will (and consciousness too) and lack of a matter based reason for that experience that we are not merely made of matter.

taneq 3y ago
Or that our self-reports of experiences are notoriously unreliable, perhaps.
- nyokodo 3y ago
  This isn’t a statistical study with questionable methodology or a fleeting observation, it is a constant and personal empirical experience we all have that has been observed and analyzed for all human history. It is not self reported data, you have access to it right now, this is a totally different thing.
  - taneq 3y ago
    OK, here's self-reported evidence that I have precognition. When I'm riding my motorbike I typically have my face shield open (I wear sunnies so no point keeping it down, plus I like the fresh air.) If a piece of grit or something gets past and hits my face near my eyes, it feels like I blink a split second before it hits. Clearly I have precognition. An alternate explanation is that my blink reflex is triggered locally by nerve cells around my eyes, regardless of what my brain does. My brain then receives sensory inputs indicating that I've blinked. It only finds out that something hit my face a split second (say 100ms, that seems to be one 'tick' for most brain things?) afterwards since touch data from that area of skin is fairly low resolution. At this point my brain feels pretty strongly that it wants to blink, to protect my eyes. Here comes the fun bit: Since there's always a strong and seemingly causal link between "something hitting face near eye", "eye has blinked", and "brain wants to blink" my brain is pretty sure it actually decided to blink just before the grit actually hit me. This feels to me like I blink, out of nowhere, then a split second later feel something hit my face. How can you argue with my constant and empirical experience?
ethanbond 3y ago
This is just confidently stating you have no idea where it comes from

DougEiffel 3y ago

The only reason I sometimes hesitate to agree with this line of thinking is precisely because we have the ability to think about free will at all. I can take a moment right now to consider whether I want to lift my right hand over my head - to no benefit of my own. I can also consider how free will plays into that and decide to lift my left hand instead, stay with my right hand, or lift no hands at all. When you have the ability to do that, I think you have free will. At least, you have the closest thing to free will anyone can ever have. By the way, I wiggled my right foot. That was my decision after my comment.

ethanbond 3y ago
All of your thoughts of lifting your right hand or to wiggle your foot were downstream of reading my comment. You can definitely have thoughts before making actions, but you don’t choose to have the thought. It just appears!
- Planktonne 3y ago
  Are you not capable of thinking about something deliberately? If so, I would be cautious about generalising that limitation to other people.
  - ethanbond 3y ago
    What was responsible for the idea to think about something deliberately?
    - Planktonne 3y ago
      Any one of a number of things, one of which is volition. The majority of people are capable of determining both proximal and ultimate causes/motivations for their actions. They're influenced by external stimuli, sure, but humans are capable of directing their thoughts deliberately to, for example, perform simple mental arithmetic. Every time someone thinks "What's 20% of 38?" or "How do I spell conceive?" or "What's the quickest way to Dave's house?", they are triggering a mental process. They are choosing to focus their thoughts in a particular direction to get a result that they will then use in future decision making. It's not relevant what caused the thought that led to them making the decision; the decision still gets made and acted on by the person. The sequence of thoughts from the decision point to the result/abandonment is volitional. Is that really not something you can do?