Free Will - an illusion?

DwnWthVwls · 02-01-2015, 11:59 AM

Can I try a different approach Chula? How do you explain free will when you tell yourself you want to do something but you brain just prevents it from happening? Here's a simple example:

-When I was younger my friends and I would all go to this bridge where they jumped into the river.. The lowest spot was about 20' and I really wanted to jump in, I love swimming but I hate heights. I couldn't bring myself to jump even though I knew it was safe and watched people do it 100s of times.

How do you take your idea of the concept and make it fit this scenario?

Edit: Or how about not having the balls to ask out a girl you like?

Xurtio · 02-02-2015, 02:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DwnWthVwls

Can I try a different approach Chula? How do you explain free will when you tell yourself you want to do something but you brain just prevents it from happening? Here's a simple example:

-When I was younger my friends and I would all go to this bridge where they jumped into the river.. The lowest spot was about 20' and I really wanted to jump in, I love swimming but I hate heights. I couldn't bring myself to jump even though I knew it was safe and watched people do it 100s of times.

How do you take your idea of the concept and make it fit this scenario?

Edit: Or how about not having the balls to ask out a girl you like?

But this still confuses the issues of (let's call it willpower) with will. Let's divide the process between two events. First the will is constructed, then the will is carried out. What you and Chula are talking about is carrying out the will, not the origin of will. That would have more to do with "willpower" - obviously Chula couldn't negate gravity and fly unaided just because he wanted to. And sometimes competing brain regions will make it harder for you to achieve your will (your flight or fight response takes over when you try to talk to a pretty girl). But these are all about what you do once you have the will, not the origin of the will itself.

"Free Will" implies that our will is freely constructed based on... nothing, basically. Just the whim of some spiritual entity that can act independently of the cause and effect events taking place in the brain. Behavioral determinists, like myself, or Sam Harris (to appeal to a known neuroscience authority) are saying that the evidence points to our will being constructed deterministically as a result of our biopsychosocial history.

Neapolitan · 02-02-2015, 10:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xurtio

But this still confuses the issues of (let's call it willpower) with will. Let's divide the process between two events. First the will is constructed, then the will is carried out. What you and Chula are talking about is carrying out the will, not the origin of will. That would have more to do with "willpower" - obviously Chula couldn't negate gravity and fly unaided just because he wanted to. And sometimes competing brain regions will make it harder for you to achieve your will (your flight or fight response takes over when you try to talk to a pretty girl). But these are all about what you do once you have the will, not the origin of the will itself.

"Free Will" implies that our will is freely constructed based on... nothing, basically. Just the whim of some spiritual entity that can act independently of the cause and effect events taking place in the brain. Behavioral determinists, like myself, or Sam Harris (to appeal to a known neuroscience authority) are saying that the evidence points to our will being constructed deterministically as a result of our biopsychosocial history.

Thought precedes action. It is in thought one might run through several possible consequences in his or her mind.There are several things to consider, if there is a possibility of something harmful happening or perhaps a lack of confidence that there will be a safe outcome, in which case there would be a fear of the unknown. Whatever the fears are, and whether the fears are from biological, or psychological causes, those fears would only influence ones judgement in one's decision making process. That influence is one of many things that contribute to making a decision, and though they can be understood through a bio-psychosocial history I don't think that negates "free will." There is nothing that say one who has fear will act a certain way. One can overcome fear. "Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear." –Ambrose Redmoon

Xurtio · 02-03-2015, 06:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Neapolitan

Thought precedes action. It is in thought one might run through several possible consequences in his or her mind.There are several things to consider, if there is a possibility of something harmful happening or perhaps a lack of confidence that there will be a safe outcome, in which case there would be a fear of the unknown. Whatever the fears are, and whether the fears are from biological, or psychological causes, those fears would only influence ones judgement in one's decision making process. That influence is one of many things that contribute to making a decision, and though they can be understood through a bio-psychosocial history I don't think that negates "free will." There is nothing that say one who has fear will act a certain way. One can overcome fear. "Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear." –Ambrose Redmoon

Yes, thought precedes action; but it's more than thought! Neural processes that aren't part of conscious thought also precede action. Making decision and overcoming fear are all deterministic processes in which different brain regions compete. People with an overactive amygdala will have more trouble overcoming fear. People with overactive social reward systems (somewhere in the frontal lobes) will be extroverts. People with broken social reward systems will be psychopaths. And it's more complicated than that - if a normally strong social reward system is being inhibited by another brain region (which is responding to a minute novel stimulus) then the fear system may over come the brain (whereas usually, for that person, it doesn't).

There is "degeneracy" in that different underlying neural processes can lead to the same conditions - and there is sensitivity in the transients, whereby small differences can lead to different outcomes, but they can all be accounted for deterministically. Again, the argument is that the brain is deterministic and mind comes from brain.

You have to remember that the brain is very complex system. Every point you've raised does not require free will, just complexity that allows for a diversity of responses based on novel differences in stimuli.

Of course, this would just be speculation if there wasn't evidence that suggested the merit.