[Note: Given the controversial nature of this topic and the subtlety of the arguments involved that might require multiple exchanges and clarifications, I am lifting the three comment limit for this post, though the rule against acting like a jerk remains and indeed will always remain.]
On January 10, 2026, I gave a talk at the local Skepticamp Conference on The Death of Free Will. I am attaching the link to the video below. It is about 25 minutes long, followed by another 20 minutes of Q/A.
Since you cannot see the slides that well, I am attaching a pdf of the slides so that you can follow along.
Enjoy!
if the decision is made before we become aware of it, how is that not just a communication delay? like if i’m on the phone and it has a few seconds of delay, my hearing “wazzaaappp” at 04:10:33 doesn’t mean it wasn’t said at 04:10:31. i also don’t believe in the self, exactly, but i don’t have a hard time believing the cognitive construct of the self also runs decision making in some way. not disagreeing, just looking for clarity, not expecting to understand it at all, heh.
Bébé,
You are correct, it is a communication delay. But this particular communication delay, unlike your example, has profound implications.
The point is that if it is the unconscious part of the brain’s activities that makes the decisions, then it does not make sense to say that we are exercising our free will. We had no choice in the matter.
As another example, the unconscious part of the brain is what runs most of our bodies (blood flow, breathing, hormone secretion), etc.) We do not control much of that. Our ‘decisions’ are just like that, except that the brain also sends a signal to the conscious mind telling it what it had decided to do. This consciousness arrives before the action that had already been initiated, giving us the misleading sense that we controlled the action.
the brain is famously complex. body functions are handled by the autonomic nervous system, mostly in the brain stem area, ok. could there be a part in there that is functionally the decision-making self, and the aware self is just the delayed version of that? there are unconscious thoughts like some biases that don’t reach the level of conscious awareness, but what if the entirety of conscious awareness is just a highly reasonable part of the unconscious mind, that some might term a self, and the conscious awareness is just that on a delay?
Mano, thank you for the talk/video!
Bébé @#3,
There are many attempts to salvage the notion of free will by appealing to the complexity of the brain. But to me the decisive rebuttal was given by Anthony Cashmore in slide #9:
“Whereas much is written claiming to provide an explanation for free will, such writings are invariably lacking any hint of molecular details concerning mechanisms. Also, it is often suggested that individuals are free to choose and modify their environment and that, in this respect, they control their destiny. This argument misses the simple but crucial point that any action, as “free” as it may appear, simply reflects the genetics of the organism and the environmental history, right up to some fraction of a microsecond before any action.”
“The reality is, not only do we have no more free will than a fly or a bacterium, in actuality we have no more free will than a bowl of sugar. The laws of nature are uniform throughout, and these laws do not accommodate the concept of free will.” (Anthony Cashmore)
So the question is: what do you postulate is the mechanism outside of GES that that influences the neurons of the brain? What is independent entity that constitutes ‘the decision-making self’ that acts on the brain but is not the product of the unconscious brain?
We have the illusion that we are all writing our own book while, in fact, we are just reading the same book from a different perspective.
i certainly wouldn’t propose anything immaterial. i was surprised to see that brought up as an element of the discourse in those slides. i had been assuming the debate was centered on different interpretations of physical phenomena. i’m totally out of the loop on the whole discussion, and if the price of admission is as difficult as holding the definition of “qualia” in my head for more than a minute, i’ll just stay outside the window in my “sickos” shirt.
I think what is often missing in these discussions is the point that while we don’t have free-will, we also can’t currently (and probably will never) be able to fully determine all the inputs, processes, connections, and resulting output into consciousness for any individual person. That is to say the illusion of free will is accurate, and humans will always feel we have free will, because at any specific moment in time the state of our mind is unique.
It is possible that the bacon I ate for breakfast this morning is influencing the words I am writing now. Actually, it’s certain that it is because I am writing about it. But it is also possible that the fat in the bacon has influenced my mental state, maybe tipping the scales among a few neurons, to encourage me to write about a subject I have read a lot about, but cannot call myself an expert.
Every person is unique, and each person is also unique at every point of time until the slices of time being looked at are shorter than the processes functioning within the brain. You are not the same person you were as a child, you are also not the same person you were twenty minutes ago. There is continuity of process and memory, but that’s all we can say for certain. The stream of consciousness is different in every person because the genetics and environmental history of every person is unique. The stream of consciousness may be deterministic, and thus lacking what is technically free will, but it is also unique in every mind, and so there is an illusion of free will.
The fact that consciousness is deterministic does not, in any way, make the contributions of that consciousness to society any less valuable. A deterministic view does not mean we are all equal, or even predictable. In fact, that this deterministic, yet continuously changing, mind can discover and convey ideas like those of language, math, physics, architecture is amazing. That this deterministic mind can accept information, which changes the structure and processes of the mind, and rearrange it in a manner consistent empathy and create intangible things like justice or value. It is absolutely astonishing, and it is understandable why we have this fiction of free will. Even without free will, even though our minds are deterministic, as individuals we are unique, unpredictable, creatures.
We always will be. Not because we will never be able to map all the neurons in a brain, and model of the processes, but because those are not the only inputs. This is the problem with the people who believe they will be able to upload their brain into a computer. Their inputs will be reduced, they will be simulated, they have to be because the brain itself will be simulated. They may have continuity of memory, but they won’t have retina cell getting low on potassium and creating visual distortions which may be explained as ghosts. They may have camera which generate visual distortions which are explained as ghosts, but are these the same thing and will they modify memory and the mind in the same way. It is almost certain that they will not, if for no other reason than the reaction among humans varies so much. The simulation of a mind in a computer may believe they are the continuation of a person, but they are at best akin to the difference between a person at the age of 10 and the same person at the age of 10. Because of the differences in environmental influences, the difference is likely to be even greater.
Finally, for those who have not read it. C. J. Cherryh wrote a novel (first published as a trilogy) called Cyteen which explores the idea that with the full knowledge of genetics and environment a person could be resurrected. Not to precisely the same person, but with a lot of the same skills and desires. It is dense and at times difficult to follow the many-layered plot, but it is an excellent exploration of an attempt to re-create an assassinated genius by having a clone of that person live through similar life experiences. I haven’t read everything Cherryh has written, but of the books of hers I have read I would rate this as the best.
flex @#8,
But what about the inevitable and uncontrollable randomness introduced by the stochastic nature of the laws? Surely that will work against the ability to recreate a person?
Deterministic but never predictable. Every one of us has been forged through the measureless complexity of everything that has ever happened, and sense inputs flood into us changing our nature every picosecond.
Given that the decision engines of life are so varied and so dependent on sense inputs, it might as well be “free will” as far as our analysis of it goes because seeking to take snapshots of our bodies for predictive purposes is a lost cause.
Mano @#9
I don’t think you even have to go down to the level of the stochastic nature of the laws to introduce differences. Just think of the effect of something like the gut biome and its influence on how a person will behave. That may be gross to some but fecal transplant is used to treat some conditions but even without that there is definitely an impact from this biome on what circulates through the blood with the resulting consequences on mood, energy level and even cognitive abilities. And you can’t get that from the person genetic signature or even their environment. And that’s just one external aspect (or quasi-external in this case since this is on the gut).
That also has an impact on the notion of free will when this is entirely outside the person consciousness (at any level since this not even part of the person) which should be the basis of both the “free” and “will” parts.
@Mano @#9,
Absolutely, and that’s one of the (unwritten) points Cherryh was attempting to make. To be clear, I’m not certain if Cherryh really thought as deeply about how uncontrollable randomness prevents anyone from duplicating a person. But the personalities of Dr. Ariane Emory, prior to her assassination and after the attempt to recreate her, are, in fact, different.
One of the ideas Cherryh, wittingly or not, was trying to get across was that even with cloning, and highly advanced technology, replicating a person is impossible.
Now, Cherryh may have thought that deeply. I don’t know. She is one of the smartest SF writers alive today, and should be recognized as such. She is one of the very few writers who understands relativity and (usually) uses it properly in her stories. So it wouldn’t surprise me that she understood enough about developmental psychology to know that even with the same genetic material a person would be different. In fact, that is a point made through another character in the novel who is also a clone of a genius but isn’t a genius themselves. Whether a genius is a person of extraordinary drive, or extraordinary talent, they are not created through genetics alone, nor is it a combination of genetics and epigenetics, but a host of other environmental factors, many of which are probably unknown to us. These factors probably include language and nutrition; interactions with other people, including social inferiors and superiors as well as pets or livestock. And if there is a desire to replicate a person, these factors would have to coincide with the mental state of the target person at the right time. There may be psychological windows, so the timing may be need to be precise, because biology is messy. The closer you get to replicating the mental state and environmental state of a person the closer you will get to replicating them. But there is a limit, and that’s the “… inevitable and uncontrollable randomness introduced by the stochastic nature….” of reality.
The result is no one can be replicated.
There is an older SF novel by Algis Budrys, Rogue Moon which explores this to some extent. The premise is that a form of teleportation is possible, creating a replicant with the identical mental state at the destination site while the original person remains intact. If the original person is immediately put into a sensory isolation chamber, that person will, for up to 20 minutes, receive the sensations from the replicant. This is clearly absurd, and the author knows it, but the novel is really about the effect of a series of multiple deaths on a person’s personality. In the novel the replicant gets killed over and over, while the original learns about the situation which kills the replicant, slowly learning to traverse an alien landscape. (Note: this was written in 1960, long before scum-saving in video games became a thing. But the idea is the same.) The relationship to our discussion is that even then the idea that an identical replicant would retain the same personality as the original person was deemed unlikely. I believe there was a Star Trek: The Next Generation which also touched on this idea with the character William Riker, but I never saw many episodes of that series.
Finally, when formulating my reply I wanted to spend a little time on a book PZ Myers recommended some time ago, possibly on an earlier blog network, Developmental Plasticity and Evolution by Mary Jane West-Eberhard. Regrettably, when I looked for it on my shelves and even in the stacks in the basement I was unable to find it. But my recollection is that the book supports the view that while general trends in development can be found, and if specific parts of development are made in error the organism will perish, there is no way to tell in advance the full details of development. Theoretically this could occur, but there is a stochiatric limit to any prediction about individual development even if predictions can be made over a population. In other words, we are all individuals.
I should add one more example which is the prevalence of toxoplasmosis in humans and its impact on behaviour and health. I’m not sure it could be characterized for a specific individual well enough to know the impact on personality and general behaviour. And again, that’s just one example of an external factor which occurred at a specific time in someone’s life with an unknown evolution throughout time.
I haven’t watched the video, and probably won’t (perhaps you are correct that I have no choice in the matter).
But this talk of everyone having no choice in the decisions they make and actions subsequent to, makes me very uncomfortable. Which of the behaviours currently deemed by society abhorrent and rightly proscribed, do we allow free reign first?
Epstein, trump, Philip Windsor, etc of course had no choice but to sexually abuse those girls. Boys will of course be boys….
The ICE thug who just murdered Alex Jeffrey Pretti could not avoid doing so, so why should anyone bother bringing him to what suddenly becomes an unjust justice?
I cannot NOT imagine a belief in there being no such thing as personal or societal choice leading to either a libertarian hellscape or an authoritarian one, without incredibly and ironically careful mamagememt of such a seizmic paradigm shift.
But perhaps it is all as far above my head as it will to to all the bewildered masses.
Nick @#14,
It is a common misconception that the absence of free will means that people face no consequences for their actions.
In fact, the consequences for how to handle crime and punishment and morality have been looked at very carefully and solutions proposed and I discuss those issues in the talk. If you do not want to view the talk, you can see the slides where I outline it.
For my third, and final, post in this thread on this topic I’ll attempt (probably poorly) to address the very valid concerns of Nick Wrathall @14.
Nick, your concerns are precisely why I wanted to draw the distinction between what the biology of the brain is telling us and the uniqueness of each mind.
The fact that you have no free will does not make you, or Epstein, or Trump, not responsible for your actions. In fact, it can be argued that it makes you more responsible for your actions.
To take Epstein as an example, what we can say is that his brain, for whatever reason, had an inclination toward sexual intercourse with underage females. We can speculate, and there may be evidence for, that Epstein also has sexual encounters with females who were not underage. I haven’t seen any evidence (although I admit I haven’t looked) that Epstein was interested in having sex with, say 5-year-old females. Now, I’m not trying to be de-humanizing when using the term female, I want to use a common term to designate who Epstein was interested in having sex with.
There is every reason to believe that Epstein was aware that having sex with underage females was illegal and viewed as immoral. The fact that he apparently primarily used a private island as a location for this activity justifies this assumption.
So Epstein was attracted to underage females and aware that this attraction was immoral and illegal. So, why does he pursue his desire rather than select of-age females who meet the physical standards he desires but do not violate the moral and statutory laws?
Because he could.
Epstein had the power, allowed in our society due to his wealth and influence, to indulge in an inclination which violated the law and morality of our nation.
It was not Epstein alone which allowed Epstein to engage in sex with minors, he had enablers and even when the first evidence of his actions started to come to light he had enough wealth and influence to cover it up.
Epstein knew it was wrong, but also thought he was unlikely to be prosecuted for his wrongdoing. For a long time he was correct. We could say that he had the free will to do what he did. We can also say that he had no free will but the choices he made were determined by the situation he found himself in. A wealthy, influential, individual who had an inclination toward having sex with underage females and could create the opportunity to do so even though he knew it was immoral and illegal.
The lack of free will does not exculpate Epstein. He knew at the time that the actions he took were illegal and immoral, but he still took those actions. Lack of free will doesn’t mean lack of choice, it means that if ALL the factors influencing a mind are known, the next state of the mind is predictable to the limit of uncontrollable randomness (like Brownian motion).
You, as a person, may lack free will in a very technical sense. But you still make decisions, follow moral guidelines, come to unique conclusions. The choices you make may be deterministic, in the very narrow sense that knowing everything about a previous state of the brain may allow knowledge of the next state of the brain. When the scientists talk about the illusion of free will it’s in the same sense as moralists talk about the illusion of justice.
You are a unique individual, the state your brain is in at this moment is likely to be a state different than any previous brain in the history of humanity. If everything about the state of your brain could be known, to the limit of uncontrollable randomness, it would be theoretically be possible to predict the next state of your brain. That’s all that the neurologists are saying. There is no free will in the sense that there is something outside of the mind influencing your brain. But there is an apparent free will which we experience throughout our lives.
Epstein made a choice. That choice may have been predictable should all of the information about the state of his brain had been known prior to him making that choice, so he has no free will, but he did make a choice. One of bigger problems we have as a species is that our brains have an innate capacity for self-justification. I am certain that once Epstein indulged in his desires once, the morality of his actions was less of a factor. We all use the syllogism of: (major premise) this action is considered evil by society, (minor premise) I am a good person who just commited this action, (conclusion) society is incorrect about saying this action is evil.
It is a sobering observation that while we assign the concept of free will to toddlers and elderly, a careful observation of their actions suggest that the mental states they occupy are fewer and more predictable. Children typically grow into complexity, but the elderly degrade into fewer and simpler mental states, becoming more and more predictable until the brain finally ceases to function at all. The impact of aging varies widely, the wider the mental acuity earlier in life, and the longer it’s required by the environment, the longer it hangs on. I knew a farmer who finally passed at the age of 106 who was pretty sharp right up until the end, but I also found out that he was an aircraft design engineer at the Willow Run plant during WWII. He didn’t start running the family farm until he was in his 50’s. My parents are in the mid-eighties now, and the reduction of their mental states is becoming obvious. It’s not just memory issues, their brains are less plastic then they once were. Learning is an issue for them, and there is a tendency for them to circle back to topics which have already been discussed.
Finally, if you want to understand people, how they create society, the social levels and status, I would recommend reading the works of Robert Sapolsky, particularly his observations of baboon society. I’ve said it before, and I’ll undoubtedly say it again, culturally we are closer to baboons than to any other primate. Epstein chose to do what he did because he found he could. That does not excuse Epstein. The lack of actual free will doesn’t either. Epstein, Philip Windsor, Trump, felt, still feel, that they are being persecuted for things society should allow them to do based on their perception of their status in society. That doesn’t make their actions moral, it’s a statement of what they believe their power allows.
TL/DR version: The presence or absence of free will in the technical sense used by neurology does not abrogate the responsibility of an individual to make decisions and perform actions within the legal and moral framework of society.
@Nick Wrathall, If this screed doesn’t help, let the commentariat know, and I’m sure you will get additional answers. Likely very different ones. 🙂
@ flex
(Note there’s no 3 comment for this thread.)
“3 comment rule”
Good thing or I couldn’t fix all my typos X-D
But what about the inevitable and uncontrollable randomness introduced by the stochastic nature of the laws?
Then you have a human that is controlled by dice tossed either by pointless universe or a trickster god.
That’s not free will. That’s being a meat robot.
I highly recommend Robert Sapolsky’s “Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will” which asks the question why we keep wasting our time on an obviously stupid concept, especially when we have confronted it before effectively. For example, we question the free will of a delusional psychotic. In fact, he has basically none. We are comfortable with that fact, why aren’t we comfortable with the idea that I don’t have free will either?
Mano @15.
I viewed the slides. I found the medical quarantine method outlined an interesting approach, though far from new.
AFAIK, such a restorative justice approach had been the norm among many indigenous societies for tens of thousands of years. Because our exploitative capalistic system appears to largely abhor the idea that every member of society should benefit from it, perhaps much crime results not so much from a lack of free will as from having no other choice?
I have for many years been of a mind that justice would better serve us if it were more restorative than punitive. I dont see why we cannot change it regardless of free will or not, unless our baboon mentality locks us collectively into needing to punish those that trangress.
@ flex. I very much appreciate your screed. Thank you for taking the time it obviously took to help me see the situation more clearly. I still cannot see past what appears to me a contradiction
Maybe I am missing the point.
Crime aside, I had a lovely icecream with my partner after a cooling dip in the estruary (35c here today). I was glad to not have to labour over the decision.
Sorry for the poor post. I don’t have a computer so do all this on a smartphone.
The delay seems to imply conscious will is of little consequence. But it is hard to see how evolutionary pressure would permit such a setup to remain, as the brain consumes a disproportionate amount of energy. Unnecessary drains of resources tend to be deleted over time.
What we might call self-introspection or self-consciousness *must* be important rather than a mere hitchiker but I find this hard to align with deeper mental processes essentially being in the driver’s seat all the time.
@birgerjohansson #22
It’s actually simpler than one might think. A sense of self is something that is selected for.
1. Natural Selection among species selects for self-preservation, as those species that have it are less likely to become extinct than those which do not.
2. A creature that has a good knowledge of what can keep them alive will be more successful at trying to preserve their life than a creature with only a weak knowledge of what makes them tick. To put it another way, you need to know all about your self if you want to preserve it.
3. Therefore Natural Selection selects for creatures with a strong sense of self.
@17, Silentbob. Thank you, I missed that. However, unless a question is directed at me I will try to refrain from making more comments in order that other voices can be heard.
With a small exception, which may also help Nick Wrathall. Common belief and the presentation divide the mind into two states, conscious and unconscious. That is not the only possible way to define the mind. My own theory of mind, which is what I took from reading Edelman’s books (meaning any misunderstanding of Edelman’s theory is my own fault), is that the mind really consists of hundreds or thousands of interlocking networks with specific tasks. When enough of them are processing at the same time in a linked formation, the feeling of consciousness emerges. However, these networks are activated when they are required to perform those tasks regardless of whether they are part of the collection of networks currently used to create the illusion of consciousness. The studies which show the mind processing information unconsciously and then passing that information to the conscious mind are flawed because there really is no distinction between a network currently part of the conscious mind a network which is currently not. I suspect that there are some few networks required to create the illusion of consciousness but they are not sufficient, additional networks need to be added to create that feeling of consciousness.
So, another way to interpret the experiments, by using a different model of mind, is to say that the mind processes information using networks regardless of whether those networks are currently part of the mind which simulates consciousness.
This model explains why sometimes you can resolve a problem in your sleep, the network(s) required to solve the problem are not dependant on consciousness to work. Further, it can also explain why some problems seem intractable until an AHA! moment. Further, while the conscious mind can admit the networks needed to solve a problem, it can also prohibit the knowledge of the answer from reaching the conscious mind, blocking the solution from reaching consciousness (“It’s on the tip of my tongue!”)
How data is interpreted is dependent on the model. I am not suggesting that the researchers into the nature of consciousness are unaware of the multiple models of mind, but I will suggest that when they write papers and reports they use language which matches the currently accepted scientific consensus, at least until a new model becomes accepted. Then, of course, when a science reporter, or a university public relations department, issues a press release, they are less likely to be aware of competing models of mind, and so we get the results Mano reported.
I am not saying the results are incorrect, only that they could also be interpreted differently if a different theory of mind is used. The results, and the alternative theory of mind I just presented, still do not allow free-will in the classic sense. The older theory of mind, which postulates a spirit inhabiting our bodies, is dead.
There I go again, writing an essay in a comment, even when I said I would try to be brief. I’ll shut up now.
File thirteen @ 23
Thanks.
This article just came from Boston University. Unfortunately I lack the background knowledge about conciousness to judge wether this article might help explain the issue of this thread. Feel free to delete it if it is irrelevant.
.
“Exploring the neural mechanisms that enable conscious experience”
.https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-01-exploring-neural-mechanisms-enable-conscious.html
I didnt watch the video yet(sorry!), just read through the slides -- An almost hour long video needs copious amounts of nudity or violence or cute animals or recipes for me.
I think this is neither necessary nor sufficient -- there are beliefs within religion that explicitly talk about destiny and things being pre-ordained which would nuke any concept of choice. Some parts of Hinduism also believe that we are trapped in the life/death-heaven/hell-reincarnation just playing out our parts, including the Gods! (without choice!). And finally the existence of soul or something that doesn’t obey physical calls would still not prove whether free will exists or not (On what basis would it make a choice ? Why would that change ?). The key thing is that there is not much explanation for what we internally , strongly feel.
Not just morality. What we call science , logic , reasoning , all the emotions we feel (love for family) , all the hobbies we choose , all depend on the idea of choice. Its curious to me , how eager hard determinists are to prove how lack of free should destroy belief in Gods without a simultaneous acknowledgement that it should destroy belief in reason and science too!
If all the thought ,thinking and conclusions in our brains are “unconscious” driven by some unnamed natural law , post hoc rationalized by some other part of our brain -- then whether we conclude one thing or its exact opposite , would always be perfectly consistent internally -- What we “know” , What we “prove” would all be bunk. This doesnt mean that free will exists of course , its just that the proponents of it not existing don’t seem to be able to following through all its implications (yeah yeah you have no choice)
I see something while walking . I pick it up (lets leave aside why i chose to do so for now). I have no idea which part of my brain directs which other part of my brain and I do not know how that translates to my arm picking it up.
But its funny to hear that this process is “unconscious”. There is the usual handwaving about genes (which one says I have to pick this object) , natural laws (Which law states that i have to pick this up?) ,
Lets say we conceive an experiment -- You will tell me which hand to wave and in order to prove that you are not the boss of me , I will wave my other hand. Does it prove I have agency, I chose to disobey ? No you will say because I cant do otherwise. I would always respond this way , and I would always wave my other hand -- And whatever I feel is my rebellious streak is just a part of my brain trying to make sense of what the unconscious part decided , 0.1 second later. I say fine , I will wave the hand you say. Does it not prove that i am consciously trying to counter you ? No you will say because you cant do otherwise -- i will always respond you your response this way , all unconsciously -- only later trying to justify why I responded this way
In other words an outcome or its opposite still means you are right. There is no hand I can wave or not wave , No action I can take that proves you wrong. Or perhaps then you will now move us into the realms of science fiction -If we could reset time and my memory , perhaps then if I did something different it would prove choice exists ? Nope.
why does my “unconscious” mind not do something truly bizarre or unrelated to your response ? Why does the unconscious part of our brain respond as we would expect a conscious being to respond ?
Till we know how the brain works this proves nothing , either way. If the experiment showed the same part of the brain doing both at the exact same time would it prove free will existed ? If the unconscious is making the choice for the same reason that the conscious mind is saying it is , then this is just the nature of how our brains work.
No it requires no such thing .Non believers too believe that they “choose”. Which physical or biological law is violated if we “choose”? -- Please be specific . And conversely , even if you posit a soul free from all known constraints it does NOT explain choice! It just shifts the choice from brain to soul but the soul too must act on the same data/environment memory combination.
Science does not state that every particle must obey some law we conceive does it? -- Science must observe some law that every particle obeys. We have no scientific theory of consciousness , yet -- so you cannot simply assert that laws must be obeyed! You could assert that the particles in our brain follow the law of gravity i suppose , but good luck explaining our decisions using that.
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What is the punishment for ? Next we will be punishing bowls of sugar for obesity . Apparently bowls of sugar are our equivalent , natural laws are all the same after all. This is a remarkable handwave that we usually see in discussions of the consequences of not choosing- or effectively How can we more or less maintain status quo , inspite of the earth shattering conclusions that we just reached when we eliminated choice!
Pot meets kettle.
@Deepak #25
For me, the way I like to think of it is that while it is correct to understand that there is no free will, it is incorrect to think that knowing that there is no free will requires a monumental change in attitude.
Saying that there is no free will doesn’t eliminate choice. We are decision engines and we react to every sense change in complicated ways. The fact that a Mano, Deepak, Trump etc etc will react as a Mano etc etc must is not a life changing realisation. It’s more like, what did you expect, that tomorrow Mano might behave like a Trump? Clearly a Mano will continue to be a Mano.
It’s dangerous to draw to many conclusions from the fact that there is no free will. The most obvious conclusion is that all life is an illusion. And? People have been saying that for a long time, but how does it help you to know that if you’re part of it?
Now Mano asserts that we could treat criminals more humanely because “they didn’t have any choice”. That’s a really dangerous argument because neither did any of the people who locked them up, tortured and beat them, and if life is an illusion, then so is suffering, pain, atrocity and murder. Is that really where we want to head with this?
It’s ok to realise that there isn’t any free will. You may be a pawn in a game or there may be no players. But be very careful of what conclusions you draw from that knowledge. Knowing you’re in a game won’t get you out of it!
I had to write this, I had no choice. Your move. 😉
It’s dangerous to draw *too many…
And lest people get too nihilistic, I want to make the argument that life, consciousness, and yes, even free will, are useful constructs and therefore not meaningless.
Suppose that life is an illusion, but matter and energy are not.
The point of note is that life,causes real world changes to matter and energy.
Therefore your life may be illusory but is not meaningless.
Similarly, the thoughts that life produces in its brains affect how life behaves, and the consequences of that affect the real world too (matter and energy).
Therefore, not only is thought not meaningless, consciousness, a driver of thought, while also illusory, is not meaningless either.
From there, one can assert that any concept that changes behaviour in any way* is not meaningless either.
* even leaving aside the point that it takes energy and mass movement to come up with a concept so there is a physical change accompanying every thought
I just watched the video …
that first “question”
golly
My early experience with the concept of “free will” was religious.
God created MAN with free will (previous creation *angels* did not have free will)
This MAN free will was only about obeying God’s laws. Obey GOTO Heaven. Disobey GOTO Hell.
this is obviously nonsensical.
and I just cannot listen to these arguments without thinking about disobedient angels …
The acronym GES should maybe be GEs, because the stochastic processes have so little to do with decision making as to be mostly ignored. I have decided to go by myself to have a pizza and beer on Tuesday. I have already decided this because I’ll have to walk more than 4 km to the nearest bus stop, ride that bus for half an hour, and walk another 1.5 km to the restaurant. I’ve made a similar choice about 50 times in the last two years and never once have any stochastic processes caused me to end up eating chicken at Chik-Fux-A. The only imaginable stochastic process that might lead to the latter would be a full on stroke causing me to not have the choice making G-ENVIRONMENT-s that I have today. If I were to stub my toe early on the walk, I might choose another, nearer restaurant, but not to eat chicken.
The vast majority of my experiences feel like I am making decisions before taking actions, but there are some that notably stand out. None of them require stochastic processes such as quantum fluctuations, beta decays, or cosmic rays, but do indicate lack of free will. The easiest to describe is the instant stopping in the middle of a trail as I hike along when my subconscious alerts me to a snake up ahead, and no conscious choice was made. Millions of years of evolution made that choice for me by wiring it into my genes. This happened maybe a dozen times in all my hikes and I’ve hiked tens of thousands of kilometers in quite various terrains, and invariably it has been a curvy smallish tree branch, not a snake. If I am looking down the trail and see a similar branch, not even a pause, just step over or around without thinking about it. Completely second nature, like a concert pianist playing without thinking, so it seems to me to be choice via G-ENVIRONMENT-s and no free will.
On the problems of cloning brought up by a few earlier comments here is a video (less than 15 minutes) from This American Life about bull named Chance.
Mano, @ #2
This highlights one of the many problems I have with this whole area of discourse… When we ask, “do we have free will?”, most people focus on the problems with “free” and “will”, but there’s a whole bunch of problems with the “we” part as well.
What is the self? What am I? Am I some sort of Cartesian homunculus, a rational ego sitting in some part of my brain, attempting to operate the rest of me like a pilot in a mech suit? Or am “I” something much more complex, something fundamentally embodied, and essentially inseparable from all of the squishy bits, right down to the microbes in my gut? Is there just one me, or are there lots of bits which could each equally claim to be me, often operating at cross purposes? Is it really just the “conscious” bit, the bit that maintains the running narrative, that counts as “me”? Why? Wouldn’t it be just as valid to say that “I” am the “unconscious” bit that’s (maybe) actually making the decisions, and the “conscious” bit is something else along for the ride and that’s just imagining that it’s me? Where is the line between the “conscious” and the “unconscious” anyway, and is there definitely only one of each? Do these terms even really mean anything, or are they just as much bullshit as Freud’s trinity of id, ego, and superego, or Plato’s idea of the soul as chariot pulled by two horses, one bad and one good?
I’ll attempt to seriously engage with the question of whether I have free will once somebody can adequately explain to me what “I” am, what “will” is, and what it would actually mean for it to be “free”.
Note that I’m not saying that we don’t have free will here -- I’m saying that all of the terms involved are so ill-defined that no sensible answer can be given.
Do we have free will? Does a dog have Buddha nature? Mu.
How would you even measure free will anyway? It feels as though you can always change your mind at the last minute, but how can you determine whether or not it was all rigged in advance to happen that way?
It’s all a bit like one of those setups where a ball-bearing bounces off a triangle of nails, and eventually falls into one of several columns. You can easily predict how many balls will wind up in each column if you drop some large enough number into the machine, but it’s much harder to say how any individual one is going to behave.
@Alan G. Humphrey, #31:
That literally does not happen to people who have lived their whole lives in countries with no indigenous dangerous snakes.
@file thirteen @26
I disagree. It obviously does. While we may or may not have choice , we do change in response to our environment -- if our brains evolved to be able to reason , then even without choice (especially without choice!) we would change to such a fundamental finding.
Sure but a calculator or a computer doesnt have “choice” though it can make decisions- Unless our consciousness drives this engine in some way we only have the illusion of choice.
On this blog ? no :). We can discuss , inspite of dangerous implications. The only danger is getting banned for too many repetitve comments .
However We do this all the time. If someone is literally crazy , then we usually reduce our condemnation.
In his talk though Mano gave some weird examples -- like only the act would matter -- not the reason and trials would be simpler. Even if we assume no free will its odd that we will just say you killed a person , you must be quarantined (self defense or premeditated murder or ICE killing citizens , all the same)
@Deepak #35
The key word being monumental. I haven’t been able to think of any examples where knowing it might make a huge difference myself.
I guess it depends on what you mean by choice. I don’t imagine choice as something that can only be done if you have free will. If free will is an illusion then you can say that choosing is too, but at the end a choice is made. That’s no illusion (unless everything is, in which case this discussion is pointless).
The difference I see is that punishment of the insane is pointless because they lack the capability of moderating their actions, whereas the sane can be influenced away from crime.
#19 Marcus
Perhaps it was naive of me, but this far into the comment I was sure you were going to nominate this silly discussion -- there is no free will -- as the object of your scorn. It’s certainly hard to think of a less productive and more indulgent bit of navel-gazing.