Is free will an illusion?

Please provide your own definition of free will if you post a response. It may prove helpful in someone's rebuttal.

 

Ability to make any action that you want.

 

I want to fly. I can't do it. Therefore I do not have free will.

I don't think that's what you meant, can you rephrase and give your thoughts on the thread title?

 

Complete free will is the ability to do whatever you wish with every second of your life. Is it not?

 

Well, that's not how I'd express it. But what do you think, is free will an illusion? If so/not, why?

 

Complete free will could be achieved but it would be pointless because people would live through every single possibility and then life would be lifeless.

However, free will of an appropriate level, I think would be close to where we are in the first-world. Which is, the ability to live your life mostly as you wish without having to worry about necessities (health, shelter, food, etc). When it comes down to it, it would be the political structure that offers everyone that luxury. I don't think that kind of political structure is an illusion. I believe that sometime in the future there will be a political system that encompasses all countries and the world will no longer be divided so that countries won't just be looking out for their self-interests.

 

I didn't mean free will in that sense. I meant it more as freedom of your thoughts, ability to have acted in a different way if you went back in time etc.

For example, today I ate a sandwich for lunch, but I had other options. Why didn't I have a banana? They're both in the house, and I enjoy both. Was it my 'free will' or was that an illusion? Why did I choose the sandwich?

If that provides anymore insight into what I'm talking about at all, lol.

I purposely asked people to provide their own definition as I expand my own definition of what it means to have 'free will'.

 

My definition of free will isn't the ability to make your own choices then, I see it as the ability to choose your own end goal without your genetics choosing it for you. While the choices you make may lead you to a different life then someone before you'll still be striving towards something that you haven't completelyThough I wouldn't consider this natural because I'm engineered to admire my end goal like everyone is.

Oh, I completely mistook it, sorry. In that case, I think it's an illusion, I think every action isn't original and when it's completely abstracted, someone in human history has had the same mentality. Obviously, that opens a rabbit hole to "what if it was free will and you just coincidently had the same idea. Well, this far down in history when over 100 billion variations of life have been lived, I think you would be lucky to make one original decision in your life, let alone have an original end goal in life.

There's a nice poem on this line of thought by Fernando Pessoa.

Spoiler: Poem

I don’t know how many souls I have.
I’ve changed at every moment.
I always feel like a stranger.
I’ve never seen or found myself.
From being so much, I have only soul.
A man who has soul has no calm.
A man who sees is just what he sees.
A man who feels is not who he is.

Attentive to what I am and see,
I become them and stop being I.
Each of my dreams and each desire
Belongs to whoever had it, not me.
I am my own landscape,
I watch myself journey -
Various, mobile, and alone.
Here where I am I can’t feel myself.

That’s why I read, as a stranger,
My being as if it were pages.
Not knowing what will come
And forgetting what has passed,
I note in the margin of my reading
What I thought I felt.
Rereading, I wonder: “Was that me?”
God knows, because he wrote it.

 

I define free will as the ability to choose more than one outcome to a situation that you have complete control over. I was convinced that it is an illusion after listening to this a while back.

Chess-playing computers are often used as an example of AI, but I believe it fits this discussion as well. A chess mind and a chess-playing computer are basically identical in that they both weigh all factors that they have available when making a decision, and then make the decision that they feel is best in that moment. Other factors such as time may go into this decision for the chess mind. If you're in a situation where 60% of the time you develop your knight and 40% of the time you push a pawn, limited time (either forced by a clock or a voluntarily rushed decision) may have made you move your knight because it's what you're more comfortable with. If you run that exact simulation a million times, however, you will not push your pawn 400,000 times. I believe that you will move the knight 1,000,000 out of 1,000,000 times, because nothing has changed. You don't get to repeat the simulation with knowledge you may have gained after the first trial. The time on the clock is the same. Your decision to preserve that time on the clock does not change, because nothing else has changed.
EDIT FOR CLARIFICATION: The 60/40 example is in reference to the pieces on the board only and does not account for any other outside factors.

Our minds act as computers, absorbing information and making decisions based on that information. Nothing we do is random, there are reasons for our actions whether we are conscious of them or not.

 

Read Sam Harris' book on the subject, that's what convinced me. Can listen to it for free on Audible.com if you like. I'd pretty much agree with everything he has to say on the matter.

 

The last I thought on this I concluded two things:

1. If you subscribe to the view that you do not have free will, then in every day life you constantly act (not by choice) in ways that performatively contradict this view (an observation only).

2. Like how things in reality are subject to the laws of gravity, so to I would conjecture, do certain things in reality inherit the capacity for free will (humans for example). What properties those certain things need to possess in order to inherit the capacity of free will I'm not sure (but that would likely be an area of research in deep learning neuroscience I guess). Now the evidence for this would simply be introspective evidence that you appear to have free-will. Which is begging the question since question at hand. But, then that means you're saying this introspective evidence isn't good enough. But on what basis do you raise the challenge? It's fine for philosophical inquiry, but the same challenge could be made to extrospection. If we make this challenge to extrospection, we would be asking how do we know our senses actually perceive reality, how do I know you are not a figment of my imagination. This devolves into solipsism which is interesting to think about for only a brief period. I regard the free will question to be in the same category as how do I know you are not a figment of my imagination; so, I effectively reject the objection the free will question implicitly relies on (how do we know our introspection is valid).

Following from that, you're left with two possibilities, whether or not free will is or isn't an illusion. You can 'choose' to believe it is, or not. I would submit that if free will exists, then it would be preferable to hold the view that it isn't an illusion, and that EVEN if free will does not exist, it is still preferable to believe that it does exist (even if you can't control your belief) so you are not constantly performatively contradicting yourself (first observation). Hence, the question becomes relatively meaningless on two levels, the first, it is tantamount to the solipsism argument, and the second, even if you conclude free-will is an illusion, it would still be better to believe that it exists (the same goes for solipsism, if you believe everyone is a figment of your imagination, it is still better to treat those figments as if they weren't).

 

A study showed that when a person holds a warm beverage, they are more generous than people holding a cold drink. Participants were offered either a free product or a voucher for a friend to gift them the same product. I believe the participants holding the warm drink chose to gift a friend 11% more often than those with a cold drink in hand.

Obviously some of them would gift a friend no matter what they held in their hand, but do you believe those who were manipulated by the temperature of their drink exercised free will? I'm willing to bet that every one of them can give a reason why they decided the way that they did and none of them will mention the cup in their hand. The fact that we can be wrong about our motivation is basis for challenging introspective 'evidence' of free will.

Also you never gave a reason for your claim that we'd be better off not knowing if free will is in fact an illusion, could you elaborate there?

 

I don't think it follows that merely because the agent is unaware of a factor that may have affected their action, that therefore the agent had no influence on their action. Merely because we we inherit the capacity for free will does necessitate that all of our actions flowed from its exercise. I do accept that people can act on autopilot. I don't accept that the agent does not have the power to override this. We can observe that we can focus our consciousness toward the performance of an action (if it is physically possible). Merely because there are times in which we do not focus our consciousness, and act anyway, does not contradict our capacity to focus, and hence, our capacity to exercise free will.

Also, doubting introspection is the same as doubting extrospection IMO, both are methods of gaining information about reality, the latter external to the agent, and the former internal to the agent. Yet merely because we could be wrong about what we have gained extrospectively does not follow that therefore extrospection is not a method of gaining knowledge about the real world. The same can be said for introspection. What is really happening is we are observing our inner state and from the information available, drawing a conclusion. We observe our inner state and comprehend our ability to focus our consciousness and direct our action. That is an observation, not the consequence of a line of reasoning. The line of reasoning is that from this evidence, we conclude that we have free-will, and your counter line of reasoning is that all we can conclude is that we perceive to be able to direct our action. The counter is fine, but per my first post, I think it is in the same class as solipsism questions where the counter is, with respect to extrospection, that all we can conclude is that we perceive that other agents exist.

I didn't say it is better off not knowing if free will is an illusion, I said even if it were an illusion, we would still be better off believing it does exist, the reasoning being, "so you are not constantly performatively contradicting yourself".

 

Most of the arguments I'm making in this post come directly from the video I linked above or the book that Milotic mentioned (from the same guy). I say this to credit him and give a reference to someone who worded these arguments much better than I did and not to absolve myself of criticism for the post

I do not believe that we're all just on autopilot, I just believe that we are not free to think/do that which does not occur to us to think or do. For example if I ask you to think of a number between 1-1,000,000 and give you 10 seconds to decide, only a few numbers will pop into your consciousness before you choose from them and give me your final answer. Were you free to choose 696,696 if that number was not one of the ones to pop into your mind during that 10 second period?

Take a look at this article on a decision-making experiment:
https://www.nature.com/news/2008/080411/full/news.2008.751.html

If the experimenters are able to determine which of two options someone is going to choose half a second, a full second, or ten seconds before the patient realizes their decision, were they exercising their free will to make the choice? Presumably they tried to focus and override the auto-pilot you mentioned, but the decision was made in their sub-conscious before they were aware of it anyways. Does the sub-conscious decision making process fall under the umbrella of free will?

I'm a bit confused here, but I think we agree. You say:
Yet merely because we could be wrong about what we have gained extrospectively does not follow that therefore extrospection is not a method of gaining knowledge about the real world.

Why then when we're wrong about information gained introspectively does it follow that introspection is not a method of gaining knowledge about the real world and dissolve into solipsism? All that I'm saying is that we can be wrong about information gained introspectively.

I don't see a difference between your version and mine but we'll call it a grammatical error on my part.

This seems like a weak reason to essentially deem a topic irrelevant. Good things will follow if we recognize free will as an illusion. You are not the sole independent cause of your actions in the same way a bear is not responsible for the fact that it's a bear and will eat you. Realizing or trying to realize the causal picture behind why a person thinks or acts the way that they do results in more empathy and less hatred. A person can still be locked away if they're a danger to others, but a lack of free will eliminates the feeling that one needs to be punished for their actions. The only thing lost if one would accept that free will is an illusion is an egocentric view of the world.

 

Could it have occurred to us?

This seems analogous to the positive liberty and negative liberty distinction. I am saying there is no restraint for you to have chosen any number. You seem to be saying there exists a need for the presence of the number in one's consciousness in order to choose that number, and the absence of that presence is a restraint. I disagree that the absence of the presence of a number in one's consciousness is a restraint thereby not making the person free to have chosen that number had they decided to focus their consciousness and choose it.

Run the example again and tell the person to choose a specific number, then ask them to choose a number between x and y.

Those studies are interesting, and I haven't spent any time yet on self-studying neuroscience so I can't comment too much. What I will say is that I doubt the studies rule out the effect consciousness can have in the decision making process, and also, that study itself has no power when it comes to any meaningful decision — I would be interested to see what happens when we look at decisions 'made' after a lengthy period of deliberation.

'The same can be said for introspection' is what I said, so I'm not sure what you mean about your first sentence. Sure, I agree we can be incorrect.

I'm not sure if your argument follows; there is some debate about the effect of accepting the belief the free-will is an illusion. The effect would seem to depend on what one believes free-will to actually mean. It is probably also affected by the extent in which one conflates fatalism with an absence of free-will, among other things.

 

I can reply in detail when I get home, but in the meantime can you provide your definition of free will? To me it means that we are the >conscious< authors of our actions and therefore decisions made sub-consciously are not made using free will. I'm guessing based on things you've said but do you disagree with the bold portion there? If so I'd argue that 1: consciousness is our introspective sense of free will and 2: we have just about as much free will over our organs as we do over our sub-conscious thought processes, which is to say almost none

 

The ability to focus our consciousness, and the fact that we could have chosen an alternative action from the actions open to us had we so focused our consciousness.

The bolded part is too imprecise, but I do accept that not all actions made are the result of the exercise of free-will (ie consequent us focusing our consciousness).

Consciousness is the faculty which perceives reality, so I'm not sure I agree with 1.

 

Yeah, virtually every single bit of our bodies obeys physical laws. There's some room (theoretically) for quantum uncertainty to affect extremely (extremely, extremely) small parts of chemical activity, but...there's no evidence that we've been able to influence that by just thinking about it.

 

Quantum uncertainty isn't necessarily random. Quantum field theory can explain wave function collapse as a determinable, information-constant phenomenon.

But yeah I think it comes down to if anything is random. The uncertainty principal affects much more than is given credit e.g. maybe smell? (No citation)

 

Free will is just to broad of a definition its not an illusion, you are free to do as you please as long as its not harmful,