Friedemann, you do not seem to understand that I am not at all impressed by what you say. I no more know how my brain works than how my car works. I drive them both with pleasure. I do not understand what all your fuss is all about. It seems to me that your “conjecture” is widely established and does not really bother most people who are aware of it.
@“you are right, I do not know a lot about neuroscience. But what I know is that neuroscience is ultimately based on chemical and pysical processes, albeit complex ones. Complexity doesn’t mean though that we can escape the deterministic laws of physics governing the chemical processes underpinning neurological phenomena.”
I’m still waiting for the explanation what does this (which I agree with) has to do with a human free will, which is not a purely scientific (physical or biological) question? Actually, I’m still waiting for you to define the free will, what do you mean by that, where are our decisions coming from in your definition of free will? (and the response to the questions I asked about the experiments)
You seem to be reading only one my post at a time :). Do you have any comments on my previous post (“…that if we are talking about human free will, we can only talk about human perception of our own decisions, not some abstract phenomenon…”)? this is closely related to the definition of free will I’m trying to get from you. If you are trying to look at the free will as something separated from human perception and the three things I mentioned earlier, then you are talking about something as abstract as human soul.
ok, this is perfect:
“… if we want to unravel the true nature of things.”
what is, for you, the true nature of free will? something like vis vitalis, something implemented in our brains from outside? completely independent of our genes, environment and experience?
Steve,
if you don’t like to contribute to this discussion, don’t do it. The discussion of free will from a scientific angle is not a trivial one and the jury is still out on it. I am not after impressing anyone! I really don’t like the aggressive tone in your posts. Maybe that’s why you have this problem with vandalism on your blog.
Aineko,
I am sorry if I have not addressed all your questions so far. Let me get started on the definition of free will:
To me free will means a sort of autonomy or unlimited power to make decisions that are truly free and not constrained by other phenomena. I do believe that physics has everything to do with free will because I believe, as many physicists do, that our world is 100% materialistic. I am not saying that physics is already in a position to explain every phenomena out there, our current theories maybe flawed, but I believe that the entire universe is ultimately governed by physical laws.
Let me ask you a question in return: Why is it that phenomena relating to neuroscience are somewhere outside the laws of physics? What kind of rules govern neurological processes in your opinion?
Aineko,
I forgot to say this: since you mentioned metaphysics, If this means there are phenomena outside the bounds of the laws of physics, I would reject that idea. In other words I do not believe in metaphysics.
Friedemann,
But I do want to contribute to this discussion, and I consider your preoccupations about our free will to be much ado about nothing. That is my opinion.
I live in blissful contempt of any scientific theory that would reduce my decision making and the exercize of my free will to something less than what I consider it to be. The same is true of my enjoyment of the many things that make life enjoyable and worth while.
You keep on implying that you have discovered some deep meaning or previously unknown bit of knowledge that should make us all depressed. I will continue to express the view that this is not how I see things.
It is quite possible that my expressing my own views, as clearly and forcefully as I can, causes people to vandalize my blog. I consider these people incapable of expressing themselves or defending their own views rationally, so I do not worry about them. If they really annoy me, or use vulgar language, I block them, but that is rare.
Fridemann,
This is a little off-topic, but I’m curious nonetheless, are you familiar with any of Immanuel Kant’s works, particularly his “Kritik der reinen Vernunft”? There is a fascinating treatment of metaphysics in there, a concept which he ultimately rejects (by positing the brain itself as being responsible for the order and structure of our world). Sorry, I know it’s not strictly related to this thread but I was just wondering, as a German, whether you are familiar with much of German philosophy (in particular Kant)?
“To me free will means a sort of autonomy or unlimited power to make decisions that are truly free and not constrained by other phenomena.”
in other words, your decisions are coming from NOTHING (if they are totally independent from any influence)? don’t you see the paradox in what you’ve just said? This makes decision making process kind of a stochastic phenomenon and this is definitely opposite to what most people see as free will - their ability to influence their decision making process. I’ve always seen the free will as the ability to decide what I WANT, and I never had any illusion that ‘what I want’ is by any means independent from WHAT I AM (my genes + my experience). You said that you were a christian as a teen, so if your idea of free will was influenced by the biblical idea of the same (something that was given to as from outside), than I’m not surprised that you found those results of experiments terrifying. As already said, I never had that illusion that my free will is independent from who I am. On the other hand, I never had any problem seeing that my decision making process is quite different from the same process of most of the other species. If you want an example: put the plant at the window and it will grow towards the light (if it is such kind of plant). There’s nothing that resembles humans decision making process in that case. However, if I would be a religious person and my faith says that I shouldn’t eat any food today, I would make a decision to starve, although my brain is screaming for some glucose. Ability to make such decision constitutes human free will (and since there is no other kind of ‘physical’ free will, constitutes free will in general). I’m honestly surprised to hear that you, as a scientist, had that idea that your decisions could be completely independent from what makes you YOU.
“Why is it that phenomena relating to neuroscience are somewhere outside the laws of physics?”
for me to answer this question, you first need to show me where have I said such thing.
If you had read my posts more carefully, you would have noticed that I by no means claim that neurological processes are not deterministic phenomenon. What I’m saying, and what you missed, is that due to the complexity of phenomena such as human behavior, at this level of knowledge and experimental power, reductionist approach have proved many times quite misleading (and this is the reason why I think that your conclusions based on mentioned experiments are wrong - you are jumping from finger movements to the complex behavior).
“…If this means there are phenomena outside the bounds of the laws of physics…”
no, there is no physical phenomenon (=measurable by empirical experiments, at this stage of science or some future stage) that is outside of the laws of physics. However, there are abstract ideas developed by human brain (I see your idea of free will like one of them) that can not be the question of empirical sciences but only the question of personal preferences.
Aineko,
You are right, that the definition of free will I gave you is not compatible with my own belief in physics. But since I don’t believe in truly free will (per the definition I gave) there is no contradiction.
I am not so sure if the plant’s decision and our’s are so fundamentally different on a chemical level. Both organisms employ chemical/physical feedback mechanisms to probe the environment which in turn triggers chemical responses in the organism (plant or human).
I believe lifting a finger is an incredibly complex process if you really break it down into the physiological chemistry going on during that task. So I think your categories of simple vs. complex human decisions is artificial.
Regarding your point about reductionism and complexity:
I don’t think complexity leads to fundamentally different mechanisms. If you were asked to trace all the money you spent over the last year down to everypenny, I am sure you couldn’t. But no money was mysterially created or destroyed in that process. Simple arithmetic accounts for each single financial transaction and also to the sum of all. I believe this is the same for physics. The problem with complexity of course is that we cannot make predictions (see the accountant analogy). But that doesn’t mean that fundamentally different processes exist in complex vs. simpler systems.
Steve,
I don’t think it is your opinions per se that provoke this vandalism. I am very often 100% d’accord with your views and you know that. I rather think it is your sometimes harsh and abrasive tone that some people, including myself might find off-putting. Like it or not, blogging is a lot about how a message is delivered and not necessarily the message itself.
If you are interested in the problems of reductionism, refer to Fallacy of composition
http://tiny.cc/z2uef
But Friedemann, why should I pretend to be other than what I am, just to please a few of the people who follow my blog. I am exercizing my free will, however much it has been conditioned by other factors.
"But since I don’t believe in truly free will (per the definition I gave) there is no contradiction. "
I don’t understand - why did you find the results terrifying then and why are you making, as Steve would say, all this fuss about the question? Only the person with the abstract idea of free will (the one you gave) would have a problem with this.
"I am not so sure if the plant’s decision and our’s are so fundamentally different on a chemical level. "
no, on the chemical level they are pretty much the same. It is the perception level (the consciousness of our decisions) that drives all the difference and generates the free will (since I already said that for me our free will, the real one, not the abstract one, is in fact our perception of our decision making).
"I believe lifting a finger is an incredibly complex process if you really break it down into the physiological chemistry going on during that task. "
and still incredibly more simple than for example decision for whom to vote - all hominids were able to lift their finger, but to come to the voting point we had to invent the whole civilization thing, which has tremendously complicated our behaviour.
"The problem with complexity of course is that we cannot make predictions "
but you started this topic by making predictions about very complex phenomena based on the findings about very simple ones (take complexity in relative terms if you want, but you get my point). from my first post I’m trying to explain to you that you cannot do that :).
btw, rohr, you are again not reading my posts carefully:
"I don’t think complexity leads to fundamentally different mechanisms. "
I haven’t said that. here is what I said:
“due to the complexity of phenomena such as human behavior, at this level of knowledge and experimental power, reductionist approach have proved many times quite misleading”
as you can see, I’m not involving different mechanisms in the story, but implying that the complexity of the phenomenon is too much for our current state of science.
Friedemann, why do you judge my debating style, when you suggest in your opening post that we cannot judge Hitler and Stalin?
Aineko
I find your posts a bit too aggressive for my taste. I try to understand each word you say, maybe sometimes I fall short but not because of ill intent, your posts are quite long BTW.
Maybe YOU are not reading my posts carefully or understanding them: I said I find the notion that there is no truly free will (which I tend to believe even I don’t like it) depressing because I’d rather like to think that I am in control of my decisions. You don’t seem to get the crux yet: if we are biological clockworks or machines, and I mean EVERYTHING about us including thoughts, experience etc., than our life unfolds like a clockwork without true power over it. Got it?
If you find the thought depressing and there is no free will, what are you saying? The thought is there and therefore perfectly in alignment with your determined way of being, so it cannot be depressing, surely?
Just think how much we all learned by following your discussion (or not) and how much not-learning a language time you set aside for something where there can be no agreement, I believe. And yes, I do know my text lacks gravitas.