The question of Free Will is often posed against a backdrop of Scientific Determinism. If the Physical World is determined according to Physical Laws, where can there be room for our own Freedom?
There are usually three ways people try to escape this suffocating situation:
- By appealing to quantum theory that posits some element of uncertainty in physical behaviour, but as the skeptics are quick to point out, how we are supposed to get from the uncertain micro element in quantum theory to human macro freedom, remains entirely unclear.
- Another approach is to frame the answer to our question in such a way as to make ideas about free will and determinism compatible. This position is usually embraced by those who think that there really is no deep problem here, just a confusion in the way we think about the problem.
- A more honest approach if we don’t think there is a deep problem is to say that there is no objective fact of the matter. In that case it is up to each of us to select the belief that we like best. Co-founder of Steemit, @dantheman, goes for this option, holding that we should select the belief that makes us most happy.
Here we will not go into either of the above choices. Against the first, we won’t need to postulate matters about physical facts. Against the latter two, we are going to be more optimistic both that there is a genuine problem and that it has a nontrivial solution!
The Real Problem
Our solution begins by pointing at the right problem. Rather than worrying about our language, our beliefs or the physical world, we will be questioning into the heart of the being with the free will - that’s you and me!
When neuroscientists and spiritual gurus agree on something, it is usually the illusory nature of the ego. If we identify ourselves with our own ego, and our ego is an illusion, it is quite natural to suppose that our feeling of free will is an illusion. Both the neuroscientists and the spiritual gurus each have their own reasons for thinking that the free will is an illusion.
They are also different in their conclusion, while both agree that free will IS an illusion, the neuroscientists, almost paradoxically, tend to say, “We have to Believe!” in the free will illusion, whereas the spiritual gurus tend to say, “No, we don’t have to believe in the illusion.”
The Neuroscientist: “We Have to Believe!”
As an example of a neuroscientist, take Rodolfo llinas, a giant in neuroscience, who did a study on himself that accidentally made him see the illusory nature of free will. What he did was get his assistant to stimulate an area of the head that would cause his leg to move.
On the first attempt his assistant stimulated the area in his brain and the leg moved, but he had to do the experiment again, he said, because he decided to move the leg after he felt the stimulation. So they did another attempt, and the same thing happened, he said he decided to move the leg after he felt the stimulation. Only after doing this half a dozen time did it dawn on Rodolfo Llinas that he said he decided to move his leg after he felt the stimulation. Because he felt the stimulation, and he felt that the stimulation would cause his leg to move, it felt like it was his own decision, even if it was his assistant making the call every time.
When I came across this experiment, I uploaded my first video ever because I was so excited. The experiment proves that the feeling of free will can be illusory. Perhaps in many instances it is not illusory, but in this case it is. This is significant because it shows that the feeling of free will is not, for instance, like the feeling of pain. When you feel pain, you are in pain. It wouldn’t make sense with an illusory pain. So the feeling of free will is more like perception in that respect, where sometimes we have illusions/hallucinations and at other times - perhaps - we see what is really there.
What Rodolfo llinas concludes from this is that our brain, our system, takes possession of whatever happens in the brain that we can predict is going to happen. So when he feels the stimulation, because the brain as a whole knows what is going to happen, it says to itself “that is my choice, I am doing that now” even if the ego/center isn’t really making that choice. Given that the brain works this way, Rodolfo concludes that we have to believe in free will, even if we can know intellectually that strictly speaking, it isn’t true in the way we feel as if we will things freely.
The Spiritual Guru: “We Don’t Have to Believe!”
Spiritual gurus also claim that free will is an illusion, but for another reason than neuroscience. They typically claim that they have seen through the illusion directly, that there is no ego and that the movement we call ego is just the conceptual process where we say to ourselves that “this is mine” and “this is not mine,” e.g. when your leg moves that “it is my leg, my action.”
Everytime we go directly back to find the ego, we find that it was not there prior to thought but followed afterward. It is an interpretation of an event, of a given thought or emotion. It’s the after-the-fact assumption that “it’s mine.” - Adyashanti
Whether certain individuals are able to see this or not is hard to verify. But it seems that Roldolfo Llinas above just assumes that we cannot realize the truth directly, and personally I see no scientific reason why this should not be possible. That individuals like Adyashanti say things that correspond so neatly to what we find by experiment is also highly intriguing.
In this respect the situation is quite strange, for while neuroscientists argue that there is a fact of the matter, they say we must hold on to our illusion, while it is the spiritual gurus who say we must rid ourselves of this illusion. Both emphasize the practical aspect, the neuroscientist believes it impossible to function without the belief, while the spiritual believes that only by seeing through the illusion can we rid ourselves of suffering.
As a last retort, the neuroscientist could appeal to a fascinating experiment that shows that “beliefs about free will can change brain processes related to a very basic motor level” which could be bad for us. But even so, and with all the interpretive challenges of that study, it still seems strange to me that a scientist would so easily sacrifice truth for utility.
While these two positions illuminate the problem as being largely contained within the question of our ego structure and conscious awareness, they still do not get to the heart of the problem. To see what the real problem is about, we have to dig a bit deeper.
The Real Anxiety
[it] shifted his existential dread from a fear that he was just a 98.6 calculating machine to a fear that he was nothing but a linguistic construct - David Foster Wallace
The real anxiety is illustrated by two philosophical thought experiments. The first shows us our anxiety about being mechanical. The second shows us our anxiety about being “nothing.”
The Zombie Thought Experiment
In this thought experiment we can imagine a robot that acts just like a human, but does not have any consciousness. In short, a sophisticated robot that can do all we humans can do, just like us, but doesn’t feel or have any experiences.
This makes us anxious because we feel like we are something more than mere mechanisms. We feel that we are a ghost in the machine, a spiritual being, that happens to be located in a body, in a brain, but that we are something different from it, and not exactly identical to it.
When we find out from science, from technology, from biology, that our actions are based on biological machinery, that our eyes are like cameras, that our brain is like a computer, we worry that our free will is determined in such a mechanical way.
The Homunculus Thought Experiment
In the homunculus thought experiment we can imagine that we are a person sitting inside our head seeing everything on a big screen. The question then becomes, is there a person inside that person again, watching that on another screen? It becomes an infinite regress.
The worry here is that if we are not in some particular location, how can we be anything at all? Are we infinitely small? Are we everywhere? When we try to see where our awareness is we can’t locate it in space like we do with physical things. We get confused because we expect to be in a single place, like our head and our eyes are in a relatively well-defined space.
While the first thought experiment makes us anxious that we are mechanical beings without any special power, this second thought experiment makes us anxious exactly because we are not mechanical beings who can be pointed to in a physical location.
The Solution
If we agree that we are not zombies, that we do in fact have consciousness, and we do agree that it makes no sense to say that we are a tiny part inside our consciousness, then I think there is only one option remaining: We are our consciousness.
We are not our ego, if it exists at all, since it would be something (a homunculus) inside consciousness. Nor can we be nothing but mechanical happenings because we are something that knows about its own existence - I experience therefore I am.
What we believe on a conceptual level is entirely different. We can believe that we are ego, we can believe that we are mechanical, we can believe that we are not conscious. If we are really conscious about what is happening, we can transcend these beliefs however, and see directly that we are conscious. Consciousness sees itself in the mirror just by being itself.
So how does this help us with our original question? It means two things. 1) freedom is not a product of mere mechanical happenings but a consequence of our consciousness. 2) freedom doesn’t come from a part inside consciousness, it comes from the totality of our conscious awareness. This ushers in a new paradigm of Conscious Freedom.
New Paradigm: Conscious Freedom and Morphological Freedom
Conscious freedom integrates science, spirituality and theoretical approaches to consciousness. It sees freedom in the context of consciousness, not in the context of ego or mechanisms. Ego and mechanisms are fine, whatever they are, but they are not what human freedom is based in.
In addition to physical freedom and freedom of speech, we need to come alive to the deeper existence of conscious freedom. Currently our consciousness is more or less held captive by the limitations of our brain and our surroundings that trigger our senses. With our imagination we can to some extent transcend those limits and explore other realms of consciousness.
With books, music and now games and virtual reality we can chose our conscious experience and worlds freely. In the future we may have complete morphological freedom to shapeshift to any form and any experience, without physical or sensory restrictions.
In the light of conscious freedom we can be hopeful that current developments in technology and human-to-technology interfaces are small steps towards complete morphological freedom. And that is something to be excited about!
What do you think? Is this the right solution to the free will problem?
Sources and reading material:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/mind-guest-blog/what-neuroscience-says-about-free-will/
http://pss.sagepub.com/content/22/5/613.abstract
http://www.nature.com/neuro/journal/v11/n5/abs/nn.2112.html
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/001346948290181X
https://www.amazon.com/Vortex-Neurons-Rodolfo-R-Llinas/dp/0262621630
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombie
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homunculus_argument
https://www.amazon.com/Emptiness-Dancing-Adyashanti/dp/1591794595
Ah, I love these discussions about free will and determinism. I wrote a post a while back I'd love your feedback on (no need for a vote).
Interesting. I see consciousness as an emergent property of our brains, just as we are an emergent property of many groups of cells working together. As our sensory inputs feed into our memory, we create a concept of moving through time and self awareness. It's not unique to humans, we've just been the best species so far (that we know of) to articulate it using language.
What would consciousness look like without a brain? That's a really good question, one I've never considered. What would a body look like without cells?
I don't mean to imply that consciousness can exist apart from matter entirely, but that consciousness can increasingly transform matter to its own ends. What the endgame is there I don't think we can quite imagine yet! :)
Ah, I love that. :)
Maybe their just 2 sides of the same coin. Could it be that the reason why consciousness transforms matter is that they could interact more efficient? To reduce the resistance from matter to receive consciousness , that way the cycle of popping in and out of existence can speed up to a pace where it seems as if our bodies are constantly animated but in fact it dies and resurrects at a very high speed so no one notices and we think we are this persona, the host which is in fact but a point of reference to observe itself. These cycles can be observed everywhere at different speeds and we divide them in to different steps: for example day and night, life and death; a year with it's seasons, ...
This is a masterpiece...... throughout the entire article I couldn't stop thinking about David Ickes perception deception idea.
Thank you! Haven't read that book, you recommend it? :)
If you Google David Icke, there tonnes of content.
awsome post christian <3 I know that you have spent a lot of time writing on this :D
Beautifully written, most lucid mind Christian.
There is no other, or, you are myself. ;)
Have you read "I Am That"?
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj.
Further inquiry into what is "I am"
I highly recommend.
Yes, great book. :)
Very good read. There is no doubt in my mind that VR will bring consciousness to that next stage of realization.
I do not BELIEVE in ANYTHING. I CONSIDER the most probable POSSIBILITIES by trying to take into account all facts, I have been lucky to be aware of, that science has discovered so far. And so far, the most probable possibility seems to be that free will is an illusion. We are all products of mixtrure of random and deterministic events.
Nothing in universe works without influence of the environment. Concept of free will is an arrogance of human kind to think that humans are the only thing in the universe which can act without influence of the environment.
Glad to see someone quoting Jacque Fresco. Despite not agreeing with some of his incomplete (and stubborn) plans for TVP, I think he's one of the sanest person who understand this topic very well.
Yes, he is incredible. He is over 100 years old atm so he may be a bit stubborn but what do you mean by incomplete? RBE is never truly complete as it is emerging system, which never stops improving?
Ofcourse you are influenced by the situation and the deterministic component of the universe called natural law, but you have free will, that you're influenced by your situation doesn't change any of that.
If we didn't have free will none of this we're experiencing would be possible, you make choices every second, and if you made different choices in the past there would be a different outcome in the present.
The past and present are fixed, they are fact, you can't change that, but by learning of the past and getting a more accurate understanding of natural law, of cause and effect, you can create a better future, by making more qualitative decisions.
You have free will, but not without consequence.
If everything was determined why do anything? cause determinism is making you act, or you are?
You are the random component to the universe and the aggregate of that determines the outcome in the world around us in conjunction with the deterministic component which is natural law, cause and effect.
Acceptance of lack of free will does not have to make your life meaningless. It doesn't make mine. I just go with the flow of how my brain is working. For example, I have acquired certain knowledge and skills which I share with people as I learnt that it would positively to humanity. Lack of free will does not stop us from right to self defence and excluding people who are beyond ability to be psychologically reconditioned (sociopaths).
Neuroscience through experiment, proved that what you think is a free choice was already decided for you, in your brain, before you even thought about it.
Even my debating with you now is because my brain has been conditioned to work this way.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/free-will-could-all-be-an-illusion-scientists-suggest-after-study-that-shows-choice-could-just-be-a7008181.html
I wasn't saying accepting that free will doesn't exist makes your life meaningless, i meant that if in fact free will didn't exist nothing would be possible, consciousness would be impossible, you wouldn't be able to make any choice, you wouldn't be able to perceive anything, cause everything is determined, if you had any perception you would be like locked in syndrome with your body moving on it's own, cause you have no freaking choice, while the fact is you have and the choices that you and others make, in conjunction with natural law, determines the outcome that you will experience in the future.
I have watched neither of the video's you posted, nor did i click on the link, but there's no possible way to argue against the existence of free will (in conjunction with the deterministic component of the universe: natural law), at most i can think of that they are arguing is that you can't just want something and then you get it and that you can't just do something and expect no consequences and that the situation you are in can force you to make certain choices and that the culture you grow up in programmed you in a certain way by which you are more likely to make certain choices in line with that culture.
But cultures have evolved, many different cultures have been created, individuals have created themselves, you are not determined to remain ignorant and stick with the mind control of your culture.
consciousness is "the ability of a being to recognize patterns and meaning with respect to events taking place, both within oneself and in the realm in which the self exists and operates."
You have the ability to get to understand natural law, cause and effect, through past actions and results and make more qualitative decisions based on that understanding giving you the more qualitative results that you want in the future, you have a free choice in that, ignorance is a choice as well.
"If everything was determined why do anything? "
That suggesst the meaningless of action...
"perception you would be like locked in syndrome with your body moving on it's own, cause you have no freaking choice, while the fact is you have and the choices that you and others make, in conjunction with natural law, determines the outcome that you will experience in the future"
Perception has nothing to do with free will. You are life. An existence conditioned by mixture of deterministic AND RANDOM events, which flows through experience.
Natural Law is the only real totalitarian system. NOTHING in universe can act separate from natural laws. Like I mentioned, free will suggests that you can act freely of influence of natural law. It suggests that it is not natural law (your biology, neuro-chemistry, influence of environmental factors, random events etc) which directs your actions and conditions (the way you think) but that it is your own separate condition beyond those laws. Every single thought and actions is based upon your brains response to environment upon all experiences which you have acquired in he past.
The food you eat, ideas you get attracted to and expresses, people you are sexually attracted to, knowledge you have. EVERYTHING has been determined by your experiences. All the illusion of choices you make are rooted in what you brain learnt. It is impossible to make a "choice" in certain direction, without your brain learning first that you can go in that direction.
Please watch the above video by J. Fresco.
Action is meaningless if everything is determined, if you were meant to act determinism would make you act cause even thousands of years ago it was fixed that today you would perform the actions that you make, cause you have no choice in the matter you do what the universe determines you must do.
You read wrong, i said everything is impossible without free will, we wouldn't have this conversation without free will i said if you could still perceive the world through your eyes, it would be like locked in syndrome where you have your mind but can't use it to influence anything but itself, cause everything that's going to happen even a million years from now is already determined in detail, you have no choice.
But you have, it's not an illusion, choosing to think that choice is an illusion is deluding yourself.
The environment you grew up in might give you the tendency to make certain choices, because it programmed you with certain believe systems, but if it determined your choices, again nothing would be possible, the first culture would remain intact eternally, no genius individual that will crush any belief system. you're ability to recognize patterns and meaning, your consciousness will eventually realize that your belief systems are a load of bull and you will make different decisions based on your knowledge.
Free will doesn't suggest you can act independently of natural law, free will is the fact that you can choose how to act upon the knowledge you acquire about natural law, The Powers That Be have a great understanding of natural law, but they choose to use it to control the masses, by keeping them ignorant, rather then to enlighten them.
you can choose to be lazy, you can choose to be violent, you can choose whatever, but not without the effects that belong to those actions.
In my p.o.v the whole problem might be around money and how we place it in our life.
Even Steem is based on incentive, so money. money. money.
Which revolution will bring a new way of life conception, without necessary building it around Pecuniary values?
Pecuniary gain refers to a gain of monetary value as usual... this should become one day the center of debate to find out if we can find freedom in this pecuniary-mecanism
As a whale, i don't need any curation reward to upvote posts like this, i was rewarded by the content already.
yes but still you cant become whale without money
or you need to write content and get whales votes but i can show multiples examples of people writing excellent content and get 0.03$ and they will give up soon or later
on Steem people expect money to be free. If they dont win it when others win alot without doing anything special, that will create frustration and this is not freedom in my pov
Nice, I'll be talking about this in one of my future posts :)
Great Post :)
I think you will really enjoy reading:
The Philosophy of Freedom by Rudolf Steiner.
It talks about this, and shows a path of thinking that, if followed, leads to a deepen understanding of ourselves, and of reality.
Conscious Freedom and Morphological Freedom, I like it that you've put it that way :) Agreed on the following - 1) freedom is not a product of mere mechanical happenings but a consequence of our consciousness. 2) freedom doesn’t come from a part inside consciousness, it comes from the totality of our conscious awareness.
I'm in the midst of writing something similar too, would be nice to update some of my terms using better words :)
For me consciousness is an illusion too. It is mere product of human brain's ability for abstract thinking (very complex cognitive function in Homo Sapiens). Just simple fact that your " consciousness" can be altered by changes in the brain (drugs, sensory deprivation, taking body out of homeostasis, mindfulness techniques etc) or damage to the brain, is a proof that it has source in the brain.
I think you and I would get along fine, as would Steemit and Ray Kurzweil: http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-law-of-accelerating-returns
Mentioned that paper in my introduction post! Had a huge influence on me when it came out :) - clains (gf account)
I don't know why the word 'free' is even in it at all. It is your will. Your will is the compound of epigenetics, genetics, and your entire developmental process up to now. If your will was free, could you not choose to suddenly like tomatoes when right now if you eat one you want to vomit?
The problem comes from the yawning gaping nothing that you have to accept if you take the 'magick' out of your awareness. But it's just silly, it's hubris even. The computer's 'consciousness' has a focal point called the 'program counter'. It uses this to know what address it needs to operate on next, or what it is operating on now, if it happens to be querying this.
Our consciousness is nothing more than this also, a focal point of a system that is taking in data, processing it, and making an evaluation. There is multiple levels of it. I am sure that if the average free will fan goes to a hypnotist that the hypnotist can make them do all kinds of things that the person would not choose to do. There is a lot of processes that have absolutely no conscious decision making process. We don't choose to make our heart beat. Even that dividing up of things itself can be kinda shocking.
The illusion of unitary consciousness is not an illusion, it is just a tiny part of what the brain does. It is the part that can even look back on itself, looking back on itself, looking back on itself, etc. Like the poet, I forget who, maybe it was Byron said.
Fundamentally we humans are evolved, out of millions of years of competition between animals, and lots and lots of bloody violence, come to that between animals and plants as well, and animals and the weather - We are evolved to predict the future.
The central act of the human is to correctly perform a series of acts that results in a desired outcome. All else is an abstract of this. It is about survival, it is about lust, it is about comfort, and fundamentally, about relieving discomfort.
There is nothing free about this. It's bloody hard work. The only 'freedom' comes in annihilation. We are free to choose wrongly but we are not free to escape the consequences. This is why I am saying that it is nonsense to call it 'free'. It's YOURS. Not someone elses. That is what freedom really means, to not have someone else's will imposed on you without you having first intruded on theirs.
Really nice to read, thanks!
Absolutely fascinating article, and since it aligns with my own personal research and interests, I would like to give this a mention on the podcast Steem Smart :) .
Your views on consciousness and conscious experience are also very similar to mine, as it were.
The content here is amazing, Clains did a great job researching on the subject and he definitely deserves the rewards because with this kind of readings my idea of raising awareness is accomplished. these are lessons wise men from all cultures have taught for centuries.
The ancient Greeks had “gnothi seauton” (“know thyself”) inscribed above the entrance to the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. The Jesuits have a nearly 500-year-old spiritual tradition that emphasizes a twice-daily examination of conscience.
This constant internal interrogation sharpens your sensitivity to your actions, desires and motivations. By discovering yourself you also discover the Universe. This will enable you not only to understand yourself better but also to live a life more in harmony with your character and your long-term goals.
The way you describe the first "escape option", or at least the skeptic's reply, is a bit lazy, IMO.
The only assumption that needs to be made is that some parts of the neuro-network are assigned the task of amplifying the quantum effects in a cascade into a macro phenomenon. I found the idea proposed by Frank J. Tipler once:
there is a very smart and rational donkey seeing two equally large and tasty hay stacks. Forced to make a rational decision, not able to choose one stack over the other for fear of missing out the other, the donkey is stuck in the decision-making process loop - and starves.
So according to Tipler, any choice would have been better than making no choice at all. Hence, this quantum level noise source amplification allows the brain the freedom of random, unpredictable choices - true freedom of the will despite being embedded in a deterministic universal automaton.
Free enough for my taste :)
The llinas experiment can be interpreted in a slightly different way too.
One might assume that in normal life the brain is not subject to electrical or electromagnetic stimulation in such an artificial and direct way.
The experiment itself may be seen as an artificial influencing of normal brain activity and so it's results may not be representative of what happens in normal life i.e. since the experiment itself is the result of anomalous stimulation it's results are not necessarily indicative of the normal functioning of the brain.
This is similar to the hallucinations or visions that those suffering from temporal lobe epilepsy may experience or the perceptual distortions during a migraine, or synaesthesia during an LSD trip. These are all anomalous phenomena cause by pathological processes or external agents.
They may give some hints or clues but one can not make an absolute conclusion based upon it as it not a "normally" functioning brain at that particular time.
I hope that makes sense. It is difficult to express in words.
Yes, that's what I mean by "illusion." It proves that there can be an illusion of free will, even if it is artificially created. In the case of other things, like pain, an illusion is not possible, because if you are in pain, then you are in pain. Before that experiment, we might have thought that free will is like pain, that you know 100% if you raise your arm that it was your own free will. But when we know there can be illusion, we know we can't be sure in each case.
OK I understand what you are saying. Since there is an illusion in this case we cannot be sure that in the normal case we are not experiencing an illusion, it doesn't mean we are it just raises the possibility. In fact that also explains Illinas theory a bit better to me as I initially think I misunderstood what he was saying too because I seem to remember reading about his findings in either New Scientist or The BMJ.
Exactly, it raises the possibility. And by raising the possibility it says something about the nature of this "feeling of free will" that it is not identical to free will. In the case of "the feeling of pain" it is - in a stronger sense - identical to pain.
Note that I move away from this picture when I say that it is consciousness as a whole that is free, because even a feeling of free will is only a small part within our conscious awareness.
Exactly and the "feeling" itself may be illusory much like the sense of proprioception (position) which can be interfered with using electromagnetic induction.
Yes. Have you seen this?
Really cool :D
Thanks for posting this! Free will is an amazing and deep and important problem, and I'm glad to see discussion of it gaining such traction on Steemit! Besides neuroscientists and gurus, there have also been philosophers who work on this problem. (Disclaimer: I'm a philosophy professor who has also posted on it twice recently.)
Before I evaluate your solution for myself I would have to understand what it is. You say your two crucial conclusions are
One favorite question of analytic philosophers is what does that mean?! This question is a very useful tool. It's a kind of check on letting our ideas run ahead of what makes sense, since it's easy to sound deep - even to ourselves - without actually saying anything of substance. Consider this product of the Deepak Chopra fake quotation generator:
It turns out that many people will rate such phrases as sounding deep, even though they are nonsense.
So in the light of that, when I don't understand a phrase that sounds deep like "freedom ... is a consequence of our consciousness", I have to pause and say: that could be because I just don't understand it yet, or it could be because there's nothing to understand.
So can you say a little more about how freedom "is a product of" consciousness? Is this freedom that comes from consciousness compatible with our consciousness being caused by a determinstic universe? Is it enough to give us true moral responsibility - the kind that justifies retributive punishment, for example? Why or why not?
Nothing justifies retributive punishment. Our consciousness is not caused by the universe, it is a real part of it. I can't spell out the nature of conscious freedom without going into the ontology of consciousness and the nature of freedom. The problem here was free will and its seemingly illusory nature. My solution navigates between quantum mysticism, wittgensteinian deflationism, new age relativism, dennetian eliminativism, and dualistic atomism. In a later post i can go into the positive ontology.
Hi @clains and @camilla. Thanks for your patient answer, and I will look forward to the details of this account. I'm especially curious to hear about how our consciousness is a real part of the universe but "not caused by the universe" (panpsychism?), and how you could be any variety of Dennettian eliminativist about consciousness and still say that we have freedom as a product of this (non-existent) consciousness. (Or when you say your solution navigates between these positions, do you mean it avoids them all?) Anyway I suppose I will have to see in the full account!
And at any rate, I'm glad to hear we agree that retributive punishment is not justified (since I think that's the real heart of the issue).
Avoids all the issues yes! I hope. Will have the positive account out maybe by next week, maybe consciousness first then freedom. :) -clains
My gf's account - clains
To quote a great friend: Everything is waves.
E=mc^2, despite what others will tell you has nothing to do with objects
moving at the speed of light. What this equation says is that matter
and energy are interrelated. One is the other, just different forms.
This wave nature is the foundation of quantum mechanics.
Bearing this in mind, as we consider the various 'placements' of different elements across the electro-magnetic spectrum, with'solids' wave vibrational rates at the lower end of the spectrum moving through sound and on up into color, and eventually arriving at pure energy - mc^2, at the higher end - what is to suppose that the nature of "Consciousness" is none other than a non-physical (solid) computation system, that could be controlled by external stimuli, and indeed the scenario of a civilization 500 years more advanced than ourselves technologically could not have created us as no more than an advanced "Sims" game and "God" as we consider the term is no more than a 12yr old kid in this advanced species and we are merely characters/actors in his game that we call "life".
That there is this thing called "will" and "consciousness" is indisputable, whether it is truly "free" is another matter entirely.
I'm having hard times understanding the context but I understand that you are trying to find solution on how free will can be observe. Freedon is very important because it is only through that a human live a happy life.
What is it that has freedom?
1) a biological mechanism?
2) a psychological ego?
We know you are not mere mechanism, because unlike a Zombie you are aware of your own existence. We know you are not ego, because it leads to an infinite regress. The only option remaining is that you are consciousness. So it is the consciousness that is free, and the only way for "you" to be free is to know yourself as consciousness.
Excellent. I am not done reading but submitted to my read later list.
I spend a lot of time thinking about this issue for obvious reasons. Firstly, I believe there is objective truth, and I except, although I am not thrilled by the possibility that we are merely self-aware clockwork with the feeling we control ourselves, while this feeling is in fact a dilusion.
However, I do not find it productive to embrace this possibility for now, when science weighs in more, as it will, I might change my mind.
Secondly, and contradicting your argument, I also have no problem embracing the ego, the feeling of I. If we have the ability to choos, I believe we have the ability to choose to commit to a sense of self and conversely the ability to try to abandon the ego, as eastern spiritualists do, but nothing I've read or lived has convinced me that one choice is more valid than the other. I choose the former ecause I find being me an enjoyable experience.
What do you think about that experiment though? It shows that in some cases the feeling of free will is an illusion. It opens up the possibility that it is always an illusion. And that is what people like Adyashanti run with, they go further and say, if you look closely, you can see it directly - that the feeling of free will is always an interpretation. It seems, either it is objectively true or it isn't.
I agree that the question of free will has an objective answer. Either we are conscious creatures with some agency, free will, or we are conscious creatures with the illusion of agency, no free will. I want to believe what is objectively true, not what is comforting. The part of your argument I find least convincing is that the ego is an illusion. To put it simply I'm stuck as myself, my lived experience involves an "I."
The problem of free will is a socioligal problem, hence it is based much on where a person was born, how he was raised, who he was hanging out with and so on.
Its not as simple as a philophical problem, as having frree will and concience comes down to not only your own decisions, but is much influenced by the goverment.
You think the fact that you go to school first, then to university, then you get a jib, then you raise kids... bla, blah, blah
Is this free will? No!
Its what the siciety tell syou to do and you do it. You see an advertisment of a new car, and you free will tells you to buy it.
Sorry your concience was influenced and so was your will.
So is it really free will?
Excellent article! :)
I like the answer given by Deepack Chopra in his book : "the book of secrets"
Mark passio about free will and human nature:
Mark Passio on consciousness:
The entire natural law seminar:
consciousness is a divine instinct, immortal and celestial voice; assured guide of a human being ignorant and narrow-minded, but intelligent and free; infallible judge of good and evil, it is this consciousness which do the excellence of our nature and the morality of our actions; without its divine power there will be nothing within us that rises us above animals , except the sad privilege to be lost in errors with a mind without a ruler and a reason without principle.
i'm not sure what you are talking about but animals are also conscious beings.
Do animals have regrets, i don't think so,regrets are linked to conscious...
Who says they don't have regrets? and btw you make consciousness way to overcomplicated.
I love freedom, and it helps me to take pictures.
@foxkoit B&W
The so-called free will problem, it seems to me, is really a question of our tendency to anthropomorphize everything... even ourselves. Ultimately, we are bound by physics, our own biology, and the random happenstance we encounter in life. Subjective qualia lead us to believe that we are really ourselves, but we are no more than dust in the wind, created by great nature and blown about on the whims of the cosmos.
The best book I ever read on this issue was cognitive psychologist Daniel Wegner's book The Illusion of Conscious Will. I should dig it out and do a review at some point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Wegner
http://www.danielwegner.com/html/conscious_will.html