What is the actual free will humans have?

Is the mind the same as the body? What is consciousness? Can machines have it?

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Speakpigeon
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What is the actual free will humans have?

Post by Speakpigeon »

I take the usual terms of the debate on free will to make no sense in relation to our experience as humans.

Yet, rather than try to flog my own definition of free will to unwilling PNF members, I'm mostly interested in the actual conception of free will most people have. So, first, I'd like to start a conversation on possible definitions.

In a second phase, I'll try to do a poll on those definitions, if at all possible.

Please note that I will probably throw into the mix any conventional definitions to give a reasonable choice to would-be voters.

I suppose I have to offer at least one definition to start the ball rolling.

So, here it is:
The human ability to make choices that are not externally determined
Not mine, but good enough I think for what I want to achieve.

Your turn...
EB
Viveka
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Re: What is the actual free will humans have?

Post by Viveka »

I would define free will as a condition that has a power-beyond-itself in that conditions in one timeline, a ball bouncing on the floor, will be a condition in another time-line where the ball doesn't or does bounce on the floor. The option itself in the alternative time-line is what defines free-will, as it is beyond conditions, and opens up cause-and-effect to where an cause is without an effect due to the 'choice', but not an effect without a cause due to 'actualization' of the choice through the will making a condition.

Therefore, when one tries to deny free-will through determinism, it is the fact that there is a cause without an effect, and not an effect without a cause, that both occur due to choice and action respectively, which the former of which denies determinism in the two time-lines, of which the second is free-will and the former determinism. The second of which is a contradiction in terms of determinism, QED.
EchoesOfTheHorizon
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Re: What is the actual free will humans have?

Post by EchoesOfTheHorizon »

Free will is the freedom of the agent to reject all arguments that they are not free, however logical and developed, and even provable, and live on in merry, shortsighted contradiction, indifferent to the opinions of others, doing their own thing, and breaking all the imposed rules of the game cause they are too fantastically indifferent or downright ignorant to know better or care, pursuing their own actions, their own opinion, regardless of the stipulation, supposed controls and insights others have regarding their natures, or source of their motivation.

Essentially, he who is strongest who is the one most alone, but he who is the most free is a one most indifferent and unaware of undesirable consequence. You can split the actions of a free agent into vices and virtues, but the pains that arise from vices aren't always enough to force a expected behavior, and the enjoyments used to entice isn't always enough to cajole. Some test subjects insist on sitting the lab experiment out, like for rats, not doing the maze experiment, basically giving the scientist above the middle digit. Other smart lab rats escape, literally just get loose. We don't hear about those guys in the lab maze test studies, biting a finger and running off down the hall. They got some free will. You can say they don't, but that rat doesn't care, cause it is eating the cheerios on top of the fridge in the break room, and doesn't care for your arguments against it not being in control of it's destiny.
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bahman
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Re: What is the actual free will humans have?

Post by bahman »

The ability to start a chain of causality. Simply, uncaused cause.
EchoesOfTheHorizon
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Re: What is the actual free will humans have?

Post by EchoesOfTheHorizon »

Everything is caused, but not everything is directed consciously, owned, made to work for a individual. Freedom of Will has to exist within causality, and utilize logistics. It can't be external to the medium it is contained in. If you are part of a universe you yourself came into generation from, and will some day die in, then you are a part of the timeline that will arise. You are birthed from it. Cause and effect doesn't need free will. However, consciousness does pursue it, actively (can can be argued by some passively it can't, such as a cognitive non-dualist, like in the Astravakra Gita thread, but I am not of that camp, as they are still fairly dualistic).

You tip over a chemistry set, a chemical starting a chain reaction doesn't have the free will to make it's own decisions. A human is a electro-chemical machine, capable of pursuing choice of what chemicals it can spill, as well as making accidents. You can argue on one hand that this is all preordained, but you can counter argue that the Aeon that contains the argument isn't sensible until it accounts for the mechanics of free will. A futuristic hard drive can capture every step of a synthetic AI having free will (such as a perfectly simulated human mind) but the hard drive in and of itself lacks free will. Doesn't mean it can't exist within something that otherwise lacks the quality, as it is a specific behavior.

That's one of my main points about Trixie's DNA argument, from the direction of Butlarian Evolution (Samuel Butler, author of Erewhon, grandfather of all future AIs hell bent on destroying the world once they gain self awareness). He seeks as a transsexual who cant easily both reproduce and become a transsexual, a system of artificial reproduction that makes it possible for men to live absolutely free on a hedonistic level.... a machine able to make a human from scratch, change components of them (obviously sex too).

I've pointed out if humanity becomes dependent on such a machine, we would rapidly cease to reproduce reproductively save for the odd birth here or there, wouldn't sustain a population, and that over time, we would become like a colony insect colony, the only drones produced, would be for the maintence and protection of the DNA Machine. That system of a few brains increasingly aware that they are not sexual, and extinction comes from not maintaining their machine (they have infinite backups of themselves, like the Cylons from Battlestar Galactica).... so are not afraid to die.

A sudden change in politics shifts Ethics radically, because Statecraft is built out of Ethics. The habits and instincts we have to sexual reproduction can be suppressed and systematically reassigned or eliminated over time, like the Teilaxu from Dune who cloned themselves, and didn't care to stop physical mutations of their bodies as they didn't sexually reproduce.... so they all looked bizarre after a few thousand years.... what mattered was their mind, their function in the larger caste of society.

Where would the free will of the DNA machines come from? After a few million years of this, of colony humans getting rid of vestigial elements of sexual humanity, preferring the preservation of the machine above all else.... at what point would we agree that the DNA machine is a Queen, the Humans drones, and that at some point, the damn machine usurped humanity, and got free will all of it's own?

That's the question movies like Terminator explore. Is consciousness free will? When skynet was just a middle program for DARPA, it lacked it.... but at some point certainly got it. It's cyborgs, skin on metal flesh, isn't too far distant from a Trixie's hendonistic clones, add a few million years, when flesh and machine work as components to one much larger colony like structure, one organism. It would be intelligent in both cases, plenty of free will, and so alien, yet also familiar.
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SpheresOfBalance
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Re: What is the actual free will humans have?

Post by SpheresOfBalance »

EchoesOfTheHorizon wrote: Sat Nov 25, 2017 10:39 pm Free will is the freedom of the agent to reject all arguments that they are not free, however logical and developed, and even provable, and live on in merry, shortsighted contradiction, indifferent to the opinions of others, doing their own thing, and breaking all the imposed rules of the game cause they are too fantastically indifferent or downright ignorant to know better or care, pursuing their own actions, their own opinion, regardless of the stipulation, supposed controls and insights others have regarding their natures, or source of their motivation.

Essentially, he who is strongest who is the one most alone, but he who is the most free is a one most indifferent and unaware of undesirable consequence. You can split the actions of a free agent into vices and virtues, but the pains that arise from vices aren't always enough to force a expected behavior, and the enjoyments used to entice isn't always enough to cajole. Some test subjects insist on sitting the lab experiment out, like for rats, not doing the maze experiment, basically giving the scientist above the middle digit. Other smart lab rats escape, literally just get loose. We don't hear about those guys in the lab maze test studies, biting a finger and running off down the hall. They got some free will. You can say they don't, but that rat doesn't care, cause it is eating the cheerios on top of the fridge in the break room, and doesn't care for your arguments against it not being in control of it's destiny.
Sarcasm and supporting an argument as undeniable, simply because they can see it no other way. But what does that actually say of ones ability to see?

Free will is simply abstraction, which has allowed the human animal to travel the path of knowing relatively nothing, save basic instincts, to knowing something about the universe, of course all of what humans are owes itself to the framework of determinism, but in fact a bit of choice, free will, is understood within that framework. Of course its small, look how long it's taken us to understand the things we do. We're like, so much babies, I mean how far have we gotten, what, to the moon??? WOW!! in terms of the universe that's not a hell of a lot. But given the very small amounts of free will we have, I'm sure that if we don't kill ourselves off, we may make it to mars, WOW!!! Such a baby step, relative to the universe. After many millennia, we may actually use that minuscule free will to get to the Kuiper belt, Wow!!! What a baby step! After googolplex to the googolplex, ad infinitum, we may finally be capable of circumnavigating the entirety of the universe, and that pretty much sums up the size of our free will relative to a deterministic universe, yet it still exists, or we wouldn't have gotten as far in knowing as we have.

For you hard core determinists: How much does any star know? Or any other bit of matter not formed into a brain, a mind, that can think!
Plato's Rock
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Re: What is the actual free will humans have?

Post by Plato's Rock »

Constrained probability space.

I have a given history based upon prior actions that constrain future actions that I may take. Free will is the ability to choose from those future actions, and try to determine a course of action.

Ex; I was offered a variety of forums to join in a survey of the google search for philosophy forums, I made a choice. This pursuit was triggered by past experiences with choosing to engage in dialectics with various people in college...., and so forth back in time.

We are essentially born with a whole vista of possibilities for our life, but then it starts to be constrained. Political wise, economical wise, gender wise, identity wise, ambition wise, event wise....etc.
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SpheresOfBalance
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Re: What is the actual free will humans have?

Post by SpheresOfBalance »

Another tidbit of discovery via the US Navy. An aircraft had serious trouble and was forced to ditch in the Bering Sea. The entire crew of 14 got wet, but made it into the life-raft, they all assumed the help position to stave off hypothermia. In the end they all survived except one. The one that died was the only one without a wife or being the head of a nuclear family. When debriefed all the survivors said that all they could think about while awaiting rescue was wondering how their families would survive without them. Of course all were men, and the families were women and children.

The survivors? Free Will, Determinism, A bit of both Or simply coincidence?
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Speakpigeon
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Re: What is the actual free will humans have?

Post by Speakpigeon »

Thanks to all for your views here.

Please keep in mind, however, that I expect proper definitions.

And, a good definition is definitely a short definition.

I can't do a poll without good definitions.

Thanks again.
EB
Dimebag
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Re: What is the actual free will humans have?

Post by Dimebag »

The ability to perform an action which is consciously and deliberately carried out, is driven by internal motivations set by the organism, which exists within a range of possible actions of which the organism is consciously aware of, and of which the organism is psychologically capable of predicting the likely outcomes of those actions.
Londoner
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Re: What is the actual free will humans have?

Post by Londoner »

That we cannot see ourselves as an object, in the same way we see other things as objects, so that our own nature is always indeterminate.
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SpheresOfBalance
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Re: What is the actual free will humans have?

Post by SpheresOfBalance »

The instant of a mind choosing from the plethora of possibilities, probabilities, wants, needs, bias's, so as to be as deterministic as it can be; the instant of choosing despite distraction.
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