Is free will an emergent property of the human brain?

In summary, the conversation discusses the concept of free will and whether it exists or not. Some participants believe it is an illusion, while others see it as a blessing. The idea of determinism is also brought up, with some arguing that our choices are predetermined by past events while others believe in the randomness of the universe. Ultimately, it is concluded that it is impossible to prove the existence of free will or predestination.
  • #106


Originally posted by Iacchus32
If the Universe is endless then free will must exist. If the Universe is not endless then it must be pervaded by determinism.

And yet in an endless Universe we can set up boundaries which give us the illusion of determinism, and yet boundaries which are nonetheless breeched, through the capacity of free will.

And we can't prove the universe is endless either, can we?(at least not physically) . And if determinism is true, then the complexities are so intricate that we PERCIEVE it as free will, because of how we view things. Peception is a tricky thing, n'est-ce pas?
 
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  • #107
Dou you guys really think that god would say: I told you so?
 
  • #108
Great stuff. I thought that you thought that you could prove that you could prove something, even though you were trying to prove that you weren't free to make up your own mind on whether you agreed with what you were trying to prove or not. My mistake.

If I could, I wouldn't be here on pf, I'd be busy publish my new book and picking up my new ferarri;). But I just take one side of the endless debate and give it my all.

I'm not quite certain yet that we can't work out the freewill thing. But we probably have to come at it from a different angle. Great minds have explored all the technicalities of this issue for millenia, and they haven't got anywhere from a 'Western' perspective.



Maybe we're stuck in the wrong paradigm, looking at it in the wrong way, asking the wrong questions. Maybe the world is stranger than we think it is, and we're just not imaginative enough to see it for what it really is. After all we only get a bunch of electrochemical patterns in our brains, we have to reconstruct the world from those.

Bad mistakes must be possible. Mistakes that are life threatening, like a belief that tigers are harmless, would soon be weeded out by evolutionary selection. But what about mistakes that aren't life threatening, or those that actually make us more likely to reproduce?

We could have errors in our conception of the world that go back to the dawn of time when you think about it seriously, we just wouldn't know. As long as they promoted our physical survival they would persist forever in our species as evolving memes. Imagining we have freewill may be one of these persistent errors.

But then the whole notion of a 'real' phenemenal world may be a persistent error. After all this is what Plato and other idealists have been arguing for at least three thousand years. If we can't be certain that the phenomenal world really exists then proving freewill is the least of our problems.

There doesn't seem to be any way through this inevitable muddle. This is why I'm sure that there must be a different way of thinking about it.

The trouble with this subject is that it leads all over the place. For instance the existence of freewill implies that consciousness is causal, and causal consciousness combined with freewill is a definite scientific no-no. So the fundamental mechanisms of cause and effect is the part of the issue as well.

The question of freewill, as you probably know already, raises other difficult questions and eventually calls into question our whole idea of our existence as 'selves' in the 'world'.

“Very few seek knowledge in this world. Mortal or immortal, few really ask. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds – justifications, explanations, forms of consolation without which they can’t go on. To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questionner.” (The Vampire Marius, Ann Rice, The Vampire Lestat) [/QUOTE]

Good luck with that. As mentat alluded, every argument for one side evoke an equal argument from the other side- each answer brings 2 more.


I can read that two ways. Are you saying that we act/react and then afterwards create a narrative to explain what happened to ourselves, are are you saying that all this is an entirely physical process?

It's a 2 level process. Basic reactions are processed by our based emotions first, then passed on to our higher functions of reasoning and logic. But our higher functioning and thought processes are based on our BASIC instincts, so in a sense it is tainted. Like touching a hot stove. We do it once and don't do it again. We may see a hot stove, and our higher functions will say "it's not logical to subject yourself to pain as it would serve no purpose". But below that, is the basic instict going "no, hot, pain, bad", and our higher brain functions are interpreting that as the above inner dialogue. That's a rough outline, but I'm no neurologist, so don't quote me on it.

What makes you say that? I would have thought that we need to simplify the problem, not make it complicated to the point where we need a machine to do it for us.

As far as freewill goes my guess is that any such machine would only ever be able to tell us what we'd told it.

Be funny if we built one and, after many long years of programming and waiting, it refused to cooperate or answer any questions.

Ok the point of determinism is that it's a huge equation of everything that exists in which every single variable is known- that's as simple as it gets. I don't think our brains could contain that- do you?
 
  • #109
Originally posted by Achy47
Dou you guys really think that god would say: I told you so?

I saw an ant today. If I picked it up and told it "I told you so ", would I be god?
 
  • #110


Originally posted by Zantra
And we can't prove the universe is endless either, can we?(at least not physically) . And if determinism is true, then the complexities are so intricate that we PERCIEVE it as free will, because of how we view things. Peception is a tricky thing, n'est-ce pas?
Perhaps free will, like consciousness, is an emergent property? ... No doubt, because the two are obviously related, if not one and the same.

Also, don't you think the idea of complexity arises out of the fact that there are so many "choices" available? Whereas if there were "no choice," wouldn't that spell "non-existence?" ... i.e., through determinism everything has a beginning which, must ultimately begin with "zero," right? In which case how could anything proceed beyond that which has already been predetermined, which is "nothing?"
 
  • #111
Originally posted by Zantra
Ok the point of determinism is that it's a huge equation of everything that exists in which every single variable is known- that's as simple as it gets. I don't think our brains could contain that- do you? [/B]
I'm not sure what you mean here.
 
  • #112
Originally posted by Zantra
I saw an ant today. If I picked it up and told it "I told you so ", would I be god?
If you really did tell it so and you were right in every case that you made a prediction (given that the predictions were not trivial) - Hmm - You would fool me.

I was just making a farce in the first post.


PS. I don't really believe in a god... Just in the existence of higher entities.

Still interesting though. Keep posting.
 
  • #113
Originally posted by Zantra
I'd be interested to hear that spin off theory.

Techinically, you've already heard it. You see, both in my "path with forks" analogy and in the applications thereof, I have explained that predestination does not include limiting factors. It has no use for them, since you're going to do one thing, and that is the only "path" that even exists. Now, determinism (no matter which form it takes) always takes into account limiting factors. It says that there is only one path that we will take, but it is not the only path that exists, simply the only one we'll take. Ergo, deternism is free will minus the freedom .
 
  • #114


Originally posted by Iacchus32
Perhaps free will, like consciousness, is an emergent property? ... No doubt, because the two are obviously related, if not one and the same.

Consciousness is not an emergent property. It is a process, just like breathing or eating.
 
  • #115
Originally posted by Mentat
Consciousness is not an emergent property. It is a process, just like breathing or eating.
Would you say that a TV picture is an emergent property of a television set?
 
  • #116
Originally posted by Iacchus32
Would you say that a TV picture is an emergent property of a television set?

No. A TV picture is a large stream of photons stimulating my CNS in a particular fashion.
 

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