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As much as we think we have free will our ability to make choices are based on many past experiences good or evil. Do you really have free will and are your decisions based on only what you think and not the baggage you are dragging since birth including your parents, lovers, friends, neighbors and society at large as well as the many belief systems and the issues that come with them?

I just bought Sam Harris's mini-book on Free Will ($4 Kindle version) where he gives the argument that free will is an illusion. I haven't read it yet.

As disturbing as it seems, it is hard to argue otherwise. If your brain state was caused by your previous brain state, going back as many steps as you want, then at what point are you able to break that causal chain? Unless you assume you can go outside the laws of physics at some point, there is no room for free will in the sense that many people believe we have it.

Dexter wrote:I just bought Sam Harris's mini-book on Free Will ($4 Kindle version) where he gives the argument that free will is an illusion. I haven't read it yet.

As disturbing as it seems, it is hard to argue otherwise. If your brain state was caused by your previous brain state, going back as many steps as you want, then at what point are you able to break that causal chain? Unless you assume you can go outside the laws of physics at some point, there is no room for free will in the sense that many people believe we have it.

Harris also went into that question in The Moral Landscape. What he says may be technically true, or neuroscientifically true. But I can't see the significance of it, maybe I just don't get it. I guess I see the free will problem as an artificial dilemma. The question as usually put doesn't seem to allow for degrees of freedom (but your thread title does). And that relates to the only reason the question was posed in the first place: to ask whether we can make a moral choice that is truly a choice. There are all sorts of things that influence who we are and what we're likely to do, but is there is determinance only if the choice we made was the only possible one we could have made. Here I have to believe there is some "radical indeterminacy" available, as Robert suggested earlier. It's simply a matter of recognizing that we have creative, originating ability, whether in the artistic or moral realm.

DWill wrote:There are all sorts of things that influence who we are and what we're likely to do, but is there is determinance only if the choice we made was the only possible one we could have made. Here I have to believe there is some "radical indeterminacy" available, as Robert suggested earlier. It's simply a matter of recognizing that we have creative, originating ability, whether in the artistic or moral realm.

It obviously doesn't affect the way we live our lives -- everyone acts as if they and others have free will in the strong sense. It is an illusion that will always be there. It's sort of an academic question, yet profound in its significance at the same time. And obviously you cannot predict others' actions or your own.

But I don't believe this "radical indeterminacy" or "originating ability" can stand up to scrutiny if you believe in a materialist/deterministic universe (determinism can still allow for randomness). Your choice is the only one possible, based on the state of your brain prior to it, which was based on previous choices and brain states. Some have tried to argue that quantum randomness can rescue free will, but I don't see how that can work either -- it just adds a random element.

Don't you just get an infinite regression by linking one brain state to the previous, and in doing that never consider the addition of new content? It doesn't ring true to me that the linking of brain states equals determinance of the current by the previous. We also don't consist mentally only of our current state of consciousness; we rather comprehend the entire history of our consciousness and incorporate that into our thinking. I don't like to get bogged down in whether our minds are "mechanistic" or not, or whether the universe is. The word doesn't seem that usefully descriptive. Our minds are probably mechanistic in ways that are way beyond our present understanding, to the point where "mechanistic" would seem pretty fantastic.

DWill wrote:Don't you just get an infinite regression by linking one brain state to the previous, and in doing that never consider the addition of new content? It doesn't ring true to me that the linking of brain states equals determinance of the current by the previous. We also don't consist mentally only of our current state of consciousness; we rather comprehend the entire history of our consciousness and incorporate that into our thinking. I don't like to get bogged down in whether our minds are "mechanistic" or not, or whether the universe is. The word doesn't seem that usefully descriptive. Our minds are probably mechanistic in ways that are way beyond our present understanding, to the point where "mechanistic" would seem pretty fantastic.

There is still plenty of room for outside effects and new content. At time x, you have a certain brain state. At time x+1, you receive some environmental stimulus, that affects your brain state at x+2. Each state also includes effects from the "entire history of our consciousness". No doubt the mechanism is extraordinarily complex, but that doesn't change the implications of determinism.

mmguta wrote:As much as we think we have free will our ability to make choices are based on many past experiences good or evil. Do you really have free will and are your decisions based on only what you think and not the baggage you are dragging since birth including your parents, lovers, friends, neighbors and society at large as well as the many belief systems and the issues that come with them?

Hi mmguta, welcome to Booktalk, and thank you for raising these questions. What with Harris's book, freedom of the will seems a fashionable topic, and it was also raised in another recent thread here started by ant.

You are raising what I would call the level of karma, or social determinacy, whereas Dexter raises the level of matter, or physical determinacy. Both have meaning, but both are also limited.

Karma suggests our fate is preordained by our previous lives, and we can only escape our destiny through extremely slow incremental steps over many generations. The idea of karma links to the Islamic concept of kismet, both of which have rather unfortunate consequences of promoting stagnation and acceptance.

Physics suggests the universe consists of matter in motion, with all events preordained by natural causality, ultimately predictable to the omniscient mind of God (or nature). Physics does question determinacy in quantum mechanics, but Einstein expressed the logical challenge to indeterminacy with his statement that God does not play dice.

Whether or not God or Nature knows the future, we cannot, so are condemned to be free. Claiming that our circumstances chain our options may often be true, but it may also be a cop-out for our timid unwillingness to take risks. The question of whether unconscious psychological impulses and instincts constrain our freedom is an important part of evolutionary psychology, topic of current Booktalk non-fiction selection. The modern enlightenment tradition holds that the rational individual is entirely free, whereas psychiatry illustrates how delusion and ignorance (Buddhist maya) shackle us in ways we do not see.

The dichotomy of freedom was expressed by the existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger, who said in his 1926 book Being and Time that on the one hand we are limited by our facticity, the actual historical situation constraining our options, while on the other hand we have existentiality, our free human capacity to project ourselves upon our possibilities in the sphere of openness. Heidegger held that the authentic human ethic is found in an attitude of pure freedom, which he further described in the rather cryptic phrase 'anticipatory resoluteness', meaning the ability to maintain integrity in the face of events.

I brought this question up because I am currently in Ethiopia working with an NGO (Non Governmental Organization) and I witnessed what appears to me at least in the surface a total dominion by the religions of the vast majority of the people in this country and how they act according to their respective cannons. While analyzing this data I changed religion for TV, politics, organizations etc... arriving at the same conclusion, the freedom we think we have is a delusion of sorts because what we choose to accept influences us tremendously. Am I not right in questioning who I am if my will can be so easily swayed by some charismatic orator or a well written book and where am I in this equation if I am the sum of all parts making decision I might not be truly free to make?

Robert Tulip wrote: The dichotomy of freedom was expressed by the existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger, who said in his 1926 book Being and Time that on the one hand we are limited by our facticity, the actual historical situation constraining our options, while on the other hand we have existentiality, our free human capacity to project ourselves upon our possibilities in the sphere of openness. Heidegger held that the authentic human ethic is found in an attitude of pure freedom, which he further described in the rather cryptic phrase 'anticipatory resoluteness', meaning the ability to maintain integrity in the face of events.

No offense to the Heideggerians, but these are just assertions, I'm sure dressed up in fancy, obscure philosophical language. Does he make any coherent argument?

mmguta wrote:Am I not right in questioning who I am if my will can be so easily swayed by some charismatic orator or a well written book and where am I in this equation if I am the sum of all parts making decision I might not be truly free to make?

I think it's a good question, although the way you phrased it, it would probably not go to the question of whether we have free will, just that religion of your family/community is often accepted unquestioningly. Most people, of course, do not subject their religion to much scrutiny.