The Illusion of Free Will (?)

[Dr. Zaus]

I'm using actual physics to denote how physical reality works far as empirical tests can muster, linguistic understanding to denote how humans make sense of their thoughts, and I'm pretty sure I don't mix the two as that was the point from the very start.

But our theoretical understanding of the world is limited by the language we use to understand it. Or as Wittgenstein said "The world is my world: this is manifest in the fact that the limits of language (of that language which alone I understand) mean the limits of my world."

Do you think that physicists are some how absolved of being embedded in such language games?

If you haven't read it yet, I highly suggest this book:
Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts

 

[agent00f]

Much as aphorisms from tractatus are eminently quotable, as mentioned his later Philosophical investigations supersedes the idea of a limited metaphysical language.

There's little evidence that language per se is anything but infinitely expressive, as witnessed by invention of novel new terms & concepts to cover new discoveries, even if the general public is not necessary equipped to trivially grasp the lexicon. If anything the idea of the unexpressible these days is largely relegated to god of the gaps.

Now it's certainly possible that the human mind itself isn't sophisticated enough to fathom some great mystery of the universe, but this is a very different kind of problem than "we can understand this if only we find the right words or better framework to express it".

 

[Kaido]

I love this topic & am a big fan of time-travel movies because they mess with your brain so much

Speaking in very simple language, however, free will exists because (1) everyone has individual agency (the ability to make choices in the moment), and (2) we cannot control time; we are simply passengers on the riverboat of time as it marches on. From a bigger perspective, sure, everything that has been, is, and will be is set in stone because the actions taken on a moment-by-moment basis will be transcribed upon the pages of history. However, that argument is negated because we cannot control time, therefore, the future is full of unlimited choices (and we also don't have access to a multi-verse, like in Jet Li's "The One", so the only thing we individually end up with is the consequences of the choices we make in the moment). In theory, if you knew all of the variables, you could control the outcome, but even then, it's not just about stuff like the Butterfly Effect - there's also the issue of predicting human behavior. If you were locked in a room with a criminally insane inmate, how would you know their thoughts? Would they ignore you, or would they kill you? You don't know, because they have their own agency as well. So it kind of boils down to (1) not being able to control or otherwise stop time, (2) not being able to calculate all of the variables of the impact of the elements (re: the butterfly effect), and (3) not being able to predict psychology based on other people's (and other sentient beings, such as animals) access to free agency. Omniscience is #2 & #3, and arguably #1 as well. Thus, free will isn't an illusion because you can't control everything & you certainly can't control other people, and you only have access to this universe & the time ahead of you as a unique individual.

A couple fun movies I've seen in recent years are Next (Nick Cage) and Limitless (both the movie with Bradley Cooper & the TV show, which is actually pretty fun). In Next, Nick Cage's character could see a few minutes into the future, which helps him make money, get out of bad situations, and in one case, go through hundreds of iterations of behavior until he finally gets a girl to notice him. So while he wasn't omniscient all at once, he could see the possibilities in front of him one by one & then choose which reality he wanted to go forward with. Limitless took a bit of different approach...Bradley Cooper's character took a pill, a drug similar to ADHD medicine, which basically gave him access to 100% of his brain. So he could not only remember but also process everything he had ever seen - every book he had skimmed through with glazed eyes, every documentary he had watched half-asleep, everything he had ever forgotten, as well as calculation all of the variables that were visible in front of him. The movie was fun, and the TV show took the concept even further with the new character (also on the pill) realizing that despite having a super-brain, he didn't have the ability to control everything & he wasn't invincible, so the best he can do is work out the best decision to solve problems with the information available to him.

It's a fun concept to think about, especially when you start tying in other real-life issues like taking responsibility for your actions & how much our individual ingrained habits guide our day-to-day lives.

 

[Kaido]

Oh yeah, reminds me of this video. Horrible, but cracks me up every time

 

[agent00f]

I love this topic & am a big fan of time-travel movies because they mess with your brain so much

Speaking in very simple language, however, free will exists because (1) everyone has individual agency (the ability to make choices in the moment), and (2) we cannot control time; we are simply passengers on the riverboat of time as it marches on. From a bigger perspective, sure, everything that has been, is, and will be is set in stone because the actions taken on a moment-by-moment basis will be transcribed upon the pages of history. However, that argument is negated because we cannot control time, therefore, the future is full of unlimited choices (and we also don't have access to a multi-verse, like in Jet Li's "The One", so the only thing we individually end up with is the consequences of the choices we make in the moment). In theory, if you knew all of the variables, you could control the outcome, but even then, it's not just about stuff like the Butterfly Effect - there's also the issue of predicting human behavior. If you were locked in a room with a criminally insane inmate, how would you know their thoughts? Would they ignore you, or would they kill you? You don't know, because they have their own agency as well. So it kind of boils down to (1) not being able to control or otherwise stop time, (2) not being able to calculate all of the variables of the impact of the elements (re: the butterfly effect), and (3) not being able to predict psychology based on other people's (and other sentient beings, such as animals) access to free agency. Omniscience is #2 & #3, and arguably #1 as well. Thus, free will isn't an illusion because you can't control everything & you certainly can't control other people, and you only have access to this universe & the time ahead of you as a unique individual.

If QM has taught us anything philosophical, it's that our mental concepts about reality are largely interpretations based on simple classical-scale phenomena that the brain has evolved to deal with.

Even when provided with reasonably accurate but abstract math models, we feel the need to cast the mechanics back into what's understood about everyday life. This has the interesting effect of driving further intuition about the math/models, despite the limitations of the hardware. A useful analogy might be if the human brain can be seen to have restrictive computer instructions, the question arises whether that set would allow reasonably bounded runtime for some hypothetical program which eventually reveals whatever ultimate nature of the universe.

 

[Dr. Zaus]

If QM has taught us anything philosophical, it's that our mental concepts about reality are largely interpretations based on simple classical-scale phenomena that the brain has evolved to deal with.

Even when provided with reasonably accurate but abstract math models,

You just did it again!

You noted that the system is not designed to handle what it has observed; and THEN you called something generated by that system "reasonably accurate but abstract".

You just CANT know about the 'accuracy' from a 'Gods Eye' perspective if the very system is known to be a linguistic game based on untestable axioms. It's a castle in the clouds, a series of self-referential word-games, reifications of language with no connection to anything pragmatic and thus disconnected from the rough ground!

Or to quote Wittgenstein in Philosophical Investigations:

"The more narrowly we examine actual language, the sharper becomes the conflict between it and our requirement. (For the crystalline purity of logic was, of course, not a result of investigation: it was a requirement.) The conflict becomes intolerable; the requirement is now in danger of becoming empty. -- We have got on to slippery ice where there is no friction and so in a certain sense the conditions are ideal, but also, just because of that, we are unable to walk. We want to walk: so we need friction. Back to the rough ground!"

"For we can avoid ineptness or emptiness in our assertions only by presenting the model as what it is, as an object of comparison -- as, so to speak, a measuring -- rod; not as a preconceived idea to which reality must correspond. (The dogmatism into which we fall so easily in doing philosophy.)"


How do you know 1=1 at a quantum level of analysis such that math works?
This basic axiom makes sense when we're pragmatically looking at a particular thorium isotope, because everything interesting about a thorium atom is the same amongst thorium isotope.

But we have absolutely no way of knowing if what is pragmatically interesting about a thorium isotope at the quantum level changes based on how it was forged (fission or fusion), its history through space time (are there string-level 'isotopic'-like properties we can't comprehend?), or any number of other things that we just don't know to observe (or may not even be able to observe).

What we know is that our system is flawed and that the people observing the system are in a tribe of math-geeks who think that if you put numbers to a system you have observed what is meaningful in that system. And we know they are wrong. See:

Gödel's incompleteness theorems

 

[agent00f]

You just did it again!

You noted that the system is not designed to handle what it has observed; and THEN you called something generated by that system "reasonably accurate but abstract".

You just CANT know about the 'accuracy' from a 'Gods Eye' perspective if the very system is known to be a linguistic game based on untestable axioms. It's a castle in the clouds, a series of self-referential word-games, reifications of language with no connection to anything pragmatic and thus disconnected from the rough ground!

Yes you can know about the accuracy since it's verifiable. The mental framework for our benefit might be "language", but the observations aren't.

Or to quote Wittgenstein in Philosophical Investigations:

"The more narrowly we examine actual language, the sharper becomes the conflict between it and our requirement. (For the crystalline purity of logic was, of course, not a result of investigation: it was a requirement.) The conflict becomes intolerable; the requirement is now in danger of becoming empty. -- We have got on to slippery ice where there is no friction and so in a certain sense the conditions are ideal, but also, just because of that, we are unable to walk. We want to walk: so we need friction. Back to the rough ground!"

"For we can avoid ineptness or emptiness in our assertions only by presenting the model as what it is, as an object of comparison -- as, so to speak, a measuring -- rod; not as a preconceived idea to which reality must correspond. (The dogmatism into which we fall so easily in doing philosophy.)"

Reality is the grounding here. The problem presented is when people confuse the mental framework for reality. That's basically his big insight from tractatus to PI. The point of philosophy is to clarify the language/mind much as possible.

How do you know 1=1 at a quantum level of analysis such that math works?
This basic axiom makes sense when we're pragmatically looking at a particular thorium isotope, because everything interesting about a thorium atom is the same amongst thorium isotope.

If the axiomatic model doesn't work, the verification will fail. It sometimes does, and notice we remedy that by changing the model and not reality.

But we have absolutely no way of knowing if what is pragmatically interesting about a thorium isotope at the quantum level changes based on how it was forged (fission or fusion), its history through space time (are there string-level 'isotopic'-like properties we can't comprehend?), or any number of other things that we just don't know to observe (or may not even be able to observe).

What we know is that our system is flawed and that the people observing the system are in a tribe of math-geeks who think that if you put numbers to a system you have observed what is meaningful in that system. And we know they are wrong.

To sum up, you're perfectly right that the language is fallible, which is why we're now smart enough to fix it when it disagrees with the natural world, instead of stubbornly insisting that it's the "true nature" of things. W's later philosophy is sharply cognizant of this failure of metaphysics, particularly given it was his own just before, because it puts the cart (language) before the horse (reality).

While it's certainly true we can't observe/test everything, that unavoidable ignorance doesn't somehow imply wishful thinking necessarily fills the void as ego often prefers to believe.

See:

Gödel's incompleteness theorems

The incompleteness theorems don't say what you seem to think they do. And in any case the point that math or whatever is fallible is exactly the case that's being made.

 

[Charmonium]

I'm a little late to this thread and I've only skimmed it so I apologize in advance if I'm missing points that have already been addressed.

I think that free will is the natural result of a chaotic biological system we call our brains. If you've ever walked into a room and can't remember why you're there, that's chaos at work.

It's worth pointing out that there are many examples of quantum biological systems. For example photosynthesis is a biological system that uses quantum mechanical principles. We know that because it's too efficient to work any other way and besides, we've uncovered some of the probably mechanisms. Also magnetic navigation in various birds and mammals requires some sort of quantum detection system since the earth's magnetic field is too weak to detect otherwise and again, various probable mechanisms have been uncovered.

So it is possible if not likely that consciousness also involves one or more quantum mechanisms. If so, then the probabilistic nature of QM guarantees that no outcome is certain, at least not in this universe.

I would also point out that QM does not recognize time as a parameter. In QM, everything works the same whether you run the clock forward or backward with only a few relatively minor exceptions called CP violations (charge-parity violations). In fact there are entanglement experiments that have been done where you can get the result before the antecedent "causes" have been created. I think the delayed choice quantum erasure experiment falls into this category but I'd have to double check - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_choice_quantum_eraser

 

[agent00f]

I'm a little late to this thread and I've only skimmed it so I apologize in advance if I'm missing points that have already been addressed.

I think that free will is the natural result of a chaotic biological system we call our brains. If you've ever walked into a room and can't remember why you're there, that's chaos at work.

It's worth pointing out that there are many examples of quantum biological systems. For example photosynthesis is a biological system that uses quantum mechanical principles. We know that because it's too efficient to work any other way and besides, we've uncovered some of the probably mechanisms. Also magnetic navigation in various birds and mammals requires some sort of quantum detection system since the earth's magnetic field is too weak to detect otherwise and again, various probable mechanisms have been uncovered.

So it is possible if not likely that consciousness also involves one or more quantum mechanisms. If so, then the probabilistic nature of QM guarantees that no outcome is certain, at least not in this universe.

I would also point out that QM does not recognize time as a parameter. In QM, everything works the same whether you run the clock forward or backward with only a few relatively minor exceptions called CP violations (charge-parity violations). In fact there are entanglement experiments that have been done where you can get the result before the antecedent "causes" have been created. I think the delayed choice quantum erasure experiment falls into this category but I'd have to double check - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_choice_quantum_eraser

The emergent properties of a neuron network the size of the human is far too complex (and little understood) to warrant quantum theories to satisfy human ego. Even if some quantum mechanism is directly involved in "choice", it has little bearing on the argument of determinism since that's in itself a human/linguistic interpretation of qm.

 

[Charmonium]

Well, it depends on what you mean - not to be coy. If you have a chaotic network w/o any qm features then by it's very nature it's going to be unpredictable and therefore be indistinguishable from what we perceive as free will. Whether or not that actually amounts to free will is a deeper question.

The same thing with qm features.

I'm guessing your objection is to the "deeper question" aspect. As to that, I suppose it really comes down to how you define free will. If you really think about it, fw implies some sort of independent animus. But if you take the position that there is no soul or no metaphysical aspect to existence, then there is no place for that free floating animus to reside. So all you're really left with are reasonable approximations.

It essentially becomes something akin to a Turing test. You come up with some definition for FW that doesn't involve any metaphysical components and then you see if the system in question demonstrates the characteristics you've required to the requisite extent. If it does, it has FW, if not, it doesn't.

 

[agent00f]

Well, it depends on what you mean - not to be coy. If you have a chaotic network w/o any qm features then by it's very nature it's going to be unpredictable and therefore be indistinguishable from what we perceive as free will. Whether or not that actually amounts to free will is a deeper question.

The same thing with qm features.

I'm guessing your objection is to the "deeper question" aspect. As to that, I suppose it really comes down to how you define free will. If you really think about it, fw implies some sort of independent animus. But if you take the position that there is no soul or no metaphysical aspect to existence, then there is no place for that free floating animus to reside. So all you're really left with are reasonable approximations.

It essentially becomes something akin to a Turing test. You come up with some definition for FW that doesn't involve any metaphysical components and then you see if the system in question demonstrates the characteristics you've required to the requisite extent. If it does, it has FW, if not, it doesn't.

I recall mentioning previously what amounts to "free will" or any such non-scientific/natural concepts are all philosophical questions, which should be uncontroversial enough, and conveniently many pro philosophers in the past have thought about this very question.

Unfortunately it turns out through modern philosophy that all philosophical questions are likely linguistic/definitional questions, so it really comes down to whether anyone considers a chaotic network or wavefunction "free" or whatever the hell a will is. Some might, some might not, there's no right answer any more than what happiness or love means; all that can be determined is we come to agreement over the definition of terms and thereby understand what each other are saying.