Free will

[Sakana]

Free will has been discussed for thousands of years, but with modern day advancements in neuropsychology it is finally possible to get hold of tangible evidence. It seems to me that we will have to eventually accept that the concept of free will simply doesn't make sense, whether we like it or not. What we've learned so far is that onsciousness is always lagging behind the real-time processes of the brain. Decisions are made before we become conscious of them, and at the same time we are unable to inspect the unconscious processes that lead to these decisions. This is known as the "blind brain theory". This leaves no room for free will. I reccomend watching this video if you want a much better explanation of the argument against free will.

Some seem to think it's irrelevant whether or not we have free will, but I think it's very consequential for both religious belief as well as speciesism.

1) Free will is the cornerstone of religions. If we can disprove the existence of free will, then much (all?) of the foundation is gone. If humans aren't capable of free choice, then god is nothing but a sadist who punishes wrongdoers with suffering in hell for doing something they couldn't have avoided doing in the first place.

2) People often use humans' supposed free will as something that sets us apart from other animals. For example, The Amazing Atheist states that, "chickens are biological machines". Here it is implied that chickens are just slaves to their genes and environment (and that humans are more than that). You see this line of thinking all the time, and I'm afraid it's tacitly used as justification for humans to do as they please with animals. However, given the non-existence of free will this distinction is no longer possible. We humans are also forced to see ourselves as meat puppets or biological "machines".

Comments, thoughts? Agree/disagree?

[TheVeganAtheist]

Funny that you bring this up now. I was watching another Sam Harris video last night on this very topic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0lOK7vikwg

I find his argument logical and compelling, however I have to do more research before I can affirm a belief.

This line of reasoning is on dangerous grounds because if people start believing that they are no longer responsible for their actions (because whatever they do is the result of all the preceding events in their life, and their genes) chaos may ensue.
Its a tricky issue.

[Volenta]

I find it a very important and relevant topic, meanly because the consequences of it; you should arrange societies according to the truth of it. It raises questions like whether you are justified in condemning people for certain believes or feelings (like pedophilia). But also whether you should punish someone for things they aren't ultimately responsible for if the consequences of that punishment aren't beneficial. Punishing for societal justice doesn't make sense if free will is false.

Surely it has consequences on religious believes. It makes this life pretty worthless in the light of Christianity since your eternal position of whether you go to heaven or hell is already established at birth, so why bother to go through all the suffering here if you are not free in choosing for Jesus anyway? Appealing to free will to fix the problem of evil can also be dismissed, so they wouldn't have any ground to stand on anymore (although they already couldn't if we would accept free will for sake of argument, there are others problems as well).

It's somehow weird to argue that only humans have free will and other animals don't—which some people do (meanly apologists). Where would this free will suddenly come from if our cognitive abilities can be placed on a gradual scale where animals definitely can't be zero. People don't want to recognize that humans also behave according to instincts. The problem is that we have this one word 'instinct' which people look at to be some kind of fixed static thoughtless kind of behavior, while instincts can be enormously complex (take human language for example). What I'm trying to say is that speciesism already has no feet to stand on, independent of the question of free will.

@TheVeganAtheist
Such a misleading title in that video. I encourage you to read his little book Free Will, I found it to be a very compelling read. It also deals pretty well with your worry of responsibility. Also read up to Daniel Dennett's thoughts on it if you like to hear the other side of the discussion. He rejects the hard determinism of Sam Harris and holds the positions of compatibilism (free will in a deterministic world). I woundn't bother much with the libertarianism (which is yes to free will and no to determinism) because it has no foundation with our current understanding of physics.

[Sakana]

It's certainly an interesting topic, and I'm excited to see how it will develop over the coming years. It was definitely not easy for myself to accept this at first. There are also potential risks associated, since some studies show that people might react to this information by displaying less self-control and more anti-social behaviours (such as cheating on a test). On the other hand, it should make society less hateful and more compassionate. I guess the trick will have to be finding a way to convey this information without shattering people's view of themselves completely.

[Volenta]

It was definitely not easy for myself to accept this at first.

Oh really? I didn't do anything for me to be honest. Maybe that's why I'm not really that concerned about the practical consequences you and TheVeganAtheist raised. There is nothing that changes about reality after believing it to be true. Surely your attitude to people may change in a positive way because of the nonexistence of their responsibility, but to adapt your behavior to use it as an excuse to do bad things seems strange to me. But it's funny, because that's also something these people don't have an influence on, so that makes questions in the pragmatic context kind of hard to answer.

[thebestofenergy]

Sam Harris did a great job at explaining the illusion of free will in the video.
I agree that those 2 consequences will probably be the most significant ones - regarding religion and humans having as much free will as other animals - but it's going to change how we view lots of things.
It's going to be a hard concept to accept for the majority of people; it'll surely take a lot of time.
One positive effect is that it'll lead to a more compassionate and less hateful society.

[brimstoneSalad]

It's a semantic issue; it depends on how you define free will, and how you measure it.

A will can be free to varying degrees from various influences. Though the conventional religious concept of free will is of course incoherent (we didn't need FMRI to show us that; it's logically incoherent).

I find it a very important and relevant topic, meanly because the consequences of it; you should arrange societies according to the truth of it. It raises questions like whether you are justified in condemning people for certain believes or feelings (like pedophilia). But also whether you should punish someone for things they aren't ultimately responsible for if the consequences of that punishment aren't beneficial. Punishing for societal justice doesn't make sense if free will is false.

Uhm, no. Sorry Volenta; that's completely irrelevant.

"Free will" is just a semantic and philosophical issue.

It has no bearing on the 'should' of our behavior, although the theistic concept (which is based on bad logic) naturally begets more bad logic, so purging our society from it's influence can be a very good thing.
That is not to say that we can not or should not replace it with a more coherent philosophical and approximate notion. OR that it has anything to do with the notion of responsibility and punishment.

[Volenta]

Uhm, no. Sorry Volenta; that's completely irrelevant.

"Free will" is just a semantic and philosophical issue.

It has no bearing on the 'should' of our behavior, although the theistic concept (which is based on bad logic) naturally begets more bad logic, so purging our society from it's influence can be a very good thing.
That is not to say that we can not or should not replace it with a more coherent philosophical and approximate notion. OR that it has anything to do with the notion of responsibility and punishment.

I'm not sure what you're actually attacking from what I said. If you responded to whether it was justified to condemn people for certain believes; I could have phrased that better. I didn't mean to say that it would be immoral (or bad in some other sense) to hold that thought. I meant to say that it wouldn't make sense in the same way that it also wouldn't make sense to condemn a bear for attacking you.

About adjusting behavior: most of our behavior can stay the same, there is no reason to change. That's actually what I said when talking about the practical consequences of people's awareness of not having free will; I see no reason to suddenly cheat on a test apart from having a lazy and silly excuse. Where our 'behavior' should change is on things like punishment (can't really think of anything other then that at the moment).

I'm not sure whether you think it has consequences on our criminal justice system. I didn't understand how you used that OR (whether it would include the first not or not).

[brimstoneSalad]

I meant to say that it wouldn't make sense in the same way that it also wouldn't make sense to condemn a bear for attacking you.

That analogy doesn't hold up.

Humans understand legal consequences, and that's part of what guides our actions. Punishment is preventative on a social scale, as well as reformative. It makes perfect sense to condemn somebody for doing something bad, no matter how it happened provided the average member of society wouldn't have done the same in that general situation, since we can't predict it in an absolute sense.

Where our 'behavior' should change is on things like punishment (can't really think of anything other then that at the moment).

That's my point; there's no reason punishment would have to change.

"Free will" in the philosophical sense is irrelevant to crime and punishment. The only thing that is relevant is provision for external force, which would make almost anybody do the same in that instance, and for which we can assign blame to another party and seek restitution or justice there as a preventative measure (which is something that already exists, and pretty much always has existed).

[Volenta]

That analogy doesn't hold up.

Humans understand legal consequences, and that's part of what guides our actions. Punishment is preventative on a social scale, as well as reformative. It makes perfect sense to condemn somebody for doing something bad, no matter how it happened provided the average member of society wouldn't have done the same in that general situation, since we can't predict it in an absolute sense.

I think the analogy does hold up. Of course there is a difference; human decisions are much more complex, but that doesn't mean anything in this context. If you're not free, it doesn't matter how complex your cognitive abilities are, it doesn't make you free. Not sure what legal consequences have to do with having feelings for children (the example I gave), but lets take a more complex example like murder for the argument here to line up with the bears attack. The fact that humans understand the legal consequences means that is taken into consideration before acting. The murder is still being done because of other factors that are also in play (bad genes, bad friends, bad upbringing/parents, etc.). The murderer has no input in the way this different factors are balanced (how strongly each force acts) in his brain. It's no accident that younger people with a prefrontal cortex isn't fully developed are higher represented in the crime rates.

It doesn't matter whether someone 1) has a brain tumor, 2) is born a psychopath, 3) has continually been abused as a child, or anything else, the fact is that it all led to the same action—murder in this instance—without having anything to say about it. That's the reason why free will is sometimes defined as the ability to make a decision without internal or external restrictions that lead to the decision. The more we know in the fields of neuroscience, the vaguer the line between healthy brains with bad connections and brains with tumors becomes in the context of explaining behavior.

That doesn't mean that punishment isn't necessary. It can and does prevent many murders and other crimes from happening. It is a huge factor for limiting the willpower of murdering. All I'm saying is that punishment doesn't make sense in certain area's. You shouldn't punish someone for performing a crime in a deep sleep, because in that instance the factor of punishment couldn't be taken in consideration. So there is a difference in voluntary and involuntary actions. But even if it were voluntary and the punishment wouldn't profit anyone, it shouldn't be done out of societal satisfaction (unless that would lead to more crimes of course).

That's my point; there's no reason punishment would have to change.

"Free will" in the philosophical sense is irrelevant to crime and punishment. The only thing that is relevant is provision for external force, which would make almost anybody do the same in that instance, and for which we can assign blame to another party and seek restitution or justice there as a preventative measure.

It makes more sense to hold on to psychopaths longer (or even take them off the street beforehand) than people that are no danger to society anymore. It makes more sense to help pedophiles to prevent them from abusing a child instead of punishing them blindly, because we know that a small percentage of them is going to abuse a child. It makes more sense to extend our criminal law concerning minors to 25 years instead of 18 (because of the unripe prefrontal cortex). There are definitely things that can change in our current system if we grant free will as an illusion. And I've granted you that some things would stay the same for practical reasons.