Essay talk:The Free Will Challenge

Is this a joke? It appears to be serious, but then perhaps it's supposed to be a joke. If serious, it's wrong, and not even a little. The inability to stop thinking about an elephant does not mean that you can't make other decisions. Hipo^crite 16:25, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Somewhere in between. If you actually had the decision making faculty suggested by 'free will', your mind would obey decisions framed by the resolutions made by its conscious part. I do think this establishes that it doesn't. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 16:30, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Posit I had free will to determine the decision to flick my wrist at a specific time, regardless of if I were thinking of apples or not, but could not, in the least, stop thinking about apples ever. Is that free will, or not? Hipo^crite 16:32, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

I'd say you can't tell, but that suggests a no. If you can't stop thinking about apples, how can you be sure that whatever it is that fixes that in your head isn't yanking your chain when you think you're choosing to flick your wrist? The point is to raise the possibility that this illusion of choice may indeed be just that: an illusion; there are things that you should be able to choose, but in fact can't. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 16:41, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

You obviously didn't read the statement, or are just unwilling to engage except to restate the point you already made that is categorically absurd. "Posit I had free will to determine the decision to flick my wrist at a specific time, regardless of if I were thinking of apples or not." Are you saying it's impossible for someone to have the free will to flick their wrist but not the free will to stop thinking about apples? If you are saying that, what sources do you cite for such? If you are asserting it as fact, why should we listen to you? Hipo^crite 17:27, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

OK. If we posit you have free will to do or not do something, then you have free will there. The question is whether actual human minds actually have it, or only seem to. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 18:38, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

How does proving I don't have the free will to throw myself off a building in any way prove I don't have free will? Hipo^crite 19:08, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

I really don't know where the claim that "If you actually had the decision making faculty suggested by 'free will', your mind would obey decisions framed by the resolutions made by its conscious part" comes from. It is neither a part of nor a consequence of any major view on free will. It seems like you a have a libertarian (nothing to do with the political position) concept of free will in mind. On this account, broadly speaking, freedom is the ability to do otherwise. That is, given that I do X in some situation, I am free if I could have done something else. But this doesn't mean that I have to have absolute control over what I do, or that all my actions are free. This is no more a worry for free will than the existence of reflex actions. If someone hits my knee in the right place, I might not be able to keep my leg from kicking out. But that doesn't entail that I lack free will, only that my free will can be abrogated by various ex- and internal forces.TallMan (talk) 20:37, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

If conscious minds can control anything, you'd think their own contents would be first among those things. Whatever else this shows, it shows that they are unable to do this. Its memory contains strings that can't be cut. This is part of the structure of human memory which it cannot escape. When the command is remembered, the unwanted image comes bobbing back, so you always fail. I do think this is a telling point against the hypothesis, if not of free will, at least of a free will that resides in the conscious portion of the mind: it shows you that consciousness is not even in control of the ideas it chooses to contemplate. (And a free unconscious mind strikes me as worse than useless.) - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 02:46, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Why would I think that? Related: why should I think that control should be absolute? As it happens, I'm a hard determinist. But that doesn't mean I'm going to support any argument against free will. Your argument hinges on quite a few unsupported assumptions, assumptions which aren't shared by anyone who's actually working the subject (to my knowledge). I'd recommend taking a look at some of Dennett's work on the subject, in particular Elbow Room (I think; I'm too lazy to dig up citations for what I taught when I was teaching free will). TallMan (talk) 03:49, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

I've always understood free will as the claim that the conscious mind is able to control... something. So what are things that conscious minds can control? Not itself, it seems. It is constrained in ways that make it unable to obey a simple command concerning something that would seem to be easily within its grasp. I am assuming all of these things, or rather not; I don't actually think they're true, but I do think they're predicted by anything fairly called free will. If a conscious mind can't even decide what it's going to think about, it might still be free to make other kinds of decisions, but it casts fairly strong doubt on that.

I think this little experiment does in fact establish that conscious minds do poorly at choosing their own contents. I do think there's a problem in saying that conscious minds can control other things while not being in control of themselves. As a wise leader once said: "your brain may no longer be the boss." - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 04:12, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Your experiment demonstrates nothing of the sort. Compare: "You can't walk from New York to Sydney, therefore you're not in control of your legs" or "You can't keep from blinking when someone pokes you in the face, therefore you're not in control of your eyes." As far as I am aware, no model of free will entails the claim that free will requires complete and arbitrary control of bodily processes (including thinking). On a libertarian model, freedom is the ability to do otherwise, and your experiment in no way demonstrates that we lack this ability. At best it shows that some alternatives are closed to us, but in order for it to be problematic you'd have to show that all alternatives are closed.

In addition, free will is usually couched in terms of actions, not thoughts, and while a thought may be an action it isn't always. This is especially true of thoughts that are roughly analogous to reflex behaviors; reflex behaviors generally aren't actions.TallMan (talk) 12:22, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

If you try to walk from New York to Sydney, the obstacles that prevent the entire journey from being carried out on foot are at least known and obvious. The limits that prevent human minds from carrying out purposes that they can nevertheless form are far less obvious; the experiment shows at least that such a limit exists. The mind was built to be able to perform only certain tasks, and forgetting about a green apple on demand is not one of those. It relates also to the way out of British empiricism: our minds can in fact surely infer that an outside world exists, because that outside world actually affects the mind, and can inspire it involuntarily with emotions and drives that are not chosen by the conscious mind. Consciousness is bound to the body it serves, and itself a part of a world that only seems external to itself.

Our minds will not obey their own orders, obsess on unwanted ideas unbidden, and are doing all sorts of things that the conscious part just doesn't perceive and gets no say over. I think this situation makes free will, or at least a free will that is identified somehow with consciousness, less likely. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 16:46, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Again: there's no reason to think that free will requires complete control over the mind, by which I mean 1) it's not generally assumed by the people who work on free will and 2) you've given no reason to think so. I'm going to leave the British empiricism remark behind - I think you mean skepticism, but it's neither here nor there. Your remark about the obstacles preventing us from walking from NYC to Sydney is irrelevant. Plenty of people (children, people who don't know about NYC and/or Sydney, some mentally disabled folks) don't know you can't walk from NYC to Sydney, and it makes not a whit of difference in their ability to do so or their free will.TallMan (talk) 04:34, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Actually, walking on foot is one of the main ways how people get from NYC to Sydney, along with sitting and lying down. Though it usually takes some strategic jumping on top of moving objects that aren't part of the Earth crust. ;) 141.134.75.236 (talk) 19:32, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

As Lord Woebone wrote in Haddock vs. The Great Western Railway Company, 32 R.f.Nowh. 312, 322 (1957), "there is no precedent for anything until it has been done for the first time." If you view free will not as a metaphysical statement, but rather as a hypothesis, what does it predict? I view free will as making testable claims that conscious minds enjoy some sort of freedom of action. If it can be shown that conscious minds in fact lack that freedom, it doesn't look good for the hypothesis. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 15:13, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Freedom of an action is not disproven by freedom of any action. Do I have freedom of movement? Can I jump four meters? No. Can I move faster than the speed of light? No. Do I have freedom of movement? Yes. Do I have TOTAL freedom of movement? Obviously not. Does man have total free will? Obviously not - we cannot count every atom. You can't speak Japanese. So what? I can still chose to turn my head left or right. Hipo^crite 15:30, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

I'll throw something at you. It's not at all hard to stop thinking about the elephant. You just have to stop. You learn how to do that over time, how to think of something else, or how to redirect your thoughts. People who have boarderline OCD have to learn how to stop thinking about whatever they are obsessing on. People with sleep disorders have to learn to stop thinking about particular things. That it's hard, or tricky, does't mean someone does not have the free will to do it, just that they do not have the skills yet. Like learning to ride a bike. "if you cannot ride this bike, you do not have free will". um... ok. Anyhow, your whole premise is a giant "set up". as others have said, the fact that in some cases, you cannot do something, or you cannot NOT do something is simply indicative that you have a body that first and formost REACTS. we all know this. but that says nothing of wheather or not you can choose chocolate ice cream, or vanilla.Godot The ablity to breath is such an overrated ability 15:34, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Here's an easy recipe to not think about a green apple for 5 minutes starting from any time you plan to: 1. Search on Youtube for stupid cat video playlist. 2. Go "D'awww!" for 5 minutes. 3. Get caught up so badly in pet videos that you actually stop thinking about a green apple for way more than 5 minutes before you remember that thing you were supposed to do. 4. Make a mental note that you stopped thinking about a green apple for 5 minutes at some point during your viewing session and continue watching the kittehs.

(Of course, if pet videos aren't your thing, you could also count sheep or reminisce about the good old days or something.) Nullahnung (talk) 16:12, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

There is a blivet floating around the net that says, "You are now breathing manually."

We shall set aside the fact that nobody breathes manually unless they are squeezing their own ambu bag, which makes for a ludicrous image of a physiological near-impossibility. And yet, when presented with the above suggestion, years of vocal coaching and contemplative practice have left me with the ability to "watch" my breath without interfering with its natural automatic flow. So, in that limited case and a few others, I have the free will to ignore any random clown on the internet who wants me to seize control of my own breathing. Not thinking of a monkey is gonna cost you extra. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 16:22, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

This is gonna be somewhat beside the point of the free will discussion, but this reminded me of another thing some bastards like to do in video commentary to annoy their viewers jokingly. "You are now aware of your own breathing." Some people have the attitude to not get annoyed at perceiving their own breathing, and it goes away faster. Other people don't and it takes them a while or some extra effort. Not that there's many conclusions to be drawn from that about free will if any. If you really wanted to make the breath awareness go away faster you just have to decide on what distraction to expose yourself to. Nullahnung (talk) 16:54, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

SWMBO rolls her eyes and grins whenever I whistle a tune that she thinks will give her an earworm. We have a meme between us that says Frosty the Snowman is good for chasing those away. Sprocket J Cogswell (talk) 17:19, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Not thinking about certain stuff is actually ridiculously easy. All it takes is not focussing on the task and preoccupying yourself with something distracting. If you want more control than that, it's perfectly possible to train your mind for that sort of thing. Though speaking from personal experience, it's no panacea for social anxiety, lack of inspiration or lack of assertiveness. 141.134.75.236 (talk) 20:07, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Free won't and compatibilism

Not having control over thoughts doesn't refute compatibilist views of free will. Above, Hipocrite is referencing the Libet experiments on free will. Libet demonstrated that readiness potentials appear before a conscious decision to move a wrist or finger. However, Libet also demonstrated experimentally that there is a veto power, or a "free won't," over these unconscious drives. ([1]) This accords well with a compatibilist view wherein motives are determined but free will to carry those motives out may or may not be constrained. (Again, Dennett is another good source on this.) Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 16:43, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Again, my academics is rooted in 80s works, cause:lazy! but i remember materialists goign on about how even choices like Vanilla or Chocolate are things you do not "choose" because you are predetermined to do A or B based on extensive history. if you knew all the factors, you could predict anyone's behaviors. is that still the thinking? Godot The ablity to breath is such an overrated ability 16:55, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

I don't know if anyone has done polls on this. I think it's safe to assume that contra-causal free will is largely dead amongst philosophers and social scientists. Even many hard determinists, though, don't claim that if you had complete knowledge of all the factors, you could predict any behavior. The development of chaos theory has shown that even deterministic systems may not be predictible. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 17:04, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ I find it useful to put a little "ping, have you done the research," in responses to things. For instance, when asked about trade-offs between goods in an economic perspective, I'll always use Potatoes as one of the goods. Sample purchases with incomplete information are always used cars. Free will will always be wrist flicks. That experiment was, by the way, terrible. I don't think it had anything to do with free-will at all, but rather the physical neurology of wrist flicking. Hipo^crite 17:49, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Pretty much in the earliest page that he mentions quantum uncertainty in, Libet combines this with chaos theory to suggest inherently random yet significant events that are impossible to predict and go against classical notions of determinism that you are referring to, Godot. He also says that those events could still be just natural occurrence and so are still deterministic, which would mean that conscious will is a by-product of physical processes, however random and doesn't actually cause anything itself, since those physical processes are what is causing those things.

In fact, I recommend reading the text from that point on (in which Libet actually discusses how free will ties into the whole thing and what a further, more helpful experiment might look like, Hipocrite!), since it elaborates on things like non-deterministic free will (free will with causal power) and the ways in which it should violate the laws of physics and what that might look like (something I don't typically see discussed).

I pretty much agree with him that as long as we don't really have any compelling evidence either way, we might as well just assume whatever we feel like. Nullahnung (talk) 17:58, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Again, you guys clearly know a lot more about both the philo and the neuroscience of "free will", but i've always taken determinism with a grain of salt. "if you think you have free will, and are acting as if you have free will, and feel as if you have free will, than in all real world applications - you do." Even if it is a chemical deterministic thing that you will "choose the apple", as you think about it, you come to that decision, based on your own thoughts... so what's the difference. or something. Of course that's how many Xians get around a God who knows all, and a god who punishes evil. "well if you live like things are your choice, then they in effect are, so god knows what you wil do, and lets you" or some such...Godot The ablity to breath is such an overrated ability 21:28, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

I've always found a "free will" that relies on such things as chaos theory, Brownian motion, or quantum uncertainties less than satisfactory. Even if they introduce uncertainty of outcome, that isn't free will; a random number generator is not an agent making a choice. They also might make testable claims: if free will is founded on the chaos of molecular motion, the more feverish you are, the more free will you have. Nothing we know about human consciousness suggests that it is affected by those things. What we can tell about human consciousness is that it appears to run on a sort of operating system it is seldom aware of, and that circumscribe its ability to do things like order the deletion of specific memories. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 02:54, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Apparently you are talking about what I wrote above, Smerdis of Tlön? If so, you appear to be slightly off in your interpretation of what Libet was saying about the relationship between the concept of free will and randomness-included deterministic theories. You might want to read/re-read what Libet wrote in the last third or so leading up to his conclusion (on page 55, from the heading "Determinism and Free Will") about free will in this: http://pacherie.free.fr/COURS/MSC/Libet-JCS1999.pdf Nullahnung (talk) 03:05, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

It is. I hadn't read this paper before I came up with this test -- I came up with it about twenty years ago, actually. But, as the paper says, "In an issue so fundamentally important to our view of who we are, a claim for illusory nature should be based on fairly direct evidence. Such evidence is not available; nor do determinists propose even a potential experimental design to test the theory." What would such an experiment look like? One that shows that the conscious mind is able to formulate but not actually carry out instructions about things that intuitively seem to be within its power -- asking it to control, not even the flicking of wrists, but purely mental events inside the conscious mind -- is at minimum not obviously irrelevant. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 14:26, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

In the rest of that same paragraph Libet refers to a proposed experiment he wrote about: Basically you measure some kind of consciousness field and show how it directly causes processes within the brain without other things being needed. That kind of experiment would set out to strengthen the notion of the existence of a free will with causal power (non-deterministic) and seems to be feasible. The experiment that you are proposing, however, I imagine would be much more difficult to conceive, because you'd have to prove that the consciousness is NOT able to do something (typically the harder one to design experiments around is the one that seeks to prove that something is NOT there). Nullahnung (talk) 14:47, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure I really understood what was being proposed by that experiment; as far as I know, all of our ways of looking into brain activity revolve around measuring the activity of neurons. It is relatively easy to show that consciousness is constrained in mildly surprising ways. - Smerdis of Tlön (talk) 18:57, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Bugger this for a game of soldiers

I refuse to be told to take a stupid test about free will. Генгис^{Our ignorance is God; what we know is science.} 17:02, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess? Chair tater (talk) 04:08, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Green apple?

What's all this talk about an apple on the talk page? I'm really confused.192.249.47.186 (talk) 18:17, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Did you read the essay? (Click the "show" link under the "Step one" section.)--ZooGuard (talk) 18:22, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

You just missed the joke. Ikanreed (talk) 19:41, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

The IP did what I did and ignored the test altogether. Radical freedom, baby! 141.134.75.236 (talk) 20:53, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

141 got it.192.249.47.186 (talk) 01:15, 30 January 2015 (UTC)