> The word would is a past-tense form of the verb to will. Checkmate
Here, its an modal verb modifying “like” into the subjunctive mood.
Where it is a past tense of “will” its the other “will” (the modal verb expressing future tense or habitual action), not the active verb referring to exercising will (of which the past tense is “willed”, not “would”.)
Although I've seen a usage (though I think its either actually archaic or an affected archaicism) in which the modal-active combination “would will” expressing exercise of will in the subjunctive mood reduced simply to just “would”, so “would” is sometimes used a form of the verb “to will” in the sense of “exercise will”, but, still, not in the use under discussion.
It seem that each time I read something about this claim it seems to distill down to a deterministic universe from a classical physics viewpoint. At the same time there are examples of non-deterministic classical physics described by various aspects of Chaos Theory and its "strange attractors" phenomena.
What strikes me is that the folks arguing "No Free Will" appear to ignore the non-deterministic parts of classical physics.
I do not know is whether this born out of ignorance or whether these folks have an agenda when it comes to trying to convince others that they do not actually have "free will."
Chaotic systems and strange attractors are 100% deterministic, yet still unpredictable -- that's what makes them so interesting. Really, determinism vs. non-determinism seems to be missing the point. I wouldn't feel like I have any more free will if it turned out all my decisions were based on the outcome of a random die roll, for instance.
Like so many philosophical discussions, it quickly devolves into an argument about definitions. What exactly is "free will"? How would the universe and my experiences in it be different if I had it vs. if I did not? If we're not debating about testable, falsifiable things, then we're just arguing about definitions of words.
An example: release a Ping-Pong ball into the water at the top of Niagara Falls and tell me within one meter of accuracy where the ball will be relative to the banks of the river when it reaches 500 yards past the bottom of the falls.
That situation is absolutely deterministic. Its just so complex that it is nearly impossible for us to predict with current methods. That's also the current situation for behavioral neuroscience as well.
if a complex system can be disentangled to explain certain causes producing certain results, the system exhibits a form of laminar flow in time and space.
otherwise it exhibits turbulence. while certain forms of turbulence appear indecipherable at first, it turns out some of the turbulence can be predicted by identifying vortex patterns.
at the margin beyond those identifiable vortexes, lies the the volume in which entropy of turbulent flow goes asymptotic towards proveable non-decipherability.
thats where free will is.in that volume.
so free will might 'not exist' but still be comprised as an emergent property of provably undecipherable turbulence.
if we can prove that causation can NEVER possibly be found, then we can express this as free will. god of the gaps. free will of the gaps.
as such, even a bacteria may be found to have indetifiable free will in a number of studied circumstances. ypu may have to look in very fine detail to find it. find what? find the indecipherablr margin where the bacteria takes actions upon itself and its environment.
animals most certainly can be found to have free will.
the real question for human civilization is not whether we have free will.
the big question is how we follow a code of ethics to hold people accountable and responsible for their actions. that is the bedrock of faith in our way of life. individually and together.
Can HN help me understand this: When people say that free will doesn't exist, is that a falsifiable position? What would it take to convince you that free will does exist?
I think the better question is, 'why does it matter?'. We all at least have the illusion of free will, even if everything is predetermined. Effectively it makes no difference to our perception and experience.
Looking at psychology, in general we see people who feel like they have agency in their lives are happier, and people feeling like they have no agency are depressed. Our agency allows us to do great things, like spearhead interesting projects or just make our lives better with our choices.
Some people will link free will to the conscious experience, but I don't think that's quite right. We all know that we are 'aware'. But being aware, experiencing life consciously, doesn't make a difference to whether we are watching some great cosmic play being preformed.
In fact, the way things happen in life, all things being the made up of cumulative events from the past, it be strange if things weren't predetermined. To me personally, a bit of hypocritical belief is necessary to continue acting out the play.
What about when people say it does exist - is that a falsifiable position?
If nobody can conclusively say anything about "free will" - if all we can agree on is that it's intrinsically ineffable - then it all starts to sound a bit like Russell's Teapot, or angels dancing on pinheads, and we should probably focus our energies on something more effable.
I tend to think of Free Will as something close to Buddhist enlightenment/liberation. Something we are capable of, but not something that everyone practices. The ability to look past the reactions of your monkey brain 0.2 and observe your own thoughts then make mindful decisions while practicing loving kindness for yourself and others.
However, free will in the sense of a soul commanding a body separate from that body that is tallying up sins to be punished based on those decisions is hard to believe.
But to falsify a concept like "Free Will" it needs to first be defined. It's one of those things where you can get 1000 different definitions.
This is what I always try to ask people. Is there even a possible definition of free will within the laws of physics? It seems to me to be blurry philosophy and nobody has the same definition. Not that it's invalid to talk about if there's no physical framework. But there's no scientific way we can talk about it that I've seen.
If you accept that cause and effect holds in a closed system, then no, there is no possibility of free will. But within that viewpoint, everything we think of as making us human is dead. It's not just free will. Truth is dead. (You can't determine whether something is true, because you have no choice whether you believe it or not. All you can say is that you found the explanation convincing.) Morals are dead. (Both because you can't blame anyone for what they do, and because you have no ability to choose what you think is right or wrong.) Even love is dead, at least in the higher sense of choosing to do what's best for the other person, because you can't choose anything. And even in the lower sense of attraction, that's determined too.
The problem is, this view really doesn't match with our experience of what it means to live as human beings. We experience deciding. We become convinced that things are actually true. We love and are loved. We know, from direct experience of living as human beings, that this is not who we are.
This leaves a dilemma. Either our experience is wrong, or our initial starting point is wrong. Either the laws of physics are not what is "furthest back" (in Francis Schaeffer's term), or else we really are determined and our lived experience is an illusion.
Option 3 - your logical leap was invalid, and it is perfectly possible to be human and believe in truth and love and morality and all the rest of it, all within a deterministic physical system.
Choice is deterministic, but that doesn't make it less real - on the contrary, it gives your choices meaning! They have causes, reasons, justifications! It would hardly be preferable if your "choice" were the outcome of a fair dice roll, would it? What kind of choice would that be?
I think the problem arises from a confusion of of abstraction levels. At the level of atoms and chemical reactions, you are completely deterministic and "choice" isn't a meaningful concept. 10 stories up, at the level of thoughts and ideas, it is. This is no different than how "pressure" is a meaningful concept for a tank of air, but not a single air molecule.
If your view is that Brownian Motion is not deterministic then does that not contradict the idea 'that cause and effect holds in a closed system' as any sort of absolute?
The subject was free will. I said "determined" in contrast to free will. So, if you've got Brownian Motion (or, worse, quantum uncertainty), then you've got some randomness in there, and it's not a purely deterministic system. But that doesn't give you any more free will; it just means that the machine that determines your choices has a random number generator as one of the inputs. You still don't get to choose, because you don't control the randomness.
Typical BS vendor. I will guarantee that Mr. Stephen Fry does not live his life as if he has no free will, in which case he is just another fraud promoting ideas that he himself does not believe to be true.
If one did not believe in free will, one would not believe in rewarding or punishing people, including criminals. It is not fair, reasonable, or productive to reward or punish people if their decisions are the result of some mechanistic process, rather than a decision that they made born of free will. That would be like punishing the weather for a tornado. My guess though, is that Mr. Stephen Fry does not believe that we should let serial rapists go unpunished or just open up all our prisons. If he believed his own words, these are exactly the kinds of things he would advocate for, since morality can only exist in a world with free will.
