Is intelligence additive? I can see that higher levels of understanding would enable us to get over the barriers to the comprehension of extremely complex phenomena, but is a collective intelligence possible, as this is not necessarily the same thing as a collective consciousness? (Of course, increased knowledge/memory can easily be accommodated in the future by a flashable chip, or maybe by access to the memory of others, or their flashable chip, but this is not intelligence). I suppose there are so many facets of intelligence that access to ones are limited in individuals would be beneficial. But simple access in a collective consciousness is not the same thing as a shared/combined intelligence.

Continuing AND back to the point of the topic. If we became a collective consciousness, would we retain free will (if we had it in the first place)?

I see I mixed two concepts together and your right to point it out. The combined knowledge only raises the platform of understanding, not the intelligence of our race. Intelligence probably increases due to the cultural pressures put on the biology. Therefore as we raise our average knowledge, we also create the external pressures on our bodies to adapt. That same recursive loop that many have spoken of in this and other topics.

I think we will always have the perception of free will.

actually no.. i believe the Bible.. and it is clear about God giving us a free will.... He has always given us the option to believe in Him or Not.

Can anyone provide a rigorous definition of "free will"? Anyone?

Rigorous meaning you can please all of the people all of the time rigorous?

If the alleged concept of "free will" is mysterious or inexplicable, why would you desire a definition of it?


What I find noteworthy about this terribly belabored topic is that no one ever considers the implications of a stalemate. Rather, each side prepares more evidence and thought experiments and hypotheses and all manner of sophisticated jargon with the sole purpose of propounding irrefragable evidence that the opposition's tenets have been quashed

"Free will" to the classic compatibilist means simply being able (ie physically unconstrained by outside forces) to do what one wishes/wills/wants to do. It is thus very different to the kind of free will that the metaphysical libertarian seeks (ie the idea of free agency and ultimate responsibility). The compatibilist notion of free will assumes neither determinism nor indeterminism and is quite at home with either concept (in contrast to the hard determinist who denies indeterminism, and the libertarian who denies hard determinism).

However, I suggest that even hard determinists believe in free will of the compatibilist kind.

Of course. They just refuse to call it free will.

Most of the arguments against free will have to do with neuroscience and the predictability of the human brain. Right now, as we speak, scientists are building software to predict how human neurons fire.

In other words, it will be possible for them to know what your going to say - before you say it and what your going to do before you do it.

You could quite possibly sum up the human brain in a mathematical algorithm, although it would be very, very long. So you see, when people can predict your actions in advance of them actually happening, you begin to look more like a machine than a "person" as we know it.

The debate about free will has been heavily debated and no definite answer has been reached.

Max, chaotic systems will probably always be beyond the reach of complete predictability since you need infinite precision to model them and make predictions. This means that neural systems will very likely never be completely predictable (since they are chaotic systems).

Being inclined towards determinism since indeterminism usually implies ignorance of causes or in some cases, a giving up on trying to find the causes of things (i.e., by rationalizing that things are 'really' indeterministic or random, or simply the 'Will of God' without further inquiring into cause-effect relationships), I have nonetheless come across useful definitions of 'free will', or more precisely, 'freedom', in the deterministic sense, as the definition supplied by Spinoza. We are 'free' to the extent that we are the cause of our actions, and since we live in a completely deterministic universe, all of our causes are intertwined with others in a complex web of causality, where nothing is left to chance. Is this incompatible with quantum mechanics? No, though some might say that it depends on whether you accept the Copenhagen interpretation, where even though the evolution of the wavefunction is purely deterministic, the collapse results in a random selection of particle values, or Bohm's interpretation, where everything is deterministic, but at the expense of locality of interactions.

To make any sense of the world, it is necessary to adopt a deterministic worldview. People may disagree with me here, but I would justify it pragmatically; namely, that it is useful to believe that everything has causes and is deterministic because that opens the door for determining what those causes are and for further understanding, prediction, and control; the hallmarks of science. Thus, to speak of 'free will', I can accept no less than a deterministic definition for it, since anything else is likely a simple parroting of what others have told them (such as, 'free will' is the human freedom to choose), often employing definitions that are circular, inconsistent, vague, or otherwise unsatisfactory.

Nonetheless, it should be pointed out that deterministic definitions of 'free will', which I would subscribe to, are rather disingenuous since the term is usually understood by other people to mean some mysterious human freedom to make choices that apparently is not determined by prior causes; hence, confusion is wont to arise in any discussion of 'free will'. However, by being precise in what we are talking about, it is possible to avoid this, and so my question above, about what precisely is 'free will', was meant to bring a quick resolution to this unnecessarily messy topic.

Lucid, I agree word for word with what you've said.

Especially:



and

For some reason I am reminded of the serenity prayer my mother would recite when I was a child:



Of course, I believe that these virtues (serenity, courage and wisdom) can be self-manifested rather than bestowed “from on high”, but the underlying sentiments are apropos for this discussion.

And I couldn't resist at least one Nietzsche reference for this dialog...

The thought of eternal recurrence

To desire to do something differently would be to desire to be someone different. I am satisfied with who I am and what I am planning to become so I possess an attitude that affirms my "Being". I view my relative level of freedom as a product of restrictions (both internal and external) being imposed on me - on my ability to do what it is in my nature to do - minus my efforts to override these restrictions.

You mean who you are is presently acceptable but not enough to prevent you to desire to become something different.
The freedom to determine the extent of your own philosophy, definitions and satsifaction...

I would argue that there is another case. To choose internally not to react to whatever external pattern rises up out of the muck.

Not even yes/no choices... simply an uncomplicated "no" would suffice.

Oh I agree that it is important to believe in a deterministic point of view regardless of whether or not there is a definitive free will. Dont get me wrong, I very much prefer to have free will, I was simply stating what the argument was against free will. We will have to see what level of predictability can be achieved in the coming years. Obviously if there is no random element to human consciousness then we face a doom of being a series of actions and reactions. Chaos mathematics may look unpredictable but underneath it lies a pattern of predictability and order. Again we are at the inital problem of whether or not their is any truely random occurances in the universe.

You do realize that randomness has nothing at all to do with the issue of FW, right?

Here's an excellent review of the contemporary FW debate by a friend of mine. BTW, he's a hard determinist (so there are aspect of this paper which I disagree with).

*Who's Afraid of Creeping Exculpation?: The Costs of Hard Compatibilism and Benefits of Free Will Denial *

And here is a truly awesome blog devoted to the FW debate.

*The Garden of Forking Paths*

Because I have a problem with accepting anything, except in theory, as absolutely so, I believe that my will is only relatively free at this point. However, the hope is that, as time goes by, and I become more and more in tune with the All--the physical, mental and spiritual ALL--my will will become more and more free in the exploration of the philosophies, the sciences and the arts, one of which is religion--one that is quite free from dogma and ritual and is based on ethical unitheism, or panentheism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitheism

I can't recall if this has been included in the discussion already, but it might be fairly important to (re)consider:

What is/are the evolutionary benefit(s) of free-will? (And/or, if free-will was an "unplanned" emergent property, are there disadvantages, and might it be selected against in future?)

This is an interesting article, but having scanned through it, I do not see the difference between a hard compatibilist and a free will denier since both accept (or to be more precise, in the case of compatibilism, is compatible with) determinism. Feel free to clarify this distinction. And what is a 'hard incompatibilist', which is a term used but never defined? Is it supposed to be identical to a free will denier? It seems to me that Hume's critique of causality is worth considering too, since any changes in our conception of causality will necessarily effect the meaning of determinism. For example, Hume's challenge that our notions of causality, far from being a 'necessary' connection between two events, are merely habits of the mind, something we do within our mind to connect disparate events into a seamless whole. This relates to free will because, if free will is an illusion and everything is strictly determined by cause-effect relationships, then it is worthwhile to examine more closely precisely what we mean by cause-effect relationships.

Consider Part II of Hume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding:

I take this, and other of Hume's words, to mean that, even if cause-effect relationships are real, and even if determinism is true, then there's still the big problem that we can never infer new cause-effect relationships a priori because cause-effect relationships are discovered after the experience (or observation), from the conjunction of events. We never actually know the 'necessary connection' between cause and effect.

The hard/soft distinction for compatibilism has become popular in the contemporary FW debate and revolves around the question of what would negate moral responsibility. A soft compatibilist believes that the nature of the casual forces (eg, an intelligent designer) that went into producing an agent are relevant, while a hard compatibilist does not. I am a hard compatibilist. From my POV the only two defensible positions are hard compatibilism and free will denial.

The difference between free will denial and compatibilism (as I subscribe to it) are, as Kip mentions, semantical disagreements over what constitutes “freedom” and “responsibility”.

The question which needs to be asked is why these semantical differences exist. Many free will deniers chalk the differences up to “semantical confusion” on the part of compatibilists. I beg to differ.

The epistemological commitments between the two camps are identical. Where they diverge is in their moral frameworks and the metaphysical/ontological commitments which they take on. I am a systems theorist who views systems (eg, a cognition) as having ontological significance. I am also holistic rather than reductionist. In contrast FW deniers view *intelligence* as a fundamental ontological entity, and they are also generally reductionist.

From my perspective, I can view the conception of FW, in the traditional Libertarian sense of the word, as being delusional. However, I view the actual sensation of FW (which we all experience) as having real significance in regards to the functional endurance of Being. Further, I believe that this sensation is a necessary component of Being, and one that can not (should not?) be eliminated.

As I’ve become accustom to at this point, FW deniers seem incapable of recognizing that there is a difference between morals and ethics. For example, I agree with Kip’s ethical proposals entirely, even those about constructive meta-controllers, but my morality leads me to a different interpretation of freedom and agency.

In many ways, the FW debate parallels the issue of “self” that is deconstructed by both eastern philosophy, and now modern functionalism as well. One could label the self as an illusion, but this implies a value judgement. It is just as reasonable for one to be totally aware of the nature of the “self systems” while still reaffirming its actuality.

HH, to your first question I respond as follows: I feel that my free-will helps me be free to play a role in how I will to evolve--as a person or spiritual being--into the future. This is one of the reasons I hope that, because I am very, very curious, this will be so.

Also, I hope, and I believe as follows: I believe, without any proof, that my spiritual and personal being will survive the death of my brain. If it does not, no one will never know, including me. And, from the point of view of the now, what a pity this will be, don't you agree?
=============
BTW, put your second question in another way, please. :(And/or, if free-will was an "unplanned" emergent property, are there disadvantages, and might it be selected against in future?)

I simply do NOT understanding what you are asking.

My question really requires an evidence-based biological answer, rather than a subjective individual "feeling" or "hope". Incidentally, I don't think it will be a big deal if our spiritual or "personal being" survives. We will leave our legacies (esp of discoveries and knowledge, sometimes formally recorded) and also leave room for the fresh intellect of the next independently minded generation.This is a question of a biological kind. If free-will emerged as an extra (surprise, side-product) property of a brain that evolved for another purpose, then might this extra property possibly be disadvantageous for our future survival?

Thanks, Techno. While I am sure there are some similarities with Hofstadter's approach in GEB (which I read a few years ago), I am also influenced by Kurt Godel himself (incompleteness), Alan Turing (undecidability), and Rudy Rucker (with Stephen Wolfram (A New Kind of Science)) (automata and computational inteterminism).

I have scattered half a dozen or so various proofs of free will in places at this site. People advocating against free will here aren't really serious, in my opinion. They know we're free, but they like playing devil's advocate. The past cannot be reconstructed and the future cannot be predicted. Some people say they don't like the "impossible" word, but have they tried dividing by zero recently?

Free will. I will subtract my religious thoughts and give my personal opinion.
(I know this won't be as "educated" definition as the ones above...but)Free will allows you to decided who you are and what you become regardless of situation and enviroment you are raised in. It takes strength and determination...but with the free will you can rise above what you have been around all your life and become someone great. Some people don't realize they have that power to overcome...from living in such tramatizing home enviroment....but deep down they have the strength and free will to overcome...

Nietzsche's doctrine was based on a fallacious belief that there is a finite number of possible states of the universe. However, just consider the number line from zero to one. We can visit an infinite number of locations on that segment and never visit the same place twice.

Nobody can. That's one of the problems with this ancient debate. Nobody can define free will or its opposite. Suppose the non-free will hypothesis is correct. Then there should be some scientific test for it that would end the debate. No such test can be devised. That is, the world with free will is indistinguishable from the world without free will. The debate is inherently pointless.

What non-free will would mean, if it were the case, would be that I could not assign blame for any actions or inactions of myself or others. That will never be the case, so non-free will loses. This should be the end of the argument.

You are free to believe so, so I guess you must be right!
I also agree with you.

it is true.. without free will we would be just a bunch of robots... doing what someone or something commanded..... we would have to have some kind of structure...

So if you obey your understanding of God's will, are you free? Yes, because you can always subtly adjust your understanding to accommodate what you really want to believe.

"I and my Father are One" The Father and the Son are one in the same. IF you don't limit yourself to an image or resonant experience relative to beliefs you become Free will.
The son is representative of all mankind not just one special person. The specialness only refers to that which is Christed, or Elevated above the ego and the relative, or consciousness without relative boundaries.

yes..because we have the free will to choose how we live and think God would have us to... only through a close walk with Christ and staying in His book do we really know what God's true will is for our lives...
but many choose (in free will) to go how they think God would have them...

And that's all that really matters in the end, isn't it?



Rick, I don't find this statement to be unsatisfactory. *Blame* is not necessary for social regulation. I've pointed out to you before that a consequentialist approach is a valid ethical framework. If the primary concern with any overarching "ethic" is the greater good of society, then all interaction and regulation should be aimed towards accomplishing this objective. "Punishment" is a draconian and instinctual. Rehabilitation is enlightened and optimal, IMO.



No, as the material I referenced made clear, Nietzsche went to great lengths to emphasizing the thought of eternal recurrence, rather than its cosmological truth. I've found that the "amori fate" which he espoused is quite useful in dealing with a reality where there is no such thing as an idealized, Libertarian notion of FW.

thanks for the clarification, Techno, as that places me in the hard compatibilism or free will denial camps (though I prefer the term, Spinozist), though it's still unclear to me what the distinguishing characteristics are between the two.



Jellybean, if by robot, you mean a deterministic system, then you are a robot.


in other words, Jelly, you just believe whatever suits your tastes and based on your limited life experience, without any regard for rationality. That's what being a Christian is all about for you. Fortunately, other people take the calling more seriously.



Rick, I'm not playing devil's advocate (). Reason dictates that free will is an illusion. We can still experience 'free will' but it is simply an illusion and does not undermine the fact that every effect has a cause and is part of a vast unitary causal network. The ubiquity of causality is perhaps one of the best established principles we have, and is one of the most fundamental. Of course, causality has it's own pseudo-problems, such as "What is it's own cause?" (which Techno rightly points out is the only meaningful definition of 'free will' when thought is it's own exclusive cause), or "What was the first cause?". These are pseudo-problems because they cannot be solved in the same mindset as they are constructed (i.e., but since they do have solutions, they are not problems; hence pseudo-problems).



Rick, I agree with Techno: universal determinism, which is what people usually mean by non-free will, does not give people a license to avoid responsibility for their actions since it does not negate or undermine social laws and their enforcement, but rather serves as an explanatory device, to explain why someone acted this way and not another, or why someone would likely make this decision and not another. I know defendent's lawyers will sometimes use the argument that their clients were determined to cause some crime by circumstances, as if this were reason in itself to pardon the defendent for the offense, but this is nonsense and should be recognized as such since determinism does not negate social laws and their enforcement.



Jelly, universal determinism, or non-free will, does not negate the experience of making choices, so your assumption that free will lets you choose how to live is completely unfounded, and is further undermined by the fact that you've never precisely defined what you mean by free will. In fact, I challenge you to come up with a satisfactory precise definition for 'free will' because I don't think you know what you're talking about.



Joesus, there is nothing free about it. To claim otherwise is to disregard the thoroughly established ubiquity of mathematical structures throughout experience and throughout Nature. We can't just close our eyes to this fact or blame it solely as an artifact of conditioning. Some have called it Nature's revelation. What is evident is that God, or Nature, or the One, is thoroughly mathematical, and also very likely to be thoroughly deterministic, and thus, does not possess this fiction that no-one can define called 'free will'.



true, Dianah, I haven't addressed it but do recognize the role that the subconscious plays in determining our decisions, which some people may be inclined to interpret consciously as 'free will', after the subconscious has already made the decision for us.

The structures you speak of are relative to universal Laws that support conscious activity. Points of reference to come back to in the building blocks of experience. IF there was no structure and everything was dreamlike in nature there would be more of a random passing of thoughts leading into other thoughts that are not connected by any meaning.

The essence of the absolute or consciousness itself is that it is without boundaries. Universal Mind and the consciousness of Man are the same Universal Mind, Infinite. What reflection seems constant only seems constant in the waking state because the mind attaches itself to static ideas.
The Universe isn't a constant to conscious awareness in an out of body experience, dream consciousness or when the body is dead, and the universe is constantly changing.
According to some scientists it (the universe) came about after a big bang. What is the mathematical configuration for that which was, before "it" popped, and what is the established finite projection for its life span?
Consciousness runs through objects like water through a hose. The relative terms for consciousness as it is applied to mechanical fucntions of the brain don't address the spirit of life only the popular mechanics.

What some call the subconscious is conditioning, or repetative thoughts creating neural pathways, and consciousness relative to waking state awareness of familiarity, judgment and choice.

Consciousness itself is Free in the sense that we cannot control it any more than we can forcibly hypnotize anyone. Even Brainwashing is consentual in that one has to make a choice to give up and accept certain programs of thought, but even that is not permanent because there is something much greater than programming behind the electrical impulses of the brain. It lives prior to birth of the body and after the body dies.

When man lives from Gods will he lives in the perfect moment of now, with no end to time and space regardless of running programs that hold the experience of the body and mind together.

If you go to the movies you know the movie will end and that you are not stuck in your chair or the movie.
Only a few believe they have no choice to recognise they paid for the show and brought themselves to their seat. They are the ones who have resigned themselves to being part of the movie without hope of being anything or doing anything other than being part of the drama that is between the opening title (birth notice in the local paper) and the ending credits (obituaries in the local paper).

no... that is not what being a Christian is for me... I take my faith very seriously...if i didn't care i wouldn't oppose you so much now would I... I was just stating how I have seen other christians live.
My belief is my life... and if i get ridiculed and called stupid by you..i really don't care.. I have better things to do than see you try to tear me down and twist things i say regardless of what I say you won't change your stance

That avatar of yours doesn't appear to be changing its demeanor but I bet you don't stay in the same relative thought stream or maintain your physical appearance in a single expression all the time. I think everyone will think different thoughts regardless of you or any mental conditioning.

As long as you support the idea of your battle between the ego and the Holy Spirit, you will see the universe reflect that all around you so that you can continue the battle.

I addressed the role of the unconscious in one of my disproofs of slave will elsewhere. Most mentation is unconscious, so the will of the person must include this. Remember, to disprove slave will we only have to show that some people are free some of the time, not that every decision is completely free. A person who is well-integrated with his or her unconscious may appear to be more free than other people. Such people may appear to be less conformal to herd behavior and think more deeply about philosophical, religious (spiritual), or political issues.

"Determinism" means that a decision point is fully determined by the mental state of the decider and his or her inputs (from the enviornment around him or her). However, it's not really as simple as that as a person's mind and body are part of his or her environment, and previous mental states affect the input because a person's previous actions change the environment. The will problem is not static, but has a dynamic dimension. Anyone who would attempt to refute free will needs to take this into account.

I assume the double negative is unintentional. I am not a utilitarian, so the overarching ethic is not the greater good (although that could be a side effect). To me, ethics is right thought for right action for a life well lived. Blaming others is just a natural human tendency in which I have been unable to resist indulging.

Hi guys,

Im new in this forum and I like this discussion about consciousness. Im working on some theories about consciousness, from the aspect of quantum physics and also neuroscience, and I want to share that with you.
By several new researchings, it is considered that consciousness is non-physical entity, and it is prooven. To understand what is free will you must think radical, in the way "how from non-physical entity it is created physical entity". Thats how our universe is "re-created". In the early time of creation of our universe (Im excluding everything theological and phylosophical in this theory), some litle earlier than Plank's time, the "consciousnes" become the main creator and Free Will becomes the main messinger in randomly interconnecting the "actors" called time, and after that space, creating the fabric of time-space.
If you translate this on a neuroscientific level, consciousness becomes the non-physical "chief" agent in the Frontal Lobe and Free Will his messinger between neural interconnections.

As wikipedia says: "The question of free will is whether, and in what sense, rational agents exercise control over their actions and decisions."

cheers

PS. Sorry for my english, its not my native language.

Maybe there's a valid bootstrap hypothesis of free will. It might go like this:

1. Assume that which is to be proven, that people are "free" agents.

That does not mean that causality is invalid. For example, my body running low on sugar causes me to be hungry which causes me to think about getting food. Further, an unconscious process pops up a memory of a food item I haven't had in a while, so I think about deciding to get it. However, assume that if I decide to get up now and what I decide to get are actually "free" decisions.

2. My current state is in part the result of previous actions by me, assumed to have some component of freedom.

That is, perhaps I am hungry right now because I neglected to eat a good breakfast, of my own free will.

3. My current state, has a non-determined component, my own previous decisons that had some degree of freedom.

4. Therefore, the assumed hypothesis is true, there is an uncaused component and people are free agents.

This resembles in its form a mathematical proof by induction. A different "proof" that will also apply to intelligent artificial robots, is a disproof by infinite regress and goes like this:

1. Assume that slave will is the case: we are completely caused unfree agents.

2. A robot faces a decision so he thinks about the factors in deciding.

3. One of the factors in his decision is his current state of thinking about the factors of deciding so he now has the number of factors plus one.

4. One of the factors in his decsion is his thinking about his thinking about his factors in deciding so he now has the number of factors plus one more.

5. An infinite regress is thereby established so the hypothesis that our robot is completely unfree is not provable.

The first "proof" only shows that freedom is consistent with experience. The second may be more difficult to evade. It shows that the only slave robots must be finite state machines. Turing machines would therefore be free. However, a "slave will" advocate might say that we have only proven that robots can be both slaves and intelligent, but such a robot would crash at every potentially free decision.

Rick, for your robot example you need to define thinking. A plant's phototropism might be considered similarly, in terms of sensitivity and the reaction to it. Do plants have free will?

I would not say that plants comprise universal computers. Plants do not have meta-thinking capability: they don't think about thinking (that we know of), so my so-called "proof" could not apply to plants.

I will say that my personal experience with plants indicates that they make decisions in ways that we do not understand.

A model, to be useful, is necessarily simpler than the reality it represents. In this case, I think the model is too simple. Boundaries of causations in reality are not well defined.

A simple example is when I stretch a rubber band. Making it get longer causes the tension to increase. Pulling an increase in tension causes it to get longer. Which is it? Throw in time and things get blurrier still.

[quote name='Joesus' date='May 30, 2007, 12:31 PM' post='79629']
[quote]
As long as you support the idea of your battle between the ego and the Holy Spirit, you will see the universe reflect that all around you so that you can continue the battle.
[/quote]
lol i don't wish to "battle"....i just state what i believe and go on.

A thought is a thought is a thought...the universe doesn't hear negatives and so what you believe is reflected around you. You don't have to make it a fight. Duality is a perception of opposites. Step back far enough and six billion people look like a blue sphere floating in space.
The struggle between the forces of nature are not really a struggle at all but the interplay of confused minds.

Here are some vague, undeveloped thoughts on my part:

The only true "causa sui" is reality itself.
Real "Libertarian" FW demands that an agent is a causa sui.
The more an agent becomes reality, the closer it gets to a state of real FW. *
Reality is infinite.
Agents are, by definition, finite.
Infinity is a limit which can be approached by an open-ended process of Becoming, but never arrived at.
FW is a limit which can be approached by Becoming but never arrived at...

* Note: Weak Premise

If we are reality we are not approaching or becoming unless we turn back on ourselves to define our being or our intention. The infinite speaks through reflection but it does not approach itself to define itself, rather it expresses its infinite nature always.
The ego is a self defining agent when it separates itself from the infinite and when it makes an assumption of being part of the infinite in any approach.

What's behind it, is reality.
That isn't weak, only the judgment is weak.

Thou art that
All that is, is that

A Śruti