According to Robert Sapolsky, human free will does not exist

[Elixir]

Free will says Robert Sapolsky doesn’t exist.

 

[Jarhyn]

Free will says Robert Sapolsky doesn’t exist.

I mean, that has been a claim made; but rather the claim that Robert Sapolski does not exist rather than "because free will says".

Believing the self, and as such believing any delineated token, does not really exist, would lead to that conclusion.

Then, the hard determinist sees in Robert Sapolski only the original chaos which took part in him as it was then; it ignores all the growth and change in the middle that's part of the result.

 

[Elixir]

the hard determinist sees in Robert Sapolski only the original chaos

Alas, it no longer exists.

 

[BSilvEsq]

Ultimately, fatalism is faith based claim, and I think now this has been revealed well and truly to be the case.

The same is true of a belief in Free Will.

The only difference between faith in a fatalistic determinism and faith in free will is that the latter feels consistent with reality and the former does not match our feelings. Believing in free will, however, places faith in the belief that our feelings are not deceptive, illusory, or programmed by the universe.

In the end, every belief about the fundamental nature and/or ultimate operation of the universe is a matter of faith. There is no getting around that, no matter how much we would like to do so.

 

[Jarhyn]

The same is true of a belief in Free Will

No, it isn't. As we've discussed, the belief in free will is compatible with determinism; nay dependent on it being true.

It is the "more atheist" position, and from my perspective, the only one that doesn't proclaim reality abides contradictions.

Go ahead and believe in it, but know that I regard your belief the same as all the others: dangerous to people's ability to exercise their will effectively.

 

[pood]

“Fatalistic determinism.”

Fatalism and determinism are not the same thing,

I have examined two arguments for fatalism, theological and epistemic, and shown that both run afoul of logic.

I await an argument for fatalism.

Free will can be empirically observed almost every moment of every day. Fatalism, not so much,

Determinism, or cause and effect, can also obviously be observed. But not fatalism..

 

[BSilvEsq]

The same is true of a belief in Free Will

No, it isn't. As we've discussed, the belief in free will is compatible with determinism; nay dependent on it being true.

It is the "more atheist" position, and from my perspective, the only one that doesn't proclaim reality abides contradictions.

Go ahead and believe in it, but know that I regard your belief the same as all the others: dangerous to people's ability to exercise their will effectively.

Whether a belief in free will is or is not compatible with determinism is immaterial to my assertion that a belief in either is faith based, as there is no proof or falsification of either.

And, as to your last statement, a belief in fatalistic determinism is dangerous to people's ability to exercise their will effectively only if (i) people truly have free will, (ii) they freely incorrectly choose to believe in the absence of free will, and (iii) they do not act "as if" they have free will, nonetheless.

If people do not, in fact, have free will, there is no danger, because everything is simply the way it is and must be.

If people having free will do not choose to believe in the absence of free will, such people will reject the notion of fatalistic determinism, and there will be no danger.

And, if people having free will do incorrectly choose to believe in the absence of free will but act "as if" they have free will, there still will be no danger.

In the end, however, you are free (or compelled) to believe in anything you decide (or are compelled) to believe.

 

[pood]

Belief in compatibilism is not faith based. It is empirical and analytical.

However, I guess one could “argue” that belief in anything at all, including my own existence, is faith based. If one takes that tack, why discuss anything at all?

 

[Jarhyn]

Belief in compatibilism is not faith based. It is empirical and analytical.

However, I guess one could “argue” that belief in anything at all, including my own existence, is faith based. If one takes that tack, why discuss anything at all?

This is quite a good point.

I argue for the least amount of belief that allows the lowest amount of complexity.

I wouldn't be surprised if there's a euclidean solution for it like "time as we see it is the n dimension shadow of a n+1 dimensional thing", but even that forms deterministically as a sequence of interactions, is calculated over a "dimension of time".

This is... Remarkably non-complex, but still not fatalistic. Even in the shadows cast upon a wall there is room for intelligence and the concept of alternatives, specifically the alternative of a different angle of projection for the shadow.

This doesn't require a belief that even that is 'fatal', and I would argue that it is not; that whatever interaction that produces contains within it things that are free, such as they are, in the moments of time that exist within the expression, and which bear responsibility in the position for ongoing events.

Fatalism is just... Not necessary as a belief, and I have waged multiple times is contradictory.

It's just... Unnecessary and arguably problematic.

I will try all day every day every way to test or seek for evidence of unacknowledged but real complexity, and when verified I will fully acknowledge it's there. But if someone asks me to believe something that cannot be disprove that assumes more than something else, I'm going to apply the razor, and stand by the well tested conclusion that the extraordinary claim that the universe we see is this "fatalistic" thing.

And still we can ask, even of the shadow, what happens when an angle of incidence is shifted for some step of the calculation, even if it never is, and this might be seen simulated by the system itself.

In fact, in some ways, when we exercise free will, we take a moment to imagine a universe more complex, one like this, logically possible if there was a 'god' in fact.

This is one of the reasons I think that it's so utterly destructive to the self to not think about God or Gods just because you don't believe in them or just because it's nonsense.

In our minds, we play the god and imagine the more complex universe with a less complex one simulated in our minds which shares, symmetrically to the real one, certain 'abstract invariants'. These invariants allow predicting things in reality, using the fact about variations in the undisprovable assumption that there may be a (Spinozan) god, and the fact that the lower simulation constrains which set of possible worlds you might say something about (in that subset of possible gods).

Again, this does not require belief in A god. Arguably a belief in A god would muck the whole thing up because then you wouldn't consider all the possible ones you need to, in abstract.

At any rate, you find one that observed this, created another universe Last Thursday mostly like that one but where one thing is changed, and then see what happens when you are that logically possible (in fact completely concrete) god of the world of the simulation that considers the possibility.

Then, you discover that while you do not believe there is a creator god, or an infinite universe of all universes that can ever be expressed as such, your consideration of the possibility has assured you that your location doesn't suck as badly as any of those worlds where you were god and made "yourself" make bad decisions, and where other people danced to a fate you spun for them.

In the end, perhaps that the logic of solipsism: that there is only one consciousness, it's yours, you're simulating everything and so you have power over the fate of everything... Then it might be easy to tell people they don't have free will, I suppose, too, but that's because you believe you can reach out and puppet the universe arbitrarily like a Kabuki show, or that something else is there that could and may and would.

 

[Elixir]

The only difference between faith in a fatalistic determinism and faith in free will is that the latter feels consistent with reality and the former does not match our feelings. Believing in free will, however, places faith in the belief that our feelings are not deceptive, illusory, or programmed by the universe.

Who is the “us” in bolded “our” above?
My feeling is that by the day after tomorrow, tomorrow and all its events will have occurred. If I am still alive I will have made choices and those choices will have had effects on events. Whether those choices were made in some transcendent causal realm of free will, or as outcomes of biological imperatives, philisophical inspirations, artistic expressions- the things causing the motivations and experiences of yesterday are so incredibly complex as to render the illusion of free will indistinguishable from the real thing, or to distinguish the real thing from the illusion.
It makes NO difference to the end user, the living organism. And the experience of user is all ya gets in this life. Even Jarhyn will admit that the tiny universes over which he presides are no match for the one that contains him and it.

 

[Jarhyn]

Even Jarhyn will admit that the tiny universes over which he presides are no match for the one that contains him and it.

And the only reason I seek to preside is to capture the nature of the invariants I have made in those tiny universes, as describes them in all possible universes... And then evoke that with the same embodiment that is necessary to live it in reality: to create an image and to project and print it into flesh and blood and bone; or whatever might do as good a job of hosting it usefully in the biggest space we have, the one we exist a part of.

I recall once taunting someone that the definition of magic was to bring the pure product of the imagination into reality.

I seek to do this thing, to imagine, and then using the imagining and knowledge, create something nobody has seen before but me, and only then in glimpses and plans.

 

[DBT]

And this, folks, is why we call him religious. He literally admits there is no flaw, that compatibilism offers iron clad definitions, the guy he claims agrees with him and who he claims to agree with agrees to as much...

That's just plain silly. The compatibilist argument is based on how compatibilists define determinism, and how they define free will in relation to how they define determinism.

I refer to their own terms and conditions.

Is that too hard to grasp?

And then he goes on to disagree with himself and start claiming that now there are flaws because we don't make modal errors.

The flaw lies in the given definition of free will not accounting for the nature of will. That given the compatibilist definition of determinism, will itself is shaped and formed by processes beyond its control.

That it is the non-chosen condition of the brain as the decision maker that determines thought and action, and that this has nothing to do with free will.

Is that too hard to grasp?

This, Bruce, is why I begged you to disabuse him of this rather than to claim he agrees with us but no, you just can't seem to understand it yourself.

Arrogance does you no service.

This is why I discussed the difference between DBT's fatalism, and compatibilism's determinism, and pointed out how all the words make sense and none of it needs to happen "at the same place and time" and how all the language works out as I describe when run in a concrete model.

How many times must the conditions of determinism, as defined by compatibilists, before the implications are understood?

Basically, given their definition of determinism (including your own) that there can be no alternate actions, that in your own words; ''A deterministic system is a system in which no randomness is involved in the development of future states of the system.''

And of course, compatibilists are determinists.

The problem here is that almost universally when discussing this with a fatalist or a libertarian, it is exposed that this is a subject they attached to to sound smart rather than to one they attached themselves to because they thought something might be wrong about the conversation.

At least we have gotten through the most recent iteration of exposing it as a religious belief for Bruce's sake, but we're still having trouble disabusing DBT of his fatalism.

You resort to defensive, insulting and dishonest tactics. You have lost and you know it, resorting to means of defense that doesn't relate to either compatibilism or my position, incompatibilism.

 

[DBT]

if the trajectory of an object is determined there can be nothing to constrain it.

Do you not understand Newton's second law and what momentum is? These are simply just different perspectives on the nature of momentum.

You already even admitted it's a perfectly valid perspective.

Because... Its a discussion about the fact that forces were imparted and where they came from specifically.

Here's a clue;

Albert Einstein: "If the moon, in the act of completing its eternal way around the earth, were gifted with self-consciousness, it would feel thoroughly convinced that it was traveling its way of its own accord on the strength of a resolution taken once and for all. So would a Being, endowed with higher insight and more perfect intelligence, watching man and his doings, smile about man’s illusion that he was acting according to his own free will."

Einstein wrote, "In human freedom in the philosophical sense I am definitely a disbeliever. Everyone acts not only under external compulsion but also in accordance with inner necessity. Schopenhauer's saying, that 'a man can do as he will, but not will as he will' has been an inspiration to me since my youth up."

''Man does at all times only what he wills, and yet he does this necessarily. But this is because he already is what he wills.'' -Arthur Schopenhauer

Appeal to authority?

Einstein: “God does not play dice.”

Bohr: “Einstein, stop telling God what to do.”

It doesn't matter who says it. Given determinism, it's true regardless. It's simply the nature and consequences of determinism as it is defined. A system where all actions, including brain, mind, consciousness must evolve as determined, which includes will and decision making. A taxi driver can say it and it would be just as true as said by Einstein.

Keep in mind that if determinism is not true, compatibilism is irrelevant.

If the world is probabilistic, ie, Bohr, then what is the nature of free will? How is it to be defined? How does the brain operate in a random or probabilistic word?

Plus Bohr's position on free will, determinism and compatibilism is all over the place;


Bohr on free will

• Is Bohr a mind-body dualist? A physicalist? He seems to be sympathetic to the idea of psycho-physical parallelism.
• In one sense, Bohr is an incompatibilist, i.e. he thinks that the concepts of free choice and causal determination are mutually exclusive. In another sense, though, he is a compatibilist. In particular, he believes that the concept of free choice is indispensable for a full understanding of human psychology.'

The idea of free will being more a matter of philosophy than science, it appears.