Yes the title is correct. Free will is an illusion. How you process information, respond, and act is the result of neurological processes over which you cannot control.
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Neurological processes and social conditioning.
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It all comes down to whether you believe the brain is a mechanistic computer, or has inexplicable quantum properties that can produce a decision by free will.
Alan Turing believed in the former; Kurt Goedel believed in the latter. Neither one has an unimpeachable track record. The āTuring Testā is being found to be defective at gauging hunan intelligence. AI programs are passing it, but are being shown to be provably inferior to human intelligence.
Goedel believed that humans have an ability to intuit that machines will never have. But some of his hunches have been shown to be in error.
Iām still not sure about determinism. I used to believe that all things would be solvable, but Goedelās Incompleteness Theorem showed us thatās not possibleā¦
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What I mean by āfree willā is a person having the ability to overcome natural processes in the brain and independently choose one option or another. That ability does not exist. You cannot separate yourself from your mind and direct it at your will. You cannot control what you think or feel. Even those thoughts saying Iām completely full of shit are not thoughts of your making. That is your brainās response to reading my words.
An action is how your brain uses the senses to respond to various internal conditions (inside the body and mind) or external conditions (outside the body and mind) and within the context of your upbringing. You have no power over those responses. You may then ask āWell, if Iām powerless to control my mind, why can I stop myself from shooting someone who pulls in front of me on the highway?ā Iāll respond with a question. If from birth to now you had never been taught that murder was bad and taught you should keep a gun at all times, would you have then thought twice about shooting the other driver? I think not. From birth to now you have been taught murder is bad and your brain is conditioned to comply. Thatās why you can have two conflicting thoughts and one wins over the other.
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Never say something isnāt solvable. When pursuing intellectual growth, I think itās always good to have the carrot and stick in front of you. I usually say āit canāt be solved using this current way of thinking but that doesnāt mean we wonāt see the problem differently tomorrow and solve it with new information and knowledgeā.
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Well, Goedel said not ALL problems are solvable; and most mathematicians, even ones who did not like the proof, did not disagree with it.
PS: https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-godels-proof-works-20200714
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Thatās a topic for another time lol.
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I get what youāre all saying. That said, I disagree. The brain is plastic, and I am neither my thoughts nor am I my emotions; I am the observer of both. When we rely on our thoughts and feelings, we respond, when we rely on our awareness, we respond. In response, we have a choice, which is free will. We have free will if we choose to understand it.
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What if capitalism or systems of power are not based on free will at allāhow would that change how we think about them?
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lol. So, I hate to bust our bubbleā¦ but our bodies and brains are nothing more than atoms and molecules doing atoms and molecules do. Every thought, feeling, idea, memory, etc. is a biological process. Nothing more.
Iām sure people are reading this response and thinking āWhat the hell is he talking about?ā But guess whatā¦ you didnāt choose to think those thoughts. They just happened. And because they appeared in your mind you think they came from an independent source. But molecules are not independent. Theyāre just doing what molecules do: React!
@sciguy24, I wonder how your framework addresses the concept of the soulānot necessarily in a religious sense, but as a potential dimension of human existence that transcends biology.
If we think of the soul as a metaphor or even as a non-material entity, could it represent the part of us that exercises choice or introduces unpredictability? Even if everything in the brain is determined by biological processes, could the soul (or whatever term you prefer) act as a mediatorāinteracting with those processes and shaping outcomes in ways that arenāt purely deterministic?
Iām not saying the soul exists definitively, but what if itās a placeholder for the parts of human experience that science hasnāt yet explained, like consciousness or moral agency? Could that space for uncertainty allow for something like free will to coexist with determinism?
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I think the concept of soul is an invention of human imagination caused by centuries of not being able to explain ourselves. So since we couldnāt explain our selves with science we revert to what we did know, stories and imagination. Now that we know about biology and chemistry we can dispel beliefs which have no scientific evidence.
Biology and chemistry shed light on our minds, but what if the soul is not entirely beyond science? Consciousness remains enigmatic; theories such as Hameroff and Penroseās propose that quantum processes in neurons may suggest deeper dimensions. Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) exhibit consistent cultural patterns that challenge biological explanations. Quantum entanglement undermines separateness, prompting considerations of āsoul-likeā realities.
Could the soul represent an unexplored aspect of existence?
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What about that thing where light atoms or w/e act differently when being observed?
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But with all the subatomic processes going on. Can we say that we consciously control them? Absolutely not!
Sam Harrisās book āFree Willā really opened my eyes to this.
Hereās an example:
I wore a gray polo to work today. I had other shirts in the closet so why did I pick this one? Honestly I picked it because it was the first one in line lol. So I grabbed it and put it on. I was not independent of my decision making process, I was subject to it. The things that formed my cares and preferences in choosing clothing were not things I independently chose. Then the decision to stop considering other options and choose the gray polo were also outside of my independent control.
Molecular, atomic, and subatomic processes happen without my permission and they control everything about me. My feeling of independence is an illusion.
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Canāt it be a combination? Biological Processes, Social Conditioning, etc.
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Not really, because at the end of the day itās the brain that receives input from the sensory organs and learns how to adapt. Those are natural processes which we are neither conscious of nor control, but which do control us. The process by which you contemplate choices and make a decision was not taught either. Itās something your mind has learned to do and does it without asking your permission.
If the brain learned it, social factors had to of contributed.
We are nothing more than atoms and molecules doing what atoms and molecules do. That also applies to the subatomic level as well.