Free will and determinism

They did interview a interview with Tononi however:
https://youtu.be/0hex5katLGk
Also wonder how they thought about part of the funding being from the John Templeton Foundation? Given that I heard some people saying it was not trustworthy for supposedly promoting Intelligent Design and climate change denial? If those opinions are widespread among academics, they could affect the careers of the involved neuroscientists.

I mean really barring some actual scientific discovery it isn't going to move the needle much IMO.

It is worth pointing out that free will underpins the legal system. I mean if I hated someone enough to decide (a form of free will) to kill them, I'd be guilty if I followed through on that act. However if I accidentally killed someone  (say with a car), I'd get a much smaller sentence, if any.

But then it can also be argued that the jury do not really choose to find somebody guilty and the judge does not really choose the sentence.

I'm a free will skeptic because I have yet to hear an explanation of how I make a free decision.

It's nice to see back, Paul (although I disagree with nearly everything you've ever posted)  but why were you not free to stay away from the forum?

I mean really barring some actual scientific discovery it isn't going to move the needle much IMO.

A publication from them that I found particularly interesting ignored Libet for a moment and criticized the psychological experiments arguing for constant unconscious influences in actions, most notably "ego depletion" and how a experiment with five thousand subjects failed to replicate it.

A publication from them that I found particularly interesting ignored Libet for a moment and criticized the psychological experiments arguing for constant unconscious influences in actions, most notably "ego depletion" and how a experiment with five thousand subjects failed to replicate it.

That is interesting, but I was thinking of some finding within the make up of the brain itself. Like if some physical structures were at least very strongly suggestive of IIT.

I don't know if QM is "random" so much as indeterministic. After all you can predict with a high degree of accuracy things like half-life, electron position, etc. It's just stochastic rather than exact.

Well that rather depends on the experiment - think of Schrodinger's rat! (Sorry I don't like to discuss killing cats).
Also many people must be alive or dead depending on the behaviour of a single particle that zapped a cell in their body to initiate a cancer (or maybe not, but that is going away off topic and might enter a censorship zone).

So it's obvious[ly] not deterministic, but random to me would be unbound. If anything QM phenomena seem to be at least somewhat akin to the character of a person - predictable in the aggregate but not necessarily in the particulars. Obvious[ly] what follows is not a perfect match to what I just said, but Nobel Prize Winner Roger Penrose has had thoughts that seem similar to mine:

I remember when I read "Shadows of the Mind". At some point I checked the comprehensive index for words like paranormal, NDE, etc. Despite the fact that the whole book is basically devoted to the nature of consciousness, there wasn't one mention of anything non-physical - not even a mention as to why he was dismissing the significance of such ideas.

I suppose at some point he made the Faustian choice to remain a well respected physicist rather than become known as a fringe scientist. The mere fact that he concluded that consciousness might only be possible only if quantum gravity was folded into the argument shows his perplexity as to the nature consciousness!

Even so, the fact that the Planck mass is 2.2 x 10^(-8) kg is intriguing because it corresponds to something that is sort of human scale. All the other Planck units are either enormous or extremely small. That might imply that there is some different physics at the scale of a few cells.

Well that rather depends on the experiment - think of Schrodinger's rat! (Sorry I don't like to discuss killing cats).
Also many people must be alive or dead depending on the behaviour of a single particle that zapped a cell in their body to initiate a cancer (or maybe not, but that is going away off topic and might enter a censorship zone).

I remember when I read "Shadows of the Mind". At some point I checked the comprehensive index for words like paranormal, NDE, etc. Despite the fact that the whole book is basically devoted to the nature of consciousness, there wasn't one mention of anything non-physical - not even a mention as to why he was dismissing the significance of such ideas.

I suppose at some point he made the Faustian choice to remain a well respected physicist rather than become known as a fringe scientist. The mere fact that he concluded that consciousness might only be possible only if quantum gravity was folded into the argument shows his perplexity as to the nature consciousness!

Even so, the fact that the Planck mass is 2.2 x 10^(-8) kg is intriguing because it corresponds to something that is sort of human scale. All the other Planck units are either enormous or extremely small. That might imply that there is some different physics at the scale of a few cells.

I will have to look into planck mass...

When I worked it out, I was somehow not surprised that 1micron (about the limit of what a human can sense), was very close to being slap bang in the middle of the orders of magnitude between planck length, and the estimated size of the visible universe.

I'm very open minded that something that sits in the middle, might generate both the smaller subatomic stuff, as well as the larger cosmological stuff.

Somehow it just seems to be assumed within physics that what generates everything, must be hidden down at the smallest scales (i.e. reductionism), and that somehow, the smallest things must be the most fundamental - at least thats the impression I get as a layman.

I'm just no longer sure about that assumption. I've searched and searched, but I just can't find any discussion about this. Could quantities of medium things, generate smaller things, as well as larger things. Could scale be somehow accorded too much significance, or the incorrect significance.

I stand at the entrance of a large straight tunnel, and can just see the tiny dot of light, which marks the tunnel exit in the far distance along the tunnel. Yet that tiny dot of light is just as large as the exit where I stand, when I finally reach it, and where I once stood is now a tiny dot of light. Yet the visual information available to me remains constant. It's almost bubble like surrounding me. That tunnel story is somehow analogous to the problem I have with the smaller scale, and the larger scale. Both are just as inaccessible to me. Anyway I can't express whats odd about it, it just nags at me from time to time.

Hi Paul, it is good to see you here again. It reminds me of the best days of Skeptiko, when we all had some very interesting discussions - even though we didn't come to any conclusive answers!

I'm a free will "denier," but I don't think it's because it absolves me from poor decisions. Made plenty of them, take responsibility for all of them.

What does taking responsibility mean in the absence of free will - perhaps a politician would understand that best.

As most folks here know, I'm a free will skeptic because I have yet to hear an explanation of how I make a free decision. Could be one, just haven't heard it.

I think that is because you imagine your brain running along totally materialistic lines - which makes free will hard to understand. However, my feeling is that free will is just one of a whole list of aspects of consciousness that reinforce one another:

1)        Consciousness extending after death - think of Julie Beischel's multiple blind tests of mediums.

2)        Links between consciousness as in ESP - think of all the Ganzfelt experiments that have been done, or Rupert Sheldrake's experiments with dogs that know when their owners are coming home.

3)        Reincarnation - think of Ian Stevenson's work together with other researchers.

4)        The separation of consciousness from the body - think of all the NDE/OBE studies.

5)        The existence of free will (which practically everyone claims to have).

Materialism requires that none of these phenomena are real - including free will - whereas if you accept a non-material reality, all these phenomena are conceivable and tend to reinforce each other.

The absence of an explanation as to how is not an overriding argument in the face of an individual experiencing the process.  Do I not love my wife because I cannot explain how love is possible?

The illusion of making libertarian free will decisions could be a product of evolution. Or, it could simply be that since we do not experience the complete process of making a decision, it feels like there must be a free step. Which, to me, is an argument that there is no free decision, or we would experience how that free decision is made and my interminable question would have been answered long ago.

~~ Paul

A standard physics explanation for reality has no room for mental phenomena, just physical phenomena in the brain. QM also injects randomness into this picture, but a world that is deterministic plus a shot of randomness also doesn't seem to be capable of supporting mind.

It is worth pointing out that free will underpins the legal system. I mean if I hated someone enough to decide (a form of free will) to kill them, I'd be guilty if I followed through on that act. However if I accidentally killed someone  (say with a car), I'd get a much smaller sentence, if any.

Anyone who takes determinism seriously, must live a very strange existence. I think most who claim to believe in determinism simply kid themselves while they are performing in various professional roles.

Physics is missing mental phenomena only if you assume that mental phenomena are fundamentally different from brain processes. If they are not, then physics has no problem investigating them.

As far as the legal system goes, we just agree that a person is responsible for their actions on a spectrum from "totally responsible" to "accidentally responsible" to "not responsible at all." We have no strong evidence to assume that their decisions are free. We simply don't know how to build a legal system without that assumption.

I don't think my existence is strange just because I can't get an explanation for how a free decision can possibly work. I just cruise along through life like everyone else. What I don't do is make up bizarre cause-and-effect scenarios in order to forgive myself for stupid actions.

~~ Paul