Can a created being have free will?

[HelenaMT]

God does not need to predict what you will do to know what you will do. To Him, you have already done it. He is outside of time and hence sees all of time at once.

There is not necessarily a contradiction between determination and free will. Could you change your choice of what to eat yesterday for lunch? No. Does that mean you weren’t free to choose the lunch you wanted? No.

Does that make sense?

But whether God is outside time or not, He has ultimate control over all that exists. It doesn’t matter that we experience time differently. It matters that it is already determined to God. I can’t change whether I had chicken for lunch yesterday, but in your view, God can, so therefore if I had chicken it was because God allowed it, meaning I actually *couldn’t *have chosen differently, even if it felt like I could have.

Maybe a better way to explain is this: Can we think a thought that God did not intend for us to have, or think something that God has no way of knowing or predicting? This gets us away from problems of ability (I want to fly but I physically can’t, or I want to be free, but I am actually in a prison). If the answer is yes, then it can be said (I think) that our will is free, but if we cannot, it isn’t. But this also means that if we have this type of free will, God is not omniscient in the way you seem to mean.

 

[greylorn]

Could you post a link please? Maybe the description of the experiment will help me understand what you mean by free will.

I read that stuff 30 years back, when links didn’t exist. Just journal articles. I’m sure that the reference is in one of 20 boxes of old materials in my storage.

Look up psych experiments on the effect of agreement/consensus on individual choice. There have been many. Some which involved the misinterpretation of optical illusions caught my attention back then.

 

[greylorn]

I fail to see the real difference in the two accounts. Different wording does not necessarily imply a different thing.

Actually, it does, especially in this case— but only if the writer is competent.

I find it interesting how Bible thumpers (not implying that you are one) focus on precise, literal meaning— except when it does not suit their purpose or make their point.

The 2nd version of Genesis does not state that God created the soul. So, why not take that absence of information into account? Genesis was written during the Babylonian captivity, borrowed from Babylonian stories about creation, which many scholars declare to have been borrowed from the Greeks, noted for their pioneering work in philosophy and storytelling. The two different stories reflect two different philosophies of creation, one in which the soul’s origin is not attributed to God.

Perhaps, as I propose, the soul is not a created entity, but like God, has always existed? This explains a great deal.

 

[greylorn]

Quote:

I think what he is saying (I could be wrong) is that it is extraordinarily hard to overcome cultural programming and the limits of one’s own knowledge and experience to perform an action (or even think a thought) that is in opposition to it. I guess examples would be a slave owner in the 19th century South who decided to become an abolitionist, or a Nazi guard who decides to help concentration camp inmates escape. Examples like that are either exceedingly rare or non-existent.

You are absolutely correct. Thanks for the translation! Next time, though, please skip the (I could be wrong) qualifier. I’ve read your posts looking very hard for something wrong, without success (else you’d have heard from me).

 

[Prodigal_Son]

Untrue, there are heaps of evidence connecting every conscious process with particular areas of the brain. The evidence piles higher and higher. Brain injuries, mental illnesses, memory loss, strokes that cause personality changes, mapping specific functions to specific brain areas. The list goes on and on.

I would count all these as evidence in favor of the mind = brain process theory.

I like Helena’s response to this a great deal, although I will also add my two cents.

Imagine a man whose only connection to the world is through a two-way television set. The people on the other side of the TV talk to him, and he talks to them. But one day, the sound on the television fails. The effect is that communication is severely impeded, but the problem is in the medium, not in the communicators.

I am saying that the brain is the medium of human behavior. If a man has a brain injury, he has a different set of (mediated) capacities, but he is still the same man. The physicalist must deny this – must insist, it seems, that the person before the brain injury is a different person than the brain injured person (overlapping, but different). To be incapable of thought is not to be incapable of experience; experimental and anecdotal evidence of experience without brain waves seems to back this point up.

At any rate, the discussion becomes a metaphysical (or metascientific, if you prefer) discussion – you cannot admit scientific evidence into the discussion unless you make a case of how such information counts as evidence. Any evidence you give to defend your physicalist hypothesis also counts as a defense of my brain/medium hypothesis. At least, so far.

Your only refuge against this overwhelming evidence is to claim that the brain only plays a mediating role between the soul and the body, and a person with a damaged brain loses their memory or loses their inhibitions because the soul loses the way it makes the mind. But that is an idea for which there is no evidence, and which doesn’t seem to be necessary.

Oops, I see you had anticipated my argument. You say there is no evidence for my hypothesis, and I agree. But there is no evidence for your hypothesis either. That is how metaphysical arguments work, generally.

Yes that is an interesting argument, that God always knew what we would choose and selected the laws of physics so that the actions of our physical bodies would conform exactly to our choices.

I think it’s pretty farfetched, but certainly logically possible.

But it brings you back to the OP’s original objection of whether God’s foreknowledge and our freedom can coexist. Personally I am not certain on that point.

I have seen no persuasive arguments either way. If there is an open and shut argument *against *their compatibility, could someone please give it?

 

[Prodigal_Son]

You’ve done a good job of cutting to the central issue. Here is a solution to the philosophical dilemma.

1. Man is composed, in many instances, of a brain-body system which is also connected to the entity which religions call the “soul.” (Cartesian dualism.)
2. The brain makes most choices, according to its instincts and societal programming.
3. The soul can make choices, either by over-riding the brain’s choices when there is a conflict, or by operating in areas for which the brain has not been pre-programmed.
4. God did not create the soul. (It would have been silly of Him to do so.)

Therefore, the brain does not have free will, but the soul does— or at least has the rarely exercised potential to use it.

This is one of many solutions that would work logically. Some would complain about the soul/body interactionism involved, but this has always struck me as an artificial problem. People assume God doesn’t exist, and then criticize Descartes for not providing an explanation of how the soul affects the body. But Descartes DID provide an explanation: God. Perhaps this answer is “too convenient”, but it does not follow from an idea’s convenience that it is untrue.

I don’t agree about eternal souls, but I do agree that the soul – the will – only occasionally interferes with our activity. Usually, we are Newtonian particles, reeds swayed by every wind. The power of the soul to assert itself is, I suspect, a power that many people have hardly noticed or exercised. It is no wonder, then, that they find physicalist determinism so plausible.

 

[greylorn]

I like Helena’s response to this a great deal, although I will also add my two cents.

The first part of this is to your credit. We’ll see about the second…

Imagine a man whose only connection to the world is through a two-way television set. The people on the other side of the TV talk to him, and he talks to them. But one day, the sound on the television fails. The effect is that communication is severely impeded, but the problem is in the medium, not in the communicators.

I am saying that the brain is the medium of human behavior. If a man has a brain injury, he has a different set of (mediated) capacities, but he is still the same man. The physicalist must deny this – must insist, it seems, that the person before the brain injury is a different person than the brain injured person (overlapping, but different). To be incapable of thought is not to be incapable of experience; experimental and anecdotal evidence of experience without brain waves seems to back this point up.

Your thinking here is generally sound, and consistent with Cartesian theory. You just got a little blabbity at the end. You might start thinking more about the soul/brain interaction and expanding upon these ideas. You might appreciate the Sperry-Gazoniga split-brain experiments in this respect.

At any rate, the discussion becomes a metaphysical (or metascientific, if you prefer) discussion – you cannot admit scientific evidence into the discussion unless you make a case of how such information counts as evidence. Any evidence you give to defend your physicalist hypothesis also counts as a defense of my brain/medium hypothesis. At least, so far.

If this post is the only exposition of your hypothesis, it remains too limited to invite either argument or defense. Shall we not use “metascientific,” meaning “before scientific,” in future conversations?

Oops, I see you had anticipated my argument. You say there is no evidence for my hypothesis, and I agree. But there is no evidence for your hypothesis either. That is how metaphysical arguments work, generally.

I’ll bet that HelenaMT reads the entire post, and thinks about it, before replying. If so, could that be a useful model for others?

I have seen no persuasive arguments either way. If there is an open and shut argument *against *their compatibility, could someone please give it?

This is a sloppily defined paragraph. It’s not possible to figure out what you wish for. As for open/shut arguments, stop looking for them. They exist only in areas of inquiry which are bounded by rules of logic, or even common sense.

A mathematician who declares that 2+2=5 will be relieved of his job, unless he is a tenured professor at Berkeley. A religionist who declares that his omnipotent God can declare 2+2=5 will be promoted, unless he is a professor at Berkeley.

No number or quality of arguments will open the minds or shut the mouths of nitwits.

Obviously you are not a nit. But when nitwits get together they work like vacuum cleaners, sucking in dirt or loose pearls with equal force. Don’t get too close.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

I’ll bet that HelenaMT reads the entire post, and thinks about it, before replying. If so, could that be a useful model for others?

Touche. For the record, I read the entire post, thought about it, and then left the computer for some time. Then I returned, and replied piece by piece. Thus the mistake.

As to your other points, I’m off to bed, so I’ll reply later.

 

[greylorn]

This is one of many solutions that would work logically. Some would complain about the soul/body interactionism involved, but this has always struck me as an artificial problem. People assume God doesn’t exist, and then criticize Descartes for not providing an explanation of how the soul affects the body. But Descartes DID provide an explanation: God. Perhaps this answer is “too convenient”, but it does not follow from an idea’s convenience that it is untrue.

Once again, you are so close to getting it all right. I can’t help appreciating someone who is out there thinking.

The nits who figured that Descartes ought to explain the soul/brain interaction also believed in a variety of mysterious interactions about which they had no clue— and that is the proper way of nits. But Descartes did what he could, founding the mathematics of analytical geometry and paving the way for Newton’s calculus, the mathematical foundation of modern physics.

There were a lot of things to be learned about the nature of the universe before an explanation of the relationship between soul and brain could even be attempted. I know that you’ll want to read my book.

Incidentally, Descartes did not use “God” as his explanation for the interface. He postulated the pineal gland. His reasons for doing so were based upon philosophical considerations, which are always absurd, rather than neurological research, which had yet to be done.

It is bad enough that the nits discredit him. Those of us who might appreciate the value of his contributions, yourself on the A list, honor him best by actually reading his original material (not distillations thereof) before making up things.

You might want to apologize to Descartes. Like Clint Eastwood said in, Fistful of Dollars, “My mule feels bad. See, he thinks you were shooting at him.”

I don’t agree about eternal souls, but I do agree that the soul – the will – only occasionally interferes with our activity. Usually, we are Newtonian particles, reeds swayed by every wind. The power of the soul to assert itself is, I suspect, a power that many people have hardly noticed or exercised. It is no wonder, then, that they find physicalist determinism so plausible.

That is really an odd comment. I shall assume that what you don’t agree about is that souls are eternal.

Does that mean that the soul does not survive the death of the body?

If so, what good is it? What is the point of any belief system which relates one’s actions in a brain-body system to consequences after the body’s death, if no mechanism responsible for the actions is around to deal with the consequences?

 

[HelenaMT]

I don’t agree about eternal souls, but I do agree that the soul – the will – only occasionally interferes with our activity.Usually, we are Newtonian particles, reeds swayed by every wind. The power of the soul to assert itself is, I suspect, a power that many people have hardly noticed or exercised.

What do you think gives some souls the ability to be noticed or exercised and not others? Is it the fault of the soul or the brain?

Do you believe that God-created souls are created with the same variation in ability as we see in our physical bodies? That would mean that not all souls are initially created equal, which seems to go against what most people want to believe.

I assume when you say you don’t agree about eternal souls that you mean the soul doesn’t exist before the body but exists eternally afterward? If God exists outside of time,though, then don’t all souls in reality exist before our bodies, in God’s perception?

I bring this up to go back to the idea that a created entity might not have the ability to make a truly free choice, especially if the creator is not subject to time.

To me it is no different than speaking of the free will of characters in a book. The characters may seem to agonize over choices they need to make within the story, but in the end they only had the chance to make the one the author gave them. Like God, the author is outside of time in relation to his story since he can rewrite any portion at any point, yet he alone has ultimate control over the outcome all along.

It is no wonder, then, that they find physicalist determinism so plausible.

I would say that physicalist determinism and God-based determinism look no different with respect to free will.

 

[Andy_III]

Untrue, there are heaps of evidence connecting every conscious process with particular areas of the brain. The evidence piles higher and higher. Brain injuries, mental illnesses, memory loss, strokes that cause personality changes, mapping specific functions to specific brain areas. The list goes on and on.

I would count all these as evidence in favor of the mind = brain process theory.

Umm, by this same line of argument there is no such thing as a web browser. I can open up my computer and the 1’s and 0’s flowing through the CPU and graphics cards have a direct relation to the output of the monitor. Therefore the evidence suggests that there is nothing in the computer like a web browser, so you’d have to say that the web browseriness comes from some external source and interacts in some way with the computer. But I can show you that there are no external fields manipulating the computer, all of the information comes from the spinning metallic disk inside the computer - so there is no web browser.

 

[Andy_III]

Unless you can point me to something that demonstrates the physical properties of a thought (seriously, because I’m looking for information), it’s hard to explain how something non-physical (not supernatural, just non-physical)can cause physical changes unless it has certain properties of it’s own.

I got some useful information out of Marvin Minsky’s The Society of Mind. Some of his models of how a brain might work are very compelling. IIRC, he talks about different sets of neurons being linked to concepts (like red, for example) and to think about a red ball, the neurons for red and ball (and round, etc.) all fire at once.

 

[Andy_III]

I think what he is saying (I could be wrong) is that it is extraordinarily hard to overcome cultural programming and the limits of one’s own knowledge and experience to perform an action (or even think a thought) that is in opposition to it. I guess examples would be a slave owner in the 19th century South who decided to become an abolitionist, or a Nazi guard who decides to help concentration camp inmates escape. Examples like that are either exceedingly rare or non-existent.

Interesting. And what about a social worker who thinks about it and decides to stay a social worker? Perhaps it takes a lot of personal effort like the above cases. Would we say this person made no choice because they’re doing the same thing? That they have no free will?

Greylorn, was there a particular measurement that allows the prediction of who is capable of these kinds of radical changes? I think you implied that there was.

I say all humans have free will. I think everyone is capable of change - even radical change - but not everyone chooses to do so.

 

[HelenaMT]

Interesting. And what about a social worker who thinks about it and decides to stay a social worker? Perhaps it takes a lot of personal effort like the above cases. Would we say this person made no choice because they’re doing the same thing? That they have no free will?

Greylorn, was there a particular measurement that allows the prediction of who is capable of these kinds of radical changes? I think you implied that there was.

I say all humans have free will. I think everyone is capable of change - even radical change - but not everyone chooses to do so.

I wouldn’t say that person made no choice but is it fundamentally different than my dog choosing a milkbone over a bowl of dogfood ? It is different in degree but not necessarily in kind.

A social worker who decides to stay a social worker did not have to make a leap past his/her entire upbringing to do so, where a die-hard Nazi who suddenly got a flash of conscience and acted on it would. In fact, it seems like more than personal effort is necessary to even* have an idea* that is radically opposed or just alien to your known surroundings, even without the ability to act on it.

 

[greylorn]

Interesting. And what about a social worker who thinks about it and decides to stay a social worker? Perhaps it takes a lot of personal effort like the above cases. Would we say this person made no choice because they’re doing the same thing? That they have no free will?

Greylorn, was there a particular measurement that allows the prediction of who is capable of these kinds of radical changes? I think you implied that there was.

I say all humans have free will. I think everyone is capable of change - even radical change - but not everyone chooses to do so.

Helena answered Q.1 better than I ever could.

Re: Q.2: No way, in the sense of your question. However, shrinks have devised tests for divergent thinkers, and the identification thereof. About 3% of the population qualifies. Curiously, intelligence is apparently not a factor. I believe that this characteristic can be learned, because I learned it.

Re:Q.3: According to my theories about the nature of the human soul/brain/mind complex, only the soul component is capable of free will. In most humans this component is weak, and is overcome by the power of brain, which has no free will and functions like any dog brain, according to agreement of the pack.

Weak souls can exercise free will only in areas for which their brains have not been programmed. For example, a devout Catholic can learn quantum mechanics. But when done, he will be burdened with two belief systems which relate poorly to how the universe actually works. I’d have no better luck convincing him of the errors inherent in QM (quantum mechanics) than of the logical problems with Catholic dogma.

And I have no particular interest in teaching that example-person. Catholicism is a higher level of belief than atheism, and its moral standards could serve him well. As for QM, he’ll be able to use it to describe observable subatomic phenomena. If it ever becomes important enough for him to understand other things, he’ll blow off QM and move onward.

There are some human beings who have no soul connected, typically the result of a brain defect, accident, or surgery. They have no free will,

I fully understand that your position is based upon your beliefs. I have no beliefs. My comments are based upon real-world information and theories derived therefrom.

 

[greylorn]

I got some useful information out of Marvin Minsky’s The Society of Mind. Some of his models of how a brain might work are very compelling. IIRC, he talks about different sets of neurons being linked to concepts (like red, for example) and to think about a red ball, the neurons for red and ball (and round, etc.) all fire at once.

This seems a somewhat dismissive response. HMT had asked,

HelenaMT:

Unless you can point me to something that demonstrates the physical properties of a thought (seriously, because I’m looking for information), it’s hard to explain how something non-physical (not supernatural, just non-physical)can cause physical changes unless it has certain properties of it’s own.

Minsky, like most neurological researchers, comes from the materialistic perspective. For him, all things are physical. So of course, the brain is physical and concepts are the effects of physical phenomenon. Nothing new or magical here. An electrical engineer, A. C. Scott figured that out in the mid-sixties and produced homologous brain circuits with old-fashioned transistors.

His work, like Minsky and thousands of others, is about how the brain processes data. Thought is another phenomenon entirely, often appearing in the absence of any data, but always in the context of such data. None of their work addresses this.

I retraced this thread looking for the context of Helena’s comment w/o luck. She was clearly interested in ideas about how to relate soul (something non-physical) to brain. A worthy subject, in the context of a forum sponsored by a Church which believes that man consists of non-physical soul and physical body.

 

[Andy_III]

This seems a somewhat dismissive response.

I did not mean to dismiss, but to contribute. The question was about thought, which Minsky wrote about, even if he was not referring to non-physical interactions. I’m not aware of any claim that the soul performs all thought, so the material is relevant. That said, I may have missed the underlying point of the question and focussed too much on the word thought. If so, I apologive to HelenaMT, esp. since the post was not a question directed to me.

 

[Andy_III]

Re: Q.2: No way, in the sense of your question. However, shrinks have devised tests for divergent thinkers, and the identification thereof. About 3% of the population qualifies. Curiously, intelligence is apparently not a factor. I believe that this characteristic can be learned, because I learned it.

Thanks, now we have a better term to describe the 3% - divergent thinkers. Do you think the world would be a better place if 99-100% of the population were divergent thinkers? Do you imagine that if everyone were divergent thinkers that they would hold the same beliefs you do?

Re:Q.3: According to my theories about the nature of the human soul/brain/mind complex, only the soul component is capable of free will. In most humans this component is weak, and is overcome by the power of brain, which has no free will and functions like any dog brain, according to agreement of the pack.

I agree with you here. Also, this is compatible with Church teaching as I understand it. This weakness is one of the reasons that Jesus’ life and His gift of the Church is so important.

Weak souls can exercise free will only in areas for which their brains have not been programmed.

This cannot be true at the same time as your earlier statement that divergent thinking can be learned without admitting some form of deprogramming. Is that what you are proposing? If so, I suggest that a more radical deprogramming is needed, like death (i.e., Baptism).

For example, a devout Catholic can learn quantum mechanics. But when done, he will be burdened with two belief systems which relate poorly to how the universe actually works. I’d have no better luck convincing him of the errors inherent in QM (quantum mechanics) than of the logical problems with Catholic dogma.

Since when is QM and Catholic faith two belief systems? Are QM and Newtonian physics two belief systems? Does someone who believes in the law of gravity have to choose to continue the belief or not upon seeing a plane flying? I don’t know of any contradictions between QM and Catholic faith, and I doubt that every Catholic who learns QM starts throwing his faith out the window.

Also, you mention logical problems with the Catholic dogma. As far as I know, there are none. The only times I have seen or heard of logical errors are when people are not reporting the true Catholic faith.

There are some human beings who have no soul connected, typically the result of a brain defect, accident, or surgery. They have no free will,

I don’t agree with you here. I wouldn’t say that the brain is some kind of antenna that can be broken through defect or damage. Every human has a soul and has the capacity for free will.

I fully understand that your position is based upon your beliefs. I have no beliefs. My comments are based upon real-world information and theories derived therefrom.

You have beliefs Greylorn, do not deceive yourself. You believe that you are a divergent thinker. You also believe that you have no beliefs. There are other things that you believe, but I’m sticking with things that are documented in this thread. Some of your beliefs are illogical (as are most people’s, I’m sure you’d agree). Everyone’s comments are based on real-world information and theories derived therefrom.

 

[HelenaMT]

I did not mean to dismiss, but to contribute. The question was about thought, which Minsky wrote about, even if he was not referring to non-physical interactions. I’m not aware of any claim that the soul performs all thought, so the material is relevant. That said, I may have missed the underlying point of the question and focussed too much on the word thought. If so, I apologive to HelenaMT, esp. since the post was not a question directed to me.

No apology necessary, I looked into Minsky a bit last night. I welcome all new information. I guess my underlying point was that even if certain thoughts show correlations to certain parts of the brain, it doesn’t necessarily explain how what we think can cause other physical reactions in the body, such as an OCD brain rewiring itself. If thoughts are simply by-products of physical processes, how do they cause changes back onto the system that created them?

As to what you say about the soul not performing all thought, I would agree. However, if it is a real entity, it must perform *something *with respect to our brains, and looking at the process by which something non-physical(specific thoughts) can affect the physical seemed to be a good place to start.

People do seem to relegate free will to the soul, in some way. Yet, free will actions are carried out by the brain/body. So, if you believe in a soul, you have to believe that it somehow either creates thoughts, or stimulates the right parts of the brain to create them (which would imply a much greater understanding of our brain functions than we have). Does this make sense?

 

[HelenaMT]

Quote:
Originally Posted by greylorn
There are some human beings who have no soul connected, typically the result of a brain defect, accident, or surgery. They have no free will,

I don’t agree with you here. I wouldn’t say that the brain is some kind of antenna that can be broken through defect or damage. Every human has a soul and has the capacity for free will.

What about people for whom even free thought is impossible?