Impossibility of free will

[Bobber90]

So… the huge number of differences accounts for any difference. Why, then, are there so many similarities? If we’re forests of unique trees, why do ‘identical’ twins appear ‘identical’? Why do people show commonalities at all? If it works in one direction, it has to fail in the other, doesn’t it? And clearly, there are correspondences in so-called ‘deterministic’ behavior that defy this vast sea of differences…!

newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/05/art-meets-science-aesthetics-politics-and-metaphysics.html

This article describes an art installation where ‘artist Natalie Jeremijenko cloned a walnut tree 1000 times to observe how strictly genetics determines destiny. After exhibiting the plantlets at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, she raised them until they were mature enough to grow outdoors, and then transferred 40 to sidewalk plots. It didn’t take long for nurture to overwhelm nature, and for the trees to look less and less alike despite their identical DNA.’

These walnut tree clones started to show variation when they were planted outside, therefore they have free will too.

We’re forgetting plain old complexity - both of the environment’s influences and the number of ways we can be altered by it. Plants have far fewer interactions with the environment and far fewer alterable parameters than us, yet they are at nature’s mercy. So why would we be surprised at strong differences emerging in identical twins by comparison?

 

[Bobber90]

Bobber:

Hmmm, let’s see. We’ll decide to do that due precisely to “feeling” moral? When did moral become something somatic?

God bless,
jd

Morality is nothing but the conventional coding of feelings that relate to social interaction. If something feels wrong, it is!

There is no other interpretation of morality which stands under determinism. Or there may be, but it is not objective morality…

 

[empther]

From Bobber90, post 119

Genes are affected by environment - epigenetics is the study of this - meaning that both twins’ genes will change over their life anyway.

Only somebody from the A-team could say something that ignorant. I’ve already explained why it’s wrong.

---

Anyways,
DNA only contains the information for the amino acid sequence of proteins. That’s all.
DNA cannot specify behavior. And there’s your free will. ( in intelligent beings, such as the B-team, bellievers )

 

[Bobber90]

From Bobber90, post 119

Only somebody from the A-team could say something that ignorant. I’ve already explained why it’s wrong.

---

Anyways,
DNA only contains the information for the amino acid sequence of proteins. That’s all.
DNA cannot specify behavior. And there’s your free will. ( in intelligent beings, such as the B-team, bellievers )

I’m flattered that you consider me part of the A-team. I don’t think you’ve considered either of the following:

-That genes do change over life according to environmental influences
-That environmental difference rather than free will can account for the differences between twins

If you want to leave it that you disagree, that’s fine.

 

[belorg]

Nope. You’re not taking into consideration frames of reference.

For example, if you and I are sitting at a table in an otherwise empty room, just staring at one another, but doing nothing else, are we moving? We’re either moving or not, right? There’s no such thing as something more than our “one reality”, right?

We are moving.

Take a step back, now. To someone outside that frame of reference, they can see that the “room” is really a spaceship, moving with constant velocity in a straight line. Are we moving, or not? The answer, based on different frames of reference, is both ‘yes’ and ‘no’.

No it is not. We are moving right now. We are on teh planet Earyh, which moves around the sun etc.

Now, within the frame of reference that is our physical universe, time is passing. No arguments there. However, the argument being made here is that God is outside of this frame of reference. For God, then, ‘time’ – which is a feature of our frame of reference – is not ‘moving’. God sees it all, in a different perspective than we can manage (by virtue of our location within our frame of reference).

If God ‘sees’ my future act, then my future act exists. Since God is supposed to be timeless, my future act (let’s say: deciding to ‘sin’) was true before I was born or even before the universe even exsited.
Which means that I cannot choose anything else. I will decide to sin. There is nothing I can do about that. Now where is my libertarian free will here?

 

[belorg]

No, God exists in all possible worlds all at once, no omnipresent future, but a multitude of possible actions on our part, the full breadth of which God is always present in. And time can pass for one but not another, it depends on your perspective. We can see this in physics: for a person moving at near light speed, time would not “pass” for them as it does for others. Being in the stream is a very different perspective from being outside it and seeing it from above, as it were, and yet it is the same stream, and with two fundamentally accurate ways of perceiving it that are nevertheless different perceptions.

If a rock is somewhere in the ‘stream’ and I cannot see it from in the stream, but you can , because you are outside it in a helicopter e.g., does not mean that the rock isn’t there. It definitely is there. Smae way, if God can watch the end of my life’s ‘movie’, that means that there is a certain end of my movie, the end of the movie is determined. Any sort of free will in this case has to be compatible with determinism, IOW it is compatibilist free will and not libertarian free will.

 

[JDaniel]

Morality is nothing but the conventional coding of feelings that relate to social interaction.

Bobber:

Have you forgotten about the far more poignant tendency of human beings, which is to be separate from the other? I would suspect that this is “conventional coding” as well? Which one takes precedence?"

There is no other interpretation of morality which stands under determinism. Or there may be, but it is not objective morality…

But, of course, one has to accept “determinism” as a presupposition. Which, as you have by now noticed, I don’t.

The impetus for “determinism,” in the view of “determinists,” is that “atoms” cause everything. What are atoms but exigencies of nothingness, no dimension, no mass, and no intelligence. (A rhetorical question, btw.)

God bless,
jd

 

[Bobber90]

Bobber:

Have you forgotten about the far more poignant tendency of human beings, which is to be separate from the other? I would suspect that this is “conventional coding” as well? Which one takes precedence?"

Pro-social behaviour takes precedence. What animals reproduce/hunt/eat/live alone? Everything is done in groups, or at least most things surely. Hence morality is a social sense that leads towards adaptive cooperation, and mitigates the downsides of other useful drives like aggression dependent on context. You must agree that view makes some sense?

But, of course, one has to accept “determinism” as a presupposition. Which, as you have by now noticed, I don’t.

The impetus for “determinism,” in the view of “determinists,” is that “atoms” cause everything. What are atoms but exigencies of nothingness, no dimension, no mass, and no intelligence. (A rhetorical question, btw.)

God bless,
jd

Yes, one has to accept the view that free will is impossible in order to negate morality of all sorts. I cannot imagine a reality in which free will is coherent and plausible though, chiefly because of what it means for causation and for the unity of the self.

 

[empther]

-That genes do change over life according to environmental influences

They do not. Or it would be chaos. Change a single transistor in a twenty million transistor computer chip and it’s useless.

 

[JDaniel]

Pro-social behaviour takes precedence.

Bobber:

That’s your opinion and you have a right to it, but it is not mine.

What animals reproduce/hunt/eat/live alone?

I am an ex-biology perfesser. Do you really want me to start naming them for you? Rather, it seems that organisms that prefer aloneness are among the less complexified ones. And, their numbers are staggering!

Everything is done in groups, or at least most things surely.

See above.

Hence morality is a social sense that leads towards adaptive cooperation, and mitigates the downsides of other useful drives like aggression dependent on context. You must agree that view makes some sense?

A little.

Yes, one has to accept the view that free will is impossible in order to negate morality of all sorts. I cannot imagine a reality in which free will is coherent and plausible though, chiefly because of what it means for causation and for the unity of the self.

What I see above is a bunch of naked assertions. Why are they naked?

Do you have a proposed apologetics for any of it? If you do, would you mind sharing it/them?

God bless,
jd

 

[Giuseppe_Gavino]

If a rock is somewhere in the ‘stream’ and I cannot see it from in the stream, but you can , because you are outside it in a helicopter e.g., does not mean that the rock isn’t there. It definitely is there. Smae way, if God can watch the end of my life’s ‘movie’, that means that there is a certain end of my movie, the end of the movie is determined. Any sort of free will in this case has to be compatible with determinism, IOW it is compatibilist free will and not libertarian free will.

How about this; God is on top of the mountain and you’re on the bottom. God being at the top can see the truck that is going to hit you; however, you cannot see anything, so the truck hitting you is still in the “future”. Now no matter what happens you are going to be hit by that truck; however, when you see this truck coming at you, you still have the free will to either accept this death and all its pains and give them as an offering of love to God or you could reject the death as being unjust and rather stay obstinate in your way of life. The choice is yours, even though the situation you’re in is beyond your control.

You see, Free Will is not about being able to do everything or even having the right to do everything. Heck Free Will isn’t even about having the right to reject or accept something; Free Will is simply the ability to accept or reject something.

 

[ASimon]

They do not. Or it would be chaos. Change a single transistor in a twenty million transistor computer chip and it’s useless.

This is also incorrect.

 

[Bobber90]

They do not. Or it would be chaos. Change a single transistor in a twenty million transistor computer chip and it’s useless.

I may have the answer. The sequence of DNA rarely changes over life, except for mutations, but twins are born with different DNA anyway. [Identical Twins' Genes Are Not Identical - Scientific American]](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=identical-twins-genes-are-not-identical])

In any case, the way our DNA is expressed changes in life so that different genes may be turned on or off. That makes the genetics of twins, even as regards identical areas of their DNA, liable to be further varied. Also, the environment influences the maintenance of certain genetic changes which are then passed down to offspring. [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics]](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics])

In these ways, people’s genetic influences do change over life, meaning we could account for remarkably different behaviour between twins without having to resort to libertarian free will.

 

[Bobber90]

I must start with this:

What I see above is a bunch of naked assertions. Why are they naked?

Haha!

Ok, fair enough, I was hasty in not providing evidence and exaggerating my claims. But! I would defend myself by saying that maybe pro-social behaviour is not a given fact simply because of natural selection, which can favour individualism (not that I have an example of this); however, our ancestral line going back to the other primates and beyond, has evolved to survive within groups. I would expect all other mammals to be in some degree reliant upon social cooperation too. Sexual reproduction gives an automatic need to care for offspring, and several parents are better than one, so there must be an instinct to care and share. Given that there must be incredibly few animals that reproduce asexually, I would provisionally generalise this argument to the lot.

Do you really want me to start naming them for you? Rather, it seems that organisms that prefer aloneness are among the less complexified ones. And, their numbers are staggering!

Well if they are all insects, that is of less concern to me. But which are the loners of the animal kingdom?

Do you have a proposed apologetics for any of it? If you do, would you mind sharing it/them?

God bless,
jd

My apologetics for doubting free will on the basis of causation and what it requires of the unity of the self is this:

1. There seem to be only 2 ideas about how causation happens in the universe. If everything is determined, then everything that happens is effectively written in the prior state of the universe. William James says that this is a monism: look at any one part of the universe in time and you see the whole iron block - there is one past and one future. It makes no sense to talk of possible courses of action because nothing is possible other than what is given to happen. We cannot choose to do anything other than the one thing we are destined to choose, for the reasons we are destined to heed at that point, in the context that was fixed from eternity… etc etc. That leaves no room for free will unless we invent a new causal chain out of nowhere, unconnected with the iron block of the rest of the universe. Or, there is indeterminism, which is the idea that an event was not caused by anything in the state of the universe. If our actions are indetermined, how did we manage to initiate them? As you can see, even a combination of the two views to account for quantum phenomena, does not provide us with the grounds to believe we have free will.
2. If we have libertarian free will, how do we execute it? This is where I get my apostrophes out. What is the ‘we’ that is doing the choosing? If the ‘we’ is choosing acts by thinking consciously, how can we distinguish between the thoughts which compose its thinking and the thoughts which it ends up influencing (by this process of ‘free will’)? If free will is not a conscious process, but gives its decisions to conscious thought (stopping the loop between decisions>thoughts>decisions), then how can we be sure that its deliberation is really ‘us’ doing it? This is a harder problem to express. Sam Harris says that free will is an illusion carefully put together to provide evolutionary advantage in the same way that sight is an illusion, considering that we are conscious of a lot less vision than we think we are. He points to experimental evidence to show that decisions being taken in the brain, in a non-conscious function, can be detected by a machine before they are realised by the test subject. It is more like decisions are manifested into conscious thought by the unconscious activity.

 

[empther]

The A-ream again:

I may have the answer. The sequence of DNA rarely changes over life, except for mutations, but twins are born with different DNA anyway

That’s impossible.
Do two adjacent liver cells in your liver have different DNA? Neither do identical twins because they come from the same fertilized egg.

 

[JDaniel]

Ok, fair enough, I was hasty in not providing evidence and exaggerating my claims. But! I would defend myself by saying that maybe pro-social behaviour is not a given fact simply because of natural selection, which can favour individualism (not that I have an example of this); however, our ancestral line going back to the other primates and beyond, has evolved to survive within groups. I would expect all other mammals to be in some degree reliant upon social cooperation too. Sexual reproduction gives an automatic need to care for offspring, and several parents are better than one, so there must be an instinct to care and share. Given that there must be incredibly few animals that reproduce asexually, I would provisionally generalise this argument to the lot.

Bobber:

Asexual reproduction is not the rarity you think it is. Take a look at the following short article. It’s not a bad article, as is usually the case with short articles.

Here

Well if they are all insects, that is of less concern to me. But which are the loners of the animal kingdom?

And, even though they do not reproduce asexually, let’s see, we can start with the big cats: the tiger, the leopard, the cheetah, the panther, and the lesser cats all the way down to the house cats. Of the dog family, the coyote, and usually foxes.

Herbivores usually herd together. Nature uses this methodology in order to prevent their extinction by predation - more eyes and ears. So this is not an example of empathetic togetherness.

BTW, I wasn’t talking about insects, I was talking primarily about unicellular and the tinier species of multi-cellular beasties, among animal, plant, and fish species. Trillions of them. Trillions!

Also, many species are able to reproduce both ways. In the absence of males, females of many species can parthenogenically reproduce. Among the sharks, black tips and hammerheads. Many reptiles, as well.

This is enough. I’m sure there are many, many websites that will provide all of the species you could ever care to know of.

My apologetics for doubting free will on the basis of causation and what it requires of the unity of the self is this:

1. There seem to be only 2 ideas about how causation happens in the universe. If everything is determined, then everything that happens is effectively written in the prior state of the universe. William James says that this is a monism: look at any one part of the universe in time and you see the whole iron block - there is one past and one future. It makes no sense to talk of possible courses of action because nothing is possible other than what is given to happen. We cannot choose to do anything other than the one thing we are destined to choose, for the reasons we are destined to heed at that point, in the context that was fixed from eternity… etc etc.

Most of the foregoing makes not much sense, but, this last part, is almost an argument in my favor! “[F]ixed from eternity?” Since infinitesimally before the Big Bang? Infinitesimally harder to prove than my Prime Mover - First Cause, Sustainer, Intelligent Designer, Source of Perfect Love, Perfect Truth, Perfect Beauty, Perfect Justice, and Perfect Home. Infinitesimally harder. (I feel that this requires repeating, sometimes.)

That leaves no room for free will unless we invent a new causal chain out of nowhere, unconnected with the iron block of the rest of the universe.

But, that doesn’t follow. Besides, the argument, pardon the expression, is “flaky.”

Or, there is indeterminism, which is the idea that an event was not caused by anything in the state of the universe. If our actions are indetermined, how did we manage to initiate them? As you can see, even a combination of the two views to account for quantum phenomena, does not provide us with the grounds to believe we have free will.

We are determined by the Creator’s algorithms plus chance built into them. Not that difficult.

1. If we have libertarian free will, how do we execute it?

Firing squad?

This is where I get my apostrophes out.

I like apostrophes.

What is the ‘we’ that is doing the choosing? If the ‘we’ is choosing acts by thinking consciously, how can we distinguish between the thoughts which compose its thinking and the thoughts which it ends up influencing (by this process of ‘free will’)? If free will is not a conscious process, but gives its decisions to conscious thought (stopping the loop between decisions>thoughts>decisions), then how can we be sure that its deliberation is really ‘us’ doing it?

By an act of interiority.

This is a harder problem to express. Sam Harris says that free will is an illusion carefully put together to provide evolutionary advantage in the same way that sight is an illusion, considering that we are conscious of a lot less vision than we think we are.

All of these life-like exigencies made solely from inert atoms, consisting of no mass and no intelligence! Harris is soo brilliant! But, out of his league.

continued . . .

 

[JDaniel]

continuation . . .

He points to experimental evidence to show that decisions being taken in the brain, in a non-conscious function, can be detected by a machine before they are realised by the test subject. It is more like decisions are manifested into conscious thought by the unconscious activity.

Yes. Scientology admits of this, too. However, they call those aspects of the mind by their correct names, names that truly describe what is taking place - and can be proven through the use of electrical meters. They call the “unconscious” mind the “reactive” mind, and the “conscious” mind, they call the “analytical” mind. The “reactive” mind never goes to sleep. It’s purpose is self-protection. While the “analytical” mind will, from time to time, fall into sleep. Yet, it is the “analytical” mind that we use while we’re awake - for making free choices, for example. Occasionally, according to Scientology, an engram, caused by a trauma leading to immediate unconsciousness, or while unconscious, such as while in sleep, causes an aberration, which causes us to make poor, often harmful decisions, especially when similar events re-stimulate the original traumatic event. Yet, they believe that “engrams” can be obliterated by careful re-confrontation. Now, I’m not a Scientologist, but I find their science much more compelling than anything modern psychology or psychiatry have to offer.

See! I told you I liked apostrophes.

God bless,
jd

 

[Bobber90]

The A-ream again:

That’s impossible.
Do two adjacent liver cells in your liver have different DNA? Neither do identical twins because they come from the same fertilized egg.

Looks like you will have to credit the A-team:

scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=identical-twins-genes-are-not-identical

'Identical twins are identical, right? After all, they derive from just one fertilized egg, which contains one set of genetic instructions, or genome, formed from combining the chromosomes of mother and father.

But experience shows that identical twins are rarely completely the same. Until recently, any differences between twins had largely been attributed to environmental influences (otherwise known as “nurture”), but a recent study contradicts that belief.

Geneticist Carl Bruder of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and his colleagues closely compared the genomes of 19 sets of adult identical twins. In some cases, one twin’s DNA differed from the other’s at various points on their genomes. At these sites of genetic divergence, one bore a different number of copies of the same gene, a genetic state called copy number variants.

Normally people carry two copies of every gene, one inherited from each parent. “There are, however, regions in the genome that deviate from that two-copy rule, and that’s where you have copy number variants,” Bruder explains. These regions can carry anywhere from zero to over 14 copies of a gene.

Scientists have long used twins to study the roles of nature and nurture in human genetics and how each affects disease, behavior, and conditions, such as obesity. But Bruder’s findings suggest a new way to study the genetic and environmental roots of disease.

For example, one twin in Bruder’s study was missing some genes on particular chromosomes that indicated a risk of leukemia, which he indeed suffered. The other twin did not.’

 

[empther]

These regions can carry anywhere from zero to over 14 copies of a gene.

So it’s the same gene, hunh?
I mean, one twin doesn’t have a gene for red hair, and the other has the gene for blond hair?
I mean, one identical twin won’t be male and the other female?
They just might have different numbers of copies of the same gene?
Or maybe one has lost a gene and got sick but the gene wasn’t turned into some other gene to do something like grow feathers?
Sounds like they’re identical to me.

Has nothing to do with free will. Either can be naughty or nice.

 

[Bobber90]

Bobber:

Asexual reproduction is not the rarity you think it is. Take a look at the following short article. It’s not a bad article, as is usually the case with short articles.

Here

And, even though they do not reproduce asexually, let’s see, we can start with the big cats: the tiger, the leopard, the cheetah, the panther, and the lesser cats all the way down to the house cats. Of the dog family, the coyote, and usually foxes.

Herbivores usually herd together. Nature uses this methodology in order to prevent their extinction by predation - more eyes and ears. So this is not an example of empathetic togetherness.

BTW, I wasn’t talking about insects, I was talking primarily about unicellular and the tinier species of multi-cellular beasties, among animal, plant, and fish species. Trillions of them. Trillions!

Unicellular things are fundamentally conglomerations of interacting/symbiotic molecules which provide a boundary with the outside world as well as energy and a means to replicate. In that sense, the smallest units of life rely upon ‘pro-social’ instincts. I appreciate all the background you have offered on the larger life forms and their behaviour, but in any case I realise I have given a tautology by introducing the term ‘pro-social’ behaviour to talk about good behaviour. Pro-social simply means any sort of behaviour which in its relation with others is adaptive, and of course, all the behaviour we see is around because it has to have been adaptive in the past. Everything could be subsumed under pro-social, however individualistic or apparently morally bad. If we had no free will, we obviously couldn’t change behaviour in a free will way (loving the tautologies as well as apostrophes), but perhaps because of our evolution we would still be as satisfied with morality as if free will were possible.

Most of the foregoing makes not much sense, but, this last part, is almost an argument in my favor! “[F]ixed from eternity?” Since infinitesimally before the Big Bang? Infinitesimally harder to prove than my Prime Mover - First Cause, Sustainer, Intelligent Designer, Source of Perfect Love, Perfect Truth, Perfect Beauty, Perfect Justice, and Perfect Home. Infinitesimally harder. (I feel that this requires repeating, sometimes.)

I didn’t mean that the past is eternal, but that for the whole of the past, the present has been fixed in the case of determinism.

But, that doesn’t follow. Besides, the argument, pardon the expression, is “flaky.”

I don’t think at that stage I was making an argument that determinism/indeterminism is definitely true, but saying that if it were, then free will is not possible. If the latter argument is flaky, what part is flakiest?

This is the very question: how do we exercise free will?

By an act of interiority.

Well is it fair to say then that acts of interiority simply occur, as Sam Harris would put it, or are we somehow responsible for them? Because if we are to claim authorship over the act of interiority, from what position are we authoring the act? From the outside? I think that moves us no further towards understanding how a unitary self can both compose and be composed by the thoughts it is having.