I agree, LevV, but just wanted to point out that the statement you quoted was Robert's, not mine.

LevV wrote: Although I don't fully understand the philosophical arguments in support of his statement, my historical readings tell me that humans can rationalize all and any form of the most despicabl moral behavior. This tell me that our ultimate decision to act or not to act in areas of morality comes from a place that is deeper that our powers of reasoning.

My example of hitting the desk clerk would be an example of my intellect overriding my gut instinct because I actually feel strongly that such violence would be wrong. It seems to me that overriding our instinct, or planning out and executing many deliberate conscious acts, does constitute free will.

But clearly there are times that we do something that we have to rationalize after the fact including despicable moral behavior. Perhaps there are times when the driver and the elephant are aligned and there are times when they are at odds with one another. For those times, perhaps there are two possible outcomes: 1) the driver has his way (free will) or 2) the elephant has his way (at which time the driver puts on his lawyer hat). Sounds rather schizophrenic, but maybe we are to some extent.

It seems to me that overriding our instinct, or planning out and executing many deliberate conscious acts, does constitute free will.

If you plan out and execute deliberate acts, you have to ask why? Are you trying to make more money? Are you acting on the knowledge that resisting temptation will also deliver you from liver damage? Reasons are like logic code in a computer; just because they are information does not mean they don't supervene on physical systems. It also doesn't mean they are free from causality. They are segments of causal information. The algorithms that determine our choices and reasoning are far more complex than a computer, and analog to boot. But still at the whim of causality.

The reasons you act are all there before you decide, a petabyte slate of decision making neurons. At that instant the "reason" or "decision" occurs to you, it seems like you "came up with it", but in reality it manifested from what Daniel Dennet calls the hidden layer of the mind. There's a key to understanding this in that reasons and ideas 'occur' to us. They don't pop into our heads out of the aether. They come from the arrangements of neurons, the informational network in our minds. There is causation from the ground up.

I don't doubt that all thoughts are computer code for our genes' survival machine. As such free will might be an illusion, but one that is subjectively meaningful. Love may be a chemical reaction, but we still feel it.

geo wrote:I don't doubt that all thoughts are computer code for our genes' survival machine. As such free will might be an illusion, but one that is subjectively meaningful. Love may be a chemical reaction, but we still feel it.

Welcome to the "No Free Will" club.

Or maybe the "Robots with Feelings" club.

Someday I hope to understand what you and interbane are saying about this topic. You're both pretty cautious about claims, so the fact that you have some conviction about it makes me wonder what I'm missing. It's not surprising that if free will is an illusion, we would have built-in resistance to seeing it.

DWill wrote:Someday I hope to understand what you and interbane are saying about this topic. You're both pretty cautious about claims, so the fact that you have some conviction about it makes me wonder what I'm missing. It's not surprising that if free will is an illusion, we would have built-in resistance to seeing it.

If you are a materialist, it is a short trip to determinism regarding free will I think (although not everyone agrees). As disturbing as the idea is, I find the argument very convincing. Although of course it hardly ever occurs to me in day-to-day life. We all act as if we could have chosen otherwise.

It comes from understanding determinism, as Dexter points out. Not just understanding it, but getting to the point where it 'clicks'. Every quark, every molecule, every neural pathway, etc, all operate according to rules. A vast web of complex if/then mechanics. How can you have any muscle movement, or any thought, that doesn't require these corresponding underlying mechanisms, ad infinitum back to the moment you were born? Even quantum randomness doesn't offer a solution.

The illusion part is that reality is far too complex to predict everything a person will say or do or think, even when it's ourselves. It all may very well be determined, but to run a "simulation" of reality would require a computer as complex as reality itself. So we may know intellectually that everything is at the whim of cause and effect, but it doesn't change the experience one bit.

Interbane wrote: Not just understanding it, but getting to the point where it 'clicks'.

Good to know that I'm really two steps away. My obstinate question at this point would be, do you think free will being an illusion is more than a technicality? Is there some major, or even minor, adjustment we should be making in how we view personal responsibility and achievement?

My obstinate question at this point would be, do you think free will being an illusion is more than a technicality? Is there some major, or even minor, adjustment we should be making in how we view personal responsibility and achievement?

It's a technicality, but one that surfaces in unexpected ways in conversation. As far as adjusting views, I'm sure everyone is different. It adds nuance to many concepts, but doesn't really change anything. Everyone is still "responsible" for the same old things.