Books about consciousness and free will

But in the end, you’re just going to follow your greatest desire, which you have no control over.

>but we can consciously go against our urges
Only because a different desire is stronger than the desire you’re trying to fight. It may be a conscious desire, but it’s still causally determining your action. If that’s how you define free will, then whatever. That would mean that some people have much more free will than others.

Schopenhauer and Hume

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Your agency is still the result of mechanisms like the animal in heat, they're just more complicated. Maybe we aren't disagreeing though

Not nescessarily, but what you are describing is now psychology, not the abscense of free will.

No, an urge and desire are two different things. I assign "urge" to largely animalistic bodily urges, eating, sleeping, etc. Desire is what i think of as a conscious drive towards a goal. Just arbitrary definitions to make conversing a little more convenient.

>That would mean that some people have much more free will than others
Depends on how aware you are of your condition, desires, wants, and all. You cannot consciously counteract that which you do not know to exist.

>Your agency is still the result of mechanisms like the animal in heat, they're just more complicated
This would to an extent make sense, we do have brains just as animals. It does sound logical that the act of defying yourself can only come from yourself. This is actually a very interesting point.

If I were able to use my reason to decide what my best course of action is, then flawlessly execute that plan every time by bending my will to conform to that rational desire, then I would believe in free will. But as it is, no one can do this. Procrastination shouldn’t exist, sin shouldn’t exist, regret shouldn’t exist, but they all do. People do what they don’t want to do! How can we claim our WILLS are FREE if we cannot change them?

And even if we had this power, we would still be limited by our level of rationality. I think that if everyone truly had free will, they would all make the same decision given the same conditions. This sounds counter-intuitive, but think about it.

>assuming causality exists
big mistake

If we extend this reasoning further, defining free will as being the cause of your actions, being fully rational, and having the power to carry out those rational plans, then who else can have free will except God? It’s a mistake to believe that free will means you could have done otherwise, because why would someone who has free will make a different decision given the same conditions? If you could simulate a decision process 1,000 times, a person would make the same decision unless randomness were involved.

>If I were able to use my reason to decide what my best course of action is, then flawlessly execute that plan every time by bending my will to conform to that rational desire, then I would believe in free will.
This is entirely possible, made incredibly difficult due to a multitude of minute factors, ranging from imperfect information on the course of action to your body judging that sitting on your ass will be more enjoyable than putting your plan into action. These can be overcome. Just not eliminated.

>How can we claim our WILLS are FREE if we cannot change them?
Free will is a greater concept, not one that is in effect passively, rather an ability a species possess. A deliberate action for deliberate results. That is what animals are incapable of to the extent humans are. Animals are curious, they can communicate, they have dreams, they can imagine, they can predict, but none to the extent humans can. I'm not sure, but this might imply that free will is a spectrum of sorts. Not to say we're at the brightest end.

>This is entirely possible
Based on what evidence or reasoning?
>Free will is a greater concept, not one that is in effect passively, rather an ability a species possess. A deliberate action for deliberate results. That is what animals are incapable of to the extent humans are. Animals are curious, they can communicate, they have dreams, they can imagine, they can predict, but none to the extent humans can. I'm not sure, but this might imply that free will is a spectrum of sorts. Not to say we're at the brightest end.
It seems like you’re talking about “will” and not “free will.” And that the more complex the decision-making process is, the more variables present, the “freer” the will is. But I still don’t see any reason to call it free.

>Abolishing Freedom by Frank Ruda
>Consciousness And The Social Brain by Michael Graziano

Both on Libgen

Absolute rationality, eh?
>I think that if everyone truly had free will, they would all make the same decision given the same conditions
True. If everyone had the same goal, and had the same, optimal means to reach that goal, then absolutely. What makes our rationality imperfect is that it is an evolution of the animal mind. Bogged down by needs and impulses. That is why nobody has "perfect free will".

But then again free will implies that even if everyone had the same goal and the same means of achieving said goal availible, some would tell you to go fuck yourself and invent telepathic chess. However what would allow this erratic behavior is tied to how imperfect our free will is. Would you consider a perfectly logical artificial intelligence, without impulses and desires (the very symptoms of our humanity) to have free will? This is an interesting question because either way you answer something gets fucky. What would an emotionless intelligence do when it would need to justify it's decisions? Many things are decided on assumption. There is no rason why pain is universally undesirable, you simply don't like it and that's that. Enough with this Lem bullshit though, my bad.

>why would someone who has free will make a different decision given the same conditions
Again, my explanation would be that there is no perfect free will in humans. Your moods can change momentarily. You can forget and remember things within a blink of an eye. Your priorities might shift. If you went back in time to the very moment a decision was made, it would have been made again. Go back just a few seconds further and the outcome can be drastically different.

>If you could simulate a decision process 1,000 times, a person would make the same decision unless randomness were involved
We can try again comparing ourselves to machines here. With machines, you would be correct. There is no "random", only mathematical "rights" and "wrongs". With humans, a degree of randomness is always involved. Invariably. Some might argue this is what grants us imperfect free will, because perfect free will is not free at all.

>Based on what evidence or reasoning?
Suppose you want to buy yourself a cat. For entertainment. Your primary motivation is thus "entertainment through cat". Therefore, you set out to acquire a cat. There are two possible scenarios, i'll attempt to illustrate both. The difference is straightforward, in the first scenario, you have knowledge and information that is always correct. In the second, you don't.

Let's start with the second then.
You think, but aren't quite sure, there is a lady that wanted to give a kitten away for free. She's a breeder, but she's the best you know in the area so you go with it. When you arrive, it turns out she has no kittens left. You come home empty-handed. Now, start this day again. This time, something triggers your senses into remembering a stray cat sneaking around the area that you could adopt. Recognizing this to be a lower effort option, you still opt for visiting the old lady. But alas, no kittens.

Now onto the first:
Suppose that you know that a stray cat just happens to be sitting outside on your back porch, one that is friendly and completely disease-free. If your end goal is to acquire a cat, given this information, every single time you were presented with this choice you would naturally jog onto your back porch and adopt the cat. It is the easiest option every time.

While writing the scenario for the second option i realized the implications of your point, that events aren't predetermined per say, but they do happen for a reason. And the chain of reasons can be interpreted as predetermined. To this i genuienly cannot answer, and unless you're a quantum physicist i doubt you can either.

sociology

structure V agency

structure wins

>we can only have free will by not having free will
Woah...
I’m curious, what does a being with maximal free will look like?
I’m not sure what the point of the cat example is. My claim is that you cannot perfectly conform your will to your understanding. I KNOW that it would most benefit me to study rather than playing a video game, yet I might play the game anyway. I believe that if I had free will, I could sit down, figure out some optimal course of action, then, once I’ve decided what I should do, I should be able to “flip a switch,” and cause that desire to be my strongest. Instead of merely doing what I will, I would be able to will my will, as Schopenhauer said. This still wouldn’t be absolute freedom, as all my actions could be still causally determined, but I would definitely be satisfied with this “freedom.” We think that because we’re offered a dozen options at the fast food restaurant, and we sometimes decide differently, then we must have free will.

>Woah...
lmao i apologize for pseudery, it sounded too intellectual not to leave it in
>I’m curious, what does a being with maximal free will look like?
By "absolute" free will i referred to the idea of a consciousness uninhibited by our animal instincts. By your idea of "free will", that is, willing yourself to choose the optimal solution to every problem, you would essentially have to develop a machine-like, binary style of reasoning. This obscures the distinction between "absolute free will" and "omnipotence" to an extent.

>I’m not sure what the point of the cat example is.
A repeating set of events can birth differing results because of our imperfect free will, precisely because our free will, it's imperfection, and external factors out of our control (such as omniscient information).

>My claim is that you cannot perfectly conform your will to your understanding. I KNOW that it would most benefit me to study rather than playing a video game, yet I might play the game anyway.
Exactly! But where you fail is that it is possible! Just extremely difficult. There is no empirical blockade preventing me from making all the decisions i would want to have been made. Nothing beyond chance and impulse. There is nothing preventing me from forcing myself against my comfort. Our entire society is built on this principle, no less.

>I believe that if I had free will, I could sit down, figure out some optimal course of action, then, once I’ve decided what I should do, I should be able to “flip a switch,” and cause that desire to be my strongest.
This is also an interesting point. Desire is something partly out of our control precisely because, as i defined it, our free will is imperfect. A desire is not a logical course of action, but merely a physical incentive produced by our brain. It changes and dampens your agency at it's worst, but even then it is possible to fight against it. As i said before, a being with "maximal free will" would be free of any narcotic incentives injected into itself by it's very self, making "free will" the only component of it's "self".

>Instead of merely doing what I will, I would be able to will my will
That goes beyond the possibilities of any intelligent creature in existence that we so far know of. With humans, at the very least we can control this to a degree. But in the end your free will is skewed by your body, which ironically is the source of your free will. Because once your knees are weak and arms are heavy, when there's vomit on your sweater already, it feels damn good to lose yourself in the moment (you gotta never let it go (go!) ). And so why don't you? This is how you mind tricks you. Incentives.

To add to the last paragraph:
*distractions and incentives

right, well, in a few minutes i'm going to have to go, i suppose if you're already writing you won't see this, but if you aren't yet then write out a response, go ahead. I'll read it in the morning.

>Be me circa 2300
>Live in deterministic universe
>Possess genetically engineered IQ
>Feelsgoodman.png
>Decide to build computer to compute the future
>See my future
>It's shit
>Tfw I can't prevent it because I don't have free will

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>Be me in a parallel universe
>This time a non-deterministic universe
>Can sense the power of free will flowing through my veins
>Decide to build future predicting machine
>Can't predict shit because conscious beings have the final say in everything that matters

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Crime and Punishment.