Did he really debunk free will?

yeah but he wasn't the first and it's really not hard

>we can even consider having free will,
What does this even mean though? Nobody who believes in free will can define it, and seems to use it to mean 'I feel like I wanted to do something' which doesn't require any freedom at all.

Here is what ive gleamed from my very little study on the subject. Free will means that people are able to consider options when making a decision to act. The other option is a genetic/biological predeterminism, where the decisions are made for a person by powerful biological/genetic instincts, and that choice is an illusion. The only choices considered are limited by what is pre-programmed in the body. I dont know enough about the conscious/sub conscious, but it would seem they represent free will/ pre-determinism respectively.
Now, it would seem to me that, if we were to act off of genetic/biological drivers, we would simply act on them. We wouldnt even argue about whether or not we free will, because acting off of biology(pre-determined decisions) would mean we would not even have the need to consider free will(choice and decision) or even have the psychological ability to consider the existence of a choice like free will, because free will(choice and decision) would not be necessary under a biological pre-determinism.

We could be pre-determined to argue about free will because believing in it is somehow useful for us. Maybe it helps for social interaction or something. I still don't really see where the 'Free' part comes in, when you make a conscious choice you are simply aware of a number of options, you don't choose which you're aware of, then you pick one for some reason, but you did not choose to be the sort of person who wanted to pick that option.

>What does this even mean though?
Non-determinism. Pseud free will denialists typically resort to extraordinary gymnastics to "prove" that universe is deterministic.
That's a question of physics. But even in pure abstract logic independent agents act ... independently, the environment is bounding area, not Fate.

You’re conflating the ability to understand multiple desires with being able to freely choose which desire you act on. You’re predetermined to act on the strongest desire, but you cannot simply understand that one is deterministically stronger than the other, so you believe you have choices that are equally probable. If we were omniscient, we wouldn’t believe in free will.

The universe not being deterministic, supposing this is true, doesn't explain what free will is

Stochastic, or whatever form of a non-deterministic Universe you'd like to imagine still doesn't grant you free will though.

>the environment is bounding area, not Fate
Specifically, free/non-free will is not a binary, but it's a spectrum. A caged slave has less free will than somebody outside of the cage. Slavery can be also self-imposed (fe low self-esteem).

As for experiments, computers seeded by genuine randomnes (isotope decay, heat noise...) exhibit free will when they find emergent solutions. They were programmed with the algorithm to find the solutions, but the solutions they decide are "their decision".

>doesn't explain what free will is
It's more related to fate. If universe is deterministic, then everything is obviously pre-determined. This is important when simulating free will on computers. If you use pseudo random generator (ie deterministic), the agent will always find same solution. Sure it "decides", but the issue remains that the train to the future is always the same for a given starting vector - there's clearly a Fate. Which is quite at odds with classical definition of free will.

>independent agents act ... independently
To be an agent, to have a will, is already a contradiction of freedom, whether materialism is true or not.

But you could make the argument that having free choice and consideration(outside of biological instincts or desires) means we are able to consider our actions being pre-determined because believing in it is somehow useful. I imagine animals are controlled by biological instincts, which is why deer cant argue about the ethics of eating grass versus meat, or why beavers build mud huts and can't argue about the benefits of classical versus gothic architecture, or why wolves dont have conflicts on the correct way to educate their cubs. Animals act in the only way they know how, which is the way they are biologically made to act. Humans dont.

The idea is that if you have true Randomness, people are *allowed* to exhibit free will. They do this by navigating the random events as best as they can, and can decide their destiny on merit. Without randomness, the system becomes static and closed form. These models are even used out in the real world, in macro economics. Without randomness, all markets would eventually get cornered, they'd find a "winner" who computes best future. This doesn't happen in the real world, all monopolies, no matter how entrenched, get displaced by black swans they *can't* plan for.

But I make bad and wrong decisions. Surely, I would not be able to do that if I acted on determined desires. The reason is because animals cannot act against instincts, because instincts are necessary for survival. If not, then why do animals have instincts?

Everybodies fate is the same, death, but how they live inbetween birth and death is different. And the fact people can bypass the train to the future and kill themselves shows that comparing a human with a random generator might not be accurate.

Game theoretic jargon, "rational agent" may sound a bit counter-intuitive to classics. In game theory, it's simply "that thing which decides its own fate given a range of uncertainties to choose from". In formally strong models, agents are typically only hedonistic ("rational"). This doesn't necessarily reflect real people all that much, though systems like natural selection does work that way.

Sam Harris has never debunked anything.

Paradoxically its easier for computer to randomly self-terminate, than for human to overcome the numerous builtin safeguards. Humans are primarily bound by evolutionary programming. Given the evolutionary objective to survive and self-replicate (because everything else doesn't carry into the future), aiming for suicide is definitely not something most people would consider, even while their free will is extremely restricted. It mostly happens in the extremes, when they consider it as last option when there are no other. When it's almost always the last choice, how much "free choice" there was, really?

It makes more sense that you make bad decisions BECAUSE you don’t have free will. You have rational desires and instinctual desires. Sometimes one is stronger than the other, and sometimes you have multiples of each. I argue that a being with free will should be able to freely choose the rational desire every single time, since he knows what is best for him, generally. That anyone would deliberately go against his rational desire is proof of lack of free will. If everyone had free will, and had the same motives, and the same conditions, and the same intelligence, then they would all make the same decision, knowing what would benefit them most, and being able to freely act in that direction.

You are not the author of your desires, or thoughts. Your consciousness is merely the plane on which they arise. You choosing between a Gothic house, or a modern one is just like the deer choosing whether to continue grazing when a sudden rustle of leaves interrupts it. It's your genetics and all the particular ways in which they've interacted with the experiences and social existence you've been exposed to that makes you "choose". Which is why nurture, or opportunity are so important as they modulate your pseudo-choice. But of course, you thinking you can expose yourself to more opportunities, whether it be education, or something else, is just an illusion. You will, or you won't when everything that is external to you finds the language of your genetics. That is when environment modulates desires and extends your degree of freedom to will. But to think that given the exact same pre-conditions you could have acted differently is an illusion. The self is an illusion and free will is nested within it. Consciousness is all there is.

>But to think that given the exact same pre-conditions you could have acted differently is an illusion.
That’s only possible with randomness anyway

Well, I guess we might have to agree to disagree. You say that people can make bad decisions because they dont have free will, because rational self-interest means a person would choose what is best for them. I say that people have free will as evident by bad decisions, because biological/genetic instincts would only allow a person to act in the best way, and wouldn't even allow the option to exist.

Not necessarily. I'd be curious to know why you think that's the case.

>because biological/genetic instincts would only allow a person to act in the best way,
This is obviously not true. Evolution just comes up with shit that sort of works, and selects for strategies that work better than others, meaning organisms are constnatly acting in suboptimal ways.

What is maladapted evolutionary traits? What is inherently non-cooperative relationships between various systems?

But are computers self-terminating because they dont like being computers? It would break my heart to read the suicide e-mails that programs send before they self-terminate.

>What is maladapted evolutionary traits?
No such thing. All our "maladaptions" are simply biological evolution not keeping up with the social one. If we account for the jetlag, totally useless features are surprisingly rare.

I don’t see why a person with free will, at least the freest that anyone can be, would make a different decision given the same conditions.

I read this book ages ago. I can't remember much about it, which probably speaks to how much it has to contribute. I seem to recall it being a pedantic exercise in evaluating an argument that modern science can't address.

"But what if, at a deeper level than we understand, everything is a rube goldberg machine and people are just particle math?".

Like, cool ok. What if? Does that actually change anything? Can we prove it one way or the other? No and No? Awesome. Great book.

I'm not married to the term, so you're 'free' to pick whatever you think suits your definition best (ie biological evolution not keeping up with the social one) as I agree with it. It is still the case that evolution inputs instincts and desires based on outdated models, thus risking sub/non-optimal outcomes, which is just one argument against your claim that, "rational self-interest" alone, as a product of evolution, would "allow a person to act in the best way".

I apologize for paraphrasing you here, but if I got you right, you are saying that environment, opportunity, and experience give people psuedo-choices. And what I will or wont is a results of the outside effects, which modulates my desires. And given the same pre-conditions, it is unlikely I would act differently.
If that is the case, your entire hypothesis rests on the fact that given the exact same ore-conditions, I would act the same. This seems to be a very large leap of faith. Unfortunately I cant agree or disagree with it because it is something we will never know but it has given me alot to think about.

Oh, I agree. But then, so does Harris as that's the definition of free will he argues against and the one most people would argue for when they speak of agency. My gripe was that your claim, as I understood it, was that 'free will' is necessary if randomness is true. But I now see that you just meant 'you may have acted differently' which is obviously not the same thing.

I think I understand you now. People cant choose the choices they make (that is provided by experience, education etc.), but they can judge which of the choices is best made. Is that correct?

evobio tl;dr incoming

Evolution happens in parallel at different stratas (there are many many subtiers involved, this is just high level):
- first you get nucleotides (tier 1, evolves individual peptide chains), that evolves into somewhat self-replicating goo
- then you get single cells (tier 2, evolves organelles, complex protein-protein mechanics)
- then you get multi-cellular (tier 3, evolves organs)
- then you get social roles, hiearchies and such (tier 4, lizard brain, family instincts, intuition, intelligence)
This was all naturally/sexually selected hardware thus far. And then...
- you get humans at tier 5 - memetics. things like "complex tool use", "religion", "complex language" and "oral history"

Why does nature use this scaffold? Because each higher tier can evolve magnitude faster than the tier below. Sexual selection has better anchors, and random mutations now work with "prefabs", instead of individual planks.

The top end of tier 4 gave us powerful language center for social function, but tier 5 hijacked it for slavery, armies and civilization. Our tier 4 hw is far more capable compared to all other animals. This is why dolphins and elephants are big brained, but retarded dumbshits, pretty much because they can't meme.

With hardware peripheries for memetics, you get extraordinary horizontal transfer of evolution at tier 5. 1 guy out of 1000,000 invents pottery, 2 years later, everyone has pottery. This mode of evolution is extremely powerful, but the problem with tiers is that the more buried tiers now serve as foundation, and will change all the more glacially the more the upper tiers are important/in flux - even if they frequently clash. This friction exists on boundaries between all the tiers, and this is also why you have ~20 amino acids and only some of the simplest and ancient organisms throw in an exotic one or two into the mix now and then. For anyone running at higher tiers, It's unthinkable to change their low level shit now.

To give an example - mating instincts might be obsolete from point of our civilization, but it is deeply intertwined with our motivation reward circuitry. And you can't just replace those with ideology out of the blue, as motivation is still fairly primitive mechanism on the tier 3-4 boundary. You can't ideologically control it, there's always some "base desire" proxy people ultimately defer to, in order to justify their lofty ideals.

sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810009001135?via=ihub
tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21507740.2018.1425756
pnas.org/content/109/42/E2904.full

Libet's experiments are outdated and have always been in doubt to a large portion of the neuroscience community, it is comical that someone who claims to be a neuroscientist has to hark back to controversial research papers from the 80s just to affirm his preconceived notions of free will. The dude thinks its all set in stone and that everyone else is wrong by default.

> you are saying that environment, opportunity, and experience give people psuedo-choices
I'd go one step further and say that these things, by the way the modulate genetics -the way your genetics allow themselves to be interacted with, to be more precise- shape your desires and thoughts. So ultimately they increase the pool of possible outcomes by increasing competition between instincts. That is not to say you have control over how, or when they arise, or that you have agency in choosing one over another. You're just increasing (or decreasing if the environmental factors are detrimental) the complexity of your system is all. Which can be good for you, but there is no free choice in how, or when they arise on the level of your consciousness.
>your entire hypothesis rests on the fact that given the exact same ore-conditions, I would act the same
That's the definition of free will Harris is operating with and argues against. And I think that's fair as that's what most people speak of when they contemplate their agency.
> but they can judge which of the choices is best made
They can, but it is not 'them' who is doing the judging because it is not them who are the authors of their own thoughts. Thoughts simply arise as a product of genetics, environment and their interaction. My whole argument against free will is predicated on the denial of the 'self' understood as this authorial agency. You are not the thinker of your thoughts, nor are you the desirer of your desires. Some find the absence of self and free will scary thoughts, but I find Ben Stiller quite good on this samharris.org/life-without-free-will/

Fucked if I know. I do know that sometimes I am forgiving and other times spiteful, sometimes careful and other times impulsive, bloody brilliant or a bloody fool, as meek as a saint or as bold as a crusader. The whole scope of human emotion and sensation.Sometimes I act on things and sometimes I ignore them. At times I can make choices, and other times i dont seem to have a choice at all. But it still seems like, regardless of all the nonsense I just wrote, I can make decisions.

I'm not sure I follow you. I agree with everything you just said.... What is it you think we're disagreeing about here? My impression was that evo maladaptations (or "biological evolution not keeping up with the social one" as you put it) are an argument against self-interest alone allowing a person to act in the best way as you claimed here .

Right, but as much as I hate using terminology hijacked and trademarked by sociopathic morons... That's not an argument. Our intuitions are terribly bad beyond the surface level (see our intuitions when it comes to the fundamental stuff, quantum particles, highs speeds, etc. We're terrible at this shit) as we haven't evolved to sense reality beyond this level (too many calories for a pretty useless trait when it comes to survival). So what 'seems' to you is not of much relevance to reality. Much like what seems to a paranoid schizophrenic isn't either.

We're not the same posters.

Oh. Then your reply would have been more appropriately directed to the user who made the claim that evo maladap aren't hurdles on the way of making the best decisions. Thorough post nonetheless.

Not me in that post. My tl;dr was meant to explain: shit wrt instincts is working as intended. The "animal impulses" is what directs our bias. You believe so and so to socially impress X or Y because biological instinct Z. Even if you don't admit it to yourself, such biases are blatant and observable everywhere. Does that rob us of free instinct? I'm not sure. These things are the core of our "rational interest". Yes, even if it means starting smoking because of peer pressure. Because at that point, your self interest to impress that peer group was entirely rational. Rationality has nothing to do with intelligent action. There's a predefined goal ("impress smokers"), and there's rational path towards it.

R-right. I completely agree. I'm too confused to unscramble what is a clear case of mistaken identities in my mind.

plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/

No, determinism says we have to argue about weather we have free will. We have no choice. Arguing about it doesn’t mean we actually have it.

>A caged slave has less free will than somebody outside of the cage.
One's ability to express free will is irrelevant to whether or not they have it. They are separate issues.

Not understanding determinism is the true mark of a brainlet

>They are separate issues.
Or intricately linked. A rock doesn't have what it takes to express any free will at all, therefore it has none. A virus has a little bit of free will, but can't do much about it. Bacteria lil more. But both are pretty near to a rock still. Slave has enormous amount of free will in comparison, but far less than a freedman. It's been stated before, free will is a spectrum, treating it as binary is just pseud's strawman. The gamut of options you have ultimately determines how "freely" you can choose.

Free will in the libertarian sense doesn't exist regardless of whether the universe is deterministic.
If your actions are deterministic, then all actions are a result of a prior state in the universe in which you didn't exist, which means your actions don't originate from the self as a prime mover of action but instead originate from without.
If the universe is not deterministic, then they weren't completely determined by anything. There was a "dice roll," so to speak that decided your behavior. But that means your action didn't originate from the self as a prime mover of action either.
Two horns. Either way you get gored.

No. Harris a retard. Free will exists because the problem of evil exists. Again: Harris is a mental midget, and an actual midget.

Terrible post.

naturalism has been debunked.
>how can someone delude themselves like this?

>naturalism has been debunked
nope.

that's what I'm saying

But the problem is you haven't really said anything. None of your arguments and premises are self evident and require backing. What psych implications non-existent in the real world for instance? What experiments? Surely you can expand on it if Stiller is no match for you.

No I'm saying we have a failure to communicate. In short, I agree that naturalism has not been debunked. The mere notion is absurd.

You're having a failure to communicate here though . What psych implications non-existent in the real world for instance? What experiments?

This. It's embarrassing how badly Yea Forums comprehends determinism.

There is no god and hence no problem of evil you idiot. Jesus Christ, imagine being a Christian and just skipping outright all of the most basic reflection about how the world works because muh god explains everything anyway, I don't need to think about it. No wonder the world is still full of retards.

Classical free will is such obvious nonsense that the slightest examination should have led anyone who is not a complete brainlet to the same conclusions as Harris a long time ago. Such a thing would require that our cognitive processes would somehow exist outside of the chain of physical causality. WHich they clearly don't, if I can lesion a small area of cortex and have you reliably raping your own children inside of a week. If not for the mind's own defenses erected to prop up the illusion of agency there would be no controversy at all.

I'd go one step further.
>Such a thing would require that our cognitive processes would somehow exist outside of the chain of physical causality
Even if our cognitive processes were a result of actual randomness, they still wouldn't necessarily imply free will in the libertarian sense.

>Such a thing would require that our cognitive processes would somehow exist outside of the chain of physical causality.
which isn't a wild proposition considering we haven't yet resolved the hard problem of consciousness

>WHich they clearly don't, if I can lesion a small area of cortex and have you reliably raping your own children inside of a week
the lesion argument is a total red herring, people rape children with or without lesions. Stunting decision making apparatuses just means your faculties for decision making is reduced, it doesn't necessarily collapse the free will argument.

No you fucking idiot. The concept that free will doesn’t exist is fucking ancient.

You'd have to prove empiricism and materialism as totalizing epistemologies first. So no.

this is a literature board, we dont understand aesthetics

What the fuck? Are you fucking retarded? Do you want a punch in the mouth?

No.

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>psychological implications based on lack of free will

>Conscious:
Denial of responsibility
Self-Defeatism
Denial of Consciousness

>Unconscious
Individuality would only be based on genes and physical outside factors, both of which would also be deterministic based on the theory, therefore we would have already hit a plateau for a long time now where individuality has faded, and we are pretty much the same person. The choice we would make in a certain situation would always be the more efficient that gives the best results, which is just not the case in nature.

No
owl232.net/papers/rand3.htm

Attached: Ayn_Rand_disegno.jpg (662x1018, 56K)

Just because those don't map out overtly, or because you're afraid of them doesn't mean free will exists.Just to address your concerns though.
>Denial of responsibility
Sure, you wouldn't be responsible for your actions in the libertarian sense of responsibility, but that doesn't mean punitive/retributive justice loses its meaning. Just that we'd take rehabilitation more seriously. It would still make sense to segregate criminals from the rest of society for as along as it is deemed necessary. And severe retributive punishment can be rehabilitative as well. Both as a matter of future prevention and individual reflection, depending on the criminal's temperament. You just wouldn't get your dick hard for punishing people just for the sake of it, because there's no true agency to spill your rage on. You CAN however, raise the objection, that however primal that type of rage may be (wanting someone to get punished for the sake of revenge), it may be one of the main motivators for why we even care about justice in the first place. And that losing it might dull our reasoning around justice in general. This is a fair question, but I see no evidence to suggest that we'd evolve to get rid of it just because we stop taking agency so seriously because of our lack of belief in free will. "With or without free will, a psychopath who enjoys killing children is different from a pediatric surgeon who enjoys saving them. Whatever the truth about free will, these distinctions are unmistakable and well worth caring about."
>Self-Defeatism
Valid concern for some temperaments. I'd say that a psychologically healthy person, capable to understand the true implications of a lack of free will, will not feel demotivated, or plunge into nihilism because of it. Taking solace in the fact that you possess consciousness and that 'it is like something to be you', regardless of free will, should be enough reason to rejoice. But I probably wouldn't tell a 5 year old about free will, you're right. And I'm willing to concede that it's a thought not worth entertaining publicly too much, if the outcomes are suicidal nihilism. I just don't think that is the case. And just because your mother is a fundamentalist evangelical pained by your apostasy and the thought of you burning in eternal hellfire, doesn't mean that you should revert back to Christianity. And that's a fairly charitable example.

>The choice we would make in a certain situation would always be the more efficient that gives the best results, which is just not the case in nature.
This is false. Evolution did not select for flawless reasoning. We have blind spots and our intuitions beyond the surface level are terrible, due to not having been equipped to perceive reality deep enough (way too many calories to be aware of high speeds and quantum particles). And there are maladaptations as well, whereby the evolution of our own physical system was not in sync with that of environment, or culture. Which is why we smoke, binge drink, have unprotected sex, etc.

Unironically Ben Stiller for your concerns samharris.org/life-without-free-will/

interesting. i would say free will is the same as self-observance. as far as we know, we are one a most specialized species know to do meta-observations about the processes involved in life. and that includes our sentient life. its like we are somewhat capable of explaning the "magic tricks", and there fore the magic is gone with it. you could say we have free will but once you explain a little bit of the biological side of things, the argument loses some magic. but in the end, the information we can gather from the meta-analysis we are capable of doing, gives us a small benefit in magnitudes of choice. we can somewhat tap in our own genetic code through conscious decision making. the irony is that nobody, NOBODY knows whats really going to happen, cause our minds are not made out to compute EVERYTHING that involves real transformation through evolution. we might think we are tapping into the matrix with our decisions (just think about crsprs research) but have no clue about how it trully works.