Ideas about free will I'm compelled to share

A nice thing about writing on the subject of free will is that it's easy to explain why I'm doing it. I had no alternative. To put it in the words of a Doris Day song, "Whatever will be, will be."

I've been writing about free will recently, but mostly by quoting the words of knowledgeable authors on this subject. In this post I'm going to take a more eclectic approach, sharing a variety of ideas about free will that have been rummaging through my mind the past few days.

Trump's indictments. Here in the United States those of us who can't stand Donald Trump have been thrilled that last week he earned his fourth criminal indictment. Most of those cases, and maybe all of them, hinge in part on the prosecution proving that Trump knew what he was doing was wrong.

This is akin to the distinction between murder and manslaughter, the difference being the intent of the person who did the killing. I mentioned to my wife that if free will doesn't exist (my strong belief), it doesn't really matter what Trump thought about his allegedly criminal acts, since it is his actions that really matter. 

That's true to some extent. However, in his wonderful short book, Free Will, I found a passage where Sam Harris describes why the thoughts of an accused criminal do matter even though free will is illusory.

We need not have any illusions that a causal agent lives within the human mind to recognize that certain people are dangerous. What we condemn most in another person is the conscious intention to do harm. Degrees of guilt can still be judged by the facts of a case: the personality of the accused, his prior offenses, his patterns of association with others, his use of intoxicants, his confessed motives with regard to the victim, etc.

If a person's actions seem to have been entirely out of character, this might influence our view of the risk he now poses to others. If the accused appears unrepentant and eager to kill again [or to try to steal an election again], we need entertain no notions of free will to consider him a danger to society.

Why is the conscious decision to do another person harm particularly blameworthy? Because what we do subsequent to conscious planning tends to most fully reflect the global properties of our minds -- our beliefs, desires, goals, prejudices, etc.

If, after weeks of deliberation, library research, and debate with your friends, you still decide to kill the king -- well, then killing the king reflects the sort of person you really are. The point is not that you are the ultimate and independent cause of your actions, the point is that, for whatever reason, you have the mind of a regicide. 

No free will is a feature, not a bug. I came up with this little mantra of sorts that I've been enjoying saying to myself from time to time: "No self. No free will. No problem." A book just arrived from Amazon that I ordered because it seems to echo this, Paul Breer's The Spontaneous Self: Viable Alternatives to Free Will. I'll be writing about the book once I'm able to read it. 

Video by David Lane. Today David Lane, a.k.a. neuralsurfer, left a comment on this blog where he shared a link to a video he made called The Prisoner's Dilemma: Why Evolution Favors "Free Will." Those quotation marks around free will reflect the fact that in the video, free will is recognized as an illusion, but a generally beneficial illusion. The video is well worth watching.

Solitaire. Every day I play several games of Klondike, a solitaire game that I've argued in a blog post is a fine philosophy of life. My iPhone app has several options, including a random draw (you might be able to win the game, or you might not) and a Daily Challenge where the game is definitely winnable, but not always easy to win.

Over the years I've arrived at an approach to playing Klondike that usually is successful. I've never written down those guidelines. They're just part of how I play a game of Klondike. A few days ago my approach failed me with a Daily Challenge. When this happens, I realize that I have to step outside my usual approach, to do something different.

This is an interesting mental exercise. I have to stifle my intention to play the way I usually do, because what I usually do didn't let me win the Daily Challenge. Today, after several failed attempts to win the Daily Challenge of a few days ago, I went all in and consciously set out to play the game wrong.

Meaning, by and large, whatever seemed right to me to do, based on my lengthy experience with this solitaire game, I didn't do, and whatever seemed wrong to me to do, I did. The result: I finally won the Daily Challenge. 

My point in sharing this anecdote is that a lack of free will doesn't mean acting like a robot or an automaton. At no point did I believe that I was acting freely, not when I followed my usual approach to playing the game or when I upended that approach and did the opposite, pretty much.

My brain simply led me to do something different when doing the same thing didn't lead to the outcome I wanted.

Admitting to being stupid can be really satisfying. Yesterday I wrote a post for my HinesSight blog, "My guide to happiness: act stupid, then undo your stupidity." I didn't mention free will in this post, but the subject lurked below the surface of the Starlink router installation that I used as an example of my stupidity.

OK, stupidity is a harsh word. But apt, since that was how I felt after I read the installation instructions several times, paying special attention to where the ethernet cable was to be connected, then ended up doing the exact opposite.

When I did this, it felt entirely right. Until I realized my mistake, then it felt entirely wrong. Even worse than wrong, since at first I wasn't able to detach the misattached cable and I worried that our broadband speed was going to sink from reasonably fast to utterly zero.

I didn't freely choose to make the mistake. It just happened. I also didn't freely choose to undo the mistake. It too just happened. What was particularly interesting is how good I felt about publishing the post and sharing it on Facebook -- my personal account plus three pages that I manage.

There was something satisfying about telling the world, or at least the small slice of the world that will read that blog post, that I was in the grip of what sure looked like stupidity, but which to me was an example of how the human brain just does what it has been determined to do.

You know, whatever will be, will be.

Comments

[Spence Tepper]

We were designed for adaptation. It's built in. But often we only adapt when our habits have failed us.

"Necessity Is The Mother of Invention.
And she is a Mother.......!"

Even belief in change, in something more, even belief and devotion to God often happens out of a desperate need for something new.

Remodeling a house of habits and dogma may be more time, effort and expense then simply buying a new house.

Conversion to an entirely need new, counterintuituve, even impractical way of thinking and living, even fantastical, seems absurd. Until everything else else stops working.

Mystics and scientists understand the cost and reward of stripping away the layers of self-justified, "practical" thinking throughout the day.

"Barn's Burned Down.
Now I can see the moon."
Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, Paul Reps

[Spence Tepper]

And it is in adaptation, in change, even dramatic change, however costly, that we discover our freedom, and our free will.

[Spence Tepper]

Freedom from the influences that bound us in the old way of thinking...old habits and mental and physical addictions and their instigation and power to force us to do what we really have no interest in anymore. And may never have had any real interest in before.

Free will to overcome those old internal and external forces with what is now our Force Majuer over them: the force of our newly discovered Free Will to do something different.

We were built to exercise free will. But it may require some work to uncover it.

Let's celibrate Free Will! The power for Good!

[Appreciative Reader]

Late to the free will party!

Just read these recent posts of yours, Brian, as well as re-read that old 2017 post of yours.

On a personal note, it was interesting for me to read the comments I’d left under that 2017 post of yours, and to see how my understanding of this has evolved over this time. That two-perspectives-conflation idea I’d put forward there, for instance, clearly indicates a complete misunderstanding of the discussion --- an embarrassing misunderstanding, given how crystal clear was the main discussion itself, and particularly of that simple yet brilliantly clear diagram of Wegner’s.

While I unqualifiedly take back that weird two-perspectives-conflation idea that had seemed so persuasive to me then and that I had, at that time, put forward with such laughable confidence; but, on the other hand, I continue to agree with that other question I’d raised back then, which is probably a vital portion of this discussion, and which, as far as I can see, had gone unaddressed then, and not substantially addressed even now. That would be the part where I’d asked, in that comment of mine, “…What about feedback?”

-----

While obviously this is ultimately a question not of what sounds ‘reasonable’ (given we know how unreliable our intuition can be sometimes) but of what the science actually bears out; but still, to me the questionable part about this …this paradigm, this POV, this unconscious-leading-directly-to-action-with-no-role-of-thoughts idea would be that it does not suggest any role at all for our thoughts and indeed for our consciousness. Think about it: If it is the unconscious that directly leads to action, then what is the role of our thoughts, and of our consciousness? None at all! (Which too isn’t an impossibility, if the science indicates that. Evolution often does throw up tangents, take our appendix for instance. It could be our consciousness is just one such tangent. But as far as I can see, no one is actually saying that here --- neither you, Brian, nor David Lane in his video and that essay he’s linked to, and nor Wegner either. Which makes the whole thing kind-of-sort-of incoherent, as far as I can make out, in the sense that it doesn’t actually add up --- not unless we posit a feedback mechanism where our thoughts lead back to our unconscious, and thus indirectly actually play an important role in causing our actions after all.)

You’ve quoted Wegner as saying, “A compass tells us what a ship is doing, but it doesn't control the action of the ship.” I’m afraid I don’t see that analogy holding up. While the compass won’t directly steer your ship, obviously; but, in as much as the navigator of the ship charts his route basis what the compass says, therefore the compass does a play a vital role in “controlling the action of the ship”. The compass isn’t there just so the navigator and the captain can entertain themselves by playing around with it, or to provide them solace by giving them a spurious sense of control. Likewise the thoughts-and-consciousness thing as well?

David’s POV in his (excellent and very thought-provoking!) video and essay, seems summed up in the part where he says: “Cashmore's argument is that free will is an illusion derived from consciousness, but consciousness has an evolutionary advantage of conferring the illusion of responsibility.” That seems a bit circular to me: Free will provides us solace by giving us a spurious sense of control; and consciousness provides us the ability to apprehend free well, and be in a position to draw that (spurious but useful) solace. The whole thing would be moot if we didn’t have consciousness at all, right? After all consciousness is essentially thoughts, and if thoughts play no role in how we actually act, then thoughts are of no actual use to us, and nor consciousness.

(Again, like I said, that might well be the case, that consciousness is indeed a tangential result of evolutionary forces that we might very well have been able to do completely without, much like our appendix. Should science show that is how it is, well then that is how it is. But, I’m saying, no one here is actually saying that, are they? Therefore, the only way to keep this …narrative, this hypothesis, this theory, fully consistent and coherent, would be to introduce thoughts feeding back into our unconscious, and in that way indirectly affecting our actions.)

(And in fact, while your 2017 article did not touch on this as far as I can see, you do quote Wegner as saying, now in your current set of posts, that “Our thoughts may have deep, important, and unconscious causal connections to our actions.” That, as far as I can see, essentially indicates that same feedback thing I’d mentioned, which would be the key function of our thoughts --- not merely the offering-solace-and-keeping-us-sane thing. And actually fleshing whether there is indeed this indirect but important causal connection from our thoughts to our actions, and what is the actual nature of that connection, would probably be an essential part of this whole discussion. At least as far as I can see.)

[Appreciative Reader]

I’d like to squeeze in two more …questions, quibbles, doubts, if I may!

First : How exactly are we defining free will here?

I ask, because, it seems to me, that a no-free-will paradigm would be perfectly compatible with both those mechanisms that Wegner discusses (unconscious causes leading to thoughts, and thoughts leading to actions; as well as unconscious thoughts leading directly to action). Even if thoughts do directly cause actions --- the route on top in Wegner’s diagram, the route that he rejects in favor of the one in the bottom --- even then, in as much as the thoughts that cause the actions are themselves completely the result of past causes, to that extent there’s zero free will there!

So that, that diagram of Wegner, as far as I can see, while it is completely fascinating, and conveys his meaning very simply and entirely clearly, but it doesn’t actually address free will at all, does it, not as free will is commonly understood?

What I’m saying is: Might we be conflating two separate senses of the term “free will” here? One of those two senses would be the old idea that we see in RCC theology, that suggests that we are, at least to an extent, able to arrive at our own decisions and actions completely independent of anything else. And the second would be the finer, more nuanced sense, that it is our thoughts that lead to our actions. Because regardless of whether our unconscious leads directly to our actions, or whether it is our thoughts (at least in part) that lead to our actions: but in neither case do we see any scope for free will, as traditional RCC theology speaks of it (which I suppose is where this whole free-will idea comes from, and which in any case is what most people think of when they use the term “free will”).

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Two: Can (at least a part of) the unconscious be brought into the territory of the conscious?

Heh, this is easy enough to ask, but I do realize how very involved would be an answer to a question of this kind. This is definitely something science would need to weigh in on, one way or the other, and not simply a question what appears “reasonable”! Still, no harm is asking: Given that actions flow from the unconscious part of our mind; and given that both therapy, as well as some meditational practices like Vipassana, claim to be able to bring (some) hitherto unexamined and unconscious parts of our mind within view of the conscious: therefore, might it be possible to become conscious of some of those elements of the unconscious that lead to actions? Or is the reaching of the conscious mind into the action-causing portion of the unconscious necessarily completely outside the ambit of both therapy and insight meditation?

[Ron E.]

Some good examples of no free will expressed in these recent posts. I particularly like the one from Daniel Wegner re the magician’s illusion hiding all the underlying preparation so that: “In the end, the audience observes something that seems to be simple, but in fact it may have been achieved with substantial thought, preparation, and effort on the magician's part. The illusion of conscious will occurs in much the same way.” And also, David lane’s depiction of on free will in his ‘Prisoners dilemma’. Brian puts out some good examples in this latest post from his own thoughts.

In the end though, free will, the self, mind, consciousness etc. are just words that reflect our attempts to explain and label these natural phenomena that we continually experience. Fine to try and understand them, though there is absolutely no value in relegating them to non-natural, supernatural explanations. I can only reason that such classifying emerges from minds that have a particular agenda.

Spence instanced a Zen Koan: “Barn’s Burned down. Now I can see the moon." Such Koans are part of Zen’s repertoire to help the student to drop or see through the barriers his mind erects that prevent seeing ‘just this’, the everyday experiences of the actual realities that we and the world just are. Burning down the barn’s can be seen as the burning down of the mind’s various structures’ allowing one to see (realise) the moon – the naturalness or clarity of the world beyond our habituated ideas and thoughts.

[Brian Hines]

Appreciative Reader, the central issue in the free will debate concerns determinism. Are our emotions, thoughts, and actions determined? Or do they spring unbidden from some mysterious fount of nothingness (as Sartre says), or of an immaterial aspect of consciousness such as soul or spirit (as many religious people believe).

From the deterministic point of view, which I hold, along with most neuroscientists, the behavior of the human brain, or any brain, results from causes and effects. Naturally feedback is involved, as is the case with any complex system. We do something, then we get feedback about what's been done, which helps determine further doing.

So thoughts, as Wegner says, are one determinate of our actions or behavior. It's a distraction when people argue that the fact we think "I'm going to have a cup of coffee" then we go make a cup of coffee, that this points to any sort of free will. As Sam Harris says in his Free Will book, where did the thought of wanting coffee come from? Why not a thought of tea? Or of whiskey?

The search for a thought that causes a thought that causes a thought leads to no end of thoughts. Harris argues persuasively that based on neuroscience and simple introspection, thoughts arise on their own, from unconscious sources. Yes, we can choose to think, "I'm going to think of making coffee," but where did that thought of choosing come from?

Einstein famously said, "I feel that I will to light my pipe and I do it; but how can I connect this up with the idea of freedom? What is behind the act of willing to light the pipe? Another act of willing?"

You presented one definition of free will that isn't really free will: being able to carry out what you choose to do. That's the compatibilist way of looking upon free will in which free will somehow is viewed as compatible with determinism.

Harris has the correct approach. Free will only makes sense if it is the ability to do other than what we did given that every atom within our brain and nervous system is in the same state as when the original doing happened. Meaning, something other than a physical cause or determination enables us to choose this rather than that, even though nothing in the universe has changed between this and that.

There's no evidence this is possible, unless, as noted above, one believes that an invisible supernatural free will fairy, or whatever, is enabling us to act, feel, and think without any connection to prior conditions of the universe and our own mind. Since you enjoy citing the Dragon in the Garage metaphor of Carl Sagan, I think you'll see the connection between such an invisible unprovable dragon and an invisible unprovable source of free will. See here for those unfamiliar with the metaphor:

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_Dragon_in_My_Garage

[Appreciative Reader]

Uhhhh, I’m sorry, Brian, but I don’t see that that’s about what I’d actually said?! Maybe how I’d worded it all wasn’t very clear, I don’t know: but, to clarify, I agree fully with the no-free-will position, and I emphatically don’t think compatibility is the answer (and nor did I even talk about compatibility at all). It’s just, well, my understanding of free will is based largely off of the discussions here (as well as my further checking things out based off that). Heh, I remember I’d first even come across this free will business in that email of yours, back around when I’d first corresponded with you, years back. I was saying, while agreeing that there’s no free will, but, well, those three …doubts, questions, issues, quibbles, that I raised, in order to better understand this. …Again, likely enough it’s my own expression that was unclear, in those two comments of mine, but …well, I don’t see that what you say here actually resolves any of that!

Bear with me please, I’d like to address individual portions of your comment if I may, to see if I might not make my meaning clearer this time, at least as far as what all you’ve said here. (I won’t repeat those portions from my comment that you haven’t yourself touched on here.)

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“Appreciative Reader, the central issue in the free will debate concerns determinism. Are our emotions, thoughts, and actions determined? Or do they spring unbidden from some mysterious fount of nothingness (as Sartre says), or of an immaterial aspect of consciousness such as soul or spirit (as many religious people believe).

From the deterministic point of view, which I hold, along with most neuroscientists, the behavior of the human brain, or any brain, results from causes and effects.”

…..That much is clear. And I agree completely with that position!

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“Naturally feedback is involved, as is the case with any complex system. We do something, then we get feedback about what's been done, which helps determine further doing.”

…..I don’t know, it seems to me this is far more involved than that! Here’s why:

(a) I don’t think we can directly assume that! I don’t really see that this follows “naturally”! After all, we don’t simply accept that actions follow thoughts, even though that narrative would be as natural as can be! We look at the evidence, at science, and basis that conclude that actions don’t follow thoughts. Wouldn’t we likewise need actual science to actually tell us that, that thoughts do in fact loop back to inform our subconscious? After all, all Wegner himself has to say about this, is an entirely speculative “Our thoughts MAY have deep, important, and unconscious causal connections to our actions.” He doesn’t say that it actually does, right? (Although of course, he may have done that elsewhere in the book. That’s what I was wondering, and asking, whether we do know, basis science, that that feedback, which seems intuitively right, is actually a thing, as borne out by neuroscience, basis either what you’ve read of Wegner, or maybe elsewhere from your extensive reading on this subject.)

(b) Should there indeed be a feedback mechanism that leads back from thoughts to our unconscious, as borne out by science, then that’s probably VERY relevant to this discussion, the details of it I mean to say! That diagram of Wegner’s? If to the arrow leading from the unconscious straight to actions, we now add another arrow leading to thoughts and back from thoughts to the unconscious, well then the extent and the timing of that feedback, wouldn’t that be completely, CRUCIALLY important? Here’s why:

I’m sitting now with a mug of coffee by my side. As you say, my unconscious led me to get coffee, instead of tea, instead of cola, instead of beer, whatever; and not my actual thoughts about this. Fair enough. But all of this happens so very fast, right? Maybe my thoughts about getting coffee were feedbacked straight back onto my unconscious, and maybe my thoughts did in fact impact my getting that coffee after all, no?! (But that won’t leave any loophole for free will, either way! No free will, that much is completely beyond doubt. But it might create some ambiguity, in terms of whether my thought, of getting coffee, did in fact impact my action of getting that coffee, even if in part, and even if indirectly, isn’t it?!)

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“It's a distraction when people argue that the fact we think "I'm going to have a cup of coffee" then we go make a cup of coffee, that this points to any sort of free will. As Sam Harris says in his Free Will book, where did the thought of wanting coffee come from? Why not a thought of tea? Or of whiskey?”

.....I understand that, absolutely. And I agree, completely.

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“You presented one definition of free will that isn't really free will: being able to carry out what you choose to do. That's the compatibilist way of looking upon free will in which free will somehow is viewed as compatible with determinism.”

…..uhhh, sorry, but …no?! I didn’t speak of compatibilism at all, none of that external-constraints business!

Okay, this I think I’ll revisit, in order to make my meaning clearer. I spoke of two separate definitions of free will, that I wondered if we were conflating here, leading to unnecessary confusion. (Compatibilist free will, the external constraints thing, would be a third; but I didn’t bring that up at all, since it wasn’t relevant here.)

The first of those two definitions would be what people commonly understand when we speak of free will, people around us, most everyone, people who haven’t expressly gone and sussed this thing out. Which definition coincides with the centuries-old definition that is trotted out by theologians when they do their basic theodicy thing. Which is that we’re all imbued with absolute free will, that is independent of anything else. Fogged in by conditioning, et cetera, sure; but at bottom somehow independent of anything else, independent even of what God might or might not want from us. (To be clear, that isn’t what I’m saying is reasonable, at all! This is very clearly disproven, directly following a materialist paradigm, and cutting out the unproven woo woo with Occam’s Razor. I’m simply observing that if you want a basic definition of free will, that most normal everyday folks will relate to, then very likely this is the one it is going to be.)

And the second definition would be what Wegner seems to be using. That diagram of his? How’s he arguing, here, that there’s no free will? By showing us that the unconscious-to-thoughts-to-action route is incorrect, and that unconscious-straight-to-action is what science shows us, right? So that, what he’s clearly implying here, is that had that not been the case, and had in fact it had been our thoughts that lead to action, then that there would actually have been evidence of free will. That implicit definition is obvious, given that this is a discussion specifically on whether we have free will!

Which is why I suggested that we might perhaps be conflating different senses in which free will is defined. Wegner’s discussion about thoughts, that’s completely fascinating, and hugely important, obviously (and his position I completely agree with, as how could I not, given that’s what the science indicates) --- but it isn’t actually about free will as commonly understood, it kind of redefines free will in these somewhat unusual terms, is what I was saying there.

(And none of this has anything to do with compatibilist free will. That’s entirely different, as far as I can see, from either of these two definitions, and deals with whether our will is impeded by external constraints. That I didn’t bring up, at all.)

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“Harris has the correct approach. Free will only makes sense if it is the ability to do other than what we did given that every atom within our brain and nervous system is in the same state as when the original doing happened. Meaning, something other than a physical cause or determination enables us to choose this rather than that, even though nothing in the universe has changed between this and that.

There's no evidence this is possible, unless, as noted above, one believes that an invisible supernatural free will fairy, or whatever, is enabling us to act, feel, and think without any connection to prior conditions of the universe and our own mind. Since you enjoy citing the Dragon in the Garage metaphor of Carl Sagan, I think you'll see the connection between such an invisible unprovable dragon and an invisible unprovable source of free will.”

…..I agree, completely. (Well, with one small quibble about quantum randomness, which is what would have “changed between this and that”, which makes determinism per se impossible. But that’s just an incidental quibble, because quantum randomness leaves no space for free will either.) Agreed, free will is essentially an extra-material/immaterial, and woo woo supernatural idea; and agreed, Carl Sagan’s garage dragon is an excellent argument that clearly demolishes this pro-supernatural-free-will position. …Although, none of that has anything to do with what I’d said there, right?! But absolutely, I do agree.

[Spence Tepper]

Hi Brian
You wrote
"There's no evidence this is possible, unless, as noted above, one believes that an invisible supernatural free will fairy, or whatever, is enabling us to act, feel, and think without any connection to prior conditions of the universe and our own mind."

Actually this is logically false. Any influence independent of known variables would make our responses independent of known variables (free will relative to what is known) , but deterministic within the larger scope of what is known plus unknown.

Therefore the only "free will" possible is the influence of a force outside the ones that normally influence us. But that would still be part of a casual chain of events.

The logical error against free will is to presume an independent agent is acting when the person that agent acts upon is dependent upon that independent agent.

Therefore any unknown agent, such as all the things science has yet to discover, are still part of the totality if creation, even God.

That some forces and events are relatively independent of others is a proven, mundane fact.

Access to those better influences is simply a matter of education.

But such education frees us of acting in ignorance.

And so relative to action in the absence of education, we act with free will.

And in the absence of such knowledge and positive influence, we are enslaved by the remaining forces of conditioning around us.

Freedom and free will is always relative, but very real things.

[Spence Tepper]

Burn down your barn storing endless piles of old, convoluted, endless concepts...
And see the moon of reality.

[Spence Tepper]

Here Brian
Let me provide an example.

Driver's Education.

Some folks who visit a country haven't had driver's education in the road rules of that country.

Or some folks get access to cars without actually having a driver's license. Some may forge a false license. They tell their friends they know how to drive and welcome them to join them in various outings.

Tragically, without a basic understanding of pedestrian rights of way, yeild and stop signs they get into more accidents, some fatal accidents, compared to others who mastered their driver's education classes with a full knowledge of just which side of the road they should be driving on.

These licensed drivers, following the rules they learned, act with relative free will free of accidents and with the greater freedom and peace of mind to go to all sorts of near and distant places. And because of this new freedom to use their car reliably and safely, they also learn to use road maps and so very little surprises them. The road is the same road. Their experience of it is much more extensive.

Their free will is real, but relative and dependent upon following the rules of the road.

The only mysticism is the terminology of those who haven't gotten their license yet. To them the whole thing is mystical, too complicated, part of a corporate conspiracy, mental enslavement, etc.

But licensed drivers understand that there is no magic at all. Their freedom and free will comes entirely from strict adherence to some very basic rules reflecting basic variables of reality.

"... if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture."

John 10:9

[Ron E.]

As far as I can see, there should be no problem with entertaining the fact that there is no such thing as free will. As I have said previously, we certainly have choices, choices that derive from a lifetimes experience that inform out thinking and actions. Such choices may feel like free will but the reality is that they are limited to the information we have in our brains network. We may acquire new information which is absorbed to become an extension to our brain's repertoire for making decisions. Still no free will, just more, and perhaps better information that our brains have to draw upon.

Spence’s analogy of the educated drivers displays this point. They are not acting from free will but from the training they received giving them more information from which the brains networking can draw upon to give them better and safer choices when traveling. True, there is no need to even entertain anything like magic or mysticism; the reality is that unskilled or skilled drivers both draw on their predictive brains’ prevailing store of information to make normal, everyday, natural choices.

[Spence Tepper]

Hi Ron
You wrote
"Spence’s analogy of the educated drivers displays this point. They are not acting from free will but from the training they received giving them more information from which the brains networking can draw"

This is a circular argument. When you define Free Will as acting without a source and set as a premise the assumption that every effect has a cause you are eliminating the possibility of Free Will by definition, not by proof.

There is zero free will if you are proposing will without cause. Even God acts with motive and purpose. In the definition you are using Free will cannot exist by definition. And so claiming free will of that sort doesn't exist is just saying we always act moved by other things.

But in the definition I'm using Free will does exist relative to a set of influences. We say they acted of their own free will when we refer to their freedom from some influence. Not saying free from any cause. There are reasons they chose to act, possibly higher reasons related to their new awareness of greater possibilities and the rules to get to them.

[SantMat63]

I confess that I agree, there's a distinct pleasure in embracing determinism. It eases acceptance of the madding who -- in the name of democracy! -- seek with the help of the swamp state to derail the next presidential election over some boxes of paper,. And send the boxes of paper culprit to prison for life, because they can't stand him. He is just so like Daddy was.

Determinism is nothing new, it just changes its justification from age to age. Heraclitus's were purely philosophical. Martin Luther was an avid predestinarian because he felt that the existence of an omniscient God demanded it. Then determinism spiraled down an atheistic path through Nietzsche's negativism, with its fruits on today's fatalism and defeatism. Now that God is dead, let's kill the human spirit He created. "You are nobody, and nothing you do or love matters..."