As you said the other day, it's not science. Or do you have a philosophy blog? - Alexander Kruel

My blog is a little bit of everything but nevermind, the point is that free will IS entering the scientific language. It's not the free will we're used to (it's not necessarily conscious, it's fully brain based etc) but it's certainly getting in: on the brain science podcast just the other day they embraced it, and a paper I read this weekend is full of intentional concepts despite being a mathematical analysis of the snail brain. I'll write a blog post spelling out how the new free will differs from the non-neuroscientific version, I just need to read a few more papers on it to be sure I understand it (I'm currently on http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed...). - Christopher Harris

Yeah, it IS entering the scientific language. But wait, it's not what you think it is. It's really banana juice. Sorry people for the deception. Well, I'm not going to read it. Up next: the reintroduction of evil into the legal system. Again, not what you think, it's just free people doing bad things. Phew... - Alexander Kruel

I think I know why you're so adamant about this. I was raised Christian too and the stress of spending many young years realizing how much of what I'd been told was false and irrational still to this day predisposes me to attack anything that smells like scientifically naive, wishful thinking. Free will used to be a prime target of this anger and frustration as late as a few years ago. I used to consider the observation that what we call mind turns out to be a network of distinct physical parts so shocking as to undermine any talk of soul, self, mind or free will. These days, after a few years of therapy and getting completely engrossed in neuroscience research, I'm more cheerful about the whole affair. - Christopher Harris

Seriously, scientists are also just humans. I've been amazed lately of how dumb educated people can be. Ever heard of Nassim Taleb? What a crank. Anyway, it's really sad to hear this. Free will is the creationism of neuroscience. And if it's true what you're saying, then woo is winning in that field. It's also not ignorance not to read some mathematical musings you may provide underpinning your notion of free will. I don't do it for the same reasons that I don't read papers by Jehovah's Witnesses. - Alexander Kruel

It's not just religious opposition. I'm saying the same when it comes to all the bullshit about consciousness. Or take Roger Penrose, I'd tell him he's making up bs there any time. It's dancing around rainbows end. You don't need expertise for this stuff. It's just flawed reasoning. An oxymoron. Of course, that there is something rather than nothing is a problem that also conflicts with our way of thinking. Or at least mine. That's why I'm not ruling out anything. Neither god. But I also do not assume it. There is no reason to do so. - Alexander Kruel

Well, sometimes there ARE reasons to assume things. For instance we don't know that other people are conscious but the way they talk and act make us assume they are. With recent advances in brain imaging we're starting to be able to distinguish conscious from unconscious brain states which gives us more reason to assume other people are conscious, even though the evidence is not conclusive. As for voluntary movement, we're now able to distinguish between externally controlled and spontaneous behaviour in terms of brain states. What this will lead to is not clear but I'm very interested to find out more. - Christopher Harris

What I meant about bs regarding consciousness is the opinion of some that we cannot tackle this concept with science. The sacrosanct of subjectivity and the first-person perspective. I've written something on topic here: http://friendfeed.com/minds... - Alexander Kruel

"If I cut my throat I may disover that I was dreaming or that I have been playing some advanced virtual reality game all along. Everything is possible. But right now there are safer and more promising options of gaining knowledge. How can I be sure? I can't, but there is evidence which proved to be reliable so far. I have to suspect that it will continue to be reliable based on experiment and observation. That doesn't make it the ultimate way of knowing or even a superior way but the best I know of at this time. And until I hit some hard barrier I do not have any good reason to try something else." - Alexander Kruel

Assume free will? No reason. It's a concept that should at best be examined by psychology or the social sciences. It's a cultural idea. - Alexander Kruel

Hey don't despair about free will being studied by scientists, consider this: Even if science truly incorporates free will, such that there are centers for The Neuroscientific Study of Free Will popping up everywhere the way they do around consciousness studies at the moment, then we may still get to a point were we understand the operation of free will in human brains so thoroughly as to be able to predict free decisions. At that point science will truly have killed any traditional notions of free will. - Christopher Harris

I don't despair. I'm just worried about the underlying reasons people have to introduce it in the first place. Suspicious. And it may slow down discovery. It highlights a fundamental error in reasoning in that field. That is bad. At the very least, it will always act as a semantic obfuscation for calling randomness, unpredictability and spontaneous behaviour 'free will' when there obviously exist other, more descriptive terms. - Alexander Kruel

blah..."for calling" not not ;-) - Alexander Kruel

We can't know whether there "obviously exist other, more descriptive terms" until we know more about the phenomenon we're naming. 'Random' doesn't cut it, that was the point of Brembs' 2008 paper. 'Spontaneous' doesn't cut it because behaviour is spontaneous even in disease states where autonomous agency is impaired. This is why I want to write a blog post, to list the similarities and differences between the old and the new free will and discuss what it would mean theoretically, culturally and legally if we decide to keep the term. - Christopher Harris

Well, nobody can stake a claim to natural language. If you actually want to create your own definition of 'free will', I'll refer to "'free will' as defined by Harris" (or "Free Harris") thenceforward. But what do you say isn't 'cutting it'? What phenomenon? I know that randomness is poriferous. Spontaneous is fatuitous. I commited the mistake to name those terms for the ease of not having to think too much. All of them are indeed not very clever. The problem is the 'mind over matter' attitude that makes all those ideas appear in the first place. - Alexander Kruel

Oh no no, I've gone along with trying to articulate and defend the new free will here but I haven't yet decided what I really think about it and it's certainly not my idea. - Christopher Harris

The phenomenon is the generation of will and behaviour by nervous systems - Christopher Harris

I think you're confusing a naive mind over matter attitude with a dynamical systems attitude where emergent properties are important - Christopher Harris

Just forget what I said. Was maybe all bs. A blog post on emergent properties would be cool. Sorry. Thanks. - Alexander Kruel

I think you should write a blog post about free will after all. I'd like you to unravel the following points: 1. To what does the word 'free' in 'free will' apply? 2. What would be the difference between a being (i.e. fruit fly) which posses free will and one that doesn't? 3. Does free will apply to a certain entity or behavior? 4. Is there a borderline between free and not free? 5. How do you differ between internal unintentional input (i.e. anger/spontaneous variation generator) and external input regarding free will? 6. What is your working definition of 'what we experience as free will'? -- To summarize: If you think 'free will' can be subject to scientific inquiry, what is the difference between an act of volition that is not free and one that is free. If you propose the existence of a will that is free, as implied by the combinatorial term free will, then what is the nature of will? Do people either act deliberately or genuine deliberate? - Alexander Kruel

well I'll have to so something, just got this comment on my 'What is dopamine?' video: "i love this video. i too think that we're just one big chemical machine with no free will. just the playing out of molecules in a bigger scale." - Christopher Harris

those are good questions though, hope I can address some of them when i'm done reading (still going through the papers Bjorn Brems recommended.. this Vladimir Brezina guy is vicious on the maths, hard to keep up) - Christopher Harris

Well, that's completely obvious to me since I first thought about it when being much younger. That's why I'm commenting here and elsewhere. Out of sheer incredulity that anybody in his right mind could contemplate about free will for long. I don't want to be derogatory here. I could be wrong, I could suffer some neurological deficit. As I said above, I can't wrap my mind around the question 'why is there something rather than nothing'. There might be people for whom the answer to that question is also obvious. - Alexander Kruel

And about math, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... - Alexander Kruel

You can show all kind of stuff with math. Just take string theory. If you want to prove 'free will' with math, simple answer: 'Not even wrong' - Alexander Kruel

On the other hand: http://www.marginalrevolution.com/margina... - That would rock, I'd love that to be the case. - Alexander Kruel

I don't actually care about the philosophical/semantic arguments around free will all that much. what matters to me are the cases where free will most obviously breaks down. how can we learn to control ourselves better? that's my real concern. - Christopher Harris

Where 'free will' breaks down is really when volition breaks down. Anyway, self-control is the enemy of diversity. I'm here, doing this for a lack of control. If I had enough control I'd still be religious today, ignoring everything that might shatter my desire to believe. -- Always reminds of this quote: “If we could deliberately seize control of our pleasure systems, we could reproduce the pleasure of success without the need for any actual accomplishment. And that would be the end of everything.” — Marvin Minsky - The Society of Mind by Marvin Minsky 6.13 SELF-KNOWLEDGE IS DANGEROUS - Alexander Kruel

This is just in: When Situations Not Personality Dictate Our Behaviour - http://www.spring.org.uk/2009... "Contrary to our instincts, however, studies such as this one demonstrate that it is frequently the situation that controls our actions more strongly than personality." - Alexander Kruel

Full list of publications by Vladimir Brezina http://146.203.52.26/Neurosc... - Alexander Kruel

That's something for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... - Alexander Kruel

Just Exactly What Is Determinism? http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog... / Forget free will and get on with empirical psychology. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog... / Free will is not a question for science. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog... - Alexander Kruel

Good question: "The will is thought to be free if a person manages to overcome a short-term temptation for the sake of a greater, but later, value. Self-regulation raises a final asymmetry. Suppose you have a choice between slapping a misbehaving child and patiently discussing her behavior. Will you get free-will credit only for patient self-regulation?" - Alexander Kruel

@Christopher: What's 'genuine' free will? The last serious thinkers to take dualism seriously probably were Popper and Eccles in the 1970s. Since then, dualism has been dead. I don't see any professional neuroscientist claiming that anything other than the brain is everything we are, as people, identities, self. So apart from a ghost in our heads, what's 'genuine' free will? - Björn Brembs

@Christopher You'd better ask him if a fruit fly without spontaneous variations in its behavior would be in any meaningful way different, from one which possess a spontaneous variation generator, regarding the notion of free will. To me it is a laughable resurrection of a obsolete concept by twisting its meaning beyond recognition. In other words, a "free will of the gaps" approach. Non-linearity generated by some randomness generator is not what anybody has in mind when thinking about free will. It also misses the point to use such nomenclature in reference to this topic. It's a deeply metaphysical idea and to arbitrarily define a system and say that this special generator is part of it and thus participates in its output, contrary to being just another factor in the causal chain, does at best mangle the original concept but likely only leads to greater overall confusion. The concept of free will is based on the notion of choice and choice cannot be proven to exist. - Alexander Kruel

By the way, Brembs' paper is very good and important work. Something I admire. I'm just calling bullshit on its interpretation. Just so that is clear, some people are easily upset :-) - Alexander Kruel

The brain as system that 'transforms sensory input into motor output' is a working defintion but has nothing to do with the reality of physical interactions. It cannot be used to call willful action free contrary to deliberate acts that are purely deterministic. In no meaningful way, regarding the concept of free will, are internal interactions within a brain different from interactions between the brain as a whole and the 'outside' world. The notion of free will has a lot to do with choice and control, neither of which can be used to describe how your brain processes its decisions. - Alexander Kruel

Possibility and Could-ness http://lesswrong.com/lw... - "The statement, "I could jump off the cliff, if I chose to" is entirely compatible with "It is physically impossible that I will jump off that cliff". It need only be physically impossible for you to choose to jump off a cliff - not physically impossible for any simple reason, perhaps, just a complex fact about what your brain will and will not choose." - Alexander Kruel

Didn't know about this: http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki... - Alexander Kruel

One of the easiest hard questions, as millennia-old philosophical dilemmas go. Though this impossible question is fully and completely dissolved on Less Wrong... http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki... - Alexander Kruel

@Christopher many chaotic systems in nature (e.g. the weather) are deterministic systems whose future states cannot (as far as we know) be predicted/calculated short of running the system, but we don't think of them as having will; we don't think of them as agents. even a willful agent might not be considered capable of free will however if his/her/its will expresses itself merely as random behavioural variability. rather, following this new intepretation of free will, we look for evidence that the agent can control and adjust the behavioural variations, can learn from their outcomes, and can be said to act with intentionality. sorry to be so vague, still reading up on this. - Christopher Harris

@Alex "The notion of free will has a lot to do with choice and control, neither of which can be used to describe how your brain processes its decisions." This is simply incorrect: choice and control are the subjects of countless rigorous investigations, the terms are used in the neuroscientific litterature every day. Stop saying these things cannot be studied scientifically, they can, they are, and you need to comment on the actual science, judge which bits are fruitful and which aren't, and not just repeat that the science doesn't exist or is doomed a priori. - Christopher Harris

@Christopher (awesome name by the way) I'm not sure what you mean by "genuine", people have always struggled with the definiotion of free will, from Hume's compatibilism to Kant's transcendental freedom. I'm interested in this new intepretation of free will because it may finally give us something more solid to work with, something I can study in the lab and do statistics on. I think the phenomenological experience of free will and the cultural and legal uses of the concept are very important, so if free will is not completely illusory then we should try to figure out how it works and what we can do with it. - Christopher Harris

What is your definition of Free Will, Christopher A. Carr? Apart from any philosopher's interpretation, what do you say it is or rather, what would you like it to be? - Melanie Reed

That is not for you to judge. I asked a question. It is pertinent to the subject matter. It is your choice (free will) to answer it. - Melanie Reed

Christopher, my reason for considering using that term is that most people have an experience of free will, and it may be that the process underlying that experience is very interesting and important. I'd like to understand the workings of that process in a small neural network and maybe one day reproduce it computationally. Also, people stress about free will with regards to the iPlant and dopamine in general, so this re-intepretation may be fruitful to that side of what I do too. - Christopher Harris

Thou mayest, Christopher. Not a microbe. Not quark. Thou. - Melanie Reed

Christopher Carr: I think you're right, you can't really tell if we actually have free will, or if it's just an illusion due to the underlying mechanisms of consciousness. But, the sensation of free-will--the feeling that we have to make choices--is surely something we've all experienced, and if it's something we experience, then the underlying mechanisms can be elucidated. - Victor Ganata

Christopher: It comes from a very famous quote out of John Steinbeck's novel East of Eden. The main character of the Chinese Housekeeper, Lee, who despite his position is a meticulous researcher of language. He explains to Cal at the end the fruit of his lifetime research which covers the main theme of Steinbeck's novel: Choice: “Don’t you see? . . . The American Standard translation orders men to triumph over sin, and you call sin ignorance. The King James translation makes a promise in ‘Thou shalt,’ meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’—that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open.” - Melanie Reed

Christopher: Prove to me that you love someone. Show me some evidence. - Melanie Reed

Yeah, I saw _Contact_ too. - Eph Zero

Ah, I get it now. The discussion regarding the existence of free will is just another insult to you, Melanie. It took me a few minutes to understand your presence in this thread. - Eivind

Christopher: How then did people recognize love before there was MRI? How could they be sure? There was no evidence, if evidence is only obtained from technology. Can you name anything that is self-evident? - Melanie Reed

Not at all, Elvind. I just want to make sure you have been given the opportunity to consider all the evidence. We can become "prisoners of one idea." The concept of Free Will was not originated from the scientific field. - Melanie Reed

"We hold these truths to be self-evident..." - Melanie Reed

Christopher, If you want to study something that did not come from your field, I agree with the originator of this thread that it is helpful to listen to those who espouse what you are trying to gain knowledge about. There is a connective tissue, indeed, a fabric that is essential to your pursuit. - Melanie Reed

If someone said they loved me but didn't show me "evidence" of such (e.g., treating me well, showing affection, etc.), the word itself would be meaningless. In fact, it's a very vague term to begin with. What exactly do you mean by it, anyway? - Eph Zero

Wait, no need to answer that and go further off-topic. - Eph Zero

Determinism in the fundamental sense has ceased to be a viable concept with the discovery of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Determinism in the sense of predictability has ceased to be a viable concept since our understanding of deterministic chaos started happening. Dualism (aka 'genuine' free will, magic-man-done-it, or ghost in my head) has ceased to be a viable concept since the last proponents died after publishing the last influential publication on dualism (indeed Popper/Eccles called it interactionism). What remains is to understand how the brain chooses between different options. How the brain generates different choices when faced with the same situation. How the brain constantly explores and probes the environment to see how it will react to its actions. Brains are constantly active and external stimuli are merely nudging this activity in our brains a little. For the most part, all brains, and not just our's, are active, and only occasionally re-active. This is the only scientifically tenable definition of free will today and anybody not understanding this needs to read up on about 30 years worth of neuroscience. There is plenty of evidence that brains constitute more components than just one nonlinear system like the weather, but nonlinearity is definitely one of the defining characteristics of all brains. - Björn Brembs

Our sense of free will, the personal experience of it - much of this is usually referred to as agency - is an entirely different matter, although there is some tentative evidence that the brain functions subserving both may overlap. - Björn Brembs

@Christopher Harris You are incorrect. You don't control how you think or when you are thinking. I don't know how you understood what I said, but it's a simple fact backed by such rigorous proves as Gödel's incompleteness theorems. - Alexander Kruel

Brembs doesn't get that just by adding complexity and uncertainty you do not verify freedom :-( - Alexander Kruel

As I said above (nobody replied), endogenous processes generating behavioral variability and thus non-linearity are working-definitions. This has nothing to do with the overall physical reality of causal chains. At no point the freedom of a system, in itself or from the environment in which it is embedded, can be derived from any conclusion that was attained in reference to that definition. Aside from the false notion that genuine spontaneity does imply voluntariness, it is just constituent of a system. This system is not in control, neither of its environment or itself. Free will is a cultural induced idea. We do not experience free will, or choice for that matter. It is an intellectual bias, not a genuine human trait. Far from it, we want our volition to be based on firm ground, which is contrary to freedom. Free will is an oxymoron. It does not deserve a revival. - Alexander Kruel

I might have to clarify what exactly I mean by 'working definitions'. Every system and its boundaries are arbitrary or biased definitions. You can extent the variables of any open system beyond its defined boundaries. Thus it is just unreasonable to talk about freedom in open systems. Endogenous actions are ultimately depend on outside factors. And talking about the freedom of a closed system is equally counterproductive. Free from what? You can define the parts of any system as sub-systems which influence each other. No part has authority, as implied by free will, over another part. To use the term 'free will' in this context is at best misleading. - Alexander Kruel

Christopher: I don't know how to discuss that difference if by "genuine" free will you mean a dualistic, magical power endowed to the souls of men by God Almighty. Like Bjorn said, no scientist would argue for the kind of dualistic, supracausal free will you and Alex seem to be refering to. If however you're asking about the subjective difference between a person with free will and a person without then we can talk: the difference is called 'abulia' in its most extreme form, but many disorders involve behavioural variability and control. - Christopher Harris

Aboulia is characterized by a lack of will, not a lack of free will. And it is not an ability to 'initiate' action. This would imply that you perceive your ability to 'initiate' action but not the initiative itself, which would mean that your thoughts are perceived as non-actions. That's where the free in free will collides with reality. We do not perceive freedom of choice, we think about options on an intellectual level and confuse ability with possiblity. - Alexander Kruel

Christopher: Something like that. Patrick Haggardd writes an excellent review of the distinct brain systems that mediate volontary and non-volontary behaviour http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed... and then there's the controlled variability, the adaptivity, the intentionality and the relative independence from environmental stimuli. - Christopher Harris

What is it that does possess free will then, the entity or the 'distinct brain systems that mediate volontary and non-volontary behaviour'? That's exactly the point, relative independence from the environment is as good as no independence when it comes to freedom. It ignores the fact that we are part of the environment, an environment that includes other supposedly free agents that are prone to conflict with your own freedom. You simply do not have a choice. To have a choice you would have to be able to control your decision making in the first place, which is impossible given the inability to control your thinking. The influence of different brain systems is in no meaningful way different from the influence of environmental input. - Alexander Kruel

Alex: no one here argues for a free will that implies that things 'could have been otherwise' or that the causal chain stretching back to the Big Bang can be subverted. the claim here is simply that the processes by which the brain makes different decisions in the same situation can be thought of as free will. - Christopher Harris

Making different decisions in similar situations is the difference between 'mechanical' and intelligent systems. It is the difference between static systems and the flexibility of adaptive systems due to feedback and learning that allows for situational variability. I argue that it is not reasonable to use free will to describe anything physical as long as you are not willing to satirize the meaning of both words. I further argue that free will belongs to metaphysics and theology and might be examined in a cultural context. Though, we could meet halfway and define an agents 'degrees of freedom' regarding the dependence on parameters that are external in reference to a persons self-perception. - Alexander Kruel

Given that the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics is a valid interpretation of reality, I don't think the idea of choice has been completely ruled out. The equations really do allow other events than what have already occurred. But I also realize this doesn't necessarily require free-will either. - Victor Ganata

"This universe is constantly splitting into a stupendous number of branches, all resulting from the measurementlike interactions between its myriads of components. Moreover, every quantum transition taking place on every star, in every galaxy, in every corner of the universe is splitting our local world into myriads of copies of itself." (Bryce De Witt, 1970) - Alexander Kruel

Even if that was the case. "Doing everything", or a Permutation City approach, does not account for free will. Although I guess we'll be a bit closer to something you could call freedom... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... / http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... - Alexander Kruel

@cristophder carr; if we grant for a moment that it is not possible to distinguish between a system with 'genuine' free will and a deterministic system whose future states can not be predicted/calculated short of running the system, why is making the difference important? If suppose that subjectively we cannot conclude either way, that is no proof in support of wither way too. So that is neither an upholding of deterministic but chaotic system, nor an upholding of genuine free will system. With lack of any distinguishing property, perhaps it behooves to believe in free will as a belief in determinism has been shown to have anti-social effects, while belief in free will are instrumental n pro-social behavior. Perhaps, believing in free will is a new form of pascal's wager. doesn't cause society or you much, but benefits of belief are many (to the society) . See my latest pots on dangers of believing in determinism http://the-mouse-trap.com/2009... - Sandeep Gautam

@Alexender human or animal agents that are believed to have free will are not closed systems. all living beings are open systems and thus by your own admission can be free and have free will. Free will is important when thinking about agents and living things and a whole theory of mind or folk psychology module that is different from mechansistic or folk physics module has evolved in our brains to think in agentic terms. Maybe the sum total of universe is not free or has a free will or a will at all; but a single organism (an open system) definetly has will, moreover will that is not tightly constrained, but relatively free and endowing with choice and control.. - Sandeep Gautam

"Maybe the sum total of universe is not free or has a free will or a will at all; but a single organism (an open system) definetly has will, moreover will that is not tightly constrained, but relatively free and endowing with choice and control." +++ Sandeep Gautam This is a closer explication of what can be stated from other disciplines, if you will, couched in terms other than scientific ones, yet saying the same thing. In these areas it takes cross-discipline understanding, - Melanie Reed

For example take Sandeep's first posit: "Maybe the sum total of universe is not free or has a free will or a will at all;" keeping in mind the following statement allows for the exception to it "..but a single organism (an open system) definetly has will,.." This is exactly what this statement is referring to: "Many are the plans in a man's heart, but it is the Lord's purpose [will] that prevails." Proverbs 19:21 It allows for what Sandeep's possiblity has hit upon: a lesser will within a larger context. - Melanie Reed

@Sandeep Gautam: Huh? When have I said that? I said it doesn't matter, either way there is no free will. - Alexander Kruel

Is there no concept that a greater will can set up deterministic systems (for safety purposes) that allow for the fluidity of lesser free wills in which to act? - Melanie Reed

Then with all due respect to you Christopher, you're not being very scientific. You cannot disprove it and so you must allow for it. There is a danger in not allowing for thinking and possibilities that are beyond our measure of intelligence. We will go round in circles or continue to arrive at imperfect destinations. A good scientist listens and is open to possibilities. - Melanie Reed

@Melanie Reed: Sandeep Gautam already made that point, sadly it's false. Read up on falsifiability and Occam's razor. Maybe some Wittgenstein would be good too. - Alexander Kruel

To take the analogy with open systems further, everyone knows the second law of thermodynamics that the entropy increases as time flies theorem; but that is applicable to closed systems. One cannot argue that open systems like living beings would not exist that sort of defy the entropy principle (move towards more organization) as long as they live. Living beings , that are open systems, live and provide a counter-example on a daily basis. similarly in an overall deterministic, non-living universe, there is still room for agentic , free-will to exist in living beings that are open in 'causal' terms. - Sandeep Gautam

@xixidiu @cristopher that is what Melaine is saying that if you cannot prove it , allow it; that is not my position. My position is that given two non-falsifiable/non-provable alternatives, believe in one that is good for everyone. - Sandeep Gautam

@crsitopher you are on slippery grounds here...to most of people free will is intuitive and not implausible...of course intuitiveness and folk concepts doesn't count as scientific proof,; but it is pertinent to what is plausible to believe and what is not. - Sandeep Gautam

No Christopher. I started not believing. I simply arrived (and I did not get there by one dull and morbid route) at the discovery that there was no other alternative. "I continue to fail to see what's useful about employing a term with so much philosophical baggage", Because Christopher, you are more than what you think you are. Connect the dots. They are there. - Melanie Reed

well freedom from immediate environmental influences or past learning history. room for behavior variability (bot operant behavior and conditioned behavior) - Sandeep Gautam

All interpretations of quantum mechanics describe an indeterministic universe, though. Again, this doesn't prove free-will, but arguing for a deterministic universe defies our current understanding of reality. - Victor Ganata

Christopher: heh, I'll leave that to a certain renowned physicist to argue. But once you remove determinism from the discussion, I think it does become useful to examine the phenomenon of free-will. Sure, it's not the same thing as what we intuit free-will to be, and it doesn't meet the classical philosophical definitions, but there's still something there to study. - Victor Ganata

Christopher, I wasn't hoping that you would make the connection today. ;) First, the anger must go. But I think one day you will. And on that day, the click of machinery will be one of relief. - Melanie Reed

I think the term "free-will" is nothing more than short-hand for an ill-defined phenomenon that we all have some vague intuition about, but which appears distinct from sentience, and perhaps even from consciousness. I think it's unnecessarily confusing to just fold it into other neurological phenomenon. As Christopher H points out, the phenomenon of volition is something that has clinical consequences, and is something we've been trying to manipulate with chemistry for a long time now. And it seems rather distinct from intelligence. - Victor Ganata

@Christopher yea this new free will isn't necessarily conscious, big change from the traditional version - Christopher Harris

@cristopher I concur, the new free will need not be conscious; it can , and most probably is to a large extent unconscious. - Sandeep Gautam

Christopher, I have no agenda where you (or anyone else) are/is concerned that is in the least bit as violent as your metaphor proposes. :) Quite the opposite. It is and will always be your choice to act upon it or not. I am not a virus nor is what I am telling you a virus or memplex. Indeed, if you want to pursue that thinking, you might as well turn it around and ask yourself if someone has given you a "memplex" that is undesirable regarding your beliefs and that perhaps it is you who are trying to "infect" others with it. (I am aware of the origination of this thinking from Mr. Dawkins) ;) I don't say this to confront, but to get you to think of that possibility. Because in the end, all the notations, computations, posits and theories will mean little. At last, you and I will face the answer and either I have made a complete fool of myself and you will be right and we will be gone forever into meaningless dust, having had no purpose other than to wonder in the last perceived moments if we ever really had this conversation. OR, my belief and actions upon it, will have been proven justified and a bright and wonderful future awaits. At which time, one of us will get to peek around the edge of that door and one of us will get to go through. It's for a you a gamble which in the one case, if I am wrong, you and I will lose nothing but silly useless pride. In the other case, we will have gained everything. It's your choice....and mine. That there are steep hills, valleys, dangerous paths, and uncertianties between here and there, does not nullify that possibility. - Melanie Reed

I don't think the evidence that some decisions are made before your consciousness perceives them necessarily precludes free-will, though. I'd like to see them test other scenarios other than just giving a volunteer an instruction, and watching how the brain processes that instruction. - Victor Ganata

If we're thinking of the same study, it just shows that there's a lot of unconscious activity when an instruction from another person gets processed by your brain. There's no indication that the consciousness can or can't override the unconscious activity. That leaves room for another experiment. - Victor Ganata

@christopher I have already answered that. freedom from immediacy. freedom from histrory - Sandeep Gautam

After all, it at least appears we can temporarily override certain otherwise involuntary functions of the body. - Victor Ganata

yes, if it (p-zombie) was acting as an agent showing behavioral flexibility and variability, our minds would model it as an agent and grant it free will . It might not be conscious but is both willful and without being sentient free in the sense that its unconscious could still have chosen otherwise - Sandeep Gautam

to elaborate on p-zombie, supposing that intoxication (inhaling alcohol) makes you a p-zombie momentarily, you would still be held accountable in thtis real world as the prior decision to take alcohol was perhaps mistaken and lead to the outcome. To use analogy of Jon Haidt, if you train your unconscious (elephant) incorrectly your conscious (the rider/trainer / mahout) is also equally to be held guilty. The unconscious is powerful and most of the free will may be due to that powerful unconscious, but digressing into ethics, it is our duty to rein it , keep it in check and train it using limited conscious resources. - Sandeep Gautam

not on a black out, but supposing that their conscious is overtaken by unconscious and they cannot remember what they are doing, law and I would still hold them accountable and having free will (as they had freely decided to enter into that state) - Sandeep Gautam

to take further the case of drunkenness, a drunken person does not just react, he/.she acts by loosening of inhibitions, free rein of impulses ..and acts freely - Sandeep Gautam

I guess free will has two parts...impulsivity contributes to freeness...freedom from history or immediacy...wilfulnness comes from ability to keep impulsivity in check. - Sandeep Gautam

ok to better rephrase it ...impulsivity - freedom from immediacy....impluses not driven by stimulus necessarily; willfulness - freedom from history- actions not governed by past operant rewards necessarily. - Sandeep Gautam

"could have" is not my position. counterfactuls do not prove the point of free will in my opinion. I think more of given the same conditions different responses at different times that are goal-directed, spontaneous, exhibit choice of form and timing and procedure; google algo doesn't choose when to substitute /ba/ as /pa/; whether to substitue or not and if so when to substitute and why? It doesn't pass the volition test - Sandeep Gautam

Christopher: Your last emphatic vulgarism answered your own question about anger. I may persuade with my arguments. I may plead with my heart. But getting angry undermines your stand. What is left is that marvel for something that to many appears a standard of intelligence and perception to which they must attain. You want the answer couched only in the terms which you have defined. Your stance would lock out the very thing you claim to pursue. Even Richard Feynman didn't do that. - Melanie Reed

to take the google voice algo example further, if the algo had hidden urges that would spontaneously and in unambiguous situations too, tweak the translation so as to favor /ba/ over /da/ sometimes and /da/ over /ba/ other times, then I would grant it willfulness or some freedom (it is not constrained by the text, but can decide on its own to translate a given text to sound; if it further had an algo coded to restrict and keep in rein such urges to serve the google voicce in some way, then I would grant it 'will' too and free will eventually. - Sandeep Gautam

ok whatever, you get the idea... - Sandeep Gautam

basically if after hearing ba correctly, if google algo still mischeveiously decidedtro code it as p or d, I owuld grant it some freedom. - Sandeep Gautam

actually our folk notions may be appropriate here...we do attribute intentionality to products like google voice when they consistently f**k up in a particular way...we say what an idiot that application is and grant it sort of agency and purpose. - Sandeep Gautam

Christopher: You're right. I am a very poor example of a robot. I am to the depth, to the last, human. - Melanie Reed

Ben's definition of intelligence (on a cursory read) to me seems wide ranging ...his 'task independent pragmatic understanding of itself and the world' borders on sentience, so not surprised if he takes volition also in its stride. BTW, its 3 am in morning india, time to signoff. will continue discussion tomorrow:-) - Sandeep Gautam

my pleasure too! - Sandeep Gautam

Christopher: No, they make one increasingly intolerant of the sum of what you are. You are dissatisfied. Your path to satisfaction has one route and it is always to run round in that circle. But do you plan to arrive anywhere? Or is it to find pleasure in the game of the circular? If so, I can understand that. But it still doesn't solve the problem of dissatisfaction. It is just a higher level of pleasurable distraction. - Melanie Reed

Christopher: You want to know rather just believe.If you are presented with a situation requiring belief in the gap where knowledge leaves off, that makes you dissatisfied. I can understand that. We all have that. It's what we do with that space that makes all the difference in the world - Melanie Reed

With respect, Mohammed did not come to come to make dead people live. He did not come to die for their sins and make a way out for them so that their relationship with God could be restored to what it was. Only Jesus did this. And I am grateful for what He did. - Melanie Reed

Christopher: Again, with respect, it is not arbitrary. I have brothers and sisters ( in Christ) who are in Saudi Arabia, indeed, in every part of the world. I have brothers (in Christ) who grew up in SA and later through a chain of events moved elsewhere and then became Christians. - Melanie Reed

Christopher: Christ is there, too. Though some of our brothers have given their lives in that mission. Of recent note (in this century) with the Waodani tribe.One tribe member in particular killed 4 missionaries, but later became our brother. - Melanie Reed

That culture still exists, Christopher. They only difference is that they exist knowing the promise of Christ. - Melanie Reed

I agree with you that as globalization progress (through technology and big business) many cultures and lives will be uprooted. But it is not Christ who is destroying people. It is people and their greed who are doing these things to each other. - Melanie Reed

I also wanted to make clear in case there was confusion: the missionaries were attacked by the tribe and 4 were killed. The missionaries did not fight back. They allowed themselves to be killed. It was this that made an impression on the tribe member and he later became a Christian - Melanie Reed

I'd be interested to know how you would describe the reason for your participation in this discussion: 1. "I came across this debate and felt compelled to respond..." 2. "Of several competing actions/options I have deliberately chosen to respond to this thread..." 3. "I never consciously decided to take part in this debate for a special reason, it just happened / I just did..." 4. "Because of / God / made me do it..." - Alexander Kruel

@Sandeep Gautam: If you define free will as freedom from immediacy, how does one achieve this? Every stimulus must be processed immediately. You don't have the option to ignore it. To restrain an urge is as much a response to stimulus as motor output. Influence is always reciprocal. Non-actions do not exist. Besides, how many people would be happy to define free will as the unconscious spontaneous varitions of fruit flies within the completely unnatural environment of a sensory deprivation tank? (I come back to it because it's the only study I know that makes an allusion to 'free will'.) - Alexander Kruel

Alexander, I made an assumption that you might be addressing me since you invoked God in your question. This thread is in a "public" room. It infers general participation by that alone. The concept of Free Will, regardless of what it has come to mean or might come to mean, within the scientific discipline originated as concept with God and therefore has been the immediate concern of those who worship Him. To study something without cross discipline knowledge, "in the explosion of knowledge" .."has complicated the process of cooperation among experts [or those who consider themselves in the process of becoming that] in different fields of study, the result being that often the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing." (J.M. Njorge) This is partly why I invoked Richard Feynman's name yesterday because it is exactly the same point he made about the scientific and mathematical approach and its responsibility in the O-ring incident in the Challenger accident: reports were not couched in cross-disciplinary terms that were useful. I joined in part for the reason that we all join a discussion if our motivation is to help and to share what we have that is germane and useful no matter the seemingly disparate connection to an audience who may not clearly understand the point as of yet. My apparent failure in this does not dismiss the fundamental and honest reason we all answer or contribute to a communication: compassion. As someone wiser than I once said: "We read to know we're not alone." We do the same when we share what we know. It behooves us to listen. You may find one day the knowledge you seek may be in the most unlikely place [to you], delivered by the most unlikely person. - Melanie Reed

@Melanie Reed: Seen me arguing against your participation in this discussion? I actually agree with you in one point. It's a theological concept. Sadly some people don't get it, or try to sneak it into neuroscience. - Alexander Kruel

@Alexander Kruel My apologies for misunderstanding who your comment was aimed at. I do understand the desire to pursue the concept from the scientific discipline. Strangely, (as it might seem to some of the participants on this thread) others have wanted to look through this lens but from a different direction: this is what we know. Now how does it work from here. Curiosity is only natural. For instance," when did that Free will (choice) kick in? before birth (somehow by some as of yet undetermined force within oneself) drawing to itself particular genetic traits from generations preceding it stored between the parents? " are logical questions. And as such they have been asked before us. The explanation given in the Bible, though not in scientific terminology says in one place: "You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother's womb." and in another place: "Before you were born, I knew you" This gives an interesting and startling indication that choice was not individual at a certain point, but became such after a certain point. And that has a bearing on seeing some sense in what we are seeing about randomness and deterministic systems having the ability to work together. - Melanie Reed

Do you think your god possess free will given its omniscience and thus prior knowledge of its own actions? Just curious :-) - Alexander Kruel

One seemingly innocuous passage declares that "His thinking is higher" meaning that He is not constrained by the same constraints that we experience within our lesser wills of choice. But here is the kicker: He chooses to work within the constraints He asks of us. In short: he "obeys" His own moral laws but allows for a stepping outside the natural (what we perceive as scientific) law to accomplish His Will. It is this that provides the greatest failsafe. And it is never acted on in a whimsical manner. Humans on the other hand, often do choose to act in arbitrary and whimsical manners that lead to undesirable outcomes, indeed outcomes that have no immediate or future beneficial purpose. God on the other hand only acts for both immediate and future beneficial purposes whether we can immediately see that or not. So the concept of Free Will for a being who IS the essence of "Will" [identifying Himself as "I am" or I caused to be"] would have to be couched in terms other than what we now possess in the scientific field. The name though initially not making sense from our standpoint of names now takes on greater meaning when you look at Him as "the" will, the source. - Melanie Reed

Seen that coming. You can't win a theological debate. Never mind, just trying to fathom if it is worth talking about this topic with you any further. I would, but I don't have the time. - Alexander Kruel

I wasn't debating. :) And I don't mind at all appearing foolish. I thank you for listening. - Melanie Reed

I don't mind appearing foolish either. Otherwise I wouldn't comment on such topics at all. But I have nothing to lose, contrary to some educated scientists that should know better. Anyway, if you haven't been debating, what then, preaching? I consider that as spam. - Alexander Kruel

I have told you the truth. Spam, when I began in technology, was defined as repeatedly sending the same email message to a recipients mailbox, flooding it so that nothing else could be sent out or received. Thus, it was incapacitating the recipient's ability to communicate. That hasn't happened here. That definition hasn't changed that I know of and I have been in the tech field for a long time both as a former E-commerce Certificate Program Coordinator for IUPUI as well as a former Instructor for both beginning, intermediate, and advanced ASP.NET programming. - Melanie Reed

It was an analogy. Unsolicited advertisement for something I'm not interested in. I wasn't writing a scientific paper and thought a lack of preciseness in my word choice would be permitted. Nevertheless, I grant you a points win on this one. P.S. I'm off for today... - Alexander Kruel

Just to clarify a few points in this meandering thread. Determinism, even macroscopically, is about as antiquated as that of what people in this thread call 'genuine' free will. Of course, anybody is entitled to their opinions, but of course anybody is free to ridicule flat-earthers, too. Free will is composed of two things. If we get too free (e.g. by drugs), we question the will. If we become too willed (e.g. in the case of autism) we also question the sanity of the person. Thus, what we call free will is a fine balance of two ill-defined (actually difficult to define) concepts. Nevertheless, all brains have some degree of freedom (plenty of evidence there), only the degrees vary. Likewise, it has been recognized for centuries that all brains have some component of will (earlier thinkers have called it drive), only the degree varies. Thus, there is more than ample evidence in the scientific literature that our particular version of free-will is not without evolutionary precedence and one of the many functions of our brain. Part of my job is to find out how this works biologically. This is the scientific part of this discussion, much of the rest is just wishful thinking or religion. Again, everyone is free both to believe what they want and to ridicule others where they believe without evidence. - Björn Brembs

I've had Tourette syndrome/impulse control disorder for many years during my childhood. I still suffer from other psychological disorders/problems, such as medical anxiety or having feelings/perceptions of things being venomed. I've never been able to focus myself on certain tasks. I also grew up in a very religious surrounding where people believe into libertarian free will. Thus I'm being exposed to a wide variety of volition and ideas about free will. -- I'd be interested to read about a study that shows that people actually experience free will, that it is a psychological phenomena and not a cultural induced idea that is assumed on an intellectual level when we self-reflect or in retrospect. As I wrote a few times above, I doubt anybody actually experiences to be free. It's a biased assumption that we learnt to assume. Trying to figure out how free will works biologically is similar to finding brain mechanisms for religion. Just because fruit flies are also prone to detect false patterns we surely wouldn't introduce the concept of faith into neuroscience? -- Let's say we're going to trigger motor activity in a patient that undergoes brain sugery so that she moves her arm unintentional. Why would we call that a lack of free will instead of a disassociation between motor activity and self-awareness? There simply never occurs a lack of free will but a lack of control or disassociation between self-perception and action. -- Introducing the concept of free will is at best misleading but will likely only lead to greater confusion. It isn't useful. - Alexander Kruel

@Xixidu not every stimulus is processed ; if that was the case we would get mad; be paralyzed analyzing the incoming stimulations. A lot of the stimulus is ignored and never reaches consciousness, so it is wrong to say every stimulus is attended to. Most are ignored and ignoring a stimulus need not be a conscious decisions; it can be an unconscious decisions. to say that ignoring a stimulus is also responding to it is clearly twisting definitions. . - Sandeep Gautam

A decision is a decision. No need to twist definitions here. If you come up with loaded and loose concepts such as free will, what do you expect? Your volition is the sum of all stimulus, internal and external, conscious and ignored. Where is the freedom? The word surely needs to have some meaning beyond the fuzziness of unpredictability? If not, why do you introduce it, what is its use in science? How does it enrich our comprehension of natural phenomena? - Alexander Kruel

why do you keep harping on unpredictability. Free will is not about unpredictability. Its not about randomness either. It si about freedom (from immediacy, from history). for eg, If I resolve not to reply to your posts in ana acrimonous manner , no matter how acrimonous you become, than though by stating it explicitly, I become highly predictable; I am still exercising my free will, despite being totally predictable. why do you keep mixing predictability with free will. even detrminsitic systems like chaotic systems can be non-predictable and someone having free will but say resolving to say no (think a terrorist being tortured to get info out) word only to every question, though being highly predictable (will always say no ) still is an agent exhibiting free will. (choosing his response of his own volition) - Sandeep Gautam

Why are we attracted to Andromeda? Because every bit of matter attracts one another. The infinitesimals forces of nature exert their pull infinitely. I'm not arguing against libertarian free will here, although I know you believe into it. I'm arguing against the term in general. If you propose the existence of a will that is free, as implied by the combinatorial term free will, then what is the nature of will? Do people either act deliberately or genuine deliberate? Show me why you need to add free to will. - Alexander Kruel

+++ Sandeep Gautam - Melanie Reed

let me get this straight. you believe that 'will' exists but is not 'free' and we create an oxymoron by adding free; can you define what your 'will' is? - Sandeep Gautam

Because the gravity between people and the gravity between celestial bodies are not the same thing. It seems that there is a blurring between what you are saying (influenced by experience from your condition as a variable) and what Sandeep is saying. Needs sorting out - Melanie Reed

You can express gravity between people as that of emotional attraction or repulsion based on characteristics not the force between galaxies - Melanie Reed

Yes I can: My will is the unfolding of a highly complex process, a sub-system of the universe, as defined by this system itself, into actions perceived to be shaped by itself. I tried to define free will here: http://xixidu.tumblr.com/post... - Just remove free and you got my definition of 'volition'... - Alexander Kruel

ah, the western mind - Gregory Lent

Gregory, I never figured if you believe that something like free will exist or not? - Alexander Kruel

Oh no, Lent joins the thread, expect more spiritual woo woo ;) Alex, let's take a specific example. The feeding system of the snail Lymnaea contains 500 neurons in two connected ganglia, but nevertheless has rudimentary free will under this new definition. The neurons in the two ganglia generate a complicated pattern of thousands of sequential and parallel spikes, which, in the intact animal, drive the mouth muscle apparatus to take food into the mouth and swallow it. Every cycle of feeding is similar - protract the toothed tongue, rasp the food, push food into the mouth cavity and swallow it - but also slightly different - the protraction, rasp and swallow phases vary in activity (i.e. how many spikes they each contain), the delays between them vary, the activity or silence of many non-essential neurons varies, etc etc etc. This variation used to be considered noise but is now beginning to be recognized as instrumental to the snail fulfilling its desire to eat effectively: the snail uses the variations to systematically explore the full range of possible muscle movements and find the ones that work best for what is currently being eaten. Effective variations are reinforced and bad ones are inhibited, but the precise nature of each variation is not strongly determined by the food being eaten - it is almost completely intrinsic to the 500 neurons. And yet it is not random, indeed the degree of variation is itself under the control of the rest of the brain, such that it can scale variability up or down, e.g. in new situations, or loose control over the degree of variability or of the specific cycles of activity that are expressed, e.g. in the conditions you describe. You seem to lack a strong sense of cognitive control. I do too. The point of the iPlant is to allow persons with limited control over their own behavioural variations to program them. Hence I have two concrete reasons to use the term free will: 1) because people keep thinking that reward learning in... more... - Christopher Harris

Let's just say I can accept free will to be defined as 'nonlinear, endogenous behavior', output over input. I now think it might be adequate after all. -- It's just really hard for me to perceive freedom 'from within'. Much of my perception is actually influenced from within, as for example that I perceive things to be dangerous for no apparent environmental cues. Or that I feel/perceive having to do certain things or it will have negative consequences. On an intellectual level I know that these feelings are a malfunction/dysfunction of my brain, that the reasons lie within my own mind. Nonetheless they are part of all the stimuli underlying my actions. That's why I have been talking about the difference between internal and external stimuli to be insubstantial regarding the concept of free will. - Alexander Kruel

no free will ... nice discussion above of what that statement could mean/imply/ ... biggest takeway from this thread is about the limits of english and its close cousin science in being able to get close to understanding subtleties of mind and consciousness. it is lacking so many necessary concepts. - Gregory Lent

Nevertheless, I think there is another problem. Although this problem matters when it comes to the new definition of free will and my definition of volition I held all along. So this is not just a critique of what you, Brembs or others propose but also of my own idea of will. Namely, of what importance is consciousness regarding volition? Can we really talk about deliberate actions without explicit awareness of what we want to do ahead of the action? - Alexander Kruel

Well, sure, even the inflexible behaviours of OCD or addiction emerge from inside the nervous system despite being in some sense un-free. The assumption there is that the normal mechanisms of will and variation have been corrupted, and this too has been studied in the molluscan feeding system http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed... - Christopher Harris

Re consciousness: I think important decisions in the healthy human brain will typically be conscious, even if the mechanisms by which the contents and conclusions of consciousness are generated are only vaguely understood. This is important I think, to identify with your ENTIRE brain, not just those processes that are accessible to consciousness. People tend to get this wrong about dopamine and reward learning in particular, they think "ah, it's my dopamine system that wants and makes decisions, not me, ergo I have no free will; I am 'just' a machine". I think this is incorrect: that dopamine system is a part of you, and an extraordinarily important part at that, we just happen to be the first generation to really realize this, so our cultural intuitions may get it wrong at first (or in Lent's case, indefinitely:). - Christopher Harris

Do people get it wrong or may they simply have a different idea of what free will is supposed to mean? Even if I agree to this new definition of free will now, being wrong before, I still doubt most people would accept that definition any time soon. - Alexander Kruel

I think people get it wrong in the same way people who reject brain-death as the proper way to determine when a person is dead are wrong. I think brain-based notions of identity will get increasingly prevalent and increasingly useful as we learn more about the brain. This will require however that there is loads of engaging, easy-to-understand-and-interact-with material available that deals with the findings of neuroscience, hence my youtube channel and website :) - Christopher Harris

If you could control your iPlant brain implant using a external computer, or use a time-based job scheduler on a external machine to execute some script, would it cease to be external and integrate with your free will/identity and thus become part of you? - Alexander Kruel

conditional rewarding brain stimulation (the main function iPlants would enable in humans) always requires an external computer to determine when a required task has been performed and deliver the rewarding electrical pulse. the question is who programs it. if the implant is used to reward behaviours that the user has chosen - behaviours he or she wants to be able to perform but which his or her own brain fails to reward sufficiently - then the implant is a motivational prosthesis and could be said to enhance the person's self-control. like any other prosthesis i presume a person would rapidly integrate it into his or her self-image. - Christopher Harris

charcoal artists talking about how to draw rainbows :-) - Gregory Lent

Lent has found the way and the light, none of this search for logic and science, truth is found in the humble leaf, and in the morning wind. - Christopher Harris

ah, the qualitative makes an appearance in Mr. Harris words .. nice beginning - Gregory Lent

I try to mix the qualitative and the quantitative in my novel, check it out sometime http://www.iplant.eu/fiction... - Christopher Harris

hello, mr carr, just drawn to the subject of the original post, enjoyed the thread, my two rupees worth is to imply that there are larger, and perhaps more accurate, understandings of these great questions available in other parts of the world, in other systems of inquiry, in other languanges. the western mind can be amusing. - Gregory Lent

I think you might get some kind of abstract freedom once you arbitrarily define a system and can prove that the complexity of transformation by which this system shapes the outside environment, in which it is embedded, does trump the specific effectiveness of the environmental influence on the defined system. In other words, mind over matter. You are able to shape reality more effectively and goal-oriented and thus, in a way, overcome its crude influence it exerts on you. - Alexander Kruel

Yes, as far as I understood, the new definition of free will that Christopher Harris and other people are talking about here, does to a certain extent equalize free will with control and thus, I assume, intelligence. For example, children and some mentally handicapped people are not responsible in same the way as healthy adults. They can not give consent or enter into legally binding contracts. One of the reasons for this is that they lack control, are easily influenced by others. Healthy humans exert a higher control than children and handicapped people. I can accept this to be defined as degrees of free will now. You experience, or possess a greater extent of freedom proportional to the amount of influence and effectiveness of control you exert over the enviroment versus the environment over you. - Alexander Kruel

You are right, this new definition of free will only works once you arbitrarily define a system to be an entity within an environment contrary to being the environment. Thus the neural activity, being either consciously aware and controled by the system itself, or not, is no valid argument within this framework. Of course, in a strong philosophical sense this definition fails to address the nature of free will as we can do what we want but not chose what we want. But I think it might after all be a useful definition when it comes to science, psychology and law. It might also very well address our public understanding of being free agents. - Alexander Kruel

if you did neuorscience research on "mind" in sanskrit, instead of english, you would do very different experiments .. five very different words for aspects of mind that the single english word clumps together .. is that relativism? dunno. i see it as an obvious limitation of "science" - Gregory Lent

Greenland natives have many, many words for snow. In no sense does that imply that english-speaking research into snow would be limited. Snow is still snow. Your mind betrays you Gregory ;-) - Nils Reinton

nils, you would never say that sentence, or have that thought, were you a native greenland speaker - Gregory Lent

Nils is from Norway, close enough I say! - Christopher Harris

Gregory, http://scottaaronson.com/blog... - "This is a mystery that could not even have been formulated within the nineteenth-century mathematical universe of Hermann Weyl." - There is some conclusiveness in what you are saying, but in reality it never comes down to the difference of popular concepts within natural languages but rather mathematical formulations. Colloquial or scientific terminology is being conceived afterwards as, for example, it happened within String theory and other modern concepts. - Alexander Kruel

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... - Christopher Harris

Gregory. My point is that having many words for something does not mean you understand it better. I have very diverse experiences with snow, but in describing snow in a particular setting I would use adjectives or build whole sentences around the word "snow". This is similar to studying the mind - where you seek to understand the object "mind" and then describe what you learn, - not by giving new words for mind, but by explaining what a mind can do and how. Having many different kinds of mind would only function to obscure - which is exactly what your belief-set has done expertly for thousands of years. Moving backwards into age-old philosophical descriptions (or semantics) of "mind" and "free will" can never move our understanding forward. Exploring the science behind conscious and unconscious perception (and the acts that may or may not follow) on the other hand, will. - Nils Reinton

This thread and the Asian nipple licking thread (http://ff.im/1hqgl) are the two threads I can always count on being present in my feed :) - Eivind

Mental models and counterfactual thoughts about what might have been: http://bit.ly/7pUOBK -- "Counterfactual thoughts about what might have been (‘if only…’) are pervasive in everyday life. They are related to causal thoughts, they help people learn from experience and they influence diverse cognitive activities, from creativity to probability judgements. They give rise to emotions and social ascriptions such as guilt, regret and blame. People show remarkable regularities in the aspects of the past they mentally ‘undo’ in their counterfactual thoughts. These regularities provide clues about their mental representations and cognitive processes, such as keeping in mind true possibilities, and situations that are false but temporarily supposed to be true." - Alexander Kruel