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Sitaram · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 1079

http://sulekha.com/chpost.asp?for...ilosophy&show=0&cid=76544

Re: Free will and "Ghost in the Machine"

The Judaeo-Christian scriptures say "God cannot lie."

But, humans, obviously, have withing their choice the power to lie.

Does this mean that humans are more free than God?

The Qu'ran asserts that Allah has the power to lie and deceive, and
that Allah will further deceive those who do not embrace Islam, in
order to increase their punishment.

================================

http://www2.abc.net.au/science/descent/posts/topic477.shtm

a/ People's behaviour is often predictable if you know them well
enough, although by no means always.

b/ We do not know if the brain operates on a newtonian or a quantum
level. If it operates on a newtonian level behaviour would be
entirely predictable, even if the behaviour is irrational because of
faulty genetics and/or environment. Obviously it would be beyond us,
as even the physics involved in predicting where a billiard ball will
travel is extremely complex.

c/ Apparently quantum movements can be predicted on average although
not on an individual level and it is still not proven whether or not
this is because we simply do not understand the physics of sub atomic
movement or whether it is a result of an uncertainty "law." I am
getting way out of my depth here and I would appreciate it if someone
with knowledge on the subject could contribute in this area.

d/ If the mind does operate on an uncertainty principle surely this
is another argument for us having no free will.

e/If we make irrational decisions because of the imperfect knowledge
of the world, surely this is also a result of genetic and
environmental influences, which are beyond our control.

=======

I wouldn't have thought it mattered one jot whether you are dealing
with classical or quantum mechanics. By definition "free will"
requires a "will" which is "free" from any laws which govern the
physical world, no matter how unpredicatable or counter intuitive
they appear to be. For free will to exist, there must be a force
exerted from another realm beyond the reach of those rules which
govern the physical world; a ghost in the machine.

Personally I see no suggestion of such a non-physical influence and I
have an intuitive feeling that a dualist system of existance would be
inherently unstable (don't ask me why..I'd need to think some more!).

==================

I agree, in that as our brain is just a machine which can only be a
product of nature and nurture, (nature and nurture all being part of
the physical universe we inhabit and subject to the mechanics of
nature, even if it uncertain as in quantum mechanics), in order for
us to have free will we would have to have a ghost within us which
was not subject to such physics.

I cannot explain consciousness and it may be that our consciousness
is not part of the physical universe in that it is a seperate entity
from the physical structure of the brain, ie if the physical
structure of the brain is responsible for consciousness it means
something has been created from nothing. However, having said this it
seems obvious that the conscious self, feels, thinks, develops a
moral code, etc, according to the instructions within the mind, which
is a result of it's nature and nurture which was beyond our control
and can have no influence on the physical universe itself.

I have been conscious of this for some time and because I have been
conscious of it for some time it has meant I have great trouble
taking life seriously. It also makes it very difficult to look at
others who take life too seriously and I get great joy laughing at
human society and it's institutions. I would like to hear from others
who look at life and society in a similar way.

Dave Wheeler argues that "People's behaviour is often predictable if
you know them well enough, although by no means always" and therefore
that there is no free will. Strangely, I would use exactly the same
observation to argue that there is.

I guess what we are arguing about is a matter of definition. What is
free will?

To me, it is the ability to choose actions from within a range in a
manner that is not obviously predictable to an outside observer. Of
course, the more knowledge the decision making entity has and the
more repeatable its cognitive function, the more restricted that
range will tend to be.

Importantly, however, even with perfect knowledge and function a
degree of free will remains.

Note the "within a range" bit. Everything is subject to a range. A
perfect random number generator is probably a good model of a simple
form of free will, yet it too is bounded by the possible, restricted
to the range of the biggest and smallest numbers it can process and
display.

The spooky thing is that this phenomenon of being bounded to a range
seems pretty scale invariant. While quantum level particles
can "choose" to be anywhere, for all practical intents they are
restricted to the range where physics expects them to reasonably be.
Likewise, I can choose to jump of the shed roof thereby risking a
broken leg, but I can't choose to flap my arms and fly away into the
sunset (whatever post-modernists would like to believe).

Incidentally, I wasn't necessarily arguing that the brain was
essentially quantum mechanical, just that enough of its processes
were close enough to the atomic level so that quantum noise would
introduce a degree of unpredictability. This would be especially so
where there wasn't clear advantage across a sub-set of choices.

In fact, the way quantum mechanics, chaos and complexity interact in
this universe give the impression of a universe
exquisitely "designed" for free will and to prevent accurate
predictions of the future. Note that being able to predict the future
also seem to imply the removal of free will.

Oh! And the "ghost within the machine" Dave's later posting mentions
neither has to be an outside entity, nor does it have to be unbounded
by this universe's physical laws. Given the previously mentioned
interaction of quantum mechanics, chaos and complexity and the
immense complexity and atomic scale processes of the human brain, it
can just as happily be an emergent phenomenon of complex systems.

============================

Stephen Heyer defined free will as "The ability to choose actions
from within a range in a manner that is not obviously predictable to
an outside observer." I would not define it that way, however I agree
that under his definition of free will we definitely have free will.

The point I am making is that there is a paradox. Yes, we have the
ability to do anything we are physically or mentally capable of doing
or making any decision we wish to. However, no, we do not have free
will in that the only method we have of making a decision is to draw
upon our knowledge and to use our intellect in making the decision.
As our knowledge and intellect is a direct result of our genetics and
environment and as we had no say in what genes we were born with nor
what environment we were born into (which led us to seek different
environments and more knowledge), it cannot be said that we have free
will.

Jack the ripper had the free will to decide to murder under Stephen's
definition, although it was inevitable that he would murder, as the
decision he made was based upon the fact that his desire to satisfy
his sadistic urges outweighed both his morality (if he had any) and
his fear of being caught. In other words, the machine called Jack the
ripper was either made to kill (genetics) or acquired the lust to
kill (possibly an abusive childhood, ie poor nurture), or had a
certain combination of these factors which directed him to act in
this way. He had no say in what his eventual makeup would be and had
no free will under my definition of the word.

=====================

Your definition appears to concentrate on the "free" bit, whilst mine
concentrates on th "will" bit. A probabilistic event is still no more
influenced by freewill than a deterministic event. You have pointed
out how modern physics suggests some things are unpredictable, "free"
from determinism if you like. However, unpredicatable systems still
have no "will".

Consiousness is I suspect an emergent property which developed once
we placed our selfs in an internalised model of our perceived
environment. In order to increase our chances of survival, we long
ago learned to view other things from an intentional stance. We
bestowed things with intentions in order to make a short cut to
prediction. The illusion of freewill is the result of us not being
able to view ourselfs from anything but the intentional stance.

My ideas are stongly influenced by Daniel Dennet who hinted, at a
talk of his which I attended, his next book is on the topic of
freewill. I'm eagerly looking forward to see what he has to say

===========================================

http://www.revricky.com/sermons/freewill.html

Unitarian Universalism and Free Will
by Rev. Ricky Hoyt

The truth that human beings are fundamentally free to act in
accordance with our own desires is one of the most basic assumptions
of our personal lives, and of our human society. We assume as a
matter of course that there exists a causal relationship between our
desire to do something, that is, our will to do something, and the
action which then follows. Our desires, or will, causes our actions.

I willed myself to get out of bed this morning. I willed myself to
write this sermon over the course of the last week. You willed
yourself to get up and get dressed and come to church. Some of you
may have expended a certain amount of your will in getting other
members of your family here.

In all these cases, and in nearly every other conscious moment of our
lives, our will to do something precedes a related action. We decide
to make dinner, and then we make dinner. We decide to go shopping,
and then we go shopping. We decide to take a bath, or scratch
ourselves, or go for a walk, or write a poem, or listen to a record,
or take a nap, and then our body moves according to our will and we
bathe, scratch, walk, write, listen, or nap.
This all happens so constantly and naturally, that most of us become
blind to the really amazing thing that is going on. Somehow our
thoughts have the power to move our bodies. Think for a minute about
the implications of that.

A thought is an immaterial thing. A thought isn't made of anything. A
thought has no mass. It doesn't weigh anything. A thought has no
electrical charge, no ability to attract or repel an object. Thoughts
don't chemically interact with atoms or molecules. Thoughts don't
exist in space, or move from one place to another. And this is truly
amazing because how could a weightless, made of nothing, thought,
have any effect on a physical object like the brain and then our
bodies?

That question is one of the most profound questions of philosophy.
It's often called the mind body problem. The mind is clearly related
to the brain, and scientists have done a lot of work over the last
few decades mapping the specific areas of the brain that get
activated by certain thoughts. But is the mind, a different thing
from the brain or are the mind and the brain two aspects of the same
thing?

Dualism looks at the mind and the body as two separate kinds of
things. There is the body, including the brain, which is made up of
physical stuff: atoms and electrons and molecules. And then there is
a different sort of thing called the mind, which is immaterial and is
made up of non-physical things like ideas and desires and memories.
Dualism describes our experience. We do seem to be both a physical
body and a non-physical mind. The problem with dualism is the
interaction problem. How does an immaterial thing like a thought move
a physical thing like a brain chemical?

This dilemma is sometimes illustrated by the analogy of a ghost in a
machine. The body is likened to a machine that runs according to the
laws of physics and biochemistry. The mind is likened to a ghost that
lives in the machine. The question is how could a ghostly presence
ever push the buttons, or move the levers that would alter the
running of the machine?

Materialism regards the mind as identical with the brain. Materialism
claims that there is no ghost in the machine, that there is only the
machine. In materialism there is only the physical body, and there is
no immaterial entity called mind. All that exists is what we see when
we examine the brain. There is only physical stuff and there are only
physical and bio-chemical processes.

Materialism doesn't have to deal with the interaction problem because
mind and brain are the same thing. Thoughts are regarded as our
interpretation of physical changes in the body and brain. This puts
materialism in the strange position of denying the efficacy of our
thoughts. The brain gets activated a certain way by the purely
physical process of our bodies, and then the brain produces a thought
that says I'm feeling a certain way, or I'm thinking this or wanting
that. But the process only works in one direction. Changes in the
brain produce thoughts. But thoughts can not produce changes in the
brain.

Unfortunately, this leads most Materialists to a denial of free will.
For materialists, our lives are completely determined by the physical
processes that influence our mechanical brain. There is no mind
independent of the brain, so our notion of an independent will must
be an illusion. Although it seems like I can say to myself, "I will
myself to get out of bed and go to church." Materialists would have
to say that your body got out of bed following purely physical and
bio-chemical processes and your seeming "will" to get up was only an
after effect, not a cause.

So here we have a phenomenon, free will, which seems to occur
constantly and naturally nearly every conscious moment of our lives,
and yet the best science and philosophy either denies that it exists,
or have no explanation for how it exists.

For Unitarian Universalists who want to follow reason in forming
beliefs about the nature of reality, the failure of science and
philosophy to provide a coherent understanding of such a basic
phenomenon of our lives is frustrating. Unfortunately, religious
tradition has been equally incomprehensible on the subject of free
will.

On the one hand, religion, wanting to preserve the nature of God as
all powerful, all knowing and eternal have come to the conclusion
that God must have known the course of our entire lives before we
were born. Although from our point of view we seem to be making free
decisions, from God's point of view our every decision has already
happened. We are not free to make different decisions for our future
because the exact, entire course of our lives is already known ahead
of time by the all knowing, all powerful, eternal God.

John Calvin reasoned that if God knew everything that would happen to
us before we were born, then God must have created some people,
knowing that they would sin, and knowing, even before they were
created that they would spend eternity in Hell. Other people,
although not nearly so many, were created knowing that they would
spend eternity in Heaven. We are thus pre-destined for either Heaven
or Hell, and nothing that we can do during our lives will have any
effect. Calvinism agrees with the Materialists that our lives are
determined by forces outside our control and will be lived in exactly
one way.

On the other hand, religion has realized that our ability to make
free choices between different possibilities is required for moral
responsibility. If we aren't capable of choosing to be good, then we
can hardly be blamed for being bad. If part of the function of
religion is to motivate people to lead better lives, then religion
has to preach a doctrine that says people really are capable of
choosing to lead a different life. And if religion is going to feel
justified in condemning people who lead a certain kind of life they
call sinful, then religion has to believe that these people could
have chosen not to sin.

Our justice system is based on the same assumption. We only punish
people who were capable of behaving differently than they did. We
don't punish people who were so mentally ill at the time of the crime
that they didn't know what they were doing. We don't punish juveniles
as harshly as adults because we believe their moral capacities to
distinguish right from wrong are still being formed. We don't punish
people who act in self-defense because we believe circumstances
forced them into doing the crime negating their ability to make a
free choice.

So religion preaches about moral responsibility, assuming people have
free will, but religion, like the Dualists affirms free will without
being able to explain how we could have it.

So like science and philosophy, religion also has this mind body
problem. It seems like we have free will, like we make free decisions
in our lives, choosing between options, and that our bodies follow
the direction of our thoughts. But science and philosophy can't
explain how thoughts could affect bodies. And religion can't
reconcile free will with the notion that an all-powerful, all-
knowing, eternal God must already know what we're going to decide
before we decide it.

On the other hand, reducing our existence to mere physical objects
behaving according to the laws of physics and bio-chemistry, forces
us to conclude absurdly that our thoughts have no effect on our
bodies, and that our experience of free will is an extremely
pervasive illusion. Likewise religion when it insists that our lives
are known beforehand by God loses any legitimacy in holding us
personably accountable for our actions.

The mind-body problem is an incredible problem for science,
philosophy, and religion. Science has tended to favor the materialist
point of view, denying any reality to immaterial things. In so doing
science has mostly ignored the implications that it then can't
explain everyday phenomena like our thoughts affecting the behavior
of our bodies. Between the problems of both the dualist and the
materialist positions many philosophers have claimed support for one
position only because the problems of the other position are even
more horrendous, or they've simply declared the mind-body problem
insoluble. And religion has consistently and illogically tried to
have it both ways: God is all-powerful, all-knowing and eternal, and
we have personal responsibility for our actions. Most religious
leaders simply state the two principles flatly without recognizing
the contradiction; others spend a lot of time and a lot of words in
trying unsuccessfully to harmonize the two.

Against all this muddle I hold that we do have free will. My thoughts
do effect my actions. I am morally responsible for my choices. I do
have the ability to change my future. As a rich white American I have
more options than do most people but all people, even the most
oppressed are fundamentally free to think their thoughts, make
decisions, and change their lives. It seems completely obvious that I
have free will, and if I hadn't gone to seminary I never would have
heard an argument that I don't have free will. The implications of
not having free will, that we aren't responsible for our choices, and
that are lives are determined, are so obnoxious and depressing that
even having heard the arguments against free will it makes me
question the assumptions behind the arguments, rather than the
reality of my free will. If everything we know about science,
philosophy and religion is telling me that I don't have free will,
then something must be wrong with everything we know about science,
philosophy, and religion.

What's wrong with our religion is the most obvious and the correction
required in our religious thinking has already been stated in the
theology of our Unitarian Universalist heritage.

The dilemma that religion gets into is caused by the felt religious
need to preserve the nature of God as all knowing, all-powerful, and
eternal. Unitarianism, starting with the all-knowing part, eventually
denies all three.

Unitarians inherited the Calvinist doctrine of pre-destination along
with the Puritan tradition that we emerged from. They were
uncomfortable, however, with a doctrine that denied that human beings
had any power to effect their own destiny. Calvinism told them that
their entire lives were determined beforehand and that our present
actions had no effect on the course of our lives. Unitarians called
this nonsense, and for evidence they pointed to their own lives. How
could it be that their actions had no effect on their lives when they
had left behind a life in Europe, sailed across the Atlantic, founded
cities and homes and farms in a new world, and were now creating
fortunes for themselves in business and trade around the world?

In order to claim that they had power for themselves all the
Unitarians had to do was deny that God had complete power. It was
that easy. They didn't have to deny that God existed, or even that
God had some power. All they had to claim was that God did not have
all the power, and therefore that they could have some power
themselves.

The Unitarian doctrine that gives us our name is all tied up in this
idea of power. Orthodox Christianity claims that we are saved by
giving ourselves over to belief in Jesus, and by letting Jesus pay
the price for our sins through his death on the cross. Orthodox
Christianity gives us a passive system of salvation where all that is
required is our belief. The Unitarian system of salvation is active.
For Unitarians we save ourselves through our own power to lead a good
life.

Once the Unitarians claimed human power, than the other orthodox
qualities of God fell away as well. God can no longer be called
Eternal because if the future is open to change, then the future
cannot be held to already exist. Therefore God, like us, must live
through time, and experience the future just as we do, only bit by
bit as we create it. God can be called all knowing only in the sense
that God knows every thing that has happened, but as to what will
happen, God is as ignorant as we are.

The Universalists were also uncomfortable with the Calvinist doctrine
of pre-destination as it was being preached in the Baptist churches
they grew out of. But their discomfort was for a totally different
reason than that of the Unitarians. Although the Universalists did
not specifically question the doctrine of God as all-powerful, the
final implications of their theology contain that conclusion.

The Universalists rejected the notion that the Calvinist God would
create a person knowing that the person would end up spending
Eternity in Hell. It seemed to them that a God that would do that was
either exceedingly cruel, or that something was wrong with the idea
of Hell. They couldn't believe that God was cruel, so they concluded
something must be wrong with the idea of Hell. The Universalists
accepted the Calvinist doctrine of pre-destination but they concluded
that if God pre-destined some people to go to Heaven, then a loving
God must have pre-destined all persons to go to Heaven.

Most Universalists believed that Hell existed and that people who
sinned while alive would go there after death. The difference is that
in the Universalist hell people are punished only temporarily, and
that the torment of Hell is designed for rehabilitation rather than
retribution. In other words sinners go to Hell to learn to be better
people and once they've changed their ways they are released from
Hell and go to Heaven where God intended them to be all along. The
Universalists believed that human beings could languish in Hell for a
long time, even 50 or 60 thousand years according to one of them, but
that eventually God's love would outlast even the most recalcitrant
sinner.

What is interesting about this belief is that the Universalist system
supports the notion of human free will. The idea of a God who intends
all creation to go to Heaven, and a human being who can resist God's
will, and who can spend thousands of years stubbornly refusing to be
saved, implies a human being who has a lot of personal power. If God
intends us all to be in Heaven, then the only reason we aren't all
immediately in Heaven must be because we have the personal power to
act against God's intention. That means free will. And just as the
Unitarians saw, free will means human power, and human power means
God is not all-powerful.

Against Orthodox Christianity both the Unitarians and the
Universalists believed that God is not all-powerful, all knowing, or
eternal. And because of that change in the doctrine of God, both the
Unitarians and Universalists are able to logically conclude what
Orthodox Christianity cannot: that human beings have power, that
human beings have free will, and that human beings are morally
responsible for our actions.

This makes an incredible difference in our lives. As Unitarian
Universalists, regardless of our beliefs about God, we are able to
claim a religious heritage that supports our ability to make changes
in the world. We are supported in our work for social justice. We are
called to take personal responsibility for our choices and actions.
We are encouraged to take an active, not passive, role in our lives.
We are assured that the future is not narrowly closed into one pre-
determined outcome, but that the world can become anything we want it
to be, both for good or ill. Our work and our lives have meaning
because our future and the Earth's future depends on our actions and
really will be one thing or another depending on the choices we make.
We claim a religious heritage that supports our intuition of free
will and all that it implies.

I believe that what our Unitarian Universalist religion says about
human free will is good because it leads to lives of freedom,
responsibility, and social action. And I believe our Unitarian
Universalist belief in free will is good because I think it is true.
Free will does exist and a religion that can include human freedom in
its description of reality is inherently better than one that cannot.

May we take our faith in freedom out into a world that depends for
it's very existence on our good choices. That we have free will is an
awesome gift of meaning, power and hope that we are called to use
carefully, responsibly and wisely.

So be it.

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