Ask HN: Is Free Will an Illusion?
Given deterministic causality, where every event has a prior cause, it would appear that free will is an illusion.
While it may seem like we’re choosing our actions, determinism implies that this is an illusion: if all our actions are determinable from prior causes, then we are just complex machines. There’s no space for free will.
But from another point of view, this claim seems absurd. Even if the logic makes sense, the conclusion suggests a mistake. We seem to make all kinds of decisions all the time, and embracing the belief that free will is an illusion would require many social concepts and contracts to be rewritten.
This tension can be represented by a spectrum of beliefs:
1. Cynics believe free will is a harmful illusion. Because free will is an illusion, we only fool ourselves by embracing it.
2. Illusionists believe free will is a useful illusion. Even if it is an illusion, it’s a dangerous one to dispense with. If people didn’t believe they were responsible for their actions, they’d be less likely to behave ethically.
3. Compatibilists believe in a limited form of free will. Besides free will, physical causality holds. They believe we have limited control over our decisions, which have limited influence over our lives.
4. Idealists believe our will is more than free: it's connected to supernatural forces (e.g. God). They believe we have more control over our decisions and our lives than physical causality can explain.
Which do you most identify with?
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Perfect randomness in infinity will generate infinite deterministic sequences. By the anthrophomorphic principle our lifes are located in the span of a string that is experienced as mostly deterministic, and we understand it as our bounded free will.
I would like to drive a nail in the coffin of “deterministic causality” by at least two mechanisms.
- In every scope there is a super scope which may influence in incalculable ways (however well their rules maybe understood.) Even in a model of the whole Universe, the base potential of cosmic background radiation (non-zero vacuum of void) is a non deterministic influence.
- ultimately radiological decay may not be predicted (a feedback mechanism of unpredictable external scopes)
There is more to consider yet these alone are enough for all physicists to agree that universal determinism is not actually possible.
Decay and the exogenous scope.
Everything in the universe fails eventually, only we may not know which part or when. Everything has an outside influence that cannot be predicted, even if that is how external decay will be involved.
These are NOT the basis of free will, merely an example of how determinism is a dead horse.
Free will is the “determination of resolve in the moment of now.” A different kind of determination than determinism. It is not that will cannot be coerced or manipulated or even anticipated (we are creatures of habit.) it is that the feedback loop in the mind is made of constructive and destructive interference and that may self reflect in unbound scalar ways.
What we think of as determinism is a blessing not a curse. Who wants the Earth to spontaneously turn to jelly? Or marshmallows to suddenly fall from the sky? We cannot function without mostly predictable outcomes.
Thanks for this!
I suppose for our purposes, both determinism and indeterminism create the same paradox of free will. Determinism gives every event a determined prior cause, and indeterminism opens the door for random or otherwise undetermined prior causes, but both are incompatible with the notion of free will.
Would you agree with that reframing, or am I missing something?
Well, these topics are useful mind fodder. Free will is the ability to be arbitrary as much as to be contrarian.
I am a proponent that consciousness allows a singular resolve from constructive and destructive interference. This may not sound like much, though it is better than “swerving atoms.” My constructive and destructive interference has been shaped by a life of tenacious willfulness and expansive trial and error.
I suppose I would claim preemptive error correction makes my will more free than that of my muddle minded reactionary peers.
Determination of resolve and determinism are two separate uses of the same word, confusing their interdependency.
This is just a problem of self-reference. If you focus on determinism and act accordingly then you are stuck in a loop. You can sit on the ground and call whatever happens inevitable but that inevitability is a product of your behaviour.
So wasn’t inevitable that they got to the point of sitting on the ground in the first place? Meaning you still haven’t solved the contingency problem.
There is no proven “deterministic causality”.
There is a free will that is easily proven.
I could give elaborate answer to your question, but I chose to give a short and primitive one.
You’ve made in the image of god and got a gift of free will. Live with it :)
Whether or not we have free will is not among our choices. It's complicated.
> Given deterministic causality
Assumption of facts not in evidence, given open questions in quantum mechanics.
It’s a reasonable challenge to determinism, but quantum decoherence seems to make that opening smaller, no? It seems you can explain much of reality using determinism, especially the portion humans operate in.
Also, in case it’s not clear: I am not assuming determinism or claiming that free will is an illusion, just explaining the challenge if one does assume determinism, which many do.
You can explain much of reality using Newtonian physics too, especially the portion humans operate in. Of course you run into enormous problems at high energies and velocities, so you need something more, and then you run into really interesting problems at extremely small scales, where suddenly you start to realize that it’s maybe not deterministic at all.
The problem starts in assuming “the portion humans operate in” is relevant or reasonable; if we assume determinism we have to assume that every interaction in quantum physics is also entirely deterministic. Anything else is just not assuming determinism.
> The problem starts in assuming “the portion humans operate in” is relevant or reasonable
the question is whether humans have control over their actions. human operations are definitionally relevant.
you seem to suggest throwing away determinism because there are open questions at extreme scales. but determinism does explain reality at the scale we're interested in, and you haven't offered a comparable explanation.
occam's razor would suggest we take determinism seriously until we have another theory which more clearly explains the phenomena of interest while also addressing the challenges you've raised. and it seems that most people do take determinism seriously, which is why free will is such a debated question.
Most people taking determinism seriously is exactly the same as most people taking God seriously, when neither determinism or God is provably known to be present or absent from the situation. Any attempt to decide the question of free will on either flimsy foundation is, really, just navel-gazing seriously.
Occam’s Razor, used properly, looks for the explanation with the least number of constituent assumptions; if the fact is the Universe operates in a manner in which quantum indeterminacy holds, the so do our nerves, thus so does everything we perceive at a human (read as “extremely ignorant”) scale. In such a world the ground state of Occam’s is one in which non-determinacy is a fact and any and all thoughts of determinism are a pointless diversion… this makes it really important to reach a conclusion on the question of whether or not the smallest scale is stochastic or not before building a philosophical or political platform atop any assumption of the contrary.
The original post is a question about people’s beliefs, not a proof or a case for any one belief.
Many believe in determinism, or at least the functional equivalent, and it poses a challenge to the popular belief that we can choose what we do. That’s the problem I’m interested in understanding.
Indeterminism, which includes that base layer of randomness, still presents a dilemma with regards to free will, doesn’t it? From the perspective of free will, and absent a more explanatory theory, they are functionally equivalent theories. Whether my brain is randomly producing actions or from an infinite chain of determined causes or a mix, free will is nowhere to be found without a more precise explanation.
The question is about free will given different assumptions of reality. My main challenge with your angle is that it’s firmly missing the point.
I am not arguing for determinism, nor the existence of God, but since I’m asking what people believe, I’m including both answers as options.