Free Will Redux: A Question

[Belle Rose]

Just love when natural scientists pretend to be psychologists 😂

[PopeBeanie]

Davis wrote:

free will infers conditions in which an agent is morally responsible for their decisions

Yeah, I think that’s a reasonable definition, and would be useful to discuss. Conversely, a deficiency of free will could infer (say) sufficient reason to not hold someone morally responsible for an action, as we’ve seen in some behavioral dysfunctions caused by a brain tumor.

Those are ideas I think most people can comprehend, even if they haven’t read books on philosophy, or neuroscience.

[PopeBeanie]

So is consciousness always relegated to the back seat, while only the unconscious mind drives Me and informs my consciousness of its decisions? (I’m only using the word unconscious because that’s the word used by the neurologist in her presentation. Preconscious would work fine for me, too.)

Even if an unconscious decision is made before my consciousness is aware of it, isn’t my unconscious dutifully carrying out orders given to it and mediated by my consciousness? Just as it takes time for my muscles to respond to an unconscious stimulus, maybe it makes sense for my consciousness to not receive verification of the order given to the unconscious until after the plan is in play and verified to be successful.

I can think of movements I’ve make where I realize “aha, yes, that is what I not only wanted to do right at this moment, but it was something I planned to do some seconds ago. Thank you, Unconscious Me, for standing by to receive My Conscious orders, and thank you, Unconscious Me for verifying that you’ve successfully carried out those orders!

Yes, Unconscious Me, thank you for following my Conscious orders to learn to ride a bicycle, so that I no longer have to even think about how to ride the bicycle while you are invoking learned balance routines and dynamic adjustments to stay upright while taking the right path forward, the same path as planned by my frontal lobes. Are we not endowed with the most awesome frontal lobes, capable of planning this trip, and our picnic, oh Faithful Unconscious.

[Simon Paynton]

PopeBeanie wrote:

So is consciousness always relegated to the back seat,

I think free will pretty much lives in the conscious mind.  If that’s true, then the question becomes, how to make the conscious mind more free.  We are constrained by all kinds of internal constraints, and some of these may be unknown to the conscious mind.  Buddhism might say that ignorance, greed and anger are all constraints on free will.

[_Robert_]

I think that removing an individual from society who has caused harm and and is liable to cause future harm is way more important than any sort of ‘punishment’ that we traditionally think will provide ‘justice’. The ‘free will’ question can be extricated from the so-called criminal justice system whether we posses it or not.

Why can we not focus on the prevention of future acts of harm while remaining humane ourselves? This repeat cycle we got going on in the US is pathetic. Some will rehabilitate, some will not. We should have that figured to 99.9% accuracy. In any event.. a cruel, sub humane prison system seals our fate to post release reoccurrences.

[jakelafort]

Robert, it is true that if we shift the focus of criminal law away from punishing the evil sinners our approach changes. And it is largely irrelevant whether we have free will. The two major concerns would be protecting the public from dangerous people and avoiding recidivism. The shift in sentiment will accompany the no free will perspective but otherwise it is the same whatever the reality of our consciousness.

[jakelafort]

Ivy, i prefer the following line ..just love when psychologists pretend to be scientists.

[Unseen]

Ivy wrote:

Just love when natural scientists pretend to be psychologists 😂

Psychology really can contribute little to a discussion centered on physical laws.

[Unseen]

jakelafort wrote:

Unseen i enjoyed the Heather Berlin vid. I doubt many in her field credit free will.

It’s kind of hard to quantify, isn’t it?

[Unseen]

Davis wrote:

Yeah Pope there have been quite a few that are worthwhile. The only one I think that is reducible to something easily discussed without delving rather deeply into it is:

free will infers conditions in which an agent is morally responsible for their decisions

I know you just hate videos, but did you watch the video where Dr. Dennett more or less admits that, if his view is correct, moral agency is lost?

jakelafort wrote:

Unseen i enjoyed the Heather Berlin vid. I doubt many in her field credit free will.

It’s kind of hard to quantify, isn’t it?

[Unseen]

PopeBeanie wrote:

Davis wrote:

free will infers conditions in which an agent is morally responsible for their decisions

Yeah, I think that’s a reasonable definition, and would be useful to discuss. Conversely, a deficiency of free will could infer (say) sufficient reason to not hold someone morally responsible for an action, as we’ve seen in some behavioral dysfunctions caused by a brain tumor. Those are ideas I think most people can comprehend, even if they haven’t read books on philosophy, or neuroscience.

A lot of ethicists would admit that once you let moral agency in, it’s hard to keep retribution out, but retribution doesn’t seem to work very well.

[Unseen]

PopeBeanie wrote:

Even if an unconscious decision is made before my consciousness is aware of it, isn’t my unconscious dutifully carrying out orders given to it and mediated by my consciousness?

Umm… No. It’s an area your conscious mind can’t access, because they are operating in two different time zones, one in real time and one with a time lag.

I can think of movements I’ve make where I realize “aha, yes, that is what I not only wanted to do right at this moment, but it was something I planned to do some seconds ago.

Proponents of the preconscious will say that it has access to plans and strategies and tactics you’ve worked out in advance which it uses, though you become consciously aware of the implementation shortly afterward. It’s as if a mind inside your mind is handing you slips of paper telling you what to do next.

[Unseen]

_Robert_ wrote:

I think that removing an individual from society who has caused harm and and is liable to cause future harm is way more important than any sort of ‘punishment’ that we traditionally think will provide ‘justice’. The ‘free will’ question can be extricated from the so-called criminal justice system whether we posses it or not.

Why can we not focus on the prevention of future acts of harm while remaining humane ourselves? This repeat cycle we got going on in the US is pathetic. Some will rehabilitate, some will not. We should have that figured to 99.9% accuracy. In any event.. a cruel, sub humane prison system seals our fate to post release reoccurrences.

Whatever we do regarding punishment and rehabilitation is no more a free choice than any other choice conditioned by sufficient antecedent conditions.

[_Robert_]

Unseen wrote:

_Robert_ wrote:

I think that removing an individual from society who has caused harm and and is liable to cause future harm is way more important than any sort of ‘punishment’ that we traditionally think will provide ‘justice’. The ‘free will’ question can be extricated from the so-called criminal justice system whether we posses it or not. Why can we not focus on the prevention of future acts of harm while remaining humane ourselves? This repeat cycle we got going on in the US is pathetic. Some will rehabilitate, some will not. We should have that figured to 99.9% accuracy. In any event.. a cruel, sub humane prison system seals our fate to post release reoccurrences.

Whatever we do regarding punishment and rehabilitation is no more a free choice than any other choice conditioned by sufficient antecedent conditions.

Don’t think you will be collecting your Nobel prize just yet. All you need is practically complete knowledge of the state of every atom from the beginning of time till now just to know you will flip a coin in the future and come up heads. Good luck with that.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 4 months ago by _Robert_.

[Belle Rose]

@Unseen

Psychology really can contribute little to a discussion centered on physical laws.

How do you figure that physical laws has anything to do with free will?

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