Zeroing in on free will

Mike Caro's law of loose wiring, anyone?

[Borodog]

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I know this has been done before, but I really want a good answer to this challenge; a philosophical/hypothetical one, not a scriptural one. (link me to one if it already exists)

Let us say that there is another planet, identical to Earth in every concievable way, down to the molecule. Same people, same animals, same families, etc. etc. etc.

Person A (who resides on Earth) and Person A' (who resides on our parallel planet) are both born into identical families with identical genetics and identical environments. God gives each a soul, and the power of free will.

Twenty years later, A and A' mature and walk down the street where they are hassled by person B and B' respectively. A gives B some money; A' kills B'. Different choices were made, because they each had free will.

Something must cause an action. Either 1) the soul of A had a different quality than the soul of A', or 2) the souls act at random.

Explain how another possibility could exist that explains this phenomenon.

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I think your example is less useful than it could be. Your hypothetical is that person A(A') will either 1) give B some money or 2) kill B'. If A' kills B' for hassling him on the street there is clearly something wrong with him, and by your setup, the same thing is wrong with A. I'm not saying it well, but my gist is that "give a bum some change" and "kill total stranger on the street" are not events that are likely to be chosen at random if such a thing exists.

A better example would be A and A1 after 20 years of identical life in every way down to every molecule going to the Waffle House and sitting down to look at the menu. A chooses pancakes, where A' orders a waffle. A/A' like waffles and pancakes equally well. He is just as likely to choose one as he is another. Why does he choose one over the other?

Frankly, I think free will comes down to randomness and probabilities. Somewhere down at the molecular level in your brain totally random quantum mechanical processes occur until an emergent pattern (a thought, a decision) says, "Waffles."

So free will is random, yes? Well, yes and no. I think that even though the decision process is fundamentally random, the weighting of various options is not. For example A/A' may prefer waffles much more than pancakes, but still enjoy pancakes occasionally. The resultant decision is random, but one choice is made more often than another. We can shape these probabilities, for example, in our children as we raise them. But aren't the decisions about what behaviors to reward or not (how to shape the probabilities) based on random decisions and previously set probabilities. Yes, I suppose so. So is free will an illusion? Is it all just random? Maybe. But I don't see how it matters to me. I'm the robot in the second example, say. Do I really care that my decisions are coming from some emergent random process? No, not really. I still get to eat pancakes. Or waffles. I haven't decided yet.

[hmkpoker]

I don't think it's going to boil down to the quantum level so much as the chemical level. Neurons communicate through bundles of neurotransmitters, not electrons.

Not that quantum randomness doesn't have any impact, but I think the biochemical reactions are more deterministic than indeterministic.

[atrifix]

How do you shape the probabilities? If you exercise "control" over the probability, then you must cause the probability to be different, and ... this runs into the same problem as standard determinism, but with the unimportant addition of probabilistic causation.

Secondly, intuitively, I don't think acting randomly is acting freely. In the case of pancakes or waffles, perhaps it could be, but if our actions are determined by random chance, then you could just as easily have killed the bum on the street as opposed to giving him some change. The probabilities may be skewed towards giving him change, but when you consider that an alternate would have just as easily killed him, can we really say that you were acting freely? Can we ascribe any moral responsibility for randomly determined actions?

1.) Can an organism adapt to the exact same outside influence in different ways?

2.) Can free will be attributed to chaos and random occurences within the organism itself?

Saying yes in number two makes number one impossible to answer except on a theoretical level. If we accept chaos we can hardly accept that situations that are identitical on every physical level will ever happen.

What we know for a fact is that an organism can react to very similar outside influences in different ways.

Humans are even prone to take actions that would seem to contradict completely with the swarm intelligence of a random gathering of cells.

Not conclusive evidence for free will, but its better than nothing.

hmk,

Out of the two explanations you offer, I would pick neither. Does it matter if the soul has the same quality? I'm not sure what you mean by this, but it's not my answer. Do the souls act at random? It depends what you mean by soul; if you mean 'person,' which I think you must mean, then no it does not act randomly. Do you think you do things randomly with no hidden reason at all?

Many things we do are based on physiological, psychological, and other such factors, but they can also be based on pure whim. I think of Mike Caro's law of loose wiring in poker.

But that's not all either. I think our soul (or will) is so completely free to choose life for itself, that it cannot possibly be doubled and still be the called the same will. Only the bodies would be the same.

[hmkpoker]

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hmk,

Out of the two explanations you offer, I would pick neither. Does it matter if the soul has the same quality? I'm not sure what you mean by this, but it's not my answer. Do the souls act at random? It depends what you mean by soul; if you mean 'person,' which I think you must mean, then no it does not act randomly. Do you think you do things randomly with no hidden reason at all?

Many things we do are based on physiological, psychological, and other such factors, but they can also be based on pure whim. I think of Mike Caro's law of loose wiring in poker.

But that's not all either. I think our soul (or will) is so completely free to choose life for itself, that it cannot possibly be doubled and still be the called the same will. Only the bodies would be the same.

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I agree that the situation I gave wasn't as effective as it could have been. I wrote rather quickly, on a whim. Law of loose wiring, again, comes into play [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Let's try it with a more meaningful decision: Two people in parallel universes, A and A', come from identical backgrounds. One goes on to earn a PhD in physics and win a Nobel prize, the other becomes a burnt-out drug addict.

In said case (or in any other case which you would deem to be representative of isolating free will as the independant variable), what can be said to cause the difference?

Essentially, why to some people choose X and others Y?

I don't have a great answer, but I would guess it has something to do with a long and delicate chain of experiences, sense perceptions, and memories that begins at birth and continues to expand as life goes on. These perceptions enter the brain and play off each other, while simultaneously playing off natural drives and impulses. All of this combines to make the "will," which is only part free and part influenced by this chain. The free part of it is self-evident. We choose what specific action we take, but part of what we PREFER is determined by this ever-fluctuating chain. What we do with our preference is wholly our choice, however.

The brain is somewhat like a computer in its analysis of the chain within, and it receives the data and stores it. There is no CPU, though; nothing processes the data accurately (or why would we need psychology?). It is stored in the back of our brain, subtly influencing our actions.

The existence of countless variables in everyday life and behavior means that the chain is affected almost at random. We experience something and immediately we reflect on an older experience, and relate the two according to an emotion we have felt before: all of a sudden there is a memory all of its own, with its own story behind it. If the same thing were to happen to A and A', both could easily end up experience totally different things because of this infinitude of possibility.

A million neurotransmitters fire at the same time in two different brains; they started in the same place, but they ended differently.

The chain begins at birth and its first experiences are its most influential. Psychologists say, I believe, that a person forms his/her personality very young. I say the chain is very delicate because it is similar to a set of domminos -- only more random.

That, in a nutshell, is why A' is a drug addict.

I got a bit carried away on that one.

[hmkpoker]

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The free part of it is self-evident.

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I disagree.

Explain.

[4ever]

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Something must cause an action. Either 1) the soul of A had a different quality than the soul of A', or 2) the souls act at random.

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So...assuming that A and A' are athiests and don't believe that they were givin the devine gift of a soul by god...I'm curious about what your other possible reasons might be.