> On the other hand, there is no evidence for the existence of free will. So we are just a part of the universe that has become conscious, aware of itself.

Meh... how would one even go about proving the existence of "free will"? It seems unfalsifiable -- outside the realm of science even, which is solely concerned with forming models that make accurate predictions of natural phenomena.

I should mention that our current best understanding of nature is that certain aspects of it are perfectly random (deviations in measurements of incompatible observables). Some people believe that since nature is not deterministic, this is where "free will" comes in (I do not). Regardless of what you believe, it's not science.

Regarding nature being random, there is no physics that suggest it is. "The wavefunction evolves deterministically", it's just that we as non-fundamental particles can't observe all amplitudes realized at once. (I suppose if you're a Copenhagen believer, the idea of collapse is non-deterministic...) Also, being uncertain about a system's future because one does not know the system's initial conditions doesn't mean the system is random.

For free will: http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Free_will_%28solution%29 (My paraphrased tl;dr for programmers in case you're a Sith: you can't possibly have any sort of will, free or otherwise, in a non-deterministic world; furthermore, we can create narrow AIs whose deterministic function is to search a space of possibilities and if it finds what looks like a good solution, it settles on that, or we can instruct it to search for other solutions, and this is what our will somewhat looks like from the outside--a search algorithm through future possibilities, some of them just as impossible physically speaking as our AI picking a solution that isn't past the stopping threshold--while what it feels like on the inside is that "we could realize any possibility[, if we felt like it]")

I'd say its rather simple, and similar to what has been done already. Wire up someone to an (eeg if i recall rightly), have them "choose" between two disparate things. Measure the brain response.

If when they "choose" you already have an idea of what they chose before they consciously became aware of it, it is likely that you do not actually have free will. That is, your conscious mind is only deluding itself into thinking it chose what processes in the brain have already decided.

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/04/mind_d...

I think that was the gist of the study, its been a while so I might be off. Corrections welcome!

That said, I've always thought it an interesting philosophical question of if we don't have free will and our paths in life are somewhat deterministic, it really puts a damper on our legal and moral systems to a degree. That said its just a thought experiment at this point. Maybe this is a "bad" approach to determining it, but the experiments do cast doubt on at the very least our perception of free will and determinism.

> That said, I've always thought it an interesting philosophical question of if we don't have free will and our paths in life are somewhat deterministic, it really puts a damper on our legal and moral systems to a degree.

I was just thinking about this the other day. What occurred to me is that we tend to think of legal and moral punishments in a vengeful kind of way (sort of "getting back" at people for doing something wrong), which I agree makes little sense if we think the people involved had no choice in the matter.

But if you think about it, it's really a lot like training an artificial neural network. If it gives you an incorrect output (does something bad), you give it a negative feedback to train it not to do that anymore. In that context, you're not punishing it per se, and there's no consciousness or will or intention involved, but it amounts to basically the same as punishing a person for stealing or something. It's just a form of training.

Except it isn't that easy to. There is probably going to be some bias, not to mention that subtle unconscious hints from participants could be picked by the participants.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22144-brain-might-not-...

Also it's important to remember most of science theories can be overturned easily by new evidence. So I'm not sure science is 100% certain in either way.

Late edit: "subtle unconscious hints from researchers could be picked by the participants"

> If when they "choose" you already have an idea of what they chose before they consciously became aware of it, it is likely that you do not actually have free will.

That doesn't follow. It's still their brain making the decision. The experiment simply pushes free will into the unconscious mind, it doesn't show you don't have it. You are still your mind, and those are still your decisions.

If you aren't conscious of it, how do you have any control of it?

We have strong enough science to believe (though further testing is always appreciated) that the brain is a fully causal machine. That is, each brain state is based on causal antecedents of both internal and external factors. One antecedent brain state and feedback from the nervous system leads to the next brain state. The brain is not "making" the decisions, they are made. They just happen. It makes no sens to say that "you are your mind" because there is no evidence for a "mind." Just a hunk of meat in the head of that same person, all wrapped up in itself, not separate at all, that happens to be the part of the body that lends itself to acting.

> If you aren't conscious of it, how do you have any control of it?

Define "you". It's your brain, it's all you. You don't control you subconscious behavior real-time, but you do control it because you programmed it and you can reprogram it.

> That is, each brain state is based on causal antecedents of both internal and external factors.

Yes, but those internal factors are things like your past experiences, and thus are you.

> The brain is not "making" the decisions, they are made.

Semantics; they are the same thing.

> It makes no sens to say that "you are your mind" because there is no evidence for a "mind."

What? Mind is just a word, not a physical thing, to describe the state of the network that is your brain. Mind is what the brain does.

> Just a hunk of meat in the head of that same person, all wrapped up in itself, not separate at all, that happens to be the part of the body that lends itself to acting.

Of course it's just a hunk of meat, but it's not just meat, it's processes, those are the mind.

But I'm not actually claiming there is or isn't free will, read my statement again; I'm simply saying that detecting an action before you're aware of it doesn't prove or disprove free will.

If I consciously train myself to say "shit" every time I hear a particular word to the point where this behavior becomes sub-conscious and automatic, as all learned behaviors eventually do, that doesn't suddenly make it not my free will. It's still my brain, I trained it to do that, it's responding in the manner I previously chose, it's still my will.

I agree with the response below, but just to clarify, how do you know there is no such thing (or process, more likely) as free will?

If its the Gazzaniga experiment's you are referring to, then please note that they merely showed that conscious awareness in a student/university staff population lagged behind the brain activities presumably associated with their experience.

One would have to believe that all humans are imbued with free will eternally and for life at birth for such an experiment to convince you. Note that I do not believe this, so for me, these experiments do not necessarily disprove the existence of free will.

I do not know there isn't free will, but I know there is nothing that suggests there is, other than this strong feeling we seem to have, which can't be trusted. So far, the universe seems to be deterministic, and our choices seem to be the result of deterministic reactions in our brains.

I dunno, I do take your argument about our feelings on the matter not necessarily being a useful guide.

Then again, deterministic actions (which is an assumption) in our brains do not necessarily correlate with a completely deterministic human. Perhaps the computation of such quantities as may be involved is impossible, and this would lead to a situation where even a completely deterministic universe could be compatible with the experience of "free will".

We probably need a better term for this sensation, as "free will" is a particularly loaded term.

What would free will even be? It sounds as if it was a meaningful concept, but perhaps it really isn't. What would be the entity making decisions? And how would it not follow any rules? That would mean it would be random?

"We have to believe in free will. We have no other choice." Isaac Bashevis Singer

That's well put. If you really do think about it, we ARE just a complicated set of reactions.

That thing we do, when we weigh options, is what choice is. Nobody is saying that physics is escaped by this.

Think about free will in terms of a game-theoretic payoff matrix: There either is or isn't really free will, and you can either behave as if there is or behave as if there isn't.

If there is no free will, it doesn't matter. The payouts are the same regardless of what you do. You can't affect anything. The game is rigged, go home, good night.

However, if there is free will, the payouts vary drastically based on how you act, and the only way to get a good payout is to act as if there is free will.

So, acting as if there is free will is, at worst, one of the ways to get the there-is-no-free-will payout, and, at best, the only way to get the best possible there-is-free-will payout.

Note: If you mention Pascal's Wager in your response, you misunderstand the problem with Pascal's Wager. The problem with Pascal's Wager is that it does not give a way to determine which deity to believe in. The argument was constructed with reference to the Christian deity, but it applies equally well to Shiva or me, for example.

You can't abandon a whole methodology just because it can be misused.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal-form_game

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_wager

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal-wager/

I like this post -- and you're right, I immediately thought 'Pascal's Wager.' I'd just add that the other problem with Pascal's wager is that there is (typically) a non-negligible cost to believing in a god, which doesn't apply here.

That argument is unsound. The color of the sky depends on atmospheric gases and suspended particles as causal factors. This shows that atmospheric gases and suspended particles are causally potent. At the same time, atmospheric gases and suspended particles do not have libertarian free will. This shows that things can be causally potent without libertarian free will. The statement that "If there is no [libertarian] free will ... The payouts are the same regardless of what you do" assumes that being without libertarian free will entails causal impotence, but that contradicts the fact that things can be causally potent without libertarian free will, as established by the argument about atmospheric gases and suspended particles. Therefore, that statement is false. When that statement has been corrected to allow people to be causally potent without libertarian free will, the conclusion of the argument does not follow.

I think the basis for your counter argument here is flawed.

The statement 'The payouts are the same regardless of what you do' is in the context of a person's state of mind; someone can either 'behave as if there is or behave as if there isn't' free will.

We are for our purposes only concerned about the situation where there is no free will.

The main issue is what not having free will entails. The parent didn't specify 'libertarian' or some other form of free will, and it's hard to specify what it means without resorting to handwaving.

The implied meaning I read was that if a person has no free will, there is no opportunity for them to change what they do. In truth, they are not free to change what they do, or even free to change what they will. Any appearance of such is an illusion.

If we accept that this is what not having a free will means, then it should be clear that, given we have no free will (our assumption from before), whether a person thinks that they have a free will or thinks that they do not have a free will makes no difference, as someone with no free will has no opportunity to change what they do.

Regardless of all that, I think kernel of the idea is a good one. Even if we are deterministic machines with no free will of any kind, we still experience out lives and should enjoy them. Thinking about if we have any oversight of our brain, able to determine the direction we want it to take is a foolish one, driven by the disconnect between what we experience and what we know about the mechanics of our minds. We are our brain, and everything else around it, and what it does is exactly what we are doing. We have the capacity to shape what we think and do as much as any other learning machine, but we are not an outside entity looking in.

My favourite quote about these ideas is this, and I have no idea where it comes from: "If nothing matters, then the statement 'nothing matters' doesn't matter, so you might as well forget about it and enjoy yourself."

"atmospheric gases and suspended particles do not have ... free will"

I believe that gasses and suspended particles do have free will in the same way a brain running on the laws of physics has free will. You're asserting non-free will by appealing to intuitions around a simple example, but it is not justified.

Free will is at a different abstraction level to its implementation. Electrons cannot do arithmetic, but calculators can, with electrons as the implementation.

You misunderstood my argument. I did not assert the existence or nonexistence of libertarian free will or compatibilist free will. Such assertions were beside the point. I was only pointing out that the argument to which I responded contained a logical error. It assumes that "people do not have libertarian free will" entails "people are causally impotent", but the former does not entail the latter.

As an aside, your omission of "libertarian" from the quote of me suggests that you might be conflating two kinds of free will. Because you talk about free will without specifying the kind, the meaning of your reply is ambiguous. Hence, I have trouble agreeing or disagreeing with it. For what it is worth, I do not deny that compatibilist free will can have various degrees of freedom, where the degree is a function of the complexity and arrangement of the things it emerges from. For example, I do not deny that humans, dogs, and cats can be said to have compatibilist free will, nor that the human wills have more degrees of freedom than dog wills and cat wills.

My point is rather that you cannot argue meaningfully about "will" by pointing to physical causality; the two are at different levels of abstraction. It gives absurd results.