Free Will

College Confidential Community
1

<p>What do you think of it?</p>

<p>Well, identical twins have 0.5 correlations with a lot of traits as measured per personality tests. Since identical twins is an excellent way to control variation in genetic material, that is the variation we have in behavioral traits due to genes.</p>

<p>They are, moreover, exposed to different stimuli (and experience different environments - by environment, I am meaning different sensory experiences with each "perception step" of their life, which means that people in the same household experience different environments, because different senses come to their attention at particular times). Moreover, one can always run the "transhumanism lolz" thought experiment, through which a brain can be replaced by mechanical parts, which means less power to the genes. That still doesn't support free will, but it does hurt genetic determinism (once it comes, that is).</p>

<p>I'm more receptive to the notion of no-free-will exists than free-will-exists. It actually is psychologically liberating in many ways, since I don't have to make any normative judgments about myself (judgments that make one feel bad over, say, doing badly in a class). Moreover, I have a lot of problems with self-control, and factors that explain such a lack of self-control can help explain the need for say, dopamine reuptake inhibitor medication. One of the problems that comes up is the criminal justice system. Already, some genes have been tied into certain criminal behaviors. One criminal behavior, rape, can be drastically reduced by chemical castration. The question is - is it "right" to castrate people before the crimes are committed? A philosophy of personal responsibility does deter many criminals from committing a crime, as does a sense of moral obligations. </p>

<p>Paradoxically, those who believe in free will improve on measures associated with "the ability to change oneself towards a desired direction". One example is <a href="http://cosmicvariance.com/2007/02/25/the-cult-of-genius/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://cosmicvariance.com/2007/02/25/the-cult-of-genius/&lt;/a> . The belief that intelligence is malleable by means of "willpower" improves performance on academic tests, perhaps because it is a motivating factor for one to study more. But the research evidence clearly establishes that intelligence is consistent in most individuals, and that there is a correlation of 0.8 between intelligence in the individual and intelligence of one's parents. Of course, motivating factors are factors of the environment separate from the individual.</p>

<p>Another implication can come with the question of - should the state control individual lives, or the individuals have as much freedom to choose what they want? If the state could retrieve the genetic profiles of each and every individual, it could potentially have a means of addressing people into positions into society before they're even born. I don't think that the lack of free will should threaten individualism any more than a free market economy is being threatened now. Individuals still are affected by the environment in so many ways that are impossible to quantify - and it is impossible for the government to put sensors over all of the individuals (just as the prices of material goods, which have no free will, are impossible to fully quantify). At least the lack of free will will permanently kill the belief that "people are all equal and capable of exactly the same things" - a belief that results in failed expectations and wasted dreams.</p>

<p>Many people make the mistake that quantum mechanics and chaos theory prove free will. They don't. They just show that we can't make deterministic closed models of the world with our current mathematical systems, but are irrelevant to free will.</p>

2

<p>Determinism... 'tis sweet.</p>

3

<p>Lack of free will does not imply determinism in the sense of being predictable by means of mathematical models. Our models are already horrible in predicting economic markets and weather forecasts - which explain why a planned market would fail at ensuring Pareto optimality (as per the book "Origins of Wealth."). </p>

<h1>Modern neuroscience can only erode free will, not bolster it. The reason comes in the role of science - in measuring behavioral traits that people only had a previous guess at. Perhaps free will will suffer the same fate that God has. We can never disprove free will, just as we can never disprove the divine intervention of God. Free will may be the "god of the gaps" of personality, so to speak.</h1>

<p>One issue, of course, is the question between medication and behavioral therapy for say, ADD. Behavioral therapy has success rates - but the fact is - it improves behavioral outcomes of some individuals, while doing absolutely nothing to the behavioral outcomes of the other individuals. The question is - which individuals improve by such methods, and why? Medication, too, improves the behavioral outcomes of some, while leaving out others. </p>

<p>The problem is the assumption that everyone with ADD is the same - that they desire the same behavioral outcomes, and that they benefit from the same treatments. The other problem with ADD is that it is a social construct of sorts, that has been defined by external means, and then later correlated with certain neurological patterns (such as lack of dopamine or immature frontal lobes). We cannot make an accurate prediction of how the person with ADD will respond the best (not now, since neuroscientific research is in its infancy) - which is why different treatments are often used on the same individual. And in the population of individuals currently diagnosed with ADD, behavioral therapy improves outcomes of the population no more or less than medication does. One question is - if the person already knows the strategies used by behavioral therapy - could that be a means by which he can finally obtain medication? </p>

<p>Finally, the erosion of free will by neuroscience is very welcome news to some who suffer from ADD, who just naturally have less willpower than others do (willpower to do activities that are socially sanctioned by means such as schools; perhaps they have more willpower in other areas that are not socially sanctioned). It's not their fault.</p>

4

<p>I seem to make a connection between willpower and free will, even though they are often confused.</p>

<p>Those with ADD naturally have less willpower than those without, in terms of achieving some desired outcome. </p>

<p>This suffice? Hmm.</p>

5

<p>Also, Steven Pinker speculates that the science/religion wars will extend to psychology/neuroscience in the next century</p>

6

<p>Have you read The Blank Slate by any chance?</p>

<p>Pinker is known to be controversial, so if you want the other side of the story I highly suggest you read Lewontin's book Triple Helix.</p>

7

<p>Yeah, the free will issue is one of those I officially refuse to take a side on, mostly because of what determinism would mean to society and perhaps ethics.</p>

<p>But I will comment that all humans are made of atoms, and atoms operate according to clear-cut chemical principles. (And, of course, the laws of chance.)</p>

8

<p>"Thus, according to Fig. 1.3, the entire physical world is depicted as being governed according to mathematical laws. We shall be seeing in later chapters that there is powerful (but incomplete) evidence in support of this contention. On this view, everything in the physical universe is indeed governed in completely precise detail by mathematical principles - perhaps by equations, such as those we shall be learning about in chapters to follow, or perhaps by some future mathematical notions fundamentally different from those which we would today label by the term 'equations'. If this is right, then even our own physical actions would be entirely subject to ultimate mathematical control, where 'control' might still allow for some random behaviour governed by strict probabilistic principles."</p>

<ul>
<li>Roger Penrose, The Road To Reality</li>
</ul>

9

<p>Haha, Penrose. Penrose made the audacious step of trying to explain neurobiology in terms of quantum mechanics. And he ended up being criticized by pretty much the entire neurobiology community (he made too many unwarranted assumptions, such as the assumption that free will could lie within the microtubules). I forgot whether he's pro-free will or determinist though.</p>

<p>I think of it as a random number generator. We definitely don't accuse those of having free will.</p>