The illusion of volition(AKA free will)

Metaphysics and Epistemology
61

No.

It is only my own personal conclusion drawn from the fact of being able to observe and reflect upon the workings of my own mind… as well as observing the world around me. This conclusion only applies to me. If you have arrived at the different conclusion that there is only a chemical brain and no mind and that behavior is amoral and driven solely by chemical reactions, I’m totally ok with that, as each of us gets exactly what we deserve as the consequences of acting on our different views.

The prevailing social narcoculture solidly agrees with your sophisticated technology view. In 2011 alone, more than 4 billion drug prescriptions were filled in the US at a cost of $319,000,000,000. That’s $1,000 per year for every man woman and child living in the US.

The technology has already been evolving for some time as billions of dollars of psychotropic drugs are ingested every year. And whatever their effects… no amount of drugs will never make evil people good.

So? Policy makers and scientists are not claiming to make a morality pill. Mental illness is a real problem, and sometimes drugs are the only things that can help. For example people with anxiety disorders can be crippled in many aspects of their life. They may be unable to drive a car, or may be unable to concentrate unless they satisfy a compulsion. They may obsess over details that are irrelevant. I have known people with OCD, and it is a terrible mental illness, not relate to moral character. Treatment through mental and verbal exercise can take years to have positive effects, where as certain drugs can help alleviate symptoms quickly so that the person may function.

62

The effects of moral law are most definitely physical as well as mental and emotional. I regard moral law as operating in exactly the same way as the law of gravity. Both are absolutely objective, and neither is the least bit affected by our emotions, thoughts, beliefs, or theories about them. Both are utterly impersonal… and no one is exempt.

Are we pre-Newtonian or post-Newtonian. I would say in the area of morals and ethics we are right where Aristotle was. Which means no laws of a quantitative and testable kind. We are in the Age of Pop Psyche which is mostly scientifically worthless.

ruveyn1

63

So? Policy makers and scientists are not claiming to make a morality pill.

Quite correct. Never quite that overt of a claim. Just controlling the behavior of millions of “ADHD” children and the epidemic of depression and anxiety in adults. These are only symptoms. They are not causes.

Mental illness is a real problem, and sometimes drugs are the only things that can help.

Then you are living in just the right place at the right time, for the narcoculture will provide a pharmaceutical solution to every problem you can possibly imagine. Mental illness is also only a symptom, and not a cause.

For example people with anxiety disorders can be crippled in many aspects of their life.

Anxiety is also a symptom, and not a cause. But never fear, for there is a huge open 24 hour 7 day a week all you can eat buffet of drugs to eliminate all of your emotional symptoms.

They may be unable to drive a car, or may be unable to concentrate unless they satisfy a compulsion. They may obsess over details that are irrelevant. I have known people with OCD, and it is a terrible mental illness, not relate to moral character.

Then you will be happy to know that drugs are readily available which can control every possible symptom of human behavior without ever needing to address a cause..

Treatment through mental and verbal exercise can take years to have positive effects, where as certain drugs can help alleviate symptoms quickly so that the person may function.

That’s great news, because this is the perfect society for you.

64

…and that missing uncaused action can be found in our ability to initiate moral choice independent of causality. Only the consequences our actions set into motion follow the laws of causality.

This is not what I mean. Moral choices always have a cause. The only choice we have is between focusing and not focusing, as I explained in point nr. 1.

Simply brilliant, Nicky.

Thank you for the compliment. However, it’s not. The secret to my “brilliant (well, they’re coherent, for the most part) posts” is actually that it’s not my brilliance at all. My big secret is not any kind of super-intelligence or extraordinary mental effort, it’s that I have the exact opposite attitude to this:

No.

It is only my own personal conclusion drawn from the fact of being able to observe and reflect upon the workings of my own mind… as well as observing the world around me.

…

Instead of trying to figure things out by myself, I read, understand, and then accept or reject ideas. I do this almost exclusively. I almost never try to come up with original ideas, except in my own field of work (which is unrelated to philosophy), and in my personal life of course. I would never ever consider myself able to do better than actual philosophers at answering problems like volition (unless of course I changed professions).

I think you should do the same. Understanding philosophy is hard enough. Re-inventing it, on a part time basis, is impossible.

65

This is not what I mean. Moral choices always have a cause. The only choice we have is between focusing and not focusing, as I explained in point nr. 1.

I see your point. I interpreted it in a completely different way. I see animals as operating completely within the causal laws of genetics and environment. A dog cannot choose to act like a cat, because it is a dog. However Humans are distinctly different in that they are free to choose to act outside the boundaries of causality. We are free in every moment to transcend all of the genetic and environmental stimulii to do evil, simply by choosing to do good.

Thank you for the compliment. However, it’s not. The secret to my “brilliant (well, they’re coherent, for the most part) posts” is actually that it’s not my brilliance at all. My big secret is not any kind of super-intelligence or extraordinary mental effort, it’s that I have the exact opposite attitude to this:

Instead of trying to figure things out by myself, I read, understand, and then accept or reject ideas.

We’re on the same page, as I don’t try to figure out things myself either. I observe both myself and the world simply by watching how events unfold. When I see what happens I can then draw a conclusion from what I actually see.

I do this almost exclusively. I almost never try to come up with original ideas, except in my own field of work (which is unrelated to philosophy), and in my personal life of course.

Same here. No idea that has ever occured to me hasn’t occured to lots of others.

I would never ever consider myself able to do better than actual philosophers at answering problems like volition (unless of course I changed professions).

I think you should do the same. Understanding philosophy is hard enough.

I’m far more interested in morality than philosophy. I love the beautful justice of moral law as I observe the design of how the consequences of actions unfold.

Re-inventing it, on a part time basis, is impossible.

I believe someone said a long time ago that there’s nothing new under the sun, and I have yet to see anything which renders that to be false..

66

Anxiety is also a symptom, and not a cause. But never fear, for there is a huge open 24 hour 7 day a week all you can eat buffet of drugs to eliminate all of your emotional symptoms.

There are so many strange assertions here, leaving aside Doomsday Prepper-esque assertions about your so-called narcoculture. Maybe not strange, but denying a sense of causality at all of the mind. What would anxiety be a symptom of? Presumably a moral problem of irrationality according to your view. How does that happen? How can a moral problem cause a mental problem, if one can choose to not be anxious, just like that?

…and that missing uncaused action can be found in our ability to initiate moral choice independent of causality.

I suppose then anxiety, too, is only self-inflicted upon an immaterial mind. It is only caused by an individual. But wait! How then would anxiety have any physical effects? Bottom line, you’re trying to get the apparently body-less mind to act upon the material world. It’s impossible, as impossible as a body-less god creating a material world.

The issue is treating the mind as an epiphenom, as a symptom of having a brain (yes, I’m also addressing a point ruveyn made). That’s the problem, for many people who think about the mind. Either the mind is a ghost in a shell, driving the body like driving a robot, or put another way, the mind is connected to the body with a spooky “controller” in your head. Mind as an epiphenom is basically saying the mind is the end result of the chemical reactions in the brain, and the process of thinking is just causally impotent. Only dualists can maintain this viewpoint, specifically because it requires a wholly separate mind and body as separate *things*. I reject the concept totally, though. The entire experience of thinking is what the brain *does* on the conceptual level, not quite a thing. Problem solved, provided one accepts volition to have some causal origin to it. For me, I see the mind as information processing, which by nature makes selections under uncertainty. Humans make the most complex decisions, and it’s not implausible to say that the very selection that goes on in information processing (i.e. conceptual thought in humans) is free will. However, it will *not* function without chemicals and electrical signals.

name='Nicky]“Every action has one specific reaction” does not equal “every action is the result of another action”

This doesn’t make sense to me. I’d switch it. While it is true every reaction IS the result of another action, that does not mean every action has one specific reaction. Chemicals are part of how the mind works, but that’s not the whole story. Moralist denies chemicals serve *any* purpose in how the mind functions as far as I’ve seen.

67

There are so many strange assertions here, leaving aside Doomsday Prepper-esque assertions about your so-called narcoculture.

It’s actually not my narcoculture because I don’t belong to it.

What would anxiety be a symptom of?

Anxiety if a symptom of a morally violated Conscience.

How can a moral problem cause a mental problem, if one can choose to not be anxious, just like that?

Choosing to to what’s morally wrong violates your Conscience which negates the choice not to be anxious about it because being anxious is a consequence of violating your Conscience.

I suppose then anxiety, too, is only self-inflicted…

Yes. It is a natural consequence of a morally violated Conscience.

Chemicals are part of how the mind works, but that’s not the whole story.

Chemicals are how the brain works, but that’s not the whole story.

Moralist denies chemicals serve *any* purpose in how the mind functions as far as I’ve seen.

Yes. Chemicals serve a purpose in how the brain works.

The mind is what observes, reflects upon, and evaluates the how the brain works.

68

Yes. Chemicals serve a purpose in how the brain works.

How is it that anxiety causes physical symptoms?

69

I’m far more interested in morality than philosophy. I love the beautful justice of moral law as I observe the design of how the consequences of actions unfold.

Moral issues are philosophical issues. Morality is a subset of ethics, which is a branch of philosophy. Just thought I’d point that out.

70

How is it that anxiety causes physical symptoms?

In exactly the same way that violating your Conscience causes anxiety.

71

Moral issues are philosophical issues. Morality is a subset of ethics, which is a branch of philosophy. Just thought I’d point that out.

Thanks for the clarification.

I’m most interested in that particular branch… because there is nothing that humans do that does not have moral implications… or set into motion consequences.

72

In exactly the same way that violating your Conscience causes anxiety.

How though? How does your mind possibly interact with your body if they are separate? The mind is wholly immaterial according to you, so how can an immaterial thing cause material consequences?

73

How though? How does your mind possibly interact with your body if they are separate?

How do you interact with another person when you are two separate beings? Because you have a reliationship as a bridge.

The mind is wholly immaterial according to you, so how can an immaterial thing cause material consequences?

How can an immaterial thought about a bowl of ice cream cause the material consequence of you going to the refrigerator to get some?

74

Quite correct. Never quite that overt of a claim. Just controlling the behavior of millions of “ADHD” children and the epidemic of depression and anxiety in adults. These are only symptoms. They are not causes.

Then you are living in just the right place at the right time, for the narcoculture will provide a pharmaceutical solution to every problem you can possibly imagine. Mental illness is also only a symptom, and not a cause.

Anxiety is also a symptom, and not a cause. But never fear, for there is a huge open 24 hour 7 day a week all you can eat buffet of drugs to eliminate all of your emotional symptoms.

Then you will be happy to know that drugs are readily available which can control every possible symptom of human behavior without ever needing to address a cause..

That’s great news, because this is the perfect society for you.

Yeah modern mediicine is great.

Do you have a response?

75

How can an immaterial thought about a bowl of ice cream cause the material consequence of you going to the refrigerator to get some?

I dunno, I asked you the same thing. Indeed, how does that happen?

76

Yeah modern medicine is great.

Do you have a response?

Only that you’re fortunate to live in a culture which provides so many sophisticated compensations.

77

I dunno, I asked you the same thing. Indeed, how does that happen?

(shrug…) It just does. If’s fact of life.

If you can observe the process of thoughts and emotions affecting your actions as if you were another person, you’ll realize that you can override that process any time you freely choose to do so.

78

If there is a Mind-Body problem then there is also a Stomach-DIgestion problem. Digestion is what the Stomach does. Mind(ing) is what the Brain does.

ruveyn1

Bad anology , ruveyn. The stomach shows no signs of sentience nor does it have any ability to use the nervous system to control other parts of the body(like the heart for example).

Now if there is indeed downward causation when it comes to decision making in the brain(And the mind of course), then what that suggests is that there is something else going on in our heads, something very profound, to which current neurology-electrical signals and synaptic chemical mediation-cannot account for and perhaps modern science has yet to discover.

79

“'…If, as a staunch determinist such as Baron Holbach states in his System of Nature, man’s ‘ideas come to him involuntarily’- if man is ‘wise or foolish, reasonable or irrational, without his will being for anything in these various states”- then by what right does he or any other determinist claim his ‘involuntary‘ ideas as knowledge? A determinist can only announce: ‘Destiny forces me to believe’, etc. He cannot claim to know anything.” ('The Contradiction of Determinism” by Nathaniel Branden)

I had never realized that knowledge itself implies the fact that humans possess free will. Prior to reading this essay, my understanding of free will was based on the fact that if humans do not possess free will then existence would have to be, quite literally, pure chaos. It would have to be pure chaos because every experience of consciousness would have to be a) not really an experience of consciousness and b ) arbitrary; then even the arbitrary belief in an awareness of consciousness is just some arbitrary occurrence but it is contradictory for consciousness to be both arbitrary and aware of the fact that it is arbitrary. In hindsight I see that I failed to identify the fact that a contradiction can be identified and thus implies the existence of knowledge. You explained free will on a much more fundamental level and reiterated the importance of examining all ideas from the most fundamental level possible…

As I mentioned earlier, I used to be a determinist. In fact, I remember a specific phone conversation I had with my mother when I was attending Florida Gulf Coast University. I spoke to her of my intense depression, and dread over my belief that I was doomed for misery. It was that sense of doom that had always haunted me. A year and a half later (after a temporary absence from college) I attended a community college and took an introductory philosophy course. At this time I was only curious about philosophy. I was not consciously passionate about it. My passion at the time was poetry. I thought however that a good poet ought to have a sufficient understanding of philosophy. Ironically, I didn’t even know the definition of philosophy. I won’t tell you every disturbing detail about that course, or that college, (I’m sure the existence of community college itself saddens you; it saddens me!) but I must tell you about a question I asked my professor. The professor’s name is Dr. Jamey Heit. The particular course Dr. Heit was teaching was called “Moral Choices; An Introduction to Philosophy”. Now one day I rose my hand and asked my professor the following question: If we have free will, is it limited or does it include the free will to choose our beliefs? His answer was “that is a topic for a more advanced course”. This disturbed me tremendously since one cannot discuss morality without first knowing if one even has the free will to understand morality and furthermore act on that understanding. Furthermore, I remained uncertain about the nature of my free will or lack there of since even though I did believe I had free will I didn’t know it.

“The Contradiction of Determinism” is the most eloquent, thorough discussion on free will that I have read. I can now most certainly say “I know I have free will”. Again, thank you. (It is true that Ayn Rand notes the fact that we have free will, and notes the implications, but so far as I am aware, she never wrote an in depth essay on free will as such.)" (“An Epistle To Dr. Nathaniel Branden” )

80

(shrug…) It just does. If’s fact of life.

I can’t continue the discussion, since you abandoned reason for faith. “It just does” doesn’t cut it on a philosophy forum.