What is the External Indicator of Volition (choice)?

Metaphysics and Epistemology
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23 minutes ago, Boydstun said:

I wonder if determining whether some entirely external object has free will necessarily requires, by hook or crook, determining its likeness to oneself.

This is very insightful.  I agree.

It might be that after eons of observation and study of brains (ours, animals, and possibly artificial ones), once unimaginable technological innovations which allow us to see the brain at work in real time in all its complexity have been achieved, we might be able to see or confirm the riddle of free free will from a third person perspective, only by determining and distilling (controlling and isolating) those aspect of some pattern in ourselves when we are actually engaged in the use of our “free will”… by hook or crook will require the teachings of millions of years of evolution exhibited by our vast and complex minds being what the brain is and does.

Whatever that is, whatever aspects, patterns, clues, it produces, will then be how we see and measure it in animals or machines we may wish to create.

1 Like
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To raise from automatized, perceptual associations - to conceptualization, that is the nature and purpose of free will and volition. Just that. Until that point, men function quite like the other higher animals. (Probably not as effectively).

“The higher organisms possess a much more potent form of consciousness [than the sensory pain-pleasure of lower organisms] : they possess the faculty of *retaining*sensations, which is the faculty of *perception*. A “perception” is a group of sensations automatically retained and integrated by the brain of a living organism, which gives it the ability to be aware, not of single stimuli, but of *entities*, of things. An animal is guided, not merely by immediate sensations, but by *percepts*. Its actions are not single, discrete, responses to single, separate stimuli, but are directed by an integrated awareness of the *perceptual* reality confronting it. It is able to grasp the perceptual concretes immediately present and it is able to form automatic perceptual associations, but it can go no further”. p19 VoS

Man can, if he chooses. His faculty combines the involuntary sensations of lower species, the automatic perceptual “associations” of higher species … with one more - the non-automatic, i.e. volitional, ability to gather his percepts into concepts.

“It is an actively sustained process of identifying one’s impressions in conceptual terms, of integrating every event and every observation into a conceptual context, grasping relationships, differences, similarities in one’s perceptual material and of abstracting them into new concepts, of drawing inferences, making deductions…”

(Automatic “associations” of sensations into percepts might be seen as an effortless dress rehearsal for what follows, making the entirely volitional concepts. Or - ‘associations’ of percepts).  

Antecedent factors and forces may or may not impinge on men, the fact remains we have always the free will, the active choice, to ‘deal’ (etc.) with them - through one’s thinking, then by one being the cause of ensuing actions out of one’s concepts.

 

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On 5/12/2021 at 6:40 AM, StrictlyLogical said:

Whatever that is, whatever aspects, patterns, clues, it produces, will then be how we see and measure it in animals or machines we may wish to create.

Randomness is an element that we can put into a machine right now.
Obviously, not enough to say it has free will.

A robot would also need to be aware that it does not know some stuff.
Knowing that I don’t know, or knowing “maybe I don’t know”, aware that “I can possibly not know” seems to be a fundamental necessary ingredient for freewill.

The power of refrainment…
The capability to refrain or “to avoid” can’t be generated with randomness, it has to have goal direction. 
And it also requires having “conflicting wills”, or “conflicting goals”.

So if we give the machine two or more tracks (maybe a long term goal track and a short term goal track) to follow and to compare (and select (i.e. choose)) the “alternatives” at regular intervals, it will change its mind (sometimes), so you can simulate “freedom from predestined actions”.

Meaning mimic free will for an outsider, “generating alternatives”.

Perhaps it would end up being a machine that can fool you into thinking it has free will.

Until and unless you eventually find out that it is not like you in a certain way. You have to do it before the terminators have taken over the world.

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19 minutes ago, Easy Truth said:

Randomness is an element that we can put into a machine right now.
Obviously, not enough to say it has free will.

Currently we don’t use QM to generate randomness.

Generally a computer would have to have a sort of deterministic will, if somehow freed, we could then say it was free will.

 

21 minutes ago, Easy Truth said:

A robot would also need to be aware that it does not know some stuff.
Knowing that I don’t know, or knowing “maybe I don’t know”, aware that “I can possibly not know” seems to be a fundamental necessary ingredient for freewill.

The power of refrainment…
The capability to refrain or “to avoid” can’t be generated with randomness, it has to have goal direction. 
And it also requires having “conflicting wills”, or “conflicting goals”.

So if we give the machine two or more tracks (maybe a long term goal track and a short term goal track) to follow and to compare (and select (i.e. choose)) the “alternatives” at regular intervals, it will change its mind (sometimes), so you can simulate “freedom from predestined actions”.

Meaning mimic free will for an outsider, “generating alternatives”.

Perhaps it would end up being a machine that can fool you into thinking it has free will.

Until and unless you eventually find out that it is not like you in a certain way. You have to do it before the terminators have taken over the world.

There is much you state here.  Deterministic thinking machines will be able to fool us into thinking they have free will only in the sense that it will mimic it.  We will know it does not have free will because we will know exactly how it works, and know that it is deterministic.  We wont really know how to create something with free will until we know how free will works, why it works in us.  

We wont be able to understand how free will works until we scientifically study it, and in order to do that we must define its boundaries.

 

Be careful not to equate free will as such with human free will, there likely is a yet to be discovered “fundamental” or “minimum” unit of exhibited behavior that an animal or machine (or injured human being) can have which would qualify as a primitive building block a lowest end of the spectrum type of free will. 

 

In this (as opposed to ethics and politics) I urge we approach the problem in the more effective manner, as scientists, not hero worshippers.

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1 hour ago, StrictlyLogical said:

Deterministic thinking machines will be able to fool us into thinking they have free will only in the sense that it will mimic it.  We will know it does not have free will because we will know exactly how it works, and know that it is deterministic.  We wont really know how to create something with free will until we know how free will works, why it works in us.

I don’t understand, we won’t really know how to create something with free until we know how free will works, but … knowing how something works means it is deterministic.

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32 minutes ago, Easy Truth said:

I don’t understand, we won’t really know how to create something with free until we know how free will works, but … knowing how something works means it is deterministic.

That sentence should be read with the one immediately prior to it…. in mind   !

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2 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

Deterministic thinking machines will be able to fool us into thinking they have free will only in the sense that it will mimic it.

How does this fix the contradiction between the next 2 sentences? You said that the reason deterministic machines (whatever exactly that means) don’t have free will is because you know exactly how they work. You made a syllogism. It doesn’t change depending on whether one is organic or not, and I don’t have a reason to suppose it should.

2 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

Be careful not to equate free will as such with human free will, there likely is a yet to be discovered “fundamental” or “minimum” unit of exhibited behavior that an animal or machine (or injured human being) can have which would qualify as a primitive building block a lowest end of the spectrum type of free will. 

What’s the difference between free will as such and human free will? 

We already know what such minimum behaviors would be. Observe jellyfish, honeybees, alligators, elephants, humans. These range of behaviors are enough to notice free will. Just take your pick what you want to consider a building block, and go from there.

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4 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

urge we approach the problem in the more effective manner, as scientists, not hero worshippers.

Not to mention I always love it when they, who are a them and definitely not a we, say how “we” should do anything

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1 hour ago, Eiuol said:

4 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

 

How does this fix the contradiction between the next 2 sentences? You said that the reason deterministic machines (whatever exactly that means) don’t have free will is because you know exactly how they work. 

I said, to ET that we’ll know it is deterministic because we know how it works… meaning we know what is under the hood, in spite of appearances.

As in … an animatronic dinosaur will fool us into thinking it is biological only in the sense that it mimics biological dinosaur on the outside.  We will know it’s just an animatronic because we know how it works.

 

1 hour ago, Eiuol said:

What’s the difference between free will as such and human free will? 

I think free will as a genus includes species which are more sophisticated (human) and less sophisticated (jellyfish) in a whole range.  I am suggesting to ET not to equate the genus as such with a particular species.

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23 minutes ago, 2046 said:

Not to mention I always love it when they, who are a them and definitely not a we, say how “we” should do anything

Thank you for honestly contributing to the discussion, or at least earnestly stepping in, on behalf of ET.

 

ET, please accept my apology if I erroneously invoked a “we” in the context of our discussion.  I intended no offence, and if I have wronged you in any way, I apologize.

My reply to you ET, was quite sincere.

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4 minutes ago, StrictlyLogical said:

an animatronic dinosaur will fool us into thinking it is biological only in the sense that it mimics biological dinosaur on the outside.

Then it is not because you know how it works, it’s because you know that it is an animatronic dinosaur. Knowing how it works doesn’t change what it is. 

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47 minutes ago, Eiuol said:

Knowing how it works doesn’t change what it is. 

I never said that … I understand you don’t like the way it was worded.  

I hope you can give me the courtesy of letting it go now that you know what was meant.

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2 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

3 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

I don’t understand, we won’t really know how to create something with free until we know how free will works, but … knowing how something works means it is deterministic.

That sentence should be read with the one immediately prior to it…. in mind   !

After reading this, the recollection of volition as a “type of causality” came to mind. 

While maybe not quite coming to a full circle comes to mind, grasping free-will/volition as a subtype of causality was raised in this “compatibilism” thread a while back.

Consider it a recursive approach: weighing volition as a subtype of causality against determinism as the whole enchilada of causality. 

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8 minutes ago, StrictlyLogical said:

I hope you can give me the courtesy of letting it go now that you know what was meant.

Your clarification didn’t help. Because you still said it is because you know how things work. So no, I don’t really know what was meant.

12 minutes ago, dream_weaver said:

After reading this, the recollection of volition as a “type of causality” came to mind. 

I’m actually not so sure that it should be described as a type of causality. Although maybe we could call information processing something like a type of explanation, something related to Aristotle’s 4 causes (as I said before, it doesn’t translate into “cause” in the same meaning as English). In that sense it probably could be a type of causality.

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This may be a relevant post.

/t/3558

 

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9 hours ago, Easy Truth said:

 

This may be a relevant post.

/t/3558

 

What from this, in particular, interests you?

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23 hours ago, StrictlyLogical said:

As in … an animatronic dinosaur will fool us into thinking it is biological only in the sense that it mimics biological dinosaur on the outside.  We will know it’s just an animatronic because we know how it works.

To add to this, your additional clarification in the other thread about hydraulic watches only confirms what I’m trying to say. When you describe how something works, that is, how the physical parts move, a material cause by my understanding, what we could call a mechanical cause in this context perhaps, we are only talking about the nature of the things the entity functions with. This might be gears, it might be neurons, but either way, it focuses strictly on the parts. Of course there is appeal in saying that it is sufficient to know the nature of an entity is psychological capacity based on only the nature of these parts (ie the material of the entity). If there are gears, how could it be conscious? It doesn’t help. Neurons are not conscious either. If you want to appeal to emergence, that’s fine, but I’d argue this becomes discussion of formal cause. The pattern or abstract nature of how the entity operates as a whole. 

We would know the dinosaur is an animatronic dinosaur because of its pattern of behavior. It doesn’t seek things in the environment, it doesn’t seek goals. Metaphorically, it goes in a straight line, never having way of adapting. It has no desires, and we know this without opening anything. And from there we can infer how it is built, and how it works. 

Which then gets into what I was pointing out earlier: vegetative, nutritive, and intellectual. Not that is completely opaque what it means to say “we know how it works”, but it is unclear. “How it works” actually means many things that we need to break down into several questions at least, if it doesn’t mean material cause anyway.