Gary....In my opinion the phrase "scientific method" is being loaded with baggage by making it seem like a complicated academia-only process that first requires publishing all ideas as journal papers for scientific tribunal, instead of science simply being about experiments to explain how things work.


Gary,

You may as well stop here. This pretty much shows you've completed your journey. The times of "gentlemen" naturalists are over. I'd say Victorian era and industrial revolution put an end to it. Today's science requires high levels of education and the only way to practice scientific method is to have publications for others consumption and. lo and behold, experiments to support hypothesis or reject them. Even those who only teach science and not practice it have to adhere to the same scientific method to explain results of experiments.

Gary,

You have not addressed my thought experiment about locking you in a cube with no stimuli and no options to practice free will - see below. This alone just blows out of the way any free will arguments laden with philosophical implications. See below.

You have a free will to the extent that fewer options you have the less to no free will/options you have. To test it, lock yourself in a dark square cube where all dimensions are the same and no outside stimuli are coming in. You have very few choices, your "free will" is limited to the environment you are in. If you as a new born were never exposed to any stimuli coming into your sensory organs you will have absolutely no concept of what's out there and your "free will" will be only in the instinctive part of your responses.

The simplest experiment like this with the minimized entropy of the system (reductionism ad absurdum) normally falsifies any complicated hypothesis not supported by evidence.

Ironically Dagny claims that the era of "gentleman naturalists" is over, and then proposes "thought experiments".

Actually, Einstein proposed "thought experiments" while he was working in a patent office!

Don't let Dagny put you down Gary, that's simply Dagny's MO.

I'm interested in this topic, but I can't make much sense of the thread so far.

Questions to think about: What do we even mean by "free will"? What exactly is free will free from?

What aspects of our behavior do we associate with free will? What is the role of consciousness in free will?

Perhaps instead of the personal sniping, people could offer their thoughts on these questions.

Some of my thoughts:

In the original article, Harris makes the point that "if I were to trade places with one of these men, atom for atom, I would be him: There is no extra part of me that could decide to see the world differently ..."

That is, to the materialist, there is no non-material soul that has some special ability to act free from the material constraints of our physical being. To the theist, we do have such a soul - there is something that is "me" that is separate from all the atoms that make up my physical being. This is the key metaphysical difference between the two viewpoints.

I personally don't see any way at all to verify that such a soul does or doesn't exist. However, I don't see that as the most interesting point. Rather, I am interested in what the experience of free will feels like to us. All normal people feel that they have some personal control over what they do - that we make choices - that we have some freedom to act one way or another.

However, obviously we don't have complete free will. For instance, to take a simple example, I can't will my lung cells to stop the transfer of oxygen and carbon dioxide as the blood goes through the lungs: my physiological process take place with with conscious thought or any exercise of my will (whatever that means.)

More interestingly, I can't will myself to stop thinking verbalized thoughts. People spend years in meditation trying to learn to quiet the mind - to stop the more-or-less continuous internal monologue of us talking to ourself.

I also can't will my personality to all-of-a-sudden be different. I may be able to slowly change my habits, both attitudinal and behavioral, but it almost all cases (there are exceptions), such changes are slow and appear to happen behind-the-scenes, so to speak, and not as a direct result of the exercise of free will.

So what exactly can we will, how does that work, and how do we explain all the things that we can't? These are questions I think are worth exploring.

Free will is just another way of saying "autonomous" or "makes own choices". And it's also a great way to look smart while wasting time arguing philosophy instead of addressing much more urgent scientific issues that pertain to why the US is now a scientific mediocrity.

See viewtopic.php?p=21409#p21409 for reply.

Please excuse my reading too much into “Kansas Citizens For Science” forum and already long week of Dagny changing the subject to philosophy or religion while topics for discussing current scientific issues even an article that changes the dynamics of the entire ID controversy get no response. In this topic instead of a question in regard to how I explained free will as it relates to science (Wikipedia parallels) it was treated as so unimportant it deserved special punishment because the surprisingly definitive answer included my honest opinion of needing philosophical definitions instead.

The Science of Free Will

Part 1: Free Will in the Lab
Part 2: Is Free Will an Illusion?
Part 3: In Defense of Free Will
Part 4: Does Free Will Matter?

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/insidenova ... ction.html

I notice that the author has a background in Philosophy and Creative writing, and is not a scientist.

I think this involves more of a substitution of Philosophical Materialism for Methodological Naturalism than the Scientific Method.

This looks like an interesting series of articles, although I'd have to read more to offer my opinion on whether it does a good job of representing the science (the danger is always that popular science writes overplay possible large conclusions.)

And she does make it clear that she will be discussing the subject from the point of view of brain science: neither God nor the soul will be mentioned because there is really no way, even for people who believe the soul exists, to study those.

Also, although there is a scientific aspect to the subject of free will (understanding our biology, and especially the brain and the nervous system), a great deal of the subject of free will does involve philosophy. More importantly, to me, the most central aspect of free will to study is out experience of the sense of agency - irrespective of either the biology or the metaphysics, we all have the sense that we can and do make choices - that we exercise our free will. The experiential phenomena of our conscious awareness of our self, and the ways it which it can or cannot influence how we behave is the most interesting part of the subject to me.

Mike, I am curious as your thoughts about free will: given that you believe in free will in the metaphysical sense, I'm virtually sure, what does free will feel like to you. Also, how do you explain the difference between the things you can freely will (I am going to go downtown and shop) vs. the things you can't (I am going to quit talking to myself in an internal monologue, or I'm going to have a different basic personality tomorrow.) Do you have thoughts on this subject?

You are correct Jack, I believe in Free Will because I don't believe the claims of Philosophical Naturalism have been demonstrated; if nothing else the claim that our wills are not free would mean that the claim itself is not a result of any exercise of the will but simply an expression of various factors (some unconscious, perhaps) and hence there is no particular reason to believe it is true.

And if these factors are responsible for our choices, then there is no more reason to believe that we have an objective knowledge of reality, as one poster here keeps claiming, that there is to believe my dog has an objective knowledge of reality.

How does my free will feel to me? The same way it does does to you, I expect.

I should have the Sam Harris book by Thursday, its down to about six bucks on Amazon, and at 98 pages or so I will try to have a review up by this weekend or as time allows.

Jack......Also, although there is a scientific aspect to the subject of free will (understanding our biology, and especially the brain and the nervous system), a great deal of the subject of free will does involve philosophy.

The concept of free will involves philosophy/mostly theology. The objective reality of free will involves nothing but choices. These choices are based upon specific constraints (finances, education, societal pressure, health, chance, etc.) within we we operate and we have no control over them. It looks like free will is elevated to its pedestal mostly because choices can be predicted and so can be probabilities. Living in a probabilistic world bothers people. We are just not wired for this. Rationality is irrational for us. Yet irrationality appears to be accepted daily.

Why Religion is Natural and Science is Not addresses this
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Religion-Natu ... =8-1-fkmr0

Once you drill down to free will (mostly in theological sense) and discard it, it's just one more step to the concept of soul and from there to the concept of the creator/intelligent designer. It's a hard pill to swallow. Very easy thing to understand. And this scares people.

Accepting probabilities and acting on the ones that maybe even counter intuitive and appear irrational in hind sight would almost always make sense. It reminds me of the act of measurement of subatomic particles that can only pinpoint one of the several properties, otherwise we'd just have a probability.

Seems like the Universe has a harsh way of demonstrating its indifference to us.

The Brain on Trial

ADVANCES IN BRAIN SCIENCE ARE CALLING INTO QUESTION THE VOLITION BEHIND MANY CRIMINAL ACTS. A LEADING NEUROSCIENTIST DESCRIBES HOW THE FOUNDATIONS OF OUR CRIMINAL-JUSTICE SYSTEM ARE BEGINNING TO CRUMBLE, AND PROPOSES A NEW WAY FORWARD FOR LAW AND ORDER.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/pri ... rial/8520/

Watch some new exciting developments in psychology and technology coming out of this in a few years. Decision making has been documented often times made seconds before the actual action acted upon.

US Military Seeks Sixth Sense Training

The U.S. Office of Naval Research pointed to sixth sense research about how "humans can detect and act on unique patterns without consciously and intentionally analyzing them," according to a special notice posted on Feb. 29. It hopes to encourage such intuition in the brains of new soldiers, Marines and other troops with little or no battlefield experience.

But intuition stands apart from step-by-step, time-consuming analytical thinking because it happens both rapidly and subconsciously. A soldier may see, smell or hear something that gets subconsciously organized within hundreds of milliseconds to create the "feeling or impression of a solution" leading up to a sudden insight about the battlefield situation.

http://www.innovationnewsdaily.com/933- ... ining.html