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From: Mark Barton <mbarton@icrr.u-tokyo.ac.jp>
Subject: Re: Free Will
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>Free will is being jettisoned as incomprehensible under
>the auspices of the scientific approach to understanding and
>exploring reality.
>
>It was previously incomprehensible that photosynthesis could
>occur without sunlight.  When plants were found at the bottom of
>the ocean that photosynthesized using heat the incomprehensible
>had to be faced.  The theory of photosynthesis had to account
>for evident phenomena.
>
>Those who deny free will have confused themselves.  Scientific
>theories are based on what we find in reality.  Self and free
>will and consciousness are actually experienced by human beings
>and must be faced.  

I disagree. Scientific theories are based on what we experience. We have
no direct access to reality. Reality is merely the simplest theory to
account for our experiences _in most cases_. In other cases internally
generated fantasy is the most economical explanation. Modern physics is
puzzling precisely because it resists being interpreted in terms of a
single coherent reality.

I agree that we have to account for the experience of free will. But this
is trivial. Whether or not our will is "really" free, and whether or not
"free" even means anything, the feeling of freedom arises from the fact
that we do not know what we are going to decide until we decide it.
Problem solved.

>At the very least these events should be
>acknowledged as possibly similar to the phantom limb experiences
>of amputees.  It should be seen as irrational to inform the
>person that is impossible for them to have that experience.

That these events are similar is precisely what is being suggested! We
take it for granted that some perfectly genuine experiences do not
correspond to reality. We therefore consider the possibility that the
experience of free will does not correspond to reality.

>One may as well instruct a person that when they tap a
>pencil on a desk top that the impact must be felt at the fingers
>and not at the desk top.  

I'm not at all sure what you're getting at here. However I remark that it
seems like a perfectly sensible experiment. In fact I can attend to
either the sense data from my finger tips, or the presumably more-highly
processed data that present as a feeling from the end of the pencil.

>I fail to see the point or insight
>of such spurious pronouncements that self and free will
>are impossible.

Nor I, but then I'm butting in here.

>Self and free will and consciousness are experiences. If someone
>is unable to comprehend the source and workings of those
>experiences then it is that reality eludes them and that their
>current logic and theories and knowledge are inadequate.  Their
>contention that these experiences are fictions raises the
>previously discarded notion that reality is just a fantasy.
>That notion is easily dismissed with a kick to the shin or
>a call of nature.

I'm not gainsaying that as reality. But then the experience of the pain
in the shin is accompanied by many lines of supporting evidence, such as
but not limited to, the view of an approaching boot. The feeling of free
will is confirmed literally by no evidence at all - merely the fact that
I don't know what I'm going to decide until I do decide.

>The concept of free will extends to freedom of thought and behavior.
>
>I previously wrote:
>Freedom is the fact that any human being can do anything that is
>physically possible.  Ethics is a discussion of how individuals
>must respect the freedom of others so that their own freedom is
>respected.
>
>I failed to see your agreement or disagreement with that observation
>and I challenge you and others to speak your mind on that approach
>towards understanding the concept of free will.

As someone else pointed out, you don't need the idea of "free will" to
contruct an ethical society, because it is a fact about human beings that
they think in ethical terms and respond, albeit perhaps
deterministically, to ethical persuasion. The idea is not for people to
behave freely, it is for people to behave sensibly.

I've never seen this clearly articulated, but I suspect the intuitive
connection between free will and ethics is via the concept of blame.
Like, how can you have a decent ethics without a heavy weapon like blame
to chastise the offender with? Then, how can you blame a person if in
some sense the cause of his/her actions lies elsewhere? 

I personally don't have a problem with this - I can distribute blame
quite accurately enough. If Bloggs stuffs up or behaves unethically, I
don't blame the laws of physics (in most cases) or Bloggs' body (in most
cases) but instead that pattern of excitation in Bloggs' brain that I
take to be the real Bloggs. I tend to look on this in the same light as
blaming Microsoft Word 6 for being a stupid program (as opposed to the
laws of physics, or the computer). The single and important difference is
that blaming MSW has no effect, whereas if I communicate my disapproval
of Bloggs to him/her I may actually change his/her behaviour.

Cheers,

Mark B.
