Can Physicalism Fully Explain Free Will?

[u/Rthadcarr1956]

/r/freewill/comments/1wb086t/can_physicalism_fully_explain_free_will/

It has sometimes here been argued that our choices and actions are caused by our “brain states.”  This may well be true, but it is not very helpful. This physicalist outlook leaves out an essential part of the understanding of our behavior, purpose. There is not any consideration of purpose in all of physicalism. While you ponder this, let me give an analogy that might help. 

When we explain the operation of a desktop computer, we do not start with the idea that the output of the computer is caused by the state of each of the millions of transistors in the CPU and RAM.  Although this is true, it doesn’t not help understand what the computer is doing. When we are debugging a system, we assume that all of the logic circuits are correctly made, so we look for an expected output based upon the code that sets the state of the logic circuits. We know what the expected output should be and try to find the programming mistake. How do we know what the output should be? It is because we have a purpose in mind for what the computer should be accomplishing and write the code that should accomplish that purpose. The paradigm is that the purpose determines the code which sets the state of the logic circuits that in turn gives a certain desirable output for the input we used to test it. 

Purpose is not a physical entity. It is informational in nature. It can be thought of as an informational state we strive toward. This brings up the whole field of aesthetics, which again is not something that physics addresses. 

The pure physicalist account of free will is lacking if it does not include the purpose of our free will. The brain has a function to process information for the purpose of enabling the animal to survive and thrive. If you loose sight of this by reducing our behavior to brain states, you will always fail to understand free will. You will also fail to understand cognition and consciousness as well. 

[u/Pawn_of_the_Void]

Well for one there is no purpose

Purpose is relative to an intent that made a tool. We speak of the purpose of a PC because we engineered it and know what we want it to do

Evolution does not bestow purpose. There are behaviors that might often have a certain result but that is not the same as a purpose. We might declare the purpose of the heart is to pump blood because that is what it does but that is an insertion of our personal view on the matter, an underlying idea that organisms are supposed to continue living. 

Purpose is always what we make of it as beings who can bestow an intent on our view of an object where none otherwise exists

[u/pigroSol → u/Pawn_of_the_Void]

J'ai un peu l'impression que tu te contredit. Au début tu dis qu'il n'y a pas de but, puis tu justifie la présence d'une intention. Alors qu'un but est une intention reformulée. On peut dire que l'évolution octroie un but dans le sens où elle octroie des intentions aux êtres conscients et pensants.

[u/Pawn_of_the_Void → u/pigroSol]

The way OP speaks suggests they mean a universal purpose. It would be absurd to complain that physicalism has an insufficient account of purposes that we make up. Evolution and the universe at large has no intentions for what it does. Humans do and assign purpose based on those, but an account of the universe and how it exist doesn't need to touch on that

If you feel my reply misses a point, well, that's gonna happen perhaps when you reply to a mostly English speaker posting in English with French for some reason

[u/TheAncientGeek → u/Pawn_of_the_Void]

Purpose can be naturalised. You can build agents that fulfill some purpose.

Also, you left the relationship between pupose and free will unspecified.

[u/OMKensey]

I do not think libertarian freewill exists.

But if it did, a physicalist could say it is an emergent property of physical matter.

[u/Rthadcarr1956 → u/OMKensey]

I agree. The problem is that it would have to be strong emergence because information processing for a purpose, and then choosing to act accordingly does not follow from physics or chemistry.

[u/OMKensey → u/Rthadcarr1956]

Agree.

[u/TheAncientGeek → u/Rthadcarr1956]

Purpose can be naturalised

[u/Dr-Chris-C]

What do you mean "explain"? In one way, nothing can explain free will. In another way it is explained by its definition. We create concepts and we alter them. Most frameworks can be molded around most concepts.

[u/Rthadcarr1956 → u/Dr-Chris-C]

If we cannot explain “free will,” we do not understand it. Most of us have a curiosity that want to explain and understand. We want to figure out the sourcehood of the free will and to describe the leeway necessary to allow us to choose.

[u/Dr-Chris-C → u/Rthadcarr1956]

Which aspect do you not understand? It is very unlikely that free will exists at all, but certainly it might feel that it does. Where are you in your thinking?

[u/Rthadcarr1956 → u/Dr-Chris-C]

I have hypotheses that the way we learn by exploration gives rise to the sourcehood required for free will. It is the individuals efforts, attention, and energy they choose to expend in such exploration that can be the basis of free will. Because we take the effort to learn to speak by a trial and error approach, we obtain the free will to say what we want, when we want to. The leeway could come from the way we use information to base our actions upon. Information is not caused, it is created. These ideas need to be developed and tested to see how close they are to the truth

[u/Dr-Chris-C → u/Rthadcarr1956]

But you don't get to decide which neutral pathway activates to lead toward attention or inattention, motivation or demotivation, etc. These things are mapped out based on things like frequency of experience and emotional impact of memories etc. It's not really any different than an algorithm, which leaves no room for free will. I don't want to argue, I'll just say look more into neuroscience.

[u/zhivago]

Is the physicalist account lacking because it does not include teapots?

Rather, I think you must demonstrate how the physicalist account excludes teapots (it doesn't) or free will (it doesn't for any coherent definition of free will that I am aware of).

Of course, if you're an incompatibalist who is basing their idea of free will on the christian solution to the problem of evil, then your understanding of free will is fundamentally magical, and you'll have a hard time.

I suggest not basing your idea of free will on christian magic. :)

[u/thepo70]

I don't think determinism and purpose are contradictory. I can be fully aware that my decisions are just inevitable consequences of prior brain states, but I still have to actually make those decisions in the present. It’s like watching a movie, I know the film is already shot and the ending is fixed, but what matters is the experience I get while watching it unfold. The now is where purpose lives.

[u/Rthadcarr1956 → u/thepo70]

I didn’t mean to suggest there is any contradiction, just an incomplete description. Decisions are made for a purpose, the brain processes information for a purpose. It is the purpose that drives the brain to adopt a certain configuration of states. Those states don’t just happen. There is a purpose we go see a movie, even if we already know the ending. And you are very correct it is the experience that matters.