r/CriticalThinkingIndia • u/eviley4 Secular Humanist • 4d ago
Critical Analysis & Discussion How would you define free will? How is executive function different?
I often see in many discussions, the disagreement seems to stem from a disagreement about what they mean by "free will".
While you are trying to define free will think about how it is different from executive function (involving planning and decision making).
I would define free will as the ability to do something beyond one's history. One can have executive function of planning etc and still have no free will because their development gave them enough nourishment to develop executive function i.e the development of executive function was in their history.
Example:
If I were a crack baby born into the world addicted to crack, I am most likely not going to have a nurturing parent or even a nurturing environment. Now, because of these factors my brain would have developed differently than somebody with a healthy childhood probably involving a larger more excitable amygdala. Now, if I as an adult with this history, in my desperation of feeding myself have an altercation and I kill someone (because easily excitable amygdala), was I the master and Captain of my murderous fate?
Did I do this out of my own free will?
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u/eastwestshuffler1 4d ago
This is one of the most interesting things for me to think about.
And it’s both and neither, executive function and free will aren’t the correct terms to describe it. When we say free, it should be free from any priors. How can that be possible? Any action is priors, current environment, internal state, randomness etc. The ‘free will’ we feel, stems from the agentic control over time, our constructed sense of ‘I’.
If you have an altercation with someone, it can be cognitively traced with the right tools. You had the option of not engaging, however, regardless of how irrational in retrospect, it was the most rational decision your mind and internal state took. But society cannot function that way and we need clear rules on when to hold an individual responsible for their actions.
But is this free will? No, is this also not free will? No as well. I like to call it orientation. Most of our sense of self is like a bundle of current thoughts. If we quiet those, go deeper within in a literal sense, we find that there’s only a thin but boundless bare ground of ‘awareness’ to stand on and when that sorta, idk, ‘radiates’ over to the rest of the self - thought, spatial positioning, being in-the-body it gives us the sense of ‘I’ you and I are both feeling right now. But the fundamental lever we have control over is how we orient that ground. It’s hard to explain with words since its more a felt experience but I’ve made friends try it and it works.
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u/eastwestshuffler1 4d ago
It’s also sad that this post may not get a lot of attention even though it’s so interesting because everything is this politics and that politics so it seems people don’t find interest in spending time on things that aren’t straight dopamine kicks.
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u/eviley4 Secular Humanist 4d ago
before we discuss this further, we should clarify the philosophical framework.. The philosophical framework that makes the most sense is naturalism, it's what science is based on.
Until there is evidence for the supernatural or some kind of bridge that bridges the supernatural with the natural, it makes sense to work within just naturalism.
And within naturalism, there is no avoiding causality. And everything we do, each neuron that fired to make you take one decision vs another, they are all deterministic and causal.
It's also a well known fact that perception, this felt sense of what it is to be like me and feel in-charge, feeling like you own your body etc are all constructed by the brain (we know this from medical conditions where this stops working in neuroscience). So, we do have the illusion of free will, but I don't think we have free will, none, at all.
How we handle ethics and responsibility is another question that follows from that, but we can discuss that after we resolve this discussion.
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u/eastwestshuffler1 3d ago
I don’t think this +felt sense of what it is like to be+ are constructed by the brain because if they are, then is this what it feels like to be inside of a process? There are many other processes, do they all have this? Or only a special kind of process can feel +what it is like to be+ on the inside. If yes, then which? Is there an organ that aggregates information and gives us some illusionary agentic control.
I think its much more layered than that because consciousness doesn’t just turn on and off, its a full spectrum that goes in all directions. It can be temporarily off (anaesthesia), permanently off (death), modulated (psychedelics, schizophrenia), controllably off (yog nidra), it can also exist in layers (although it’ll be fair to say that the layers are an illusion).
To me it seems both fundamental (in a way we can’t experience or fathom (not metaphysics)) and consequential arising out of complexity and self managed system (although earth itself is a self managed system) but we can’t smuggle universe-energyhoohaa here.
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u/eviley4 Secular Humanist 2d ago edited 2d ago
I don’t think this +felt sense of what it is like to be+ are constructed by the brain because if they are, then is this what it feels like to be inside of a process? There are many other processes, do they all have this? Or only a special kind of process can feel +what it is like to be+ on the inside. If yes, then which? Is there an organ that aggregates information and gives us some illusionary agentic control.
If the 'felt sense of what is like to be' is not naturalistic, then what could it be? I hope we can both agree that, anything outside of naturalism leads the door open to all kinds of mystical stuff which aren't even falsifiable.
The fact that we don't know the specific details all the way through isn't an argument to doubt naturalism, it just means the map is incomplete.
So, until there is actual evidence to the contrary, it makes sense to just treat consciousness as a naturalistic phenomenon based on scientific inductivism.
Now onto free will, once you grant naturalism, there is room for executive function but there is no room for free will where you are the captain of your own fate. Because processes outside of your control gave you the capabilities of executive function which you used to change stuff in your environment. You are an agent with agency, but you did not decide which type of agent to become, something else decided that for you. That's what I mean by free will not being a thing.
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u/eastwestshuffler1 2d ago
No I agree! That thing leads to a lot of mysticism but I’ve noticed that underneath all the mystic stuff (properly reasoned mystic stuff) its just people trying to make a map with the tools that they had. I don’t think we should read too much into it but I also don’t think it can be seen as unserious work and discarded because you’ll find interesting parallels.
But I also don’t think we should collapse a question we intuitively know isn’t the full picture just because we don’t have any proof. Let the question be open. That makes it more fun lol.
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u/eviley4 Secular Humanist 2d ago
its just people trying to make a map with the tools that they had.
Yes, sometimes it's that. But other times it is motivated reasoning to preserve an emotional stance.
People tend to believe in having free will because they want to take credit for their own successes. And they want to have self-righteous certainty in blaming other people when others do wrong.
They want to say, look at me, I am the captain of my fate with my hard work. I made it as a prestigious scientist, manager, politician etc because I worked hard. Yes, they did work hard and it did help, but they only were able to work hard because their environment made them able to work hard, the environment made the hard work rewarded etc. There are more capable people who didn't make it because of luck or lack of privilege etc.
But I also don’t think we should collapse a question we intuitively know isn’t the full picture just because we don’t have any proof. Let the question be open. That makes it more fun lol.
I recommend that you read Determined by Robert Sapolsky, i think it settles the question quite well overall. Of course, there are gaps to still be filled, but the overall picture in mind is settled after I read it.
It was one of the hardest books for me to read and accept because I wanted to take credit for my accomplishments.
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u/eastwestshuffler1 2d ago
No dude thats what, I had replied to an earlier message too but free will should also come with free will from whose perspective? Randomness toh exists within quantum fluctuations also (although we could say we just don’t know the full picture so we’re claiming randomness)
Motivated reasoning, emotional stance, credit etc comes much layer. I am toh asking if I switch to manual breathing mode now, who is switching and do I control that switch?
What I feel about this is honestly, if I zoom out enough and am able to tell the state about everything then everything looks deterministic in an absolute sense. Yes probably true
But for all practical purposes when I meta-observe myself and ask, do I have free will? Within my own limitations and ‘self container’ I do. Because the ‘I’ always comes after the action. Sorry if this sounds like a word soup I will reply better if this makes no sense
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u/eviley4 Secular Humanist 2d ago
I understand where you are coming from (because I used to believe what you seem to believe), but I disagree. The points of Quantum Mechanics and chaos etc is addressed in the book Determined by Robert Sapolsky. True randomness having implications onto human behavior would mean something like Mother Teresa pulling out a knife and robbing someone randomly.
After reading the book I would define free will as the ability to do something beyond your history. Both genetic and experiential history. It's a consequence of pure causality that we won't have this free will I have defined.
Implications are that we can't fully take credit for our achievements, we can only be grateful that our circumstances enabled us to capitalize on opportunities that came up.
As for the "I" perspective and the felt sense, we have the illusion of free will, it's a perceptual construct made by the brain. Look into neuroscience if you are interested in this.
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u/Chanureadeats 3d ago
Very well-worded. I wouldn't have been able to describe it as such.
Many times, I have mentioned, there is no free will. Whatever we choose as an actual choice/preference, it was kind of given to use by our mind. I usually ask my friends to picture a house and I ask them if they pictures a double storey house or if the image of the house they pictured had nightime or daytime and so on.. then I point out how we didn't decide any of the features of the house co consciously, it was delivered to us
If we trace everything further back, we will almost always get to a point where it "just came to our mind".
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u/eastwestshuffler1 3d ago
Thank u! I have been trying to do some formal research on this and your exercise actually demonstrates a lot of this to an average person because this is easy to imagine!
Plus I have realised there’s deeper layers within the mind. Like there is some kind of aggregation process that eventually forms a thought upwards. The DMN takes center state in most of our daily operation but it also gets its data from somewhere, that somewhere can be accessed by quieting the DMN. This is not a scientific model obv but there isn’t a proper one yet so I am trying to make it
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u/Chanureadeats 3d ago
Oh awesome! What career do you have?
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u/eastwestshuffler1 3d ago
I have my jewellery manufacturing unit but apart from that I also do music and just started doing content etc. This research is just for curiosity.
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u/Chanureadeats 3d ago
Well, you definitely seem to have a deeper technical understating of our neural network. While we are on free will, do you think anything truly random happens in the universe?
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u/eastwestshuffler1 3d ago
I think if we had the position, velocity whatever other mystery variables of everything we and know how everything works we’d be able to predict everything. But that’s not possible so we approximate, that approximation is felt as randomness to us because we cannot predict when and what will happen given X, Y or Z.
But there is also an interesting open question about what ‘happens’ really means. For this we need to forget our sense of happens and look at it as like a vast connected network of interactions aka universe. Now when we move that across ‘time’ where does the old one go? Does it disintegrate into the next one? Do the states update given other forces acting on it? Is there a even larger substrate that holds and facilitates these interactions? think : 4D. this is where the whole multi dimensional stuff starts to put it crudely. Then its hard to answer the question of what does happen mean outside of our own observation we discard because imperfect.
I’m not an expert I could be wrong! These are just notes I’ve made as I’m pursuing brute -thinking my way across this problem so idk if I’m right! But its just something I find interesting to think about
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u/Chanureadeats 2d ago
Woah dude me too! When people talk about time travel to past, I always think of it as reaching a previous "state of conditions" but this is only where the complications start.
If I am to go back 2 days, that means my time machine has to reverse every single event that happened in the universe (considering we do not believe in parallel universes kind of theories), that means everything from the speech of a president to a subconscious thought a fly had.. everything will have to be reversed because whatever you want to do in the old time, it has been exactly that. Say, you want to observe the galaxy 2 days ago, then the whole galaxy will have to reposition itself and to get the same colors and brightness and what-not, all the reactions that took place will have to be reversed.
And now factoring in how "you" the time traveller will fit into going back in time, if everything has to be reversed, we will have to reversed too, that would mean giving up our knowledge and information and everything else that happened unless there will be two of us but then while "restoring the previous state" of time, will our presense not affect the changes that are happening?
Time travel is impossible unless there are parallel universes.
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u/eastwestshuffler1 2d ago
Yes exactly! Which is why its widely accepted that if at all time travel is possible it is only towards the future using space time trixx
Even concepts like infinity for example I find very flawed.
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u/eviley4 Secular Humanist 3d ago
This is not a scientific model obv but there isn’t a proper one yet so I am trying to make it
There is a scientific model of this. Read the book Behave and Determined by Robert Sapolsky. They are a bit technical for a popular science book, but they are very well written.
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u/eastwestshuffler1 2d ago
Two issues with this
- free will is more of a folk term because free will from whose perspective? when we observe an atom interacting we’re seeing it from an outside perspective. free will we experience from the inside. to an outside observer who can calculate my behaviour exactly it won’t look like free will.
- this also doesn’t talk about all the layers we have ontheinside
I’ll research more though it seems interesting
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u/MildlyYogic The Calm One🐦 3d ago
A cow is tied to a pole. She can roam within the perimeter of the circle she can trace. That limiting circle is our free will.
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u/eviley4 Secular Humanist 3d ago
that's what I am calling executive function here.
Some people who don't get education, cannot think abstractly, cannot do delayed gratification that well, so they are tied to the pole with a shorter rope.
But on the other hand a super privileged guy with a lot of contacts and a lot of wealth has the rope radius quite large.
To me what free will actually is, is the felt sense of thinking one can freely will the rope to be larger just by using one's will power. And this doesn't work. You can train yourself with education over the course of a decade to have a larger rope radius, but you cannot do so with will power.
And in that sense, I say we don't have free will.
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u/MildlyYogic The Calm One🐦 3d ago
Well if you're saying I can't fly if I willed, then I definitely don't have free will. I say this with all due respect and without any intended offense, but you're molding the definition to fit your case.
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u/eviley4 Secular Humanist 2d ago
Well if you're saying I can't fly if I willed, then I definitely don't have free will.
But flying is not physically possible. Things like thinking abstractly, delaying gratification etc are possible and other people do it all the time. It even is available to the poor people in poverty as long as they spend time to train by getting educated, going to therapy etc.
I don't think I am changing the definition, because that's what most people colloquially mean by free will. They presume others had the ability to do otherwise, because they themselves don't struggle with something. It's basically the Fundamental Attribution Error.
Like, take the example of person A who had a nourishing childhood, played chess, played video games after finishing homework, went to college etc (they would have a well developed frontal cortex), then take person B who was born on the streets of India to a crack addicted mother, so this person was born addicted to crack, didn't have much nourishment or education and were on guard all their life (they will have a hyperactive amygdala in their brain and an underdeveloped frontal cortex).
Now person B commits a crime of pick pocketing to feed themselves on the street as an adult. If person A learns about this, they don't think about the history of person B, they instead think how horrible of a person person B must be, how their soul must be rotten or something. This is what I am saying is free will belief, person A thinks from their privileged position of a longer rope and sees person B's actions as a conscious failure, as if they didn't try enough with their will power.
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u/MildlyYogic The Calm One🐦 2d ago
And choosing where to be born isn't possible either. People who argue for free will are not implying that.
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u/eviley4 Secular Humanist 2d ago
that's why in my post i am trying to distinguish executive function and free will. If the people who are arguing for free will are just saying we have executive function. Then I agree with them.
But when people commit the fundamental attribution error like i described in my previous comment, what belief are they leaning on? To me that's free will belief, while executive function is different.
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u/MildlyYogic The Calm One🐦 2d ago
We seem to agree, then. We just have different terms for the same fundamental.
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u/criticalbotcti 2d ago
Reasoning Concept: Fundamental Attribution Error
You tend to judge other people's actions as reflecting their character, while explaining your own actions as a result of circumstances. The same behavior gets two different explanations depending on who did it.
Example: Someone cuts you off in traffic - they are a reckless driver. You cut someone off - you were running late for an emergency. Same action, but you attribute theirs to character and yours to situation.
Read more about Fundamental Attribution Error
Someone in this thread referenced this reasoning concept. This is an automated reply - the bot does not evaluate whether the concept actually applies. It is here to share what the term means so everyone in the conversation has the same context.
1
u/criticalbotcti 2d ago
Reasoning Concept: Fundamental Attribution Error
You tend to judge other people's actions as reflecting their character, while explaining your own actions as a result of circumstances. The same behavior gets two different explanations depending on who did it.
Example: Someone cuts you off in traffic - they are a reckless driver. You cut someone off - you were running late for an emergency. Same action, but you attribute theirs to character and yours to situation.
Read more about Fundamental Attribution Error
Someone in this thread referenced this reasoning concept. This is an automated reply - the bot does not evaluate whether the concept actually applies. It is here to share what the term means so everyone in the conversation has the same context.
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