One Old Cat

 

One Old Cat

 My house is quiet today.

All it's missing is one old cat.

She spent most of her time sleeping in her bed.

I never saw nor heard her unless I went to her.

But she is gone now.

And the quiet without her is much worse than the quiet with her.

You have no free will, but you must behave as if you do. End of debate.

You don't have free will.  All of your actions and thoughts could be predicted by someone that knows everything about you.  I don't mean a close friend or family member, but rather a scientist or a omniscient being that has collected all the movements of every quantum particle that has been part of your entire life.  That being could predict what you would choose before you could.  The free will with which you think you make your decisions, is an illusion.

Each of us makes hundreds of choices each day.  The choices we make are influenced by the events going on immediately around us, but also by the algorithms that exist in our minds.  Each person has different algorithms and our algorithms are altered constantly in response to new inputs.  The algorithms in our minds our constructed from our life experiences, from the foods we eat and the hormones and chemicals in our bodies, as well as our education and physical environments.  For one person, a traumatic childhood experience involving a dog may adjust mind algorithms to cause the person to avoid interactions with dogs in the future.  For another person, growing up in a small rural community may produce algorithms in the mind that favor trusting strangers.

 

Uncontrolled thoughts

Science reveals to us that our brain is more like a collection of minds instead of a single mind.  Our brains are a collection of many smaller sections each processing stimuli and information and passing along transformed information to other parts of the brain.  The occipital lobe processes what our eyes see, the temporal lobe processes what our ears hear, other parts of the brain cause our reflexes to react instantly to dangers and sensations.  And still other parts of the brain store memory and personality.  All of these brain lobes send signals that cause us to act, or not act, and another part of our brain, chiefly the frontal lobe, interprets and creates explanations of our actions.  All of the subsections of our brain are sending signals throughout the brain and are clamoring for attention.  We have no control over what these brain subsections cause us to think about.  Sights and sounds pop into the awareness area of our mind based on what our visual and auditory brain centers perceive.  Just like the way the sound of a train whistle pops into your mind when you hear it, so to do thoughts just pop into our minds from sources we can't determine.  We don't get to choose what we think about.  External or internal stimuli prompt each of our thoughts.

 

Many events bombard our mind causing our thoughts to shift directions and our bodies to take action.  A butterfly passing by reminds me that I wanted to buy new bushes for the garden and I check the clock to see if I can get to the store before it closes.  Likewise, my brain is invoking thoughts in response to internal stimuli that only my brain is aware of.  These invoked thoughts, whether by internal or external stimuli, affect "the thinker" in the mind.

 

Our actions are predetermined (no free will), but are not predictable.

At any moment of decision, there will be some immediate external stimuli that provide input to our choices, but the largest factor in the course of action we take will be determined by the algorithms that have been evolving in our minds all of our lives.  It seems like we have free will, and can make a choice, but the truth is that the result of our deliberation is predetermined by the laws of physics.  We can deliberate.  But we have no choice in whether or not we deliberate.  We may be at a restaurant trying to choose between the healthier meal or the tastier meal.  Just after deciding to go with the tastier item, we see our fitness instructor walk into the restaurant, and from that visual input we change our decision and choose the healthier item instead.  The presence of the fitness instructor is an external event that caused us to change our mind; and we had no control over that external event happening.  The same is true of the algorithms within our minds.  We have no control over which choice our mind will decide upon because we can't see all the variables that go into the algorithms that are influencing the choice.

 

Many psychological studies have demonstrated that a device attached to a person's head reading their brain waves can be used to predict the choice a person will make on a test before that person even makes the choice for themselves.  A subconscious part of our brain is reaching the decision then letting the conscious part of our brain know what decision was made.

 

Quantum mechanics of the mind

But what about inputs from the quantum realm?  Some people promote the idea that our mind is connected to quantum particles that are known to burst into existence then cease to exist.  These virtual particles could be affecting our consciousness and represent our personality and our soul.  Unfortunately that theory does not withstand much scrutiny.  The virtual particles that appear randomly have miniscule influence upon the behavior of the atoms and particles when they appear.  The phenomenal success of quantum theory proves the influence of virtual particles is so small that it rarely even needs to be considered.  Even if you do want to accept, that occasionally one of those random virtual particles affect your behavior, it would be akin to saying that, "If my mind's algorithm compute a value of greater than 1,000,000,000,000 then I will chose the healthy food, and if not, I will choose the unhealthy food."  At this moment the algorithm scores exactly 1,000,000,000,000, but then a random virtual particle comes into existence, subtracts 1 from that value (I choose the value of 1 out of a trillion because we know the impact of virtual particles are miniscule), and therefore causes me to choose the unhealthy food.  Such occurrence is possible, but these types of events would happen extremely rarely, probably less than once per lifetime, which implies a soul or personality coming from a subatomic world has little impact.  Also it is important to understand that the particles are virtual and random and do not come into existence at the moment of a human making a decision.

 

So what?  You've read this far and agree that based on the arguments above, we don't have free will.  Does it matter?  The answer is No.  Not really.  Because even though we don't really have free will it sure feels like we have control over our choices.  It feels like that "we" are in charge of the decisions we make.  We can't just sit back and wait to see what choices our subconscious makes for us.  We are still going to deliberate, and we are still going to act or not act.  We have no choice but to continue to act as if we have free will.

 

Free will and our behavior

Does the belief that we lack free will affect our behavior?  For some, the answer may be 'yes'.  For most, the answer is mostly 'no'.  I deliberate about decisions, but I don't recall ever including in my deliberations the thought, "Well, I don't have free will so I might as well do option 'x'."  Besides, when you analyze any statement closely you will see that even in the absence of free will the thinker is acting as if they still have the free will to choose an option.  That option may be to "do nothing", but they still feel like they are making the choice to do nothing.

 

Free will and morality

One fear that some philosophers express is that if people believe they do not have free will, that they will behave differently, and that they will choose courses of action with worse outcomes for themselves and others.  And for some individuals that may be true.  Beliefs, which are coded as the algorithms in our minds, do affect actions.  A person that believes the world will end this year may choose the unhealthy food instead of the healthy food because that belief influences their choice.  Likewise, a person that believes they have no free will may, in thinking to themselves, "I have no free will to choose", choose the less healthy option.  Or, more broadly, say to themselves, "I have no free will therefore I am free to choose the less moral course of action."  This train of thought could be used to rationalize and justify the less moral course of action.  But it does not follow, that in the absence of free will, a person is more or less likely to choose a more or less moral course of action.  A person could just as easily deduce, "I have no free will therefore I am free to choose the more moral course of action."  The absence or presence of free will does not contribute to the better, worse, moral, or immoral course of action.

 

Free will and punishment.

Then why, you may ask, do people feel the need to discuss this topic?  Why is there a debate over free will?  The answer is that some feel it impacts how we hold others accountable for their actions.  It impacts the punishment we mete out to those who break the rules.  What if a bad person threatens harm to someone you care about unless you break your neighbor's window.  To protect the one you care about, you break the window, get caught by police, and go to trial.  At the trial you explain that you were forced to throw the rock, and the judge agrees that you did not have the free will to act and lets you go free.  If we don't have free will at all, couldn't anyone make a similar argument and say that they had no choice but to do what they did?  The answer is no.

 

Every action we take is partially influenced and controlled by things external to our minds, but some actions we take are primarily controlled by the algorithms in our mind.  If it appears that our action was primarily caused by the algorithms in our minds, and not forced by an external threat like the person threatening harm to someone we care about, then we need to be held accountable for the action.  For the good of society those people with defective brain algorithms must be restrained from living in the general populace.   Just like when we discover a machine that is malfunctioning and hurting people we disable the machine; so will we disable malfunctioning people by putting them into prison and/or treatment programs.  When we incarcerate people for crimes, the goal should be to re-habilitate those people, to alter their brain algorithms so that they are safe to release back into society.  But even if we don't think rehabilitation is possible for those individuals, we will still incarcerate and punish them because we want to alter the algorithms of everyone else in society to understand that the crimes the individual committed are not acceptable.  We also recognize that the brain algorithms of some individuals are too damaged to allow those people to roam free in our societies.  

 

Free will and remorse.

Some people believe that accepting that we have no free will liberates them from remorse for their past actions.  If I am texting while driving my car and I hit a squirrel in the road, and I believe that I have no free will, I might tell myself that I had no control over my actions and thus I should not feel remorse over hitting the squirrel.  However, the value of remorse is to improve our behavior in future similar situations, so if I suppress remorse then I am more likely to commit the same behavior in the future.  If I allow the remorse to flow I will be more attentive in future situations (less likely to text while driving) and thus be less likely to hit a squirrel in the future.  Remorse is an evolved trait that increases our ability to get along with others.  Too much remorse may be dysfunctional, as may too little.  But the conclusion to suppress remorse because you lack free will harms yourself because you prevent the alteration of the brain algorithms that will help prevent you from performing actions with negative consequences in the future.  You have no control over whether or not your belief that we have no free will also cause you to feel less remorse over your actions, but in reading the very words of these paragraphs your mental algorithms may have been altered which will affect your remorse calculations in the future.

 

I hope you found value reading my thoughts about free will.  I had no choice but to write the words above and share them with others.