Philosophy Now Forum

BigMike wrote: ↑Fri May 16, 2025 2:02 pm

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Fri May 16, 2025 1:34 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Fri May 16, 2025 10:24 amHow free is your free will? Can you quantify your free will? Is your free will maybe like a grain of salt that not merely mixes with water but is dissolved in a given volume of water?

I'm not the person to ask. My expertise is in easy stuff, like quantum mechanics and relativity. I quite like Roger Penrose's take, or at least the bit I understand, which in a nutshell, is that consciousness is not computable, which I presume means it couldn't be the product of purely mechanical processes. As I said though, I'm a bit out of my depth when it comes to philosophy of mind.

Fair enough, Will—and honestly, if you’re already comfortable swimming in quantum mechanics and relativity, you’re doing just fine. Don't sell yourself short. And yeah, Penrose’s view is certainly a bold one. His Orch-OR theory, developed with anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff, proposes that consciousness arises from quantum processes in microtubules within neurons—an attempt to step beyond what he sees as the limits of algorithmic computation.

Penrose argues that consciousness is non-computable—that no Turing machine, no matter how complex, could fully replicate it. It’s an intriguing proposal, one that draws from Gödel’s incompleteness theorems and quantum indeterminacy to suggest that human understanding and insight must involve something more than classical computation.

That said, the theory’s been met with a lot of skepticism in the neuroscience and physics communities. A major hurdle is the so-called “warm, wet brain” problem. Quantum coherence is notoriously fragile—it tends to collapse quickly in environments like the human brain, which is noisy, warm, and biologically active. Many argue it’s just not plausible for delicate quantum states to persist long enough inside neurons to play the kind of role Orch-OR suggests.

Still, Penrose’s challenge to mainstream materialist views of consciousness has been valuable in pushing the conversation forward. Even critics concede: at least he’s asking hard questions with intellectual rigor, which is more than can be said for most pop-theories of mind.

Belinda wrote: ↑Fri May 16, 2025 2:33 pm

BigMike wrote: ↑Fri May 16, 2025 2:02 pm

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Fri May 16, 2025 1:34 pm
I'm not the person to ask. My expertise is in easy stuff, like quantum mechanics and relativity. I quite like Roger Penrose's take, or at least the bit I understand, which in a nutshell, is that consciousness is not computable, which I presume means it couldn't be the product of purely mechanical processes. As I said though, I'm a bit out of my depth when it comes to philosophy of mind.

Fair enough, Will—and honestly, if you’re already comfortable swimming in quantum mechanics and relativity, you’re doing just fine. Don't sell yourself short. And yeah, Penrose’s view is certainly a bold one. His Orch-OR theory, developed with anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff, proposes that consciousness arises from quantum processes in microtubules within neurons—an attempt to step beyond what he sees as the limits of algorithmic computation.

Penrose argues that consciousness is non-computable—that no Turing machine, no matter how complex, could fully replicate it. It’s an intriguing proposal, one that draws from Gödel’s incompleteness theorems and quantum indeterminacy to suggest that human understanding and insight must involve something more than classical computation.

That said, the theory’s been met with a lot of skepticism in the neuroscience and physics communities. A major hurdle is the so-called “warm, wet brain” problem. Quantum coherence is notoriously fragile—it tends to collapse quickly in environments like the human brain, which is noisy, warm, and biologically active. Many argue it’s just not plausible for delicate quantum states to persist long enough inside neurons to play the kind of role Orch-OR suggests.

Still, Penrose’s challenge to mainstream materialist views of consciousness has been valuable in pushing the conversation forward. Even critics concede: at least he’s asking hard questions with intellectual rigor, which is more than can be said for most pop-theories of mind.

It seems that what Penrose calls "consciousness" is more explicitly waking awareness.( I wonder what audience Penrose was aiming for.) If free will correlates with waking awareness then free will is not constantly present in the same individual but is either polarised present or polarised not present in the same individual.

If I felt I wanted a spooky substance like free will to be true, I'd at least make a decent stab at reading some neuroscience.

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Fri May 16, 2025 9:23 am Well again, you should know by now that I am acutely aware that, with two exceptions, all propositions are theory laden. I am not a determinist. Unlike you, I understand that determinism accounts for the phenomena just as well as free will, and that my preference for free will is a choice. Or maybe just my nature.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri May 16, 2025 3:05 pm

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Fri May 16, 2025 9:23 am Well again, you should know by now that I am acutely aware that, with two exceptions, all propositions are theory laden. I am not a determinist. Unlike you, I understand that determinism accounts for the phenomena just as well as free will, and that my preference for free will is a choice. Or maybe just my nature.

The position you have could be seen as putting the entire conversation on the shelf since, as you say, it cannot actually be settled. In a sense then the “war of opinions” that goes on with such furor is less a war on the basis of tangible facts, so called, but rather on tendencies of personality.

However, Mr Determinism does propose a remodel of the education system to accommodate his settled theory — no longer theory but political and social doctrine. Though you may sit on the proverbial fence, one cannot but note this militant aspect of the ideological stance. All sorts of ramifications and consequences lurk there, many quite monstrous.

Also, it might be a claim worthy of further thought: free-will, if indeed it exhibits the quality of “choice in the matter” cannot be compared with “no choice in the matter” (Mr Determinism’s hard determinism stance).

The evidence of free decision is in the witnessed outcomes. To deny these (it seems to me) one resorts to elaborated sophistries and linguistically constructed defenses (tightly bound up, one might say, with those subjective personality traits always so predominant in all PN participants).

Odd it seems to me that your argument is not an argument, but simply a statement of preference. I think I understand what you are saying though. Or perhaps why you say it.

Have you ever thought much on what what the actual ramifications would/will be if the militant ideology of a Mr Determinism were to gain substantial purchase? It does not seem to me that you have.

Belinda wrote: ↑Fri May 16, 2025 2:40 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Fri May 16, 2025 2:33 pm

BigMike wrote: ↑Fri May 16, 2025 2:02 pm

Fair enough, Will—and honestly, if you’re already comfortable swimming in quantum mechanics and relativity, you’re doing just fine. Don't sell yourself short. And yeah, Penrose’s view is certainly a bold one. His Orch-OR theory, developed with anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff, proposes that consciousness arises from quantum processes in microtubules within neurons—an attempt to step beyond what he sees as the limits of algorithmic computation.

Penrose argues that consciousness is non-computable—that no Turing machine, no matter how complex, could fully replicate it. It’s an intriguing proposal, one that draws from Gödel’s incompleteness theorems and quantum indeterminacy to suggest that human understanding and insight must involve something more than classical computation.

That said, the theory’s been met with a lot of skepticism in the neuroscience and physics communities. A major hurdle is the so-called “warm, wet brain” problem. Quantum coherence is notoriously fragile—it tends to collapse quickly in environments like the human brain, which is noisy, warm, and biologically active. Many argue it’s just not plausible for delicate quantum states to persist long enough inside neurons to play the kind of role Orch-OR suggests.

Still, Penrose’s challenge to mainstream materialist views of consciousness has been valuable in pushing the conversation forward. Even critics concede: at least he’s asking hard questions with intellectual rigor, which is more than can be said for most pop-theories of mind.

It seems that what Penrose calls "consciousness" is more explicitly waking awareness.( I wonder what audience Penrose was aiming for.) If free will correlates with waking awareness then free will is not constantly present in the same individual but is either polarised present or polarised not present in the same individual.

If I felt I wanted a spooky substance like free will to be true, I'd at least make a decent stab at reading some neuroscience.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri May 16, 2025 3:05 pm

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Fri May 16, 2025 9:23 am Well again, you should know by now that I am acutely aware that, with two exceptions, all propositions are theory laden. I am not a determinist. Unlike you, I understand that determinism accounts for the phenomena just as well as free will, and that my preference for free will is a choice. Or maybe just my nature.

The position you have could be seen as putting the entire conversation on the shelf since, as you say, it cannot actually be settled. In a sense then the “war of opinions” that goes on with such furor is less a war on the basis of tangible facts, so called, but rather on tendencies of personality.

However, Mr Determinism does propose a remodel of the education system to accommodate his settled theory — no longer theory but political and social doctrine. Though you may sit on the proverbial fence, one cannot but note this militant aspect of the ideological stance. All sorts of ramifications and consequences lurk there, many quite monstrous.

Also, it might be a claim worthy of further thought: free-will, if indeed it exhibits the quality of “choice in the matter” cannot be compared with “no choice in the matter” (Mr Determinism’s hard determinism stance).

The evidence of free decision is in the witnessed outcomes. To deny these (it seems to me) one resorts to elaborated sophistries and linguistically constructed defenses (tightly bound up, one might say, with those subjective personality traits always so predominant in all PN participants).

Odd it seems to me that your argument is not an argument, but simply a statement of preference. I think I understand what you are saying though. Or perhaps why you say it.

Have you ever thought much on what what the actual ramifications would/will be if the militant ideology of a Mr Determinism were to gain substantial purchase? It does not seem to me that you have.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Fri May 16, 2025 6:51 pm

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri May 16, 2025 3:05 pm

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Fri May 16, 2025 9:23 am Well again, you should know by now that I am acutely aware that, with two exceptions, all propositions are theory laden. I am not a determinist. Unlike you, I understand that determinism accounts for the phenomena just as well as free will, and that my preference for free will is a choice. Or maybe just my nature.

The position you have could be seen as putting the entire conversation on the shelf since, as you say, it cannot actually be settled. In a sense then the “war of opinions” that goes on with such furor is less a war on the basis of tangible facts, so called, but rather on tendencies of personality.

However, Mr Determinism does propose a remodel of the education system to accommodate his settled theory — no longer theory but political and social doctrine. Though you may sit on the proverbial fence, one cannot but note this militant aspect of the ideological stance. All sorts of ramifications and consequences lurk there, many quite monstrous.

Also, it might be a claim worthy of further thought: free-will, if indeed it exhibits the quality of “choice in the matter” cannot be compared with “no choice in the matter” (Mr Determinism’s hard determinism stance).

The evidence of free decision is in the witnessed outcomes. To deny these (it seems to me) one resorts to elaborated sophistries and linguistically constructed defenses (tightly bound up, one might say, with those subjective personality traits always so predominant in all PN participants).

Odd it seems to me that your argument is not an argument, but simply a statement of preference. I think I understand what you are saying though. Or perhaps why you say it.

Have you ever thought much on what what the actual ramifications would/will be if the militant ideology of a Mr Determinism were to gain substantial purchase? It does not seem to me that you have.

The people who misunderstand the debate about free will are the ones who think that it has some important outcome. You, IC, Henry, that Darkneos guy, and above all BigMike all don't get it. You all think that if free will is an illusion then the world would be different to the way it is, or in Mike's case, should be different.

Willy B laid it out for IC in that passage you quoted, and you don't seem to have understood him either. When he tells you that " determinism accounts for the phenomena just as well as free will" he means it. It's moot as a question that needs to be answered, and it's equally moot as a question that can really be answered, because properly understood, determinism is just an alternative way of describing the world exactly as it is, not some other world.

Elsewhere in the free will debate, FJ is having a similar problem trying to explain to Darkneos what the limits of physicalist reductions and its implications are, which falls under the same category of conversation and largely it is the same set of people who can't grasp the lack of importance there either. Again, all data about the real world are accounted for equally either way and that limits the importance of the matter.

I mention that second thing partly to see if I can have fun at Mannie's expense. I am fairly sure he is going to tell Willy that he doesn't know what he's talking about because materialism entails determinism on the basis that all matter behaves entirely probabilistically and thus the reduction of the person to atoms and quarks or whatnot must eliminate all articles of folk psychology including choice. Basically there is a core of the bad argument about free will that is shared by Mike, Mannie and the Darkneos guy even if they aren't on the same side of the debate. Technically they share it with Peter Strawson, or perhaps even indirectly inherit it from him, so I should probably give them a break, but I am not a nice man, so I shan't.

Willy B is more into philosophy of science than I am, and so he presents this free will thing above as a case of underdetermination which is a concept he has been heroically attempting to teach to mister Can for a long time. In his accounting there, it is simply the case that the available evidence for determinism and that for free will are basically the same, there is no evidence available in the world that would help you choose between them because both explain the world as it is. Not being a philosopher of science (and really having very little skill in that area), I tend to describe it as either a full on pseudo-problem - or just a a nothing burger if I am dialling it down.

The second type of support which the religious feeling gives to morality also assists morality to retain its non-scientific character. Religious feeling resists the tendency to regard men as logically similar to things: a tendency which grows as science (particularly psychological science) advances further. Briefly, there are a number of concepts peculiar and essential to morality, which clash (or appear to clash) with the notion that men, like things, work by cause and effect, are capable of scientific investigation, and are ultimately to be studied by the same methods as those which we use to study things, though no doubt with more difficulty.

If men's actions are all ultimately explicable in a normal manner, and in principle at least capable of prediction, doubt is cast on these moral concepts. Among those which become dubious are the notions of guilt, responsibility, blame, praise, punishment — and ultimately, justice.

The religious and moral concept of 'free will’ also appears to be challenged. For, in fact, we do still regard men in a very different logical light from that in which we regard things. We do not praise a man's moral actions in the same psychological way as that in which we praise the smooth running of a machine. To our minds, a man is 'responsible' for a murder in a different sense from that in which a bullet is 'responsible': the man is 'guilty', whereas the bullet can only be called 'guilty' by a metaphor.

We might say, perhaps, though this is crude, that orthodox morality depends on a picture of a sort of inner man or self, who is essentially mysterious and unpredictable: the person's ‘soul', or his 'will'. This inner man is inviolable, and not acted upon by causes: it is not just another part of the machine. It is a kind of incarnate will, that can do right or wrong, rather than merely go right or wrong. Hence we can blame, praise and punish it (or him) according to its merits or deserts, according to justice. All this, of course, is immensely helped by religious belief: the belief that men are basically mysterious, have (or are) souls, and so on; and this is why religious believers tend to be horrified by the scientific approach to the human personality.

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Fri May 16, 2025 6:51 pm Willy B laid it out for IC in that passage you quoted, and you don't seem to have understood him either. When he tells you that "determinism accounts for the phenomena just as well as free will" he means it. It's moot as a question that needs to be answered, and it's equally moot as a question that can really be answered, because properly understood, determinism is just an alternative way of describing the world exactly as it is, not some other world.

Atla wrote: ↑Fri May 16, 2025 7:53 pm I can't even beat sense into VA using my supposed free will.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri May 16, 2025 8:04 pm

Atla wrote: ↑Fri May 16, 2025 7:53 pm I can't even beat sense into VA using my supposed free will.

Then get your hands on an actual free will.

If you wish I can set VA on a healing path, but you tight-fisted English jerk-offs* are going to have to make a contribution to the cause. I’ll ask for at least a grand.

*Yes, yes, I know you Atla are some weird Greekish mutt from only God knows where …

FlashDangerpants wrote: ↑Fri May 16, 2025 6:51 pmYou...think...if free will is an illusion then the world would be different to the way it is

BigMike wrote: ↑Fri Nov 29, 2024 6:06 pmHere’s the brutal truth: your brain is a deterministic machine, operating under the same unyielding physical laws as a rock rolling downhill. You don’t control your thoughts, your desires, or your decisions. You are driven by a cascade of external inputs, biological processes, and environmental stimuli—all of which you neither initiated nor directed.

Alexis Jacobi wrote: ↑Fri May 16, 2025 7:45 pm The following has relevancy to the never-ending debate on the theme:

The following from Philosophy and Religion: The Logic of Religious Belief, by John Wilson 1961

The second type of support which the religious feeling gives to morality also assists morality to retain its non-scientific character. Religious feeling resists the tendency to regard men as logically similar to things: a tendency which grows as science (particularly psychological science) advances further. Briefly, there are a number of concepts peculiar and essential to morality, which clash (or appear to clash) with the notion that men, like things, work by cause and effect, are capable of scientific investigation, and are ultimately to be studied by the same methods as those which we use to study things, though no doubt with more difficulty.

If men's actions are all ultimately explicable in a normal manner, and in principle at least capable of prediction, doubt is cast on these moral concepts. Among those which become dubious are the notions of guilt, responsibility, blame, praise, punishment — and ultimately, justice.

The religious and moral concept of 'free will’ also appears to be challenged. For, in fact, we do still regard men in a very different logical light from that in which we regard things. We do not praise a man's moral actions in the same psychological way as that in which we praise the smooth running of a machine. To our minds, a man is 'responsible' for a murder in a different sense from that in which a bullet is 'responsible': the man is 'guilty', whereas the bullet can only be called 'guilty' by a metaphor.

We might say, perhaps, though this is crude, that orthodox morality depends on a picture of a sort of inner man or self, who is essentially mysterious and unpredictable: the person's ‘soul', or his 'will'. This inner man is inviolable, and not acted upon by causes: it is not just another part of the machine. It is a kind of incarnate will, that can do right or wrong, rather than merely go right or wrong. Hence we can blame, praise and punish it (or him) according to its merits or deserts, according to justice. All this, of course, is immensely helped by religious belief: the belief that men are basically mysterious, have (or are) souls, and so on; and this is why religious believers tend to be horrified by the scientific approach to the human personality.