The Best of Reason: Did Evolution Give Us Free Will?

Free Agents author Kevin J. Mitchell makes a neuroscientific case against determinism.

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The Best of Reason: Did Evolution Give Us Free Will?

This week's featured article is "Did Evolution Give Us Free Will?" by Ronald Bailey.

This audio was generated using AI trained on the voice of Katherine Mangu-Ward.

Music Credits: "Deep in Thought" by CTRL S and "Sunsettling" by Man with Roses

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[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Speaking free will, here’s a bit of free will that’s not quite working out as planned. Front page, above the fold today.

Amazon worker who refused relocation to Seattle stares down last day
An Amazon employee who declined to move from Wisconsin as part of the company’s return-to-office mandate said Amazon set his last day for Nov. 1.

[Longtobefree]

Sounds like free will to me – – – – – – – – – –

[SQRLSY One]

Could Bill Gates PLEASE put MEEEEE on his will, for FREE?!?!?

[middlefinger]

The city has to bring in more six figure earners for prop tax ,sales tax. Do you think all those subsidized apartments for part time baristas are just going to subsidize themselves?

[Square = Circle]

There was a guy on Heaton last week making similar arguments. I find it endlessly amusing how each new generation of bio-scientists think they’re making wild, new contributions to this discussion rather than just repeating the same two-thousand-year-old-at-least determinist stances.

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

I agree with this. There is no proof either way, so all we can do is make impassioned logical arguments.

I still stand by my assertion that it’s far more horrifying to live as if we don’t, than to live as if we do. Sam Harris’ preferred vision if we don’t.

[SRG2]

There is no proof either way, so all we can do is make impassioned illogical arguments.

FTFY

Arguments from consequences may indeed be emotionally satisfying, and they can also be dismissed without any further thought.

Is there any physical structure in the universe aside from the brain that acts in a way that is neither deterministic nor random?

If you cannot cite one, what makes the brain different?

Further, I find a suspiciously low number of people who advocate for free will in the human brain are willing to concede that other animals have free will as well, suggesting that in general, their opposition to determinism is not scientifically-based. This may not apply to you, of course.

[SRG2]

Are UNWILLING to concede. Sheesh.

[Square = Circle]

If you cannot cite one, what makes the brain different?

The observation that it is.

Ask yourself this: if we’re looking for signs of alien life, or they are looking for us, what are we looking for?

We are looking for evidence of things that can’t be accounted for by passive deterministic forces.

IOW, consciousness is different from other things insomuch as it is observably different from other things, and cannot be accounted for in the same way that other things can.

And yes, this applies to animals. Because you can burn an animal every time it does something and predict that it will stop doing that thing, you haven’t really shown anything.

[Religion and Politics, my life]

There is proof and it follows necessarily from your very arguing !!
” man acts from judgment, because by his apprehensive power he judges that something should be avoided or sought. But because this judgment, in the case of some particular act, is not from a natural instinct, but from some act of comparison in the reason, therefore he acts from free judgment and retains the power of being inclined to various things. For reason in contingent matters may follow opposite courses, as we see in dialectic syllogisms and rhetorical arguments. Now particular operations are contingent, and therefore in such matters the judgment of reason may follow opposite courses, and is not determinate to one. And forasmuch as man is rational is it necessary that man have a free-will.”

A logical argument that is assessed by someone with no free will cannot weigh logic and cannot make mistakes either.

[Religion and Politics, my life]

Even KANT knew that that question shows you already reject free will.
It is one of the antinomies. You can’t even discuss the question without thereby REFUTING determinism. Okay, this is 800 years ago and still unanswerable to any mind above plant level :

“: But man acts from judgment, because by his apprehensive power he judges that something should be avoided or sought. But because this judgment, in the case of some particular act, is not from a natural instinct, but from some act of comparison in the reason, therefore he acts from free judgment and retains the power of being inclined to various things. For reason in contingent matters may follow opposite courses, as we see in dialectic syllogisms and rhetorical arguments. Now particular operations are contingent, and therefore in such matters the judgment of reason may follow opposite courses, and is not determinate to one. And forasmuch as man is rational is it necessary that man have a free-will.”

Airtight as can be, you have to reject reason to even attempt an answer, and notice : If evolution did such a thing, that too destroys the argument because

even Darwin himself admitted the worry:

With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?

[Mickey Rat]

One does have to wonder if there is no free will exactly where did evolution select for driving someone to become a biologist?

[SRG2]

To mate with biology co-eds, of course! Hence reproductive success.

An old biologist friend of mine, sadly now gone, did indeed marry and have kids with one of his students.

[SRG2]

You can’t even discuss the question without thereby REFUTING determinism.

So, many people have wrongly thought, over centuries.

[Religion and Politics, my life]

Yes, but it is thought itself and not its rightness or wrongness that refutes all determinism

[SRG2]

Why? What is thought that is distinct from a change of brain states?

[Square = Circle]

What is a change of brain states that is different from thought? By what grounds do you assert the order of causation with such confidence?

[Religion and Politics, my life]

What is anything distinct from its effects !!!
And why do you say ‘brain’ instead of ‘mind’.
You always argue epiphenomenalism but poorly

[Edmund Burke's Hastings spy]

Silly of you to not see that you are privileging YOUR thought as something special. Now we have different minds 🙂

[middlefinger]

Why does this stuff always seem to pop up after , um let’s see, terrorist attacks, mass murder of civilians , kidnappings and every city and urban university in the U.S. and Ivys celebrating it.

Some people did something, the people celebrating it are determined to do so, now let’s move on to open borders and subsidies for everything shall we.

[chemjeff radical individualist]

Oh come on. Everyone knows we don’t have free will. If you are born with XY chromosomes, that means you must wear pants and neckties and drink cheap beer and watch football on Sundays and go hunting. If you are born with XX chromosomes, that means you must wear skirts and dresses and wear perfume and makeup and drink “skinny mojitos” and obsess about staying fit and be up to date about the latest celebrity gossip. It is programmed into our genes. And anyone who dares to express any sentiment otherwise is a subversive gender traitor who must undergo shame and humiliation and rigorous psychological treatment, up to and including involuntary confinement to a mental hospital, to rid that person of the wrongthink that causes the person to think that maybe men can wear dresses or women can play football. It is the only way to keep society’s bodily fluids pure of the contamination that results from the occasional genetic abnormality that results from free will.

[chemjeff radical individualist]

If you are born with XY chromosomes, that means you are a man. If you are a man, that means you must conform to the social roles of a man. Why? Because the social roles of a man are those that have evolved over millions of years as the best fit for those who have XY chromosomes. Or in other words: That’s the way it’s always been and that’s the way it will always be.

If you are born with XX chromosomes, that means you are a woman. If you are a woman, that means you must conform to the social roles of a woman. Why? Because the social roles of a woman are those that have evolved over millions of years as the best fit for those who have XX chromosomes. Or in other words: That’s the way it has always been and that’s the way it will always be.

So it doesn’t matter if human beings have free will or not. If they are born into a world in which those who have XX chromosomes must obey the social assignment given to all with XX chromosomes, and those with XY chromosomes must obey the social assignment given to all with XY chromosomes, then who cares about antiquated notions like free will. Rigid social conformity trumps free will.

[chemjeff radical individualist]

This is why conservatism and libertarianism can never truly get along. Because conservatism will ALWAYS demand conformity to tradition, just for the sake of tradition. Men will be men, and women will be women, because that’s the way it has always been! And for them, that is a convincing argument! But for libertarians, LIBERTY is the guiding principle. The LIBERTY for men OR women to explore whatever it is that they wish to do, without violating the NAP, supersedes any demand to obey tradition. So if a man or woman doesn’t want to be a “man” or “woman, as a conservative defines the term, then that is the man’s or woman’s liberty to do so.

And the conservative’s impulse, when confronted with the man or woman who doesn’t conform to the traditional role assigned to the man or woman, is to use coercive force against that person. Because social order and tradition is more important than individual liberty.

[SRG2]

This is why conservatism and libertarianism can never truly get along.

That’s one reason, for sure. But from a political theory perspective there’s a more fundamental reason why conservatism and libertarianism are incompatible – at least, the conservatism of Burke, Oakeshott and other actual conservative thinkers, rather than emotionally-charged and tribal “conservatism” of the American right-wing.

The deference to existing institutions, the opposition to ideology in general and “rational” untried political theories, together with associated concerns of unforeseen consequences of implementing such theories, that are the hallmarks of fundamental conservative principles are all antithetical to a political theory like libertarianism which has never been attempted at any reasonable scale anywhere.

The “libertarianism” of many posters here turns out to be highly asymmetrical.

[Religion and Politics, my life]

Have you never heard of Harry Jaffa !!!

[SRG2]

Nope – and I just now whizzed through the Wikipedia entry on him. It doesn’t address my points. Perhaps you’d care to.

[Religion and Politics, my life]

You wave your hands and use words with no meaning, but it is about natural law. That is what conservatism is rooted in and what libertarianism rejects. Very simple and totally Jaffa.

The Classical and Christian Origins of American Politics: Political Theology, Natural Law, and the American Founding
by Kody W. Cooper , Justin Buckley Dyer

And for the same argument made around the time of the New Deal and Progressivsm and Libertarianism

Founding Fathers and the Natural Law: A Study of the Source of our Legal Institutions,
Clarence Emmett Manion

[Religion and Politics, my life]

What a dumb argument…to say that collective results from hundreds of millions of people over thousands of years is crap but each individual is the standard!! MAKES NO SENSE AT ALL
Conformit to tradition was never defined that way by any conservative I know, and I know them all.

So you exempt math, Why? 🙂

[Edmund Burke's Hastings spy]

What dumb BS. So if they always demand conformity to tradition then the tradition of a Burke must be the same as a modern conservvative’s and that is patently STUPID to say.

Worse yet you deny that Conservatives ever made that tradition. BUt Burke and Wilberforce and John Adams and many others show the absurdity of that. Look at Lincoln , he was FIGHTING THE LIBERAL CLINGING TO THE TRADITION OF SLAVERY

What a stupid moronic statement, you must be a lawyer or a college professor 🙂

[Religion and Politics, my life]

Just the opposite as your own post demonstrates. You are talking about conscience and not will. Will is what you do or don’t do with conscience. Aaaah, if only schools taught logic or rhetoric.

[HarrietLi]

No, not this. The school began to squeeze too many general subjects into the educational process. Yes, children are adaptive, but there is a limit to everything. One day I simply told my son – use help. Sometimes he gave money to a classmate to help him with various economic essays. Sometimes I gave an order to a special service – there This freed up his time for physics and mathematics. It is these subjects that are most important for his future profession. Study rhetoric? Are you sure this makes sense?

[Religion and Politics, my life]

Your own post argues against you. You speak of issues , all of them in fact, that are beyond physics and math
1) What are ‘too much studies” ?
2) Is it right to pass off as yours what you paid money for?
3) Are those ‘special services’ moral, both for you to use and for you to support ?
4) What subjects are most important in life?
5) How does one decide what makes sense?

Yes, rhetoric would show the utter stupidity of your argument 🙂

[Edmund Burke's Hastings spy]

YOu confuse , as many do, being finite with being determined.
But that does not follow. To be human means you have some weight or height , of course, but the weight or height you have is not thereby
determined. This is maybe the most basic logic error one can make.
To be anything definite is — wait for it– to be something definite.
And while I am at it , you are describing not free will but random will , which of course violates your entire argument. For the will to function in a rational being in a rational world ,the good MUST BE already existent. you can seek or not seek it but you can’t remake it.

[MWAocdoc]

Whether there is “proof” or not, logic can – and sometimes does – prove theories decisively. Paradoxes cannot exist. If you think you have found a paradox it means you asked an irrational question. Determinism is impossible given the state of the art in physics. If the physics changes, one might have to reconsider the possibility of determinism within the new context. As things stand now, the future millions of choices by billions of people per unit time cannot possibly have been calculated by a “Deep Thought” computer algorithm at the dawn of human intelligence because no matter how detailed or comprehensive the state of the entire universe might be; and no matter how accurate the coefficients of all possible factors included in the linear model for that algorithm; using the end state of each number crunch as the starting state for calculating the next state of the universe is an iterative process in a chaotic system that becomes wildly inaccurate after no more than ten iterations – whether or not you try to include the concept of quantum indeterminacy in the mix.

[SRG2]

That turns out to be an argument from personal incredulity. We don’t know how complex a computer it is possible to build and in any event as a thought experiment you can construct a computer of arbitrarily large size and power. Further, neither quantum indeterminacy nor chaos theory lets you squeeze free will in through the cracks.

Not being able to predict an outcome doesn’t mean that the outcome was freely chosen, only that your knowledge of the initial state and your processing power are limited – ignoring quantum indeterminacy.

I note that the Libet experiment demonstrates that in at least one set of conditions, we think we have conscious free will but provably we don’t. Hence our subjective impression of free will cannot be relied upon.

[Square = Circle]

Further, neither quantum indeterminacy nor chaos theory lets you squeeze free will in through the cracks.

Your argument is entirely circular.

Ask yourself this: why are you even thinking about free will in the first place?

[Religion and Politics, my life]

Okay, once every 2-3 months I applaud an answer that appears to come from a thinking person. [ applause ]

[Religion and Politics, my life]

I only jump in to say that your ‘personal incredulity’ reply is itself fallacious. A thing can be true and yet held for or against by someone for fallacious reasons.
And LIBET rejects you, just for the record

It is important to recognize the almost universal experience: that we can act in certain situation with a free, independent choice and control of whether to act. […] This provides a kind of prima facie evidence that conscious mental processes can cause some brain processes. Our own experimental findings showed that conscious free will does not initiate the final “act now” process; the initiation of it occurs unconsciously. But conscious will certainly has the potentiality to control the progress and outcome of volitional processes. Thus, the experience of independent choice and of control (of whether and when to act) does have a potentially solid validity as not being an illusion. […] My conclusion about free will, one genuinely free in the non-determined sense, is that its existence is at least as good, if not a better, scientific option than is its denial by natural law determinist theory. (Libet 1999, 56f.)

Libet, B. (1999). Do we have free will? Journal of Consciousness Studies, 6, No. 8–9: 47–57

[Edmund Burke's Hastings spy]

NO , his argument can’t be invalidated by YOUR incredulty !!!
And you are wrong about Libet as many have shown since. So for example a probe to the brain can make you lift your arm but YOU KNOW IT WASN”T YOU willing it.
This has been shown REPEATEDLY

[Religion and Politics, my life]

All you are doing , unwittingly, is affirming LOGOS and denying the Muslim Double Truth theory. SO: for you or anyone to discuss this rather than say read cow livers IS TO AFFIRM LOGOS.

[Edmund Burke's Hastings spy]

I have NEVER in my life known a person to hold Determinism that was not what we used to collouqially call “an asshole”
And if you murdered one of their family members they would not say “well, he had to, too bad”
I live by what C S Peirce said

Charles Sanders Peirce — ‘Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts.’

So many stupid Libertarians say in effect :RIght now I am for “all men are created equal” but if someone shows me that is wrong I willl change my mind

Just as well say : I doubt my mother was a guard at the Nazi camps but if she was I’ll be the first to ……

That is a disgusting lack of conscience.