Do you think you have free will?

[TimberWolf]

- I wish that monkey would stop farting
- I hope a fly comes past
- where's mrs toad, I fancy some rumpy pumpy,
- I hope that's rain falling on my head

Except toads must contemplate those weighty matters in pictures or something other than croaks. Language is so entrenched in to our thinking that conscious thought seems tricky to carry out without also silently saying the words. Ever tried? Even though a lot of our internal thinking must be done without language.

[EternalOptimist]

I sometimes wonder what a toad is thinking about when it's sitting on leaf. It can't all be about flies surely?

Well free will, surely, is that you come to a fork in the road, and you can choose the left road, or the right.

If there is determinism, you would always choose the left, if you had free will, you might sometimes take the right.

whether a toad ever gets to make choices I dont know.

how you might prove the road thing ? i would guess it would have to be a thought experiment.

[threaded]

Surprisingly few neurons are required for consciousness. IIRC less than 1000.

[EternalOptimist]

Surprisingly few neurons are required for consciousness. IIRC less than 1000.

so why do I lose consciousness after ten pints of fozzies ?



its a worry

[Mich the Tester]

Well free will, surely, is that you come to a fork in the road, and you can choose the left road, or the right.

If there is determinism, you would always choose the left, if you had free will, you might sometimes take the right.

whether a toad ever gets to make choices I dont know.

how you might prove the road thing ? i would guess it would have to be a thought experiment.

Free will in this case is bounded by the choice of right or left. To exercise true free will, you’d need roads going off in every direction in every dimension. In this case, the roadbuilders have limited your choice by building only two roads.

[TimberWolf]

If there is determinism, you would always choose the left, if you had free will, you might sometimes take the right.

Only if the rules were very simple, to the tune of one. Another deterministic rule might be if the last left turned out a bit carp, take a right. Add another billion or so rules with various weightings and you might think you had a choice.

[EternalOptimist]

forget the road.

the road was a paradigm. a model. a structure.


ok, you have a decision, a or b

where a is the left road. etc

and there is no a priori, nothing to base a judgement on

no road
no judgement


determinism will always choose a, free will will sometimes pick b

[EternalOptimist]

Only if the rules were very simple, to the tune of one. Another deterministic rule might be if the last left turned out a bit carp, take a right. Add another billion or so rules with various weightings and you might think you had a choice.

so you think the very compexity of the determinism, gives the illusion of free will

[threaded]

so why do I lose consciousness after ten pints of fozzies ?



its a worry

There is a theory, IIRC 'single neuron theory' that each individual neuron is conscious, and that 'mind' is actually the majority vote.

Alcohol would of course interfere with the voting mechanism...

[Mich the Tester]

Only if the rules were very simple, to the tune of one. Another deterministic rule might be if the last left turned out a bit carp, take a right. Add another billion or so rules with various weightings and you might think you had a choice.

You don't need many rules. With only a few simple conditional rules, adding perhaps 'take a right in afternoon' and 'take a left in the morning', 'take a left if there's a tree on the left, and a right if not', and 'do not turn into a road where there is a dogturd' and 'unless the last turn in that direction was crap', and several repetitions you would achieve a chaotic situation where the end result varies wildly according to tiny variations in the starting conditions.