Does Free Will exist?

23 thoughts on “Does Free Will exist?”

1. What is free will? It is the ability to make the wrong choice as often as one makes a right choice, or a neutral choice.
   I am not going to tell you the story of my life, but there is no way anyone or anything could have predicted or otherwise chosen all the various choices I have made in my life. Maybe your life has been totally predictable, right down to your choice to believe there is no free will. So maybe there are people with no free will, but there are also people who have it. That is at least a more optimal position to take than denying free will completely.
   This world/life is not black and white — it will always be some shade of grey.

   And as for your definiition of consciousness as the perception of and reaction to stimuli: Lifeless matter cannot perceive. A rock sitting in the sun will react to the stimuli of heat, but that reaction is not a possible reaction, or a probable reaction. It is the only reaction that the rock can make. There is no decision to react to the heat! Perception take consciousness, or awareness, or life, or whatever word you choose to apply. Perception requires the capability of perceiving,
   I am perceiving that you are designing your definitions to support your arguments, rather than examining the definition to see if it supports your argument.

   I know you did not write this post or the others to make me respond to them. It was my choice to respond because my expetience tells me you are wrong in your definitions.
   You can list all the ways you want that make it sound like our lives are controlled by chemical reactions, or pain, or response to particular stimuli, but that list speaks of nothing that counters your argument even just for the sake of argument. You make closed statements to stop all challenges in their tracks, yet here am I arguing against your list — arguing you need to make more additions to your list. Tell me, please, what is happening in my brain that is causing me to challenges what you are saying. I was taught as a child to be seen and not heard. How did that work out for me?. I was taught as a child to shut up and just do what I was told. I didn’t learn that one very well either. According to my history, my DNA, I should have stayed the victim I was made to be all my childhood. On my 16th birthday I walked out of my childhood home, and never went back.
   I choose to be a pacifist in a very violent world, even though I have often been attacked by very violent people. I never fight back, not with violence. What chemical is making me make that decision? It is certainly not fear, because I stand up to violence. Other times I just leave a violent scene. Is that not free will, never reacting the same way to similar stimuli? And here I stop..

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   1. The notion of “free will” has nothing to do with predictability. It has to do with the (ridiculous) belief that you control all the chemicals in your body — the hormones including Cortisol, Thyroid Hormones, Estrogen and Testosterone, Insulin. Melatonin, Serotonin, Dopamine. Ghrelin and Leptin — including al the chemicals entering your body from the air you breath, the liquids you drink, the food you eat, and the strange belief that these chemicals do not affect your decision-making.

      You don’t control the myriad chemicals and they do affect your thinking. To believe otherwise is naive.

      Also, you claim lifeless matter cannot perceive. Fair enough. Please define lifeless.

      If you don’t like my definition of consciousness, you are free to come up with an alternative — and then defend it. It’s OK to throw stones (pun intended), but then you have to use those stones to build something. Tell me your definition of consciousness, and then I’ll ask you as series of “Is this conscious, and why?” questions. Be prepared to defend your definition.

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      1. All the chemicale are there, yes, but they have nothing to do with “will,” in my opinion. Free or not, will is the power to make a choice. Chemicals can point a brain in various directions, but in the end it is the mind that ultimately decides on many of the things we do as living beings.

         Consciousness is having a mind seperate from the brain, that can pull together related and unrelated facts and use them to make some decisions. You listed a lot of tnings that chemicals control, i am not disputing that, but there are things where a mind is needed as the final arbiter in making a decision. I mean this in the nicest of ways, but given your arguments maybe you don’t have a mind, maybe you work solely with brain power — but I know I have a mind, and I use it regularly. I don’t believe everything I read. I don’t believe everything I hear. Sometimes I don’t even believe evefything I see, because eyesight cannot see around corners or behind things. Will, and espescially free will, is being able to make a decision counter to what one thinks one knows.

         Consciousness is a quality of life. As I have said before, life is that which comes into being by fission or fusion. Life requires RNA and DNA. Life requires the potential to grow and the potential to thrive. Life can create cells out of seemingly nothing. Life takes in energy, be it from sunlight or foodstuffs or water, and ļĺactively changes the chemicals involved to create something that was not there previously. And above all else, life must be able to die. Your rocks cannot die. They cannot take in energy and use it to produce anything but excited atoms, and once the atoms lose their excitement (cool off) the rock will return to its unexcited state — and size. Rocks cannot grow! Left on its own, say frozen in an glacier for a billion years, nothing at all will change the rock in any way. There is no life there.
         Life above the cellular stage is not one-dimensional. It Involves many processes working together to produce growth, and to produce or create change. Life is capable of reproducing itself. Life can create life.

         Consciousness it the ability to not just perceive and react, but to be able to put perceptions together and react in new or different ways. Consciousness “can” say “I am” but does not have to be able to say it. Consciousness takes in information, or energy, and changes it internally. Outside forces can affect consciousness, but they cannot stop conciousness unless the force causes death.

         To anticipate your question, death is the stoppage of life, Everything in a body stops working after death, though different parts can last longer than other parts, Fortunately human organs do not die instantly, and can be put into living bodies to help that body survive. But that usefulness is limited, and not gusranteed to work.
         But ultimately, death is the stoppage of function of an entire organism, complete to the cellular level.

         If these definitions/descriptions are not scientific enough for you, that is becsuse I am not a scientist. But I am a living being, able to understand some of the processes my body acvomp.ushes every dsy, with the knowledge I will die eventually if not sooner.

         Yes, consciousness includes reaction to perceived and even unperceived stimuli, but it is so much more. It cannot be boiled down to only one condition.

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         1. You wrote, “All the chemicals are there, yes, but they have nothing to do with “will,” in my opinion. Free or not, will is the power to make a choice. Chemicals can point a brain in various directions, but in the end it is the mind that ultimately decides on many of the things we do as living beings.”

            If you get drunk, does your mind make the same decisions as when you are not drunk? Are you also saying that hormones do not affect your thinking?

            As for life, do you consider a virus to be alive? A sperm? An egg? They all include DNA and RNA. Are they conscious?

            You wrote, “Consciousness is having a mind separate from the brain, that can pull together related and unrelated facts and use them to make some decisions.” Where is your consciousness if it is separate from your brain?

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            1. Alcohol, and hormones are chemicals — and yes they can affect my decision-making process. But there are other factors involved.
               I was addicted to nicotine, a chemical. I smoked 75 Canadian cigarettes a day for years — much stronger than the American ones. Nicotine was in complete control, almost. One night as I went to sleep, i decided I would never smoke another cigarette in my life. When I woke up in the morning I threw my cigarettes in the garbage, AND NEVER SMOKED ANOTHER CIGARETTE IN MY LIFE. Never even had a urge to smoke. Chemicals were not as strong as my mind. That was 41 years ago.
               I already answered your questions about life, I guess you missed them. A sperm and an egg are living material, yes. They are the foundations of animal life. Obviously they have the potential to be conscious, otherwise we would not be conscious. As for a virus, last time I checked viruses did not have complete DNA strings in their cells. That knowledge may have changed, but I never heard that it did, so I go with a maybe. They certainly do reproduce, by fission, but to my best knowledge they only reproduce themselves over and over, never anything new or different. So I see them as very rudimentary lifeforms. Are they capable of consciousness? As I have said many times over on your blog, I DON’T KNOW. That is far beyond, or prior to, my experience.

               My consciousness is in every cell of my body, not just my brain. I don’t know about you, but my body “talks” to me, giving me warm fuzzies when something is good, or warning me with feelings of trepidation when there could be a threat — BEFORE THE THREAT EVEN APPEARS! I learned to “listen” to my body when it talks to me. As far back as I can remember it has never been wrong. Are those warnings chemical? Probably, but it is me who listens to the warnings, who enjoys the warm fuzzies. I know a number of people who do not listen to their bodies, they never taught thmselves how to listen. In my mind they are the poorer for it.

               So far, Rodger, all you are doing is repeating your questions over and over. You have given me no basis for your belief that perceiving and responding to stimuli is the only factor in being conscious. So our definitions of consciousness are not the same. For me consciousness leads to learning which leads to change. A rock cannot learn, cannot change — therefore it is not conscious. You continually ask if a sleeping person is conscious. This one I have not answered yet because there are different levels of consciousness. When I sleep, I dream. I am always in the dream, usually along with other beings of some kind. Do they exist only in my dreams? Some of them, yes. Others are real representations of living people. BUT, while I am dreaming, i am also watching the dream on some level of consciousness. Watching a dream is similar to being in a theatre watching a movie. Are you conscious when you are watching a movie, or do you sometimes get so engrossed into the movie you forget you are a separate person? That is how I am when I am watching a dream. I am aware I am watching myself. I remember many of my dream
               s through that awareness. Most of the memories I throw away, but some are too real to throw away. Those I keep, at least while I try to figure out if there is a message in that dream. Sometimes I find one, but not always. If I like the message, or feel it can be useful to me, I integrate the learning into my being. So, yes, sleeping people can be conscious on some level.
               You also ask if my mind and my brain are separate? Let me ask you if you have ever “astral travelled,” or “spirit travelled”? You probably think such a thing is hooey. Impossible. But most people astral travel in their sleep occasionally. It gives you a feeling you are flying!
               When I was younger I astral travelled, consciously. You won’t believe me, of course, but as I live and breathe i could consciously separate my mind from my body, and go various places around the world. My brain did not come with me, but my “spirit” did. I felt myself detaching from my body, travelling around, and then sttling back into my body. When I did this my consciousness was always with me. It did not remain with my body. The term astral travel is a translation of a Sanskrit word, used to describe out-of-body travel. I did not invent it. But when I read it I immediately knew what it meant, because I had already been doing it. You can decry my words all you want, but you cannot take those experiences away from me.
               I could go on, but by know I have list your interest. I’m just another one of those religios weirdos. Except I am not religious, and have not been for about 50 years. Whether you want to believe me ot not us up to you. I do not only know astral travel is real, i have experienced it many times over.
               This probably challenges everything you want to believe about life. Reject it if you will. But that won’t change me. I know what I know.

               So, is our conversation over, or do you truly have an open mind? Time will tell, even though time is just a word used to describe a series of perpetual nows.
               Have a good night, Rodger. Sleep well.

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            2. Thank you for posting this anseer in its complete form. The question is, will you reply to it? What are those chemicals in your brain telling you to do? Are you willing to listen to truths beyond your experience? Are you willing to challenge them as you said you would?
               So just to let you know, I am not finnished with this conversation yet. I have probably taken it in a ditection you were not prepared to go. But that is life. It is out of your control. No one can know what is going to happen when they put something out into the world, or into life. That is the thing about having quintillions of lifeforms, just on this planet alone — each being has its own experiences, which affect the way they go through life equally to how chemicals sffect our lives. One has to reject all boxes that they were put in as youths and young adults. The universe is a big place. The cosmos is even bigger. Anything, uterrly anything, can happen — including free will.
               Peace to you, Rodger. You have an enquiring mind. Don’t be afraid to use it, please.

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            3. Thank you for your comment, which as always, I am publishing, though I have no idea what your point is.

               My only question: Are you on some sort of brain altering medication? Really, what medications are you on?

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            4. None that affect my brain. My point is that you asserted that matter that responds to a stimulus is conscious, but you have never proved it.

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            5. It’s a definition. You don’t prove definitions. You state them. The definition of consciousness is reacting to a stimulus.

               Rawgod, I am honored to correspond with the one human in the universe whose brain is not affected by chemicals.

               Wait, I had an uncle like that.

               He would make the same claim at parties, just after he started pinching the women and berore he dipped into the punch bowl with his bare hand. Later, his excuse was, “Sorry, I was drunk.”

               By the way, Liam Payne fell off a balcony. Police said in a statement that they were called to the CasaSur Hotel in the capital’s Palermo neighborhood after being notified of an “aggressive man who could be under the effects of drugs and alcohol.”

               What? Someone’s brain can be affected by drugs?? Who knew?

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2. For those who think “free will” exists, consider autism.

   Autism can affect judgment and decision-making. Individuals on the autism sepctrum may face challenges in processing information, navigating social cues, and managing sensory overload.

   These difficulties can make simple decision-making more complex and stressful, even for seemingly simple choices.

   Autism can be caused by genetics, parental age, pregnancy and birth complications, and environmental factors.

   There are three levels of autism, 1, 2, and three, describing different levels of life support the autistic person requires.

   Level 1, the lowest level requires minimal support and is not easily recognized. You may even know a level 1 autistic and not realize it. They may have slight difficulty with social interaction and communication.

   Many individuals with Level 1 ASD (often previously referred to as “high-functioning autism” or Asperger’s Syndrome) might go through life without a formal diagnosis. They might attribute their unique behaviors or social challenges to quirks or personal idiosyncrasies, rather than recognizing them as part of autism

   No one intentionally is autistic.

   So, my question is: Does an autistic person have free will?

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   1. We have Free Will, but within an actually pretty narrow set of chemically, sensibly & electrically controlled AND real-world, choices. By real-world I mean something like this: You can choose to try to fly like a bird, but if you do so while jumping off a cliff (or a building), you will die. People who chose to fly like a bird, or, more likely, our primate ancestors, have already been weeded from the gene pool. Alas, evolution hasn’t completely handled people who choose to fly like Superman…yet. So, faulty information-processing of movies and comics can override instinct for self-preservation.

      By sensibly, I mean as a result of senses: e.g. we only see or hear in a very narrow range of their respective spectrums. Elephants and whales can hear low tones we can’t, and create them too. Bees see in the ultra-violet range and we can’t. It’s impossible to make decisions about things we can’t see or hear.

      Chemically, you’ve already described the limits pretty well. I have nothing to add.

      Now that I’ve shrunk the possibility of Free Will a lot, let me expand it a little bit.

      There’s good evidence that much of what the brain does is actually to suppress potential choices with an overlay of consciousness and reason. I worry about the absence of both at times, but let’s stick to the best case scenario as possible since we’ve already covered the worst cases.

      I used the case of Phinius Gage before – the unfortunate foreman of a road crew who, in the mid-nineteenth century, was a victim of an explosive iron rod shooting through his brain. All psychology students who went for their psychology B.A. when I did, learned about this case. Prior to the accident, which miraculous didn’t kill him outright, learned how he went from a level-headed leader of a rough crew of workers, to a man who could barely control his emotions, was prone to violent outbursts and violent behavior. It’s debated whether he later learned to recontrol himself as his brain healed but the damage to his brain, later understood to be his limbic system specifically, was profound. Clearly the iron rod didn’t impart any new behavioral choices upon Gage; it didn’t add neurons or add “brain.” It only destroyed synapses and brain matter. So the “bad” behavior potential was there in Gage’s brain all along. But previously it had been suppressed by Gage’s Free Will. After the accident, these potential choices rose to the surface, unchecked by the damage to his conscious control mechanisms. Alcohol, rage and other emotions, lead poisoning and other interferences already discussed can prevent the full operation of the Will, so it may never be completely Free. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have the ability, or the responsibility, legal or otherwise, to choose to do some things and not others. Indeed, our whole legal system depends upon it. The law DOES recognize diminished capacity, but in reality, that type of defense rarely succeeds. The law generally says an adult at least is almost always responsible for his bad behavior, that a person knew something was wrong – ignorance of the law is no excuse either – and chose to do it anyway, therefore, he/she must be punished according to the rule of law. This is true in most aspects of life: liberals generally allow for more leeway towards people who have been victims of poverty, while conservatives might sometimes blame the Devil or a drop in belief in God for “sinful” actions. But most of the time, even they ascribe blame to the person’s choices themselves.

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      1. We make the law. The law, and most of humankind, wrongly assume there is free will. That assumption doesn’t allow for all the billions of chemical and electrical actions happening in your brain and the rest of your body, that affect our actions.

         Gage didn’t have “free will” before his accident and didn’t have it after. The chemistry and electrical stimuli and response simply changed. I doubt the scenario of a hidden Mr. Hyde, kept in chains by a free will Dr. Jeckel, was let loose by Mr. Gage’s accident.

         The iron rod merely made his brain different from what it had been. Some people are born that way. Some people become that way because of changes in their brain and body.

         Had his doctor given Gage chemicals, perhaps Gage would have become passive, even docile. When the chemicals wore off, he might have become a beast, again. It’s chemicals, not “free will.”

         When you were younger your brain and body are different from what they are today. Your inputs are different, too. So your decisions, emotions, attitudes and actions are different. We have a name for that: Maturation.

         When you go out tonight, try some chemicals. Maybe pot. Maybe alcohol. Maybe some other dope. See what happens to your “free will.”

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         1. No thanks. I used my Free Will, even as a child/teenager, not to use recreational drugs or alcohol of any kind. I thought the kids who did use those were, well, dope. I wouldn’t have expressed it this way as a teenager, but I never wanted to be dependent on any drug. Also, I had problems A-B-C, why would I want to add problem D, for drugs&drinking – the list? Also, my mother smoked until I was six, and said it was my nagging that made her quit; I barely remember that so I’ll take her word for it. I see wasted lives everywhere since cannabis was legalized here in NYC and NY. The stats confirm that cannabis daily use will exceed alcohol daily use sometime next year, nationally. Overdose cases have skyrocketed in every state that’s legalized cannabis.

            That not a result of Free Will. It’s a result of greedy state politicians putting the interest of their coffers and personal campaign donations, plus the youth vote – still immature – ahead of human health and quality of life.

            So, Free Will comes with reasoning and observation of consequences. It’s pretty hard to argue my “chemical mix” was somehow responsible for that when other peers had more-or-less the same chemical soup.

            Poverty, stress, even epigenetics all influence our decisions, it is true, but why gauge people according to the worst examples? Our best natures allow for MORE Free Will, though it will never be 100% in human beings; maybe advanced alien beings will do better. Star Trek and Star Wars are poor presenters of such possibilities. I tried to be more creative and outside-the-human-box in my Impland book, mentioned earlier. I didn’t always succeed. It’s very hard to imagine a species superior to our own. Our brains aren’t well equipped for it. But we can imagine and actually see, worse versions, so it ought to work the other way too.

            And I, and my psychology professor, disagree about Gage. He HAD bad,destructive thoughts, or unconscious impulses he didn’t even know he had. But in his original healthier brain, they were tamped down, unlike the inadequately tamped down iron spike that shot through his head (set off by a spark to the dynamite beneath it, presumably). We all have such impulses. A healthy, mature brain, suppresses them. It’s scary, but that is what is meant by choice, and the Free Will to choose.

            The law is right. You are wrong. I so will it.

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            1. “So, Free Will comes with reasoning and observation of consequences. It’s pretty hard to argue my “chemical mix” was somehow responsible for that when other peers had more-or-less the same chemical soup.”

               If you and your psychology can’t see what’s wrong with this “logic,” no facts will persuade you. I’ll just have to wait until you get drunk.

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            2. Since I haven’t had alcohol in decades, aside from a 2-week experiment to see if a glass of wine would help me sleep better; it didn’t – I think neither of us will live to see that day.

               I also think you are missing the point.

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            3. I present the following as a PSA, not as a follow-up comment or rebuttal:

               “A study published in Molecular Psychiatry is the first to suggest that the use of high-potency cannabis leaves a distinct mark on DNA, providing valuable insights into the biological impact of cannabis use. High-potency cannabis is defined as having Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) content of 10% or more. THC is the principal psychoactive constituent in cannabis.”

               https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-10-high-potency-cannabis-epigenetic.html

               The THC in current canabis is 10X or more higher than when we were teenagers. It can be over 90% THC too. There is no safe use anymore, if there ever was.

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            4. No surprise. Chemicals rule the brain and the brain rules the person. Strangely, some people believe they rule their brain via a mythical thing called “free will.” To believe that, one must be drunk — on chemicals.

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            5. Certain individuals seem more likely to believe in Free Will. They are less likely to believe outside influences in general control their lives and more likely to believe in personal motivation and control. They might skew conservative except for religious belief, though even there, Christian theology posits Free Will in most of its sects, as long as the Devil doesn’t make them do something, or they believe they are “God’s Messenger” which may be even worse because they can think they’re acting for the good, when they are bad. At least the Devil believers know they’re bad, they just choose to do bad anyway.

               Are these beliefs all controlled by chemicals or Free Will?

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            6. No will is “free.” All decisions and beliefs are affected by chemicals in the brain. I’m not sure why anyone would doubt this while simultaneously knowing that alcohol and other recreational drugs affect judgment. One cannot believe both.

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            7. Sorry, I think your chemicals are just making you think this way. I’m using Free Will.

               Free Will or ad hominem?

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            8. Chemicals like alcohol, marijuana, etc. affect the brain, where decisions are made. If one doesn’t have a brain, the chemicals may have less effect.

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3. Here’s an excerpt from a new finding related to “free will.”

   Researchers analyzed real-world data from more than 500,000 patients with opioid use disorder (OUD) and 800,000 with alcohol use disorder (AUD) who were prescribed GIP or GLP-1 receptor agonist drugs like Ozempic (semaglutide) or Mounjaro (tirzepatide).

   The study found that participants taking these drugs had 40 percent lower rates of opioid overdose and 50 percent lower rates of alcohol intoxication compared to those not taking the medications. Even when looking at different health conditions, patients with OUD and AUD who received GIP/GLP-1 RA prescriptions still showed lower rates of both opioid overdoses and alcohol intoxication.

   These results are consistent with animal studies showing that GLP-1 RA drugs can reduce substance-related behaviors in rodents, the authors wrote.

   Free will?

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4. Obsessive, Compulsive Disorder has several primary causes. Which ones demonstrate “free will.”

   1. Genetics: OCD can run in families, suggesting a genetic component.
   2. Brain Abnormalities: Differences in certain areas of the brain, particularly those involved in  decision-making and behavior regulation, may play a role.
   3. Brain Chemistry: Imbalances in neurotransmitters like serotonin, dopamine, and glutamate are associated with OCD.
   4. Environmental Factors: Stressful life events, trauma, or infections can trigger or exacerbate OCD symptoms.
   5. Temperament: Certain personality traits, such as perfectionism or a tendency to be overly cautious, may increase the risk of developing OCD.

   Again, which ones demonstrate free will?

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