Hey /sci/, help me cope with the fact that there's no free will. If you want to respect physics, then the only shred of hope (if you can call it that) seems to lie in a controversial concept called downward causation.
I've just read this https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5039668 and the tl;dr is:
>be agent
>have a novel problem
>do a stochastic search (e.g. neural processes)
>the result is your will
The author's main argument is that the cost function or, as he calls it, the interpreter is what allows free choice. In other words it's your will that picks the response out of all the responses that you could come up with. The underlying assumption is downward causation, that the high-level processes such as thought can impose constraints on the low-level processes such as the opening and closing of ion channels. I think it's bullshit because what downward causation entails is that somehow electrons care about your feelings.
Before anyone brings up (quantum) uncertainty for whatever reason, I'd like you remind you that randomness does not help free will. The problem isn't whether there are some interactions that are indeterministic, but it's the fact that low-level interactions obey simple rules that doesn't capture free will. And those rules don't care about the emerging high-level behavior as far as we know because they cause the high-level behavior.
So, is there a way? If there isn't, you can't really blame me for making this thread.
I've just read this https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5039668 and the tl;dr is:
>be agent
>have a novel problem
>do a stochastic search (e.g. neural processes)
>the result is your will
The author's main argument is that the cost function or, as he calls it, the interpreter is what allows free choice. In other words it's your will that picks the response out of all the responses that you could come up with. The underlying assumption is downward causation, that the high-level processes such as thought can impose constraints on the low-level processes such as the opening and closing of ion channels. I think it's bullshit because what downward causation entails is that somehow electrons care about your feelings.
Before anyone brings up (quantum) uncertainty for whatever reason, I'd like you remind you that randomness does not help free will. The problem isn't whether there are some interactions that are indeterministic, but it's the fact that low-level interactions obey simple rules that doesn't capture free will. And those rules don't care about the emerging high-level behavior as far as we know because they cause the high-level behavior.
So, is there a way? If there isn't, you can't really blame me for making this thread.
