Modern science is founded on the philosophical assumptions of materialism

Fail. Scientific metohod does nowhere assume materialism. It could happily be applied to magic or ghosts or whatever if they existed

Materialism assumes determinism.

Fail. Quantum mechanics is materialistic but does deal with inherently stochastic processes.

Determinism is mechanistic and denies free will.

Fail again. There is no way to define fee will that would not be either equivalent to randomness or be possible even under determinism. Both of which science can deal with.

As the first commenter pointed out, this isn’t an assumption to be made so lightly:

Determinism is mechanistic and denies free will.

As Daniel C. Dennett argues convincingly in Freedom Evolves, determinism does not deny free will at all, and in fact may be required for free will to exist. After all, what good is making a choice if the outcome of your actions based on that choice are random?

I too used to believe that the possible definitions of “free will” were limited to “random”, “mechanical” (meaning non-existent), or “spiritual” (magical). Freedom Evolves is an excellent read on the nature of what “free will” actually means, in a way completely compatible with a deterministic brain.

I think this discussion needs to be careful with its terms. Eg ‘hard’ and ’soft’ determinism need to be distinguished.

Hard determinism is not compatible with free wiil, soft determinism is (though hard determinists see it as an evasion).

The assumption of an independant observer is one assumption that positivist science is based on.

Cause is an assumption that empiricism is based on (I’ve never stubbed my toe on a cause and I bet you haven’t either).

Your argument for free will fails because faulting a study for having a hypothesis is illogical. They were able to gather empirical evidence to back up their hypothesis, which you need to refute. You say you’ll do that by re-interpreting the result, but you offered no re-interpretation, instead you simply dismissed the premise of their argument. That’s not re-interpretation…

I agree with T_U_T, this was indeed a fail argument. From the very get-go my first two questions were:

(1) Exactly what is the definition of “free will”? The term is too nebulous and conflated as it currently stands in modern parlance to be put under rigorous empirical or theoretical study. And,

(2) Exactly how would deterministic left-right button pushing be logically extended to all willed choices? A bit jumpy if you ask me.

You say there are “alternative interpretations” of the data, and that you would outline one for us. I reread this blogpost over and still don’t see said interpretation. The chief erroneous claim in the whole post, though, is “materialism assumes determinism,” which is false – as said above, quantum theory is materialistic but requires elements of randomness. Even if the universe is entirely deterministic at heart – it might not rule out free will depending on exactly what “free” means.

What does it mean?

P.S. I’d like to go under that fMRI. What I’d do is select an elementary sequence of numbers and modulate it. Say I take prime numbers modulo 4. If it’s congruent to 1, I go left, if 3, I go right. (And I start at 3 of course.) Would the machine be able to parse my brain patterns corresponding to my convoluted calculations? Doubtful.

Brad hit the nail on the head. What is the definition of free will? To most of the commenters so far it appears that free will = randomness. I disagree with that definition. Free will is closer to choice but even that is incomplete. I also believe that there are gradations of free will – the free will of a human is different than the free will of a snail. I know many would argue that snails don’t have free will (especially because many argue that people don’t) but that’s just my belief. Some people might think that choice = randomness = unexplained behavior/outcome = uncertainty. Those are aspects of free will but none of them is sufficient to define free will. My definition of free will needs some context, which I can’t provide in this comment. I know that’s a cop-out but I don’t think I can do the topic justice in just a few words.

There were many flaws with my post – I recognize that (namely the part where I said I’d offer an alternative interpretation – I meant to add that it would be in a follow-up post, which I have yet to write). I just wanted it to serve as a jumping ground for further discussion.

Brad, “‘materialism assumes determinism,’ which is false – as said above, quantum theory is materialistic but requires elements of randomness.” Ah, but does randomness equal “free will”? That’s the question, isn’t it?

“The term is too nebulous and conflated as it currently stands in modern parlance to be put under rigorous empirical or theoretical study.” True, it is a nebulous term but you cannot “study free will” using empirical methods. We can set up some operational definition for free will but we are still not studying it; we are studying what we believe is a measurable manifestation of it. Now we can study it using theory (i.e., philosophy) but any other method is untenable.

Evan, many people today assume soft determinism but the problem is that so-called soft determinism is simply a change in the meaning of the word determinism. There really is no “hard” and “soft” determinism – just hard determinism. What is called soft determinism is something else altogether because it breaks the basic assumption of determinism. Many people try to sugar-coat determinism to fit experience or data or personal belief systems but what they are doing is misapplying a convenient label to something it is not. Even though I try not to assume determinism in my research or theories or general belief system, I have to agree with your “hard determinists” who call “soft determinism” an evasion; it is. It’s applying a label to something that is not determinism.

Looking forward to your next post.

Even though free will is an ‘uncaused’ directional force towards a planned effect, it still must necessarily be determined by the parameters within which its efficacy is permitted to operate ie the framework of beingness and its environs with all its finite possibilities. In other words, free will by its very encapsulation in the human prison, is by definition shackled to the deterministic artefacts of life; thus it is in the ultimately indeterminate probabilistic (but still finite) outcomes that it fulfills its definition.

Thanks Evan. I’m working on a follow-up post or two but it might take me a while since school is super busy right now!

For all readers of the post – when I say “determinism” in my post I’m referring strictly to biological determinism.

ylang, That’s a very interesting comment. What you are arguing sounds much closer to a monistic approach to this issue rather than the classic dualism that neuroscience assumes. I haven’t explained what monism is (it’s different than the one-sided dualism that many neuroscientists and scientists assume) but basically it’s a philosophical idea or approach to science, particularly neuroscience, that serves as an alternate assumption to Cartesian dualism so many assume today.

Wondering if you’ve seen John Conway’s article in February’s Notices of the AMS. There are also some video lectures on this available.

@Jared: I figured the alternative interpretation might have been saved for later. I am interested and may drop by later. Or perhaps delve into this blog some more for fun. I dunno, I have schoolwork as well, but then again, I think I can slump off my last few weeks of high school. Unlike you Jared

Anyway, my rejoinder to your rebuttal: although the overarching question is indeed about the relationship between free will and randomness, the main thrust of this post in particular was that scientific investigation – at least as currently practiced – preemptively rules out free will, thereby making the aforementioned left/right-button-pushing experiment vain. My point was that this argument in particular is unsound because of the false premise “materialism assumes determinism”.

Second, can you present an actual argument as to why free will cannot be empirically studied, or is that merely an immediate intuition? I cannot think of any way that any particularly cool definition could allow for empirical study, but that doesn’t mean that it’s impossible in principle.

As per your response to Evan, I concurrently observe that “determinism” has been sugar-coated to appease our mysteriously disconcerting feelings about it. Sometimes I wonder, even if the brain is able to exploit the randomness of quantum mechanics (if there really is randomness there), and my decisions and personality happen to be stochastic in nature, then would I still be disappointed about it? Emotions are weird.

@ylang: It’s kind of hard to comprehend your words, but if I understand correctly, aren’t you circuitously presupposing free will and reality are deterministic? (As for the semantics: “free will” isn’t a force and “efficacy” doesn’t operate. That kind of threw me off. Perhaps I need to change brainsides.)

@dm: I haven’t looked through Conway’s article yet, but I remember downloading the first FWT from arXiv.org and glancing at it. Out of curiosity, does the theorem rest on empirically true axioms this time? I’ll check it out.

Re: dm

I haven’t watched much of the lectures yet. They are on my to do list. I really like what I’ve seen so far of them. Thanks also for linking to Conway’s paper; I didn’t have that link.

Here’s an interesting perspecitve

Quantum physics in neuroscience and psychology:
a neurophysical model of mind–brain interaction
Jeffrey M. Schwartz, Henry P. Stapp and Mario Beauregard

Happy seeking!