If you had chosen the other option it would have been your free choice — Janus

Now you are speculating. Then my initial (A) decision would not have been free. But I chose (A).

I have no idea what you are talking about, unfortunately.

If my decision was free, then I could have chosen otherwise. If my decision was not free (i.e. it was completely determined by something other myself) then I could not have chosen otherwise; indeed I could not have really chosen at all.

Of course, we know that our decisions are constrained by a multitude of factors; they cannot be "completely free". But we don't know that rigid determinism is the case; if it were we would not be free at all; and although it is logically possible that we could have chosen otherwise than we did, under determinsim it would not be actually possible.

I have no idea what you are talking about, unfortunately. — Janus

Of course.

If my decision was free, then I could have chosen otherwise. — Janus

Formally.

Your "of course" seems to indicate that you acknowledge you have been talking nonsense.

Yes, speaking formally we could have chosen otherwise regardless, it expresses merely logical possibility. Whether we could have actually chosen otherwise we can never know, because once we have chosen there is no way of checking whether we could have chosen otherwise.

But all of that is really irrelevant to our original disagreement which was over your claim that free choice must be between what we want to do and what we don't want to do. I have demonstrated that this is false.

In fact most of our significant ethical decisions involve choosing between two things that we want to do; one that we judge will or may be harmful, or not as beneficial, to ourselves and/ or others, and another that we want to do for purely hedonistic, selfish or self-indulgent reasons.

When neurons fire, the ions blend. Firing neurons helps entropy increase. It is a second law affect. Consciousness makes the brain fire at will, since consciousness is an entropy generator. It is needed to help neurons reverse. — wellwisher

I like your focus on entropy, but we would need to make a distinction between physical entropy and informational entropy here.

The point of neurons is in fact to zero the hardware costs of being "conscious" and so create a basic freedom when it comes to the informational or "software" entropy of the system.

So like the circuits of a computer, neurons are designed so that it "costs nothing" to switch their states. And so all physical constraints on freewill - the making of informed choices - are thus removed.

It does of course cost quite a lot to keep neurons running. They burn glucose like hard-working muscle - even when we sleep. Humans could only support their big brains because it was matched with a shift to a cooked and calorie dense diet.

But neurons themselves fire all the time. They are set up so they just keep charging up and discharging as their basic steady-state level of operation. What "consciousness" - or global attentive focus - does is modulate those firing rates. It speeds them up or slows them down. It creates larger states of synchrony and asynchrony so as to weave meaningful information patterns.

So the neurons are just a constant cost. They are going to fire anyway. So there is no effective cost for using them for one thing rather than another. And this thus opens up the infinite possibilities that allow us to think about anything at all at any time ... to the degree it is then ecologically and pragmatically useful, of course.

Now we get to the informational entropy. The brain exists to model the world in a useful predictive fashion. And so it is set up to minimise the possibility of the world being surprising. It wants to minimise the Shannon information uncertainty that exists "out there".

So consciousness - as our running attentional model of the world - in fact is organised by the goal of decreasing its information entropy. It is pointed intelligently at the task of constructing a mental state of order - where the world unfolds in a smoothly-predicted and intention-fulfilling fashion.

And this is the freewill ideal. Anything that we could wish, we can make be the case. By learning and planning, we can limit the possibility of being surprised by the world telling us, well no, you can't do anything you want in fact.

So it is all about this separation from physical entropy which allows this new game based on informational entropy. We have to pay for that freedom by burning a heck of a lot of glucose all the time. We do have to meet the greater cost imposed by the second law. But then that gives us our freedoms as reality modellers, seeking to minimise our informational entropy.

We are free to pursue our own organismic goals because we have made a bargain with nature where we burn much more than we could ever extract as useful work. But hey, that capacity for work can then be freely applied to any intention or plan we could possibly conceive. Freewill exists because we can afford the underlying fuel bill, eventually reaching the point as civilised technological humans where the cost of any choice becomes too "cheap" to be a concern.

It is like they said about atomic energy. It would be too cheap to bother monitoring. It might as well be given away on a help yourself basis.

That wasn't actually true of course. But for a while now, it has seemed effectively true enough of fossil fuels and other natural resources like clean air and clean water. A consumer culture enshrines exactly that kind of "freewill" dynamic - where you can just afford to help yourself to the negentropy that sits around on the planet, simply begging to be entropified.

The next probable chapter of the freewill story will be the one that shows that, in the end, it does come back to paying for that right to burn. It only feels like we can make any choice we want. In fact, it is meant to be about modelling the world in a way that doesn't store up a bunch of nasty surprises.

Your "of course" seems to indicate that you acknowledge you have been talking nonsense. — Janus

No, "of course" you are not trying to understand because it does not fit into your speculation.

But all of that is really irrelevant to our original disagreement which was over your claim that free choice must be between what we want to do and what we don't want to do. I have demonstrated that this is false. — Janus

What you have demonstrated is that you can speculate about that you could have wanted what you did not want.

Whether we could have actually chosen otherwise we can never know, because once we have chosen there is no way of checking whether we could have chosen otherwise. — Janus

There we are going. So why do you say then we could? Notice: You are always talking in hindsight.

In fact most of our significant ethical decisions involve choosing between two things that we want to do — Janus

Yeah, and you can only choose as good as you can. Hope your best is good enough.
See what? "Best" is superlative.

one that we judge will or may be harmful to ourselves or others, and another that we want to do for purely hedonistic, selfish or self-indulgent reasons — Janus

Make your choice. I'll tell you if it's free.

Well, everything about us can be reduced to physics and chemistry but that still doesn't explain what free will is. We recognize a self and its ability to make choices. You may be able to describe it in terms of physics and chemistry but that still doesn't explain the phenomenon of self and the, possibly, illusion of free will.

Are you saying that by virtue of the basic laws of physics and chemistry our bodies must comply to, we don't have free will?

Entropy, if I understand correctly, is the random motion of particles which is actually a non-deterministic view of the world.

You can't use an unfalsifiable claim as the standard of proof. Now, I am sure like all "philosophers" you think this is a matter of interpretation, opinion or whatnot; however, it is not. What you are demanding amounts to arguing that if one cannot disprove fairy magic then we can't really know if gravity is a force that attracts objects with mass. — Jeremiah

I'm not making an unfalsifiable claim. I have a method to prove/disprove free will that is falsfiable but to do it we need an infinite amount of time.

My method depends on numbers:
1. We don't know whether numbers affect our ability to make choices
So,
2. We need to check their effects on our ability to make free choices
3. Numbers are infinite
4. To check each number's effects on our decision making process we require a non-zero amount of time
So,
5. To check ALL numbers (infinity) for their effect on our will (to determine whether it is free or not) will require an infinite amount of time

Basically, we can't do it.

This is NOT unfalsifiable in the sense a claim cannot be proved wrong because of the nature of the claim. It is unprovable on the basis of a fact about numbers.

...and yet we choose. — Banno

are these choices free? Isn't that the issue?

'will' is antecedent to thought and action therefore it cannot be free but originates prior to and outside of consciousness. — Marcus de Brun

Can you expand on that. Thanks.

I would think that you've overstated the case here. Seems to me that in order for a will to be free, it must be free from influence, which is clearly impossible. There is no such thing as free will. We need not know everything in order to know that what we do, and what we choose to do is influenced by lots of things.

Free will presupposes volition. In order to choose better, one must first know of better.

The closest we can come to having free will is recognizing the influences that the world and others have upon us, and then being quite judicious about who and what we allow to influence us. — creativesoul

Yes, a limited version of freedom of will is defensible. I guess we need to be satisfied with that.

"Free will" was invented as a means to exonerate the God of Abraham from the existence of evil. — creativesoul

Is it only about God? I think free will is central to everything we do apart from religion.

if one cannot disprove fairy magic then we can't really know if gravity is a force that attracts objects with mass. — Jeremiah

But that's true.

You tell me. — Jeremiah

it was meant to be thought provoking, guess not very effectively.

I agree, it was not very thought provoking.

I like your focus on entropy, but we would need to make a distinction between physical entropy and informational entropy here. — apokrisis

Physical entropy is a state variable, while information entropy is not. As a physical variable, entropy is fixed for a given state of physical matter. For example, water at 25C and one atmosphere has a measured entropy of 6.6177 J ˣ mol-1 ˣ K-1. This value is a standard and is measured the same by all labs. This value remains the same no matter how we approach this state. The entropy of that state is not a random number, but a number that is fixed for that state. This is basic to chemistry but is rarely taught properly, outside chemistry.

Information entropy, which is a derivative concept, is not the same. Information entropy is more about loss, change and randomization. With physical entropy, I can start anywhere and as I long as I end up back to water at 25C and 1atmosphere, the entropy is the same as before. There is no randomization or loss. The information is restored again.

Brain entropy and neural information are both state variables since each implies the other. This type of memory is connected to physical states which are defined by fixed entropy in each state. This is not how computer memory or telecommunications works. Human languages, are subjective and arbitrary, whereas neuron memory is based on how matter works; universal laws of physics.

When the neurons pump and exchange cations, this defines a new physical state, at the neuron membrane, with a given entropy value, based on that state. This state is lower in entropy than previous, and defines a base level of neural information. Neuron firing alters this state into a higher entropy state. Long term memory is a physical state. It would need to be a high entropy state, so there is little need to alter it further. Alternation in the brain will preferentially occur with lower entropy memory; short term memory. We will push this toward long term.

Where willpower comes in is there are many ways to increase entropy toward the ceiling state of entropy; total firing of all the neurons, as long as the sum of all the new states reaches a certain entropy total value.

An analogy is collecting 1 liter of water. The entropy of water at 25C, above, is measured per mole of water; 18 grams. I can collect the water in teaspoons or pints. As long I reach the same final liter, all roads lead to Rome. Free will is connected to a unique path to the same place for all. Our conscious mind sort of deflects the path of free energy and diverts it in unique ways, with this unique river of free energy still reaching the lake. This translates to unique information.

Note: Entropy was a concept developed in the early days of steam engines. When you did an energy balance around the steam engine, one was always short. Entropy was added as an adjustment favor, so energy input matched energy output. Something was going on at the molecular level, which was not exactly clear. Yet it was there and reproducible; state variable. It was constant for a given state.

If we look at a mole of water in a beaker; 18 grams, all the molecules are displaying what appears to be random behavior that coincides with a bell curve. Yet, no matter who we reach that final state, all these molecules seem to average the same randomness and bell curve. Random is a subset of order when it comes to entropy states. Information entropy deals with the subsets and not the states. It gets bogged down in the weeds and never sees the state; lake. This is due to the disconnect between the subjectivity of human language and the universal logic of physical states.

Basically we need to be omniscient

Why? Of course, you would need to know if an atom in a far away galaxy would impact on your actions, but you don't need everything that is happening with this and other atoms, you only need to know whether they'll change your actions.