Free will...

[delanvital]

Free will - I have an interesting article here from The Economist, but I cannot quite it in full; so I have done a few quotes:



"IN THE late 1990s a previously blameless American began collecting child pornography and propositioning children. On the day before he was due to be sentenced to prison for his crimes, he had his brain scanned. He had a tumour. When it had been removed, his paedophilic tendencies went away. When it started growing back, they returned. When the regrowth was removed, they vanished again. Who then was the child abuser?"

And in a slightly different context:


 
"Such disorders are serious pathologies. But the National DNA Database being built up by the British government (which includes material from many innocent people), would already allow the identification of those with milder predispositions to anger and violence. How soon before those people are subject to special surveillance? And if the state chose to carry out such surveillance, recognising that the people in question may pose particular risks merely because of their biology, it could hardly then argue that they were wholly responsible for any crime that they did go on to commit.
  Nor is it only the criminal law where free will matters. Markets also depend on the idea that personal choice is free choice. Mostly, that is not a problem. Even if choice is guided by unconscious instinct, that instinct will usually have been honed by natural selection to do the right thing. But not always. Fatty, sugary foods subvert evolved instincts, as do addictive drugs such as nicotine, alcohol and cocaine. Pornography does as well. Liberals say that individuals should be free to consume these, or not. Erode free will, and you erode that argument."

After a discussion I have had here abt the subj. I would like to know what you Brits think of the idea of the DNA database in this context...

Source: The Economist, 12/23/2006, Vol. 381 Issue 8509, p16-18, 2p, 1c

Edit: The quotes are a bit out of context, but I cannot legally quote as much as I've already done :sad: If you go to the library once in a while, check out the theme, which deals with the brain from a scientific perspective - rather good.

[suicidal_monkey]

Really scary, but also promising really interesting advancements.

If one day you could go into a clinic, have a bit of mind-altering-surgery, and come out free from (for example) any cravings for cigarettes, or indeed anything else that was adversely affecting your life (depression, phobia, etc) without any other side effects, would that not be a good (or at least useful) thing to have available? I realise the potential for misuse and that there would be the possibility of side-effects. Plastic surgery has it's share of problems and while I'm not totally sure about the surgery just to change the shape of one's nose, surgery to rebuild someone's face after it's been burnt or something is great.

Free will to choose to have mind-altering surgery, but will you still have free will afterwards

p.s. this sort of thing - where personality is affected by physical damage to the brain is quite well documented I think? People becoming totally different, or only very slightly different (e.g. the chain-smoker who loses their addiction) after a stroke that leaves them with partially damaged bits of the brain.

p.p.s.

from The Economist

Which dates?

[Benny]

That's some interesting stuff. I'll come back when I get 1/2 hour to make a proper comment.....

[delanvital]

Imagine lacking so much confidence in yourself, that you have that removed.
Or instead removing personal characteristics, which clearly define who you are as a person, to fit the "social norm"?

However, the point in the article is basically, that what if everything that we do, all our actions and our whole personal character, in the end is defined by some machinery in our head, perhaps inherited, does that put our responsibility for our actions out of our hands?

If so, can we do anything on our own? If desires are fuelled by physical impact, our free will and life is actually an illusion.... That said, rational thought has some influence. But still, if what drives us is in fact not something we chose, but some physical allocation, origin rather nebulous - bummer! Imagine all us liking to play PC-games do so, because we all share some kind of physical disposition, and not because social interaction has caused this... and now I am blabbering...

Edit: why bother being conscious, when you are a bystander to your own life?

[delanvital]

p.p.s.Which dates?

See first post. Check your uni library access before buying.

[suicidal_monkey]

See first post. Check your uni library access before buying.

I'll sift through the pile here at home

[suicidal_monkey]

Or instead removing personal characteristics, which clearly define who you are as a person, to fit the "social norm"?

What if those "characteristics" were something like amnesia, tourettes, multiple-sclerosis, psychosis, serious bipolar-er-ness, or anything else which splits you off from society at some level like losing the power of speech after a stroke, short-term-memory loss, flashbacks to horrific events. These are conditions for which we have no real cures but seem to be related to the mind/brain/nervous system. I would argue that there are occasions when people might make the choice to try change these conditions through surgery if conventional therapist-techniques didn't work. Some will choose to live with it, others will opt to get a mental switch flicked in hope of a better life afterwards. There's always a risk but if you felt your condition was bad enough and unfixable otherwise it might be a risk worth taking.

However, the point in the article is basically, that what if everything that we do, all our actions and our whole personal character, in the end is defined by some machinery in our head, perhaps inherited, does that put our responsibility for our actions out of our hands?

If you argue that it puts responsibility out of our hands but in the hands of some bit of our brain that is broken then I would argue that the person with the broken brain is legally obliged to have that bit of their brain "fixed". I believe that you cannot have both the excuse that "my brain made me do it" and the option to refuse to have your brain treated/locked-up. It could drastically reduce the prison population of course if at the guilty verdict we could just send someone into surgery and then stick 'em back out on the streets if whatever the crime was was deemed serious enough to warrant intervention like that. Use those who repeatedly commit violent crimes as a testing group perhaps.

If so, can we do anything on our own? If desires are fuelled by physical impact, our free will and life is actually an illusion.... That said, rational thought has some influence.

I would have thought that past experiences and memory adds to some of the things we do/choose (was it Pavlov's dogs with the bell and food?) and a good deal of our actions are swayed by society's norms. We can, with training, override (at least some of) our instincts.

I think there's a mixture of what we choose/think to do based on some sort of logical reasoning, but then there's also a healthy dose of instincts and physical needs. The fact that we can override some of these needs (dieting as a simple example) and instincts means we do have some semblance of control, however in situations where we have not had time to consider options we rely on "instinct" to help us out. Do you run away from the big scary monster and use a shot of adrenaline to boost you up into the tree or do you freeze up and try to pretend not to be there or do you attack it.

I'm not at all surprised that we are discovering proof that our characteristics, instincts, etc, are governed by physical differences in our brains. Some of that is through what we have experienced and learnt through life, a sort of memory/learning programme (e.g. fuzzy logic) that bases reactions on how we've seen others react. We can change and override this conditioning through further conditioning, so which is worse - the child that learns to be violent through growing up in a violent home/estate/school, the adult who "learns" to be violent through surviving war/combat situations, or the adult who gets "brain-washed" into becoming a psychotic maniac "bred" for fighting. Is it a bad thing to suggest that these people can all "learn" to override those violent tendancies? Is this changing their character for better or for worse? You only have to watch that super-nanny program once or twice to see just how powerful environmental factors can be to personality. It works better with young kids because their characteristics are less embedded - they have less experience on which to base their reactions.

Perhaps this is all a result of evolution. Gradual "mutation" predisposes each of us with certain characteristics and through selection those having the stronger or more appropriate-for-the-time characteristics tend to survive. With people however, through curing disease, keeping the weak alive, etc are we weakening our genetic make-up and so will come to rely on science to keep us alive and competitive in the "natural" world? That's perhaps a question for another thread though

[Luminance]

What if those "characteristics" were something like amnesia, tourettes, multiple-sclerosis, psychosis, serious bipolar-er-ness, or anything else which splits you off from society at some level like losing the power of speech after a stroke, short-term-memory loss, flashbacks to horrific events. These are conditions for which we have no real cures but seem to be related to the mind/brain/nervous system. I would argue that there are occasions when people might make the choice to try change these conditions through surgery if conventional therapist-techniques didn't work. Some will choose to live with it, others will opt to get a mental switch flicked in hope of a better life afterwards. There's always a risk but if you felt your condition was bad enough and unfixable otherwise it might be a risk worth taking.

People who suffer from brain defunctions like mentioned above change dramasticly mostly. If i would suffer from that, and they gave a chance to restore my "old" me or something close with a a surchery, then i would def. take that chance.

Perhaps this is all a result of evolution. Gradual "mutation" predisposes each of us with certain characteristics and through selection those having the stronger or more appropriate-for-the-time characteristics tend to survive. With people however, through curing disease, keeping the weak alive, etc are we weakening our genetic make-up and so will come to rely on science to keep us alive and competitive in the "natural" world? That's perhaps a question for another thread though

The "natural" world isn't that natural anymore, so it would be logical to change humans too, since they allready chanced animals and plants or other organics.
Though this frightens me alot, cuz not allways for the good.

And what will happen if humans can survive alot better as we can now due to science? Then nature will have to do better again too restore balance, so that we have to do better again (the will to be better/perfect will always be there), so that it'll be a huge spiral upwards. Where will that end??
You might not even speak of humans anymore at some part in that spiral!

[Bob]

For some interesting thoughts around the topic free will, I would recommend taking a look at a book (free, downloadable) I wrote about in [post=168849]a previous thread[/post], namely God's Debris.

The chapters "Your Free Will", "God's Free Will" and "Free Will of a Penny" are very cool! But I guess if you've first read one of those chapters, you probably won't be able to stop before you've finished the whole book :flirty:

[Penfold]

That's some interesting stuff. I'll come back when I get 1/2 hour to make a proper comment.....

Let us know if we're rushing you mate :narnar:

PEN

[A Twig]

For some interesting thoughts around the topic free will, I would recommend taking a look at a book (free, downloadable) I wrote about in [post=168849]a previous thread[/post], namely God's Debris.

The chapters "Your Free Will", "God's Free Will" and "Free Will of a Penny" are very cool! But I guess if you've first read one of those chapters, you probably won't be able to stop before you've finished the whole book :flirty:

It was a pretty good read, quite interesting, but I think there are a few flaws in it, but then the author says there is deliberately a flawed assumption in it somewhere, so I guess thats ok then!

[delanvital]

It was a pretty good read, quite interesting, but I think there are a few flaws in it, but then the author says there is deliberately a flawed assumption in it somewhere, so I guess thats ok then!

Deliberately? Isn't that like saying "if you find what seems to be an error it is in fact not"?

[A Twig]

Deliberately? Isn't that like saying "if you find what seems to be an error it is in fact not"?

Pretty much, the whole point of the book is that it is a thought experiment, it doesn't aim to provide right or wrong answers, it is just another viewpoint, based upon principles, some of which IMO are flawed, and the author admits as such.