The study of making choices has been a philosophical pursuit for millenniums. It was one of the important subject of Greek philosophy and this subject, in which determinism and free-will do battle, is still prominent today. 

One wonders how we can achieve anything with the obvious conflicts that enter this debate. 

This debate is strongly confused by our religious beliefs — especially that in which we believe we are fallen angels (destitute "sons" — daughters: bugger off — of a god) in which there is a part of determinism in it since the almighty knows everything we do "in advance" because "he knows everything" and a part of free-will, as, even if god knows we're going to fuck up, we have the choice of not fucking up (but we will because...) — but can be smartly enlightened by our scientific knowledge, in which we can say with confidence we are evolving monkeys muddling around in uncertainty. 

I am writing this the light of what is a strong hypothesis that the co-pilot of an airliner deliberately crashed a plane. As a social species in which we tend to rely on each others, most of us need closure as to why or why not... This does not make sense, and we need to know. Today it was announced that the co-pilot hid his "depression" from his employer after having been diagnosed by his doctor. Where was his "free-will" to commit annihilation? According to his former girlfriend, he wanted the world to know his name... The search for fame can be destroy-full.

I know of a few religious persons (younger generally) who committed suicide. I know of a few atheists who, at the end of their life, decided "they had enough". But rarely one has ever noted the deliberate killing of oneself with no motive — and taking 150 lives in the same act. There appears to be a certain finality-dare in the act unless there is an underlying despair or a monster search for a deadly thrill.

In a chapter of my book on "solving depression for a creative mind" I stress the importance of our ability to lie to our self. Lying to our self is a step further than being delusional or even to lying to others. Being delusional is often unrealised or undetected by our own self. Lying to our self is a deliberate act. 

There is a gulf of difference between deliberately doing a cartoon and killing oneself. 

On the surface this could appear to be two different actions, but at some point they could join at the hip should one not be suicidal though decided to draw mohamed cartoons knowingly that this will attract a loopy religious extremist's ire. We become aware of the dangers. We take the chances that we can survive. We hire a body guard or make sure the police is present. We hide.

The point here is survival, defence and aggression mechanism are part of nature. Thus the will of our action is often bathed in what is going to be beneficial to protect our next, though we might dare. The next is the resultant of the step of what we do, in relation to "time" increments. It is important to know that at most time we are at a juncture that has followed a set of events, including our birth, reactions, and choices. Our previous pathways are often dictating the choice of what we do next. Our memory strongly swims in powerful habits. We are creatures of habits. Our genetic make up is also going to place us in a position of advantage/disadvantage. The colour of our skin can attract prejudices.

And we are not travelling alone. All along while enabling our personal reactions and choices, we are influenced by others and we influence others. And are we "truthful"? 

I know people who are as truthful as can ever be, professional people who avoid as many pitfalls as can be possible and they still get hammered for six by "nutters" who have a one sided view of a subject — and their own profitable patch of lies to defend.

Most system of philosophy, including religion, devised some rules, which help individuals develop some "inhibitors" in their behaviour. One of the most notable set of rules, but not the only one, is the "ten commandments". These "laws" were themselves extracted and simplified from Egyptian common law, which at the time made sense and served the social edifice stay upright, in favour of the Pharaos. 

But there are contentious views still within those laws and their antecedent scriptures, including the allowance for slavery and bigamy on a large scale. There was nothing much there about homosexuality which till the 19th century was not a problematic issue for kings and goat keepers.

So, humans in their stylistic wisdoms devised artifices in which one manages or prohibits a gamut of input into "free will", from excuses to righteousness in order to, at most time, maintain relationships to a cordial level for maximum survival. But in most cases, trying to inflict absolutism on everyone is a source of trouble. 

Not everyone "can fit the mould", especially in sexual or beliefs tendencies. For some people some sexual tendencies can be a "lifestyle choice", for many it is a natural influence in which confusion can be stressful because of condemnation by a certain set of rules, often based on traditions that are nebulously started for no other reason than to victimise.

In most Australian Aboriginal cultures, there was a time when the young men would be sent "walkabout". One could speculate about this aspect of culture and think that it was designed to shoo away growing-up horny young men and for them to show what stern stuff they were made of, while surviving in the desert for a certainly long period of time, ALONE. 

Quite a feat, considering the paucity of resources in the conditions. Survival was pinned on skills, observation and understanding of signs of nature — while having paid attention to the "teachings". 

Free will would have been tested to the limit since in such culture THERE WAS (is) NO GOD, BUT NATURE, in which ancestors and animals who had passed away, had (have) entered the rock and landscape features. The stories and drawings were like maps of survival, on where to find water and where the spirits of those departed, mythical or humans had to be respected. Survival depended on how well the "knowledge" was understood.

This is where the stories converge with science. Studies of the extinct fauna such as the megafauna has a resonance with aboriginal "legends". Which animal did what and why some animals species like the palorchestes disappeared.

Understanding of the animalistic will in such circumstances is vital. Animals behave according to their instincts but also harbour a variety of choices emanating from the habit of survival and relationship with resources. They know where the waterholes are, they know where the grass is going to be best and they have to implement management of their territory — and they know how to fool predators.

Why would the ibis fly away to another corner of the park?... Is it because of the dog coming at it? Or is it because other ibises have moved-on there because it seems they have exhausted the worm or grass beetle supply where they were before? Why did the ibis stopped flying twenty metres short of the pack? Is it because it is still a young fellow and respects the pecking order? Is it because it saw an opportunity being close enough to the other guys but away enough to have its own patch of lawn to explore for grubs? Does it know this from the day before, having memorised the co-ordinates of a better meal?... And why is it staying alone there, in the middle of "its" patch, while being attacked by a bunch of Noisy Minors, and not being fussed by this? Does it know that the minors would not dare hit it without hurting themselves? Is ducking enough to prevent injury? there is more than reactivity to animal behaviour. There is a sense of decision based on "luck" in which "free-will plays a part of choice.

For humans, in most society, survival is assured by the group. Free will or the will to survive (or not) of an individual can become a luxury or a point of control on unsuspecting individuals by some organised collectives, including the state and church. Soldiers have limited free-will and this free-will is controlled, albeit suppressed by orders, hierarchy and a ritualised pump up (that often used to include booze or drugs — including coffee) to go to battle. 

Behaviour is thus regulated and one (especially the police) hopes that only very few people will trangress their personal imprinted inhibitors. Nothing like a Taser to make you think after a transgression, though this might encourage the rebellious free-will despite the prison.

Most of our pollies hope that free-will is contained in the populace by their propaganda lies and the traditional political boundaries. Our "free-will" is often dented by price and taste. Learnt taste and accident of birth. 

As well, one can say that our free-will mood is influenced by many factors. For example we could win 10 million dollars at lotto but on the same day, our beloved dies. This would create conflicts of moods. This is not so silly. At every one time, we solve little conflicts and our mood reflects this success — except the conflicts we do not solve can linger and trigger a slide towards distress and depression, despite being successful on other fronts. Our mood often reflects the sum of our success and failures but not exclusively so. Such processes impinge on our free-will.

So... is it free-will or determinism? 

Neither. 

Free-will is mostly an illusion we manage between various inhibitors and the crossings thereof. I say mostly because our will to be "bad" or "good" is only immediately relevant to the framework of our "inhibitors". And no matter what, we have inhibitors which are natural (often imprinted in pain) and social (pain developed into fear)— and inhibitors personally developed from those. Our inhibitors are mostly at the limit of the "safe" end of the line while we fiddle in the "possible" realm of action. Overriding our inhibitors, there is often a sense of doing the wrong thing (or a dare) — and of "sin" should we believe in the old bearded male almighty.

Thus our "free-will" is often about the management of pain and contentment (physical and psychological) to the best we can in a prejudicial and prejudiced context, by using prejudiced ingrained habits of doing things. On the mundane level, we do certain things, like going to the theatre, because the theatre exists. And the multiplicity of choices can create mega-confusion, despite the "help" we get from advertising in these choices. This help actually can become more confusing by bringing in new parameters of choice. Everyday, advertising is designed to influence our free-will with temptations — most of them involving spending money rather than burning in hell.

The management of pain is also quite conflicted by the type of pain and the type of "cures" on offer. And most of the cures are prejudiced by someone else's opinion and desire to cash in on our choices. Advertising of pharmaceuticals (mostly physical but sometimes psychological) rides on this bandwagon. "if pain persists, see your doctor...". and the doctor might prescribe you stronger medicine with side-effects that may only hide the symptoms of your pain, not cure the source. Or he/she might prescribe you Viagra or hormone replacement therapy...

Free will is more in tune with atheism. But free will in this context is something in which personal responsibility becomes more important should we chose to be social — as we cannot delegate our goof-ups to an almighty, or confess we have been influenced by the devil. The free-will to kill others in not welcome in most societies, especially when it is gratuitous and there are no caveats attached — like defence or religious fervour. Most (all) of the excuses in the religious case are idiotic and ludicrous — and often go against the teaching of the dogma — but can provide powerful bypass of our inhibitors — as a group or as individuals. 

In the end, the free-willed acceptance of the need to care may be our strongest safety factor, in general and in particular.

Gus Leonisky

Your Free-Willing local natural expert.

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Further readings:

A lie is an intentionally false statement to a person or group made by another person or group who knows it is not wholly the truth.[1] The practice of communicating lies is called lying, and a person who communicates a lie may be termed a liar. Lies may be employed to serve a variety of instrumental, interpersonal, or psychological functions for the individuals who use them. Generally, the term "lie" carries a negative connotation, and depending on the context a person who communicates a lie may be subject to social, legal, religious, or criminal sanctions. In certain situations, however lying is permitted, expected, or even encouraged. Because believing and acting on false information can have serious consequences, scientists and others have attempted to develop reliable methods for distinguishing lies from true statements.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie

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Free will[edit]Main article: Two-stage model of free will

Some scientists including Arthur Compton[70] and Martin Heisenberg[71] have suggested that the uncertainty principle, or at least the general probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics, could be evidence for the two-stage model of free will. The standard view, however, is that apart from the basic role of quantum mechanics as a foundation for chemistry, nontrivial biological mechanisms requiring quantum mechanics are unlikely, due to the rapid decoherence time of quantum systems at room temperature.[72]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle

 

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A two-stage model of free will separates the free stage from the will stage.

In the first stage, alternative possibilities for thought and action are generated, in part indeterministically.
In the second stage, an adequately determined will evaluates the options that have been developed.

If, on deliberation, one option for action seems best, it is selected and chosen. If no option seems good enough, and time permitting, the process can return to the further generation of alternative possibilities ("second thoughts") before a final decision.

A two-stage model can explain how an agent could choose to do otherwise in exactly the same circumstances that preceded the first stage of the overall free will process.

 

The two-stage argument is designed to defeat the standard argument against free will. In that very simple and logical argument:

• P1. Either determinism or indeterminism is true
  (The philosopher J. J. C. Smart points out that these exhaust the logical possibilities.)
• P2. If determinism is true, we are not free.
• P3. If indeterminism is true, our decisions are random and we lack responsibility (or, anyway, control is lacking).

In the first "free" stage of the two-stage model, the indeterminism is limited to the generation of alternative possibilities, it does not directly cause the willed decision, thus negating P2.

In the second "will" stage, the decision is not predetermined by events in the distant past, before the agent was born, indeed possibly back to the origin of the universe in the extreme determinism view.

Identifying the source of indeterminism in the free stage, and locating it in the brain, has proved to be a challenge for philosophers and scientists. A random quantum mechanical event in the brain amplified to the macroscopic level might only do harm if it was involved directly in the decision.

 

 

Ernst Mayr called biological evolution a "two-step process", in which random variations in the gene pool are followed by law-like natural selection.[1]

Free will is also a two-stage creative process – first random and "free", then a lawful "will". First chance, then choice.

The mind's "two-stage" ability to be creative and free is likely evolved indirectly from Mayr's "two-step" process and then directly from the combination of random and lawlike behavior in the lower animals pointed out by Martin Heisenberg.[2] Free will is therefore not an ad hoc development in humans, as many philosophers (especially theologians) have thought.

Getting from behavioral freedom in the lower animals to free will in humans has primarily involved significant changes in the complexity of the second stage – the selection process.

Although randomness may at all levels have the same source in chaotic thermal and quantal noise, we can note that the selection process itself has significantly evolved. So we can suggest different levels of selection (but note that each level organisms all using the earlier levels).

• Natural selection – for biological evolution, selection is reproductive success for a population.
• Instinctive selection – by animals with little or no learning capability. Selection criteria are transmitted genetically.
• Learned selection – for animals whose past experiences guide current choices. Selection criteria are acquired environmentally, including instruction by parents and peers.
• Predictive selection – using imagination and foresight to evaluate the future consequences of choices.
• Reflective and normative selection – in which conscious deliberation about cultural values influences the choice of behaviors.

Evolution has added more and more features over time that eventually become the many factors at work in the fully conscious human will.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-stage_model_of_free_will

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COVER The cargo adaptor Bicaudal-D2 (orange) brings the dynein motor complex (yellow) together with its essential cofactor dynactin (red). This giant complex of 37 proteins drags cellular cargos for long distances along microtubules (blue). Cryo–electron microscopy provides insight into the structural assembly and operation of this supracomplex. See page 1441 .
Illustration: Chris Bickel/Science

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/347/6229/1441.short

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In this paper, we suggest that many of the choice situations confronting consumers in the modern marketplace have become supra-complex. Supra-complex decision-making occurs when the perceived difficulty of transforming product information into knowledge exceeds the expected benefits of doing so, even if decision-making heuristics, or other kind of attribute-related decision rules, are applied. Under conditions of supra-complexity, we propose that consumers instead use mental markers in order to justify their decisions. Mental markers are any mental construct the consumer uses for the purpose of gaining mental justification of overall choices. We argue that the usage of mental markers leads to reductions in cognitive dissonance, reduced usage of mental resources and time. Drawing on the principle of mental justification as well as consumers’ propensity to use goals as blueprints for directing their behaviour, we propose a framework for understanding consumer decisions when faced with supra-complexity.

http://research.cbs.dk/portal/en/publications/consumers-facing-supracomplex-choices-in-the-modern-marketplace%28830ab48f-98cc-4b81-85d1-6aa2ca7b5ee3%29.html

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“Experts in ancient Greek culture say that people back then didn't see their thoughts as belonging to them. When ancient Greeks had a thought, it occurred to them as a god or goddess giving an order. Apollo was telling them to be brave. Athena was telling them to fall in love. 
Now people hear a commercial for sour cream potato chips and rush out to buy, but now they call this free will.
At least the ancient Greeks were being honest.” ― Chuck Palahniuk, Lullaby

 

 

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“Like the most of you, I was raised among people who knew - who were certain. They did not reason or investigate. They had no doubts. They knew that they had the truth. In their creed there was no guess — no perhaps. They had a revelation from God. They knew the beginning of things. They knew that God commenced to create one Monday morning, four thousand and four years before Christ. They knew that in the eternity — back of that morning, he had done nothing. They knew that it took him six days to make the earth — all plants, all animals, all life, and all the globes that wheel in space. They knew exactly what he did each day and when he rested. They knew the origin, the cause of evil, of all crime, of all disease and death.
At the same time they knew that God created man in his own image and was perfectly satisfied with his work... They knew all about the Flood -- knew that God, with the exception of eight, drowned all his children -- the old and young -- the bowed patriarch and the dimpled babe -- the young man and the merry maiden -- the loving mother and the laughing child -- because his mercy endureth forever. They knew too, that he drowned the beasts and birds -- everything that walked or crawled or flew -- because his loving kindness is over all his works. They knew that God, for the purpose of civilizing his children, had devoured some with earthquakes, destroyed some with storms of fire, killed some with his lightnings, millions with famine, with pestilence, and sacrificed countless thousands upon the fields of war. They knew that it was necessary to believe these things and to love God. They knew that there could be no salvation except by faith, and through the atoning blood of Jesus Christ.
Then I asked myself the question: Is there a supernatural power -- an arbitrary mind -- an enthroned God -- a supreme will that sways the tides and currents of the world -- to which all causes bow?
I do not deny. I do not know - but I do not believe. I believe that the natural is supreme - that from the infinite chain no link can be lost or broken — that there is no supernatural power that can answer prayer - no power that worship can persuade or change — no power that cares for man.
Is there a God?
I do not know.
Is man immortal?
I do not know.
One thing I do know, and that is, that neither hope, nor fear, belief, nor denial, can change the fact. It is as it is, and it will be as it must be.
We can be as honest as we are ignorant. If we are, when asked what is beyond the horizon of the known, we must say that we do not know. We can tell the truth, and we can enjoy the blessed freedom that the brave have won. We can destroy the monsters of superstition, the hissing snakes of ignorance and fear. We can drive from our minds the frightful things that tear and wound with beak and fang. We can civilize our fellow-men. We can fill our lives with generous deeds, with loving words, with art and song, and all the ecstasies of love. We can flood our years with sunshine — with the divine climate of kindness, and we can drain to the last drop the golden cup of joy.” ― Robert G. Ingersoll, The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol 1: Lectures

 

 

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“Were these boys in their right minds? Here were two boys with good intellect, one eighteen and one nineteen. They had all the prospects that life could hold out for any of the young; one a graduate of Chicago and another of Ann Arbor; one who had passed his examination for the Harvard Law School and was about to take a trip in Europe,--another who had passed at Ann Arbor, the youngest in his class, with three thousand dollars in the bank. Boys who never knew what it was to want a dollar; boys who could reach any position that was to boys of that kind to reach; boys of distinguished and honorable families, families of wealth and position, with all the world before them. And they gave it all up for nothing, for nothing! They took a little companion of one of them, on a crowded street, and killed him, for nothing, and sacrificed everything that could be of value in human life upon the crazy scheme of a couple of immature lads.
Now, your Honor, you have been a boy; I have been a boy. And we have known other boys. The best way to understand somebody else is to put yourself in his place.
Is it within the realm of your imagination that a boy who was right, with all the prospects of life before him, who could choose what he wanted, without the slightest reason in the world would lure a young companion to his death, and take his place in the shadow of the gallows?
...No one who has the process of reasoning could doubt that a boy who would do that is not right.
How insane they are I care not, whether medically or legally. They did not reason; they could not reason; they committed the most foolish, most unprovoked, most purposeless, most causeless act that any two boys ever committed, and they put themselves where the rope is dangling above their heads....
Why did they kill little Bobby Franks?
Not for money, not for spite; not for hate. They killed him as they might kill a spider or a fly, for the experience. They killed him because they were made that way. Because somewhere in the infinite processes that go to the making up of the boy or the man something slipped, and those unfortunate lads sit here hated, despised, outcasts, with the community shouting for their blood.
. . . I know, Your Honor, that every atom of life in all this universe is bound up together. I know that a pebble cannot be thrown into the ocean without disturbing every drop of water in the sea. I know that every life is inextricably mixed and woven with every other life. I know that every influence, conscious and unconscious, acts and reacts on every living organism, and that no one can fix the blame. I know that all life is a series of infinite chances, which sometimes result one way and sometimes another. I have not the infinite wisdom that can fathom it, neither has any other human brain” ― Clarence Darrow, Attorney for the Damned: Clarence Darrow in the Courtroom
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“We're a government that believes in everybody having the illusion of free will.” ― Anthony Burgess, The Wanting Seed
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“Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty.” ― Henry David Thoreau