/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.16488865]

Has psychology disproven free will? Seems like all my thoughts and behaviors reciprocate from previous experience

[Anonymous No.16489065]

It hasn’t disproved it but it will. psychology is alchemy waiting to be chemistry

[Anonymous No.16489112]

>>16488865
Basic experiments can trivially disprove free will.
Take some PCP and try to tell me that your thoughts and actions are dictated by some mystical "will" and not the electro-chemical reaction in your brain.

[Jesus No.16490778]

>>16489112
who told you that thoughts are reactions in brain? it is theory, and stupid.

[Jesus No.16490780]

>>16489065
this "chemistry" is called art of stalking by castaneda and art of waterwalking by old jesus.

[Anonymous No.16490789]

>>16489065
are you that dumbass who said the same thing on /sci/? Psychology will never be nothing more than a tool for eugenics and mass control.

[Anonymous No.16490797]

>>16489065
I called it that in the last thread about it, you stole that term from me. Also psych will eventually prove the existence of free will

[Anonymous No.16490827]

>>16488865
Nope. The links you see as far as your experiences go are just free association. You have agency.

[Anonymous No.16490831]

>>16488865
The crucial relationship in the free will debate right now is not between philosophy or psychology and free will; it's between quantum mechanics and free will. If you take causal determinism as the most direct attack on the idea of free will, we have a fundamental, insoluble paradox thanks to quantum uncertainty. For all systems of sufficient size, we can calculate exactly the nature of any event given sufficient information and knowledge. For instance, if a force is applied to a pool ball in a specific vector, we can calculate very precisely how it will react. The issue with quantum uncertainty is that, while the pool ball will behave predictably on a macro scale, since its components are formed of quanta, we cannot predict precisely where every quantum will be based on its antecedent state. How is this connected to free will?

A central argument of determinism is also one of materialism: that the entirety of our being as individual humans can be reduced to the physical events objectively measurable within the brain. This would mean that every thought has a physical representation in the mind, and therefore that if we had sufficient information and knowledge, we would be able to predict mental events, and that furthermore every mental state must be a function of its antecedent state -- that is to say, it was predetermined, free will must therefore be an illusion, etc.

If we go off of macro structures, this is a compelling argument for reasons which are ultimately out of scope here. The problem is that we can't reconcile the disparity between what LOOKS like observational, material determinism in macro structures but breaks down into uncertainty at the quantum level. This may read like the cop out of all cop outs, but we unironically need a theory of everything. Philosophy and maths have a long history of crossover, especially during the enlightenment, and quantum mechanics is fundamentally a maths problem. Philosophy really just needs to wait, because we really don't have a resolution to this genuine paradox.

[Anonymous No.16490874]

>>16489112
It shouldn't be said that humans live completely independently of their bodies. An even more trivial experiment disproving this would be to pinch yourself, or twist your balls, maybe drive a couple rusty nails into them before stuffing a glass jar up your ass, only to clamp down on it as hard as you can, until with a "pop!" the thing shatters in your rectum, evidencing your subjective experience of the pain the physical body forces you to feel. We are all riding along in the corporeal structures of the body, this is a self-affirming truth. What is less a truth is the degree to which the observational "we" is distinguishable from the subjective "we."

[Anonymous No.16490881]

>weak-willed incel tier
Freud’s etiology
>chad tier
Adler’s teleology

[Anonymous No.16490888]

"intellectuals" really can't produce anything of value

[Anonymous No.16490890]

Read Spinoza, he's a deterministic thinker who develops an incredibly strong theory of the human mind in Ethics part 3
>>16490853

[Anonymous No.16490898]

>>16488865
>Has psychology disproven free will?
Free will can't be disproven or proven until we know how the brain works.

[Anonymous No.16490916]

>>16488865
how do different child act differently under the same environmental influences? How do twins act differently and differ in intellect when they are hugely similar with similar IQ? There's definitely an innate disposition that is beyond past experiences and even genetics. Don't kid yourselves. This doesn't mean that psychology is null, but that it still can't disprove metaphysics.

[Anonymous No.16490942]

>>16490916
>How do twins act differently and differ in intellect when they are hugely similar with similar IQ?
This is a seemingly poignant question with a simple answer: no two twins are sufficiently alike to be able to draw the conclusions you're hinting at. There are perfectly reasonable and basic answers to it, like that the tiniest genetic drift accounts for the differences between humans and chimps, and that an even smaller one accounts for the difference between Einstein and 50 Cent, or that even if there existed two exactly precisely mirrored twins, in order to even start using twins to evidence whatever it actually is that you're trying to say -- you never actually say it -- you would need to directly control every single event that happens at every single moment of their lives. Oh, and to make it really conclusive, you'd need a third completely, 100% identical, in order to do absolutely nothing for his life.

Basically, what you said is dumb and speaks to nothing except your own ignorance and shallow thought. I still have no fucking clue what you were trying to say, by the way. Twins act differently therefore souls? God? Dude.

[Anonymous No.16490952]

>>16490942
>>16490916
IMO it's mega unreasonable to think that twins have a perfect 1:1 identical experience of everything. But if I were to grow up as anyone who wasn't me, with their name, face, family, education, circles of friend, why wouldn't I do every single thing they did in the same order?
Twins are still going to experience things differently and behave differently.

[Anonymous No.16490993]

>>16490952
>why wouldn't I do every single thing they did in the same order?
In short, quantum uncertainty (maybe). You're saying that if a series of events happens in the exact same way to different human beings, you get a set of the same actions to essentially the same person. If we knew for an absolute fact that we could determine the precise state of every elementary particle influencing that person's life, we could recreate it. It doesn't mean that we ever would be ABLE the create it, or gain the required knowledge, but we would know this was possible. If it were possible, this implies a kind of causality to the universe ergo no free will. The problem is that we cannot predict the state of quanta based on prior states. It's not that equipment isn't good enough to detect it, it's a fundamental, mathematical impossibility. Since we cannot predict their state based on prior states, this would evidence a universe where there is at least the possibility of free will. It's not conclusive, but it's something.

[Anonymous No.16491000]

>>16490890
>strong theory
Strong how?

[Anonymous No.16491018]

>>16490831
>>16490993
>quantum
>>>/x/

[Anonymous No.16491045]

>>16491000
Read the ethics, part 3.

>>16490993
>muh quantum freewill
Every fucking time.

[Anonymous No.16491052]

If you perceive your free will (i.e. are not a NPC), it's irrational to deny free will.

[Anonymous No.16491058]

>>16489065
>psychology is alchemy waiting to be chemistry

I doubt it. Perhaps you mean neurology, which will certainly advance its knowledge into surprising echelons, as it is a hard science. Psychology is little more than philosophy in my opinion. While Jung made great progress with his idea of the collective unconscious and shadow, anima/animus nodes of consciousness, I think they cannot be tested and therefore lie outside of real science. That said, I believe that there are non-physical aspects to a human entity that are critical in the formation of our free will, especially. I am a believer in free will, and find the alternative to be repugnant. But the harder sciences have a view more based in causality than the whole of philosophy and this makes them often think that the mind is just an emanation of the physical systems of the body the same way a movie is an emanation of a tv screen. And maybe they are right. Maybe consciousness is nothing more than a chemical soup and causality is king. But I would prefer not to live in such a world. The fact that some do is disturbing to me in the same way that some people try to take away the freedom of others is, this last is an ongoing process throughout history. Maybe it's easier to not be responsible for your actions or lack of actions or failures. I take full responsibility for mine, such as they are. But its mostly because some kind of freedom has always been a core attribute of a human being to me, without which we would be reduced to the status of meteorology. A complex, chaotic series of systems of determinism. That is intolerable to me

[Anonymous No.16491090]

>>16491045
>quantum freewill
How do you reconcile determinism absolutely with quantum uncertainty? Genuine question.

[Anonymous No.16491107]

>>16488865
This is an idiot concept. Anyone who replies to this in the affirmative is an idiot.

[Anonymous No.16491108]

>>16491090
Heisenberg uncertainty doesn't imply matter is blurry at an ontological level. There is simply a hard cap on whatever experimental knowledge can be deduced from reality without interfering causally with it.

[Anonymous No.16491120]

>>16490942
>Basically, what you said is dumb and speaks to nothing except your own ignorance and shallow thought. I still have no fucking clue what you were trying to say, by the way. Twins act differently therefore souls? God? Dude.
you are an idiot that has never interacted with a twin. How can one twin be more intellectual than another and one being more forgetful or denser than the other? There' no reason because being dense and unintellectual at the face of the other is a huge disadvantage and of the realm of their IQ which is presumably concrete in the determination of intellectual capabilities unless you are willing to conclude that being dense has no correlation with IQ or genetics.
Determinist assholes are using shitty circular argument to argue of the absoluteness of naturalism. "Oh a difference? therefore tiiinee winsy tiny difference in genetics, because THAT has to be the reason despite not being scientifically testable and still is largely the realm of the unknown. Therefore, determinism is true, because determinism is true"
Fuck off.

[Anonymous No.16491123]

>>16491108
>>>/sci/12185467
Wait and see the replies

[Anonymous No.16491128]

>>16491120
>nooooooooooooooooooooooo
>i am special and uniiiiiiiiiiiique
>i cannot be reduced to matter and causalityyyyy i feel special snowflaaaaake!!!

[Anonymous No.16491130]

>>16491128
Cringe and low IQ.
Seethe more

[Anonymous No.16491133]

>>16491130
Better luck next time

[Anonymous No.16491137]

>>16491108
>but what is that hard cap, sir?
>give me more money and I'll find out!
Academics are absolute cancer.

[Anonymous No.16491141]

>>16491133
>147 is high
Here's laughing at you, kid.

[Anonymous No.16491143]

>>16491128
>no humans are only matter
>differences in response is only due to environment despite manifesting during infancy from twins that has 100% similar genetics

[Anonymous No.16491158]

>>16491133
How much do you read?

[Anonymous No.16491165]

>>16491158
A fair bit, but I was studying history+phil in uni so it's expected. However I couldnt bother with the uni books (analytics, kant, aristotle) and just focused on Spinoza, history of science, historiography etc

[Anonymous No.16491167]

>>16491120
Honestly, wojak was a good response to this.

[Anonymous No.16491193]

>>16491128
Unironically got warned for this wojak although it is a silly way to make a legit serious point on the narcissistic injury and anthropocentric exceptionalism. Good job mr jany

[Anonymous No.16491236]

>>16491193
>it is a silly way to make a legit serious point on the narcissistic injury and anthropocentric exceptionalism
how is any of that anthropocentric?

[Anonymous No.16491243]

>>16491236
Because it posits human exceptionality in free-will/consciousness/soul. All things in nature are accepted to obey causality, except for anything below the surface of human skin.

[Anonymous No.16491254]

>>16491243
what? It posits the uncertainty of reaction against natural stimuli despite similar variables. Humans are just the example, not the exception.

[Anonymous No.16491260]

>>16491254
Is that uncertainty an actual property of humans or the result of our ignorance of comprehensive causal links? If you think the former, you're anthropocentric.

[Anonymous No.16491322]

>>16491260
>Is that uncertainty an actual property of humans or the result of our ignorance of comprehensive causal links?
It actually didn't occur to me that we were specifically talking about humans until just now. The capacity for free will isn't dependent on humans. It seems unlikely that humans and humans alone would exhibit free will throughout the universe. Its capacity doesn't really require intelligent life at all, in the same way that the sun doesn't require life to utilize it -- it would continue doing the same thing independent of our observation. Free will could just as easily be a universal constant that can be taken advantage of if certain conditions are met. I just don't see how free will absolutely, categorically cannot ITSELF be the end (or beginning) of a causal link. It could be an irreducible, axiomatic precondition, composed of some kind of exotic elementary particle we haven't discovered yet. It's just unscientific to try to state definitively that either you believe we are inherently deterministic entities or you're "anthropocentric," which seems like a bit of a false dichotomy to boot.

[Anonymous No.16491395]

>>16490993
I have always had the intuitive hunch that some kind of cosmic or mathematical non-determinism was linked to free will in terms of our consciousness. But every time I try to talk to a scientist about the existence of non-determinism within a kicked harmonic oscillator, for example, they just clam the fuck up and stop the conversation. The idea of non-determinism is like anathema to the core of their belief structure. I'm more interested in the relationship between certain particles and consciousness in quantum physics though I don't know much about it. There is an Indian school of philosophy called samkhya that always interested me, and they say that pure consciousness exists in the form of one side of a dualistic substance, the other being gross or more solid matter. Purusha and Prakriti. Wouldn't it be interesting if they were right, and purusha is something like dark energy? A consciousness that exists, emanated by the structure of the sum total of the lit universe, similar, but not identical to the way that electricity and neurons combine to form ours? Or something like that. Light has to play some kind of role. Of course, I am not a physicist, I just like imagining strange states of being or underlying existential weirdness that explains why the universe is the way it is.

[Anonymous No.16491424]

>>16491260
The latter, however every individual has different disposition that does result in a difference response to stimuli. A tyrannical coddling mother can either hyper-masculinize or feminize a man depending on their innate disposition, which posits that there is a definite realm of "unknowable circumstances" which you can either chalk up to be genetics or a "God-given difference", both of which philosophically address the problem "competently" and are both implying ignorance of the human mind in calculating of all of the variables.
The problem in the emphasis on genetic difference in determining causal outcomes is that the implication that the difference which your entire behavior can be predicated upon can be discovered once our scientific apparatuses are sophisticated enough, which I personally can't ever see happening thus making it pretty much useless for personal philosophy although incredibly useful in the advance of scientific fields.
Thus, we get to the problem of methodological naturalism and philosophical naturalism.
I still can't see how any of this is anthropocentric when it can definitely apply to social animals.

[Anonymous No.16491485]

>>16491395
>There is an Indian school of philosophy called samkhya that always interested me, and they say that pure consciousness exists in the form of one side of a dualistic substance, the other being gross or more solid matter. Purusha and Prakriti
I don't have much to add except that it's really cool to trace the idea through history. Kant based his ontology on the Platonic forms and ideas, but the interesting part is that Plato himself traveled extensively in the middle east, where it's likely he'd have interacted with Vedic philosophy. It's incredibly unlikely forms and ideas arose independently given the context. So what we have as a common thread throughout history, reaching even into the ages of oral history, is the little idea that we may be more than the contents of our bodies -- supersets rather than subsets. It's one of the oldest, continuously present ideas in human history. I'm not saying its longevity is testament to anything more than its appeal, but it is really interesting to think about.

[Anonymous No.16491529]

>>16489065
>psychology is alchemy waiting to be chemistry
Is more aptly liken it to medicine during four humor theory, because it’s problem is a lack of understanding for the deepest processes, rather than an inability to work. Medicine during 4 humors could treat illnesses (though less effectively than now) just as psychology can understand some aspects of our minds but not fully yet:

psychology needs a physiology to its medicine.

>>16488865
This was metaphysically demonstrated by both Socrates and Spinoza. However, understanding how we make those decisions and the complexity of reality means that free will might as well exist and you should take responsibility for your behaviours.

[Anonymous No.16492357]

>>16488865
Freud said that understanding the ways your experience programmed you would then free you from the programming.

[Anonymous No.16492403]

>>16488865
>reciprocate

[Anonymous No.16492807]

>>16491485
Dualism is shit and a cope way to save human exceptionalism. Monist traditions are incredibly powerful but ignored by plebs

[Anonymous No.16493010]

>>16490831
if the thought processes are macro scale events (and this macro scale is much smaller than the human eye can see), case closed. But if they're not, quantum uncertainty does not imply free will. We can assign probabilities to quantum events, so we could still describe thought in a probabilistic manner, however impractical that'd be. And even if we could not, that doesn't really matter, as this randomness doesn't give man agency - no free will, just random will.

That's not to say there is no free will, just that quantum mechanics has no bearing on the question.

[Anonymous No.16493046]

1. It's possible to talk and reason about a concept without having a precise, rigorous definition of the concept.

2. It's meaningful to talk about free will.

3. If some fact or statement is immediately perceived to be true then it's reasonable to believe the statement unless you have a valid reason to doubt your perception.

4. I immediately perceive my own free will.

5. I know of no good arguments against free will.

6. Therefore, it's reasonable for me to believe that I have free will.

[Anonymous No.16493089]

>>16490890
>Implying I havent
What else besides ethics

[Anonymous No.16493166]

>>16493046
Is Libet not good, or do you simply know nothing about the topic under discussion?

[Anonymous No.16493988]

>>16493010
>as this randomness doesn't give man agency - no free will, just random will
No, you're right, and I'd never try to speak definitively that it did. Given the fact that neuroscience is still very much a nascent field though, I think you're jumping the shark to say that quantum mechanics has categorically no bearing on the question of free will. I want to stay very far away from "quantum brain" hoodoo, but it would be far from unreasonable to say that we just don't know enough yet about the workings of the brain or QM alone -- both fields are very much in flux -- let alone how they interact.

[Anonymous No.16494132]

>>16493988
That may very well be, as my knowledge of QM is limited and that of neuroscience nonexistent, but as far as I'm concerned, free will may only exist metaphysically. If physicalism is true then that's that, reasoning outlined above, which I guess makes me an incompatibilist

[Anonymous No.16495431]

Free Will vs Determinism is a useless debate. Why does it matter if any of your actions will lead to an inevitable conclusion or not? It is impossible for you to know what those outcomes will be for sure. You cannot change the tides, but you yourself cannot predict where the tides will lead you. In the end free will nor determinism is neither for or against self-actualization. It's merely perception.

[Anonymous No.16495458]

>>16490778
gravity is a theory too, jump out a window

[Anonymous No.16495480]

>>16495431
It's just interesting to think about. Everything as a giant clockwork mechanism unfolding