@UrsaMinor

Having a program that adapts to its environment is simple in an abstract way. Take a two 16 bit numbers calling them the environment (E) and goal (G). Now create a 1024 programs each with there own 16 bit number defining their characteristic (C) and a simple rule set (R) of 16 bitwise (AND, NOT, OR, XOR) operators. Now let them all live (perform each bitwise operation) for a generation to give a selection criteria (S); so S[n] = R[n](E[n], C[n), n = 0 .. 15. Take the top 128 programs (number of bits set in S vs. number in G) and let each one of them bred by making eight copies of itself and with minor variations in either its C or R. Now rinse and repeat to get a population that slowly adapts to achieving its goal.

Meh. The only one that really has any currency is the Chinese Room objection, and as I've indicated before I think that Turing was right and Searle wrong; we fetishize "understanding" as distinct from algorithmic symbol manipulation only because we are (foggily) aware of it as it occurs. There is no magic ingredient that turns an algorithm that takes inputs and creates correct outputs and turns it into understanding, but rather (most probably) a separate algorithmic process that matches the experience of processing algorithms properly with a register of "understanding".

The rest of the objections seem either to mistake the goal of mind-computation (hint: the mind is not, generally, calculating to resolve for semantic TRUTH, like most artificial computers do; human minds and minds in general are absurdly fault-tolerant at several levels of analysis) or attempt a reductio that doesn't actually lead to absurdity (objection 3.5) or make unbelievably unwarranted inductive leaps about qualitative difference (such as the supposed path differences between novice and expert computational strategies for completing familiar tasks).

Yeah, the 'brain as computer' thing is pretty outdated.

There are plenty of criticisms of the computational theory of mind:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computational-mind/#CriThe

Isn't the brain just a computer? The output completely depends on the input. If you provide the exact same input, the output should always be the same.
Let's say we throw a dice. If we could find the exact location and energy of the dice and do the math, we should be able to predict the outcome. The brain isn't any different; it's just more complex.
It all comes down to the question of where consciousness comes from. My opinion is that the brain is just a very complex computer program, and what we call consciousness is just a first-person view of that program.
Here is my question. Do simple organisms like amoeba have consciousness? I'm pretty sure some higher organisms (like chimpanzees) do. How complex should a computer be to have consciousness (the state of being aware of one's surroundings; Oxford)?

Well, my position is pretty similar to UrsaMinors. However I would also like to add that in my opinion free will is a question we just aren't even close to ready to answer yet. Neuroscience and understanding how our brain states relate to our thoughts and emotions is one of the newest sciences around. We have only a very rudimentary understanding of how our brain gives rise to such things.

I don't see how we can possibly even begin to answer the question of free will until we start to understand exactly how a biological brain gives rise to what we consider consciousness. To me it is putting the cart in front of the horse. Philosophizing about it can be entertaining but isn't really going to get us any closer to an answer.

@WarbVIII:

I'm agnostic about the existence of free will. As I said in an earlier post, it makes the most sense to assume it exists, because if it does, we have moral responsibilities, and if it doesn't, even our incorrect assumption that it exist does is predetermined.

I am not as sure as you are that we actually can make choices. We certainly feel like we can. But how would you ever prove that any decision you make is a choice, and not the inevitable consequence of physics and biology that just feels like a choice to you? Could you really have gone the other way and ordered the chicken instead of the steak last night, or were your brain molecules just lined up so that ordering steak was inevitable at that moment in time?

But again, since we can't really know, the best working assumption is that we can make choices. We can go down either path. We can make decisions that carry moral weight.

i think the argument over free will is a little bit off the mark to be honest.

we've inherited a conception of self that is, in my understanding, altogether flawed in its assumption that we are our conscious minds and nothing more. this idea is present in western christianity and we are operating under its influence to this day.

remember that it is the function of your brain to identify patterns and work with them. its a very practical thing, as it allows us to differentiate between a door and a wall for example. because of this ability we are able to a host of incredible things and our survival ability shoots through the roof.

however, it is a fundamental flaw in our "common sense" that we assert that "we" have "free will," since what we really are is a continuum of biology, not a differentiated set of entities incorporated into one body. the idea of free will comes with the assumption that an individual is his or her conscious thoughts and memories.

consider this: we are communicating masses of information constantly with others through body language. we are masters of self-expression and our conscious minds have little access to it. your conscious mind is an single aspect of the continuum which is you. your self-concept is not objectively real, it is simply a consequence of your existence.

another example... psychologists have discovered that by monitoring an individual's brain, they can accurately predict a decision he or she will make up to 6 seconds before they are conscious of it. (i'm pretty sure it was 6 seconds, correct me if i'm quoting that study inaccurately).

as i understand it, free will is a useful concept along the same lines as our self-concepts. this method of thinking help us differentiate between walls and doors and get us where we need to go. free will is an expression of an experience, and it's a good one as accountability and responsibility for actions is so necessary to both an individual's healthy personal psychology and the function of a society.

one problem i see in a lot of people's thought is the idea that the mind is anything more than a useful system, a sort of "sense factory" if you will. the mind is not transcendent. the "soul" is an outdated concept that we need to move on from.

free will is like a door--if you examine it closely, you see it is an arrangement of sub-atomic particles acting in time and space. but it is most useful when we examine it from a distance and know the "meaning" of it. when you recognize the meaning, you can cross through the wall.

i hope this gets my idea across correctly... i unfortunately don't have time to go back and revise :p

Ursa I did say kinda agreed with the concept not that it gave us free will,also said I didn't understand it all that well,but you did get the gist of what I was saying, and explained that it does demolish determanism more or less.
In any event I don't see how if we can make a choice,a descision about what we do that isn't actually 'free will', you will agree that we can make choices right? Would you also perhaps agree then that some choices people make and what they make them about can definitely have no biological origin,and thus no chemical component..and also one devoid of say physics? A couple examples would be say choices about insurance plans, liking one team over any other team when you start rooting for one, liking some movies or dislikinging them when compared to others film tastes(heck taste in most things overall such as liking some color but not another), hobbies what they are and wether you have any or not. I am sure there are many other possible examples of such things, though in the end if we think it is free will or that we have a choice perceptually can it be proved or disproved that we actually don't?

To mimic the brain, I think there would have to be levels/ systems of action like there is in the brain-- the molecular level, the cell level, the tissue level, the organ level, and (maybe even) the organ system level.

After listening to the excellent discussion of determinism and free will on this podcast (this is part one of a series on determinism from the excellent podcast Reasonable Doubts) http://doubtreligion.blogspot.com/2009/01/episode-29-free-willy-vs-determinator.html
I'm convinced that free will is an illusion, but it is an illusion that is a necessary emergent condition of consciousness. (That is, free will is the process of consciousness acting. I'm not a philosopher so I may not be using the language precisely...)

That is my current belief until Elemenope comes along to shatter my assumptions with his piercing observations. That's what usually happens here. :)

True, there are no computers today that can give rise to consciousness. The jury is still out on whether or not this is possible. I think part of the problem is the elusive nature of consciousness- we haven't agreed yet on exactly what it is, so it's hard to say whether it is possible to build a conscious machine when 'conscious' still has an unknown value. If it's just a matter of sufficient complexity and plasticity for consciousness to emerge, then sure, in theory, some day we will be able to build something that complex and behaviorally plastic. If it's not...well, we'll have to figure out what that sine qua non is and go from there. I am not persuaded by arguments either way at this point.

Although they exist solely on the experimental lab bench at this point, there are trainable logic arrays whose components can alter their response thresholds to stimuli. They learn and adapt. This seems like a step in the direction of mimicking natural neuronal function more closely. Where this will lead, I can't say.

I think free will is not wholly free... there are clearly biological limits, socioeconomic limits, even geopolitical limits that stop people from total freedom of will. That being said, clearly we observe people making choices.

That makes a very complicated situation for moral praise/blameworthiness. How do we sort out whether or not a person chose a certain behavior or was compelled to do it or some combination of the two?

This has huge implications for the criminal "justice" system, which to me seems less like a system of "justice" and more like a barbaric torture device that hardens people and makes them worse.

"Neurons can be compared to bits in computer memory- they are either firing or not (which sweeps a great deal of subtlety under the rug, since their firing thresholds can vary with over time and with training)"

Well, these kind of statements worry me.* Each neuron has many thousands of dendritic branches and many thousands of axonal terminals producing exhibitory or inhibitory chemicals that may or may not lead to long term potentiation that may or may not lead to transcription of DNA that may or may not lead to neuronal plasticity. I don't know of any program that is like that.

I recently read Ray Kurzweil's "The Age of Spiritual Machines" and I disagreed with some of the more "ambitious" claims in that book.

*Again, I just don't have enough knowledge about computers, but my understanding is that there are no computers in existence today that can do what the human brain can do (that is, give rise to consciousness) and also that there may never be (or there might-- who knows!).

I know less about brains than LRA, but I am both a professional biologist and professional software engineer. My take? The brain is like a computer...maybe. The brain does parallel processing, but so do modern computers. Neurons can be compared to bits in computer memory- they are either firing or not (which sweeps a great deal of subtlety under the rug, since their firing thresholds can vary with over time and with training). I agree that consciousness is probably an emergent feature of the system.

The brain probably follows rules that most closely resemble what we call "fuzzy logic" to arrive at decisions. Beyond some basic autonomic functions and instinctive processes, it has to be trained to do what it does. But I'd be really surprised if there weren't some core logic rules buried deep in there somewhere. Otherwise, human infants would have to figure the rules out for themselves and learn how to learn, with no innate basis for it. That seems a pretty tall order, and there are just too many similarities cross-culturally about how infants learn for it to be a coincidence. So my guess is, there are a few hardwired basic rules and a lot of parallel processing power, and the application of fuzzy logic whose rules are learned with experience.

But not being a brain or behavorial specialist, I must admit that my guesses are hardly better than what the average college graduate could come up with. We still have a lot to learn about the brain and the nature of consciousness. Come back in twenty years and ask me again.

"Now the human brain is a very complicated set of programs,"

That doesn't seem quite accurate to me.* A program requires someone to program it and it follows the logic of the program. The brain doesn't do that. Also, there is parallel processing on a massive scale in the brain. Consciousness seems to be an emergent feature of the many minute processes of each individual neuron... like the way an ant colony has complex behavior emerging from many simple ant behaviors.

http://www.cnr.berkeley.edu/~goster/pdfs/NeuroComplexity.pdf

*(I make this statement as a person who knows a whole lot about brains and not a whole lot about computers.)

I'm not sure that quantum mechanics says anything about free will. Yes, it does demolish classical determinism (a necessary precondition to the existence of free will), but what does it leave us with? If what we decide to do is ultimately based on random quantum fluctuations resolving one way or the other, how does this give us free will? The script may not be written in advance, but neither do we necessarily have any control over it.

Ender not sure how if free will exists it has to extend to that level at all, if will can and does overcome chemical and biological instinct does it have to change the processes I don't think so...heck training and culture can often trump these things as well(monagamy for instance) and that definitely doesn't in any way extend down to a subatomic level. Choosing to not follow purely chemical and instinctive things are something people,I would say all people,do on a daily basis..it's also been shown choice and will can trump genetics...someone can become really good at something,perhaps even great even though it's something they are not predisposed to be good or great at lots of example abound of that in the world blind and deaf musicians for instance..things like these tell me people have free will and choices...and I thought quantum phsics kinda agreed with free will(though I am by no means an expert..nor do I probably really understand it all that well).

I was talking about replicating things down to subatomic level, which is something that's clearly impossible to do - however if free will does exist, this means it must somehow extend down to that level.

Not sure about free will in a religious or philisophical case existing,particullarly in the religious sense anyway.
Yet,free will as choice in eveday life existing as far as most thinking creatures are concerned sure as heck seems to exist, it's how people can overcome fear and choose to run towards someone shooting at them(as happened during the shooting in arizona for example),or choosing to run towards a fire as a fireman..which at times is trumped still by instinct but can be overcome but choice and the application of willpower. I would also say since people can and do change even after making certain choices the same way for years prior to that point,and then not making those choices afterwards. Choice exists,and thus free will exists in at least the real world.

I am also sure that if you could replicate things again and again things would not turn out the same everytime. The best current way to show that though would be twins,most turn out incredibly alike given most or all of the same parameters,but some are incredibly different..even so far as some pairs have a gay and a straight member as an example. Then their are those twins raised differently,often when seperated at birth or whatnot, that also either are scarily similar though having had wildly different upbringings,yet some are nothing alike.
I think god does play dice with the universe unlike Albert..(granted I don't think god exists but so what). Choice and choices definitely exist,thus free will in humanity exists at least...wether or not most people use it or not is another question entirely.

It doesn't disagree with it, but simply provides an incomplete picture of the events as they actually are. I don't see why they must necessarily disagree at all.

Take any computer program, and change the significant digits being preserved from one calculation the the next by one decimal place. The outputs of the program will quickly diverge from the original program.

Minor changes in simple programs will lead to divergent results. Now the human brain is a very complicated set of programs, and the conscious model of human thought is orders of magnitudes less complicated. I would expect their outputs to diverge wildly, even if it were a very good model (which we have no reason to believe it is).

Now, if it is a useful model *at all*, what it probably does is sum across histories to create probabilistic models for different states of mind, since for any given specific instance its model will be so far off the actual state of mind so as to be useless. It is, at best, predictive in general cases. It's why we can imagine what we would do, given certain circumstances, but the reality of what we do do given those circumstances diverges significantly from the prediction.

If free will is an illusion, then morality, ethics and philosophy are all meaningless. Just sayin'.

You can make a sort of Pascal's Wager about this.

If free will doesn't exist and we pretend it does and act in a certain way that would be considered 'good' if we were free moral agents, we're doing it because we have no choice. No brownie points for us.

Likewise, if free will doesn't exist and we recognize this and act in a manner that would be considered 'bad' if we were free moral agents, we're doing it because we have no choice. No slap on the wrist for us.

If free will does exist and we pretend that it does not, we run a risk of committing moral and ethical errors by not assuming responsibility for our actions.

If free will does exist and we recognize it, it is no guarantee that we will behave morally, but at least there is the awareness of responsibility to tickle our consciences.

The best decision is to assume that free will exists. If it does not exist, our behavior doesn't matter anyway, and there are no moral consequences for being wrong about its existence. If it does exist and we recognize it, we can strive to be moral. The only case where we get into serious trouble is if free will exists and we pretend that it doesn't and deny that there is any such thing as moral responsibility.

In my opinion, free will is an illusion - not due to any psychological reasons, but due to chemistry and physics. I think that if we were able to create a perfect simulation of the current universe (which is for obvious reasons impossible), we would get to the exact same point where we're today.

If you could put the same person through the same experience multiple times (perfectly replicating all circumstances - this includes what this person knows), he'd always behave the same.

"Whatever happens happens."

And whatever happens to be beneficial will be more likely to stick around.

Blind spots and gigantic self aware resource hog brains are two very different things, with two very different costs to support.

Problem I see is, T and Model[T] run in parallel, and Model[T], though it is ostensibly part of the set T, must necessarily disagree with it in some details, because it is a simplified model of T.

It doesn't disagree with it, but simply provides an incomplete picture of the events as they actually are. I don't see why they must necessarily disagree at all.

@Shin

I don't think any conscious beings are aware of the mechanics behind their thoughts, so how could this trait have "evolved" in order to sway us away from depression?

I don't think evolving a delusion of free will and the blind spot are in the same category.

My point was that evolution doesn't always follow a purpose or usefulness. Whatever happens happens. So a product of evolution doesn't have to be useful; like the blind spot or swelling prostate gland. If a delusion of free will is useless, that would explain why we have it despite its uselessness.

But if it is useful, it is probably because delusional people were less likely to be emos. Wouldn't you be more motivated to live if you believe you have full control in your life?

@Eudaimonist
I think it is possible that we evolved this way. Being more conscious of the mechanics behind our thoughts can cause us to be depressed. Maybe natural selection is holding us from developing the ability to be more conscious of it. Or maybe we just evolved that way for no reason; like the blind spot.

I felt compelled to post this:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/

We simply don't have the ability to be actively conscious of the mechanics behind our actions or thoughts.

Our thoughts hold a simplified model of our thoughts. Problem I see is, T and Model[T] run in parallel, and Model[T], though it is ostensibly part of the set T, must necessarily disagree with it in some details, because it is a simplified model of T. Doesn't that necessarily and pathologically lead to dialethic results?

If it's a delusion, it's a useful one or we wouldn't have evolved it. It's an expensive trait. It must have a corresponding payoff.

I don't think it's accurate to say we "evolved" a delusion of free will. We simply don't have the ability to be actively conscious of the mechanics behind our actions or thoughts.