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Do you believe in free will? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 week ago by Dr_Box@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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There is an argument that free will doesn't exist because there is an unbroken chain of causality we are riding on that dates back to the beginning of time. Meaning that every time you fart, scratch your nose, blink, or make lifechanging decisions there is a pre existing reason. These reasons might be anything from the sensory enviornment you were in the past minute, the hormone levels in your bloodstream at the time, hormones you were exposed to as a baby, or how you were parented growing up. No thought you have is really original and is more like a domino affect of neurons firing off in reaction to what you have experienced. What are your thoughts on this?

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[–] Sal@mander.xyz 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

In my view, neuroscience may contribute to clarifying questions like:

Do all brains support a conscious predictive model (CPM)?
Does adaptive behavior in brainless organisms suggest a primitive CPM?
What is the relationship between brain and mind?

But deeper questions, such as “What do we mean by mind?” or “Why assume weak emergence?” remain tied to the hard problem of consciousness, which currently lies beyond the reach of empirical science.

In trying to describe promising cognitive models, I buried my main point. I am not arguing that the brain and mind problem is close to a solution, or that science is close to resolving it.

Here is my actual point:

Certain materialist views unintentionally reproduce dualist thinking. Substance dualism claims that the mind exists outside physical law. Materialism, in contrast, holds that the mind emerges from brain activity. But when this emergence is explained only as complexity or undefined processing, a conceptual gap forms: brain -> black box -> mind. This reproduces dualism in practice, even if not in theory.

This gap renders consciousness a passive byproduct. It becomes a new kind of soul, unable to influence the body. A mind without agency.

Predictive processing and active inference models offer an alternative. They describe the brain as a generative system that continuously updates predictions based on sensory input. As summarized in a recent review:

Active inference casts the brain as a fantastic organ: a generator of fantasies, hypotheses and predictions that are tested against sensory evidence.

While these models do not resolve the hard problem, they help remove part of the black box. They suggest that consciousness may play a functional role in these feedback loops. It is not a detached illusion but a process embedded in how the brain operates.

For me, this shift changed how I think about free will. Not because it provides final answers, but because it allows me to see mental acts in a similar way to how I see muscle movement. These acts are constrained by physical laws, but they are still mine.

[–] TempermentalAnomaly@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

I'm going to stick with the meat of your point. To summarize,

Some materialist views create a black box in which consciousness is a passive activity
brain -> black box -> mind
CPMs extract consciousness from the black box
Consciousness plays a function role by providing feedback
brain -> black box -> CPM-> consciousness -> black box -> mind

But to go further, stimuli -> brain -> black box -> CPM-> consciousness update CPM -> black box -> mind -> response to stimuli

The CPM as far as I can tell is the following:
representation of stimuli -> model (of the world with a modeled self) -> consciousness making predictions (of how the world changes if the self acts upon it) -> updating model -> updated prediction -> suspected desired result

I feel like I've mis-represented something of your position with the self. I think you're saying that the self is the prediction maker. And that free will exists in the making of predictions. But presentation of the CPM places the self in the model. Furthermore, I think you're saying that consciousness is a process of the brain and I think it's of the mind. Can you remedy my representation of your position?

Quickly reading the review, I went to see if they posited role for the mind. I was disappointed to see that they, not only ignored it (unsurprising), but collapsed functions normally attributed to the mind to the brain. Ascribing predictions, fantasies, and hypotheses to the brain or calling it a statistical organ sidesteps the hard problem and collapses it into a physicalist view. They don't posit a mind-body relationship, they speak about body and never acknowledge the mind. I find this frustrating.