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Fruit Flies Show Spark of Free Will
Lucas123 writes "A study performed at the Free University Berlin on human free will has produced some unexpected results showing that fruit flies may have a spark of free will in their tiny brains." From the article: "Their behavior seemed to match up with a mathematical algorithm called Levy's distribution ... Future research delving further into free will could lead to more advanced robots, scientists added. The result, joked neurobiologist Björn Brembs from the Free University Berlin, could be "world robot domination."
By their logic, chaotic systems = free will. So the weather really does have a mind of its own?
More like biologists that took a few too many liberal arts classes.
I don't know if it is the MSNBC write up or the "experiment" itself, but this has got to be the most vacuous thing I've ever read.
How we know is more important than what we know.
If people really have free will, why do they keep automatically making that "I for one welcome our new overlords" joke?
Is there any fundamental difference between random and free-will? From and observational standpoint, don't they both mean that the observer can't, on a case by case, basis predict what the observed entity will do?
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So the article seems to be saying that in the absence of external stimuli, the flies tend to move in patterns that match a mathematical model. I fail to see how this precludes them from merely having brains with hardwired instruction sets that tell them how to fly in zigzag patterns looking for food. Couldn't a robot do exactly that?
And how do you show 'a spark' of free will? They can make independant choices, but are easily influenced by pressure from friends and family? We have a way to quantify free will now?
Agreed that the issue is somewhat orthogonal to religion. Religion has 'fate' while atheism has 'determinism'.
Just critizising the article, really. I find "Free Will" to be very much an abuse of semantics, anyway. A 'pseudoproblem', I believe it's called. The term shouldn't be used in an scientific article. If they mean that the fly's behaviour is neither completely random nor easily predictible from external factors, then they should write so (But of course, where's the sensationalism in that?)
In a fair world, refrigerators would make electricity.
If it's free will, how come it matches a mathematical distribution?
What theory of free will predicted this?
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I'd argue the fundamental problem is the lack of any real definition of what "free will" is. Free will can't simply mean that different individuals follow different patterns - that would be expected through variations in neural wiring as a result of genetics. Free will to me means something approaching a "soul" - a non-materialist inner part of me that can make "decisions" about how I will act. In other words "I" - under a definition of "I" that involves more than just patterns of neural activity - can make choices based on beliefs and reasoning, and then act on those beliefs
As far as I can tell this would require some sort of new scientific discoveries to even be possible. Nothing we currently know about the universe supports the concept of a coherent mental entity capable of making decisions that affect the physical world; in fact everything seems to imply the opposite, that the physical world would determine the structure and behavior of our mind, and that consciousness and the perception of free will is some sort of emergent effect from all the (entirely deterministic) processes going on inside our brains
Not a very pleasant view of existence, but so far I've seen nothing to counter it. Free will becomes simply an illusion, and it's no wonder that a study of an insects' flight patterns would do nothing to prove it real. There's not even a coherent concept that can be proved or disproved, just a name for a thing people believe they experience and want to believe is true
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That "spark" of free will was that @#@*! fruit fly hitting my bug zapper. Human free will to invent bug-killing devices trumps an insect's free will to kiss the suBZZZZZZTTTTTTT.
By "choice," do they mean free of self-determination and action independent of external causes?
Is it even possible for a living creature (human, animal, insect, etc.) to elect to do something in such a manner, being based on absolutely no external influence (i.e. environmental influences, genetics, a person's needs/well-being)?
Yes, but you see, one doesn't follow the other - they're entirely independent. I am atheist; I hold no belief in a god or gods. This does not mean that I presume that the universe is governed by immutable behaviors and effects, or behaviors and effects that are mutable, or a combination of the two. In fact, I don't know, and I don't presume to know, though I have a moderate level of confidence that we will eventually know which of these is the case as a consequence of our scientific explorations.
Atheism — which is, at its core, simply the lack of a belief in a god or gods — doesn't really take you anywhere else in particular. There are as many different outlooks that contain atheism as there are outlooks that are theist, that is, those outlooks that hold a belief in a god or gods. I personally find a great deal to disagree over when I talk to others who are atheist, more often than not.
Finally, two things: "design" isn't a capability that is only to be visualized as something in the hands of a god or gods. Just ask a real watchmaker or chip architect. On top of that, naturalism isn't something that precludes design.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
What exactly do you think you have proved with by observing that in an identical world, things would be identical? Does the word "tautology" mean anything to you?
If you think physics settles the question of free will, then I'd guess you're not that well versed in either physics or philosophy.
Now I've heard of not RTFA, but not even reading the title? Come on.If people really have free will, why do they keep automatically making that "I for one welcome our new overlords" joke?
It said "Fruit Flies Show Spark of Free Will". It says nothing of people. Clearly the facts show that people do not possess any sort of free will. I mean, how else would one explain American Idol?
...and you only just shared it with us? Many have died in vain.
Or maybe your essentially newtonian and deterministic view of reality is based on assumptions which conveniently can never be proven or disproven. You know, just like crazy religious people.
I mean, does it even occur to you that if you could, somehow, recreate the *exact* same state of affairs twice to see what would happen, then it might still be possible for two different outcomes to occur? Not because of anything measurable or predictable, but because that's just how things are?
If you think "physics" or, for that matter, "reality" is all newtonian levers and collisions then you will no doubt say that it's impossible. But if reality simply doesn't behave like that then you might be wrong, and you couldn't prove it one way or another.
To take one, limited example: what if in a given situation a whole range of outcomes happen, but the infinite number of different outcomes lead to an infinite number of different, quasi-parallel universes? Simply because your consciousness is limited to observing one of these at a time doesn't mean that it's "the only thing which could have happened", does it? However, to you, there is only one, seemingly consistent, version of reality. I'm sure there are problems with this example but perhaps it conveys the essential point.
More significantly: if everything is deterministic based on "physics", could you please tell us where the rules of physics come from, and why they are as they are and not some other way? For instance, why do massive bodies attract and not repel? Why does light travel at the speed it does? At some point there is an arbitrary "decision" as to how things work which cannot be explained by pre-determined rules - unless it's just elephants all the way down...
Read Pynchon.
- Perhaps the laws of physics are not translation-invariant? That is, perhaps just by being in two different locations means the systems are different enough to behave differently. (This means that two truly identical systems must be in the same location, i.e., to be the same system.) Now, most physicists assume physics is in fact translation-invariant - but this is a working hypothesis, which might be altered by observations. (Note: everything here is also true for time-invariance.)
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Identical systems might behave differently if nature is governed (in part) by random processes. This, in fact, is implied by quantum mechanics. While quantum effects are virtually negligible for large systems, they can still have an effect.
'Free will' is a concept human beings have discussed for thousands of years; much of that discussion was how to define free will. You seem to go by the "Free will = capability of identical systems to do something different in the same situation" definition, which some scientists seem to like. And that is fine. But there are other ways to define it (Hume, for example, had a popular definition. Look on Wikipedia if you are curious). This then becomes a discussion about definitions, which is to say, philosophy.When you want to determine the motion of a 2-body system, you need physics. When you want to discuss definitions of terms thousands of years old, you need philosophy (once you settle on a definition, physics might then be of help, of course).
"Philosophy can think about what things might be like, or what they should be like, but nothing in it can change how things are."
Until you can present a scientific experiment involving two physically identical people with completely identical enviroments and history to test your statement that they "clearly can't" make different decisions, this statement is entirely irrelevant. That isn't how "things are", because your theories about these hypothetical situations with identical people or possible decisions of a person at any one time are not testable. There are no identical people in identical situations to observe and see if they make the same decisions. There is no way for a single person to make a decision, have that recorded, and then rewind time for that person so they never made the decision and have them redo it exactly the same way. Your statements are just as factually accurate as any free-will proponents you argue against, if not less so.
This may be just me being picky, but why was he marked redundant? I mean, QuantumFTL posted the joke only two minutes after the original poster. It's quite plausible that they were both reading the article at the same time, but due to the speed at which these threads tend to fill up, Quantum had not seen the original joke, and posted his own, as at the time the orginal post of the joke, was not there. But again, this could just be me being to picky.
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For all we know, the things that are going on inside our heads, might just as well be described as "magic". We do not know how the brain works, we may suspect it works similarly to a computer, but then again, it wouldn't be the first time people are wrong about how the brain works. Earlier theories have involved everything from souls, to telephone switchboards, and as far as I know, the only thing that has definitely been proven, is that the brain does not work the same way as a telephone switchboard.
Similarly, your argument that an identical person in an identical environment would do exactly the same thing, is nonsense. We do not have the ability to set up an experiment to test whether this is true, which puts the experiment in the realm of thought experiments, not science. As such, I could just as well claim that an identical person in an identical environment may choose to do something else, and you would be just as unable to disprove my statement, as I would be to disprove yours. This last statement could be interpreted to state that brain functions are random, that free will exists, or a combination of both.
Your claim that philosophy can't change how things are, is of course true. But how do you know "how things are"? Science isn't perfect. The only thing we know with absolute certainty in science, is that our models are incomplete and most often wrong. And just because you think the brain works in a certain way, doesn't mean it actually does. Like most eminent scientists, you are also capable of being wrong.
Since we do not know what kind of universe we live in, it's impossible to define what a "physical universe" means, except perhaps, that it must mean our own. And since we are unable to come up with a final proof (or even a convincing argument) either way, I think the only sane position to take, is that the existence of free will is still UNDECIDED.
Now, please go read some science and philosophy, because you obviously have a bad understanding of both.
Anyone with who is physically identical to you in an identical situation (with the requisite identical past experiences) would do exactly the same thing as you are doing right now and at every moment from now until you're dead. At which point their body would decompose in an identical manner.
If two identical atoms don't behave like that then why should a hundred quadrillion of them lumped together be expected to do so?
Sure, but that still leaves you required to demonstrate the mechanism of "choice", which we could then (possibly?) search for. You can't simply observe behavior patterns that correspond to a distribution curve and call it choice - that could easily still be a deterministic behavior, just complex & multilayered determinism
The elephant in the room is: how can choice occur? It's positing a cause->effect relationship between a conceptual person and the physical actions he takes. That your *mind* - not simply neurons in your brain - can somehow reach out and touch the material world; that's free will. And there's absolutely no evidence it exists
While I agree completely that identical initial conditions will evolve to the same final state, I'm not sure this really illuminates the the "free will" issue. The real problem is that free will is a poorly defined property. I can't think of a way to test whether someone (or some entity) possesses free will. Naively, I would expect free will to mean that faced with a choice, there are multiple options the entity might pursue. This is trivially true of many choices where our knowledge of the state the entity is in is incomplete, and trivially false when we have a complete description of the entity's state.
For example, we say a chair has no free will because it obeys simple physical laws and we usually have enough knowledge of its state to completely determine its future behaviour (at least at the level relevant to our daily lives). We say a person has free will because our lack of knowledge of their internal state limits our ability to predict their actions.
/-\-/
I'm an atheist, and I think the question of determinism is unknowable. Even if it is in principle knowable, the sum total of all knowledge about everything is unknowable by us, which means that, for all practical purposes, we might as well have free will. We're running up against the limits of human knowledge, and (to me) philosophy should focus on what reality is for us, not some purely abstract "what it really is" question. Our meaning is made by us. Yes, I'm a rabid existentialist. Mathematics (for one example) may describe an independly extant reality, and that's great, but the question of free will exists only in relation to us. Math would exist (theoretically) if all sentient life died, but free will depends on sentience.
That your *mind* - not simply neurons in your brain - can somehow reach out and touch the material world; that's free will. And there's absolutely no evidence it exists
Except for every waking moment.
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Whether mind is physical or not is, if you pardon the term, immaterial. It's not an obvious premise that all physical processes are necessarily deterministic or random, or a mixture of the two. The idea is that choice acts in an independent, but still non-random, way.
Of course, one of the problems of materialism is that this notion of independent, non-deterministic action arising from physical substance seems rather unlikely and at odds with all other known physical phenomena. And on the other hand, for those materialists who embrace quantum mechanics, the idea of randomness underlying processes is rather problematic.
Perhaps the Many-Worlds interpretation provides us with an out. If all possibilities occur in multiple universe, then the materialist can still say these are deterministic, in a sense that encompasses the random nature of QM. But perhaps free will comes into play in the *choice* of which universe you or I experience. The problem that arises then is what to do with all these people in other universes, or the fact that your choice may lead you to one universe and I another. Are the vast majority of these people "soul-less", in that they don't truly experience and choose the way "I" do? Or are new indetities constantly being created, in which case, in what sense do "I" actually "choose" a universe, if in fact the "I" that is experiencing might simply have just now come into existance based on the non-choice of another "I"?
These sorts of questions of identity seem to be ultimately unresolvable. But I still cling to the classic notion of Free Will, as I see rather little point in existing in a universe that is either deterministic or purely random. Perhaps it is my crutch of "faith" in an otherwise fairly rational world-view.
And, since so many comedies of various forms use repetition (catchphrases are an obvious example, running jokes amongst a group of friends, reciting of Monty Python) you don't even have the basis of a claim to "most people find repetition non-funny." From experience, if running jokes are simply remember old humour, then that doesn't actually alter the experience from new humour, especially given that, if execute successfully, a running joke gets funnier each time, not stale.
im in ur
If you don't have "free will", then you never make any real choices, as all your decisions have been pre-made by God.
If that is the case, then God is just a puppeteer, playing out whatever puppet show He happens to like.
There is no Good or Evil, there is only God - and God wills the acts of the murderer or rapist every bit as much as He wills the actions of the teacher, preacher, or scientist.
No heaven, no hell, no salvation, no redemption - because these depend on humans making CHOICES, and choices are only meaningful if there is "free will".
"Free will" is a core aspect of Christianity. Without it, Christ Himself is meaningless.
Personally, I'm an Atheist, and a Secular Humanist at that. There are no gods or any other form of supernatural forces at work in the Universe. We, our sentience, and our free will, are the result of a spectacularly unlikely series of events, and so are immeasurably precious.
DG
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I like to think the Pudgalavadins had the right answer.