Discussion suicide and free will

[esse_est_percipi]

So we didn't choose our genetics, upbringing, many environmental factors in our history, the way that physical forces and particles work, our personality type, as well as many other things.
It looks like our choices, which are supposedly manifestations of our free will, are made within very narrow limits, and that outside of those limits lies the huge landscape of determinism, briefly outlined above.

But it seems that even the narrow limits of the rivulet of free will are in danger of being submerged by the pressures of the outside deterministic torrents.
Neuroscientific data would suggest that our brains make decisions a few seconds before we are consciously aware of having done so (Using MRI machines, buttons and visualization experiments). We think we freely act based on decisions which we think we freely make; in fact a whole causal nexus of complex neurological events of which we are unaware is the real 'agent', and the impression of being a singular self which consciously chooses and acts based on alternatives is just a phenomenological illusion. Perhaps some kind of byproduct of evolutionary forces which increased survival rates for a remote ancestor.

What seems true at most given what we know, is that we have desires and impulses to act (which we don't choose or have any control over), and we then either act on them, or we don't. If we don't, it is because another desire or impulse has overridden the other one. "You can do what you will, but not will what you will", as Schopenhauer said.

What all this appears to point to is the lack of ultimate responsibility/choice of individuals when it comes to acting in general, and, more relevantly, to suicide as a subset of actions in general (n.b., of course, for the judicial system to work as an institution of punishment and control it has to assume responsibility for actions and therefore free will, even if science seems to be undermining this.)

In any case, there is much more evidence for this deterministic picture (evidence which accumulates as scientific knowledge advances) than for the (Cartesian) picture of humans being tiny metaphysical islets of free will surrounded by impersonal deterministic physical forces.

So whether a person ctb's, or just thinks about it but doesn't carry it out, or tries, fails and tries again, is ultimately not something that has anything to do with free will, real choices or any kind of meaningful autonomy. It's at bottom clusters of energy and particles conglomerating in the form of living systems, in interactive choreographic exchanges with the energy making up environments.
'Suicide' is just another (very localized) way in which energy trading and transformations occur in the universe on the long road to maximum entropy. It's not 'bad', 'selfish', 'cowardly', 'good', 'heroic', or any other all-too-human description. It's a very small and marginal node in the way the distribution of energy unfolded from the beginning of time.

Is this way of looking at it helpful/unhelpful/overly reductionist/irrelevant/liberating/stupid?

 

[GravityUtilizer]

I think the deterministic aspects are more interesting than the reductionist ones. Like whether or not everything is ultimately meaningless, I think it's still kind of cool to think you may have been basically born to suicide and never comprehend it, even as you're pulling the trigger/drinking the overly salty water/staring at the jagged rocks below, etc.

 

[esse_est_percipi]

I think the deterministic aspects are more interesting than the reductionist ones. Like whether or not everything is ultimately meaningless, I think it's still kind of cool to think you may have been basically born to suicide and never comprehend it, even as you're pulling the trigger/drinking the overly salty water/staring at the jagged rocks below, etc.

Thanks for your take. Yeah, to think we were never really in control of anything, but just sort of conscious observers with the illusion of free will, even up to the point of ctb. Pretty neat

 

[Superdeterminist]

I think it's a helpful perspective because it gets away from all of the strong emotions for once and just tries to assess the act of suicide in a matter-of-fact manner. Indeed, our current understanding of physics does not allow free will, and I submit that the likelihood we actually possess it is very low. If we actually had free will, we would be able to change our moods and our thoughts at whim - and everyone would be able to achieve most of what their wants much more easily than they actually do. Nobody would be suicidal because they would be free to feel differently. The reality is that people have to struggle against their feelings and thoughts, which are imposed upon their consciousness without their say.

 

[muffin222]

I don't believe in total free will. I think our subconscious mind dictates the lion's share of our behavior beyond our conscious control. For me, my suicidal thoughts aren't even necessarily something I "choose" to experience- my brain has just adopted this line of thinking as a response to my unbearable circumstances. It's all very fascinating to ponder

 

[esse_est_percipi]

programming me to tell me "suicide is wrong and evil", "don't do it", "life is wonderful" etc

Yes, "life is a gift", "suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem", etc., all the classic phrases to control and own people.

i go against the DNA programming the survival instinct .i choose of my own free will

So in your view, this ability to reject the SI and dna programming, even for the second it takes to ctb, shows that there is some sort of free will?
Interesting. I'm not saying you're wrong, but could in not be the case that it's other drives and emotions that just override SI and dna, not free will necessarily?
So, for example, Freud's death drive, which causes self-destructive behavior, is not subordinate to a free will, but just sort of spontaneously expresses itself in actions without conscious awareness by the subject.
Anyway, thanks for commenting.

 

[pthnrdnojvsc]

Yes, "life is a gift", "suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem", etc., all the classic phrases to control and own people.

So in your view, this ability to reject the SI and dna programming, even for the second it takes to ctb, shows that there is some sort of free will?
Interesting. I'm not saying you're wrong, but could in not be the case that it's other drives and emotions that just override SI and dna, not free will necessarily?
So, for example, Freud's death drive, which causes self-destructive behavior, is not subordinate to a free will, but just sort of spontaneously expresses itself in actions without conscious awareness by the subject.
Anyway, thanks for commenting.

Yes but it takes more than a second to commit suicide imo. A lot of times it's not impulsive.
By the way is your OP part of an article? It is interesting and very well written like a science article . did you write it or could you link me to the article?
I couldn't find it on the internet yet.

 

[esse_est_percipi]

Yes but it takes more than a second to commit suicide imo. A lot of times it's not impulsive.
By the way is your op part of an article . it is interesting and very well written like a science article . did you write it or could you link me to the article?
I couldn't find it on the internet yet.

Yes, you're right. Suicide is often the end result of a long period of deliberation, not always impulsive.

I just wrote it on here, not part of an article. Thanks for liking it.

 

[Aap]

"What all this appears to point to is the lack of ultimate responsibility/choice of individuals when it comes to acting in general, and, more relevantly, to suicide as a subset of actions in general (n.b., of course, for the judicial system to work as an institution of punishment and control it has to assume responsibility for actions and therefore free will, even if science seems to be undermining this.)"

this is a post-modernistic hellscape. I couldn't help but to abuse that child, your honor, I had no choice. Give me a break.

 

[esse_est_percipi]

"What all this appears to point to is the lack of ultimate responsibility/choice of individuals when it comes to acting in general, and, more relevantly, to suicide as a subset of actions in general (n.b., of course, for the judicial system to work as an institution of punishment and control it has to assume responsibility for actions and therefore free will, even if science seems to be undermining this.)"

this is a post-modernistic hellscape. I couldn't help but to abuse that child, your honor, I had no choice. Give me a break.

Even if science shows free will to be a subjective illusion, society would still need to have a penal/correctional system in place to protect innocent people and function properly.
It might even be necessary to maintain a general belief in free will for society to function properly at all, despite evidence to the contrary, a 'noble lie' as Plato.would call it.
I do understand your point.

 

[FohPah]

the impression of being a singular self which consciously chooses and acts based on alternatives is just a phenomenological illusion.

Is this way of looking at it helpful/unhelpful/overly reductionist/irrelevant/liberating/stupid?

The question at the root of your discussion is known as the hard problem of consciousness. In the first sentence I quoted, you're advocating the position of epiphenomenalism. It's still basically a Cartesian position, because it says there's a real, metaphysical "self" that watches the physical universe. It's just that with epiphenomenalism, the self is purely a spectator; it can't influence the universe at all.

I don't see any reason to think of myself as an entity distinct from the physical universe, peering in. To me, it makes the most sense to say that I am the universe experiencing itself. Why this experience is located in this body, I don't know. I don't know if there is a "why".

Is it helpful to debate which of these two ideas is correct? Maybe. They don't help us make successful predictions, because they don't in fact predict anything at all. This makes them unfalsifiable, which makes it impossible to decide which is correct. Rather, they just try to make sense of experience. But that could be helpful for mental clarity. The buddhists seem to have gotten a lot of value out of viewing the self as an illusion. "I am the universe experiencing itself" also views the self as an illusion.

These ideas are not helpful for making judgments. "free will" is not the opposite of physical determinism. "free will" is the opposite of coercion, intoxication, psychosis, involuntary movement, etc. It doesn't matter if it's all ultimately determined by physical laws; there are still differences between following through with a plan, doing something impulsively in the moment, and acting in fear because someone's holding a gun to your head.

Free will is a useful idea for making legal judgments. The purpose of punishment is not to give people what they "deserve", whatever that means. The purpose is to deter harmful behavior. I can predict that if the consequence of killing a baby is unpleasant enough, then fewer people of a clear mind will do it. I can't predict that any amount of deterrence would prevent someone like Andrea Yates from drowning her children in a bathtub. So, if people of a clear mind don't believe they can successfully pretend to be psychotic, then there's no reason to punish Andrea Yates for her actions, because doing so won't deter anyone else, because her consequence doesn't apply to anyone who has the capacity to be deterred. All you need to do is to take away her ability to harm anyone else.

This does not require belief in a lie. In fact, it's based on empirical knowledge and falsifiable predictions. You mention scientific research in which people are aware of their actions after making them. But this only applies to moment-by-moment actions. We have the ability to make a plan and carry it out over a long time. Furthermore, our conscious beliefs and values can change our character, and our character influences our actions even if we don't completely think through them every time we act. So it's useful to deter harmful behavior if people internalize the idea that they can't get away with it, because this internalized idea influences their behavior.

As for how to understand your own actions, you would be incorrect if you think you have no conscious control over your life and you're just watching your brain do its own thing. The truth is that your system 1 and system 2 influence each other. It's just that some people, for whatever reason, act more deliberately than others. Just do what you can, and don't be too hard on yourself when you don't act as deliberately as you wish you had acted.

 

[esse_est_percipi]

The question at the root of your discussion is known as the hard problem of consciousness. In the first sentence I quoted, you're advocating the position of epiphenomenalism. It's still basically a Cartesian position, because it says there's a real, metaphysical "self" that watches the physical universe. It's just that with epiphenomenalism, the self is purely a spectator; it can't influence the universe at all.

I think the hard problem of consciousness is distinct from the problem of free will, although there is some overlap, yes.
I think that ultimately, because with the hard problem of consciousness the subject under investigation is the very think we're using to inquire into it (consciousness), there is a kind of fractal loop at play which we cannot observe from 'outside', making it beyond human understanding (the 'new mysterianism' position).

I wasn't advocating epiphenomenalism myself, just saying that neuroscientific data would seem to suggest that that the impression of being a singular self etc was just an illusion. Epiphenomenalism isn't really a Cartesian position imo, although it can be historically traced back to Descartes in terms of development (as with almost everything else in post-17th century philosophy). Epiphenomenalism doesn't really deal with the metaphysics of the self, but rather with mental events.The mental events caused by physical events in the brain (but which then have no causal impact themselves) could still be physical with epiphenomenalism, just without the properties necessary to be causally efficient. At most, you could say that epiphenomenalism is a kind of property dualism, but Descartes was a substance dualist. The whole thrust of Descartes' argument is to distinguish the mind from matter in the most radical way possible, identify the self with the mind, and give the mind definite causal powers, although he was never able to specify exactly how the mind interacts with the material world.

it makes the most sense to say that I am the universe experiencing itself.

I can sort understand what you mean here but it also sounds like mysticism, which I'm fine with.

"free will" is not the opposite of physical determinism. "free will" is the opposite of coercion, intoxication, psychosis, involuntary movement, etc.

Yes, but this depends on how you understand/describe free will. What you're describing here is compatibilism. But there are incompatibilists who think that free will and determinism cannot both be true, and define free will in such a way as to oppose it to determinism.

You mention scientific research in which people are aware of their actions after making them. But this only applies to moment-by-moment actions. We have the ability to make a plan and carry it out over a long time

Yes, but there's there's no reason to believe that the brain activity preceding conscious decison making doesn't carry through into long-term plans and actions. The burden of proof would be on those who believe in some kind of free will (incompatibilist kind) to show that any of our action regardless of how long we have planned them are the result of an independent agency which would be 'responsible' for the actions, and cannot be analysed in terms of neurological events over which we have no control.

The truth is that your system 1 and system 2 influence each other.

Yes, I get that. But just because there is a more deliberate, rational aspect to the mind, as opposed to quick intuitive thinking, doesn't show that anything like (incompatibilist) free will exists, or that 'conscious control' has any basis in reality. This is an assumption based on subjective appearance. But subjective appearances are notoriously unreliable when it comes to establishing truth. The 'conscious control' which we appear to have might be just that-an appearance without a grounding in reality. Maybe the appearance of having conscious control over actions was a useful evolutionary device? Every advance in neuroscience further undermines the idea that some form of free will exists, understood as an independent agency which isn't somehow caught up in the causal network of the physical world.. If you then want to define free will as "the opposite of coercion, intoxication, psychosis, involuntary movement, etc", then that's ok. But then you have to accept that not only humans can have free will. Personally I have no problem with this consequence. Perhaps free will is grounded in the natural world and just involves making decisions and acting without duress (the compatibilism you were describing), and comes in grades or small stages, depending on complexity and level of consciousness. It could stretch all the way down into the world of insects and bacteria...Daniel Dennett's kind of position in freedom evolves.

Anyway, thanks for your input and insights and taking the time to respond, I appreciate it.

 

[FohPah]

I think we basically agree:

If you define "free will" to mean we have agency that's not just brain activity (libertarian free will), then it has no place in our model of physics. And because our model of physics works so well, I trust it even when it leads to counterintuitive conclusions, like the conclusion that our behavior is entirely explainable as a biological process.

If you define "free will" to mean our behavior is influenced by our awareness of the significance and potential consequences of our actions (compatibilist free will), then not only is it plausible, but it's useful to think about. And you're right, free will in this sense exists on a spectrum and it's not exclusive to humans.

By "I am the universe experiencing itself", I mean that the universe is a process; my experience is a subprocess, and the structure of the bigger process maps onto the structure of the subprocess in a very deep way. Think about how the structure of space maps onto the structure of a camera sensor. Directions in space map onto directions in the frame of the camera; wavelengths map onto color values.

 

[not4us]

I agree with determinism, it's a given. But it's not important for me since if I feel like I make choices then it's real for me subjectively, and that is all that matters. Same as it's irrelevant whether our consciousness is an illusion or no, if we feel like it's real, for us it's real.

 

[esse_est_percipi]

Same as it's irrelevant whether our consciousness is an illusion or no, if we feel like it's real, for us it's real.

Yes.
Also, someone could make the argument that the meaning of 'illusion' depends on distinguishing between reality and appearance. If the appearance is different from the reality (e.g. a shape might appear to be an animal from a distance, but in reality it's just a rock), yet the appearance is believed to be true, then the appearance is an illusion.

But, consciousness is all about appearances. Consciousness is subjective perception, how things immediately appear to a subject, so consciousness itself can never be an illusion because a subject can never be mistaken about how things appear to it, or the fact that there is an awareness of something that's occurring. (i.e. even if the shape that appears to be an animal is in fact a rock, it is still true that it appears to be an animal for the subject of consciousness).

Another way of putting it is that a person can never think they are conscious without actually being conscious, they can never be deceived about the contents of their consciousness. Even if they are dreaming, and mistake the dream for reality, they are still conscious in the dream, they still experience the contents of the dream.

 

[Painless_end]

This is an excellent post. I have only read the original comment so far which I wholly agree with.

I will try to read others when I find time.

 

[esse_est_percipi]

This is an excellent post. I have only read the original comment so far which I wholly agree with.

I will try to read others when I find time.

Thank you

 

[kane]

Love to see a discussion of free will that gets me pondering. So...I think 'human descriptions' can still have value - labeling an act as bad, selfish, heroic etc. Such terms relate to the effects upon, motivations, and generally the experiences of those involved. However much our decisions and actions are formed by the reality beyond us, we still have the conscious experience of those decisions and the feelings that result. We may not exactly 'make' decisions, but we do experience them, and so feel a kind of ownership of them.

Whether or not you ctb may ultimately be a question of precisely how the universe unfolds. But the experiences (the suffering) that results will still be real. So it still has significance - to the extent that anything does. Hope that made some kind of sense?

 

[esse_est_percipi]

inside each individual neuron quantum microtubules which could increase that number trillions of more times.

This is crazy.
I think people like roger penrose believe this could be the key to understanding consciousness, and maybe even free will, and why the mind isn't just like a computer.
This is an interesting excerpt from an article about penrose's thinking on this:

"Consider, for example, superposition in quantum theory. How could Schrödinger's cat be both dead and alive before we open the box? "An element of proto-consciousness takes place whenever a decision is made in the universe," he said. "I'm not talking about the brain. I'm talking about an object which is put into a superposition of two places. Say it's a speck of dust that you put into two locations at once. Now, in a small fraction of a second, it will become one or the other. Which does it become? Well, that's a choice. Is it a choice made by the universe? Does the speck of dust make this choice? Maybe it's a free choice. I have no idea."

I wondered if Penrose's theory has any bearing on the long-running philosophical argument between free will and determinism. Many neuroscientists believe decisions are caused by neural processes that aren't ruled by conscious thought, rendering the whole idea of free will obsolete. But the indeterminacy that's intrinsic to quantum theory would suggest that causal connections break down in the conscious brain. Is Penrose making the case for free will?

"Not quite, though at this stage, it looks like it," he said. "It does look like these choices would be random. But free will, is that random?" Like much of his thinking, there's a "yes, but" here. His claims are provocative, but they're often provisional. And so it is with his ideas about free will. "I've certainly grown up thinking the universe is deterministic. Then I evolved into saying, 'Well, maybe it's deterministic but it's not computable.' But is it something more subtle than that? Is it several layers deeper? If it's something we use for our conscious understanding, it's going to be a lot deeper than even straightforward, non-computable deterministic physics. It's a kind of delicate borderline between completely deterministic behavior and something which is completely free.""

Love to see a discussion of free will that gets me pondering. So...I think 'human descriptions' can still have value - labeling an act as bad, selfish, heroic etc. Such terms relate to the effects upon, motivations, and generally the experiences of those involved. However much our decisions and actions are formed by the reality beyond us, we still have the conscious experience of those decisions and the feelings that result. We may not exactly 'make' decisions, but we do experience them, and so feel a kind of ownership of them.

Whether or not you ctb may ultimately be a question of precisely how the universe unfolds. But the experiences (the suffering) that results will still be real. So it still has significance - to the extent that anything does. Hope that made some kind of sense?

Yes, I agree.
Even if everything can be ultimately reduced town to fundamental physical forces, particles, quantum stuff etc, that doesn't take away the fact that we can only go by what we experience at this level of reality. It would like trying to reduce sociology to chemistry..there is a sense in which everything in society and all social problems can be reduced town to chemical events, but there is also another sense in which sociology constitutes its own level of explanation, which is irreducible.

 

[kane]

I've never understood how randomness/quantum indeterminacy is supposed to make a difference to this question (though I should say my knowledge of science is rudimentary at best.) How would a decision coming to you at random/on the role of a dice make it more meaningfully 'free'? If I have a craving for ice cream caused by random processes within my brain, does that somehow make me more free than if I have a craving caused by entirely deterministic processes? The meaningful point for me would be that the consciousness experiences the craving/decision/thought - that what creates the experience precedes it.

 

[esse_est_percipi]

I've never understood how randomness/quantum indeterminacy is supposed to make a difference to this question

How would a decision coming to you at random/on the role of a dice make it more meaningfully 'free'?

Yes, I don't see either.
It seems that on the macro level everything is determined, so free will is excluded.
But then you go deeper to the quantum level, and randomness/indeterminacy seems to govern processes, so free will is excluded.
Maybe you have to go even deeper, to quantum field theory or string theory?
But perhaps the deeper you go, the less meaningful the whole determinism/free will debate becomes, because it's so far removed from human reality.
Maybe the whole concept of free will is an incoherent human construct, which is why it's never been properly resolved since the ancient greeks.
It's a rabbit hole.

 

[kane]

Yes, I don't see either.
It seems that on the macro level everything is determined, so free will is excluded.
But then you go deeper to the quantum level, and randomness/indeterminacy seems to govern processes, so free will is excluded.
Maybe you have to go even deeper, to quantum field theory or string theory?
But perhaps the deeper you go, the less meaningful the whole determinism/free will debate becomes, because it's so far removed from human reality.
Maybe the whole concept of free will is an incoherent human construct, which is why it's never been properly resolved since the ancient greeks.
It's a rabbit hole.

I sometimes worry I'm simply too dense to comprehend the true reality of such fundamental questions. It seems to me that the concept in general arises from the psychological/social need to identify with and explain our own actions, and to blame and feel genuinely angry with others for theirs. Which would make it more 'functional' than true. But maybe that's the only level of explanation I'm capable of getting my head around. There could be a deeper truth to it which is just beyond me. That's the problem with being a 'humanities' rather than a 'sciences' person!

 

[esse_est_percipi]

psychological/social need to identify with and explain our own actions, and to blame and feel genuinely angry with others for theirs. Which would make it more 'functional' than true.

This could have a lot to do with it.

But maybe that's the only level of explanation I'm capable of getting my head around.

Same here. I mean, quantum mechanics, string theory etc, are beyond the grasp of 99.9% of people.
Feynman said "if you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics."