Part of the problem with free will and determinism is that we have no way of knowing what events trigger our decisions. Free will could be defined as the need to do good and avoid evil while determinism is more of a case that it makes no difference. There is also the problem that what is important to one person may mean nothing to another. My favorite is the question of degree. Do big events produce big effects and small events produce small effects? Not as far as i’ve seen. It all depends on the effect on the indivigual and that tends to be in the realm of emotion.

No responsible scientist would EVER take a 100% deterministic view of anything, much less accept single causes in a deterministic model. The argument as depicted here is a red herring. Of COURSE the ball could do something else; but the probability of that is relatively small. SImilarly, the perrson’s wiring could have led to alternative behaviors, but each with a different probability, conditioned by genes and experience.

This subject does NOT benefit from a dialectical approach!

People believe in free will, they don’t disbelieve in determinism unless you mention the idea to them. If you compare the idea of determinism to the idea of indeterminism or probabilistic mechanics, then it’s pretty obvious that the universe is deterministic.

Jack, you are right in that causation is chaotic and multisourced as far as human behaviors are concerned. However, I think many scientists do believe in a deterministic reality.
You will see if you think about it that the thing which ensures cyclical processes (like life) keep happening is determinism.

There is no linear domino like chain of cause and effect events. Every event that occurs and has occurred for whatever reason including the spontaneity of random accident, from the beginning (if there ever was one) of time, has and will have contributed in some way to the causation of all future events, which in our relatively lawful universe may be for the short term predictable to a virtual certainty, but no closer than that, and in the longer term, since the universe has in addition found the need for choice making entities, exponentially less and less certain. Nothing has been or will be truly inevitable.
There are more complex arguments that demonstrate that pure determinism is at best a mythological construction, but the mythos of the true nature of causation supposedly devoid of ever changing and evolving purposes, and running straight and without reason to the inevitable for all of time, is all that should be needed to puncture our illusions here.

What a bizarre piece of research. If the universe was other than it is then think of all the philosophical quandries that would result – err, why?

Nothing bizarre about this at all. Answering this question has huge practical implications. For example, the degree to which an action arises from free will or not is at the core of deciding responsibility in a court of law. Indeed, we just finished a two day symposium on that topic here at U of Missouri:
http://muconf.missouri.edu/sciencessocietysymposium/schedule.html

Consider the alternative that free will is illusory. I have published a review of the research that scientists and philosophers use to argue that free will is illusory. I have deduced that there are 12 categories of fallacious data or data interpretation in this research. The paper is available for free download at http://www.ac-psych.org/?id=2&rok=2010

I conclude that The origin of intents, choices, and decisions may well arise through either subconscious or conscious mechanisms. In the unified mind of embodied brain, all major acts of will may involve cooperative engagement of both subconscious and conscious minds in the genesis of zombian or free will, or some combination of both. The required neural “machinery” will depend on the nature of willed actions. Simple, well-learned, or habitual tasks, can be a zombian process. Complex or novel tasks may require free-will operation of the conscious mind. Both minds interact and inform each other to varying degrees of what each is doing. Each can guide and influence the actions of the other. In the case of conscious mind, the feedback to subconscious operations also serves a programming function. Providing such programming can even be a free-will intention.

I wrote this Letter to the Editor of Science in response to Nichols’ paper on Experimental Philosophy. The editor said he would not print it. Note how this echos Jack Schultz’s comments above.

Without neuroscience, experimental philosophy is like an apple without a core. Shaun Nichols’ discussion of the problem of free will (Science , March 18) suggests that the issue of determinism can be resolved without neuroscience. But willed action comes from neural circuit activity. So, of course, a willed action has a cause: it is driven by nerve impulse patterns. But what light does that shed on the idea of free will?

The real issue is what causes brain circuits to select one set of patterns over alternatives. The brain selects among circuit-impulse- pattern options on the basis of such situational contingencies as what has been stored in the brain’s memory, likely outcomes, reward/punishment probabilities, and no doubt other factors. So, of course, all these factors constrain the brain’s choices, and in that sense there is no free will. But free will needs to be operationally defined, as it often is, as the choice of one action over other possibilities when the chosen action is not mandatory. In other words, a brain can choose an alternative that is not even in its own embodied best interest, which is commonly and universally done.

Operational definition of “determinism” could also use re-framing. If it means that effects have causes, then it is hardly a useful word, and Nichols’ attempt to defend it requires no particular insight. But determinism could simply mean that effects have a range of causes, each with their own probability of influence and selection. If for any given willed action, the chosen effect violates the expected probability, the issue becomes whether that action was a random choice or one that emanated from the neural processing (i.e. free will). Why would we assume randomness from a brain operation that is being influenced non-randomly by situational contingency, memory, etc.? No one choice or decision is inevitable. Why isn’t that free will?

Is the common “sense of agency” an artifact or an inevitable consequence of a conscious brain that knows that it knows, what it knows, why a given choice was selected, and whether the choice was implemented as expected? Nichols’ mentions that young children seem to reject determinism, without the caveat that the brain of young children is not developed enough for a child to fully know that it knows, what it knows, etc. This proves nothing about the issue of free will, except that if it exists, children don’t have much of it.

Likewise, the neuroscience research that has led many scholars to conclude free will is an illusion has been soundly challenged in a recent review (1). The various flaws of method and interpretation in this research does not prove that free will exists, but it does go a long way to disprove the notion of illusory free will.

Nichols describes research showing that people reject determinism if they think choices are made psychologically and embrace it if they think choices are made by neurons. But what does that prove? Psychological processes are not separate from neurophysiological ones, despite the apparent confusion by the general public.

Nichol’s pitch for the usefulness of “experimental philosophy” has much merit, but in practice it will only bear fruit if it includes the neuroscience core.

1. W. R. Klemm, Advances in Cognitive Psychology. 6, 47 (2010).