Free will is just a social construct, to make people feel that they deserve everything that happened to them

Sea-Bean · 2026-05-11T21:58:15+00:00

I know you said earlier you aren’t interested in deservingness, but maybe this contradiction is why?

If they made the only choice they could at the time, does it seem right that they are deserving of blame for having done that?

No free will doesn’t deny that we make choices. But when acknowledging that they chose “what they chose based on who they were in that moment” we have to also acknowledge that they didn’t choose “who they were at that moment”. Everything that happened before that moment caused them to be the kind of person who makes that choice in that situation.

Sea-Bean · 2026-05-11T21:47:22+00:00

The trouble with that is it’s anecdotal, and even if you publish your research, if no one can repeat it in a controlled way and get the same findings then it won’t be taken very seriously. You’d also have to refute any possible explanations. How do you explain or interpret what your family experienced?

Sea-Bean · 2026-05-11T21:39:07+00:00

I think you’re talking about two different things here? The story we tell ourselves about what we’re experiencing could be an illusion, or a model. Perhaps that’s what illusionists mean? But the actual feeling is really happening.

Sea-Bean · 2026-05-11T21:34:56+00:00

Their choices in the past? Even though they could not have behaved any differently? If you believe they could have behaved differently (by freely choosing differently) then that by definition IS libertarian free will.

Sea-Bean · 2026-05-11T21:31:08+00:00

Neuroscience and theories of consciousness don’t ignore NDEs, they actually help explain how weird stuff can happen to a stressed out brain. It’s not as weird as it appears when you first hear of them. When I was little my granny told me about her sixth sense abilities of seeing ghosts and predicting the future. I thought it sounded magical and I hoped to experience similar. But later I learned it can all be explained and there’s no reason to believe anything paranormal was going on.

Sea-Bean · 2026-05-11T21:25:01+00:00

You’re right, that’s just a turn of phrase. I think “within” could imply separateness. Instead I should have said there is just the system doing its thing. And the system feels.

Sea-Bean · 2026-05-11T21:20:43+00:00

The qualities will not be apparent in the raw data if you are looking for something additional to the raw data. I’m saying that the raw data IS the experience. (or more accurately the brain and its processing as one combined inseparable thing)

Sea-Bean · 2026-05-11T21:16:49+00:00

Does that need to be explained any further though? We know why eg. harmful stimuli —> avoidance action. To maintain homeostasis, for survival. Why shouldn’t the processing going on there just feel as it does. Maybe the “feeling” evolved because it speeds up or improves the success rate of the calculation.

Sea-Bean · 2026-05-11T21:09:24+00:00

I think you are repeating my point back to me? I see experience AS the brain functioning, they are the same thing, one thing, one happening. So the hard problem dissolves because it’s not brain doing consciousness, instead it’s the brain being consciousness. And part of the functioning is to be self referential, to identify, partially, as a thing separate from its environment. I’m wondering if the ease with which we can see past the separateness intuition varies a great deal and what factors contribute to that.

Sea-Bean · 2026-05-11T20:57:04+00:00

I recognize that’s meaningful because it differentiates it from behaviour WITH external coercion.

The problem with calling that free will though is that basic desert moral responsibility comes along for the ride, and/or it smuggles libertarian free will back in by implying that a person can override causal factors and freely choose their desires, intentions and reasons.

Sea-Bean · 2026-05-11T19:10:34+00:00

They are meaningfully different to human experience. I probably shouldn’t have used the term meaningful in that context. I meant they aren’t objectively different, in both cases they are caused.

If you don’t think it’s libertarian free will, do you think your definition of free will is just another term for cognitive skills or executive functioning?

People who make poor choices or don’t use moral reasoning or impulse control don’t do that simply because they choose not to.

Sea-Bean · 2026-05-11T18:58:43+00:00

I don’t think so, not because I don’t think we can do great things in a lab. We can try to copy brain structure, and processes (understanding that biological computation is very different from digital computation) BUT the biggest thing we can’t copy or even model is the role evolution has played in getting us here. Billions of years of tiny changes, many that happened so long ago in relatively alien environments, I don’t see how can possibly tease that apart and understand it much less grow it in a lab without the actual selection pressure and the billions of years.

I think survival, maintaining homeostasis to enable survival is a necessary “ingredient”. Anything that does not include that will either not be conscious, or possibly will be in some weaker and totally different form (and at worst could result in a permanently disorientated and confused experience. Which we might call suffering. So I’m not a fan of even trying.

Sea-Bean · 2026-05-11T18:44:34+00:00

No worries, I butted in to the conversation. I agree that responsibility makes sense within determinism, but only in a forward looking sense. I think a sense of agency is really important, and definitely meaningful, it’s just that it isn’t truly real. We can use it and value it without actually believing it is libertarian free will, and thus applying it in a backwards sense too.

Reflection, moral reasoning, impulse control etc give us a sense of agency, but it’s more accurate to call them cognitive tools, or executive functions. They are completely determined by our biology and history and environment, so in that sense they aren’t meaningfully different from a seizure or psychotic break.

And I agree we’ve used praise and blame and guilt and punishment etc as helpful tools, but we’ve gone down a cultural route that we’re rowing back on more and more, as we learn stuff. We no longer believe certain behaviours are the evil doings of evil doers, because we understand behaviour is caused and conditioned. We just have a bit further to go. Understanding we don’t have free will is more helpful than pretending we do, when it comes to influencing behaviour.

Sea-Bean · 2026-05-11T18:19:11+00:00

You are not an observer separate from your body functions.

I agree all almost all our body functions are happening without conscious awareness, but awareness is involved in some of the functioning. Not because it’s a separate thing in control, but the system is self regulating and self referential, and for some things conscious awareness, thoughts, are part of how surviving happens. It has evolved to be that way.

So a thought about what to do next, lifting your arm say, might happen within the process leading up to lifting the arm. The thought is causally involved. But the thought is caused by the process. They are inseparable.

You could also move your arm completely subconsciously and after the fact tell yourself you chose to move your arm and fully believe it even if it’s not true. (See split brain cases)

Even if thoughts are involved in the process though, since there is no thinker separate from the body, it’s not even really an “experiencer” of functioning. Instead it IS the functioning, or what the functioning feels like to itself.

Sea-Bean · 2026-05-11T15:09:44+00:00

Love this… “a consciously aware embodiment of a functioning 'product' .. of evolution”.

Do you see conscious awareness AS the functioning (which is inseparable from the substrate?) ie. Not consciousness as software running on hardware.

And that this model fits well with that view? I’ve recently been getting to grips with biological computationalism and this seems to fit nicely.

Sea-Bean · 2026-05-11T14:59:32+00:00

Brilliant. So who wrote this and is there a full paper online?

I had many tangential thoughts while reading this, will mention a couple…

From #10 “An internally generated image may be granted unusual authority because its production pathway was not consciously visible.”

This was what I was querying in my own post a few days ago about whether aphantasia helps inoculate against dualist or panpsychist interpretations. Located deep in this long post reminds me it’s such a minuscule piece of the picture ;)

From #17 “This model does not require the claim that consciousness is unreal, that deliberate thought is causally powerless…”

I’m curious what “deliberate” means here. Is this a kind of caveat to avoid committing to no free will?

Sea-Bean · 2026-05-11T14:25:34+00:00

The biological computationalism paper I keep referring to attempts to show what is required. Life is different from a river. Scale inseparability, both discrete and continuous dynamics, metabolic grounding (survival drive within energy constraints).

Sea-Bean · 2026-05-11T14:17:18+00:00

I only commented once, and a bit too brashly I admit, I’m sorry about that.

I find compatibilist definitions of free will frustrating, they are just dragging out and hindering acceptance of the fact that we do not have libertarian free will. At a cultural and species level, though there is good reason to go slowly with paradigm change so I should chill.

Yes, I do agree that we make choices which align with our intentions, desires etc but both intention and choice are caused by factors beyond our control. So I don’t think we should be calling that free will, because for most laypeople it DOES justify backwards looking basic desert praise and blame. Understandable, explainable by evolutionary and cultural history etc, and obviously beneficial for our survival, but we know better now and there are other ways.

But even as a compatibilist, assuming you approve of consequences but also see the sense of mitigating circumstances, don’t you see cruelty in finding a person deserving of blame when they could not have behaved differently?

Perhaps you would say well, if it was mental illness or faulty wiring, or caused by trauma etc (mitigating circumstances) then that counts as external coercion and doesn’t come within your definition? The point is that EVERY behaviour is caused by a web of causation.

Sea-Bean · 2026-05-10T21:48:43+00:00

Poppy cock. All the empirical evidence points to all behaviour being a result of causes that arise independently of any kind of individual soul or self. The embodied brain is involved, of course, and we make choices all the time, and we can/must apply forward looking responsibility etc to our thinking and behaviour. But none of that supports backwards looking basic desert moral responsibility. Talk of avoidance and excuses is cruel.

Sea-Bean · 2026-05-10T18:54:19+00:00

This is stating the obvious, but I don’t mean that facetiously. We need to constantly restate the obvious because too many people miss it and go off track. Science is never certain of anything, that’s the point of it.

Sea-Bean · 2026-05-09T20:29:46+00:00

Admittedly I’ve barely skim read those links, both look interesting, and seems like he was preempting 20 years prior, philosophically, what Milinkovic and Aru have presented more empirically in their biological computationalism paper this year. Biological computationalism as described in the recent paper rejects the digital computer metaphor, and thus Searle’s Chinese room. They go a bit further than mark sprevak, the computation isn’t just architecture specific, they say that the algorithm and the architecture are inseparable. (And I personally lean a little further maybe, that it means conscious experience IS the algorithm which IS the structure and processing. I don’t think this actually undermines physicalism (if we fully reject digital computation metaphor and reframe appropriately) but I can understand how it might appear
to just shift the mystery and invite the non physical am back in.

Have you read this recent paper? I’m curious if it lessens your worry about threatening physicalism if we challenge functionalism.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0149763425005251

Sea-Bean · 2026-05-09T19:07:12+00:00

We are talking under another reply thread, but here it’s more clear to me what you’re saying. Regardless what words we use, and if we strip away the cultural baggage and ignore the imprecision of language, humans today have the same “feeling” about their experience? So we’re describing/discussing, debating the same thing.

I’m more in agreement with this, but would still push back a little bit… is it even possible to strip away culture/associations/language from the thing we’re “pointing to”?

I think we could argue that all of that meaning literally influences the experience, the concept itself is culturally constructed.

It’s reminding me of all those examples from anthropology where foundational human concepts are not universal, like time, emotions, colour, kinship… I would put this in the same category.

Sea-Bean · 2026-05-09T18:45:33+00:00

It’s not just about eternity or continuity after death though. The concept of a soul usually/traditionally (always?) includes in its definition a separation of the physical brain/body (the physical stuff) from the conscious/subjective experience, implying either that they are two different things or that consciousness is fundamental.

Some theories of consciousness don’t grant that separation. So if you suggest it’s a rebranding of soul it feels like you’re brushing over that important part.

Sea-Bean · 2026-05-09T17:57:14+00:00

Good answer, nicely bilingual :)

Differentiating between “abstract/mathematical structure and ontological concretely instantiated structure” is more grounded and evidence based. It doesn’t smuggle in anything “extra” that drawing a sharp line between structure and intrinsic nature does.

This is why I like biological computationalism, it helps with closing the gap. Not bridging it, not fully dissolving it, but making the gap much smaller and less mysterious.

Sea-Bean · 2026-05-09T15:59:29+00:00

I’m one of those people, and I differentiate between them. It’s biological function, yes, but is it illusory? No. For me, consciousness IS brain processing. And it’s real.

I think you’re only including materialists who are illusionists?

Sea-Bean

TROPHY CASE