At what age do humans get free will?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > At what age do humans get free will?

Izzhov: Dec 6, 2013; My head hurts.

I realized recently just how tricky this question is to answer. I thought of the question when I read a simple, intuitive argument that dogs don't have free will. The argument went like this: the idea of a dog not chasing a ball you throw, or in any other way disobeying an instinct, just because it's "choosing" to is utterly alien and bizarre. I realized that the same argument also applies to newborn infants: you would never, ever hear an obstetrician say that the reason a newborn baby isn't crying is "just because that's the baby's choice. Ever heard of a little thing called free will? :biglips:

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So that of course raises the question: when, exactly, does a child first get free will, and why?

# ¿ Oct 23, 2020 16:01

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 08:40

Izzhov: Dec 6, 2013; My head hurts.

Mata posted:

I don't really follow, surely the dog makes a choice to either chase the ball or not?

My intuition tells me that whether a dog chases a ball or not is entirely determined by instinct -- that is to say, whether the "chase ball" subroutine in its evolutionary programming is activated by the throwing stimulus. Like if it didn't chase the ball, that would mean there was some extenuating circumstance suppressing that subroutine, such as that it just ate I guess? I'm no zoologist.

quote:

As for the baby probably not, I guess it doesn't really have the capacity to weigh both options (crying vs not crying) until its senses have developed to the point where it can create a mental model of the world that includes the baby itself.

This seems to imply that free will is contingent on understanding/mental capacity. Does this mean that free will is a sliding scale rather than a binary, and the "amount" of free will a person has is determined by their ability to conceptualize the world and their place in it?

# ¿ Oct 23, 2020 16:20

Izzhov: Dec 6, 2013; My head hurts.

Aramis posted:

Your examples are not particularly great because you are conflating instinct, in the case of the dog, with reflex in the case of the baby.

While "somewhat" related, the two notions operate at vastly different scales. Reflexes, in particular are very well understood.

I'm no biologist, so I would love some elaboration on what exactly the difference is between them. For me, intuitively, the dog chasing the ball does feel like it could be called a "reflex," so clearly I'm missing some nuance here.

Vincent Van Goatse posted:

They're born with it. Free will isn't a thing you develop at a certain point in your life, it either exists or it doesn't.

How do you answer the example of the newborn baby given in the OP?

# ¿ Oct 23, 2020 16:23

Izzhov: Dec 6, 2013; My head hurts.

Aramis posted:

Reflexes are low-level neurological processes that partially or completely bypass the cortex, and typically involve only senses that have nerve endings across the whole body (touch, pain, heat, etc...). You can literally remove most of the brain of a creature and they still function.

Instinct is evolution-driven pre-configurations of the cortex, leading to cognitive-like behaviors that are inherent to the species.

Got it, that makes sense. This seems to suggest a hierarchy of modes of thought, with reflexes at the bottom ("most low level"), instinct a level above reflex, and higher-level brain functions further up. If "free will" is only located in levels of the hierarchy above reflex and instinct, then perhaps humans first get free will once their brain develops those functions.

# ¿ Oct 23, 2020 16:35

Izzhov: Dec 6, 2013; My head hurts.

EDIT: whoops I hit quote instead of edit

Vincent Van Goatse posted:

They still have free will, they just can't make use of it. Do employees and prisoners and soldiers and so on not have free will because they have other people telling them what to do?

Employees and prisoners can still choose to go against their orders, unlike newborns.

# ¿ Oct 23, 2020 16:37

Izzhov: Dec 6, 2013; My head hurts.

Mata posted:

I can certainly buy into the idea that neither humans or dogs have free will, and depending on where you look for it this seems like the obvious conclusion. but the idea that humans have it and dogs don't raises my hackles. This idea is usually trotted out to justify mistreatment of our fellow conscious beings.

Like when dogs do it it's "extenuating circumstance suppressing a subroutine", but when humans do it it's making a choice. These both appear to mean the same thing but the former is expressed in terms that make it sound like some computer algorithm whose components are fully understood.

I apologize if I came off that way -- rather, the point of bringing up dogs in the first place was to create a (by this point in the thread debunked) comparison, rather than a constrast, to humans (specifically newborns). I definitely do not advocate for mistreating any person or animal based on its level of sapience.

Cat Mattress posted:

Newborns cannot go along their orders, because they don't understand them to begin with.

I agree -- the analogy is broken on multiple levels.

Cat Mattress posted:

As for free will, I'd liken it to informed consent. Are you aware of what you are doing, why you are doing it, and what consequences can result? Are you choosing to do it anyway? Can you choose to not do it instead? If you answer yes to all these questions, then you are doing something out of your free will.

I quite like this rubric. But to challenge it: it makes me think of the example of people who are addicted to substances. When someone is addicted, depending on what the substance is, the question of, "Can you choose to not do it instead?" becomes fraught. The severity of the addiction determines how difficult it is for an addict to choose not to continue using. How difficult must making a choice become before it ceases to be a choice?

# ¿ Oct 23, 2020 17:51

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# ¿ May 14, 2024 08:40

Izzhov: Dec 6, 2013; My head hurts.

I apologize for my dog-related errors. I probably should have just included the newborn example since I actually have some experience with those as compared to dogs.

evilweasel posted:

I see you�re not that familiar with babies. They are not obedient.

No, I agree, I was mainly just trying to show how nonsensical the argument/analogy I was responding to is... it's just hard to do that concisely in a way that isn't somewhat nonsensical itself.

# ¿ Oct 24, 2020 23:57

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > At what age do humans get free will?