What does "will" mean?

Discuss any topics related to metaphysics (the philosophical study of the principles of reality) or epistemology (the philosophical study of knowledge) in this forum.
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Re: What does "will" mean?

Post by -1- »

I am not sure will exists. It's more of a want. I'm willing to bet that many are going to want to argue against that.

A will is a wish or a desire. It is determination, without any guarantee of outcome.

Most of our actions that we consciously will to do are not willed. WE get up in the morning; brush our teeth; put on clothes; we don't consider these "willed" but they are.

We like to attach a hifolutin, larger-than-life role to will here and in many other philosophical discussion circles. Will is actually not any different form motivation; unfulfilled need, which we seek to fill.
Spraticus
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Re: What does "will" mean?

Post by Spraticus »

The correct answer to many of these questions is now moving from philosophy to neuro-science.[/quote]

Try reading up on Chalmer's "hard problem".[/quote]


What makes you think I haven't? I find the whole "hard problem" thing to little more than a lazy mantra that can be waved at any issue around consciousness to make it go away. Chalmers is over-rated. There is not much there, or in Nagel, beyond unsupported assertion. Nagel is a particularly tedious read because of the endlessly piled up repetition of the assertion that we can't solve the problem, but he never presents any evidence. For me the analysis of Churchland, Dennet, Demasio et al is far more persuasive and comes with reams of good solid evidence. Consider just one exemplary idea, the problem of blindsight. Check Dennet on that and try not to wave the "hard problem" magic wand at it. Magic wands don't work.
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Re: What does "will" mean?

Post by Gertie »

I'd say that until we crack the Mind Body problem, the relationship between the mental and physical, any answers we come up with
will only lead to more fundamental questions. Even our folk psychology intuitions about something as basic to us as a sense of self might have to be radically re-evaluated, even the concepts and language we use. For now, it's a puzzlement.
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Re: What does "will" mean?

Post by Spraticus »

The mental is physical.
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RJG
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Re: What does "will" mean?

Post by RJG »

Mgrinder wrote: I am my will. I am my will. I am my will. I am my will. I am my will. I am my will. I am my will. I am my will. I am my will. I am my will. I am my will. I am my will.
“I am my will” is an oxymoronic statement. For who does this “my” refer to? Does it refer to the “I”, or someone else?

Are “I” and “will” one-in-the-same thing, or two things?? ...or is “will” a possession of “I” (as in my house, my car, my dog, etc.)?


Mgrinder, I think it best to re-clarify your meaning of “will” (in a non-contradictory way!). For starters--

1. If “will” and “I” are one-in-the-same then why the need for the separate word “will” (i.e. why the redundancy)?
2. And if these (“will” and “I”) are two separate things, then what is the relationship between these two things? …who controls who?
3. And furthermore, how do you know this thing called “will” actually exists??? What are the indicators of such? Is it that you experience a “want” (urge/desire) and then call this experience the “will”?

There is no "will" in of itself, but instead, only our "wants" that we in-turn call "will"!
Last edited by RJG on February 20th, 2017, 5:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: What does "will" mean?

Post by Gertie »

Spraticus
Spraticus wrote:The mental is physical.
Maybe. Monism is an appealing solution to some of the baffling problems of consciousness.

But can you explain what you think 'The mental is physical' actually means? Are you saying the mental doesn't really exist? Or that both exist, and have different properties, but are the same thing, which seems paradoxical? Or?
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Re: What does "will" mean?

Post by Spraticus »

Gertie wrote:Spraticus
Spraticus wrote:The mental is physical.
Maybe. Monism is an appealing solution to some of the baffling problems of consciousness.

But can you explain what you think 'The mental is physical' actually means? Are you saying the mental doesn't really exist? Or that both exist, and have different properties, but are the same thing, which seems paradoxical? Or?
It's one of these, "it depends what you mean by," kind of questions. I had to go out for the whole day so I dashed off a quick response to show interest, but in a sense it does say what I mean.
I don't think that any of the entities invented from time to time to account for experience, such as mind, will, soul etc. are actually necessary. The brain does a great deal of unconscious processing and some of it becomes consciously salient. The conscious processing area includes our internal conversation, and linguistic habits such as, "I", build the sense of there being a ghost in the machine but it is illusory; there is just the brain and its sensory process getting on with the job of navigating the world and staying alive.
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Re: What does "will" mean?

Post by Atreyu »

Your definition of "will" is not practical. As far as I can tell, the definition is merely an attempt to assert "free will" in yourself, primarily because then you don't have to consider if it really could be obtained, and how you could go about getting it.

If we really had free will there would be no crime, no wars, and we'd be living in a utopian society, because nobody would choose to do these things. These things simply happen, and humans cannot control them, because they have no will to do so.

Watching governments passing laws to solve various problems is a good way to see that humans have no "free will"...
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Re: What does "will" mean?

Post by Gertie »

Spraticus (is that you??)
It's one of these, "it depends what you mean by," kind of questions.
I find a lot of questions involving consciousness are those!
I don't think that any of the entities invented from time to time to account for experience, such as mind, will, soul etc. are actually necessary
.

Not necessary in terms of describing our behaviour, or not necessary because phenomological subjective experiencing (the what it's like of seeing, feeling, thinking, etc) doesn't exist?
The brain does a great deal of unconscious processing and some of it becomes consciously salient. The conscious processing area includes our internal conversation, and linguistic habits such as, "I", build the sense of there being a ghost in the machine but it is illusory; there is just the brain and its sensory process getting on with the job of navigating the world and staying alive.
I also think 'I' is a construct, but that it describes something real. As you say there's this thinky voice in our heads constructing narratives about the world and ourselves, and we also subjectively experience consciousness from a specific, embodied, first person perspective in a unified field of conscious experience, moving through space and time. That's the material which the thinky voice has to work with, if you like, in constructing a model of the exterior world and the interior sense of a unified self.

But I'd say it's an open question as to whether the physical processes of the brain/nervous system do all the work in navigating the world. As you say, monism might resolve the problem, but raises new questions (how can the same thing weigh a kilo, but weigh nothing, be a pinky grey colour, but have no colour, etc). This is what I meant by answers leading to more fundamental questions - which seem intractable using our existing scientific models and rationality. I'm with Chalmers.

On the empirical side, we don't have the fine grained technology to see if mental processes can interfere with the brain's physical cause and effect processes, not yet anyway, so we can't use that to give an empirical answer. Experimental evidence (Libet et al, split brain patients) suggests that sometimes the thinky voice in our head might be giving post hoc rationalisations for our behaviour, rather than making decisions then enacting them, but the jury's still out.

So we're left with theorising. And my big problem with the argument that the mental plays no causal role, that it's just useless epiphenomenal baggage, is - why did it evolve then? And why did it evolve in such an apparently useful way, so that it feels good to do evolutionarily useful stuff like eat, have sex, avoid painful injury - and feels bad to starve, be celibate and stick your hand in a fire? We apparently have a finely evolved experiential reward system which works very well, has an apparently obvious causal role in survival, why and how could that evolve if it's useless?
Spraticus
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Re: What does "will" mean?

Post by Spraticus »

Gertie wrote:Spraticus (is that you??)
It's one of these, "it depends what you mean by," kind of questions.
I find a lot of questions involving consciousness are those!
I don't think that any of the entities invented from time to time to account for experience, such as mind, will, soul etc. are actually necessary
.

Not necessary in terms of describing our behaviour, or not necessary because phenomological subjective experiencing (the what it's like of seeing, feeling, thinking, etc) doesn't exist?
The brain does a great deal of unconscious processing and some of it becomes consciously salient. The conscious processing area includes our internal conversation, and linguistic habits such as, "I", build the sense of there being a ghost in the machine but it is illusory; there is just the brain and its sensory process getting on with the job of navigating the world and staying alive.
I also think 'I' is a construct, but that it describes something real. As you say there's this thinky voice in our heads constructing narratives about the world and ourselves, and we also subjectively experience consciousness from a specific, embodied, first person perspective in a unified field of conscious experience, moving through space and time. That's the material which the thinky voice has to work with, if you like, in constructing a model of the exterior world and the interior sense of a unified self.


The "thinky voice", is part of the material. It's the running commentary of the brain. When I generate a sentence like "It's the running commentary of the brain", I don't have a separate word generator in space that picks these words out of a dictionary. The words are not somehow outside of the grey matter. They come into salience from subconscious processing; I don't have to consciously produce and modulate all the complex nervous commands that will produce the sounds; that happens in parallel with the experience of the words and activates the same parts of the brain. I am occasionally surprised to find out what I think. It's either from the subconscious or there is indeed a puppet master somewhere pulling my strings, which seems to me to be a massively pointlessly clunky way of organising life.

I also see parallels with the old religious arguments of the God of the Gaps. It was always a losing tactic for the believers because they had no sooner declared an insurmountable gap in knowledge, than science filled it. There are still gaps but not so many people nowadays would take them as evidence for anything other than our temporary ignorance. All the developments in neuro-science are heading in the same way and it isn't towards Cartesian Dualism.


But I'd say it's an open question as to whether the physical processes of the brain/nervous system do all the work in navigating the world. As you say, monism might resolve the problem, but raises new questions (how can the same thing weigh a kilo, but weigh nothing, be a pinky grey colour, but have no colour, etc). This is what I meant by answers leading to more fundamental questions - which seem intractable using our existing scientific models and rationality. I'm with Chalmers.

It doesn't have weight because it isn't a thing, it's a process. The question itself is pointless. It's a category error. I've already given my low opinion of Chalmers.

On the empirical side, we don't have the fine grained technology to see if mental processes can interfere with the brain's physical cause and effect processes, not yet anyway, so we can't use that to give an empirical answer. Experimental evidence (Libet et al, split brain patients) suggests that sometimes the thinky voice in our head might be giving post hoc rationalisations for our behaviour, rather than making decisions then enacting them, but the jury's still out.

This is also a category error. The realisation that you don't like what you see is part of the brain's process and the unpleasant sensation that accompanies it is part of the body's physical reaction to a noxious stimulus as identified by the brain. Fear is the brain's experience of adrenalin as detected by the nervous system as part of the constant feedback loops. The brain detects what might be a tiger in the bushes and sends out a signal to release adrenalin. The speeded heart rate and generally excited feeling are communicated back to brain by other parts of the nervous system and you feel fear. It isn't helpful to think of the brain and body being separate. The nervous system is extremely complex and constantly feeds information into the brain which is constantly returning other signals for movement, heart rate, gut processes etc.

So we're left with theorising. And my big problem with the argument that the mental plays no causal role, that it's just useless epiphenomenal baggage, is - why did it evolve then? And why did it evolve in such an apparently useful way, so that it feels good to do evolutionarily useful stuff like eat, have sex, avoid painful injury - and feels bad to starve, be celibate and stick your hand in a fire? We apparently have a finely evolved experiential reward system which works very well, has an apparently obvious causal role in survival, why and how could that evolve if it's useless?
Evolution is the key to the problem. Very lowly form of life can still react to stimulii in a very basic way such as moving towards or away from light, and they do it in a mechanical/chemical way. As organisms become more complex the behaviour does too. By the time you reach dogs it's pretty clear that there is consciousness in there.
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Re: What does "will" mean?

Post by Fooloso4 »

In my opinion ‘will’ does not name a part of us or a faculty or a power. It simply names what we desire and pursue or shun. We can and do desire opposing things at the same time, but it is not simply a matter of the battle of opposing desires with whichever one that is at the moment strongest winning out. We can and do deliberate, weighing the benefits and losses of pursuing or shunning options, and choose accordingly. But reason is not wholly separate from desire. We can and do reason in favor of some particular desire that we might not choose if we were free of desire. What we desire may win out over what deliberation calculates is best. What is called “willpower” is not the power of will but rather a matter of discipline and stubbornness. Discipline is developed and practiced, but stubbornness is not. They may work toward the same end, but when they do not discipline can and does moderate stubbornness. And discipline can and does moderate desire, although some are naturally more moderate than others with regard to particular desires.

This is what is known in the literature, from Plato to Nietzsche, as the politics of the soul. Accordingly, ‘I’ is not the name of a part but of the whole. The will, so to speak, is the will of the people, and that is determined by how well the whole is ordered.
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Re: What does "will" mean?

Post by Spraticus »

I pretty much agree with that. The idea of will is largely a language habit, like most of the words used in this area .
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Re: What does "will" mean?

Post by Mgrinder »

Spraticus wrote:
Try reading up on Chalmer's "hard problem".

What makes you think I haven't? I find the whole "hard problem" thing to little more than a lazy mantra that can be waved at any issue around consciousness to make it go away. Chalmers is over-rated. There is not much there, or in Nagel, beyond unsupported assertion. Nagel is a particularly tedious read because of the endlessly piled up repetition of the assertion that we can't solve the problem, but he never presents any evidence. For me the analysis of Churchland, Dennet, Demasio et al is far more persuasive and comes with reams of good solid evidence. Consider just one exemplary idea, the problem of blindsight. Check Dennet on that and try not to wave the "hard problem" magic wand at it. Magic wands don't work.
The same could be said of science. You are waving the magic wand of science at the hard problem. That doesn't make it go away. I have conscious experiences of qualia. Explain why. What are they, what do they do in nature? Why don't they not exist? How do they relate to the rest of nature, like mass, and charge, etc.? Waving the magic wand of science is a good idea to try, but it doesn't seem to work at all, and probably won't work in the future...

-- Updated Tue Feb 21, 2017 1:39 pm to add the following --
RJG wrote:
Mgrinder wrote: I am my will. I am my will. I am my will. I am my will. I am my will. I am my will. I am my will. I am my will. I am my will. I am my will. I am my will. I am my will.
“I am my will” is an oxymoronic statement. For who does this “my” refer to? Does it refer to the “I”, or someone else?

Are “I” and “will” one-in-the-same thing, or two things?? ...or is “will” a possession of “I” (as in my house, my car, my dog, etc.)?


Mgrinder, I think it best to re-clarify your meaning of “will” (in a non-contradictory way!). For starters--

1. If “will” and “I” are one-in-the-same then why the need for the separate word “will” (i.e. why the redundancy)?
2. And if these (“will” and “I”) are two separate things, then what is the relationship between these two things? …who controls who?
3. And furthermore, how do you know this thing called “will” actually exists??? What are the indicators of such? Is it that you experience a “want” (urge/desire) and then call this experience the “will”?

There is no "will" in of itself, but instead, only our "wants" that we in-turn call "will"!
The will is a subset of "I". A part of "me". However, since we are dealing with unquantifiable things, that's just an analogy. Basically, You can think of yourself as just an awareness, or you can think of yourself as just your will, or you can think of yourself as awareness and will at the same time, which is best.
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Re: What does "will" mean?

Post by Gertie »

I see two issues, the first hurdle has to be gotten over before the second comes into play, and so far it hasn't been resolved.

The first one is can conscious brains somehow interfere with physical cause and effect? If I decide to raise my arm now, it goes up. Is that because I made a mental decision, then willed it? Or is that just a story I tell myself, when in fact it's an inevitable part of a physical causal chain I'm not aware of?

Then there's the psychological issue. If you allow that it's mental desires, reasoning, etc which motivate behaviour, and mental willing which somehow causes my arm to go up, then how free am I to make choices, bearing in mind psychological issues resulting from genetics, previous experience, etc, which has helped mould my fears and desires.

The simplest way to reconcile the first problem, and give mental desires, decisions and will-to-action agency a role, is monism. But that requires explanation. Why do sophisticated brains have these experiential properties like fears and desires, what's the underlying explanation? And if the physical and mental are the same stuff, even tho they have different properties (!) doesn't this stuff have to follow the laws of physics, like all other types of stuff. If so mental states are useless, you can't mentally choose and will your desires to be enacted.

Or if the claim is that mental states somehow emerge from certain physical processes such as working human brains, can they alter the physical cause and effect processes of brains to pursue desires? Mind over matter. Again explanations are required. How do mental states emerge from brain processes? How can they interfere with those physical causal brain processes? Or if they don't, why did they evolve in a way which seems so tuned for evolutionary usefulness?

These aren't language issues. We don't have those explanations, physics can't answer them, other evidence is inconclusive, so we don't know.
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Re: What does "will" mean?

Post by Mgrinder »

Atreyu wrote:Your definition of "will" is not practical. As far as I can tell, the definition is merely an attempt to assert "free will" in yourself, primarily because then you don't have to consider if it really could be obtained, and how you could go about getting it.

If we really had free will there would be no crime, no wars, and we'd be living in a utopian society, because nobody would choose to do these things. These things simply happen, and humans cannot control them, because they have no will to do so.

Watching governments passing laws to solve various problems is a good way to see that humans have no "free will"...
Humans have desires and the ability to choose between desires. Why would one choose evil? Because for some, there is no downside to evil, for others there is. Some people care about others, others do not. For both, their will is a causal thing, it chooses between options, or is capable of choosing between desires, however you want to put it. If there is only one possible desire (as in my startle reflex which probably involves awareness and that which translates thought into action (i.e. a will), but is not recorded), then you will only get one result. Since only one result is possible with my startle reflex, we don't say it is "free will" since it's not really free in the sense that it's always the same result. However, it is free in the sense that the phenomenon of consciousness caused the reflex, free in a causal sense.

For those that don't have a desire to help others whatsoever (like a psychopath), they will always choose selfishness, only one option. But these same people can choose to put down the bottle or not if they are an alcoholic, therefore free will (the capacity for this).
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