Is it possible to empirically prove free will?

Nancy Brown11 said:I'm not actually debating whether free will exists or not. I'm asking if we can empirically prove it, and if such a thing is even possible.

bluemaker52 said:Suicide serves as ultimate proof. If you view it through the lens of exercising one's own will, it's an extreme act, but it truly is.

lonegardener said:I don't see how. 🤷

The whole idea of "freedom" is an absolute mystery. It feels like a subjective impression that you just can't prove or disprove through an experiment (sure, there are studies that claim to debunk free will, but I find them unconvincing). At the end of the day, you either choose to believe in freedom or you don't.

If someone believes in free will, they’ll likely argue that they *chose* to believe in it (just as others chose the opposite).

On the flip side, someone who doesn't believe in free will will say they have no choice but to feel that way—because free will doesn't exist, so there's no "decision" to be made. They simply believe because they must, just as others must believe.

Personally, I'm undecided 😬—as usual. I honestly can't tell if I'm unsure because it's predetermined, or because I've freely decided to remain indecisive. 🤣

Nancy Brown11 said:I’m not actually debating whether free will exists or doesn't exist in some abstract sense... what I'm really getting at is how one would go about proving it through actual experience, and if that's even a thing that can be done.

Nancy Brown11 said:I’m totally on board with this, except for one thing: there really are people out there who say, "Look, I don't know if free will exists, but I've decided to believe it doesn't." And honestly, there are plenty of them. But I can't get behind the idea that we can't test it through an experiment... I mean, who knows? I'd rather just say "I don't know," because truth be told, I really don't. It would be wild to try and design an experiment like that, but man, imagine everything you'd need to pull that off.

rustymaker5 said:Well, it really all depends on your definition of free will, doesn't it... personally, I feel like we prove our own agency through lived experience every single day. It starts with the freedom of thought, moves through the ability to make choices, and eventually lands on the freedom of action. No matter the circumstances or the messy situations we find ourselves stuck in, we always retain that capacity to choose how we react in the moment, and I truly believe people exercise that choice constantly... though, you know, when things go sideways, people tend to blame external pressures or claim they were forced into a corner, which makes it look like their will was stripped away, but that isn't actually the case...

lonegardener said:You make a fair point. I shouldn't say it's "impossible"—rather, it just seems unfeasible to me. In fact, that's exactly what I meant when I said I don't see a way to prove or disprove it.

True enough. It sounds like your definition of "freedom" relies on the absence of EXTERNAL COERCION. Essentially, if no outside force (like another person) is making you do something, you consider yourself "free."

But that feels like a pretty superficial way to look at liberty. Beyond external pressure, there is also internal compulsion. In fact, I'd argue that people experience this internal "drive" just as vividly every day.

When you dig into that internal drive, logic leads you to a different conclusion: every decision is essentially "compelled," because it is the inevitable result of internal processes that function exactly as they must. Decisions are the logical outcome of internal laws; therefore, they aren't "free," they are "necessary."

Of course, that conclusion clashes with our intuitive sense that we are in control. I can't deny that it *feels* like I have free will, too. But I don't see how we can logically derive that feeling from what we understand about physics.

lonegardener said:You make a fair point. I shouldn't say it's "impossible"—rather, it just seems unfeasible to me. In fact, that's exactly what I meant when I said I don't see a way to prove or disprove it.

True enough. It sounds like your definition of "freedom" relies on the absence of EXTERNAL COERCION. Essentially, if no outside force (like another person) is making you do something, you consider yourself "free."

But that feels like a pretty superficial way to look at liberty. Beyond external pressure, there is also internal compulsion. In fact, I'd argue that people experience this internal "drive" just as vividly every day.

When you dig into that internal drive, logic leads you to a different conclusion: every decision is essentially "compelled," because it is the inevitable result of internal processes that function exactly as they must. Decisions are the logical outcome of internal laws; therefore, they aren't "free," they are "necessary."

Of course, that conclusion clashes with our intuitive sense that we are in control. I can't deny that it *feels* like I have free will, too. But I don't see how we can logically derive that feeling from what we understand about physics.

lonegardener said:You make a fair point. I shouldn't say it's "impossible"—rather, it just seems unfeasible to me. In fact, that's exactly what I meant when I said I don't see a way to prove or disprove it.

True enough. It sounds like your definition of "freedom" relies on the absence of EXTERNAL COERCION. Essentially, if no outside force (like another person) is making you do something, you consider yourself "free."

But that feels like a pretty superficial way to look at liberty. Beyond external pressure, there is also internal compulsion. In fact, I'd argue that people experience this internal "drive" just as vividly every day.

When you dig into that internal drive, logic leads you to a different conclusion: every decision is essentially "compelled," because it is the inevitable result of internal processes that function exactly as they must. Decisions are the logical outcome of internal laws; therefore, they aren't "free," they are "necessary."

Of course, that conclusion clashes with our intuitive sense that we are in control. I can't deny that it *feels* like I have free will, too. But I don't see how we can logically derive that feeling from what we understand about physics.

Jack Wood43 said:Proof of what, exactly? 😕

rustymaker5 said:But if other people are forcing me to do things, they’re acting on their own free will, right? So why wouldn't I have free will too? What makes them fundamentally different from me?...🤷

I don't see how that makes my understanding of freedom superficial. I'm not any less free than anyone else...🤷

What kind of internal compulsions are you even talking about?

And why on earth do you feel like you have to prove free will using the laws of physics?

rustymaker5 said:But if other people are forcing me to do things, they’re acting on their own free will, right? So why wouldn't I have free will too? What makes them fundamentally different from me?...🤷

I don't see how that makes my understanding of freedom superficial. I'm not any less free than anyone else...🤷

What kind of internal compulsions are you even talking about?

And why on earth do you feel like you have to prove free will using the laws of physics?

rustymaker5 said:But if other people are forcing me to do things, they’re acting on their own free will, right? So why wouldn't I have free will too? What makes them fundamentally different from me?...🤷

I don't see how that makes my understanding of freedom superficial. I'm not any less free than anyone else...🤷

What kind of internal compulsions are you even talking about?

And why on earth do you feel like you have to prove free will using the laws of physics?

Nancy Brown11 said:Flip it around: can we actually prove through experience that free will doesn't exist?

And would the answer to one of these questions basically dictate the answer to the other?

I’m not just asking if free will is real or not—I mean, is it even possible to provide empirical evidence regarding its absence?

Keith Lee2 said:Here I go again, transcribing everything.
This time around we’re looking at Susan Greenfield's brain story—specifically pages 183 and 184.

Libet (whoever that guy is—just my two cents) was looking into what actually goes down in the brain when we decide to make a move.
So... what comes first—the conscious choice or the unconscious movement?
A physiologist named Patrick Haggard over at the University of California in New York City actually just ran this exact same experiment recently.
Running the experiment was actually pretty easy—I figured that out once I became Patrick's right-hand woman.
So, I had electrodes stuck to my forehead monitoring the electrical activity in my motor cortex—you know, that part of the brain that handles all the movement stuff. My whole job was basically just hitting a button whenever I felt like it and shouting out loud when I wanted to press it.
So, Libet actually thought the conscious urge to move would show up before the motor areas of the brain even started firing—but he found out it’s basically the exact opposite. Turns out, the actual decision to act happens almost a whole second after the brain starts prepping for it. Crazy, right? Your brain basically makes the call to move before you even realize you've done it—you only catch on once the action is already happening.
The fallout from this discovery is honestly a bit of an uncomfortable surprise.
If the intention to act only shows up after the brain has already made its move—meaning the brain decides before you even realize it—then we aren't really driving the bus with free will... it's just subconscious processes calling the shots.
That feeling that you’re actually "you"—like there's some single person sitting behind your eyes—might just be the brain's most impressive little trick.
The brain kind of tricks you into thinking "I" am the one calling the shots—when really, the subconscious is pulling all the strings behind the scenes.

lonegardener said:I never actually said you were "less" free. My point is, if free will is just an illusion, then we are all equally (un)free.

Do you have the freedom to stop breathing? Give it a shot—I guarantee you'll give up on that idea sooner rather than later. 😬 I haven't heard of anyone successfully taking their own life simply by choosing to stop breathing.

The same kind of "compulsion" applies to other basic needs. With secondary needs, the pressure isn't quite as obvious, but the logic holds up. For example, don't you feel an "internal push" to, say, keep a promise? Or do you "freely decide" to keep it every single time?

Well... that depends on whether a person believes in something transcendental within a material universe, or not. If you follow atheistic materialism, everything follows the laws of physics.

Nancy Brown11 said:Let me clear this up:

Libet expected conscious intent to show up before the brain's motor areas even started firing, but he found the exact opposite. That decision to act actually arrives nearly a full second after the motor regions begin prepping for movement. Your CONTROVERSIAL PART brain has already made its subconscious call to move, and you only catch wind of it once the action is already underway
.
There’s zero proof that what I marked red
in the paragraph above is actually what pulled the trigger on that decision!
Basically, there isn't any hard evidence that this "unconscious thing is the primary driver (deciding) for the action (that the action happens
)" in a physical, brain-based way.
The proof for that claim is missing because there’s no guarantee that an unconscious process—wherever it lives—has to be a physical brain function! Even so, the post just glosses over this unproven assumption, treating it like a proven fact. Then, based on that same shaky ground, they start "drawing conclusions" and "building models," eventually pivoting away from actual science toward pure "gut feeling" or common sense.

Is that claim, which gets presented as so convincing later on, actually convincing? Not to me. I don't see why a brain would bother doing something like that—what biological or material benefit could it possibly get from creating the illusion that "it wasn't me"? It would be way more efficient if everything just worked exactly as intended without trying to create these "impressions"—which would be much more impressive (much more impressive, if we follow the logic that everything is just the brain, as LIQ definitely thinks)! So, it turns out that what the post calls most "striking" is actually the least striking thing ever, and I'm not even exaggerating. It might be the easiest pill to swallow, but there’s really no good reason to serve up such nonsense or buy into it.

Secondly, the whole "voluntary" choice to move your hand and hook yourself up to electrodes just so someone can record data and draw conclusions speaks volumes about how "methodologically sound" any interpretation of this experiment really is.

So, they used common sense to jump both ways (like skipping over the question of "why does the unconscious *have* to be brain-based"). They skipped that part because people who are easily swayed by media spin often fail to realize that talking about free will isn't stifled by finding the unconscious; if anything, it makes the whole debate even wilder!

And there isn't even proof that the brain hadn't already CONSCIOUSLY decided to perform the task before those preparatory signals even started. Someone could have decided to do something, forgotten they even made the choice right before they did it, and then only realized it as they were starting. In other words, we can't rule out that possibility, and any decent psychiatrist knows (and teaches) that these kinds of "quirks" and "glitches" are totally normal parts of everyday life for "sane" people.

Elizabeth Ruiz65 said:There is no proof that before the brain prepared for an action, a person hadn't already made a conscious decision to act, only to forget that very decision right before starting to announce it—assuming they even felt the urge to announce it at all. In other words, there is no evidence to disprove that possibility.