Do zombies have free will?

[Voltaire2]

The literature for the philosophy of the mind is full of thought experiments involving zombies. These are not Walking Dead zombies, they are instead just like you and me with the one exception that they have no conscious experiences. In all other respects they are fully human.

Note that their unconscious or subconscious mind is fully functional and they are just as intelligent as we are.

There just isn’t a chattering monkeybrain in there “experiencing” existence.

They make choices. They go to Starbucks and order chai lattes.

Do they have free will?

[TreasonousBastard]

1. Eh? Since there are no zombies, what's the point of inventing them just to prove a point? The...

canceled TV show iZombie, btw, was about fully conscious zombies.

[Doodley]

3. What point do you think it is proving?

[TreasonousBastard]

4. The point that discussion about zombie free will is worthwhile...

It's for people who who can't deal with robotic free will.

[Doodley]

6. Are you saying robots can have free will?

[TreasonousBastard]

10. I'm saying the discussion about robots and free will makes more sense than zombies...

Robots do exist and are "evolving" in some sense of the word. They may evolve free will, or they may not. Science fiction is full of that speculation.

Zombies do not exist and are purely inventions of imagination-- so everyone is free to invent zombies with or without. I prefer zombies without free will, so my zombies don't have it. Yours might.

[marylandblue]

12. Here are real zombies that appear to have free will

[marylandblue]

2. Probably, yes, but it does depend on what you mean by "conscious"

It would have to have some means of experience pain, hunger, pleasure etc. But it wouldn't need a chattering monkey brain. There are meditative techniques that either try to quiet the monkey brain, or just let it chatter while attending to other experiences such as breathing or visualizing quiet spaces.

[Doodley]

7. Are you saying pain, hunger, pleasure, etc., are essential for free will? Why would that be?

[marylandblue]

11. I am saying they are inputs into the decision-making process

You eat because you feel hungry, but hunger doesn't force you to eat. Rather, you can choose to delay eating for any number of reasons. But the longer you delay, the worse the hunger gets, increasing the likelihood you will eat. This experience is not part of Voltaire's chattering monkey brain, but it is a conscious experience. So a creature that felt hunger but had no mind chatter, would have free will.

But if it didn't feel hungry, how would it know when to go to Starbucks? What method would it use to determine whether to go to Starbucks or a chinese restaurant, or just wait for dinner?

[Jim__]

5. No. Consciousness is necessary for self-awareness and self-awareness is necessary for free will.

If a being is not self-aware, it can react to stimuli, but it can't (consciously) choose its action.

We may want to distinguish between types of zombies. From wikipedia:

The unifying idea of the zombie is of a human that has no conscious experience, but one might distinguish various types of zombie used in different thought experiments as follows:

A behavioral zombie that is behaviorally indistinguishable from a human.
A neurological zombie that has a human brain and is generally physiologically indistinguishable from a human.[5]
A soulless zombie that lacks a soul.

[Voltaire2]

17. So when you decide to sleep on it

before making a big decision, that unconscious decision making process is not an act of free will?

[Jim__]

18. I'm not sure what you mean by "*that* unconscious decision making process."

I don't usually make decisions in my sleep; although I can't say it never happens. But, my guess is that any such decision is not a free, willful act. Believing that people have free will does not mean that you believe every decision is a free, conscious act.

I do believe that sleeping on it can clarify some issues involved in making a decision. My understanding is that the brain does process information while we sleep. When I sleep on something, I don't normally make the decision in my sleep, but do often find the decision easier to make after a night's sleep.

[Voltaire2]

19. Processing information while we sleep

is unconscious processing. It is exactly what my zombies do all the time. It is also anecdotally how many brilliant breakthroughs in art and science have occurred.

So back to my question: are unconscious decisions that our conscious processes learn about after they have been made, acts of free will?

[Jim__]

20. To be clear, you've changed your question.

The question, as stated in post #17 was:

So when you decide to sleep on it before making a big decision, that unconscious decision making process is not an act of free will?

Your new question is:

are unconscious decisions that our conscious processes learn about after they have been made, acts of free will?

You may not realize it, but the question is ambiguous. So, I'll give a two-part answer.

First, certain decision can be made unconsciously, without any conscious input. For instance, stepping into the street and glimpsing a nearby car speeding directly at you. In that case, we can decide to jump out of the way without any conscious processing. Such a decision is not an act of free will.

On the other hand, some decisions may be contemplated consciously, calling various arguments to mind and weighing them against each other. For instance, I get my paycheck, I am going to go to dinner with some friends later in the week, and I have to decide how much money to put in the bank and how much cash to keep on hand. I consciously consider my financial situation and the likely cost of the dinner. The actual decision is made via unconscious neuronal processing based on input from conscious processes. You might say that the unconscious made that decision; but, in this case, given that it's based on input from conscious processes, I would call that an act of free will.

[htuttle]

8. Have you ever seen a definition of 'free will' that wasn't either self-referential or circular?

Do animals have free will?

Do all humans have free will? Do they have it from birth, or does it emerge over time?

I often suspect that what is referred to as free will isn't found at the same levels in every human, and may not be an unbridled good thing.

What's the opposite of free will? Acting entirely according to nature and instinct? Subjugation to another's will?

Who among us isn't subject to some other will?

And does it matter if animals don't have free will if they don't realize it?

[Voltaire2]

16. And yet people intuitively believe they have free will.

It is odd. I agree that when you try to pin down a definition the concept collapses.

[marylandblue]

21. The probably mean they have a decision process that is at least partly conscious

as Jim described in 20.

Alternatively, they believe they could have made a different choice and there is no reason given why they could not have. Personally, this is why I believe in free will. I am suspicious of theoretical arguments that say I could not have made a different choice in that moment, and I can't think of an experiment that could reproduce conditions so exactly that I would have to make the same choice each time it's done.

People who don't believe in free will may present theoretical arguments as to why someone actually had no other choice, but these theoretical arguments are unrelated to the actual experience or act of choosing.

There are also theoretical and empirical arguments that show that the feeling of love is just neurotransmitters in the brain, but these arguments do not change the experience of love.

[RainCaster]

9. Do Trumpanzees have free will?

You're asking the same question.

[Lucky Luciano]

14. You said what I came to say.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

13. Do any fictional characters have free will?

Somehow I don't think so.

[marylandblue]

22. They do if the author says they do.

[Permanut]

15. I've seen them at Starbucks..

But to answer the question, I think you have to have your monkeybrain functioning at some level in order to have free will.