As far as I’ve been able to parse it, what a goodly chunk of the folks who consider “free will” an illusion are on about boils down to this:
If you decide to do something, you either had a reason for deciding to do it or you didn’t. If you had a reason, there’s no “free will”, your choice was “caused by” the reason that was the basis of your decision. If on the other hand you had no reason whatsoever for making your decision, well gee that’s not free will that’s just rolling the dice and making a completely random choice.
It’s a damn silly argument on the face of it *, but it does point to a genuine philosophical problem that is indeed all entwined with the question of free will, which is the definition of SELF and the not-so-self-evident distinction between the self and the context in which the self operates.
Silly because what most of us mean by “free will” (those of us who speak of it as something that does in fact exist) is that the experience of volition is not illusory; that whatever-the-heck it is that we experience as self is indeed genuinely actively and consciously involved in selecting the outcome of things. Hence not a passive puppet being caused by other things, or at least not in a way that obliterates or negates being a genuine selector of outcomes.
How often are you sleeping, and thus unaware? It’s a bit of a conceptual puzzle, unless you of course work backwards from how often you’re awake and aware. Start off by noting that you’re awake X hours per day, and solve for Y where 24 - X = Y; do likewise here, y’know? Note that you’re sometimes keenly aware (and stop for a moment to really consider the importance of that), and then do the math.
In many ways the claim of Free Will is a legacy of Faith, particularly Christian Faith.
If you read the philosophy of action either prior to Christianity or from non-Western tradition philosophies, they have far fewer problems with determinism and make fewer extreme claims for free will. Once the Christian Church determined that Humans had the Free Will to avoid sin, and were culpable if they failed, the Western obsession with dualism and Free Will became set in stone. The fathers of the church took esoteric Platonic doctrines and turned them into putative moral strictures in a manner not intended by Plato himself or his later followers.
What we are seeing currently is a Western Philosophy recovering from a cul-de-sac of false belief in Human Agency.
Only if we had a fail safe procedure for predicting the future. We do not and never will have. The computational requirements to do so exceed the capability of the universe to produce such a decision maker. The argument goes that the amount of information necessary to process the intricacies of just the behaviours of humans on earth with any certainty would need a computer with more storage bits than there are available atoms in the universe.
You may imagine someone with Free Will certainly. Where is the proof that it exists?
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It’s my answer to your other question:
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The question is not " Why don’t humans have free will" but "Why do humans believe they have free will when such a concept runs counter to every piece of evidence from the best system we have for deciding how the world works
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My answer is that it doesn’t run counter to that evidence; it fits that evidence perfectly; imagining someone with Free Will, and noting that he’s indistinguishable from someone who lacks Free Will, means it runs counter to precisely nothing. It’s not like imagining someone’s a Kryptonian, and then noting all sorts of evidence to the contrary; it’s imagining, like, the opposite of that.
Congratulations. You have just proved the exixtence of God- a task that has loomed over philosophy and Theology as insoluble for centuries, for your argument is as applicable to God as it is to Free Will.
Proof that a cause exists requires a clear description of what that cause is, how and where it acts and why it is necessary and suffcient to result in the observed outcome.
You claim that something you have used Folk Psychology to piece together is the cause of your behaviour. It is your right to have such a belief, however empirically unsupported it si. Many people believe in God, yet there is no empirical evidence of her existence either. These ar matters of theological and moral claims, not matters of science.
You have failed to describe the mechanism and form of this Free Will contention in any manner that can be understood.
If you have any evidence, please supply it. I suspect that all you have is faith rather than evidence. This is because belief in Free Will is a matter of faith, not a matter of knowledge.
I merely note that this “free will” other folks keep going on and on about seems utterly indistinguishable from the complete lack of free will. I didn’t piece it together; I’ve simply asked others to describe how a man would be different if he had it. Would he make different decisions, I ask. Would he behave differently, I ask. I don’t see that he’d be any different, and so I shrug.
Again, why the heck would I describe the mechanism and form of it? Other folks have readily answered me when I’ve asked 'em about it; I don’t readily recall adding that I believe in the stuff – not as a matter of faith, and not as a matter of evidence.
Because it is an alternate, extraneous explanation, which does not seem to mesh logically, and increasingly doesn’t seem to be meshing with developments in neuroscience. If it is a false picture, then I don’t care how much it seems to fit intuitively or as part of a wider narrative such as religion, I have no use for it. No-one should have any use for a false picture, else we may as well admit that Thor is responsible for casting down thunderbolts, despite the fact it flies in the face of current scientific knowledge.
But, hey, if Thor was responsible for throwing down thunderbolts in patterns that look like what we refer to as storm clouds, it’d look identical to the scientific explanation, so why not accept that’s what’s happening?
ME: A wise philosopher (my memory currently fails me as does Google) once suggested that “you can want what you will, but you cannot will what you want”.
YOU:To a limited degree, you can. Self-hypnosis techniques actually can work. A little.
This is also the exception to “You can’t choose what you believe.” In fact, you can have some influence there, too. It isn’t easy, and there is usually very little point to it.
(People who are stuck in loveless marriages have a long history of “making themselves believe they are happy” – and some are even successful in it.)
Free will has some definite limitations; this is why they put candy near checkout aisles in supermarkets.
ME: There is no evidence that this Free Will you claim exists. It is a way of talking about complex behaviour. If you insist that it exists as a real effect in the world, please provide evidence of such. . . .
You claim that some Free Will exists (Highlighted in Red) I ask you for some proof of its existence.
So you agree that there is no Proof of the existence of Free Will? That people who use the term are describing a matter of faith rather than a matter of universal truth?
I agree that – insofar as it’s a distinction that makes no difference – it’s a distinction that makes no difference; as far as I can tell, folks who use the term keep describing something which people would act the same with or without. I can’t tell the difference between a matter of faith and a matter of truth so long as “having it” seems indistinguishable from “not having it”.
If people want to offer a different definition, I’d have a much easier time noting whether it’s a matter of faith or a matter of universal truth – but describe it as the quality by which folks would make choices the same way they would without it, and I’m not even sure “universal” goes far enough; “axiomatic” seems better.
No, I didn’t actually claim “it exists.” I alluded to the concept, and noted one of its limitations.
You misread my post.
The concept can no more be proven than it can be disproven. The concept, as a theological one, is nonsensical. You might as well ask someone (and ask someone else, please) for proof of the soul.
Meanwhile, I very much do believe in human volition and ordinary commonplace matters of choice. I re-wrote this post several times in response to my changing choice of words. I’ve made a large number of choices today.
(Someone could say these were only “illusions.” But, as noted above, the whole world might be just an illusion. No one can prove otherwise.)
But the whole point of you making that ‘Thor’ comparison is that the ‘Thor’ concept used to do more robust stuff before dwindling down to god-of-the-gaps weaksauce. My whole point is that, apparently, free will was only ever supposed to do exactly what you’re saying it still does: making the same decisions that we would have anyway. It didn’t dwindle down to a point of mere compatibilism; it’s always been defined in terms of mere compatibilism.
The problem is that it is a distinction with a massive moral difference.
If a person has ‘Free Will’ then that person is ultimately responsible for their actions in a way that a determined organism is not. We do not apply extreme punishments to organism or persons who lack such ultimate responsibility. We are willing to act punitively towards those who are seen to have Free Will (ordinary criminals) but more likely to act differently with those that lack free will. We no longer hang elephants or monkeys for murder, nor do we hold wild animals responsible when they attack and kill humans. We may put them down as dangerous, but we do not try them to decide their culpability. Children, crazy, demented and otherwise mentally impaired persons are treated as being deficient in Free Will (responsibility) and hence less culpable.
In death states the distinction can mean the difference between state killing and survival.
Your use of the word choice rather than decision begs the question as it assumes the reality fo Free Will.
Your person has made many decisions today. Whether these were Free Will choices or merely determined decisions is a matter of interest and each require a different response.
Children, crazy, demented and otherwise mentally impaired persons are comparatively deficient in something, and will presumably be treated accordingly whether you call it a deficiency of “free will” or a deficiency of “something else”.
(Help me out, here: what, precisely, would you say they’re deficient in?)
Again, I have no problem with executing a criminal so long as he isn’t a child or otherwise deficient in whatever-you-call-it; I have no problem with executing that criminal if you call it “free will”, and I have no problem with executing that criminal if you call it “something else”.
So long as we make exceptions for that whatchamacallit deficiency, I’d vote for capital punishment when that exception isn’t in play and there’s an abundance rather than a deficiency. Why the heck would changing the name change my mind?
I doubt you’d start favoring a “death state” approach if we changed the wording but still meant ‘executing convicted criminals who have a superabundance of what small children and the deranged are deficient in’; do me the same courtesy; do so for us all; we’re mature enough for the big-boy pants of rose-by-any-other-name thinking.
(Hooray for mixed metaphors!)
No, they don’t; you can say it’s a matter of interest, you can act as if they “require” a different response, but I assure you I can say er, no; that’s not so.
You misunderstand 600 years of Jurisprudence. In order for a person to be condemned for a crime, they must have a mens rea- a guilty mind, making them responsible for their behaviour as autonomous individuals who new the difference between right and wrong AND could have acted otherwise if only their mind directed them. Children, the mentally impaired and some others are considered to lack such a facility and hence are not treated as responsible. If there is free will and people are forced by circumstance of nature to act as they do, then there is no real difference between the current excluded classes and the general population- no one is in truth responsible for their behaviour as it was determined by circumstance, not by free will. It certainly excludes pure retribution for desert as part of the justice system and also elevates rehabilitation as a main goal of the criminal justice process.
That aside there seems a basic moral problem with causing harm to an individual who had no choice other than to have acted in the way that he did unless there are further considerations to apply. It certainly indicates that our current Judao- Christian approach is without a grounding from real knowledge about the world.
Ahhhh, I see. Since there is a tradition of calling something which isn’t ‘free’ by definition, ‘free will’, we should just continue to. Despite the fact that the concept came from a place of ignorance, and describes a state of affairs we now know not to be the case, it is preferable to pretend that this phrase, carrying the import and legacy that it does, is still correct. Knowing that in fact it was an erroneous picture, we should still pretend it is an adequate description of how decisions are arrive at, that the decision process itself is more-or-less irrelevant, as long as the outcome is same as you might imagine that this unscientific notion of free will should suggest that it is. Since people used to think they had free will, and made decisions, the fact that we are now starting to realise this was an incorrect understanding of the process of human rationalisation doesn’t matter. It was good enough for our ancestors, right, so it must be good enough for us.
Just like the heart is the seat of emotions. We sort of know that it plays no real part in emotions, but if it did, the outcome would be the same as it is now; people would still feel emotions. What point is there in making a modern distinction based on science? All you’re doing is suggesting that we would still have the same emotions either way, why does the process by which you arrive at them matter?