I don’t think determinism or free will makes any difference in a universe sample size of one. You’d only see the difference if you could somehow compare multiple universes that had identical starting points. Without that comparison, it’s impossible to say whether a decision resulted from free will, or from determinism… and that’s especially true when you consider that quantum theory says that nothing can be truly deterministic.
However, I do learn toward a deterministic viewpoint based on one factor: if free will exists, at what point does it arise? We can all agree that volcanoes have no free will - purely inorganic process at work there. and we probably agree that bacteria have no free will becuase their behaviors are very simplistic. What about a daffodil? A fish? A rat? At what point do we pass a threshold of chemical complexity to achieve free will?
Phrased like that, I think it’s clear that free will could only arise in humans if there’s something non-chemical driving our behavior like a soul and now you’re in very murky waters because there’s no test that distinguish which things have a soul and which do not.
No, I think we have the *illusion *of free will. The illusion is created because our brains have the capability to model multiple potential outcomes and then choose between them. (Heck, we can even model not-potential outcomes like Star Wars.) Its probably a useful fiction to believe that we control our own actions because even in a deterministic universe, a person with that belief probably makes different decisions than an otherwise-identical person without it.
Does it really matter in a day to day basis? I’m not sure. I tend to believe that having correct information about the universe is inherently better than having incorrect information, even if it’s hard to nail down how some bits of information are put into use.
Aren’t you saying basically what DSeid said upthread? And, if so, I get that - accepting that, when we dig into it, we can see that Deterministic forces underlie things. But we still face the day as an “I” self that feels agency. Per monstro, she feels like she made a decision, even if she noodles it a bit more and decides that her decision was deterministic in nature.
In the moment of every day decisions, that agency, even if it is illusory when broken down analytically, matters.
monstro, you characterized the Both/And position I was taking as some “feel good” approach akin to a person wanting to believe in God. It felt a bit condescending but I sure don’t think of you that way, at all. And yet you indicate that your initial impression was that it felt like you were making your own decision as it was happening.
I am just trying to acknowledge and own that feeling of agency: a) without signing up for the baggage of Free Will that makes it okay to condemn others; and b) while acknowledging that there are Deterministic forces at work that no human will ever fully comprehend.
If I am facing the day and wanting to make better decisions, stopping and considering the Free Will ways to look at things AND the Deterministic way to look at things both have value to me.
Determinists tend to point to free will folk and talk about how often free will arguments are used to support social darwinism and the death penalty and victim blaming. So let me illustrate HOW determinism is an inherently conservative ideology and how it can be dangerous on a political plane.
• Evil Government X comes into power and intends to lock up you and a lot of people like you as potential troublemakers. You go to civil rights demonstrations and speak out about freedom and oppression. Evil Government X, using your own words from things you’ve said about free will vs determinism, that you have no freedom anyway; that your preference for being outside of rather than inside of a cell is due entirely to external influences causing you to have that preference and not that it is inherently better to be unconstrained by walls and bars. They also say that, rather than them doing anything for nefarious reasons like wanting to squelch dissent, their own actions are responses to their social location and that it makes no sense to blame them in any shape way fashion or form for what they are doing, and again they play clips of you making that very argument, albeit in a different context.
So now you get to choose between trying to explain why what you said previously doesn’t really apply in this situation or saying that you often make arguments that you don’t really literally mean, you just embrace them if they let you reach a conclusion that you wanted to reach, like “death penalty is bad”
• A culture war of sorts is in progress and you’re making a strong appeal to people’s sense of justice and fairness and their idealistic sense of how things really ought to be for people, and you seem to be making progress until the Oppressive Little Shits begin airing your speeches about determinism vs free will and following them up with the argument that not one bit of your appeal for a “better” society is based on anything, because all of your notions of what is, in fact, “better”, are entirely arbitrary accidents of such things as individual events in your life and socialization, peer pressure, and what side of the bed you woke up on today, none of it being the outcome of reason applied to universal truths. “The only reason this troublemaking loudmouth blathers on about Martin Luther King being good and Adolf Hitler bad is the ungrounded attitudes and tastes created by his personal experience. And that’s true of Adolf and Martin too, if you switched them they’d have been each other. There’s no intrinsic value in any idea, just reasons for coming to believe in such values. We the Oppressive LIttle Shits Leaders are not believers in stuff like values. What we do know is that holding the beliefs that the Troublemakers hold correlated with causing a disruption”. And again you’re on tape saying things from which their conclusions seem to derive quite readily.
But, dude, that’s more scenario-building. My whole point in the OP is to reference the everyday world, right?
I get that either perspective can be “used for evil” - we’re humans; everything can be used for evil, unfortunately.
My point is that, in general over time, I want to feel better about what I say and do in a given day.
First, I find I am always better off if I try to stop and think about what I am thinking about saying or doing.
While inside that moment, before I speak or act, I see value in considering both Free Will and Deterministic aspects -
> From a Free Will standpoint, I want to remind myself that I have a choice. To speak or act (or not) and if so, how.
> From a Deterministic standpoint, I can remind myself that many/most of the forces at work in that situation are out of my control, and consider what “letting go” of the need to “force agency” in that situation might look like.
> Also from a Deterministic standpoint, I can remind myself that it is NOT okay to ascribe Free Will to broad generalities like The Poor Deserve their Fate or other stupidity.
In this simple/simplistic scenario, the sense of agency, even if simply illusory, is present in the moment. To that extent, considering the “Free Will implications” within that moment adds value to how I try to approach the decision.
Yup - sounds like “Focus on what you can Control, not what you can’t” - straight from The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People (which, by the way, is a solid book - good common sense packaged up for $10.95).
My point with the OP though is that when I read the Philosophy stuff I do, the FW vs. D discussions are asserted to have direct impact on the everyday. Heck, I just listened to a debate between Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett, two of the Four Horsemen of modern atheism, where they are using every day scenarios - some of which have futuristic twists incorporated in them, but still - to illustrate their points.
But, if that is all there is to it - i.e., focus on what you can control - then why is FW vs D a debate for the ages?
You seem to think that determinism makes your decision-making process less important. I think that’s a faulty understanding of what determinism really means.
Determinism doesn’t say “You are destined to eat vanilla ice cream, no matter what.” No, determinism just says “Given the current state of the universe, you will choose vanilla ice cream.” Your thoughts and feelings are part of the state of universe, right? So if you change how you think, you change the state and you change the decision. If you think “Wait, I always order vanilla, but I have free will and I’m going to prove it by choosing chocolate!” then you haven’t proven free will. It’s still determinism… a different thought process lead to a different choice.
So, there is value in being thoughtful and value in teaching people how to make good decisions. Not because of free will, but because learning how to think is as much an input into the decision as being hungry or your biological response to sugar and vanilla.
Is there value in calling it free will, though? I don’t know… I think it’s probably better to just say “Better decisions result from better decision-making processes.” Why do a good thing based on false information when you can do a good thing based on correct information?
Really, I think it just makes for stimulating conversation.
It’s why West World is such a popular show. Same with The Matrix. People really like to grok this stuff. Myself included.
I get it. I am very open to hearing I am attempting to use Philosophical Sledgehammers to think through something requiring a couple of Rules to Live By.
Per my post just above yours, I am struck by how Philosophers use everyday examples to make their points in FW vs. D debates. But that doesn’t mean I have to re-argue that debate every time I consider my ice cream choices
That’s an . . . interesting metaphor, but it doesn’t really mean anything. I think there are numerous fundamental differences between alive dog and dead dog; alive me and dead me. But, I would say that one definition of “identity” might be the sum of how an individual responds to stimuli. Whether or not the individual ‘chooses’ action has nothing to do with that individual’s self-ness.
Gotcha; the phrasing confused me.
See, I feel like this is how you are approaching this issue. That even though we are ‘influenced’ by environment, that there is somehow some part of us that is impervious to that influence, and makes decisions. I don’t see how those two things can both be true simultaneously. We are either of and in our world or separate from it.
Didn’t mean to imply they were. In the same way most of what you have written doesn’t have any resemblance to any deterministic arguments put forth in this thread, though I’m sure you are not implying that anyone has said them. I’m just addressing the OP’s question of why one should care about these things in the everyday world. And I read/hear on a daily basis arguments about how support/help/compassion for people should be withheld because they made their own beds and ought to lie in them.
Sort of. You’re going off on the death penalty and I’m not sure why. But I would say that we all see on a daily basis social attitudes that are centered around non-compassionate blaming of people for their own ills that only make sense if you believe in free will, and are only wrong if our actions are deterministic.
. . . ok, these are funny made-up scenarios, but neither of them actually reflect real-life experience, and are borderline strawman arguments. But, here we go:
Well, look, here’s the thing. You’re eagerly conflating the multiple meanings of “responsibility” to present a position that no one in this thread (nor whom I, anecdotally, have ever spoken with in real life) is making.
In this scenario:
[ul]
[li]Government X has done some things[/li][li]Citizen Y feels unhappy about it[/li][/ul]
This is true regardless of free will. And, I agree completely that, hey, those people in Government X were just kind of responding to their environment in the way that seemed right. But that doesn’t mean that Citizen Y shouldn’t complain about it, or shouldn’t make an attempt to influence Government X to change.
And Gov’t X in your story is obviously lying through its teeth. “We’re not doing this for any reason at all” They are doing it to squelch dissent. Why do they want to squelch dissent? To retain power. Why do they want power? Because it feels good. Or something, I’m obviously simplifying a practically infinite chain of causes/effects, but the point is that 1) the “there is no reason” argument is not one anyone is making, and 2) just because I can point to a deterministic reason for doing something doesn’t make me any less responsible for having done it. Let me set up an equally silly hypothetical:
Frank is sitting at the bottom of a cliff, taking a nap. At the top of the cliff is a pulley system; on one side, suspended over the cliff edge, is tied a Steinway grand piano. On the other side, standing on the ledge, is me, holding the rope that keeps the Steinway from smashing poor Frank.
Henry comes along and, not understanding the situation, starts tickling me until I let go of the rope, letting all 88 keys fall, flattening poor Frank.
Who killed Frank? Certainly, I did, as I let the rope go. Or was it Henry, as he caused me to let go of the rope? Did I have a choice to let go, or was it inevitable? What if it was someone else who wasn’t ticklish? Is it my fault for being ticklish? For not working harder at not being ticklish? Or should Henry have educated himself more about the true consequences of gravity on a pulley system when you release the counterweight?
I could not help but kill Frank, because Henry made me let go of the rope. Who’s responsible? Is it Henry for tickling me, or me, for being ticklish?
It’s some combination of both, I guess, but regardless, we’ve decided for some reason that dropping pianos on people is not something that we’re going to stand for, and so we need to decide how to address this.
You seem to think that “I was just doing as the moment made me” means “no accountability”, but they are not mutually exclusive.
Regarding your second scenario: Of course my deterministic perspective on what is “better” for the world is flawed and arbitrary . . . but so is a free will perspective. Someone could say those words you wrote, sure, but it’s not a sound argument.
Pretty much, and the same is true for an awful lot of other philosophical conundrums. Is the world made of “one-ness” or “multiplicity?” Is the world naturally “orderly” or “chaotic?” Is love stronger than hate? Would you go back in time and kill Hitler when he was just a baby?
There aren’t – cannot be! – definite answers to any of these questions: they ultimately tell more about the people who argue one way or the other than they tell about reality itself.
I can speak of “choices” and “decisions” without giving any nod to free will.
I think my cat makes choices and decisions. But I don’t think he has free will. He can act in ways that are totally unpredictable. But I don’t think he has free will.
I didn’t mean to sound condescending. It’s just that I don’t see the point of–besides coping with existential angst–believing that our choices are anything other than the result of biologically-engrained algorithms. Because saying “result of biologically-engrained algorithms” is pretty awkward, I find “choices and decisions” to be useful shorthand. I don’t think telling someone that I made the decision to take medication means that I’ve suddenly compromised my position that free will is an illusion until proven otherwise.
If someone believes this to be the case, then I feel they are misinterpreting my position.
Fair enough. But I guess I don’t see how this is a compromise between the two positions. I own the feeling of my agency too, because the feeling is 100% real and because for all I know I really am making decisions with my own free will. I just don’t believe that I must have free will on the basis that this is what my gut says.
Totally fair and thanks for your articulation of it.
I have also acknowledged other posters’ framing the sensation of Free Will to be illusory. But I still feel it - as do you. The reality of “your gut feeling” of FW is there, even if you don’t reason it to be true. How might it be applied?
I start with that premise: the sense of Free Will is in me. And I am noodling around reading stuff on it, like the podcast interview I referenced upthread. Hitting some of the classic philosophers about it, I try to keep it in practical perspective. Hence the OP.
Loving this thread so thanks everyone for the input - I’m digging AHunter and Eonwe’s discussion even if I’m focused on my own. And agree with the others who simply enjoy the grok.
I can’t speak for other philosophers, but I tend to use an example from everyday behavior because I mostly think about free will in the context of habits or addictions. When one person exercises everyday and another overeats, that’s a great time to think about whether they’re truly using free will or, if not, what factors drive the different behaviors. Why does one person enjoy a couple of beers when another doesn’t stop drinking until they pass out? Sex is another great area to think about free will in, but not necessary the best for polite conversation.
It’s these everyday actions where I mostly hear people say “I wish I could stop/start doing X! What’s wrong with me?” Without a pattern of behavior and a desire to change it, free will doesn’t seem to come up as much.
Let’s say you’re not making these arguments. You’re arguing that you are a free agent who makes decisions completely independent of all external variables, including authority and the law. And then an evil government locks you up for advocating breaking the law and disrepecting authority, even though that’s not your position at all.
Does this mean that the belief in free will is inherently dangerous? Or does it mean that evil governments can create trumped-up charges against you no matter what your position is?
All beliefs have the potential to be used as the basis for evil purposes. Evolution by natural selection is not an evil ideology, though it can be used to justify evil policies. The possible ramifications of a philosophy taken to an extreme (“Determinism means we’re mindless passive automatons”) are not a good enough reason to reject the core reasoning underpinning that philosophy (“There is no empirical evidence that free will exists.”)
I don’t reject free will on the basis that it is evil or politically incorrect. I reject free will because I see no reason for me to presume it exists.
This is where some of you always lose me. People that are arguing in favor of determinism constantly use terms like “choose”, “if you change how you think” and “teach”. Those are completely incompatible with determinism as the way that I understand it.
“Choosing” chocolate ice cream is a great example of free will especially if you secretly craved vanilla in my mind. The fact that there was a choice at all refutes determinism.
As always with threads of type, I think people are talking about two completely separate things. There is something that I call weak determinism that just means that you get lots of long-term and short-term influences from the quality to your neighborhood to the state of your health on a given day and you can’t just “decide” to override them at will. That isn’t very controversial but it really just the nature/nurture debate rephrased and not what some people are talking about at all.
The strong version of this argument states that absolutely no one can “choose” anything at all. It is either completely predetermined or has some random quantum influences that are still outside of individual control. It isn’t just philosophical either. There is some neuroscience evidence for that such as experimental results that show that people make some decisions like choosing the chocolate ice cream and then build the reasons for that pseudo-choice after it has been made.
I am not sure which side I believe but I do know that even people that claim they believe in determinism have a really hard time demonstrating that they really do even in threads like this because the posts are full of references to the Self, conscious interventions by others and various other choices.
Personally, I say I make choices because 1) the English language doesn’t offer good alternatives and 2) “choice” does not necessarily imply the existence of free will. A person who has shackles on his feet is ambulatory. But they are still wearing restraints–they are not free to move however they want.
If someone only gives me two options–a bowl of ice cream and a bowl of lava–I will certainly go with the ice cream. But the options are so limited and so unequal in valence that it is ridiculous to say this is a “free choice”. Just like a person who has a gun to his head isn’t freely deciding to hand over his wallet. He is being coerced.
To go to your example with chocolate and vanilla ice cream. From the outside (including your own consciousness), your choice to go with chocolate appears like an action of free will. It feels like a “free” choice. But for all you know, you were coerced by the associations embedded in your subconscious. You may not believe that the subconscious is that powerful, but you can’t ever know this for certain because by definition your subconscious is unknowable to you.
That’s precisely what I am claiming (my bold)-living proof. I have completely rebuilt my entire life and psyche literally from the ground up. 33 years ago I was a complete emotional wreck, loathed myself utterly, had a life which was going nowhere, almost dashed myself against the sea rocks.
Something stopped me. Was it my will?
[Now, your specific example-sample size of one-inherently involves biology as a limiting factor. I don’t claim 100% freedom from our biology-in my case I have a fairly benign case of chronic dyslexia which occ. pops up here and there, usually when I am trying to keep people’s names straight. But in purely psychological sense, your thoughts can most certainly rewire your entire brain. Hormonal systems or such, less sure of, and hereby defer on the point.]
I wake up each morning and feel the exhilarating freedom of a brand new day beckoning to me, knowing that nothing and nobody (least of all myself) will prevent me from doing what I wish. See amazing things each and every day, such as the bright sun dog today, or the rising gibbous supermoon tonight. A song is always on my lips, a jig in my step (or some air guitaring). The lost soul that I was is completely gone. And I did not need what passes for Western professional psychological counseling (“help”) to do it. Yes, I do feel like my will was a central part of all of that.
You would say that doing that is impossible.
I say that, if you wish to argue for your limitations, you get to keep them.
Because for me it means taking away my dignity as a living soul, taking away the ability for me to utterly transform my life and my mind in the way that I see fit. And in the process of accepting that, believing that, fostering it in the lives and minds of the people I care about (such as my students-some have indeed told me that I have helped them do exactly that).
Yours is a hopelessly bleak world that I want no part of. I really do find it horrifying, the dankest darkest prison that you can imagine, and it’s your own lizard/monkey mind.
You don’t have proof of anything. You surmise that you all by your lonesome rebuilt your life through sheer will. But this is an untestable hypothesis.
Are my suicidal thoughts the manifestation of my will? Or are they the result of my hormones going out of wack?
Yes, your thoughts create emotions, which create action, which in turn create thoughts, then emotions…all of which can make you learn things or unlearn things, thereby changing your brain.
But none of this requires free will. Thoughts and feelings are authored by processes that are unknowable to us. You will awake tomorrow morning with a thought in your head that you did not consciously create. The thought that follows that thought is equally unplanned–since this would require you to have cognition outside of your cognition.
I have spent years in therapy. I have learned a ton about CBT and how to change thoughts through behavior. However, millions of other people try CBT and it doesn’t work for them. And this has nothing to do with their “lack of will”, but everything to do with CBT not being the key that fits their particular lock.
And you are entitled to that feeling. I’m not telling you that your feeling is wrong.
But just recognize that feelings are not the same as knowledge and understanding. You may 100% believe that your life is awesome because you consciously have decided to make it awesome. But that doesn’t mean you are correct. You could very well be deluding yourself.
I find this hilarious. I share a story about me finally finding wellness and self-acceptance through the realization that I am an organism rather than a supernatural entity. This seems like a rather mundane revelation, IMHO. And for this, I get accused of living in a hopeless, bleak, horrifying prison with a monkey mind?
Well, gee, John Difool! Thanks for that. I guess all I have to say to that is some of us don’t possess all the incredible powers that you apparently possess. Maybe all I have is a simple monkey brain while you have a highly evolved human brain. If this is the case, wouldn’t it be safer for me to question whether I have free will rather than to purport I have it like a big know-it-all? Isn’t this the more humble position to take when objective evidence of free will is lacking and I see evidence of biological determinism all around me?
Maybe you don’t care about being a rational human being and prefer instead to adopt belief systems based solely on how they make you feel. But some of us would rather form beliefs based on how well they jibe with the empirical evidence. I don’t need to tell myself a fairy tale to feel good about myself or my place in the world. I’m a quality worthwhile person whether or not I have free will, regardless of your very cynical opinion.
See “dignity of a living soul” is a step further than I have gone. I merely wish to accept the reality that I feel a sense of Free Will. At this point I don’t care if it is “real” or “illusory” - I feel it.
I’m done with deciding about its existence. It feels like sophistry past that.
My question is how it applies to the every day. If I accept a feeling of free will - and I don’t wish to use it for Bad - then how do I use it? In my case it is by recognizing I have Volition as a source of believing I can Change. Which, to me, means feeling I can make better choices in the moment.
