Determinism vs. Free Will: why care in the everyday world?

[Shagnasty]

@WordMan

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.

There we go again. None of your statement makes the least bit of sense if the universe is truly determinant. I am not picking on you in particular. Even the people that claim they believe in determinism in this thread have made statements that contradict that. You are assuming there is a ‘You’ that can make a choice. There may very well be but not in a truly deterministic universe.

My personal position is that I am the ultimate agnostic and I not only don’t know the full reality, I am incapable of it. I am not a big fan of determinism arguments because they depend on a full understanding of consciousness and nobody in the world is any closer to understanding that than they were 500 or even 100,000 years ago. Even the best neuroscientists or computer scientists in the world today cannot explain what it is or why it happens.

Don’t listen to anyone that claims to know how any of this works because they don’t.

To me, that is key. If the best scientists in the world cannot explain it, then it is all masturbatory intellectual speculation from everyone else. For all we know, there could be a breakthrough for the understanding of consciousness like relativity that makes everything a little more clear but then goes dark again when you get into the realm of something like quantum mechanics.

People today are not as nearly as smart as we choose to think. There are reputable scientists that believe we are living in a simulation, others that think there are multi-verses in which every possible outcome happens and real mathematical evidence that time does not exist the way we perceive it. No amount of Mary Jane or shrooms can sort sort out those ideas because no one has any solid theoretical framework about how it works.

There are at least two known miracles in the universe. One is creation. Science has given up for explaining that for now. The other is consciousness. We have made almost zero progress in understanding it despite decades of research. Once some unified theory of those is worked out, especially the latter, then we can talk we can talk about causality. However, right now, there are many plausible answers and some of them are more bizarre than finding out that time runs at different rates depending on speed and particles can be in more than one place at a time (all provable results).

[monstro]

@WordMan

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.

Whenever I am stuck in an intellectual problem, I always try to switch to a mindless activity. I’ll take a walk, pop a yoga pose, or surf the internet.

Usually when I do this the answers to my problems kinda just pop into my mind. I call it a “front porch moment” because usually this happens when I step onto my front porch after walking home from work.

Rarely, though, do I figure shit out “in the moment”. The more I start thinking about something, the more stressed out I get, and the more stupid, wasteful thoughts I have, and then I get even more stressed out. “Think harder, monstro!” is what the Free Willer in me says when it thinks I’m being lazy and stupid. When really the message I need to hear is, “monstro, stop acting like you’re the one in control of this here ship.”

I understand why people feel emboldened by the notion of free will when they are in times of trouble, but I feel the opposite. I take comfort in knowing that the human brain has evolved over millions of years to solve complex problems without any micromanagement.

[WordMan]

@monstro

Whenever I am stuck in an intellectual problem, I always try to switch to a mindless activity. I’ll take a walk, pop a yoga pose, or surf the internet.

Usually when I do this the answers to my problems kinda just pop into my mind. I call it a “front porch moment” because usually this happens when I step onto my front porch after walking home from work.

Rarely, though, do I figure shit out “in the moment”. The more I start thinking about something, the more stressed out I get, and the more stupid, wasteful thoughts I have, and then I get even more stressed out. “Think harder, monstro!” is what the Free Willer in me says when it thinks I’m being lazy and stupid. When really the message I need to hear is, “monstro, stop acting like you’re the one in control of this here ship.”

I understand why people feel emboldened by the notion of free will when they are in times of trouble, but I feel the opposite. I take comfort in knowing that the human brain has evolved over millions of years to solve complex problems without any micromanagement.

Fascinating. We each target the same behavior: taking time to step back. I haven’t referenced it in this thread, but yes, for significant issues, part of stepping back is ensuring I “downshift my brain” by playing guitar or some other “in the zone” activity. Takes me out of my current cycle which in turn increases an ability to consider things differently, hear other parts of my brain more clearly, etc.

You appear to see Free Will as acting impulsively. You see embracing Determinism as part of the process of opening your brain to other perspectives.

I see the choice to step back as a positive exercise of Free Will.

I don’t believe either POV is wrong, just different expressions of the underlying thinking. And that is what leads to the OP.

I am not sure if there are any “best ways” to scope down from the big underlying question of Determinism vs. Free Will to the everyday.

Shagnasty, two key topics in any of the best thinking I have been exposed to are:

• our “epistemic arrogance” = Humans believing they can know more than they can; and

• reflecting on the “unsolvable paradox” at the heart of all Big Questions = The fact that “Why is there Something rather than Nothing?” has been approached via Religion, Philosophy and Science and remains an active engine of inquiry on all fronts.

I think that is another reason I am asking this OP: the D vs FW debate frames interesting extremes. These scenarios help us better reason about our existence. But past a certain point, they become sophistry in the face of what we don’t, and perhaps can’t ever know. And that leaves how they apply to us in the everyday open to interpretation.

Everybody’s gotta plan 'til they get punched in the mouth.

[DSeid]

@WordMan

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.

Which is why, I suspect, you put this in IMHO rather than GD.

I may not agree with much of where else Descartes went with it but that thesis of “I think therefore I am” is to me on the money. Given that “I” am something thinking and experiencing a sense of self with the agency to decide whether or not I believe “I” and my FW exists, I do exist and do have FW. Tautology away! How can I decide that I have no ability to decide?

Like you debating its existence is to me sophistry. Sometimes fun for the intellectual game of it but of no actual value. Does the experience of the color “red” exist? Or is it an illusion experienced by something that does not really exist. It does actually exist only in our minds. Same of course with all qualia. And of course they are none the less real for existing as experiences of some filtered and processed external reality within “minds.” I could argue that “red” does not really exist, that it is an illusory experience … but the organism that results in my mind experiencing it would be foolish to not “decide” to stop when the illusion that is my “self” sees it on a traffic light.

[DSeid]

Of course if one wants to play with sophistry you can take the other extreme too, the “If a tree falls in a forest …” bit. All we can know exists is what we experience as selves.

[Thudlow_Boink]

@WordMan

• If Free Will holds, then we are agents in all of our decisions, can make bad moral choices…and should feel like shit about that.

I want to go back and address this. I don’t agree with the idea that one difference between Free Will and Determinism is whether we should feel like shit for our bad choices, for three reasons:

(1) Whether, when, and why we should feel bad about how we use our free will is a separate issue from whether or not we (believe we) have it. Belief in Free Will is compatible with many different specific beliefs about morality, guilt, responsibility, etc.

(2) If Determinism is true, we’ll still feel bad about our own moral failings, and blame others for theirs, if that’s what has been Determined. It’s a contradiction to say that Determinism implies we should choose not to feel bad about our moral failings.

(3) If Determinism is true, then the bad things a person does aren’t free choices, but they are determined by (among other things) the kind of person they are—by their brain and their background and their habits and etc. So isn’t there still justification for judging or feeling bad about the person who does the bad things? If a tree produces rotten fruit, we don’t say that the tree chose to produce bad fruit; and we might be able to find the cause (that’s not the tree’s “fault” in any moral sense); but we can still conclude that it’s a bad tree.

On the other hand, you can believe in Free Will and still believe that your actions and choices are heavily influenced by the kind of person you are—your nature and nurture, your genes and your upbringing and your habits and your state of health and so on. Free will gives you at least some ability to override your natural inclinations. But it also gives you the ability to make everyday choices that change those natural inclinations.

You can make the choice not to beat up the old lady and steal her money. But you can also make little choices every day that turn you a little bit more towards, or away from, the kind of person who wouldn’t ever think to beat up an old lady and steal her money.

(Thus, more of a virtue ethics approach than one that focuses on choosing specific right or wrong actions.)

[WordMan]

In that case, Thudlow, I was framing Free Will in one of its extreme scenarios, I.e., the Catholic form required, I think in the 400’s?, to enable Original Sin. I see your arguments for less burdened implications of FW and agree.

DSeid - okay so our sense of FW is part of the brute fact of Cogito Ergo Sum. What can you share about how the Big Thinkers think it manifests in an examined life? Basically just that struggling with the reality of Free Will led to the Do Unto Others insight anchoring all Axial Age* religions and philosophies?

*around 700-400 BCE, when the monotheism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Greek Philosophy, etc, all emerged. Covered really well in The Great Transformation by Karen Armstrong.

[DSeid]

Nah. Evolution, both hereditary and cultural leads to all that whether FW is illusory or not. “Do unto others …” (or alternatively “Do not do unto …”) was no insight, it was expressing a basic premise that has been extant within human societies from the get go … along with the choice by some to break the rules and the desire of others to catch and punish the rules breakers. These decisions do not require FW as an entity that exists; the desires however perhaps do. FW emerges as sentience emerges and to the degree one is real both are; to the same degree both are “mere” epiphenomena.

[John_DiFool]

@monstro

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.

Lots of projection there.

The fallacy at the core of your worldview seems to be that YOUR evidence, your worldview, is peachy keen and above reproach, while those of someone else can be safely dismissed, while you are nonetheless-by your own admission-trapped within your worldview just as much-in your own view of life as being hopelessly determined!-as anyone else would be.

[If you were to come and live my life for a week, you would have more than enough evidence to satisfy you. I am literally DROWNING in evidence, of freedom, of joy, of unlimited meaning, every single moment. So don’t go lecturing to me about evidence-it goes a long long way beyond “mere” feelings (as if they cannot tell us anything by themselves, which is another unexamined assumption of yours).]

I want to believe in total freedom, because, if that is taken away from me, I become a mere hapless puppet of forces that I not only cannot understand, but also have absolutely no prayer of ultimately being able to control and overcome. That you seem to have absolutely no issue with these deeper implications makes me truly wonder if you have really thought them through. I as said simply find the mere thought utterly horrifying.

True transformation goes way beyond pop psych techniques like CBT (which have undoubtedly worked very well for me, just that it isn’t but a small part of it all).

[WordMan]

I can’t be a junior mod, but I can say I started this thread for the rich discussion - and we’ve gotten a bunch. Can we avoid the shots and the trashing of worldviews?

As I commented above, I think it’s cool to see that monstro values the same basic results that I have heard that most of us do. The question we are discussing is how one can or should apply this Cogito-driven sense of Free Will.

DSeid, okay, it isn’t Do Unto Others - any perspective as to how to regard and apply our sense of Free Will?

[monstro]

@John_DiFool

Lots of projection there.

My horrifying monkey brain doesn’t agree.

The fallacy at the core of your worldview seems to be that YOUR evidence, your worldview, is peachy keen and above reproach, while those of someone else can be safely dismissed..

You have no empirical, objective evidence that you have free will. This is irrefutable.

You have only gut feelings. You have the beliefs that your brain feed to you. This is irrefutable.

Your brain could be lying to you and you would never know since you don’t exist outside of your brain. This is irrefutable.

If my existence is halfway similar to your existence, then the same facts apply to me.

I’m not dismissing your feelings. I’m dismissing your claim that you know more about reality than I do. You haven’t provided any facts, just a passionate exposition about your wonderful glorious life. If you want to convince me that I am wrong, you will have to do better than that.

…while you are nonetheless-by your own admission-trapped within your worldview just as much-in your own view of life as being hopelessly determined!-as anyone else would be.

I can’t prove that I’m not trapped. I can either proclaim my freedom like an arrogant know-it-all and look like a fool when confronted with the facts. Or I could concede that although it feels like I’m free, all evidence points to me being trapped. Moreover, I can let the world know that I’m 100% okay with me being trapped in this way since my ego and identify aren’t tied to me being “free”.

I don’t know why you think this statement is a challenge to your own personal statement. You believe you can fly like a bird? Go right ahead and believe that. Just don’t try to convince me that I can fly like a bird without first proving that I have functional wings. And don’t feel sorry for me because I don’t believe as you do, since by the sound of it both of us lead equally happy, constructive lives.

[If you were to come and live my life for a week, you would have more than enough evidence to satisfy you. I am literally DROWNING in evidence, of freedom, of joy, of unlimited meaning, every single moment. So don’t go lecturing to me about evidence-it goes a long long way beyond “mere” feelings (as if they cannot tell us anything by themselves, which is another unexamined assumption of yours).]

Um, if anyone has been lecturing, it has been you, dear. I am not the one calling your life “horrifying and bleak”. Nor have I claimed to possess a superor life or mindset, as you have. All I have done is explain to the OP why I don’t find it a bit fatalistic to embrace determinism. I don’t know why this is so upsetting to you.

I want to believe in total freedom, because, if that is taken away from me, I become a mere hapless puppet of forces that I not only cannot understand, but also have absolutely no prayer of ultimately being able to control and overcome.

And you do realize this sounds kinda hysterical, right? You want to believe in something because you’re afraid of what the implications are if that belief isn’t true. This is no different than the person who believes in God because he’s afraid of death, or the person who believes that obesity is attractive because they can’t stand the thought of being ugly. If your feelings are that super intense that they define your reality for you, then guess what? You ain’t free. You’re just another stranger on the bus.

That you seem to have absolutely no issue with these deeper implications makes me truly wonder if you have really thought them through. I as said simply find the mere thought utterly horrifying.

I find it horrifying that you think it is reasonable to only believe things that make you feel good. Most people above a certain age are able to accept things that are unpleasant without spiraling into existential angst. I can accept that I don’t have a soul that exists outside of my body because frankly, I dig my body. I love being a biological organism that can be understood through science rather than spirituality. I find it sad that an intelligent person such as yourself finds this acceptance “horrifying”. Why does it have to be anything but an idea that differs from yours?

I’m curious what grave implications you think will occur in a world that eschews the notion free will that aren’t occurring now in a world where everyone assumes free will exists. I’m also curious why you think I haven’t considered the implications. Do I sound like I’m a complete newbie to this debate?

True transformation goes way beyond pop psych techniques like CBT (which have undoubtedly worked very well for me, just that it isn’t but a small part of it all).

I’ve heard some version of “There is only one true way” my whole life. The people who espouse such nonsense tend to be folks who lack imagination and compassion. They almost always have huge egos. I tend to stay away from them.

[dracoi]

@Shagnasty

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.

I think using the term choice is still appropriate even if you belief free will didn’t come to it.

When I type an address into my map phone app, the software “chooses” a route from among all the possible routes. This is no less a choice than I would use if I chose a route from my personal memory. If you prefer some fancy terminology like “optimal outcome selection algorithm” then by all means we can start talking about OOSAs instead of choices.

And therefore, changing how you think, learning, etc. all make perfect sense. The algorithm in the map software is continually being tweaked so that it has a better OOSA and so that it relies on more accurate data. Teaching software about the new overpass is no different than teaching me about it.

If you favor free will, then my challenge to you is to define what you have that Google Maps doesn’t. What do you have that a rock or a plant or a dog doesn’t? Making the judgment based on how you feel is like arguing that the Earth doesn’t rotate because you don’t feel dizzy.

[Thudlow_Boink]

@dracoi

If you favor free will, then my challenge to you is to define what you have that Google Maps doesn’t.

For one thing, consciousness.

[DSeid]

@WordMan

… DSeid, okay, it isn’t Do Unto Others - any perspective as to how to regard and apply our sense of Free Will?

None profound. Regard it as a practical reality and apply it accordingly: make the best choices you can with the tools you have knowing that those choices have impact on both yourself and on others. Don’t assume that FW implies anything more than it does.

Thudlow Boink’s brief response is exactly right. An AI that decides between options, be it in one narrow domain or applying across domains and weighting a variety of values in the process, even one that includes a certain amount of random factors into the mix so is not strictly determinable, but which does not possess that sense of self, sentience, consciousness, awareness … is making choices but does not experience FW.

FW is how a sentient intelligence decides when using the tools of sentience as part of that process. (Note: I am very aware that sometimes the choices are made before the sentience realizes it has decided and that the sentience is sometimes rationalizing the choice after the fact. Be that as it may.)

Boink’s pointing the discussion to the concept of locus of control was also most pertinent. Human minds function well and most likely more successfully within a society of other human minds when they believe that they have control over what outcomes occur.

[DrCube]

I’ve yet to hear a definition of Free Will that made any sense. At least one that actually conflicted with Determinism.

You want to call the freedom to make choices and decisions “free will”, go for it. But that is perfectly compatible with determinism.

But if you start talking about randomness and quantum mechanics or whatever, and how that has something to do with our ability to make choices? Or how strict cause and effect makes our choices an illusion? That’s where you lose me.

[AHunter3]

@DrCube

I’ve yet to hear a definition of Free Will that made any sense. At least one that actually conflicted with Determinism.

Likewise back at you from the other side. The only explications of determinism that make any sense are the ones compatible with free will.

[AHunter3]

@monstro

wut?

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.

Why would I make such a silly argument?

I am a free agent who makes decisions completely DEPENDENT on external variables — the entirety of the context in which I operate.

Who I am is not separable from my context. The context isn’t controlling me and “making me do things”, though. There is an actual real genuinely existent “I” who am in perpetual interaction with that context and I am constantly making choices that, in conjunction with what other participants in that context may be doing, causes the entire situation to end up being what it is a little while later.

I am not the cause of the context, either, by the way. If I were, all the other involved participants would be deterministically caused by ME; they are not. We interact, each of us in possession of free will, all of us affecting one another.
… does anyone else sometimes think everyone on the “other side” of this discussion is using words that we use to mean something totally different from what WE mean when WE say them?

[DrCube]

@AHunter3

Likewise back at you from the other side. The only explications of determinism that make any sense are the ones compatible with free will.

Determinism to me is just a simple consequence of cause and effect. Everything has a cause, even your choices. So, I don’t necessarily disagree with you.

But "free will " is usually placed in opposition to determinism. And I can’t quite say how disregarding cause and effect (or positing random quantum fluctuations or something like they are relevant to the topic) makes your decisions any more free. Also, the free will crowd usually likes to contrast humans with lesser animals who apparently don’t have free will. And that makes even less sense to me.

[dracoi]

@Thudlow_Boink

For one thing, consciousness.

OK. So consciousness allows you to exercise free will independently of the physical laws of the universe.

Is there evidence of this? If Google Maps developed consciousness, how would you know? If I said you were just a meat machine running algorithms, how would you refute that?

[monstro]

@AHunter3

Why would I make such a silly argument?

The words you put into the determinists’ collective mouth sound just as silly. Your whole hypothetical is silly.

I am a free agent who makes decisions completely DEPENDENT on external variables — the entirety of the context in which I operate.

Free agents operate INDEPENDENT of variables. To be “free” is supposed to be something very specific.

You’re essentially defining the concept of “free will” so that it sounds like a reasonable thing. If it were as simple as the thing you are describing–using the external variables around me to make a decision–then no one would have any beef with it. But that’s not the formal definition of free will. Free will is having the ability to make choices irrespective of the “external variables” and the “entirety of a context”. It is the ability to make choices that no one could ever predict.

What you are speaking of is not free will. It is better described as something else. Whatever it is, it ain’t “free”.

Who I am is not separable from my context. The context isn’t controlling me and “making me do things”, though.

How do you know this? Is this your gut telling you this or do you have hard, objective proof of this?

There is an actual real genuinely existent “I” who am in perpetual interaction with that context and I am constantly making choices that, in conjunction with what other participants in that context may be doing, causes the entire situation to end up being what it is a little while later.

No one is questioning whether you exist “genuinely” so I don’t know why you’re pointing this out.

I am not the cause of the context, either, by the way. If I were, all the other involved participants would be deterministically caused by ME; they are not.

I don’t know what you mean be “cause of the context”. Seems to me if the decisions you make at time t directly lead you to the decisions you make at t+1, then yes, you are causing your context. So? Is this supposed to create a rip in the space-time continuum, so we shouldn’t even dare imagine it is possible?

One decision can always be predicted from the decisions that followed, and it’s like that all the way down. I decide to put on my coat after I decide to go for a walk–a decision I come to after I decide I am bored. My decision tree would seem to be rather complicated because to an outside observer, I’ve got an infinite number of options at every branch. But in actuality, I am only presented with the choices that my brain presented me with. I don’t choose to put on a bathing suit because my brain didn’t give me the “bathing suit” option. I don’t decide to eat a pizza instead of go for a walk because my brain didn’t alert me to any cravings for pizza. At the most fundamental level, I am implementing decisions made by a hidden executive since I can’t possibly know with certainty why I’m walking down the street in the dead of winter. All I can do is speculate.

If all I can do is speculate, then I can’t claim to have free will with any certainty. I can say it sure seems like I’ve got it. I can say that I exhibit volition (carrying out actions that are in accordance with my conscious desires). But I can’t say that I have free will–not without having to be prepared to defend such a lofty assertion.

… does anyone else sometimes think everyone on the “other side” of this discussion is using words that we use to mean something totally different from what WE mean when WE say them?

It’s funny because I think you’re doing the same thing to “my side”. “Free will” means something very specific to me: the ability to operate outside of and completely independent of external variables, including biological ones. IMO, if this isn’t free will to you, then you aren’t a Free Willer. You’re somebody else.