No. To say that they haven’t any control is assuming that the decision is made by some external machinery and that, sort of, they just are obligated to “follow the program/order”. That is I think the core of the issue some people have with the non-existence of free will. But the “machinery” doing the decision-making is themselves. Again, we are this machinery. There isn’t a machine deciding to say, commit a crime, and a separate entity, an helpless human being, implementing the decision. They’re one and the same.
And again, as asked repeatedly, what would be exactly this “free will”? There’s no concept I can conceive that could affect our decisions without being either responding to inputs (same as a brain, it then makes no difference) or random (doesn’t look like “free will”) or receiving the input of some external being (god, mind control by aliens, whatever…and this wouldn’t make you any more “free” of your decisions, at the contrary).
I don’t know if there is free will or not since no one has come up with a decent definition. But your example can be enlightening.
We had a system which recommended repairs to circuit boards for telephone switches that failed in the field based on the signature of the failure, and experience in which repairs worked. We discovered that the same signature would often lead to very different repairs being recommended. The system learned that the right repair for a failure with a certain signature for a system built in January was very different for that of a system built in June.
What if your checkout instrument displayed a price that varied by the inventory of the product, or by the date, or by the number of people in the store, or by the number of people standing near the product in the store, or the number of people standing near the product in sister stores? It would a lot more like a system with free will then. Enough of this kind of thing and you get a system where you can never actually predict the price. For us, if our decisions are made through various inputs, many of them chaotic, and a massive number of internal state variables, our decisions are basically not predictable. With enough time and information, we might be able to explain them. But say it is fundamentally impossible to collect all the states and inputs that influenced the decision. Is it free will then? Now add the factor that our decisions influence our future decisions. Does that make it free will?
I don’t know, since I don’t know what free will is.
This does resolve the punishment question. It doesn’t matter if the person being punished had free will or not - the purpose of punishment is to modify his state machine so he will be less likely to do it again, and maybe modify other people’s state machines to make them less likely to commit the crime ever.
(Sorry for jumping on your reasonable post - it was a good insertion point.)
Even real machines are not that simple. We had a chip which would somewhat randomly assert an output and cause an error. This happened at different intervals for one chip, and different ones across chips, and only happened when the chip was in a computer system. In fact, one good test was letting the computer sit at the system prompt, and not do anything. If it was deterministic the determinism was based on many, many unmeasurable variables. Given that our brains are orders of magnitude more complex than this chip, I think saying that our thoughts are controlled by deterministic variables is a bit simplistic.
I don’t know what free will means, so I can’t say whether a system that makes choices to a very, very large number of chaotic variables and internal states is exhibiting free will or not.
I see. So you feel justified in punishing people for things that they had absolutely no control over. Things for which they had absolutely no ability to choose otherwise.
That is monstrous.
Why should they be ashamed of something over which they had no control?
Heck, you yourself have repeatedly said that there is no such thing as morality. Why should anyone rightfully feel shame if his or her actions cannot be considered to be morally wrong? You might not personally like these actions, Diogenes the Cynic, but it’s incoherent to insist that they should feel shameful about things that cannot be considered wrong.
Well as my posts above show, I do not believe that determinism in and of itself demonstrates lack of freedom. I as a human being have the freedom to choose whatever I want. Just because I say “fuck no!” every single time someone invites me into the trunk of their car, it doesn’t imply any reduction in my freedoms whatsoever (unless they use the baseball bat technique). I have yet to see a compelling argument showing how determinism is at odds with freedom. Unless you explicitly define “free” as “something that is not causal”. But then we’re asking a different question altogether. Personally, I don’t believe anyone can put forth a convincing argument that the will is not causal: making decisions is causal by it’s very definition.
Has the integrity of the box been violated by external sources? If no -> free will. If yes -> not free will.
The poles themselves are a part of the box itself, and thus the box was not violated. We are judging whether the barcode itself impinges on the box’s free will, yes? The barcode itself always remains outside the box, and thus the box was not violated. In other words, are we letting the internal machinery do it’s thing, or are we stepping in and sticking our fingers where they don’t belong?
The force being presented to the box always remained outside the box. The box internalized it, in a sense, but that’s what the box does. What would you have to do to impinge upon the box’s integrity? Well in case of the human mind/will… I’m not sure how you’d be able to do this, short of sticking your fingers into someone else’s brain, or using some kind of voodoo mind-control.
Thus, I believe, humans almost always have free will, as long as they have the capacity to make a choice (eg trunk-bat analogy).
This is well-articulated. For some reason, most people don’t understand any of this.
Are you suggesting that free will is determined by the observer?
“Punish” is the wrong word. I feel fine about sanctioning behaviors in order to influence future decisions.
Not at all. It’s necessary.
Shame is a consequence which shapes will.
No I haven’t.
JThunder (and others), this point about responsibility is tangential to this argument. It’s not totally unrelated but it’s becoming a hijack. Consider taking it to a new thread.
Suppose we alter the $1, $100 dollar example.
I’ll put a $1 bill and a $100 dollar bill in front of you and you may take either. The other bill will be donated to the poor / charity of your choice.
Then let’s say we modify this scenario so that I won’t know which one you take and which you donate.
Will observing / not observing alter the outcome?
<tongue only somewhat in cheek> 
Whenever? Usually?!
I find this statement frankly quite disturbing. 
As I mentioned earlier in this thread, I’ve never understood how “free will” mattered outisde of theological debate. It’s important in theology because if you posit a creator/judge, it’s somewhat incoherant. The judge is the ultimate cause for the evil acts being judged.
If you’re not considering theological implications, it’s pretty much a trivial definitional issue. Physicalism entails no “uncaused choices,” but this simply doesn’t matter, because the above incoherence doesn’t exist. A person’s choices are caused, but they’re caused by their identity. There’s nothing problematic.
I agree completely; but that doesn’t mean the choice was any less determined. Given the exact same circumstances, the exact same determination would have taken place. Of course, ‘the exact same circumstances’ is a purely abstract concept; in general, you can’t wind back the universe, so one might argue how much meaning can be given to the concept. Any sufficiently complex system is in principle (not just in practice) impossible to predict perfectly through any other way than by letting it run, so to speak; and it is to a certain extent a matter of terminology whether or not this can be called freedom.
Personally, I would define ‘free’ as ‘not fully constrained’; i.e. that there is some leeway in how things turn out. In the examples given so far, there is no such leeway – the state of things at one point precisely determine the state of things at any later point, i.e. reduce the available choices to one. To call that ‘free’ seems odd to me.
See, most people would consider this a position opposed to ‘truly’ free will. It certainly is opposed to the libertarian notion of free will, which tends to be the one implicitly assumed by many on the pro free will side of the debate. A lot of people argue that this position isn’t consistent, and thus, redefine free will in some other manner, but to me, this blurs the concepts, as nobody can really be sure what exactly the other person means by ‘free will’. It’s a bit like redefining the notion of ‘unicorn’ to include ordinary horses, and then claiming that unicorns exist – it’s true in that case, but what most people mean when they say ‘unicorn’ is still a fairy tale.
Well, that depends entirely on what you would consider a ‘violation’; everything that causes a change in the state of the box must cross its borders somehow, so classifying some crossings as ‘violations’ is nothing but arbitrary. Defining what is and what isn’t free will on this basis is essentially saying ‘free will is whatever I want it to be’. If, for instance, I add a pole to the internal design of the box, you’d probably classify that as a violation – yet if I just painted an additional stripe on the barcode, leading to exactly that same pole being added in the box, would that be any less so? In both cases, the actions originate completely with me, and their effects are exactly the same; yet your ‘external vs. internal’ scheme would seem to evaluate them differently, granting the machine freedom in one, but not in the other case.
Oh, there are millions of ways. Advertisers are well aware of them. One example that leaps to mind is a study that shows you have a higher chance for a second date if you meet the other person in somewhat exciting circumstances – on a high bridge, say. The reason being that the excitement is mistaken as a reaction to you, rather than to the situation. In any given circumstance, out choice is influenced by thousands of factors, most of which can’t be cleanly placed into an inside/outside scheme. There’s just too much interaction, too many interrelations between what happens in here and what happens out there. Trying to draw a border anywhere leads to a very poor model of a realistic situation.
Franckly, I don’t think that the issue of responsability is tangential at all. It’s the first “practical” issue that’s going to appear in a debate about free will (apart from theological issues, that is).
I was just about to say the very same thing, clairobscur. It’s not at all tangential, especially since one’s stance regarding free will should presumably be consistent with one’s philosophical intuitions on matters of axiology. The immediate practical issues of a particular worldview must surely be considered when evaluating its reasonableness.
I don’t see that we have to resort to another will to change the first one. The point is whether or not the will can decide to change itself.
Are you a fan of Aristotle’s unmoved mover argument? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmoved_mover
(Especially clause 3. 3. If everything that moves were caused to move by something else, there would be an infinite chain of causes. This can’t happen.)
If the universe can come into existence from nothing, why can’t a will change itself without some other force acting on it?
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
To quote Schopenhauer, “we can do what we will, but we can’t WILL what we will.”
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Borzo]
The human mind is fascinating in the sense that it can also change itself without any present input to it (eg dreaming, thinking in a sensory deprivation tank, etc). I disagree with his statement that we can’t will what we will.
[/QUOTE]
I’m with Borzo on this one.
I loved Whack-a-Mole’s link… http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/science/22tier.html
So, even if you don’t believe in free will, you should promote it for others… that is if you value honesty and a good work ethic in others. Not believing in free will gives people an excuse to cheat, steal, and just generally disregard morality. It’s been shown to have this effect. So, it would make sense for those of us who believe in free will to expect those who don’t to be less moral, and to think of them as promoting evil.
And if you don’t believe in free will, you have less incentive to do what Borzo suggested, which is decide to change your own will. Believing in free will is a good thing. Whether it exists or not.
You know that polytheists of different stripes get along with each other much better than monotheists.
Monotheists have a tendancy to kill other people just because they don’t share the same god.
Maybe, ch4rl3s, we should just start worshipping multiple gods!
Even if you don’t really believe. It will be better for society…
I don’t understand what you are saying. What is “leeway”? What is “not fully constrained” if it’s not “not causal”?
I believe that the state of a system at time A determines the state at time B. I don’t see how this reduces choices or decisions. Decisions still happen… many of them, and choices are made among a multitude of options. I define “decisions” or “choice” as the processing that occurs inside the internal machinery of the mind. This is why I draw the box.
If something happens outside this box, then it’s not part of the decision-making process. If it happens inside the box, then it is.
What is the will? What does it do? It makes decisions. It makes choices. It takes input, does some processing, and spits out some output. If that’s not causal, I don’t know what is! How could anyone claim that isn’t causal? And if they do, then what would they claim it is?
If you wanna say that “will” is the same as “random action” then just say so. If you don’t believe it’s random action… then what is it if not causal?
I really don’t see why you’re making this more complicated than it has to be. I know they taught us all in Philosophy 101 to make simple things as complicated as possible… but you’re burning me out man!
You sticking your fingers into the cash register and adding a pole is a violation, because your fingers were not sold, delivered, and installed as a part of the cash register. No one defines a cash register as something that also happens to come with Half Man Half Wit’s fingers as a part of the package. The fact that the end result/output - of scanning a barcode VS you poking around in there - is the same, is completely missing the point of freedom. Your fingers are actively changing what we concretely define as a “cash register”. You are violating the cash register’s freedom by redefining what a cash register is, and by blocking the register from functioning normally. You are changing the box. It’s being violated both directly and from external sources.
Freedom isn’t about the end result, but HOW you get to the end result. You claim that this is irrelevant, whereas I believe it’s one of the only meaningful and important things.
In specific response to:
Well holy shit I’m sorry for trying to define the mind! :smack: But you’d think this would be required in order to come up with a subsequent definition of free will, no? Does the will not somehow inhabit the mind? In my above definitions, it certainly does.
I can draw a border around the skull, or around the whole human body. It’s very easy to see what parts of the cause-effect chain happen outside the body, and what happens within.
The body contains the input receptors and the output effectors, and inbetween is the mind.
outside world -> input receptors -> mind -> output effectors -> outside world
If change happens internally through internal mechanisms, then free will (my definition) is preserved. As long as the outside world stays outside, and doesn’t physically enter into my body or brain, free will is preserved. Causing change in the mind, by using the normal input channels (ie our senses, which we define as being a part of the body) keeps the outside world outside (literally) and does not violate the inside of my body or my mind. The fingers-in-register analogy is still a good one.
Sure advertisers “manipulate”… but they respectfully stay outside. They have an understanding of the circuitry of the mind, and use that to get desired outcomes. I do not believe this violates free will, however. Me grabbing a can of caviar and changing the bar code to that of a jug of peanut butter, to save costs, will trick the cash register into supplying a lower price. Was it’s free will taken away? I argue that no it wasn’t.
As I said before, I think it’s very difficult for a human to NOT have free will. You’d have to physically enter his brain and make changes, or simply overpower a person with force (bat-trunk) and remove his ability to make decisions altogether.
Free, in the metaphysical libertarianist sense (somewhere to the top of your wiki article).
Except it never does. That you claim it’s OK for the will to be free if the outside world enters through some channels, but a violation if it enters via others, is an arbitrary divide. It’s like calling a person unfree only if they are bound by restraints of some kind – shackles, ropes, chains etc. --, which makes the prisoner in his cell free: you could define things that way, but it would be useless.
If it does that, it first have to have the will to change itself. It’s turtles all the way down.
No.
What decides to change the will?
Borzo is wrong. The brain has no independence from determinism. It can’t be separated from causes, even from the second to second input of sensory information and the need to stay oxygenated.
Why do you assume most people want to disregard morality and do bad things? If it could be proven to you that free will didn’t exist, would you start doing unethical or hurtful things to others just for the hell of it? That’s nonsense. Actions still have consequences, and those consequences (or the potential for consequences) still affect and shape the “will.”
Saying you can “decide to change your own will” is regressive. That decision IS will. How do you decide what you will decide?