Free will - implications?

Great Debates
21

You would have to spell out why you think all those things that you listed about democracy and fascisim follow.

I tend to think this is precisely the confusion over terminology that’s created by “compatibilism”. Contra-causal free will (the kind that does not exist) does not mean freedom in the sense of autonomy, self-determination, the freedom to act and contribute to society without coercion, individual human rights. There are certainly implications in these areas, in particular strong implications about how we should think about what personal responsibility means, but in my opinion none of the implications that you claim follow.

22

I think of free will as like a computer random number generator. It really isn’t random and if you know enough information (algorithm, prior numbers, etc.) you can figure out what is coming next. But for most practical purposes, it looks random.

With free will, if you know every experience a person has had, you could predict what their reaction will be but for most practical purposes that fatalism looks like free will.

Until we have that perfect knowledge, we have to have our legal system act as if free will exists.

23

I agree that in much of our life perhaps we should continue just as though free will exists. But criminal justice is the one area where there are strong and obvious implications. It still makes sense to imprison or even kill people when they are a danger to society; and it makes sense to punish people for deterrence, to modify the behavior of others. But how can it be justified to punish people solely for retribution, to hurt them for the sake of hurting them.

Under our current system, we would not feel the urge to hurt someone who did wrong because their behavior was affected by a brain tumor. Why, then, would we seek to hurt someone (solely for the sake of inflicting pain) if their actions are ultimately a deterministic result of their genes & their environment, if ultimately they could not have done otherwise? They did not choose their own nature, evil though it might be. Perhaps we may decide to hurt them, imprison them, even execute them to deter others, or to remove them from the world as we would a rabid dog, but what possible justification is there for retribution?

24

I’m not arguing either for or against free will. I’m not hiding the fact I’m a so-called compatibilist either. It has often happened that both my interlocutor and I should start from the same premises only to reach different conclusions. But whether or not there is free will does not seem to be the point of this thread. Rather, what ramifications would ensue if there truly were no free will?

My opinion is that if there were no free will, a corporatist type of community (such as fascism) would make more sense than democracy.

Human beings are social living things.

Proponents of self-rule believe that the best way of ensuring everyone’s welfare in the community is by instituting democracy as a form of government. This form of government includes everyone – everyone is a citizen with equal rights and responsibilities regardless of origin, ethnicity, background, gender, religion, etc. Everyone is an equal member of the community in that every citizen can make use of their innate reason and the values they have assimilated to make the decisions that allow the community to function properly so that everyone can thrive.

Proponents of corporatism believe that the best way of ensuring everyone’s welfare in the community is by instituting social groups hierarchically organized. Under this form of government, people have different rights and responsibilities depending on the social group they belong to. The elites are regarded as model citizens who enjoy full rights whereas individuals belonging to lower social groups are tolerated citizens with fewer rights. Some people may even be denied social membership and treated like sub-humans. This is because in a corporatist community, only model citizens belonging to the elites can ensure the prosperity of the entire group. Everyone else is supposed to accept their social position and contribute to the elites’ success so that every citizen’s welfare can be secured.

When there is no free will and people do not have the ability to choose between different courses of action, their actions are considered to be predetermined by nature, origin, ethnicity, background, gender, religious beliefs etc. Corporatism places every individual in social groups hierarchically positioned in the society according to their members’ ability to make themselves useful for the community and/or its elite.

When there is free will and people do have the ability to choose between different courses of action, then people’s origin, ethnicity, background, gender, religious beliefs etc. are irrelevant. Today’s democracy counts on people’s faculty to rationally select between various political choices. Democracy is based on the idea that every citizen can elect and be elected and everyone is able to choose to actively participate in civic life.

I’m not arguing democracy is superior to corporatism either. I simply state the opinion (based on the ideas succinctly presented above) that if there were no free will it would make sense that society should resemble a beehive where everyone occupies a position according to their predetermined innate and/or acquired faculties and abilities. But if one argues for democracy as being superior to corporatism, one should also accept that people have the ability to rationally select between various political choices and they can *choose *to actively participate in civic life.

25

Whether in the reality of choice as, in Riemann’s words, “sophisticated computations” or assuming the hypothetical case of choice as contra-causal free will, there’s a statistical relationship between our actions and our nature and nurture. I don’t see any logic in believing this relationship to be any stronger (or weaker) when we see our choices for what they are.

We can test it… have you or I become any more or less predictably bonded to our nature/nurture since realising free will is an illusion? All that’s happened is our understanding of who we are has improved, which affords us more rational decision making.

26

I don’t believe in free will. To put it another way, I admit that it may exist somewhere in the universe and that it could potentially evolve here on Earth. But there is no objective evidence that human beings possess it. So I don’t believe in it, for the same reason I don’t believe in God.

But I have no problem with punishment–criminal justice or otherwise. I don’t think my cat has free will and yet I yell at him whenever he does a bad thing. He doesn’t like when I yell. He suffers a little bit when I yell at him. But he stops doing that bad thing, at least for the time being.

I have no problem with punishing kids. Or mentally impaired adults. Or adults with dysfunctional upbringings (which no doubt includes the vast majority of the incarcerated). Put the last group in prison for awhile, away from everyone else, and let them stew in their juices for awhile. I’m fine with this for the same reason I’m fine with yelling at my cat when he bites me. Punishments deter bad-behavior by speaking directly to our Pavlovian minds.

I only have problems with punishment doesn’t fit the nature of the crime. Or punishments that offer no rehabilitation. I believe the vast majority of criminals have maladaptive cognitive schema. Correct their thought-patterns and you won’t have a criminal anymore. I don’t know if I would go so far as to require prisoners to undergo psychotherapy, but I think it should at least be strongly encouraged.

27

I guess I was thinking that behavior modification with no suffering is objectively better than behavior modification that involves suffering (like yelling at your cat, or separating criminals from society). If you could snap your fingers and the cat wouldn’t perform this bad behavior anymore, rather than you yelling, I would think the finger snapping would be the moral choice.

But I agree, in the world and time we live in, punishment deters bad behavior albeit inefficiently.

28

I’m not sure I get the point of your explanation. I believe that people have the ability to rationally make their own choices, and to choose whether to participate in civic life. And I believe there is no contra-causal free will. I don’t see what the two have to do with each other.

29

The non-existence of contra-causal free will is an assertion that when we make choices it is not some incoherent and undefined magical process, rather that choosing is simply computation; and our conscious sense of “free” choice (that we could have done otherwise) is an illusion.

However, you seem to be suggesting that if choices are seen as computation rather than undefined magic, this implies that we are condemned to lack the imagination to participate in democracy, which you see as a capacity to rise above the narrow constraints of the political/social status quo. Why? This is simply a non sequitur. The kinds of choices that we make is an orthogonal question, it will depend on the “choice algorithms” in our brains, the way that we are “programmed”, which may vary with genetics, education, social environment & (perhaps significantly) chance.

If you want to consider the hypothetical that contra-causal free will exists - that choices are made by magic rather than computation - then there is a burden to specify the properties of this magic. If you do not, what basis do you have for assuming that an undefined magical process will make us more inclined to question the social status quo rather than conform to it?

It’s odd that you seem to associate “rational” choice with undefined magic rather than computation.

30

To state this more emphatically:

There is absolutely no connection between the denial of free will and being “soft” on criminal punishment. The question of the severity of criminal justice is orthogonal.

There is no internal inconsistency in believing that there is no free will, and that everyone who steals anything worth more than $100 should be summarily executed.

The point is that criminal penalties must be justified either for the removal of the perpetrator from society, for the same reason that we may kill a fox that steals our chickens; or for the deterrence of others. But it is never justifiable to punish somebody solely to hurt them, for retribution, any more than it is justifiable to torture the fox that stole our chickens.

We do make choices (we compute), and we must be held accountable for those choices in order to protect society; but we do not “freely” choose our nature, we do not choose the choices we make, so it is wrong to inflict retribution for our very nature.

31

Doesn’t matter if “moral” or not. Without free will there is no choice how to punish.

32

Contra-causal free will is a recent term.

The notion of free will took shape in ancient Greece, when there was no Christian faith yet and where scholars regarded it as Man’s ability to cause his own course of actions by his own means - it referred to the control of instinctual and emotional behavior through reason. Those people were naturalists, who were aware of the fact that Earth was a round celestial body and the Moon revolved around it - they had calculated their circumferences as well. Humans were both subjects of the causal chain of events and a rational force that could take advantage of causality for their own benefit.

About 3,000 years later, we name these thinkers ‘compatibilists’ and this type of free will ‘causal free will’. I have no problem with that. In fact, specific terms and rigorous definitions can only help avoid confusion, ambiguity and obscurity.

But once the distinction between ‘causal free will’ and ‘contra-causal free will’ has been made and accepted, then it is improper and negligent to simply state ‘free will is an illusion’. Because if there were no faculty or ability for humans to choose or to make rational selections, the implication (in my opinion of course) would be that a beehive-like society made more sense than self-rule based on members’ capacity of making choices.

Because we’re talking about implications.

34

The illusion of free will is like those optical illusions that still trick you even if you know how they work. Even if we could accurately predict our actions in the future, we would still not be able to shake the feeling that we were making the decisions. So, as far as how we organize our society, it really doesn’t matter if we know there is no free will because we can’t get around the illusion.

35

You quote me saying:

and then reply:

I can’t really see how your post is a response to I state (especially since I keep pointing out this thread is about implications).

36

No, I’m sorry but you simply don’t understand the modern debate on free will. This is not what contra-causal free will means. Contra-causal is not the opposite of “rational”. It’s the (magical) notion that one could have done otherwise in precisely identical circumstances. Read my post here #5, and for a more thorough discussion read Sam Harris’s book “Free Will” (it’s short, it only takes a couple of hours).

Yes, we are talking about implications - the implications of the fact that contra-causal free will is incoherent nonsense and does not exist. But until you understand exactly what we mean by that, we’re not going to get anywhere in this conversation.

37

To be clear: what you have written here is not at all what anyone is suggesting when we say there is no contra-causal free will.

We do choose. We do make rational selections. The point is that these choices are computation, not some ill-defined magical “freedom”.

If you think that there is some kind of “freedom” and that choices other than computation may occur, you need to define carefully how this “freedom” is supposed to work, in light of post #5 above.

38

So I get it that you’re using the compatibilist idea of “free will” and saying that it has a long tradition among philosophers. Fine.

The problem is that when the term is used nowadays, especially by laymen (non-philosophers), they’re almost always talking about the contra-causal idea. Most people in real life would be shocked that you believe this kind of free will doesn’t exist; that you believe our choices are actually just the playing out of the laws of physics in our brains. But most people haven’t thought about it too deeply, and are unaware that this concept of free will is incoherent and CAN’T exist.

The quoted paragraph above I can’t figure out. We both agree that our choices are the playing out of the laws of physics in our brains, right? That there’s no “magical free will” involved? Then what are you saying about not having the ability to make choices? No one’s arguing that we can’t make choices!

39

I see a supposition-I see no “fact”…

40

I hesitate to jump in here without the background that many of you have here. One aspect of free will I think worth looking at has to do with brain development. We can ask does .99 equal 1, for most practical simple purposes it would but if instead you used .9999 it would be much closer to 1. .99999999 would again be much closer and give the person using the longer number much more finite ability to stretch out with greater accuracy. I think it is the same with our brains, as we develop inputs and experiences with varying results the closer we get to have a complete brain, we can never be absolutely complete but we can continue to add numbers on the backend as we grow. At some point our access to data needed to make decision becomes so finite that free will would probably best describe it. At the lower stages of development with the less decimal places our ability to make decisions based of free will is much more limited.

    If there is any truth to my premise it would indicate that a person making poor decisions simply needs to have more experiences with favorable outcomes both for himself and society. I know this is grossly over simplified but I have witnessed in many years of working with addicts and criminals that this can and does happen.
41

Have you read the thread? See post #5.

If you disagree with #5, your burden is to specify how you suggest contra-causal free will proceeds. Contra-causal free will is not (by definition) deterministic; nor is it stochastic. In other words - if we make choices for reasons, that is not “free will”, that is computation; if we do not make choices for reasons, how do we make them? That is what is incoherent and nonsensicial about the intuitive idea of “free will”.