“I have a map of the United States…It’s actual size.”
-Steve Wright
Columbus: Okay Isabella, let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that the Earth is round.
Isabella: That’s ridiculous.
Columbus: Just for the sake of argument.
Isabella: I’m listening.
Columbus: Wouldn’t you want to be the first to find a route to India?
Isabella: Hm. I guess so.
Columbus: Ha! I knew that allowing suppositions for theoretical argument was worth it!
…YMMV
Orbifold, I don’t know you. If you are a particle physicst or a theoretical mathmatician, I apologize. But neither **Frylock ** nor I is an expert in this field. I was asking him to embark on a thought exercise here, not *truly * disregard a branch of science.
That’s funny, I have a tattoo of myself, lifesized. (Good thing they didn’t put it on backwards!)
Actually, I’ve heard the exact opposite claimed; that the multiple world scenario strengthens determinism. As I understand it, the idea is that the many worlds scenario eliminates quantum uncertainty; instead of Schrodinger’s cat that is both alive and dead, there are two cats; one alive, one dead, in two seperate worlds. In a single world you would have the appearance of quantum randomness; but on the multiversal scale you would have absolute determinism.
Well, that’s a mighty good point. But even if the non-deterministic quantum phenomena ruins the deterministic view of the universe, does it help get any closer to free will? Seems to me that it’s just a different form of non-free will.
I deserved that for resorting to snark in the first place. Nevertheless, I too have a problem with your admonition to AHunter3 to stop “fighting the hypothetical” after making grand claims about free will in this universe. Either we’re arguing about this universe, in which case your “hypotheticals” are actually hypotheses and are fair game, or else we’re just engaging in a thought experiment about a parallel clockwork alterna-verse, in which case we have no basis from which to draw conclusions about the real world.
(And of course “the Earth is round” wasn’t just a hypothetical for Columbus. It was a hypothesis, based on the science of the time, and he wasn’t the first to advance that hypothesis by far. So, not necessarily the best example.)
I stayed out of the last debate on this topic (linked by DSeid) because I didn’t have the time to spare at the time. Hopefully, this time I will.
I will say, firstly, that I don’t have much use for libertarian free will. Indeed, most discussions on this subject I have with friends are to the effect that we have less control over - and, thus, less responsibility for - our actions than is commonly supposed. That said, IMHO, there is such a thing as volition. That is, we make choices and have the ability (subject to various influences and constraints, internal and external) to do X or to refrain from doing X. FWIW, I don’t think we are unique animals in this regard. For example, predators make decisions on how to find prey and prey make decisions on how not to be found. Our choices are more complex, because we are, but volition is not sui generis to humans.
The problem I have with the deterministic conception is that it fails to explain so much of human behavior. What’s happening when Shakespeare writes Hamlet? When Springsteen writes Born To Run? When an alcoholic decides to go on the wagon? When I choose to marry someone? When I choose a career? When I choose where to live? When I decide whether to declare all my tips on my tax return? Etc. The volition model fits these things pretty well, the deterministic model not very. From which I conclude that the former is a more useful model.
Two things:
- I wasn’t trying to prove my point with that hypothetical. I was using the hypothetical to see how **Frylock ** views the issue. (He was getting hung up on QM. What happens if we remove QM from the equation? Does he have any other hang ups? Let’s explore those instead!)
- Re: fighting the hypothetical. I think several posters here are getting preoccupied with the impossibility of the “computer” or “Laplace’s Demon”. Okay, for the purposes of this discussion, I’ll grant that it is impossible. But the “computer” is just a rhetorical device I’m using to illustrate a point. The plausibility of the computer/demon has no bearing on my Free Will argument.
Here it is sans demons:
We operate in a universe of predictable physics. Therefore, our actions are predictable–even if they’re too complex for ***us ** * to predict. Since they’re predictable, all of our choices are predetermined since the moment of the big bang. So any sense that we are making our own decisions is false.
In the context of this discussion, I don’t see how Shakespeare writing Hamlet is any different from me deciding which sock to put on first.
I don’t want to sound like I’m dismissing your ideas out-of-hand; I just don’t understand where you’re coming from.
The deterministic model fits them just fine. I think you are confusing ignorance and volition; just because we aren’t consciously aware of all the processes in our brain that lead to a decision doesn’t mean that those decisions aren’t deterministic.
Unless you mean that the volitional model is more useful, not more correct, in which case you have a point; it’s much easier to think in volitional terms, however inaccurate they are.
There was no problem with the hypothetical as presented by Randy. He framed it clearly: He was not asking me what I thought about the real world, but rather, what I thought about the concept of free will.
-FrL-
I would agree with determinism, but not with the notion that there is no free will. My notion of free will does not require the metaphysical or logical possibility that one do otherwise than what one actually does.
This makes me what is called in philosophical circles a “compatibilist.” (Text at link is pretty long. Also I haven’t read it but assume its good considering the source. You’ve got the main idea of compatibilism already: its the claim that the existence of free will is compatible with the universe’s being completely causally determinate.)
To be clear: I am a compatibilist about the concept of free will, but I also think (without too terribly much conviction though) that our wills are actually free in the libertarian sense. In other words, I don’t think a will has to be free in the libertarian sense in order to be free, but I do think our wills actually are free in the libertarian sense. My reasons for thinking the latter are for the most part aesthetic, however–it fits nicely into some other things I think about the human condition etc.)
-FrL-
We are covering lots of the ground covered in the linked last thread. Let me summarize some of what I at least felt werre the most pertinent parts of that discussion in the hopes that this thread can actually do more than repeat past recitations.
One major issue was clarifying the distinction between the distracting and irrelevant issue or the universe’s determinability vs. the universe being deterministic. It may be that the universe is, even theoretically, not determinable, yet still function deterministically. Only the latter is relevant to the discussion of free will. Randomness may prevent my theoretical supercomputer or demon from being able to dtermine what the future may be, but the future is still naturally and inexorabley determined by that which precedes it.
Another issue was the very definition of “free will.” Apos was complaining about those who use the phrase thusly:
whereas others of us complained that defining free will as that which does not follow naturally as a consequence of the past defines it away. My stab was inspired by AHunter’s explanation and stated
In that regard in matters not if the experinence of an “I” is the emergent result of my physical processes, or the result of an eternal soul: it is still reacting in a deterministic manner to that which is its inate nature and its past experiences, while it still is functionally a morally culpable agent.
Determine what it IS. Will is wanting. Something has to cause you want what you want. Maybe it would help to move from the general to a specific example – selecting from a McDonald’s menu, for instance. You are perfectly free to order what you want, but something has to cause you to want the Big Mac more than the McNuggets – not to CHOOSE it, to WANT to choose it – that wanting is the will and we have no control over what we’re going to want at any goven moment. We don’t decide to actually WANT a Big Mac, we just act on the wanting after it happens. We usually have a lot of conflicting “wants” going on at once and the strongest want wins. We have no conscious control over what those wants are going to be, but even if we did, it would create an infinite regress.
I hope so too, but I’m not optimistic.
It’s an event the way weather is an event. It’s constantly changing and being affected by eternal and internal variables.
I don’t know about that. The individual is a locus for the will, but has no ability to determine it. All he can do is follow it.
You can look at it that way, but it doesn’t really change anything. The individual is a locus for the will in the same way that a specific part of the atmosphere is a locus for a tornado – and in some sense, the physical air can be said to BE the tornado – but those specific air molecules don’t have any control of the tornado and bear no moral responsibility for the damage to the trailer park.
I don’t understand this question.
A process cannot simultaneously be cognizant and randomly generating. If it’s “choosing,” it’s not random.
How could moral responsibility be assigned for randomly generated choices?
Yes.
How can it be morally culpable if it’s still 100% determined?
Because it exists to exactly the same extent as “I” exist. Insofar as “I” experience a “self” that makes choices, free will and moral culpability exist. As we covered in that previous thread, both may be myths (in the classic and nonpejorative sense of myth) but neither is possible without the other. To deny free will as a functional entity and the moral culpability that such existence entails, is to deny the self as a reality as well.
Uh, for all the same reasons you had before you realized that free will is an incoherent, useless concept? Why would all your motivations evaporate just because you realized they had some underlying “how” explanation as to how you got them?
Remember that, in this context, what you are talking about changing is… what you CHOOSE to change.
Like “They’ve done studies you know: 60% of the time, it works… everytime!” that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
I posted but was unable to follow up in the last thread.
My argument against determinism is simply human cognition. Humans make effects without direct causes every minute of every day simply by dint of the complexity and random effects of the human brain. There is no possible way to predict the human brain any more than you can quantum physics. Some events that transpire there are truly random (ask an epileptic) and are not subject to prior causes. The brain evolved as a tool to take in randomness and emit order as a survival trait. The human brain took it a step further and started accepting input from itself, some random, some preprogrammed, some learned. The resultant state is what some in this thread are referring to as will. But the will is something the mind built out of chaos not something that the chaos imposed on it. The result is something that not only is unpredictable but is undetermined until it arises.
An astute argument. I’ve always found this side of the freewill debate to be a bit boring, but you’ve established what I believe to be a defensible premise.
Brain activity is nothing but a bunch of chemical reactions. Every bit of it is determined. I’m not really sure what you mean when you say the brain “takes in randomness,” or “builds order out of chaos,” but the brain does neither. it responds in a deterministic way to external stimuli. Brain activity is not magical, it’s chemical.