I’m not sure I agree with the bolded part. I can imagine an individual aware of “things” happening to that individual, but without the “experience of free will” that it can alter it’s “course” in the universe.
Not sure how the question suddenly became trivial. Just because you think there is a mutually dependent relationship between sense of self and free will (illusion or actual), the question is still interesting and far from trivial.
None of that sheds any light on whether free will is real or if it’s an illusion. That’s the question we are debating.
If it’s deterministic than the outcome (and indeed all experiences it will ever encounter) are already known or predicted with certainty from the moment we throw the power switch. If it’s deterministic, we don’t even have to run the thing because we KNOW what the outputs will be. You can’t make an argument for determinism with what essentially amounts to “well we know it’ll output SOMETHING at the end of the program”. Determinism specifically implies that there is only one possible output for everything because it’s, well, determined already
Yes that is all correct. But part of that deterministic program is to incorporate input external to the program, process it using it’s configuration/rules and produce output.
Nothing you have said requires “experience” to be non-deterministic. “Experience” is merely the incorporation of inputs into the local system.
Perhaps you imagine someone similar to those “locked in” themselves. Paralyzed such that they have no motor control even as they remain aware of their environment and of things occuring to them. Yet they still have a will over what they would like to happen even if they have no ability to influence the events. They still have percieved control over their thoughts and where those thoughts go.
Perhaps you imagine someone whose actions are being provoked by electrodes in their brain, or who experience a sensation for the same reason. Interestingly enough those experiments have been done. A neurosugeon stimulates the motor cortex and the arm raises, for example. The subject does not experience that as part of his self, he states “I didn’t do that, you did it.” Same with an unbidden exogenously stimulated sensation. The sense of self occurs when the individual percieves that (s)he was the cause and without that sense of agency the action or sensation are not part of self.
As to the reality of free will and of self vs determinism … okay, I’ll refrain from discussing the triviality of the question. I believe that the two are not incompatible and that free will is no more an illusion than my sense of self is. The difficulty in reconciling the two lies in mixing levels of analysis.
All my actions have natural causes, all my thoughts have natural causes. At this level of analysis the causes are preceding thoughts and convictions, my beliefs about the world and how it works and the values I place on various outcomes. This is the level of my self. At this descriptive level, my level of self, I have free will. My self is indeed morally responsible for my actions.
The same system can be viewed at a level of bits of matter being shuffled around in the huge nonlinear dynamic and chaotic dance further subject to random quantum variations. Here all results are the natural results of that which preceded it, including random events. It is an indeterminable and deterministic system. Free will is not part of the equation at this level of analysis. It is silly to talk of free will at this level. Free will and selfness are emergent propeerties that are only apparent at a higher level of analysis, like wetness emerges out of the dynamic interaction of water molecules.
I have had dreams before in which I was clearly experiencing awareness, and yet I also did not have any concommitant sense of any desire that things go this way or that way. I was just experiencing what I was experiencing, devoid of will.
So I know from experience that it is possible. But I know not everyone shares this experience.
But maybe you could assimilate it to the experience of being really engrossed in a movie, in that particular way in which at least for a moment you forget what you’re seeing isn’t real–but you also don’t think of yourself as having any intentions toward the world you are witnessing, whether they be desires to act or wishes about what shall happen next. You are just experiencing it as it comes, so to speak, “uncritically,” but you’re certainly experiencing it with awareness.
The individual I had in mind was an artifical neural network running on a computer that is complex enough to be able to incorporate “itself” into it’s model of the universe it is “aware of”. I picture this as inputs being routed to the appropriate processing area for categorization, etc., and then those outputs are fed to the area that models “itself” and it’s universe.
But the implied phrase that is not stated when they say “I didn’t do that, you did it” is “to me”. I didn’t cause my arm to raise, you caused my arm to raise. The sense of self is fully intact as the person senses that their arm has been raised due to an external stimulus.
I believe I understand what you are saying, but I don’t see any compelling argument to convince me that free will can be an emergent property of a deterministic system. I can see the selfness and wetness examples, but neither of those requires a non-deterministic system, they are simply higher level abstractions of sets of matter and information. Free will, on the other hand, seems incompatible with a deterministic system unless we are just talking about the illusion of free will.
I acknowledge the examples of self-aware entities without free will. Oh I have quibbles … we do not know at what point, if ever, an AI that is capable of a self-updating self concept develops the qualia of selfness and of agency. If your machine has an experience of selfness, then it may very well expereience agency. The movie example doesn’t quite qualify as you are still choosing to sit there. A paticular dream state … that does. I will have to rethink my position regarding the proposed mutual requirement of self and free will. Still, a major, if not the major, function of a self concept is to allow the exercise of will, and I persist in my belief that my experience of that phenomenum is just as real (and just as illusury) as my self is. If one of these emergent metaphysical properties of the system are real then both are.
Agreed. It merely seems possible/logical, but it’s not a given that it would duplicate our experience.
I completely agree that it seems like the function of a self concept is purely to improve decision making. And I can understand the idea that if there were no real free will, then it would not have been an advantage for organisms to waste precious energy on a mechanism that didn’t actually help it in any way. But I think that’s not correct because it’s seems that a self concept could still be the most efficient way to process inputs even in a deterministic process.
Well, in practical terms, I certainly operate on a daily basis with the assumption that both are real, so our belief is not so different. But when I analyze the situation, I don’t see any opportunity for real free will, only the illusion.
Jebus H. Christmas, people! It’s 2007 (quick, what year is it in the Jewish calendar; better yet, any Hindus handy?) and you guys are STILL arguing this?
We all have free will. Some things are affected by the choices we make but others aren’t–Pres Bush isn’t affected if I choose to put off paying the electric bill until next month. Any other view of this is the navel contemplation that lets the rest of us laugh at philosophers. Got that?
Yet there are other functions that apparently allow through some of the noise that trigger the “y’know, I never thought of it like that” things. You guys also need to get closer to your inner tin-foil hatters! It would certainly make you more interesting when your audience is in the same condition as your predecessor, like Lao Tse. (See the Monty Python “Philosophers’ Song” for a clearer explanation why AA was the ruin of philosophy)
I hear my wife hollering for me to take out the trash. Contrary to her expectation, I tell her, “You want it taken out, you take it out. I’m tired of taking out the damn trash!” She stands, flabbergasted, in the hallway, then grabs the bag of trash, stomps out to the dumpster and throws the trash in. I sleep on the sofa that night.
Seriously, I’m not being flippant. Please understand that I’ve never taken a college level philosophy course; my understanding of free will comes entirely from the teachings of an Episcopal priest in 1979. Free will, according to Fr. Keefe, is the condition of having choices to make, knowing the consequences of all choices, and accepting the consequences of the choices we make. No?
If we all have free will, how did I know you would eventually pop in and post something like this? Go check your posting history and you will see it supports my view of determinism.
(draping my arm over my ol’ pal Raft’s shoulder) You didn’t. Or you assumed it would be someone, but not necessarily me and are using me as your example. Or, were you a fairly ept user of the “Search” function and you used my post history and realized that, were this NOT a Friday night, I would write this off as your good luck to have walked into a sophistic but invalid argument. Or, using the same history, you’d realize I’d fit in a Monty Python or Firesign Theater reference if I possibly could. However, it being my night to join with my philosophic brethren, I assume you, lacking proof you predicted my response, got lucky.
Or, per another MP quote, “I run circles around you logically.”
dropzone and Sunrazor both seemed to have missed the philisophical boat, so to speak. According to the method of determinism being argued, determinism states that when you’re wife asks you to take out the trash your only possible action is to respond negatively, having nothing to do with thought processes or etc. but essentially because particle interactions determined at the big bang allow no other process, for that matter, the fact that she asked you to take out the trash is determined, her amazed reaction at your negative response was determined. We’re speaking of a far more global determinism than a local system.
In response to the last criticism of my argument. How are we to determine a “local system” for that matter, how do we know the “universe” as we know it is a complete system. Again reference the idea of an extra-universal (obviously, unprovable just like any other non-physics assertion in the thread, and some of the physics ones, for that matter) force (call it a will or soul for sake of argument) that isn’t within the universe and can affect it as it sees fit each of us has a will that can make that determination and influence the particles in the universe to create a particular outcome in the physical universe, hence, the outcome was nondeterministic until the will made a non-causal decision to influence the universe.
If the ‘soul’ thing is outside your willingness to explore, then we can simplify it to the same concept without a specific cause. Simply stating “the universe is not a complete system” and furthermore, due to, say, extra-universal or alternate-universal interactions, there is never a definably complete system with respect to the specific behavior of every particle in the observable universe, hence it is non-deterministic
Frylock: Bear in mind that my statement was couched as “determinists who address the topic.” Most I’ve read would radically overhaul the insanity defense. Most would introduce elements directed to reduced capacity, in how offences are defined and/or how sentences are calculated. Most heavily favor rehabilitation over punishment. And some would chuck the entire system in favor of a therapeutic model. As for deterrence, how can that be justified in a deterministic model? We recognize that you could not have acted other than as you did, but we’re going to punish you anyway for the good of society. To me, that’s ethically indefensible. BTW, just to round out the circle, as mentioned in my first post (#47), I’m usually defending the soft determinism side of this debate. That is, I think the current system is too harsh in failing to give proper weight to things like diminished capacity and mental illness. But I don’t think we’re automatons and I don’t think the current system could be defended if we were.
RaftPeople: First, as regards my list. Yes, I understand (and said) that all those things can be described as determined. But what does this add? No mechanism, no predictions and little basis for allotting approval or approbation. Whereas the free will model supplies all these things, while having the advantage of comporting with our ordinary understanding of how life is lived. Second, as regards deterrence. To me, it’s a matter of whether the prospect of penalty is a determinant or an influence. The latter more realistically jibes with my understanding of what happens when most people break the law or refrain from breaking it. As I said to Frylock, there are exceptions and I think present law incorporates those inadequately.
dropzone: You do realize, right?, that most professional philosophers indeed consider the question settled. The other way.
It’s certainly possible that free will requires something external to what we consider the universe, but if we introduce that idea prior to a thorough analysis that assumes the universe is complete, then we may have missed an opportunity for free will in the universe as we know it.
It sounds like you are approaching this from the following perspective: “what is the best model of free will that reduces the number of conflicts/paradoxes between what we experience and believe to be true vs the physical rules of matter/energy?” Is this correct? If so, I am approaching this debate from the following perspective: “Is it possible that what I experience as free will is not really free will?”
So for the criminal justice question, I really was just saying that our current practice is not incompatible with determinism. Not that’s it’s a good/bad/neutral system, merely that it does indeed cause certain individuals to calculate a different action than they would have without the system in place.
I would agree that it’s an influence in the sense that it’s just one of many many variables that are incorporated into the calculation and many of those variables have a much higher weight due to previous positive or negative experiences, etc.
To the Free Willer’s of this Debate:
I just had a thought. Previously I posted a (what I thought was) humorous response to dropzone which got me thinking. I assume we are all familiar with different poster’s habits to varying degrees. There are some poster’s that stand out more than others with a consistent approach/style/content, etc. Not to the point where you could predict consistently what he/she would say, but certainly to the point where you could identify if he/she deviated from normal posting style. So here is the question:
How do you account for such consistency and still allow for free will?
If a person has internal influences pushing them a particular direction, where does free will jump in?
