Free will - looking for explanation

My recommendation is to deny the concept of free will at a deeper level. It doesn’t matter whether physics is deterministic or indeterministic or even whether or not humans have immaterial souls; the concept of free will is itself incoherent. It could not be had by any possible being in any possible world.

The crucial question: To what degree are a person’s actions determined by the state of his or her mind?

This state includes but is not limited to a person’s nature, personality, preferences, knowledge, skills, and memories. These, I assume, can be agreed to exist whatever the actual metaphysical basis of human consciousness.

To the extent that human actions are predictable, we predict them based on our knowledge of the mental states of the actors. This is evidence, should any be required, that the mental states of human beings affect their actions. In other words, mental states partly determine human behavior.

To the extent that such states determine a person’s behavior, this behavior is not free, for to that extent it could not possibly have been otherwise.

To the extent that such states do not determine a person’s behavior, this behavior is meaningless, for to that extent it is independent of everything that determines who that person is.

Is free will the ability to perform meaningless actions?

This is intended as a rhetorical argument rather than a strictly logical one, for its conceptual incoherence makes free will difficult to describe in logical terms. I can see places to quibble with my reasoning, but this is essentially the argument that changed my mind on the issue.

The primary counterargument I have encountered is that there is some fundamental property of human agency that cannot be subsumed under nature, personality, preferences, knowledge, skills, memories, or anything else along those descriptive lines. I can only reply that whatever remains behind when everything of importance has been stripped away must be of minimal worth.

An excellent analysis, JasonFin, with excellent questions and comments. One problem, however, is that if you declare freewill to be an incoherent concept in se, then it is not logical for you to oppose it. It amounts to a substantive denial of a positive ontological proposition. In other words, if it can be denied, then it must at least be coherent.

Free will is pure metaphysics, it’s entirely specious. How would you know whether you voluntarily made a decision or the sum total of all causitive events to date simply resulted in you making that decision? “Free will” as a concept is an unsupported extension of self-consciousness.

Actually, that’s my worldview. That’s why I’d rather not think too much about this issue.

Actually, this isn’t really a problem. If you assume that you don’t have free will, then you can’t choose not to be upset, either.
Anyway, the fact that in this case, casting blame is nonsentical isn’t an argument in favor of free will. Not any more than saying “it would be nicer if good people were rewarded in an afterlife” is a sound argument in favor of the existence of an afterlife.

that’s generally the way I like to view this issue. We’re the decision making process, the chemical reactions, etc… However, it’s not fully satisfying because we’re acustomed to think that we control this process. And we don’t. We’re merely the predetermined process itself.

I did not attempt with my previous post to accurately reflect my opinion about free will. It was, as I noted, intended as a rough sketch of a rhetorical argument intended to convince people to question their understanding of the concept of free will. As you correctly note, it is unreasonable to substantively deny a proposition that is incoherent in the logical sense. If given a proposed precise definition of free will, I will of course accept it, deny it, or forbear judgment for the present.

My position, for which I do not maintain that I have, at this point, attempted to provide an effective argument, is that free will, as generally understood either by philosophers historically or by the general public, is not a natural kind. By this, I mean that the truth or falsehood of statements such as “human beings have free will and inanimate objects do not” will hinge in an extremely sensitive way on the precise definitions of certain words used to explain just what “free will” is. This means free will cannot be usefully understood as a meaningful entity in itself unless properties crucial to its public meaning are first stripped away.

I suspect this is because free will relies fundamentally on normativity, which is itself extremely problematic. This conceptual unnaturalness is a different property from nonexistence as a matter of fact, from impossibility, or from logical incoherence.

JasonFin:

While I do not disagree with what you have posted, it is my experience that most people have not had the experience with philosophical/analytical thought of this nature to jump right to the heart of the matter.

That is why I wouldn’t rule out the simple example that relies on physics, it’s an easier first step.

I would look at free will this way. If I want to go to the movies, and my Father says," You can go to the movies if you want to, but I do not want you to go,so if you do go Iwill punish you, maybe kill you". So it would mean either we have to do things the father’s way. If there is a consequence for doing our will it is not free.

Monavis

A poor way to look at the issue, in my opinion. Every human praxis has a consequence: some are good, some are bad, and some are neutral. The choice of whether to risk and bear the consequence is a part of the freedom. At any rate, I believe that the issue of a materialistic freewill is moot — trivial at best. It is moral freewill that matters.

Thanks very much for introducing the term to me, but isn’t compatibilism consistent with hard determinism?

Consistant in what way? Both compatiblism and hard determinism agree that the universe (and human nature) are deterministic, but compatibilism says that we have free will (or that free will and determinism are compatible), while hard determinism says that free will is incompatible with determinism.

You are right by definition, I learn. My idea of the only tenable way of conceiving free will led me to a different conclusion. I just can’t get my head around the conception of free will as being outside causation.

Would you mind running that one by me again? I’m not quite sure I understand what you’re saying. Your conception of free will was already compatibilist, and you were just unaware of the term?

I’ll try. My conception of hard determinism is that everything is caused, and given the current state, only one result is possible. The only coherent meaning I can give to “free will” is that we can do what we want. Given these definitions, they’re compatible. Now I realize that something more is generally meant by “free will”, but frankly I can’t make sense of it. I can choose chocolate over vanilla, but I can’t choose to prefer vanilla - I really like chocolate better. Can you help me?

Sorry guy, but there’s no way to simply communicate that one doesn’t have free will. That’s because you do have free will, but it’s constrained.

You can choose, but your choices are only *partially * determined by culture, heredity, and similar factors; there’s still that bio-computer that lets you take a bunch of data and arrive at different decisions at different times.

What you gotta do to get your point across is modify your delivery to: “your supposedly ‘free’ will isn’t as free as we think; it’s constrained by a number of factors.”

People have an easier time accepting non-absolutes.

Remember, even Freedom isn’t free…

NoYB

Well. I wasn’t trying so much to get a point across as understand one. It seems to me that the only interpretation of “free will” that is incompatible with hard determinism is one that is on its face impossible. Even “that bio-computer that lets you take a bunch of data and arrive at different decisions at different times” is constrained by the laws of physics.

Moral or Materailistic,If we choose differently than What God wills there is a punishment for not following what is believed to be God’s will. So, the only choice we have, would be to do what God wants us to do, or suffer the consequences!

Monavis

Yeah, but God wants us to have, and use, free will!

The question of free-will is actually a pretty highly debated issue amongst certain Christians. 2 click twiddle flare, you might want to look into Calvinism. I think you might find some answers there.

Just to get you started… (if you’ll forgive a bit of googling)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvinism
http://www.noble-minded.org/calvinism.html
http://www.bible-truth.org/election.htm