That hate is largely instinctive: a strong impulse for retribution against those that have wronged us or our tribe.
Not that that makes it irrational: it’s no more rational or irrational than liking a beautiful face. And certainly I don’t want to live in a world where we don’t at least hate the crime.
But very soon I think we are going to start finding the neural correlates of the worst behaviour. We already know some of the chemistry. It will become more difficult to feel hate for the criminal.
In terms of the criminal justice system; the goals of deterrence, rehabilitation and protection of wider society, still make sense even once we formally reject the idea of “could have chosen differently”.
The only thing we need to drop is the concept of punishment.
And many Western countries are already pretty much there; the US is (once again) exceptional in putting punishment front and centre.
I don’t think the concept of free will is related to the suggestion that “you” could be born “as somebody else”. There, I said it.
“Will” does not equal “thought” or “intelligence” or “personality”. We are free to think what we like. We are also free to choose. Will = volition. We can want and deliberately choose whatever we like. “Will” doesn’t imply the ability to successfully execute your plans or fulfill your desires. If you want something you can’t get, understand, or is impossible, you haven’t been denied “free will”, you’ve simply not gotten your wish.
What any of that has to do directly with “being” someone else, I’m not getting.
I think trying to test the question of free will by applying “if you were born as your neighbor…” is an irrational way to attack the problem. If A=A, B=B, and A /= B, there is no way to make A become B. You are you, your neighbor is your neighbor. You cannot be born into the place of your neighbor, because then there would be no you; conversely, your neighbor is your neighbor and cannot be you. There is no entity that can possibly be “you and your neighbor” at the same time.
So, you can’t test what A would do if it was B, because if something is B, it is not A. This formula shines no light on the question because A and B cannot be compared in that manner.
But think about this: let’s say there were ten thousand Bs. Would all Bs make the same choices, have the same likes, interests and dreams? I don’t think so.
That’s really an absurd question. We think … we have thoughts. We don’t have to tell anyone what they are. And, I didn’t say every thought that passes through our minds are what we like, but if you want to wish for something in your own mind, nothing is stopping you. You’re limited, though, in your ability to bend reality to your will, so you’re free to try and fail. That’s free will.
We’re not discussing decisions, we’re debating free will. You can have a different wish or intention every four seconds. Changing your mind, or failing in an attempt has no bearing on free will. This isn’t that hard.
But where do those thoughts come from? Do you not believe that our brains are essentially computers that form these thoughts by physical processes? Do you believe there is some kind of ghost in the machine that is actually in charge? That is, a soul? If so, that is the source of our disagreement right there. But if you are an atheist like me, I don’t see where you can find free will.
If you were born as your next door neighbor you would be your next door neighbor. There is not stack of personalities waiting in queue to be born as such and such. You are who you are born as. Only Einstein can be born as Einstein.
As to free will, it doesn’t exist. Every action or thought is predicated on a cause that occurred prior to it. This chain can be followed to the beginning of time.
Uh…no. People cannot will themselves to feel anything–like or dislike. Unless you’re saying that you can will yourself to like eating vomit…or will yourself to like smothering newborn infants…or will yourself to dislike orgasms.
We like what we like. If we are amenable enough to change, we can sway our own opinions by taking on new experiences. But we don’t choose whether we are the kind of person who is amenable to change. A person either is or isn’t. A person who wakes up in the morning and says “I think I’ll try a new kind of cereal!” does not consciously construct this thought any more than the person who wakes up and says, “I want my oatmeal!” So if they do not choose these thoughts, they also don’t choose the resulting actions.
The whole “there is no free will” argument used to go over my little head. But now the simple truth of it is undeniable to me.
One can certainly choose to learn to like things or to think differently, or to stay the same. One can learn to be more amenable to change, or elect to stay as rigid as we are.
We make choices within our limitations, including the limitations of our bodies and our circumstances. We make those choices with the equipment we’re given, our brains. The limitations may be so numerous and formidable that there’s really no choice at all in some circumstances; that doesn’t mean there’s no such thing as free will, just that the choices are also the result of physical processes, no?
Disagree. This violates thermodynamics. It implies that the entire text of, say, Shakespeare’s plays existed in some form at the instant of the Big Bang. The information was there, and only waited until the Elizabethan era to manifest. It’s a weird kind of preformationism, and absolutely does not function in the real world.
You can learn to be more amenable, but you can’t will yourself to learn to be more amenable. You’re either the type of person who is amenable to learning to be more amenable, or you aren’t. Making yourself amenable to change is not a demonstration of choice. You only demonstrate an ability you previously didn’t know you had.
If I choose to do something radically different tomorrow than I did today, I guess I can pat myself on the back and say, “Good for me for doing something new!” But would I be making a choice to do something different? Or would I only be acting on involuntary impulses and thoughts…triggers that I have no control over…that I don’t even know exist. If I don’t consciously create the initial thought that screams “DO THIS!” , nor the positive feeling I get in response to that thought, then how can I take credit for the action that follows? I can’t. All I can do is stand to the side in a Zen-like state and say, “I just did something radically different.” Saying I made a choice is taking things a step too far.
If you are limited by the choices that you’re aware of, heavily weighted by personal preferences and desires (neither of which you control), then you don’t have anything close to free will. “Free” is supposed to be boundless and without restriction. “Free will” doesn’t make any sense given our reality.
“Will” does not equal “thought” or “intelligence” or “personality”. We are free to think what we like. We are also free to choose. Will = volition. We can want and deliberately choose whatever we like.
You’re not understanding me. I’ll rephrase what I said:
“Will does not equal thought”.
What I mean is, you can have a random though, or a train of thought, but unless you make a decision to be proactive, or desire to be proactive (or even reactive), it’s not an act of will, it’s just a thought.
“We are free to think what we like”.
This is the sentence that I think is giving you trouble. I’ll say it a different way.
We are able to have any thought or thoughts running through or heads. No one else is controlling our thoughts and prohibiting us from what we think. Even if we’re brainwashed, we’re free to think … we’re just responding to a lie. We think it’s true, and we are free to think whatever thought we want.
**
“Will = volition. We can want and deliberately choose whatever we like.”**
Again, I’ll rephrase for clarity:
We may consciously think whatever we want to think. We may freely desire whatever we want to desire. Real life conditions may thwart our plans, but we are still free to “will” that something happens, though it may not come to pass after all. Will = Volition, not performance or completion. We can try or plan anything. We obviously can’t do the impossible or reach the unreachable. Sometimes we fail, but we may desire whatever we choose.
Are you referring to the Lucas-Penrose argument regarding Gödelian incompleteness? If so, I think the consensus is that it’s deeply flawed. A Turing machine T cannot express some theorem t, while I can—this much is true. But this does not imply that I have some greater computational power. For instance, you can’t consistently assert the sentence ‘Bremidon cannot consistently assert the truth of this sentence’: if you assert its truth, it’s false. For me, however, asserting this sentence is trivial, and it’s also true. But I don’t have any logical power exceeding yours.
But it’s exactly what’s the case, provided quantum mechanics is a valid description of the world: the evolution of the quantum state (modulo collapses) is unitary, that is, information conserving. Even including the collapse, information is at best destroyed: from a given post-collapse state, you can’t reconstruct the past state. This at best introduces randomness into the description, meaning that, if the information in Shakespeare’s plays wasn’t included in the universal state from the beginning, it’s quite literally the product of infinitely many monkeys.
For a classical deterministic theory, by the way, information conservation holds unequivocally: the state at the beginning uniquely determines the state at any future time—this is what determinism means.
Our minds and wills are part of a system that operates at its own scale - not independently of its components, but with its own behaviours that are special and cannot happen to the components on their own.
What I mean is this:
A collection of atoms of copper and zinc will behave in a way that atoms do - subject to Brownian motion and whatnot - but once formed into the gears of a clock, there is a potential for action at a different scale - the mechanical action of rotation (for example) is something that happens to entire gear wheels at once - it’s an emergent property of the configuration of matter - and it’s something that heaps of random atoms don’t do on their own.
But more importantly, as an emergent property, it’s somewhat independent of whatever is happening at the smaller scale - individual atoms can wear off, swap places, vibrate, decay, bond or whatever, and the gears still function in the same general way, regardless.
I don’t think this necessarily provides any loopholes for freewill, but it does mean we can sensibly say things like ‘I decided’, rather than ‘something made me decide’.
Right, this is what feels right to me: that classic determinism is wrong, but only because there is a bit of randomness mixed in with the determinism. But this still does not mean we really choose what to do, say, or think. A lot of it comes from deterministic processes, and wherever there is wiggle room, it is random as to which way it will go.
Surely I can’t be the only one who finds this discomfiting? Or maybe the others who find it so refuse to believe it as a result.
Again though, what would “really choose” mean? If computing out a decision based on past information doesn’t count, and nor does a random “bolt from the blue”, what would count?
Even if we were to go all out and posit souls, we can ask whether souls are “blank slates” or not, and quickly realize that even with new physics / magic, it’s just not obvious how to reconcile willful, informed choice with all the requirements of “free will”.
And in terms of it bothering me; it bothers me I can’t simply choose to visit another star system or have superpowers. Those limitations suck.
It doesn’t bother me that I start out predisposed towards liking some things, disliking others, and of the options I’m presented with I pick the one I like best.
I don’t believe in fatalism; my decision-making process really is how my decisions are made.
Let me say that I fully agree with this view. And in my opinion, the fact that the term “free will” rose to such prominence is one of the most unfortunate accidents in the history of philosophy.
The way I see it, an agent is free if his actions are determined by his desires, preferences, tastes - what you may call his will - rather than by external constraints. (Of course, in the real world, freedom is always a gradual thing, since there are always constraints, at least those imposed by the laws of physics.) So to demand that the will itself is free is mixing up concepts. It would require that the will again has a will of its own, and I don’t think anyone knows what that is even supposed to mean.
I think a statement like “I could have chosen differently”, or perhaps better “I would have chosen differently if I had wanted to” does make sense in a certain way. It says that if my state of mind (my tastes and preferences, or also my knowledge) had been different at that time, I would have come to a different decision and produced a different action. Of course a different state of mind requires a different physical state of the brain (unless you believe in some immaterial soul stuff, which I don’t). So it’s not a statement about determinism (whether the exact same initial state could have produced a different result), but whether a different state of mind would have produced a different outcome. Very roughly, it means the outcome was not fully determined by the physical reality outside of my brain, but to some part depended on the physical reality inside of my brain. That doesn’t contradict a deterministic world view (it doesn’t even really matter whether there is a bit of randomness mixed in or not).
Right, but where I think the rubber really hits the road on this one is when you talk about past choices when paths potentially diverged, particularly regrets. Let’s say you regret that you did not push harder towards some goal you had in your youth. Or regret that you did not reach out and show more kindness to those who were in school with you and had trouble fitting in. Most people think that they could have chosen to be kinder; but I don’t believe the person they are could do.
By the same token, if you feel good about the fact that you are not a serial killer of children, and are in fact a nice person who helps others, it’s really just luck that you are nice. You don’t really have any choice, only the illusion of choice. Some of this runs into intractable semantic disputes, of course.