Nm
Psalm 19. There.
The wind also has a name. For that matter, so do fire and rain. But I don’t look to Alan J. Lerner for theology.
Bertie Wooster: I wouldn’t go so far as to say she actually writes poetry, but when a girl suddenly asks you out of a clear blue sky if you don’t think that the stars are “God’s daisy chain,” well, I mean, you do begin to wonder, Jeeves.
Jeeves: [clears throat] Indeed, sir.
While Bohmian mechanics seems, at first, much more ‘classical-like’ and intuitive than other interpretations, this has a tendency to disappear when one takes a closer look. For one, there’s no ‘back-action’ of the Bohmian particles on the quantum potential—the latter simply tells the former how to move. From the point of view of classical physics, this is profoundly odd: if A influences B, B also influences A, as in e.g. Newton’s third law.
By extension, this also means that Bohmian particles never interact with one another—they’re all kept on their separate trajectories, and indeed, it doesn’t really matter whether there are any other particles at all. As long as the quantum potential stays the same, you can throw away all particles that aren’t needed, e.g., for your measurement apparatus to give a different reading. So, what’s their role in the theory at all?
Moreover, in some sense, Bohmian mechanics really is just a many-worlds theory in disguise. The wave-function is typically taken as really existing (and not, e.g., a mere bookkeeping device), and thus, all the branches you have in Everett’s theory, you also have in Bohm’s. It’s just that Bohmian mechanics adds a marker to one of those branches saying ‘you are here’. So what about all those empty branches? Why not put a marker there, also?
Furthermore, there are some profoundly odd implications regarding measurement. In the Bohmian theory, all properties of a particle are determined by its position—so, no trouble there: since any particle always has a definite position, position measurements can be construed as merely revealing this pre-existing value. But, of course, we can measure more than merely positions—for instance, we can measure spins. And then, a prediction of the Bohmian theory is that the outcome of a spin measurement is not merely determined by the particle itself, but rather, by the arrangement of the measuring apparatus—so, while we regain something classical-like for one particular observable, position, we loose it for all others (not that there’s anything special about position here, I might add; another quantity could play the same role, and there are interpretations—so-called modal interpretations—where it’s even a question of the system’s state which observable happens to be definite at any given instant).
This is of course what ultimately implies the nonlocality of the theory that’s already been mentioned (and, by the way, don’t ever believe anybody who tries to claim that quantum mechanics is nonlocal—it’s not, or at least, not without making some additional assumptions that actually are quite unnatural from a quantum mechanical point of view). But this also means that, in a sense, we’re fundamentally deceived, by the theory, about how the world actually works: there’s an underlying, nonlocal reality, complete with a preferred frame of reference and a unique notion of simultaneity, and the theory always just hides enough about that world so that we can’t quite figure out it’s there. The laws of physics, on Bohm’s theory, are such as to systematically mislead us about themselves—which is either really cool or really depressing.
So in the end, I think it comes down to a subjective assessment of which sort of weird consequences you’re ready to live with—because there will be some, no matter the interpretation.
According to the philpapers survey, it’s approximately 13.7%, narrowly edging out the amount of philosophers believing that there is no free will coming in at 12.2%. Granted, the data’s from 2009, but I don’t think it’s terribly likely that the percentage has dropped to near-zero in the intervening seven years. (Interestingly, philosophers seem to believe that almost a quarter of philosophers believe in libertarian free will.)
@Half Man Half Wit, thanks for that description of Bohmian Mechanics, that was helpful.
As for the stats on philosophers and free will - you may be right, but I’ve never been quite sure what falls under the heading “Libertarian Free Will”, since the ideas therein all seem to me pretty confused. “Contracausal Free Will” is certainly a subset of it, but I’m not sure if it’s synonymous. The majority view, compatilibilism, imo generally seems to be re-definition of the concept of free will away from the popular (among the hoi polloi) contracausal notion. The difference in your second link is indeed interesting. Selective memory favoring disagreeing with people over agreeing with them?
Checking compatabilism on the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, your arguments seem to fall under what they call hard determinism, someone who rejects that “Some agent, at some time, could have acted otherwise than she did.”
I lean closer to the negation of that: “All agents, at all times, could have acted otherwise than they did.”
No wonder we don’t agree.
I seem to fall under the term of libertarianism - talk about jargon contrasting with the everyday meaning of words - even though their essay on libertarianism goes in more political directions. From The Information Philosopher I find the term “modest libertarianism.”
I am not competent to pick through the nuances and implications of this position. The short excursion through the jargon does help me understand what I found incomprehensible in your positions. As I’ve emphasized, I’ve been basing my discussion on popular arguments, with a totally different set of terms and definitions.
Certainly true. It’s essential, even among philosophers, to define precisely what you mean by free will.
I think both compatibilists and incompatibilists agree that contracausal free will (“could have done otherwise under precisely the same conditions”) is incoherent. Incompatabilists (of which I am one) then just shrug their shoulders and say - ok, no free will, what does that mean for us? Compatibilists say - well, since contracausal free will is incoherent, surely that can’t have been what anyone really meant when they talked about free will, so here’s a description of what they really meant. They want to save the concept by simply redefining it, imo, and they distract from the central point - which most non-philosophers don’t yet accept - that contracausal free will makes no sense.
Among philosophers, belief in contracausal free will is (I think) a subset of “libertarian” free will, possibly they are synonymous.
All of these waters are muddied by the fact that free will in some form is essential to Abrahamic religions, so there’s a whole lot of motivated reasoning and overlap with theology.
Hm, I don’t think so. Incompatibilism doesn’t entail believing there’s no free will—rather, as far as I know, libertarian (here as opposed to ‘necessitarian’, i.e. deterministic) theories of free will are generally incompatibilist, predicated exactly on the idea that in a determinist universe, one ‘could not have done otherwise’.
Sorry, you are correct. I should have said hard incompatibilism, which resolves the belief that free will and determinism are incompatible by discarding free will.
You can, of course, think that determinism and free will are incompatibile, but that the correct resolution is to discard determinism.
Seems to (very much armchair philosopher) me that the angels are dancing on the “precisely” pinhead.
Conditions are never *precisely *the same. My decision about breakfast today is different from my decision yesterday if for no other reason than it is informed by the experience of eating yesterday’s breakfast.
Nor does it need human or conscious or living agents.
Hurricane Matthew will never happen again *precisely *the same way because the vast array of umpteen jillion factors will never be *precisely *the same. Though they could be similar enough to make large scale weather prediction more successful than mere dice rolling.
Since “precisely the same” cannot exist ever anywhere under any circumstances, it can’t be used as some sort of razor to separate free will from determinism
In my largely clue-free opinion.
No, but we have an incredibly strong internal illusion of contracausal free will that must be challenged. So it’s worth pointing out that are actually no objective data to support it. We have no evidence whatsoever that we can do multiple things under a precisely specified set of circumstances.
Just to add on the definitions:
I think the view I hold is usually called hard incompatibilism, which makes no commitment to determinism in the physical sense, i.e. allows stochastic indeterminism (QM or whatever), but asserts that free will is an incoherent and ill-defined notion that’s not compatible with either determinism or stochastic indeterminism.
It would be ridiculous, of course, for any modern educated person to reject stochasitic indeterminism because QM is obviously true; but I think a lot of this terminology is just old, when such things were less obvious. Well, I guess you could advocate an interpretation of QM that looks sort-of deterministic, but that’s a stretch.
nm.
Obviated by your last post. I need to fall back and regroup. Or retire from the field.
But’s such an important thing that bears incredibly careful thought, and has really weird philosophical implications - perhaps almost as weird as QM! And it’s really not something where I think the majority of philosophers show clear thinking, so it’s not as though studying a vast amount of historical thought on the matter makes much difference.
What I meant was I’m not informed enough to debate it here without looking the fool. I’d be glad to learn more. Do you have a cite or three to get me started? Thanks.
I did read part of Exapno’s link to the SEP on the free will problem. I found it well-written and about as clear as could be expected. But I also but had the feeling I was going to need hours of reading and thought before emerging out the other side. So I cut it short to return to this thread.
If you don’t object to two of the four horsemen,
Sam Harris - Free Will
Dan Dennett - Freedom Evolves; Elbow Room
Dennett is one of my intellectual heroes and an incredibly perceptive thinker, but as a compatibilist I think he’s off base on free will, so I recommend him as someone smart who I completely disagree with.
For a more casual read, I’d recommend Jerry Coyne’s blog
Put “free will” into the search box and you’ll find much good reading. My views are pretty much exactly the same as his.
I can’t recommend anything that advocates libertarian free will that sounds any more coherent to me than the bible!
Just to add - I should have mentioned that Harris is a hard incompatibilist. And his book is a brief tract that concisely lays out the case for “no free will” and can be read in a couple of hours. It’s not a coincidence imo that making the hard incompatibilist case is ultimately quite easy, since free will is not in the first place a sound philosophical position. Belief in free will derives only from our mental illusion, and perhaps therefrom via religion, but not from any reasonable logical foundation. Dennett’s attempts (in my view) to “rescue” free will by redefining it are of necessity more protracted.
I find these varying positions the equivalent of axiom systems. Interesting things emerge when you choose free will and no determinism, determinism and no free will, both, or Other, which is a solid second on that PhilPapers page.
It’s the application that gets wonky. Euclidian geometry does not describe the surface of the earth, yet describes small sections of it very well. We can force acceptance of those different axiom systems through empirical methods.
I don’t see any way we can yet apply empirical methods to the problem of free will, especially without any comprehension of what consciousness is.
I dispute that it’s an empirical problem. Free will is an incoherent concept, and no conceivable evidence can render it coherent.
If you think it’s a possibility, first define what you mean by “free will” coherently, only then can one start to consider what experiments might be relevant.
For what it’s worth, there are certainly experiments (starting with Libet) that show that we make decisions well before we are consciously aware of them. That’s certainly thought-provoking, but the notion of free will does not hinge on these experiments, or the nature of consciousness. The relevance of consciousness is really only that it creates our strong internal illusion of conscious agency and free will, from which the widespread belief in free will derives.