I know I am butting in, but I think saying the thermostat “chooses” is an unfortunate anthropormorphication. The thermostat is made to react to a set of inputs. If operating correctly the thermostat will always turn off and on at the right temperature. Although analogies are often a sign of bad logic I think that apt one would be that of a ball on a shelf. If the ball is nudged off it will wither fall or not fall. Since gravity will dictate the motion it will fall. At no time was a “choice”. It would be fairly safe to say all physical actions are deterministic.
Ramanujan
I’m not saying I’m ‘self’ aware. Thoughts and ever changing sensations of this apparent physical body does not constitute a ‘self’. I’m talking about awareness. Without ‘awareness’ there is no knowing, experiences, or observations. If the automaton is a human construct I am speculating that it does not possess awareness. If you are saying, What if it possesses awareness that’s another issue which certainly can be discussed.
If a thermostat is a location on a wall where flow of electricity is ended/diverted by a series of causes and effects, then I would say no, it does not make a choice.
A cause doesn’t have a choice. Nor is there anything to “realize” anything.
Does a choice need a chooser? If so there may be no such thing as a ‘choice’.
** ABSTRACT: Though we share an irresistible introspection that we possess a will governing our behavior and not controlled by outside forces or previous states, empirical research shows that such a will does not exist. Rather, actions are triggered unconsciously, and a memory-related part of the brain produces a narrative to explain the behavior after the fact.**
*Review of Daniel M. Wegner’s The Illusion of Conscious Will*
Welcome to STMB interficio
AFAIK, a lot of current popular thought is revolving around compatibilism. From what I understand, the question isn’t whether there was an uncaused event, but simply whether we did what we wanted to. Inasmuch as we want to do what we in fact do, the question of whether we willed it so seems sort of irrelevant.
Nice rug-sweeping, but not very motivating.
There is little room for will in naturalistic explanations, and since it seems that any incompatibilist account of will shall require uncaused events, it seems unlikely that a naturalistic account of will should ever come about. Will the will be a “will of the gaps”, pushed farther back into as-of-yet unresolved questions about brain operations, or is it that there is a genuine barrier to explaining human action, and we can name what must lie beyond it the “will”?
For a perspective that seems to take a path different from compatibilist and incompatibilist accounts, I would recommend GEM Anscombe’s Intention.
You seem to have some as of yet unexplained defintion of making a choice that involves “self-awareness” whatever THAT is (how can you tell whether or not the automaton has it? And what difference does it even make?)
I’m saying, quite plainly: it can make choices, in the plain, obvious meaning of that word. It can recognize multiple options, and then choose among them. It’s your job to explain how this is different, in a relevant way, from what we do when we make choices.
** interficio ** says that a thermostat selecting a temperature shouldn’t really be called “choosing” because that’s an anthropomorphism. But is it? To sustain that charge, he, and you, are going to have to cough up some explaination of why choosing is any different in us than it is in the thermostat, albiet in a much more complex and unpredictable way. You and he both seem to be demanding that it fulfill all sorts of extra conditions. but frankly, I can’t see what relevance they have. You might as well say that thermostats can’t make choices because they don’t have assholes, and only things with assholes can make choices. What relevance is that? You say that “realizing” is important to making a choice, but then you go on to pretty much say that you don’t even know what that entails.
There are choosers, and they do make choices. As long as you don’t try to bundle in ideas into those words that even you admit you can’t even explain the meaning of.
Predestination and free will are not necessarily opposed.
Why would the fact that your future is known change anything about your choices? You are still making choices for the exact same reasons.
Think of any choice you ever made. At the time you made the choice, everything that you call “self” was in a particular state. Therefore, if it was possible for you to make a different choice, that different choice could not have been caused by the “self”. If you didn’t cause your choice, then how can you say it was an example of free will? Any meaningful definition of free will has to tie it into the person making the choice. You can’t just leave it out there as some unintelligible floating concept with no relevance to choices.
Keep in mind, choices made by free will can still be manipulated. I think some people are afraid to use a meaningful definition of free will because they are looking for a way to get out of responsibility for their actions - but I say that even a choice made by free will can be so manipulated that the responsibility lies mostly with someone else.
I define free will as: The power to act, or not act, according to the determinations of the will.
In order to use the term “free will”, you must clarify the “will” you are referring to:
Consider a man genetically predisposed to drug addiction, so strongly that there is no way he will not succumb.
If you consider the genetic predisposition part of his essential “will”, then yes, he takes drugs of his own free will.
On the other hand, if you believe he has an essential “will” that does not include the genetic predisposition, then his choice is not free. I would tend to hold this view.
I believe that even predestined humans have free will, because we can still look at their essential “will”, and see if it is causing their choices. If so, then the choice was of their own free will. Again, even a choice made by free will might have been manipulated so that responsibility would lie mostly with someone else. Manipulation and predestination are different than mind control.
If the choice was caused by some outside influence, then it was not free will. There may be disagreement over what is part of the essential “will”, and what is an outside influence (as in the case of unstoppable genetic predisposition).
It seems to me that those who deny free will are really denying that their physical bodies are part of their essential “will”, or are denying that they even have an intelligible “will” of their own. They may be right. But in denying their own will, they make free will an unintelligible concept, as something that doesn’t exist cannot be free. It does seem clear that predestination is not relevant to any meaningful definition of free will. If the predestination is manifesting itself in some way that affects the will, then that does matter, but if it doesn’t then they are entirely seperate issues.
They’re denying the possibility of a free will, so no, they’re not affirming it by saying their choice wasn’t free.
Predestination and Free Will are labels for theological positions which weasel on the original concepts of each in order to reconcile them to other theological positions/concepts.
Define each term precisely prior to entering into a discussion, else the different understanding of each participant leads to further misunderstanding in place of agreement or at least an intelligent discussion.
I don’t get the whole point about not holding people accountable if free will didn’t exist. Surely, if free will didn’t exist, then we could do nothing BUT hold them accountable since we are pre-determined into such a course of action. In fact, on a purely empircal level, theres no way to determine if free will exists or not.
However, looking at it from a game theory perspective, if free will did not exists, then it doesn’t matter if we believe in free will or not, its all pre-determined. If free will DID exist, then the only logical choice would be to believe in free will. Thus, its pointless believing in determinism and we might as well pretend free will exists.
Was away from the board for a while.
The point of my experiment was to create a situation that would carry a strong psychological desire to do something that you purposely resisted. In public. For very little expense. Something that would seem harmlessly abnormal to actual people you just interacted with. Ideally asking them for help (throwing the ticket away for you) in the abnormal behavior.
Someone made the argument about the brain being conditioned to do things it is familiar with. My experiment also spoke to that. Can you choose to break the mold?
It was argued that if they did my experiment, they would not be engaging in free will. They would be engaging in my will. That’s not true at all. Buying the ticket would be the following instructions. But once you buy that ticket, all bets are off. That is your ticket…you could possibly win millions of dollars. Nobody would throw that chance away because some schmo on a message board told them to do so. They would have to do it for themselves, to prove that they could.
In short, they would have to make a conscious decision to act abnormally, in public, and in so doing potentially cost themselves heaps of money.
Shalmanese, Pascal’s Wager does nothing to convince me that god exists, so why should it have any better luck at convincing me of free will?
The responsibility issue of free will is demonstrated with the fable about the spider. You knew what it was when you picked it up; how can you blame it for biting you?
Without free will, the emotional investment we have in people is hollow. Morality is meaningless. We all do what god planned for us. Therefore we can lay the blame for all the evil of men directly at god’s feet. If he didn’t want us to do evil, why did he force us to do it? The only possible sin would be to not follow god’s plan. But then, that is impossible, because there is no free will. So there cannot be sin. So no matter what anybody does, they will all end up in heaven, equally blessed because everybody did exactly they were supposed to.
Yeah, that’s the worldview for me.
Regarding the apparently serious automaton debate, I am almost speechless. So automatons make choices? How about a fatal hit and run. Do we blame the car for making that choice? Or the driver?
Apos
As I said several times now, no one can tell if other things or beings are conscious. What I am saying is if you are not conscious you don’t know anything about any “choices”(if such things exist) or anything else, so you are NOT making any choices, accept as observed by a third “conscious” party.
The only way I know that I have made apparent choice is by “observing” that I have done so. An automaton sans awareness does not observe anything, that’s the difference.
A choice involves an option. For the thermostat there is no option. The mercury reaches a certain temperature and expands, falls to one side, and an electrical signal is sent which either turns off the heat if it’s on or turns on the heat if it’s off. It’s all cause and effect, and causes don’t have choices. If it has options it probably wouldn’t function properly.
Ands what is this " it" that would have options?
The difference with humans is that there is “know”, and/or “observing”, and therefore “something exists”, not so for a thing that has no awareness.
How can I tell that I am conscious? The only thing I have to go on is the fact that I have an experience of a world around me, and an experience of myself observing it and reacting to it as I see fit. However, I’m not clear on where you think this awareness comes into choice making. At what point in the process of making a choice (a process you’ve yet to explain in detail) does this experience play a crucial role?
But this is a moot point. We don’t know whether or not automatons are conscious or not, and indeed they can be so complex as to mimic even the human insitence of having a consciousness. How does this relate to the process of “truly” choosing?
But that’s no difference at all. If I make a choice, but die before I get the sensory feedback of having successfully made the choice, haven’t I still chosen? What if I make choices without any memory of having done so later on due to mental disease? What does observation have to do with anything?
Why?
Again: what is free will? What necessary ans irreplacable function does it play in having emotional investment in something?
Same question as above.
Well, that seems to be what a lot of the Bible implies: indeed it seems far more to imply some sort of predestination than not. But the Bible presents no argument for any of this, so there’ no particular reason to be convinced by its views.
This is a whole nother ball of wax, and perhaps outside the scope of this debate. But suffice to say that it IS my suspicion that the assertion of free will exists in part because otherwise the above conclusion would be inescapable, and that doesn’t play well for theologians.
Maybe he wants us to do evil? I dunno. The mind and motives of god are not my purview.
That does seem to be the basic endpoint of most forms of theistic morality.
You ever heard of Calvinism? They certianly didn’t think that everyone went to heaven and that was part of God’s plan too.
Let’s get back on track here: please explain how free will works: how can we recognize it in action? You MUST do this before you can run off a litany of other concepts that would be threatened by its abscence.
Perhaps that’s because you don’t understand what we’re debating?
Apos
If you don’t know a choice is being made then no choice is known to occur. A ‘choice’ has to be observed to be whatever it is.
I don’t think choices exist, it’s all cause and effect. We are just a mind—body mechanism being observed performing various actions. And a thought appears, “That’s a choice”,……and there is the sense there is choosing taking place. But since there is no chooser to be observed there is no choice.
Not to “you”.
In a general sense you cannot make choices that you are not aware of.
Free will works as follows:
Humans are faced with choices every day. Each choice involves multiple options, of which only one will be realized. This morning I had two options of breakfast cereal: Golden Grahams and Rice Krispies. I chose to eat the former. I had then finished eating my breakfast. Two options. One was realized, the other was not. I was free to choose which one, and I did.
It was not my destiny to eat Golden Grahams this morning. It was my choice.
Since I obviously do not understand the automaton debate, please give me an example of an automaton making a choice.
Basically, in a nutshell, free will is identified when an event happens that cannot be predicted by the laws of physics. This elimates all (non parallel processing) computer programs, automatons, billiard balls, etcetera.
- Are you saying that if we ever understand the human brain enough to make predictions of choices, that they are no longer free choices?
- What if prediction is based on having already seen the future, rather than based on the laws of physics? Are your choices still free?
- Is random chance free will?
I once read of an automaton convinced that it chose its own breakfast, I’ll have a grub around and see if I can’t find you a cite.
So free will requires that an event not be the result of the laws of physics?
Okay, fine. Now: how can we know whether a given event was caused by the laws of physics or not?
What?
Can you even BEGIN to defend this position? Why does something have to be consciously observed to be a “choice”? what in the heck does “choice” MEAN to you? Apparently, to you, it’s some sort of experience, not an actual THING that happens. If that’s so, then I can’t see how your idea of “choice” has any relevance to this debate about free will.