Probably discussed before, but I’m still on my first cuppa joe and who knows how old they are?
It seems to me that time is a contimuum. The past has lead to the present, and the present will lead to the future. A hundred and fifty years ago (or any other number of years) the inhabitants lived in their present. That is our past. We are now living in the present, but it is the future’s past.
Theoretically (some would say), someone in 1850 could have done something to change the future as we know the past. For example, he may have done something that stopped the Civil War. But he couldn’t really, could he? Because we are living in the present, and the Civil War has already happened. Therefore, the 1850 man could not change the future because the future ‘has already happened’ in the continuum.
So assuming the non-existence of multiple time lines (i.e., an infinite number of futures that branch out from a contimuum at every instant and for their own continuums), our future has already happened. We just can’t perceive it because we are living in our present. Since it’s already happened, we can’t change it. If the future cannot be changed, then we don’t have free will. Everything we do will already have been done in the future.
More or less, yeah, though your use of past tense might be a bit inappropriate there. However, granting the non-existence of multiple time lines seems a very big assumption to me.
Such “time-lines” need not be in the form of a branching continuum; it could merely be the case that a large number of very similar worlds exist within this physical universe or others. Perhaps there are worlds only microscopically different from ours prior to 1850 in which that man did take a different course. If reality is sufficiently vast, the existence of such near-clone worlds is statistically certain.
In that case, if different worlds are similar enough to be subjectively indistinguishable, how could we say there is a true fact of the matter as to whether we live in one rather than another? The future would be effectively undetermined, even in principle.
But it seems to me that you’re not only implying no multiple time lines, but you’re also implying that the future is set, and therefore ‘already happened’. That I don’t beleive. I think the past happened, the present is happening, and the future has not yet happened. Therefore, me and my free will have a say in how the future happens. Perhaps there will be only one future, but I believe it’s not written down yet.
Therefore, yes we do have free will. Just because I can’t un-choose a certain course of action doesn’t mean I didn’t choose it in the first place.
The Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics holds in fact that there are multiple time lines. Every microsecond, billions of universes branch out from the present, exploring every possible thing that could ever happen.
Even if you assume that this interpretation is incorrect, that doesn’t mean that the future is fixed. It could well be that the past and present is exactly as we perceive it, ie you cannot change the past, you can only act in the present, thus affecting the undecided future. The past is fixed, and cannot be changed. The future is fluid, and unknown. The present is the advancing boundary between the two, where uncertainty is frozen into place as unchangeable events.
In fact this is how quantum mechanics works - the uncertainty principle says that you cannot know the exact position and velocity of a particle. This only works in the present though, you can know exactly the position and velocity of a particle in the past.
Determinism is the position that every event, even human thought and action, is determined by prior events (even if they are random as in quantum mechanics), and so the future has “already happened” (to use petelin’s beautiful phrase). It is the position I myself advocate.
Haven’t had coffee yet. It seems I think of this stuff when I just get up. Being caffeine deficient at the moment, I’ve only scanned the article on Determinism.
We may know where the particle will be, but it will be somewhere in the future.
We seem to have choices. I may decide to change lanes on the freeway, and be killed in a crash. Or I may decide to keep my lane and survive. I can’t know what the future will be, but it will be something. Again assuming that we cannot ‘slide’ into another timeline, whatever future will happen will happen. I’m going to make a choice. From a future point of reference, I already have made the choice. Thus, ‘free will’ is illusory.
The problem is with the idea of infinite outcomes. I read somewhere that a particle of light goes through every possible (infinite) bit of space, and we only see where it finally went (in our reality) after it has done. What does this mean for sub-light humans? Do we make every possible choice and take every possible action, which we perceive only after the action has manifested itself in ‘our’ reality? If so, what difference does it make? In a continuum, the outcome will already have happened regardless of whether another future happens (or has happened) in a different continuum.
The article linked by SentientMeat says, ‘Some critics of determinism argue that if people are incapable of independent choice there can be no basis for morality, and therefore some aspects of criminal and civil jurisprudence and legislation are left without their necessary foundation.’ That seems to be an emotional response. That is, it’s the same as Creationists saying that evolution is wrong because they are offended that we are ‘descended from monkeys’.
My (admittedly rudimentary) understanding of Quantum Mechanics tells me that this is wrong. I was under the impression that, under most circumstances, the idea of the particle being somewhere is one of those things that doesn’t translate well into the quantum world.
This statement is valid independent determinism, and whether there is a single timeline or multiple. It would seem that, given this argument, the existence of time disproves free will.
I think there may be a problem with the idea of “changing the future”. What exactly does it mean to “change the future” and how might one go about accomplishing that task? Ignoring the many worlds interpretation of QM, we know that there will be exactly one future. This is true independent of determinism (with indeterminism, there are many possible futures, but only one will come to fruition). We also know that we can’t predict, with perfect accuracy, the future state of the universe. Again, this is independent of determinism. From this we know that after any series of events has exactly one outcome (=future), and that outcome can only be seen after-the-fact. So, in a sense, you’re right: we can’t change the future because the future that you’re talking about exists only in the past.
It seems to me that this whole notion of “changing the future” is incoherent. I wouldn’t throw away free will based on an incoherent idea.
It seems to me you’re making a circular argument here. You’re assuming that a future point of reference is somehow real, and valid. But if the future is uncertain, a future point of reference is not real, and not valid, and your argument falls down.
It seems to me that determinism is guilty of something similar - it makes its own assumptions, then comes to a conclusion that supports its own assumptions. It assumes two things:
1 - Free will is not the action of physical laws, including QM randomness.
2 - Only the physical and objective is real.
Given this, it is not surprising it concludes that free will isn’t real. But I would argue that a scientistic viewpoint like this is not fully correct. I also have subjective experiences, and can reasonably deduce that others have this as well. Imagine a man falling down the side of the building. If i were to describe this situation fully, would i say that an object of certain mass, chemical composition and structure, density etc is falling at so many metres per second? I could, and it would be a correct description, but it wouldn’t be a full description. A full description would have to include information about the subjective, the meaning.
I could argue that we do have free will, but is a property that can only be applied to us as a whole, and not our parts. Suppose i have two drinks in front of me, and i chose the one on the left. I have exercised my free will, and chosen it. You can start to break the situation down and you look inside my head with electron microscopes etc and find that my decision is a result of neurons firing in a certain way, certain electrical impulses etc, all blindly following the laws of physics. But of course once you’ve gone down to that level you’re only looking at the physical, and thus would have to also conclude that the subjective doesn’t exist. Clearly the subjective does exist, so this viewpoint is missing something.
Personally, i don’t think the concept of free will is well defined, and in fact may well be meaningless. What is free will? What would be the difference between a human being with free will, and without it? Until we answer these questions and define the words we’re using, we may well be talking about different things.