The problem with option 3 is the word “outside.” The controller is “outside the game.” With human minds, the controller is inside the game, inescapably part of it.
That said, I think it is the correct explanation…with some randomness playing a part, but not with randomness being the only determiner of choices. Our human behavior has an element of randomness; sometimes, we just say, “Oh, heck with it,” and act without deliberation.
Also, we’re partly programmed. There are some things we would have the gravest difficulty “choosing” to do. Damn few of us could “choose” to go on a murder spree. Hey, there’s nothing to stop us! Grab a kitchen knife and go berserk. But we’re strongly provided with behavioral disincentives. (Thank goodness!)
There is good evidence that we make at least some decisions unconsciously, and then after the decision is made we construct an illusion of conscious deliberation controlling the decision. At the very least, that should give us pause - we cannot trust the accuracy of our internal impression of “free” conscious deliberation controlling our choices.
There’s a pretty good summary here of the Libet experiment and subsequent research:
Agreed. The fallacy in that construct is the idea that the universe being re-run – in its entirety – would play out in exactly the same way in the absence of the single actor making exactly the same choices. In actuality, the entire-of-universe is composed of a vast array of independent participatory actors each of whom acts with free will, and each of whose behaviors affects all of the others.
An interesting thing happens to causality when you cease to think of “everything except the one actor” as a mindless and monolithically rigid thing, and instead think of it, itself, in its entirety, as reactive and responsive.
From what you’ve written here and before, I tend to think that you’re talking about the nature of “self” or “identity”, which to me is not at all synonymous with free will, at least in the usual contra-causal sense of free will.
There is, of course, a large compatibilist literature devoted to redefining the term “free will” to mean something else that is not incoherent. It’s largely semantics, although I think it tends to distract from the central point that magical contra-causal free will is nonsense - something that both compatibilists and incompatibilists agree on, but the vast majority of humanity does not accept.
Now, I still think there is such a thing as volition/choice/will…but, my gosh, it’s kludgy! We’re lucky we can get through a day of work without going nuts!
Questions of the self are unavoidable in a discussion of free will, because in all the debates about whether it exists or not there are assumptions (usually tacit) about who or what it is that either does or does not possess free will: usually the individual self as conventionally imagined.
With no return of the OP, I’m wondering if this isn’t less of an actual discussion and more of a revival of the argument that goes nowhere.
You either accept that there is free will, or that there isn’t. Since Occam’s Razor would tend to suggest that we all have Free Will (as such a system would be indistinguishable from what we have now), it would seem to me to be up to the anti-free will people to conclusively prove otherwise.
Roundabout, endless discussions of this here (insert Matrix Meme about repeating this thread N number of times and getting very good at it) don’t add value.
If you think this, then you don’t understand the argument against free will at all.
There is no observable phenomenon that corresponds to contra-causal free will. We have a strong internal sense that we could have done otherwise in a given situation; but no evidence to support the idea, since we only get to run the universe one time. And the Libet experiments show that we certainly cannot trust our internal intuition about how we make decisions. Just because we feel we are “free” to do anything does not make it so.
Moreover, nobody has ever given a coherent account of how magical contra-causal free will is supposed to work. If we could have done otherwise because of reasons, slightly different circumstances - well, that’s just deterministic cause and effect, no free will there. If we could have done otherwise because of chance elements - well, nobody thinks free will inheres in rolling a dice. Logically, what other way is there for any two things to interact other than deterministically (for reasons, cause and effect) or randomly? Just how is it supposed to work?
So contra-causal free will is something that
(a) is not defined coherently;
(b) does not correspond to any objective phenomenon.
And you think the burden of proof lies with those who think it does not exist?
I’m troubled by the accusations of “magic” and “contra-causal” elements of human volition. I don’t believe in those; I’m not a religionist who thinks there’s a non-material soul that contributes to choices.
I believe that, yes, if you were to rewind the tape of history forty minutes, and run it forward again, I might possibly make different decisions. I could have acted differently.
I absolutely believe that events would be different in a re-run of time, because of quantum uncertainty. Absolute Newtonian determinism is obsolete. On the other hand, that’s not a big part of why I believe in human choice; it’s a side-issue. Quantum randomness means that events can’t be predicted, but it isn’t what I base my view on.
Anyway, I don’t fit your description, so, yes, a fair part of the burden of proof is on you when you use such specific terms. If you say, “Your belief is magical,” you need to be prepared to demonstrate it.
Do you believe that free will inheres in deterministic processes, cause and effect, being constrained to act differently only when there are reasons to act differently?
Quantum uncertainty is strictly random. Do you believe that free will inheres in rolling a dice?
Then where is free will?
If you believe in free will, you’re the one who claims to believe in an unspecified (and apparently magical) process. The burden is certainly not upon me to explain what you mean and how it’s supposed to work.
In a many-worlds universe, a rerun of time would have exactly the same results.
This is at minimum the sixth thread in which you’ve participated where this fact has been directly explained. In many of those previous threads, this fact was pointed out not just in the thread in general, but directly to you personally. We might not live in an MWI world. Very possible. But if we happen to do so, then a “re-run of time” will have the same results.
You can remain dogmatically ignorant if you like, but it’d be better if you stopped polluting these threads with your ignorance.
Suppose we have some kind of “volitional self” that chooses, that makes decisions. We make no assumptions at all about its nature. We can think of it as a brain, an immaterial soul, whatever you like. It’s a black box, we don’t know how it works.
But when we observe the decisions made by this “volitional self”, there are only two logical possibilities: at a given moment (i.e. for a given internal configuration of the “self”) the output (the decision) either depends on the input (the circumstances, the reasons), or it doesn’t.
(1) If the output depends on the input, that’s another way of saying that it’s deterministic. However complex the reasoning process inside the black box, the “self” is constrained to change its output only if the inputs change. It could make a different “choice” only if there were reasons to make a different choice, only if the inputs were different. It is simply computation.
(2) If the output does not depend on the input, then by definition the output is random with respect to the input. It is functionally equivalent to rolling a dice.
So we have only two logical alternatives: either the output depends on the input or it does not; either decisions are made for reasons, or they are random whims. On careful reflection, neither of these two logical possibilities comports with our intuition of “free will”, the idea that we could have done otherwise in a re-run of the universe. Our intuition that we “choose freely” does not stand up to logical scrutiny, and it does not correspond to any observable phenomenon. It is simply an illusion.
The human brain is a computer. It is very, very different from the computers that we manufacturer, but it still is a large number of components that perform calculations based on the movement of electrical and chemical signals between those components. It takes a number of molecules/ions to cause a neuron to fire, not a single one. It takes a number of neurons firing to cause an action, not a single one. So not only would a time rewind with the exact same conditions always come up with the exact same results, but bundling quantum weirdness into it still won’t change the results because the change in the action of a single molecule or single neuron isn’t enough to change the brain’s decision/behavior.
a single human being, as distinguished from a group.
a person:
“Self”:
that which knows, remembers, desires, suffers, thinks, etc.
The consciousness that resides within the individual and consists of feelings and thoughts uniquely of the individual (singular);
The consciousness that resides in plural numbers of individuals and consists of thoughts and feelings held in common by those individuals (plural)
The consciousness that resides wherever the hell it does in fact reside, if, in fact, it resides in places not entirely described already by the above two (superplural)
“Self” is actually not well defined. It’s “who we think we are”, it’s the identity that we conscious beings are conscious of, and it is (therefore) the entity of which we speak when we say “I”, as in the statement “I have free will”.
Doesn’t matter. Rewinding in the sense you are describing has no bearing on the limitations (or lack thereof) of causality as an explanatory. It’s akin to saying “Did you eat ice cream on Friday?” and then asking a second time, “I ask you a second time, did you eat ice cream on Friday?” – it isn’t a second event at all. It’s the same freaking event.
Quite the contrary. If you do not believe that we have free will, the burden is on YOU to prove it. You’re the one who believes in ‘magic’ that makes the world go without individualised choice, which is contrary to all evidence.