An alien from another planet drops in on us. This alien is a member of a species that has developed the ability to travel across galaxies with the same ease that we travel across different states.
Do you think this alien creature would say we have “freedom of movement”? Or do you the alien would say we humans are extremely limited in where we can go and that the reason we believe differently is because we have never experienced real travel.
Maybe the alien is wrong. Maybe what is “free” is in the eye of the beholder. Perhaps, as you intimate, “free” is all relative. But in that case, why do we deny children and animal free will? Or the mentally ill? Don’t they have “freedom of will”, even if it is more constrained than what we have? Why isn’t this as absurd as saying that a bacterium has “freedom of movement”, just a lesser amount than whatever the inter-galactic alien has? Surely there becomes a point when it is wrong to use that term.
All those statements are making essentially the same point. Let me explain why I believe that point is incorrect.
It seems to be assuming a misguided interpretation of what “determinism” is. By asking, for instance, what use intelligence is if everything is predetermined, you’re implicitly assuming that everything would turn out exactly the same way no matter what choices we made. That is of course absurd. Outcomes are predetermined based on a set of conditions and the agents acting on those conditions, such as our intelligence – all of which could in theory be described by a sufficiently large (and completely deterministic) finite-state machine. The short answer to why we have intelligence is that it results in predetermined outcomes that are usually more advantageous for us than the ones that would otherwise have occurred. But with any given initial state, whatever it may be, and a fixed set of transition rules, there is always only one possible outcome.
Another way to say this is that our minds are part of the state of the physical universe. It goes back to what I said earlier about the free will illusion being a side effect of consciousness and being entirely subjective. The only possible alternative is that our minds defy the laws of physics and incorporate some element of the supernatural. Since there is zero evidence for such a belief, I choose to reject it.
If free will does not exist, then no one bares responsibility for their choices, their actions are nothing less than the conduit of all past experiences. No one wants to go down that road.
Maybe. I don’t know. I just know that we don’t know enough about anything to be using that term in non-ironic way.
At what point would you decide that a being acts on their own volition, but without free will? Or are the two terms are interchangeable to you? They aren’t the same thing to me.
I just checked a couple of dictionaries, and they list 'em as synonyms.
But I don’t see that it much matters; won’t splitting 'em just move everything back a step? Won’t you next just say sure, I act on my own volition, but I don’t do so 100% of the time – and even when acting on my own volition, I’m not always acting 100% on my own volition – so, like, we maybe need to preface that term with a conditional limitation, or swap in some other word we haven’t yet thought up, huh?
Well, a function of past experiences + the kind of person they are ultimately (their particular neurology).
I don’t see any issue since after such a realization; it still makes sense to put criminals in jail (or other means of reform), it still makes sense to try to influence others’ behaviour (e.g. praise good behaviour), and we still can’t predict what someone is going to do next.
Why not? Determinism isn’t inconsistent with subjective choice. See my previous post.
But our actions are the consequence of past experiences – the cumulative effect of all our experiences since (or before) birth, and the happenstance of our particular brain physiology.
None of this exonerates the criminal. Again going back to my analogy with the finite state machine, the fact that it was predetermined by all preceding conditions that a criminal would make a choice to commit a crime doesn’t change the fact that he did make the choice in his subjective mind. If conditions had been different – say, if penalties had been greater or the chances of getting caught had been higher – the predetermined outcome might have been different. OTOH, if penalties are too severe then we may be helping to create a career criminal instead of rehabilitating one. Therefore as a society we need to tweak these conditions so that the finite state machine we call the human brain responds in mutually beneficial ways.
The thing is…that isn’t what I mean. In absolute Newtonian determinism, there aren’t any choices. We all move along pre-established trajectories like billiard balls or planets. “Choice” is meaningless. Billiard balls don’t get to choose which direction they will bounce…and thus there isn’t any point in them evolving large, complex, expensive, and wholly illusory decision-making mechanisms.
Again, though, why bother with intelligence if it doesn’t avail anyone of anything?
A good many of us see a third alternative: our minds actually are decision-making machines, and our personalities and selves are part of this intelligent process. We make choices, and have volition.
It doesn’t violate any laws of physics. Indeed, the fact that our intelligence and choices are so very clearly limited by physical laws – a drunk person does not make decisions that are as wise as the same person makes when sober – that suggests the physicality of the entire thinking – and choosing – operation.
Newtonian predetermination is for insects. People make choices all the live-long day, and some of them are even good ones.
I see a huge false dichotomy in “Predeterminism or else Magic.” I believe in the third choice: physically limited and physically empowered intelligence with choices as a means of expression of that intelligence.
ETA: just as with monstro, I’m falling into the trap of arguing against you as if you’re promoting absolute Newtonian determinism. Actually, I suspect you’re holding a fourth view, determinism, but not absolute Newtonian determinism. It gets complicated!
You’re quibbling and I disagree with what you’ve decided determinism to mean.
You’re standing in a cafeteria line, you have the choice of apple or orange. If I knew every single thing that mattered in your entire life ( as you do) I would be able to not only predict but KNOW what you would pick. You have a choice of Apple or orange, but not really. That is what determinism means.
I completely disagree and I guess I haven’t communicated my point clearly. Consider for a moment a good chess-playing computer. You make a move that presents it with various tradeoffs – it can lose a piece, or it can preserve it but weaken its position, or maybe it can attack and defer the decision.
Is the computer making a “choice” here?
What it will do is likely unknown and unknowable even to the programmers in most cases without actually executing the algorithms, yet what it does is absolutely deterministic, absolutely predetermined, and – absent some artificial randomization – will be exactly the same each time, by definition. And even the randomization would be, under the laws of physics, ultimately deterministic.
I would argue that the computer is absolutely making a choice in a meaningful sense. The game of chess is a whole series of choices, and you win or lose based on how good the choices are.
This is a simple paradigm that also describes any intelligence. What we do in everyday life is like a much more complex game of chess, and equally predetermined by all the initial states. What we think of as free-will choice-making is simply how we experience consciousness. Actually I think one could argue that this is fundamentally what consciousness is – the experience of willing thoughts and actions. But from an objective, outside perspective, all that’s happening is the inexorable and inevitable and deterministic transitioning of neural states, responding to sensory inputs and to its own state changes. Either that or it’s magic. There is no other explanatory mechanism.
Why don’t you ask me before telling me what I’m going to say?
I can distinguish a voluntary act from an involuntary act based on the subjective experience of each. A voluntary act feels like it is under my control. I can explain its purpose (whether or not that explanation is the right one is besides the point). It does not feel alien or intrusive or ego-dystonic. An involuntary act doesn’t feel this way at all.
So when I say I went to Bojangles under my own volition today, I am saying that the action was carried out with my awareness and consent.
But I don’t experience this when I’m having a tic, or when I’m carrying out a basic reflex (yawning, sneezing). I don’t feel like these things are under my control. I feel like they are without any purpose and that they came from out of nowhere.
For me, the difference between volition and free will is that the former does not presume that I am consciously controlling (“willing”) anything. It is all about the subjective experience of me being in control, and outsiders perceiving me to be in control. In contrast, the notion of free will presumes that my voluntary actions are indeed under my conscious control–that my conscious mind is actually the one calling the shots. When I see my cat licking herself, I understand that she’s carrying out that behavior voluntarily. But does she consciously decide to lick herself, like an individual with free will would? How can I possibly know that? It’s just a lot safer to say she exhibits volition just like I do, instead of proclaiming I have something special that she doesn’t have just because she can’t speak English.
The following analogy came to me while I was showering a few minutes ago:
Let’s say that our thoughts, feelings, and actions were being beamed into us by entities observing us from another dimension. While we do possess a consciousness and a sense of self, our brains pretty much serve as an elaborate transistor radio. The information being beamed into our brains seems like it is being generated by us. But it isn’t. Actually none of the information in our brains is self-generated. The sole purpose of our primitive consciousness is to create the illusion that all the thoughts, feelings, and actions swirling around actually belongs to us and are under our control. Maybe we work better when we think we’re in control.
Let’s say that from the moment we are born, the control of each of our brains is given to a single individual. Every thought, feeling and action this individual beams into your brain feels like it belongs to you simply because you have never experienced a different “broadcaster”. So whenever you carry out this entity’s signals to act, those actions feel voluntary.
But let’s say one day, another entity takes over the controls of your brain and starts beaming in their information. You may not consciously recognize this information as foreign and different, but maybe your brain can’t properly interpret the signals, which prevents you from coming up with a good “just so” story to justify your actions. And the end result is that you either perceive yourself to have impaired volition, or other people perceive you be impaired.
In neither scenario are you acting with free will, because you aren’t actually in control of anything.
Do I believe we’re remotely controlled toys? No, there is no evidence to support this. But what is the test that would disprove such a thing?
I’ve read what you wrote. I understand it. I agree with this one sentence wholeheartedly and believe it is the key, the rest of your post is handwaving.
The algorithm exists, whether or not someone decides to compute it.
Well, first of all I have no such intimate knowledge of all the neural states in my brain, nor is it possible for any self-contained system to have such complete knowledge of itself.
But, yes, that is indeed what determinism means, and if you somehow did have such detailed information about all my relevant neural states, synapse and sensory states, and about the apple and orange in question and the environment around them, then yes, you’d be able to make that prediction. And I would happily think I was making a free choice. Given the future potential for digitally storing all the information in our brains, it may not even be that far-fetched to have enough such information to make behavioral predictions that are correct most of the time – and would be wrong only because of imperfect simulation of the brain process or the sensory environment.
Of course you could tell me your prediction, and then out of spite I’d do the opposite – but that doesn’t count because now you’ve become part of the conditions driving the response. You and I would BOTH feel we were exercising our free will to play this interesting game, but a third party observing the whole process, given all relevant information about BOTH of us and the environment we were in, could reliably predict how this deterministic process would play out!
My past decisions and current metal state are amongst the most important things that matter to me and very important in dictating any decisions I make. To know “every single thing that mattered in my entire life” you would need to know all my past decisions *and *my current mental state at the time that the choice needs to be made.IOW you would need to be able to experience everything that I have ever experienced in order to know my choices. But if you have experienced everything that I have experienced then that you are indistinguishable from me.
IOW the only way that you could actually know in advance whether I would choose an apple or an orange would be for you to be me. but since I do not know myself what I will choose, then you can not know either, since you are experiencing everything that I experience, including the experience of being uncertain what choice I will make.
The experience of uncertainty is as important to the choice made as anything else, and if you don’t experience that you can not have the information required to know what choice will be made, And if you do experience that uncertainty then, by definition, you must be uncertain what choice will be made.
It really is turtles all the way down. You can’t experience everything important that I have experienced right up to the moment the decision is made unless you also experience the uncertianty about what choice to make. That uncertainty is itself very important. But if you experience uncertainty up to the point that the decision is made, then you can not know in advance what decision will be made.
This is where these discussions always seem to go astray. As humans we can not only make decisions, but we can analyse the outcomes of those decisions and from emotional reactions to those decisions and outcomes, and those will in turn dictate future decisions. And as any psychologist will tell you, we are able to control what emotional reactions we have and how we think about outcomes. So the reaction to past events is under our control, and that in turn controls our future decision which then cascades forever through our lives.
Even if we accept that a neonate is pre-programmed with a certain personality type, certain instinctive reactions and so forth, those things can be overridden by the higher brain centres. At some point the individual experiences a noenate has acquired will produce a unique person: a personality. At that point self-awareness overwhelms determinism.
While the personality may be deterministic up to that point, after that point the personality can shape itself. It can choose how to react and why and when. At that point the personality has free will. It can freely choose which if the various mechanisms available to it it wishes to employ. The past may have determined which mechanisms it has to select from, but it does not dictate which of the available mechanisms are employed.
At that point you can no longer determine whether somebody will select an apple or an orange. At that stage, the decisions made *within *the mind *about *the mind will become more important than anything external that could be recorded or observed. We enter the realm of qualia, where the sensation of of experience is more important than the experience in determining choice.
At that stage you, as an external observer, can no longer determine what choices I will make. An observer would need to be able to experience everything that I have ever experienced in order to make my choices because most of what I experience is qualia. And if an observer has experienced everything that I have experienced then that observer is indistinguishable from me and hence must be just as uncertain as I am myself…
IOW the only way that you could actually know in advance whether I would choose an apple or an orange would be for you to be me. but since I do not know myself what i will choose, then you can not know either, since you are experiencing everything that I experience, including the experience of being uncertain what choice I will make. The experience of uncertainty is as important to the choice made as anything else, and if you don’t experience that you can not have the information required to know what choice will be made, And if you do experience that uncertainty then, by definition, you must be uncertain what choice will be made.
No, it isn’t. Whether something is “unknowable” is not the same as whether or not it’s deterministic, much less when it’s simply “unknown” which is a matter of information and technology. Unknowability can come about either from information that is not accessible (e.g.- quantum states) or from some intrinsic principle that always requires more time to computationally predict the outcome than it takes the universe to produce it. None of those things are relevant to determinism, which is not the same thing as practical predictability.
In any case, my argument here is fundamentally a simple one. The human brain is a machine, operating on physical principles. Period. It’s not influenced by a soul, by Heavenly Powers, by magic, phlogiston, or any other mythical forces. It’s a very complex machine whose possessors experience as consciousness the subjective sense of taking voluntary actions and having thoughts, hopes, and dreams. It’s quite a wondrous and marvelous machine. But it’s not magic. And, for that matter, it’s not fundamentally different from the brains of other higher animals, and differs only in degree.
Let’s not. Let’s say that some people are getting beamed that stuff by a broadcaster and merely feel like they’re carrying out voluntary actions – and that some other people, who feel the same way, aren’t getting beamed thoughts and feelings and actions from some outside source. Which leads to this:
If some of us are remote-controlled toys with delusions of voluntariness – and some of us in fact had voluntary actions under our own conscious control – then how could we tell the difference? What is the test that could distinguish one from the other?
We can agree the human brain is a machine and doesn’t operate using quantum states so I have no idea why that entered this conversation. And as far the unknowable simply being the uncalculable because of time constraints, it doesn’t make any difference.
Storms are determined. We may never know what the wind speed in Chicago will be two years from now but that doesn’t mean it IS knowable.
This may seem like a silly semantic argument I’m pulling, but we’re discussing human choice. The one current machine that can calculate all the experiences it has ever had into a decision of Apple or orange is the one person making the choice, and it is still not that regardless of anyone else’s inability to calculate it beforehand.
Right, and at that point the “prediction” is essentially being made by making a complete copy of the person’s brain and environment, and asking it what it would do.
I have no issue with the idea that if you could make a perfect copy of Mijin’s neural state and environment (this is physically impossible, but anyway), then it would make the same choice as me.
It’s essentially like if you made a video of me making a decision and then replay the video…of course you will see me make the same decision again.
The purpose of the first part of your argument is unclear. My point was to illustrate the deterministic nature of our existence, and the subjective nature of free will which is just an artifact of consciousness. You’re reaffirming that with sufficient information such determinism could in theory lead to complete predictability of all behavior, which was my point, but I don’t think it’s a point that should be trivialized as it’s the core of the discussion here. And I don’t think it’s quite like the video example. A video or a movie is always going to end the same way no matter how often you watch it because it’s trivially bounded to that singular outcome. Our interaction with the universe is equally deterministic but far less trivially and less obviously so, dominated as it is by the perspective of the aforementioned consciousness.
