# Would you give up free will for world peace? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 28, 2023, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-give-up-free-will-for-world-peace/990800 "2023-09-28T01:17:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 19
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2023, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-give-up-free-will-for-world-peace/990800/361 "2023-10-06T15:36:26Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > Now, all that natural selection can tell me is that something is a member of the set of things that behave as if they have the illusion of free will. Consequently, natural selection cannot tell me whether something has the illusion of free will. Hence, it does not explain why something has the illusion of free will, in contrast to how Socrates’ humanity explains his mortality, and how having free will explains having the feeling of free will. There is more explanatory power to the hypothesis that we have the feeling of free will because we have free will than to the hypothesis that we have that illusion due to natural selection. I am not attempting to claim that natural selection is proof that we have an illusion of free will. I never have and never will. I have no idea how you would use natural selection as proof that we have an illusion of free will. If all you have been doing is arguing that it does not, then I agree. Natural selection is not a reason to believe that free will is an illusion. Natural selection is not the reason that I believe that free will is an illusion. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2023, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-give-up-free-will-for-world-peace/990800/362 "2023-10-06T16:14:49Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > I am not attempting to claim that natural selection is proof that we have an illusion of free will. That’s not what this is about. It’s just about the claim that we can say ‘human beings have the feeling of free will because of the adaptive benefit it bestows’ in the same sense as ‘Socrates is mortal because he is human’ or indeed ‘human beings have the feeling of free will because they actually do have free will’. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2023, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-give-up-free-will-for-world-peace/990800/363 "2023-10-06T17:03:16Z")
Whoops – posted by accident before finishing, and might want to change or add to it later, when the edit window’s gone. So am copying and then removing the rest of this post entirely, and may re-post it later. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2023, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-give-up-free-will-for-world-peace/990800/364 "2023-10-06T17:21:19Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > Let’s try this another way. Take the sentence ‘Socrates if mortal, because he is human’. This asserts that Socrates’ mortality is explained by his humanity. Why is that a good explanation? Well, consider the set of all mortal things. Then consider the set of all humans. The latter is a (strict) subset of the former. Hence, every thing that is human is also mortal. Sure. > [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > Then consider the set of all things that have free will. (Note that this set may be empty without changing the logic.) This is a subset of the set of all things that have a feeling of free will. Hence, having free will explains having the feeling of free will. If you tell me that something is a member of the set of things having free will, I know it is also a member of the set of things having the feeling of free will. Sure. > [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > Now consider the set of all things that show the same behavior as things that have the feeling of free will. If there are other mental states that confer this behavior—as there plausibly are—then that set is _not_ a subset of the set of all things that have the illusion of free will. Hence, telling me that something is a member of this set does _not_ tell me that that something has a feeling of free will. Do you agree that there is a clear difference between this case and the other cases? Only because of the way you chose to define things. You take as a given that Socrates is a human, for example. But we may not know that. Socrates could be an alien reptilian shape-shifting to look like a human. In that case, he would be mortal because he is an alien reptilian, not because he is human. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2023, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-give-up-free-will-for-world-peace/990800/365 "2023-10-06T17:21:28Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > Then consider the set of all things that have free will. (Note that this set may be empty without changing the logic.) This is a subset of the set of all things that have a feeling of free will. Why? Something could have free will and not know it. In fact, you can’t posit that humans have free will without acknowledging that; because there are humans who don’t have a feeling of free will. > [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > Furthermore, we typically expect that unlikely things occurring have a further explanation. Hence, the problem of the smallness of the cosmological constant. It is very unlikely, on standard quantum field theory, that the various contributions to it’s value cancel out almost, but not quite, exactly. So, we seek for a further explanation—because ‘things just shook out that way’ is not typically considered sufficient. We’d like for there to be an explanation beyond ‘we just got lucky’. Every single deal of a deck of 52 cards that were properly shuffled is extremely unlikely. Nevertheless, this happens all the time, and nobody goes around saying that we need a further explanation of each hand. We do tend to think we need a further explanation if such a deal falls neatly into an order of suits and numbers. That has nothing to do with such a hand being less likely than any other hand. It has to do with how our brains work. > [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > Hence, it’s also reasonable to look for an explanation of the feeling of free will—which might e.g. be given by actually having free will: then, no uncertainty remains. Lots of uncertainty remains. You’re just refusing to see it. Our brains also work in such a fashion that most humans are uncomfortable with uncertainty; so we tend to try to come up with definitive answers when there aren’t any. Some humans have this factor much more than others. Humans who feel they have to be certain and humans who can accept being uncertain probably behave differently. Whether overall we’re in process of being selected for one or the other and, because we’re in the process, both traits are still around; or whether each trait is more useful in different circumstances and enough humans are in those different circumstances that (as with sickle cell) the traits of hating uncertainty, liking uncertainty, and feeling neutral about uncertainty are all selected for in enough of the population to keep them all around seems to me to be – uncertain. (Another possibility is of course that those traits don’t cause enough difference in behavior for selection to be operating on them. I think there’s evidence against that, but not being expert in a relevant field don’t know where to find clear statistical studies.) > [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > That’s not what this is about. It’s just about the claim that we can say ‘human beings have the feeling of free will because of the adaptive benefit it bestows’ in the same sense as ‘Socrates is mortal because he is human’ or indeed ‘human beings have the feeling of free will because they actually do have free will’. Nobody is making the claim that we can say ‘human beings have the feeling of free will because of the adaptive benefit it bestows’ in the same sense as ‘Socrates is mortal because he is human’. But there is no way whatsoever that we can say ‘human beings have the feeling of free will because they actually do have free will’ in the same sense as that in which we can say ‘Socrates is mortal because he is human’. It’s an entirely different sort of statement, and it rests on no logical basis whatsoever: because it’s utterly clear that humans often think things that aren’t so, and perceive things inaccurately. If you want to state it as a hypothesis for further testing, fine. But it’s no more of an explanation than is ‘lots of people believe in Bigfoot, therefore the explanation for that is that Bigfoot must exist’. – I came into this thread pretty sure that free will exists, presuming that the entire mind and not just the conscious mind is taken into account. By now you’ve pretty much convinced me that it doesn’t, just because your arguments for it are so bad. I doubt that’s going to change my perception that I have it, though, because my brain doesn’t seem to want to work that way; any more than it wants to believe that the chair I’m sitting on is made up mostly of empty space. But I can function in the universe without understanding it. Which is a good thing; because it’s pretty obvious to me that I have to. Now I (in which I include my physical sensations of hunger and my physical blood sugar level, among other portions of me); or possibly the universe as a whole; am/are going to decide what to have for lunch. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2023, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-give-up-free-will-for-world-peace/990800/366 "2023-10-06T17:35:45Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > – I came into this thread pretty sure that free will exists, presuming that the entire mind and not just the conscious mind is taken into account. By now you’ve pretty much convinced me that it doesn’t, just because your arguments for it are so bad. I doubt that’s going to change my perception that I have it, though, because my brain doesn’t seem to want to work that way; any more than it wants to believe that the chair I’m sitting on is made up mostly of empty space. But I can function in the universe without understanding it. Which is a good thing; because it’s pretty obvious to me that I have to. I think the problem is just that words like “I” and “decide” and “choose” carry too much baggage. Look. Your mind works through inputs. Your senses, emotions, past experience - it all comes together to crunch data and output results. It’s a self-referential process (you see something which makes you feel a certain way which colors your perception of further inputs which impacts your mood further, etc etc). The process in which data is fed into your mind, processed, and output is what we call cognition or decision making or whatever else you want to describe it as. When you crunch the numbers and decide to act, you are making a decision. The fact that you are not consciously aware of every aspect of that decisionmaking doesn’t mean that it isn’t you making a decision. If you are put into a situation and, given your internal state, past experience, etc you choose a certain action… I think it is pretty self-evident that, if we reset the clock and moved the entire universe (your subjective internal state included) back to the moment befoee you made a decision… you would make the same decision. How could you not? All the inputs are the same. This is what I mean when I say that we are not _free_ - if you reset everything, your internal mental state included, then events would play out the same way. If true randomness exists, if doing this experiment would cause quantum events to occur slightly differently, then I would expect that tiny changes would propagate from the quantum scale to the atomic scale to the realms of chemistry, biology, and psychology. If we go back to the instant before you made a decision, there may not be enough time for changes to propagate far enough to change your decision; but if we went back far enough then the whole world would be completely different, per the butterfly effect. But these differences aren’t being directed by _us_, so I don’t think they make us free. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2023, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-give-up-free-will-for-world-peace/990800/367 "2023-10-06T18:04:50Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > I think the problem is just that words like “I” and “decide” and “choose” carry too much baggage. > > Look. Your mind works through inputs. Your senses, emotions, past experience - it all comes together to crunch data and output results. It’s a self-referential process (you see something which makes you feel a certain way which colors your perception of further inputs which impacts your mood further, etc etc). > > The process in which data is fed into your mind, processed, and output is what we call cognition or decision making or whatever else you want to describe it as. > > When you crunch the numbers and decide to act, you are making a decision. The fact that you are not consciously aware of every aspect of that decisionmaking doesn’t mean that it isn’t you making a decision. Yeah. And I think that another thing is – my sensation that “I” am choosing what to have for lunch affects, if not the decision to have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich instead of melted cheese two days running or a tuna sandwich when I had one two days ago or something that needed time to cook, the ability to make that decision at all. If I didn’t feel like “I” were deciding that, I think that “I”, as actually constituted, wouldn’t be able to eat any of those, for lack of being able to decide which. (A problem that very many people in human history/prehistory, and all too many now, don’t have – because their question isn’t ‘which thing to eat?’ but ‘is there anything to eat?’) The supposed person who feels compelled to eat peanut butter despite hating it – that person might, I suppose, theoretically exist; but that person isn’t me. (And, in practice – most people who hate peanut butter don’t eat very much peanut butter; even if their conscious minds do keep telling them that it would be better for them. They might, however, find something they think is healthy that they do like to eat.) > [@Babale](#): > > If you are put into a situation and, given your internal state, past experience, etc you choose a certain action… I think it is pretty self-evident that, if we reset the clock and moved the entire universe (your subjective internal state included) back to the moment befoee you made a decision… you would make the same decision. How could you not? All the inputs are the same. > > This is what I mean when I say that we are not _free_ - if you reset everything, your internal mental state included, then events would play out the same way. I’m not sure. I’m aware enough of the decision-making process that led to this peanut butter sandwich that I agree that most of it would have gone the same way, given the exact same conditions. But at the point at which, having found out that the not-used-in-a-while jar of preserves I’d intended to use had gone moldy, and having gone to look for something else instead, I took the raspberry instead of the blackberry version – I’m not sure that I might not have taken blackberry instead. The real problem, I think, arises when we’re talking not about raspberry or blackberry jam on the sandwich; but about things with a more significant effect, especially on other people. (Or at any rate, the real problem with regards to humans; not the real problem with the nature of the universe, which is the same if we’re only talking about which jar of jam.) Some of those also clearly couldn’t have gone another way – I’ve fantasized about murdering a couple of people, but I knew perfectly well that I-as-I-am/was wasn’t going to do any such thing – but others feel a whole lot less clear. – I was trying to do examples; but any example I can think of would be clear to some people and not to others. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2023, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-give-up-free-will-for-world-peace/990800/368 "2023-10-06T18:17:41Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > But at the point at which, having found out that the not-used-in-a-while jar of preserves I’d intended to use had gone moldy, and having gone to look for something else instead, I took the raspberry instead of the blackberry version – I’m not sure that I might not have taken blackberry instead. But why did you take the raspberry instead of the blackberry? If it’s because the raspberry was slightly further forward on the shelf and so stood out to you more, then that would _happen again_ in exactly the same way when we do our do-over, because every atom im the universe is exactly where it was to begin with. This _is_ the sort of difference that I expect would crop up first if there _is_ a random component to quantum mechanics, though. But I don’t know how significant these events would be to determine if the propagation of changes would take the few seconds to reach the macro-level or a few years. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2023, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-give-up-free-will-for-world-peace/990800/369 "2023-10-06T18:26:47Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > The answer about the coin landing on its edge is the same as the answer about the die coming up odd—yes, there is a difference between ‘landing on the edge’ and ‘landing heads or tails’, but that doesn’t suddenly mean there is a difference between ‘landing heads’ and ‘landing tails’. So..you’re saying if the coin lands on its edge I don’t get a million dollars? Well then, that shows that flipping heads is indeed causally connected to me winning a million dollars. I get nothing before I flip the coin, and I only win if specific outcomes occur. If there are two winning lottery tickets, do we say that having a winning ticket is not causally connected to collecting a prize? > [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > It still isn’t any more true that you can tell that your coin came up heads from the fact that you got the million dollars. But in the context of this discussion, that’s the opposite direction of reasoning. We know that a trait exists and we are trying to infer a benefit. It’s not that we are aware of a specific benefit and are trying to infer the trait. The “many to one” relationship is irrelevant here, as we know which of the “many” is the actual path. Also, this is a completely different argument to the one that I took exception to, and that you’ve been repeating. You have been saying that we cannot say that A has a benefit, if some other trait B would have had the same benefit. Now you’re arguing that we cannot discern whether we arrived at some outcome via A or B. That’s a _new_ _argument_, not a defence at all of what you were saying. > [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > The reproductive benefit is due to the behavior shown, not due to the subjective experience of free will, hence, that experience could be absent, as long as the behavior stayed the same True, and AIUI, that’s the main point of contention between you and @Babale. If the subjective experience is epiphenonemal then, by definition, it confers no survival advantage in itself. @Babale’s position – that that feeling _does_ have a survival advantage – entails that it has some effect on behaviour. (since we’re talking about a mental trait) ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2023, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-give-up-free-will-for-world-peace/990800/370 "2023-10-06T18:38:02Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > True, and AIUI, that’s the main point of contention between you and @Babale. If the subjective experience is epiphenonemal then, by definition, it confers no survival advantage in itself. @Babale’s position – that that feeling _does_ have a survival advantage – entails that it has some effect on behaviour. To clarify my position since you’re close here but not quite right - I think there is no doubt that our subjective experience affects our behavior, and thus impacts our odds of survival. I do _not_ know if our subjective experience arose specifically because the way that it impacts our behavior is advantageous, or because having a subjective experience is a requirement for some other trait that is directly advantageous, or because it is a side effect of some other function (epiphenomenal). I _do_ feel confident in saying that it did not arise by chance alone. Obviously random mutations are the mechanism by which this function arose, so randomness was evolved. But without selection pressure (either directly on the behavior we show thanks to our subjective experience or on the behavior we exhibit due to some other traits that requires a subjective experience) I do not believe that this mental structure would have arisen. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2023, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-give-up-free-will-for-world-peace/990800/371 "2023-10-06T18:43:10Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > But why did you take the raspberry instead of the blackberry? If it’s because the raspberry was slightly further forward on the shelf and so stood out to you more, then that would _happen again_ in exactly the same way when we do our do-over, because every atom im the universe is exactly where it was to begin with. They were both in a box of three, packed in such a way that none of them was easier to get out than any of the others. I like both raspberries and blackberries. Maybe I like raspberries fractionally more? Not sure. (I didn’t buy the stuff, it was a gift, and I hadn’t read the label. So I wasn’t expecting the jelly to taste mostly like the “juice concentrates” they used to sweeten it so they could put ‘no added sugar’ on the package, and not really like raspberries at all. I strongly suspect that the other two jars in the package taste the same. And it’s too sweet. Bah.) ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2023, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-give-up-free-will-for-world-peace/990800/372 "2023-10-06T18:47:21Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > They were both in a box of three, packed in such a way that none of them was easier to get out than any of the others. I like both raspberries and blackberries. Maybe I like raspberries fractionally more? Not sure. Even if you blindly reached into the box to grab one, the details in how you did so - where you stood near the fridge and at what angle your hand approached the box and therefore which jar was easier to grab - that’s all stuff that should happen identically if we rewound the clock and let things play out again. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2023, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-give-up-free-will-for-world-peace/990800/373 "2023-10-06T21:11:47Z")
True. However, in this particular case, I looked at all three in the closed box (it had a transparent covering) and decided which to take before trying to remove any of them. It certainly felt like I was deciding on a flavor; it didn’t feel at all as if one was easier to reach than another. And the decision on a flavor felt like it could have gone either way. Which, of course, doesn’t mean that it actually could have. (They were all easier to reach than hunting through a cupboard to see whether I had additional choices in preserves/jams/jellies. So that was certainly part of the issue.) ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [October 6, 2023, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-give-up-free-will-for-world-peace/990800/374 "2023-10-06T21:20:54Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > True. However, in this particular case, I looked at all three in the closed box (it had a transparent covering) and decided which to take before trying to remove any of them. It certainly felt like I was deciding on a flavor; it didn’t feel at all as if one was easier to reach than another. And the decision on a flavor felt like it could have gone either way. Which, of course, doesn’t mean that it actually could have. [The Human brain is notoriously terrible at picking randomly.](https://www.liveabout.com/random-number-generators-more-complicated-than-you-think-4177342#:~:text=Human%20Brains%20Are%20Terrible%20at%20Randomness&text=Human%20brains%20are%20terrible%20at%20picking%20random%20numbers.,chosen%2050%25%20of%20the%20time.) So I doubt that we are actually capable of picking a jar (or anything else) at random. It seems reasonable to suggest that _if_ true randomness is possible in the universe and _if_ quantum mechanics exhibits it and _if_ that randomness can propagate up to impact our actions, then an action with little thought behind it would be easier for this propagation process to impact than a well reasoned action. But we make a lot of assumptions there. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2023, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-give-up-free-will-for-world-peace/990800/375 "2023-10-07T00:11:57Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > Only because of the way you chose to define things. You take as a given that Socrates is a human, for example. No. I’m saying that learning that Socrates is a human entails knowing that he is mortal. > [@thorny\_locust](#): > > Something could have free will and not know it. I don’t see how that could work. Will presupposes intentionality, i.e. aboutness regarding our actions. And freedom entails choice, options from which to choose. So I can’t see how you could have free will—the ability to consciously choose between options—while not having the experience that one does. Sure, some people might convince themselves that this is just an illusion, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have the same experience if choosing between options. Anyway, it doesn’t change the logic. All it means is that then, having free will is not the complete explanation. We might add something like ‘having veridical conscious perceptions of its capabilities’, that is, consider the intersection of the set of all creatures with free will and the set of all creatures having such self-perception. This manoeuver is, of course, also open in the case of the argument from selection. But then, it already means giving up on the idea that our feeling of free will is due to the selection benefit it bestows. It must rather be due to that selection benefit plus something else that yields a subset of the set of all creatures having the experience of freedom as a result. It would perhaps be interesting to speculate about what this could be! > [@thorny\_locust](#): > > We do tend to think we need a further explanation if such a deal falls neatly into an order of suits and numbers. That has nothing to do with such a hand being less likely than any other hand. It has to do with how our brains work. If that were the case, for instance, we’d never see anything wrong with a poker player always getting four aces. It’s certainly possible! But in general, we would eventually become somewhat suspicious and ask whether there might not be another explanation. No? > [@thorny\_locust](#): > > Lots of uncertainty remains. You’re just refusing to see it. No. If we indeed do have the feeling of free will because we have free will, no uncertainty remains about why we have the feeling of free will. > [@thorny\_locust](#): > > Nobody is making the claim that we can say ‘human beings have the feeling of free will because of the adaptive benefit it bestows’ in the same sense as ‘Socrates is mortal because he is human’. Lots of people do. I’ve posted examples in this thread. > [@thorny\_locust](#): > > But there is no way whatsoever that we can say ‘human beings have the feeling of free will because they actually do have free will’ in the same sense as that in which we can say ‘Socrates is mortal because he is human’. It’s an entirely different sort of statement, and it rests on no logical basis whatsoever: because it’s utterly clear that humans often think things that aren’t so, and perceive things inaccurately. That completely misunderstands the basic logic here. It’s a statement of the same logical form: everything that is A, is B; x is A; hence, x is B. Everything that is human, is mortal; Socrates is human; hence, Socrates is mortal. Everything that has free will has the experience of free will; humans have free will; hence, humans have the experience of free will. But not: everything that has the adaptive benefit brought on by the behavior imbued by having the illusion of free will has the illusion of free will (as a creature that experiences its actions as due to compulsion, and shows all the same behaviors we do, would reap the same reproductive benefits). > [@thorny\_locust](#): > > But it’s no more of an explanation than is ‘lots of people believe in Bigfoot, therefore the explanation for that is that Bigfoot must exist’. That’s the entirely wrong way around. I’m not arguing that because we have the illusion of free will, we should believe free will exists; I’m saying that if free will exists, that explains our having the experience of having free will. > [@thorny\_locust](#): > > – I came into this thread pretty sure that free will exists, presuming that the entire mind and not just the conscious mind is taken into account. By now you’ve pretty much convinced me that it doesn’t, just because your arguments for it are so bad It doesn’t really matter one whit to me what you believe about free will. But I do want to note that to the best of my recollection, I haven’t made any argument in favor of the existence of free will. I have argued that _if_ it existed, that would explain our experience of having it. I have also argued that its existence is consistent, rather than incoherent, by giving a mechanism for its operation. > [@Mijin](#): > > Well then, that shows that flipping heads is indeed causally connected to me winning a million dollars. No. Again, consider the difference in terms of sets: the set of million-dollar winners is the union of the set of those for which the coin came up heads, and those for whom the coin came up tails; the set of those for whom the coin landed on its edge is in its complement, so doesn’t matter here. Hence, knowing that somebody is a million-dollar winner does not tell you whether they are a heads-getter or a tail-getter. Likewise, the set of creatures that obtain a fitness benefit thanks to showing behavior identical to that bestowed by having the illusion of freedom is the union of the sets of those that have this illusion, those that feel compelled to act in the requisite way, those that are aware of the deterministic nature of their choice-processes and show the same behavior, and so on. Thus, knowing that some creature has that behavior does not tell us whether they have the illusion of free will. Hence, in particular, you can’t say that any creature has free will because of that fitness benefit. The set of all things that show the adaptive behavior is not a subset of the set of things that have the experience of free will. There are elements of that set that have no experience of free will. The set of all things that have free will is a subset of the set of all things that have the experience of free will (modulo the caveats above). Hence, we can point to having free will as an explanation of having the feeling of free will in a way we can’t with natural selection (or more accurately, the adaptive behavior bestowed by the illusion of free choice). Are you, at least, clear on the fact that there’s a clear distinction here? If not, it might help you to draw a diagram. Start with the structure of ‘Socrates is mortal because he is human’—a big circle of all mortal things, a smaller circle of all humans, and an x marks the spot for Socrates. Then do the same for ‘creatures have the feeling of free will because they actually have free will’. Again, big circle for ‘creatures having the experience of free will’, then smaller circle for ‘creatures having free will’, then an x for any specific creature of that sort. Then perhaps introduce the wrinkle due to @thorny_locust : suppose it is possible for there to be creatures that have free will, but aren’t aware of it. Then, the smaller ‘creatures with free will’ circle will no longer be contained in the larger circle of ‘creatures with the experience of free will’. What does that mean? Well, that ‘having free will’ now is only a partial explanation for having the experience of free will. Now, intersect this smaller circle with one labeled ‘creatures having veridical self-perception’. The intersection of ‘creatures having free will’ and ‘creatures having veridical self-perception’ now should again be a proper subset of ‘creatures having the experience of free will’. We have again a complete explanation, a _reason why_ a creature has the feeling of free will: _because_ it has free will _and_ a veridical self-perception. Then draw another circle, of ‘creatures that have the adaptive benefit bestowed by the behavior associated with the illusion of free will’. Where should we put that one? Well, as there are possible creatures that show that behavior without having the illusion of free will, it will obviously only partially intersect with the circle ‘creatures that have the illusion of free will’. But then, as in the case of ‘unconscious’ free will, having that reproductive benefit does not explain having the illusion of free will! We don’t have a _reason why_ a creature has the illusion of free will, and hence, can’t say that they have that illusion _because of_ the adaptive benefit due to the associated behavior. _Something else_ must be appealed to, another set that intersects that of ‘creatures with the adaptive benefit…’ such that this intersection is once again a subset of the set of ‘creatures having the illusion of free will’. Let’s call this the x-property. Then, we can say that a creature has the experience of free will because of the adaptive benefit that generates _and_ the x-property, and will once again have a proper explanation. Do you, at least, now see the difference between this case and something like the ‘Socrates is mortal because he is human’-case? If not, where exactly did you get lost? > [@Mijin](#): > > If there are two winning lottery tickets, do we say that having a winning ticket is not causally connected to collecting a prize? Having _a_ lottery ticket is the cause of winning. Having _that specific one_, is not. > [@Mijin](#): > > We know that a trait exists and we are trying to infer a benefit. It’s not that we are aware of a specific benefit and are trying to infer the trait. If we want to point to the benefit as an explanation for possessing the trait, it’s the right direction. If we want to say that a creature has the illusion of free will because that illusion confers an adaptive benefit (yields to behavior being beneficial), then it must be the case that having that benefit implies having the illusion of freedom, in the same sense that we can point to Socrates’ humanity to explain his mortality because humanity implies mortality. It doesn’t. > [@Mijin](#): > > You have been saying that we cannot say that A has a benefit, if some other trait B would have had the same benefit. I don’t recall such an argument. What I have been arguing is that the illusion of free will does not confer a fitness benefit, but rather, the behavior that it leads to—simply because only behavioral differences can lead to differential selection. This then implies that one can arrive at this benefit via more than one route, via internal states that lead to the same external behavior. * * * Anyway, I’ll be on vacation for the next few days, hence I probably won’t be checking this thread. I think I’ve made my case about as well as I’m able to; but on the off-chance that I still might not get through to everybody, it’ll probably be a bit before I can try a different approach to explaining it. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2023, 8:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-give-up-free-will-for-world-peace/990800/376 "2023-10-07T08:04:25Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > Having _a_ lottery ticket is the cause of winning. Having _that specific one_, is not. Yes, it is. It’s not a _unique_ cause, but that’s not a requirement for causality. If I arrived to work by train then that is casually connected to me arriving at work. It is wholly irrelevant if a bus would have done just as well. > [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > If we want to point to the benefit as an explanation for possessing the trait, it’s the right direction. What? We look at an animal that’s the same color green as the leaves in its habitat. We infer that its coloration is to camouflage it from predators. Now, it’s reasonable of course to question this, and suggest perhaps the green serves another function, or is just a side product of something else, that’s all fine. But what we can’t do (or at best, is useless) is the backwards logic of asserting that the animal _is_ camouflaged from its predators, and needing to guess what color the animal is. And then, apparently, get stuck if it turns out that more than one color would have sufficed. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2023, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-give-up-free-will-for-world-peace/990800/377 "2023-10-07T18:42:12Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > Everything that is human, is mortal; Socrates is human; hence, Socrates is mortal. Everything that has free will has the experience of free will; humans have free will; hence, humans have the experience of free will. The difference is that we know that Socrates is (was) human. (The particular Socrates being discussed, anyway. Somebody’s undoubtedly named their cat that.) We don’t know that humans have free will. > [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > I’m not arguing that because we have the illusion of free will, we should believe free will exists; I’m saying that if free will exists, that explains our having the experience of having free will. And if free will doesn’t exist, we may still have the experience of having the illusion of free will, and be unable to distinguish the two. > [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > I have also argued that its existence is consistent, rather than incoherent, by giving a mechanism for its operation. No, you haven’t. You’ve given a fictional one out of a thought experiment, as if somebody’s thinking it up made it actual. Yet again: humans think up counterfactuals all the time. Some of them are useful in the right context; but that doesn’t make them factual. > [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > the set of million-dollar winners is the union of the set of those for which the coin came up heads, and those for whom the coin came up tails; the set of those for whom the coin landed on its edge is in its complement, so doesn’t matter here. Hence, knowing that somebody is a million-dollar winner does not tell you whether they are a heads-getter or a tail-getter. > > Likewise, the set of creatures that obtain a fitness benefit thanks to showing behavior identical to that bestowed by having the illusion of freedom is the union of the sets of those that have this illusion, those that feel compelled to act in the requisite way, those that are aware of the deterministic nature of their choice-processes and show the same behavior, and so on. Thus, knowing that some creature has that behavior does not tell us whether they have the illusion of free will. Hence, in particular, you can’t say that any creature has free will because of that fitness benefit. Your conclusion does not follow. If I live with two other people, and I look in the refrigerator and see a fresh jug of milk, I may not know whether person A or person B put that milk in the refrigerator. Nevertheless the milk is there because one of them put the milk there. You’re doing the equivalent of saying that person A can’t possibly have put the milk there because I, right at this moment, don’t know for sure that it wasn’t person B – and also that person B can’t possibly have put the milk there because I, right at this moment, don’t know that it wasn’t person A. As that’s obviously nonsensical, the reasoning is faulty. > [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > The set of all things that show the adaptive behavior is not a subset of the set of things that have the experience of free will. There are elements of that set that have no experience of free will. We don’t know that. We only know that you imagined such. And it wouldn’t mean anything if we did. Bats fly and so do birds. They both exhibit flying behavior. They do so in different fashions, and the genetic traits that enable them to do so are different genetic traits. – for that matter, humans also exhibit flying behavior, in different fashions entirely from either the bats or the birds. > [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > If we want to say that a creature has the illusion of free will because that illusion confers an adaptive benefit (yields to behavior being beneficial), then it must be the case that having that benefit implies having the illusion of freedom Nope. Nope, nope, nope. Having the benefit of flying doesn’t imply having feathers. Nevertheless a benefit (there are others) of birds’ having feathers is that they make it possible for birds to fly. > [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > on the off-chance that I still might not get through to everybody Yeah, well, I very much doubt that I, or anybody else, will get through to you either. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [October 7, 2023, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-give-up-free-will-for-world-peace/990800/378 "2023-10-07T20:10:04Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > Yes, it is. It’s not a _unique_ cause, but that’s not a requirement for causality. What I mean is that conditioned on obtaining the benefit, no further information is gathered by the distinction between the lottery tickets, so it does no work; it’s a distinction without a difference. But if that’s the way you want to talk about it, fine. > [@Mijin](#): > > We look at an animal that’s the same color green as the leaves in its habitat. We infer that its coloration is to camouflage it from predators. You haven’t really looked at any of the examples, have you. Anyway, the point is that we have the same situation in both cases: the set of all people that obtain a million dollars is partitioned into sets of people getting heads, and sets of people getting tails. Likewise, the set of creatures reaping the adaptive benefit is partitioned into creatures having the illusion of free will, and creatures not having it (but instead, showing the same behavior thanks to a sense of compulsion, for example). Now, the argument is that we have the sense of free will because of natural selection (because of the adaptive benefit it yields). Hence, it must be that natural selection, or more accurately, the specific behavior that confers a selection advantage, must yield having the illusion of free will. This is the same as saying that winning the million dollars must imply the coin coming up heads, say. Again, just draw the diagrams: it’s five minutes of work and makes the whole thing obvious. > [@thorny\_locust](#): > > The difference is that we know that Socrates is (was) human. (The particular Socrates being discussed, anyway. Somebody’s undoubtedly named their cat that.) We don’t know that humans have free will. And as I noted, the argument works just as well if humans don’t have free will, or even if nothing has free will. It would still be the case that the set of all creatures having free will would be a subset of the set of all creatures having the sense of having free will. That set would just be empty. > [@thorny\_locust](#): > > And if free will doesn’t exist, we may still have the experience of having the illusion of free will, and be unable to distinguish the two. True, but irrelevant to the point. > [@thorny\_locust](#): > > No, you haven’t. You’ve given a fictional one out of a thought experiment, as if somebody’s thinking it up made it actual. I have nowhere said that this makes it actual. But being able to describe something without contradiction certainly makes it coherent, thus refuting any charge of being incoherent (as that just means entailing a contradiction). > [@thorny\_locust](#): > > You’re doing the equivalent of saying that person A can’t possibly have put the milk there because I, right at this moment, don’t know for sure that it wasn’t person B – and also that person B can’t possibly have put the milk there because I, right at this moment, don’t know that it wasn’t person A. That is, once more, not even in the ballpark. I’m saying that from the fact that the milk is in the fridge, you can’t conclude that either person A or person B put it there, but only that one of them must have done so. Likewise, from the fact that a particular creature reaps the benefit conferred by behaving in the way a creature having the feeling of free will does, we can’t infer that this creature actually has the feeling of free will, as long as there are other ways (i.e. having a feeling of compulsion leading to the same behavior) of behaving in that way. > [@thorny\_locust](#): > > We don’t know that. We only know that you imagined such. I have given examples of where this is the case. If you find fault with these, you’re free to point that out. > [@thorny\_locust](#): > > And it wouldn’t mean anything if we did. Bats fly and so do birds. They both exhibit flying behavior. They do so in different fashions Exactly! And hence, from that fact that something flies, we can’t infer that it’s a bird. > [@thorny\_locust](#): > > Nope. Nope, nope, nope. Having the benefit of flying doesn’t imply having feathers. Again, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Hence, you can’t say that because something flies, it must have feathers. Likewise, you can’t say that because something behaves as if it has the illusion of free will (and consequently, experiences a reproductive advantage and is selected for), it has the illusion of free will. > [@thorny\_locust](#): > > Yeah, well, I very much doubt that I, or anybody else, will get through to you either. You already are through, so don’t worry about that. The points everyone in this thread has made are very easily understood. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2023, 3:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-give-up-free-will-for-world-peace/990800/379 "2023-10-08T03:59:37Z")
> [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > Now, the argument is that we have the sense of free will because of natural selection (because of the adaptive benefit it yields). Hence, it must be that natural selection, or more accurately, the specific behavior that confers a selection advantage, must yield having the illusion of free will. **No.** This is the critical error in your reasoning. The fact that a trait is beneficial, does not at all imply that it was the _only_ possible beneficial trait, or that it was destined to happen or whatever. As mentioned above, the same ecological niche can be filled by different species with very different modes of survival. Evolution takes one useful path one time, and another useful path another time. ---
**Author:** ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2023, 6:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-give-up-free-will-for-world-peace/990800/380 "2023-10-08T06:30:07Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > The fact that a trait is beneficial, does not at all imply that it was the _only_ possible beneficial trait, or that it was destined to happen or whatever. The point is that if you want to say that ‘x is A because of B’, then B must necessitate A, otherwise, that something is B does not tell us whether it is A. Hence, ‘Socrates is mortal because he is human’: the set of all human things is contained in the set of all mortal things. If only some humans were mortal, that just wouldn’t work. Now consider: ‘humans have the feeling of free will because of the reproductive benefit the behavior this yields confers’. This tells us that humans are in the set of all things that have the fitness advantage provided by the behavior produced by the feeling of free will. For this argument to work, it must be the case that B implies A, as above. But it doesn’t. Some Bs are not A. Hence, that something is B doesn’t tell us that it is A. We can’t point to B-ness as an explanation for A-ness. Does that help matters? I mean, at least that there is a salient difference here should be clear by the above. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-give-up-free-will-for-world-peace/990800.md?page=18) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-give-up-free-will-for-world-peace/990800.md?page=20)