You misunderstand the adaptive hypothesis that you are calling “argument from selection”, apparently because you fundamentally misunderstand what natural selection could ever, in principle, explain. Natural selection cannot even explain WHY not jumping off a cliff is beneficial, it could not possibly explain why “sense of free will” might be beneficial. You are making something akin to a category error.
The adaptive hypothesis is merely that there MAY be some benefit to the trait “sense of free will”. To discover WHY requires neuroscience, just as understanding WHY it’s better not to jump off a cliff requires an understanding of human physiology and gravity.
It’s worth noting here that a common criticism of evolution by natural selection is that it’s trivial. The most fundamental “principle” is a tautology, organisms that are better equipped to survive will survive. It’s essentially this tautology that you’re obsessing over, imagining that the adaptive hypothesis is simply assuming a conclusion.
But Darwin’s deep insight was not to explain WHY traits are beneficial. It’s hardly groundbreaking news that a finch with a beak more suited to the task of finding food is more likely to survive. Natural selection has never been offered as an explanation for WHY a trait is beneficial.
The deep insight of natural selection is that when traits are HERITABLE and when mutation generates VARIATION, then natural selection explains the appearance of complexity with sophisticated apparently purpose-driven design.
I don’t know what to say. The argument comes up in the context of the question why we feel as if we’re free. If we’re actually free, there’s no question. If we’re not, then the question is why we would be so deceived. That this illusion confers a fitness advantage is the argument offered—what I’ve been calling the ‘argument from selection’. There’s really no two ways about this.
Except that us being “actually free” is meaningless. Even if we can come up with a thought experiment involving annalyzing every part of infinity at once and therefore solve infinite regression, or whatever your link was supposed to prove, there is no way to make sense of that statement. We cannot be free in a causal universe. There is no way for the illusion of choice to be anything other than an illusion.
That’s a hypothesis, not an argument, nor a conclusion. I’m fairly you sure you do know the difference.
What you’re misunderstanding is that you imagine that the adaptive hypothesis entails an explanation of WHY there is a fitness advantage. Again, IT DOES NOT. To misconstrue it in that way does requires a fundamental misunderstanding (which is 100% on you) of what natural selection could ever, in principle, explain.
I know exactly what was meant by the argument, because I was the one to introduce it in this discussion:
Meaning: if we are, in fact, deceived into having free will, then this is something that needs explanation; one explanation that’s often offered is that there’s some evolutionary benefit to this illusion. Are you seriously telling me you understand better what I meant than I do?
The assumption that this is a causal universe is just as unfounded as the one that this is a universe in which there is free will, and just as problematic. And there are plenty of ways to reconcile our universe as we see it with free action, not just the one I posted. A good book on the subject is Jennan Ismael’s How Physics makes us Free, and an even better one, though somewhat more technical, is Michael Esfeld’s Science and Human Freedom. If you want something a bit shorter, there’s thesetwo articles of my own, where I make the case that ‘causality’ and ‘randomness’ aren’t any more well-founded than free will, and how to get a more general idea of how stuff happens.
The argument is that we do have the illusion of free will because of the fitness advantage it offers. That is, indeed, a bona fide argument, if a fallacious one.
This is entirely a fabrication of yours and bears no relevance to anything I’ve written. If you want to continue this discussion on some non-all-caps-screaming level, I’d suggest you take the scenario I’ve laid out clearly in my post above, and clarify where, exactly, you think I go wrong there.
Well, congratulations on a debunking an argument that only you have made, and an argument that requires a fundamental misunderstanding of what natural selection could, in principle, ever explain.
Please forgive the rest of us for misunderstanding your argument, for the unfortunate reason that we do understand the theory of evolution.
It’s not our fault, because… you know. No retribution please.
It’s a common enough argument; a little googling reveals numerous examples, e.g. this one. But as long as we’re agreeing that the conferred fitness advantage doesn’t explain our having the illusion of free willl… What does? We’re back to square one: actually having free will explains our having the feeling of having free will, as simply being veridical. But why do we have an illusion of free will if there’s no such thing? Why go through all that trouble?
Ok, sure, I’ll certainly concede that there are plenty of people out there who don’t understand evolution and make spurious arguments.
But when you know you’re talking to biologists, why on earth would you repeat one of those spurious arguments here if YOU know that natural selection cannot in principle explain the “why” of it, and WE obviously know that?
It’s not unreasonable for me to conclude from everything you said that you advanced the argument because YOU don’t understand that natural selection can never (in principle) ever explain why ANY trait is beneficial, and that you think it’s specifically just the benefit of subjective mental states that it cannot explain.
Incidentally, another not-well-defined concept here is “world peace”.
One could say “Russia invading the Ukraine isn’t compatible with ‘world peace’, but Marissa smacking Teresa upside the face is just ordinary human interaction and doesn’t count”. So it’s only organized warfare between nations that needs to be eliminated in order to have ‘world peace’ by this formulation.
But what about 9-11? So it’s not a violation of ‘world peace’ if some non-nation ragtag polyglot hoodlums hijack some planes and fly them into the side of some buildings? Even if it pretty transparently constitutes an attack on the nation associated with said buildings? “Well, not just nations then, but any aggregate organized group of folks attacking another as a political assault. That’s still different from Teresa and Marissa having it out in the alley behind the bar”.
All right, so we’re gonna have an anarchy. No organizations of any sort that run by imposing power of any people over any other people. And by definition that includes groups that exist to impose power over folks who aren’t in the group, even if the group isn’t internally organized by a power hierarchy. World peace, amiright? “Fuck no, that would never work, cuz over those hills comes a big badass barbarian and he’s gonna come right into your peaceful anarchy village and demand tribute! You don’t have police force to stop him or even any law that says he can’t do that, so now everybody has to do as he says, cuz he’s carrying a big fucking stick, ok?”
Hmm, I see your point, but how is that different from Marissa and Teresa trying to beat each other up behind the bar?
Well, there’s also lots of biologists making that argument, for instance:
However, Cashmore argues that there are deeper explanations for why we think we have free will. He thinks that there must be a genetic basis for consciousness and the associated belief in free will. Consciousness has an evolutionary selective advantage: it provides us with the illusion of responsibility, which is beneficial for society, if not for individuals as well. In this sense, consciousness is our “preview function” that comforts us into thinking that we are in control of what we will (or at least may) do ahead of time. As Cashmore notes, the irony is that the very existence of these “free will genes” is predicated on their ability to con us into believing in free will and responsibility.
My bringing up the argument was just to forestall anybody falling into the same trap, by quickly debunking it. As for what’s reasonable or not for you to conclude, well, you could also simply have read my posts, where I’ve laid out the matter clearly time and again, but instead you chose to go off half-cocked on some imagined claims that are totally divorced from anything that’s supported by my writings.
Nonsense. He’s not using natural selection to explain why “sense of free will” is beneficial.
He first states the adaptive hypothesis, which requires that the trait is heritable, and requires that it has a fitness advantage:
He thinks that there must be a genetic basis for consciousness and the associated belief in free will. Consciousness has an evolutionary selective advantage:
He’s then speculates on what that advantage might be:
…it provides us with the illusion of responsibility, which is beneficial for society, if not for individuals as well. In this sense, consciousness is our “preview function” that comforts us into thinking that we are in control of what we will (or at least may) do ahead of time
The “why” here is speculation about neurological function, it does not derive from the adaptive hypothesis.
But explaining why the sense of free will is beneficial isn’t part of the argument! It aims solely to explain why we have the illusion of free will, by pointing to its supposed advantage. How can you still misunderstand this so completely after all of the above?
Here is a quote from the summary that seems to distill the message from the book that’s relevant to this . - let me know if this is correct or not -
I have absolutely no problem with this idea, other than that it doesn’t actually say much. It seems to match the argument @AHunter3 made earlier - that if we define “You” as “your sense of self, your emotive state, your genetic makeup, and your history” - then “You” can be said to be free in that “You” are making decisions free from external influence.
That’s absolutely true, and this “You” is a useful way of looking at the world. I just don’t find the statement that this “You” is free to be meaningful, because this “You” includes everything that could possibly influence your decision making, therefore saying that nothing else influences your decision making is tautological. But if this is how we define free will, then I agree, we have it.
He states the adaptive hypothesis that there is a heritable trait with a fitness advantage, and then speculates on what that advantage might be.
You can certainly take issue with his speculation about why he thinks a sense of free will might be beneficial. But challenging it means you disagree with his speculation about neurological function, it has nothing to do with the evolutionary mechanism of adaptation. Natural selection will only be relevant IF there is a fitness advantage to the trait.
It seems to me like quire a few of us aren’t getting the point you are trying to communicate, while we seem to mutually understand each other. While it is possible that we are all simply too dumb and ignorant to understand your point, I’d urge you to consider the alternative - that you aren’t being as clear as you believe, or are misunderstanding the point we are making.
First of all, it’s a bit misleading to be describing this in terms of mental states: we’re talking about a disposition towards a particular mental state. Something baked in, not transient.
And this is why your argument fails. You’re saying that vision cannot have adaptive benefit if you can conceive of some other thing, let’s say echolocation, that would have been equally useful in a given environment. Well, that logic doesn’t follow at all. Evolution doesn’t care about a solution being unique.