I have of course been persistently arguing the exact opposite, that the purported explanation of the feeling of free will by the reproductive benefit it confers ought to be treated exactly the same as any other explanation. But there seems to be little point in continuing this if you will not even read my explanations in order to persist in your misunderstandings.
(Indeed, my argument is really just that in any explanation, it must be the case that the explanans entails the explanandum, as otherwise the explanans being true doesn’t give us any reason to believe that the explanandum is true, as well—it might or might not be. But then, we obviously haven’t explained why the explanandum is true. And this just fails to be the case for the feeling of free will being supposedly explained by the selective benefit. To dismiss this as me requiring some special treatment for this case is such a gross misreading of what I’ve been writing that I struggle to see how it could reasonably come about.)
I think I can see what HMHW is driving at; either free will is an illusion, which has presumably evolved biologically, or it is a real phenomenon, and we really do have free will. Or perhaps there are other options I can’t imagine (due to my own intrinsic limitations).
But I’m still stuck on what true-free-will would mean in practice. Earlier in the thread we discussed two main options; choices which are made as a result of events in the past, leading to a causal relationship and a choice which is determined by those events and certainly not free. The other option was that choices might be made as a result of ‘contracausal’ effects, effects that have noting to do with past events and just happen at random somehow. It seems to me that neither of those definitions fulfil the characteristics of free will as a real phenomenon, as opposed to an illusion.
I’ve been wracking my brains to try to imagine what true-free-will would look like.
Even if there is a separate, non-material spirit or ethereal entity which makes decisions independently of our own deterministic, mechanistic brains, that ethereal entity would surely make decisions based on its own experiences and on its own intrinsic nature - that would be just another form of determinism, just resulting from the effects of a different set of events.
One way to ensure that our choices are not solely a result of events which have happened in the past is to allow true prescience. If we could get information from the future as well as the past we might be able to use it to make better decisions; imagine if we already knew the results of some or all of our actions, or the answers to some or all of our questions. Hans Moravec has investigated this possibility in some of his speculative papers; this advanced information might help us to make better decisions, but I suspect it would turn out to be just as deterministic as the other kinds of causality.
Or maybe true-free-will occurs as the result of a miracle, or a series of miracles, which are performed by some remote god-like entity or impersonal panuniversal emergent entity that has decided to allow us to choose ‘freely’ between a range of options at various points in the timeline. This ‘god’ might even actualise a range of possible futures, and we poor mortals might be gifted the chance to ‘navigate’ through these choices at will. But each option we take would seem (to us limited mortals) to be the only possible choice, so we would then labour under an illusion of determinism, the exact opposite of the illusion of free will.
Ultimately I suspect that the concept of true-free-will arises from theological considerations, since true-free-will allows us limited mortals to make good and bad choices, and this gives an excuse for the concept of sin and punishment. If everything that happens is considered to be the result of the actions of an omnibenevolent god, then all the bad, harmful, ‘evil’ things that happen are also the result of Her actions, and that would mean that She is not omnibenevolent. So we must be somehow to blame for our own evil.
Except that you haven’t, when it comes to things like beer being the reason Mijin is drunk, or a cricket ball being the reason the window is broken, you do not demand that those explanations be inferable from the conclusion (i.e. that broken glass logical entails a cricket ball, and not a stone)
Uniquely only for this one biological trait, logic works backwards.
Exactly. The answer is that the concept has never made sense, it’s never been fully defined.
It just dates from a time where we had no clue at all about how mind and matter could be related. So it felt like our decisions appeared from nowhere.
Now that we know something of neurology, and can make intelligent machines, we’re left asking what we even mean by free will, and the answer is: who knows?
We should really start over with a completely different framing of intention, but can’t because:
- This has been filed as a grand philosophical debate for so long, the one opinion that’s not allowed is: Both the statements “we have free will” and “we don’t have free will” are undefined, because “free will” is ill-defined.
- Modern apologetics relies upon the idea that free will solves issues like the problem of evil. It doesn’t of course. But that’s a reason it gets propped up as a meaningful concept.
No. Honestly, how do you get this from what I’ve written? I’ve been at great pains to point out that nothing is inferred from any conclusion, treating all of the cases offered in exact parallel. The only thing I’m saying is that something being an explanation necessitates it actually explain the thing to be explained. I.e. that if the explaining thing holds, so must the explained thing, otherwise the explaining thing holding gives us no reason to conclude the explained thing, and hence, no reason why the explained thing holds true—i.e. we simply have no explanation.
That is: to explain that @Mijin is drunk, having drunk (that amount of) beer must entail being drunk. To explain that the window is broken, being hit by a cricket ball must entail the window breaking. To explain Socrates being mortal, being human must entail being mortal. To explain humans having the feeling of free will, having the survival benefit must entail having the feeling of free will.
This is exactly and absolutely the same in all cases. Explanans → explanandum, otherwise there’s no explanation. I don’t understand where you come to believe that requiring exactly the same in every case is somehow ‘backwards logic’ when applied to the argument from selection. All the elements bear the same relation in all the described cases, as shown explicitly by the diagrams above.
That somewhat depends on how you want to cash out the notion of ‘chance’. The sort of implicit assumption in these threads is a kind of prescriptive reading: wherever the deterministic laws of the universe leave an opening for randomness, the universe flips a coin, and decides the next step ‘for you’, forcing you along. Then, chance doesn’t give any more of an opening to free will than deterministic evolution does.
But that’s not the only possible way to interpret this. Another option is to instead move to a descriptive, ‘Humean’ sort of reading: the laws of the universe just give a concise description of what happens, but they aren’t what makes things happen. (After all, how would they do that?) Any not totally random universe has a description in terms of some deterministic algorithm plus a random input—essentially, the maximally compressed version of the data together with the algorithm to unpack it. Thus, its evolution seems lawlike for some, and perhaps most, of the time, with interspersed random events.
But these random events then aren’t points where the universe flips a coin for you; rather, they’re simply points where the laws don’t fully describe what happens next—where the future course is open. Consider chess, as an analogy: the laws don’t uniquely determine the next move; the player chooses one among several possibilities. One could write down some probability distribution for the next move, but that doesn’t mean that the next move just ‘happens’ by some random process; rather, it’s due to the player’s choice.
Of course, that only kicks the can down the road: how does the player’s choice work? We have the same dilemma, just iterated. So the proposal I raised all these many posts ago is: just keep iterating, and when you’re done, you’ll have a self-determined decision neither due to chance nor determined by external factors.
This is admittedly kind of an exotic suggestion, but arguably not logically inconsistent. Whether such a thing is possible in the real world is, of course, another matter altogether (although as noted, any world containing true randomness should admit processes equivalent to those needed here); and even if it’s possible, there’s still a question of whether human minds actually make use of such a mechanism.
My guess is that whenever we bump up against these sorts of ‘infinitary’ notions, what we’re really dealing with is an inability of symbolic reasoning (i.e. finite manipulations on finite strings of symbols) to fully capture the phenomena present in the world, and if we could leapfrog these limitations, things like this would seem much more commonplace. But we can’t, and so lots of people take these limits of theory to accurately track the limits of the world. However, that’s a much more involved topic.
And it is. That’s my position.
The thing I am disagreeing with, is what you’ve been arguing for the last 120 posts, that the feeling of free will must uniquely be the only thing that provides this survival benefit. A selection of quotes:
But this uniqueness requirement is absolutely false.
Mijin could be drunk because he drank vodka. A sonic boom could explain why the window broke. Socrates could be the name of a dog, because they are also mortal.
And, yes, natural selection can result in a trait that has the same, or even less benefit that another trait. The only requirement for a trait to be selected is that the trait is better than the status quo.
There is no uniqueness of explanation requirement, that’s not rational.
You’ve also been exasperated that @Riemann and @Babale were not “getting it”.
Once again, respectfully, just accept that maybe your reasoning on this is not sound.
Remember, I don’t even disagree very much with your overall conclusion, I am just saying your argument to arrive there simply doesn’t work.
(missed edit window)
I said I agreed with this statement because I misread this as: having the feeling of free will must entail a survival benefit.
That would be looking from the perspective of cause → effect, and would be reasoning correctly as in all the other examples.
OTOH, reasoning from the effect (survival benefit) to a cause (feeling of free will) is the fallacy of affirming the consequent.
As it must, in each of these cases. You keep confusing explanans and explanandum: to explain what is to be explained, the explanans must uniquely entail the explanandum. For instance, if the window is cracked, and the proposed explanation is that a cricket ball broke it through impact, then it must be the case that impacting the window in this way breaks it; otherwise, this impact could occur without the window being broken, and hence, would not tell us why it is broken. Likewise, Socrates’ mortality is explained by his humanity only if being human entails being mortal; if there were some immortal humans, then being human just isn’t a sufficient reason to be mortal.
Now, there could, of course, be other explanations: Socrates could be someone’s dog, in which case his being mortal would be explained by his dogness. That is, there are multiple explanantia for any explanandum, but any given explanans must uniquely entail the explanandum—it can’t be the case that the explanans obtains without the explanandum doing so, too. That’s just what is meant by something explaining something else: that given the first thing, we know the second must be the case.
This is all I require for the feeling of free will. The explanandum (having this feeling) must uniquely result from the explanans (having the survival benefit). That it does not means that the latter fails to explain the former—just in the same way that the possibility of immortal humans would mean that Socrates being human fails to explain his mortality.
Here, now, you turn things around: yes, the explanandum could obtain due to a different explanans. Multiple explanantia can lead to the same explanandum. Likewise, the feeling of free will could be explained by us actually having free will.
But this doesn’t change the fact that any single explanans must lead uniquely to the explanandum! The direction ‘explanandum → explanans’ can (and generally will be) one-to-many, but the direction ‘explanans → explanandum’ must be unique. Otherwise, the question ‘Why explanandum?’ simply isn’t answered by pointing to the explanans.
So the point I’m making is just that in the case of the argument from selection, this implication fails—the explanans may be the case, without the explanandum being so. You then give examples where the explanandum is the case without a given explanans being so—where the window is shattered by a sonic boom, or Socrates is mortal because he is a dog. But this is simply the wrong way round! It doesn’t impinge on the point I’m making at all.
Or in short, I’m saying that explanans → explanandum, and you’re saying, no, because explanandum does not → explanans. But that just doesn’t follow.
Or to put the point differently: rather than giving examples of different explanations for Socrates being mortal, you would have to give an example of the same reason yielding different outcomes, while nevertheless being a good explanation for one particular outcome—i.e. how Socrates being mortal could be explained by him being a jellyfish, even though some jellyfish are immortal.
Obviously, that can’t work, because then, the same reason could be put forward as an explanation for Socrates’ immortality. Likewise, the proposed explanation for having the feeling of free will by having the reproductive benefit could just as well explain the lack of such a feeling.
No, you are turning the logic around, as demonstrated in the three quotes of yours that I put in my last post.
No-one else is having a problem with this. Not me, not @Babale, not @Riemann.
If P → Q, then we can say if P, then Q by definition.
What we can’t say, is if Q then necessarily P, which is your argument, your whole basis for rejecting the hypothesis that the feeling of free will could have a survival benefit. Any number of mental or physical traits could have a survival benefit, that’s irrelevant and your argument is flawed.
In all of those quotes, I am saying that if explanans, then explanandum. You’re trying to argue against that by saying that there could be multiple explanantia, given an explanandum (Socrates could be mortal because he is a dog or a human). That’s simply the wrong way round.
It isn’t. Again, there could be multiple possible explanations for having a feeling of free will. Actually having free will is one, interference by some trickster god is another. In each of these cases, we have that given the explanans, the explanandum follows necessarily. That isn’t the case for the proposed explanation via the selection benefit. Hence, it doesn’t work as an explanation.
There is absolutely no affirmation of the consequent.
That is not a hypothesis I’m rejecting. What I am rejecting is the argument that because of this survival benefit, we have the feeling of free will. In doing so, I am in fact accepting, at least for the sake of argument, that this feeling (or rather, the behavior produced by having it) does have a survival advantage.
@Mijin, I stepped away from this because it is so frustrating, and it’s hard to believe that @Half_Man_Half_Wit is still persisting with this. But let me give it one more try.
The disconnect here is that @Half_Man_Half_Wit is so heavily invested in refuting what he calls the “argument from selection” that he simply won’t accept that nobody was ever making this “argument”. Eveyone else is left scratching their heads about why he keeps erecting a straw man and then knocking it down. It becomes very confusing because in this persistent need to erect the straw man it sometimes appears that he arguing for the obviously flawed logical argument - when in fact he is just setting it up to knock it down again.
The adaptive hypothesis simply postulates that there may be a fitness advantage to the trait “sense of free will”. It is a hypothesis, not a logical argument. It may, of course, be phrased as something like
“we have a sense of free will BECAUSE it has a fitness advantage”
The “because” here is obviously just referring to the ordinary process of natural selection if the hypothesis is true - that the trait arose by random mutation, then went to fixation in the human population because it had some fitness advantage relative to the ancestral state where the trait was absent.
@Half_Man_Half_Wit has misinterpreted the “because” in that phrasing as somebody making a logical argument that a proposed fitness advantage implies the necessary existence of the trait. He is determined to “refute” this “argument from selection”, and has apparently become so invested in the refutation that he cannot now accept that he misinterpreted the meaning of “because” in this context. Nobody anywhere was ever making this flawed logical argument. Not in this thread, not in any of the links he posted. The fact that one of the links he posted used the specific phrase “argument from selection” is irrelevant. If you examine the article, they were clearly only using “because” in the sense I have described to refer to the ordinary process of natural selection if the hypothesis is true and a fitness advantage exists.
HMHW: I reject the “argument from selection”. The fact that finding food is a fitness benefit does not necessarily imply that we must have eyes.
Everyone else: Nobody is making that “argument”. There is just a hypothesis that eyes might help you find food, that eyes might be better than no eyes.
HMHW: I accept that hypothesis as plausible, but I reject the “argument from selection”. The fact that finding food is a fitness benefit does not necessarily imply that we must have eyes.
Everyone else: Nobody is making that “argument”. There is just a hypothesis that eyes might help you find food, that eyes might be better than no eyes.
HMHW: I accept that hypothesis as plausible, but I reject the “argument from selection”. The fact that finding food is a fitness benefit does not necessarily imply that we must have eyes.
etc. ad nauseam
I’m not heavily invested in anything. I would’ve let things stand as they were when I originally brought up the argument as something that’s obviously wrong, but common, in the hope of not having to get sidetracked (and look how that turned out). But yeah, as long as people keep attacking my reasoning as basically being that of a spittle-flecked troglodyte, I am going to carry on trying to explain myself.
No, people keep trying to tell me that I’m childishly wrong. I generally take it that means they disagree with me. Hence, I keep trying to explain, in various different ways, although so far with little success.
I interpret that ‘because’ in the same way as I interpret it in ‘we have the feeling of free will because we do have free will’, or ‘Socrates is mortal because he is human’. My original point was merely that those who believe in free will have a ready explanation for why we should feel as if we have free will—because that feeling is just accurate. This puts an explanatory burden on the ‘no free will’-position: if we don’t have any, why do we feel like we do? And to meet that burden, a commonly-made argument is because of the adaptive benefit this confers. And that’s the argument I’ve been discussing.
It might be clear, to you, that this is a fallacious argument. But it’s certainly not clear to everyone, nor even everyone in this thread. If so, then it’s also clear to you that the ‘free will yay’ side, whatever their other issues might be, has a leg up regarding the explanation of the feeling of free will as compared to the ‘free will nay’-side. And if that’s the case, I wonder why you ever engaged me and tried to oppose my arguments at all, if you agree with my position.
Which, of course, exactly is that argument you claim nobody is making. There is no comparable argument that having the feeling of free will could be better than not having the feeling of free will: because the behavior in both cases can plausibly be the same, while the behavior in the ‘eyes’ vs. ‘no eyes’-cases can’t. There is a valid argument from selection for eyes (or for a visual sense, at least), there’s just none for the feeling of free will. You can’t behave the same way without such a sense as with it; you can behave the same way without the feeling of free will, as with it.
There is a hypothesis that “sense of free will” leads to different behavior from “no sense of free will”, in precisely the same way as the hypothesis that “eyes” leads to different behavior from “no eyes”. That is the entirety of the hypothesis. You have said quite clearly that you accept this hypothesis as plausible.
To say that “the behavior in both cases can plausibly be the same” is simply rejecting the hypothesis out of hand. It is not rejecting any argument, because this hypothesis does not entail any logical argument.
You claim that a hypothesis that “eyes” being better than “no eyes” is qualitatively different from a hypothesis that “sense of free will” is better than “no sense of free will”. It is not. They are precisely analogous. The plausibility of the “eyes” adaptive hypothesis depends upon understand the use of vision, the plausibility of the “sense of free will” adaptive hypothesis depends upon understanding how our brains work. Neither hypothesis differs in plausibility through abstract logical argument.
Anyway, I’m done here, I’m not getting dragged back into this.
No, I’ve said that I accept the hypothesis that the behavior produced by the feeling of free will carries an adaptive benefit. I have also quite clearly said that I reject the hypothesis that this behavior is only achievable via a feeling of free will, giving numerous examples of cases where a creature without this sense would show the same behavior. There seems to be no reason to accept any hypothesis that the feeling of free will would produce a fitness benefit over the lack of such a feeling.
It’s not a rejection out of hand, I’ve given several examples where it’s false, and see no reason why these examples shouldn’t be relevant.
Sure it is. You can’t show the same behavior with and without eyes; but there are easily conceivable cases of showing the same behavior with and without the feeling of free will.
Nobody is dragging you anywhere.
Sure I can, if you live in a cave where there is no light.
The plausibility of the adaptive hypothesis for eyes might be obvious (we don’t live in caves and the way we use vision is obviously beneficial), but it does require reference to our use of vision, to physics and neuroscience. No logically circular “argument from selection” step is involved.
You are welcome to imagine such cases. But imagining them is not grounds to simply reject the hypothesis out of hand. You are not pointing out some logical flaw in an “argument from selection”, because the hypothesis does not entail any such logic.
Just as the adaptive hypothesis for eyes requires reference to the use of vision, any discussion of the plausibility of the adaptive hypothesis that “sense of free will” is better than “no sense of free will” must refer to neuroscience, to the way our brains work. We could have been having that interesting discussion rather than wasting hundreds of posts on your misunderstanding of the word “because” in the context of natural selection.
In which case it would be unexplained why we have eyes. Which is, well, my point.
The argument isn’t circular, it’s clearly valid, just not always sound, because it’s premises can fail to be true. If it is possible to have the benefit without having the feeling of free will, then that premise is just false.
They certainly are grounds for not accepting it, which of course isn’t a rejection out of hand, but for good reasons. If you come to me with the hypothesis that all middle-aged blond cobblers named Steven have at least size 8 feet, the fact that I don’t see any problem with there being one with size 7 feet is good grounds not to accept that hypothesis.
We could’ve been having all kinds of discussions, but for some reason you saw fit to keep defending an argument you’re simultaneously claiming not to make.
Actually, it occurs to me that this might serve as a good illustration of what I’m saying. If, in some dark cave, you find a population of creatures with perfectly functioning eyes, at the very least, you’d be surprised—there’s no reason for them to have vision, it doesn’t confer any additional survival benefit they couldn’t obtain without it (let’s for the moment assume that eyes also don’t incur any additional fitness cost, which probably isn’t true). So pointing to selection as the reason for them having eyes simply isn’t explanatory.
Now, finding such creatures in a well-lit space, you’d be perfectly justified in making an argument from selection: eyes are clearly beneficial, and because of that, they have them.
We’re in the same boat with the feeling of free will. If it’s true that the same reproductive benefit could be obtained without it—which so far nobody has made a case against—then that we have it is just as surprising as the existence of eyes in a dark cave, i.e. not explained by a survival benefit.
And that’s all I’m saying, really.