I’m saying that I have that strong intuition of free choice; and that I think that feeling of free choice is itself one of the multitude of things that affect my choices. I don’t know whether it’s accurate; but I do think that it’s useful.
For one thing, we feel that we chose to go on that rollercoaster ride.
For another – there’s a particular kind of thrill in feeling that one is deliberately setting that agency temporarily aside. Feeling that one is being forced to do so is something else altogether.
We generally think of those as pathologies, don’t we?
Evolution acts on behaviors. It simply doesn’t care how they’re produced. It can’t! So it’s from the outset simply fallacious to claim that the illusion of free will is adaptive: that’s just not where selection occurs. But one might allow for such an argument if there were a case to be made that there’s some necessary connection from the illusion to the behavior—it would still be imprecise, but not entirely wrong. However, there isn’t such a connection.
Now, you seem to want to argue that maybe there’s some mechanism that makes it more likely to have the illusion of free will as a by-product of processes needed to bring about the adaptive behavior. And at that point, well, I don’t know? Maybe? But then, there is certainly no argument anymore that we have the illusion of free will because it is adaptive. There is a hope that we might have the illusion of free will because it may share some unknown degree of correlation with processes that produce behavior that is adaptive… Which is very far from persuasive.
Not free from, but free to: make a genuine choice, to do something that one could have just as well not.
Of course you could. The round square copula of Berkeley college is an incoherent concept, but it would completely justify saying, ‘that’s a funny copula, being both round and square’. You could validly hold that if there is such a thing as free will, which makes people the original sources of their actions, it would be morally permissible to take punitive actions in response, even if you think it’s impossible for people to be sources of their own actions in the right way.
I don’t assume anything, I’ve given examples. And the conclusion of my argument is that the illusion of free will is not necessary for reproductive fitness, which is completely different. And of course, it’s by no means an ‘obvious fact’ that subjective mental states modulate behavior, which is where the whole discussion around epiphenomenalism comes from. But again: that’s not what I’m arguing for here (in fact, it’s entirely orthogonal to the issue).
Of course. There are setting where we don’t have the illusion of free will, yet behave identically—and as natural selection acts on behavior exclusively, it can’t distinguish between those.
We know it isn’t adaptive. Nothing but behavior is adaptive. Unless there is a one-to-one correlation between behavior and a certain mental state, there is at least some element of chance involved. But then the argument that we have the illusion of free will because it leads to adaptive behavior no longer goes through, because the implication from one to the other doesn’t hold.
In your analogy, it would be like claiming that insulin production is an evolutionary necessity. But it’s not: the function that insulin fulfils is what’s needed. That function could be fulfilled differently. That still means that we could end up with that particular molecular machinery through evolution, but we might just as well not have. Hence, we have no argument that insulin is in some ways needed—that we can take a look at a creature of similar make as us, and infer that it also must produce insulin. It must somehow fulfil that same function, perhaps, but beyond that, no further conclusion is warranted.
Likewise, we could not look at a creature similar to us and conclude that it also must have, or even is likely to have, the illusion of free will. It must have something that gets it to behave in the right way, but there are other options. But then, we can also not point at ourselves and claim that we have the illusion of free will because it is adaptive.
I don’t see how that should impact my enjoyment. In fact, if I were forced to endure a ride, it might be all the more thrilling.
You ride rollercoasters more cerebrally than I. I just like the speed and the funny feeling I get in my stomach, which doesn’t have any dependence on whether it’s due to my agency.
And then there’s still the fact that we enjoy movies or novels, whose ending is written long before we ever turn the first page, and where we exert no agency to speak of.
Because as things are, they’re aberrations from the norm.
That argument reads to me very much like saying ‘having fur can’t be adaptive, because there are creatures that manage their body temperature and protect their skin without having fur.’
Because there may be multiple ways of accomplishing one basic thing doesn’t mean that each of those ways can’t be adaptive.
Sure, that possibility is exactly what we’re considering in discussing whether the illusion of free will might be adaptive - whether it might lead you make different choices, for better or worse.
But I’m not sure how that relates to the other things you said about bad choices. I would say that choices (computation) can be said to be objectively bad (harm others) without consideration of the subjective state of mind that led to them.
However, if what’s being considered is itself the person that made the choices, that seems to me to be a different matter. The person who chose the door that had no prize behind it did so in the same state of mind as if they’d chosen the door that had the prize they wanted; that was a bad choice, but doesn’t reflect upon the chooser. The person who knowingly chooses the door with a large prize behind it despite the fact that opening that door will kill somebody almost certainly didn’t do that in the same state of mind as the person who chose instead (also knowingly) the door that provides them with no prize but benefits someone else and doesn’t appear to harm anybody. That sort of choice does reflect upon the chooser.
Whether this means that the person who chooses the murderous door should be shot, slowly burned to death, locked up for life in unpleasant conditions, locked up in reasonably pleasant conditions, or otherwise prevented from opening any more doors – or for that matter whether they should be put in charge of door-opening, possibly because there’s a war on – is for me a separate sort of question entirely. The choice a person makes among those alternatives also reflects upon the chooser.
But the argument only works if there isn’t really any other way to fulfill the adaptive function (e.g. keeping warm). It’s like saying, in order to keep warm, you need fur—which is just dismissed by pointing out an organism that keeps warm without fur.
Suppose the different possible solutions for a given evolutionary problem are laid out on a dart board. You throw the dart, and it hits a given spot—say, having fur, or the illusion of free will. It’s then not due to selection that the dart landed in that particular spot; evolution just set up the solution space, but can’t be appealed to for the selection of any one particular solution. But that’s what the argument that we have the illusion of free will because it’s adaptive tries to do.
This is just complete nonsense. Evolution (by natural selection) doesn’t care how a behavior is produced, but it cares that it is produced. If a mental state generates a behavior that affects fitness, then natural selection will act on the mental state. It’s irrelevant that the same behavior might counterfactually have been produced some other way.
By your bizarre reasoning, natural selection doesn’t act on DNA in the genome, because DNA is not behavior.
This assumes that any behavior can be produced any way. But I would argue that some ways of producing decision may be more or less likely to produce advantageous results, and that is something that can be acted on.
Your fallacy is obvious here. You are confusing whether something is adaptive (arising by natural selection because of a relative fitness advantage) with absolute necessity.
You are clearly incorrect here. There are lots of ways to manage body temperature, of which fur is one. At the same time, fur evolved as a result of adaptation due to selection pressure.
No. Evolution will act on the behavior, and on that behavior only. If there are several mental states leading to that behavior, evolution can’t distinguish between them.
It’s just the fallacy of affirming the consequent. The illusion of free will leads to a certain fitness-enhancing behavior, but then, that behavior does not entail the illusion of free will.
No. All that’s needed is that there are multiple mental states that yield the same behavior. Given that, evolution is just blind to the differences between them.
I’m not. But the only way to make the argument work would be if there was an absolute necessity. Again, the form is just, if A (illusion of fitness), then B (behavior yielding fitness advantage). The inverse, if B, then A—which is what the evolutionary argument for us having a subjective illusion of freedom posits—only holds of the connection between both is ‘if and only if’, i.e.if there were no alternative way to obtain B. But there are. So the argument is just fallacious.
See above. The argument only works if the connection is necessary; otherwise it’s just affirming the consequent.
No. The selection pressure is for a means to manage body temperature. If there are several ways to achieve this (while leaving all else equal), then evolution just has no handle to differentiate between them.
If there are several mental states that lead to identical behavior in all circumstances then that would be the case. But that seems like quite a stretch. I would expect that different mental states lead to different outcomes, even if multiple states can lead to the same outcome.
It also discounts the fact that these mental states arise from physical processes. Even if they lead to identical behavior they could require different amounts of energy in which case evolution would absolutely discriminate between them.
Right. I should probably speak of ‘function’ rather than behavior. But it’s only a minimal application of charity to amend what I wrote appropriately, so I think we can take this as understood.
If both fulfill the same function in the same manner, then yes, obviously.
It’s always seemed to me that these debates are driven by concepts and definitions of choice, morality, and responsibility that are inherently warped from common understanding by the nature of the argument. Oh, and also by the wide ranging practical implications of one conclusion or the other, as evidenced by above discussion of the purpose and goals of the criminal justice system.
(Plus, I always get dizzy when contemplating action; if the only purpose to, say, punishing bad behavior is to add to the dataset for other people to make it less likely that they do the bad behavior, then it almost feels like a “turtles all the way down” thing…)
But I don’t think anybody’s saying there’s no other possible way to fulfill the adaptive function. I’m only saying that this is one way, and may be the way that evolution picked off the dartboard in this particular case.
And you seem to be saying that either free will, or the sense of free will, can’t possibly be adaptive. Not just that there may be other adaptations that fulfill the same function.
– I thought I’d posted this earlier, and I see that others have stepped in in the meantime; but I’m going to start with it anyway. And I’m going to also ask – are you seriously claiming that neither fur nor feathers have been subject to evolution?
Not believing in free will is always the wrong decision.
Consider the possibilities: either free will exists or it does not; you either believe free will exists or you do not; you either maintain your belief or you switch your belief.
If free will does not exist, you aren’t making any decisions. You are just experiencing pre-determined thoughts and carrying out pre-determined actions. There’s no deeper meaning to your thoughts or actions. You just exist.
If free will does exist, then you have the capacity to make decisions. It’s better to make decisions that are correct. So if free will exists and you believe that free will exists, the correct decision is to maintain your belief. And if free will exists but you don’t believe that free will exists, the correct decision is to switch your belief.