Free Will
The controversies about free will occupy a large part of philosophys landscape. I wonder if a fundamental cause of the controversies is that the concept of free will is poorly defined. Lets see if people agree the man in the following story has free will or not.
Imagine a rectangular field, something the size of a football field but paved in asphalt. Perhaps a parking lot. A fine covering of some sort (sand or snow) blankets the field. A man stands at the lower left corner of the field. He is asked to push a shovel before him as he walks to the upper right corner. The man is free to take any path. He can turn around. He can do loops. He can spell his sons name in script. But he must never set foot on the covering. He must push the shovel ahead so that he only steps on the asphalt.
As hes pushing, he notices the surface is black. When hes done, the covering is removed. The rest of the field is white. The man is shown a film of the previous day, of the field being painted white.
From the subjective viewpoint, i.e., from the mans point of view, he was free to take any path. Had the covering not been removed, he would have left fully believing he possessed free will as he crossed the field.
But the field had already been painted. From an objective viewpoint, how could the man have truly been free?
Does the man possess free will or not? If interlocutors in some discussion dont agree, then they may not be discussing the same concept. Which might imply they will never agree.
This seems to make sense to me. What do other people think?
Imagine a rectangular field, something the size of a football field but paved in asphalt. Perhaps a parking lot. A fine covering of some sort (sand or snow) blankets the field. A man stands at the lower left corner of the field. He is asked to push a shovel before him as he walks to the upper right corner. The man is free to take any path. He can turn around. He can do loops. He can spell his sons name in script. But he must never set foot on the covering. He must push the shovel ahead so that he only steps on the asphalt.
As hes pushing, he notices the surface is black. When hes done, the covering is removed. The rest of the field is white. The man is shown a film of the previous day, of the field being painted white.
From the subjective viewpoint, i.e., from the mans point of view, he was free to take any path. Had the covering not been removed, he would have left fully believing he possessed free will as he crossed the field.
But the field had already been painted. From an objective viewpoint, how could the man have truly been free?
Does the man possess free will or not? If interlocutors in some discussion dont agree, then they may not be discussing the same concept. Which might imply they will never agree.
This seems to make sense to me. What do other people think?
Comments (143)
Compatibilism makes the most sense to me: an agent's free willing (i.e. volition) is manifest within constraints of (a) deterministic conditions of and (b) consequences caused by those agent's actions which are not coerced by another agency.
So he goes directly diagonally. The covering is removed. Only his diagonal path is black. The remainder of the field has been painted white. Did he have free will, or not?
So paint-guy leaves the diagonal unpainted, merely playing the odds that shovel-guy would take the most direct route. Shovel-guys just following directions: go from here to there, dont step outside your own track. Not much of a challenge, is it?
I dont vote, and I dont see will as having much to do with this gedankenexperiment.
The classical conception of causality, which assumes that the causal order is independent of perspective, does not possess the notion of synchronized events, in which the existence of an event necessitates the existence or non-existence of another event, but without either event being alleged to influence the other.
If the notion of causality is adjusted so as to included synchronised events, we automatically get
1) The notion of non-local quantum entanglement.
2) A reconciliation of Bertrand Russell's view that causality doesn't exist, with the interventionist view of causality as used in the sciences.
So in your previous example, the man's path can be viewed as being synchronised with the independent observation that the rest of the field is white, even though neither event is the cause of the other.
Absolutely. It's an even larger issue in theology.
I would just add that another element of the problem is the fact that people conflate determinism with "smallism," the idea that facts about larger wholes must be reducible to facts about small constituent parts. Then, because we generally assume that atoms and molecules lack intentionality, this then suggests that determinism requires that minds, beliefs, etc. can have no causal efficacy. After all, if all thoughts, beliefs, perceptions can be reduced to facts about mindless molecules, then such things must be in some way "illusory" vis-á-vis any causal explanation of phenomena.
But I don't think this is at all a consensus, or even a common opinion in philosophy. To be sure, reductionism and smallism are popular, but the concept that they are essential to elements of determinism is not. Rather, people seem more likely to embrace determinism because of smallism.
Part of this seems to stem from problems with viewing "natural laws," as extrinsic, Platonic forces that exist "outside" the universe, but act upon it. This is sort of the Newton conception of the "natural laws." This has been replaced to a large degree by Kirpke's essentialism, the idea that "laws" simply "describe" regularities that exist because of properties intrinsic to objects. E.g., water acts the way it does because of what water is.
Essentialism doesn't require smallism. We could as well say the world acts the way it does because of what universal fields are. However, it was originally framed in smallist terms, and so the two have become contingently wedded.
I buy essentialism more than the idea of extrinsic, eternal laws, but I don't think this requires explanations of facts grounded entirely in the properties of "fundemental" parts.
Your question seems more akin to earlier questions about free will and it's compatibility with divine foreknowledge. This is a nonreductionist conception of determinism, and I think it is perfectly compatible with compatibilist ideas of free will.
Is the man free? It depends, freedom is relative. But he is not unfree simply because it was possible to predict his behavior. If we are, as Plato and Hegel suggest, more free when we are more united and guided by reason, then in key ways our actions should be more, not less predictable as we become freer (so long as you have information about the freer person's beliefs, priorities, and the information they have access to).
Saint Augustine used this analogy. Think of a choice you made in the past. Can you go back and change it? No, your choice is now a necessary element of the past. Does that preclude your being free when you made the choice, at the point of becoming? Absolutely not. We only make choices in the eternal "now," not in the "already has been," or "not yet."
Edit. I understand. You're saying, in a very hard to follow way in my opinion, that the previous day it was painted as if the person painting it knew exactly the path this guy would take - he predicted it perfectly so the guy would only see black.
I don't really see what this has to do with free will at all tbh. The scenario tells me nothing about it the guy had free will or not. Knowing how other people answer this question doesn't really tell me much about what they think of free will either.
Neither the shoveling man, nor the painting man had any free will. Both were constrained by some common factor that yielded the ultimate pattern on the field. The two complimentary events were "entangled", and so the case must be that neither had the choice to deviate from the predetermined pattern.
Mentalists or magicians do this sort of thing all the time:
An excellent example of the burden for Determinists to disprove Free Will. Hence why Free Will is not disproven.
Santa Clause hasn't been disproven either, so he must be real. Is this a valid conclusion?
I don't get how your mind works. "Not disproven" doesn't mean: "proven", it means: "possible".
That's right, the example is nonsense, because it has not been proven that the perfect prediction of an individual's actions which is described by the example, is even possible. @Art48 might just as well have described a world in which all actions are completely predetermined due to causal determinism, and asked if there is any free will in this world. So the question Art48 is really asking is whether free will is compatible with determinism, and the answer is no it is not.
Well, surely it's possible just by pure chance. If I asked a hundred people to guess a number between 1-100, I might guess the number they guessed correctly once or twice - that's not impossible by any means. He didn't really clarify how the painter got it right, he just said he got it right.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Or alternatively the answer might be yes it is.
That depends on what sort of possibility you are referring to.
https://www.differencebetween.com/difference-between-logical-possibility-and-vs-metaphysical-possibility/
Notice though, that the only way you make the correct prediction possible is by restricting the possible choices of the agent. The more you restrict the possibilities of the agent, the easier it is to predict. So when you change the perimeters to 1-50, or 1-10, you make the prediction easier, but if you change to 1-1000 you make the prediction more difficult.
So in reality, in this type of scenario, the agent's actions are only becoming predictable by forcing the agent (contrary to free will) to make a choice within a specified range of possibilities. In the op, the agent must clear a line from one corner to another, and this denies the agent's free will, as a premise. So the op denies the possibility of free will, by starting with a premise that the agent must do as he is told to, thereby denying him the free will to do what he wants to do.
Sure, if you have free will, you might answer as you please.
No, the reason is that people cannot cope with the fact that we don't have free will. It's an existential threat to their very experience of being. It messes with the concept of justice, the concept of agency, of identity and so on. Even for people who understand the logic of determinism it is hard to wrap their heads around the experience of it, because it feels so alien to the way our consciousness behaves.
It's not that free will is poorly defined, it's that determinism isn't well understood.
So, do you believe that the man in the OP does not have free will? At the moment, the poll is 80% does not have free will and 20% other.
To give a simplified version of OP's thought experiment, let
A := Alice's secret prediction on Monday, concerning what Bob will do on Tuesday
B := Bob's actions on Tuesday, without Bob knowing about Alice's prediction, which he later learns about on Wednesday.
Suppose that Bob believes from past experience that
1) Alice's secret 'predictions about him are always true.
2) Her predictions cannot be explained by a hidden confounding variable that influences both her prediction and what he does.
As a result, Bob accepts a conditional of the form A --> B. If Bob is to be a compatibilist, then he must also argue for a "retrocausal" relation of the form B --> A. This means that Bob must assume that from his perspective, Alice's "prediction on Monday" actually occurs on 'Bob's Wednesday' when he learns about her prediction, which is after he dug the path. Thus B --> A refers to Bob's actions "causing" Alice's "earlier" prediction. Since Bob only observes Alice's prediction after the facts of his actions, this compatibilist interpretation is perfectly consistent.
What does "compatibilist" mean in this sentence? It doesn't look like it means the usual free-will/determinism kind of compatibilism, but I'm stumped at what else it could mean.
Pray tell, in which possibility is Free Will not possible? BTW if you're going to throw out conclusions, you're sort of obligated to back them up (oh and your citation doesn't address Free Will).
No one has free will. Doesn't matter how people try to phrase things, we're not detached entities from the universe in which we exist. Everything in this universe is acting within deterministic laws, but somehow people's decisions aren't? If anything, that sounds more like human arrogance and ideals about humanity as something uniquely special in this reality. So far, all actual evidence we have point towards pure determinism while there's no actual evidence for free will at all, outside some pseudo-religious hogwash that people interpret out of trash science magazines that have no idea on how to present actual research paper conclusions without introducing speculative nonsense into the mix.
The bottom line is that if everything points towards determinism, then the burden of proof is on the one claiming there is free will to prove how human decision making is possible outside of that universal law. It doesn't matter how elaborate of an example someone tries to write out, it's not getting around the basics of it all.
Not poorly, but not universally, unanimously. You can see already from people's definitions of "free will" or from the experiments with which they propose to test it, whether they believe it exists or not. Libet, for example, makes absurd demands on what a will would need to be like in order to be free.
That the field was painted in a particular way is irrelevant. Free will applies to his sense as to whether he felt he had a choice to partake in the experiment or not. Free will doesn't pertain to the parameters of the experiment. If he felt he had a choice whether to partake in the experiment or not, he had free will; if he didn't feel he had such choice, he didn't have free will.
But what about situations where we have been manipulated? In those cases, it seems like we are making a free choice at the time, but we come to find out that we made choices we otherwise wouldn't have.
But if the antecedent state did not cause the resultant state, that's not Determinism.
Ive been following this discussion with some bemusement. Would one of you be willing to put forward a target definition of free will -- one that makes sense to them so that we can have some idea what were debating, and all focus on the same concept?
What?
Don't feel bad about it, you're not the first or the last. How is free will possible, or at least how do you think it might be possible? Do you think that Santa Clause is possible?
Firstly, anything not impossible is possible in my understanding. What is your understanding?
You're asking me to demonstrate that Free Will is possible, which implies you believe it is impossible. Since there is a robust Determinism vs Free Will debate here and elsewhere that long predated your (and my) existance on this planet and likely will continue long after we're both gone, the general consensus is that Free Will is possible, therefore you're actually in the position of having to demonstrate your outlier position.
Santa Claus (as well as gods) definitely exist. I don't know if that satifies either of them being possible in your way of thinking.
I was referring to the usual kind of compatibilism. The problem of compatibilism, at least as i understand it, is how to reconcile two seemingly contradictory premises
1) The principle of causal determinism - by which the future when conditioned upon a hypothetical total knowledge of the past, is believed to consist of precisely one possible world.
2) The metaphysical existence of choice and possibility for agents who interact with the world.
In my opinion, many self-described compatibilists are in fact deniers of either 1 or 2, and so don't qualify as being "compatibilist". For example, they might hold to 1) but interpret possibilities to be epistemic rather than ontic. Or they might hold onto 2 whilst apparently forgetting their alleged commitment to 1, or they might simply fail to provide any reconciliation of their beliefs in 1 and 2.
To actually commit to both 1 and 2 in a way that reconciles them requires a radical re-conception of time and causation along the lines of presentism, such that the logical implications of causal determinism can be either fully, or least partly, recoverable from the interactive choice principles of 2.
I prioritize the pursuit of wisdom over engaging in debates or conforming to popular opinion. My focus lies in what aligns with logical or mathematical reasoning rather than engaging in robust debates. The dichotomy between determinism and indeterminism, fundamental to quantum and classical science respectively, underpins my perspective. If free will were to exist, the universe would descend into chaos, rendering knowledge and existence impossible due to the absence of stable order and structure. The burden of proof, i believe, rests with those advocating for free will. However, i acknowledge the challenge of providing a logically consistent and satisfying account of free will, as it would necessitate introducing a force beyond demonstrable science and outside the laws of our universe.
My understanding is simple and straightforward. The universe can behave in three possible ways:
1) Deterministic: this means that everything is predetermined, rendering free will non-existent.
2) Indeterministic: this means that everything is random, making free will not possible.
3) Both deterministic and indeterministic: this option, like the first two, excludes the possibility of free will.
As for my question: Is there another option not listed that I should be aware of?
Quoting LuckyR
Right, well then don't forget to be a good boy this Christmas, and if you see or talk to him tell him that punos says hi, and that i'm still waiting for my Red Ryder Carbine Action 200-shot Range Model air rifle. Just kidding :joke:
Earlier i was mentioning models that might appear retro-causal, in the sense that the model considers facts about the past to be ontologically dependent on present and future observations, i.e history is considered not to exist unless 'enabled' by the observations of 'future' observers, which isn't to imply that observers get to control the content of history.
Roguelike video games come to mind, in which a computer game generates an on-the-fly history of a world around the player, in direct response to the players actions. The player's possible actions, which he himself controls, are by definition considered to be "future directed" causal events relative to the player. e.g opening a door, digging a hole, killing a monster etc. The information about the world that those actions reveal, but which those actions aren't said to "cause", is information that appears to be retrocausal if it is considered to be nature's on-the-fly response to the players actions.
Because according to classical understanding of causality, the past is both fixed and exactly determines the future, which prevents the possibility of free choice of any agent who lives above the initial cause.
Compatibilism doesn't make sense as a concept unless the past is in some way considered to be ontologically dependent upon the future. Being committed to the appearance of retrocausation isn't to be committed to retro-causation, and super-determinism might even be considered as appearing retro-causal.
Because you say there would need to be one, would I be correct in assuming you already know there was such a force? If not, there was, introduced in 1785, meeting your general criteria, although the degree of satisfaction obtainable from the account of that force is rather subjective, to be sure.
Quoting punos
Maybe that given the mere appearance that sufficiently intelligent beings behave in at least one way not available to non-intelligent beings, the case should be granted that they actually do. It follows that if such behavior is granted, it is only logical that there be a force serving as both justification and necessary causality for it, that is not available to non-intelligent beings.
Why? Says who?
How did painter know the path shoveler would take?
The story is meaningless.
Yours truly. Tell me how i've gone wrong.
You said it like the compatibilist model of the world has retro causality, but I think instead it's more accurate to say that your model of compatibilism has retro causality.
Which is fine, if you're a compatibilist and you believe it makes sense with retro causality, that can be the kind of compatibilism that works for you. But it's not what compatibilists think in general.
I'm not sure how this is the case. If I am manipulated, brainwashed by propaganda say, then it seems my actions can absolutely be determined by that.
Like, if you're sent to some alien planet to destroy the Goobleblogs and you've been told that this species' one goal is to eradicate all other life in the galaxy. You think you're involved in self defense against an implacable foe, and so you act accordingly.
As it turns out, the Galaxy Defense Force intentionality mislead you because they want all the unobtainium on the Goobleblogs land and they are actually a friendly, peace loving people.
Then it seems like the manipulation plays a key causal role in your actions.
But part of the network of causes can absolutely be information someone tells you, that seems pretty clear to me.
Indeed. I worded that badly. I didn't mean to imply the information, alone, caused the action, or that the Count suggested such.
If you make a choice based on information told to you, and that choice turns out to be really damaging, you might want someone to blame. Sometimes, it's the person who gave the information. Sometimes it's the person who made the choice based on the information. Sometimes it's both, sometimes it's neither.
Seems to be the case to me. When a fire alarm goes off, everyone stands up and exits the room. The alarm seems to play an important causal role there. When you see smoke billowing from your kitchen, you go and grab the fire extinguisher. Incoming information affects behavior.
Of course, it isn't the only thing involved. Past experiences with fire drills also play a causal role in people's behavior. Ears and brains are involved, etc.
I would put it like this: given the way the world is, the fact that people experience fire drills routinely, the fact that loud piercing sirens and flashing lights get our attention, etc. the fire alarm sits astride a "leverage point" as a subsystem that is part of the overall system of "the building and all its occupants." By doing something very simple, it can cause a huge change in behavior. This is a trait of complex systems: a small change in one place can cascade into major global changes across the system.
But when we talk about "freedom," things get more complex. Why is the fire alarm there? Because someone engineered it for a certain purpose -- to warn us about fires. If we put an alarm up in our house, then it is basically acting as an extension of our will. So even though it plays a causal role in our behavior, it doesn't necessarily constrain our freedom. It's the same as when we leave a post-it note for ourselves and it reminds us to do something. The note has causal efficacy, but it has the effect we will it to have.
Manipulation and brainwashing are different. In this case, the information guiding us is largely an extension of another person's will. We aren't acting completely freely if we wouldn't commit to the same acts if we weren't being manipulated.
Modifying Lynn Rudder Baker's definition, I would say an act is free when:
These conditions, particularly the last, are difficult to meet entirely. This is no issue, an act can bemore or less free; freedom is not bivalent. Manipulation seems to make us less free by acting on the last point.
Another thing to note here is that, under the above definition, knowledge and information help us to become more free. This makes intuitive sense. Know-how enhances our causal powers; technology lets us do things we otherwise could not. Knowledge of the world affects our decision-making. The more we know, the more we can be guided by unifying reason, instead of by instinct, desire, and circumstance. Knowledge of the "why" behind our actions is especially important. Without such recursive self-knowledge, we are always motivated by what R. Scott Baker calls "the darkness that comes before," things we cannot fathom. This turns us into a mere effect of other causes.
Retro-causality is a generally vague and controversial concept, to the point that it seems to rule very little in or out (recalling the fact that QM, which most physicists consider to be forwards-directed, has an innocuous retro-causal interpretation). Causal conventionalists like Hume for instance, even rule out retro-causality as a matter of tautology, which is why i didn't want to appeal to retro-causality as a hypothesis (which some might argue is formally meaningless), but to philosophical and empirical intuitions, naive if you like, that align with the idea.
It might have been better if I had never used the term. What is of underlying importance to compatibilism in my view, isn't the existence of retro-causation (whatever it is supposed to mean), but the treatment of material implication as being symmetric, i.e. of the form A <--> B, which can be interpreted in a number of ways, including Bertrand Russell's directionless "no causality" view, super-determinism and circular causality. In these cases, it is accepted that there exists synchronisation between a so-called "cause" and a so-called "effect", but where the control between "cause" and "effect" is either considered to be bidirectional, directional but a matter of perspective, or directionless in both directions.
I don't know the background motivation of the OP, but the problem that was presented is very reminiscent of the thought experiments that physicists use when selecting among interpretations of QM, which frequently give rise to debates over free-will in magazines such as the scientific american. In fact the OP's thought experiment is more or less identical to premises called "quantum conspiracies" , namely the premise that nature has already decided on the properties that physicists will measure, such that physics experiments cannot reveal anything about nature's properties.
The OP muddles the question because it's impossible to know why the shoveler and the field painter arrived at the same decision of how to meander across the field.
If you asked me to cross the field taking the shortest distance, I would walk a diagonal line, as would most people, but certainly not all because some would get the question wrong. When I walked the diagonal line, I would still do it with free will because I could have done otherwise and could have purposefully refused to comply with the request to take the shortest path. But, to the extent someone asks me to do X and I do X and the person predicted I would do X, that has nothing to do with whether I could have done otherwise and had free will. I could have done anything. It was just most likely I would comply.
The real question arises when we posit an omniscient creature who knows all. For example, if an omniscient creature wrote out all the things I would do over the course of my life in the Book of Hanover, it would create a problem for free will advocates, at least to the extent free will entails the ability to do otherwise when faced with a decision.
For example, if you ask whether I'm going to eat a ham sandwich for dinner today, and the answer can be found at Page 6 of the Book of Hanover, such that I cannot vary from what the book says, then it's hard to say I can do otherwise. In fact, the book would say such things as "At 3:00 p.m. Hanover will flip to page 6 of the book and see what he will do at 7:00 p.m. and he will try to defy what it says, but he can't."
Such is the problem with omniscience, which is part of a myriad of problems dealing with infinity and other problems dealing with time travel generally.
My view is that one cannot make sense of the meaning of free will, but neither can we make sense of a world without free will. It is a necessary prerequisite to be taken as a given to make sense of our world, even if ultimately it cannot be rationally reconciled.
None of this seems connected in particular to compatibilism. Compatibilism is perfectly compatible with the idea of causality moving exclusively forward in time.
If I have been lied to about this easily recognizable person, my options, freedom, and decision are the same. No?
No, i'm not aware of such a force that would enable the occurrence of free will, since every force i know of is of a deterministic nature. What is the name of this force discovered in 1785 that you seem to claim serves as the mechanism for free will? Is it gravity? Is it electromagnetism? Is it the strong or weak force? What other fundamental force is there?
Quoting Mww
At what level of intelligence does a being acquire free will, and why is there a difference between one insufficient level and another sufficient one? For instance if an egg and a sperm do not have free will, at what point after fertilization does free will come into the picture, and how?
Quoting Mww
Ok, but what is that force is what i'm asking, along with a complimentary description as to how it achieves this free will? Neither you nor anyone else has ever provided me with a 4th option to my list, do you have one?
Me neither, but I want to consider a pragmatic motivation for a compatibilist perspective.
A person can recognize that we are physically determined systems, and recognize that we are systems that develop probabilistic anticipations of future events. Furthermore, it's rather pragmatically valuable for machines like us to discuss such anticipations. (To get a job, to get married, to get to the moon, to end global warming, etc.)
It seems to me there is a pragmatic value, for the sort of machines we are, to being able to communicate in simplistic terms of free will, and as we are able, modify what we mean by "free will" to be more accurate.
IMO, Peter Tse, in The Neural Basis of Free Will: Criterial Causation, does a good job of pointing towards a more accurate understanding.
So what we know doesn't determine our actions at all? Then why does everyone choose to get up when the fire alarm goes off?
If information didn't determine our choices, this would seem to be a serious limit on freedom. I would like to think that I love who I love and despise who I despise because of who they are, what I know about them, etc. That is, past experiences would help [I]determine[/I] my actions relative to people.
But if information has no interaction with choice, then what determines our actions? It can't be our opinions, because those are formed by our past experiences and information about the world. It can't be our preferences unless said preferences are free floating, and not grounded in past experiences or our information about the world. This would seem to simply make our actions arbitrary, random this doesn't seem like freedom.
So to answer your question: no, freedom is about [I]what we choose to do[/I] not about metaphysical possibilities.
I don't think a libertarian free will where a "choosing entity" sits free floating outside of all our other experiences is coherent. If I freely decided to turn the AC up because I feel hot, my "feeling hot" determined my actions. If there wasn't this sort of interaction between the rest of my self and my will, my choices could only be random and arbitrary, determined by nothing, and thus I could not be "self-determining," in any sense.
That's the thing with fighting strawmen, you always win. No one I know who believes in Free Will (as well as serious Determinists) supposes that the concept applies to anything more than decision making, ie they agree that physical systems are Determined.
As to talking to Santa (and gods) since they both exist inter-subjectively (not objectively) we can speak to them but they don't answer back.
The freedom implied by the word "Free" in Free Will doesn't mean free from influence, it means free from following inevitably from the antecedent state.
Yes, but if determinism is accepted by the compatibilist, then probabilities can only be given an epistemic interpretation, while teleological concepts such as "anticipating the future" can only be objectively interpreted as referring to present and past causes. In which case, your pragmatic compatibilist solution must surely collapse on further inspection into standard metaphysical determinism without "free will".
Another possibility which comes to mind, is to deny that there is an absolute metaphysical distinction between determinism and free-will, by arguing that a definition of either is meaningless, by virtue of their definitions being circular. This is analgous to the arguments that Quine used to reject the analytic-synthetic distinction. However, since this is about denying the intelligibility of the determinism/free-will distinction, I can't see how this stance could be described as a "compatibilist" position. Furthermore, it entails re-conceiving the problem of free will as being at least partly grammatical in nature, as opposed to referring to a purely physical conjecture.
What strawman? It sounds to me like you don't have an answer to my question, and you're just trying to excuse your way out of it. I'm not trying to win anything, what i'm trying to do is figure out how one comes to the conclusion that free will exists in the midst of determinism, or indeterminism.
Quoting LuckyR
Sounds like those people want to have their cake and eat it too. How do you suppose decision making is not governed by the deterministic laws of the universe? Whomever believes in determinism and yet believes in free will anywhere in the whole of the universe (from quantum particles to human brains) either does not understand determinism, or does not understand what they mean by free will, and are definitely not serious determinists. What exactly is free about free will? What is it about making a decision that trumps the laws of a deterministically evolving universe?
There really is only one will, the singular will of a deterministic universe, and free will is no more than a misnomer of a deeply misunderstood nature of the universe by some people. One's decisions do not belong to one self, they belong to literally the universe, yet since each and everyone of us is completely part of the universe, our wills naturally feel free to us, i mean why wouldn't it?. I do not believe in free will in any which way, and still i feel as if my will is free and all my own. I feel just like you except my priority is in accepting truth for what it is, and not for what i feel like it is or should be. If that were the case i would be practicing religion and not philosophy.
We don't have to address this subject any further if you are not willing or comfortable in applying logic and reason to the matter. I'm not in competition with you brother, believe it or not i think we are on the same team (i hope); that is we both want to know (i assume), and we are both philosophers (i'm guessing).
So, what determines the "free part" of the decision making process?
If it's nothing, then it's random.
If it's us, then it seems like our choices are based on the type of people we are, which is in turn shaped by past events and our nature. In which case our choices "follow from" us. And since we preexist our choices, it would seem to be the case that we also exist in states that are antecedent to our choices.
If it's a "free will" that exists without reference to our past experiences, preferences, and nature, how does that work? I don't see how our choices can be both "determined by," but "not really determined" by the self that exists prior to a choice being made. But even more so, if seems that, for me to be free, my decisions have to be based on my knowledge, preferences, feelings, past experiences, desires, rational thinking, etc. These pre-exist any "choosing," and to the extent that my choices are based on a free floating free will instead of on these pre-existing factors, I would say I am not free. Some will that has nothing to do with what makes me who I am is then chosing.
This is of course leaving aside the problem of how our choices could ever reflect our will if our actions lack determinate effects. We can only make choices that bring about the states of affairs that we prefer because we know what the effects of our actions will be (which goes back to past experience).
It would seem to me that most philosophers take the "free" to simply means "possessing freedom." They all define freedom differently. Saying "free" means "free from determinism," is just begging the question on libertarianism versus compatibilism.
Nope, and no one ever will. Your list seeks natural causality for the way the universe behaves in relation to the possibility for free will, but in considerations for how human agency itself behaves, which presupposes free will, natural causality wont work. Hence, the introduction of a non-natural causality, or force in your terms, sufficient for metaphysically establishing a logical ground for human behavior, re: freedom.
Im using free will because you did ..dialectical consistency and all that. They do not belong together, insofar as free does not describe the will under every possible condition of its use in human agency.
But, as you say, I dont do debates either. You asked, I offered; do with it as you wish.
I kinda already knew that.
Quoting Mww
Nope. In fact the purpose of my list was to lay out all the ways the universe might work, and listed all the ones i know. I was hoping that you or someone had some framework under which free will makes sense. I've tried to steelman the free will argument before, but to tell you the honest truth i don't even know how to begin to describe something so contradictory in a sensible way. Obviously you have a way of thinking about it that makes sense to you, and one of the things i'm trying to do is find out how it makes sense to you.
What considerations of human agency are you referring to, and why would you presuppose free will first before investigating the matter, that seems backwards. It is like i'm going to presuppose the Earth is flat and thus i will only conclude that the Earth is flat, even though all other planets that we know of in the universe are spherical in nature. Explain to me how natural causality won't work, show me where it breaks down, and i'll show you where you are wrong, if you or anyone else can even answer that question.
Quoting Mww
And i only did because that's the topic of this thread, and i had no choice even though i felt i did.
Quoting Mww
Ok good that's a start, how do you know there are some conditions under which free will is not a valid description, and how do you know which ones are, and what makes the difference?
Quoting Mww
You're right, i'm not debating really, i already know there is no free will, but what i really wish to do is to know where such disconnected ideas from reality come from. I'm actually asking for a coherent explanation of free will. If supernatural is all you got then i get it... you're intellectually bankrupt in that specific area at least (not meant to be offensive, just an observation). If that is the case then so be it.
Id agree to intellectual bankruptcy ..not my own of course; no one willingly admits impoverished rationality ..if supernatural predication was all there was. But it isnt, and because Im approaching the issue of will and non-natural causality from the domain of pure practical reason, Im exempted from any such indirect accusation.
Quoting punos
Ahhh, a Schopenhaur-ian then. Of some sort? Very far from my interest, so .carry on.
Wouldn't it be absolutely free, without any boundaries or limitations whatsoever? But that's just my guess, I really don't know what you're talking about.
The will without the body was your proposition. Do you accept it or not?
No one expects that the will is free in an absolute way. That is not how we use 'free", and it seems like a sort of ridiculous idea. That's what I was trying to say. You and I are "free", but we cannot break the law without being punished. Freedom always has its limits.
Have you ever considered that perhaps the will chose to have a body, so that it could use the body as a tool? Then having a body is the means by which the will is expanding is boundaries.
Alas no one knows at the granular level how exactly human decision making happens. We do know that if someone could take detailed knowledge of the antecedent state and correctly predict the resultant state (the decision) 100% of the time, most, including myself would take that as proof of Determinism and a refutation of the concept of Free Will.
We also know that knowledge of the antecedent state allows prediction of decision making better than random chance but nowhere near 100% accuracy. Thus the antecedent state clearly Influences decision making, just it isn't proven that it Determines it.
Now, everyone has experienced the process of pondering a choice. Determinism proclaims that while the process of pondering is real, that one can actually choose either vanilla or chocolate is an illusion. In other words our subjective feeling that we can choose is false. All Free Will is claiming is that our subjective feeling of choice is correct, that you really could have chosen vanilla or chocolate.
It doesn't require disintegration of the Universe. That's just hyperbole.
The thing I don't like about this framing is that it's impossible in a practical sense - we'll never get to a point where we can do that perfectly, and in fact any physical system in any possible universe prohibits predicting the future perfectly faster than the universe calculates that future itself.
So even if we did live in a deterministic universe, predicting the future perfectly faster than the future comes is necessarily impossible.
You could predict it imperfectly faster, of course - we can do that now for many scenarios - but that can't have 100% accuracy and we could do that even if there is some genuine randomness.
So basically, what I'm saying is, realistically our ability to predict things doesn't actually tell us if we live in a deterministic universe or not. I mean, it does mean at don't live in a COMPLETELY random universe, but it doesn't tell us if we live in a universe with 0 randomness or some randomness
This is a statement of the position known as "incompatibilism." "If things are determined, then there is no freedom." Claiming that we universally "know" this is simply to beg the question re compatibilism.
But there is a reason incompatibilism is no longer a dominant position in debates free will. It's arguably incoherent, as I've tried to point out. If I'm "free" when I act according to my desires, preferences, and rational decision making process, then it is also clear that all of those must preexist my acts.
You say this makes us somehow unfree, by virtue of our rationality, desires, knowledge, and preferences pre-existing our actions. My question is: what doesn't preexist our making a choice that is meaningfully "us," such that this non-prexisting force has anything to do with us and thus can be an extension of [I]our[/I] will? The demand that some core element of "what is doing the choosing," not pre-exist our choosing seems to preclude that any
of the freedom described is actually "ours."
And then what determines how this special choosing part chooses? If it has nothing to do with our knowledge, desires, etc. then it doesn't seem to have anything to do with us. We are acted upon by ghosts outside our understanding.
That is, the metaphysical problem of "where is this will in space time," is only part of the challenge to incompatiblist free will. The other problem is that it seems to deny that "we," who pre-exist our choices, could be what determines those choices.
Certainly, advocates of libertarian free will still exist (e.g., Thomas Pink), but IMO they all seem to either turn libertarianism into compatibilism, or handwave the issues away with semantics by claiming "freedom just IS the act of chosing that organisms do," (Pink).
Determinism does not entail reductionism. It doesn't entail that our choices reduce to "the states of all the atoms that make up our body before we choose," or anything like that. It simply means, "what comes before dictates what comes after." We come before our choices. This seems to be a prerequisite for freedom in that we have to come before our choices to affect them. Determinism doesn't preclude "self determination." Only determinism wed to smallism claims that actions reduce to physical states in phase space or something like that.
Again, this is the position of incompatibilism, not determinism. Leibniz came up with the Principal of Sufficient Reason in part to explain why it was necessary for freedom, not how it precluded it.
I agree, compatibilists are generally people who do not want to think out the problems, so they insist there is no problem.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
You are characterizing "the will", and the freedom which the will has, as a property of "us". But if you allow that each person is an individual, and the free will as a property of "us" is something which preexists the individual, (and this is evident by the nature of life), then you will see that an individual's free will is an extension of the will which precedes the individual. As I said to Vaskane above, consider that to have a body was a choice made by the will.
Ok, that still doesn't answer how such decisions are "mine" in they aren't determined by my rationality, beliefs, desires, instincts, etc? What exactly is this free floating will that isn't determined by anything that comes before? You can declare by fiat that free floating "will" is ours, but what exactly does it have to do with us if it isn't determined by our feelings, memories, etc?
And incompatibilism runs in to even more problems explaining how it is that people in France might be, in important ways, "more free" than people in North Korea. Or how is it that a prisoner can be "less free" due to their imprisonment? Do we have to posit a different, sui generis type of freedom here? It seems to me like we would, since otherwise the free floating freedom of individuals turns out to be exactly the sort of thing that is influenced by prior circumstances.
Further, we can consider positive freedom. In key ways, things like education seem to empower or freedom. We are not "free to become a literary critic" if no one will teach us how to read. We aren't "free to become an engineer," without training in mathematics. But these are, like political liberties and rights, tied to the prior state of the world. I am not free to become a lawyer if only the nobility can practice law, etc.
Then there is the whole issue of how any will can possibly effectively work to bring about states of affairs it prefers, and prevent states of affairs it does not prefer, if its actions lack determinant effects. If my showing my son books might make him forget how to read, how am I free to teach him to read? I am only free to do this because I know that specific acts help with the acquisition of literacy (acts have determinant, predictable consequences)
Finally, consider the alcoholic, drug addict, sex addict, sufferer of OCD, or "rageoholic" They are influenced by internal causes outside their control in a way many who suffer these conditions liken to "slavery." But how can we explain this sort of internal bondage if our freedom isn't determined by our personal history?
Because there doesn't seem to be a problem if freedom is grounded in "self-determination." It doesn't seem like much of a definition stretch to say that we are free when "we do what we want and don't do what we don't want," and that "we are the cause of our own actions."
Such a definition doesn't clash with determinism. The definition which clashes with determinism is: "we are free if we can do other than we actually do,"which just seems like a bad definition since, by necessity, we only ever do what we actually do. The freedom we care about lies in how we make our actual choices, not metaphysical potentialities re choice, so this ends up being a non-sequitur. Not to mention that free will as self-determination makes it much easier to define how we can be relatively more or less free, which certainly seems to be the case (freedom is not bivalent, we can experience gradations of coercion).
If we offer hungry people two dishes of food, one fresh, and one rancid, we are probably justified in expecting 100% of them choose the non-rancid food. Were they unfree? It doesn't seem so. Was their choice determined by what came before - the rancidity of the one plate? It seems so.
You are just asking for a contradiction. You want to say "the decisions are mine", as if you are determining them, so that you can say "this contradicts 'the will is free'".
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
It is not declared by fiat, it is known by evidence. Your parents preexisted you, and so did the will which brought your body into being. It is only when you move to make the will the property of the individual, instead of the individual a property of the will, that you separate a multitude of wills, the wills of your parents, and yourself into individual wills. But you do this only because you are asking for contradiction.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I do not understand this criticism. Learning is attributable to the combined and unified will of both teacher and student, with the unified goal of education. If the will for education was only on one side, as you portray, there could be no education.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I do not understand this criticism either. The will is free to choose, but it must live with the consequences of its choices. That is the nature of time. Mistakes happen and we suffer from the consequences. That we suffer from mistaken choices of the past, does not imply that those choices were not freely made.
And, as I also explained to Viskane above, in no way is "free" ever used to signify something absolute. There is always restrictions to freedom. It is only by asking for absolute freedom in the concept of "free will", that the incoherency which you find, arises. But that incoherency is really the result of making "free" something which it never is in reality, and that is absolute. In reality, "free" is always qualified.
The problems described here arise from a misrepresentation of the nature of time. We would require a better representation of freedom in relation to passing time, in order to sort out these issues. We are free in relation to the future, and not free in relation to the past, is a position which does clash with determinism, and it does not require that we are free to do other than we did.
I don't think anybody's concpetion of freed will literally requires the ability to change past choices made.
I agree, it's asking for a contradiction. That's why libertarian free will makes no sense. The idea of "us" choosing in a way that is autonomous from the past - our experiences, memories, desires, past thinking, etc. removes "us" from the will.
To say that such a "free will," "isn't actually totally free, that it's constrained by (determined by) all sorts of things like past experience, memory, desire, physics etc." is to simply grant the main claim of compatibilism. This is what I mean by "libertarianism turning itself into compatibilism."
If you say "no, only most of our decision making is pre-determined, there is an extra bit of free floating free will that isn't determined by anything in the past," then I'd just repeat the same question: "what does such a will have to do with me?"
It basically comes down to this; "If something is not determined by anything in what way is it not random?" The uncaused is random, and there is no reason anything uncaused should tend towards any choice and not another. It seems incoherent to me to say "our wills are determined by our past experiences, thoughts, desires" but then also that there is also an "extra bit" that isn't determined by any of these. Ok, even if this is true, it doesn't result in more freedom, it just makes my actions partly random and unfathomable. If I can't possibly know what determined my actions, how am I to become free?
The point isn't about whose will is involved, it is that, in every such instance of positive freedom the past dictates what we are free to do in the future. I have no problem saying that "past free choices influence future free choices." But this is still the past determining the future.
If you don't learn to read, you're not free to read War and Peace. This is past states of the world determining freedom of action.
I think that alternative interpretations of 'chance' is the key to non-classical compatibilism, where by "non-classical" I am referring to considerations from modern logic.
Consider the fact that the definition of chance appears to be circular - ordinarily, chance is taken to mean "to not be determined", where to be "determined" is taken to mean "to not be subject to chance".
One way out of this circularity is to consider determinism and chance to be relative to perspective, by taking inspiration from game-theory in which "chance nodes" are understood to refer to states of a game in which it isn't the player's turn to move, but someone else's.
Non-classical compatibilism that is based on this logic, can take metaphysical "free choice" as an axiom that is true for every player of the game, whose actions impose constraints on both the possible futures and possible 'pasts' of every other player. This position can be regarded as "compatibilist" to the extent that it can successfully reduce the empirical observations of modern theoretical physics in terms of a set of laws, whose 'determinism' is considered to be relative to the frame of reference used.
Transactional QM seems to be the closest theory in this regard.
I think there are definitely problems with the main ways of defining probability, particularly frequentism, but I don't think circularity is one of them. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/probability-interpret/
The classical and logical views don't seem to be as much a problem for metaphysical potentialities as for epistemology and the idea of rational credence.
That's an interesting idea. Any tips on a place to read more?
That doesn't matter, because free will isn't wisdom, omnipotence, or omniscience.
Of course it's possible that with more knowledge, more resources, one would make different choices. But this has no bearing on whether one has free will or not.
Not sure what the relevance of this is.
So what does have bearing on free will?
Did the shift in Western culture that allowed women to start being educated in large numbers not affect their freedom? Does being raised in a religious cult not effect freedom? Are the characters in 1984 not made less free by the omnipotent manipulation of information by the state?
When people talk about lack of free will, they're usually actually talking about lack of wisdom, lack of omniscience, or lack of omnipotence.
(Or, in Libet's absurd case, a person would have to be without the ability to plan and act accordingly in order to qualify as having free will.)
Only whether the person feels they have free will or not.
In some of the above cases, free will is affected only in the sense that people were directly taught and internalized things to the effect that they are deterministic automatons, or that whatever they do is guided and decided by some "higher power".
Knowledge, information, and resources only define and limit options on which to think or act, but they don't limit free will.
I entirely agree with you. If it's not the result of influences, then it's random.
My answer to the question of "What is free will free from?" is "The properties and forces that physics is aware of." My decisions/choices are not reducible to arrangements of the constituent parts of my brain, progressing from moment to moment due to the laws of physics.
Gotcha. Personally, I don't think freedom can be reduced to "the feeling of volition." At the very least, such a view would seem to require multiple disjunct types of freedom. Slaves presumably experience the sensation of volition the same way as non-slaves, and yet there is still an important sense in which they aren't "free" in the same ways. The same goes for alcoholism, drug addiction, etc., which don't have any effect on the sensation of volition.
That seems plausible to me. But even if some sort of substance dualism were the case, it would still seem to me that what determines our choices must exist before we choose in order for our choices to be truly "ours." So, even if I entertain the idea of "nonphysical souls," compatibalism seems more right.
I agree - whether choices are purely physical or happen in some sort of "soul realm", the picture doesn't change at all.
Freedom is about "freedom from something" and "freedom to do something". This doesn't have to do with "free will".
Sure. Someone with less information, less knowledge, fewer resources will just have it harder to carry out their decisions. Making a decision in free will and the ease of acting on said decision are two different things.
We don't talk about "love" or "friendship" or "democracy" etc. on the level of cells and tissues, as if "love" etc. would exist on the level of biochemistry. But why do this when it comes to free will?
Do you think it would make sense to test someone whether they love you or believe in democracy by measuring their brain waves or some such?
IMHO, it's the prevalence of smallism in modern explanations of determinism.
Old way of explaining determinism: the world follows the Principal of Sufficient Reason, "everything has a sufficent cause." Causes come before effects. Causes determine effects. We can consider several types of causes (substance, essence, form, telos, etc.)
Modern Way: X are the ways in which physics and chemistry are deterministic. Everything reduces to facts about chemistry and physics, thus the world is deterministic.
And then this is used to support fatalism. "If all facts about people are reducible to facts about atoms, and atoms aren't free, then freedom can never enter the equation (see: Hume, Jaegeon Kim)."
To my mind, this is problematic because there is much more evidence for a broad concept of causation than smallism. On the balance of evidence, I would say smallism sounds quite unlikely, while some concept of cause seems necessary to explain the world (and likely PSR as well).
Is "smallism" a view that anyone actually endorses?
"Smallism" to me looks pretty interchangable with the statement "there's no strong Emergence", or in other words "all macroscopic phenomena are the direct consequence of microscopic phenomena"
I'm skeptical that most people in the hard sciences would disagree with the proposition, "What happens at the microscopic level is a function of the context provided by a larger physical system." Do you think otherwise?
I think more than 50% (but certainly not all) people especially in physics would agree with this statement in particular.
That doesn't mean it's a TRUE statement, but you asked if anyone actually endorses it - yes, they do, and it's probably more ubiquitous in some sciences than you think. (I guess that's an easy bar to pass, if you think there's 0 and there is in fact more than 0, but still)
Quoting Art48
To me, one cannot make a term of two existing words like "free will" and be privileged to describe the term however they see fit. No matter how one defines the term I will not accept it. To conclude either way, that "Humans possess free will or not", will definitely have repercussions beyond any intended context.
Both words "Free" and "Will" are very, very tricky.
The problem with the term "free" is that you can't say one has "free will" if they're merely free from deterministic forces. A slave who is free from hunger isn't free, the same logic applies to will.
However, the bigger problem lies with the word "will", and it's truly a disaster in this context. I won't go into details unless asked, but in short, everyone has their own opinion on what this word refers to and means. On what constitutes a will and what's external, and on how we determine what was one's will.
Many of the things one might argue one's will is influenced by, another could argue are part of one's will. The circumstances that influence one's will... Is that a threat to freedom of one's will, or is that just decision-making? So many different understandings of "will", and on what "free" would mean, and what things "will" must be free from.
Anyway, TLDR is, if someone wants to argue for "free will", they should just express their position without using the term. If they insist on using the term, the discussion will likely go nowhere, and for my part, I will just disagree pretty much no matter what the argument, as long as its conclusion is on the existence of "free will".
Oh I agree with you that in reality our inability to predict the resultant state in the case of decision making doesn't tell us anything about the validity of Determinism nor Free Will.
I was only saying that if we somehow could (I know we currently can't), it would prove Determinism and disprove Free Will.
I am in complete agreement with you that Free Will, as a label is a total disaster. I wish the concept could have a different one, say "Bob" for instance.
Basically, I don't deal in labels, I think of concepts. Unfortunately when communicating with others, we generally use labels, and the miscommunication flows from there.
Here's a concept: does antecedent state X always lead to resultant state A or can antecedent state X lead to resultant state A or B or C? People I commonly converse with call the first scenario Determinism. I don't really care what someone calls it. Some call the second scenario Free Will others call it Indeterminism, again I am less interested in labels.
Certainly. It's still the dominant view it would seem, although this is more by inertia than anything else. But if you look back to the 20th century it was quite dominant; now this is less and less the case.
Maybe it's just selection bias, but smallism actually seems less popular in physics, most popular in neuroscience and cognitive science, or amongst the laity (which makes sense because it was dominant until recently). In physics, the success of QFT, and the ideal of fields (wholes) being fundemental, not part(icles)s, and the rise of pancomputationalism both seem to have hit smallism quite hard. Just thinking of writers in physics who would not appear to be smallist, there is: Vedral, Tegmark, Davies, Lloyd, Wilzek, Rovelli, Deutsche, etc. A sort of "who's who" list of people writing popular theory.
This is Plato's point in the Republic when he discusses the parts of the soul and how they can be set against one another. Saint Paul describes something similar in his Epistle to the Romans, describing how he is a slave to desire and instinct, at "war with the members of his body."
Plato's solution, picked up by the Patristics, Hegel, and others, was to posit that the unification of the will requires that all these elements, Nietzsche's "congress of souls," be ruled over by reason.
Why reason? In part because it can weigh and balance desires, but also because it's the "part of the soul," that allows us to figure out how to actually achieve any goals. But more importantly, reason has authority because in its desire for truth and "what is truly true/good," not just "what appears to be so," reason routinely transcends itself. It goes beyond the finite limits of what a person currently is. Other desires, per Plato, don't do this, and lacking this transcendent quality, they are more contingent, less necessary, and so less deserving of authority because they are less fully themselves. That is, they are effects from "without." But if we want to be free, we need to be self-determining, which means we seek the transcendent cause from within.
Against this view, Hume posited that reason should only be "the slave of the passions," but I don't recall Hume ever actually taking down Plato's argument re transcendence and the ability to bring unity. The dismissal is more grounded in the lack of a "unified ego," to rule. But of course, this is the same thing that Plato actually allows and starts with. If we were unified, we wouldn't need the rule of reason.
It would seem you and I have different ideas about smallism. To me, QFT is the very essence of smallism. To me, when a smallist says "big things happening are the consequence of small things happening", QFT is PRECISELY the sort of thing they mean by "small things happening".
QFT is a specification, a model, of what happens exactly to the smallest things in the universe and how they interact.
Smallism is the claim that all facts about larger things are reducible to facts about small things (parts). QFT says that facts about the smallest things are actually only/best describable as facts about completely universal entities. This is a reversal. The universe isn't what it is because of the properties of its most "basic" parts, but rather the properties of "basic parts" are driven by what the entire universe is.
To be sure, QFT has been made to fit with smallism, because smallism is still popular, but it at least creates a wedge. The larger motivation for abandoning smallism is a switch from a substance based view ("things are the way they are because of differences in the types of stuff that makes them up") to a process based view ("change is fundemental and things are what they are because of the processes underlying them"). Computation is a popular model here and computation isn't reducible in the same way as the substance view.
A classical substance view would be that Na + Cl = salt. Keep adding more salt and you have more salt, but it's always the same thing because of the parts that make it up. In process, more can be different. Nest a formula like PRIME(x*3) and adding more x gives you something different. X = 1 results in a prime, and the output will be 1 (1 = "yes, this number is prime"). Adding more X always makes a number divisible by 3, and so any other value for x will result in a 0 ("no, not prime").
Apparent substances then are just long term stabilities in process. And indeed, our "basic particles" do appear to "come into being" and "decay out of being," rather than being "essential building blocks."
To the contrary, QFT was literally invented in the first place to be compatible with the most fundamentally smallist theory there is: relativity. QFTs reason for existence is smallism.
It does not remove "us" from the will. As I explained, it inverts the relation so that "us" is attributed to the will rather than "will" being attributed to us. Attributing "will" to us, as you do, actually removes "us" from will, in order to have an autonomous self which has a will as a property.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
It is not compatibilist because the will is not necessarily constrained by determinist 'laws of nature' which is what is inherent to determinism. So, at any moment in time, the will is free to act in a way which is inconsistent with determinist laws, even though the action produced can be described as consistent with those laws, to a degree. The "to a degree" is what makes compatibilism appear to be correct, but the "inconsistent with determinist laws" is what makes compatibilism actually impossible. In other words, determinist laws are not complete in their capacity to explain what happens in reality, and there are things which happen which cannot be explained by determinist laws. Freely willed acts have a source which is outside the governance of these laws. That makes free will not compatible with determinism. However, in so much as the free will act which occurs at the present, can only act on whatever is already existing, it is constrained by the past.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
The free will act is not determined by anything in the past. However, it is constrained by the fact that it can only act at the present. This means that its capacity to have an effect in the material world is limited by the time when it occurs. Notice that the act itself is not determined, therefore not compatibilist, but the effect that the act has, is restricted and therefore limited by the temporal conditions produced in the past.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
When we do not understand the cause of an act, we might be inclined to say that the act is random. This is due to our failure to understand, and it does not necessarily mean that the act is truly random in any absolute sense, it may just be that we do not have the ability to understand the cause. The determinist will say that if the cause is not a determinist cause then it must be truly random, because the reality of a freely willed cause, as a true cause, is not allowed by the determinist.
Therefore your statement reduces the act which is caused by a free will to an "uncaused" act, in the determinist way of excluding free will causes as possible causes, and concludes that such an act would be "random". The mistake is in categorizing the act of the free will, which is a type of act we do not completely ,understand as "uncaused", rather than categorizing it as a cause which is inconsistent with "cause" as defined by determinist principles, and therefore not understood by those principles.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
The free will act is neither past nor future, it is at the present. So in saying that the past necessarily determines the future, you exclude the possibility of a free will act at the present, and you have determinism. The concept of free will allows for an act at the present, which is not determined by the past.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Sure, but the will to learn allows one to learn how to read, and then read War and Peace. So it is not true to say that if you do not know how to read you will not ever read War and Peace, because you can learn and then do it. And the choice to learn is freely willed, therefore not determined by the past.
Quoting Metaphysician UndercoverMU, I can't say I understand your position. But I believe I understand the Count's. I believe he's saying that, if things in my past aren't causing my decisions in the present, then my decisions are random. So, for example, I will not have chosen chocolate ice cream over vanilla for any reason more significant than a coin toss. In fact, the fact that I don't like, or am allergic to, strawberry will not make it any less likely that I will choose strawberry than either of the other options.
My position is that my past does have bearing on my present decisions. However, it doesn't determine them. I could have chosen vanilla. But I didn't. Obviously, there's no way to prove that I could have done other than I did. But that's what I believe.
While that may indeed be true, it does not follow from it, that there is nothing not caused by something. If it is necessary that everything be caused by something, it becomes a matter of what can cause and whatever relation is possible from it.
Simply put, the principle of cause and effect legislates either in a progressive or regressive series of given empirical conditions, but for which the terminus of the series is not given.
For purely rational conditions, on the other hand, as in a perfectly suitable self-determining system, it is possible that the will be that which is a cause for the progressive series of effects, terminating in an action manifest in the world. But this, even if the case, still leaves the will as either necessitating a cause of itself, or, be itself uncaused. If uncaused, the principle of cause and effect is contradictory, and if the principle of cause and effect is contradictory under some conditions, its total validity immediately becomes questionable, and from which the empirical power of science is doubtable.
If it is unreliable to question the principle of cause and effect, it must be allowed to condition the will, in which case, the regressive series continues. But if the regressive series continues, there is no reason for the notion of a will free to determine anything on its own accord, which destroys the very idea of will as such and inevitably makes morality as a innate human condition, impossible.
It all reduces to the fact the principle of cause and effect cannot be denied, and at the same time but under different conditions, it cannot be used. Which leaves the idea of a substitution for it that does not contradict or intervene on those conditions for which it is necessary.
Given that the principle of cause and effect, as either a progressive or regressive series, is conditioned by time, a non-contradictory substitution for that which is legislated by it, in this case the will and that in a regressive series alone, insofar as its progressive series ends in a behavior congruent with the determination for what it ought to be, must justify the exclusion of regressive successions of time as its own condition.
So it is that that which is not determined by anything may be random, but that which is determined by the will is determined by something, hence not random. But to say an effect is not random does not say anything of its cause other than there is one, and in the case of such cause that has will for its effect, that in its turn being a cause, must have the time condition legislating any other cause/effect series, excluded from it.
There is but one conception, while not precisely sufficient for causality is nonetheless non-contradictory with respect to it, and, most importantly, is irrespective of time, and that is spontaneity. But this conception of spontaneity does not carry the implication that the will is a spontaneous faculty, but only that it is conditioned by it, and from which the conception of autonomy is a logically valid deduction, and from that, arises the conception of freedom.
Easy-peasy.
Or not.
I am not convinced that we cannot use the concept of causation to good use. Nor do I see how substituting a "universal will" as a sort of first mover fixes any of the problems I've mentioned about personal freedom. If a cosmic will starts all causes and effects, it's still the case that for my actions to be mine they have to have something to do with my memories, emotions, knowledge, etc.
I don't understand how this is supposed to fix things. It's still the case that our thoughts, beliefs, memories, rational decision making process, knowledge, etc. all pre-exist our choices. And they also seem to determine our choices. If they determine our choices, then our choices are "determined by" the past. Laws of nature have nothing to do with it, that's just one specific flavor of determinism. I'm just talking about determinism in the sense that "everything has a cause" and "what comes before dictates what comes after, causes pre-exist their effects."
If those things don't determine our choices, then it's hard to see how our actions are "free. Moreover this seems to fly in the face of phenomenological experience and the social sciences as well. E.g., I am generally hungry before I decide to go make lunch, my past sensations determine my current actions in that case.
Determinism is just the view that: "events are determined by previously existing causes." The Principle of Sufficent Reason gets you there by itself. Ideas of determinism, e.g. Stoic Logos Spermatikos and cause, predate anything like modern science, and are a more basic (and IMO even more empirically and logically supportable) description of determinism.
So why is any choice more likely than any other?
But if the act isn't determined by anything in the past what is determining it? If you say "your will," does this will involve your memories, desires, preferences, etc.?
If it does, well those things preexist our choices and influence/determine them. If you say "no" then it's completely unrelated to anything, which makes it impossible to explain why people act in the predictable ways they do.
Surely, the reliable way in which drugs and hormone injections affect behavior suggest some relation between past events and actions, no? Drinking alcohol changes how people decide to act.
Or consider traumatic brain injuries that radically alter someone's personality and short term memory? Why do these effect how people act?
This is an example of past choices dictating future choices. Hence, not consistent with "free will that unaffected by the past." Our past choices affect our future choices, and how they do so depends on how they have affected us and the world around us. That is, past choices determine future choices.
Exactly. Or, even if they are somehow not random, they aren't free. I mean, it seems to me that I proposed to my wife because of all the experiences I had while dating her, not because a will that is totally unrelated to past events acted through me. And if my will is unrelated to past events, it doesn't really make sense why I have gone years without reversing my decision to be married to her. After all, my relative happiness or love for her could have nothing to do with my actions now, those are all things that occured in the past.
The concept of potentialities seems like something that can go to the side when considering free will. It's a bit of a red herring.
Muscle spasms are actions of our body, but they aren't what we'd generally like to call "free actions." Same with our heart beat. Rather than focusing on potentialities, I think it makes more sense to consider which of our actions "we" decide, and which are effects from causes we do not control and may not even fathom. If I am guided by drives totally alien to me, that I don't understand, it doesn't seem like I'm free.
Determinism plays a role on allowing us to make choices though. Our actions need to have predictable effects for them to instantiate our will. If the world was random, if water sometimes cleaned your child, sometimes dissolved then, you couldn't make meaningful choices. That we have some idea what our actions will entail re changes in states of affairs is also a prerequisite of freedom.
This doesn't require absolute determinism, and neither does freedom. But any stochastic element also doesn't seem to make us any freer because it can't be based on our reasons for choosing different actions.
Cool. I never said or implied any sort of universal will.
For my actions to be mine, whatever their cause must be in me. Who ever contested that? Did you really get from what I said, that I was implying anything else?
Oh well. Ever onward.
I found that post quite hard to follow TBH. But you seemed to be talking about the problem of first cause, and a self-determining will somehow solving that? I assumed this must be "universal" in that it doesn't seem like any of our personal wills could possibly account for causation going back before we were born.
But IDK how that solves the problem of a will that isn't affected by the past, memories, desires, etc. either. My will being "mine" doesn't make sense to me if said will remains undetermined by any of my memories, desires, knowledge, etc.
Apparently your interest is in with examining what the will does, whereas my interest concerns what the will is, or, what it is about human agency that makes it possible.
So it isnt so much first cause, as it is metaphysical reduction. And from that, it becomes clear the will is not determined by my experiences or desires and whatnot, but the determinations the will makes, which manifest as my choice of behaviors, are conditioned by them. If we already understand thats what happens, it remains to find out how it happens. As you say we seek a reason, a transcendent cause I remember you calling it. Or, at least make a reasonable philosophical stab at it.
I figured I just gave you one. Kinda. Transcendental rather than transcendent, but a form of cause nonetheless.
There's no logic to support that conclusion. The decisions are made concerning the future, and they are made at the present. The present is prior in time to the future, so a decision made at the present can have an effect in the future. And there is no need to assume that a decision made at the present, which is free from being determined by the past, is random, because it is made with respect to the future therefore not random. This takes into account the reality of all three aspects of time, past, present, and future.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Sure, all of these pre-exist the choice, just like the past condition of the physical world pre-exists the choice, but none of these can be said to be the cause of the choice. This is because the choice is made in relation to the future. So the thing which chooses, the agent, considers all sorts of past things, and possible future things, and makes a decision, at the present, concerning the future. If the decision was caused only by pre-existing things, the agent could not consider the future. Yet the future plays an integral role in the decision.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I don't think you are paying close attention to your own experience. I prepare my meals, and I think this is the case for most people, before i get hungry, by some sort of schedule or habit. Then I am ready to eat before I get too hungry. This is known as thinking ahead. I make my lunch even before I go to work in the morning, and bring it with me, so I in no way wait till I am hungry before I make my lunch.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
The principle of sufficient reason does not get you there, because as I explain above, the cause may be a freely will act of a free willing being, at the present, rather than previously existing causes. This is consistent with the principle of sufficient reason, but not consistent with determinism.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
The free will act is caused by a choice made at the present, free from the past. And as I said, the past is definitely considered, but the past does not determine the choice. The future is also considered. And since the thing which is desired, the good which is acted toward, is something in the future, the future has the principal position as providing the primary influence on the choice. So it is clearly incorrect to say that the act is determined by the past.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Obviously, I do not deny that there is "some relation" between the past, and the choice which is made. However, there is also a relation to the future, and the relation to the future is the principal one. That's why the free will choice is more properly represented as a relation between the present and the future. But the being which makes the choice must make careful consideration of the past in order to adequately know its position at the present, and make the best choices.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I never said that the free will choice is "unaffected by the past". I clearly said precisely otherwise. What is being discussed is whether the choice is determined by the past.
We don't make decisions with no memory of the past. And, remembering the past, we don't ignore it when we make decisions. When you make lunch before going to work, hours before you eat it, you dont make something you do not like. You probably dont often make something you have never tried before. Knowing you are going to want to enjoy your lunch in the future, you likely make something that you know you like because youve had it in the past and you liked it. When you are shopping at the grocery store, you think about what you were going to take to lunch for the next several days. You pick out things that you have enjoyed in the past. Thats why you pick them out.
What you think about the future determines what you will do, but what you think about the future is determined by your past, or more precisely, your memory of the past. You do not know the future; all you can know are your own projections of the future, and your projections are informed by your memory of the past. To paraphrase something Marshall McLuhan would say, you are looking at the future through the rear-view mirror.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I think this "reason" is "overarching reason" and is being referred to as just that, and not "reason".
Firstly, all vices either consist of or affect reasoning. The gambling addict will always have a reason. "I'll just go gambling this one time, I've worked hard and I deserve a reward", right? This is an example representative of most, if not all cases.
Secondly, neither one's will and reasoning are consistent across time. One's will is tied to one's consciousness, for it is about conscious acts, conscious choices and conscious desires. The consciousness is always and only ever experienced in the present. So, will must only ever exist in the present too, but I've never seen a view of free will that actually takes this to heart.
One's failure to follow up on yesterday's promise to quit gambling doesn't represent a failure of will. After all, it's one's free will that allows them to break that promise. Why is the promise to act in one's best interests privileged over the decision to self-sabotage? All sorts of moralistic favouritism like this are embedded into free will ideas.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
I'm not convinced that will's freedom is threatened by anything internally. The "self-determination" you speak of, if my assumptions are correct, requires the sustaining of an intention across time.
That is a common problem for me because will should be tied to consciousness, and is thus trapped in the present.
An intention that spans across time is still just one's will at just one point in time. At 9:00 am Sam commits to meditating for an hour, that's his choice, but at 9:20 am, he's bored and wants to stop. The self-determination you speak of is Sam following through on his intention to meditate for an hour. However, regardless of how boredom, laziness, hunger or whatever else influenced him, it was still his choice to stop, and at 9:20 it was his decision to stop.
Part of the problem is this notion of some mystical, overarching reason, as if, what Sam really wanted to do was meditate for an hour, and he was robbed of that. I find this silly. Why is the decision to meditate for an hour privileged over the decision to quit after 20 minutes?
My own conclusions always come back to morality and idealism.
It's also a linguistic problem. We say that one's will at time A is to do action A at time B (in the future), and that action A represents one's will. Then at time B, one's will, which only exists in time B at time B, becomes this "other". This "other" that interferes with and gets in the way of one's will, the choice made at time A.
I'd say that will is not united by, nor ruled over reason, it's a concept tied to consciousness, and so it's united by the singular consciousness. What do you think is the relationship between will and consciousness?
Like I explained, that does not imply that the past determines the decision.
Quoting Patterner
There must be a first time for everything. Have you never heard of a process called trial and error?
Quoting Patterner
Not necessarily, that's the point, we often like to try different things. Since we actually do choose, and try things we've never done before, your argument that choosing familiar things is evidence of determinism fails. Those examples are all irrelevant because we actually do sometimes choose otherwise, therefore the necessity required for determinism is lacking.
Quoting punos
But what you think about the future does not "determine" what you do. It is only a contributing factor. There is also many other factors, like what Patterner argues, the force of habit.
So you and Patterner are arguing two very distinct things that "determine" the choice. Patterner says that it is habits you've formed in the past, things you've come to be familiar with and like, while you are arguing that it is something you think about for the future which determines your action. However, it is quite clear to me, that both of these play a role, and neither one "determines" the choice.
And neither one of you has addressed the fact that the choice is made at the present. If the future is determined by the past, there is a continuity of necessity through the present, which lies between these two. This implies that nothing can really happen at the present, because if something actually happened it would break the continuity and alter the relationship of necessity. Of course evidence is contrary to this, we see that everything happens at the present, and freely willed choices at the present will have an effect on the future which is not determined by the past. Therefore we ought to form the obvious conclusion that determinism is based in a faulty understanding of the present.
Quoting Metaphysician UndercoverEven that is influenced by the past. You couldn't try something new if you didn't know you never tried it in the past. I would say sometimes the decision to try X is made because we want to try something new, and know we haven't tried X in the past.
Quoting Metaphysician UndercoverI am not arguing for determinism. I don't believe determinism. I'm arguing that we don't make decisions without the influence of the past.
Probability Theory actually supports what i'm saying.
First recall that Classical Probability Theory is said to speak of 'events' of Probability 1 that occur almost surely, and conversely of 'events' of Probability 0 that occur almost never. So although classical probability is sound in the sense of comprising an identifiable class of entities belonging to the universe of, say, ZFC Set Theory, it's semantics is in contradiction with naive intuitions about chance.
E.g when probability theory is interpreted as saying that a dart must land somewhere on an infinitely divisible dart-board, at a location that has probability 0. One the one hand, we want Pr(1) to mean surely, and Pr(0) to mean never, but this 'exacting' demand conflicts with our other demand that it is possible to choose any member of an infinite set. What probability theory is actually expressing, is that our intuitions about chance, determinism and infinity are vague and contradictory and cannot be reconciled, let alone be formally represented in terms of a finite axiomatic definition.
An obvious way out of the above impasse is to interpret almost surely and almost never as referring to limits of a sequence of random events, such as the dart's sequence of positions over time, where these limits aren't considered to represents probability-apt events in themselves. In which case, we restrict our interpretation of Probability Theory as only assigning meaningful probabilities to either incomplete trajectories of darts that haven''t yet landed and whose eventual position is uncertain, or to landed darts whose position is vague and to within finite precision among a set of positions whose probability is strictly greater than zero. In my view, this way out amounts to a philosophical rejection of an absolute distinction between determinism and chance.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Sadly I can't think of specific references off the top of my head, but in my view Category Theory is the right meta-language for relating physics, logic and philosophy, so Samuel Abramsky and Jean Yves Girard would be my generally recommended authors, Plus lots of nlab and SEP, of course.
Ooh I really like this thought experiment. Good food for thought. Thank you.
Fun fact: if you did throw a dart at an infinitely dividable board, and you got the x,y coordinates of the point it landed, you'd be more likely to land on irrational numbers than rational
Nor I. I think of the term as simple speech at the expense of critical thought.
Pretty sad, I must say, to create a philosophy predicated on the convenience of a phrase.
I would like to address the issue of contributing factors first to keep things simple and uncluttered so that we can potentially make some progress here. I'll address the issue of time, and making choices in the present later if you wish me to. For now...
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I would be very interested in seeing a comprehensive list of these contributing factors if you can provide one. Also, am i to understand that contributing factors no matter how many or which ones are not responsible for any choice determination? Besides contributing factors, what else is there? Once the contributing factors are in place what makes or determines the choice according to you? It appears to me that without a final determination a choice is not possible, free or not.
Allow me to articulate my framework for decision-making. Given that decisions originate within the brain, which is comprised entirely of neurons, it is logical to surmise that comprehending the workings of neurons will enhance one's understanding of the decision-making process. By examining the structure and function of neurons, one can gain insight into how decisions are executed at the most fundamental level.
A neuron consists of a central body (soma), dendrites for receiving input, and an axon for transmitting output. Essentially, the neuron receives signals from its surroundings, primarily from other neurons, via its dendrites. These signals enter the neuron's central body and modify its responsiveness to future signals. Each incoming signal serves as a contributing factor towards an adaptive function within the neuron. By considering the cumulative effect of all present contributing factors in conjunction with prior contributing factors, the neuron makes a discerning determination to emit a signal back into the environment, thereby instigating an action that informs the future state of the neuronal environment (the brain). A person's choice is therefor the result of all the elemental "choices" or signals made by these component neurons in their brain to fire or not to fire a signal.
Is there anything else you would add or modify in this neuronal model of decision making to make it compatible with free will?
Quoting punosAlthough it's impossible for us to list all the variables, figure out how much weight each has at any given moment, and probably many other factors, I think your general ideas is pretty clear.
Of course, if the Hard Problem is real, if there is subjective experience that is not explained by physicalism, it could be decision making is not entirely neuronal.
Whatever the solution to the Hard Problem, it must involve some other process that is also determined, but it may also be that we don't understand how all the already known components involved work, and how information flows through those components to be processed.
Take for instance how an artificial deep neural network makes decisions based on the weights and activation thresholds of its artificial neurons. These AI systems can in many instances make decisions on par with humans, or better. Modeled after biological neurons, but much simpler it is still able to make decisions, even without the biological complexity. The problem may be simpler than some may anticipate.
The very scientists that create these neural networks themselves do not understand what exactly is going on in these artificial decision processes (black box). What is clear is that there is nothing else going on in those neural networks than mere calculations (deterministic math and logic). And so it seems clear to me that we don't need to look for some external arbitrary thing to explain it, especially something outside the laws of a determinism. Determinism is sufficient for any problem we are trying to solve. If it were not deterministic then it would not be possible to solve since nothing would determine a solution, and that is just not how the world works.
Quoting punosHow is it they do not understand what is going on if there is nothing else going on aside from the mere calculations they programmed into it?
Of course, I don't think anyone would disagree with this, so it doesn't need to be argued. But I don't think it's relevant to the question of free will.
There is no need for a list of contributing factors to demonstrate free will. The fact that not one of the multitude of contributing factors can be said to be the cause of the choice, and that the agent chooses from a multitude of options is enough to demonstrate free will.
So to answer your question, besides contributing factors, there is the thing which selects, we might call this the agent. The multitude of contributing factors provide a mutitude of options for "the agent", and a selection is made.
Quoting punos
Are you proposing that a neuron itself makes a selection, it decides whether or not to fire when stimulated? That's what seems to be implied when you say "the neuron makes a discerning determination to emit a signal...".
Quoting punos
I really do not think that a neuron makes a selection, or decision at all. So I think your terminology, "discerning determination to emit a signal" is not accurate.
Interesting. I get what you're saying; I'm not sure if I understand the circularity of it though. But is there an example like this that doesn't involve infinites or infinitesimals? Would this be a problem for finitists or intuitionists? I could see the claim that this says more about our idea of infinites than probability.
Because, if physicists are correct that the world is computable (and there is a huge amount of supposition there, it's just speculation) then we wouldn't be dealing with true continua.
Faster and more accurate. These systems generally outperform humans at games of almost every kind, which demonstrates the power of their decision making capabilities.
https://medium.com/@evyborov/ai-vs-humans-a-noise-audit-in-decision-making-7093a8e25edb
Quoting Patterner
Because of the enormous computational complexity involved and its non-linear nature (complex adaptive system), not because there are extra ingredients in the sauce. There are ongoing efforts to develop "Interpretable AI", which aims at making AI systems more transparent in order to understand how these deep learning systems make decisions. These machine learning model systems are very new and moving fast ahead, and the science necessary to understand them is very new as well. It's an extremely exciting field in science and philosophy in my opinion providing much insight into how minds work, including our own minds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explainable_artificial_intelligence
Not sufficient, how do you know that the agent is not selecting at random, or based on some deterministic criteria? How does the agent make a 'determination' or 'choice'? Do you at least have a probable model for how an agent makes a decision happen?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Is there a reason why an agent might select one option over another? If there is a reason then it's determined, and if it has no reason then it's random.
Additionally, environments are able to select genetic expressions in organisms for example and whether they live or die. Selection happens all up and down the hierarchies of nature and the universe, it's what evolution is made of (variation and selection). Even fundamental particles make decisions in how they respond to different electrical charges for example. A simple particle can be seen behaving the same way a cell does when it moves towards food or away from toxins and when the particle moves toward its complimentary charge and away from a self-similar charge.
You may not be comfortable with this definition of 'decision' or 'choice', but when one can generalize the concept then one can recognize it everywhere. A thing means nothing if it does nothing, and so the optimal way of thinking about things is to ask 'what does it do?', and not 'what is it?'. A thing's function is the origin of its meaning.
We know now that intelligence is substrait independent (AI), and that consciousness doesn't appear to be necessary for intelligence, at least not in the way we generally define consciousness now, and that signals to me that intelligence can exist at any level in nature including at the level of atoms and molecules (atomic intelligence, and molecular intelligence respectively) without needing to be defined as conscious.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Yes, of course what did you think they do? Why do you think it fires sometimes and sometimes not, even when in both cases it is receiving signals (contributing factors). It obviously has a preference for certain signals.
Simpler cells than neurons make decisions all the time like moving towards food or away from toxins, fungus as well. Just because they are not complex decisions like we make doesn't mean they are not making decisions. One neuron can only make very simple decisions, but when connected to a vast network of other neurons 'talking' to each other you get the emergence of swarm intelligence capable of more complex decision making.
I'll put my reply to the last part of your post first punos, just so you can have a better understanding of my position before reading the rest. I think that it is necessary to conclude that free will underlies all activities of living things. They all make use of the features of temporal existence which cannot be understood by determinism which I discuss below. Any "self" motivated activity like "self-subsistence", "self-nourishment", "self-movement", etc., must be supported by a type of causation known by the concept of "free will". This is best called "intentional" activity, or purposeful activity.
Quoting punos
We discussed this already on this thread, when the principle of sufficient reason was mentioned. That there is a reason for the choice does not imply that the choice was determined. To be determined, the choice must be consistent with determinist principles. Determinist principles dictate that there is a direct causal relation between past events and future events. This excludes the possibility of a free will event. This is an event at the present which was not caused by an event in the past, but which will still cause an effect in the future.
Such an event, the freely willed event, is not unintelligible (as it is explained above), and it is not without reason. The determinist however, allows only determinist principles to be the reason for an event, and therefore excludes the possibility of a freely willed event as an unreasonable proposition. The determinist then argues that any event which cannot be understood under the precepts of determinism must be "random". Here, "random" really means a cause, or reason for the event which cannot be understood by determinist principles. This allows for the reality of causes and reasons for events which the determinist classifies as "random" simply because they are not able to be understood by determinist principles. Examples might be random mutation to genes in evolutionary theory, and random occurrence of life on the planet, to begin with.
The free willy may argue as I have, that this is because the determinist misunderstands the nature of time. The misunderstanding of time inclines the determinist to deny the possibility of an event at the present which does not have a cause in the past. The determinist understands time in terms of a temporal continuity of necessity between past and future, which is best exemplified as Newton's first law of motion. Things will continue to be in the future, as they have been in the past, unless a "force" is applied. This is a statement of necessity. It is necessary to apply a force to break the continuity of existence at the present.
The free willy may argue that such a statement of the necessary continuity of existence through the present, is a false statement. There is no such necessary continuity of existence at the present, and evidence demonstrates that absolutely everything, and anything has the possibility of changing at any moment of passing time. This means that instead of a cause of change at the present (the requirement of the application of force as described by Newton), in reality there must be a cause of things staying the same at each moment of passing time. From this perspective, "random" means that at every moment of passing time, every aspect of what we know as "existence" could be scrambled in any possible way. However, we observe continuity therefore the continuity must be caused.
The cause of the observed continuity of observed existents through the present, from the past, to the future, is the aspect of temporal reality which the determinists do not apprehend, and therefore misunderstand. They take this continuity for granted, as Newton's first law. However, the free willy knows that this observed continuity must be caused. This cause cannot be understood by determinist principles because it is prior to, therefore independent from, and necessary for, determinist causation, as producing the conditions for the temporal continuity required for deterministic causation. In other words, there is a type of causation which produces the required conditions for deterministic causation, and this type of causation cannot be understood as deterministic causation. This is reasonable and not random.
Quoting punos
There is equivocation between two distinct meanings of "select" here. That is why I was clear to say that "to select" is an act carried out by an agent. So, one meaning requires an agent which "selects", but "selection" in biology, under Darwinian principles requires no such agent. Darwin blurs the boundaries between human beings as agents of selection, doing selective breeding, and breeding under natural conditions, such that this can be called "natural selection". Thus Darwin sows the seeds of ambiguity in "selection". "Selection" in this sense can then be understood as the result of determinist forces which annihilate some things while others survive. So if you and I were both in the same plane crash, and I died while you lived, this would be an example of that type of "selection", where no agent actually "selects". Notice that there is no need to assume an active agent which "selects" in this meaning of "selection". It is this equivocation which generally supports compatibilism.
Quoting punos
I've never heard this before. You are saying that in distinct cases when the same neuron is subjected to what can be said as "the same conditions", it will sometime fire under those conditions, and sometimes not fire under those conditions. Can you provide some supporting documentation which I can read?
I notice that you tend to put the cart before the horse when you say things like:
"I think that it is necessary to conclude"
"must be supported by a type of causation known by the concept of "free will""
"This (deterministic principles) excludes the possibility of a free will event"
I would prefer to use the null hypothesis in a situation like this since it seems more reasonable to assume nothing outside the box until what is in the box has been investigated thoroughly.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
If it is free should it not be free from reason as well? A reason determines what one selects, or it's not a reason; just a random selection. Here is the definition (from Google) for 'a reason': a cause, explanation, or justification for an action or event. A justification or explanation consists of providing evidence, or logical arguments to support a claim. The term 'free will' is simply a claim and not an explanation or justification. One must show how it works or potentially works. What is the explanation, or justification for how an event (choice) occurs. The term 'free will' front-loads the word 'will' with the word 'free' seemingly only to contradict the meaning of 'will'. Here is the meaning of the word 'will': expressing the future tense; expressing inevitable events. Sounds like determinism.
The statement that "an event at the present which was not caused by an event in the past, but which will still cause an effect in the future" does not make sense. Once you move into the future, which you affected in the present, the present becomes the past, and now your present has been affected by your past present moments. Therefore the past affects the future in every way. The statement should read "an event at the present which was caused by an event in the past, which will cause an effect in the future".
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Like i said it wasn't an explanation. It was a claim without a justification, i presume because according to you free will doesn't need a justification even though you claim it does have a reason.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This says nothing because i can restate it like this: "The free willy however, allows only free willy principles to be the reason for an event, and therefore excludes the possibility of a deterministically willed event as an unreasonable proposition."
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Neither you, nor i can understand or predict something that is experienced as random, so it makes no difference between free will and determinism. My suspicions are that there is no such thing as true randomness. Randomness is a word that we have applied to describe our ignorance while saving face. Scientists used to wonder why particles and dust would move or jitter apparently randomly, until they discovered Brownian motion and random motions suddenly became deterministic (determined by Brownian motion).
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
This is precisely what free will does; not determinism. Free will is the claim that some external force to the universe impinges on the present moment to cause an action that would violate a deterministic path. Determinism does no such thing because determinism is simply what the universe is doing and what it will do free from external influence. It can be argued that the definition of free will is the freedom of determinism to do its will without interference from an external will to the universe, including personal free will.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I believe that everything changes at every moment without exception, but in a deterministic manner. Time is change and it is inescapable, the only true constant in the universe.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The continuity is caused because of previous effects which is the reason why existence suddenly doesn't collapse into chaos. It is in fact free will which would cause a collapse of reality as soon as it begins to violate the natural order. Entropic time is deterministic as opposed to primordial time which is not. This concept that you're describing is what i call primordial time which is what keeps an object persistent through multiple moments of existence. Without it the universe would at most be a virtual soup of virtual particles that never exist past one Planck moment. Entropic time is dependent on and emerges from primordial time.
About words and meanings in particular about the word 'select'. Here is the meaning of 'select': carefully choose as being the best or most suitable; carefully chosen from a larger number as being the best or most valuable. And to clarify further the meaning of the word 'choose': pick out or select (someone or something) as being the best or most appropriate of two or more alternatives.
There is no implication that selection must be performed by an agent, and if one insists that it does then it means that something like an environment is an agent. One should not add arbitrary qualifications to a definition if that definition does not include that qualification. Of course one can do whatever one wants with their definitions, but it doesn't help in the arena of discourse, which i suspect is the main reason for most misunderstandings and inability to agree and come to consensus, apart from other more personal reasons one might have.
Here is the definition of 'agent': a person or thing that takes an active role or produces a specified effect.
Let me mention also that an organism such as an animal, or human is an environment all unto itself. An environment with it's own biological intelligence making decisions, having a desire or will for homeostasis, and being an agent of the whole system. Each cell in your body is also an environment all unto itself with a molecular intelligence, an agent with desires, and a will to maintain itself. You and every person inherits these features from the very components that make them up.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threshold_potential
This video may also help, the relevant part to your question is addressed between 1:50 and 4:00.
Quoting Mww
It'd be easy to mistake what you're saying as hyperbole, but indeed, there are philosophies and worldviews that rely on this incredibly flawed term. It's a great place to study to better understand some of the risks of language.
I explained why what's "in the box" is insufficient to account for the complete reality of human experience, and why it is logically necessary to conclude something outside the box. But if you're happy to be constrained within the box, that's your choice. However, I see that your appeal to "primordial time" show that you are in some way inclined to step outside of the box. But it looks more like a falling out of the box to me.
Quoting punos
The thing discussed, the will, is free from reason in it's activity, as not determined by reason, but this does not imply that it cannot be understood by reason (i.e. that it is random). There are many things in the world which are understood by reason, but not controlled or determined by reason.
Quoting punos
You have not explained why this does not make sense to you. Yes, the event which is uncaused becomes a past event, but it remains as an event which was not caused by an event prior to it in time. Why does it not make sense to you that there are events in the past which do not have a cause which is prior to them. The alternative implies an infinite regress of events. Do you not believe that there was a beginning to time? If you do, then you ought to conclude the logical necessity that there was at least one event without an event prior to it in time, as cause of it. And if you recognize the logical necessity of one such event, why would you exclude the possibility of others?
Quoting punos
Yes, as I explained above, we recognize the reality of many events in the world which have a reason, but are not justified. Take the effects of gravity for example. Something falling has a reason for falling, the effect of gravity, but that activity, falling, is not justified. Likewise, a freely willed act may have a reason for occurring, the effects of free will, but the act might still not be justifiable.
Quoting punos
That's not a fair analogy. It is a false representation, a straw man, because the free willy allows also that there are events which can be explained by determinist principles. Therefore this part of the statement "the free willy however, allows only free willy principles to be the reason for an event" is a false representation. So, as I explained, the principles which underlie determinism, such as Newton's first law, must be accounted for within the context of a reality which also allows for free will. This inclines many, such as Newton himself, to state that Newton's laws are upheld by God's Will. Therefore, contrary to your claim, "a deterministically willed event" is actually very reasonable.
Quoting punos
Right, at least we agree on the nature of "randomness". Now, the next step for you, in understanding free will, is to understand that an event which appears to be a random event, might actually have a cause which is not prior to it in time. So you replace "Brownian motion" in your example with "free will cause", and suddenly events which appear to be random, have a cause. The difference is that the cause is not deterministic, because it is not prior to the event in time. This type of causation will account for many events which are often spoken of as if they are random. To begin with, we have the first event in time, mentioned above. This is often called a random quantum fluctuation or something like that. And quantum physics is full of such "random" symmetry-breaking, and that sort of thing, where an event simply flies out of the present, as purely uncaused by an event in the past, so it is said to be "random". Then in the field of biology there are many other events which are often said to be "random"; the first living being, genetic mutations, etc., and of course our topic here, a freely willed decision.
Once you allow for the reality of such causation, an act at the present which is not caused by anything in the past, then many such events which are "called" random will be reasonable, instead of being random. Then you can understand what Aristotle called "final cause", as completely distinct from what we call "efficient cause". Efficient causation is central to determinism, and it is always understood as requiring a cause which is prior to it in time. This produces a problem of infinite regress in causation because there is always required a prior time. That is a very real logical problem, because any current state of existence can only be understood as the logical result of the initial conditions, which constitute the boundary conditions. But the infinite regress renders true initial conditions as impossible, and this renders any state at any time as fundamentally unintelligible.
So that's a real logical problem which "final cause" resolves. Not only does it resolve that problem, but it is completely consistent with observed experience of intentional actions. However.it is a completely different type of causation, which does not require that there is a further cause prior to it in time, putting an end to the infinite regress, hence the designator "final". Once we see that it is a real logical necessity to include the reality of such a type of cause, it becomes a "first" cause in relation to chains of efficient causation, not requiring a cause prior to it in time. Then we can see evidence of this type of causation everywhere in reality, such as freely willed acts, and we escape "the box" of determinist thinking.
Quoting punos
Yes, if "universe" is restricted in that way, such that the entire universe is deterministic, then the free will act must come from outside the universe. As explained above, it is logically necessary to assume such a type of act to break the infinite regress of "the universe". That infinite regress renders the universe at anytime as unintelligible because it makes the current state of the universe dependent on initial conditions, but also denies the possibility of initial conditions with the infinite regress. Therefore to bring "the universe" into the realm of intelligibility we must assume another sort of cause, which has been named "final cause".
Quoting punos
This way of thinking produces the infinite regress, by always requiring "previous effects" when looking backward in time, and that produces the logical problem of no initial conditions, explained above.
Quoting punos
See, here you propose two types of time, coexisting at the present moment, primordial time which keeps an objects persistent, and entropic time, which allows for deterministic change. But you propose nothing to establish a relationship between these two "times". So the fact that you insist on determinism forces you (logically), to propose a completely different type of time. In other words your clinging to determinism has rendered the universe as unintelligible, in the way I described above. Then, in your resistance to the traditional and conventional way of dealing with this problem "final cause", you instead propose something completely irrational and ridiculous, two types of time coexisting with no principles for interacting with each other, only the implication that they must interact because things both persist through time, yet also change through time. This is nothing but an extremely unintelligible form of dualism.
Quoting punos
Are you kidding? "Carefully chose" signifies an activity as a verb, and the phrase implies an agent acting with care. How can you interpret this otherwise? Is there an effect of this act of carefully choosing? If so, there is necessarily an agent by your definition, "a person or thing that takes an active role or produces a specified effect". You could deny the need for an agent by denying that there is an effect from the act of choosing, but that would leave selection as irrelevant to our discussion of causation.
Quoting punos
There is nothing there that supports your claim, only an indication that "a neuron" cannot be sufficiently isolated from its environment to test what you claim. In other words you have made a very simplistic claim about something which is much more complex and that complexity invalidates your claim.
Understanding is inherently tied to reason, which serves as an explanation or justification. If something cannot be articulated in a logically consistent manner, it implies a lack of understanding. Reason and mathematics are effective precisely because the universe operates fundamentally on principles of reason and mathematics, which leads to determinism. "In the beginning was the Logos", the fundamental logic behind the universe, underlying the natural order of things.
This primordial logic, while maximally simple, serves as the dynamo of the universe, perpetually executing its function. Primordial time can be likened to a unitary logical NOT operator, representing the creative and destructive force of time, while space is dualistic and represented by binary logical operators [AND, OR]. The logic of being and determinism in our universe is intertwined with these temporal and binary spatial operators, likening the universe to a literal computer with time as the processor and space as the working memory. This perspective views fundamental particles and numbers as essentially the same, and 'quantum mechanics' can be reframed as 'number mechanics' or 'number logic,' emphasizing the fundamental connection between math and logic and the way the universe works.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
The statement appears to be logically contradictory. According to the principle of causality which i have no reason or evidence to deny, every event is caused by a preceding event or set of circumstances. The idea of an event in the present not being caused by a past event but still causing an effect in the future seems to defy this principle. I can see why someone who doesn't accept the principle of causality might agree with the statement. Alternatively, you can simply provide me with an example of an event, any event that was not caused by a prior event. I would prefer an actual real and verifiable kind of event, but i'm willing to consider a hypothetical, yet logically consistent one.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
No, i do not believe that time had a beginning, because time itself is the measure of beginnings and endings, and thus to ask if time had a beginning is like asking at what time did time start? If you are speaking of entropic or thermodynamic time then yes it did have a beginning, but primordial time never did. You should think about this: If there were ever a 'time' before time where time was not, then why would time decide to start all of a sudden? Notice how incoherent the question is, like asking what's north of the north pole?. If time were ever not, then nothing could have ever happened to make anything happen ever. Nothing would change since there is no time to change it. That is why primordial time necessarily must have always been and will always be. Primordial time was active before our universe, and will be way after our universe is long gone.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Every force in the universe including gravity manifests as a result of some broken symmetry. The topology of space is such that it is repelled by matter or mass (like opposite charges), and as a result causing a rarification or thinning of spacial energy in the vicinity of that matter. Matter which is the inversion of space, is attracted (not repelled) towards gravity wells simply as the universe's attempt to "fill the hole" so to say, and repair the broken symmetry of space.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
You are right, i apologize. I did not mean to construct a strawman, my mistake. I should then clarify here that i myself do not preclude the possibility of non-deterministic events either, but these events do not count as free will, simply random. Never the less i am still somewhat skeptical as to the veracity of true randomness. Either way this doesn't convince me that free will is possible or probable.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I do not have a problem with the concept of God really. My concept of God is non-personal, and in my view it simply equivocates to the whole of the universe, not some creator outside of it with complex knowledge and intentions, and a fully developed and infinite consciousness. That's the old outdated anthropomorphic view of God, and we should know better by now, but many still lag behind. I believe in Father Time, and Mother Space, and if that specific wording bothers some people then i have no problem changing it back to simply time and space... no big deal, because it's still the same thing. God is not a useful concept to explain anything anyway, its optional as long as logic and reason is not violated.
The concept or more precisely the word 'free will' was introduced to Christianity i believe by the theologian Tertullian in the 2nd century. The reason for the introduction was to solve the "problem of evil" and absolve God of any evil that might exist in the world. This essentially scapegoated humanity for the sake of God. A legal loophole to let God off the hook for all the things people didn't like about the world. All good things come from God, and all bad things come from humans.. is that right?
I've already stated that i'm not convinced that quantum fluctuations are random; they are most likely caused. The only thing that does not have a cause in my book is time, since in my view, time (primordial time) is the first cause of all things that exist in time, but it has nothing to do with free will because it did not choose to cause anything, it is forced to cause, it has no choice to cause, and the only thing it can cause is the manifestation of simple and fundamental virtual particles in the quantum foam. The rest is up to determinism to work out.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
"Once you allow the reality that 2 + 2 = 17, then it would be reasonable for of course 2 + 2 to equal 17, since you decide. This is true because 17 is not caused by 2 + 2, but the free will of the person doing the calculation to freely choose the answer. This explains everything. When an engineer for example with free will wants to build a bridge, he can choose whatever numbers or measurements feel right, by the unfathomable power of his free will. The resulting bridge will hold up perfectly because of the free will of the engineer willing it to be correct. The bridge is not caused by the engineer, even though he did design it. What is there not to understand?". That is the kind of thing i'm hearing you say.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
here is my understanding of the four kinds of causes:
Material Cause: primordial energy, or simply energy (same as primordial time)
Formal Cause: logic, reason, mathematics
Efficient Cause: force (directed energy, or vector) = (energy + logic) = (material + formal)
Final Cause: universal symmetry, complete matter annihilation, universal unification of all opposites
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
All things begin with initial conditions, but since prime time never began, it never had an initial condition, it is also not a 'thing', but things begin, exist, and end in it. Prime time is what sets the initial conditions for things to manifest and exist. Nothing exists until symmetry is broken.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
In my understanding there is only really one kind of time, and if it was completely up to me i would never mention a second kind of time (entropic). Most people it seems are not able to perceive or comprehend what i mean by primordial time (except you apparently), and insist that thermodynamics is actually time. For me thermodynamics or the entropic or thermodynamic state is not time, but simply the arrow of time. Time and the arrow of time are not the same thing. Thermodynamics emerges only in the context of extended space or dimensions where things have the probability of being in different states, and are constantly changing their relationships to each other.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
choose: pick out or select (someone or something) as being the best or most appropriate of two or more alternatives.
carefully: in a way that deliberately avoids harm or errors
I've already stated that i believe that every part of the universe has agency of some kind, including the universe as a whole. Consider how electro-magnetism works and how careful it is to never move towards a charge equal to itself (or move away from an opposite complimentary charge to itself) since this would be an error and harmful for the overall purpose of the universe. Electro-magnetism picks out or selects the charge it will move towards as being the best or most appropriate of two or more alternatives. It is so deliberate that it never makes a mistake... that is how careful it is.
An agent, like the definition says is a person or thing. That it mentions 'person' is redundant since if a thing can do something, then obviously a person can too. So the definition is not making a distinction between something or someone, it means anything can be an agent.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
It doesn't matter, since i don't think you'll agree with it anyway. The Wikipedia article about 'threshold potentials' should have been enough to answer your question, and the video was just supplementary.
Of course you recognize that there is an agent involved in such understanding and reasoning. All logic is an activity carried out by an agent. Generally we say that human beings perform this activity. So when you say "the universe operates fundamentally on principles of reason", I assume you mean that the universe operates in a way which can be understood through reasoning.
There is a slight problem here because until we actually understand the fundamental operations of the universe, we have no proof of that, and this is just speculation on your part. Problems with quantum mechanics, and the uncertainty principle in general, indicate that maybe the fundamentals might not be understandable by human reason.
Quoting punos
Since only an intelligent being can act to create things according to reason, or logic, I assume that you are saying that God is the agent who employed "primordial logic" and created the universe and also created "primordial time" according to some principles of reason.
Quoting punos
I gave you very good reason why there is very significant problems with "the principle of causation" as you state it. If every event is caused by a preceding event, then this would mean that there is an infinite regress of events extending backward in time, with no possibility of a first event. This would make aspects of the universe fundamentally unintelligible, as I explained. That contradicts what you say above, that there is a " fundamental logic behind the universe". Therefore your believe in "the principle of causation" contradicts your belief in a "fundamental logic behind the universe".
Quoting punos
Yes, the idea of an event in the present not being caused by a past event but still causing an effect in the future does defy "the principle of causation". However, this principle is defective as I explained, because it denies the possibility of a beginning to time, a first event, and it renders the universe as unintelligible because it makes "initial conditions" which are required for understanding any system, impossible. Consider, that when time started to roll, there was a future but no past. An event at this time would be at the present, and it would have an effect in the future, but not an event in its past.
When you realize that it is necessary to include this type of event, the event with no prior event as its cause, in any complete understanding of the universe, as a very reasonable proposition, then you will see that there is no reason to exclude this type of event from occurring at any moment of the present, as time passes. The inclusion of this type of event, an event which starts at any point in time, a zero point, with no preceding event linkable to it causally, makes issues of free will, and quantum uncertainty very reasonable.
You can characterize this type of event in a number of different ways, but what is required is to understand "time" in a way which is unconventional. We tend to characterize "the universe" as everything which fits within a space-time representation. From this perspective we'd have to place these acts as coming from outside the universe, as not fitting into the space-time representation because of the need for a true "zero time" at each moment of the present, as time passes, marking the time when the uncaused event starts. The common practice of calling such events "random" assumes that the universe is fundamentally unintelligible, instead of moving to recognize such events as still in some way "reasonable".
Quoting punos
Inquiring about the beginning of time does not necessarily mean asking what time did time start. That is already self evident in the question, it is the "zero point" of time. What is required is simply to put "time" into the context of something larger, just like when we ask about the relations of any particular thing. We put that thing into a larger context. That is what you do with "the universe" in your concept of "primordial time", you tie "time" to something larger than the universe, and allow that the universe had a beginning in time, primordial time.
The problem with your approach is that you propose nothing real to tie the concept of "primordial time", prior to the universe, to. You assert that time is something bigger, a wider context than "the universe", such that the universe can have a beginning and ending in "primordial time", but primordial time is just a purely imaginary thing, providing no link to our universe, whereby we could apply some principles of reasoning or logic, to bring the concept into our fold of intelligibility. My perspective is based in real observed empirical principles (free will acts which appear to be random), and logic (the need for a true "zero time", and therefore provides a real perspective for relating the smaller context (inside time or the universe) with the larger perspective (outside time or the universe).
Quoting punos
A break of symmetry is fundamentally unintelligible, as random, and outside the governance of logic or reason. That is the problem with this approach, we start to see at the fundamental level, that all forces derive from outside the realm of intelligibility. This is completely at odds with your claim of a primordial logic at the base. I propose to you, that the reason why this basic uncertainty and unintelligibility arises in our representations or models, is our failure to be able to determine a true "zero point" in time. When time is passing, we cannot adequately determine "a point" from which measurement might be made. We might assume an infinitesimal, but this does not give us a proper point. Then all things that start to happen, and all measurements we try to make, get enveloped by uncertainty.
Quoting punos
You should see, that "randomness" is contrary to your opening statements about "the fundamental logic behind the universe". To say that an event is "random", is to say that no logic can explain it. When we allow randomness into our explanations, and do not distinguish between "appears like it's random" from "it truly is random", then we allow that the reason for the event cannot possibly be understood. This becomes a problem for the philosophically inclined person, who wants to be able to understand everything, and therefore is inclined to think that there must be a reason for everything (principle of sufficient reason). If we keep a philosophical mind we keep looking for the reason, if we designate "random" we do not even look for the reason. A free will event is not random. Nor is it deterministically caused, because it has a cause which is not consistent with "deterministically caused".
Quoting punos
If we posit time as "the first cause" of all things in time, as you propose, then when time acts as the first cause, isn't it true that time would be just like an absolutely free will, having infinite freedom as to what it chooses to bring into existence. Consider this, there is nothing except primordial time, then primordial time brings something into existence. Doesn't this imply that in its capacity of "first cause", primordial time is just like "free will", only having an infinite capacity of freedom to cause the existence of absolutely anything. There would be no prior existents, therefore no events in the sense of physical events which could act as determining causes of what comes into being, because there is nothing but time.
So I think that you are completely wrong in saying that primordial time must cause, is forced to cause, and does not choose to cause. Clearly, as "first cause" there is nothing to force it to be a cause in the determinist sense, because there is nothing prior to this first act which could cause the first existents. How can you conceive this first act, which brings existents from nothing, a forced act? In reality, your concept of "primordial time" if you think it through logically, is nothing but an infinitely free act of will.
Quoting punos
I don't understand your analogy. Things like "2", and "17" are just symbols, and we assign meaning to the symbols freely. We could make "2+2=17" correct, simply by changing the meaning of the symbols. However, we already have a different convention, so convincing people to make the switch would be difficult.
Quoting punos
We probably really need to say what each of us think "time" actually is. I would describe it as a process, the process by which the future becomes the past. Also, since we apprehend the future as possibilities, and the past as actualities, the present is when this process occurs, and the activity we observe at the present is the result of this process. Free will fits in because something must select which possibilities will be actualized. We tend to think that the inertia of being, from the past, necessitates which possibilities will be actualized, in a deterministic way, but this is not realistic because an intelligent creature with a will can step up at any moment, and break this supposed necessity.
That is why we need to allow for acts which are derived directly out of the present. So if we apprehend the passing of time as a process, there is necessarily a force involved with this process. This means that some future possibilities must be actualized due to the very nature of passing time (entropy perhaps). The being with free will can make use of this force to direct it toward the various possibilities it selects for.
Quoting punos
Ok, so you think that electro-magnetism "deliberately" avoids harm and errors. I think that's ridiculous, "deliberate" implies intentionality, and careful thinking, which I do not think is an appropriate description for electro-magnetism.
Quoting punos
That's right, an "agent" is anything active causally, it may be animate, inanimate, or inconclusive. However, inanimate agents are observed to act causally in a way consistent with determinism, while living things are known to make choices and act in ways not consistent with determinism. Therefore we have two distinct types of "agents", and we ought not equivocate between the two.
Quoting punos
The "threshold potentials" article mentions a "threshold" for action, so similar stimulation would always cause action, being above the threshold, and similar below the threshold stimulation would not cause action. So it really doesn't indicate that the neuron can decide to fire or not fire, in equal cases of stimulation.
Fun fact 2: There are a countable number of points with rational coordinates and an uncountable number of points with irrational coordinates (and some with mixed, as in (1,pi), which I'll ignore). This makes talking about probability difficult as the straightforward way of calculating probability
> (number of points with rational coordinates) / (total number of points)
which is
> (countable) / (uncountable)
which, it can be argued, equals 0.
So there is 0 chance of hitting a point with rational coordinates?
Yes, just like the probability is zero of geting EXACTLY 0.5 on a wheel with real numbers from 0 to 1.
I think the controversy arises from the fact that one is obliged to believe and not believe at the same time.
[quote=Robert Frost.]Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.[/quote]
One has to choose whenever roads diverge. And in order to make a choice, one has to believe one can freely choose, and has to choose or else remain forever in the wood. It is always some other philosopher or poet who claims that one's choice is not free but predetermined, but for oneself, as for that other herself, one has to make the choice whatever one believes just as if one were free to choose.
And of course even the most trivial choice of action, as any time traveller will affirm, makes "all the difference", if only because the next traveller will find the paths differently worn and have a different choice to make depending which, for you was "the road not taken".
Edit: In case anyone does not intuit the argument from the poetry, the philosophical claim is that for any human choice, the decision-making process can include any philosophical claim or consideration except one that specifies that choices cannot be made, or are already determined.
This is exactly the point Aristotle made. We can can ask about whether or not the truth about a chosen act precedes the act itself, as if whatever happens will happen necessarily, and even claim that it does (determinism), but we cannot live this way.
So, to avoid the hypocrisy of living our lives in a way other than what we claim to believe, we ought to admit to ourselves that we do not believe in determinism.
I believe this is a good way of presenting this concept.
I have no real problem with the idea of free will, or the lack of it.
I leave you with this question:
If free will 'actually exists' and were to disappear tomorrow, what would be different?
This really depends on how you conceive of free will. I personally find compatibalist arguments for free will that are grounded in process metaphysics and strong emergence most convincing (for reasons that are pretty far afield and related to physics/philosophy of physics).
In such a view, you can't really get rid of free will without radically altering the structure of reality. Our free will comes from the fact that:
A. Our conciousness emerges from the world.
B. Our conciousness causally interacts with the world (seems about empirically supportable as any claim).
C. We are, to varying degrees, self determining systems. We are obviously not completely self-determining, but what we do has to do with things that are internal to us. Likewise, we shape our own enviornment, meaning the system representing our "will" is not easily demarcated by any simply superveniance relationship.
D. Facts about larger systems are not reducible to facts about "parts" of those systems. In part, because processes are not always decomposable, "more is different."
It would seem to be to be impossible to remove this sort of free will without radically rewriting the physics of our universe and what it is.
I personally find epiphenomenalism sort of ridiculous. We want to reduce all phenomena to physical causes, but then decided that the broad class of phenomena involving all observations is actually completely causally disconnected from everything else, totally sui generis. What motivates such a contention? Simply that phenomenal awareness causes problems for some popular models.
I'd liken epiphenomenalism and eliminitivism to finding that your boat has a giant hole in the bottom. Some people want to fix the hole right away. Some people say, "get, we're still sailing, let's just try to get to port and worry about it later." Eliminitivism just seems to solve the problem by denying there is a hole or that taking on water is a problem for boats.
Everyone agrees that various factors (say, being an autist) INFLUENCES decision making, sometimes drastically. However, abandoning Free Will says that there are no TRUE decisions for anyone. That is, if humans create a big enough supercomputer and feed it enough data all of what we call 'decisions' could be successfully predicted into infinity.
It depends on your personal definition of "total free will". What most subscribers to Free Will that I know believe is that humans can actually make conscious choices, exactly as we appreciate subjectively, that is: human decision making is not an illusion.