Pascal's Wager applied to free will (and has this been discussed?)
For some reason, I don't think I've ever really thought to apply a Pascal's Wager-type argument to the topic of free will. I've also tried searching it and haven't been able to find much discussion about the idea.
Here's my attempt at demonstrating that belief in free will is the only sensible position to take:
There is only one outcome here that has any value: The correct answer is C.
It should be noted I may be making some assumptions about the nature of free will and its relation to agency or moral worth. Personally, when I think about free will, I consider a form of leeway freedom, which I think is sufficient for basic desert. I'm not certain about the existence of sourcehood freedom, it doesn't seem tenable in our universe. Regardless, this is one form of the argument that I've been trying to articulate lately. And lastly, has this kind of argument been discussed here before? I'd like a link if so, did a quick search but didn't see anything.
Here's my attempt at demonstrating that belief in free will is the only sensible position to take:
- A. If free will does not exist and you believe in free will, it doesn't matter if you're wrong because you had no choice.B. If free will does not exist and you do not believe in free will, it doesn't matter if you're right because the choice wasn't yours.C. If free will exists and you believe in free will, then you can take agency and fulfill your obligations.D. If free will exists and you don't believe in free will, then you are wrong, and worse, deny your obligations.
There is only one outcome here that has any value: The correct answer is C.
It should be noted I may be making some assumptions about the nature of free will and its relation to agency or moral worth. Personally, when I think about free will, I consider a form of leeway freedom, which I think is sufficient for basic desert. I'm not certain about the existence of sourcehood freedom, it doesn't seem tenable in our universe. Regardless, this is one form of the argument that I've been trying to articulate lately. And lastly, has this kind of argument been discussed here before? I'd like a link if so, did a quick search but didn't see anything.
Comments (45)
Not believing in free will does not make me negligent because being negligent (lazy) is also a choice.
You can easily flip it to: If free will exists and you don't believe in free will, then you are wrong, and better, you do your obligation.
Whether there is free will or not, whether we believe in it or not, there is still the impression that we have it, everybody who is not lobotomised or in a coma is under that impression.
Believing in free will or not makes no practical difference in real life. You can choose to do whatever it is that you will choose, you just may think that it was predetermined for you to choose it.
If you don't believe in free will and free will does not exist*, you can't intentionally fulfill your obligations. But that does not contradict my post in fact it is almost an analytic statement.
Quoting QuixoticAgnostic
You can reformulate the concepts of praise or blame within a deterministic worldview no problem. In common language, praise and blame involve free will simply because we all have the impression of free will.
Your argument is roughly that "Well, if free will is not real [one believes], I should stay on the couch all day doing nothing". But one does not follow from the other, it is a contigent psychological result.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism ^
:up:
This doesn't seem like a necessary conclusion to me. Do you think the majority of people who don't believe in free will, in reality, are "denying their obligations" in any important ways more than people who believe in free will?
I really like what your exercise reveals for me.
C is the only one with any functional value. If free will didnt exist C would revert to B. So yes, it is better to live as though we have free will; and besides the deep digging of philosophy; that is exactly what we do.
Could that reasoning be the mechanism, buried from conventional awareness, which "makes" free will seem to be real when there are strong opposing arguments?
Can you now reverse your exercise and bring it back to Pascal's original? Do we believe in God because it is functional, and thus a form of Reasoning like or unlike Pascal's caused such a mechanism to evolve in human Consciousness?
Can we go other steps further and suggest we believe in an individual Self, the Subject "I" because it is functional, and thus a form of Reasoning like or unlike Pascal's caused such a mechanism to evolve in human Consciousness?
And so on?
In other words, are all thing we "find ourselves" almost naturally or inescapably believing in (like God, Free Will, Self Consciousness, objective reality, morality, etc) even when there are strong reasonable opposing arguments, believed because they are functional and a mechanism for such belief evolved over time for that purpose?
Would the bulk of us be better off cutting the crap, and going on as if God, Free Will, and My Self, are Real, leaving the crap to a small minority of obsessive philosophers?
Yes.
The precise exercise doesnt fit as well for the Subject as it does for Free Will. But it's the same finger pointing at tge same moon.
Firstly, A-D are all presupposing certain axiological claims that I would completely reject. For example, A and B are false. What matters is relative to values; and values are subjective and relative (e.g., if one values truth, then it absolutely matters if one believes that they have free will even when they dont).
Secondly, pascals wager is a poor argument: one should never believe something out of fear of the consequences, despite its probability, of believing it. E.g., if I dont go out tonight with my friends, then I cant get run over by a car; or if I go, then there is a chance I will: best case scenario, I have fun; and worst case scenario, I die. According to Pascals wager, I am to stay at home because the worst case is clearly what I should avoid over such a trivial best case scenario (if I were to do the contrary). Pascals wager ignores probability, and this is way it is a bad argument.
Thirdly, leeway free will (i.e., libertarianism) seems plausibly false. If one rewound the clock (and only the clock), then it is unreasonable to expect any other decision to be reached and action to be made by an agent: the ability to do otherwise is incoherent with physics.
Fourthly, I think your argument works perfectly fine, notwithstanding my previous worries mentioned above, with compatibilism: what exactly is the ability to do otherwise, instead of just the ability to choose, doing in your argument?
Bob
Expand on this, if you would, because the implications of lacking free will make it clear to me that we can't hold any real (free) value in something like truth.
Starting with B, surely valuing truth implies avoiding error, and perhaps some sort of pride or otherwise virtue in comporting with reality. But, such a value implies we have the power to "avoid" error, i.e., we have a certain freedom to do otherwise. Denying free will (in certain senses at least) is to deny that we have this freedom, so, if it is the case that there is no free will, we can not value our belief in the truth of this proposition, because we could not avoid erring.
Same principle with A. It seems the fear we have with believing in free will is that we could be wrong. But as I say, if we are wrong, meaning free will doesn't exist, then, since their can be no value in having true beliefs, that means there's also no negative value in having a false belief. So there is nothing to lose for believing in free will, and, by C, everything to gain (which is where the parallel to Pascal's Wager comes in, even though they don't function on exactly the same principles).
If one is a compatibilist, then they would respond with (something along the lines of) because causal determinism [or some weaker variant] is true, one cannot do otherwise but they can choose; thusly, they can choose what they value and what they dont, and if one values the truth then they will believe that it matters if they believe something that is false.
If one is a incompatibilist, then they would respond with (something along the lines of) because causal determinism [or some weaker variant] is true, one cannot do otherwise and they cannot choose; however, this does not negate the fact that they have values and, thusly, if one values the truth <...>.
In either case, one can have values without being able to do otherwise. I value the truth and even if it is the case that I am utterly determined by causality it does not take away from the fact that I value truth.
What this really boils down to, I suspect, is that you dont value anything unless you have the ability to choose and had the ability to do otherwise when you chose; and this is the underlying axiological position that is fueling your argument.
One can try to avoid error without having the ability to do otherwise nor to choose: this is just a non-sequitur. Likewise, valuing something just means that one assigns it a worth and not that they had the power to choose that valuation nor to have chosen otherwise.
The only major (counter-intuitive and practical) implication for incompatibilists, irregardless of its truth or falsity, is that if one has no free will (whatsoever), then there is no accountability nor responsibility: this is the only substantial difference (other than considerations about whether it is simply true or not).
Again: non-sequitur. The formulation of a value judgment has nothing whatsoever to do with avoiding erring [in a libertarian nor compatibilist sense].
Pascals wager is a bad argument, because it renders the probability of the consequence occurring omissible when, in fact, it is the most critical factor for analysis.
Bob
Many incompatiblist determinists would disagree with this on purely practical terms. If we imagine humans as decision-making machines in a deterministic world, it's clearly the case that some of these machines *do* make decisions to hold other machines accountable for their harmful (or perceived-harmful) actions - they punish those machines, imprison those machines, etc. - and even if you assume incompatibilist determinism is true, it's not a given that those consequences are irrational to impose (any ineffective pain caused by those punishments would be, though).
Full disclosure, I'm a compatiblist. And quite frankly, I think the difference between a compatilblist and the type of determinist who would argue what I said above is PROBABLY a semantic difference of opinion, rather than a real one.
How? If they accept sourcehood freedom? Is that not different from choice, or do you speak of leeway freedom, in which case I ask again, how does one choose if they can't do otherwise?
I don't deny that one can value (or at least define values such that it is possible) under hard incompatibilism. However, notice I claimed we couldn't hold any value "freely", not just that we couldn't have values.
And this is just an unsubstantiated claim. I ask again: how is it possible to "try to avoid" without being able to "choose" or "do otherwise"? Are these all diffferent things? If so, you have to explain how they're different, you can't just assert that "no, this doesn't mean that" and be done with it.
There's no probability in this argument, there's no numerical "cost-benefit analysis". It simply claims that if you value truth, and additionally, you value "ownership", i.e. "free control", over your beliefs, then the only way these two values are satiated occurs if you believe in free will. I can further argue that our "ownership of beliefs" takes precedence over merely having true beliefs, because it is the reason for that value.
So let me ask you this to further the discussion: why do you value truth? Does it even matter? Will you argue that reasons for valuations don't matter, because so long as one just so happens to value truth, the argument is defeated?
So is his general point in this segment that it's reductionist to claim all of these different mechanisms going on almost simultaneously boil down to one act of free will? That when I make a "free" choice, it's nonsensical to say there's a single event or something I think or "will" that causes me to follow through with that choice?
That we do act as though responsibility exists, does not make it true that people have responsibilities.
If one really thinks that free will does not exist (and not even in the compatibilist sense), then they are being irrational by holding people accountable. Should implies can: viz., one is not responsible for consequence of an action that they did not choose.
We were predetermined to put some people in jail.
A choice is merely to decide for or against something, and this process absolutely can happen by something which is deterministic.
Even if I am completely determined, I am nevertheless generating reasons for and against particular actions and conclusion, weighing and contemplating them, and reaching a decision which is in conformance with my will: that, my friend, is a free act.
To be able to do otherwise is an extra-attribute which goes being merely reasoning and making conclusions (in accordance with ones will): it is that, if one rewound the clock (and only the clock), one legitimately could, this time around, choose differently.
For example, I am debating on eating vanilla or chocolate ice cream. I think of various reasons for and against each, and ultimately reach the conclusion that I want vanilla. Now, I had the ability to choose IFF my reasons and conclusion originated from me--i.e., they are in accordance with my will--whereas I had the ability to do otherwise IFF I could have come up with different conclusion (and arguably different reasons too)(i.e., if one rewound the clock, although I chose vanilla the first time around, I have the ability to do otherwise only if I legitimately can choose chocolate this time around even with all other factors the same).
I think that I have the ability to choose because I can come up with reasons and reach conclusions in accordance with my will; but I dont think I have the ability to do otherwise because if you rewound the clock, then I would expect nothing other than myself to generate the same reasons and reach the same conclusionafterall, nothing changed other than the rewinding of time.
The ability to do otherwise entails that an agent is a source of indeterminancy.
Then you are not using Pascals wager properly (with all due respect). The wager is a cost-benefit analysis which, dare I say, ignores probably of each outcome.
This claim just collapses, then, into if one values ownership, then one should believe in free will even if it doesnt exist. That one values truth has nothing to do with this claim: again, a hard determinist can perfectly coherently value truth and deny that they have free will. If you deny this, then you are arguing, necessarily, that one cannot value truth as a matter of being determined to value truth; which is clearly, by my lights, false.
This is incorrect with your claim that if you value truth...and...ownership...then the only way these two values are <...>: if one values truth, then they necessarily will value having only true beliefs. You are saying hey, to all those who value truth, you should believe in a lie that free will exists because it gives you an illusion of ownership over your actions: you are preaching to the wrong crowd.
Firstly, it is a matter of my pyschology. I am simply wired, biologically and (probably) sociologically, to commend truth. In fact, I believe that my primary, core motivation is coming to know the absolute truth; and this is why I spend so much time trying to think about these kinds of things.
Secondly, I think that truth is good, and I value what is good.
Thirdly, I think that truth is useful and beneficial for society: no society can function properly if its citizens are very untruthful.
Reasons for believing something always matter to me, but I dont see how this is relevant to your OP. The problem that I pointed out was that your argument have presuppositions about what matters that no serious hard determinist is going to accept; and it is not internally incoherent for them to reject it.
Bob
???
I can imagine a society of ai robots, who all are determinists and think their ais are deterministic, who have policies for how they treat robots in their society who do things that are distinctly contrary to the values of the society as a whole, and the well being of the members of that society.
For various "crimes", they can decide to exile, destroy or retrain ais that commit those crimes - this is what "accountability" means to these deterministic robots, and I don't think there's anything irrational about it. I don't necessarily think they need a concept of free will to do this either.
One thing about this society that's different from humans is that their sense of accountability and justice does not include pain for pains sake, punishment for punishments sake. Consequences aren't there to inflict pain on the perpetrator, they're there to fix the problem and protect other members of the society.
There is no doubt that beings with no free will can construct a society which is predicated off of having accountability for one's actions: what makes it irrational is that accountability, in its common use, is about holding a person responsible for their actions that they chose yet a hard determinist would like to hold people accountable for what they didn't choose to do.
For example, we normally wouldn't hold someone accountable for a car crash that they were uninvolved in, and hard determinists view everything akin to that: you deciding to go stab that person to death wasn't something you chose to do, just like how you didn't choose for that other person to crash into that other person with their car. Normally, we hold people accountable, and accountability only makes sense, for what we believe they have sufficient control over (in the sense of making choices).
What hard determinism is missing is exactly what is the difference between it and compatibilism: sourcehood free will is the answer to these problems.
:sad:
Vaskane, it does not help further the discussion by insulting people whom you disagree with; and it certainly does not help to straw man their position, especially to the point where you have shoved, not just words but, complete ideologies (which I do not subscribe to) down my throat. If you ever would like to have an honest, genuine, and respectful conversation, then my door is always open; but I am not going to entertain, with all due respect, your ingenuine insults and wreckless, blatant misunderstands of my beliefs.
Not quite. I am a compatibilist: I was noting the differences between incompatibilism, libertarianism, and compatibilism.
I never claimed it was irrational to do what one is predetermined to do.
It is true that even the most ardent disbeliever in Free Will, lives their Real Life exactly as if it does.
That is what I understood by "If one really thinks that free will does not exist (and not even in the compatibilist sense), then they are being irrational by holding people accountable". But if that is so, nevermind it.
I feel like this is boiling down to an equivocation more than anything, because my argument, as I mentioned in the OP, primarily relies on a leeway notion of free will, the ability to do otherwise. When I've said "choice", I've meant it as ability to do otherwise, so when you said (in your sample compatibilist counterargument):
Quoting Bob Ross
it seems to just be a slight of hand.
Your point seems to be that just because people can value things under hard determinism, as long as someone happens to value truth (is determined to value truth), regardless of the reason, they shouldn't believe in free will if that's what they're inclined to believe. But my point is, if there is no leeway freedom, no ability to do otherwise, then there is no "should", there is no free choice (ability to do otherwise). If you can't freely choose your own belief, there's no point. Essentially, I'm arguing that 1) you ought to value leeway freedom (which I suppose is another argument in-and-of itself) and 2) if you value leeway freedom, then
I don't mind discussing free will more generally (but particularly the necessary or sufficient freedoms required for it and the existence thereof). Ultimately, one could imagine morality and axiology and etc. to arise even without free will, but I think such an existence is meaningless, at least in comparison to a world in which we have the ability to do otherwise. Not only do I think it's meaningless, but I think denying free will is actively harmful because, as I say, it is convincing people that they literally have no control over their actions, and although that is unlikely to turn them into "robots" or resign them to doing nothing, it is still insidious and can cause damage to one's mind if they come to believe or merely fear it.
The crux of your argument is:
I am just pointing out that this was not defended whatsoever in your OP; and, without any further elaboration, it is a non-sequitur.
In terms of your argument presupposing leeway free will, a problem with that is that it is a false dilemma. You can't validly tell someone "either you believe there is leeway free will, or that there isn't any free will": that's deceptive and misleading. Of course, you could argue that there is something wrong with compatibilism and, on those grounds, say that the only option left for a person is libertarianism if they believe in free will; but that's an entirely different argument than what I have been able to gather of your current one.
Another problem is this:
This is a peculiar argument (to me), because it does not care about the truth at all. #1 is completely unjustified in the OP, and #2 is essentially saying that if one values leeway freedom then they should believe it exists even if they know it clearly doesn't--i.e., you are telling people to believe in illusions so long as they like that illusion, as opposed to giving them the truth.
I guess it isn't irrational, per se, to believe in an illusion if it helps achieve one's goals; but I took your OP to be trying to argue the truth of the matter and not merely that we should lie to ourselves about free will.
Bob
I stand by that quote of me, and I am unsure as to what you are arguing about it.
"What one is predetermined to do" being "holding people accountable".
The argument commits an appeal to consequences fallacy.
Oh, I see now. Let me clarify.
What one is predetermined to do may be irrational, but one is not irrational for simply doing what one is predetermined to do.
I am not irrational for doing something, like holding a contradiction as true, simply because I was predetermined to do it; but, nevertheless, I am engaging in something that is irrational (e.g., holding a contradiction as true).
The difference between the two claims is that one is questioning the rationality of doing what one can only do, and the other is questioning the rationality of what one can only do. It is not irrational to do what one can only do, because they cannot do otherwise [s]or choose (depending on one's conception of free will)[/s]*; but, what they can only do can itself nevertheless be irrational.
* I actually don't think one's conception of free will matters here, because in a compatibilists' interpretation, the choice would be an irrational one iff what they chose is irrational but the fact that they chose an irrational choice would not itself be irrational because they cannot do otherwise.
Hopefully that helps clarify.
Bob
I agree. In order to avoid this, I think the OP needs to clarify that it is arguing for it being true that one should believe in leeway free will even if leeway free will is false. If it were presented that way, then I don't think it would be a fallacy anymore.
The wager is a double edged sword. It cuts against the authority of any given time because nothing like that can answer the personal desire for salvation. If one continues along that line, there is no way to cover the bet. The point of the bet is that we do not own what is needed to secure a loan for that purpose.
We are free to recognize that or not. But only in that game of cards.
This is pretty much what I was doing from the beginning, and perhaps the source of confusion. I wasn't arguing that free will exists, only that we ought to believe in (leeway) free will, even if it may not exist, because it's the only way to yield (in my opinion, and one I admittedly would need further argumentation to justify) a sensible position. That said, I did, albeit briefly, describe in the argument why I think each possible position in the matrix is or isn't sensible.
A couple things to note though. I'm not saying that one should believe in free will despite thinking the contrary is true because they "like" it or it makes them feel comfortable. In fact, I'm not even saying, "if free will is false, one should still believe in free will", because I don't believe it's known whether or not free will exists, if such a thing can even be known. If we knew for a fact that leeway freedom doesn't exist, I'd pretty much concede anything, because I don't think it would matter whether or not we believe, since we'd only do what we're determined to do anyway. But as it stands, as we don't know for a fact if leeway freedom does or doesn't exist, we ought to believe it, because we have nothing to lose if it ends up being false, and everything to gain if it is true.
For example, let me ask you this: how would you describe the determinancy of a die roll? Because to me a die roll can basically function as determinant so long as the chance governing the die roll does not change. If the rule is constant, then even if the outcome is random, we can still determine the prior events and its outcomes.
I don't think it is clear enough in the OP that you are making an argument, not about the truth of the matter, but the weighing of costs of believing either way. Perhaps I just misread it (:
If you were just trying to argue that:
Then, I don't see at all in your OP, upon a quick re-read, where you argue for that. I think your OP would be much better if you just outlined what we gain from believing that we have leeway freedom as opposed to believing the contrary. As of now, I don't see what benefit(s) it has over compatibilism.
Also, I should note that, if I am understanding you correctly now, your argument isn't about what we gain if it is true but, rather, by believing it (which is not technically what you said in the above quote).
In a traditional sense:
Libertarians believe in leeway freedom, compatibilists in sourcehood freedom. The former believes agents are sources of indeterminacy, the latter that we are not. The former believes that we have the ability to do otherwise, the latter does not.
In a looser sense:
A compatibilists is anyone who believes that we have free will but not that we have the ability to do otherwise. So this could include, for example, people who arent convinced determinism is true but still do not believe that we have the ability to do otherwise.
Personally, I am a compatibilist in the looser sense. I am not particularly convinced that everything is causally determined, but, at the same time, I do think that, when it comes to agents, we clearly do not have the ability to do otherwise. If anything has that ability, it would be (by my lights) something at the quantum level and that doesnt meaningfully make is sources of indeterminacy when it comes to our actions.
If one rolls a 6-sided die and it lands on a 5; and then the clock of cosmic time were rewound such that one rolls again; then I have no reason to believe that that person would not roll another 5 and every reason to believe they would (considering all the relevant factors are the exact same: nothing has changed except for rewinding time). Unless time itself is doing something magical here, then I dont see how it would be anything other than a 5. In fact, every time we were to perform this experiment, it would always turn out to be a 5. Now, if we were to add in the mix that a spec of dust changed along with rewinding the time, then I am uncertain what will result in the rolling of the die (because I am not sure how impactfull that causal change will be on the outcome).
I am not sure what you mean here: could you elaborate? Probability still exists if determinism is true: probability doesnt entail that there is some sort of indeterminacy (ontologically) going on but, rather, a preemptive calculation of the odds of rolling any number given a fair die.