Why I'm a compatibilist about free will
I made a recent thread about my reasons for rejecting libertarian free will here. I had quite a few people trying to probe into my non libertarian beliefs so I thought I'd make a thread about that specifically.
My aim in this thread is not to convince anybody I'm correct. If anything, over the past years on philosophy forums I've come to the conclusion that it's borderline impossible to do that. At best, one can express their thoughts and hope one of the people listening can convince themselves. And I'm not even certain my take is correct, so the last thing on my mind is changing your mind.
This is more of a journal of sorts. I'm writing this on the fly in between sets at the gym.
My journey of thought about free will actually starts with something like the train of thought illustrated in the above linked thread. Either we live in a world that evolves towards the future according to strict rules, rules about how things relate to each other in space and time, how energy transforms matter, transfers between matter, things like that, OR the rules aren't quite so strict, and some random things happen. That's the basic dichotomy that started my journey, but I had all of those thoughts while pretty much not having heard much about quantum physics at all. And with no awareness of quantum physics, I didn't find any reason at the time, all those years ago, to be anything other than a determinist. In my early years in philosophy, the debate was framed as "determinism vs free will" and I accepted that framing, and happily just ended up being a hard determinist.
The first time I heard about compatibilism, I thought what most people seem to think: that's just silly, if the world is determined then you can't really have done otherwise, there's no room for free will there. Compatibilists are just playing goofy word games. I still thought at that time that even if the world weren't deterministic, that just means random, and random is no more free than determined. So I guess at that point in my life, I would have been a "hard incompatibilist".
I don't actually know when or why I changed my mind about that. I don't know if I read an article - could have been this one - or if it was purely based on a sequence of my own unprompted thoughts. In either case, I came to view myself as a decision making machine, and furthermore that those decisions are -real- , at least in some sense.
That's actually the center of compatibilism to me. I have conscious experience, and I may not have full sourcehood-control of my thoughts, but my thoughts do seem non-epiphenomenally connected to the things my body does. Even writing about consciousness, about the ineffable nature of it, about the richness of the qualia of colour, seems enough evidence to me to say "it's not epiphenomenal" - why would my body be writing the words that can only be conveying the things I'm consciously experiencing, even trying to convey the ineffable parts, if those ineffable parts weren't causal in some way? So, even if I can't explain why or how, I feel compelled to conclude that they aren't epiphenomenal.
But if they aren't epiphenomenal, how do they actually relate to the rest of my world view? This part is much much harder to explain. I believe that emergence is required here, but I don't have the vocabulary to bridge the gap. I believe that I, as a decision making machine, am most likely fully and completely implemented by my physical makeup. Furthermore, I also believe that even if I wasn't, it wouldn't really matter, because whatever else I was composed of would still have to be some kind of process-oriented "thing" evolving into the future based on past states and new inputs. Physical or not doesn't really matter. So I might as well be physical, positing anything else doesn't seem to go any distance towards answering any questions. So my body is physical, every element of it behaves in just the way physical things behave - I don't believe the matter in my body or brain behaves in fundamentally different ways from anything else - and so... how can my conscious experience be efficacious? It must be, and yet it seems so impossible to understand how.
My current view is that I think of our minds, and this world stage in which many minds can interact with each other, are just physically implemented manifestations of almost some kind of semi-platonic semi-ideal. So it's not so much that our minds are CHANGING what happens in the physical world, per se, but our minds are an emergent part of the physical world and the physical world is the very thing that enables us to have minds to think things. I'm sure there's someone out there who has expressed what I'm trying to express in much more eloquent words than I am right now.
I don't know if the world is deterministic or indeterministic. I lean towards deterministic but QM gives me some reasonable doubt. But I don't think it matters in either case, for the question of free will.
When we hold someone morally responsible, we're judging them as a decision making machine. The same way a machine that, say, produces fabric can be malfunctioning or just not working well enough to fit into the assembly line, so too can a human beings decision making apparatus be malfunctioning, or not working in anything close to a way that makes it compatible with the rest of society. So other decision making machines say "this decision making machine needs to be separated, corrected, or maybe even destroyed".
And that's where the compatibilist "could have done otherwise" comes in. Some decision making machine does something, some other ones say "I hate that he did that, if he wasn't malfunctioning as a decision making machine, or if he was a better designed machine, he would have done something different". So one can imagine replacing his decision making algorithm with their own, prior to the offending decision, and if one can be convinced that under those circumstances, ones own decision making apparatus would have done something different, one may think that the person being judged was "in the wrong". They could have done otherwise, but not in the libertarian sense - with no change whatsoever - but in the sense of swapping out the decision making machine for a better one. If you swapped it out, this other one would have done something better.
But there are subtleties to that. For example, you could come up with a situation where some other decision making machine could have produced a more desirable result, but for reasons that aren't generalisable to producing generally more desirable results. It's tough. And I don't have all the answers.
I've been rambling aimlessly for long enough. I hope no one reads this.
My aim in this thread is not to convince anybody I'm correct. If anything, over the past years on philosophy forums I've come to the conclusion that it's borderline impossible to do that. At best, one can express their thoughts and hope one of the people listening can convince themselves. And I'm not even certain my take is correct, so the last thing on my mind is changing your mind.
This is more of a journal of sorts. I'm writing this on the fly in between sets at the gym.
My journey of thought about free will actually starts with something like the train of thought illustrated in the above linked thread. Either we live in a world that evolves towards the future according to strict rules, rules about how things relate to each other in space and time, how energy transforms matter, transfers between matter, things like that, OR the rules aren't quite so strict, and some random things happen. That's the basic dichotomy that started my journey, but I had all of those thoughts while pretty much not having heard much about quantum physics at all. And with no awareness of quantum physics, I didn't find any reason at the time, all those years ago, to be anything other than a determinist. In my early years in philosophy, the debate was framed as "determinism vs free will" and I accepted that framing, and happily just ended up being a hard determinist.
The first time I heard about compatibilism, I thought what most people seem to think: that's just silly, if the world is determined then you can't really have done otherwise, there's no room for free will there. Compatibilists are just playing goofy word games. I still thought at that time that even if the world weren't deterministic, that just means random, and random is no more free than determined. So I guess at that point in my life, I would have been a "hard incompatibilist".
I don't actually know when or why I changed my mind about that. I don't know if I read an article - could have been this one - or if it was purely based on a sequence of my own unprompted thoughts. In either case, I came to view myself as a decision making machine, and furthermore that those decisions are -real- , at least in some sense.
That's actually the center of compatibilism to me. I have conscious experience, and I may not have full sourcehood-control of my thoughts, but my thoughts do seem non-epiphenomenally connected to the things my body does. Even writing about consciousness, about the ineffable nature of it, about the richness of the qualia of colour, seems enough evidence to me to say "it's not epiphenomenal" - why would my body be writing the words that can only be conveying the things I'm consciously experiencing, even trying to convey the ineffable parts, if those ineffable parts weren't causal in some way? So, even if I can't explain why or how, I feel compelled to conclude that they aren't epiphenomenal.
But if they aren't epiphenomenal, how do they actually relate to the rest of my world view? This part is much much harder to explain. I believe that emergence is required here, but I don't have the vocabulary to bridge the gap. I believe that I, as a decision making machine, am most likely fully and completely implemented by my physical makeup. Furthermore, I also believe that even if I wasn't, it wouldn't really matter, because whatever else I was composed of would still have to be some kind of process-oriented "thing" evolving into the future based on past states and new inputs. Physical or not doesn't really matter. So I might as well be physical, positing anything else doesn't seem to go any distance towards answering any questions. So my body is physical, every element of it behaves in just the way physical things behave - I don't believe the matter in my body or brain behaves in fundamentally different ways from anything else - and so... how can my conscious experience be efficacious? It must be, and yet it seems so impossible to understand how.
My current view is that I think of our minds, and this world stage in which many minds can interact with each other, are just physically implemented manifestations of almost some kind of semi-platonic semi-ideal. So it's not so much that our minds are CHANGING what happens in the physical world, per se, but our minds are an emergent part of the physical world and the physical world is the very thing that enables us to have minds to think things. I'm sure there's someone out there who has expressed what I'm trying to express in much more eloquent words than I am right now.
I don't know if the world is deterministic or indeterministic. I lean towards deterministic but QM gives me some reasonable doubt. But I don't think it matters in either case, for the question of free will.
When we hold someone morally responsible, we're judging them as a decision making machine. The same way a machine that, say, produces fabric can be malfunctioning or just not working well enough to fit into the assembly line, so too can a human beings decision making apparatus be malfunctioning, or not working in anything close to a way that makes it compatible with the rest of society. So other decision making machines say "this decision making machine needs to be separated, corrected, or maybe even destroyed".
And that's where the compatibilist "could have done otherwise" comes in. Some decision making machine does something, some other ones say "I hate that he did that, if he wasn't malfunctioning as a decision making machine, or if he was a better designed machine, he would have done something different". So one can imagine replacing his decision making algorithm with their own, prior to the offending decision, and if one can be convinced that under those circumstances, ones own decision making apparatus would have done something different, one may think that the person being judged was "in the wrong". They could have done otherwise, but not in the libertarian sense - with no change whatsoever - but in the sense of swapping out the decision making machine for a better one. If you swapped it out, this other one would have done something better.
But there are subtleties to that. For example, you could come up with a situation where some other decision making machine could have produced a more desirable result, but for reasons that aren't generalisable to producing generally more desirable results. It's tough. And I don't have all the answers.
I've been rambling aimlessly for long enough. I hope no one reads this.
Comments (173)
Hey! You had me at "free". :blush:
Nobody is completely free from determinism. But quantum particles are partly free in the sense that their existence & behavior are probabilistic : determined by the roll of the dice, with options, such as 7 or 11. Likewise, human behavior is causally determined by a long line of prior probabilistic events. So Chance, by definition, is not deterministic, it's non-compulsory. Change is inevitable, but Chance is optional. Where there are options, there is freedom. The door opens, but you can choose to walk through it, or not. :smile:
Excellent post. Thank you.
I still don't understand where the freedom you believe in is found, or how it can exist. I'll reread. But I like much of what you said. I'll be responding with my own thoughts, some of which are in line with yours a, and shine of which are not.
There's no need to be free from causality for that.
And in some moments, you're not free to do a lot of things. If you're currently leg-disabled, you're not free to run, but you're free to do other things
Ps my post is not excellent, it's unstructured, rambling, and I self admittedly have no idea how to express the ideas swimming around in my head.
Sounds like youre addressing chance in the sense of a random occurrence, this since its specified as not being deterministic. Two philosophically-minded questions:
1) How could randomness (chance so understood) allow for ones responsibility (in the sense of culpability or praiseworthiness) for the options one decides upon?
2) How does any notion of free will when strictly understood as I have free will whenever Im not obstructed in that which I will - be this act of willing chance-based or not - account for the sentiment of regret which most of us have and do on occasion experience, with this sentiment of regret basically translating into that of I ought to have chosen a different course of events than the one I ended up choosing? To be more explicit, how can regret be accounted for by free will when granting that the ability to choose otherwise than what one ends up choosing is fully illusory and thereby ontically non-occurrent (for the ontic occurrence of this very ability can only result in some form of libertarian free will, whose possibility is here denied)?
CC: @Mww
It is also worth mentioning Kant's transcendental freedom, which does not fit cleanly between compatibilism and incompatibilism; and of which claims that our reasoning is governed by rational principles unrestrained by one's natural instincts.
This kind of view could be incorporated, to wit, into a version of compatibilism different than the OP's (but yet still naturalisticalthough Kant wouldn't probably go for it); such that our brains are causally determined but, when functioned properly, facilitate our ability to be regulated in thought through reason's own principles instead of anything about the natural laws which govern the brain which facilitates it.
The key difference here would be that your OP accepts that there is some sort of connection between the causal underpinnings which facilitate reason and reason herself such that reason cannot think according to her own laws. Why should someone accept that?
EDIT:
E.g., when I determine that '1 + 1 = 2' it does not seem to be dependent on the underlying natural laws which facilitated my ability to determine it; but, rather, is governed by rational principles of logic and cognition which have nothing to do with those aforesaid natural laws. So long as my brain is healthy enough to facilitate it, my thinking powers will be able to reason in this way.
Quoting flannel jesusThat's a great answer. Thank you. It's good to have any understanding of your position. I was thinking of starting a thread like this, and editing the first post with a brief summary of the position of the whoever posted. Easier than digging through a thread's pages, hoping to find the idea someone told us about.
Quoting flannel jesusI understand what you mean, and wouldn't have any leg to stand on if I wanted to argue. If it's not determined, and also not random, what is it?
The beginning of my hair-brained thinking is this... I believe we have free will. I believe the thing it is free from is physicalism. That is, the physical properties of matter, the laws of physics, and the forces. Physicalism is not responsible for the pyramids; the NYC skyline; language; poetry; the internet; Bach's and Beethoven's music; discussions, in RL or here, about things like free will and consciousness; religion; The Lord of the Rings; on and on and on.
Nothing about our physical sciences explains the existence of any of thisr things. All of them came about because of the meanings our consciousness gives things, and the intentions it has. We wanted things to be a certain way in the future, so we caused that future to come about. We used physicalism to accomplish our intended future, because physicalism is the setting. Those things would never have come to exist without our consciousness, with only the laws of physics and forces acting on particles.
Quoting Bob RossDo you think the rational principles of logic and cognition would be the same in a reality that had different underlying natural laws?
I think we can eliminate all troubles if we accept a form of substance dualism, in which matter is deterministic, whereas the mind can experience options and decide freely. The problem that is left is how can we have options in a deterministic world. I have discussed this in another thread of mine entitled "On the existence of options in a deterministic world".
I don't think so. Whether it's physical or some other substance is just an implementation detail. That other substance faces the same determined/random dichotomy as physics
Did you read my explanation? The mind is not determined or random.
No, I am talking about what I wrote in this thread.
Well, if the mind was determined then you could not possibly decide in a situation with two options. We also don't toss a coin when we decide. We just pick the option that we please and want.
I don't have any reason to believe this personally
Let me put it this way: How could the mind be determined before realizing options?
The brain doesn't know ahead of time what it's going to do. That's not what causal determinism is about.
Could you decide before you are presented with options?
I am asking this question to argue that the mind is not a determined entity. If you have one option, then you just follow it. The future however is uncertain. It might contain options or not. You have to wait for it and see whether you are presented with options.
Options cannot be random or determined. Whether the decision is random or determined is another topic. I however argue that decisions cannot be generally determined since the future as I mentioned is uncertain so you may face a situation with options that you have never experienced in the past. That is where the mind comes into play and gives you the ability to choose between options.
Hey .
Once again, thanks for the nod, but I abstain from conversations having free will as the topic, insofar as the very notion of free will, as far as Im concerned, has already confused the issue. That being said .
Quoting Bob Ross
is only the case under very restricted conditions, re: pure practical reasoning, in which the subject himself is necessary and sufficient causality for all that which is governed by those principles, sometimes even to the utter subordination of natural instincts, re: the trolley problem.
What do you mean?
Which is fine, not an insult, I don't understand why many people think the things they think.
You didn't say that. You said that two options are determined or random. I then mentioned that options cannot be random or determined.
Quoting flannel jesus
What is the thing that you think I didn't understand?
Read the first 4 paragraphs of the op please. "Either we live in a world that evolves towards the future according to strict rules, rules about how things relate to each other in space and time, how energy transforms matter, transfers between matter, things like that, OR the rules aren't quite so strict, and some random things happen." That's what I meant by "the two options are determined or random", and that's what I was asking if you understood.
Aren't you a compatibilist?
So to you, the world should be deterministic. Why do you bother with randomness?
In trying to stave off potential headaches, he's a compatibilist in the sense of free will being defined as "anything one wills to do that is not obstructed is thereby one's free will" ... which would then be a free will notion that is perfectly compatible with realty being "causally inevitable".
@flannel jesus is of course free to correct or else modify this if wrong. But I've had my headaches in the past in trying to discuss with him the difference between libertarian compatibilism and deterministic compatibilism - which he seems to conflate into the same thing. He sticks to everything necessarily being either "causally inevitable" or else random. And hence to compatibilism only making sense within this framework.
Anyway, if this helps ...
Compatibilism isn't a hard commitment to determinism.
How can the stance of "compatibilism" be compatible with randomness? In other words, if one's actions of will are random, how then can one be stated to have free will?
If it can't, and if there is no other option than that of reality being "causally inevitable" or else random, doesn't that then mandate compatibilism's "hard commitment to determinism" in the sense that everything is causally inevitable?
Incompatibilists say "determinism destroys free will". Compatibilists simply say "determinism doesn't destroy free will". They're not (all) saying "and that means determinism is necessarily the case" or "indeterminism destroys free will".
Just one simple thing: determinism doesn't destroy free will.
Basically, imagine I have a snow globe in my left hand and a snow globe in my right hand - in each snow globe a little handheld universe. Suppose I know the one in my left hand is indeterministic, and the one in my right hand, while looking at a surface level pretty much just like the left one, is deterministic. An incompatibilist would say "free will may exist in the left globe but not the right", a compatibilist would say "free will may exist in both".
Some compatibilists are definitely unambiguously determinists, and some believe free will is incompatible with indeterminism, but that's not a necessary feature of compatibilis.m
Cool.
Quoting javra
I think we first have to agree on how options could be real in a determinist world. Once that is established then we could understand that decision is not possible in a deterministic system.
Quoting javra
Are you saying that in his opinion the decision is the result of randomness or else is determined? I think we can simply exclude the latter because both options are real. The former also can be excluded as well because of the correlation between the time of decision and action.
It is. If you have some other view in your mind please be more specific and use other terminology.
None of which is a reply to what I asked.
Quoting flannel jesus
It does not destroy free will when free will is defined as:
Quoting javra
If however does necessarily deny the very possibility of free will when free will is defined as:
"One could have chosen an option other than the one option one ends up choosing". Or, more simply, the ability to choose otherwise.
Common sense holds free will to be the latter. As it for example gets applied, however implicitly, in judicial systems.
It's all explicitly a reply to what you asked.
Agreed.
Quoting MoK
Yes. With the caveat that "determined' here entails "causally inevitable".
Quoting MoK
I'd again agree.
OK. But neither question asked was in any way answered.
Okey dokey, then. (In the world I live in, however, context is quite important to individual words, such as the ones you've quoted. Apparently not so much in yours. Sounds more like an ego battle than an honest search for truths, in this case truths of a rational kind. But as you say, you've replied.)
I know what compatibilism means. Compatibilism is however nonsensical.
Sure. Here were my two questions:
Quoting javra
Here was your reply which you insist answered the questions:
Quoting flannel jesus
For starters, my two questions are such that the second hinges on the answer to the first. You did not answer the first. You therefore neither answered the second.
If the world has a little bit of randomness, that doesn't necessarily destroy the causality one needs to enact one's will. So that should be the answer to your first two questions, right?
No. It's not an answer to the first question. The first question regarded what a "random free will" can possibly signify, and if the idea of such a random free will is at all viable. It did not address the workings of the world, but instead addressed what free will can and cannot possibly be.
Please re-read the first question again.
Why wouldn't it be? I don't know what's so unsatisfying about my answer to you, I feel like I'm answering pretty straight forward, but since that's not satisfying to you, let me know why you think a world with a little bit of randomness is necessarily contrary to a compatibilist idea of free will
Adding a little randomness to the world means that it is not deterministic anymore.
What technicality could that possibly be?
As in, "there's a possible world where determinism is true and beings in that world have free will, this just doesn't happen to be one of them".
I'm certain the vast majority of compatibilists don't take a position like that though.
But compatibilism is about the existence of free will in a deterministic world rather than a random world.
Absolute Determinism would be one-damn-thing-after-another. Randomness is non-linear, so there are forks in the path. Those forks are opportunities for Choice. If there is an option, you may be forced to choose by pressure from the past, but left vs right would be a "free" choice. :joke:
Can we at least agree that there can be no compatibilism if free will is denied regardless of how free will is defined?
You've explained options via randomness, but not the choice between options which is taken. How can randomness account for the very act of deciding while yet accounting for one's responsibility in light of the decision made?
Compatibilism is about conceiving of free will in such a way that it's compatible with determinism, which is distinct from an explicit claim that determinism is in fact the case.
OK. Then, a compatibilist will necessarily believe in the reality of some form or other of free will. If so, to reinforce 's comment, how can free will be stated to be real if the act of deciding is of itself random?
Because the options aren't 100% determinism and 100% randomness. There's also the option of
If quantum randomness is the case, then it's not like everything that happens in the world is completely random. Quantum events are governed by the Schrödinger equation, so even if the event isn't deterministic, the range of possibilities is deterministically decided, and it seems to be that the randomness that does exist in a quantum sense kind of averages out macroscopically.
So in such a view, it's not just a nonsense world where everything is random and nothing is causally connected to past states. There's still a sense of causality, with some random quantum wiggle room.
Yes.
Quoting flannel jesus
Well, if you deny determinism then there is nothing to discuss when it comes to compatibilism.
I don't agree
Why?
When you come to a fork in a raging river, if you don't make a conscious (responsible) choice, the river will make it for you. :cool:
To my surprise, I fully agree with this statement as written. (You might recall that in the other thread I used the term "semi-determined" or something to the like, which signifies just this.) But I doubt we agree on what the statement entails.
So what to you is hybrid between determined and random? Or are all events either 100% determined or 100% random when you get down into nitty gritty?
The question was about that conscious choice, and not about whether rivers make decisions. But I guess you're not taking this seriously. Oh well.
No. First off because it addresses hypotheses regarding physics at a quantum level which have in no way been evidenced to directly influence, much less determine, the choices that we as conscious beings make. Secondly, this issue is one of sheer metaphysical possibilities rather than about physical data with nebulous explanations.
So, again, what to you would a hybrid between 1) a determined event and 2) a random event be?
I think they got it right.
Quoting flannel jesus
Why bothering to discuss compatibilism if it does not matter that the world is deterministic or not?
Quoting flannel jesus
Where do you think that they got the concept of free will wrong?
I've already explained why. But (unless I need to give further replies) I'll stop.
If you with quantum crap mean the Copenhagen interpretation then it suffers from many paradoxes such as Schrodinger's cat paradox and particle-wave duality. So this interpretation cannot be the correct interpretation of quantum mechanics.
Then why don't accept the De BroglieBohm interprertation which is paredox free and determinsitic?
It might come as no surprise that others disagree with this. So how do you rationally conclude this affirmation?
Not that any of this addresses the reasons I've given. But all the same.
-----
Just saw this:
Quoting MoK
If it's deterministic, it ain't partly random. :wink: :razz:
I'm not talking about what is the correct interpretation of quantum mechanics. I'm not making an ontological claim that this is true about the world. I'm talking about a concept - regardless of if that concept matches reality. Conceptually, this way of interpreting quantum mechanics is a hybrid.
I actually explicitly DON'T think that interpretation is likely to be correct. But I'm not worried about that, I'm just worried about giving you a suitable example to the question you asked. I think it is, regardless of the fact that I don't think the world actually works that way
Are you asking me for an example that I think really genuinely exists in real life? Because I don't think that was specified in the way you asked your question.
I think it is the right thread to discuss this issue since you are using an interpretation of quantum mechanics for the sake of your argument which is unfortunately paradoxical.
OK. But how do you reason this hybrid metaphysics to work? This has direct baring on what you are wanting to claim for free will.
It is not at all random. Randomness only exists in other interpretations, Copenhagen interpretation for example.
It is. The cat in the box cannot be in both states of alive and dead.
No problem, mate. :wink:
The Schrödinger equation evolves the wave function deterministically, and then at some moment it collapses the wave function randomly, with the probabilities of that random collapse determined by the shape of the wave function
But here your saying that the first is 100% determined and the second is 100% random. Neither then are hybrid events. Where is the hybrid event at?
The wave function does not collapse randomly. It just collapses when a measurement is done on the system.
Well, I'm a programmer, and as a programmer I can tell you, fundamentally if I wanted to develop a hybrid process, there's always a function call to the *random number generator* as one command, and the function that uses that random result as another one. So I don't necessarily think any *single event* is hybrid at that detailed level of description, no. Maybe it is, idk, I'm agnostic. I'm not sure it matters either way.
If you're not yet familiar with this, the delayed-choice quantum erasure experiment gets extremely interesting.
Nothing conclusive about it in this regard, but - from my last readings regarding it - it to me so far illustrates that the measurement by which collapse occurs might well be pivoted upon observers as conscious beings. But I grant that's debatable.
At any rate, its an interesting QM experiment that's been replicated many times.
Got it. I'm still curious though: What then would be your gut feeling regarding this in terms of free will?
Thanks, I was familiar with the delayed-choice quantum erasure experiment. De BroglieBohm interpretation can simply address this paradox as you can find it here.
As a reminder, do you believe that you could have chosen otherwise at an past juncture of choice-making (i.e., at any juncture in which you decided upon an option)?
Granted. Bohm does have a lot of interesting things to say.
But I don't think that either of those things are required for free will.
Unless one introduces some form of a hybrid event in one's metaphysics, I still don't get how randomness can account for any notion of free will. But thanks for the answer. :up:
Than why did you just specify the possibility of free will thus defined as being contingent on "genuine randomness"?
I think explicitly saying "it doesn't account for it" is exactly the opposite of me saying it's contingent on it. How could I say randomness doesn't account for it, but also think that it's contingent on randomness? I think you're interpreting these words in the exact wrong direction.
Can you clarify what you're here addressing. As a reminder, what I was addressing is in relation to what you expressed here:
Quoting flannel jesus
The question you asked.
I do not believe I expressed anything about free will being contingent upon randomness.
If we do some rewind experiment, and it does end up with me making a different choice despite being under exactly the same conditions, that difference in choice isn't due to my will, it's due to randomness. I'm not saying, and haven't said, that free will is contingent on the possibility that i could rewind time and make a different choice.
It may be ontologically true that if time was rewound, quantum randomness allows for a different choice to be made. But I didn't call that "free will" at any point. That's just random. Random is random, random isn't human freedom.
For the record, it has nothing to do with rewinding time. (It has to do which what is and is not possible at any juncture of choice-making. which as event always occurs in the present, and not in the past. If one can chose differently than what one ends up doing at any present juncture of choice making, then one could have chosen differently at any past juncture of choice-making.)
Quoting flannel jesus
I thought you implicitly did. But ok, you didn't. What then does this "free will" term signify to you?
Can you be explicit on whether or not "all that crap" allows for you having chosen differently than what you do or else did?
So this god sees me do one thing, presses rewind, so all relevant causal facts are the same, presses play and then he sees me do something different, right? That's what you mean by "allows me to have chosen differently", right? It means there's a non-zero probability that I actually do something different, despite being perfectly the same, the second time around. Yeah?
Nor really. It has nothing to do with rewinding time, and certainly has nothing to do with any god. Assume your right now have two options of either replying or of not replying. In this very act of choice-making, can you of your own volition (which would preclude the outcome being random) choose either of the two options? Or are you causally determined to choose one option such that you in reality have no true choice between the two?
I say god because we can't check that sort of thing from inside the universe. It's gotta be tested from outside.
Why "god" and not a "brain-in-vat dragon"? It has nothing to do with god, nor with the [s]omniscience[/s] omnipotence I take it you're here addressing.
Quoting flannel jesus
It means that you could in fact choose either of the two options of your own volition. This in contrast to such presumption being in reality only an illusory emotion / sentiment regarding your ability to do so.
The difference between indeterminism and determinism is, given the exact same conditions, with determinism you get the exact same result every time. With indeterminism you don't. That's what this rewind test is all about. It's an easy to visualise way of setting up the same exact conditions.
So when you say "could in fact choose", I'm trying to figure out if you mean like in an indeterministic way, or if you mean some other way.
Because some people think you "could in fact choose" even if you get the same result every time from the same condition.
You're in many a way placing the cart before the horse. If one can choose any of the two options via one's own volition, that is termed liberatrian free will. If this belief that one can is only illusory, that is then determinism in the sense of "everything is causally inevitable" - be it compatibilist or nor. Each will in turn require its own metaphysical account for how it operates. With these being all over the place.
There are other ways of defining determinism and indeterminism. But using the definitions you've just given, quite plainly, libertairan free will shall need to adopt some variant of indeterminism, i.e., some variant which specifies that not everything is causally inevitable - such that given the same physical context, the same intent, and the same options (these being the conditions) different options can be chosen (the option chosen then being the result, such that different results are then possible - but certainly not necessary).
My concern in just answering directly is that I'm not confident I understand what you mean. If you played ball with the rewind test, I would perhaps have been able to figure out what you mean, but without that I feel like I'm just guessing at what you mean.
When you have a choice of vanilla ice cream or chocolate ice cream, do you really have a choice? Or are all of the interactions between brain structures, particles, electrochemical signals, and whatever else, which we have no possibility of calculating,determining which choice you will make as surely as all the physical interactions on the mountain determine which way the rock will roll?
Not exactly.
Quoting flannel jesus
gives a good example. I'll let others take over for now.
And I've tried to make clear that my position on free will is compatibilist in that it doesn't require determinism or indeterminism.
How could you be compatibilist and at the same time agnostic about determinism?
"[I]Compatibilism[/I] is the thesis that free will is compatible with determinism."
if you are a compatibilist, what two (or more) things do you find to be compatible, if determinism is not one of them?
I do. Compatibilism simply means that free will and determinism are compatible concepts. There is nothing to discuss if you are not sure whether determinism is true or not.
May I be corrected if wrong, but it was about whether one really has a choice in what one chooses. Again, if one does, then liberarain free will holds, irrespective of how it's metaphysically accounted for. If one doesn't, then back to everything being causally inevitable (or else everything being causally inevitable save for when it's sprinkled with a bit or randomness).
But I really am running short on time at the current moment.
What!? I am not a compatibilist. You are and yet you deny determinism!
Quoting flannel jesusI don't think you've wavered. The problem is that we do not understand what you're saying. As though you are saying, "My idea of circles is not incompatible with the possibility that they are squares." If you are trying to explain how the obvious problem with that is resolved, we are all unable to understand your explanation.
However, I think you explained it in your responses to me on page 1:Quoting flannel jesusFreedom to, not freedom from. I think our ideas of free will are very different. Which is fine. We just can't discuss it the way we are. Kind of like asking which you prefer, chocolate ice cream or The Beatles. It's different conversations.
I am not confused. Don't you see that you are having a problem in your position? Being a compatibilist means that one agrees with both free will and determinism and think they are compatable.
Yeah free will conversations are mostly like that it seems. One of the primary factors that creates the conditions for talking past each other is disagreement on the determined / random dichotomy. People who believe that's a valid dichotomy having conversations with people who don't usually results in talking in circles. Most people don't even realise that's a major point of difference between their intuitions about these ideas.
1. A causally closed system either evolves towards the future deterministically, or it is in some part random. So that's the difference between determinism and indeterminism - indeterminism has some randomness.
2. Thus any time someone expresses an idea that's supposedly "incompatible with determinism", that's the same thing as saying "this idea requires randomness"
3. When libertarians say free will is incompatible with determinism, I hear "free will requires randomness"
4. I do not believe any coherent concept of free will requires randomness (and that's independent of whether or not I think randomness actually exists), and that's for one simple reason: if something is random, it's uncontrolled. If random stuff is happening in your brain or in your mind or in your agency, you don't control that any more than you control a fully determined brain / mind / agency (and it could be argued that the randomness gives you explicitly less control)
5. Therefore I believe that the libertarian concept of free will is incorrect (and again, that's independent of whether or not I think randomness actually exists). At this point I can either reframe free will to be more coherent according to my understand, or reject it altogether
6. I DID reject it altogether for many years. Perhaps you think that's a more coherent position, and perhaps it is.
7. Some years ago, something flipped, I don't recall what or why, but I came to accept the idea of a compatibilist emergent decision making process. Such a process doesn't rely on randomness (again, regardless of whether randomness actually exists). Through much abstract contemplation, most of which I can't put into words, that ended up with me thinking that some flavour of compatibilism is the right way to think about free will.
The a priori modes by which one cognizes depends on, as the name suggests, how their cognition is pre-structured and not the natural laws which govern those pre-structures: they relate to each other, but arent the same.
If, in principle, reason were to manifest in a being which had a wholly different physical constitution, then its modes of cognition would be the same as it relates to reasoning even if the natural laws governing (and the natural organs or functions ontologically grounding) that reasoning is wholly different than our own.
Now, what are the kinds of being which have reason but do not have human brains? I dont know, exactly because weve never met one.
How does it confused the issue?
Cant we subordinate our natural instincts all the time? How is this very restricted? Most people dont have, e.g., brain tumors.
Ok mate, let's discuss things to see what is right and wrong in your reasoning. :wink:
Quoting flannel jesus
You are a compatibilist, so let's just accept that the physical is only deterministic.
Quoting flannel jesus
If by the idea you mean free will, then there are other ways to address that without including randomness in a deterministic system. One way to address free will is to consider the mind as the entity that decides.
Quoting flannel jesus
This I have to explain in more detail. When you freely decide in a situation you don't toss a coin. You just decide and proceed with the option you want. So there is an element of wanting in your decision you cannot deny. I have to say that your decision from the third perspective seems random but from the first perspective, it is not since as I mentioned you do what you want. As I mentioned, if we include the mind in the equation then we have a deterministic part of the system, the so-called body, and we also have the mind that makes decisions when we are faced with options. As I said the decision from the third perspective seems random so you have a part of the person that is deterministic, the body, and a part that seems to work randomly when the person faces options, the other part being the mind. If you exclude the mind then you have a system that sometimes is deterministic and sometimes is random, which is contrary.
Quoting flannel jesus
I discussed it in good depth in the previous comment.
Quoting flannel jesus
Free will is real and you can have a coherent picture when you accept the mind otherwise you fall into the trap that a system must be deterministic and random.
Quoting flannel jesus
Let me know what you think so far.
Quoting flannel jesus
That is all right to change your mind. It occurred to me many times and it still happens to me.
Which part of my discussion do you disagree with?
This part
Quoting MoK
This part
I don't feel like going through everything. Most of it.
But I'm trying to simplify the conservation, because I realise that we'll never have any mutual understanding without starting here:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/977039
So you have to endorse that the physical is deterministic and random! That is a contrary position though.
Quoting flannel jesus
If you don't accept the mind then I am afraid to say that you have to deal with a contrary view you have.
Quoting flannel jesus
I am trying to simplify the conversation as well. You cannot have randomness and determinism within a monistic view since it is incoherent. If you accept the dualistic view then all problems are resolved.
What I notice is that, repeatedly and imo inexplicably, you keep on talking about "physical" this and "physical" that in reply to my posts, but I don't say anything about things being "physical". I don't know why you're doing that. I don't know why you're trying to force "physical" into the conversation.
I never said anything is deterministic and random. You're just saying silly stuff now.
By physical I simply mean the stuff that exists, your body, my body, etc. I have to use that to explain my view about reality. Aren't you a physical? If not what you are?
Quoting flannel jesus
To differentiate the physical from the mind. I am a dualist so I have to do that.
Quoting flannel jesus
You said it in all your posts. For example, "A causally closed system either evolves towards the future deterministically, or it is in some part random."
But then you said you differentiate physical from the mind.
So the mind doesn't exist?
Deterministic and random
Is different from
Deterministic or random
"And" and "or" are two very extremely different words
I gave you the example of physical, such as my body, your body, etc. And of course, the mind exists and it is a separate thing from my body, your body, etc.
Are you saying that in your view things are sometimes deterministic and sometimes random? If not what are you trying to say?
I gave the example of the physical stuff, like my body. I also think that there is mental stuff, like my mind.
I do have an idea, however, that the processes by which things happen are either deterministic or in some part random. That if a process isn't deterministic, that can only mean that the part of that process that isn't deterministic is random.
As you say, the natural laws govern the pre-structures. If the natural laws are different, the pre-structures are different, so the modes of cognition are different. If the natural laws are not such that 1 + 1 = 2, then they will not lead to pre-structures, then rational principles of logic and cognition, that reflect/suggest/embody/whatever 1 + 1 = 2, and 1 + 1 = 2 will never be determined.
It all depends on the underlying natural laws. A healthy brain will not facilitate thinking powers that contradict the natural laws from which the brain grew, and of which the brain is composed.
Ok, so you are talking about processes that happen in things. When I say that a thing is deterministic or random, I mean that the processes within the thing are deterministic or random. I however think that something cannot be deterministic sometimes and random at other times.
But the reality is different from your program.
I talk about things in reality.
But you cannot be agnostic about reality if you are a compatibilist!
So the end of the discussion?
I already discussed substance dualism to a good extent. If you have any questions then I would be happy to answer. Otherwise, I don't see anything to add.
nothing i've said is pro- or contra- substance dualism. I don't care about it either way. It just seems completely orthogonal to any point I've made.
Ok, it was very nice to chat with you.
Your thinking presupposes that the a priori modes of cognition have to mirror the natural laws; and this is simply not true.
Who said that, e.g., mathematics is more than (transcendental) a priori?
One analogy is, if you are in a lumberyard, and you build a house, your house is not going to be made out of stone.
Another analogy is, if you use the sword-making methods of Masamune, you won't end up with Excaliber.
The general idea being, a product cannot reflect materials and methods that were not used during its production.
Nothing produced in this universe can reflect natural laws other than the natural laws of this universe. How could it be otherwise? How could an intelligence, produced in and by a reality where 1 + 1 = 2, seeing that principle reflected everywhere, think that 1 + 1 = 3? Not, as you said, in a healthy brain.
Or, from the other direction, [I]does[/I] 1 + 1 = 3, and the universe produced intelligences that built mathematical systems around the wrong answer?
Imagine the universe in a snow globe. Imagine 2 snow globes, one in each hand. In your left hand, it's a lot like this universe, but where a random-collapse quantum interpretation is true. In your right hand, it's a lot like this universe, but one where a deterministic quantum interpretation is true. My understanding of free will is such that, as long as humans and human decision making is an emergent feature, both of those universes have human beings with tthe only sort of "free will" I think means anything.
My understanding of free will is *compatible with* determinism, but that doesn't mean it's incompatible with indeterminism. Being compatible with one thing doesn't mean incompatible with another. We have free will, regardless of determinism.