Comments
ambisinister_gecko t1_j970yd2 wrote
Do you believe the incompatibilists conception of free will is coherent?
jamesj t1_j976xaz wrote
No, I don't see a coherent way of integrating free will with my observations. I believe that free will as commonly understood is likely incompatible with either a deterministic or stochastic universe. I'm open to evidence and argument to the contrary though.
ambisinister_gecko t1_j97aqfx wrote
No, I don't want to convince you that libertarian free will is coherent. I think it's not, which is part of what drives the compatibilist intuition to recontextualize what is called the "feeling of having free will" - if the Libertarian approach is not only non existent, but not even coherent, that opens us up to the idea that a different approach from the libertarian one might produce something more coherent, more valuable.
jamesj t1_j97dmsd wrote
Sure, I think I can get behind a statement that we can redefine free will to be the most useful plausible version. That then wouldn't be the kind of free will many people think they have. I'm also not sure how that version of free will supports the kind of moral responsibility that many people think other people have.
ambisinister_gecko t1_j97g44s wrote
>the kind of moral responsibility that many people think other people have.
People intuitively think you have moral responsibility for actions you were in control of. The article centers their conception of free will around control as well. I think that's a really solid place to center it.
jamesj t1_j97xptk wrote
In what way is someone in control of their actions if they are determined by causes they are not in control of?
Ytar0 t1_j989r0b wrote
Have you actually never heard the term “free will is an illusion”? I feel like it perfectly describes compatibilism. You can never escape the subjectivity of your personal perspective, objective truths might exist but they will never be known to you. Determinism might ultimately mean that your fate is inevitable, but that whole discussion is redundant since you can’t see the future. Even if it might be an illusion I do experience, and I am not omniscient so I feel free.
fartmouthbreather t1_j98cf2m wrote
Free will being an illusion is obviously compatible with determinism. That’s the whole point of determinism, that isn’t a free will worth wanting, and that’s OP’s point. The author has redefined it to make it a negligible epiphenomenon.
OldMillenial t1_j98czub wrote
>The author has redefined it to make it a negligible epiphenomenon.
The author has attempted to redefine it, and at the same time attempted to leverage the "common sense" perception of moral responsibility that is most certainly not based on his new definition.
The author is playing a semantic shell game, all while desperately attempting to convince you that he gets to go to dinners with more interesting people, and that those who disagree with him and his cool friends are just "Philosophy 101 students."
Ytar0 t1_j98eili wrote
I honestly feel like so much of "philosophy" is just miscommunication lol.
fartmouthbreather t1_j98lejv wrote
It’s easy when people define their own terms. :(
keelanstuart t1_j9ajkrn wrote
Is watching a movie for the first time, whose story you cannot control, any less enjoyable because of that fact? What is "worth wanting" then? Why does determinism feel oppressive if the illusion of free will is persistent? If we had everything we wanted in life, would we feel put upon by forces we cannot control or would we never question things as we do when we suffer? Shrug. Points to ponder.
fartmouthbreather t1_j9b7902 wrote
I don’t want that. The author claims “people do”.
jamesj t1_j98aavi wrote
Sure, but why is that called compatibilism and not illusionism, which seems like a much more appropriate label? It just feels to me that compatibilists want the claim that free will is compatible with determinism (because they are physicalists who like the idea of moral responsibility) more than they want clarity around the words "free will".
Ytar0 t1_j98c0mi wrote
Well, not all philosophers are very "compatible" themselves lol. But that aside, yes you might call that flavor of compatibilism, illusionism. But for the most part, I think they just have a different definition of free will. I.e. one that isn't:
- If someone acts of their own free will, then they could have done otherwise (A-C).
- If determinism is true, no one can do otherwise than one actually does (D-E).
- Therefore, if determinism is true, no one acts of her own free will (F).
Compatibilism reminds me of Absurdism, in that you're embracing "the absurd" (even though it's a slightly different absurd here lol)
Atilla_The_Honey t1_j99xtdn wrote
I’ve seen something like this argument before and I wonder if you can clarify it for me. In the first premise, what does “could have done otherwise” mean? That if they had decided to do otherwise, they could have?
Surely in a deterministic universe this could still be true, because the deciding to do otherwise would be part of the causal chain leading them to act, so changing that part could change the resulting action.
I don’t really understand the second premise either - surely whether the universe is deterministic or not, once an action has been taken it can’t be changed. Can you clarify how someone could do otherwise than they actually do in any kind of universe?
I think I broadly agree that the article above is arguing from a different conception of free will, in a rather sneaky way.
dirtmother t1_j9acftr wrote
Compatibilism often reads to me as, "I will express my moral intuition, and I never could have done otherwise".
Correct me if I'm wrong lol.
Ytar0 t1_j99z04n wrote
Determinism ultimately means that there only is one possible future. And that all actions will inevitably lead to that future. From an outside perspective we are simply following the laws of casualty.
So “deciding to do otherwise” means creating a different future, one where you has done otherwise than what was predetermined. Idk if that makes more sense.
jamesj t1_j993fmi wrote
That's interesting because absurdism appeals to me quite a lot while compatibilism makes little sense to me at all.
Ytar0 t1_j9bwkg6 wrote
Hmm. Then let me ask you some, since I am not sure how to relate to incompatibilists. Are you at all times aware that whatever you choose to do (and chose to do) is outside of your control?? Because for the life of me I have never felt that I wasn't free in my actions. And while this might be an illusion (I am a determinist after all) I will never and don't believe I ever can be aware of how this changes anything in my life. (since I simply am not given this information)
What do you think about that ^ ?
jamesj t1_j9bzbrb wrote
Yes, there are two important levels where things are outside of my control: first, i didn't choose my place of birth, language, parents, schools, upbringing, and what ideas I was exposed to. Second, I conceive of my self as a subset of my brain and body, and at a deep level I don't believe that part of me is in control. I'm along for the ride, and I experience stories about why things happen, some of those stories involving the idea of choices, but I don't believe all of those stories.
Ytar0 t1_j9cvzbv wrote
Hmm yeah, I guess it’s too hard for me to truly explain my pov. But to put it another way, while the concept of objective truths might exist in this universe, I don’t believe we could ever know them, since we’re always bound by the confines of our brains, and our perspective. Your experience and subjective opinion is just as valid is mine, I just argue that “being along for the ride” is the same as what compatibilists call “free will”. Because this “ride” isn’t one you know or can wholly predict, and it also feels the same as if it weren’t a ride. The difference is unknowable imo.
OldMillenial t1_j98dc3y wrote
>Have you actually never heard the term “free will is an illusion”? I feel like it perfectly describes compatibilism.
Whether this does or does not perfectly define compatibilism, I do not know.
I do know that this description is in fairly direct opposition to the relationship between free will and compatibilism as presented in the article.
deepfield67 t1_j99uo0g wrote
I'm not convinced the very concept of free will isn't meaningless. It doesn't necessarily correspond to any aspect of reality. There is an embedded assumption that there is an objective reality in which that free will is exercised and that's a meaningless concept, too. I can only be point to my own subjective experience, and I don't know if the idea of free will has any significance in that context. It feels purely conceptual, purely semantic.
cloake t1_j9985n7 wrote
It's fairly trivial to contradict libertarian free will. If you can prove to me you don't need to breathe and don't need to crap, I'll entertain a will bound by no limitation.
Drawmeomg t1_j97tf2y wrote
Do you accept a physicalist definition of self? "Self" is the sum of processes in the brain and/or body in some way that isn't fully worked out but isn't fundamentally mysterious?
jamesj t1_j97xvzf wrote
I'm not a physicalist.
Drawmeomg t1_j9af7zz wrote
Gotcha. To try to at least make compatibilism comprehensible:
If physicalism is true, then desires are some combination of physical states and/or processes.
Whether determinism is true or not, you are inevitably going to ‘choose’ those desires in exactly the libertarian free will sense, by definition. The only things you’re not free to choose are the things you don’t choose. You could have chosen differently - if a combination of processes in your mind had given a different result, which is to say, if you were a different person in the relevant sense (which could be quite minor in the case of an arbitrary choice, but major in the case of something that speaks to your core beliefs).
The only real difference between this and libertarian free will is the belief that desires aren’t fundamentally mysterious. It might founder on some other rock (if, for example, determinism is false, or if there’s some other property of free will not being captured here, or if there’s no such thing as ‘self’, or if you define brain processes as being outside of self), but hopefully it’s at least a bit more understandable how a person could believe that, and what exactly they believe.
Professional-Bat2966 t1_j98zz30 wrote
This is my view of it as well. To me it seems more rational based on what is known but of course the merits of that may be debated.
Thelonious_Cube t1_j99abqg wrote
> free will as commonly understood
Are you certain that the way free will is commonly understood is coherent?
I don't think it is
jamesj t1_j99bqfk wrote
I think it could be true that people exercise real choice. But I don't think it is consistent with determinism.
https://cogsci.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Thesis2018Hietala.pdf
Scholarly definitions aside, ordinary people generally understand free will as the ability to choose a desired course of action without restraint (Monroe, Dillon & Malle, 2014; Feldman, Wong & Baumeister, 2014; Feldman, 2017). Even if some scholars conceptualize free will in abstract, metaphysical terms (Greene & Cohen, 2004; Montague, 2008; Bargh, 2008), people tend to link free will most closely with the psychological concept of choice, not metaphysical concepts (Vonash, Baumeister, & Mele, 2018).
Thelonious_Cube t1_j99e3sn wrote
And they also believe that their free choices should be governed by their values and preferences which are a product of their upbringing
> ordinary people generally understand free will as the ability to choose a desired course of action without restraint
And that is perfectly compatible with determinism
jamesj t1_j99ebw7 wrote
- If someone acts of her own free will, then she could have done otherwise.
- If determinism is true, no one can do otherwise than one actually does.
- Therefore, if determinism is true, no one acts of her own free will.
Is the standard argument.
What's your argument for your claim?
Thelonious_Cube t1_j9e0xid wrote
That "could have done otherwise" means there's a possible world in which a different choice was made, not that determinism is false.
jamesj t1_j9e2cn6 wrote
In practice I live in only one world. My position is that I couldn't have done otherwise and any other very-nearly-mes in other worlds also couldn't have.
Thelonious_Cube t1_j9e2jnx wrote
That ignores the purpose of possible-world thinking
jamesj t1_j9e35d1 wrote
Theorizing worlds doesn't make them true. The fact we can imagine other worlds doesn't make them exist. They could exist, they might exist, but I'm still not in control of which one I end up in, even if they do exist.
Im-a-magpie t1_j9jy5yo wrote
>And that is perfectly compatible with determinism
It isn't though. The ordinary concept of free will (the way most people use the term) is directly on contradiction with a deterministic universe
Thelonious_Cube t1_j9mg1io wrote
No, it's not - the ordinary concept is vague and contradictory
Im-a-magpie t1_j9toado wrote
The ordinary concept is simple libertarian free will. There's nothing contradictory about it. Most people just reject a deterministic universe. Compatibilism is motivated by some desperate need to preserve our intuitive notions of justice, morality and ethics instead of accepting that those intuitions are flawed and don't reflect reality.
Thelonious_Cube t1_ja1lvwc wrote
No, that's not correct.
The ordinary concept also includes the idea that one's choices are a product of one's taste, values and experience - therefore tied to the causal history of one's life.
Im-a-magpie t1_ja1uetw wrote
But also that you could, for whatever reason, choose to go against those things.
E: Also people believe taste, values and such are the product of conscious choice.
Thelonious_Cube t1_ja6l8hm wrote
Perhaps so, but the point still stands
Michamus t1_j99qkjy wrote
It’s also incompatible with the observational data we’ve gathered so far. When we perform fMRI scans of the various structures of the brain and ask the subject to decide between binary options, the decision is made in the subconscious regions and then reported to the conscious regions. This means that when we’re deciding something, our “conscious mind” is told what’s being “thought about” and the eventual verdict, rather than being involved in it.
It appears that not only is free will non-existent, but consciousness may not actually be anything like we think it is. What we call consciousness may in fact just be the communication channels between the various brains that have been strapped on over the years.
Another example is when the connections between hemispheres are temporarily chemically “severed” the hemispheres begin behaving as two distinct minds. When isolating each hemispheres from the other’s field of vision from the other’s, you end up with extremely bizarre behaviors. One such behavior is the subject handing themselves an item from one hand to the next. They’re then asked how the item got into that hand. The response is universally that someone handed it to them.
My personal favorite rebuttal against free will though is “of course the brain would tell you it’s the master of the body.”
subito_lucres t1_j98jdmb wrote
I'm a scientist, not a philosopher. But since we are getting into physics, I will say this:
I don't think we know enough about existence to have much certainty whether or not we have free will. I understand the argument that free will does not necessary follow from either a predetermined or stochastic universe. But it could be an emergent property we don't yet understand. The deep intuition argument is, to me, the best. We have to define axioms to make sense of anything, and perhaps (like existence itself) the best argument for free will is the fact that we all seem to experience it.
LordMongrove t1_j98ml1x wrote
Does it matter if the universe is stochastic or predetermined? It seems that neither leave room for free will.
There is no crack that I can know of in physics where free will could hide.
So if have some options, I’d love to hear them.
subito_lucres t1_j98ncg2 wrote
I said that free will does not follow from either model.
However, the models are merely models, and they can't really rule out free will.
There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio....
Not suggesting we accept free will either. But again, we accept existence itself on axiomatic principles. I don't know if we have free will or not, but one could argue it's self-evident.
PariahDong t1_j98pjeq wrote
The issue is that the sense in which it's "self-evident" falls away very quickly, for many people, with even a little bit of concentrated/guided introspection.
I got a chance during undergrad to spend quite a bit of time on research which surveyed non-philosophy participants on their thoughts/feelings regarding free will/self issues. It's the "illusion of free will is itself an illusion" idea; it's difficult, because the whole topic is so conceptually muddy and there are so many concepts which overlap definitionally with day-to-day use, but, overwhelmingly, when you get people thinking clearly about the idea and sharpen some of the conceptual edges they come away with pretty clear incompatibilist intuitions that they do not actually have free will.
I can dig up some of the research to link if you're interested, but with even just a little bit of conceptual clean-up most non-philosophy people become pretty quickly disillusioned about their free will.
erkling27 t1_j999xhc wrote
I will say, I feel like just introducing people to determinism and them suddenly feeling a dampened sense of self or free will is kinda like saying kids who can't swim that get thrown into the deep end of a pool stuggle to stay afloat.
But, I will say that it's a solid point that determinism's immediate logical follow up is "free will as I understand it, is sus."
At the end of the day, I think free will is such a loosely defined concept entirely because it kinda takes a whole lot to justify it. Like beyond what is currently or ever may be possible. But that's kinda why it's all very philisophical and not science really.
subito_lucres t1_j98qneu wrote
First of all, your answer is condescending, and also doesn't really make an argument so much as imply that if I only knew what you know, I'd agree with you.
Second, I already do not believe in free will. I'm merely commenting that, as a scientist, efforts to argue against the possibility of free will based on our current models of physics are not very convincing to me. Because our understanding is incomplete.
Edit: disagree by downvoting all you want, this is a philosophy forum and we should be directly making our arguments here, not describing how our arguments would make someone feel if we made them. It's not politics or debate club, it's philosophy. I don't care how popular the idea is, I care if it's a sound logical argument.
PariahDong t1_j98ulxs wrote
? You must reading some tone/implication into my comment that was not intended. I'm sorry you felt condescended to, just sharing an interesting personal connection I have to this very specific question and responding to the claim that we might be able to think of free will as self-evident or axiomatic.
Your initial claim was that "perhaps the best argument for free will is the fact that we all seem to experience it," which makes sense. All I was saying is that, for most people, even when they don't spend much time with the topic, it's surprisingly easy for their subjective experience of free will to fall away.
That our "baseline" subjective experience seems to be one of experiencing free will is certainly true, and there are really interesting & open potential cultural/social/evolutionary reasons for that, but generally we wouldn't accept a claim on axiomatic principles if it had the property of seeming to exist or fall away with the relative ease that the experience of free will does.
Again, not making any claims about what you do or don't believe, just responding to the comment that accepting free will as axiomatic or self-evident might make sense with some reasons why it might not make sense.
warren_stupidity t1_j9a2kj4 wrote
So kind of a ‘free will of the gaps’ argument?
subito_lucres t1_j9a5zym wrote
It's similar, in that I'm arguing we can't prove it doesn't exist and is perhaps self-evident. Obviously, no one here is going around "believing in things" simply because we can't prove them wrong. So whether or not this is a sound argument hinges on whether or not you think free will is self-evident.
I am not sure of that, myself, and I'm not convinced the answer is known to anyone. I don't think physics really answers that question. Neither does psychology or neuroscience.
branedead t1_j98uwgm wrote
Incomplete, and something you said earlier that's important, they are MODELS.
LordMongrove t1_j9fa7t5 wrote
You say you are a scientist, yet your arguments seem to come from a different place. What kind of scientist exactly?
The only way there is a place for free will is if all our fundamental science is wrong. There was no place for free will in classical (Newtonian) mechanics, there is no place for it in quantum mechanics, nor in relativity. There is no place for it in string theory or the standard particle model.
Basically, everything we think we know about the universe would need to be wrong for free will to have a chance. You are grasping at straws.
subito_lucres t1_j9fgary wrote
I do not believe in free will. However, I do not think our models of the universe are very complete, so I do not think there's a logical basis for dismissing the possibility of free will.
I don't want to make this about my credentials, I was only mentioning my scientific background to help relate my epistemological framework, not to claim any authority. Furthermore, I like to come to r/philosophy to discuss ideas, and it's unfortunate to see that so many debates veer into various logical fallacies, like ad hominem, straw man, argument from authority, etc. So I think it's very important that neither of us do that, which is why I don't want to claim authority, nor assume you are attacking my credentials. But if it helps to understand my state of mind, I will share that I'm an academic biologist, with expertise in molecular biology, biophysics, cell biology, analytical geometry, optics/microscopy, bacterial pathogenesis, evolution, and genetics.
Obviously, it's not the same field as we are discussing (although, really, there is no one field that encompasses all of the science we are discussing, unless we remain so hopelessly broad as to say something like "theoretical physics"), but biology and physics use the same toolset in terms of building and assessing models. Good scientists are skeptics, and it's important to have some sense of what we are reasonably sure is true, what we are reasonably sure is untrue, and everything else. To quote the statistician George Box, "all models are wrong, but some are useful."
To me, as a scientist... I think it's more fair to say that free will is not predicted or explained by any of our models than to say that our models eliminate the possibility of free will. Hopefully, our models are getting better all of the time, and we can approach but never achieve certainty. Most people want certainty, but there is none, only degrees of uncertainty. So, I am arguing from a place of skepticism.
Since it seems to be getting lost somehow, I will repeat for the fourth time that I do not believe in free will. However, all epistemological frameworks that I am aware of require accepting certain axioms. For example, "I think therefore I am," or "A = A," or "existence exists." How do we decide if something is self-evident?
Nameless1995 t1_j988o3b wrote
> And so he claims they are compatible, but to do so he redefines free will, then claims he hasn't and that was the definition of it we were working with all along. It just isn't convincing to me.
But what makes a "definition" primal (true, non re-defined, original)? Is there such a "definition" in the first place and how to determine it? Should we make surveys accross culture? Should we analyze how "freedom" is used in practice? Should we look at historical lineage and development? Are you sure your linguistic intuitions track the "right definition"?
Sure, compatibilist free will may not match with the kind of free will you are concerned with; that's fine. You can say that's not the "free will I am concerned with", but that doesn't say anything about what's the true definition of free will is supposed to be, and what is supposed to be the "criteria" for distinguishing true definitions.
Compatibilists go as far back as Stoics and ancient. And the incompatibilist ideas of randomness-infusion is also explicated by philosophers. So it's not clear why the explication of some philosopher should be automatically privileged above others.
Personally, I don't think words really mean much of anything deep. Words are used within a pragmatic context. It can involve complex rules of play and how one person use it can subtly diverge from others. And internal intuitions can be incoherent. So neat and clean "definitions" are a lost cause. I don't think there are "definitions" out there to discover such one is "true" or "false". There's just messy usages of words to attain some pragmatic means.
Any attempt of definition is an approximation; I personally believe we should focus more on conceptual engineering (in a sense it can be "re-definition" but with a purpose -- to give more exact form to a usage and rules of usage that comply with how it's practically used and also simple)
Note that science does "conceptual engineering" too. For example, making pluto "not a planet", or defining temperature in terms of mercurial expansions, or making whales not a fish. Much of it is based on keeping some harmony with past usage, while keeping a trade off balance between simplicity of the concept, fruitfulness in a theoretical context, or practical use, among other things. There is nothing special about such "re-definitions".
From a conceptual engineering perspective, any compatibilist free will will fare far better than any any incompatibilist ones, as far as I can see.
I am a moral anti-realist (or anti-realist against anything "normative" (unless it is intelligibly conceptually re-engineered)), so the point about "moral" responsibility is also moot to me whether we get compatibilist free will or not. Responsibility assignment is a matter of pragmatic needs for intersubjective co-ordination. It just so happens that such assignment can help intervene and invest resources at critical points of "failure" so to say in certain kinds of autonomous causal systems. I think retributivist justice is meaningless and unintelligible either way.
jamesj t1_j98b5pb wrote
This all makes sense. I suppose that I think that the compatibilist redefinition of the terms make everything less literal and more metaphorical, and it is less in line with what I believe most people mean by the terms, "free will", "morally responsible", and "choose". Also, there's often a real difference in belief between us: I really don't think anyone is in any important sense "morally responsible". This means I support preventative justice but I don't support retributive justice.
Nameless1995 t1_j98cadp wrote
> I suppose that I think that the compatibilist redefinition of the terms make everything less literal and more metaphorical
I think that again brings the same question what is supposed to be the original "literal" sense in the first place and what would be the criteria to find it.
> it is less in line with what I believe most people mean by the terms, "free will", "morally responsible", and "choose".
Could be. But I see that as an empirical claim that would require experiments, interventions, survey to determine. I am neutral to how that will turn out.
> Also, there's often a real difference in belief between us: I really don't think anyone is in any important sense "morally responsible". This means I support preventative justice but I don't support retributive justice.
Same.
OldMillenial t1_j97rirj wrote
> I'd like to be convinced, for a long time I thought I was missing something, but I'm now begining to believe I'm not missing anything.
You're not missing anything.
The whole thing is built on incredibly shaky suppositions and wordplay and constant allusions to the "fact" that if you don't "get it" then you're just not savvy enough, you're just not seeing things the right way.
EDIT:
>I don’t think you would accept [determinism] at as a blame-removing (or even blame-reducing) excuse. And I don’t think you’d accept it even if you fully and deeply accepted your friend’s empirical premise.
>The reason I don’t think you’d accept it—no matter how good a job you’d done in convincing yourself that determinism was 100% for sure definitely true—is that determinism vs. indeterminism has all of nothing to do with anything we commonsensically regard as relevant to the kind of control that’s required for moral responsibility.
This argument that "determinism is not an excuse" is both foundational to Brugis's point, and is completely unsupported. Literally no supporting evidence for this other than Burgis "doesn't think so."
Meanwhile, the argument that "determinism is, in fact, an excuse" is much more straightforward - determinism removes choice from the equation, and we don't tend to place moralistic judgement on things that don't have a choice. We don't put volcanoes on trial, regardless of how much damage they cause, we don't think that COVID is a bad moral example for our children, regardless of how many lives it has taken.
Illiux t1_j98gpqs wrote
Asserting that determinism removes choice from the equation is question begging. The compatibilists don't think it does and you didn't give even one reason why it would. Compatibilists would say that humans make choices and volcanoes don't for reasons that have nothing to do with the deterministic nature of the universe.
OldMillenial t1_j98mi38 wrote
> Asserting that determinism removes choice from the equation is question begging. The compatibilists don't think it does and you didn't give even one reason why it would.
Compatibalists can try to play whatever semantic games they like - a deterministic universe is incompatible with the idea of choice. By definition.
The entire premise of compatibilism is trying to square peg that round hole.
A pre-determined choice is not a choice. A deterministic universe neatly wipes out any such concerns as "reason responsiveness" or whatever other definition of free will you care to align on. Zizek's treasured quote that the author presents with such reverence boils down to accepting the lack of choice, and finding "freedom" in that unity with the universe, by recognizing that the "choice" you are making was in fact made by the very universe you are trying to affect, and only has meaning because of that commonality of source.
Which is all fine and good and ultimately meaningless. It gets truly non-sensical however, if you follow the author's proposed approach of accepting this fluff and then pretending that the "common sense" approach to assigning moral responsibility still applies, even though no one is really in control of their actions.
Illiux t1_j9914iq wrote
> a deterministic universe is incompatible with the idea of choice
> A pre-determined choice is not a choice.
> no one is really in control of their actions.
These are just more assertions lacking any given justification. You aren't bothering to try justify your position at all.
> by definition
A strange thing to say when you've not defined anything, and also clearly question begging.
Also, it's very unclear what idea of free will is sitting in your head. You haven't tried to define it, but it seems like you're requiring that, for a choice to be free, it must be made on the basis of something other than the random chance, the facts of the situation, the character of the decision maker, their beliefs, or their experiences. What other factor are you looking for? In fact, why is determinism even a relevant consideration? When a decision is made, all those factors I listed, save random chance, have already been established and set in stone - even in a non-deterministic universe. How would a non-deterministic universe allow for whatever this unstated factor is?
Coomb t1_j9948fc wrote
>> a deterministic universe is incompatible with the idea of choice > ># > >> A pre-determined choice is not a choice. > ># > >> no one is really in control of their actions. > >These are just more assertions lacking any given justification. You aren't bothering to try justify your position at all.
What is a morally relevant choice, if not the ability to freely determine which among a number of options to take? In a predetermined universe, there are no morally relevant choices, because there are no options. Claiming that a morally relevant choice can be made in a fully deterministic universe is like claiming that a person can successfully choose not to be affected by gravity. In a fully deterministic universe, human thought processes are no more sophisticated or chosen than the processes of water molecules flowing down a hill in a creek.
>> by definition > >A strange thing to say when you've not defined anything, and also clearly question begging. > >Also, it's very unclear what idea of free will is sitting in your head. You haven't tried to define it, but it seems like you're requiring that, for a choice to be free, it must be made on the basis of something other than the random chance, the facts of the situation, the character of the decision maker, their beliefs, or their experiences. What other factor are you looking for? In fact, why is determinism even a relevant consideration? When a decision is made, all those factors I listed, save random chance, have already been established and set in stone - even in a non-deterministic universe. How would a non-deterministic universe allow for whatever this unstated factor is?
A non-physically-deterministic universe allows (or rather does not forbid) mental processes, which some people think are categorically separate from physical processes, to influence the physical universe. And what that means for the free will question is that free will can exist because the choices made by a moral actor are made via a mental process and are not fully determined by the physical universe.
erkling27 t1_j99cft0 wrote
Not the person you're responding to, but I think some people can still think of free will as possible in a deterministic universe without thinking that mental processes are somehow not in the mix with everything else.
I do think there are distinct sub systems to a deterministic universe. All things are equally determined and definite in their eventuality, buuut, not all things are of the same magnitude or complexity. The marbles on a track of molecules in a creek are not as sophisticated as the rube goldberging of a mind. To that notion, the more aware of a deterministic state a sub system of a determiniatic reality is, the more it can sort of adjust. SORT OF. We can divert creeks, and hoping for an at least pleasant way along the tracks for those now and in the future, thinking beings can seek a less painful average for their existence. After all, if the hill top of pain is percieved as negative, it only makes sense that all thinking beings would drain downhill towards the less painful reservoir below right?
Definitions are allowed to, and just sorta do, change, and choice/free will might be slightly different in the context of the universe than we initially thought. Like, our galaxy is not milk, but it's still called a galaxy. . .a word derived from thw greek word for milk. People don't still argue whether of not the stars are milk, maybe we need to stop arguing about the stagnant definition of free will not being compatible with a deterministic universe :/
Illiux t1_j9br4rq wrote
Of course there are options. They way you're thinking about choice here would render commonplace statements like "I could climb that fence but I don't feel like it" incoherent nonsense, because there wasn't any future in which I would have chosen to do so. That's a strong indication that you're operating with a notion of choice that doesn't line up with the what people generally mean by choice.
Choices are morally relevant where they give information about the decision maker, and that's where there are a number of options to take under a quite mundane sense of "option". There's a difference between jumping a fence because I wanted to and jumping one at gunpoint regardless of whether the universe is deterministic or not.
A deterministic universe doesn't forbid mental processes from affecting physical processes when mental processes are understood as physical process. But really, you didn't answer my question here. I don't see how even a dualistic universe helps allow free will to exist. What additional factor into a choice does it allow for that wasn't already there?
Again, you seem to be saying that for a choice to be free it must be made on the basis of something other than your character, experiences, beliefs, facts of the situation, and random chance. What else needs to influence it for it to be free and how does a nondeterministic universe allow for that when a deterministic one doesn't? So far you've just said that it means mental processes can be nondeterministic but why's that supposed to help?
I think that an nondeterministic universe poses problems for free will, because it means a less strong connection between beliefs/experiences and deliberation, as well as deliberation and action. Of course someone would make the exact same decision every time in the exact same situation: that decision is a reflection of who they were at the time. Why would we ever expect anything else? And to the extent a decision isn't reflective of who they are, it's less morally relevant!
I lean towards what's sometimes called "hard compatibility": that far from being incompatible with determinism, free will in fact might require it.
Coomb t1_j9c6d45 wrote
>Of course there are options. They way you're thinking about choice here would render commonplace statements like "I could climb that fence but I don't feel like it" incoherent nonsense, because there wasn't any future in which I would have chosen to do so. That's a strong indication that you're operating with a notion of choice that doesn't line up with the what people generally mean by choice.
Nobody, or at least certainly not me, is going to deny that there is a strong subjective perception of choice in some situations. It seems like you choose whether to go to a party or not, or how much you think you need to study to pass an exam.
It's also obviously true that there are mental states which we are consciously aware of not choosing. People generally don't choose to be sexually attracted or not sexually attracted to someone. They don't choose whether they "click" with someone and become friends. They don't choose whether they prefer to stay in all night watching Netflix or go out to bars.
I think the obvious truth that we generally don't choose our preferences is inherently problematic for the common concept of free will.
>Choices are morally relevant where they give information about the decision maker, and that's where there are a number of options to take under a quite mundane sense of "option". There's a difference between jumping a fence because I wanted to and jumping one at gunpoint regardless of whether the universe is deterministic or not.
That's a weird definition of morally relevant. When I choose to eat vanilla ice cream instead of peanut butter, you're getting information about my preferences. When I choose to murder somebody or refrain from murdering them, you're getting information about my preferences. But most people would say that my ice cream choice isn't morally relevant but my murder choice is. Can you explain what makes you think your definition is sensible?
>A deterministic universe doesn't forbid mental processes from affecting physical processes when mental processes are understood as physical process. But really, you didn't answer my question here. I don't see how even a dualistic universe helps allow free will to exist. What additional factor into a choice does it allow for that wasn't already there?
If it is true that the universe is entirely physically deterministic, then there is no way to distinguish between the processes of the brain which give rise to mental states, including thoughts and choices, and simpler deterministic mechanical systems like internal combustion engines or computers. We do not have the intuition that an internal combustion engine is morally responsible for its actions, or that it is making any choices at all. The same is generally true of computers, at least until we developed computer programs sophisticated enough to trick people's pattern recognition algorithms into interpreting stimulus from a computer as stimulus from a mind. But even where that trick is effective, people are generally at least intellectually aware that everything that's coming out of the computer is predetermined by the motion of electrons and other purely mechanical processes, and by analogy to other machines, that's a pretty convincing argument to most people that chatGPT isn't actually a mind.
>Again, you seem to be saying that for a choice to be free it must be made on the basis of something other than your character, experiences, beliefs, facts of the situation, and random chance. What else needs to influence it for it to be free and how does a nondeterministic universe allow for that when a deterministic one doesn't? So far you've just said that it means mental processes can be nondeterministic but why's that supposed to help?
Most people conceive of free will as existing in the universe where there is a possible counterfactual to a choice. If I choose to eat broccoli instead of cauliflower, the word "choose" only makes sense if there is a possible world in which I ate cauliflower, but based on my mental processes, I influenced the world to become one where I ate broccoli. If there was never a possibility that I would "choose" cauliflower, I didn't make a choice. All that happened was the universe evolved as it was always going to. My mental processes didn't have any effect on the outcome.
In other words, a choice is the ability to actually change the future state of the universe via internal mental processes.
If the universe is entirely physical and deterministic, that's impossible to do. Everything that happens was fundamentally determined by the initial state of the universe and the rules that the universe follows. It is impossible for me to change the universe through choice, precisely because the outcome of my mental processes, which are instantiated in my brain, are entirely physical and predetermined by everything else. There is no "me" to "choose" for the same reasons that we don't think of water choosing to flow downhill or an engine choosing to run.
The only time it is possible for free will to exist is if my mental processes are not entirely predetermined the history of the universe up to the current point. Only that allows me to change the pattern of activation of neurons in my brain and central nervous system and muscles so that I can effectuate my genuine preference. Otherwise my body is a mechanism and everything that happens in the mechanism is fully automatic.
>I think that an nondeterministic universe poses problems for free will, because it means a less strong connection between beliefs/experiences and deliberation, as well as deliberation and action. Of course someone would make the exact same decision every time in the exact same situation: that decision is a reflection of who they were at the time. Why would we ever expect anything else? And to the extent a decision isn't reflective of who they are, it's less morally relevant!
As I said above, if the universe is fully physical and fully deterministic, its evolution in time is predetermined and therefore there is no choice by anyone about anything. People are just like any other composition of matter, and their activities are just like the activities of processes we generally don't consider conscious or mental, like atoms bonding with each other, or water flowing downhill. Only if our actions are somehow not fully determined by the physical universe, but rather can actually be changed by our conscious control of our mental state, can we make choices. You're right that free will then requires our mental processes to be fully determinative of our bodily actions.
>I lean towards what's sometimes called "hard compatibility": that far from being incompatible with determinism, free will in fact might require it.
Free will obviously requires that we, at at least some times and in at least some ways, be able to affect the physical universe through our mental processes, including and especially conscious choices. Otherwise, at best, we would be consciousnesses trapped in our bodies.
But in the sense that people commonly understand it, it also requires that the universe not predetermine our choices. It requires that we make choices of our own volition and not simply because a particular subatomic particle was close to another particular subatomic particle at the attosecond after the Big Bang.
Illiux t1_j9ei1fn wrote
> I think the obvious truth that we generally don't choose our preferences is inherently problematic for the common concept of free will.
But why? First, this has little to nothing to do with determinism. It's also not like humans have spent thousands of years under some illusion that they choose their preferences, since as you point out it's quite obvious. It's clear that people don't generally think this poses a problem for free will or moral responsibility. So why do you?
> Can you explain what makes you think your definition is sensible?
It's a necessary but not sufficient condition, and wasn't intended to be a total definition. It's not easily possible to provide an all-encompaasing definition of something so nebulous as morality that'll get wide appeal.
> no way to distinguish between the processes of the brain which give rise to mental states, including thoughts and choices, and simpler deterministic mechanical systems like internal combustion engines or computers
What does this have to do with determinism? Isn't this just the hard problem of consciousness? It's just as hard for me to look at a brain and find the processes that give rise to mental states in a dualistic universe.
> least until we developed computer programs sophisticated enough to trick people's pattern recognition algorithms into interpreting stimulus from a computer as stimulus from a mind. But even where that trick is effective,
It feels a bit like having your cake and eating it too when you jump from saying that people's intuitions matter when they judge an internal combustion engine as not making choices but somehow don't matter if they were to judge a sophisticated computer algorithm as making them. In any case this:
> that's a pretty convincing argument to most people that chatGPT isn't actually a mind.
Is an empirical statement. Do you have something to back it up? Specifically that people don't think chatGPT has a mind because it's output is predetermined by mechanical processes. Also, what do you think of the fact that people commonly apply "choose"-type verbiage the output of things like recommendation and search algorithms (e.g. "Let's see what YouTube picked for me today")?
> Most people conceive of free will as existing in the universe where there is a possible counterfactual to a choice.
In the specific sense of "possible counterfactual" you go on to elaborate? I don't agree, and this contradicts what I know of the current results in experimental philosophy. What makes you think this? Especially when you go on to try to say that mass amounts of everyday communication are actually nonsensical.
> the word "choose" only makes sense if there is a possible world in which I ate cauliflower
If your definition of a word implies that it's constantly misused, your definition is just wrong. People say things like your example all the time and clearly understand each other. If you're saying that their use of the word doesn't make sense, you've effectively shown that your definition has nothing to do with they way the word actually gets used.
> If there was never a possibility that I would "choose" cauliflower, I didn't make a choice.
In the context of our discussion, this is question begging. The essence of the compatibilist position is that you make choices even when there wasn't any possibility you would choose differently.
> My mental processes didn't have any effect on the outcome.
They quite obviously did, since they're part of the causal chain that resulted in the broccoli eating. Without them no broccoli gets eaten. They're essential to and directly caused the outcome you're trying to say they didn't effect. This is like trying to say that one ball colliding with another didn't have any effect on the second, now moving, ball.
> In other words, a choice is the ability to actually change the future state of the universe via internal mental processes.
But you have that. Your mental processes absolutely do determine the future state of the universe because they, obviously, cause things to happen. You're trying to also say that it's somehow problematic that those mental processes themselves could not have been otherwise and are themselves the effect of another cause, but it's still not clear to me why you think that.
> There is no "me"
I have absolutely no idea what determinism is supposed to have to do with establishing a line between self and not-self.
> The only time it is possible for free will to exist is if my mental processes are not entirely predetermined the history of the universe up to the current point. Only that allows me to change the pattern of activation of neurons in my brain and central nervous system and muscles so that I can effectuate my genuine preference. Otherwise my body is a mechanism and everything that happens in the mechanism is fully automatic.
But how does this help? This touches on the original question I asked you: what other factor are you requiring in a decision for it to qualify as free? On what basis would you decide otherwise or change your neural firing? It can't be anything about who you are or the facts of the situation, so why would you ever decide otherwise? It certainly can't be your preferences, because those already exist when a decision comes round and quite obviously affect your choices in a deterministic universe.
> But in the sense that people commonly understand it, it also requires that the universe not predetermine our choices
This is another empirical claim. What evidence makes you believe it?
OldMillenial t1_j99xbkq wrote
>These are just more assertions lacking any given justification. You aren't bothering to try justify your position at all.
>Also, it's very unclear what idea of free will is sitting in your head.
Why yes, if you neatly clip around the specific parts of my post where I point out that determinism conflicts with the very definition of free will brought up in the article, then yes, you're right.
Here, let me quote the full thing for you:
>A pre-determined choice is not a choice. A deterministic universe neatly wipes out any such concerns as "reason responsiveness" or whatever other definition of free will you care to align on. Zizek's treasured quote that the author presents with such reverence boils down to accepting the lack of choice, and finding "freedom" in that unity with the universe, by recognizing that the "choice" you are making was in fact made by the very universe you are trying to affect, and only has meaning because of that commonality of source.
Illiux t1_j9bozt6 wrote
This is merely yet another question begging assertion given without argument:
> A deterministic universe neatly wipes out any such concerns as "reason responsiveness" or whatever other definition of free will you care to align on.
Does it? You give no reason why.
> Zizek's treasured quote that the author presents with such reverence boils down to accepting the lack of choice, and finding "freedom" in that unity with the universe, by recognizing that the "choice" you are making was in fact made by the very universe you are trying to affect, and only has meaning because of that commonality of source.
This is your take on it, but there is no analysis here. Why does it boil down to that? Not to mention that
> recognizing that the "choice" you are making was in fact made by the very universe you are trying to affect
Doesn't sound very like the quote you're referencing to me. Do you think Zizek would agree with you here?
But in general you don't actually elaborate any supposed conflict. You just assert there is one several times.
OldMillenial t1_j9bvcfm wrote
> Does it? You give no reason why.
>Doesn't sound very like the quote you're referencing to me. Do you think Zizek would agree with you here?
I was assuming that you read the article under discussion.
Here, I'll bold the relevant parts for you.
>Compatibilists such as Daniel Dennett have an elegant solution to the incompatibilists’ complaints about determinism: when incompatibilists complain that our freedom cannot be combined with the fact that all our acts are part of the great chain of natural determinism, they secretly make an unwarranted ontological assumption: first, they assume that we (the Self, the free agent) somehow stand outside reality, then they go on to complain about how they feel oppressed by the notion that reality in its determinism controls them totally. This is what is wrong with the notion of us being “imprisoned” by the chains of natural determinism: we thereby obfuscate the fact that we are part of reality, that the (possible, local) conflict between our “free” striving and the external reality that resists it is a conflict inherent in reality itself. That is to say, there is nothing “oppressive” or “constraining” about the fact that our innermost strivings are (pre)determined: when we feel thwarted in our freedom by the pressure of external reality, there must be something in us, some desire or striving, which is thus thwarted, but where do such strivings come from if not this same reality? Our “free will” does not in some mysterious way “disturb the natural course of things,” it is part and parcel of this course.... When a determinist claims that our free choice is “determined,” this does not mean that our free will is somehow constrained, that we are forced to act against our will—what is “determined” is the very thing that we want to do “freely,” that is, without being thwarted by external obstacles.
Do you see the bit about "the fact that all our acts are part of the great chain of natural determinism"? Do you see the bit about Zizek explicitly tying our actions to the inescapable bounds of a deterministic - i.e. "(pre)detetrmined" - universe? How he denies that our Self can be a "free agent" outside of those bounds? How he explicitly links our "strivings" and the reality which - in his proposition - has spawned them? And how about the bit on our free choice being "determined" - by that very same reality?
It's the compatibilists themselves that are happy to claim that determinism removes free choice. They just attempt to decouple choice and "free will" - and do so clumsily and incoherently.
In particular, Zizek's proposition is that a pre-deterimined choice is still consistent with "free will" - because "what is “determined” is the very thing that we want to do “freely,” that is, without being thwarted by external obstacles."
This falls apart in several places - perhaps most obviously in that in Zizek's own framing, there is no possibility of any "external obstacles" - because there is no possibility in his mind of anything "external" to the reality that both governs our "strivings" and determines their success or failure.
>"...that the (possible, local) conflict between our “free” striving and the external reality that resists it is a conflict inherent in reality itself."
In Zizek's proposition (and Burgis' far less able framing) we are simultaneously totally governed by the unshakeable, constant and accidental whims of reality - and also free to choose whatever path we like, provided it aligns exactly with the predetermined path laid out by that same reality.
The ultimate meaninglessness of Zizek's interpretation of determinism is almost breathtaking.
Im-a-magpie t1_j9jz63p wrote
>constant allusions to the "fact" that if you don't "get it" then you're just not savvy enough, you're just not seeing things the right way.
This is the most frustrating thing when talking to a compatibilist. They basically start from the position that their belief is correct and if you disagree it's because you just don't get it.
The reality is they use the term "free will" in a completely different way than it's common conceptualization and then act as if their definition is the obvious one.
jamesj t1_j97y44o wrote
Yes. He also assumes I do believe in my friend's moral culpability and would blame them, but that just isn't true for me exactly because I don't think free will makes any sense. He's basically making an appeal to "what feels correct". But we know lots of examples of things that feel true that are not true.
iaswob t1_j98hvv2 wrote
We don't put moralistic judgements on things we think don't have choice, but if determinism is true than this is sort of trivially untrue: we have in fact been making moral judgements on humans who don't have control over their choices. I think what some compatibalists are saying is that regardless of all the arguments and assumptions pinning morality, judgements of the choices that are made, to determinism, to the causal origin of choices, the one function is useful and points to soemthing real while the other isn't. Usually it seems to be framed as keeping one register of what freedom means socially while loosing others, identifying a function freedom has had and identifying freedom with whatever serves that function.
Basically, a choice is an empirical fact one could argue. I'm not talking about "a thing determined by nothing other than a person's agency" when I say a choice, but I am talking about whatever we have been pointing to for over a thousand years and calling a choice, an emergent phenomenon of the brain. So, what a compatablist might argue is that anything which undergoes a sufficiently close analogue of certain neural processes, and/or perhaps if treating it/them as free we can enter into a meaningful social relationship with it/them seeing it/them as free, then we can call it free.
The reason I wouldn't call a volcano free is that I can't enter into a relationship with a volcano as if it were free, and it does not have any (deterministic) process of determination. AI is in many ways I think free, but I don't think modern AI is necessarily conscious by virtue of being free. I think freedom as such likely preceeds consciousness. Even humans I think are free to varying degrees, not just politically and socially but phenomenologically. Just because something makes a free choice doesn't mean it should be held accountable IMO, if an AI decide to do harm, even nondeterministically with quantum randomness, that could be a free choice, yet I wouldn't think it should be held morally accountable if it didn't have sufficient sense of self. The more I think about the more morality and accountability seem to have little do with freedom to me.
OldMillenial t1_j98lek1 wrote
> We don't put moralistic judgements on things we think don't have choice, but if determinism is true than this is sort of trivially untrue: we have in fact been making moral judgements on humans who don't have control over their choices
>Basically, a choice is an empirical fact one could argue. I'm not talking about "a thing determined by nothing other than a person's agency" when I say a choice, but I am talking about whatever we have been pointing to for over a thousand years and calling a choice, an emergent phenomenon of the brain.
>The reason I wouldn't call a volcano free is that I can't enter into a relationship with a volcano as if it were free, and it does not have any (deterministic) process of determination.
All of this boils down to "determinism destroys choice, but as long as we pretend it doesn't and just continue doing the same thing as we did before, then it's all OK."
Which makes determinism worthless and compatibalism so much hot air.
iaswob t1_j98op6n wrote
That inherently depends upon fixing our understanding of choice to only one dimension of it, the particular ways it has been defined in certain academic arguments about it being a choice determined solely by an individual. If we accept that choice, as a concept, has been a bundle of multiple things, some of which are not salvageable and some of which might be indispensible or at least very valuable, then why is it an illegitimate rhetorical move to accept only some of those things which are bundled with the idea of choice? I could equally say that choice was never destroyed because it has always been determined, but as long we continue to pretend there are no social dimensions to the idea of choice then we can pretend choice is destoryed. I think if one is claiming this reduction is accurate, they need to specifically justify the claim that we ought to view free will as determinists do.
Accountability is the field of should and determinism is the field of is, if we accept that determinism destroys accountability we are bridging from an is to an ought. I would be curious to see what the exact chain of logic is from "the world is determinists" to "therefore we cannot be accountable", because here I think is where we could find a bit of a rhetorical sleight of hand among some determinists. When I say I am holding someone accountable, all I have ever been saying (since childhood) is that I am relating to them in a specific way, that is why people hold other people accountable. Even the idea of "accountable" inherently is social linguistically, what is an account (financial or narrative) but a social relationship? To try to surgically remove these social dimensions seems ahistorical, and I think wrong inasmuch as it is ahistorical.
The crux here is that these terms don't exist as absteact precisely defined little neat categories with some presently exhaustible and easily enumerable ideas, leading in some logical chain from A to B. Free will, accountability, choice? They are messy, historical, social terms who are subject both to flux and to unveiling (as well as veiling). If the social dimension is ignored and it is treated as being exhausted by this one facet of its intellectual dimensions, then that strikes me as a fundamental categorical and communication error which inhibits understanding. I think choice is a social object, which can be metaphorically picked up and repurposed while maintaining a sense of identity.
InTheEndEntropyWins t1_j9a8xtn wrote
>And so he claims they are compatible, but to do so he redefines free will, then claims he hasn't and that was the definition of it we were working with all along. It just isn't convincing to me. I'd like to be convinced, for a long time I thought I was missing something, but I'm now begining to believe I'm not missing anything.
I feel it's you who have redefined what free will means, you are using a definition that doesn't exist, is incoherent and no one outside of amateur philosophers actually use.
Most professional philosophers most are outright compatibilists.
>https://survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/all
Lay people have incoherent ideas around free will, but when properly probed the majority have compatibilist intuitions.
>In the past decade, a number of empirical researchers have suggested that laypeople have compatibilist intuitions… In one of the first studies, Nahmias et al. (2006) asked participants to imagine that, in the next century, humans build a supercomputer able to accurately predict future human behavior on the basis of the current state of the world. Participants were then asked to imagine that, in this future, an agent has robbed a bank, as the supercomputer had predicted before he was even born. In this case, 76% of participants answered that this agent acted of his own free will, and 83% answered that he was morally blameworthy. These results suggest that most participants have compatibilist intuitions, since most answered that this agent could act freely and be morally responsible, despite living in a deterministic universe.
>
>https://philpapers.org/archive/ANDWCI-3.pdf
​
>Our results highlight some inconsistencies of lay beliefs in the general public, by showing explicit agreement with libertarian concepts of free will (especially in the US) and simultaneously showing behavior that is more consistent with compatibilist theories. If participants behaved in a way that was consistent with their libertarian beliefs, we would have expected a negative relation between free will and determinism, but instead we saw a positive relation that is hard to reconcile with libertarian views
>
>https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0221617
Then finally most/all court and justice systems use the compatibilist definition of free will.
>It is a principle of fundamental justice that only voluntary conduct – behaviour that is the product of a free will and controlled body, unhindered by external constraints – should attract the penalty and stigma of criminal liability.
>
>https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/1861/index.do
In the case of R. v. Ruzic
>The accused had been coerced by an individual in Colombia to smuggle cocaine into the United States. He was told that if he did not comply, his wife and child in Colombia would be harmed.
The Supreme Court found that he didn't smuggle the cocaine of his own free will. He didn't do it in line with his desires free from external coercion. Hence they were found innocent.
So no, the compatibilist definition is what we have been using all along, it's you who have redefined it to be incoherent.
BlueSkyAndGoldenLite t1_j98eepq wrote
Took me a few rereads and looking up whatever/whoever he was referencing, but I think I'm getting the gist of what he's arguing? The main points I got from this I think were:
- Definitions of concepts/words matters a lot here
- Compatibilists definition of "free will" can be defined as having the freedom to act on our desires, even if these desires aren't something we were responsible for
- The conflict between our desires and the outside world's doesn't prove that free will exist in a compatibilist context. These desires after all, were just products of past events and causal chains
- Who we are has to be defined somewhere down the causal chain though, the alternative would mean that we would be free of all our desires and thus not really "us". Being free of all desires would mean that we are not really ourselves since our desires are important to our identity
Very interesting read, I think he makes a pretty compelling argument that is a lot more well defined/coherent than my take on free will up to now which kind of just boiled down to "all of who I am up to now has kind of been predetermined but even if free will is an illusion it's better to believe, even if falsely, that I am free so that I can function in society" Would love to hear other takes, especially if I interpreted some of this incorrectly.
keelanstuart t1_j9a522a wrote
What I took from it is that I may be a Compatibilist - I believe the universe is completely deterministic, even though I also think "free will" is the human experience - because I am ignorant and beyond education in any relevant, meaningful sense... unless I somehow missed the point.
Why? Given the state of the universe at any time to be S(T):
- I do not have knowledge of S(0)
- I do not have knowledge of the current T
- I can not extrapolate a future state, S(T + n), with any degree of certainty, even locally
- I feel "free" in my decisions, because even though I cannot control what I desire, it seems like I can choose how to deal with desires
- I can never change any of the above
Acceptance of our inescapable ignorance is the key to never feeling "oppressed" by determinism... which is why I would feel pity for any omniscient beings that exist; god knows they're not free.
In terms of moral responsibility, perhaps it is helpful to view the universe systematically. "Responsibility" allows the system to self-correct and protect itself. If we are not the individuals that we seem to be, but parts of a whole, removing pieces that damage that whole is of benefit.
BlueSkyAndGoldenLite t1_j9bblou wrote
My limited understanding of quantum stuff has led me to believe that there's multiple worlds out there due to the probabilistic nature of things. But then that seems to imply that the world is still deterministic, just now in infinite ways and the current "world" is still determined with factors outside of my control (luck/randomness).
I think that the acceptance definitely plays a part somewhere, I mean at the end of the day we are biologically programmed beings to live and have self-preservation so it makes sense that our minds come up with reasons for us to keep living.
I've pondered the idea of responsibility before as well. If you view the world deterministically then you can't hold people accountable. Even if the majority of society accepts determinism, we can't allow people who commit crimes to stay free for the benefit of the majority. If we want to act morally and put the blame on what caused someone to commit crimes, you kind of just start going down the rabbit hole of who/what to hold accountable? Do you blame someone's parents for their poor upbringing and as a result environment for growing up? Their DNA? For practicality, in society you kind of have to put the "responsibility" somewhere and its easiest to put the responsibility on the individual.
keelanstuart t1_j9bgbct wrote
Many of my beliefs have formed due to my profession as a software engineer. "Random" numbers are not truly random... they are pseudo-random given a seed value to start with. I.e., pull n values from a random number generator that started with the same seed and you will get the same numbers out in the same order each time. I like to think of "god" as that generation function and of each universe having a unique seed value. Maybe all universes have the same rules, but for each "decision point" (whatever that is!), a different number was given and thus a different result.
The little computers between our ears can't extrapolate S(T + n) for more than a couple of variables and we also can't look at the state of other brains... so, we're left to be mostly reactive to whatever we observed in S(T - m). Responsibility is placed most easily with the observed. When a computer malfunctions, we deal with that instance... yeah.
Looking at parents or at DNA is really meta... the machine looks at itself... what does it see?
mixile t1_j99gsq0 wrote
What does “freedom to act” mean? It sounds like a circular definition and nonsensical. If the universe is determined, you would act as you must act due to causality. What does freedom mean? Is it even meaningful outside of an aesthetic context? I think a feeling, what is perhaps referenced by freedom, is being substituted for an axiom without awareness of this choice.
frnzprf t1_j99wrs5 wrote
Let's say there is a human string puppet. It's wants to move a certain way, but the strings (or an exoskelleton) forces it to move another way.
It feels intuitive that a human that isn't tied to strings is freeer than a human that is.
The will may still be determined, so I wouldn't call it free will, but the untied human is free to act according to his will.
A short while ago someone argued that the term "free will" is also used in juristic contexts. I'd say at least they are talking about something, whether you should call it "free will" or not.
I suggest "free to act according to your own will".
People think of string-puppets when they feel uncomfortable with entertaining that they don't have free will.
On the other hand people also would say that a hypnotized person is not acting on free will, although they are free to act according to their will - which happens to be manipulated. Not all types of manipulation are considered as taking away free will. If you ask nicely or buy a service, that is also manipulating will.
What I'm saying is: There might be something what people call "free will" that exists and something different, that other people call "free will", that doesn't exist.
mixile t1_j9aenee wrote
If I psychologically prime a child to make the choice I prefer them to make such as give them two insignificant variants of the same choice (would you like to go to school now or in a few minutes?) they can feel free, no? Are they not compelled?
When the tiger starts running towards me, I feel a surge of adrenaline that allows me to climb a tree to safety. That may not feel free and yet every day I make choices with less urgency that are still ultimately about survival. I am not choosing to survive I am compelled.
Underneath whatever desire we think we have, how do we know there are no strings? Isn’t the point of a determined universe that there must be strings even if our intuition cannot see them? These desires are not an uncaused cause.
My intuition tells me all desire is manifest from the substrate and is not free ever, though I cannot define free so I have to go with some process of elimination to make that statement. My intuition tells me that we are always on strings due to our inability to fly or teleport but that other people feel free despite these constraints due to their acceptance of the constraints. My intuition tells me that constraints long applied get ignored. If I place a human being in the confines of a cell they will eventually stop testing the limits of that cell and perhaps then they will think they have free will again, intuitively, after some time.
If you want to define free will as any time you can make a decision that aligns with your expectations of what is possible without having to reflect on enfetterment you have not accepted as natural… then ok you have free will at times but it’s a rather absurd distinction to make. It does not seem to give rise to the moral premise the author wants.
frnzprf t1_j9b35id wrote
I was talking about literal strings. (When people say they aren't monkeys or machines, they are also thinking about literal monkeys and machines with metal cogs.)
Some constraints are felt as restricting, for example literal strings attached to your limbs and other constraints, like scratching your head, because it's itching or listening to music you like, don't feel restricting. They are both 100% determined, but they make a pragmatic difference in life. (That was phrased weirdly...)
Your home can never be 100% clean, but it still makes sense to say that a home is clean. "Clean" means that you can stop cleaning.
Maybe you could say that "free will" in a juristic sense is defined by it's consequences. Whenever it makes sense to punish someone, you say they acted on "free will". Whenever a condition should be medically treated, you call it a "sickness".
Then you can't say that someone should be punished because they acted on free will, or that a condition should be treated because it is a sickness, because that would be circular reasoning.
I absolutely agree that you could very well define "free" as "not determined" and as it is determined, it's not free. There is just an alternative definition of free will, that makes sense.
InTheEndEntropyWins t1_j9a4o8m wrote
>What does “freedom to act” mean?
Just use the normal definition used in society. I generally like to refer to the legal system.
In a legal contract there might be certain conditions that restrict your freedom to act in certain ways.
It's about the "external" world influences on what we call a "person". So to what extent does the external world influence and control what the person can do.
So treat a "person" as a black box, that includes everything that goes into making up that person, so their DNA and all past environmental inputs that you would consider making a person what they are.
Then since that person is a black box, you can't know how they work. In such a situation would knowing the current environmental inputs be able to predict what that person does.
So lets use a real life situation.
You may offer that person the opportunity to commit to traffic drugs. In the normal case you can't completely know whether the person would traffic drugs, that person has the freedom to choose. (The fact they choose deterministically is irrelevant).
In another situation you threaten the person to kill the person's family if they don't traffic drugs. In this situation the external environment is limiting the freedom to act of the person. That person is going to very likely to traffic drugs. (The fact they choose deterministically is irrelevant).
There is a real difference between being coerced into committing a crime and not. The difference according to most/all court and justice system, most lay people and most professional philosophers is know as "free will". The only group that might not agree are amateur philosophers.
>It is a principle of fundamental justice that only voluntary conduct – behaviour that is the product of a free will and controlled body, unhindered by external constraints – should attract the penalty and stigma of criminal liability.
>
>https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/1861/index.do
In the case of R. v. Ruzic
>The accused had been coerced by an individual in Colombia to smuggle cocaine into the United States. He was told that if he did not comply, his wife and child in Colombia would be harmed.
The Supreme Court found that he didn't smuggle the cocaine of his own free will. He didn't do it in line with his desires free from external coercion. Hence they were found innocent.
mixile t1_j9acihx wrote
By this definition my dresser has freedom to act. I can equally apply this definition to a computer program that controls a thermostat based on tenant law.
Do these objects have free will?
InTheEndEntropyWins t1_j9ajhd1 wrote
>By this definition my dresser has freedom to act.
No it doesn't... How did you come to that conclusion.?
Edit: To clarify I define free will as "the ability to make voluntary actions in line with your desires free from external coercion/influence".
BlueSkyAndGoldenLite t1_j9bf18i wrote
I kind of see it as the ability to act as we desire, but not having the ability to desire what we desire. That definitely just circles back around to not being in control of our actions, but the main takeaway I took was the counterargument that we must come from somewhere as our definition of who we are is the sum of our experiences, environment, genetics, etc. If you take all that away then you are not really you anymore so you should kind of just, accept that I guess? Maybe you are right about the emotional aspect of it as this argument seems to hint that we should take some pride in our past. Kind of like, well we can't really have changed who we are up to now but the alternative is nothingness so let's try to make the most out of it.
Perhaps this is the natural conclusion even if deterministic that we are designed to come to? Giving people the illusion of free will helps encourage them to survive and make the most out of their life?
oeksa t1_j9a7212 wrote
this is kind of an impossible discussion. whether we call it determinism or compatibilism or guided voluntarism or whatever, logic says that no man or woman can think or act beyond the constraints of the laws of nature (which may include some randomness. however, randomness does not make you any more in control, it just means that your actions were not predetermined). freedom to act would require freedom not to act. not acting on a desire only proves that other desires or constraints were stronger. so your previous take is still right and compatible with both determinism, some variants of voluntarism, and compatibilism, depending on definitions of these terms.
BlueSkyAndGoldenLite t1_j9bfhj6 wrote
Yeah, just mentioned it in another comment but my understanding, though limited of quantum mechanics just implies that the world can be probabilistic but that just shifts causality to be the result of luck/randomness.
I think this is definitely an argument that kind of just never ends until we come to a better understanding of neuroscience/physics. At the end of the day though it seems valuable to have arguments, define concepts, etc.
bortlip t1_j97z0vw wrote
IDK, I think things become clearer when you break the definitions down some and address the nuances more and I think that's what Compatibilism does.
I think it can help to word things without using the actual words we are discussing, thus removing issues around differing definitions. For example, I'll approach this with out using the term "Freewill" or "determinism".
Can I affect the universe in such a way as it would be unpredictable if you had perfect knowledge of the world and the laws of nature? Or, to try to word it another way, if it were possible to "rewind" the universe to the point you made a decision, could you decide another way?
No, I don't think you could. I believe (ignoring quantum effects, which I don't think factor in to this, but I could be wrong) that you would always choose the same way due to causality. If you could rewind the universe, it would always playout the same way.
Can I evaluate all options open to me and choose which I would most like and then execute that option. Yes, barring some external force preventing you. If I have a glass of milk and a glass of water, I can choose which to drink.
I think this is what Compatibilism is trying to say.
Can I choose how I want to choose? Can I will what my will is? No. But that's just the way things work. That's not really a limitation that makes it so you can't exercise the will you do have.
But the question remains about morality. How can I hold you morally responsible? After all, if you didn't choose to have that will, how is it your fault you have that will?
Here again, I think the "trick" of not using the words can help shed light.
Should I separate a person from society due to what they did? Yes, that seems like a proper thing to do. The person is causing an issue and separation can help with that.
I feel I could go on and potentially explain better and more, but that's already a lot, so I'll leave it there.
mtklein t1_j99n7cc wrote
Thank you for trying to clarify and not argue. I found your post extremely helpful.
34656691 t1_j9a312z wrote
I don't understand how you can claim to be able to exercise a will while admitting you have no control over what your your will is. This philosophy seems like a last ditch cope in the face of recent evidence that demonstrates we're puppets of physics and it's so fucking sad how people can't just deal with it.
InTheEndEntropyWins t1_j9a5luv wrote
>But the question remains about morality. How can I hold you morally responsible? After all, if you didn't choose to have that will, how is it your fault you have that will?
I like to see it in terms of impact on society. We should punish you to act as a deterrent to you and other people. We might also want to protect society by removing you from from committing more crimes.
Free will, fault and moral responsibility are concepts that are key for morality and justice. They make sense from an almost utilitarian point of view.
[deleted] t1_j9abhu4 wrote
Why do we need free will for justice?
Imagine a robot that follows it's programming perfectly. If the robot commits a murder, we'd put it in jail all the same. Other robots might observe that robots can go to jail and then do a calculus that causes them to not do more murders.
We can achieve deterrence and removal without free will. The only part of our justice system that we would have to get rid of in the face of no free will is perhaps vengeance but we never wanted that in there anyway! Justice is improved by removing free will!
InTheEndEntropyWins t1_j9ak60k wrote
>Why do we need free will for justice?
To determine the appropriate action or whether someone should be punished.
If someone commits a crime freely, you want to put them in prison. But if someone if forced or coerced into the crime, then they will probably found not guilty and not put into prison.
Any functional justice system would in practice need to have some kind of concept of compatibilist free will in order to determine whether to find someone guilty and the appropriate punishment.
​
>In the case of R. v. Ruzic
>
>It is a principle of fundamental justice that only voluntary conduct – behaviour that is the product of a free will and controlled body, unhindered by external constraints – should attract the penalty and stigma of criminal liability.
>
>The accused had been coerced by an individual in Colombia to smuggle cocaine into the United States. He was told that if he did not comply, his wife and child in Colombia would be harmed.
>
>https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/1861/index.do
Hence they were found not guilty since it wasn't of their own free will.
[deleted] t1_j9ardf1 wrote
>If someone commits a crime freely, you want to put them in prison. But if someone if forced or coerced into the crime, then they will probably found not guilty and not put into prison.
Why does it have to be described like that, though?
If someone commits a murder without coercion, we can decide that it's a problem with their brain chemistry and we can't fix that brain chemistry so we need to remove that brain chemistry from society so that it won't happen again.
If the murder is committed under coercion then maybe the brain is fine it was just external circumstances. So we'd not imprison that brain but we might try to remedy the external circumstances.
This would lead us to exactly the outcome as you described, with harsher penalties for the first and not for the second.
And I described the whole thing without even mentioning free will!
We can pretend that free will exists and attribute our justice system to that but we don't need the idea of free will to have the justice system that we already have.
If anything, the idea of free will can remove our empathy. If free will exists then maybe people are choosing to be evil. But if free will doesn't exist then we can have compassion for the people who are unfortunately burdened with having no choice but to do evil acts.
(Can't believe that I'm defending Sam Harris but here we are!)
InTheEndEntropyWins t1_j9az4ai wrote
>Why does it have to be described like that, though?
It's a useful and pragmatic way that we have to describe things with our current knowledge and technology.
>If someone commits a murder without coercion, we can decide that it's a problem with their brain chemistry and we can't fix that brain chemistry so we need to remove that brain chemistry from society so that it won't happen again.
>
>If the murder is committed under coercion then maybe the brain is fine it was just external circumstances. So we'd not imprison that brain but we might try to remedy the external circumstances.
We don't even know what the brain is supposed to look like, let alone the technology to do such a brain scan.
Also what if the person was coerced but there was also a chemical imbalance in the brain? Would you punish the person who really didn't do anything wrong?
So in the present day, the test for if the brain is good/bad is basically the compatibilist free will test.
​
>And I described the whole thing without even mentioning free will!
Maybe, I have two thoughts. First as I already mentioned, they aren't practical or might even be impossible alternatives, so in the meantime you have to use compatibilist free will.
Above you've described how to do things that are impossible. Imagine you were a judge in the present day and time, how would you be able to approach things without using the concept of compatibilist free will and coercion?
Secondly, I think you are just looking at the other side of the coin of free will. You could define free will as the concept/test that's useful for justice. So in effect you are just using it's definition even if you don't want to use the word.
​
>We can pretend that free will exists and attribute our justice system to that but we don't need the idea of free will to have the justice system that we already have.
Let's go back to the example above of someone being coerced into committing a crime. Using present day technology how would a justice system determine what to do without referring to the coercive element or the concept of compatibilist free will.
Anyway I just wanted to note, I like your train of thought, I recently had some very similar lines of thought.
>If anything, the idea of free will can remove our empathy. If free will exists then maybe people are choosing to be evil. But if free will doesn't exist then we can have compassion for the people who are unfortunately burdened with having no choice but to do evil acts.
I think most studies suggest the opposite, that reduce belief in free will results in people being more immoral and racist. I expect that also people would be less compassionate, since why be compassionate to someone inherently "bad"?
>These three studies suggest that endorsement of the belief in free will can lead to decreased ethnic/racial prejudice compared to denial of the belief in free will. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0091572#s1>
>
>For example, weakening free will belief led participants to behave less morally and responsibly (Baumeister et al., 2009; Protzko et al., 2016; Vohs & Schooler, 2008)
From https://www.ethicalpsychology.com/search?q=free+will
>A study suggests that when people are encouraged to believe their behavior is predetermined by genes or by environment they may be more likely to cheat. The report, in the January issue of Psychological Science, describes two studies by Kathleen D. Vohs of the University of Minnesota and Jonathan W. Schooler of the University of British Columbia.
[deleted] t1_j9b5vba wrote
It feels like there is something undescribable that causes people to do one thing or another and we're calling it free will but I might as well call it brain chemistry under incompatiblist determinism and the result is the same. Why do we have to call it "free will"? except to say that this naming might be convenient.
I'll check out those studies!
InTheEndEntropyWins t1_j9b7k34 wrote
Edit:2
>we're calling it free will but I might as well call it brain chemistry under incompatiblist determinism
I think you just have two different ways of describing the same thing. One is an emergent descriptions compared to the other. e.g. You could say that humans could be described simply as physics, but higher emergent descriptions using biology are more useful.
Free will is just a higher emergent concept above brain chemistry. Different sides of the same coin
Orig:
>Why do we have to call it "free will"? except to say that this naming might be convenient.
Isn't literally every word/definition just "convenient" naming conventions?
Studies show that most people have compatibilist intuitions, and most professional philosophers are outright compatibilists.
Most lay people, professional philosophers and criminal justice systems, call it "free will".
So it seems like society just calls it "free will". I don't think "should" or "have to" really comes into play.
You don't "have to" call it free will, but it just makes sense to call it free will, since it lines up to what people really mean by the term.
Edit: Some more studies you might be interested in
People have incoherent ideas around free will, but when properly probed the majority have compatibilist intutions.
>https://casetext.com/case/united-states-v-moore-48/
>
>In the past decade, a number of empirical researchers have suggested that laypeople have compatibilist intuitions… In one of the first studies, Nahmias et al. (2006) asked participants to imagine that, in the next century, humans build a supercomputer able to accurately predict future human behavior on the basis of the current state of the world. Participants were then asked to imagine that, in this future, an agent has robbed a bank, as the supercomputer had predicted before he was even born. In this case, 76% of participants answered that this agent acted of his own free will, and 83% answered that he was morally blameworthy. These results suggest that most participants have compatibilist intuitions, since most answered that this agent could act freely and be morally responsible, despite living in a deterministic universe.
>
>https://philpapers.org/archive/ANDWCI-3.pdf
​
>Our results highlight some inconsistencies of lay beliefs in the general public, by showing explicit agreement with libertarian concepts of free will (especially in the US) and simultaneously showing behavior that is more consistent with compatibilist theories. If participants behaved in a way that was consistent with their libertarian beliefs, we would have expected a negative relation between free will and determinism, but instead we saw a positive relation that is hard to reconcile with libertarian views
>
>https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0221617
>
>Then when it comes to philosophy professors most are outright compatibilists.
>
>[https://survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/all)
MaxChaplin t1_j98cfuv wrote
Compatibilism clicked for me once I realized it's basically talking about emergence. When you input "2+5=" into your calculator and it displays "7", is it because 2+5=7, or because the buttons changed the pattern of electric current in the calculator's circuits and caused a chain reaction resulting in the digit appearing on the display? Both answers are true, but the former one operates on a higher level than the latter. The same works for the question of whether you do what you do due to your soul's desire or due to neurons firing - both are true, but work on different levels. (This line of thought is used in Hofstadter's I Am A Strange Loop)
A different way to look at it - free will, in Berlinesque terms, is a form of negative freedom - an absence of constraints. Since the freedom worth talking about is the one that affects our lived experience, the only constraints that matter are those we actively feel, or know about. Free will can therefore be violated only when the levels cross, e.g. the Oracle of Delphi tells you your fate and you want to change it but unable to; a company targets you with effective subliminal advertising, and so on. As long as the level where determinism is located is untouched by the level where you live, your freedom is intact. This is why randomness, chaos and fuzzyness feel liberating.
Here I should mention the best Existential Comic in years (almost on par with SMBC at its best), according to which an AGI would see randomness as more detrimental to freedom than determinism, because it hinders its ability to have control over its environment.
frogandbanjo t1_j98vd93 wrote
> is it because 2+5=7
And what if you get a calculator that says 2+5 = 6? Is that because it's 6, or is it then only because of that other shit?
MaxChaplin t1_j99fx5g wrote
Then the calculator's functionality is not isomorphic to arithmetic, and only the physical explanation is true.
frogandbanjo t1_j9czlnh wrote
So there's something special about calculators that produce correct answers using virtually indistinguishable physical processes from calculators that produce incorrect answers.
Explain what significance that "higher level" actually has when we're trying to figure out what's going in the real, physical world.
Before you do, you might want to remember that analogies relying upon things that everybody already concedes are true are weak and shady.
Maybe you should think about two calculators that give two different answers to a math problem that absolutely nobody and nothing knows the correct answer to - and, possibly, can never.
MaxChaplin t1_j9ec2i7 wrote
The higher level doesn't need to be able to explain the physical level in order to be useful. If substrate independence applies, it really is unable to. A calculator built correctly is like a window into the platonic world of arithmetics.
The analogy doesn't decisively prove that people have free will. It's point is to show that determinism doesn't contradict it.
frnzprf t1_j99z8hk wrote
> The same works for the question of whether you do what you do due to your soul's desire or due to neurons firing - both are true, but work on different levels.
Even if someone knows nothing about neurons, they could argue that free will doesn't exist, because it determined either by randomness or by reasons. "I choose strawberry icecream because I like the flavor. I like the flavor because I'm born that way, or maybe because my mother fed them to me as a baby." (nature/nurture)
> Since the freedom worth talking about is the one that affects our lived experience, the only constraints that matter are those we actively feel, or know about.
This is a good idea that I haven't thought about before! We say that a glass is empty, even though there is air inside it. Language is practical. There is probably a practical distincion between some causes of will (or actions?) and others.
[deleted] t1_j9agqhh wrote
Almost on par?
Existential comics is the bomb!
MaxChaplin t1_j9aidol wrote
It's too "I'm this and this, and I believe in such and such" for my tastes. I like the early long serious ones.
Nameless1995 t1_j98fvw0 wrote
> Here I should mention the best Existential Comic in years (almost on par with SMBC at its best), according to which an AGI would see randomness as more detrimental to freedom than determinism, because it hinders its ability to have control over its environment.
In RL, stochasticity through some level of (pseudo-)randomness can be useful to balance exploitation-exploration. However, I am not sure "true randomness" is particularly any more or less helpful than "pseudo-randomness" in most of those contexts (what is gained, if we map out an unfolding of a pseudo-random process and change it to a world where the exact same sequence of actions is unfolded from a true-random process?)
ThMogget t1_j99ce9n wrote
>Is determinism true? I have no idea. That’s a question for quantum physicists to fight about. The interesting philosophical question is what if anything would follow about free will if it were true. - OP article
Determinism is as true as makes no difference. No it is not a physics question and nothing follows.
As I think both Harris and Dennett point out, physics is irrelevant here. Being a slave to the dice is no more free than being a slave to the clockwork. Stochastic mechanics are no more free than any other - they must be exactly random. Random behavior is the opposite of willpower.
Besides, a device that is random cannot compute. It’s a very good thing that at the scale of huge neuron cells, all the quantum randomness has averaged out - or the cell machinery couldn’t work. Your brain thinks because your neurons are non-random. The brain is a huge macrostructure with many emergent layers between your thoughts and molecular randomness.
Quantum mechanics isn’t magic or supernatural. It highlights the huge gap in training between physicists and philosophers that anyone could mention quantum anything in a discussion of free will without being laughed out of existence. It is the sort of silly grasping for mysterious skyhooks that Dennett is fond of roasting people for.
cloake t1_j97uz41 wrote
I still think compatibilism is redundant. Determinism is already compatibilism. It's just biased minds that can't accept biologically predetermined minds have a decision making apparatus, and it's all been accounted for, already, for several billion years. It's once again, philosophers, unable to easily let go the ego and linguistic sphere of their thought process.
Confident-Broccoli-5 t1_j98bad5 wrote
>Determinism is already compatibilism.
It is yeah, most compatibilists believe determinism to be true.
>It's just biased minds that can't accept biologically predetermined minds have a decision making apparatus, and it's all been accounted for, already, for several billion years.
But most compatibilists do accept that things are pre determined, they just don't believe that negates free will.
>It's once again, philosophers, unable to easily let go the ego and linguistic sphere of their thought process.
This seems quite an extraordinary claim, compatibilism has been around for centuries, it pre-dates back to the stoics, it's not some sporadic desperate invention by philosophers in reaction to scientific consensus regarding determinism.
cloake t1_j994hs0 wrote
> This seems quite an extraordinary claim, compatibilism has been around for centuries, it pre-dates back to the stoics, it's not some sporadic desperate invention by philosophers in reaction to scientific consensus regarding determinism.
Compatibilism is implying there exists a determinism without decision making capacity. Which never existed. It was an inadequate conceptualization that deserves no further time. We've always dealt with humans having colloquial "free will" and still continue to.
Confident-Broccoli-5 t1_j99md0e wrote
>Compatibilism is implying there exists a determinism without decision making capacity.
But it's not implying that.
cloake t1_j9dz4zb wrote
Sure it is, by having to make an extra term, implies it needed to be clarified.
Confident-Broccoli-5 t1_j9e8e39 wrote
What extra term?
cloake t1_j9fsyu7 wrote
Compatibilism!
Confident-Broccoli-5 t1_j9fu168 wrote
To be honest I'm not sure what you're trying to argue, compatibilism just says free will is compatible with determinism, that is we can still act freely, make decisions etc regardless if the universe is deterministic. It's not clear to me what you mean by "extra term."
cloake t1_j9fyjse wrote
Well okay, can anyone argue a sound incompatibalist viewpoint? That's as best as I can explain my perspective.
Confident-Broccoli-5 t1_j9fz0ck wrote
>can anyone argue a sound incompatibalist viewpoint
I can't, hence compatibilism.
bildramer t1_j99l885 wrote
I don't understand all the hostility towards compatibilism in the comments. To me, asking whether we have free will or everything is predetermined is a false dichotomy, like asking if our muscles are made of fibers or made of atoms. These are just two models of reality, and they are compatible, hence the name.
Compatibilism is simple: Determinism seems true. When I say I "can" decide to stand up and go eat a bar of chocolate, then, all that means that it's a future that appears accessible to me, that perhaps I have an action plan that I think would reach it if taken, a plan I also "can" deliberate upon, accept or reject - what else could it possibly mean? There might be a single future, or a randomly chosen future not under our control - either way we don't have access to knowledge of it. I don't know in advance what I will do, and interact with people who don't, either, all the time. Clearly we're used to doing reasoning under uncertainty and mentally working with counterfactuals. "Can" is a word that works in that context, we regularly use it to reason correctly and make correct predictions about ourselves and others; it must refer to how our decision processes interact with the world/the future, and not some kind of incoherent libertarian free will.
Jingle-man t1_j9b4kb2 wrote
Exactly. When we say that such and such thing "is possible", what we really mean is "I imagine it may occur". This imagining is not metaphysically significant; it's just a physical phenomenon like any other, and so subject to the same laws of causality. Possibility and choice and freedom are products of the physical mind, and so are completely compatible with a deterministic metaphysical model of the universe.
StevieInternets t1_j97uo36 wrote
Interesting article, I tend to agree with the way Zizek has framed it, but maybe that’s because I don’t intuitively agree with the materialist deterministic frame the author has started with. His point seems to be something like ‘how would we know if our free will were being thwarted without comparing our ability to make decisions to some extrinsic godlike position that cannot by definition be a part of deterministic reality’.
ThMogget t1_j9995x7 wrote
I am glad to see Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett in the illustration there. If any two books really introduced the public to the issue it would be Free Will by Harris and Elbow Room by Dennett. Regardless of your own position on the subject or your feelings about these two men, they are required reading. Is there any other work that we think is essential here? If so, why?
This article (and the linked one about Harris) are essentially efforts to add minor nuances to these books. If there is some real new angle I sure missed it.
Having read Dennett’s book, I would argue that his brand of compatibilism is best described by what it is not - by what it attacks rather than what it proposes, if anything.
Compatibilism takes determinism at the level of subconscious cognition to be a given. It then points out all the reasons why people apply motivated reasoning to escape this obvious fact, and how misguided they are. Its only real claim is that the commonsense version and experience of free will does not require the super free will philosophers and theologians are chasing. Anyone who is seeking the latter to justify the former is in error on multiple levels. It is not the compatibilists who are trying yo redefine things, the incompatibilists did it first intentionally to perform a bait-and-switch.
Apart from pointing these two things out, there isn’t much else. What the commonsense free will is, how it emerges, and how we should think about it is murky. Is the divide between conscious and subconscious relevant? Can we draw moral or practical implications from this or are we forced to work-arounds? Do we treat moral failures more like hardware failures and focus on containment and repair rather than punishment and virtue?
I feel Dennett merely raises these resulting questions without attempting to solve them.
Thelonious_Cube t1_j99a329 wrote
Dennett has a newer, more generally accessible book on compatibilism called Freedom Evolves - highly recommended!
ConsciousLiterature t1_j99bywn wrote
If there is no free will then you have no more free will about your reactions to an act than the actor does in the action.
This is what people seem to miss in this conversation. Somebody does something because they have no choice. You will react the way you do because you have no choice. The "you" could be the police, judge, jury, media, bystander etc.
Everybody acts exactly as the laws of the universe dictate.
GolemThe3rd t1_j99pcxr wrote
Man I really thought that guy on the left was Dan Harmon for a sec
oeksa t1_j9a6vtf wrote
this is kind of an impossible discussion. whether we call it determinism or compatibilism or guided voluntarism or whatever, logic says that no man or woman can think or act beyond the constraints of the laws of nature (which may include some randomness. however, randomness does not make you any more in control, it just means that your actions were not predetermined). freedom to act would require freedom not to act. not acting on a desire only proves that other desires were stronger. so your previous take is still right and compatible with both determinism, some variants of voluntarism, and compatibilism, depending on definitions of these terms.
[deleted] t1_j9ae5cx wrote
> (1) That free will of some sort is a necessary condition for moral responsibility,
> (2) That moral responsibility exists regardless of whether determinism is true &
> (3) That free will wouldn’t exist in a deterministic universe
Number 2 seems to be the shakiest point. From the article, it seems that if my buddy flakes on lunch just to play video games then I'm blaming him so that means he is morally responsible and so I'm justified in being upset.
But I could just as easily say that everything was predetermined, he flaked, and I'm upset without assigning any morally responsibility. It's just his brain chemistry to sometimes be flakey. I'll take this into account in my future dealings with him.
Whether or not free will exists, my response is the same. So why do I have to keep this notion of free will around? Determinism doesn't support it. There's refutation of freewill and the only thing against it is my intuition. My intuition is often wrong and it's wrong again. There's no freewill.
chicliac t1_j9akzs2 wrote
I have one question. Why is preserving moral responsibility so important?
BlueSkyAndGoldenLite t1_j9bh46q wrote
The basis for society's legal system is founded on the idea that we need to hold people accountable for their actions, which assumes that people have responsibility for the actions they makes. If everyone's actions are predetermined though, can we really put the blame on people for acting the way they did? We would essentially be sentencing people for crimes they had no control over.
InTheEndEntropyWins t1_j9biaii wrote
>If everyone's actions are predetermined though, can we really put the blame on people for acting the way they did? We would essentially be sentencing people for crimes they had no control over.
Yep it's perfectly fine to sentence those people. We sentence people to act as a deterrent and to protect society.
cloake t1_j9e11o7 wrote
> The basis for society's legal system is founded on the idea that we need to hold people accountable for their actions,
Could contest that, that's merely an enlightenment rationalization. Mainly carceral treatment and punishment is meant to suppress destabilizing elements first and foremost.
chicliac t1_j9bhmib wrote
Yes I'm aware. And why is preserving this system important?
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objeteh t1_j97zr0y wrote
Going to save this, thank you
Nameless1995 t1_j989f7q wrote
I personally have zero intuition about freedom, control, responsibility. I am more of an outsider who can play along with the "tune", and play "games" with the words, but I don't have any clear intelligible sense of them, beyond the rules of how some of the words get used in certain language games. Even then the rules are ill-defined and fuzzy in most contexts. I share very little intuition with most philosophers.
> First, notice that one of the main reasons anyone cares about free will is that it seems to be a requirement for moral responsibility. What you do can only be your fault, or conversely to your credit, if it’s under your control.
How do I notice it? How do you notice it? Have you taken an empirical survey? Some psychological experiment as to what anyone "truly" cares for? Have we find some cross-cultural and cross-temporal invariances (beyond WEIRD)?
Philosophers like to sneak in loaded statements about "this is common sense" "this is what we care for" here and there. As Lance Bush says, philosophy is often psychology with a sample size = 1.
There are some approaches in experimental philosophy seeking more into these questions but a lot can depend on how the questions are framed, and results seem somewhat mixed (people have both compatibilist and incompatibilist intuition) from the last time I check.
So I overall experience a tension here, it seems like the investigation as to what we really care for (at a statistical level -- otherwise what we care for in regards to "free will" is very unlikely to invariant accross individuals -- I have a discussion long ago with someone who really really wanted true randomness for freedom), and what should be called 'free will' if they are properly constrained into well-defined problems turns into questions of psychology, anthropology and such. I am not sure what philosophy is left to do. Perhaps, then people should use philosophical tool to create their own conceptual boundaries to track what they personally care for and analyze if such a thing is coherent and if there is good warrant for believing them. Philosophers, can then, simply "list" different conceptions that reflective people (philosophers) have considered and objectively discuss what we gain and lose from each, instead of forcing one as uniquely "true" or consistent with what people, in general, care of (that's psychology). We can perhaps then have some voting process as to which conception to choose or prefer. Or we can discuss some clear evaluation criterion (eg. from a conceptual engineering perspective).
[deleted] t1_j99em6k wrote
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[deleted] t1_j99pexj wrote
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Sosen t1_j99w9lf wrote
The determinism camp is dying, if not dead already. It's too blatantly obvious that in a determinist scenario, something has to do the determining- and the self is the increasingly obvious starting point. The only remaining debate (which philosophers are currently losing to religion - I would blame this on Heidegger's betrayal of secular philosophy, since my reading of him has steered me and many others in this direction) is whether the self is a "thing" with an extremely limited function, or whether it has a much different nature than we thought and religion is basically right about the most important things. If you're reading this comment, go find some people to study Heidegger with. "Free will" is a somewhat nonsensical term, anyway - I don't think it's translatable from the Germans who formulated these views.
the_grungydan t1_j9ah2ce wrote
Compatiblism: for when determinism gives you a big sad and you don't like it.
LukaBrovic t1_j9b64ge wrote
Tell me you don't understand Compatibilism without telling me you don't understand Compatibilism
Confident-Broccoli-5 t1_j9aw0eg wrote
What a great argument
ikamyx t1_j9fub2y wrote
haha ye hoo
Okleyoc t1_j99349z wrote
want clarity around the words
EddyMoneyGotHoney t1_j99njyq wrote
Make a rap of philosophy, or would that be poetry
mixile t1_j99g96e wrote
What does free mean? Why do we need a concept of control in order to blame? I can chuck out a faulty coffee maker and I can morally blame a faulty human, if I am willing to thing of humans as a morality machine.
Every time I read about compatibilism I think of the god of the gaps. Except this latest argument does not even appear to be an argument. It seems to say, despite all evidence correctly pointing to our machine like nature bound by physical laws and our physical form, nevertheless we are free. But it says nothing about what freedom is and why that enables us to blame.
InTheEndEntropyWins t1_j9a9qv6 wrote
I'm sure there are other definitions, but I use something like free will is about "the ability to make voluntary actions in line with your desires free from external coercion/influence".
Free will is key in morality and justice, so I like to understand how the courts define and use it. Lets use a real life example of how the Supreme Court considers free will.
​
>It is a principle of fundamental justice that only voluntary conduct – behaviour that is the product of a free will and controlled body, unhindered by external constraints – should attract the penalty and stigma of criminal liability.
>
>https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/1861/index.do
In the case of R. v. Ruzic
>The accused had been coerced by an individual in Colombia to smuggle cocaine into the United States. He was told that if he did not comply, his wife and child in Colombia would be harmed.
The Supreme Court found that he didn't smuggle the cocaine of his own free will. He didn't do it in line with his desires free from external coercion. Hence they were found innocent.
mixile t1_j9ac6q7 wrote
What does voluntary mean? What does free from external coercion mean? Can you define free will without using the word free? Can you define free?
Also your definition doesn’t seem to make sense in a compatibilist view either. Can your decision be both determined and “free” from external influence?
I honestly suspect you can make free will mean whatever you want it to mean if you don’t have to define the word free and you go around thinking about it in the context of how you morally feel about the context in which people were acting.
InTheEndEntropyWins t1_j9akmlo wrote
>What does voluntary mean?
We just use the medical definition. It's when you deliberately do something. So if you deliberately shake you hand that's voluntary. But if you try and keep you had still but it shakes because you have Parkinson's, that involuntary.
With sufficient technology you could scan someone's brain and differentiate between voluntary and involuntary actions.
EddyMoneyGotHoney t1_j99ngu0 wrote
If you want to do it, then do it
ifoundit1 t1_j99az48 wrote
That's why the US likes Jamaica
jamesj t1_j96w1g3 wrote
After reading his previous article I gave compatibilism a real attempt and read more from other authors. I still think it isn't coherent. This article isn't getting me closer. It feels a lot like he wants moral responsibility, which seems true to him, to be true. He also accepts the possibility that determinism is true. And so he claims they are compatible, but to do so he redefines free will, then claims he hasn't and that was the definition of it we were working with all along. It just isn't convincing to me. I'd like to be convinced, for a long time I thought I was missing something, but I'm now begining to believe I'm not missing anything.