Let influences be understood as partial determinants, but whether the sum of all influences--apart from the "influence" of free choice--determines the outcome seems to be at the heart of the issue.
What is meant by 'free choice' in this context?
Okay good, so I take it you are conceding pre-determinism.
For the sake of argument, yes.
I disagree that they would not be predictable in principle, and even the author of the article you cite does not seem to make that claim, as he shies away when "infinite precision" is considered. Exhaustive knowledge of the computer program would result in knowledge of what it will produce in any given circumstance, and running the same program twice will produce the same result, no?
Yes, you're right - my mistake; what I meant is that, even given indefinite precision, and complete knowledge of the starting conditions, there is no way to discover a future state other than running through the entire process up to the relevant point. Imagine someone predicted the result of the n'th iteration of a chaotic function, and on iterating it, you found they were correct and asked them how they knew; if they told you they'd done the same thing just before you arrived, I suspect you'd see it more as a post-diction than a prediction... but, whatever, that's an incidental.
They are the choices you make in one sense but not another. The sense in which they are not the choices you make is precisely the sense that almost everyone assumes is entailed by the very fact of making a choice (i.e. having the ability to make a contrary choice).
I think the concept of being able to make a contrary choice is at the heart of the it, and at the heart of the popular conception of free will. When someone says they made a choice, and that it was an expression of free will, they usually mean that they
could have made a different choice at that time. The (often unspoken) rider is, '
if they had wanted/been brave enough/been strong enough/etc., to', in other words, if their state of mind had been different; or, more bluntly, if the circumstances had been different. This is correct, but misses the point, which is that
in the circumstances that held when they made that choice, their state of mind was such that they made the choice they did; that's
why they made that choice. By failing to include their own mental state in the circumstances of their choice, they miss the point and are effectively saying, 'if things (i.e. my state of mind) were different, I could have made a different choice', which resolves to the almost tautological, 'if things were different, things could have been different'.
So I don't think you would find very many people who would grant that a pre-determined system could generate choices flowing authentically from the agent. That is because the agent is not truly self-moving, but rather a cog in the machine.
What many people would grant isn't always a reliable guide, and we're talking about a system unimaginably more complex than a cog in a machine; but I don't know what you mean by, 'flowing authentically', and 'truly self-moving'. What makes the flow authentic? what distinguishes the
truly self-moving, from the self-moving?
Perhaps if you walked through an example decision and pointed out where these elements are involved; i.e., the points where a deterministic explanation is insufficient?
When Joe hits the cue ball into the 3-ball, which then pockets the 9, we could say that the 3-ball moved the 9-ball. But no one thinks that the 3-ball moves the 9-ball in the same way that Joe moves his pool cue. In the parlance of contemporary philosophy, we could say that there is thought to be a qualitative difference between agent causation and event causation. Your scenario eliminates this essential difference.
You say there is an essential difference, but what might a highly advanced observer see, reviewing the pot?
Joe's arm muscles have moved the arm holding the cue, on signals from nerves leading from the motor cortex of his brain, which was stimulated, in turn, by the results of coordinated activity in numerous other parts of his brain - visual cortex, vestibular cortex, frontal cortext, etc., activity that could be traced back to his shot selection, based on his analysis of the current position, modeling of optimal future positions, his skill level, confidence level, experience of the way the table is playing, stored experience of similar situations, analysis of his opponent's strengths & weaknesses, etc.
It's a far more complicated causal sequence, involving many different elements, types of element, and levels of abstraction, and so it is qualitatively different in mechanism and complexity, but still looks like a (complex) sequence of simple causal events. It's understandable that it's seen as qualitatively different from a distance, but is it really, on close examination? If so, how, where?
Why do you say that? Have you seen both, compared them, and noted that there is no difference?
Clearly not, the real world is as it is; what I'm saying is that I see no way that I, as an agent, can distinguish whether the universe is deterministic (leaving quantum mechanics to one side) or not, in respect of my choices and capability to choose. If you can suggest a way, I'm interested to hear it.
A
post of yours reminds me of the
Experience Machine. If you really think it makes no difference, then would you hook yourself up?
How do I know I'm not already hooked up, having artificially generated experiences, e.g. in the Matrix? We have to take the world as we find it. Personally, I don't think I'd choose the Experience Machine, but I'm not talking about having that choice here, I'm exploring the POV of an agent with experience of only that universe.
No one wants to be deceived, yet your solution rests on deception. Your life finds meaning in light of a free will that does not exist but is somehow believed to exist.
I'd rather not call it a deception here, as there is no deceiver; it's just a misinterpretation, an error. The agent finds himself in a universe in which he weighs up his options and makes choices that, as far as he can tell, are free; he can change his mind, and he sees others doing the same. So, from his POV, he has free will - that's how it feels. If you ask him whether he could have chosen differently on any particular occasion, he'd probably say, "Yes,
if I'd wanted to." If you were to tell him that it wasn't
really free will because, at the time, his mental state was such that he
didn't want to make a different choice, what do you think he'd say?
Perhaps he'd say, "Ah, but the difference is that I'm truly self-moving, my choices flow authentically"
So it is not clear that it would make no difference according to one's experience
I'm open to suggestions for telling the difference.
...is still false that one is indifferent to unknown deception. They are unaware, but not indifferent in intention. It is like the husband who considers telling his blissfully ignorant wife about his infidelity. He might think that it really makes no difference, but the wife would disagree both with respect to reality and with respect to her intentions/desires.
There is no deception in the scenario I have in mind; just a deterministic world and an agent that interprets it. You could say he deceives himself, because what he sees is entirely consistent with a deterministic universe
without free will, but - ironically - he has no choice but to act as if he does have free will; even if you tell him that he's a deterministic agent in a deterministic universe, he still has to make his choices, he still doesn't know all their determinants, and he still can't predict the future...
Believing in things that are false does not necessarily mean we've been deceived; we may just be wrong.
Causation doesn't imply determinism.
True; which is why, if nothing else, quantum mechanics makes our universe non-deterministic.