Does determinism really negate free will?

zippy2006 · May 5, 2022

partinobodycular said:
Ah, well that's kinda the point of the OP, to which I would argue that the fact that you would always make the same choice doesn't necessarily mean that you don't have free will. It might simply mean that given the same circumstances, you would consider them in the same manner, reach the same conclusion, and subsequently make the same choice. Not because you're forced to by deterministic underlying causes, but simply because you, being you, would always make that choice. "You" are neither an unpredictable thing, nor a completely deterministic thing, you're you...whatever the heck that means, with your own personal fears, desires, and peccadilloes, emergent from, but not completely predictable by those underlying causes.

From what I have seen, your approach in this thread isn't really on point. You keep sliding into inaccurate definitions of free will and determinism. For example, to say that someone could not have chosen otherwise is determinism. It doesn't make any difference if we attribute the causal mechanism to "underlying causes" or to the person's psychology. In such a case the "underlying causes" are just the person's psychology itself.

Similarly, if behavior is "not completely predictable by those underlying causes," then it isn't true that you would always make the same choice given the same circumstances.

Determinism and Libertarian free will are contradictory positions. It isn't possible to have them both or to find a middle way.

FrumiousBandersnatch · May 5, 2022

SelfSim said:
So how are you going to go about ascertaining whether it is a dog or whether its not a dog?

Without informed advice from others, I can only go by whether it fits the pattern of appearance, behaviour, and context I've learned.

FrumiousBandersnatch · May 5, 2022

Chesterton said:
You didn't answer my question.

Oh, I'm sorry, I thought it would be clear from my response. As far as we know, the most fundamental things in our model of the universe are not emergent, i.e. quantum fields. But obviously, there are different levels of emergence, so when talking about what is and isn't emergent, context is important - that was my original point.

Yes, all that goes without saying. What I'm saying is that if there is a chain of events wherein a cause causes an effect and that effect causes an effect, and if physical laws regulate every aspect of what's happening, nothing can ever change. The future is set in stone, as is the past and present.

Well, sure, from a point of view outside spacetime, i.e. the 4D Parminidean/Einsteinian 'block' universe, past, present, and future all exist and are equally real and fixed - but we're not outside spacetime, we're in it and we experience the passage of time, so we talk about change because things are not the same from one event to another, i.e. from one point in spacetime to another.

You've told me how you're programmed by mindless forces to feel about the effects of mindless forces. That also doesn't answer the question.

Well, I answered the question I thought you were asking, so perhaps you could rephrase it.

I would like to know.

I'm devoted to learning more about the topics and questions that fascinate me; IOW that is what I devote most of my time to.

partinobodycular · May 5, 2022

zippy2006 said:
You keep sliding into inaccurate definitions of free will and determinism.

Undoubtedly.

zippy2006 said:
For example, to say that someone could not have chosen otherwise is determinism. It doesn't make any difference if we attribute the causal mechanism to "underlying causes" or to the person's psychology.

I agree that's still determinism, but I would argue that in the psychological case the determining factor is "Me" and that that makes all the difference. To me that's the point of free will...whether or not I am the determining factor. If "I" am the determining factor, then it's free will.

The question that I'm raising is whether that psychological me, and hence my choices are the direct result of some underlying causes, or whether that psychological me is somehow distinct from, and can to some degree, operate independent of those underlying causes. Such that my choices, although perhaps probabilistic, aren't actually deterministic, in that there's no direct deterministic relationship between the underlying causes and the choices.

durangodawood · May 5, 2022

partinobodycular said:
.... that psychological me is somehow distinct from, and can to some degree, operate independent of those underlying causes. Such that my choices, although perhaps probabilistic, aren't actually deterministic....

Thats sort of where I'm at. The operation of the human mind creates some kind of special thing that gets held apart from strict physical causality and lives a life there - even while much of us remains physically bound. Spiritual disciples are essentially the cultivation of this little set-apart-life. Evidence for this = 0 unfortunately.

FrumiousBandersnatch · May 5, 2022

SelfSim said:
Maybe .. but that's certainly not me .. I'm human.

Me too.

FrumiousBandersnatch · May 5, 2022

Chesterton said:
My original concern was to ask Frumious how he gets meaning from mindless particles which have no meaning. Of course it's a rhetorical question, because obviously you can't.

Of course you can.

It's only a difficult question worth considering, by people who suffer from the cognitive dissonance of really wanting to think they are robots but deep down know they aren't.

Who are these people? are they anything like the people that really want to believe they're immortal but deep down know they aren't?

partinobodycular · May 5, 2022

zippy2006 said:
Similarly, if behavior is "not completely predictable by those underlying causes," then it isn't true that you would always make the same choice given the same circumstances.

I would posit a different argument, that if the underlying causes can only give you the probability for a set of potential outcomes then those underlying causes can't possibly explain why the outcome would always be the same. There would have to be something above and beyond those underlying causes to explain the consistent outcome.

I would also posit that consciousness emerges in just such a probabilistic environment, wherein the conscious mind becomes the determining factor within a probabilistic backdrop, and a consistent outcome becomes an argument for a conscious mind with free will, not against it.

FrumiousBandersnatch · May 5, 2022

partinobodycular said:
The question that I'm raising is whether that psychological me, and hence my choices are the direct result of some underlying causes, or whether that psychological me is somehow distinct from, and can to some degree, operate independent of those underlying causes. Such that my choices, although perhaps probabilistic, aren't actually deterministic, in that there's no direct deterministic relationship between the underlying causes and the choices.

If your choices weren't the result of underlying causes, in what sense would they be choices? Don't you choose for some reasons, preferences, desires, requirements, etc., that you have? Where do these reasons, preferences, desires, requirements, etc., come from, if not underlying causes?

FrumiousBandersnatch · May 5, 2022

The happy Objectivist said:
I understand your difficulty. It's a very complex subject and we can't see into the brains of other animals like we can introspect and observe our own.

I find it helpful to think in terms from the bottom up. There are three forms of consciousness: sensation, perception, and conception. I have no trouble at all seeing how an organism could develop the ability to sense light, for instance. I can see how some animals developed the ability to integrate sensations into a whole and thereby become able to perceive entities instead of a collection of sensations. What the conceptual faculty does is integrate these perceptions of entities into open ended entity classes by means of abstraction.

Think of a fetus in the womb. When it is first developing it does not yet have the organs and structures required to be conscious. At some point, these develop and then the fetus has the ability to be aware of its surroundings. Then after some months the newborn develops enough to integrate these sensations into a whole and perceive entities. This happens automatically. It learns that the bundle of sensations it keeps sensing is its mother. Then it learns to differentiate it's mother from other things around it. Later the child starts forming rudimentary concepts, even if only implicitly. Then it learns to form concepts by integrating concepts into higher and higher abstractions. This last part is what has to be learned and honed. Unlike perception, this is not automatic. I think this is the way to look at it and demystify it.

There is some (disputed) evidence that chimps and African Grey Parrots, and possibly dolphins can learn to refine and express their conceptualisation through linguistic tasks. Language allows concepts to be represented and expressed by symbols that can be strung together with operators into meaningful sequences.

partinobodycular · May 5, 2022

FrumiousBandersnatch said:
Don't you choose for some reasons, preferences, desires, requirements, etc., that you have? Where do these reasons, preferences, desires, requirements, etc., come from, if not underlying causes?

I can't tell you where they come from, and that's pretty much the point. It's like asking why the particle went through the left slit versus the right slit. Nobody knows. There's just no direct correlation between the initial conditions/causes and the outcome.

That's what I'm positing, that the conscious mind emerges in a probabilistic environment, not completely determined by the initial conditions.

But those reasons, preferences, desires, requirements, etc. are the very things that make me "Me". They do exist, and they're the determining factors in our free will choices, but they're not the direct result of the initial conditions, and hence, while my choices may in some sense be deterministic, they're determined by me. I.E those reasons, preferences, desires, requirements, etc. that define me.

durangodawood · May 5, 2022

FrumiousBandersnatch said:
If your choices weren't the result of underlying causes, in what sense would they be choices? Don't you choose for some reasons, preferences, desires, requirements, etc., that you have? Where do these reasons, preferences, desires, requirements, etc., come from, if not underlying causes?

From imagination, the capacity to invent.

zippy2006 · May 5, 2022

partinobodycular said:
Undoubtedly.

I agree that's still determinism, but I would argue that in the psychological case the determining factor is "Me" and that that makes all the difference. To me that's the point of free will...whether or not I am the determining factor. If "I" am the determining factor, then it's free will.

The question that I'm raising is whether that psychological me, and hence my choices are the direct result of some underlying causes, or whether that psychological me is somehow distinct from, and can to some degree, operate independent of those underlying causes. Such that my choices, although perhaps probabilistic, aren't actually deterministic, in that there's no direct deterministic relationship between the underlying causes and the choices.

Okay, I see.

partinobodycular said:
I would posit a different argument, that if the underlying causes can only give you the probability for a set of potential outcomes then those underlying causes can't possibly explain why the outcome would always be the same. There would have to be something above and beyond those underlying causes to explain the consistent outcome.

I would also posit that consciousness emerges in just such a probabilistic environment, wherein the conscious mind becomes the determining factor within a probabilistic backdrop, and a consistent outcome becomes an argument for a conscious mind with free will, not against it.

Would not such an argument lead you to believe that all non-human organisms also have free will, since they also act consistently?

FrumiousBandersnatch · May 5, 2022

partinobodycular said:
I can't tell you where they come from, and that's pretty much the point. It's like asking why the particle went through the left slit versus the right slit. Nobody knows. There's just no direct correlation between the initial conditions/causes and the outcome.

But if that was the case, your 'choices' would be (or appear) random - there would be no reasons underlying them, no link with your past experience, your preferences, what you want, etc. But there clearly is a link - we often characterise people by the consistency and predictability of their choices; we know Fred likes wine but not beer so he will choose wine over beer; we know Bill is risk-averse so will choose to drive carefully, etc.

That's what I'm positing, that the conscious mind emerges in a probabilistic environment, not completely determined by the initial conditions.

It's certainly possible that there is some 'true' randomness (e.g. quantum randomness) in the world, but is that where freedom is?

But those reasons, preferences, desires, requirements, etc. are the very things that make me "Me". They do exist, and they're the determining factors in our free will choices, but they're not the direct result of the initial conditions, and hence, while my choices may in some sense be deterministic, they're determined by me. I.E those reasons, preferences, desires, requirements, etc. that define me.

The initial conditions include "You", and you are the causal result of all the things that make you "You", just as the choices you perceive are the causal result of all the things that made them that way.

Yes, you're (in a sense) defined by your unique genetic heritage and its interaction with your unique lifetime of experiences, and that makes you different from everyone else, and it makes the reasons for your choices unique to you, but in what sense does that make your choices 'free'?

FrumiousBandersnatch · May 5, 2022

durangodawood said:
From imagination, the capacity to invent.

People do seem to imagine and/or invent preferences or desires, but they do that for some reason, and it seems to me that the things they imagine or invent are based on their past experience - creativity is arranging what you know in novel ways.

partinobodycular · May 5, 2022

zippy2006 said:
Would not such an argument lead you to believe that all non-human organisms also have free will, since they also act consistently?

Not necessarily. Because I can't tell you where the dividing line is between behavior that's purely deterministic and behavior that involves a free will choice. As @Bradskii is wont to point out, if we truly have free will, then at some point in the past we must have evolved from an organism that didn't have free will to one that did. But where's the line of demarcation?

Now we could take a cue from the Bible and say that free will emerges at the point where an organism has the ability to discern good from evil. In which case Bradskii's dog may not qualify. Because although it may know that it prefers one route over another, it may not as yet have taken the further step of assigning to those routes the qualia of being good or evil. It's simply reacting to what it does or doesn't like.

I realize that this is a very speculative threshold, and I have no way of knowing the point at which a system becomes so complex that its behavior switches from being deterministic to being probabilistic. But if it does at some point make that switch then you can no longer determine the outcome based solely upon the initial conditions, and you have to look somewhere else to explain its behavior. Absent an external explanation you're forced to resort to an internal one which for all intents and purposes might best be described as free will.

durangodawood · May 5, 2022

FrumiousBandersnatch said:
People do seem to imagine and/or invent preferences or desires, but they do that for some reason, and it seems to me that the things they imagine or invent are based on their past experience - creativity is arranging what you know in novel ways.

Yes, there's a motivation. But the outcome is not necessarily dependent on the reason.

I'm proposing that in the solution space of available choices for a decision, some of them can be cooked up in this causally unconnected consciousness zone. Maybe this zone is us harnessing accumulated randomness like some solvent that dissolves the ties of cause/effect in the mind. Then we can run somewhat free in the solution space, as one novel idea triggers others. The cascading novelty can even permit an untethering from the initial motivation for attacking a given problem.

It all sounds like randomness is the core, which isnt freedom at all. But I think randomness might just be the enabler, and the free self then develops its own sort of existence in that space not even bound by physical cause/effect.

SelfSim · May 5, 2022

partinobodycular said:
Not necessarily. Because I can't tell you where the dividing line is between behavior that's purely deterministic and behavior that involves a free will choice. As @Bradskii is wont to point out, if we truly have free will, then at some point in the past we must have evolved from an organism that didn't have free will to one that did. But where's the line of demarcation?

Now we could take a cue from the Bible and say that free will emerges at the point where an organism has the ability to discern good from evil. In which case Bradskii's dog may not qualify. Because although it may know that it prefers one route over another, it may not as yet have taken the further step of assigning to those routes the qualia of being good or evil. It's simply reacting to what it does or doesn't like.

I realize that this is a very speculative threshold, and I have no way of knowing the point at which a system becomes so complex that its behavior switches from being deterministic to being probabilistic. But if it does at some point make that switch then you can no longer determine the outcome based solely upon the initial conditions, and you have to look somewhere else to explain its behavior. Absent an external explanation you're forced to resort to an internal one which for all intents and purposes might best be described as free will.

FWIW, I might be 'liking' most of what you've said in those recent posts, but I don't believe any of it.

partinobodycular · May 5, 2022

SelfSim said:
FWIW, I might be 'liking' most of what you've said in those recent posts, but I don't believe any of it.

Trust me I'm still a solipsist, speculating about what's possible is pretty much what I do, but like you it doesn't mean that I believe my own BS. That's the first trap that I try to avoid.

SelfSim · May 5, 2022

partinobodycular said:
Trust me I'm still a solipsist, speculating about what's possible is pretty much what I do, but like you it doesn't mean that I believe my own BS. That's the first trap that I try to avoid.

I might add that the reason for my 'like' is that I recognise that it allows science to go forward with an extended philosophically consistent basis, which always 'a nice to have'.

Does determinism really negate free will?

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