Does determinism really negate free will?

[Chesterton]

It doesn't negate free will.

Determinism and free will together is a flat out contradiction. Like saying an object is a both a square and a circle. Like saying your car can exceed the speed limit while not moving. A contradiction, like me saying "Hi, I'm Chesterton and I'm a nice, agreeable person who doesn't enjoy arguing online."

It just changes the conversation about free will.
"I posted this because God had this in His plans."
It adds meaning to events and helps to suppress ones ego.

I don't know what this means.

 

[Chesterton]

My question regarding determinism and free will doesn't just apply to a physically deterministic reality, but it applies to a dualistic reality as well. It doesn't matter which one we're talking about.

What do you mean by a dualistic reality?

 

[zippy2006]

It seems as if most people believe that if reality is deterministic then there's no such thing as free will, which seems like a fairly straight forward assumption, but is it in fact true?

Yes, it is true, assuming we are talking about libertarian free will.

The question is, given a set circumstances involving a plurality of possible choices, and even if, due to dualism, the outcome of that choice isn't predetermined by any physical restrictions, would I always make the exact same choice anyway?

If the answer is yes, I would always make the exact same choice then in what way is it not identical to determinism?

If on the other hand the answer is no, I wouldn't always make the exact same choice, then don't my choices appear to be unpredictable, irrational and neurotic? There's simply no way to know what I'm going to do next.

If there's a third option, what is it?

Yours is a common argument from those who oppose free will:

• Everything which exists is either determined or random
• Free choice is by definition not determined or random
• Therefore, free choice does not exist

The "third option" is that we are the masters of ourselves and our choices, and that we choose according to our will (i.e. agent causation). For example, if my choices for lunch were a hamburger, pizza, or a gyro, there is nothing which says that, at the time of my choice, I was unable to have chosen differently. I am free to choose whichever of the three I want, and I am not deterministically bound in my choice.

 

[zippy2006]

There is also the question of how you could validate the idea...

The objections that you give apply equally to determinism. Your error is in thinking that you have some decisive way to adjudicate between the two.

For the person who believes in free will, the adjudication comes through direct experience of free choice, or "intellection," as well as consequent belief in responsibility, fault, merit, etc.

For example, if the determinist thinks that people make true mistakes that they could have avoided, then he is contradicting himself, and he is constantly contradicting himself.

 

[partinobodycular]

You could also say that God knows the outcomes of every possible choice you could make in all possible situations, but it's up to you which branch of the possible realities you choose to go down. Not sure it helps, but...

This brings up a point that I wanted to raise after reading one of your previous posts. You seemed to suggest that reality was either deterministic or random, but isn't there a third possibility that it's probabilistic. But for the life of me I can't figure out how such a probabilistic system would work. What determines which branch I take? What "hidden variable" makes me take this branch rather than that branch? And if there is no hidden variable then doesn't the system essentially default back to being random. It's just that all possible branches are taken and who the heck knows why I'm in this one. And once again I seem to lack free will. Nothing that I did put me in this branch, I just am.

The only way that I can begin to account for free will is solipsism, but that's a completely different topic, and one that only crazy people seriously consider. Which is why I consider it.

 

[partinobodycular]

Yours is a common argument from those who oppose free will:

• Everything which exists is either determined or random
• Free choice is by definition not determined or random
• Therefore, free choice does not exist

I am definitely open to other possibilities, and if you have one to present that would be awesome, because unfortunately I can't seem to wrap my head around it.

Simply invoking a magical force called free will doesn't really clarify it for me. How does this free will work?

If reality isn't deterministic and it isn't random, then what other choice is there? I love a mystery...and this is a good one.

 

[Cormack]

The argument is that the free will experience we have is illusory or mistaken.

Like how child abusers argue that moral intuition is an illusion.

Felt morals are, by definition, subjective, whether you think there is some objective source of morals or not.

Felt morals are from subjects sensing an objective realm of moral values and duties. The philosophically amoral however deny that this objective dimension exists, even while experiencing the objective moral values themselves. They have undercut their own means of understanding reality, like how you have with the experience of libertarian free choice.

it seems to me that at any particular time I am the product of my genetic inheritance and its interaction with my environment over my life,

Generic predispositions aren’t divine predestination (or any kind of determinism.)

that's what makes me who I am and determines how I feel at that point. If my choices were not determined by who I am and how I feel at that point, they wouldn't be my choices ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Influences and experiences don’t cause your choices, rather they influence and inform you. The decisive reason of any choice is the chooser. Having genetics and past experiences aren’t going to do away with your own ability to choose.

Not only are they unreliable epistemic guides, but our memory and recall of them is also unreliable,

I’m not writing about your memory of moral experiences or your memory of libertarian choice, rather I’ve written about the immediate experience itself. You have direct access to these things, making them the absolute best guide to knowledge.

We do this kind of thing all the time for entertainment - we can get intense emotional stimulation and satisfaction from movies, books, stories, etc.,

As people receive a sense of protection and satisfaction over determinism. Worse still they can feel helpless and unchosen by a God who has already decided they are doomed, these users are on CF daily. The big difference between philosophical determinism versus movies, music and books is that people can lay those things down for what they are, rather than insist they are the secrets to the hidden workings of the universe.

Books, movies and rollercoasters aren’t examples of mental compartmentalism, while believing every choice you make is already decided (while in the act of deciding yourself) is near insane for believers willing to contemplate the thing.

Not inconsistent at all. Just an acknowledgement that how we feel things are is not necessarily how they are.

Living as though you’re making choices while believing you don’t make choices is the definition of inconsistent.

It's not a rejection of the experience,

It’s a rejection when you experience freewill as being libertarian, yet deny that libertarian freewill exists. Again, it’s rejecting your own lived reality by definition.

Do you accept all experience without question? Do you believe that Yuri Geller can really bend spoons with his mind? Have you never had an experience you later found to be mistaken?

I’d most likely view that with scepticism because TV often shows fantastical things that aren’t real. Sure experiences can be mistaken, but that’s not much to go on when you have daily experiences and can accurately glean the world through those things.

Just because someone mistakes a thing by sight, I wouldn’t go so far as to deny that the eyes are a window into seeing the real world and gaining some measure of knowledge from it.

Errors in hearing, sight and even on moral things doesn’t invalidate the experience itself, just having the tools help properly basic beliefs arise around those tools. Likewise, having the experience of choice or that you and I could have done differently in any given situation is the foundation of knowledge.

When you reject those things you aren’t rejecting memory or spoon bending, you are rejecting human knowledge in its most accessible form.

Determinism doesn't make you some kind of amoral robot; it means you're the person you are because of your inheritance and life experiences

That’s not the standard definition of determinism though. Determinism is about your choices having been determined by external factors beyond your own control.

IOW, you can live normally without accepting incoherent libertarian free will.

You could. You could live normally without believing in objective moral values and duties too, you’d end up denying your own lived experiences and describing them as an illusion in conversation however.

It’s not an intellectually genuine way to live imo.

Many accept various forms of compatibilist free will - such as accepting that the feeling of free will may be illusory, but is useful enough in practice that it doesn't matter.

That’s just word games to get you back into the safety of determinism though.

Accepting that your moral experience is a product of chains of events ultimately beyond your control doesn't stop you from feeling that some things are right and some things are wrong and feeling appropriate responses when you take right or wrong actions.

You’re misunderstanding the argument again. I’ll try one last time.

Believing that your moral experiences, experiences felt as being objective, to then believe that they are illusory (therefore not objective,) that’s a denial of your own lived experience.

To restate the earlier point. The moral experience is a certain type of knowledge, immediately experienced knowledge about the world in which we live. Denying that type of knowledge as an illusion leads into denying similar types of immediately experienced knowledge as being illusory too.

I would group moral experience along with other emotional experiences, as feelings that represent a state of mind, and group the experience of free will separately, as an experience that is supposedly a reflection of how the world works.

Are you an atheist?

 

[partinobodycular]

What do you mean by a dualistic reality?

This is asking me to do something that I am definitely not qualified to do...define dualistic. For me personally it simply implies that the mind and body are two separate and distinct things, and the former isn't simply a byproduct of the latter. I'm sure that there's a far more nuanced definition and I'm perfectly willing to defer to someone else's expertise on the subject.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

The objections that you give apply equally to determinism. Your error is in thinking that you have some decisive way to adjudicate between the two.

I haven't suggested that there is some decisive way to decide between them. I just pointed out why libertarian free will seems logically incoherent. a non-dualist view can be falsified by strong evidence for dualism; I can't, off the top of my head see how dualism can be falsified, but Occam's razor applies - it is unevidenced and unnecessary.

For the person who believes in free will, the adjudication comes through direct experience of free choice, or "intellection," as well as consequent belief in responsibility, fault, merit, etc.

Sure. The same applies to a range of pseudoscientific, superstitious, and magical beliefs. People experience them as real and build whole networks of belief around them.

For example, if the determinist thinks that people make true mistakes that they could have avoided, then he is contradicting himself, and he is constantly contradicting himself.

Sure, but determinists are human too and typically imbued with the mores of the cultures they grew up in; that stuff is hard to shake off if you're the kind of determinist that thinks that's important. But you can be a determinist that knows and understands that it is a contradiction and that it's hard to avoid. Humans are good at that sort of thing - we constantly tell ourselves that we should do this and that (e.g. for health and fitness), but at the same time understand that we're unlikely to make more than the odd token effort.

I don't know what you mean by a 'true' mistake, but there's a difference between a mistake as something that would have been better not done, and a mistake that could have been avoided. But whether you believe in libertarian free will or determinism, it's not possible to undo what has been done, and with both it's possible to take steps to avoid making similar mistakes.

 

[partinobodycular]

Generic predispositions aren’t divine predestination.

Is there an actual difference, or is the mundane merely mischaracterized as sublime.

 

[zippy2006]

I am definitely open to other possibilities, and if you have one to present that would be awesome, because unfortunately I can't seem to wrap my head around it.

Simply invoking a magical force called free will doesn't really clarify it for me. How does this free will work?

If reality isn't deterministic and it isn't random, then what other choice is there? I love a mystery...and this is a good one.

Those who are unfamiliar with this issue bring very many assumptions to such questions, and I am not interested in trying to disentangle them. It takes a long time.

What I will say is that calling freedom "magical" is altogether arbitrary and question-begging. Freedom is no more magical than randomness or determinism, especially given quantum discoveries, and none of the disjuncts are demonstrably true.

How does this free will work?

When a determinist or quasi-determinist asks that question what they are really asking is, "How does free will work in terms of deterministic causality?" The questionable inductive inference is so ingrained in the determinist's psyche, that they just automatically think in those categories. As I said, untangling those assumptions is quite difficult. Nevertheless, someone with adequate training in logic will be able to identify how thoroughly question-begging the determinist's approach is.

 

[partinobodycular]

Living as though you’re making choices while believing you don’t make choices is the definition of inconsistent.

Isn't it also inevitable?

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

This brings up a point that I wanted to raise after reading one of your previous posts. You seemed to suggest that reality was either deterministic or random, but isn't there a third possibility that it's probabilistic. But for the life of me I can't figure out how such a probabilistic system would work. What determines which branch I take? What "hidden variable" makes me take this branch rather than that branch? And if there is no hidden variable then doesn't the system essentially default back to being random. It's just that all possible branches are taken and who the heck knows why I'm in this one. And once again I seem to lack free will. Nothing that I did put me in this branch, I just am.

The only way that I can begin to account for free will is solipsism, but that's a completely different topic, and one that only crazy people seriously consider. Which is why I consider it.

Probabilistic is a form of random where the distribution of possible outcomes is uneven - I say that because that's how the randomness of quantum mechanics works (assuming you don't prefer a deterministic interpretation!). The wavefunction collapses to a particular outcome at random, but with a probability described by the square of the amplitude of that outcome in the wavefunction.

In QM, hidden variable interpretations seem to imply nonlocal interactions, which makes some physicists uncomfortable, and Bell's inequalities showed that certain kinds of hidden variables won't work, so they're not the most popular interpretation.

'Many Worlds' is deterministic and accounts for the probabilistic nature of quantum measurement (by 'self-locating uncertainty', or as I think of it, the lottery effect).

 

[zippy2006]

I haven't suggested that there is some decisive way to decide between them. I just pointed out why libertarian free will seems logically incoherent. a non-dualist view can be falsified by strong evidence for dualism; I can't, off the top of my head see how dualism can be falsified, but Occam's razor applies - it is unevidenced and unnecessary.

But I just noted that the same objection applies to determinism. How do you propose determinism could be falsified? And if neither can be falsified, then why think that this is a special problem for LFW?

Sure. The same applies to a range of pseudoscientific, superstitious, and magical beliefs. People experience them as real and build whole networks of belief around them.

Not really. Science itself presupposes freedom (as does any adequate account of knowledge).

But you can be a determinist that knows and understands...

Again, even this much is false.

But you can be a determinist that knows and understands that it is a contradiction and that it's hard to avoid.

The relevant question is whether it is possible to avoid, and this question underwrites the false equivalence of these sorts of analogies that you propose:

Humans are good at that sort of thing - we constantly tell ourselves that we should do this and that (e.g. for health and fitness), but at the same time understand that we're unlikely to make more than the odd token effort.

I don't know what you mean by a 'true' mistake, but there's a difference between a mistake as something that would have been better not done, and a mistake that could have been avoided.

A mistake that someone can be held accountable for. Can you hold someone accountable for things they were physically incapable of avoiding?

Building off of this notion of a (true) mistake, knowledge itself presupposes the ability to make mistakes, the ability to be correct or incorrect, and the ability to assert things truly or falsely. It presupposes the (free) ability to have one's thesis correspond or not correspond to what is true. If we can't fail, then we can't succeed, and if we can't succeed, then we can't have knowledge, and if we can't have knowledge, then determinism cannot be known, nor can it even be "true" in a real epistemic sense. This is because the proposition that we use to represent its meaning cannot have the crucial quality of truth-indeterminateness that propositions are required to have (what the Medieval logicians termed 'enuntiabilia').

 

[Chesterton]

This is asking me to do something that I am definitely not qualified to do...define dualistic. For me personally it simply implies that the mind and body are two separate and distinct things, and the former isn't simply a byproduct of the latter. I'm sure that there's a far more nuanced definition and I'm perfectly willing to defer to someone else's expertise on the subject.

That sounds like a good definition for this thread. I'd agree with it. Then...

The question is, given a set of circumstances involving a plurality of possible choices, and even if, due to dualism, the outcome of that choice isn't predetermined by any physical restrictions, would I always make the exact same choice anyway?

I think the question answers itself - if you're not restricted, then you're not restricted. You would not necessarily always make the same choice.

If on the other hand the answer is no, I wouldn't always make the exact same choice, then don't my choices appear to be unpredictable, irrational and neurotic? There's simply no way to know what I'm going to do next.

Unpredictable? Yes, usually. Irrational and neurotic? Only if you are irrational and neurotic, which we all may be capable of being at times.

 

[partinobodycular]

Those who are unfamiliar with this issue bring very many assumptions to such questions, and I am not interested in trying to disentangle them. It takes a long time.

This is no doubt true, and I am no doubt coming into it with a great many assumptions. But I'm also trying to come into it with an open mind. I'm just asking for a little help.

What I will say is that calling freedom "magical" is altogether arbitrary and question-begging.

"Magical" in this case simply means that I don't understand how it works, and I really do want to. This may be due to a shortcoming on my part, but not one that I'm unwilling to admit or reconsider.

When a determinist or quasi-determinist asks that question what they are really asking is, "How does free will work in terms of deterministic causality?"

Again, I have absolutely no doubt that you're right. I definitely come into this discussion with a set of preconceptions. As I assume that you do as well. If we agreed then it really wouldn't make for a very productive discussion, we'd just complement each other on our profound wisdom and commiserate over all the hopelessness of the ignorant people.

But maybe we can get past that.

 

[partinobodycular]

I think the question answers itself - if you're not restricted, then you're not restricted. You would not necessarily always make the same choice.

But if we're talking about a mind/body dualism, then the lack of physical restrictions doesn't necessarily imply that the mind doesn't have its own restrictions. You wouldn't randomly kill someone for example, which means that your mind must be operating under some form of restrictions. So the question is, given the same set of circumstances, would you always make the same choice? If the answer is yes then isn't that simply another form of determinism? If the answer is no, then aren't your actions merely random?

 

[partinobodycular]

Unpredictable? Yes, usually. Irrational and neurotic? Only if you are irrational and neurotic.

But now you've introduced a restriction, while your actions may be unpredictable they will not be irrational nor neurotic. If you can introduce one restriction, then why not more? Just how unpredictable are you?

 

[Occams Barber]

We have about as much free will as a rock. Rocks and people are both governed by the known and unknown rules of physics. Neither has the power to change these rules or their outcome. If the rules of physics are deterministic then so are our actions.

The concept of Free Will is simply a convenient explanation for a concept we have difficulty accepting.

OB

 

[SelfSim]

This is no doubt true, and I am no doubt coming into it with a great many assumptions. But I'm also trying to come into it with an open mind. I'm just asking for a little help.
...
Again, I have absolutely no doubt that you're right. I definitely come into this discussion with a set of preconceptions. As I assume that you do as well.

Causality is assumed as a constraint in your hypothetical:

The question is, given a set of circumstances involving a plurality of possible choices, and even if, due to dualism, the outcome of that choice isn't predetermined by any physical restrictions, would I always make the exact same choice anyway?

If the answer is yes, I would always make the exact same choice then in what way is it not identical to determinism?

If on the other hand the answer is no, I wouldn't always make the exact same choice, then don't my choices appear to be unpredictable, irrational and neurotic? There's simply no way to know what I'm going to do next.