Does determinism really negate free will?

[Occams Barber]

True. The secular dogma that you are opposing is based on the idea that we know D with more certainty than P.

• D: Everything which exists in the entire universe is reducible to nothing more than deterministic laws.
• P: Things like personality, bias, guilt, and innocence exist.

@Occams Barber is claiming that our knowledge of D is so certain that it washes away any possibility of P, despite the fact that P stares us straight in the face every day of our lives and D is a universal empirical claim based on dozens of obscure and doubtful inferences mixed with a great deal of blind faith.

It is simply irrational to prefer D to P.

P is actually an emergent property of D

Imagine a microscope with multiple settings from sub atomic to a scale consistent with looking at an entire person:

• At the lowest setting you're seeing atomic particles acting in accord with the laws of physics
• At the next setting you're seeing atoms and molecules interacting - chemistry
• At the next level you'll see macro combinations of chemical substances - that's flesh
• The next level is entire organs
• Then we have organic systems
• Finally a collection of organic systems - aka a human being

Behaviour is simply an emergent property describing how the whole reacts to its environment. There's nothing magic about behaviour. At base it derives from the collective physical properties of an organism and if you reduce these properties to basics we're back with physics.

Change the collection of atomic particles and you have a different human being acting in different ways.

The only way to theoretically change all this is to inject some sort of supernatural thing which is able to cause the organism to act contrary to the laws of physics.

OB

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Is any physical process truly deterministic? At the bottom are quantum processes which are modelled as truly random. So even those who believe consciousness is a chemical process cannot be assured of determinism.

That depends on the formulation (or interpretation) of QM you prefer. There are deterministic formulations. The Schrodinger equation evolves deterministically. But AIUI, it's true that from our POV QM outcomes are, for all practical purposes, stochastic.

 

[SkyWriting]

You should make generalisations, because there’s an in general. You might be confusing generalisations (which are good) with stereotypes (which are bad.)

“Blacks love watermelon” is a stereotype and should be avoided, because there are lots of black men, women and children who don’t really like watermelon.

Whereas “certain kinds of minds are drawn to that [Calvinism.] And those kinds of minds tend to be argumentative” that’s an example of pattern recognition. It’s shades of an in general, made by a Calvinist no less.

imo you should be more concerned with making false claims like “nobody really understands tulip” alongside “I’ve never studied Calvinism,” because writing things like that is an example of the rabid double think that characterises the Calvinist camp.

I’ve never studied Calvinism. Doesn't say much other than I’ve never studied Calvinism. I don't remember what it refers to.

 

[SelfSim]

That depends on the formulation (or interpretation) of QM you prefer. There are deterministic formulations. The Schrodinger equation evolves deterministically. But AIUI, it's true that from our POV QM outcomes are, for all practical purposes, stochastic.

QM system models need to be such that their Compton wavelength exceeds the event horizon of that model, (when shrunk down to BH dimensions), and that they can be observed in experiments (ie: exceeding Planck dimensions).
These parameters set the (lower/upper?) limits for any hypothesised sources of quantum influence with the brain organ.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

If I'm hungry and have no money, and you offer me a sandwich, I'll probably always make the same choice to accept the sandwich. But that's not determinism. I'd always still have the choice not to accept, for whatever reason, or lack of reason.

But if you had a reason not to accept or no reason to accept, the circumstances would be different, so it would not be comparing like with like. Determinism applies to the operations of your brain too. I've often thought that the claim, "I could have chosen differently" has an implied, "If I'd wanted to", but the point is that at the time the circumstances were such that they didn't want to.

 

[Vap841]

Someone's bound to post this old gem. Might as well be me.

I guess I need to be less cryptic with my jokes like you, my #109 post did reflect my position, however nobody caught on to what I did lol

 

[zippy2006]

But how do we know P are anything more than just very complex operations of D?

It is simply a question of certitude. Which of the two beliefs possesses more certitude?

I mean, all of reality could be just very complex operations of the mad scientist who is controlling your brain in a vat, but rationality requires assessing certitude. Once you begin to fail to do that, you're at sea, and you will probably drown in irrationality.

 

[zippy2006]

D is a universal empirical claim based on dozens of obscure and doubtful inferences mixed with a great deal of blind faith.

P is actually an emergent property of D

Imagine a microscope with multiple settings from sub atomic to a scale consistent with looking at an entire person:

• At the lowest setting you're seeing atomic particles acting in accord with the laws of physics
• At the next setting you're seeing atoms and molecules interacting - chemistry
• At the next level you'll see macro combinations of chemical substances - that's flesh
• The next level is entire organs
• Then we have organic systems
• Finally a collection of organic systems - aka a human being

Behaviour is simply an emergent property describing how the whole reacts to its environment. There's nothing magic about behaviour. At base it derives from the collective physical properties of an organism and if you reduce these properties to basics we're back with physics.

Change the collection of atomic particles and you have a different human being acting in different ways.

The only way to theoretically change all this is to inject some sort of supernatural thing which is able to cause the organism to act contrary to the laws of physics.

OB

The above is a wonderful verification of my claim that, "D is a universal empirical claim based on dozens of obscure and doubtful inferences mixed with a great deal of blind faith."

 

[Occams Barber]

The above is a wonderful verification of my claim that, "D is a universal empirical claim based on dozens of obscure and doubtful inferences mixed with a great deal of blind faith."

And this statement is meaningless.

I'm happy to talk with you Zippy but it would be useful if you could give me something to work with other than these vague insults.

OB

 

[Occams Barber]

It is simply a question of certitude. Which of the two beliefs possesses more certitude?

I mean, all of reality could be just very complex operations of the mad scientist who is controlling your brain in a vat, but rationality requires assessing certitude. Once you begin to fail to do that, you're at sea, and you will probably drown in irrationality.

Beliefs don't possess certitude - people do.

I see you're still using insults as a substitute for cogent arguments.

OB

 

[Chesterton]

That's a fair point, influence and affect don't by default rise to the level of control. But I'm left wondering, what's this "me" that's somehow capable of overcoming all of those influences and biases, and then acting in opposition to them? After all aren't those influences and biases the very things that serve to form the basis of my choices in the first place? So how can I act against the very things by which I choose that act?

Well, science and philosophy don't have a clue what the "me" is, but an idea which makes perfect sense to me is that "Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High". Psalm 82:6, John 10:34. We are little gods. God created us in His image. One aspect of that is he imparted to us some of the kind of agency he has. He is uncaused, and what He does is uncaused. We have some of that same freedom of uncaused-ness in our thought life.

 

[zippy2006]

Determinism could, presumably, be falsified by good evidence for acausality, i.e. randomness.

How would you identify randomness and demonstrate that the event has no deterministic cause behind it?

But I didn't say this was a special problem for LFW, I said LFW appears incoherent.

Well if your own position suffers from the exact same problems that you are leveling at other positions, then your arguments prove too much and you haven't provided any reason to prefer your own position.

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:...

I don't see the problem - you can reason that the world, including yourself, is deterministic, yet feel that it's hard to live out day to day whatever you think a determinist lifestyle should involve - because you are not accustomed to doing so. The degree of success you have in that you will depend on the kind of person you are.

I don't think this problem is significantly different from the way people find it hard to live up to their lifestyle philosophies or worldviews in other areas, e.g. religious worldviews. How many Christians find it easy to consistently adhere to the fundamental tenets of their belief system?

But it seems to me that most people that think the world is deterministic don't feel they have to live any different to anyone else, for the most part. But I think there are times when acknowledging it at the scale of human behaviour and interaction can potentially help reduce suffering and increase wellbeing and flourishing.

The quote you responded to already answers your response, "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. . ."

Responding to the claim that deterministic self-contradiction is impossible to avoid with analogies of self-contradictions that are possible to avoid is just more of the false equivalence I already pointed out.

That's the point - what it means to be accountable. For a determinist, the individual that makes the mistake is the responsible agent that could not do otherwise in those circumstances.

But then it's not a mistake at all. You're just playing word games. To make a mistake is to do something that you should not have done. There are no mistakes on determinism, for there is nothing we do that we could have not-done.

There are many different concepts of truth, but one's thesis depends largely on one's knowledge, which is a result of experience (e.g. education) and can be correct or incorrect by correspondence to the results of observation, i.e. testing, or correspondence to a belief system or worldview (coherence truth), or according to its logic (formal truth), and so on.

Why do you assert that it requires 'freedom'? If what you have learned is correct by whatever measure is used to assess it and you assemble your thesis correctly, e.g. rationally & logically, based on that knowledge, then your thesis is likely to correspond to the truth by that measure. If your knowledge is incorrect by that measure and/or you assemble your thesis incorrectly, i.e. you make errors, then your thesis will not correspond to the truth by that measure.

Ah, but these are more word games, for you are redefining truth as the accomplishment of some stipulated goal.

At bottom here is the fact that you don't actually believe in truth, and have substituted for it a theory of mere prediction or desire-satisfaction. You think we are little more than Skinner's rats, utilizing trial-and-error to elicit some desired effect. When you use words like 'mistake', 'truth', 'correct', etc., you are really importing concepts from a different worldview, one which you don't seem to realize that you have abandoned. Anthropomorphisms aside, rats don't engage in such things.

If we are not able to contemplate whether something is true or false without our conclusion being fully determined by pre-existing causes, then we are not rational and we do not reason at all. In that case all our "reasoning" is deception (although deception itself also presupposes truth and freedom).

The proposition we use to represent the meaning of what? - truth? knowledge? determinism?

The meaning of determinism. The idea that we can have a truth-indeterminate abstract representation/proposition that is then assessed for truth is not possible on determinism. Such a notion presupposes that we be able to step outside of the causal world, pose a question, survey the causal world which we are at that moment standing over, and then draw a conclusion based on our assessment. The very ability to conceive of determinism implies an ability to stand over and transcend the causal order. Rats can't do any of this, but they still manage to fulfill some of their desires. ...So either we can truly conceive of determinism, in which case it is false (for it did not determine our conception of determinism) or else we are rats and the conception we have of "determinism" isn't determinism at all.

There is an insightful quote by George MacDonald which Petros includes in his signature:

"The difference between a man and a beast is that the man knows he's a man and the beast does not know it's a beast. And so the more a man becomes a beast, the less he knows it."​

 

[Chesterton]

But if you had a reason not to accept or no reason to accept, the circumstances would be different, so it would not be comparing like with like.

Not necessarily. I could accept or not accept under the exact same circumstances. "Circumstances" do not make decisions. Minds do.

Determinism applies to the operations of your brain too.

If you mean determinism applies fully, then if that statement is true, then that statement is meaningless and therefore untrue. You're offering a paradox which cannot be.

 

[SelfSim]

The above is a wonderful verification of my claim that, "D is a universal empirical claim based on dozens of obscure and doubtful inferences mixed with a great deal of blind faith."

Hmm ... In order to strengthen OB's point from an objective viewpoint, I'd reword your original descriptions of "D" and "P" from:

• D: Everything which exists in the entire universe is reducible to nothing more than deterministic laws.
• P: Things like personality, bias, guilt, and innocence exist.

to:

• D: Objective existence makes practical use of the notion of determinism in order to make predictions;
• P: Personality, bias, guilt, and innocence are then predictions from that objective existence.

 

[durangodawood]

It is simply a question of certitude. Which of the two beliefs possesses more certitude?...

Theres no need to choose. D and P are compatible.

 

[Larniavc]

God only steps in to somehow accomplish the later heart hardening, but not in the earlier instances.

So we agree that God subverted Pharaoh’s free will.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

The so-called 'butterfly effect' from chaos theory, describes the middle ground between pure random and deterministic system behaviours.

The 'butterfly effect' of chaos theory is purely deterministic. Chaos theory is mathematical.

 

[Cormack]

So we agree that God subverted Pharaoh’s free will.

No, I’m not sure I do. To subvert means something like “to try to destroy or damage something,” but that’s not what Gods done in the Exodus story. Even the definition that says subvert means to undermine isn’t really there, instead God wanted to “make known His power,” or to prompt an encounter that will end in the sacrificial death and resurrection of Christ.

He’s no more subverted Pharaohs libertarian freewill than a child asking “why?” constantly has subverted his parents when they get irritated or decide to discipline him. That was the parents freewill choice too, despite the childs influence.

Christ would goad and challenge the Pharisees, undermining their authority, as God would undermine Pharaohs authority as the king of Egypt.

As @enoob57 might know, having followed provisionism, “the sting operation” analogy doesn’t subvert or undo freewill in some kind of deterministic heart hardening fashion.

Wives who are lured into hiring undercover policemen to murder their husbands aren’t bereft of their freedom, rather they have exercised it to the fullest. Likewise Pharaoh used their own libertarian freewill attempting to do evil, evil God by His own will turns around for good.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

As far as the options suggested by @partinobodycular, ie: caused or random, I cannot see why randomness cannot also be 'a cause'. In fact, neuroscience, for years, used the term: 'Bereitschaftspotential' (or readinesss potential) first coined by a researcher, Benjamin Libet, to make the case that its not just the brain that displays signals of a decision before someone acts, but that the brain is actually building up activity, well prior to there even being any choices to consider.
(Libet's idea (the 1970s) more or less fell by the wayside, in the light of more controlled experimental data becoming available).

What Libet's work, and that of others, revealed is that much of the activity previously assumed to be initiated consciously is initiated unconsciously and we become consciously aware of it later. But we generally arrogate conscious agency, i.e. it feels as if it was consciously initiated (another example of felt experience being misleading).

There are some disorders where this agency attribution fails and the individual thinks their body is acting independently of them (e.g. some forms of 'alien hand' syndrome). Cognitive neuroscientists estimate that consciousness accounts for only about 5% of brain activity, and social anthropologists suggest that its major or primary role is to tie this activity together with an explanatory narrative to provide a consistent narrative 'self' to facilitate social interaction...

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

The only people who have referenced dualism in this thread are FrumiousBandersnatch and yourself. It doesn't actually add to the conversation, it complicates things considerably, and the introduction of the term is based on Frumious' doubtful claim that everyone who believes in free will is, "wittingly or unwittingly," a dualist.

More accurately, in my experience, LFW is most commonly associated with a dualist position because a degree of randomness, i.e. that some events are uncaused, is unappealing to many as an explanation for free will; i.e. how is it 'willed' if it's random? So there is the suggestion that something beyond or outside the 'limitations' of the physical world of caused or uncaused events is necessary to account for it. But there are people who think that it can be accommodated by random activity within a physical framework.

I haven't taken any polls, but that's the impression I get.