Free will and determinism

[Bradskii]

I agree, with the caveat that the exact circumstances can only happen once, so it's kind of tautological...

It only needs to happen once. And then the question asked: 'Why did that happen?'

And then there can only be one answer. Even if we don't know what it is, there can only be one answer.

 

[Neogaia777]

I agree, with the caveat that the exact circumstances can only happen once, so it's kind of tautological...

We do our best to recreate them in a lab, but you are right though, the exact, exact same set of circumstances may only be able to happen once, if you're talking about everything, etc.

I do believe we can recreate them well enough to know it must be true though, etc.

Take Care.

 

[Ana the Ist]

Again, if conditions are the exact same, or you could roll back time for the person in your two door experiment, or reset their memory, making them the exact same person each time, and all other conditions are the exact same, the decision of what door they will choose will have already been decided, and if you were able to back it up and repeat it again the exact same, they will choose the same exact door again 100% of the time the exact same.

Since you're including temporal factors, you're describing a situation which cannot happen.

This makes evidence impossible and the premise, mere assumption.

It is only by changing something that you can possibly alter or change their choice,

Choice.

if you run the conditions again the exact same, etc.

If we do something that can't ever be done, we can prove determinism, unless another effects results, in which case you'll assume some unknown cause was unaccounted for....and claim determinism is true regardless.

Why are you not understanding this?

Again, what part do you think I'm not understanding?

I offered you a sound explanation of why inductive reasoning isn't logic. You said you didn't want to bother with philosophers. It's an extraordinarily short argument against the logic of induction.

So you can say "it's the law of the universe" but it's not.

 

[Ana the Ist]

@Ana the Ist

Were you drunk or something when you were drawing up or thinking up those pictures?

No...I was using my finger on my phone, and a memo taking app that came with the software lol.

If there's some part eluding you, just ask, I'll explain.

Anyway, in the real world we do have a ton of different causes going on or happening all of the time, but if we really were capable of fully understanding them all, and how they are all working together always, then we'd be able to predict/know just one predictable result/effect for that, etc.

Really? We'd be able to predict left or right?

What sort of cause differentiates between the two? If that's a question you think is too easy....just scale up the 2 door thought experiment to the 100 door thought experiment and tell me why door 41 (for example) would always be chosen.

And so far, in any lab experiment that I know of that has attempted to reproduce this thus far, etc, it never, ever happens, etc, showing that determinism is the most likely explanation for things, etc, since you can't have all the exact same conditions, and have it ever produce different results ever, etc.

You apparently haven't ever heard of a bimodal distribution.

Whereas if free will were true, then it should be able to, but it doesn't, etc,

What does the word "it" refer to exactly in your statement above?

Free will only ever refers to human behavior....not the temperature at which water freezes.

 

[Ana the Ist]

@Ana the Ist

And I'm sorry

There's no need to apologize.

I've been on both sides of this discussion, I understand that sometimes even very rational people can become utterly convinced without a shred of evidence. It happens to all of us.

 

[Ana the Ist]

I agree, with the caveat that the exact circumstances can only happen once, so it's kind of tautological...

It's not tautological....it's an unknown unknowable.

Not even wrong - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

It describes an argument or explanation that purports to be scientific but uses faulty reasoning or speculative premises, which can be neither affirmed nor denied and thus cannot be discussed rigorously and scientifically.

It's pure speculation without any possible manner of verification or falsification.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

We do our best to recreate them in a lab, but you are right though, the exact, exact same set of circumstances may only be able to happen once, if you're talking about everything, etc.

There's no 'may' about it. Similar circumstances can occur again, but not exactly the same circumstances (because, for example, that means occurring at the same point in spacetime).

I do believe we can recreate them well enough to know it must be true though, etc.

Not for biological organisms.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

It's not tautological....it's an unknown unknowable.

Not even wrong - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

It describes an argument or explanation that purports to be scientific but uses faulty reasoning or speculative premises, which can be neither affirmed nor denied and thus cannot be discussed rigorously and scientifically.

It's pure speculation without any possible manner of verification or falsification.

A particular event in spacetime is unique. You can refer to it more than once, but it only occurs once.

 

[Neogaia777]

There's no 'may' about it. Similar circumstances can occur again, but not exactly the same circumstances (because, for example, that means occurring at the same point in spacetime).

Yet you believe that if we could do that, that the exact same thing would just happen again, right?

And you base that on "what" now exactly?

Not for biological organisms.

Why not? All your doing is making it more complex, etc, but it's still just all made up of a bunch of causes, antecedent conditions, and results and/or causes and effects.

On what basis do you think it changes for biological organisms/systems only, etc?

You think there's something much more "special" about them, other than just being more complex?

You don't think there's anything beyond just the physical matter or material, do you?

Some kind of "spirit" or "ghost in the machine" for biological organisms, etc?

And where do you draw that line also? I mean there are very, very simple biological organisms, like cells, and some might argue molecules, that I think you'd agree behave very, very much deterministically, etc. So what makes more complex ones so much more different? Other than just being a combination or combining of those or being much more complex? Because it sounds like your bordering on some kind of spiritual and/or religious belief here to me, etc.

Just tell us plainly what we know you already think about it, and take your firm, clear stand on that, and don't be afraid to disagree with other fellows that might be from your own camp or crowd here on it, etc.

I gotta say though, I only wish most from my own camp or group, or other people on here, were half as loyal and afraid to disagree with one another than most of your group was on here though, etc.

Or on second thought, maybe I don't wish that maybe, etc?

I guess it could be a sign of weakness or a sign/show of strength, depending, etc.

Take Care/God Bless.

 

[Neogaia777]

It's not tautological....it's an unknown unknowable.

Not even wrong - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

It describes an argument or explanation that purports to be scientific but uses faulty reasoning or speculative premises, which can be neither affirmed nor denied and thus cannot be discussed rigorously and scientifically.

It's pure speculation without any possible manner of verification or falsification.

Wrong. We can recreate it on much smaller and simpler scales in a lab most of the time, etc. And there's nothing any more special about a more complex system/form, etc. Unless you're saying there is, etc. But also like I said to @FrumiousBandersnatch, that borders on a almost having a spiritual or religious belief, etc.

You both believe humanity is "special" somehow, etc, just because they are a more complex combination of these, etc.

But we all know that in reality, you just don't want to think or believe that about yourselves in all actually, etc.

And this is where you guys, and some (many) so-called believers on here, are really no different, and are exactly the same, etc.

Take that belief that you are somehow special, or more important than other life, or other lifeforms to the grave, etc.

How dare you suggest that we are all just only small cogs in that, etc.

"I" am not "small" after all, and how dare you suggest that, etc.

And if you do, I will mock or insult your intelligence by drawing what looks like a two year olds picture drawings for you to try and explain it to you, etc. Nevermind that I'm completely wrong, and my two year old picture drawings only show just how basic I think, and how truly small I am, etc, I'm insulting you by them here, remember?

God Bless.

 

[Neogaia777]

I'm out for a while.

And let's just see if any of the rest of you on here will ever have the cahones to dare disagree with one another when we all know you already do about this subject in particular on here, etc.

Until then, have fun by yourselves for a while, etc.

I've done tried to explain from my perspective in a hundred different ways already, and I don't know any other way to put it, etc.

Now let's see if the obvious two contenders on here will ever dare to disagree or actually confront one another about a thing where it's obvious they disagree on here or not, etc.

Until then, I'm done with these childish games for now, etc, and I'm out for a bit, etc.

Have fun.

God Bless.

 

[Bradskii]

On what basis do you think it changes for biological organisms/systems only, etc?

You can repeat an experiment any number of times, and if you can control all the variables, then you'll get the same answer each time (the accuracy of your results will depend on your equipment of course). But the hypothetical thought experiment to consider a personal decision made under exactly the same conditions is just that. A hypothetical. It's not possible to run an experiment on it because you cannot control the variables. There'll be new antecedent conditions. The obvious one being that the test subject has already done the experiment before.

Unfortunately, a lot of people have difficulty with hypotheticals. They'll say exactly what I just did about a test. But it's not a test. It's equivalent to watching a film being rerun. If Michael kills Freddo the first time you watch The Godfather, he's going to kill him the next time as well. And every subsequent time.

I'm reminded of the film The boys From Brazil when Gregory Peck, playing Dr. Mengele, had cloned Hitler a few dozen times and set up each boy in the same type of circumstances that Hitler himself grew up, in the hope that one of them would turn out to be a new incarnation of the Fuhrer. But of course, the circumstances are similar, but not exactly the same. So the experiment was really doomed from the start.

 

[Neogaia777]

You can repeat an experiment any number of times, and if you can control all the variables, then you'll get the same answer each time (the accuracy of your results will depend on your equipment of course). But the hypothetical thought experiment to consider a personal decision made under exactly the same conditions is just that. A hypothetical. It's not possible to run an experiment on it because you cannot control the variables. There'll be new antecedent conditions. The obvious one being that the test subject has already done the experiment before.

Unfortunately, a lot of people have difficulty with hypotheticals. They'll say exactly what I just did about a test. But it's not a test. It's equivalent to watching a film being rerun. If Michael kills Freddo the first time you watch The Godfather, he's going to kill him the next time as well. And every subsequent time.

And, unfortunately, a lot of people just don't like thinking about themselves and their own lives in this way. That I think, above any and all other reasons/causes, has gotta be the number one cause/reason for people from any and all camps just flat out dismissing it or denying it or rejecting it, etc.

But I'm glad you can show some humility at least @Bradskii

Take Care Man.

 

[Neogaia777]

@Bradskii

I'm actually binge-watching a few TV shows/series right now, and think I'm just going to go back to that for a bit. I'm kind of losing my marbles and my patience a little bit here anyway, etc. Time to take a break for a little while I think.

Current one I'm onto right now is "The Expanse", etc, good show so far, I'm enjoying it so far. I didn't get a chance to watch it before, so I'm doing it now.

Anyway, Later man.

 

[Ana the Ist]

A particular event in spacetime is unique. You can refer to it more than once, but it only occurs once.

Sure...and there's just too many illogical and unfounded assumptions. Wanna go through some?

1. Whatever we can state "is true" regarding reality will continue to be so, in the future. This empty assertion is essentially the cornerstone of the whole idea, and while it seems highly probable for atoms (for awhile anyway)....determinism isn't a term to describe the behavior of atoms. It's a term to describe the behavior of people.

2. There's some meaningful difference between genetic/experiential architecture of personality, reasoning capabilities, and their direct confluence to the creation of choices.....and free will. No...we wouldn't call that free will, free will for some reason has to involve thought experiments about time travel and precisely controlled causal factors lol.

3. Any number of causes can go into creating an effect but only one effect can ever possibly result from innumerable causes. Why? Well determinists aren't going to tell us....I suppose we had better simply take it on faith.

4. The time travel thought experiment could potentially result in a different outcome disproving determinism. I daresay that even under such fantastical circumstances as would be required to prove determinism, if those circumstances resulted in a different outcome, then the assumption of the determinists here would be that determinism is still correct and an unknown uncontrolled "cause of the gaps" snuck it's way into the time travel experiment. This essentially renders the entire idea completely pointless, the thought experiment a waste of time, and determinism a concept of faith....not evidence.


And finally, the only reasonable conclusion.

5. As far as descriptive conceptions of human behavior go....we know that free will inevitably creeps it's way back into our entire consideration of our interactions with one another, arguably making it superior as a description in basically every way possible.

 

[Ana the Ist]

I'm out for a while.

And let's just see if any of the rest of you on here will ever have the cahones to dare disagree with one another when we all know you already do about this subject in particular on here, etc.

Until then, have fun by yourselves for a while, etc.

I've done tried to explain from my perspective in a hundred different ways already, and I don't know any other way to put it, etc.

Now let's see if the obvious two contenders on here will ever dare to disagree or actually confront one another about a thing where it's obvious they disagree on here or not, etc.

Until then, I'm done with these childish games for now, etc, and I'm out for a bit, etc.

Have fun.

God Bless.

I'm not certain if you were referring to me, but half this forum has me on ignore.

 

[Ana the Ist]

Wrong. We can recreate it on much smaller and simpler scales in a lab most of the time, etc.

Again, what is "it" in this statement?

I don't want to tell you that you're wrong only to learn you're referring to freezing water into ice cubes here.

I would suggest that since the term determinism and it's counterpart "free will" describe human behaviors in different schemas...that you try and remain focused on that....and not whatever "it" is in your statement here.

And there's nothing any more special about a more complex system/form, etc. Unless you're saying there is, etc. But also like I said to @FrumiousBandersnatch, that borders on a almost having a spiritual or religious belief, etc.

Well we are sentient...capable of more complex reasoning than any other animal and we've used that to remove ourselves from the food chain....so yeah, we're a bit special in that regard. I'm aware dolphins are relatively intelligent and crows can be taught to count to 3....but they aren't launching anything into space anytime soon so in regards to intelligence, yeah....we're a bit special.

You both believe humanity is "special" somehow, etc, just because they are a more complex combination of these, etc.

These what? Combination of these.....? What does "these" refer to in that statement?

Look, we wouldn't be having this discussion if we weren't able to conceive the larger concepts that are far outside the grasp of whatever counts as the second most intelligent species on the planet.

Furthermore, you seem to want to cling to morality....as if that makes any sense at all from a deterministic viewpoint. If you were half as certain as you pretend to be....you'd quickly stop referring to any moral good or bad....as these aren't things the determinist believes anyone chooses....and therefore the determinist cannot justify any moral labels.

And this is where you guys, and some (many) so-called believers on here, are really no different, and are exactly the same, etc.

Go on...

I don't look down on the faithful.

Take that belief that you are somehow special, or more important than other life, or other lifeforms to the grave, etc.

Special? Yes....the intelligence alone makes us special (some of us anyway). I also think the peregrine falcon is special for having the fastest top speed....and the tardigrade is special for being able to survive in extreme environments.

More important? Not a consideration I've made in this discussion. Perhaps you're projecting because of that need to cling to moral judgements.

And if you do, I will mock or insult your intelligence by drawing what looks like a two year olds picture drawings for you to try and explain it to you, etc.

I wanted to be clear on what you were saying. If it feels ridiculous....it should. The drawings weren't meant as an insult though. I spent 30 seconds using my pinky on my phone....it's not a Rembrandt.

Nevermind that I'm completely wrong, and my two year old picture drawings only show just how basic I think, and how truly small I am, etc, I'm insulting you by them here, remember?

You've stated....and I can quote you....that we would need other causes for any difference in outcomes.

Are you changing your position? Are you now accepting multiple possible outcomes from the same cause?

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

The autonomous car does not have free will because, with humans, "will" indicates desire. The word "would" is a past tense of "will". It's a bit of an antiquated usage, but remember the Kipling story called The Man Who Would Be King, i.e. the man who wants or wanted to be king. If a waiter asks you if you want the soup or a salad for starters, and you say "I'll have the salad" (I will have the salad), it means you want the salad. If you're kidnapped and help captive, you're being held "against your will". You don't want to be captive. The car at the T-junction has no such desires.

Apologies for the late reply.

OK, so there's more to free will than the "possibility of choosing differently between at least 2 options". 'Desires' are necessary too. I would suggest that (in this context) a desire is a felt need for some future outcome and, for actionable outcomes, we could call this a goal.

The autonomous car has the equivalent of desires - these are the functional goals it has, implemented as a hierarchy of tasks with dynamic priorities, e.g. primary task = bid for a job to pick up a client at a specified place & time and deliver to a specified destination - unless there is a higher priority constraint or task, e.g. fuel too low, or maintenance/repair required. High-level tasks are made up of sub-tasks, e.g. picking up a client involves an initial task of navigating to the pick-up point by the shortest or quickest route according to fuel levels, time pressure, traffic, etc. which itself involves calculating the shortest or quickest route, etc.

When the primary task is completed, its priority drops until a new pick-up request is successfully bid for. If fuel is low or traffic too heavy to reach the client within the required window, it will not bid for the job. If fuel is too low to allow bids for a certain percentage of jobs within its area, refill becomes the highest priority, and so on.

A human driver could face the same choice as your car, but he would not be acting on algorithms. He'd be acting on what he wants. Does he want to pick up the passengers on time and have good job performance, or does he want to not run out of gas or electricity? And a human could do many other things which are not limited to any given algorithms. He could on a whim decide to quit his job and drive to the nearest pub to start drinking.

Even if I were to agree by some weird use of semantics that the car had will, there is no way I could agree that it was free, when everyone knows it was programmed to do specific things in specific circumstances.

The car is a learning system - it learns from past experience, adjusting its parameters and priorities according to their degree of success over time. So it will not do specific things in specific circumstances, because it adapts by generalisation (like an AI). This is not so different, in principle, from human behaviour.

A human also has goals (desires) consisting of a hierarchy of tasks with dynamic priorities. When the body signals to the brain that nourishment is required, a 'low fuel' state (hunger) is flagged and the 'get food' task priority rises. Past a certain threshold, depending on the priority of other tasks, it will become a primary goal.

Of course, humans are vastly more complex than the autonomous car, which was just a simple analogy. We have many more - often competing or conflicting - goals, both long-term and short-term. Our short-term goals are mainly subconscious in origin and our long-term goals are derived from social conditioning & pressure, the learned deferment or suppression of short-term goals, and planning (e.g. visualising a future self). We can select between competing short-term goals on the basis of long-term goals.

Ultimately, our algorithm isn't very complicated - we select our course of action according to the strength of our motivations (desires, goals) at a decision point, and the strength of those motivations is dynamic (affected by mood, memory, external reinforcement, etc). We assess willpower by how well we can defer short-term gratification, or how much discomfort we're prepared to endure, in favour of long-term goals.

All this stuff is what David Chalmers called the 'easy problems' of consciousness, not because they were necessarily easy to explain in practice but to distinguish them from the 'hard problem' of consciousness (why there is subjective experience at all) for which it is not clear that an explanation is possible in principle.

 

[Chesterton]

Apologies for the late reply.

OK, so there's more to free will than the "possibility of choosing differently between at least 2 options". 'Desires' are necessary too. I would suggest that (in this context) a desire is a felt need for some future outcome and, for actionable outcomes, we could call this a goal.

The autonomous car has the equivalent of desires - these are the functional goals it has, implemented as a hierarchy of tasks with dynamic priorities, e.g. primary task = bid for a job to pick up a client at a specified place & time and deliver to a specified destination - unless there is a higher priority constraint or task, e.g. fuel too low, or maintenance/repair required. High-level tasks are made up of sub-tasks, e.g. picking up a client involves an initial task of navigating to the pick-up point by the shortest or quickest route according to fuel levels, time pressure, traffic, etc. which itself involves calculating the shortest or quickest route, etc.

When the primary task is completed, its priority drops until a new pick-up request is successfully bid for. If fuel is low or traffic too heavy to reach the client within the required window, it will not bid for the job. If fuel is too low to allow bids for a certain percentage of jobs within its area, refill becomes the highest priority, and so on.

In my reply I anticipated something about a "weird use of semantics", but I wasn't expecting something this weird. You're giving a private definition of "desire" that would apply to my kitchen toaster, to trees, rivers, rocks and everything physical. By your logic, if I drop a rock on a slope, the rock desires to roll downhill.

Can the car, which has been programmed by human minds, make a wrong decision? Is it free to run out of fuel intentionally? I ask because last week I determined that I would lose some weight by dieting, and an hour later I ate two large slices of cheesecake. Can the car drive off a cliff and commit suicide, without having been programmed by human minds to have that choice?

The car is a learning system - it learns from past experience, adjusting its parameters and priorities according to their degree of success over time. So it will not do specific things in specific circumstances, because it adapts by generalisation (like an AI). This is not so different, in principle, from human behaviour.

The car will do specific things in specific circumstances. It's just that circumstances change, and the car adapts accordingly.

This is what I'd call an argument from complexity, and it's fallacious because although the car is much more complex, it is at bottom no different from my electric toaster.

A human also has goals (desires) consisting of a hierarchy of tasks with dynamic priorities. When the body signals to the brain that nourishment is required, a 'low fuel' state (hunger) is flagged and the 'get food' task priority rises. Past a certain threshold, depending on the priority of other tasks, it will become a primary goal.

Of course, humans are vastly more complex than the autonomous car, which was just a simple analogy. We have many more - often competing or conflicting - goals, both long-term and short-term. Our short-term goals are mainly subconscious in origin and our long-term goals are derived from social conditioning & pressure, the learned deferment or suppression of short-term goals, and planning (e.g. visualising a future self). We can select between competing short-term goals on the basis of long-term goals.

Ultimately, our algorithm isn't very complicated - we select our course of action according to the strength of our motivations (desires, goals) at a decision point, and the strength of those motivations is dynamic (affected by mood, memory, external reinforcement, etc). We assess willpower by how well we can defer short-term gratification, or how much discomfort we're prepared to endure, in favour of long-term goals.

All this stuff is what David Chalmers called the 'easy problems' of consciousness, not because they were necessarily easy to explain in practice but to distinguish them from the 'hard problem' of consciousness (why there is subjective experience at all) for which it is not clear that an explanation is possible in principle.

As with two other posters in this thread, you have no argument for determinism other than a bald assertion, based on a belief in materialism. "As far as we can tell, everything operates according to laws of physics, therefore the human mind must also." But you've no evidence or argument that this is the case. And I would have thought with the discovery of QM people would be a little more open-minded.

 

[Ana the Ist]

Apologies for the late reply.

OK, so there's more to free will than the "possibility of choosing differently between at least 2 options". 'Desires' are necessary too.

I don't think desires are necessary.

They can be, but aren't necessarily.

A human also has goals (desires) consisting of a hierarchy of tasks with dynamic priorities.

And this is why the two door example is so useful.. The room is devoid of stimuli apart from a light source. There's no distinguishing difference between door left and door right apart from relative position. Without any food source or means of waste disposal....any desire to leave the room that isn't present initially can be reasonably assumed to manifest eventually. Despite all the internal, genetic, and deep psychological facets of personality inherent in genetics....I've never heard of one that results in a preference for "left"or "right" in the abstract....particularly when both choices appear to have an equal potential to fulfill the desire to leave the room. It's certainly possible that some such preference exists....but because I can't feel it (particularly because I cannot feel it, it never enters the conscious choice being made) so it's not obvious that it's going to affect the outcome so significantly that it's a certain outcome every time....you know, if such a preference exists on a subconscious level.