Free will and determinism

[Bradskii]

Life will never be exactly the same like it was an hour ago and rerun it to now.

It's never been done and it's a illusion if anyone thinks it can.

Quite right. I'll add you to the list of people I know in this forum that have a problem with hypotheticals.

 

[BeyondET]

If you deny free will, you must deny the capacity to act. Because without free will, we have an illusion of the capacity to act but since our actions are determined by prior conditions that sense of agency is a falsehood. We are acted upon by forces outside of our control, unless we have free will.

Nope, if by "free will is an illusion" you only mean to deny a wonky philosophical definition then the statement is rather meaningless. And it's quite clear because you keep waffling on whether you actually believe it, I don't think it's nonsensical to say that someone who claims it is an illusion is still stuck believing that it does exist. Because you don't just carry on as a victim of causal forces, but as if you have some say in what you think and do.

Not once have I asserted the ability to do differently as being a genuine expression of what it means to have free will, because such a definition doesn't really seem to be semantically significant. We only know what we have done in actuality, and never in potential. So any discussion of what was truly available in potential involves assuming things that we simply cannot know.

The compatibilist position isn't that free will exists alongside determinism, as I've already pointed out. It's the assertion that human responsibility is not violated by determinism. And as you are the one presenting an argument, it's up to you to defend it not up to me to prove it false. And the only reason to take determinism as you seem to be taking it is to adopt materialist presuppositions, a position you admitted is the true underlying reason for your rejection of free will. So I don't share your materialist presuppositons, your argument goes no where and I am left laughing at what passes for rationality in your mind.

The human mind is hard wired capable of illusions.

 

[Bradskii]

It was determined that humans can't regrow teeth but because of free will that might not be the case one day.

That's one I haven't come across before. We might be able to regrow our teeth...therefore free will. I'm certain that if Spinoza had been up to speed on the future of Japanese dental technology then he would have been suitably impressed. But I'm not sure he'd have changed his mind on free will.

 

[BeyondET]

Quite right. I'll add you to the list of people I know in this forum that have a problem with hypotheticals.

Hypothetical isn't real until it's not. Not saying a hypothesis can not be proven. Reliving life an hour exactly the same will never happen period.

 

[BeyondET]

That's one I haven't come across before. We might be able to regrow our teeth...therefore free will. I'm certain that if Spinoza had been up to speed on the future of Japanese dental technology then he would have been suitably impressed. But I'm not sure he'd have changed his mind on free will.

No one just determined to look into it, they chose to do so thus freely investigated.

 

[BeyondET]

Because what I posted didn't cause you to determine what to say, you freely chose your words.
A free will Spinoza Bonanza on your part that wasn't determined.

 

[Bradskii]

The human mind is hard wired capable of illusions.

You're so right. We're so easily fooled. Here's a simple one that indicates what our brains do to maintain an illusion. Touch your nose with your finger. It feels exactly like the sensation on your finger and that on your nose happened at exactly the same time. But the length of the nerves between your finger and your brain is significantly longer than those between your nose and your brain. So there should be a small but noticeable difference.

 

[Fervent]

Then we're done. You don't have any real comprehension of what free will entails. You think that simple acts as an agent proves it exists and that no free will means you cannot make a decision. And even when you do make a decision, you cannot change it. I can't waste any more of my time in trying to explain it to you. I'm tempted to close the thread, but someone else may have something constructive to add.

Again, I'm not making ontological claims you are. I'm making epistemic ones, because the ontological claims require onboarding all sorts of assumptions that we simply cannot determine. My experience is such that it appears that I have free will, so from the assumption that my experiences are basically trustworthy the simplest explanation for these experiences is that somehow I have free will. On the other hand, you assume a mechanistic universe which requires that free will be an illusion. Except your basis for that conclusion is the assumption that our experiences are basically trustworthy combined with an unjustified assumption of a mechanical universe.

You somehow seem to just know things that are beyond our ability to know, like whether or not the things that appear to be possible to us before we have made a choice are actual possibilities or simply illusory. It's wrapped up in the assumption of determinism, so by defining free will as you have combined with assuming determinism is true you eliminate free will at the level of definition/assumption. But that elimination renders the foundation for your epistemology suspect, because it means that our sense experiences are not trustworthy.

 

[Bradskii]

Again...

Yes. Yet again. If you bring nothing new to the discussion then I'm not going to keep repeating myself.

 

[Fervent]

Yes. Yet again. If you bring nothing new to the discussion then I'm not going to keep repeating myself.

Perhaps if you would address my arguments, you wouldn't just be repeating your assertion over and over again. Especially because I agree that if your metaphysical presuppositions were true, free will would have to be an illusion. There is no place in a purely mechanical universe for free will, but it seems to me that fact should make us suspicious of the assumption the universe is mechanical rather than accept the proposition that our basic experiences are illusion. So if you want my story to change, you'd be better off addressing my objections than expecting your metaphysical commitments to just be accepted uncritically as if they were self-evident facts and then complaining/getting frustrated when your assertions aren't adopted as truth.

 

[Bradskii]

Perhaps if you would address my arguments, you wouldn't just be repeating your assertion over and over again. Especially because I agree that if your metaphysical presuppositions were true, free will would have to be an illusion. There is no place in a purely mechanical universe for free will, but it seems to me that fact should make us suspicious of the assumption the universe is mechanical rather than accept the proposition that our basic experiences are illusion. So if you want my story to change, you'd be better off addressing my objections than expecting your metaphysical commitments to just be accepted uncritically as if they were self-evident facts and then complaining/getting frustrated when your assertions aren't adopted as truth.

#1089

 

[Fervent]

#1089

I suppose if you're satisfied with simply making an assertion, rather than engaging with criticism of your position, then more power to you. Perhaps one day you may develop the criticial thinking tools to question your epistemic framework from outside of your own worldview assumptions, though I doubt it.

 

[Hans Blaster]

I made no such assertion, perhaps you should take the time to actually understand my argument.

I read further down in your response and you clearly think that reaching the free will conclusion is only possible if it is rational and therefore correct.

The "data" is our sense experience directly. Because if our sense perceptions are untrustworthy, then we can't make any a posteriori conclusions.

We already know from the study of minds that our sense experience is not completely trustworthy. "Trust my senses" is already a failed notion.

Because the so-called illusion is required in coming to a conclusion at all. If our conclusions are the result of being swayed by reasoning, we must have some form of agency for that reasoning to mean anything at all.

Perhaps "perception of free will" would be a less grating term. IDK. All kinds of "thinking machines" can come to "conclusions" based on "reasoning". I would not grant *them* agency, would you?

Oh? And how did you come to that conclusion? How did you determine the external world existed and wasn't an illusion?

If you're going to go down the path of solipcism, you can go by yourself.

I can only go by what is stated, which is that we "don't have a choice." Now, if you want to read that as affirming that we have a choice, but that choice is simply irrelevant then that's your prerogative, but it seems a rather tortured read.

If you don't like "choice" read "decide" or some other such thing. (Our you could have waited until I went through another formulation of it...

Yes, but that doesn't make the conclusion a rational conclusion. Someone may believe that they have free will, but that belief is inherently irrational. Just as someone may believe that the external world is an illusion, but such a belief is irrational. And both because they are unliveable.

A conclusion reached based on the information available to the person is not irrational.

Given our apparent possession of free choice (in some limited fashion), it is rational to conclude we have free will.
Given the laws of nature and causality, it is rational to conclude that we don't have free will.

Depending on the way you weigh or are aware of the evidence, you might rationally come to either conclusion.

If you are aware of both, it is rational to conclude that we don't know if we have free will or not. Does the mind, an emergent property of a functioning brain, have the property of free choice in addition to consciousness and self-awareness? I don't know, but it seems at least a possibility.

"the mind?" Why the mind-brain dichotomy if ultimately the mind is just a by-product of the brain?

For the same reason I would refer to "the weather" which is just the by-product, or rather an emergent property, of diurnal heating and cooling of atmospheric gases over land and water. Knowing the thermodynamic state of a parcel of gas (for example the one that just passed in through my window) does not tell me what the state of future parcels of gas doing the same later today will be. For that I would need to study the collective properties of the system called "the weather".

No, but there is a reason to believe that a belief that requires denying the basic trustworthiness of our experiences is self-defeating. Which is what I am arguing, not that free will categorically exists but that the rational belief is that it does exist based purely on our sense perceptions. It's a ground-level belief, and denying it renders any epistemology suspect because it raises the queston that all of our perceptions are ultimately untrustworthy.

Our perceptions are as trustworthy as we think they are. There is gobs of work in the psychology of perception to tell us this. I didn't say believing in free will was irrational, but you seem to be saying that believing the opposite is.

I am more holistic in the matter, in that it appears clear to me that there is some immaterial aspect of our cognitive capacities but they are tied to our physical bodies in some way.

The only way to couple meaningfully to the physical body is the electromagnetic field, which is carried by photons.

But someone who adopts materialist/physicalist metaphysical commitments must deny that any such thing is possible, and deny the one statement that is essentially entirely undoubtable in our own existence. If the mind is an illusion cast by a physical brain, and has no existence of its own in some fashion then "I think, therefore I am" becomes "I have the illusion of thinking, therefore I imagine I am." Which I hope we both agree is an irrational thought.

I didn't say anything about minds being "illusion" of the brain. Mind is clearly a property of our brains. The question is whether some sort of free will also emerges from function of the brain in the form of "mind".

Looked where? How'd you determine that the physical world existed, and wasn't an illusion created in your thoughts?

Take your solipsism elsewhere, sir!

 

[Hans Blaster]

Free will and determinism

This is precisely why I have thought about objecting to the term "determinism" for awhile. (I held back because it is apparently the standard term in philosophy.) It leads people to think that determinism requires a determinizer. It does not. As far as I can tell, it is nothing more than the events of now are "determined" by the prior state of things, i.e., contingent and causal, including any randomness that arises from the indeterminancy of physical systems. So no, your belief in free will in a universe without free will of the kind you think you have does not need to be the result of some being or entity deciding anything about you.

In case anyone was wondering why I would make such a post, after getting to the end of the current list of posts there was link in the "similar threads" list that seems to have been picked up by the software because it was referring to "free will". It started like this:

We understand that God has free will. and Jesus has Free will.

If not, who is pulling their strings? Who is controlling them, as that would be THEIR God.

This person, whom I am not calling out, naming, or linking, clearly associates a lack of free will (or determinism) with having someone (with free will) pulling their strings.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

You're so right. We're so easily fooled. Here's a simple one that indicates what our brains do to maintain an illusion. Touch your nose with your finger. It feels exactly like the sensation on your finger and that on your nose happened at exactly the same time. But the length of the nerves between your finger and your brain is significantly longer than those between your nose and your brain. So there should be a small but noticeable difference.

 

[Fervent]

I read further down in your response and you clearly think that reaching the free will conclusion is only possible if it is rational and therefore correct.

Nope, simply being irrational doesn't automatically lead to false. It simply means that we are more justified in believing it to be false than to be true. If it is true, I don't believe it's possible to make any truth claims.

We already know from the study of minds that our sense experience is not completely trustworthy. "Trust my senses" is already a failed notion.

There's a difference between not completely trustworthy, and illusory. Taking the physical world as more real than our internal world leads to the awkward conclusion that no knowledge is possible since we only apprehend the physical world indirectly through our senses. So taking my sense experience as being demonstrative as genuine phenomenon is about the only thing I can do, even though the possibility remains that my experiences are in fact illusion.

Perhaps "perception of free will" would be a less grating term. IDK. All kinds of "thinking machines" can come to "conclusions" based on "reasoning". I would not grant *them* agency, would you?

I would not, which is why denying human beings have free will is effectively the same as denying we have agency. And since agency is a fundamental part of our experience, observable in the fact that even those who deny free will try to weasel around to claim that they're not denying efficacious agency, it is irrational to be skeptical that we have such agency.

If you're going to go down the path of solipcism, you can go by yourself.

I'm not, but that's where physicalism leads. And is my primary reason for rejecting physicalism as an adequate explanation of my phenomenal experience.

If you don't like "choice" read "decide" or some other such thing. (Our you could have waited until I went through another formulation of it...

Still requires active agency.

A conclusion reached based on the information available to the person is not irrational.

A conclusion that requires claiming basic experience is illusion is.

Given our apparent possession of free choice (in some limited fashion), it is rational to conclude we have free will.
Given the laws of nature and causality, it is rational to conclude that we don't have free will.

The laws of nature and causality? I'm sorry, but those are not self-evident truths. They are indirect inferences built on metaphysical commitments. So the challenge is explaining how free will could possibly exist in a world that appears to be causally ordered in some way, not to simply write off free will as an illusion because there is no way to make it fit into a mechanistic philosophy.

Depending on the way you weigh or are aware of the evidence, you might rationally come to either conclusion.

If you conclude that your basic experience is illusion, you quickly lose any ground for establishing that anything is true at all. Which is what makes denial of free will irrational.

If you are aware of both, it is rational to conclude that we don't know if we have free will or not. Does the mind, an emergent property of a functioning brain, have the property of free choice in addition to consciousness and self-awareness? I don't know, but it seems at least a possibility.

All of this displays a prior commitment to metaphysical positions with a complete lack of suspicion that those positions may be untenable.

For the same reason I would refer to "the weather" which is just the by-product, or rather an emergent property, of diurnal heating and cooling of atmospheric gases over land and water. Knowing the thermodynamic state of a parcel of gas (for example the one that just passed in through my window) does not tell me what the state of future parcels of gas doing the same later today will be. For that I would need to study the collective properties of the system called "the weather".

Mechanical indeterminism and intentional agency are distinctly different things, such that comparing one to the other entirely ignores the true issue at hand. It is not simply the inability to predict future outcomes that is problematic, but that the experience of making choices is basic to any epistemic program. Discarding it because it doesn't fit with philosophical commitments, rather than examining those commitments to see where the weakness is, is an entirely irrational move.

Our perceptions are as trustworthy as we think they are. There is gobs of work in the psychology of perception to tell us this. I didn't say believing in free will was irrational, but you seem to be saying that believing the opposite is.

Because truth claims depend on the existence of free will, so while it is hypothetically possible for free will to not exist as an ontological fact it is irrational to hold that it does as a truth claim.

The only way to couple meaningfully to the physical body is the electromagnetic field, which is carried by photons.

Oh, you've solved the interaction problem have you?

I didn't say anything about minds being "illusion" of the brain. Mind is clearly a property of our brains. The question is whether some sort of free will also emerges from function of the brain in the form of "mind".

When we boil it down, if physicalism is true then minds have to be illusions with reality being the physical operations in the brain. But that removes our ability to know reality, because we indirectly perceive such realities through our conscious experience. Calling it emergent is simply saying it is mysterious in some way, but it doesn't remove the element of illusion it just kicks it down the road. If minds do not have a true ontological status separate from the physical matter with which they interact, they are illusion. Plain and simple.

Take your solipsism elsewhere, sir!

It's not my solipsism, it's the absurd conclusion you end up with if you ruthlessly chase down what physicalism claims to be true rather than taking physicalist presuppositions as a given. Peppering in confounders like calling consciousness an "emergent behavior" doesn't remove the base fact that physicalist monism requires that in some way our conscious experience be an illusion.

 

[BeyondET]

You're so right. We're so easily fooled. Here's a simple one that indicates what our brains do to maintain an illusion. Touch your nose with your finger. It feels exactly like the sensation on your finger and that on your nose happened at exactly the same time. But the length of the nerves between your finger and your brain is significantly longer than those between your nose and your brain. So there should be a small but noticeable difference.

The signals move faster than you are able to comprehend it in real time. That isn't a illusion there is a slight difference but the mind can't perceive it.

Touch and proprioception
These larger, myelinated axons carry signals at speeds of 80–120 m/s, or 179–268 mph

 

[Hans Blaster]

Nope, simply being irrational doesn't automatically lead to false. It simply means that we are more justified in believing it to be false than to be true. If it is true, I don't believe it's possible to make any truth claims.

perhaps I should have used an additional "is" in my sentence. Rationality is based on conclusions following from evidence. Correct answers can be reached for irrational reasons and incorrect conclusions rationally.

There's a difference between not completely trustworthy, and illusory. Taking the physical world as more real than our internal world leads to the awkward conclusion that no knowledge is possible since we only apprehend the physical world indirectly through our senses. So taking my sense experience as being demonstrative as genuine phenomenon is about the only thing I can do, even though the possibility remains that my experiences are in fact illusion.

Again, I'm not going to waste any more time discussing the existence of the outside world. Of course every bit of information that reaches our minds passes through our senses, that does not mean they are illusion. (The only possible illusion we have discussed before this and the only one I thought I was discussing was whether the perception our minds have of itself and of our choices is real or unreal free will. That has nothing to do with the perception of external stimuli.)

I would not, which is why denying human beings have free will is effectively the same as denying we have agency. And since agency is a fundamental part of our experience, observable in the fact that even those who deny free will try to weasel around to claim that they're not denying efficacious agency, it is irrational to be skeptical that we have such agency.

I'm not, but that's where physicalism leads. And is my primary reason for rejecting physicalism as an adequate explanation of my phenomenal experience.

I'm not going to follow into some hole discussing whether the 'outside world' exists. That's just a silly thing to do and a waste of time.

Still requires active agency.

A conclusion that requires claiming basic experience is illusion is.

The laws of nature and causality? I'm sorry, but those are not self-evident truths.

I don't deal in self-evident truth. I deal with physics.

They are indirect inferences

~Yeah~.

built on metaphysical commitments.

No, on evidence.

So the challenge is explaining how free will could possibly exist in a world that appears to be causally ordered in some way, not to simply write off free will as an illusion because there is no way to make it fit into a mechanistic philosophy.

I admit it would be a problem to make work, but that's not something I am trying to do. I just study the laws of universe, I'm not trying to figure out how we have free will. I did not know there was a philosophy of mechanics.

If you conclude that your basic experience is illusion, you quickly lose any ground for establishing that anything is true at all. Which is what makes denial of free will irrational.

All of this displays a prior commitment to metaphysical positions with a complete lack of suspicion that those positions may be untenable.

Mechanical indeterminism and intentional agency are distinctly different things, such that comparing one to the other entirely ignores the true issue at hand. It is not simply the inability to predict future outcomes that is problematic, but that the experience of making choices is basic to any epistemic program. Discarding it because it doesn't fit with philosophical commitments, rather than examining those commitments to see where the weakness is, is an entirely irrational move.

Because truth claims depend on the existence of free will, so while it is hypothetically possible for free will to not exist as an ontological fact it is irrational to hold that it does as a truth claim.

I heard someone else make this claim. I don't know where you get this notion "truth" depending on "free will". At this point I can only think "truth" is some sort of special thing that has little to do with the truth of logic, or the notion of a bit of information being correct.

Oh, you've solved the interaction problem have you?

Personally, no. But it really isn't my problem. I'm not claiming there is some sort of immaterial (or better put, undetectable) component of mind that is *interacting* with the body. Such a thing would need a mechanism for interaction. If there is such a thing we should have found it by now given the range of energies and length scales searched. The failure to identify an interaction mechanism is strong evidence against any such immaterial component of mind.

When we boil it down, if physicalism is true then minds have to be illusions with reality being the physical operations in the brain.

Not "physicalism", just physics. Physics isn't an "ism".

But that removes our ability to know reality, because we indirectly perceive such realities through our conscious experience. Calling it emergent is simply saying it is mysterious in some way, but it doesn't remove the element of illusion it just kicks it down the road.

No, emergent properties are real things we see all of the time when many simple things group together to become something new and complex. A bunch of water molecules condensed together becomes a fluid with properties like wetness that are not the properties of individual molecules. A grouping of creatures in the same place become an ecosystem. A cloud of interstellar gas collapsed under self-gravitation becomes a glowing nuclear reactor that makes new elements and might even explode. It is on the neuroscientists and psychologists to work out how groups of neurons organize and obtain new properties to become thinking organs.

If minds do not have a true ontological status separate from the physical matter with which they interact, they are illusion. Plain and simple.

No more so that weather is an illusion. It is only an emergent manifestation of flowing air.

It's not my solipsism, it's the absurd conclusion you end up with if you ruthlessly chase down what physicalism claims to be true rather than taking physicalist presuppositions as a given.

I'm not suggesting connections to "brains in vats" or questioning "outside reality"

Peppering in confounders like calling consciousness an "emergent behavior" doesn't remove the base fact that physicalist monism requires that in some way our conscious experience be an illusion.

This is just physics (no "ist") worked up a few levels (chemistry, cellular biology, organs). New properties emerge again and again, level after level. Even something as 'basic' as chemistry can be seen as emerging from the properties of nuclei that share electrons in a single quantum state (a bond).

 

[o_mlly]

If there is such a thing we should have found it by now given the range of energies and length scales searched. The failure to identify an interaction mechanism is strong evidence against any such immaterial component of mind.

Applying the same illogical thinking to living beings, the fact that science given the range of energies employed has failed to identify the causal mechanism that explains the effect of living beings is strong evidence that there are no living beings.

A conclusion reached based on the information available to the person is not irrational.

Yes, that is the scientific method.

Given our apparent possession of free choice (in some limited fashion), it is rational to conclude we have free will.

Yes. Quite rational and very scientific.

Given the laws of nature and causality, it is rational to conclude that we don't have free will.

Not very scientific at all. In this claim you have abandoned the scientific method and lurched awkwardly into a metaphysical claim. The laws of nature and causality have not been directly observed but are only inferred. Further, you also infer without evidence and directly against contradictory evidence that man is as controlled by the same inferred observable laws as rocks thereby begging the very question at issue.

Truth, where the epistemic and the ontological cross paths, is a mind that conforms to reality. Rather than conforming one's mind to the observable data, this thread is an attempt to project one's mind and have reality conform to it.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

perhaps I should have used an additional "is" in my sentence. Rationality is based on conclusions following from evidence. Correct answers can be reached for irrational reasons and incorrect conclusions rationally.

Again, I'm not going to waste any more time discussing the existence of the outside world. Of course every bit of information that reaches our minds passes through our senses, that does not mean they are illusion. (The only possible illusion we have discussed before this and the only one I thought I was discussing was whether the perception our minds have of itself and of our choices is real or unreal free will. That has nothing to do with the perception of external stimuli.)

I'm not going to follow into some hole discussing whether the 'outside world' exists. That's just a silly thing to do and a waste of time.

I don't deal in self-evident truth. I deal with physics.

~Yeah~.

No, on evidence.

I admit it would be a problem to make work, but that's not something I am trying to do. I just study the laws of universe, I'm not trying to figure out how we have free will. I did not know there was a philosophy of mechanics.

I heard someone else make this claim. I don't know where you get this notion "truth" depending on "free will". At this point I can only think "truth" is some sort of special thing that has little to do with the truth of logic, or the notion of a bit of information being correct.

Personally, no. But it really isn't my problem. I'm not claiming there is some sort of immaterial (or better put, undetectable) component of mind that is *interacting* with the body. Such a thing would need a mechanism for interaction. If there is such a thing we should have found it by now given the range of energies and length scales searched. The failure to identify an interaction mechanism is strong evidence against any such immaterial component of mind.

Not "physicalism", just physics. Physics isn't an "ism".

No, emergent properties are real things we see all of the time when many simple things group together to become something new and complex. A bunch of water molecules condensed together becomes a fluid with properties like wetness that are not the properties of individual molecules. A grouping of creatures in the same place become an ecosystem. A cloud of interstellar gas collapsed under self-gravitation becomes a glowing nuclear reactor that makes new elements and might even explode. It is on the neuroscientists and psychologists to work out how groups of neurons organize and obtain new properties to become thinking organs.


No more so that weather is an illusion. It is only an emergent manifestation of flowing air.

I'm not suggesting connections to "brains in vats" or questioning "outside reality"

This is just physics (no "ist") worked up a few levels (chemistry, cellular biology, organs). New properties emerge again and again, level after level. Even something as 'basic' as chemistry can be seen as emerging from the properties of nuclei that share electrons in a single quantum state (a bond).

Believe it or not, Hans, I had the same reaction to the 'Brain In A Vat' analogy when I first heard it decades ago that you seem to have, because, also similar to you, I began my outook on life as a kid with a strong dose of Carl Sagan.