I suspect that we’re all getting tired of thinking about free will. I know I am (for the moment); like D. P. Gumby, my brain hurts. Clearly my definition of yesterday, involving whether someone could do something different were the tape of life rewound, left something out. I could simply alter it by adding the words in bold: “If on the tape rewind the person, after deliberation, makes a decision different from the one before, then that person had free will.” I thought that was implicit in the words “makes a decision,” but so it goes. But I’d also be happy to accept Sampolinski’s definition of free will offered by reader Yair, which seems roughly equivalent to mine, for both my revised definition and that of Sampolinski remove free will from considerations of “randomness” (whatever those are).
To those who maintain that, by redefining the term, we gain free will, I argue that this obviates the meaning of the term as most people understand it: that we really can make choices that could have been otherwise, even if all circumstances up to the moment of choice were identical. When someone says “I have free will,” I think that’s what she means. Redefining the term to ensure that we have “free will” seems to me to completely avoid that issue. And all redefinitions still avoid the burning question of how we deal with human responsibility in a deterministic world. Redefinition also smacks, to me at least, of trying to save the ghost in the machine by burying it under sophisticated language. We really do want to feel that we can freely make decisions. And to those who claim that we really do have free will in the classical sense, I ask this: what is the mechanism whereby our thoughts can override our molecules?
Perhaps it’s best, as some have suggested, to deep-six the term “free will” altogether. I have to say, though, that I have a bunch of smart readers and I’ve learned a lot.
But enough. I want to quickly highlight one comment by Eric MacDonald after my earlier post on free will:
I’m not at all sure that I understand the problem that is being discussed here, and in [Sam Harris’s] essay. At one level there seems to be the assumption that every event has a cause, and if we could consider all the physical inputs to my brain, there would be an entirely causal account for each and every movement, every thought, every action that I perform. So, in one sense, we could just cancel out by all the words that express our humanness, words about thought, decision, hopes, fears, wishes, dreams, etc., and just speak about inputs and outputs.
On the face of it this seems implausible, not because I have any particular distaste for determinism, but because one of the advantages of big brains and the ability to reason is that it provides us with the ability to think, conceive meaning, and then act according to the thoughts and meanings that we have or understand.
Yes, but do these phenomena, which have either evolved by selection or are epiphenomena of having a big brain, say anything about whether we can override the physical inputs to our brain by just thinking about stuff? Yes, humans have more complex brains and can impute “meaning” to things in ways that many (but perhaps not all) species can’t, but I don’t see how that says anything about our choices being “freer” than those of a squirrel who decides to forage in one area rather than another.
Just basing the lack of “free will” on the idea of counterfactuals — “Instead of doing X I could easily have done Y” — as Sam seems to do — doesn’t really take us far. Of course, once something is done, you can’t not do it. That goes without saying. So, if I write the word ‘dog’, I do it because that’s the word I chose. It seems odd to say that I didn’t choose it, but that it was somehow chosen for me by a deterministic process. Meanings don’t work like that.
Unless I’m misunderstanding Eric, I don’t know what this has to do with free will. Yes, if you write “dog”, it may have meanings, especially if you have (Ceiling Cat forbid) a beloved canid. But if you’re a determinist like Sam or myself, saying that “I chose it” is just shorthand for “it was chosen for me by a deterministic process.” If you really did choose it in a way that obviates determinism, how does that happen?
Now, I know that consciousness is a very difficult thing to understand, and not only because philosophers are bloody minded and find the idea that consciousness is just a epiphenomenon that accompanies our thoughts and actions that are somehow determined, but because it would be hard to explain consciousness as simply a byproduct of evolution. If something this prominent didn’t give us selection advantage, what on earth do we have it for?
Nobody’s sure whether consciousness is an epiphenomenon of having a sufficiently complex brain, or is a neuronal module that was actually installed by natural selection. You could, of course, make up a variety of stories about how having consciousness, in the sense of feeling like the personal “command module,” would be adaptive, but in the end it’s all speculation. But I don’t understand why the evolutionary/neuronal basis of consciousness has anything to do with free will. After all, unless you’re religious or a dualist, consciousness still involves brains, neurons, and molecules.
Now, I don’t know this for sure, and perhaps there are ways to check this empirically, but it seems to me that all our actions are underdetermined by inputs. In other words, it is possible for the individual to take the the complex meaning systems in which our lives are interlaced and respond to inputs in completely unpredictable ways, precisely because we are meaning creating beings. So that for any inputs, there are a maze of different output choices that we can make. Is this contracausal free-will? I don’t know. But it seems far more likely that it is the ability to make these kinds of “creative” responses to inputs which gives human beings such an immense selection advantage, and why human beings are now at the point of decimating the world by their sheer success.
Here I think Eric is using precisely the definition of free will that I suggested yesterday—or, at least, the modified version above. Given identical inputs, deliberation could produce different outputs. Eric claims here that it can, and thus argues that we have free will in the classical sense. (This is clear from his saying that we can process inputs in “completely unpredictable ways”). But calling responses “creative” is tendentious, for it implies that we’re really doing something to those inputs that is novel and unpredictable. To me, the “unpredictability” simply reflects our lack of knowledge, not something we do to alter outputs, and, as several readers have noted, unpredictability doesn’t make our choices free.
Further, I think the assertion that our cerebral creativity gave us an immense selection advantage reverses cause and effect. Our cerebral creativity is what was favored by selection! True, once our brains became “creative,” they became subject to novel forms of selection, but that’s a different issue.
Of course, this doesn’t mean that there is originating free will in the sense that we are absolute creators. But the ability to choose — which is what Sam wants to deny — seems to me to be built into the big brain and the cultures that big brains have created. Our repertoire of possible responses to a given set of inputs — supposing it was possible to quantify those and describe them exhaustively — is much larger than Sam’s notion of choice seems to provide for. In that sense, I think, we do have free will, and I don’t know why a scientist — whose whole raison d’être is to find the correct answers to questions by means of examining the evidence — would think otherwise.
However, I’d be glad to hear some kind of response to this. I think the whole issue of “free will” and “consciousness” (which is related) is far more complex than Sam’s ultra simple analysis suggests.
What is built into our big brains is not the “ability to choose” in the truly creative sense that Eric means, but “the ability to process a huge variety of inputs in ways that most other species can’t.” There’s a difference between an array of individuals showing many different outputs to similar array of stimuli—with those diverse outputs depending on the choosers’ genes and environments—and the ability of one mind to produce different outputs given identical inputs. The former is what Dennett means by “free will”, the latter is what I mean by the term.
So, Eric, that’s my response. Cheers.
http://wtfcontent.com/img/130200655432.jpg
We randomize the starting conditions of a football game with a coin toss. I used to randomize the order of answers on multiple choice test questions by rolling dice.
In both cases, the results coincide with predictions based on a hypothesis of randomness. Really, though, the results of each toss are determined by a complex interaction of initial conditions.
It seems that free will is like this. “Free” choices are determined by such a complex interaction of conditions in our brain that we often can’t figure out what the process is. I think “free will” is an acceptable term for that process.
Importantly, the idea that we have free will is one of the initial conditions that influences the choice we make. If we think we can make choices, we make different and often better choices than if we think we can’t. Therefore, I find free will a useful thing to think I have and to tell students they have.
After all, the “I” who might have “free will” is equally a construct, imagined, abstracted, from complex interactions of processes in “my” brain. I see no problem with such a fictional being functioning as if “I” have the equally fictional (but no more fictional) “free will.”
But is “able to make choices” the same as “having free will”?
Great post!
When one is explicit with his definitions much like you just did and gives enough context for the other to establiosh forensic integrity everything is cristal clear
No argument is possible
I salute you for behaving like a REAL SCIENTIST!
I am curious what you are teaching and where – the society absolutely needs people like you that can think streight and be direct, precise and short in their communications to themselves and others!
my comment was to barbara
You are missing the point. You can’t make better or worse choices if you don’t have free will.
If we do have free will, then certainly recognizing that could lead to “better” choices.
That is what I’ve been trying to address with the posts I’ve made. Perhaps we can carry on with the same old same old if we conclude that people don’t really, actually make choices, as many seem to assert. But I’ve yet to encounter any powerful explanations for why we can – only things like “It’s ok if we behave and react as if we have free will, because we need to.” Well, why is it ok? And why do we need to?
Seems to me we can just choose whether we have free will or not!
not really – the argument here is thast the choice itself will be pre-determined by the whole history of “the choser” whether he is aware of it or not and as such it goes against the logics of “free will”
as i posted below the question of free will does not make much sense ans we should not bother with it at all
My comment was a poor attempt at humour. I leave questions of whether free will exists to philosophers and carry on making my own choices until philosophers decide… well, something useful!
i thought so 🙂
good i clarified 🙂
i concur on the usefulness of phoilosophical pursuits 🙂
It’s not in dispute whether people make choices, in the sense that depending on the situation, they either do something or they don’t. What’s in dispute is whether there is some indeterministic factor in that choice.
As to how to deal with responsibility in a deterministic universe, I don’t really see the problem. Doesn’t “being responsible for an event” simply imply that a particular mind was part of a chain of causality leading to that event? If that event was desirable, you would then try to influence the mind to repeat the behavior. If not, you influence the mind to avoid it. Society is just a whole lot of minds interacting in that way.
You’re using “responsible” in two senses though. Certainly I am causally responsible for the any of the causal effects I have. But I’m not always morally responsible for those effects. If someone pushes me off a building and I fall on someone killing them, I am (proximally) causally responsible, but not morally responsible for their death.
We need to get to a point where conceptions of human agency requiring operation outside the causal order are just considered loony. I certainly agree with Jerry that if that is what someone means by “free will” then it doesn’t exist. So what? It’s just a bad theory of choosing and agency.
Your example of being pushed of a building doesn’t work as a refutation, as it wasn’t your mind (or any process in it) that caused you to fall, but someone else’s mind.
In fact, I’m not the one using “responsibility” in two ways, you are. To me, “moral responsibility” is just a causal responsibility that happens to involve a mind. The onus is on you to show how “moral responsibility” is something inherently different.
OK. How about this instead? You turn on the ignition of your car. Unbeknownst to you, an evil mastermind has linked the ignition to a bomb, killing dozens. You mind is causally responsible for turning of the ignition, but you aren’t morally responsible. You’re only morally responsible for some of your causal effects, even those that involve your mind.
Nope, still doesn’t work. There are two causes for the explosion: a driver turning the ignition, and the placement of a bomb. The driver (and his mind) is only causally linked to one of these causes. The other cause, which is arguably the more important one here, is causally linked to the evil mastermind – which is why he is more responsible for the explosion.
It feels like you are trying to insert “intent” into the equation. However, intent is not necessary for responsibility, nor is it sufficient.
The ignition-turner is certainly a more proximal cause than the bomb-setter, who may have set it weeks before, and there is no sense in identifying “the cause”. There are causal factors, of which my mentally-caused key turning is one. I don’t understand why you want to insist that moral responsibility is the same as causal responsibility. There are many effects for which I am not morally responsible. I never claimed that intent was necessary or sufficient. I’m only claiming that I’m not morally responsible for all of my causal effect, even restricted to one causally involving my mind/brain.
Why is the placement of blame on the “evil mastermind” and not on the turner important? (Or, why are we angry at one and not the other? Are we angry at one and not the other?) Is it because the “evil mastermind” resulted in something unwanted and the turner did not?
Or is it because there is something about the “evil mastermind” that makes him result in unwanted things – such as the “evil” part – that doesn’t apply to the turner?
Or is it, similarly to above, because the “evil mastermind” did something we tend to associate with unwanted results, while the turner did something we don’t tend to associate with unwanted results?
Or is it because we have an aversion to the “evil mastermind”‘s cape, while the turner dresses inoffensively?
I’m just musing.
And I don’t understand why you think the turning of the key was more essential to the bomb going off than the fact that someone wired a bomb into the ignition to begin with. It doesn’t matter one bit how much time there was between the events. The only reason the driver isn’t morally responsible for the explosion is because there is someone else who is clearly much more responsible, because his actions had a much bigger effect: the evil mastermind.
Then it is up to you to show this. Under what circumstances are you not responsible for the things you have caused to happen (or prevented from happening)? You know my answer: when someone else had a much greater effect on the outcome. What is yours?
Totally agree with this point
We should focus on iteraction of the minds and bodies in the system o0f human experience on a physical planet
Instead we are spending our time debating “fre will”, “god”, “economics” and other high-order intellectualizations that have very little relevance to what is going on.
Evolutionary biology should enlighten us all to the _validity_ of our discussions and “beliefs” we are holding
If we pay careful attention and learn etiology of human condition we would be talking about overpopulation, how it should be defined and what we have to change about the way we teach our children to make it easier for them in year 2050 or 2520
Instead we are waisting our time talking about “free will” and arguing if “god exists” or “god does not exist”
those who can think scientifically should not waste their time onto words that have no substance behind them
It’s not in dispute if one, as many here do, equivocates between “made a choice” and “did something; actually acted,” which I can see is actually, at bottom, appropriate to do. I meant “choice” in its traditional sense, as even Sam Harris uses it when he says “you do not choose what you choose.”
In a similar way, many people try to explain that the notion of responsibility remains intact. I’m not so sure the equivocation is warranted in this case. Should we really think of “was responsible for” as tantamount to “did”? Isn’t the whole point of responsibility that it means something more than simply “x happened”? We don’t think of rocks as responsible for rolling down hills. But we also don’t really think of other animals as responsible for things they do.
I’m saying that, if anything, we’re going to have to admit that there is no responsibility, in the traditional sense.
I said this in the last thread (and forgive me if I missed a relevant reply; I’m on vacation), I don’t think we *have* a coherent notion of responsibility.
What does it mean? It seems to me that “responsibility” allows us to praise people for doing good stuff and complain when they do bad. That’s seems to be the meat of it. And, we can still do that without free will.
As I said last thread – and I see my thoughts getting more Sam Harris-ian here – why don’t we just run society the best way we can, so that people are generally happy and healthy and free? Praising good and condemning bad works. Rehabilitating people is humane and beneficial. Once we get over the fact that we’re all biotic robots, it seems simply sensible to do what makes life better, because we are robots that *like things* certain ways over others.
I think we’re ultimately saying very similar things, although I’ve taken a rather round-about path to get there, and engaged in some probably unnecessary angst in the process.
I think my complaint about equivocation between “being responsible (in the traditional, vague, dualist sense that most people have in mind when they use it) for something” and simply “performing an action” is the same as your observation that responsibility (in the same traditional sense) is an incoherent notion. The only sense in which the word remains useful is in the quasi-poetic sense that chlorophyll is “responsible” for the green appearance of many plants – which isn’t “responsibility” as most people think of it.
I suppose my commentary hasn’t really added or accomplished much. I’m realizing that I’ve basically just been lamenting the fact that there is no “ghost in the machine,” no “me” that is contra-causally responsible for deeds or accomplishments of which I want to be proud.
I can already hear other readers typing “Well, go ahead and be proud of your accompishments. So they were a result of a ‘you’ that was a material link in a causal chain, instead of a magical ‘you’ that spontaneously produced uncaused actions. It was still you.”
I guess this was just one area where I hadn’t managed to entirely sweep away the cobwebs of my religious, “soul-y” upbringing.
Responsibility is a mental construct (part of our social instincts). Responsibility does NOT require the classical free will, we are (like many animals) programmed to be modified by social corrections. The fact that our behavior might be modified by the possibility of punishment does not require ‘free will’, it merely requires that we have a brain mechanism that weighs the output of our behaviors and acts accordingly.
My dog actively chooses actions that result in praise, perhaps treats and avoids actions that result in scolding (UNLIKE CATS WHO ARE COMPLETELY INCORRIGIBLE–JERRY), her brain functions in this regard are not really that much different, other than complexity, from ours.
What about positive responsibility? A lot of commenters take the responsibility ball and immediately run to the “punishment” goal. I understand how punishment remains valid in the absence of free will.
What about holding Newton responsible – really responsible – for calculus? It’d be a shame to lose that kind of responsibility, but it seems we probably have to admit it’s an illusion.
What does “holding Newton really responsible” really mean? The man is dead. You might be talking about giving credit for certain accomplishments, but that’s simply a form of reward. If you can retain punishment in the absence of free will, than you can retain reward as well.
Yes, I do see that, too…
I guess I’m wondering if there’s a bedrock way of claiming ownership of various deeds, irrespective of whether I’ll receive a reward (or punishment) for them.
Well, you can always reward or punish yourself.
The problem I see with the “no free will” side is that the argument seems to be one of fatalism – everything was somehow preordained because everything is assumed to be a calculable result which can in principle be traced back to the Big Bang itself. The point that in reality we would predict numerous outcomes but only one of those outcomes will prevail for any event is simply ignored. Deterministic? Absolutely. 100% the same behavior if we could magically turn back time? Hell no. Determinism is *not* the same as fatalism. As complex machines we impose some localized order within ourselves and our environment; ultimately we are deterministic in nature, but determinism does not mean we will inevitably act a certain way due to the past history. At each microsecond one of an immense number of events happen due to the ultimate quantum indeterminacy, and these events then limit the possible immense number of succeeding events – but not all of those possible events will happen, only an extremely small subset of the possible will happen. There is no possible single-event prediction on even the simplest level, much less when interactions of the most minute particles are considered. Of the practically infinite possibilities with each fleeting moment, one single possibility becomes reality. Humans (and other animals for that matter) are ultimately not as predictable as claimed. The complex interactions within a human give the appearance of what we call free will, nor is there any test yet devised which demonstrates otherwise. It is simplistic (and begging the question) to assume that somehow there is no free will because human thought is somehow ultimately a calculable thing (which I believe is not the case, but you can prove me wrong by demonstrating such calculations).
bothe “free will”, “fatalism” and “calculations” are high order intellectualizations
your way of putting a description is as good as the way of those who argue that “there is no free will”
by engaging in this kind of discussion we apply ourselves to the matters that are not important in the “grand scheme of thing”
you ask but what is “important”?
and what is “grand scheme of things?”
and “what are criteria of importance?”
these would be the questions we would want to spend our mental energies on given the world population reaching 8 billion, biodiversity rapidly dwindling, and the whole process going on an automatic pilot to some sort of rebalancing while we all argue about “god”, “free will”, “economics”, “morality” and “right and wrong”
Correct me if I’m wrong, but are you arguing about what we are supposed to be arguing about? That seems futile itself.
All these things that you appear to think of as “not worth” arguing about, have great implications in the well-being of the world’s population (human or not human). I think they are well worth discussing at the rate they are now, if not even more. They are way important to the grand scheme of things.
While I won’t object to the possible usefulness of surplus knowledge and serendipity, I do suspect that I would not really be bothered by these discussions not resulting in eternal bliss for starving children or somesuch.
I’d say that if two minds give different responses to the same inputs, then they are not identical minds. That’s even true if it’s the same physical brain, but at different points in time, or at different states of mind.
The thing is that a decision doesn’t just depend on the inputs necessary for the decision process at hand, but also on the current state of mind, which is affected by the entire history of mind and body leading up to this decision moment. Since we never know everything about this history, this makes the decision process unpredictable. But that doesn’t make it undeterministic in principle.
That’s the mistake already.
There is a strange view that is widespread in Western philosophy, that perception is passive. Perhaps it is due to Descartes. In this view, we receive inputs, and act on the inputs that we receive. That would seem to give us an equal status to rocks, with as much free will as a rock has.
But surely, that’s a false picture. We don’t receive inputs – we go out and get inputs. As a scientist, this should be obvious to you.
Our inputs are not something that happens to us, and to which we fall victim. Our inputs are under our control.
the illusion of control is an evolutionary adaptation
whether you can see it and reconcile with it with or without free will is a function of your cognitive history from birth tho the moment of you writing your post
don’t forget that words do not have intrinsic meanings that are accessed by everybody in much the same fashion
each word means something different to each of us and this is why it is much easier to disagree on definitions and interpretations – we can do it endlessly
the reality is material; it is outthere and whether you call it free will or not is important for you and your “ego” but when we look at the system of human experience and all of us as superorganism the question of free will is completely irrelevant – in much the same fashion as is the question of whether god exists or not.
It’s still a causal process though. It’s just a more complicated causal process. That’s a basic corollary of the 100% true claim that we are regular matter that obeys the same physical laws as the rest of the Universe. The worry seems to be that viewing myself as a causal process means that I lack free will, am not a chooser, or am not an agent. I just don’t see why anyone would think that though. It’s just a misunderstanding of what choosing or acting really is.
The matter that constitutes my body will mostly be gone within a few months. But I will still be here.
No, we are not matter. We are processes that are using whatever matter is available to sustain those processes.
I am an object, matter. I can go weigh myself right now if you want some evidence of my materiality. We are like the ship of theseus in that we are constantly losing some matter and gaining others, but I fail to see how that changes the story any. Identifying yourself with abstract processes seems unnecessarily abstruse for a perfectly ordinary object.
Of course, that process is an arrangement of matter. The process doesn’t go somewhere else when the matter is gone, and the matter doesn’t perform the same functions without the same process, as it were.
In addition, that process and the shape of the matter are more or less the same thing.
No they are not. You didn’t choose where you were born, nor with what genes you were born, so your first sets of inputs are entirely beyond your control. After that, every decision to go out and get inputs depends on previous inputs.
Hmmm….Another interesting thought is if there was free will would you be able to conceive of something that you have not witnessed or learned. That is, all of our behavior and thoughts must be determined by our experiences, we cannot picture a human face that we have not seen, etc.
Of course we can. We can recombine memories in new ways. We can do so randomly or by accident, or we can do so systematically.
I was thinking more of complete faces that exist.
this argument is about nothing
“i have free will” and
“i don’t have free will” are just the words
and all of the discussion is just a word play because people are not willing to establish forensic integrity – that is to be explicit about their _meanings_ before they start talking
but _meanings_ depend on the _entirety_ and _integrity_ of knowledge that have been accumulated by the speaker
this is why philosophy is “dead end”
science operates as refinement of meanings to improve its integrity and consistency
the reality is what it is: whether we call it “i have free will” or “i don’t have free will” the reality is material and _primary_ to our _ideation_ and _intellectualization_ about it
but the way we think _changes_ our reality too:
think about the fertal child that was raised by the pack of wolves and still lives with them – you think his reality is anywhere near yours and mine?
bottom line: the question of “free will” (like all of the philosophy and religion) does not make much sense and is a complete waste of time but it is not obvious and can only be understood by wasting a lot of time trying to resolve it
Just because rewinding the tape might come up with a different result does not demonstrate ‘free will’ in any conventional sense. A fully deterministic computer program with a quantum randomizer would not be considered free will by most people but would pass that test.
People who argue for classical free will have the problem of what would it actually mean in practice. If thought is a brain state, then any additional thoughts are produced by previous thoughts, i.e. a new brain state is produced by the previous brain state. If the new brain state were independent of the previous then we would not be logical, and more significantly we would be randomized (like the example above) and randomization could not be considered free will in the classical sense.
Free will is, however a useful fiction. Accepting it permits us to conveniently, though approximately, model brain states, both our own or other peoples’ (or even complex animals). And it does not rule out learning or self modification (responding to social correction or reward, for example). Even a fully deterministic computer program can be designed to modify it’s performance based on ‘punishment’ or ‘reward’.
If you choose Coke over Pepsi: is it because you have free will, or because the cells on your tongue respond more favorably, or because you associate it with childhood memories, or because that’s how your brain is wired? Does it matter?
Personally, I think it’s more than a useful fiction, it’s a predictive model. People’s behavior is not predictable, and in fact we behave as though we have free will.
Actually, the behavior of people can be predicted to some certainty. Advertising and marketing relies heavily on this. I don’t know if believing in free will is a useful fiction. It certainly has led to much bad public policy.
I love you, Jerry, and while I’m not *entirely* unconvinced by your argument, it seems to have a subtle flaw in it. You evidently assume (and please correct me if I’ve a misapprehension) that, at least on a subconscious level, everyone is certain of every decision they must make. That the process of ‘making the decision’ is one of post-hoc justifications for what they’ve already decided the instant the decision=point presented itself.
I’m not entirely certain this is at all the case. It seems to preclude whimsy or arbitrariness. It implies that no range of options are equiprobably selectable as well, that there’s always a ‘right’ answer; but almost all of us have been in a situation where the choices at hand are more-or-less equally satisfying, and where the decision involved takes on something akin to guesswork (or, sometimes, arbitrary selection). I’m not entirely convinced that, at least in these scenarios, ‘winding the tape back’ a la SJG would necessarily result in the same outcome each time.
But “whimsy and arbitrariness” is just another way of saying do something random in certain conditions. Sure, you might get a different outcome, but it wouldn’t be due to any “free will”.
Ultimately what I am concerned about is people thinking they have something they don’t and then acting on it (or assuming it exists). It’s the intersection of “free will” and public policy that is the problem. The idea that people choose to be poor, for instance. Free will (like god) means something to people. What exactly, is the question.
“But if you’re a determinist like Sam or myself, saying that ‘I chose it’ is just shorthand for ‘it was chosen for me by a deterministic process.'”
This makes out the self to be a passive object of manipulation by determinism, when in fact we are active participants in the causal unfolding of events, just as real as the processes that make us who we are. We *are* sets of behavior-controlling deterministic processes, so we’re not manipulated by them.
“Nobody’s sure whether consciousness is an epiphenomenon of having a sufficiently complex brain, or is a neuronal module that was actually installed by natural selection.”
Well, we know for sure that the neural correlates of consciousness, which carry out crucial integrative informational functions (http://www.naturalism.org/kto.htm#Neuroscience ) *were* selected for. But it isn’t clear that phenomenal experience itself (qualia) adds to what those correlates are doing in terms of behavior control. Since qualia are unobservable, they arguably can’t play a role in scientific accounts of behavior, since science always deals in public observables, http://www.naturalism.org/privacy.htm
“But I don’t understand why the evolutionary/neuronal basis of consciousness has anything to do with free will. After all, unless you’re religious or a dualist, consciousness still involves brains, neurons, and molecules.”
Quite right. Whatever consciousness is, there’s no evidence that it transcends causation. So it doesn’t endow us with contra-causal freedom – the capacity to have done otherwise in an actual situation as it arose.
“Chosen for me” isn’t the same as “chosen by me”. It’s odd to use the agential term “choose” and then foist the choosing off on something else. Choosing is something that agents do, and choosing just is a causal process that happens in brains by causal processes. Nothing about that requires that you believe that you could have chosen something different without any physical fact being different. That’s impossible. The mental supervenes on the physical, so under identical physical circumstances, the mental states will be the same.
I suppose by “redefinition” you mean various Compatibilist accounts of “free will”, agency, choosing, etc… Compatibilists don’t see their efforts as redefinition at all, but rather as attempts to get away from confused, useless conceptions of “free will” which require action outside the causal order. Compatibilists aren’t trying to save the ghost in the machine. They are trying to explain the natural phenomena of deliberative agency within the causal order.
I define free will as the capacity to think, analyze and make choices independent of natural processes i.e the constraints of physics and chemistry.
If there is no sphere of operation beyond physics and chemistry to which we have access we can have no free will. Our choices therefore, whether associated with emergent functions etc are then simply more complex but,in essence, no more free than those of an ant or any other living organism.
How could they be?
You’re yet another person who wants to assume an Incompatibilist contracausal conception of Free Will rather than argue for one. A regulatory or control conception of agency that is compatible with being part of the natural order is a perfectly live option. You really need to ask whether you have misdefined “free will” before drawing hasty conclusions.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/
“A regulatory or control conception of agency that is compatible with being part of the natural order is a perfectly live option”.
Could you explain this.
“You really need to ask whether you have misdefined “free will” before drawing hasty conclusions”.
How would you define free will ?
I wouldn’t define “free will” because I think it’s a misleading term and a crude binary oversimplification which divides the world into “free willers” and everything else. There are various levels and types of agency that are exemplified in humans and non-human organisms. Agency is a class of complicated natural phenomena. Why would we think it would be otherwise? I’m not totally up on the recent literature but Dennett’s old free will book “Elbow Room” is a pretty good account. This supplement to the main Stanford Encyclopedia article is interesting.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/supplement.html
You’d also need to look at work done in Cognitive Science on human and animal decision-making, planning and action.
I also think the interpretations of Libet’s experiments are overstated. Al Mele wrote a book recently that goes through the subject of Will Skepticism in great detail. I don’t doubt Libet’s abilities as an experimentalist but as a theorist interpreting his experiments he is hopeless. The book is called “Effective Intentions”.
Thank you
I think what Eric’s analysis misses is the issue of computation: how does the brain get from the inputs to the decision? Sam’s analysis may be “ultra-simple”, but computation is not a trivial issue even in the simplest models. Propositional logic, for example, is very simple, but computing whether a propositional sentence is true or not can be very, very complicated.
Eric’s response (and most responses) to the “no free will” position seem to assume that if there is no free will, then we can list the inputs, apply some simple decision-making algorithm to them, and have a good simulation of a human. Decades of work in AI and cognitive psych show that this is absolutely not the case (at this point in time). The most advanced AIs in the world can’t even simulate the decision-making brain of an ant. We don’t even /know/ what all the inputs are, much less how they’re coded, and we certainly don’t know how the computation happens.
The simple “no free will” position still allows for a great deal of complexity in the brain and the decision-making process. It still lets us feel like we have free will.
(A) pondering determinism vs. indeterminism is pointless as the two are completely indistinguishable.
(B) Where did this stuff about “thoughts overriding molecules” come from? “Thoughts” and “minds” are high-level descriptive terms. You might as well ask whether water waves override water molecules.
(C) The claims “I made this decision” and “the complicated interactions among molecules made this decision” are synonymous and identical, unless we invoke Cartesian dualism, which we’re not going to do, right?
(D) People are arguing that we should change our minds about the nature of responsibility on the grounds of physical determinism. Does it seem funny at all, to be told to choose to act differently because we have no choice in how we act? I find it amusing, anyway. If you think I have enough choice to make that kind of decision, then I have enough choice to be held responsible for my choices.
Actually, the whole “free will” debate often appears to be little more than a way to keep the idea of a soul alive.
“a way to keep the idea of a soul alive.”
I concur.
People are arguing that we should change our minds about the nature of responsibility on the grounds of physical determinism. Does it seem funny at all, to be told to choose to act differently because we have no choice in how we act?
Good one!
It is important to have a response to the question of free will since it is a major point of attack for religious apologetics.
As an example look at this ‘debate’ (Dawkins says it was an ambush) between Dawkins and (the odious) David Quinn on Irish radio from a few years back.
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/science/sc0086.htm
If they were a little more honest, we could just ask them to produce a clear and testable definition of free will and watch their brains melt in the process. As it is, this strategy would not work with people like David Quinn, for he would simply stump his feet and shout louder.
By the way, I don’t think there’s a consensus about free will even among theists.
My metaphor for life and will is:
We start as a ball of sticky chewing-gum and we are rolled across the carpet of life.
All kinds of fluff and hair gets glued-on. The ball gets bigger and keeps rolling.
What we are, how we intend, how we respond; is all through and of that layer of dross that stuck to us.
How about a programming metaphor:
An event (nascent signal) is fired by brain hardware and then bubbles up through our APIs. Layer upon layer of old, buggy, code bounces and wraps and influences the event. Finally it arrives at the last layer (say my most recent education) and emerges as a thought/word/deed.
All that ‘code’ is a shifting morass of influence on the basic signals. From it, depending on unknown gradients of influence that shift the function calls ceaselessly, comes our familiar sense of “I”.
I would also suggest that “I” can “will” to learn new things — adding code that will influence my future self so that future signals/events can be processed differently to the way they are now. Hence: I can alter my will.
Or not. I like to be wrong, so I can appreciate right. How weird is that?
Wont the answer depend on whether we have any truly random process anywhere in the universe (not just humans)?
I find it fascinating to read such disagreement on this issue.
The writing dog part: The reason you wrote dog is because dog was somehow primed in your brain. Why didn’t you write cat or pigmonkey?
The last line of my most recent (which I will link) post says this:
“As far as the free will debate goes, I conclude that biological brain processes create consciousness, but not the other way around.”
Which I happened to write before reading this post.
Anyway, here is my latest post. I was inspired by all these posts by Harris and Coyne and didn’t want to be left out. It was mostly inspired when Jerry Coyne noted that free will is an awful lot like god belief.
http://socialpsychologyeye.wordpress.com/2011/06/14/free-will-is-the-new-god/
Note: I work for a publisher and have limitations on length and journals I can reference.
BTW. Sorry for my shameless self-promotion. I didn’t want to reformulate my feelings and repost the entire thing here. You can respond here, if you have a response.
Let’s say that we could build Asimov-style robots of arbitrary complexity, with the proviso that we could never build them such that they had “free will”, whatever that means. They could have whatever complex responses to inputs we desired, and we might even throw in a real random number generator (a tiny lava lamp, maybe) so that their behavior was at least a little unpredictable around the margins. But, as established, they could never be considered to have “free will”.
What would be the observable difference in behavior between such a robot and a human being, for which the difference in “free will” – having it vs. not having it – would presumably be responsible?
That’s like saying let’s imagine a computer powerful enough to calculate any number except pi. It’s a nonsensical proposition. If free will exists and we have it, then nothing stops robots from having it too, and any robot complex enough to pass a Turing test must necessarily have it.
On the other hand if free will is a logical impossibility, then obviously robots don’t have it and neither do we.
So what you’re saying is that complexity is synonymous with free will? I don’t think anybody on either side of the debate thinks that’s a legitimate position.
The proposition is hardly nonsensical, because there’s no reason to believe that sufficient complexity will suddenly result in free will. There’s nothing fundamentally more complex about the brain of an elephant or of a horse but free will’s proponents don’t contend that horses and elephants have it, too. But their behavior is much less complex, as well.
Complexity and will are properly understood to be orthogonal, so it’s fruitful to consider the difference in one against identical levels of the other. What would a human being without free will be like? I’ve presented that in terms of robots, but you could say “zombies” too. It’s the position of proponents of free will that not everything with human complexity has human free will – that not every human has human free will, even. I’m simply asking what the practical difference is.
“It’s the position of proponents of free will that not everything with human complexity has human free will – that not every human has human free will, even.”
This is certainly not my position, nor that of any free-will compatibilist I’ve read (unless you’re making the trivial point that people in prison or in a coma have their freedom curtailed). Nor did I say that free will is synonymous with complexity, but certainly it’s a function of complexity. A robot (or zombie or whatever) complex enough to carry on philosophical discussions about free will, and whose behavior gives the same appearance of deliberative choice as a human’s, must have free will to at least the same extent as the human does; otherwise you’ve simply defined free will as synonymous with being human and not a robot.
And there’s nothing sudden about it; it’s not a binary thing that you either have or don’t have. A human’s will is freer than an elephant’s, which is freer than a fruit fly’s.
It seems to me that this focus on “could have done otherwise” rests on a too-literal interpretation of “could”. When physicists speak of the degrees of freedom of a particle, they’re not talking about its actual trajectory; they’re talking about the space in which that trajectory is embedded. On that view, “could have done otherwise” should be read not as a claim of powers of non-physical causality, but as a statement about the space of available behaviors, only one of which (obviously) will be chosen in any given circumstance.
Premise: Free will is required to have done otherwise given the exact same conditions.
How do we know this?
First off discard the term free will.
Premise: One needs to override molecules to have done otherwise given identical conditions.
What exactly does that mean? It’s sort of a tautology. The act of volition is part of the physics of molecules. So then:
A specific set of conditions = that specific act of volition.
It’s basically like saying, if the conditions are exactly the same, the conditions are exactly the same. There is no substantive difference between that choice to do something, and those specific physical conditions.
So it says nothing in of itself about the capacity to have done otherwise.
So this would be my question, given the dilemma of whether or not we could have done something differently, excluding purely random inputs:
Can a biological computation produce multiple results?
Is that the very same biological computation?
@16 Dee
I quite agree that according to Jerry’s definition any truly random event involved in a chain of causation would play out differently if the tape were rewound.
I would say the proffered definition is contingent upon randomness. So how about it, Jerry? Do you believe in any random event? Or could you replay the tape from the very beginning and get the exact same result every time?
I’m personally undecided on this one, but quantum craziness does seem to have some randomness built into it. Still I wonder is this truly random or just our inability to comprehend it?
No.
I just posted a comment on the “My definition of freewill”, but the conversation seems to have moved on here, so I’ll repost it (with one significant change!):
I did “;-)”, but that wasn’t entirely facetious.
Gregory Kusnick also made what I thought was a perceptive comment and worth repeating:
I agreed:
/@
* not necessarily all other animals, of course!
/@
Last paragraph sounds plausible.
The argument for free will must go something like this: for around 14 billion years the universe was deterministic, and then life evolved to a point where individuals within a species developed free will and BAM, the universe instantly changed from deterministic to random due to the unpredictable actions of some organisms. I say bullshit.
To increase the pain, take a look at Conway and Kochen’s free will theorem.
Conway and Kochen’s free will theorem.
Just looking at this thing hurts.
In having free will what would we have to be freed from ?
Speaking as neither a physicist nor a philosopher, I find this paper interesting, but I’m not sure it gets us anywhere useful. If we assume that experimenters are themselves physical systems, then it seems unsurprising that any uncaused action on their part must originate in the physical particles of which they are made (though I suppose it’s nice to have that intuition verified mathematically).
However the chief point of disagreement about free will — i.e. the compatibilist/incompatibilist divide — has to do with whether the concept of free will necessarily entails uncaused action. I don’t see how this paper sheds any light on that.
It’s also important to remember that the inputs to the brain include all past inputs — the so-called percept sequence. Of course we don’t make decisions determined based only on the input at the current moment…
That is better because it removes the uselessness of the earlier definition, but not its incoherence. As I mentioned, it is incoherent because determinism (deterministic chaos) prevents having “exactly” the same point in phase space in physics due to exponential divergence coupled to finite precision. We can’t do the observation.
Because a philosophical definition is incoherent, I consider the philosophical discussion moot, it doesn’t contribute to knowledge. I am much closer to MacDonald and apparently precisely where Dennett is:
“Empirically “free will” models is a folk psychology concept, its existence and properties testable by such observations as the described decisions-before-awareness, confabulations and the putative evolutionary cause. All it says is that there are observable situations where populations of organisms can and will take different pathways in a sufficiently complex manner that it doesn’t look algorithmic (automated).” [From the John Horgan post.]
I think choosing between free will and determinism is a false choice. It’s like asking if there’s such a thing as music, or just pressure variations in a gas.
Free will is real, and it’s definition is what everyone agrees it to be: the ability to make choices. The only caveat: “choice” is a concept of psychology, not physics.
It’s telling that this philosophical debate hasn’t been “solved” in 500 years, and yet no one has ever suggested a concrete implication for criminal law. The two issues are at completely different planes of intellectual consideration.
“Nobody’s sure whether consciousness is an epiphenomenon of having a sufficiently complex brain, or is a neuronal module that was actually installed by natural selection. You could, of course, make up a variety of stories about how having consciousness, in the sense of feeling like the personal “command module,” would be adaptive, but in the end it’s all speculation.”
It is frustrating, for me, to try to follow the reasoning regarding the question of free will. There is no question that I have a will. I will to do something and I do it. The question as to whether I have some kind of freedom in my willingness seems superfluous and can be seen to be absent only in a deterministic sense. A decision is certainly a result of specific mental (neuronal) inputs but determinism can only address the issue after the fact. I’m not arguing for “the ghost in the machine” here but our understanding of complex neuronal processes, let alone consciousness is insufficient, at present, to allow us to rule out some kind of volition that is driven, not only by sensory data but by remembered experience as well. A volition that is capable of considering the meaning and the possible outcomes of our decisions. Of course, it could be argued that any such previewing is a kind of neuronal feedback that simply modifies the inputs but it is the nature of this feedback that interests me and dissuades me from seeing this in deterministic terms. I am also frustrated when the subject of consciousness is discussed. I certainly have a limited understanding of these issues and no schooling beyond my reading but I would suggest that Julien Jaynes’ ideas deserve more attention than they get. I am aware of the criticisms of his work but I side with those who point out that most of these arise out of a visceral rather than a reasoned response. I raised this issue with Steven Pinker and he said, and I’m paraphrasing here, ‘I find it hard to believe that ancient Greek sailors, in Achilles’ time, spent any time discussing the use of language or inventing new words.’ Like many scholars, he didn’t consider it useful to read what Jaynes had actually written. This is not meant to be an apology for Jaynes’ ideas – that is beyond my capabilities but his concept of consciousness as a metaphorical mind-space in which we are self aware, aware of the world and of our role in it as a person is enlightening. At the very least it is thought-provoking in the best sense of that (hyphenated) word. (Damned hyphens!) When I am subjectively operating in that mind space, projecting the outcomes of possible decisions onto an imagined future it certainly doesn’t feel deterministic.
We seem to be burdened with outmoded concepts that require us to discuss “free will” in a manner similar to that in which our philosophic forbearers earnestly discussed such things as the Holy Ghost, souls and phlogiston. When our language and concepts result in strange loops and dead ends it may be time to reconsider our assumptions. Jaynes’ well reasoned ideas would be a valuable contribution to that effort.
I am one with Adam K. Fetterman’s response to AT’s comments regarding MadScientist’s well reasoned exposition at 4.
This is important stuff.
There is no way of knowing that given certain brain inputs and circumstances that we would spit out different thoughts feelings and behaviors. If we couldn’t obviously we don’t have free will. But even if we could would that imply free will. I can see that it would imply freedom in the sense that slight different outputs could arise randomly from the same imputs perhaps ultimately from quantum indeterminacy. By I would call this freedom rather than free will. Free will implies a “willer,” not to be a defendant of any eastern metaphysics but still there is no evidence that there is a willer – a permanent self other than as a collective brain process any more than there is evidence that consciousness all comes together in any one place. So it is the “will” part I have a problem with. I have no doubt it feels as if I have free will, but illusions like mirages still seem real even when we know they are illusions. A great read that touches on the issue of consciousness but also free will and the self is Nick Humphrey’s Soul Dust which essential suggests that our conscious experience is an elaborate user illusion transparent to us as the title implies.
Since I see more repeat posts here than usual, I’m guessing the old post was abandoned in a hurry.
So I suppose I can also repeat something.
“Free from what?”, might be a key question in setting up a discussion.
Oh for goodness sake!
Someone please show me a brain making “free will” choices without the benefit of external stimuli of one sort or another(forget about autonomic functions; that’s a whole different discussion)!
For now, doesn’t it appear that, if we are “conscious”, we are continually bombarded with all sorts of external stimuli?
For now, doesn’t it also appear that almost everything we think, say, and do is dependent on those external stimuli?
For now, doesn’t it appear that almost everything that I have typed here is due to some form of external stimuli?
Can someone show me anyone who has ever had an “original thought” that wasn’t the result of prior experience/learning?
Where’s the “free will”?
Since you blogged on Stephen Gould and free will on the same day, I can’t help but wonder about your suggestion in yesterday’s blog on the topic: “If on the rewind the person makes a decision different from the one before, then that person had free will.”
Recall that Gould also suggested that if we rewind the tape of life, it would not play forward again in the same way, but if there is no true free will, then how could it not?!
Clearly if everything happened in exactly the same way – the same chemistry in the same place at the same time, the same asteroids on the same trajectories, etc., then the tape would play out exactly the same way!
If you reject the rewind and playback for free will, then mustn’t you also reject it in Gould’s scenario? Be careful in your answer lest we give more blank ammunition to the creationists!
I also have to raise your question: “what is the mechanism whereby our thoughts can override our molecules?”. Are you denying that our emotions feed back into our biochemistry for good or for ill; that our emotions can indeed affect our body?
You can now claim that these emotions themselves are the product of processes which are outside of our control, but that just brings us to the question which no one seems to have answered (not to my satisfaction at least!).
Harris’s article to which you refer seems to me to be begging the question. He appears to be arguing that we have no free will because we do not understand where the basis of our decisions comes from – indeed that it is possible to demonstrate scientifically that we ‘take’ decisions before our conscious mind is aware of them, but isn’t this the same thing the creationists do? Do not the creationists turn ignorance into ‘knowledge’ along the lines of claims such as: “We don’t know where the universe came from therefore we do know: some god did it!”?
If we truly do not know from whence the impulse comes which underlies the decisions we (think) we take, then how can Harris categorically insist that we have had no influence over that impulse and therefore over that decision?
In closing, here’s a thought experiment which may address your example of rewinding the tape, which we cannot do in real life, of course.
Suppose you decide (wherever that decision comes from!) to throw a die, and dependent upon the roll of that die, you will take an action. Suppose you decide, for example, that if the roll is three or less (or if the result cannot be known – if the die falls down a drain, for example), you will watch TV, but if the roll is greater than three, you will read a book, and then you act upon that exactly as you ‘determined’.
Can you now say the was no free will involved? Whether the two options were chosen through pure free will or by unknown determinate causes, there is nothing within you which chose what the die would show and therefore what you ‘chose’ to do. Isn’t this analogous to rewinding the tape?
You might argue that you threw the die and perhaps influenced it, but this issue can be resolved by having a machine call the number in some way. Perhaps as Harris argues, you did not control the choices you set before yourself, but neither did you select the final outcome.
Of course, you can argue that this itself robbed you of free will, but I think to argue such in this case is a little lame, because this is a case where the final ‘choice’ on your part was not the result of anything within yourself, but it was a choice you made.
Jerry, I think your definition is useless because it involves the past. You can’t do anything with the past, it just lies there. “My choice could have been different” is an unscientific statement. You can’t test it, you can’t work with it. It’s useless.
Why don’t you take your definition to the present instead? Given one situation now, if you can do two different things about it, then you have free will. The present you can work with. Bring your ideas into scientific scrutiny, they will be more productive that way.
That is a very simple thing to test: we all have to make the same decisions over and over again for all our life. You have to wake up, brush your teeth, go to work, do lunch, etc. We make little choices all the time. Are you saying that, faced with the decision of whether preparing rice or pasta, we don’t really decide? But…we do, don’t we?
Nope, you only think you do.
This still smacks of dualism. Somehow a choice gets made, by some extremely complex, physically based process; if you insist that that physical process is not you, then what exactly do you think you are?
An experiment can be easily set up to test that. Just make some meal today, and make another meal tomorrow. It’s still you, the same kitchen, same time of the day, same family, same ingredients available, etc. There, same conditions, different outcome. Are you claiming that there are some hidden variables that change between today and tomorrow affecting the decision that we always fail to take into account? If so, can you specify which those are, so we can control the experiment better?
If said variables could always escape our control (for example, you could say “they are tiny quantum fluctuations within the molecules in our neurons” or something like that), could there be any possible experiment to test your claim? If not, would you still be thinking about this scientifically? How are undetectable hidden variables different from, say, a soul or a little demon on your shoulder?
You also seem to see a conflict between free choices and determinism. Let’s look at a more traditionally determinist system: a soccer ball. You kick the ball, the ball moves through classical mechanics. No randomness. Based on the strenght of your kick, you can predict the trajectory of the ball and the place when it will stop. The whole thing is completely deterministic, yet you made the decision to kick the ball. I don’t see any conflict.
I don’t like to cop out when given a direct challenge, as is obviously the case here. However, I think I need to know about the free will problem and the verious alternatives to it, before I make detailed comments about Jerry’s response to my (rather hurriedly) note. I have the feeling that something essential is missing, but I don’t know what. I haven’t worked seriously on the free will problem since 1970 or so, so I am way out of date. One of the things that does concern be about Jerry’s analysis is that it’s not obviously falsifiable, as it stands, and that’s something of a problem. The other problem is that it leaves our language of free choice a bit mangled, and really raises the question as to whether it would, on Jerry’s premises, make sense to speak of choice, decision, and other terms which imply that we are agents. But, as I say, I need to spend more time thinking and reading about this before I attempt to answer. As I say, this is not a cop-out. It’s very Socratic. I just don’t know, but I still have an uneasy feeling that (i) we are free in a significant sense which Jerry won’t allow, and (ii) that, lacking that, nonsense is made of most ordinary discours about human action, and (iii) even the project of science begins to look just a bit more questionable as a way of seeking truth. Add these to the unfalisifiabillity of the Jerry’s claim that we are not free, and it looks very much as though Jerry has backed himself into a corner — only I don’t know how to let him out!
Eric, I look forward to your response. Indeed, I don’t see a way to empirically falsify my notion that there’s no free will, but it’s supported by a lot of evidence showing that brains respond to mechanical and physical stimuli. In addition, the biological/physical basis for thought and action seems to leave no reason for free choice, so that, I think, is enough to falsify the notion of free will, or at least to put the onus on its supporters, like yourself, to suggest a biological and physical mechanism whereby “choice” can override determinism.
The compatibilist argument is not that free will overrides physical causality, but that free will is an emergent property of complex physical systems.
By any useful definition of “choice”, Deep Blue’s algorithm chooses chess moves. It does this not by overriding the laws of electromagnetism, but by organizing lawful electronic interactions into meaningful patterns. If you grant that a computer program can make choices of this sort — choices that would not be made by a different program or in the absence of any program — then it seems to me that you must grant the same power of choice to human cognition.
If you do not grant that Deep Blue makes choices, then what role do you think the algorithm plays in the machine’s operation, if not to decide what moves to make?
This is obviously not my “response” — I do have to do some work first — but it goes without saying that brains respond to mechanical and physical stimuli. It is also apparently true that in some sense brains and minds are identical, or share some identical locations, at any rate. So this doesn’t go towards confirming a no free-will theory, because both would include the same provisions.
(I should also apologise for my grammatical and spelling errors in my hurried comment.)
I also have some trouble with Ant’s definition of the absence of free will which comes from Sastra.
I can think of lots of situations where, given the same circumstances, I would make the same decision. It does not follow that I did not decide. It just follows that that was the best or most reasonable or most honorable or most moral thing to do in those circumstances, but still freely chosen each time.
I add this because I think it is not quite clear what is meant here by ‘free-will’, and if we don’t have clarity about this we will go on arguing until the cows come home, and won’t be any closer to solving the problem.
I think we may have also forgotten the loner sibling of the term. Good old “Will” always sits on the bench while we play with “Freewill”.
Eric, it was not meant as a definition of the absence of free will, only as a criticism of the scenario that Jerry set up to define free will. I was not at all trying to suggest that you do not decide: Yes, in any situation you are “free” to make a decision, by imagining arbitrarily many possible outcomes and judging which would be most desirable. But in exactly the same situation, you would, necessarily, make exactly the same decision, yielding exactly the same most-desirable-outcome. How could you not, without being simply capricious?
Why would you not? Something would have to be different – your state of mind, the food roiling in your stomach, the young woman walking past, the way the wind blows, etc., etc. – in which case it’s no longer the same situation.
I don’t think that I’m guilty of petitio principii: While some intuition about the kind of free will we have might lie behind my reasoning, I don’t think it’s premised on any assumption about free will. But I do seem to end up in the same place as Tom Clark, with regard to contra-causal free will; i.e., that it cannot exist.
/@
Oops: That’s a reply to Eric MacDonald @ June 15, 2011 at 1:24 pm, of course. 🙁
/@