I’m posting here the first four definitions of the word “choose” (in order) in the Oxford English Dictionary
1. trans. To take by preference out of all that are available; to select; to take as that which one prefers, or in accordance with one’s free will and preference.
2. with inf. obj.: To determine in favour of a course, to decide in accordance with inclination. to choose rather : to resolve (to do one thing) in preference (to another).
3. The notion of a choice between alternatives is often left quite in the background, and the sense is little more than an emphatic equivalent of, To will, to wish, to exercise one’s own pleasure in regard to a matter in which one is a free agent.
a. esp. with inf. To think fit, to be pleased (to do so and so). not to choose (to do a thing): not to be pleased and therefore to forbear.
b. To wish to have, to want. vulgar.
4.
a. 1.a intr. or absol. To exercise choice to make a selection between different things or alternatives.
b. To exercise one’s own pleasure, do as one likes, take one’s own way; esp. as an alternative to something suggested and rejected. Obs. or dial.
At least two of these definitions seem to involve the notion of “free will” that I adhere to, that is “one could have made another decision at the moment of choice,” while others simply refer to the act of choice as making a selection between alternatives, which could be thought of as simply the “appearance of choosing freely.”
The point, of course, is that how one uses the word “choice” itself has implications with regards to free will.
I may use the word “choose” to refer to computer choices, for example if a factory-control computer decides to increase the heat in chemical vat 13 based on its inputs of how the factory processes are measured.
I don’t think anyone would refer to this as the computer’s free will. On the other hand, in these discussions here and elsewhere, I’ve seen a lot of confusion caused by the word. Multiple people have commented something like “of course there’s free will – he made a choice.” In my mind, a choice does not imply free will, it just means that a certain option was selected by some process, whether that process is deterministic, stochastic, or “free” (whatever that means).
I would intentionally sidestep the issue (when did you stop beating your wife?) and instead observe that, whatever the computer is doing when it decides to turn up the heat is no different from what a human would do in a similar circumstance. Or, for that matter, when the human picks the chocolate sundae over the banana split.
If it’s the human’s free will that’s driving those choices, then it’s a comparable free will that’s driving the computer’s choices.
Cheers,
b&
Also, how one use the word “could” has implications for our understanding of free will.
I’m a determinist, and I agree that “one could have made another decision at the moment of choice.”
To say that I “could” have made another decision is just to say that I *would* have made another decision *if* I had wanted to.
We always make sense of any claim that X *could* have happened even though it didn’t by considering what *would* have happened if something else had been different. When it comes to questions of what a person can do, the differences we focus on are usually desires (or related psychological states).
Agreed. A computer is simply reacting to programming, given a certain set of circumstances, it makes a particular pre-programmed decision. It cannot decide something outside of it’s programming. Humans, however, have free will. Given the same set of circumstances, we can make a variety of decisions, we are never forcibly tied to a specific reaction to the events in our lives.
The idea that there is no free will seems entirely silly to me. We all exercise it every day, simply choosing to read this, or any, blog.
I’ve never quite understood what “free will” is supposed to be free of. My actions are either caused or uncaused. If caused, then the “choices” I make are deterministic, the inevitable outcome of the state of the universe at the time they were made. If uncaused (perhaps dependent on quantum events) then they are just random events that happen to me. This problem is not in any way solved by positing a soul that has free will, as the choices of such a soul would necessarily be limited in the same way.
<AOL>Me, too!< />
Cheers,
b&
This has been covered several times in these free-will threads. If the causal chain of your behavior is primarily internal/introspective, we say that your choice is free. If it’s dominated by external constraints or coercion, we say it’s not free. Citizens are, by and large, free to behave as they will. Slaves and incarcerated felons are not. This is standard English usage, but if you object to the word “free” in this context, by all means feel free to propose a better word.
I would define “choose” as the selection of a single item or course of action while at least two are recognized as a reasonable possibility. So any entity that can recognize courses of action and perform one can “choose” something. Computers, dogs, or even flow chart methodologies can make choices as far as I am concerned. No free will required.
Choice is a matter of logic of course. Computers can make choices, and yet are more or less programmed and determined fundamentally.
I still don’t understand what you mean by “could have chosen differently”. Why would I have chosen differently? The facts wouldn’t have changed and my reasoning wouldn’t have changed. The only difference would be if I “randomly” picked a different option, but I’m not sure what that has to do with “will”, free or otherwise.
It seems like for that to even make sense you have to assume that we have souls that somehow make decisions without input from reality or reasoning.
Jerry writes:
“…two of these definitions seem to involve the notion of ‘free will’ that I adhere to, that is ‘one could have made another decision at the moment of choice'”
Sorry, but I don’t see that any of the definitions of choice imply anything contra-causal. The one that says “to take as that which one prefers, or in accordance with one’s free will and preference” doesn’t specify that free will is contra-causal. Same thing for “To will, to wish, to exercise one’s own pleasure in regard to a matter in which one is a free agent.” Free agent here could mean, and ordinarily does mean, an agent that’s free from being coerced or forced or manipulated into doing something against her preferences, her will. Agents free from coercion make free choices in a perfectly ordinary, real sense. Their will doesn’t have to be free from causation for them to choose freely.
“…other [definitions] simply refer to the act of choice as making a selection between alternatives, which could be thought of as simply the ‘appearance of choosing freely.'”
Selecting between two alternatives according to one’s preferences isn’t merely the appearance of choosing, it’s what choosing really *is*, according to the definitions you listed. And choices are free insofar as you aren’t coerced or forced by circumstances or agents into acting against your preferences.
But you believe that because selection among alternatives is a deterministic function of neurally instantiated character, desires and preferences (of who we are), we don’t really make real, free choices. Real choices, you believe, are contra-causal, a definition of choice not given by the OED. But since contra-causal freedom doesn’t exist (is unreal), would simply tie us in knots if it did exist (see the first essay at http://www.naturalism.org/fatalism.htm ), and so isn’t worth wanting, it seems to me pointless to continue to use it as a standard by which to dismiss our actual choice-making capacities and choices as unreal. But you’re determined, it seems, to stick to a notion of choice that’s naturalistically unobtainable, and to regret the fact we aren’t contra-causal agents.
If we are programmed to make choices according to our preferences (which we are), in what way is this a choice?
If I offer you the choice between an orange and a mango to eat, and you LOVE oranges and HATE mangoes, you are programmed – in the absense of other mitigating factors – to choose the orange. The outcome was inevitable – just the same as if you had fed data into a computer that was programmed to weight certain factors differently than others and make a “choice” as to what its output would be.
And humans do actually acknowledge this, from time to time. “Here I stand, I can do no other.” That’s a literal description, you know. Luther *couldn’t* do any other. And if I walk around a corner and see my girlfriend being raped in an alley, do you think I actually have a *choice* not to intervene? Really, I don’t.
I agree that in some cases our actions are straightforwardly determined by strong desires so that we might say we didn’t have a choice in the matter. But in many cases we don’t know in advance what the outcome will be because our desires conflict, so we need to weigh options and deliberate, which seems to me a real choice-making process even though it’s likely fully deterministic. We might be “programmed” in our choice-making by our very desires and capacity for foresight, but that doesn’t render the process of weighing alternatives unreal. Without going through that process, we couldn’t act effectively.
Probability of future events does suggest choice.
I think it’s just as important to define who or what is “choosing” when having a discussion about free will.
As I alluded to in a comment on a previous post, I don’t think we know enough about what defines the “self” or consciousness to be able to begin a discussion about whether or not that self is doing something that resembles a “choice”.
In some countries and some times, a young woman was told who she would marry. In enlightened countries today, a woman freely chooses her own mate. This is what is meant by “free choice”, not that we make choices free of the laws of nature.
But that’s not the notion of free choice that Jerry’s been writing about.
My head hurts!
Our minds have sufficient simulation capability that, when considering a decision, we imagine the possible outcomes of the several different choices, and our decision is influenced by those imaginings. So our decisions are influenced by the consideration of multiple possible outcomes; whereas simpler systems, like a cockroach for example, don’t seem to do any such evaluation. In this sense we have a capacity for choice which cockroaches don’t.
Now for the love of Sky Kitty let’s stop banging our collective heads against this particular brick wall. Please.
You know…I think you just made me understand the real source of all of this. Everything — the whole thing. Why people think “free will” means something, what they think they’re referring to when they talk about it, why they don’t think computers or cockroaches have it — the entire enchilada.
I might even be able to take that and formulate it into a coherent definition of “free will” that Jerry and I can both agree upon.
Thank you!
b&
I didn’t particularly intend to make anybody attain enlightenment, but if I did so accidentally, I’m not complaining! Glad to have made some sense 🙂
Well, thanks anyway!
Jerry, if you’re reading this, try it on for size:
The concept popularly termed “free will” can best be understood as the mental process of creating internal simulations of a number of possible future outcomes and selecting an action intended to effect a particular outcome projected in the simulation.
Anybody who understands what I wrote and would care to explain it better, have at it.
Cheers,
b&
I think that is a pretty nice expression of what free will means when most people say it. I had thought of adding something about the ability to veto the need to make any choice at all (ie: being compelled to make a choice is not free). On reflection, being compelled would be a specific case of the circumstances in which the choice would be made, so it would not be pleasant, and not feel free, but would still fit the definition?
Typed in a hurry, as I have to take Mrs Rixaeton to have a blood test, and then off to the bank… all of my … own.. free… umm… yeah.
So… chess programs have free will.
By this definition, certainly.
At least, with respect to the game. They certainly don’t have any free will when it comes to the choice of snacks to be served to the players in the tournament — not that such free will couldn’t be added, of course.
Cheers,
b&
Definitely. It’s as simple as SAWells states. Choice is choice.
I’m still waiting for evidence that humans cannot make a different decision – or a description of an experiment in which we can determine this. I stand corrected on the meaning of ‘determinism’ – I was thinking of it as a prediction with inherent error, but it does mean absolute predictability. So there’s another problem – are humans really deterministic in that sense? I would say no, because even chemical interactions are not deterministic, they are probabilistic (and we can tweak the probabilities in a deterministic fashion).
Heuristic!
Actually yes. A chess program using heuristics is a great example of how a program makes choices.
There are finite choices or moves, but which move is the best? The computer plans ahead and uses strategy, but ultimately in a balanced position, there is no right move, only strategy.
All completely programmed, and yet so powerful as to beat the best grandmasters.
Not to mention learning chess programs, whose future moves (once they’ve outstripped their designers) can be predicted only in terms of their interest in winning.
But I’m also fond of the word “heuristic” in the more blue-collar sense of an idea that works pretty well most of the time, but fails when you move beyond its proper scope. The idea of distinct species is indispensably useful, even though we know they aren’t really distinct. The idea of a celestial sphere, rotating around a stationary earth, is patently fictional, but it’s a great (and perfectly accurate) way to look for stuff in the sky at night. The idea that killing people is wrong is unimpeachable, even though we can all imagine situations where killing someone would be the right thing to do. Every idea has its limits, and recognizing those limits is an important part of understanding the idea.
If it were possible to imagine the idea of free will freed from all its vast ideological ramifications, wouldn’t it look like the same sort of thing? If we’re talking about imagining the future (see SAWells) then we’re within the proper scope; we can do that, and in fact we have a hard time stopping. If we’re talking about knowing the future, or knowing the velocity and direction of every particle in the universe, or whatever, then we’ve left the scope within which free will is a useful idea. Eh?
(Which is why Christians need free will to be magically unencumbered by God’s omniscience.)
Someone almost certainly said all this already, so I’m sorry. But it’s off my chest, so thank you.
To me it’s obvious that the question of free will, as it is commonly posed, is plagued with implicit assumptions.
It is assumed that there is an “I” entity which exists, and that this “I” has the power to choose, either deterministically or otherwise. So basically a form of dualism is already taken for granted. Where is this “I” of which you speak? Who said that the “I” is a real thing in the first place?
[Church lady voice] Could it be ….. Descartes?
It’s no wonder that a question with dualistic assumptions cannot easily be reconciled with a non-dualistic view!
[*ring ring*] “Hello? … Eastern Asia? Yes? What do you want? … You’re calling to say that you told us so?”
In my opinion you have it exactly backward. To say that I don’t make choices is to say that “I” am something different from the biological system that does choose (since clearly choices do get made in the sense that a range of possible behaviors is narrowed to a single actual behavior).
As a compatibilist I take the (non-dualist) view that I am that biological process and that its choices are therefore mine.
If you had not written “I” in quotes, I would have thought for certain that you accidentally replied to the wrong post. I see basically no relationship between your comment and mine.
Guess he meant you got Descartes before the horse
You said that use of “I” necessarily implies dualism. I say you’re wrong. There’s a perfectly reasonably definition of “I” that comports with ordinary usage and identifies “me” with the physical workings of my brain. By this definition, “I” is neither illusory nor magical and clearly has the power to make real choices with real consequences.
Jerry, why do you keep trying to convince us that we don’t have free will? Assuming you’re correct about FW, it’s not like we have a choice of whether to believe it or not.
Of course you wouldn’t have a choice about whether or not to try and convince us, so never mind…
Humans are like the chess playing computer Deep Blue but with added enhancements. Not only can we analyze “options” for their utility but we can also analyze our analysis itself. Deep Blue has a “choice” in the move it will make next. Many people will disagree with that and say that it is completely programmed and is therefore not really making a “choice” but merely implementing a complex analysis and outputing the result. Now, what if Deep Blue II had the ability to not only analyze the different options/moves for their utility, but also the capability to analyze its own analyses and to make changes. Would we then consider it to be making a “choice”?
Do we need to go a step further? What if Deep Blue III had the capabilities of DBII and the additional ability to have multiple goals besides winning the game of chess. With corresponding heuristics that allowed it to evaluate “choices” in other areas related to theses goals with the same complexity and depth it evaluates chess moves.
If DBIII is not an analog of a typical human being what is missing in DBIII that we have?
Does DBIII have freewill?
As a thought experiment, consider a particular narrow domain of human choice: animal husbandry. In this domain, livestock breeders make choices (or in Jerry’s view, they give the appearance of making choices) that have real-world consequences in terms of gene frequencies and phenotypic fitness.
Now remove the human being from the process. Choices still get made, and gene frequencies and phenotypes continue to change over time, but now it’s natural selection doing the choosing. (That’s why we call it “selection”.) In this case we seem to be perfectly comfortable with the idea of natural selection as a real phenomenon with genuine creative power to shape organisms and drive evolutionary change. We don’t require a warning label to the effect that “Natural selection doesn’t actually select anything, since the fate of individual genes and organisms is predetermined at the molecular level”; indeed, we would find such a warning wrong-headed and beside the point.
Why then should we reach a different conclusion if the locus of choice happens to be a human brain? What makes the idea of volition as a real phenomenon, with real power to shape the future, more problematic than that of natural selection? They’re both emergent decision processes with real-world consequences, executing on a substrate of deterministic physics and chemistry. Granted that the element of intentionality is missing from natural selection — but why should that make its choices more real than those of a conscious agent?
Sorry, but I don’t understand the dichotomy. There is no such thing as free will, as will is not free. I COULD kill my sister, but I won’t. I can’t see a constraint that totally shuts down my creativity either. There seems to always be a way to innovate.
Maybe it’s my Buddhist point of view, but the whole argument seems a bit silly to me.
Tenuously on-topic (sort of) – I just came across this a minute ago –
Was Karl Marx a Jaynesian?
“It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness”
(Sorry, not trying to troll, I’m just an interested layperson (though very bored at the moment) . . . well, actually a layperson who views consciousness through an idiosyncratic crackpot blend of Jaynesianism and Adorno’s philosophy of music (don’t ask) . . . OK, I’ll go away now.)
I had free will once, and I Cogitoed in my Santorum.
I have a custard pie, due to narative imperetive this is the only option available to me
People seem to think that free will is the availability of a choice and the freedom to decide, but if your decision will always be the same given the exact same circumstances then it isn’t really free will at all is it?
Why isn’t it “really free”?
In all those cases where what I want is chocolate, chocolate is what I choose. In all those cases where what I want is vanilla, vanilla is what I choose.
The argument here seems to be that the choice is only “really free” if in some situation I want chocolate but somehow end up choosing vanilla instead.
This seems nutty, at least to me.
In all those cases where you want chocolate, in the absence of any stronger opposing cause, from within yourself or from without, you have no choice: you are compelled to act upon your desire.
So, I am “compelled” to do what I want to do, and freely choosing to do what I want, based on all the different desires I have, is somehow not “really free”, while being “really free” would mean doing something other than what I actually want…? This is what I suggest seems nutty.
I wonder why some insist on using this sort of definition of ‘free will’, when it is impossible, useless, and indeed undesirable. So far as I can tell, it seems to be only useful as theological slight-of-hand to let god off the hook for what he supposedly creates/controls.
No, you don’t freely choose to do what you want. You don’t choose what you want and you have no choice but to act on your desires, where there are no stronger countervailing causes at work.
It certainly is true that “what I want” is not chosen by me (at least not in any simple sense), but if I am able to choose following my own desires, then I don’t understand what more there might be that could make my choice “really free”.
As has been noted elsewhere, there are multiple possible conceptions of “free will”; I don’t understand on what basis one insists that only libertarian free will, something that is actually incoherent and impossible, is the right one. Theologians may need that sort of concept, but those of us not involved in justifying the actions of god are free to discard it as incoherent and useless.
It isn’t that you are *able* to act upon your desires, it’s that you *must* act upon them if there is nothing compelling enough to stop you. You then act in accordance with your will. Introducing the word “free” creates an unecessary argument.
We both agree that libertarian free will is useless for the reason you give.
But if I prevented from acting according to my desires, then to that extent I am not “free”. Which suggests that acting according to my desires can reasonably be considered acting “free”ly.
One last try.
The confusion of compatibilism:
Our conscious will is produced (determined or not) by processes beyond our conscious control within our brains. The expression of our conscious will – our actions – are determined by factors outside our control without our brains. Sometimes we are able to act according to our conscious will, sometimes not.
To say that because we can sometimes act in accordance with our consciouus will we therefore have free will, isn’t saying anything about our will as such. It’s not saying our will is free. We may sometimes be able (be “free”) to do what we want to do, but this ability, this “freedom” is not a property of the will. It’s a figure of speech.
Some final thoughts.
Intentions, desires, decisions, choices; these things arise in our consciousness of themselves not as a result of any choice or desire or intention or decision. How could they? It would involve an infinite regression.
Being able to act in accordance with these components of the will doesn’t mean these components are free; what could that possibly mean? In acting fully in accordance with our will we are completely free agents, because no other agent or obstacle is forcing their will upon us or otherwise preventing us from exercising our own will. That is all we mean when we say we act of our own free will: as autonomous agents. We do not mean that our will is free; we mean that we are free.
A conscious will (brain) needs a suitable body and a body needs a suitable brain (will) to act. Brain and body must be compatible to function. When we say we act completely of our own free will, what we mean is that nothing at all prevents us (body and brain as an indivisible whole) from acting according to our will.
Brains (wills) and bodies are certainly not independent autonomous agents. Unless one believes the will is not the brain.
Isn’t “free” the term we need to be clear about. I think when people claim there’s no such things as “free will” they are giving the word “free” an unrealistic and extreme meaning. Free from what? And to what degree? (I think Dennett’s point is this isn’t a YES/NO problem, living creates can be MORE or LESS free.)
Returning to the point: am I “free” from all influences when we make a “choice”? That can’t be coherent because then my decision making would be “free” (in the sense of “utterly independent”) of my own preferences. In what way is it “my decision” then? Those preferences and decision making processes developed from our history and biology. So that can’t be what anyone means by free.
My understanding of the compatibilist stance is that “freedom” is more to do with internalizing that decision making process – making decisions using the processes and preferences and information available to the deciding agent – rather than outsourcing to another agent (in which case we are not “free” and all but “controlled” by the other agent).
What we’re finding (or realising) is that a lot of those internal processes and preferences are below the level of our conscious awareness. But it’s still “us” who do the “deciding” – if those properties don’t define “us” then what does?
All very well put, thanks.
“So that can’t be what anyone means by free.”
Strangely enough, some folks, including Jerry, think that our concrete characteristics – character, needs and desires – are limitations and infringements on what they believe is true freedom. When they see that choices are fully a function of these characteristics, not decided by a causally independent arbiter, they see such choices as being compelled, not free. But as you say, such choices fully reflect the self, naturalistically conceived. To want something more than this in the way of freedom and control seems impossible and incoherent.
Not at all. It’s not about wanting something more. I recognise that we have a will. I don’t see that anything meaningful is gained by addition of the word “free”. We are all caused to have the will we have; that’s it.
Unless we are ultimately self-caused. Then I would say that our will is free.
It’s you who wants something more than mere will.
Tell me where I’ve gone wrong here. I’ve been thinking deeply about this before making any comments, and I think I’ve got what I believe… so here goes…
I hope that we can agree on the concept that you are a different person today than you were yesterday, if only in the slightest. Compare you to 5 years ago and it might not be even close (particularly if you’re young). And that’s due to how the environment interacts with you and vice versa. So changes in yourself are due to your predisposition of genes and your perception of previous experiences. So if you experience an outcome, you are a different person because of it.
Consider that with this, I remember one of Jerry’s previous explanations of freewill was “knowing what you now know, could you make a different decision?” or something to that effect. That really fails based on the above, doesn’t it? I mean, if I’ve experienced the outcome, I am changed by it, so future me is not the same person as past me that made that original “decision”. So if I went back in time somehow and made a different choice, then it’s not the “same” person that’s making a different choice.
The real question of freewill then seems to be, given absolutely no changes to you, your experiences, environment, timing, or knowledge, could you have made any different decisions? Besides being completely untestable, it feels to me like the answer is “no”.
h/t to Rationalizer at 22.
This argument is based on a mistaken reading of the word “could”. You’re taking it to be a statement about physical reality, i.e. “I could have done X” means there was a physically possible future that included X.
But that’s not what people mean when they say “could”. What they mean is that X is within their repertoire of behavior, and for all they knew beforehand, could have been the behavior they ended up choosing. As it happens, it didn’t turn out that way, but they didn’t know that until after the fact. “Could” is a statement about their own prior state of knowledge, not about physical causality. “I could have done X” means that I considered X and rejected it. No spooky contra-causal magic implied.
Thanks!
But I’m confused.
In my last paragraph, in the “could you have made any different decisions?” piece, I took that “could” to mean exactly “… (is a different path possible) within their repertoire of behavior”.
In this I took “could” to simply mean the opposite of “can’t”.
But just because other options or behaviors exist, doesn’t mean it’s necessarily possible for that particular person in that particular time to exercise a different option.
I believe that behavior (read: a person) is directly influenced solely by genes and past experiences. So with the exact same genes, and the exact same environment, you would have the exact same behaviors emerging over and over again. To me, if freewill existed, you would get different behaviors emerging each time you re-ran the test.
And that’s the untestable part. And I can see why people feel like they’re banging their heads against a wall thinking about this.
What you’re describing is not free will in any useful sense. Arbitrary uncaused behavior that doesn’t depend on brain state can by definition have nothing to do with will (unless you believe will is somehow independent of the brain). For free will to mean anything, it must be causally connected to brain activity.
If you’re now tempted to say “But then it’s not free!” my question for you would be why you think “free” has to mean “non-physical”. The Emanicipation Proclamation didn’t free slaves from the laws of physics, but it did free them to follow their own will instead of someone else’s. That’s what “free will” means.
“For free will to mean anything, it must be causally connected to brain activity.”
I would say that the conscious will is brain activity. Desires, choices, intentions, decisions are conscious components of the will.
Brain activity is determined by the laws of nature.
Free will is the freedom to follow one’s own will rather than another’s, you say.
Free will defined as such is a property not of the brain but of a person. As regards the will itself, it makes no sense to say it is free.
Underlying the free will of the person is the conscious will of the brain. Underlying the conscious will is the unconscious brain. Underlying the brain are the laws of nature. Free will as you define it is ultimately determined by the laws of nature.
When we speak of “free” will we speak about a natural phenomenon – a property of a person – determined by the laws of nature.
Our conscious mind is being deceived. It is under the perception that it is in control. In reality the conscious mind is not really in control but merely a stage for options to be considered. This is accomplished by the brain simulating a detached observer perspective. This helps facilitate the analyses of options by giving a false perception that we are free to choose any option equally. The brain has made this simulation very convincing, as it had to do in order to be an effective analysis tool.
Something like that, I think. The part of the brain that produces conscious awareness is deceived. The conscious self is the most incredibly convincing illusion. I feel sure that the illusion has been selected for and is more than the most incredibly flamboyant spandrel.
Incidentally, Jerry, can you explain at all why you are so het up about Free Will at all? (I know, it’s inevitable, but you know what I mean).
I don’t routinely spend any significant portion of my day fretting about whether I or anyone else has Free Will. I’m usually more busy thinking and doing stuff.
Sorry, but that’s a pretty snarky comment, which, as far as I can see, is designed to display your superiority. If you had an honest question rather than a snide one, I might have answered it.
I suggest you go to other websites that discuss free will less often.
I’m sorry if it came out snarky. It’s a serious question. Why is the question looming so large? What in your life or mine depends upon it?
I made a comment at 11 which at least some people seemed to find helpful, so you can’t say I’m not trying to contribute. I just honestly find it weird that you’ve recently devoted a dozen columns to a point upon which nothing seems to depend.
I’m sorry, but I thought I made it clear why this is important to people’s lives: because it affects many people’s views about moral responsibility and, especially, punishment. That’s clear by the many legal caveats involving whether or not people had a “choice” about doing a crime. And don’t you think it’s interesting to contemplate how much our “choices” might be predetermined by factors like our genes or our environment. Not much in your life or mine depends on whether evolution is true, or whether there’s a Higgs boson, either, but it expands our awareness and understanding. If you’re only interested in things on which your “life depends”, then you might as well ignore much of science and philosophy.
I didn’t say anything about life depending on it, I asked what in our lives depends on it. What would you do or think, if you thought you had free will, that you wouldn’t do or think if you thought you didn’t? It’s hard even to phrase the question sensibly. It’s not a question which seems to be helpful to ponder when trying to reach a decision.
It’s unclear to me that it’s even that relevant to moral or legal responsibility. Belief in hard determinism might (in your case) lead to greater empathy for offenders and an advocacy for more rehabilitative and less retributive punishment; the same belief in someone of a more Calvinist frame of mind might lead to a yet greater relish in condemning criminals, since they are intrinsically and inevitably bad. Belief in genuine free will, whatever that is, might also lead people to be either more or less sympathetic to and understanding of offenders – you can oppose “since they have free will, they can change, and it’s worth trying to save them” to “They have free will and chose to do wrong, therefore they deserve condemnation”.
So I think your views on moral and criminal responsibility may originate more in your apparently being a nice person of liberal tendencies than in your being a hard determinist.
Returning to my comment 11 above, I think the interesting difference which gives us “choice” in a way that rocks and cockroaches don’t is that our decisions are influenced by questions of futurity; we can think of the way things might turn out. We simulate possible futures. I think that can be an illuminating point of view in considering responsibility in law. We judge a crime less harshly if committed without premeditation than with (manslaughter versus murder, or 2nd vs 1st degree) because premeditation means you considered what was going to happen and did it anyway. The legal question of soundness of mind seems to hinge on whether a person’s ability to contemplate the future is reasonably accurate or not. A person who knew what they were doing and did it anyway is judged responsible; someone with delusions isn’t.
Certainly. None of those are what I would use in a free will theory, though.
I would probably use “outcome of distribution over pathways of autonomous agents that are too complex to model algebraically (deterministically)”.