Here’s a video put out by “Prager University,” a series of online “educational” videos issued under the aegis of Dennis Prager, a conservative and a Jew. His religion is relevant because the video touts a “contracausal” form of free will: the widespread notion that our decisions reflect something beyond the laws of physics—which of course include chemistry and biology— that is, there is a small ghost in the head that can actually choose in many ways, unconstrained by materialism. (Talk about an idea that’s incoherent!) But the narrator seems incredulous that it could be otherwise. Contracausal free will (also known as “libertarian free will” when it’s free not only from deterministic influences of the environment, but also from God’s control) is the most common form of free will espoused by believers and, I think, nonbelievers.
So, you compatibilists: this 5-minute video lays out the mentality you have to work with. Try convincing this person, or the many religionists in this country (85% or more) that in any situation they couldn’t have chosen any differently from how they did. Then after you convince them of that determinism, tell them that they still have a kind of free will, a much better kind!!! See how far you get!
But if you don’t want to do that, see how many errors you can find in this video. Note as well that G*d, as the One Who Vouchsafed our Mind Ghosts, appears at exactly 5 minutes.
About “Prager University” from YouTube:
Prager also started a website called “Prager University”, that offers five-minute videos on various subjects such as the Ten Commandments, minimum wage, the Middle East Crisis, and happiness. Video contributors are varied and include columnists George Will and Bret Stephens, British historians Paul Johnson and Andrew Roberts, American Enterprise Institute president Arthur Brooks, former Prime Minister of Spain Jose Maria Aznar, several university professors, and Prager himself. According to Prager, he created the site to challenge the “unhealthy effect intellectually and morally” of the American higher education system. New videos are added to the website about once a week.
Two comments. First, if God gave us pure free will so we could exercise both good and evil (for reasons that still aren’t clear to me), why in the Old Testament did He repeatedly harden Pharaoh’s heart against letting the Jews go free? Why didn’t God let Pharaoh exercise his God-given free will? After all, then the Egyptians could have been spared all those plagues, sufferings, and deaths, for Pharaoh would have simply let the Jews go. I’m not aware of any theological answer to this, but perhaps readers can enlighten me.
Second, I continue to discuss this issue with my friends. Here’s the reaction of a very smart academic who hadn’t thought much about the issue, but told me, when I brought up my views, “. . . every time I start thinking too much about free will I end up in despair.” This attitude is what allows compatibilists to make a living.
h/t: Max
Contracausal free will…is the most common form of free will espoused by believers and, I think, nonbelievers.
I wonder, if the topic were anything else, what you would call the uncritical passing off as a simple fact of the authors’ interpretations of their own study on a particular subject.
Their video “University Diversity Scam” that comes up after provides an interesting take on why college costs so much.
“. . . every time I start thinking too much about free will I end up in despair.”
That is the attitude that I have really never understood. I take great comfort in looking in the mirror in the morning and thinking, “I wonder what that crazy SOB will do today?”
If God didn’t do things that make no sense in Biblical passages, He’d be effable instead of ineffable. And that just won’t do.
You see, removing the “mysterious ways” excuse would allow a discerning Bible reader to use reason to defeat any unreasonable arguments and demands of priests, vastly undermining their power to control and manipulate their followers.
If contracausal free will were real, what difference would it make? If it is real, your decisions are accomplished in some mental realm somewhere where you weigh the various inputs to your decision. If it’s an illusion, you do the same thing but it takes place through the machinations of the brain. I don’t see that anything is gained or lost either way. Except that materialism comports with our understanding of the way the world works.
That’s what I’ve been thinking too!
But someone will of course answer that it’s all too easy for people to turn that “mental realm” into god.
From the Prager University website under “ABOUT” then “WHAT WE DO”
That concludes my evening, ladies and gentlemen. Maybe next time we’ll encounter rationality.
We are not a real XXXX. And we don’t want to be.
na na na boo booo
Right of course be because “accreditation” is just The Man’s way of forcIng people to be “responsible” for the things they say, to have a faculty made up of “qualified” “professionals” following so-called “rigorous standards,” and a bunch of other stuff that’s all skewed toward the “public interest.” Smash the system!
That institutions of higher learning will be the death of America!™ is perhaps the foremost plank in Prager’s personal platform. You see, they kicked god out, so *anything* that goes on there can only have a detrimental effect on society.
(Of course, “they kicked god out” in Prager’s imagination. No time for research now, but I’d like to know what the ratio of “godless” state institutions to private religious institutions is.)
You mean overall in say the U.S., UK and Canada? Probably heavily weighted toward the religious. Among schools that have won the Nobel Prize or generated ground-breaking research and innovations? Yeah, not so much.
That’s my sense as well.
That statistic would just go to show that Prager’s insistence that universities are all godless engines of destruction is nonsense.
Ugh, sounds like the FB posts of my Catholic relatives….usually those ones I can’t resist correcting.
Of course you can’t resist…you have no choice in the matter!
b&
He’s right…accredited academic institutions do not do anything anymore. This is what Prager deserves to listen to (Clockwork Orange style) with his higher-than-thou culture attitude:
Mary Poppins Sings Death Metal
Try convincing this person, or the many religionists in this country (85% or more) that in any situation they couldn’t have chosen any differently from how they did.
Since this implicitly uses one of a handful of blatantly prejudicial definitions of relevant terms the imcompatibilists here use, let me just point to a comment on a different thread that links to certain arguments which said incompatibilists studiously (and, to others, frustratingly) ignore.
Then after you convince them of that determinism, tell them that they still have a kind of free will, a much better kind!!! See how far you get!
Since you seem to think that a negative report would carry some kind of evidential power, let me just say that I have tried that and have had positive results. I trust you will treat that as the potentially falsifying counter-evidence to your assertion your challenge logically implies it is.
What was the implicit definition of what term?
I honestly don’t know what you are referencing.
The compatibilist answer probably goes something like this: You’re totally wrong about determinism, but it doesn’t matter. You still have free will, and by that I mean you’re not chained to a wall in someone’s basement. And that’s the only type of free will worth wanting. It’s better than your type of free will, which according to you, you’d still have even if you were chained to a wall in a basement. That’s not worth wanting! So don’t worry, you have free will (it just doesn’t mean what you think it means).
Is there reliable WiFi in this basement of which you speak? Online access still affords a kind of virtual free will.
Good question. I don’t know. We’ll have to ask Vaal, or maybe Coel.
Probably depends on whether the WiFi is free or not. Maybe it counts if you leech off your neighbor’s open access point?
b&
Because God likes to tease people. As so eloquently put by Homer Simpson: Sometimes I think God is teasing me…just like he teased Moses in the desert.
God, “hardened Pharaoh’s heart” because, well, if he hadn’t, it couldn’t have been written into the Babble that way! There! How’s that for circular reasoning (?)?
Seems to me that all compatibilists are much more concerned with fitting “free will” to a phenomenon and finding phenomena to fit to “free will” than they are with tackling head-on the questions of whether the term has any meaning or utility or coherence. They’re certain that there must be something to it and that it’s really important and we can’t do without it…without first establishing the facts on the ground.
That’s not good science….
In reality, even most compatibilists will agree that there is no freedom to the will itself. Most will insist that “free will” applies to freedoms that come long after the will…but don’t think it’s at all relevant that the will itself has no freedom.
And most compatibilists think that “free will” is essential to avoiding terminal depression or societal collapse or other dire consequences…and yet we’ve got ample evidence — of people like Jerry, for example, or me — who aren’t at all depressed or criminally maniacal despite being absolutely certain that “free will” is a null pointer.
And the overwhelming majority of the population thinks “free will” means what Prager University thinks it means, which compatibilists insist is nothing at all like their own conception of “free will.” Compatibilists haven’t been able to convince me that this alternative meaning serves as anything other than a source of confusion at best and a bait-and-switch at worst.
b&
» Ben:
And the overwhelming majority of the population thinks “free will” means what Prager University thinks it means
Which assertion is (methodologically and factually) bullshit. And even if it weren’t, it would be completely irrelevant for the discussion, since there have been all manner of terms (such as ‘species’ and ‘gravity’) that people have had (and often still do have) extremely misleadingly wrong notions of—and still we don’t go around telling them that there’re no such things as species and gravity, for fear that they might cling to their outdated beliefs even one minute longer. Instead, shockingly, we educate them.
I’m sorry, Peter, but I will call you out once again for incivility. You are perfectly capable of making these points without snark, or without calling people’s comments “bullshit.” (Or maybe you aren’t because you are determined by the laws of physics to be rude.) I really don’t feel like engaging someone who has a history of uncivil remarks on this topic and is, in fact, rude. As you know, I don’t avoid discussing free will with readers. But I will when those readers have a politeness problem.
I have tried to answer you before, but I’m really tired of your incivility. If you can’t be polite on this site to the host and other commenters, please go elsewhere.
If your intent is to educate the uninitiated then you’re not having any success with me.
These threads on WEIT were my first introduction into this debate about the nature of free will.
I have tried to ingest as much as possible from either side of the argument and I read your comments and the link you posted to the previous thread regarding Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett and I have to say that between the vitriol and the pedantry, I have no idea what you’re actually arguing most of the time.
I’m not writing this to be antagonistic, I’m telling you that I came into this discussion with an open mind and I’ve found the comments made by non-compatibilists to be logically consistent and objective. Yours on the other hand seem preoccupied with casting aspersions at non-compatibilists.
You had a chance to argue me onto your position. You have not accomplished this.
I guess he plucks your strings in the wrong way 🙂
That’s pretty clever.
I think he dropped his pick in the sound hole.
Is that what the kids are calling it these days? I can never keep track.
Where’s Mr. Muth when we need him?
b&
Not so.
Not so. Compatibilists have established the facts on the ground. The facts are that determinism rules.
Of course it’s relevant! That’s why compatibilists have been stating it for 200 years (“Man can do as he wills but not will what he wills”, 1819). Note that “we can’t will what we will” is not the same as “it is irrelevant that we can’t will what we will”.
And your evidence for that claim is …? Two or three anecdotes?
Well, that isn’t so in Europe.
You haven’t been able to convince compatibilists that you even understand what compatibilist FW actually is, given the weird and wonderful set of ways in which you misunderstand it.
By definition if one is a compatibalist, that means one accepts determinism but holds on to classical, libertarian free will – those are the two things that are “compatible” in the mind of a “compatibalist.”
I believe Ben’s point is that the assertion of free will lacks the support of facts on the ground. To the extent there have been proper experiments, the no-free-will position has prevailed – or more precisely, the yes-free-will position has been falsified.
That’s as far as I know, of course – a more thoughtful response and challenge to Ben’s post would provide scientific results. Simply asserting that he misunderstands is no more dispositive than what he wrote (and since I agree with Ben, I’d be very interested to hear some compatibalist science).
Just a correction:
“By definition if one is a compatibalist, that means one accepts determinism but holds on to classical, libertarian free will “
No, classical Libertarianism and Compatibilism are typically seen as one of the three separate stances on the question of determinism and free will: Incompatibilism, Compatibilism, Libertarian.
Libertarianism actually understood as on branch of incompatibilism, holding that free will is incompatible with determinism.
Whereas of course Compatibilism is the stance that free will is compatible with determinism. So no, compatibilists do not hold to classical libertarian free will.
(Of course, like everything else, there’s a whole bunch of variety within each camp).
Interesting. Thanks for the clarification. I wonder how close the various compatibalism camps are via a vis the “ghost in the machine.”
That is just totally wrong, sorry. Compatibilists are *not* holding on to “classical, libertarian free will”. Really, really, we are not! This is why these discussions get nowhere. The incompatibilists just misunderstand c-FW time after time.
The compatibilist *rejects* “classical, libertarian FW”. S/he then asks what we mean by concepts such as “choice” in a deterministic world, and then develops a concept of “will” and “freedom” in line with that.
He quite blatantly misunderstands in the same way that you quite blatantly misunderstand.
The science is *determinism*. The “facts on the ground” are determinism! We don’t need and are not looking for any science beyond that! Really, we’re not.
If you don’t understand why determinism alone is entirely sufficient for c-FW then you haven’t understood even the basics of c-FW.
Sheesh, these discussions are so frustrating because every discussion of c-FW gets treated as though it were about dualist FW.
Perhaps we would come to understand if someone would explain it in a coherent way instead of telling us we don’t understand.
Given the mutual acceptance of determinism, it seems to me that it’s compatibalism that makes assertions without evidence. Since incompatibalism is the logical default position that fits the facts, that is, there is no evidence of an “I” which exists except as the product of the physical brain, the onus would be on compatibalists to develop the science that falsifies the default.
Is there something more to it than “I feel like I have free will and I feel like I make choices” … ? The very, very smart and thoughtful Dan Dennet put forward his model and it was not convincing.
Maybe you can point to a source that makes the case?
Exactly. And to a compatibilist the “I” is the physical brain.
Sigh, once again you are not understanding compatibilism. The compatibilist *agrees* with you! The “I” *is* the physical, materialist brain. The compatibilist does not want anything different than that!
So, let’s put your claimed non-dualism to the acid test.
What freedom is there in the brain as a physical phenomenon?
Never mind the subjective perceptions we all experience. Consider the brain only as an objective observer examining a physical phenomenon, at the level of a neuron that fires and triggers a cascade in a synapse that eventually causes a finger to twitch.
Of what sense could it possibly make to apply the word, “free,” to the phenomenon at that level of analysis? Do neurons have a choice of when to fire? Do synapses get to decide whether to syn or apse? If so, the word has no meaning, and we might as well suggest that a pocket calculator or a Rube Goldberg contraption or a Magic 8-Ball or a tornado is “free.”
So, either you’re using a definition of the word, “free,” that means the opposite of what everybody else means with that term…or you’re a dualist, even if a non-religious one, who thinks that the layer of consciousness that emerges from the physical actions of the brain adds some secret freedom sauce.
b&
Ben, if you’re asking “is it free of the laws of physics”, then the answer is that, no, of course it is not.
If I were to use the phrase “free speech”, the word “free” would not imply ignoring the laws of physics. What it would be about is degree of coercion from other humans.
In the same way c-FW is not even about the laws of physics (it is blatantly obvious that they apply — just as they do to free speech), instead c-FW is about degree of social coercion, just as free speech is about coercion.
You always, always misunderstand this because you *still* have not realised what c-FW is even *about*. If is not about d-FW, it is not about the laws of physics, it is about coercion by other humans.
I’m not even asking about the laws of physics.
I’m asking at the level of biology.
Is there freedom in the firing of a single neuron? In the firing of two neurons? In the firing of millions of neurons?
How many neurons have to fire before freedom has certainly emerged?
Ah.
Dualism.
Pure and simple.
You’ve got a phantasmagorical “free will” that can be annihilated by its anti-phantasm, “social coercion.”
Consider two parallel universes. In both, Sally is an Olympic sprinter, and she’s in the starting blocks about to head down the track.
In one universe, the night before the race, Sally ate something that didn’t quite agree with her. Her time is off by half a second, and she comes in third place rather than win.
In the other universe, the night before the race, a Mafia hit man told her to lose the race or else he’d break her knees. Her time is off by half a second, and she comes in third place rather than win.
By your definition, Sally has free will in the first universe but not in the second.
And the only thing different between the two is your own personal value judgement of the cultural significance of the factors that slowed Sally down from her performance in a third alternate universe where she won the race.
Sorry, Coel, but you’ve been quite consistent on this. You’re using dualistic terminology that fits with dualistic definitions that dualists use to dualistically describe dualism, and you’re just leaving out the gods from your language.
I suppose the more generous analysis would be that you’ve redefined, “dualism,” to mean, “not religious.” It would be consistent with your redefinition of, “free will,” to mean, “wills that are not free.”
b&
“Is there freedom in the firing of a single neuron?”
What definition of “freedom” are you asking about?
In c-FW the “freedom” is about degree of social coercion. Obviously that concept doesn’t apply to neurons.
“Ah. Dualism. Pure and simple.”
Ah. You still haven’t understood.
Ben, can you think of an interpretation of the word “free” such that you are freer to criticise Islam in America than you are in Saudi Arabia?
“And the only thing different between the two is your own personal value judgement of the cultural significance of the factors that slowed Sally down from her performance in a third alternate universe where she won the race.”
Wow! I’m stunned! After all this time Ben has actually said something sensible about c-FW!
Yes Ben, it is indeed about value judgements about cultural factors.
Now, might value judgements and cultural factors about how humans interact with each other actually be important to humans?
Sufficiently important that they might actually have words and concepts for them?
You know, things like: “Did you sign this contract of your own free will or were you coerced?”?
Pick one. Define it. Tell us the definition. Stick to it.
Using whatever definition you care to run with, is there “freedom” in the firing of a single neuron?
Then your version of compatibilist free will is a pure bait-and-switch with the jurisprudential one.
While you’re at it, why not throw in architecture? A free wall is one that’s not attached to any others, as I understand it, and I’ve definitely seen those. So free wall is real, too. Forest management…they use a fire wall to stop the spread of wildfires. I’m sure some sport has a free volley.
But why do you keep insisting on attempting to hijack the subject with legalisms when that’s so painfully obviously emphatically NOT what everybody else is talking about?
b&
“Pick one. Define it. Tell us the definition. Stick to it.”
Fine. My definition of “free” in “free will” is about social coercion. The concept is not applicable to neurons.
Similarly, the concept of “free” in “free speech” is about social coercion. The concept is not applicable to neurons.
The concept of “free” in “buy one get one free” is also not applicable to neurons.
“Then your version of compatibilist free will is a pure bait-and-switch with the jurisprudential one.”
Yes, the c-FW concept is indeed the jurisprudential one. Have a think about *why* jusisprudence uses it; it is because both are about social coercion by humans.
But, no, it’s not a bait-and-switch. It would only be so if I were pretending that this were somehow about d-FW, and I was baiting and switching from d-FW to c-FW.
But I’m not. Again and again and again I’ve tried to emphasize to you that c-FW is not about d-FW.
“While you’re at it, why not throw in architecture?”
Because concepts are most useful when we keep them fairly specific. And c-FW is about social coercion.
“when that’s so painfully obviously emphatically NOT what everybody else is talking about?”
But Ben, it *is* what compatibilists are talking about! And, there is a very long history of using c-FW vocabularly in this way. Really, there is. That’s a simple fact.
Now, you are entirely right that it is not what **dualist**-FW is about, and that is exactly what I’ve tried to emphasize to you again and again and again.
Is it possible that this might be a breakthrough point? Is it just possible that you now might finally realise that c-FW is not about d-FW?
It might indeed be possible, because in your previous comment you — at last — posted something sensible about c-FW that showed that you might finally be beginning to grasp it.
All you need to do now is realise that that *is* what c-FW is *about*.
I’ll note that you never did tell us whether or not a neuron is free.
Then your arguments, all of them, are entirely irrelevant.
This isn’t a courtroom or a statehouse. It would seem an obvious fact to state, but it’s now clear that it is a fact that has, indeed, entirely escaped your notice.
…erm…you did notice Jerry’s commentary at the top? About the Prager “University” lecturer? And the video he embedded?
Are you somehow under the mistraken impression that said lecturer is lecturing law students?
And you’re the only ones, and you only do so when everybody else is talking about non-jurisprudential free will. That’s threadjacking. You know? Like when somebody tries to discuss female genital mutilation and somebody else starts going off on circumcision, or vice-versa? Or when somebody criticizes the Catholic Church for the latest in-the-news child rape scandal, and somebody else brings up some random completely unrelated child rapist? Or when somebody criticizes the American government’s recent record on human rights and somebody else starts describing all the nasty shit that goes down in North Korea?
That’s still to be determined.
In what sense, if any, is a single neuron “free”? If none, at what point (and we’ll worry about “how” later) does a collection of neurons acquire freedom?
If you can’t provide a coherent answer to that question, then, legalistic or not, your free will, whatever it is, is supernatural and dualistic, despite any protestations you might insist upon to the contrary.
And, be warned: our laws are infused with dualism….
b&
“I’ll note that you never did tell us whether or not a neuron is free.”
I am not proposing a conception of “free” in which a neuron is “free”. The conception of “free” that I am presenting, the one in c-FW and “free speech” and “freed from slavery” is about coercion by other humans and is not applicable to neurons.
“Then your arguments, all of them, are entirely irrelevant. This isn’t a courtroom or a statehouse.”
You are entirely wrong. c-FW is about social coercion. Court-room FW is about social coercion. So of course the two are relevant to each other.
“And you’re the only ones, and you only do so when everybody else is talking about non-jurisprudential free will.”
You are simply wrong. You write comment after comment about compatibilism. Jerry writes multiple OPs about compatibilism. *Any* and all comments about c-FW are about court-room FW because c_FW **IS** court-room FW.
“That’s threadjacking. You know?”
If you think that talking about c-FW on a thread about d-FW is “threadjacking” then don’t do it!!
“In what sense, if any, is a single neuron “free”? If none, at what point (and we’ll worry about “how” later) does a collection of neurons acquire freedom?”
Answer your own question for the case of “free speech” or “freed from slavery” or “freed from jail” or court-room-FW and you’ll have your answer.
But, the basic answer is that “free” in all the above cases is about humans coercing each other, and that concept is not applicable to neurons.
“If you can’t provide a coherent answer to that question, …”
I just have.
“… then, legalistic or not, your free will, whatever it is, is supernatural and dualistic, …”
You’re just *desperate* to make this about d-FW aren’t you?
Do you think that the concepts “freed from jail” or “freed from slavery” are also about dualism? If not, make those your starting point. Try very hard. See if you can come up with a sensible conception of “free” as used in those two cases.
Fair enough — and you’re not going to like it.
Freedom, in all forms, is ultimately an illusion. Oftentimes, a rather useful illusion, just as the illusion that the Earth is flat makes it a lot easier to find your way to the drugstore.
In each and every case, freedom presumes the possibility that something could have been otherwise. And, while it’s true that we can propose logical models of anything you might care to propose that are internally coherent that include different outcomes…all such models are of not-real “realities” that never could possibly really exist for the simple reason that they leave out essential elements from the model.
You could, for example, build a logical model of a car that’s shaped like a VW Bus with a standard VW Bus engine and the rest that has a top speed of 500 miles per hour. Your model would ignore aerodynamics and track length and possibly other factors, of course — but it’d be perfectly self-consistent…
…and perfectly unreal.
At the same time, that exact same model that would suggest that your Bus can outperform a land speed racing champion may be the perfect one to use to lay out the cones on the parking lot for your local Saturday night at the races event. You’d be lucky to make it to 45 MPH on a course that small and short, and aerodynamics simply doesn’t enter the picture in a meaningful way at those speeds.
Any form of freedom that you might propose will, of necessity, break down as soon as you get anywhere near the boundaries of the model. Any model that actually incorporates enough details of reality to describe reality to any degree is going to inevitably conclude that any freedoms that might be apparent with simpler models just don’t apply in reality.
Are you happy now?
b&
“Are you happy now?”
Nope, I’m not. Have you seen the film: “12 years a slave”, or some similar account of slavery?
Do you think that there is a significant difference, a difference that is very important to humans, between being a “slave” and a “free man”?
If so, what is that difference and what does the term “free” mean as used in that context?
Coel, have you ever laid a street map on a flat table and used it to find your way to the drugstore? Do you really expect me to believe these ivory tower types when they tell me, contrary to that experience right there, that the Earth isn’t as flat as that map?
Now, if we’ve both got that out of our systems…I think we can both agree that the Earth is not flat, but that there are situations in which the local conditions are close enough to flat that it makes our lives a lot simpler if we pretend it is.
And, therefore, we should also be able to agree that there really isn’t any freedom at all in the Universe, but that there are situations in which the local conditions are close enough to free that it makes our lives a lot simpler if we pretend we’re free.
Now, we come back to a question of semantics.
You can either insist that “the flat Earth” / “free will” is a real phenomenon because it’s an useful illusion under certain circumstances…
…or you can acknowledge that the Earth is an oblate spheroid with a dynamic quasi-fractal fine surface structure and that there’s no freedom at all in reality, even while we go about a good portion of our daily lives in blissful ignorance of those inconvenient facts.
The former makes you a Flat Earther / dualist, in practice if nothing else.
The latter makes you an educated and pragmatic rationalist.
Cheers,
b&
“And, therefore, we should also be able to agree that there really isn’t any freedom at all in the Universe, but that there are situations in which the local conditions are close enough to free that it makes our lives a lot simpler if we pretend we’re free.”
Hols on, if *that’s* your answer to the difference between “slave” and “free man”, then *you’re* the one hankering after dualism.
The compatibilist answer to that, and the compatibilist conception of “free” in that context, is *rigorously* deterministic.
It is not in any way about being “close enough” to anything like dualism or the non-operation of the laws of physics.
Your whole thinking about all of this is still *waaaay* too close to dualistic, and you still think it’s all about the presence or absence of dualism.
Hold on, Coel, if that’s your answer to the difference between the flat and round Earths, then you’re the one hankering after geocentricism.
Then whence the “free” word? Physics most emphatically is not free. If you’re discussing freedom in any form, then the laws of physics aren’t operating.
As long as you keep using that word, “free,” then your model is incomplete and does not incorporate all relevant facts about the way the Universe works — and my VW Bus is similarly capable of 500 MPH on the salt flats.
If you want to talk about the real world in complete detail, you’ve got to drop the word, “free.” If you want to ignore all the messy detail to make your life easier, you can discuss freedom…but only if you’re aware that the freedom goes away once you add the detail back in, just as my car’s top speed becomes much more sedate when I consider aerodynamics.
b&
“If you’re discussing freedom in any form, then the laws of physics aren’t operating.”
No, not at all. But this is revealing, that you cannot conceive of any meaning of “freedom” that isn’t about the non-operation of the laws of physics.
Take the case of slavery:
The slave does not particularly want to pick cotton non-stop for twelve hours. But, his master does want him to and threatens to whip him if he doesn’t. Under that coercion the slave does pick the cotton. If he could ignore the other person’s request without penalty then we’d call that “free”, but if he is subject to that other person’s will then we call that “slavery”.
Absolutely nothing about that last paragraph is about the non-operation of the laws of physics. The desires and “will” of both the slave and the master are deterministic products of physical brains. Yet, the concept “free” is meaningful and important to humans.
Then the freedom in question is not something that actually exists in this universe, any more than any other imaginary construct does. And that would include such a noble construct as mathematics, incidentally; numbers don’t exist, Plato notwithstanding, even though that doesn’t stop us from counting things.
Just as paper maps that you spread flat on the table are meaningful and important — but that does not mean that the Earth is flat!
I’ll also note that you’re now rather transparently appealing to consequences. If I insist that freedom is illusory, you’re strongly implying, then I support slavery.
It should be obvious that I no more endorse slavery than any atheist, through rejection of the gods, endorses villainy. I really shouldn’t have to explain why slavery is a very, very, very bad thing, even as I indicate that, just as the Earth isn’t ultimately flat, neither are any of us ultimately free.
b&
I’m baffled by the logic here.
You> Freedom can only refer to the non-operation of the laws of physics.
Me> No, there are concepts of “freedom” that don’t refer to that.
You> Then the freedom in question is not something that actually exists in this universe.
How does your answer follow? It follows if your conception of freedom (non-operation of physics) holds, but is not an argument against my concept of freedom (in which physics does apply).
And I’m not suggesting you support slavery. I’m simply trying to get to you to say that the difference between “slavery” and being “free” is important and meaningful and nothing to do with non-operation of physics.
Coel, physics is all there is. Everything eventually reduces down to physics. If physics doesn’t apply, then you’ve just introduced the supernatural.
So, which is it: physics is irrelevant to the discussion and you’re a supernaturalist, or physics eventually has its say at some point? But, of course, once you expand your model sufficiently to include physics, all pretense of there being any degrees of freedom vanishes.
And I’m simply trying to get you to acknowledge that offering no-charge estate planning services, yes, does constitute a “free will,” but that it’s not at all meaningful in the context of the discussion we’re ostensibly having.
Maybe you could leave free will aside for the moment and consider terrestrial geometry.
The Earth really is (roughly) an oblate spheroid, yes? And you’ve used flat paper maps, right? So how do you reconcile those two characterizations of the shape of the Earth? Do you call yourself a flat Earther because you find maps just so danged useful, or do you describe the Earth as spherical and consider the maps an useful approximation that, when it comes right down to it, don’t even vaguely resemble the actual reality of the Earth?
b&
“If physics doesn’t apply, then you’ve just introduced the supernatural.”
Physics always, always, always, ALWAYS, Always, ALWAYS applies! Sheesh, which bit of this are you not getting?
Why do you always, always, always want to return to the topic of dualism?? sheesh!
“So, which is it: physics is irrelevant to the discussion and you’re a supernaturalist,…”
Oh FFS. Physics always applies. That makes the operation of physics irrelevant to the **DIFFERENCE** between a “slave” and a “free man” because physics always applies.
Just like “breathing air” is irrelevant to the *DIFFERENCE* between a slave and a free man, because they both breath air.
I’m just utterly stunned by the sheer perversity of the myriad ways you come up with to misunderstand compatibilism!
“once you expand your model sufficiently to include physics, all pretense of there being any degrees of freedom vanishes.”
Only if “freedom” is necessarily about the non-operation of laws of physics.
Sheesh, look it really is not hard. The laws of physics apply both to slaves and to free men. The term “free” still captures a difference between those states that is important to humans.
“… but that it’s not at all meaningful in the context of the discussion we’re ostensibly having.”
The discussion I am *trying* to have, trying very hard to have, is one in which physics always, always, always, always applies.
The bit how you reconcile statements like that with ones that follow that dismiss physics as irrelevant because you’re only considering some limited scope and ignoring physics.
Either physics applies or it’s irrelevant.
If it applies, there’s no freedom to be had, period, full stop — any more than the planets themselves are “free” in their orbits even if we use the term, “free fall,” as a linguistic artifact to describe said orbits.
And if physics is irrelevant, then that’s supernaturalism.
If it’s merely that you don’t need to go all the way through the layers of biology and chemistry and what-not down to physics to describe something…then either the freedom is an emergent property or it’s an incomplete model that might be useful in limited circumstances but doesn’t actually describe real reality. And we’ve pretty much ruled out the emergent property possibility.
Where we’re at now, basically, is that you’re insisting that the map really is the territory, and the real territory is irrelevant because the map is what matters. If it’s not on the map, it’s not real and we can just ignore it; that’s what your words amount to.
And that’s just a different form of the same variety of supernaturalism as the religious propose.
b&
“Either physics applies or it’s irrelevant.”
Wrong. It can be irrelevant to the **difference** between two precisely because it does apply to both. I said that in the last comment but you just ignored it.
“If it applies, there’s no freedom to be had, period, ..”
That is *only* that case if the conception of “freedom” requires that physics not apply. It is not the case for conceptions of “freedom” in which physics always applies, which it always does.
I said that in the last couple of comments, but you just ignored it.
I ignored it because it’s either incoherent or dualistic.
Mars and Jupiter are both in free fall, right? And we see the evidence of that as they wander about the sky, even going back and forth? And physics is irrelevant because it’s the same physics applying to both, so we need to use “free fall” to explain retrograde motion.
There’s just no salvaging that sentence you wrote that I quoted. Either you really don’t “get” physics or you really are a dualist and you’re just confusing your dualism with physics.
I know you keep insisting that you accept physics and you reject dualism…but, at the same time, you not only propose gross violations of physics but dismiss it as irrelevant in situations where it couldn’t possibly be more relevant.
If you actually do “get” physics and your freedom really is really real, you can walk the dog, so to speak, from atomic theory to chemistry to biology all the way up to the sociology where you clearly think “freedom” really is really real rather than just a blank spot on the map. That sort of thing is trivial to do with the wetness of water that only emerges at scales where chemistry is applicable but not with individual atoms. But it’s damned clear to my understanding of physics that that’s simply not possible with “free will,” and your repeatedly-demonstrated inability to do so only confirms that fact.
If you really do want to convince me of the reality of freedom, walk that dog. Even if you don’t have an explanation for how the freedom arises from a non-free system, you should be able to isolate the point at which freedom emerges from non-freedom.
Because the only other option is for you to convince me even further that your own operating understanding of physics is fundamentally dualistic, even if you don’t realize it.
b&
Oh FFS.
Physics applies both to slaves and to free men.
The difference between being a slave or a free man is meaningful and important to humans.
Nothing in the last sentence is about the non-operation of the laws of physics.
Yet, the term “free” in that sentence is meaningful and important to humans.
At this point I give up.
Coel, we are none of us free.
Not even you.
The unfortunate wear bitter chains forged of cold steel. And we as compassionate humans have a moral duty to lessen their burden. Indeed, we are not free on that matter; we must help them or be morally inadequate.
But even those of us not in chains are still not free. Our chains are invisible and, for many, not merely typically unnoticeable but downright pleasant.
But a puppet that likes it strings is no more or less free than one that resents them.
If and when you come to realize that you, too, are inextricably embedded in the universal web of causation, no more free to choose your path than the “free-flowing” water in a pipe is to choose its destiny, then you will understand the incoherence of the notion of “free will.”
b&
Some more Schopenhauer (Über die Freiheit des menschlichen Willens):
“I can do what I will: I can, if I will, give everything I have to the poor and thus become poor myself—if I will! But I cannot will this, because the opposing motives have much too much power over me for me to be able to. On the other hand, if I had a different character, even to the extent that I were a saint, then I would be able to will it. But then I could not keep from willing it, and hence I would have to do so.”
Crystal clear. I don’t think that this is what even Europeans mean by freewill.
If compatibalists didn’t introduce “moral responsibility” I wouldn’t care how they might redefine freewill.
Schopenhauer sees morality as a consequence of our character. Personally I think it’s a bit unfair to punish people for who or what they are.
Especially when they cannot will what they will.
Dan Dennett is most explicit about that, and many of the compatibilists made the same point in the last thread. I don’t have hard figures to back it up, but I’ll not back down unless you can present hard figures of your own to the contrary.
That would be in no small part due to the diversity of compatibilist definitions of the term, many of which incorporate dualistic or supernatural (even if non-religious) elements. Or, more generously, how many demonstrate ignorance or misunderstanding of physics (including information theory) as we know it.
I’m not accusing you personally of such failings…just suggesting that you would do well to get your own house in order and presenting an unified front before accusing others of not being able to triangulate all y’all.
Your arguments are as much with your fellow compatibilists as they are with incompatibilists.
b&
That’s simply not true. c-FW is not d-FW.
Empirically, per the last thread, a number of other people defended compatibilist free will with dualist conceptions of, for example, computation. That’s not dualist in the sense of a Christian soul, but it’s still dualism to propose that computation is somehow Platonically separated from physics.
b&
Here is my argument:
There is no “Mind Ghost” because if you could surgically remove a small portion of a human’s brain, they might not only become less intelligent, but would react differently to the same of inputs.
Remove a little bit more of the brain in increments and the intelligence would definitely decrease in rough correlation with incremental resection. Their reaction (to same of inputs) would also eventually become radically different to the unresected brain.
Eventually the patient would die as too much of their ‘meat computer’ is removed.
At no point does a ‘mind ghost’, soul, spirit seem to intervene during this experiment.
And unfortunately we have plenty empirical evidence from trauma victims, brain cancer, dementia, alzheimers etc…
If there was some other “soul” wouldn’t we conceivably have cases where an entire brain is resected and subject survives? (How is that for a theology PHD thesis?)
“same of inputs” is meant to be “same set of inputs”
I apologize 🙁
Amen!
Er… I mean, right on.
I’m amused that the speaker in the video seems to suggest that the withdrawal reflex involves the brain. Without understanding spinal reflexes, he at least acknowledges their deterministic nature.
I can’t stand Dennis Prager! In my semi-Faitheist youth, I attended the alternative “minion” at a large synagogue in L.A. It had short services, very light on the goddy stuff (even for an old-school Reform temple it was light), not too many people. Then Prager saw his chance to be Mr. Celebrity Rabbi and turned Saturdays into “oh the things I know” time. Ugh! It was all God this and God that. I suppose he did me a favor in snipping one of the last cords or my belief in belief – but at the time I was pretty mad. What’s the point of being a liberal Jew if you have to sit there and listen to bible stories?! Sheesh.
Is a minion a minyan done by the Onion?
Farkakhte autocorrect! An Onion-based minyan would be way better than the Prager version.
And is said “minion” from Minos?
I thought the “alternative minion” was the vegetarian version of the “filet mignon.”
Just curious, did (and how did) Mr.“oh the things I know” Prager dismiss Christianity and its core doctrine – the belief in and declaring Jesus Christ as ones Savior? To the extent such a “right” exists, anyone one has the right to say something is so “because I SAID so.”
Re; “Prager University”: there’s a “McDonald’s University,” so far as that is concerned. Perhaps he could have tried to affect some (“I know nothing” Socratic) modesty and humility by referring to it instead as a “conversation” or “exploration” or “seminar” or “colloquium.”
One notes that more and more colleges are “puttin’ on airs” by announcing that they are now “universities.”
I once saw a van, the side of which bloviated, “Interior Environmental Maintenance Systems.” In reality, it was not much more than the throw-rug rental man.”
I live in The Land of Hot Air.”
No, Mr. Prager stuck to Jewish subject matter. One particularly annoying bit I remember was his rejection of the idea that a lack of archeological evidence did not mean the Exodus from Egypt did not happen (I think he may have been responding to a recent lecture at the same synagogue, but I’m not sure – it’s been a,most 20 years since): the bible has so many details and the faith is so strong, something MUST have happened those 3,000 years ago! It MUST be true!
However, speaking of Xtianity, I remember thinking “Dude, do you not realize you’re making the case for every religion?” The New Testament also has lots of details about the resurrection and faith in that story also is quite strong: it MUST be true! We also know a LOT about unicorns and faeries! True and TRUE!
I don’t think feigning humility is in Mr. Prager’s toolkit. His ego seems to be at least as large as he is (over 6 feet tall and easily 15 stone.
RE “minion”
I once saw someone complain in print about a politician’s “mignons”. Since I knew the politician, I called him up to invite him to bring his mignons to my place for dinner.
I’m sure they are rare and delicious.
I hesitate to tread on ground already well tilled by those more qualified than I am to comment. But I am content with a concept of free will that says I am ‘responsible’ for my decisions because nobody else can be. And those decisions are taken by a brain that has (or is expected to have) already internalised their possible consequences, including the potential social or legal penalties. If I ‘choose’ to take particular decisions, therefore, I cannot claim to be absolved from their consequences.
I think it is also important that ‘deterministic’ should not be interpreted as ‘inevitable’. There are far too many phenomena around that are deterministic but unpredictable (eg the weather!) to allow us to think that the outcome of the brain’s workings are somehow completely predetermined. Not that that gives a let-out for compatibilist or other traditional concepts of free will.
You’ve tread quite well as it turns out. In my understanding, the incompatibalist view does not eliminate the concept of responsibility or accountability, it’s more about informing the reactions and judgment of people’s actions, informed by the understanding that a given person could not have chosen otherwise. This moves the focus from the secondary emotions of outrage and the need for punishment or retribution – which are all but completely ineffective as change agents – and onto more successful means of making things better or at least not-worse. Of course change is hard and many people will just be too far gone by the time they commit a crime or otherwise hurt others – but the problem is we as a society hardly even try even though we know there are all kinds of rehabilitation therapies that could make a big difference for all kinds of people; in the end, the current justice system, as well as the way most of us raise our kids or treat our neighbors, just reinforces and exacerbates dysfunction and recidivism. Religion-bred libertarian free will with a healthy dose of self-righteousness has resulted in civil society for the few and an inescapable trap of failure for the many.
The incompatibilist view supports a compassionate view not only towards others but also towards ourselves. We may regret but need not beat ourselves up over our own screw-ups. We did the best we could at the time and under the circumstances (that’s true of almost all human actions), although we now wish we had done differently.
Yup. And maybe more important is the attitude toward the self. The human tendency to “wish we had done differently” is I think connected to the delusion that we can will the past to have been different just by ruminating on it. A person would have to be pretty stoic or inhuman not to feel regret and guilt over past misdeeds; the trick is to move attention back to “what now” and “what next” and to avoid turning hopefulness into another kind of magical thinking.
I’m sure lots of “conventional free will” folks are very good at this – lots of people are good at living rationally and practically, and the majority of people assume they have free will. The advantage to the incompatibilist view is that it also happens to be congruent with the world as we find it – ghost-free, that is – and I think acceptance of reality has to be a prerequisite to understanding anything.
Thank you for that helpful elaboration. For me, society is entirely justified in requiring penalties such as incarceration in order to (a) demonstrate its disapproval, (b) remove from society (for a bit – not necessarily for ever) those who might do the same thing again, and (c) try to rehabilitate them. Retribution is not only incoherent, but to my mind unethical. Trouble is that far too few societies take (c) seriously.
To clarify: my remarks were in response to MOOT’S. And I forgot to mention the deterrent argument, which I think is relevant as well.
That’s the theme in these threads – I went on at length a while back on my personal observation of an older brother who was incarcerated for most of his adult life and had his humanity obliterated. Over what? A couple of posession charges, raiding a cash register at a convenience store (unarmed) and trespassing while on parole (trespassing being a failed burglary – he just hadn’t taken anything yet).
Unfortunately I think c) rehabilitation is not consistent with the U.S. Puritan fetish for punishing evil doers. The majority clings to this idea that prisons have to be nothing but awful in the belief that bad guys deserve no mercy and in the hope they will be good upon release to keep from going back. It’s understandable that people feel that way, but the method consistently yields the exact opposite of the objective – except for the punishment part. Boy, are we good at ruining people’s lives!
Thanks for your openness. My immediate reaction is of sincere sympathy for your position and that of your brother.
As you say, the majority think prisons have to be awful in the hope that people will be good so as not to be sent back. Deterrence indeed needs to be part of the picture. But as you point out so eloquently, merciless retribution just doesn’t work. How much more evidence does there need to be to show this?
Off to bed now! Many thanks for your thoughts.
Honestly, I think compatibilists and incompatibilists would be fine with the definition you gave. We just argue over terminology and it’s kind of sad since we essentially agree.
There are incompatibilists and compatibilists who believe the argument is ultimately about semantics, while others in each camp believe it about something more substantial.
Sometimes I waver on this myself, when my thinker gets tired.
You mean that, due to forces outside your willful ability to control, your understanding of the nature of the debate about free will changes?
Fancy that.
b&
There is no doubt that Prager is smart, but he is diseased with what I call: ‘The universe must be the kind, intellectually friendly place I thought of when I was in my early, precocious twenties.’
There is no evidence for ghosts or gods. Likewise, there is nothing that anyone did yesterday that we cannot explain through physics, except maybe MH370.
I’m new to the discussion but it seems to me the seeming compatibilist paradox reflects a difference of scale between the micro level at which things are actually caused and the macro level at which the brain processes our surroundings. The same process of minute natural causation that proceeds everywhere also brought about a brain that monitors our situation and our actions at a relatively gross level. So most people need a sense of free will to process the social complexities of our life, and our brain is constructed at the minuscule level to do that. Natural causation is real, but so is human/social information processing.
Also,can someone fill me in on what Jerry’s much better kind of free will is, mentioned at the end of the 2nd paragraph? Thanks.
Brock Haussamen
The “much better kind of free will” Jerry mentions is the compatibilist free will. It isn’t Jerry’s free will though because Jerry is an incompatibilist.
If, and what a big if, we are just chemical reactions, what is it that allows a chemical reaction in us to become aware and inform us that it is just a chemical reaction not free will?
It’s chemical reactions all the way down.
That is a superlative question, and one of the most relevant ones that could be asked in this discussion.
It is, of course, also commonly known as “the hard problem of consciousness,” and one for which we do not yet have a definitive answer.
We can start with some boundary limits, though…just as you don’t need to investigate proposals that the Sun will rise in the West tomorrow, or that a device can create more energy than it consumes, or that a rocketship can go faster than the speed of light before we dismiss them, we can dismiss any and all claims that involve something outside the confines of the skull is at work.
Put simply, we know the physics of the human body as well as we know the physics of a thrown baseball. Any external force would be measurable. Any force that could go undetected would also be incapable of interacting with the body. And that doesn’t just extend to thoughts…I think we can agree, for example, that your thoughts control the movements of your body (such as your fingers upon the keyboard) and you can follow that chain of causality all the way back to “just chemical reactions” with no room, even hypothetically, for something else.
But all that, of course, just tells us what consciousness isn’t, and tells us damned little about what it is. And most people consider explanations of what something isn’t unsatisfactory until there’s a compelling explanation of what it is.
The leading contender right now for what consciousness actually is…is a recursive computational model of reality that includes itself in the model.
Imagine a video game with characters wandering around in it. Today’s video game characters are not conscious. Imagine one of those characters including a subroutine that was a stripped-down simulation-in-a-simulation of its surroundings — say, enough for it to be able to avoid walking into walls and other characters. This character still isn’t conscious.
Now, imagine that this character has itself in this simulation-in-a-simulation, in a recursive fashion that has itself complete with its own recursive simulation of its surroundings in the simulation — somewhat like what happens when you point mirrors at each other or aim a video camera lens at the display showing the video output. This character is actually conscious, if this is the correct model of consciousness.
And…we already know that the brain has so-called “mirror neurons” that permit us to build our own private models of the presumed mental state of others — it’s how you know what somebody else is feeling. Wikipedia and other sources are full of information on their functioning if you’re not familiar with them; they’re a well-studied (though not yet thoroughly understood) phenomenon. All that’s necessary for this model of consciousness to be correct…is for some of these mirror neurons to mirror your own internal state of mind, not somebody else’s state of mind.
Is this the solution to the hard problem of consciousness? I rather think it is, at least in general outline. But, to be fair, we still need to do a lot more basic research before we can have any confidence in any answer.
But…what it does establish is that there can be a very plausible, very realistic, and actually-evidenced mechanism by which self-awareness and consciousness can arise from, as you put it, chemical reactions. Or, for that matter, computer circuits — or anything else that can be logically represented by a Turing Machine.
Cheers,
b&
Yes, a recursive model that may be the result of complex systems (squishy or otherwise). We also know that consciousness isn’t located anywhere in the brain (which supports my first sentence).
I have NEVER been able to get a feel for the purported “Hard Problem” of consciousness. Despite reading Chalmers, and reading/talking to “mysterions” and talk of “qualia” etc.
It just doesn’t take. Yea consciousness is going to be complicated to explain, but the stance that it is somehow *in principle* irreducible, or unexplainable, or “mysterious” seems to always rely on a No True Scotsman type stance: Once you start explaining a material basis for Consciousness, then you aren’t really describing consciousness because “Consciousness is so mysterious, you see.
If you are finding a material way to explain it, that must mean you haven’t thought deeply enough about it to know it’s inexplicably mysterious.”
You should read Christoph Kock’s book. It is well explained in that.
Freudian slip?
No, iPad.
You have a Freudian iPad? Neat! Disturbing, but neat!
b&
woops: Christoph Koch.
Quite right. I’m comfortable with the “hard problem” language because it is something that’s vexed us for quite a long time and that we may well not have an ironclad explanation for in my lifetime…but, at the same time, at least since Church-Turing, we’ve had a damned good idea of the boundaries of any possible answer.
It’s like abiogenesis. We’re making great strides on that front, but, again, I may well die before we get a definitive answer. But, ever since Miller-Urey, we’ve had no excuse for thinking the problem is intractable or will involve anything other than chemistry.
b&
Ben, have you ever read Antonio Damasio’s self comes to mind?
Must admit, I’m not familiar with that.
b&
I strongly recommend it, then. He makes a very compelling, if highly speculatory, case for the recursive model of conciousness.
http://www.amazon.com/Self-Comes-Mind-Constructing-Conscious/dp/030747495X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1427973970&sr=8-1&keywords=self+comes+to+mind
Thanks for the reference!
…and curse you for another addition to The Pile….
b&
One theological response is that one should carefully note that before Yahweh is ever said to harden Pharaoh’s heart, the Pharaoh himself is said to have hardened his heart first. This being the case, the subsequent hardening of Pharaoh’s heart by Yahweh is said to be the application of lex talionis, basically an “eye for an eye.”
The problem with that theological excuse is that, as I recall, in the text, YHWH first hardens Pharaoh’s heart several times before Pharaoh hardens it without YHWH’s intervention.
After all that brainwashing, can Pharaoh hardly be blamed for succumbing to YWHW’s puppetry?
And it misses an even bigger problem.
YWHW clearly hardened Pharoah’s heart at some point. So he clearly has the capability and willingness to alter the firmness of the heart.
So why the fuck didn’t he soften Pharoah’s heart in the first place before resorting to all the nasty whoop-ass he kept unleashing?
Clearly, it can only be because YHWH got a new batch of whoop-ass toys in the mail, and he wanted to try them all out right away….
b&
Nice video, even my children can understand this. It’s basically let’s intuition be our guide against cold robotic materialism. Dualism is the natural born winner.It’s a nice way to cope with the nonexistence of god.
I’m a deterministic materialistic atheistic reductionist and don’t believe in Freewill so I disagree with it’s conclusions.
On the “despair” subject:
I see my “not believing in freewill” as a positive Zen-like thing and have stopped worrying about “Freewill” a long time ago.
Maybe, on the downside, it’s a little bit narcissistic.
Nothing is perfect.
I like your point about the positive aspect of your non-belief and find it personally relevant. I think maybe Buddhists would have something to say on this topic. Non-belief doesn’t sound especially narcissistic, but it may foster needless passivity in the face of others’ suffering.
Brock
Why should it? “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” is entirely independent of any questions about the meaning of choice.
b&
Thanks for this. The video actually did a good job of laying out the basic issues regarding free will, but then at some point shifted gears and essentially said “but of course you can choose freely” and then went downhill after that. Clearly, the intent was not to say “what if this is true?”, but “this can’t possibly be true, so a ‘greater mind’ must be the alternative.”
Prager was a staple of the Los Angeles day time talk show scene around 20 years ago. Even though I often disagreed with him, at least he discussed mildly philosophical topics.
I remember a few of his assertions/thought experiments. One was that music proves God, because otherwise how can you explain something so beautiful and yet useless/unnecessary?
He also had a ready answer to theodicy, which I believe he attributed to some rabbi. Basically, it was this: how could the world really be otherwise? If you didn’t have struggles for survival, then we couldn’t fulfill our God-given destinies and potential. Natural selection thus becomes a sort of crucible by which we improve.
Finally, to either prove that race wasn’t an issue in America, or to prove how great Christianity is, he posed this thought experiment: picture two groups of young males walking down the sidewalk towards you on opposite sides of the street. One group is white and thuggish (as shown by their attire, swagger, etc.) and the other group is black, well-dressed, and carrying Bibles. Which group would you rather walk past? Since most everyone would trust the latter group more, therefore Christianity is a good moral force in society. (Not sure now why race/attire is necessary here…)
This issue continues to spin my brain in circles or should I say loops! I trend in the the direction of incompatibilism vis-a-vis multitude determinants both known and and unknown at any given moment. I do like the comment that it really doesn’t make any difference whether “libertarian free will” is an illusion or a reality. The fact is that I do have an awareness that there are options at any given point but even if that’s an illusion I still must deal with it. As I have long followed this issue on this website, I think that there is a need for a new vocabulary; what Richard Rorty refers to as “Contingent Vocabulary” versus ” “Final vocabulary.” Much more of the former is needed than the latter. There seems to be agreement that “Libertarian Free Will” comes from a philosophical and religious tradition that is no longer relevant in a contemporary scientific world. However, terms such as “conscience” and any of its derivatives such as “unconscionable” are likewise dated. I’m beginning to think that “determinism” and “indeterminism” are emerging as terms possibly unwittingly inseparable from “free will” and its cohort of terminology. In his book, Complexity: A Very Short Introduction, John Holland addresses “Complicated Systems” versus “Complex Systems.” In “Complex Systems” the ‘whole is greater than the sum of the parts.” An example is “wetness.” Oxygen and Hydrogen do not have that property but when H2O is formed “wetness” is a property that emerges as a characteristic of this “Complex System.” Might one consider that “options,” “choices” are to human brain activity what “wetness” is to the molecular structure of water. Semir Zeki, % neuroesthetics, points out that any color, like “green,” is an abstraction. We think we see “green” but we really don’t… it’s a product of the brain. Anyway, I’m simply trying to find my own way… and that is to embrace a more “contingent vocabulary” than holding to a “final vocabulary.” Thanks for your time.
Complexity doesn’t change things substantially. “There’s more than one way to do it” is a popular saying amongst programmers. Ultimately, we are computational engines that have functions that provide a one-to-one mapping from any given set of inputs to a single output.
You can witness this yourself. How many times have you made the same selection for a meal from a menu? Every time you did that, you had a different set of inputs — different day, different company, different set of smells, different blood sugar levels, and so on…yet they all reduced down to a single decision that happened to be repeatable. And, sometimes, in that same restaurant with that same menu, the result is a different choice…but that choice corresponded to a different set of inputs.
And, remember: it is not necessary for the brain to be able to model itself completely to know that it is the type of function that can be modeled. Indeed, no model from within can be a complete representation of the whole….
b&
I cannot believe I’m doing it again so soon.
I think I kind of get where compatiblists at least are coming from when they say they are concerned about the potential consequences of “the little people” (I sincerely hope Dennett did not actually use that phrase) being told they do not have free will. I was describing a case that Patricia Churchland had written about (which I first heard of on Paul Harvey’s “The Rest of the Story…”–and yes I know he was right-wing) to a family member where a decent law-abiding man started craving child porn and after he was arrested and convicted and awaiting sentencing, he was taken to the ER complaining of severe headaches. Doctors identified a large tumor pressing on a specific brain region (I don’t recall which right now), and when the tumor was removed the pedophillic urges ceased. Some time later, the urges returned, and sure enough, when neurosurgeons checked, the tumor was back.
The very religious person I described this to just could not get their head around it. She was okay with Alzheimer’s causing changes in “who a person was” but could not fathom how such “evil” could not be the person’s own “sinful nature.” Though it must be said that at least she saw how in this case it was not that person’s fault. Anyone aware of the Dunning-Kruger effect will have an inkling about how wide-spread the severe lack of metacognitive skills among our fellow human-beings is.
Those here on WEIT are very reflective people, generously endowed with metacognitive abilities, whether they are incompatibilists or compatiblists. I think that making assumptions about how those less well-endowed with metacognitive skills will take repeated assertions that free will is an illusion–with real-world examples of this–will deal with it, without compassionate help in getting their heads around that idea.
BTW…I am an agnostic incompatibilist, in other words, I accept that determinism is almost certainly true and thus free will is an illusion, but there may be some things (some of which I can specify) out there that might change my mind.
BTW#2…here is that Patricia Churchland reference: Churchland, P. ‘Do We Have Free Will?’. New Scientist. 192, p.42–45; (18 Nov. 2006). (full text available on EBSCO host, citation courtesy of Zotero)
If we are to adopt that type of language…I would have to put myself, once again, in the ignostic camp, this time with respect to “free will.” The concept is too ill-defined to be meaningly referred to.
The few definitions that aren’t outright incoherent are either defining that which we know is incompatible with physics or that which is entirely mundane and that nobody else identifies as the phenomenon in question. Respectively, that would be outright dualists; those who would Platonically reify computation or math or the like; and those who equate it with matters of jurisprudence and related subjects.
The one thing we should all be able to agree upon is that nobody can agree upon what “free will” really is or is supposed to be — and that right there precludes the ability to make meaningful declarations, for example, affirming its reality.
Cheers,
b&
Evening Ben,
What I meant by “agnostic” was that, for example, I saw a science story several years ago regarding research that was done back in 1999 where researchers were able to detect wave/particle duality of C-60 molecules (Arndt, M. & Nairz, O. ‘Wave-Particle Duality of C60 Molecules’. Nature. 401, p.680; (14 Oct. 1999).
I recall thinking at the time that, while it may not salvage free will via quantum fuzziness, the assertion/presumption that wave/particle duality is irrelevant to macroscopic “stuff” may not be correct. As I understand it, research since that time has only increased the scale at which wave/particle duality is detectable.
Just from a physics standpoint such findings are cool.
True…but irrelevant.
First, quantum mechanics, even in principle, doesn’t change the cognitive equation. Quantum computers would be capable of carrying out certain computations with more speed and / or efficiency than classical computers…but there isn’t anything that the one could do that the other couldn’t or vice-versa.
Second, there’s no practical room remaining for quantum effects to be relevant in brains. Brains are far too hot, large, and messy for quantum effects to dominate. Might as well hold out hope that, since it seems likely we’ll find microbial life on Mars, there could still be full-sized humanoid Martians who built the canals that aren’t there.
No doubt…but you should be aware that we’re long past the days when new discoveries in physics are relevant to biology.
http://www.preposterousuniverse.com/blog/2010/09/23/the-laws-underlying-the-physics-of-everyday-life-are-completely-understood/
All sorts of exciting new frontiers remain…but the homeland of microscopic through to telescopic? That’s more thoroughly mapped than the streets of Manhattan.
Cheers,
b&
Dennett has, IMO, been incorrectly characterized as appealing to a “little people” argument.
First, “little people arguments” tend to be in the form of “let’s tell other people a lie, because THEY can’t handle the truth.”
But that is not Dennett’s position. He believes that telling people they have no free will is an UNTRUTH. And he thinks it is one that may be pernicious, finding some experimental support for the worry.
And his pointing to experimental results on people that show a bias effect doesn’t imply he is removed or above such effects, any more than someone else assumes that in reporting any number of studies of human behavior.
Finally, Dennett’s work throughout his career clearly shows he has had no qualms about disabusing people of their comfortable intuitions and self-illusions. His books on Consciousness for instance essentially tears our intuitions and comforting illusion of being a single “Cartesian” viewer apart.
So it does not strike me as a reasonable, or charitable reading, to infer that Dennett suddenly wants to “hold the truth” from the public, when his modus operandi has never been to do so.
I did not think Dennett’s critique of Sam Harris’s Free Will as charitable or reasonable reading either.
Compatibilism avoids the issue. As far as we can tell, everything is a result of cause and effect. We can debate whether that cause is classical, quantum, a combination or something else all together.
The buck does not stop here, despite what signs we have might on our desks.
So are you ok with your employer sending the check for “your” work to someone else?
🙂
Well there was some painful (lack of) reasoning in that video. It doesn’t even seem to have sights set above being a piece of rhetoric.
“Try convincing this person, or the many religionists in this country (85% or more) that in any situation they couldn’t have chosen any differently from how they did. Then after you convince them of that determinism, tell them that they still have a kind of free will, a much better kind!!! See how far you get!”
People are stubborn. How’s the project of convincing these same people they have no free will going? 😉
From the video:
“If all you are is a brain, there’s no you that’s going to be making a choice at all.”
That hits me like a giant non-sequitur, and I intuitively think it would strike everyone here the same way. And yet it actually seems
consonant with some of the (IMO) hyper-reductionism I’ve seen in the “no free will” arguments.
And boy am I tired of the “JUST” arguments featured in this video. If we are JUST chemicals, JUST matter in motion…THEN…(non-sequitur). In these “arguments” the word “just” does all the heavy lifting, used simply to dismiss without argument the very differences that are important. I’d ask Mr. Prager if a car and a banana are “just” material objects, why not accept my trade of a banana for his car, so he can ride the banana to work? Oh, wait, suddenly the differences in material objects are important?
Love the way he as much as spits out the word “materialists.” 🙂 They may as well have added hissing from an audience at that point.
Weak. He can be soundly dismissed considering atomic decay may not have causal antecedents.
Mike
Compatibilists don’t deny there are libertarian conceptions of free will, but that a libertarian conception isn’t the only conception of free will. The way you frame the debate makes it seem like compatibilists are merely a front for propagating libertarianism in a deterministic universe. :/
I have not seen your blog until tonight. Leaving Dennis Prager aside,since you sound like a materialist, and obviously believe–yes, it is a belief, as much as one believes in any number of gods and goddesses–in evolution, then you surely realize that any notion of free will is invalid. We are totally at the mercy of our genes. Your post was done by your genes, not by free creative thought. Speaking of free, creative thought, I don’t know your views about epistemology, but I trust you realize that as a materialist, nothing that you “think” you think can be trusted. This is an absolutely incontrovertible reality if indeed we are simply random accidents in a universe devoid of anything but material. I presume you’ll disagree with that, but that’s because your genes have made you believe that you can think rationally, when in fact in a materialist universe,nothing that we think we think, including this sentence, can be taken as reliable. Whatever position you hold, you need to accept the reality that would accompany it. Since a mateialistic universe is incompatible with having meaningful thoughts, that’s one of the rrasons I’m not a naturalistic materiallist.
Ceci n’est pas un bleargh.
Quite the contrary. Our genes may set the stage, but there are vastly more factors at play than mere genetics. That is, after all, the entire point of Darwinian Evolution.
Again, completely incorrect. At best, the genes in this place would stand in for the designer’s blueprints for a computer. Those blueprints will place constraints on what the computer is capable of, but would otherwise be completely irrelevant to the software that eventually actually did run on the hardware — and, especially, the inputs to the computer which will (in the case of a brain, at least) radically change the resulting computations.
Actually, a material universe is the only one ever proposed in which cognition is even hypothetically possible. Worse for your unnatural phantasmagorical position, all of science overwhelmingly points to the inescapable conclusion that the Standard Model alone is sufficient to ultimately explain any human-scale phenomenon — in the same way that Newtonian Mechanics alone (with a minor footnote for Einstein) is all you need to ultimately explain the motion of the wandering planets in the night sky.
What you’re proposing, in stark contrast, is that maybe the planets really are the castles of the gods after whom they’re named, and it’s the gods themselves who decide when the planets should engage in retrograde motion and cause them to do so.
Cheers,
b&
The Honorable Prof. Ceiling Cat has, as I understand it, offered this video as evidence that these people believe dualism/ghost-in-our-head IS Free Will.
Wheres to me the video underscores an argument I’ve been making for quite a while: that this is to mistake a bad theory for the thing that is being explained. That is, dualistic/libertarian free will is an attempt to explain how our choice-making works. You can see from the structure of the presentation in the video that this is the case. Prager essentially can’t see how mere material processes COULD produce or amount to a “you” who “chooses” to do things via reasons. He thinks psychology can be reduced to biology, physics, chemistry.
So how to explain our nonetheless ‘obvious’ ability to choose? Must be a mind external to our brain. Yeah, that’s solves the problem.
I don’t see how this is essentially different than watching people come up with bad supernatural theories for morality.
“If we are just matter in motion, then morality wouldn’t exist” or “Without a God, there would be no morality.” These are bad theories brought in to explain our experiences. And, as has been pointed out
ad nauseam, just like there were dualistic explanations for “life,” “morality” and really countless other phenomena. Instead of doing away with the phenomena, we came up with better theories, correcting the mistakes.
How would a compatibilist try to convince someone like Prager he has free will, but the wrong theory to explain it? Well, just like any other materialistic/rational argument one would present dualists/Christians etc. For instance, similar arguments appealing to evidence and rational consistancy, showing how morality is grounded in a natural world rather than in the supernatural.
Not easy, but then changing people’s minds is rarely easy. It’s not like it’s easier and any less messy or complicated for the incompatibilists to tell them they have no free will.
“No freewill” is relatively easy to explain but goes against our basic intuitions.
I think that the compatibilist form of freewill is much easier to accept for most people.
“Free will” is the term that’s been used for forever to label the “mind external to the brain.” It is the free will that’s the control center that pulls the levers in the brain.
In stark contrast, the gods are anthropomorphic other entities who scribbled moral laws on stone tablets.
“Free will,” even if you wish to describe it as an explanation rather than a phenomenon, is the élan vital, the phlogiston, the calorific, the luminiferous aether.
The real-world phenomenon closest and / or most relevant to the incoherence of “free will” is the conscious decision-making process. And, you know what? There’re perfectly fine secular words for the conscious decision-making process. Indeed, I just used a bunch of them right there.
What you’re doing is ditching the term, “morality,” in favor of, “god-given commandments. The incompatibilist position is the other way ’round.
b&
“Free will” is the term that’s been used for forever to label the “mind external to the brain.” It is the free will that’s the control center that pulls the levers in the brain.
Ben, that is no more correct stated this time than all the other times you’ve claimed this.
Again, just look at the Wikipedia entry on Free Will:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will
From the article:
“Free will is the ability of agents to make choices and/or act upon them unimpeded by certain prevailing factors. Possible impeding factors include metaphysical constraints (particularly forms of determinism such as logical, physical, biological, social or theological determinism),[1] physical constraints (such as chains or imprisonment), social constraints (such as threat of punishment or censure), and mental constraints (such as compulsions or phobias, neurological disorders, or genetic predispositions). “
That is a CLEAR indication of the variety of ways in which the issues of Free Will have been understood, in contrast to the narrow, simplified version you keep repeating.
The article goes on to explain how diverse the issues and concepts have been regarding free will.
As the article says: “The underlying issue is: Do we have some control over our actions, and if so, what sort of control, and to what extent?”
Just what I’ve argued, that Free Will is a phrase that encapsulates a set of concerns,
and is not confined to *one specific theory to the exclusion of all the others.*
Ben, just thinking about the history of the debate should make it obvious that Free Will is not simply a reference to a “mind external to the brain.” The question “Do We Have Free Will?” has been debated for thousands and thousands of years, during which time pretty much everyone was a theist!
The debate has a long history in Christianity among other religions. These are people who already ASSUME the dualistic mind you speak of, and yet have debated whether they have free will or not (e.g. on grounds like Theological determinism/omniscience, and other threats).
And you have compatibilists and incompatibilists coming out of those debates.
All dualists believing in separate magic minds.
This debate would not make sense if, as you say, “Free Will” were simply reference to a non-material mind. Then they’d all have assumed they have free will.
You raise some good points as always…but this one mistake is not one of them, and it’s something of an impasse to moving the conversation any further.
Vaal, if you’re comfortable running with the bits you quoted from Wikipedia…then the debate is most emphatically settled. Everything mentioned falls into one of two classes: that which is fundamentally and inescapably constraining, or that which is inescapably and fundamentally constrained by the first class. Social constraints themselves are no more fundamentally free than the chemistry of your neurons, for example.
So, either the question has been answered with a resounding, “NO!” or science is all fucked up and there’s all this weird shit that’s going on that we’ve somehow missed.
Freedom, of course, remains a useful construct in many contexts…but there’s just no way to construct a will that is itself free without instant contradiction, incoherence, and denial of science.
And the will, too, is a useful construct. But describing it as free?
We might say that an unmarried man is wedded to his career, and do so quite meaningfully. But to therefore label him a married bachelor is to do great violence to linguistics and the art of discourse.
b&
Ben,
First, at least concede that you can’t keep claiming that Free Will IS the belief in a dualistic non-material mind. It’s an indefensible claim, against all the facts concerning the history of the issue.
Are we clear on that at least?
As for your interpretation of the article quote, it rests as usual on your question-begging assumption, the dogmatic stance that free will ONLY concerns a dualistic/contra-causal mind.
The first sentence SHOULD disabuse you of that error:
“Free will is the ability of agents to make choices and/or act upon them unimpeded by CERTAIN prevailing factors.”
See? Right there? It doesn’t say “unimpeded by ALL factors.” The quote goes on to list VARIOUS individual factors which have been thought, from various standpoints, to be the factors in question.
Your use of the word “Fundamentally Free” in examples like this:
“Social constraints themselves are no more fundamentally free than the chemistry of your neurons, for example.”
Is just another instance of question-begging. You have equated “true freedom” with “under no causal restraints” and put this under the guise of the phrase “fundamentally free.”
Thus you are simply dismissing the various other forms of freedom on the grounds of the definition of freedom you have ASSUMED. But that is what you are supposed to argue for, not assume.
Good arguments don’t beg the question, and you can’t get any traction when you continue to do so. (And this is again, one reason why I have yet to be persuaded by incompatibilism – I haven’t seen a fully cogent case made for it).
But I’ve been involved in these discussions before and found that once someone has seized
on this type of question-begging, it’s a merry-go-round that never stops. So, until next time, cheers.
It is a question of logical operation.
That your decisions are free of any consideration on the current state of the weather on Saturn is entirely irrelevant if your decisions are entirely constrained due to being strapped into a marionette suit.
The fact of the matter remains that even those high-level phenomenon to which you would ascribe freedom are, themselves, inevitably constrained by lower-level freedom.
At absolute best, you are arguing for an emergent phenomenon that never emerges. In reality, you’re arguing for an emergent phenomenon that’s the opposite of that from which it emerges — rather than describe wetness as a property of a sufficient number of water molecules, you’re describing wetness as a property of a sufficient aggregation of dryness.
Note that last bit. We don’t ascribe either “wet” or dry to individual water molecules. We only do so to aggregates of sufficient quantities of them to exhibit the behavior in question — at which point you can have wet water and dry snow, for example.
Again, everything laid out in those bits you quoted from Wikipedia is not free. It’s either the fixed base-level stuff, or the higher-level stuff that’s fixed by the lower level stuff.
It would seem that we’re agreed that the physics dictates all the motions of all the pieces of the puzzle, and that computation and decision-making and awareness and associated phenomena arise from that motion rather than the other way ’round. But you wish to put the cart before the horse, to claim that there is freedom at the higher level to manipulate the physical stuff as the result of making decisions, and that just ain’t so — no matter how much you wish to obfuscate things with layers of abstraction.
I’ll give you the same challenge I gave Coel; maybe you’ll have better luck.
Using any definition you might care for the word, “free,” give us that definition and tell us if a single neuron is “free.” If the neuron isn’t “free,” still using the same decision, tell us at which degree of aggregation a collection of neurons (even spread out amongst many humans) becomes “free.” Don’t even worry about explaining the mechanism by which the phenomenon emerges; just identify the level at which it’s applicable and the level below at which it’s no longer applicable.
…and I’ll bet anybody a suitable beverage that we’ll continue to observe that “free will” is, amongst all its other contradictory characteristics, an emergent property that never actually emerges.
(Which, of course, is exactly what the dualists argue: “free will” doesn’t emerge from the physical body, but is rather something distinct from the body that’s imposed from outside.)
b&
The commonsensical concept of free will is that it does emerge at a stage of brain development, around the “age of reason”, in some humans never develops, and can be temporarily or permanently impaired by physical agents that interfere with normal functioning of the human brain.
Since quantum mechanical events are uncaused (in the sense of being purely stochastic), there is no absolute hard determinism in a history of the universe sense – that is some events are free, and a lot more are indistinguishable from free even if at a macroscopic level eg
Brembs (2010): Towards a scientific concept of free will as a biological trait: spontaneous actions and decision-making in invertebrates
[What it says on the tin]
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/12/14/rspb.2010.2325.short
So you have freedom of action, a power to reason, and you can make a decision to act freely or decide it is not a good idea.
Alas, Mr. Brembs run smack dab into all the same incoherencies as one should come to expect these days from defenders of free will.
He starts by rejecting determinism…which demonstrates the perils of specialists straying outside of their specialities. I am unaware of any physicist of any repute who has rejected determinism since Newton. Yes, many systems are unpredictable for any of a number of reasons, but physics would be impossible were these systems not explicable — and explicability is only possible for deterministic systems.
Then…he equates randomness with “free will,” and yet there can be no will, even in principle, with randomness. “I’ve decided today that I’m going to base all my decisions on a flip of a coin.” So the coin is now making all the decisions? Most peculiar that somebody can transfer something so purportedly sophisticated as “free will” to a small disc of metal.
And, in so doing, he gets the physics worng again. Brains are far too large, hot, and messy for quantum effects to be significant. Even if one is merely looking for a source of random input to seed some sampling engine, there’re far better sources of such in a brain than anything coming from quantum mechanics.
His defense of the term free will betrays more confusion about physics, insisting that we cannot be “slaves of our genes and our environment, forced to always choose the same option when faced with the same situation,” and insists that different choices are possible given identical circumstances…and then falls back on the by-now-obligatory little people argument: “Finally, there may be a societal value in retaining free will as a valid concept, since encouraging a belief in determinism increases cheating [103]. I agree with the criticism that retention of the term may not be ideal, but in the absence of more suitable terms, free will; remains the best option.”
So, Mr. Brembs is worng on the physics, confused about the significance of randomness with respect to choice, and afraid of the masses. A very typical compatibilist, in other words, with nothing new to bring to our discussion here that we haven’t already thoroughly dismissed.
b&
So, you compatibilists: this 5-minute video lays out the mentality you have to work with. Try convincing this person, or the many religionists in this country (85% or more) that in any situation they couldn’t have chosen any differently from how they did. Then after you convince them of that determinism, tell them that they still have a kind of free will, a much better kind!!! See how far you get!
What I immediately ask myself after reading this is: Would an incompatibilist have an easier time convincing these people? Not likely. (Nor relevant, unless one assumes that this is a competition for having the most attractive as opposed to the most accurate position.)
This attitude is what allows compatibilists to make a living.
Nobody is paying me for being a compatibilist at the moment – where do I sign up?
Once more, in my native language I have pretty much no choice to be anything but a compatibilist. When somebody asks me whether I voluntarily signed up to the working bee, they ask “machst Du das freiwillig?” (Are you doing that freewilledly?) And nobody would suspect anything supernatural behind it. (Of course, the more religions Germans might say the same stuff as the Pragers said if pressed about their beliefs on that issue, but the language itself does not imply anything.)
I don’t know German, but we have a very close parallel construction in English: “Did you do that of your own free will?” And it’s an entirely different context, a jurisprudential one, from the one ostensibly at hand.
Similarly, a lawyer could offer no-charge estate planning as a promotional deal when purchased with other services. That would also be a “free will,” but clearly not the one under discussion.
b&
He lost me at calling genetic, chemical, biological or neurological controls to be external; they are all internal controls on the brain/mind (mind the work of the brain). Environmental controls are those which are only external and even those are interactively controlling any organism. They seem to be defining anything to be external if it is not their conjectured ‘ghost in the machine’ – which is just about as non-scientific and illogical an idea one might have.
If compatibalist would define their freewill like this, my confusion would be gone.
Practical free will:
Practical free will is the ability for an individual to experience having options, considering the outcomes of those options within the context of their value system, and then experience making a choice from among them based on what they want to happen.
from danielmiessler.com
Even psychoneural dualism being true doesn’t solve the problem for the contracausalist, as it just runs into the “interaction” problem in spades. And even if you do that, you’re still left with the fact one wants one’s spook to see, etc. and so is pushed around from the outside anyway. I had at least one dualist classmate years ago in the course I’ve alluded to, and he realized there’s no escaping the question. At best one has to make *another* ad hoc ontological move, and that’s … awkward.
I rule out libertarian free will or other non-deterministic options. I include ideas that feature quantum weirdness under the headline of determinism as well, as long as that randomness is coming out of a black box and the thinking agent would act the same way if the random die roll from that black box would come out the same in a repeated experiment. Determinism for me.
After considering both sides of the argument, compatibilism and incompatibilism, I tend towards the compatibilist side. It looks to me as if the difference is mostly semantic and the remaining part hides in different perspectives the arguers assume to make their points. The sun rises and it sets and everyone can observe that every day. At the same time, the earth rotates around itself and the sun (simplified) goes nowhere. And this can also be seen from a vantage from outside the system. But both is true. There is no “truer” perspective.
Impression, especially from inside a system compared to one from outside can apparently appear dramatically different. We haven’t yet found additional ways to look at minds than from these two vantage points. Preliminary, we can say that we do what we would always do under identical circumstances, but that it includes obviously mental operations we call “thinking” and this thinking is not an illusion, but simply the name for mental processes that are carried out. Will can be conceived in a similar manner. Some gear is moving around, electrons zipping about and trigger ever more complex cascades of neurons. We simply need some way to slap a name onto what’s going on there, and as language goes, at the same time differentiate it from other things.
Since we aren’t able to rewind the arrow of time and repeat such operations to see if we would think (and choose) differently under otherwise identical conditions, we have absolutely no idea what would happen and have – at present – no reason to believe in fancy magic. If we picked chocolate ice cream last time, we could conceivably pick it again because we just happen to like it at that moment.
Since we are locked into our mental states and will perhaps forever be unable to escape this system, we have to go with what seems closest to what we do know. We know that people are very complex machines that do not exactly act the same way as we would ordinary think of deterministic systems. We have simpler machines that do that. And that’s what we assume is meant by deterministic. We know that in the spectrum in which we see, and I use spectrum deliberately, people in seemingly identical situation can choose different things. They just pick vanilla even if they always picked chocolate! Laplace’s demon knew it all along, but we didn’t. We have to say that this time she picked vanilla, despite going for chocolate in all other instances, and we need some way to say that this was done without social coercion or pressure or force or anything, but because the mental processes, as a bigger black box, somehow came out that way.
As traditions go, determinism and non-determinism have pre-scientific precursors, God’s Plan, substance dualism, free will, fate and destiny and so forth. It seems our ancestors tried out all sorts of ideas already and therefore I don’t see why exactly “free will” cannot be conceived in a modern sense, denoting that “all things considered” she picked vanilla this time, because she wanted to. “Free”, therefore means, with little or hardly any social pressure.
That’s not a bad analogy…but not for the reasons you would appear to hope.
Yes, from a very limited perspective and for certain useful purposes, you can model the movement of the Sun across the sky as the Sun itself moving with respect to a fixed Earth.
But that model breaks down rapidly if you try to use it to do anything more substantial than make your way to the next town. On the other hand, the full Relativistic model of the Solar System doesn’t break down, period. You need to get to the scale of galaxies for it to start to show its weaknesses, when as-yet-unexplained dark matter must be fudged into the model; and to the scale of superclusters for as-yet-unexplained dark energy to be required as well. That’s a damned successful and useful model…whereas the geocentric flat Earth model breaks down at mere regional scales and is utterly useless for intercontinental navigation.
Similarly, the dualistic notion of free will has some certain utility in limited situations, but it breaks down the instant you look at it with any sort of seriousness.
Now, it must be noted that, in your everyday life, the only model you ever actually use of the Earth is the flat one. The Earth’s curvature is dwarfed at the scale of cities by mere mountains and valleys and is of absolutely no use whatsoever to mapmakers at that scale. You could use geodesics to calculate your route to the drugstore, but you don’t have measuring equipment precise enough to distinguish between the route you’d calculate that way and the route the map you’ve got in your back pocket takes you on.
But that doesn’t mean that the Earth actually is flat, or that there’s any real or fundamental truth to be had in describing the Earth as flat!
Similarly, we all go about our daily lives with the subjective impression of disconnected-from-the-body ghostly phantasms free from the constraints of nature…but that just simply doesn’t make it so. To claim that it’s really the case that “free will” really is real in any sense is to claim that the Earth really is flat.
Cheers,
b&