Dilbert tells Dogbert that doesn’t think we have any—at least of the contracausal, “libertarian” sort.
I like the last panel, which goes along with brain-scanning experiments that give the surprising result that you can predict (with 60-70% accuracy) the results of a binary decision up to ten seconds before the person who “makes” that decision is conscious of having made it. Of course, compatibilists and libertarian free-will advocates have found reasons to dismiss these experiments as evidence for free will. This is one of many ways that such people resemble theologians (another is that they think that belief in free will—even of the compatibilist sort—is, like belief in God, essential to keep society moral and harmonious.)
h/t: jsp
Should we club together to get Dilbert a larger and thinner monitor? I’m sure he’d appreciate it more than an ironed-flat tie.
Or even a cravat? Dilbert in a cravat would probably have questions asked in Congress.
I noticed the extra-heavy-duty monitor as well. A few panels back I see the super computer is a Cray 9 bought for $10,000,000. I hope that explains the monitor situation.
Heh, I thought the same. Dilbert must really have to squint at that thing to see his code.
Any belief that is demonstrably false has a limited shelf-life; word will eventually trickle out from the elites to the hoi polloi.
Beside, how is religion’s track record for keeping society moral and harmonious?
US Libertarians are Right Wing and the thought of us being wind up robots or the hint of it puts them into a rage to destroy anyone promulgating that idea. They are paranoid, and with good reason, of those who would like to turn them into slaves of the state/corp. threat.
Don’t confuse believers in supernatural free will — called “libertarian” free will in the philosophical literature — with small-government political libertarians. These are two unrelated uses of the word “libertarian”.
By “supernatural” you mean “God given” rights?
There are levels of Libertarian thought on govt. From small govt to no govt.
How are they unrelated to their version of personal freedom?
By “supernatural” I mean the spooky, dualist, ghost-in-the-machine sort of free will that defies physical causality. In philosophy that’s called libertarian free will, for reasons that have nothing to do with libertarian politics (which I’m not going to debate with you). The fact that they both use the word “libertarian” is a historical coincidence.
See here.
Who are these “those” who want to turn the libertarian right into “slaves of the state”?
Anyway, not liking the social implications of one side of the free will/determinism question doesn’t constitute evidence bearing upon the scientific answer to that issue.
Put another way, libertarians’ fear of becoming “slaves of the state” has nothing to do with whether determinism is true.
If you read any of their writings you find anyone in power. Those who want more control as they see it. Though they tend to miss those Plutocrats who have been working to make it under their control
“they” … “their” … “those” — do you have any proper nouns (or, heck, even common nouns) or just pronouns without antecedents?
Plenty of compatibilists entirely accept such experiments, which are entirely in line with compatibilism.
Plenty of compatibilists don’t think that (Dennett is a bit of an exception).
Dennett is not the only exception: Eddy Nahmias is another. And I’m pretty sure it’s the motivation behind much compatibilism. Why else would people engage in such elaborate semantic exercises unless they think there’s a salutary effect of accepting a kind of free will. Otherwise they’re just playing word games.
Why else? In order to understand the world around us. What do we mean by “choice” in a deterministic world, and why do we find the concept useful?
Most incompatibilists are de facto compatibilists in everyday life.
What does that even mean, Cole? It sounds like saying most people are flat Earthers (believer in a geocentric arrangement between Earth and the Sun) in everyday life. If I say that last night there was a beautiful sunset, that does not make me a de facto geocentrist, and it doesn’t change the reality of a heliocentric solar system. There is no such thing as being a de facto compatibilist, no amount of believing in a free will can make the human will libertarianly free.
Sigh. I long for the day when critics of compatibilism finally realise that compatibilism is not about libertarian FW, nor is it hankering after libertarian FW, nor is it any version of libertarian FW.
Compatbililism is about a total and whole-hearted embrace of determinism.
It means that even professed incompatibilists see the utility of applying concepts of deterministic “choice” to a deterministic world. Listen to them in everyday life, and you’ll see them do it.
Choice? Depends are you a rat in a maze with that choice? Or do you simply think another way ignoring the choices you are given and make your own? Does it work? Does it fail? Can you escape your own brain?
One has a choice in the same way that a chess-playing computer makes a “choice” about its next move. That choice is an entirely determined product of the system, and is the product of processing information to attain a goal.
The concept of choice is a useful one to apply to goal-oriented information-processing systems such as chess-playing computers and mammalian brains.
If you watch incompatibilists in everyday life they use that concept. The terms “plan”, “decide”, “consider”, “attempt”, “succeed”, “fail”, and many others all depend on such deterministic-choice concepts.
“Sigh. I long for the day when critics of compatibilism finally realise that compatibilism is not about libertarian”
compatibalism confuses people 🙂
It means that even professed incompatibilists see the utility of applying concepts of deterministic “choice” to a deterministic world. Listen to them in everyday life, and you’ll see them do it.
Cards on the table, I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if I’d thought myself into a habit of cringing at words like “choice”. I have the same feeling when I hear “nature” or “life” or “spirit” or “soul”. There’s a certain obscurity shrouding the concept that makes me want to fetch a mental wind machine and blow it away.
Then again, it’s amazing how far you can get in biology without once using a word like “life”.
I long for the day when critics of compatibilism finally realise that compatibilism is not about libertarian FW, nor is it hankering after libertarian FW, nor is it any version of libertarian FW.
To the extent that it endorses the concept of punishable personal responsibility and a sense of justice, it’s based on the same instinctive impulse – for just deserts – that prompts libertarian FW advocates to cry “They had a choice” when condemning criminals. Impulses are conclusions where no one’s shown the working.
To the extent that it doesn’t match the strict utilitarian logic of deterrence while mistakenly assuming justice and deterrence are the same thing, it’s a self-contradictory position. Deterrence hits harder when the crime is tougher to detect and more visible to the public; justice hits harder when the crime follows heinous motives or comes from a less commendable disposition.
The former aims to get the message across to others and target the most tempting crimes; the latter aims to scrub harder at the black spots for being more disgusting or inhuman. Far from being synonyms, the two can and do clash, and unfortunately only one of them is justifiable through explicit logic. Even then, only as a pretty desperate measure of setting fires to stop fires.
Why else? In order to understand the world around us.
The concept of choice is a useful one to apply to goal-oriented information-processing systems such as chess-playing computers and mammalian brains.
I dispute that it is a useful concept that helps us understand these things. Far from providing a rich explanatory framework, it only provides a restatement of the thing to be explained. At best, and with all unwanted connotations stripped away from the word, it’s a black box conversational place-holder: OK for everyday idle chat, perhaps, but for anything more rigorous than that, it’s not much better than “life force” or “nervous energy”. You can use the word several times without being able to see what goes into it, and that’s what makes it suspicious.
Its baggage is also co-opted to prop up “just deserts” justice in a way that couldn’t otherwise be done, which makes its black box nature all the more suspicious.
reasonshark,
U see your reply about the concept of “choice” to be indicative of many such answers given by incompatibilists on this site. That is: it doesn’t really go anywhere, and sort of skirts over the issue.
It’s a sort of “I’ll keep using the term ‘choice’ but it’s really just out of cultural habit,” or as you say it’s some sort of “placeholder” for now.
But you don’t keep going to analyze what could replace it, and that’s really the crux of the matter! If the scenarios to which we apply the word “choice” still exist given determinism, then whatever word we end up with will be essentially describing the same thing, and since we already have a word for it that does the job, why change it? It’s like words like “blue” or “pain” or “wet.”
If we decide to get rid of those words we end up just having to describe the same things by another name anyway.
But if the scenarios to which we normally apply the word choice don’t really exist, then we really should get rid of the word.
But then how do we replace it? What does that look like?
So the issue of what “choice” means given determinism just can’t be handwaved away.
Let’s say I’m buying a new car and the salesman wants it known I have “a choice of finish colors between red, blue or black.”
How does he express this, without the concept of my having a “choice?” Any word he may want to replace it with, say “option,” will still essentially *mean the same thing* and if what choice refereed to actually exists, actual options, then it wasn’t an illusion or an error to begin with and the word makes sense to begin with.
The whole concept of choice is crucial.
So from incompatibilists I tend to see on the matter of ‘choice” a version of “I’m not sure how this piece fits in, maybe it does, maybe it’s to be thrown away, but I’ll put that off for another time.” Whereas compatibilism has done the work of sorting through the pieces like “does the language of choice still make sense given determinism?” and fit them together in a way things makes more sense.
Hmmm…
Well, you’ve given me something to think about, no mistake. I might be a compatibilist. But I’ll have to think about it.
“Most incompatibilists are de facto compatibilists”
Most people have both compatibilist and incompatibilist intuitions.
See research by Knobe+Nichols.
Agreed, Coel.
Both sides think the concept of free will is consequential, which is also why they spend time on the subject. And I still find it unfortunate that compatibilists, e.g. Dennett, are depicted as merely engaging in semantic exercises, with the implication that they are engaging the topic in a sort of bad faith effort to simply “save” an assumption they won’t let go – like the theologian.
I certainly see no imbalance in honesty or integrity between most compatibilists and incompatibilists arguments.
Compatibilists, like incompatibilists, are just trying to make sense of the world. And I find compatibilist talk makes more sense.
For instance, the brain-scan experiments Jerry alludes to from which he and other incompatibilists conclude “no free will.”
You get incompatibilists drawing conclusions like “therefore I didn’t really make the decision” or “I was not in control of the decision” and “the choice was not made by me.”
But as Dennett points out, this type of analysis and conclusion depends on a sort of special-pleading version of “I” where “I” am squeezed into a tiny moment – the “I” at the very moment of becoming conscious of making the decision. And if that specific moment of “I” was not instigating the decision, then the decision wasn’t really made by “me.”
But this version of self-identity just does not fully capture both how we actually think of ourselves, or even how we COULD REASONABLY think of ourselves. Our self-identity is something stretched over time, not frozen in exact moments of consciousness. The “I” who am writing this is also the “I” who rode my bike yesterday, and the same “Me” as two minutes ago. If I have a stimulus that I am aware of, say I’ve eaten something super spicy, and that enters my brain, my brain goes through a reasoning process and ends up with an output that rationally links my next decision with my experience and desires – e.g. I head to the fridge for a mouth cooling drink – that’s all “me.” What “I” am is not isolated to only the moment of being conscious of the decision.
Now, there may be some non-intuitive illusion involved in terms of how the process happens – e.g. IF it turns out we can show all decisions are made before being sent to consciousness. But even if that’s the case, my normal notion of identity, of myself, absorbs that truth without destruction, since it never depended on such an artificially limited scope of ‘me’ in the first place.
When I see incompatibilists analyse these issues they make sense right up until they start drawing weird apparently inconsistant conclusions. Compatibilist analysis just seem to make more sense of the same sets of facts both sides are viewing IMO.
“therefore I didn’t really make the decision” or “I was not in control of the decision” and “the choice was not made by me.”
Moreover, this is dualist language. I know incompatibilists will say they argue against dualism, but what can it mean to say processes in your brain make choices which “you” later become aware of? What are “you” if not the processes in your brain?
Vaal,
On squeezing the “I” into a tiny moment – to quote another Dennett-ism: “if you make yourself really small, you can externalize virtually everything.”
The mistake Dennett makes in my view is a failure to realize that it seems that “failure to be responsible” is transitive – if I didn’t get my childhood, etc. right, how can the “I” which is now making decisions be big enough? It is just a matter of luck, it seems.
But denying the transfer of non-responsibility is not a mistake. It might seem plausible on its face that non-responsibility transfers down the line, but then, it also seems plausible on its face that non-humanity transfers down the line. “If neither of an organism’s parents are human, then it’s not human either.” Sounds logical, until you realize that you’ve just ruled out evolution!
(Dennett’s argument, paraphrased from memory.)
Just because there are negative consequences to defining a word in a certain way doesn’t mean that therefore that’s what the word means.
To the question: “Why else would people engage in such elaborate semantic exercises unless they think there’s a salutary effect of accepting a kind of free will.”
I’m not sure why there has to be any ulterior motive. Personally, I just find the questions and the arguments interesting. We *seem* to have free will. And we have good reason to think that our actions are causally determined (or close enough) by things we do not control. Does that mean that this seeming-to-have-free-will is an illusion? To me, that is an interesting question regardless of what one thinks free will might be good for. It’s on par with questions about whether the visual world is a grand illusion.
I won’t go into detail here, but I am a compatibilist because I think it makes the most sense of the physical world: including complicated meat machines like us. I think that the compatibility of free will and determinism falls out of any serious attempt to understand dispositions, abilities, causation, decision, and other modally-rich objects of study.
I have spent some time thinking about the question of whether free will is compatible with determinism (though it is not my primary research area). I haven’t spent much time at all considering the questions of whether moral responsibility is compatible with a lack of free will or whether widespread belief that we have no free will has bad consequences for society. These just aren’t relevant to what I think is the interesting question about the metaphysical relationship between determinism and free will. As far as I can see, the issue of societal impact is an open empirical question, but I have not been much moved one way or the other by the research so far. I’m also not sure whether we should adopt any policy–or what that policy should look like–if it turns out that widespread belief that we don’t have free will is found to have bad consequences for society. I certainly don’t think that the way we answer the metaphysical question should be influenced by societal consequences.
That is all by way of saying that I am increasingly disappointed by suggestions–usually by way of rhetorical question–that compatibilists are suffering from motivated reasoning or are arguing in bad faith or have some religious bias that keeps them from thinking clearly about the metaphysical question. For the most part, scientists pursue questions that interest them and follow the evidence where they think it leads. For the most part, philosophers *also* pursue questions that interest them and follow the evidence where they think it leads. The fact that there is a disagreement about free will is best explained (I think) by people having an honest, properly motivated disagreement about how the world actually works.
Well said.
I second that: very well said.
To expand on Coel’s point, we can accept the results of such experiments without buying into the experimenters’ sensationalist overinterpretations of them.
“Free will is dead!” is the neuroscience equivalent of “Darwin was wrong!”
I’m not sure what compatibilists think as I’m pretty ignorant of philosophy. But from what I’ve understood their point is more of a higher abstraction than something that exists physically, which to me, at least, renders the point moot. Kinda like belief in resurrection – what’s the point if you don’t remember anything or have the same personality and dreams, etc.
Meh… back to whisky.
Eh. Ment reincarnation, of course.
Reincarnation:
Voluntary choosing of new bodies?
Involuntary of host bodies.
Only human or also animal bodies too?
Damn it all, things aren’t simple. They never are.
Things may not be simple, but this one thing is: There is no evidence (other than highly suspect individual purported past-life recollections) that reincarnation occurs. None, nada, zip. And there is no viable theory for supposing that a dualistic “personality” or “mind” (or what have you) could survive the death of the body, so as to be transferred to a new “host” to have a subsequent life.
And all the supposed examples occur in societies where reincarnation is accepted.
And there are more people alive today than have ever died.
And stigmata don’t occur in societies unaware of Jesus’ death.
And you can’t successfully curse someone if they don’t know about it.
Just sayin’.
“And there are more people alive today than have ever died.”
I don’t think so. Estimates of <a href="“>the total number of humans who have ever lived run upwards of 100 billion.
Html fail.
Link here.
I reject your hypothesis on the basis of the overwhelming evidence of my not liking how it makes me feel. I can accept that my great, great, great, etc., grandfather was a monkey. But I won’t accept that I myself might be a reincarnated Cro-Magnon.
If I’m reincarnated, I was definitely an Egyptian pharaoh, or a Roman centurion, or a Knight of the Roundtable in my previous life. I mean, every other schmo with a cockamamie reincarnation story gets to be something like that — why not me?
You misunderstand me. I wasn’t advocating reincarnation I was showing Doosp, it isn’t any easier or simpler. Doesn’t mean I support it. So I don’t need convincing from you are anyone about it. Understand?
No, that’s not compatibilism, which is materialistic; belief in reincarnation is just another version of dualism.
Then there is that unknown quantity called “soul”.
There are two versions of how a child gets a soul: traducianism and creationism. The former holds that the parents create the soul as well as the body, the latter that the parents create the body but Deity creates the soul.
So… how many thousands died in the traducianism-creationsm wars? Doesn’t matter if you believe in souls, for the souls remain untouched unless they are near a thermo-nuclear detonation, then they are ionized by the EMP into random electrons.
Any thoughts on the pressing angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin issue — or on where one might hunt dragons?
Hey, someone brings it up. I lay out some aspects of it according to some of the literature based upon no scientific findings. Know the difference.
The soul isn’t merely “unknown”; it is undetectable. And the undetectable and the non-existent are asymptotically equivalent.
Am I going to make a comment? No, definitely not.
Oh no, I just did!
I decided to comment before I even knew it.
No, you didn’t decide anything–your neurons did!
Except neurons don’t have free will to decide either. 🙂
Compatibilists think “you” and “your neurons” are the same thing. Incompatibilists apparently think they’re somehow different.
And yet it’s the compatibilists who routinely get accused of thinking like theologians.
The only thing that insures that you will wake up tomorrow morning the same person you are today is that you and your neurons are the same thing. If that was not a deterministic process, you might wake up tomorrow morning being Oprah Winfrey. Does anyone (besides Oprah) want that?
Have you taken a look at Oprah’s pass-book savings account lately?
How do you think Stedman would handle it if he woke up next to Oprah tomorrow morning and Oprah turned out to be you?
That makes no sense.
I think the philosopher Derk Pereboom explains in a fair way the basic problems of the three main free will views:
If libertarianism were true, then we would expect events to occur that are incompatible with what our physical theories predict to be overwhelmingly likely.
If soft determinism (compatibalism) were true, then agents would deserve blame for their wrongdoing even though their actions were produced by processes beyond their control.
If hard determinism were true, agents would not be morally responsible — agents would never deserve blame for even the most cold-blooded and calmly executed evil actions.
What do you mean by “deserve blame”? It is indeed true that people would blame them. That’s because we’ve evolved to do so, for the pragmatic reason that social opprobrium is a deterrent.
If you mean “deserve blame” in some sort of moral-realist sense, then the reply is that moral realism is a non-starter, so this is not a problem for compatibilism.
If you mean “deserve blame” in some sort of moral-realist sense, then the reply is that moral realism is a non-starter, so this is not a problem for compatibilism.
I think you’ll find it’s moral anti-realism that is a non-starter.
“What do you mean by “deserve blame”?
In a non-consequentialist desert-based sense.
Saying wrong-doers “deserves blame” in a “desert-based sense” doesn’t really clarify for me.
Are you assuming some sort of moral realism? If so, such notions have never made sense to me. But compatibilism does not entail moral realism, so it doesn’t say that wrong-doers “deserve blame” in a realist sense.
Hope this clarifies:
“A person who is a morally responsible agent is not merely a person who is able to do moral right or wrong. Beyond this, she is accountable for her morally significant conduct. Hence, she is, when fitting, an apt target of moral praise or blame, as well as reward or punishment. And typically, free will is understood as a necessary condition of moral responsibility since it would seem unreasonable to say of a person that she deserves blame and punishment for her conduct if it turned out that she was not at any point in time in control of it. (Similar things can be said about praise and reward.)”
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/#MorRes
I don’t see how denying moral realism is compatible with compatibalism. It sure is compatible with free will skepticism 🙂
Well no, it doesn’t really clarify. It basically assumes moral realism. And I agree that there would be a conflict between moral realism and compatibilism.
Since moral realism is a non-starter, there is no problem here for compatibilism.
Coel,
I would not agree there is a conflict between moral realism and compatibilism, that’s a whole different conversation for this thread.
But just out of curiosity, are you are non-cognitivist about morality or something like it?
Hi Vaal,
Yes, I think I qualify as non-cognitivist over morality.
Interesting. I would think that free will requires moral realism.
Coel,
That’s helpful to know, thanks.
“If soft determinism (compatibalism) were true, then agents would deserve blame for their wrongdoing even though their actions were produced by processes beyond their control.”
And compatibilists would point out that formulation doesn’t make sense. That just puts things in a way that ignores the relveant point: that our decision making is part of the process!
For there to be “decisions” there has to be a “decision-maker” in the chain. I’m the decision-maker in the chain. It would not make sense, for instance, to say my choice of vacation was “decided” before I was born by non-sentient causes that have no such ability to “decide.” Hence the outcome depends on me being there to think things through and decide, and such decisions are only rational if we are not delusional about the things we can control (e.g. whether to board a plane or not….). Unless one says we have to throw out rationality with determinism – which even incompatibilists wouldn’t do – it entails we are thinking about “real things I’m in control of” in our rational decision making.
Free Will skeptics will deny that you are in control of your decisions; they don’t deny that you have the illusion that you are in control or that these illusions are important for you.
Yes peepuk, I know. That just re-states exactly the problem I rebutted.
It depends on assuming that “I” am only the purportedly “illusory” part of the process (i.e. only the conscious part) as if the part that IS in control, making the decisions, in’t “me” as well.
And that assumption makes no sense.
Incompatibilists like anyone else assume humans can reason and be rational. Any time they reason or present an argument assumes this. But in order for that to be the case we can not be *fully deluded* about our powers; if that were the case virtually any reasoning we’d be doing would be ultimately built on unavoidable error, hence our reasoning would be false and reason/rationality and the truths we believe our reason leads to would be an illusion.
Hence any argument the incompatibilist produces is self-contradicting on such grounds.
This is the incoherence one teeters towards by saying things like “our actions are produced by processes beyond our control.”
What can that mean? It can’t *really* mean we do not control anything we do as that becomes incoherent. But when you get into analyzing what we do and can control, it pretty much supports the compatibilist case IMO.
“But in order for that to be the case we can not be *fully deluded* about our powers”
If we compare us with other animals we do not bad, but we now for sure that we are deluded about our powers; this is confirmed by a wealth of research.
Only science can tell us what part of what we think is true. Neuroscience has a long way to go before we really know what’s going on in our heads, but we know already that introspection gives us only a rough indication.
This is not really surprising given the fact that we are designed for other “purposes” by Mother Nature.
Do free will skeptics deny that an autopilot controls an airplane’s trajectory? If it doesn’t control it, then what exactly is its function? And how does the plane remain on course with nothing in control?
If you grant that machines can control airplanes, then on what basis does it make sense to say that people cannot control their own behavior?
Free will skeptics deny the kind of control over your own conduct that is required for being moral responsible. We don’t deny that people or autopilots have some kind of control. People clearly have self-control.
OK, so if people have self-control, then society can leverage that self-control to incentivize good behavior and disincentivize bad behavior, and thereby hold people accountable for the appropriate exercise of their self-control. What additional sort of control do you think is missing from this picture that prevents us from saying that people are responsible for their own conduct?
Free will skeptics deny the kind of control over your own conduct that is required for being moral responsible. We don’t deny that people or autopilots have some kind of control. People clearly have self-control.
If that is what incompatibilism boils down to, then it is bordering on word-play. Certainly not a proposition that justifies deriding any disagreement as equivalent to religious apologetics.
But judging from past discussions I assume that at least some other incompatibilists here would disagree and restate that people don’t have control, although again without clarifying what part of their bodies ‘people’ would have to be to make such a claim possible.
Well the stakes are higher then you might think.
Belief in free will and therefore moral responsibility causes a of unnecessary suffering. Nice examples are the excessive incarceration rates and capital punishment; for free will skeptics these are impossible to justify.
So free will skeptics “think that [dis]belief in free will — even of the compatibilist sort — is, like belief in God, essential to keep society moral and harmonious.” But this is precisely the sort of “theological” argument that Jerry deplores in the OP.
The fact is that people mean something when they talk about free will and responsibility. The question is whether there are real phenomena of human behavior that correspond to those concepts. The answer to that question, as Jonathan said earlier, should derive from the facts, not from the social consequences of those facts.
“What additional sort of control do you think is missing from this picture that prevents free will”
Self control is only a small part of what influences your actions and more importantly, the amount of self control you might have is not under your control; some people have more, some have less due to a zillion of reasons like bad genes, bad parents, cosmic rays, place of birth, time of birth, malnutrition, religion, child-abuse etc…
So what’s missing is libertarian kind of free will. Unfortunately it’s existence is ruled out by science.
And yet the lack of libertarian free will doesn’t prevent people from talking coherently about responsibility in everyday speech. “You’re responsible for this mess [i.e. your actions caused it], so it’s your responsibility to clean it up [i.e. that task is assigned to you].”
It’s in this sense that we’re responsible for our own behavior: our decisions cause it, so society assigns us the task of regulating it appropriately — a task even free will skeptics admit we’re capable of. The nonexistence of libertarian free will seems beside the point.
Yes, we are still people, we don’t deny these feelings.
The reference to libertarian free will is important because if we use a neutral definition of free will a lot of compatiblists are simply not compatible with that.
The other problem free will skeptics trying to address is that the belief in free will brings a lot of misery in the world.
Ah. I just made a comment about this kind of “dualism” upthread.
“After all, one can argue that philosophical beliefs have a stronger claim on legal recognition, or at least on public “respect,” than do religious beliefs. First, most people get their religion via accidents of birth. If you’re born in Utah, you’re likely to be a Mormon, a Muslim if born in Saudi Arabia, and a Christian if born in Mississippi. That, of course, means those beliefs weren’t arrived at by reason but by cultural inheritance.”
Jerry, this excerpt was taken from your article captioned: Why is religion privileged over philosophy?
Can you explain what is meant by “accidents of birth,” as used in the abovementioned paragraph?
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “accident” can mean:
• An unfortunate incident that happens unexpectedly and unintentionally, typically resulting in damage or injury
• A crash involving road or other vehicles
• euphemistic An incidence of incontinence by a child or animal
• The working of fortune; chance
As a hard determinist, you appear to be using terms that contradict what determinism is all about.
Seems to me that stochastic processes are within the OED’s last definition and are consistent with determinism.
Of course, I’m not Jerry; but then, I had no choice but to offer my two cents.
My fingers were on the keyboard 10 seconds before my prefrontal cortex knew what was up.
I’m not trying to answer for Jerry, but it does not seem to me that the concept of “accident” would be inconsistent with hard determinism/incompatibilism.
Take an example from evolution theory: it incorporates the idea of “random mutation” (upon which natural selection can act in a non-random way). But, of course, that’s not the claim that mutations are non-deterministic and don’t follow the laws of physics. Mutations themselves are in principle predictable. So what science means by “random mutation” is “random with respect to the organism’s fitness.”
So long as “accident” is understood with a similar context in incompatibilism, there is no problem. My walking outside and stepping on a piece of glass was an “accident” = a result from my action that I did not intend.
Similarly, religion being ascribed to via the “accident” of birth is a way of saying one’s birthplace is “random” with respect to one’s ability to choose or intend where to be born. And insofar as birthplace relates heavily to religious indoctrination, the religion you adopt is tied to that same randomness – “accident” – of birth.
So I don’t see any problem in talking this way in the contest of Jerry’s incompatibilism.
Good explanation Vaal, I’m with you. My first reaction was ‘semantics’. But imo it is a fair question by richarddwkc.
I thought “accidents of birth”, was a commonly understood phrase. But then maybe “commonly understood” is not a commonly understood phrase.
Those who practice birth control via the coitus interruptus method commonly understand the phrase “accidents of birth.”
No, I think he means the first definition: being born in a Morman family is an unfortunate incident.
What I meant by “accidents of birth” was simply “where you happened to be born”, that’s all. I’m curious why peoople are trying to catch me out on silly stuff like this.
of course libertarians dismiss evidence
that conflicts with their self made myth
That Dilbert cartoon is a good one!
Meh. The second panel is just plain wrong. The fact that things are subject to cause and effect does not make them predictable, even in principle.
“even in principle.”
Only if you introduce probability (i.e. randomness) into the mix. The only way for a cause-and-effect relationship to be unpredictable in principle is to have at least one alternative effect whose occurrence isn’t confirmed until the cause flips a coin at the last moment.
Of course, there’s no shortage of reasons why causality is unpredictable in practice, including non-linear and many-to-many causal relationships rather than linear one-to-one versions.
Unpredictability doesn’t require randomness. Deterministic chaos will suffice. It’s impossible in principle to gather sufficient information to make every chaotic interaction completely predictable.
Deterministic chaos will suffice. It’s impossible in principle to gather sufficient information to make every chaotic interaction completely predictable.
It’s impossible in practice. All it would require would be the ability to measure every single variable in the universe that could tangentially effect the result – i.e. all of it – and an insanely competent mathematician. Insurmountably formidable as that is, if A causes B 100% of the time (the definition of a deterministic system), then it is 100% predictable in principle. The fact that we quickly get out of our depth is the real kicker.
Chaos does make deterministic systems unpredictable, but that’s simply because it’s complex causality on meth, which no living human could hope to match. It’s still determinism, which has a precise definition that ensures in principle alone that it’s predictable.
It would require representing every physical fact about the universe in a device contained within the universe and therefore smaller than the data it’s trying to represent. If you want to call that possible in principle, then fine; I guess there’s no point splitting that hair any further.
It’s really not a problem with a Cray 9 supercomputer with a purchase price of 10 billion dollars. Even given that cartoon dollars are not worth as much as real dollars.
Can we take you to mean that stochastic processes are the only impediment to Laplace’s demon?
Can I join this fray?
1. Your supercomputer will have some heat output, which will change what happens in the world you are trying to predict.
2. Predicting the behavior of electrons in atoms requires quantum mechanics.
3. You can’t build a computer out of atoms that can predict the behavior of all the atoms in the universe in real time. You would have at most one atom per atom, and that only if you use all the atoms in the universe to build it.
Atoms will always be more efficient at “computing” their behavior than any machine can ever be, if you count speed, accuracy, and amount of material used.
No computer we will ever devise will be able to predict the future in the way This cartoon suggests.
Might try something simple, like predicting the location of a single water molecule in the ocean after one day (+/- 1 meter). Or how about predicting the scores of next years Final Four. Or where my cat will be next week … Now that one is near impossible.
Maybe you can predict next week that your cat will be next to his/her foodbowl at feeding time. 🙂
“….compatibilists and libertarian free-will advocates have found reasons to dismiss these experiments as evidence for free will. ”
But of course, we KNEW they would do that- Ha!
…”brain-scanning experiments that give the surprising result that you can predict (with 60-70% accuracy) the results of a binary decision up to ten seconds before the person who “makes” that decision is conscious of having made it.”
I am totally underwhelmed. 60-70% accuracy on a binary decision where chance would produce a 50% result? Even if this percentage is much higher (say 90%) what does it prove? The brain is a complex multi-processing system. ALL of these processors are part of the same brain – they are YOUR PROCESSORS (you also programmed/formed them). So anything happening in any processor is part of YOUR decision process. Consciousness is separate from delegated processes – that’s how multiprocessors with EXECUTIVE software functions work. A subordinate processor, if probed with a logic analyser, can give a good clue to an answer being recognised at a later time by the Executive program. It is NO BIG DEAL, that’s how multiprocessing systems work.
“This is one of many ways that such people resemble theologians…”
Coming up with rational counterarguments based on fact as I have done here is NOT what theologians do. It is just offering a rational counterargument….. just like SCIENTISTS do.
That’s better than the margin for casinos. You ever tried betting against the House over the long haul? Have you seen how many lights those places can buy with their profits?
More to the point:
Can the conscious executive processors of the brain overrule the decisions put in motion by the preprogrammed, unconscious subordinate processors? Can the executive processors do their overruling at anything other than a rate corresponding to the 60% or 70% (or 90%) rate successfully predicted by the unconscious processors?
Can the conscious executive processors of the brain overrule the decisions put in motion by the preprogrammed, unconscious subordinate processors?”
Why on earth does “overruling” have anything to do with it? The subordinate is doing a JOB for the executive – nothing more. It is what the executive “wants done”. More than that, the executive pre-programmend much how the subordinate operates – how it has been “formed” as Robert Kane would put it. Because the executive does not “notice” the job is completed immediately so it can finish off the overall process is of no consequence at all. That’s how multiprocessing systems work.
I cannot see how “overruling’ has any meaning in this context whatsoever. In any case even if you can “predict” final action 60% of the time this could mean that 40% of the time the subordinate processor WAS “overruled” – which completely negates your argument anyhow. But as I said, this whole line of argument you raise is irrelevent – it matters not.
You’re making arguments about human brains by analogy to complex multi-processing computers. What is it in human brains that corresponds to a computer’s preprogrammed subordinate processors? (And, if you can’t identify what that is, how is yours a useful analogy?)
If you can identify what it is in human brains that corresponds to these unconscious subordinate processors, how is it that the YOU (whatever it is you may mean by that) “preprogrammed” them?
Finally, it sounds like you’re saying that a brain that lacked the conscious “executive software function” — a brain in which all the decisions were made solely at the “unconscious subordinate processors” level — would itself have “free will.” Is that correct?
P.S. – Contrary to your assertion, I haven’t presented any “argument” here. I’ve simply asked some questions to probe the accuracy and usefulness of your “complex multi-processing” model of the human brain.
Also, assuming the legitimacy of your analogy, does the analogy hold in the opposite direction — do complex multi-processing computers with executive software function have “free will”?
“What is it in human brains that corresponds to a computer’s preprogrammed subordinate processors?”
Well, a massive amount of brain research has shown that the brain indeed a complex of specialised processing areas/units. Neural networks divide into processing and pre-processing areas themselves. MRI research verifies all this. The brain has MASSIVE partitioned parallel processing. Though the basic organisation is fixed, the CONTENT is formed as the human being “grows up”. The process involves endlessly recursive decisional processes in which the “self” is involved.
“….., how is it that the YOU (whatever it is you may mean by that) “preprogrammed” them?
”
Well, who else does? Memory and its neural structure form what in computer terms is “associative memory”. The self is continuously involved in forming these associations – what Douglas Hofstadter calls a “strange loop” and Kane labels “self forming”.
“Finally, it sounds like you’re saying that a brain that lacked the conscious “executive software function” — a brain in which all the decisions were made solely at the “unconscious subordinate processors” level — would itself have “free will.” Is that correct?”
No, not at all. If the executive function did not exist the subordinate processors would have no data or program to carry out anything but the lowest reflexive functions
“…do complex multi-processing computers with executive software function have “free will”?”
We have NOTHING even approaching this level of complexity or capacity yet, but if we did – yes it could exhibit free will.
Free will is an EMERGENT capability. It is nonsensical to argue against it by applying grossly reductive arguments related to functions (eg quantum mechanics or organic chemistry) far far below the level at which it can emerge. We NEED to be relating our discussions to advanced computational theory.
Jerry wrote: “(another is that they think that belief in free will—even of the compatibilist sort—is, like belief in God, essential to keep society moral and harmonious.)”
I would suggest you believe essentially the same thing, and have spent quite a bit of time doing the same thing Dan is doing.
Here’s what I mean:
When you declare “We have no Free Will” (and/or that we really “can’t do otherwise” etc) you know that your job is far from done.
As you have experienced, you are immediately faced with all sorts of questions and objections:
– Then it doesn’t matter what I choose to do, it’s all just fate.
– I can’t make another decision because I have no choice.
– That means we can have no meaning or purpose.
– Then nothing really has value.
– Then we aren’t really “reasoning” about anything if our atoms are doing nothing more significant than pop cans fizzing.
– Then truth doesn’t matter, because we end up believing things determined long ago, whether they are true or not.
– Debating these issues no longer make sense, since we won’t believe otherwise.
– Then there’s no morality, or reasons to act good.
– Then it makes no sense for you to suggest any course of action for me, since I “don’t have a choice.”
Etc.
Because “free will” is tied in people’s minds with such issues, you (and other incompatibilists) have to spend your time disabusing people of those false conclusions, explaining: “No, even if determinism is true it still does matter what we choose, we still have value, we still have purposes and give things meaning,
we are still reasoning and choosing, truth does matter, morality still makes sense, we still have better reasons for some actions vs other actions, advising one another still makes sense since we can influence one another…” etc.
In other words, you are doing exactly what Dan is doing. Dan starts out with the same starting point, determinism, and then to face the chorus of “but then all these other important things go away” he explains why that is not the case, given determinism.
So you really both are engaged in essentially
the same endeavor. A main difference between you is that Dan would say those concerns, the type listed above which you both defend as still being real, ARE in essence “free will.” The very fact that people naturally THINK such issues depend on free will show that they are part of what Free Will means to people. And this is why Dan would say it still makes sense to retain the notion of Free Will, since even within determinism you end up retaining all those things people value. That being the case, when Dan sees incompatibilists like yourself declaring to the publc “We have no Free Will,” he believes that it will be seen as threatening all those concerns. And the fact incompatibilist do find themselves having to continually counter those concerns pretty much shows he’s right IMO.
I do believe the debate between incompatiilism and compatibillism goes somewhat beyond semantics to the conceptual, but the point is either way, both sides find themselves having to make the same defense for retaining things we value within determinism, for much the same reasons.
This conclusion seems to follow overly simplistic reasoning: (1) the universe is deterministic, and (2) the “soul” is nonsense, ergo our actions are the direct and unalterable result of our chemical states.
I disagree. What if some inputs to our thought process are one or more mentally stored models (computer models) of the ways we’ve learned to be moral (or not), to be considerate (or not), etc., changeable over a lifetime as we receive additional education or have additional experience that bears on it. It results in our having, as one biologist put it, not free will but “free won’t,” in the sense that we can overrule an otherwise chemically determined state by invoking this model. E.g. your chemistry says I must eat this candy, but the model says I’m on a strict diet, so I refrain.
I think this way of looking at the matter is scientifically sound, much more consistent with our experience, and therefore likely correct.
It seems you’ve hypothesized a highly complex, but still deterministic, model.
What do you mean by the “we” in “we can overrule an otherwise chemically determined state[,]” Whatever it is, it presumably interacts with the chemically determined state on the material plane — and presumably by altering the brain’s chemistry. Do you have a model for how such a process might occur?
As always, Coel, Vaal and Gregory Kusnick make a better case for a compatibilist view than I ever could. And at least at this moment I have trawled carefully through the thread and have yet to find a reply to them that does not depend either on a complete misrepresentation or misunderstanding of the compatibilist view or on unwitting mind-body dualism.
To quote from further up, “you didn’t decide anything–your neurons did!” What is the “you” in that case? The sentence only makes sense if you believe that you are not your brain/neurons/genes. And yes, if you believe that, then humans can indeed not make decisions and choices and have no compatibilist free will. But that also means that you must by necessity be a dualist, because only a dualist would doubt that they are their neurons and believe they are really an immaterial soul-thing riding along on top of the neurons.
Conversely, if you conclude that you are your brain/neurons/genes, then you are a materialist, naturalist, monist. But then it follows that you made the decision, and that means you are a compatibilist!
The only difference between religious dualism and incompatibilist dualism is that the former see the soul as influencing the brain, and the latter see the soul as a passive observer. (And perhaps that the latter don’t realise what they are doing.)
But Alex, you aren’t fooling anyone.
Remember: incompabilism is about being a grown up, simply taking sober stock of the facts, reaching your conclusions through reason.
If you are defending compatibilism you didn’t *really* reach your conclusions by the same grown-up procedure as an incompatiblist. You must have been guided by your emotions, by a desire to protect your intuition in the same way Christians protect their belief in God.
The jig is up.
😉
The problem is the first panel positing a perfect predicting machine. Not possible. See Turing’s proof on the halting problem.
It could be that Dogbert is representable as a finite automaton.
The issue I see here is that on one level I quite agree with Jerry.
But I am also bothered by problems (in addition ot the fact that no one has a clear way to actually test for free or even truly define free will).
Consciousness appears to b be directly connected to ‘free will’, and deterministic biolgical computer models so far give us no freakin clue how conscious arose, or works. Until we solve that problem we need to honestly put the free will question in the same ‘we don’t know yet’ box.