How is this a useful definition of free will and how does it in any way correspond to the folk conception of the meaning of 'free will'? It seems obvious to me that the radium man is less 'free' from the point of responsibility than Yar's determined individual which acts in response to its beliefs, desires, memories.
Free and Not-Free are opposites. What is the meaningful distinction to be made so explaining their opposition? Well, free is not caused, whereas not-free is caused. So, etc.
If we are talking about a different kind of freedom, then define it. But I see no reason to make a distinction between "free" and "not-free" unless there is a difference, and the only meaningful difference is with regard to causality.
We are talking about a different sort of freedom. MrMister and I are talking about 'free' as governed by internal intentional states and 'non-free' as not governed by internal intentional states. These are opposites, are useful concepts with these definitions, and are more closely aligned with the folk understanding of the concept of 'free will.'
I think the inconsistencies or problems which result are the same as any argument within which one's premises are the conclusion for which one is arguing.
The premises are not the conclusion. The argument is such
1. the compatibilist definition of 'free will' should be adopted as the meaning of the word
1.a the conventional definition of free will is largely incoherent and doesn't create the meaningfully responsible agent that the folk understanding of the concept implies
1.b the compatibilist definition of 'free will' is coherent and is more closely aligned with the folk understanding of the concept
2. humans have free will by the compatibilist definition
Not if we define agency and self-efficacy in some meaningful (but still objective way). I.E. entities that internally represent their environment, represent themselves as an entity in their environment, have preferences for certain states of affairs, and attempt to interact with their environment to procure those states of affairs have agency and self-efficacy.
I'm not sure how successful that would be under thorough scrutiny, but it definitely excludes rocks. It does include things like people, some sorts of animals, and the china brain.
But you've set up the definition of agency and self-efficacy to already contain that magical property for which one needs to argue in order to preserve freedom.
If you define a person to have "preferences" while rocks lack preferences, and you define "preferences" to be self-caused motivating states...then you've just snuck the magic of freedom into the argument.
I was using preferences in the sense that one may deduce preferences by observing an entity. I.E. we only know I prefer chocolate to vanilla if I'm seen to consume chocolate. Rocks could be said to 'prefer' to be on the ground, if they met the other requirements for agency. [/quote]
If we are trying to argue that there is freedom, then we cannot start with a premise which basically states "there is freedom". Because that's not an argument; that's just stating what one believes.
The question is how we reconcile freedom will and determinism, uncaused actions and causality, without simply stating that some things, persons, have a magical freedom spot in their mind within which they are uncaused, or caused in a super-special different way than rocks are.
No. That's not the question. The very idea that 'freedom of will' = 'uncaused actions' is ridiculous. How do I have some sort of meaningful freedom of choice if my behavior is decided by a metaphysical coin flip?
We are talking about a different sort of freedom. MrMister and I are talking about 'free' as governed by internal intentional states and 'non-free' as not governed by internal intentional states. These are opposites, are useful concepts with these definitions, and are more closely aligned with the folk understanding of the concept of 'free will.'
What governs the selection of these internal states? It seems like any truly free 'free will' requires either randomly-determined or acausal internal state selection. If state selection is based, at some point, on externals then it just seems like drawing a line of abstraction deep enough that, to the casual observer, the effects of externals are hidden. If, instead, these internal states are entirely independent of external conditions, then by what mechanism do they operate?
I will grant you that we can segment a particular set of causal relations within the universal causal nexus and label that set "Yar", in the same way that we dan segment a particular set of causal relations and label that "rock falling" or "BP oil well spilling oil".
What I will not grant, and have yet to discern an argument for, is how the Yar set has the magical "choice" and "free will" whereas the rock and BP oil well do not have "choice" or "free will".
Because I can envision possible futures and feel desires for or against them, which in turn becomes a dominant cause regarding how I might act accordingly. Rocks don't do this. This is a difference between me and rocks, just like I have hair and rocks don't. This one in particular is called choice. This isn't as difficult as you want to make it. The only frame of reference in which you are able to deny any significance to this is a frame of reference in which you've broken down my very existence as a thing. You are needlessly confusing yourself. We could also break things down to where the fact that I have hair and rocks don't is also a meaningless distinction, because hair and rocks are made out of the same atoms or whatever.
I can break down "cat" or "fish" or "economics" or "_J_" or anything at all, until I reach a point where that thing's components are no longer distinct from the components of other things that we wouldn't call cat or fish or economics or _J_. Just as you want to break down the components of choice and free will until those components no longer seem distinct from components that might make up actions we wouldn't call choice or free will.
And I can also build those components back up, until I reach the point where the particular grouping of components again becomes distinct and meaningful enough to have its own name. Like the scaly swimmy thing with fins, that's a fish, even if it's just made out of the same kinds of molecules that a cat is made of. And when something uses it's brain and capacity to reason in order to conceive of possible futures, and then act to effect one over others, that's called making a choice, even if that choice can be broken down into the same kinds of cause-and-effect events that a falling rock is subject to. Choices made free of dominant influence from threats or controls or other factors that might conflict with and override that being's usual process of making a choice - that's free will.
It's philosophical wankery to try to disprove something's existence by breaking it down until it is no longer distinct from other things, and the particular application of this wankery to free will is built on the fundamentally flawed and untenable concept of a thing being an object acted upon by its component parts, rather than being the sum of and identity of its component parts. We aren't acted upon by our desires, we are them. Otherwise, what do you suppose comprises that thing upon which desires are acting? What is the "you," if, rather than being your body and mind and memories and hormones and preferences, it is instead something separate from those that is being acted upon by them?
But don't think that this is the same thing as the orthodox Christian definition of Free Will that folks like Thomas Aquinas considered. They conceive of free will as something explicitly and by definition supernatural - a totally free choice, free of causation, between God and not-God. But that definition is just kind of silly when you're an atheist. It loses all meaning.
So the concept of Free Will is really just meaningless to me.
No, it isn't. If you're ever charged with a crime, whether or not the act was committed of your own free will might be extremely meaningful. Like, if someone held a gun to your head and made you do something as opposed to you freely choosing to do it. However, you are correct that if you choose to define free will as being entirely free from cause-and-effect, then you've either got to explain what sort of universe you think there is that is free from cause and effect, or else you have to admit that you are choosing to directly define "free" literally to mean "nonexistent," which is quite a stacked deck and makes it unnecessary to even talk about religion or determinism or anything, all you have to say is that free will is by definition nonexistent because "free" means "doesn't exist."
1) Beliefs and desires combine in such a way to move X to action. (person)
2) Gravity and friction combine in such a way as to move X to action. (rock)
What's the difference?
The difference is much what you said. One is comprised of beliefs and desires and the other isn't. That's at least a significant part of the reason why one is a choice and the other isn't. Again, you're making this needlessly complicated for no logical reason. We give things different names and descriptors if they are comprised of different things towards different ends. Proving that the things that comprise them are similar in some fashion in no way invalidates anything. It's as if I'm saying that boats go on water, and you're trying to prove that because boats and cars are both made of parts assembled in a factory, and cars don't go on water, then boats can't either. This is silly.
No, determinism brings into question the very notion of a "coming from us ourselves", as all events are simply the results of the causal nexus of the universe. I am typing this post because (long causal chain) in the same way that a rock falls down a hill because (long causal chain).
They are only "in the same way" if you deny the existence of those things that obviously make them different. Your position seems to be that so long as you can find a manner in which two things can be decribed with the same words, then those two things are identical. There's really no such thing as _J_, _J_ has skin and Yar has skin and MrMister has skin so there is no _J_. Really?
There are two people in the audience. MrMr and _J_. After watching the movie MrMr turns to _J_ and says, "I thought the motivations for the characters in this movie were really well fleshed out; you can really see how Don Jean-Pierre had to struggle to choose between losing his daughter, or ruining his country forever."
_J_ turns back and says, "That's a ridiculous statement, we just observed a series of pictures. They could only ever happen in the order they were presented. The struggle was nonexistent."
And both of you keep arguing past each other about who is right. You're rejecting each others premises.
Yes, this is the "Does Link wield the Master Sword?" kind of analogy I always use. It is a very astute way of describing a large aspect of this and many ontological debates. I tend to deem it a fallacy when one tries to deny any conversation about the characters and events in the movie because they are all just pictures on film, and not meaningfully different from pictures on film that don't have characters or events in them.
So, I did not freely come to have the desire, but rather the desire was posited onto me via a causal chain.
No. The desire is part of what you are. It is not posited on you. It is you. To say it is posited on you makes no sense, because the "you" at the end of that sentence can't exist as something a desire is posited onto.
1. the compatibilist definition of 'free will' should be adopted as the meaning of the word
1.a the conventional definition of free will is largely incoherent and doesn't create the meaningfully responsible agent that the folk understanding of the concept implies
1.b the compatibilist definition of 'free will' is coherent and is more closely aligned with the folk understanding of the concept
2. humans have free will by the compatibilist definition
Conclusion: people have free will
Correct. The free will that seems to be suggested by those who deny it appears to me to be one which is defined to be non-existent, by defining the word "free" to mean "free from even existing at all." It isn't coherent or useful in the way a compatabilist or even a libertarian definition of it would be.
i am curious as to how MrMister would define the nature of "freedom" re: free will, as opposed to the nature of constraint for a will that is not free.
In the sense of "freedom" at play in free will arguments, all human action is necessarily the product of a free will; there is no unfree will against which to contrast. We can, nonetheless, draw important distinctions among human actions regarding coercion, ignorance, and so on. They just aren't going to be drawn in terms of freedom of the will.
This really doesn't answer my question.
If there no unfree will, and if the traditional concept of freedom doesn't apply to will, then the attempt to apply the word seems silly.
For the word "free" to be used meaningfully, there must be an explanation of what the object is free from. The constraint must be defined.
One could be free of imprisonment, or coersion, or whatever. A product can be free of charge.
We seem to have agreed that a will is not free of cause. What, then, is it free of? What constraint creates the potential for freedom?
I think you might be missing the forest for the trees. Sometimes it's useful to analyze a term by way of its constituent parts and drawing analogies to other instances where those parts exist. I'm not sure this is one of those times though.
1. the compatibilist definition of 'free will' should be adopted as the meaning of the word
1.a the conventional definition of free will is largely incoherent and doesn't create the meaningfully responsible agent that the folk understanding of the concept implies
1.b the compatibilist definition of 'free will' is coherent and is more closely aligned with the folk understanding of the concept
2. humans have free will by the compatibilist definition
Conclusion: people have free will
Correct. The free will that seems to be suggested by those who deny it appears to me to be one which is defined to be non-existent, by defining the word "free" to mean "free from even existing at all." It isn't coherent or useful in the way a compatabilist or even a libertarian definition of it would be.
What is the 'folk understanding' referred to here, if not determinism?
The compatibilist interpretation of free will appears to be "You have free will if you think you have free will." Which works to a point, I suppose, but it doesn't seem very useful. An especially skilled manipulator could probably make you feel like you had a choice, too.
Intentional states are caused, and are thus deterministic.
I don't see any way freedom or its absence is actually relevant to the situation.
Right. "Free will" as a phrase has come to mean "the thing making moral responsibility an intelligible and plausible concept". On the compatibilist view, freedom or its absence isn't relevant, but they use that language because that's how the debate has been couched for however long.
Intentional states are caused, and are thus deterministic.
I don't see any way freedom or its absence is actually relevant to the situation.
Can't we compromise at probabilistic?
Probabilism has nothing to do with freedom either. It's just determinism where one of the determinants is probability.
Oh, I thought you were talking hard causal determinism, when you use the word determinism. In that regard, saying one of the determinants is probability makes no sense to me.
I think whenever free will debates come up, we forget that Free Will has been primarily a RELIGIOUS CONCEPT among the west for the past couple thousand years. It was created in order to explain a few theological problems in Christianity.
So, as an atheist I essentially take the fourth position, that the concept of Free Will is an outdated and irrelevant relic of the past. It really isn't that important.
Human beings do things. Animals do things. Rocks bouncing around in space do things. There are physical reasons that exist in the real world that caused all those things to do things. I look at his whole debate and think that it's unclear what free will is even trying to say outside of a religious context.
If it's trying to say that human beings are immune to the whole "things do things because of reasons" law that applies to almost everything in the universe, then it's stupid. We do things for reasons just like everything else in this world that's bigger than an electron.
If it's just trying to say that human beings consider different courses of action and then decide to something, and that decision is important and valuable, then cool, I'm okay with that.
But don't think that this is the same thing as the orthodox Christian definition of Free Will that folks like Thomas Aquinas considered. They conceive of free will as something explicitly and by definition supernatural - a totally free choice, free of causation, between God and not-God. But that definition is just kind of silly when you're an atheist. It loses all meaning.
So the concept of Free Will is really just meaningless to me.
I agree largely with Melkster, based on what I know of science. Essentially I believe the universe to be predetermined (but, perhaps fortunately, unknowable).
The premises:
1a) If you knew the exact state of every element of matter everywhere, and knew the exact methods / formula that every element of matter interacts with other matter, you could flawlessly predict the future. Quantum mechanics may throw a wrench into this by being truly random, but I don't think anyone has actually proven that they are, and they are unlikely to effect anything on a human's scale anyway; relying on it is a god in the cracks fallacy.
1b) Aside from being an impossible task to set out and measure every element of the universe within the same instant, there are certain properties of the universe that cannot be measured. Values for those properties exist, but it is impossible to ascertain them without changing them or another value to a new unknown. So "knowing" the predetermined path of the universe is not only practically impossible but theoretically impossible.
2) The brain is made of matter and in the universe and thus as subject to these forces as anything else, alive or dead. "States" of mind are irrelevant, they are just the sum total of countless interactions between subatomic particles interacting to make atoms interacting to make molecules interacting to make cells and neurotransmitters, etc.
3) Thus, a thought is nothing more special or free than a meteor smacking into a planet or a rock just sitting there.
In this definition a "free" will would be one that could make a decision free from the inevitable chain of interactions that govern the physics of their brain. Such freedom would require a "divine spark", something very special and unique about consciousness that we don't know about yet, or that the fundamentals of our understanding of the universe are flawed (technically that would be true if either of the first conditions was :P). In other words, a free will has the capacity to consciously change the path of the universe set in premise 1, even if they are not conscious of what that path is/was.
As for the ethics, well, that criminal's dilemma thing never made much sense to me. If we have free will then of course we should be able to ethically punish him. If we don't, that frees us, the judges, from being morally obligated to exempt him from punishment. We *have* to do it in the same way he *had* to commit a crime. Any revulsion with the crime or moral outrage about the punishment are just thoughts that were predetermined as above, too. This dilemma only makes sense if the judges have free will and the criminal does not.
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HachfaceNot the Minister Farrakhan you're thinking ofDammit, Shepard!Registered Userregular
edited June 2010
What Melkster calls the "fourth position" is actually just a flavor of compatibilism.
Intentional states are caused, and are thus deterministic.
I don't see any way freedom or its absence is actually relevant to the situation.
Can't we compromise at probabilistic?
Probabilism has nothing to do with freedom either. It's just determinism where one of the determinants is probability.
Oh, I thought you were talking hard causal determinism, when you use the word determinism. In that regard, saying one of the determinants is probability makes no sense to me.
Intentional states caused by probabilistic randomness are still determined. They are simply determined in part by chance.
Probabilism is not a compromise, it's just another kind of determinism.
Also, true compassion can only come from a deterministic concept of self, ie the understanding of a person as a caused entity. It is by understanding those causes that we find within ourselves the ability to empathize and identify and forgive.
This does not in any way reduce the need to discourage and prevent unethical or harmful activity.
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HachfaceNot the Minister Farrakhan you're thinking ofDammit, Shepard!Registered Userregular
Intentional states are caused, and are thus deterministic.
I don't see any way freedom or its absence is actually relevant to the situation.
Can't we compromise at probabilistic?
Probabilism has nothing to do with freedom either. It's just determinism where one of the determinants is probability.
Oh, I thought you were talking hard causal determinism, when you use the word determinism. In that regard, saying one of the determinants is probability makes no sense to me.
Intentional states caused by probabilistic randomness are still determined. They are simply determined in part by chance.
Probabilism is not a compromise, it's just another kind of determinism.
This is true enough from an ethical standpoint. Knowledge that your actions are prompted by the random motions of subatomic particles endows you with no more responsibility than knowledge that they are caused by nonrandom motion in the same.
From an epistemological angle, though, there is a significant difference between probabilsim and determinism.
What is the 'folk understanding' referred to here, if not determinism?
I believe the folk understanding could be 1) the difference between doing something because you decide to and doing something because someone put a gun to your head or grabbed you by force and made you do it. One is free will and the other isn't. 2) A more spiritual concept that resembles the concept of a soul - a being that transcends our reality but plays a critical role interacting with our mind to create our desires and actions.
I think people are arguing against the second, whereas I think the first is the one that actually makes sense and has a meaningful use.
The compatibilist interpretation of free will appears to be "You have free will if you think you have free will." Which works to a point, I suppose, but it doesn't seem very useful. An especially skilled manipulator could probably make you feel like you had a choice, too.
Hrmmm... well, I guess so, in the sense that nothing to you exists except what you think exists. But no, the compatabilist view, as I understand it, accepts the concept of determinism, of a closed system of causes and effects like a clock that is in motion, but that there is still a thing meaningfully called "free will" that exists among the various functions of this clock just like anything else. We make choices. We act on our desires. We call this choice and free will. That's what they are. The fact that it it is all, on some level, predetermined by a static chain of causes and effects does not mean that they aren't free will and choice.
In short, I don't see anywhere where anyone has provided a reasonable justification for why "free" or "choice" must be defined as that which has no cause. Rather, defining them as making decisions based on supposed outcomes, or free from coercion, seems usable and meaningful and accurate and doesn't conflict with determinism or otherwise lead to absurd incoherence.
I think the compatibilist stance you're defending, yar, sort of misses the point of determinism.
I also remember you saying there is no point to determinism, so, there you are.
To say that we are deterministic entities is to make a supposition about the nature of reality on a personal level. It is to confront a lot of metaphysical assumptions about the nature of identity and action.
What is important to the deterministic is the acknowledgment that we are caused. Why? Because it seems correct, first of all; subordinately, because it leads to important ways to consider compassion, forgiveness, justice, and social action. Determinism of self is a vital part of tremendously important theorists like Foucault and Althusser, and their rejection of standard humanist truisms. It is vital to the understanding of power and structure, and how the individual is not the vital point of origin that we often assume it to be.
On a very practical level, true progressive change on a social or political level is most efficacious when motivated by and enacted with an understanding of the determined individual. This is for example a key part of the political problems in America with its hyper-individualist right extremism.
I think the compatibilist stance you're defending, yar, sort of misses the point of determinism.
I also remember you saying there is no point to determinism, so, there you are.
To say that we are deterministic entities is to make a supposition about the nature of reality on a personal level. It is to confront a lot of metaphysical assumptions about the nature of identity and action.
What is important to the deterministic is the acknowledgment that we are caused. Why? Because it seems correct, first of all; subordinately, because it leads to important ways to consider compassion, forgiveness, justice, and social action. Determinism of self is a vital part of tremendously important theorists like Foucault and Althusser, and their rejection of standard humanist truisms. It is vital to the understanding of power and structure, and how the individual is not the vital point of origin that we often assume it to be.
On a very practical level, true progressive change on a social or political level is most efficacious when motivated by and enacted with an understanding of the determined individual. This is for example a key part of the political problems in America with its hyper-individualist right extremism.
None of this is valid unless you state a goal and demonstrate that one method or philosophy achieves that goal more effectively than another.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but what you're claiming is that determinism proves that we should consider what causes a criminal to be a criminal at least as much or more so than just considering how to punish the individual who committed it.
But determinism doesn't support this any more than it supports an entirely opposite conclusion.
You have to state what your end goal is. What does "should" mean, what does it aim for? And then, you must show why considering a multitude of causes will ultimately achieve those "shoulds" better than will individual responsibility. Because, you know, you could be wrong. Maybe harsh individualistic responsibility actually works out to achieve those goals most effectively, regardless of the fact that the crime was determined.
Again, determinism isn't going to help you either way. The criminal was determined to commit his crime just as we are determined to punish him. Tell me why, and towards what end, we might change how we view a justice or morality system, and I'm fine. Show me data on how some mechanism of strict individualism fails to achieve our goals (assuming we've agreed on these goals), while some other mechanism that tends to address external causes is more effective, and I'm for it. Don't tell me it's because of "determinism" or that it disproves the eixstence of free will, because that isn't saying anything and doesn't prove what you think it does.
In the end, if what you are saying is that social policy and government need to acknowledge a multitude of causes that go into outcomes and not necessarily focus on the individual as the be-all, end-all, then sure, I'd say in some cases that thinking could be very progressive and create a more enjoyable society, and in other cases that thinking will effect some of the greatest evils human are capable of. Taking it completely by itself, vis-a-vis hardcore utilitarianism or machiavellianism or a similar structure, I'd say the latter, the evil, is the more likely. Regardless, none of it really addresses determinism or free will in any useful manner. Yes, we have free will, and sure, in a certain frame of reference, all events, including those born of free will, are predetermined, though that fact is so utterly meaningless as to be of a null truth value. Those aren't contradictory and neither helps you make your case for why XYZ is how we should approach crime and punishment.
My point, yar, was that you agree with the actual description of reality, the ontological claims, of determinism. ie, you believe that individuals are caused. Where you differ is in the definition of free will, which is a semantic distinction.
Note that in this context I am not using "semantic" pejoratively.
To think of individuals as uncaused, or to separate them from their causes, or to attribute to them the ability to transcend their causes - these ideas are factually incorrect. Individuals are their causes. You have said as much.
I am not accusing you of this. But the term "free will" is loaded. It carries those connotations. I think you would agree that, if individuals are caused, then the most effective way of thinking of or treating individuals is with this in mind.
Rehabilitation is a deterministic endeavour. It is an attempt to inject new causes into the subject. Retributive justice is one that ignores the causes of the individual.
I could even back off and say that determinism is not morally superior, inherently (by itself it is not). However, it is more accurate than a humanist conception of self, just as a humanistic view is more accurate than the various authoritarian ideas that preceded it. What this offers, like any greater understanding, is power.
Generally, those who make policy, those who shape society, have the same moral objectives in an ultimate sense; they differ only in how to get there. I think determinism, being more accurate, is a better way to get there.
In short, I don't see anywhere where anyone has provided a reasonable justification for why "free" or "choice" must be defined as that which has no cause.
"Free" and "Choice" must be defined as that which has no cause because that is what "Free" and "choice" mean. If you do not understand WHY they must necessarily mean that, perhaps I can explain it using your quote.
Rather, defining them as making decisions based on supposed outcomes, or free from coercion, seems usable and meaningful and accurate and doesn't conflict with determinism or otherwise lead to absurd incoherence.
To make a decision is to actualize a choice between multiple options. If one can do X or Y, then whether one does X or Y is the result of the choice, the decision, to do X or Y.
The crux of that statement, the important component, is "If one can do X or Y", that it is actually possible for one to choose X just as it is actually possible for one to choose Y, either of the two options could be actualized.
This ability for actualization only makes sense if choice is not caused. Were choice causal, then the doing of X or the doing of Y would result from a causal chain which would have made doing the opposite impossible; If I choose to do X as a result of a causal chain, then I could not have done Y, and so did not have a choice.
That's the reason for why choice and freedom must be uncaused, must be estranged from a causal nexus.
Think of it this way:
Determinism:
A - B - C - D - E - F - G
Freedom:
................E - F - G - H
A - B - C <
................D - U - I - O
For there to actually be "Choice", at point C it must be the case that both E and D were possibilities, that at point C one could have truly proceeded to E AND one could have proceeded to D.
The only way for this to happen is for the "choice" at point C to have not been causally determined. For if it is causally determined then, in actuality, there is only the determinism line and the (D - U - I - O) reality is an impossibility.
Basically, the only way to really engage this topic of freedom or determinism with regard to choice is to engage in a conversation about hypotheticals, counter-factuals, and possible worlds. TO say that one had a choice at point C is to state that E and D are both options. To make this claim with regard to the future is to engage with hypotheticals, to make this claim with regard to the past is to engage with counter-factuals and, perhaps, possible worlds.
The problem is that both hypotheticals and counter-factuals are philosophical nonsense, when you get right down to it.
I am not accusing you of this. But the term "free will" is loaded. It carries those connotations. I think you would agree that, if individuals are caused, then the most effective way of thinking of or treating individuals is with this in mind.
Maybe. I get the sense that others here experience free will as a term used to promote something different that most of us likely wouldn't agree with. I'm not so familiar with that. Most of what I see in this thread and similar discussions is just needless and unfounded complication of a simple notion - yes we make choices, sometimes freely, sometimes not, under coercion and force or due to dominant factors that aren't generally associated with the process of making a choice. It is this simple truth that most here seem to be arguing against, and using incoherent statements and arguments to do so. That's my focus. Well, at least until now.
Rehabilitation is a deterministic endeavour. It is an attempt to inject new causes into the subject. Retributive justice is one that ignores the causes of the individual.
No. Using the word "deterministic" is not appropriate here. Rehabilitation is an endeavor at better reducing harms to society through fewer harms against criminals and reduced likelihood of crime recurrence and thus harms against innocents. If we agree that reducing harms is the goal, and if rehabilitation achieves this, then goody. But many value retribution for the deterrence it causes; the causes it injects into any future criminals. Theoretically harsher retribution could be better for society than rehabilitation, if it actually reduced future crimes even more. Note that I could easily argue that this is the more "deterministic" approach, too, because it concentrates less on this one individual and trying to shape his individual future through rehabilitation, and more on creating a cause that could affect any and all potential criminals that become more aware of the retribution they could face.
That is key to why determinism doesn't work the way you think it does. Maybe a criminal's horrible childhood is why he committed his crime. Maybe a non-criminal's fear of wicked retribution is why he didn't commit a crime. Either is equally "deterministic," the only useful endeavor is to attempt to study and prove which actually better achieves the goal and forget trying to tell yourself that one is more deterministic.
This is why I strongly disagree with what I think you're trying to say here. I might commit some pretty vile and heinous acts over and over while telling myself that the individuals I committed these evils against aren't what we should focus on, but rather the net determined effect across the entire universe, all the great order and solidarity and [insert crap here] that my actions will engender among us all. That's more "deterministic" because it takes a wider view of the effects of our actions, instead of just focusing on an individual criminal and how we can help him.
Anyway, if rehabilitation turns out to be better than stricter punishments, it isn't because of determinism, it's because we analyzed two methods and found one to be more successful than the other. In the end, it was all determined.
I could even back off and say that determinism is not morally superior, inherently (by itself it is not). However, it is more accurate than a humanist conception of self, just as a humanistic view is more accurate than the various authoritarian ideas that preceded it. What this offers, like any greater understanding, is power.
I don't completely agree that it is accurate, either, though I think I'll wait to see if this discussion actually goes there before I jump in on that.
Generally, those who make policy, those who shape society, have the same moral objectives in an ultimate sense; they differ only in how to get there. I think determinism, being more accurate, is a better way to get there.
Determinism is not a way towards any one thing. Determinism determines everything.
I agree largely with Melkster, based on what I know of science. Essentially I believe the universe to be predetermined (but, perhaps fortunately, unknowable).
The premises:
1a) If you knew the exact state of every element of matter everywhere, and knew the exact methods / formula that every element of matter interacts with other matter, you could flawlessly predict the future. Quantum mechanics may throw a wrench into this by being truly random, but I don't think anyone has actually proven that they are, and they are unlikely to effect anything on a human's scale anyway; relying on it is a god in the cracks fallacy.
1b) Aside from being an impossible task to set out and measure every element of the universe within the same instant, there are certain properties of the universe that cannot be measured. Values for those properties exist, but it is impossible to ascertain them without changing them or another value to a new unknown. So "knowing" the predetermined path of the universe is not only practically impossible but theoretically impossible.
2) The brain is made of matter and in the universe and thus as subject to these forces as anything else, alive or dead. "States" of mind are irrelevant, they are just the sum total of countless interactions between subatomic particles interacting to make atoms interacting to make molecules interacting to make cells and neurotransmitters, etc.
3) Thus, a thought is nothing more special or free than a meteor smacking into a planet or a rock just sitting there.
In this definition a "free" will would be one that could make a decision free from the inevitable chain of interactions that govern the physics of their brain. Such freedom would require a "divine spark", something very special and unique about consciousness that we don't know about yet, or that the fundamentals of our understanding of the universe are flawed (technically that would be true if either of the first conditions was :P). In other words, a free will has the capacity to consciously change the path of the universe set in premise 1, even if they are not conscious of what that path is/was.
I think your position is a bit immature (mainly because it's different from mine :P). Quantum mechanics does indeed throw a wrench in 1a) - it does suggest that the universe is, at some level, undetermined. The universe could still be deterministic (and a "hidden variable theory" correct), but we have no evidence for this assertion and we are unaware of what laws would govern it at the most fundamental level. The issue of whether quantum uncertainty effects decision is interesting. If we consider an indefinite timespan, I think it is inevitable that eventually a synapse fire/lack of response will come down to quantum uncertainty. Regardless of how unlikely, every electron in a neuron conspiring to be found by quantum uncertainty in a certain configuration and causing a neuron to misfire remains a theoretic possibility, and thus grants us "undetermined will." Even if an unpredicted act would only happen on average every billion years. Ultimately though I think quantum mechanics is a red herring.
What I think is worth considering here is what is usually understood by the term "free will." Usually the term is used to assign personal responsibility and has to do with an actor making a decision free from external influence.
The thing is, thoughts are internal influences. Once you break down thoughts to the interaction of particles and use that to say the actor is 'unfree', now you're trying to discuss free choice as an actor's freedom from *internal influence*.
If I act in such a way that my action is both free from external and internal evidence, my action is determined by some sort of metaphysical coin flip. It isn't really free in the conventional sense at all.
When I say "deterministic" I am specifically addressing the determinism of self and a structural (or post-structural) theory of identity. Talking about the universe etc is unnecessary and irrelevant. What I am talking about is the theoretical framework for our concept of self and action. Your final comment seems to imagine determinism as a force; it is the name of a theory or position.
The possible consequences you describe do not follow from that theory. At best they are examples of people acting in bad faith or with poor or incorrect information; this always leads to poor results.
Most of what I see in this thread and similar discussions is just needless and unfounded complication of a simple notion - yes we make choices, sometimes freely, sometimes not, under coercion and force or due to dominant factors that aren't generally associated with the process of making a choice.
It is very simple to type "we make choices". It is very difficult to actually articulate what a choice is, how choices could happen, and whether or not there actually are ever choices made by persons. I tend to think that you are not genuinely engaging in the discussion, as you simply state "there are choices" without ever truly engaging with what that means.
My guess is that if you had to argue for there being choice, you would state that, when presented with the supposed option of chicken or steak, you "feel as if" you could "choose" the steak or the chicken. You can imagine yourself eating chicken and imagine yourself eating steak. So, when you "choose" the steak you think "but I can imagine myself having picked the chicken, so that means I had a choice".
But that is not what "choice" is; that is the feeling of choice. For there to have actually been a choice there must have been both the possibility of steak and possibility of chicken in that one could actually have actualized the chicken or the steak. Which is nigh-impossible to prove.
Someone calls you and asks "Do you want to go to the movies or the park?" You think about it and then say "park". That does not prove that you had choice. That proves that you were presented with a stimulus, stuff happened in your mind, and you gave the response "park" in the same way, one could argue, that Deep Blue "chooses" which move to make in a game of chess.
The question of whether you were determined to say "park" or chose to say "park" is the topic of this thread. If you are simply going to say "I chose park" without ever proving it, then that seems unhelpful.
The crux of that statement, the important component, is "If one can do X or Y", that it is actually possible for one to choose X just as it is actually possible for one to choose Y, either of the two options could be actualized.
But even given determinism one can do X or Y. The nature of an individual in the compatibilist conception allows it - an individual is free if they have no external influences dictating their action. Thus although whether an individual does X or Y is determined, whether X or Y is selected comes down to a question of the internal state of the 'one.'
The individual's internal state is opaque unless we decide to destroy the individual as an entity to analyze its mechanisms - and because the internal state of the 'one' is opaque either X or Y can be chosen. We can't consider the individual's internal mechanisms because as soon as we do, the 'one' in the question 'can one do X or Y?' ceases to exist.
The crux of that statement, the important component, is "If one can do X or Y", that it is actually possible for one to choose X just as it is actually possible for one to choose Y, either of the two options could be actualized.
But even given determinism one can do X or Y. The nature of an individual in the compatibilist conception allows it - an individual is free if they have no external influences dictating their action. Thus although whether an individual does X or Y is determined, whether X or Y is selected comes down to a question of the internal state of the 'one.'
No, in determinism one is always already pre-determined to do, say, X, and has been determined to do X since existence began. There is no possibility of doing Y; one could only do X.
The compatibilist conception does not allow for the doing of X or Y; the compatibilist conception maintains that a particular individual, in acting accord with its own internal states, is determined in its actions but is free insofar as it acts in accord with its internal states.
It is impossible for the individual to contain internal states which result in both "Do X at time-point Z" AND "Do Y at time-point Z", given that the individual, given the confines of reality, can ONLY do X or Y at time-point Z.
To make a decision is to actualize a choice between multiple options. If one can do X or Y, then whether one does X or Y is the result of the choice, the decision, to do X or Y.
The crux of that statement, the important component, is "If one can do X or Y", that it is actually possible for one to choose X just as it is actually possible for one to choose Y, either of the two options could be actualized.
Nothing I've said involves or cares about this nonsense notion of whether or not there are multiple futures all of which could or could not have been actualized. Some of these possible futures were perceived in the mind of the decider before he made his decision, at least, which is a big part of what made the process a choice. Beyond that, whether or not that which didn't happen "could" have happened is am incoherent statement. What does "could" even mean there? If it isn't what happened, then of course it couldn't happen, because we already know it isn't what happened. Things exist or don't exist. There is no "could" when it comes to existence. Nothing I've said depends on anything you just posted. Nothing you just posted makes any sense anyway.
Were choice causal, then the doing of X or the doing of Y would result from a causal chain which would have made doing the opposite impossible;
This is the same incoherent statement from before. Impossible for whom? The causal chain does not constrain me or make things impossible for me. What is "me", if the causal chain is something that acts upon it makes things possible or impossible for it? Me, my choice, my free will, they are all part of that causal chain, not acted upon by it.
If I choose to do X as a result of a causal chain, then I could not have done Y, and so did not have a choice.
Again, this is nonsense. Your if-clause already states that you did not do Y, so telling me in the then-clause that you couldn't have done Y isn't saying anything. I already know from your given that your universe is defined as one without Y, so don't then tell me how it therefore couldn't have Y, as if that means anything at all.
For there to actually be "Choice", at point C it must be the case that both E and D were possibilities, that at point C one could have truly proceeded to E AND one could have proceeded to D.
Why? Why not say that in order for there to actually be choice, one must have considered both E and D in their rational mind, and that this consideration itself be a signficant or dominant event amongst the predetermined causal chain that led to what happened at C? That's my definition of choice, it's what we actually do when we make a choice, it doesn't conflict with determinism, and it doesn't present the nonsense time-paradoxes you are confusing yourself with. It doesn't rely at all on an absurd notion of a timeline that is and isn't.
Basically, the only way to really engage this topic of freedom or determinism with regard to choice is to engage in a conversation about hypotheticals, counter-factuals, and possible worlds. TO say that one had a choice at point C is to state that E and D are both options. To make this claim with regard to the future is to engage with hypotheticals, to make this claim with regard to the past is to engage with counter-factuals and, perhaps, possible worlds.
The problem is that both hypotheticals and counter-factuals are philosophical nonsense, when you get right down to it.
I'm somewhat ok with the idea that the discussion must include a notion of possible worlds. I'm also saying those possible worlds need only exist as imagined in the mind of the chooser in order for it to be called a choice, there is no coherent or justified reason why you must suppose that these possibilities exist in some other manner, whatever manner it is you are supposing they must exist in order for there to be choice.
I imagine a possible future where I'm eating chocolate ice cream, and I imagine one where I'm not. I prefer the former and act accordingly. I've made a choice. Under various clumsy notions of determinism, this choice was predetermined. An omniscient being might have been able to predict it eons ago based on circumstances as they existed then, and knew it was a certainty that I'd be born someday and choose chocolate ice cream. That doesn't make it not what it was. That doesn't make it not a choice, anymore than predicting a rock eons ago makes it not a rock.
Why not say that in order for there to actually be choice, one must have considered both E and D in their rational mind, and that this consideration itself be a signficant or dominant event amongst the predetermined causal chain that led to what happened at C?
If what you mean by "consider" is "think about", then by choice you mean that an entity thinks about X prior to doing X, as opposed to a rock, which simply does Y absent any thought.
So, my thought process is determined and comes to be as a result of a causal nexus of events, but I have choice in that I think about X, which is to say that I subject X to mental scrutiny the structure of which is determined by the causal nexus of the universe.
So, to think is to have choice; to not think is to not have choice.
So all you mean by "X has choice" is "X is a thinking thing"? And we say that "thought", as it occurs in rational agents, is different than the "processing" which occurs in computers because, well, we want to be special?
That's my definition of choice, it's what we actually do when we make a choice, it doesn't conflict with determinism, and it doesn't present the nonsense time-paradoxes you are confusing yourself with. It doesn't rely at all on an absurd notion of a timeline that is and isn't.
Well, it wouldn't conflict with determinism...because you are arguing for determinism...but are calling it "free will" for some reason.
Typically, "free will" means "could have done otherwise". So, we justify punishing a robber for killing X as a result of that robber having free will, which means it could have done otherwise; it could have not killed X.
If you're completely dismissing the option of "could have done otherwise" and are saying that we can punish robbers because they think, and can't punish rocks because they can't think...well...ok.
We are talking about a different sort of freedom. MrMister and I are talking about 'free' as governed by internal intentional states and 'non-free' as not governed by internal intentional states. These are opposites, are useful concepts with these definitions, and are more closely aligned with the folk understanding of the concept of 'free will.'
What governs the selection of these internal states? It seems like any truly free 'free will' requires either randomly-determined or acausal internal state selection. If state selection is based, at some point, on externals then it just seems like drawing a line of abstraction deep enough that, to the casual observer, the effects of externals are hidden. If, instead, these internal states are entirely independent of external conditions, then by what mechanism do they operate?
What governs the selection of the internal states is irrelevant - it can be either causal or acausal.
If state selection is based, at some point, on externals then it just seems like drawing a line of abstraction deep enough that, to the casual observer, the effects of externals are hidden.
The line isn't arbitrary - the line is drawn around properties belonging to the entity. Yes, these properties that the entity has may be causally related to the external world - but when we ask "will the entity do X or Y' when placed in external world A?" The answer comes down to the entity's internal states.
Even though whether Bob is happy or sad right now could be a deterministic function of past events, the fact remains that Bob is the same individual regardless of whether he is happy or sad. If we ask "Will Bob mope or smile?" we're asking a question of the individual, Bob, common between his happy and sad selves, and independently of whatever chain of cause brought him to have the internal state that he does.
1. the compatibilist definition of 'free will' should be adopted as the meaning of the word
1.a the conventional definition of free will is largely incoherent and doesn't create the meaningfully responsible agent that the folk understanding of the concept implies
1.b the compatibilist definition of 'free will' is coherent and is more closely aligned with the folk understanding of the concept
2. humans have free will by the compatibilist definition
Conclusion: people have free will
Correct. The free will that seems to be suggested by those who deny it appears to me to be one which is defined to be non-existent, by defining the word "free" to mean "free from even existing at all." It isn't coherent or useful in the way a compatabilist or even a libertarian definition of it would be.
What is the 'folk understanding' referred to here, if not determinism?
The compatibilist interpretation of free will appears to be "You have free will if you think you have free will." Which works to a point, I suppose, but it doesn't seem very useful. An especially skilled manipulator could probably make you feel like you had a choice, too.
'folk understanding' means the answer you would get if you went up to people on the street and asked them to explain the concept.
the 'folk understanding of free will' which I'm referring to is an understanding of free will which equates it with personal responsibility, and which connects the concept with the idea of freedom from external influence.
The compatibilist conception does not allow for the doing of X or Y; the compatibilist conception maintains that a particular individual, in acting accord with its own internal states, is determined in its actions but is free insofar as it acts in accord with its internal states..
Sort of. Internal states are part of an individual - and insofar as an individual acts in accordance with them they are self-determined. The process of resolving one's internal states and taking action is 'making a choice.'
Let A be an individual making a decision. A is the same individual regardless of whether they are happy or sad. When we ask "will A choose to do X or Y at time Z?" the answer *could be X or Y*. Whether X or Y is selected is not determined by any external stimulus - it is a "free choice".
It's true that causally it may be determined that A will be happy at time Z and thus pick X-- but when we asked the question we weren't rigorously specifying A's internal state; we were asking a question of A in general. If we were asking a question of a hyper-specific version about A with the status of every neuron and biochemical pathway known, we're asking a question of a different sort of entity, and not about A as an individual as individuals are usually understood.
Internal states are part of an individual - and insofar as an individual acts in accordance with them they are self-determined.
No, the individual would not be "self"-determined; the individual would be determined by the individual states, which are PART of the individual, and not the entirety of the individual. It's not "Self"-determined, it is "part-of-self"-determined.
Except that part did not come to be purely via the individual self, but rather came to be as a result of a wealth of external factors; the little self had wishes, desires, hopes, dreams posited onto it.
So it is not the self acting, it is those wishes, desires, hopes, and dreams coming to realize themselves by way of the individual.
The "self", in effect, is slave to the passions festering within the self, and "slavery" is not "freedom".
'folk understanding' means the answer you would get if you went up to people on the street and asked them to explain the concept.
Otherwise known as the "incorrect" understanding, usually ending in "huyuck".
Edit: Alternatively ending in "We don't take kindly to readers round here."
But I'm arguing for compatibilism on the basis it more closely aligns with folk understanding of the words meaning...
If the entirety of your argument for free will is founded upon definitions utilized by silly geese, then, by definition, your argument would be the argument for free will as understood by silly geese. While that is fine, I am more interested in discerning the way things are starting with true and correct understandings, so that we can get to a true and correct understanding of free will.
Basically, if you utilize folk understandings, you're engaging in the philosophical equivalent of using faith healing to get over your illness. That's cool, but I'm more interested in using penicillin.
All of you are demonstrating an excellent ability to draw out your premises to logical conclusions.
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HachfaceNot the Minister Farrakhan you're thinking ofDammit, Shepard!Registered Userregular
edited June 2010
Quantum randomness is truly irrelevant in these discussions.
1. The structures of the brain are probably too large for QM to be significant.
2. Even if QM were significant, this just means that the puppet strings of the universe are yanked at random instead of in a predetermined pattern. This does not make anyone's will any more free.
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We are talking about a different sort of freedom. MrMister and I are talking about 'free' as governed by internal intentional states and 'non-free' as not governed by internal intentional states. These are opposites, are useful concepts with these definitions, and are more closely aligned with the folk understanding of the concept of 'free will.'
The premises are not the conclusion. The argument is such
1. the compatibilist definition of 'free will' should be adopted as the meaning of the word
1.a the conventional definition of free will is largely incoherent and doesn't create the meaningfully responsible agent that the folk understanding of the concept implies
1.b the compatibilist definition of 'free will' is coherent and is more closely aligned with the folk understanding of the concept
2. humans have free will by the compatibilist definition
Conclusion: people have free will
I was using preferences in the sense that one may deduce preferences by observing an entity. I.E. we only know I prefer chocolate to vanilla if I'm seen to consume chocolate. Rocks could be said to 'prefer' to be on the ground, if they met the other requirements for agency. [/quote]
No. That's not the question. The very idea that 'freedom of will' = 'uncaused actions' is ridiculous. How do I have some sort of meaningful freedom of choice if my behavior is decided by a metaphysical coin flip?
What governs the selection of these internal states? It seems like any truly free 'free will' requires either randomly-determined or acausal internal state selection. If state selection is based, at some point, on externals then it just seems like drawing a line of abstraction deep enough that, to the casual observer, the effects of externals are hidden. If, instead, these internal states are entirely independent of external conditions, then by what mechanism do they operate?
I can break down "cat" or "fish" or "economics" or "_J_" or anything at all, until I reach a point where that thing's components are no longer distinct from the components of other things that we wouldn't call cat or fish or economics or _J_. Just as you want to break down the components of choice and free will until those components no longer seem distinct from components that might make up actions we wouldn't call choice or free will.
And I can also build those components back up, until I reach the point where the particular grouping of components again becomes distinct and meaningful enough to have its own name. Like the scaly swimmy thing with fins, that's a fish, even if it's just made out of the same kinds of molecules that a cat is made of. And when something uses it's brain and capacity to reason in order to conceive of possible futures, and then act to effect one over others, that's called making a choice, even if that choice can be broken down into the same kinds of cause-and-effect events that a falling rock is subject to. Choices made free of dominant influence from threats or controls or other factors that might conflict with and override that being's usual process of making a choice - that's free will.
It's philosophical wankery to try to disprove something's existence by breaking it down until it is no longer distinct from other things, and the particular application of this wankery to free will is built on the fundamentally flawed and untenable concept of a thing being an object acted upon by its component parts, rather than being the sum of and identity of its component parts. We aren't acted upon by our desires, we are them. Otherwise, what do you suppose comprises that thing upon which desires are acting? What is the "you," if, rather than being your body and mind and memories and hormones and preferences, it is instead something separate from those that is being acted upon by them?
No, it isn't. If you're ever charged with a crime, whether or not the act was committed of your own free will might be extremely meaningful. Like, if someone held a gun to your head and made you do something as opposed to you freely choosing to do it. However, you are correct that if you choose to define free will as being entirely free from cause-and-effect, then you've either got to explain what sort of universe you think there is that is free from cause and effect, or else you have to admit that you are choosing to directly define "free" literally to mean "nonexistent," which is quite a stacked deck and makes it unnecessary to even talk about religion or determinism or anything, all you have to say is that free will is by definition nonexistent because "free" means "doesn't exist."
The difference is much what you said. One is comprised of beliefs and desires and the other isn't. That's at least a significant part of the reason why one is a choice and the other isn't. Again, you're making this needlessly complicated for no logical reason. We give things different names and descriptors if they are comprised of different things towards different ends. Proving that the things that comprise them are similar in some fashion in no way invalidates anything. It's as if I'm saying that boats go on water, and you're trying to prove that because boats and cars are both made of parts assembled in a factory, and cars don't go on water, then boats can't either. This is silly.
They are only "in the same way" if you deny the existence of those things that obviously make them different. Your position seems to be that so long as you can find a manner in which two things can be decribed with the same words, then those two things are identical. There's really no such thing as _J_, _J_ has skin and Yar has skin and MrMister has skin so there is no _J_. Really?
Yes, this is the "Does Link wield the Master Sword?" kind of analogy I always use. It is a very astute way of describing a large aspect of this and many ontological debates. I tend to deem it a fallacy when one tries to deny any conversation about the characters and events in the movie because they are all just pictures on film, and not meaningfully different from pictures on film that don't have characters or events in them.
No. The desire is part of what you are. It is not posited on you. It is you. To say it is posited on you makes no sense, because the "you" at the end of that sentence can't exist as something a desire is posited onto.
Correct. The free will that seems to be suggested by those who deny it appears to me to be one which is defined to be non-existent, by defining the word "free" to mean "free from even existing at all." It isn't coherent or useful in the way a compatabilist or even a libertarian definition of it would be.
This really doesn't answer my question.
If there no unfree will, and if the traditional concept of freedom doesn't apply to will, then the attempt to apply the word seems silly.
For the word "free" to be used meaningfully, there must be an explanation of what the object is free from. The constraint must be defined.
One could be free of imprisonment, or coersion, or whatever. A product can be free of charge.
We seem to have agreed that a will is not free of cause. What, then, is it free of? What constraint creates the potential for freedom?
I don't see any way freedom or its absence is actually relevant to the situation.
Can't we compromise at probabilistic?
What is the 'folk understanding' referred to here, if not determinism?
The compatibilist interpretation of free will appears to be "You have free will if you think you have free will." Which works to a point, I suppose, but it doesn't seem very useful. An especially skilled manipulator could probably make you feel like you had a choice, too.
Probabilism has nothing to do with freedom either. It's just determinism where one of the determinants is probability.
Right. "Free will" as a phrase has come to mean "the thing making moral responsibility an intelligible and plausible concept". On the compatibilist view, freedom or its absence isn't relevant, but they use that language because that's how the debate has been couched for however long.
Oh, I thought you were talking hard causal determinism, when you use the word determinism. In that regard, saying one of the determinants is probability makes no sense to me.
I agree largely with Melkster, based on what I know of science. Essentially I believe the universe to be predetermined (but, perhaps fortunately, unknowable).
The premises:
1a) If you knew the exact state of every element of matter everywhere, and knew the exact methods / formula that every element of matter interacts with other matter, you could flawlessly predict the future. Quantum mechanics may throw a wrench into this by being truly random, but I don't think anyone has actually proven that they are, and they are unlikely to effect anything on a human's scale anyway; relying on it is a god in the cracks fallacy.
1b) Aside from being an impossible task to set out and measure every element of the universe within the same instant, there are certain properties of the universe that cannot be measured. Values for those properties exist, but it is impossible to ascertain them without changing them or another value to a new unknown. So "knowing" the predetermined path of the universe is not only practically impossible but theoretically impossible.
2) The brain is made of matter and in the universe and thus as subject to these forces as anything else, alive or dead. "States" of mind are irrelevant, they are just the sum total of countless interactions between subatomic particles interacting to make atoms interacting to make molecules interacting to make cells and neurotransmitters, etc.
3) Thus, a thought is nothing more special or free than a meteor smacking into a planet or a rock just sitting there.
In this definition a "free" will would be one that could make a decision free from the inevitable chain of interactions that govern the physics of their brain. Such freedom would require a "divine spark", something very special and unique about consciousness that we don't know about yet, or that the fundamentals of our understanding of the universe are flawed (technically that would be true if either of the first conditions was :P). In other words, a free will has the capacity to consciously change the path of the universe set in premise 1, even if they are not conscious of what that path is/was.
As for the ethics, well, that criminal's dilemma thing never made much sense to me. If we have free will then of course we should be able to ethically punish him. If we don't, that frees us, the judges, from being morally obligated to exempt him from punishment. We *have* to do it in the same way he *had* to commit a crime. Any revulsion with the crime or moral outrage about the punishment are just thoughts that were predetermined as above, too. This dilemma only makes sense if the judges have free will and the criminal does not.
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Intentional states caused by probabilistic randomness are still determined. They are simply determined in part by chance.
Probabilism is not a compromise, it's just another kind of determinism.
This does not in any way reduce the need to discourage and prevent unethical or harmful activity.
This is true enough from an ethical standpoint. Knowledge that your actions are prompted by the random motions of subatomic particles endows you with no more responsibility than knowledge that they are caused by nonrandom motion in the same.
From an epistemological angle, though, there is a significant difference between probabilsim and determinism.
I think people are arguing against the second, whereas I think the first is the one that actually makes sense and has a meaningful use.
Hrmmm... well, I guess so, in the sense that nothing to you exists except what you think exists. But no, the compatabilist view, as I understand it, accepts the concept of determinism, of a closed system of causes and effects like a clock that is in motion, but that there is still a thing meaningfully called "free will" that exists among the various functions of this clock just like anything else. We make choices. We act on our desires. We call this choice and free will. That's what they are. The fact that it it is all, on some level, predetermined by a static chain of causes and effects does not mean that they aren't free will and choice.
In short, I don't see anywhere where anyone has provided a reasonable justification for why "free" or "choice" must be defined as that which has no cause. Rather, defining them as making decisions based on supposed outcomes, or free from coercion, seems usable and meaningful and accurate and doesn't conflict with determinism or otherwise lead to absurd incoherence.
I also remember you saying there is no point to determinism, so, there you are.
To say that we are deterministic entities is to make a supposition about the nature of reality on a personal level. It is to confront a lot of metaphysical assumptions about the nature of identity and action.
What is important to the deterministic is the acknowledgment that we are caused. Why? Because it seems correct, first of all; subordinately, because it leads to important ways to consider compassion, forgiveness, justice, and social action. Determinism of self is a vital part of tremendously important theorists like Foucault and Althusser, and their rejection of standard humanist truisms. It is vital to the understanding of power and structure, and how the individual is not the vital point of origin that we often assume it to be.
On a very practical level, true progressive change on a social or political level is most efficacious when motivated by and enacted with an understanding of the determined individual. This is for example a key part of the political problems in America with its hyper-individualist right extremism.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but what you're claiming is that determinism proves that we should consider what causes a criminal to be a criminal at least as much or more so than just considering how to punish the individual who committed it.
But determinism doesn't support this any more than it supports an entirely opposite conclusion.
You have to state what your end goal is. What does "should" mean, what does it aim for? And then, you must show why considering a multitude of causes will ultimately achieve those "shoulds" better than will individual responsibility. Because, you know, you could be wrong. Maybe harsh individualistic responsibility actually works out to achieve those goals most effectively, regardless of the fact that the crime was determined.
Again, determinism isn't going to help you either way. The criminal was determined to commit his crime just as we are determined to punish him. Tell me why, and towards what end, we might change how we view a justice or morality system, and I'm fine. Show me data on how some mechanism of strict individualism fails to achieve our goals (assuming we've agreed on these goals), while some other mechanism that tends to address external causes is more effective, and I'm for it. Don't tell me it's because of "determinism" or that it disproves the eixstence of free will, because that isn't saying anything and doesn't prove what you think it does.
In the end, if what you are saying is that social policy and government need to acknowledge a multitude of causes that go into outcomes and not necessarily focus on the individual as the be-all, end-all, then sure, I'd say in some cases that thinking could be very progressive and create a more enjoyable society, and in other cases that thinking will effect some of the greatest evils human are capable of. Taking it completely by itself, vis-a-vis hardcore utilitarianism or machiavellianism or a similar structure, I'd say the latter, the evil, is the more likely. Regardless, none of it really addresses determinism or free will in any useful manner. Yes, we have free will, and sure, in a certain frame of reference, all events, including those born of free will, are predetermined, though that fact is so utterly meaningless as to be of a null truth value. Those aren't contradictory and neither helps you make your case for why XYZ is how we should approach crime and punishment.
Note that in this context I am not using "semantic" pejoratively.
To think of individuals as uncaused, or to separate them from their causes, or to attribute to them the ability to transcend their causes - these ideas are factually incorrect. Individuals are their causes. You have said as much.
I am not accusing you of this. But the term "free will" is loaded. It carries those connotations. I think you would agree that, if individuals are caused, then the most effective way of thinking of or treating individuals is with this in mind.
Rehabilitation is a deterministic endeavour. It is an attempt to inject new causes into the subject. Retributive justice is one that ignores the causes of the individual.
I could even back off and say that determinism is not morally superior, inherently (by itself it is not). However, it is more accurate than a humanist conception of self, just as a humanistic view is more accurate than the various authoritarian ideas that preceded it. What this offers, like any greater understanding, is power.
Generally, those who make policy, those who shape society, have the same moral objectives in an ultimate sense; they differ only in how to get there. I think determinism, being more accurate, is a better way to get there.
"Free" and "Choice" must be defined as that which has no cause because that is what "Free" and "choice" mean. If you do not understand WHY they must necessarily mean that, perhaps I can explain it using your quote.
To make a decision is to actualize a choice between multiple options. If one can do X or Y, then whether one does X or Y is the result of the choice, the decision, to do X or Y.
The crux of that statement, the important component, is "If one can do X or Y", that it is actually possible for one to choose X just as it is actually possible for one to choose Y, either of the two options could be actualized.
This ability for actualization only makes sense if choice is not caused. Were choice causal, then the doing of X or the doing of Y would result from a causal chain which would have made doing the opposite impossible; If I choose to do X as a result of a causal chain, then I could not have done Y, and so did not have a choice.
That's the reason for why choice and freedom must be uncaused, must be estranged from a causal nexus.
Think of it this way:
Determinism:
A - B - C - D - E - F - G
Freedom:
................E - F - G - H
A - B - C <
................D - U - I - O
For there to actually be "Choice", at point C it must be the case that both E and D were possibilities, that at point C one could have truly proceeded to E AND one could have proceeded to D.
The only way for this to happen is for the "choice" at point C to have not been causally determined. For if it is causally determined then, in actuality, there is only the determinism line and the (D - U - I - O) reality is an impossibility.
Basically, the only way to really engage this topic of freedom or determinism with regard to choice is to engage in a conversation about hypotheticals, counter-factuals, and possible worlds. TO say that one had a choice at point C is to state that E and D are both options. To make this claim with regard to the future is to engage with hypotheticals, to make this claim with regard to the past is to engage with counter-factuals and, perhaps, possible worlds.
The problem is that both hypotheticals and counter-factuals are philosophical nonsense, when you get right down to it.
No. Using the word "deterministic" is not appropriate here. Rehabilitation is an endeavor at better reducing harms to society through fewer harms against criminals and reduced likelihood of crime recurrence and thus harms against innocents. If we agree that reducing harms is the goal, and if rehabilitation achieves this, then goody. But many value retribution for the deterrence it causes; the causes it injects into any future criminals. Theoretically harsher retribution could be better for society than rehabilitation, if it actually reduced future crimes even more. Note that I could easily argue that this is the more "deterministic" approach, too, because it concentrates less on this one individual and trying to shape his individual future through rehabilitation, and more on creating a cause that could affect any and all potential criminals that become more aware of the retribution they could face.
That is key to why determinism doesn't work the way you think it does. Maybe a criminal's horrible childhood is why he committed his crime. Maybe a non-criminal's fear of wicked retribution is why he didn't commit a crime. Either is equally "deterministic," the only useful endeavor is to attempt to study and prove which actually better achieves the goal and forget trying to tell yourself that one is more deterministic.
This is why I strongly disagree with what I think you're trying to say here. I might commit some pretty vile and heinous acts over and over while telling myself that the individuals I committed these evils against aren't what we should focus on, but rather the net determined effect across the entire universe, all the great order and solidarity and [insert crap here] that my actions will engender among us all. That's more "deterministic" because it takes a wider view of the effects of our actions, instead of just focusing on an individual criminal and how we can help him.
Anyway, if rehabilitation turns out to be better than stricter punishments, it isn't because of determinism, it's because we analyzed two methods and found one to be more successful than the other. In the end, it was all determined.
I don't completely agree that it is accurate, either, though I think I'll wait to see if this discussion actually goes there before I jump in on that.
Determinism is not a way towards any one thing. Determinism determines everything.
I think your position is a bit immature (mainly because it's different from mine :P). Quantum mechanics does indeed throw a wrench in 1a) - it does suggest that the universe is, at some level, undetermined. The universe could still be deterministic (and a "hidden variable theory" correct), but we have no evidence for this assertion and we are unaware of what laws would govern it at the most fundamental level. The issue of whether quantum uncertainty effects decision is interesting. If we consider an indefinite timespan, I think it is inevitable that eventually a synapse fire/lack of response will come down to quantum uncertainty. Regardless of how unlikely, every electron in a neuron conspiring to be found by quantum uncertainty in a certain configuration and causing a neuron to misfire remains a theoretic possibility, and thus grants us "undetermined will." Even if an unpredicted act would only happen on average every billion years. Ultimately though I think quantum mechanics is a red herring.
What I think is worth considering here is what is usually understood by the term "free will." Usually the term is used to assign personal responsibility and has to do with an actor making a decision free from external influence.
The thing is, thoughts are internal influences. Once you break down thoughts to the interaction of particles and use that to say the actor is 'unfree', now you're trying to discuss free choice as an actor's freedom from *internal influence*.
If I act in such a way that my action is both free from external and internal evidence, my action is determined by some sort of metaphysical coin flip. It isn't really free in the conventional sense at all.
The possible consequences you describe do not follow from that theory. At best they are examples of people acting in bad faith or with poor or incorrect information; this always leads to poor results.
It is very simple to type "we make choices". It is very difficult to actually articulate what a choice is, how choices could happen, and whether or not there actually are ever choices made by persons. I tend to think that you are not genuinely engaging in the discussion, as you simply state "there are choices" without ever truly engaging with what that means.
My guess is that if you had to argue for there being choice, you would state that, when presented with the supposed option of chicken or steak, you "feel as if" you could "choose" the steak or the chicken. You can imagine yourself eating chicken and imagine yourself eating steak. So, when you "choose" the steak you think "but I can imagine myself having picked the chicken, so that means I had a choice".
But that is not what "choice" is; that is the feeling of choice. For there to have actually been a choice there must have been both the possibility of steak and possibility of chicken in that one could actually have actualized the chicken or the steak. Which is nigh-impossible to prove.
Someone calls you and asks "Do you want to go to the movies or the park?" You think about it and then say "park". That does not prove that you had choice. That proves that you were presented with a stimulus, stuff happened in your mind, and you gave the response "park" in the same way, one could argue, that Deep Blue "chooses" which move to make in a game of chess.
The question of whether you were determined to say "park" or chose to say "park" is the topic of this thread. If you are simply going to say "I chose park" without ever proving it, then that seems unhelpful.
But even given determinism one can do X or Y. The nature of an individual in the compatibilist conception allows it - an individual is free if they have no external influences dictating their action. Thus although whether an individual does X or Y is determined, whether X or Y is selected comes down to a question of the internal state of the 'one.'
The individual's internal state is opaque unless we decide to destroy the individual as an entity to analyze its mechanisms - and because the internal state of the 'one' is opaque either X or Y can be chosen. We can't consider the individual's internal mechanisms because as soon as we do, the 'one' in the question 'can one do X or Y?' ceases to exist.
No, in determinism one is always already pre-determined to do, say, X, and has been determined to do X since existence began. There is no possibility of doing Y; one could only do X.
The compatibilist conception does not allow for the doing of X or Y; the compatibilist conception maintains that a particular individual, in acting accord with its own internal states, is determined in its actions but is free insofar as it acts in accord with its internal states.
It is impossible for the individual to contain internal states which result in both "Do X at time-point Z" AND "Do Y at time-point Z", given that the individual, given the confines of reality, can ONLY do X or Y at time-point Z.
This is the same incoherent statement from before. Impossible for whom? The causal chain does not constrain me or make things impossible for me. What is "me", if the causal chain is something that acts upon it makes things possible or impossible for it? Me, my choice, my free will, they are all part of that causal chain, not acted upon by it.
Again, this is nonsense. Your if-clause already states that you did not do Y, so telling me in the then-clause that you couldn't have done Y isn't saying anything. I already know from your given that your universe is defined as one without Y, so don't then tell me how it therefore couldn't have Y, as if that means anything at all.
Why? Why not say that in order for there to actually be choice, one must have considered both E and D in their rational mind, and that this consideration itself be a signficant or dominant event amongst the predetermined causal chain that led to what happened at C? That's my definition of choice, it's what we actually do when we make a choice, it doesn't conflict with determinism, and it doesn't present the nonsense time-paradoxes you are confusing yourself with. It doesn't rely at all on an absurd notion of a timeline that is and isn't.
I'm somewhat ok with the idea that the discussion must include a notion of possible worlds. I'm also saying those possible worlds need only exist as imagined in the mind of the chooser in order for it to be called a choice, there is no coherent or justified reason why you must suppose that these possibilities exist in some other manner, whatever manner it is you are supposing they must exist in order for there to be choice.
I imagine a possible future where I'm eating chocolate ice cream, and I imagine one where I'm not. I prefer the former and act accordingly. I've made a choice. Under various clumsy notions of determinism, this choice was predetermined. An omniscient being might have been able to predict it eons ago based on circumstances as they existed then, and knew it was a certainty that I'd be born someday and choose chocolate ice cream. That doesn't make it not what it was. That doesn't make it not a choice, anymore than predicting a rock eons ago makes it not a rock.
If what you mean by "consider" is "think about", then by choice you mean that an entity thinks about X prior to doing X, as opposed to a rock, which simply does Y absent any thought.
So, my thought process is determined and comes to be as a result of a causal nexus of events, but I have choice in that I think about X, which is to say that I subject X to mental scrutiny the structure of which is determined by the causal nexus of the universe.
So, to think is to have choice; to not think is to not have choice.
So all you mean by "X has choice" is "X is a thinking thing"? And we say that "thought", as it occurs in rational agents, is different than the "processing" which occurs in computers because, well, we want to be special?
Well, it wouldn't conflict with determinism...because you are arguing for determinism...but are calling it "free will" for some reason.
Typically, "free will" means "could have done otherwise". So, we justify punishing a robber for killing X as a result of that robber having free will, which means it could have done otherwise; it could have not killed X.
If you're completely dismissing the option of "could have done otherwise" and are saying that we can punish robbers because they think, and can't punish rocks because they can't think...well...ok.
But that's weird.
What governs the selection of the internal states is irrelevant - it can be either causal or acausal.
The line isn't arbitrary - the line is drawn around properties belonging to the entity. Yes, these properties that the entity has may be causally related to the external world - but when we ask "will the entity do X or Y' when placed in external world A?" The answer comes down to the entity's internal states.
Even though whether Bob is happy or sad right now could be a deterministic function of past events, the fact remains that Bob is the same individual regardless of whether he is happy or sad. If we ask "Will Bob mope or smile?" we're asking a question of the individual, Bob, common between his happy and sad selves, and independently of whatever chain of cause brought him to have the internal state that he does.
'folk understanding' means the answer you would get if you went up to people on the street and asked them to explain the concept.
the 'folk understanding of free will' which I'm referring to is an understanding of free will which equates it with personal responsibility, and which connects the concept with the idea of freedom from external influence.
Otherwise known as the "incorrect" understanding, usually ending in "huyuck".
Edit: Alternatively ending in "We don't take kindly to readers round here."
Sort of. Internal states are part of an individual - and insofar as an individual acts in accordance with them they are self-determined. The process of resolving one's internal states and taking action is 'making a choice.'
Let A be an individual making a decision. A is the same individual regardless of whether they are happy or sad. When we ask "will A choose to do X or Y at time Z?" the answer *could be X or Y*. Whether X or Y is selected is not determined by any external stimulus - it is a "free choice".
It's true that causally it may be determined that A will be happy at time Z and thus pick X-- but when we asked the question we weren't rigorously specifying A's internal state; we were asking a question of A in general. If we were asking a question of a hyper-specific version about A with the status of every neuron and biochemical pathway known, we're asking a question of a different sort of entity, and not about A as an individual as individuals are usually understood.
But I'm arguing for compatibilism on the basis it more closely aligns with folk understanding of the words meaning...
No, the individual would not be "self"-determined; the individual would be determined by the individual states, which are PART of the individual, and not the entirety of the individual. It's not "Self"-determined, it is "part-of-self"-determined.
Except that part did not come to be purely via the individual self, but rather came to be as a result of a wealth of external factors; the little self had wishes, desires, hopes, dreams posited onto it.
So it is not the self acting, it is those wishes, desires, hopes, and dreams coming to realize themselves by way of the individual.
The "self", in effect, is slave to the passions festering within the self, and "slavery" is not "freedom".
If the entirety of your argument for free will is founded upon definitions utilized by silly geese, then, by definition, your argument would be the argument for free will as understood by silly geese. While that is fine, I am more interested in discerning the way things are starting with true and correct understandings, so that we can get to a true and correct understanding of free will.
Basically, if you utilize folk understandings, you're engaging in the philosophical equivalent of using faith healing to get over your illness. That's cool, but I'm more interested in using penicillin.
Psh, doctors. I'm going to use folk remedies.
Who is some graduate of a medical program to tell me how to cure the diseases of my passions?
1. The structures of the brain are probably too large for QM to be significant.
2. Even if QM were significant, this just means that the puppet strings of the universe are yanked at random instead of in a predetermined pattern. This does not make anyone's will any more free.
Is there a way to discern whose premises are correct?