Free Will vs Determinism

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Immanuel Can
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Re: Free Will vs Determinism

Post by Immanuel Can »

OuterLimits wrote: Tue Nov 14, 2017 6:20 pm If your choice is not caused or determined by the physical world, it must be caused by something psychological - else it is random.
This may well be (and I think it is) a fallacy of equivocation.

What we mean when we say material things "cause" something to happen is not what we mean when we say a person "causes" something to happen. In the former case, there is, and can be, no volition. In the latter case, there (admittedly arguably, but I think reasonably so) is. But in the second instance, it's very far from a cause of randomness, though a persons will may be said to "cause" a situation.
davidm
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Re: Free Will vs Determinism

Post by davidm »

Immanuel Can wrote: Sun Nov 12, 2017 9:00 pm Here's how the IEP, the peer-reviewed dictionary of philosophical terms puts it:

"Causal determinism (hereafter, simply "determinism") is the thesis that the course of the future is entirely determined by the conjunction of the past and the laws of nature."

And as OL puts it above, "Either way, in determinism, all of your "choices" are caused by events previously, and so on. So the very idea of agency and choice vanishes to the remote (infinite?) past." So there you have the evidence that CD is the form of Determinism for which he's pitching.
Nice cherry-picking!

Of course, this long, in-depth article, with which I am quite familiar, is framing the issue in the above, and not taking a stand on it. That's why it's called the thesis that...
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Free Will vs Determinism

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davidm wrote: Wed Nov 15, 2017 12:38 am Of course, this long, in-depth article, with which I am quite familiar, is framing the issue in the above, and not taking a stand on it.
Nobody says anybody in the IEP was "taking a stand" on it. They were defining it. And the definition was what was in question between Belinda and I. Nobody was appealing to the IEP to adjudicate the issue.

Funny that you even thought that. :shock:
Belinda
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Re: Free Will vs Determinism

Post by Belinda »

Immanuel Can wrote:
I'm always bemused when someone quotes the dictionary as if it's some kind of final authority on the ontological reality of something...
That is correct, Immanuel. You might cease to be bemused on this occasion if you consider that 'choose' was the word about which you questioned the usual usages of the word. English to English dictionaries list usual usages of English words.

You should look at real people and listen to real people speaking instead of theorising about magical unicorns.

IC wrote:
But Causal Determinism says there's really no such thing as "freedom"
Determinism relative freedom

Free Will absolute freedom
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henry quirk
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Post by henry quirk »

"that which you believed chosen was actually preordained"

Evidence, please.
OuterLimits
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Post by OuterLimits »

henry quirk wrote: Wed Nov 15, 2017 3:25 pm "that which you believed chosen was actually preordained"

Evidence, please.
Is there "evidence" of cause and effect? Or is it just an (inescapable) mental model?

Anyway, in our usual mental model where things must be caused to occur, then those "chosen" events logically turn out to be (blindly) preordained - or in other words *implicit* in past events, only becoming *explicit* when everything works itself out.

"Time is God's way of keeping everything from happening at once."
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henry quirk
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Post by henry quirk »

Here's the problem, OL: cause & effect sez 'Henry, you can't' while my own coherent, consistent experience sez otherwise.

I don't deny cause & effect and I can't deny myself (as real, self-directing, 'choosing'), so, at least when it comes to my agency (myself), cause & effect loses.

#

"Free Will absolute freedom"

But that's not what 'free will' means.

Will is not a thing any more than walking is a thing. Walking is what legs do. Will(ing) is what the willer does.

Free, in context, is not about absolutes. Free, in context, is being unrestrained in the rather large arena of Reality, not being free of the arena itself.

So, 'free will' basically means 'unrestricted chooser'.
Belinda
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Re: Free Will vs Determinism

Post by Belinda »

So, 'free will' basically means 'unrestricted chooser'.
Henry, do you mean relatively unrestricted choose, or do you mean absolutely unrestricted chooser?
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henry quirk
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Post by henry quirk »

Unrestricted chooser...cuz, again, 'will(ing)' is what the willer does.

Can you have walking without the walker?
davidm
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Re: Free Will vs Determinism

Post by davidm »

OuterLimits wrote: Sun Nov 12, 2017 11:33 pm
davidm wrote: Sun Nov 12, 2017 9:57 pm Causal determinism — the idea that because the unalterable past, in conjunction with the laws of nature, determine everything that happens, we have no free will. This is incorrect.
I think the most Hard Scientific Minds believe in causal determinism. I certainly see nothing wrong with it, from a scientific or a mystical perspective.

Perhaps you might comment on the idea of reductionism, and whether causes and effects working at the level of cells, molecules, and atoms makes the case for causal determinism more convincing.
Causal determinism is in conflict with quantum indeterminism.

Apart from that, what do we mean by determinism (even assuming it is valid)? And what do we mean by free will?

Libertarian free will is that we have freedom of action that is contra-causal: outside determinism, self-activated. Evidence: Conway-Kochen strong free will theorem.

Compatiblist free will holds that free will requires determinism to be valid.

The neo-Humean conception of the "Laws" of nature denies premise 1 of the standard causal deterministic formulation: that the laws of nature (in conjunction with antecedent conditions) govern the universe. See: writings of Norman Swartz.

Some interpretations of QM deny that antecedent conditions are set in stone.

It's complicated!
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Free Will vs Determinism

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Belinda wrote: Wed Nov 15, 2017 10:42 am Determinism relative freedom
Free Will absolute freedom
Not according to Causal Determinism. And not according to the various proponents of free will, either.

But I see the problem. You're defining CD as "whatever Belinda thinks is the case," and "free will" as " an unrealistic and absolute freedom." With that sort of defining, there's no debate left, because you've misunderstood CD and "straw-manned" the free will case to death, so no rational person can find it credible -- on the terms you insist on giving it.

Unfortunately for that theory, no proponent of free will has ever suggested, so far as I can find, that freedom is "absolute." And all the proponents of CD, like OL, think it means there's no volitional "freedom" at all...so that's absolute. You just need to figure out which one is the absolutist position...and it's not the one you presently think.

But maybe that's as far as you and I can go on that.
OuterLimits
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Re: Free Will vs Determinism

Post by OuterLimits »

davidm wrote: Wed Nov 15, 2017 9:21 pm Causal determinism is in conflict with quantum indeterminism.

Apart from that, what do we mean by determinism (even assuming it is valid)? And what do we mean by free will?

Libertarian free will is that we have freedom of action that is contra-causal: outside determinism, self-activated. Evidence: Conway-Kochen strong free will theorem.

Compatiblist free will holds that free will requires determinism to be valid.

The neo-Humean conception of the "Laws" of nature denies premise 1 of the standard causal deterministic formulation: that the laws of nature (in conjunction with antecedent conditions) govern the universe. See: writings of Norman Swartz.

Some interpretations of QM deny that antecedent conditions are set in stone.

It's complicated!
QM is openly described as an incomplete theory and an non-deterministic theory. Sure. If your theory is that God rolls dice under the table, then yes, by all means that "contradicts" intuitive models of cause-and-effect.
davidm
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Re: Free Will vs Determinism

Post by davidm »

OuterLimits wrote: Wed Nov 15, 2017 9:37 pm
davidm wrote: Wed Nov 15, 2017 9:21 pm Causal determinism is in conflict with quantum indeterminism.

Apart from that, what do we mean by determinism (even assuming it is valid)? And what do we mean by free will?

Libertarian free will is that we have freedom of action that is contra-causal: outside determinism, self-activated. Evidence: Conway-Kochen strong free will theorem.

Compatiblist free will holds that free will requires determinism to be valid.

The neo-Humean conception of the "Laws" of nature denies premise 1 of the standard causal deterministic formulation: that the laws of nature (in conjunction with antecedent conditions) govern the universe. See: writings of Norman Swartz.

Some interpretations of QM deny that antecedent conditions are set in stone.

It's complicated!
QM is openly described as an incomplete theory and an non-deterministic theory. Sure. If your theory is that God rolls dice under the table, then yes, by all means that "contradicts" intuitive models of cause-and-effect.
Well, it's not an incomplete theory as it stands -- the Bell's inequalities rule this out -- but it IS in conflict at a fundamental level with GR. So we await the next genius to clear this up! :)

That said, we don't need to focus, as philosophers, on QM. I believe our attention is better directed toward analyzing the premises of causal determinism. To do this, we can disregard QM.
OuterLimits
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Re: Free Will vs Determinism

Post by OuterLimits »

davidm wrote: Wed Nov 15, 2017 10:28 pm That said, we don't need to focus, as philosophers, on QM. I believe our attention is better directed toward analyzing the premises of causal determinism. To do this, we can disregard QM.
QM is statistical. If one were impatient, looking only at a few results, one would have no "theory" at all. The inputs don't specify the outputs.

Bell's inequality is the most revolutionary when we imagine we are "freely choosing" the orientations of our measuring devices. If we don't have that bias, it's less interesting. http://mathpages.com/rr/s9-06/9-06.htm

'...
In fact, when Bell contemplated the possibility that determinism might also apply to himself and other living beings, he coined a different name for it, calling it “super-determinism”. Regarding the experimental tests of quantum entanglement he said

>> One of the ways of understanding this business is to say that the world is super-deterministic. That not only is inanimate nature deterministic, but we, the experimenters who imagine we can choose to do one experiment rather than another, are also determined. If so, the difficulty which this experimental result creates disappears. <<

But what Bell calls (admittedly on the spur of the moment) super-determinism is nothing other than what philosophers have always called simply determinism.
...'
Nick_A
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Re: Free Will vs Determinism

Post by Nick_A »

"God...does not constrain the will. Rather, he sets it free, so that it may choose him, that is to say, freedom. The spirit of man may not will otherwise than what God wills, but that is no lack of freedom. It is true freedom itself." ~ Meister Eckhart
I remember reading that it is foolish to look for causes in nature when nature herself is an effect. If animal man is a natural creature arising from the earth how can we be other than the rest of organic life which reacts to external circumstances. We like to think that we have free will but it is pretty easy to verify that we are creatures of reaction reacting to opposing desires.

Meister Eckhart describes a conscious action unnatural for a creature of reaction reacting to conflicting earthly desires. He is referring to an action of free will not limited by earthly desires. Free will is a potential for Man. As we are we can feel the attraction but lack the knowledge or will to actualize it. We remain creatures reacting to desires and imagining the dominant desire is an expression of free will. When a dog moves is it an expression of free will or just a reaction to desire? It is the same with us.
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