Free Will vs Determinism

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Londoner
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Re: Free Will vs Determinism

Post by Londoner »

Noax wrote: Mon Jul 17, 2017 11:11 pm
But if that's a fair definition, then where does volition or will fit in? Is it a "material" too? If I want to stay a Materialist, I have to say it is. And if so, then the phenomenon I perceive as my own volition or will is really nothing other than an interaction of matter, energy and scientific laws. Even my feeling or impression that volition is my own is merely a phenomenon caused by an interaction of matter, energy and scientific laws.
I do not think the last sentence can be right. If I have a feeling about my volition, then I am not identical with that volition. And the same with everything else I see in the world; in one sense I am part of it, but in another I am an observer of it.

If that is the case, then all that matter, energy and scientific laws have not determined just one thing, in humans they have determined two contrasting things, human consciousness is an indeterminate state.
In fact, had we a big enough computer, and could we program into it all the variables in the universe, we could predict absolutely every event that would ever happen, for all time. Now, we don't have that computer, of course: but in principle, that's how things should work.
But the computer would not have written its own program, nor would the computer read its own predictions. To say 'that's how things should work' could only be said by something that was not itself a 'thing', that can observe the system from outside the system.

If I am outside the system, if I can observe it in the way we must be doing in this thread, then I can imagine things being other than the way they are. I can think of possible futures. If I can do that, then I can have a preference and may be able to exercise that preference. I do not see this presents a problem, since I am an object in the world. If a volcano can erupt and a cat catch a mouse, why can't a human act in the world too?

It may well be the case that my preferences, the choices I make, are determined by my psychological state, but the notion of free will necessarily includes a subject that is exercising that will. (If not, then acts of 'free will' would just mean 'random acts'.) So I certainly 'want things', but since I am aware that I want things, I am not bound to act on any particular want.
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Noax
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Re: Free Will vs Determinism

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Belinda wrote: Tue Jul 18, 2017 8:18 amNoax wrote:
I did not write that. I-Can did, in post 906. I did admittedly get my quoting wrong as well, and I've fixed that.
Sentient beings go into their futures without any guarantees that predictions are 100% reliable, and reason is the best road for humans.
Nobody claimed accurate predictions were possible, but I-Can suggested it could be computed in principle outside the closed system, which would not predict anything, just know. I disagreed with it as well.
Last edited by Noax on Tue Jul 18, 2017 1:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Noax
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Re: Free Will vs Determinism

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Sorry Londoner, I screwed up my quoting. This below is I-Can's quote, and my part begins after what was the dangling /quote several lines down, which I've fixed. I was trying to agree with the quote as much as I could, since I-Can is trying to express the materialist position. I disagreed with the determinism conclusion but said it doesn't matter since what matters is that it is a closed system.
Londoner wrote: Tue Jul 18, 2017 8:56 am
But if that's a fair definition, then where does volition or will fit in? Is it a "material" too? If I want to stay a Materialist, I have to say it is. And if so, then the phenomenon I perceive as my own volition or will is really nothing other than an interaction of matter, energy and scientific laws. Even my feeling or impression that volition is my own is merely a phenomenon caused by an interaction of matter, energy and scientific laws.
I do not think the last sentence can be right. If I have a feeling about my volition, then I am not identical with that volition.
And here I must agree with I-Can. Neither of us is claiming to be identical with a feeling about something. I have feelings, but I am not identical with them.
In fact, had we a big enough computer, and could we program into it all the variables in the universe, we could predict absolutely every event that would ever happen, for all time. Now, we don't have that computer, of course: but in principle, that's how things should work.
His quote again.
But the computer would not have written its own program, nor would the computer read its own predictions. To say 'that's how things should work' could only be said by something that was not itself a 'thing', that can observe the system from outside the system.
A computer inside cannot, and my objection was that no outside one even in principle could. The paragraph is attempting to demonstrate determinism which is not the materialist position, especially in the face of empirical randomness.
If I am outside the system, if I can observe it in the way we must be doing in this thread, then I can imagine things being other than the way they are. I can think of possible futures. If I can do that, then I can have a preference and may be able to exercise that preference. I do not see this presents a problem, since I am an object in the world. If a volcano can erupt and a cat catch a mouse, why can't a human act in the world too?
I had outlined (in a thread on the old forum) a form of dualism that did just that: An epiphenomenal mind exercising preference in the possible future of choice. It totally works and even demonstrably must exist. But the same demonstration says that this is not the world that was chosen.
It may well be the case that my preferences, the choices I make, are determined by my psychological state, but the notion of free will necessarily includes a subject that is exercising that will. (If not, then acts of 'free will' would just mean 'random acts'.) So I certainly 'want things', but since I am aware that I want things, I am not bound to act on any particular want.
It is very easy to tell when your will is bound. There is conflict, and the result is the choice is not available to one or the other side of the conflict.
So the dualistic view seems to be that self-contained life forms (bacteria say) are pure physical creatures and have wills of their own. But at some point the lifeform (often only humans of course) evolves to the point where it acquires this second mental component which I see as possessing the life form, and thus forming conflict between what the mind wants to do and what the lifeform would have wanted to do the old way. Doesn't sound very free to me, but the point is that the moral responsibility can now fall on the mental entity possessing it and no longer on the usurped physical will.
That is my admittedly very biased account of dualism. One can go full religious and deny evolution and thus eliminate the uncomfortable implication of that usurped will, but that crosses the line from alternate philosophical position to outright denial of empirical evidence, but the bible doesn't support it since there is no assertion of dualism in it, and certainly not to any sort of cognative component.
Notice I-Can will not post his own views. Can't refute them if they're not posted. Is the Earth 6000 years old or billions? What is the function of the soul (not asking how it works)? Somebody seems very insecure about their position it seems.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Free Will vs Determinism

Post by Immanuel Can »

Noax wrote: Mon Jul 17, 2017 11:11 pm Sorry to dredge new life into this tired thread, but I only recently realized that it had become interesting after 800 posts of the usual trolling. There are lots of sidetracks, but this one is on subject. I didn't think the core of this post was addressed.
This was taken from post 906:
Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Jun 05, 2017 3:04 pm ...So Determinism follows inevitably from Materialism. I see no way to escape it. It is, as Max Weber has called it, "the iron cage."
davidm pretty much countered this assertion. Determinism does not follow from materialism and if it was, the universe is still not computable even in principle.
Actually, what davidm argues, even if conceded entirely, would only deliver the Materialist to a different mechanical process known as "randomness." The situation of the individual will would be no less Deterministic: it would just be determined by forces of another name. Nothing about "randomness" makes it more genuinely human or free-will-producing than simple causality: it's just a process that is even less predictable.

For that reason, some philosophers worry that things like quantum dynamics, far from being an improvement on mechanical causality, are actually even one step worse. :shock: After all, wouldn't you rather be a cog in a predictable machine than a toy of mere capricious chance? Either way, there is no power in the individual will.
What we're talking about here is physical monism. It is the view that it is a closed system, determined or not. Choice is a function of physical process. I think that is what you say there.
"Closed" with regard to human will? Yes, that is the entailment of Materialism. It's not the universe I think we live in, but it's the one that Materialism has to posit.
Now for free will: It seems difficult to define a non-begging definition of the concept. The ability to do otherwise is a matter of assertion. I can say that choice existed but I freely chose A and not B. This is true, monist or not. If no choice existed, then I would not require the mechanism for making a good choice since it would happen anyway.
Not quite. The Materialist has, by definition, to hold that "choice" itself is a mechanical phenomenon. To simplify, it might look like this: you "chose" to respond to this message, at this time, because of (perhaps) a combination of neurochemicals that happened in your brain. Why did they happen? Because of the combination of the stimuli acting upon you immediately prior, including the earlier message, the breakfast you ate, the thing your spouse said to you last night...and so on. So your "choice" was nothing but the sum of previous events, and involved no independent volitional action emanating from personhood.
To find common ground, I looked to the conclusion always drawn by a one's favorite begging free-will definition. It always seems to come to morals. If you don't have free will, you cannot be held morally responsible for your actions. Thus, if I should be held morally responsible, I must have free will.
Well, the "ought implies can" argument follows, rather than causes the Determinist-Materialist argument. We may not like that Materialism deprives us of morals, of personhood, of volition, and so on...but our not-liking will not justify us believing it's not true, if it is true. So that's not my argument.
So in what way is a physical being not responsible for his actions?
In the same way an earthquake, a volcano or a tsunami is not morally culpable for all the people it kills. It is mechanically the cause of their deaths, but having no volition or malice, nor any capability of such things, it cannot be attributed moral responsibility. These natural forces cannot do otherwise than then did; and if they could not do otherwise, they are not responsible for what they did.
It would not be better to make a choice not based on the prior events.
That's an odd claim, for a couple of reasons. One is that according to Materialism, you cannot "make a choice not [entirely] based on prior" causes.
Another is that there is no independent agent capable of generating such a "choice." Personhood and volition, like everything else, are latter manifestations of previous processes.
For instance, while driving, a pedestrian is crossing up ahead. I can react to this physical event, or dissociate myself from that state of affairs and continue on my way not letting the detection of the pedestrian influence my decision.
Materialistic Determinists have been aware of such objections for a long time. Their response tends to be to say that your "decision" is not genuine. Even the feeling of "deciding" is nothing but the latter manifestation of earlier processes, and likewise, your perceived moment of deliberation is just an odd side-phenomenon of the causal process. In other words, you're just fooling yourself.

Now, of course, I don't believe this is so. Their explanation is reductional and untrue, I would say. Nevertheless, you've got to give them this much: that it's very hard to think of how one would prove decisively that they have an impossible explanation.

Keep in mind, though, that to say an explanation is "possible" is not the same as to concede it's the right explanation. An explanation can be plausible without being accurate or truthful.
It seems to me that this is how the typical argument is presented. I cannot have free will if I let the presence of the physical pedestrian influence my choice to evade.
I think it's one step worse. I think they'd argue that you have no genuine choice as to whether or not you "let" the presence of the physical pedestrian "influence" your decision at all. Your decision, whatever it is, was actually predetermined for you; and your sensation of deliberating whether or not to regard the pedestrian was just one of these weird, inexplicable side-sensations that Material Determinism creates in the cosmos.
This is of course absurd, but then I'm not sure what is claimed by the argument that decisions based on prior events cannot have moral implications. On what should the decisions be based if not the inputs relevant to the choice? Why is it not choice if the system is closed?
That's what I mean. Materialists would have to say "decisions" aren't "based" on anything. A "decision" is nothing but the combination of prior events and causes determining a subsequent outcome. There was no volitional agent, no special middle ground upon which the "decision" could teeter. "Volition" is just an epiphenomenon: a weird sensation produced by the causal process itself, but not indicating an agent capable of inputing anything distinct to that causal process by his or her judgment.

That's an inelegant way to put it. But then, Materialist Determinism is a very inelegant theory whenever it tries to account for personhood or volition.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Free Will vs Determinism

Post by Immanuel Can »

Noax wrote: Tue Jul 18, 2017 1:12 pm Notice I-Can will not post his own views.
????
I am posting my views. :shock:

Was there someone else you thought was here? Or are you referring to some question about Materialism that nobody has asked me yet?
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Free Will vs Determinism

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Londoner wrote: Tue Jul 18, 2017 8:56 am
Noax wrote: Mon Jul 17, 2017 11:11 pm
But if that's a fair definition, then where does volition or will fit in? Is it a "material" too? If I want to stay a Materialist, I have to say it is. And if so, then the phenomenon I perceive as my own volition or will is really nothing other than an interaction of matter, energy and scientific laws. Even my feeling or impression that volition is my own is merely a phenomenon caused by an interaction of matter, energy and scientific laws.
I do not think the last sentence can be right. If I have a feeling about my volition, then I am not identical with that volition. And the same with everything else I see in the world; in one sense I am part of it, but in another I am an observer of it.

If that is the case, then all that matter, energy and scientific laws have not determined just one thing, in humans they have determined two contrasting things, human consciousness is an indeterminate state.
I actually agree with that entirely. I do not think that Materialism is true, nor that the "feeling" of making decisions is an accident or an indicator of nothing but an odd side-effect of material processes. And I think your observation that "having a feeling about volition" is a good one.

But I have to admit that I cannot prove my intuition about that right to the satisfaction of every Materialist. Their sort of way of explaining things is what Chesterton called something like, "the clean and well-lit prison of one idea." That "one idea," Materialism, is supposed to explain everything; but listening to the explanation Materialists gives me the impression that they are not so much really explaining volition as trying to explain-away volition.
In fact, had we a big enough computer, and could we program into it all the variables in the universe, we could predict absolutely every event that would ever happen, for all time. Now, we don't have that computer, of course: but in principle, that's how things should work.
But the computer would not have written its own program, nor would the computer read its own predictions. To say 'that's how things should work' could only be said by something that was not itself a 'thing', that can observe the system from outside the system.
:D The "computer" is not real.

I'm merely trying to make clear what in principle Materialists have to believe is the case...not that there IS a computer, but that IF there were, it would be quite reasonable to expect it to be able to do such an operation.

In other words, they believe that every question, inevitably, will boil down to the answer, "...because of matter, energy and natural laws."
It may well be the case that my preferences, the choices I make, are determined by my psychological state, but the notion of free will necessarily includes a subject that is exercising that will.
Yes: unless it's what Materialists call an "epiphenomenon," by which they essentially mean, "an odd side-effect of material processes, for which there is no reason for us to account further." That's a massive dodge on their part, I'll admit. But it's how they roll.

Here's a brief definition of that term, culled from Google:

ep·i·phe·nom·e·non
ˌepēfəˈnämənän,ˌepēfəˈnämənən
noun
a secondary effect or byproduct that arises from but does not causally influence a process, in particular.

MEDICINE
a secondary symptom, occurring simultaneously with a disease or condition but not directly related to it.
a mental state regarded as a byproduct of brain activity.
davidm
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Re: Free Will vs Determinism

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Hard or Laplacean causal determinism is false because of quantum mechanics. No computer even in principle can accurately predict the future state of the universe.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Free Will vs Determinism

Post by Immanuel Can »

davidm wrote: Tue Jul 18, 2017 7:03 pm Hard or Laplacean causal determinism is false because of quantum mechanics. No computer even in principle can accurately predict the future state of the universe.
It would not change anything. Determinism by material processes, or Determinism by quantum irregularity -- they're both strict forms of Determinism, and neither has any place for human free will.

C'est la meme chose.
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Re: Free Will vs Determinism

Post by davidm »

Quantum "irregularity" is not determinism -- it is indeterminism.
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Re: Free Will vs Determinism

Post by davidm »

Also, of course the idea that determinism is the opposite of free will is rejected by compatibilists who maintain that free will requires determinism.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Free Will vs Determinism

Post by Immanuel Can »

davidm wrote: Tue Jul 18, 2017 7:49 pm Quantum "irregularity" is not determinism -- it is indeterminism.
Actually, it's not. Because whatever the process, you have no more conscious control over one than the other. You're just a pawn, in either case. The larger causal force determines everything for you.

But the quantum situation is worse; at least there would be potentially some kind of remote chance you could predict the outcomes of material causality -- but good luck even guessing what a quantum "indeterminacy" will throw up! :shock:

Either way, the individual personal will matters nada. That's Determinism, by either name.
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Re: Free Will vs Determinism

Post by Immanuel Can »

davidm wrote: Tue Jul 18, 2017 7:51 pm Also, of course the idea that determinism is the opposite of free will is rejected by compatibilists who maintain that free will requires determinism.
What reason do you give to support such a claim as the Compatibilists would make? It seems to me that they're just closet Determinists who are afraid to "pay the piper." You'd need to show they're not.
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Re: Free Will vs Determinism

Post by davidm »

Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Jul 18, 2017 9:08 pm
davidm wrote: Tue Jul 18, 2017 7:49 pm Quantum "irregularity" is not determinism -- it is indeterminism.
Actually, it's not. Because whatever the process, you have no more conscious control over one than the other.
"Conscious control" is irrelevant to determinism v. indeterminism. You're stuck in the weird theist loop in thinking that humans matter to the universe, apparently.
But the quantum situation is worse; at least there would be potentially some kind of remote chance you could predict the outcomes of material causality -- but good luck even guessing what a quantum "indeterminacy" will throw up! :shock:
No. QM is random but probabilistically so. One can predict the probabilities of outcomes.
Either way, the individual personal will matters nada. That's Determinism, by either name.
No, that isn't determinism.
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Post by davidm »

Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Jul 18, 2017 9:09 pm
davidm wrote: Tue Jul 18, 2017 7:51 pm Also, of course the idea that determinism is the opposite of free will is rejected by compatibilists who maintain that free will requires determinism.
What reason do you give to support such a claim as the Compatibilists would make? It seems to me that they're just closet Determinists who are afraid to "pay the piper." You'd need to show they're not.
Yes! Compatibilists are determinists! Not closet determinists! -- full, out-of-the-closet, pro-determinist marriage determinists! Hooray for your staggering insight!
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Re: Free Will vs Determinism

Post by Immanuel Can »

davidm wrote: Tue Jul 18, 2017 9:49 pm"Conscious control" is irrelevant to determinism v. indeterminism. You're stuck in the weird theist loop in thinking that humans matter to the universe, apparently.
No, that is true. People could never "matter to the universe," since "the universe" refers only to a physical causal system. Whether driven by Material causality or quantum causality, it has no opinion about anyone.

But if, as I hold, God exists, things look quite different. Then you matter immeasurably...and matter whether you know it or not.
But the quantum situation is worse; at least there would be potentially some kind of remote chance you could predict the outcomes of material causality -- but good luck even guessing what a quantum "indeterminacy" will throw up! :shock:
No. QM is random but probabilistically so. One can predict the probabilities of outcomes.
That objection just doesn't help.

You've still got no crack through which you can introduce any idea of free will. It matters not whether people can guess at the more likely outcomes of quantum fluctuation or of material causality...in neither case does their judgment form anything but yet another link in the iron chain of cause and effect.
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