Free Will

Is the mind the same as the body? What is consciousness? Can machines have it?

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RogerSH
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Re: Free Will

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Immanuel Can wrote: Sat Jul 24, 2021 1:58 pm Determinism has to hold that the will is strictly a product of prior forces. A belief in free will allows that its not.
This is a key point.

The question is, does free will require the ability to choose the state of one’s mind at the instant that one is doing the choosing? If it does, then that is certainly impossible if determinism is true… but it is also certainly impossible if determinism is NOT true, so determinism is irrelevant to the question! This is because it is simply logically impossible for what is being chosen to be also at the same moment what is doing the choosing. No variable can have a multiplicity of values and only one value at the same moment.

On the other hand, if a mental state is neither instantaneously self-determined nor a product of prior physical/mental states, it cannot have the character of a will. It may be the result of divine intention, pure randomness, or whatever you like. Such imports from outside the causally-connected world are a form of "freedom", certainly, but such forms of "freedom" are not accessible to the self to whom the mental state belongs. (William James made a famous argument along these lines).

The will supposedly being determined by some non-physical mind doesn’t alter the problem, but merely shifts it back. Does that non-physical mind choose its own state? No, because that is still logically impossible. It may be determined by earlier physical or non-physical states, or by something external, or by nothing at all, or some combination, but not by itself, since that would still be choosing while being chosen. And again, the external and undetermined options are freedoms inaccessible to the will.

The nearest thing to metaphysical self-determination that is logically possible is psychological self-determination, that is to say that how one is at one moment is in important ways influenced by choices made at earlier moments. This may be the origin of the faulty notion that metaphysical self-determination is a valid concept, which requires some special ingredient to enable it. (I am defending free will as a capability, not as an ingredient of reality).

Now if it is not logically possible to meet the criterion of metaphysical self-determination, this has big implications. It entails that a definition based on this criterion cannot mean anything. It has no connotation: it does not pick out any conceivable world in which the criterion could be met. And if that definition doesn’t mean anything, then proposing a meaningful definition is not “changing the meaning” since there is no meaning to change.
Alternatively, if free will is defined explicitly as the negation of determinism, then it is certainly changing the meaning of will, to mean something unconnected to the self, and has no further significance. [PS: Perhaps what is meant is that determinism of the material world denies freedom to anything outside the material world. This is true: it follows from the general physical principle that a causally closed system denies freedom to anything outside that system. So the combination of determinism, dualism and free will is indeed a contradiction -though I don't know anyone who believes in that combination! But determinism and monist free will are perfectly happy logical bedfellows, because a monist mind isn't outside the material world.]

So we have to forget about how the state of mind, at the moment the choice is presented, is arrived at, and ask instead whether the resulting will, whatever it is, can be implemented. If for example the will is to change the past, then there is no such freedom.

The experience of free will starts from the consciousness of there being more than one option that would be possible if chosen, and uses the resources in the mind available to consciousness at that moment in arriving at a decision. This means that in general a decision that is anything more than a snap decision starts with a special kind of search in the mind for relevant material (see my recent post on Attention). The lack of perfect predictability of searches then explains the formal unpredictability of conscious decisions.
Last edited by RogerSH on Wed Jul 28, 2021 3:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Free Will

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RogerSH wrote: Wed Jul 28, 2021 1:01 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Jul 27, 2021 8:22 pm That's because "prediction," as a word, is a description of what humans can or cannot know. Determinism, by contrast, is presented as a statement about what is actually true, whether humans know it or not.
I'm trying to make a further distinction: whether or not there is an algorithm by which the truth can be established.
That's an odd sentence. It's like writing, "I'm wondering which musical phrase will convey me to Boston." What would make us think that "truth" and "algoithm" had anything to do with one another?
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Free Will

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RogerSH wrote: Wed Jul 28, 2021 1:15 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Jul 27, 2021 8:14 pm The first thing we need to know about the Multiverse Hypothesis is that it's a "hypothesis," an imaginary model, not an empirical reality, of course. Worse still, if we understand the word "universe," then we also realize that if anything empirical were ever found to support the idea, it would, by definition be part of this "universe," not of some other one or a complex of them called the "Multiverse." So it's not only unscientific, but doomed to stay so.
"everything that can happen, does happen".
But there's a very fundamental mathematical error bedded in this very idea.

It requires that "things that can happen" is a finite set, and yet that the Multiverses are infinite. Put those things together, and you have to believe that not only does "everything that can happen, does happen," but also that "everything that can happen, has happened and will happen an infinite number of times."

Infinite universes have in them, by definition, infinite possibilities. There is no end to the set of "things that can happen." Hence, there is no necessity that even ONE time the set of infinite universes needs to repeat an outcome. In fact, there are infinite other possibilities than ANY one outcome at all. So we're still left with the question, why did THIS universe ever happen? Why not one of the OTHER INFINITE POSSIBILITIES that could have happened?

So again, the "infinite universes" hypothesis has zero by way of explanatory power. It doesn't give us any basis to suppose that the outcome we have, the universe we know, should have ever happened at all. There are, by definition, infinite other ways the universe could have been: why this one? :shock: And instead of making this outcome necessary and inevitable, it's just as odd and inexplicable as it's always been.

Worse than that, if the "infinite universes" hypothesis were true, plus the set of "things that can happen" were finite, then it would mean that not only does this universe happen once, but that it's happened an infinite number of times already, and will be happening again an infinite number of times in the future.

However, in such a universe, we have no reason to think that "things that can happen" is a limited set, and every reason to think it's not. Why can't the salt shaker in one such "universe" be six centimeters to the left of the pepper, and in another, three-point-two-seven centimeters to the right, and everything else in the universe be identical to our outcome? There are infinite positions for just one salt shaker: why would we think there was a limited set of possible universes? But if it's infinite, then again, its explanatory power falls to zero.

In any case, it remains a totally non-empirical, non-scientific hypothesis -- and, if what I am saying is true, is now exposed as having a fundamental flaw in its logic, one that renders it completely useless in explanatory terms.

In contrast, even a wildly superstitious hypothesis, such as "Pixies did it," is capable of being tested by evidence and retains explanatory function, even if totally fictional. The multiverse hypothesis doesn't even have those things going for it. :shock:

People are free, of course, to continue to believe in it. But since it's non-evidence having, non-scientific and illogical, as well as devoid of explanatory function, what's the point in retaining the hypothesis? :shock:
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Free Will

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RogerSH wrote: Wed Jul 28, 2021 1:19 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Tue Jul 27, 2021 8:14 pm The second thing is this: that an actual Physicalist cannot, by definition, accept any non-physical explanations of causality in any universe. If he does, he immediately ceases to be a Physicalist.
True! I mean I shall assume physicalism unless or until I find a good reason not to....
That's not a bad way to proceed, of course. I can think of no better reason to "assume" something than that one has "good reason" for it. And I can think of no better reason to refuse to believe in something than that one has no "good reason" for it. Fair enough.

But to assume that Physicalism is true until-further-notice is not strong enough for actual Physicalism. It remains open to some kind of Dualism or some kind of physically-transcending factors. It's open-minded and fair, but would not make any real Physicalist happy. The purpose of positing Physicalism is to eliminate the possibility, a priori, of every having to turn to any such explanation.

What the Physicalist values about Physicalism, his incentive for believing in Physicalism, is that, in principle, it makes everything that exists a fit subject for strictly physical investigation and explanation. And your kind of openness will not achieve that. It leaves open a door that the Physicalist wants to nail shut.

But how would we know that Physicalism is true? To know that, we would have to believe that we have investigated the complete set of phenomena that exist now and ever have existed or will exist, and have confirmed that they are all nothing-but-physical. Is it reasonable to suppose that that is what we have done? But if we have not, then can Physicalism be assumed on a rational basis? Clearly not.

So your kind of Physicalism-as-starting-point-plus-openness-to-further-data is actually a very sensible way to proceed. But pure Physicalism is not. It's merely gratuitously suppositional.
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Re: Free Will

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Immanuel Can wrote: Wed Jul 28, 2021 3:59 pm "everything that can happen, does happen".
But there's a very fundamental mathematical error bedded in this very idea.

It requires that "things that can happen" is a finite set, and yet that the Multiverses are infinite. Put those things together, and you have to believe that not only does "everything that can happen, does happen," but also that "everything that can happen, has happened and will happen an infinite number of times."

Infinite universes have in them, by definition, infinite possibilities. There is no end to the set of "things that can happen." Hence, there is no necessity that even ONE time the set of infinite universes needs to repeat an outcome. In fact, there are infinite other possibilities than ANY one outcome at all. So we're still left with the question, why did THIS universe ever happen? Why not one of the OTHER INFINITE POSSIBILITIES that could have happened?

So again, the "infinite universes" hypothesis has zero by way of explanatory power. It doesn't give us any basis to suppose that the outcome we have, the universe we know, should have ever happened at all. There are, by definition, infinite other ways the universe could have been: why this one? And instead of making this outcome necessary and inevitable, it's just as odd and inexplicable as it's always been.
I am referring to a specific and reputable viewpoint in quantum physics. In this context, the slogan has a much narrower meaning that that: just that all the possibilities described by the wave equation for the current state will be realised. Strictly, that is an infinite number, a continuum of possibilities, but the indexical probability of an observer finding herself at most of that continuum is vanishingly small. So it looks like a rapidly growing set of futures to every present.
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Re: Free Will

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RogerSH wrote: Wed Jul 28, 2021 1:59 pm The question is, does free will require the ability to choose the state of one’s mind at the instant that one is doing the choosing? If it does, then that is certainly impossible if determinism is true… but it is also certainly impossible if determinism is NOT true,
That doesn't seem obvious to me at all. Why would it be impossible for a person to choose an action "if Determinism is NOT true"? :shock:
This is because it is simply logically impossible for what is being chosen to be also at the same moment what is doing the choosing.

But this is not what anyone is saying. A free-willian is not saying, "I choose to run because my running is choosing." That's not merely circular, but also unlike any explanation anybody I know of ever gives. What one says is something like, "I choose to run because I regard the race as worth it."
On the other hand, if a mental state is neither instantaneously self-determined nor a product of prior physical/mental states, it cannot have the character of a will.
I
This, again, does not at all seem obvious. Why can't "will" be explained in terms like, "Will is what 'the I' chooses to make out of a set of given, prior circumstances"?

That seems the right way to talk about it. There is, so to speak, a given situation, problem, circumstance or order of affairs, out of which different outcomes can potentially be chosen, and the ultimate arbitrator of that choice is me, is 'the I.' (I can go to the race, or I can stay home, or I can join a different competition, or I can subvert this competition by cheating, or I can go next week...and so on.)
Does that non-physical mind choose its own state?

That depends. Yes, it cannot choose its physical state; but we are no longer granting the Physicalist his presumption that that is the only kind of "state" there can be.

This brings us to the key distinction between "brain" (physical) and "mind" (i.e. the transcendent, conscious entity associated with the brain, the "ghost in the machine," so to speak, the thing which does the thinking, and that the brain seems to house.) If there is any such thing as the latter, then Physicalism is not true.
The nearest thing to metaphysical self-determination that is logically possible is psychological self-determination, that is to say that how one is at one moment is in important ways influenced by choices made at earlier moments.
But to be "influenced" is not Determinism. For "influence" may be partial and incomplete, whereas Determinism posits that nothing but prior physical circumstance accounts for the entire decision that ensues.

So to say something like, "One of the things that kept me from running in the race was my laziness" is not to say "I had no choice." It's to say that I had the option to go and race, but I elected not to go, influenced by my weariness, and not as interested in the prize offered. I had influences, but I ultimately made my choice as to which one I would regard as more important.
Now if it is not logically possible to meet the criterion of metaphysical self-determination,

Nobody has ever said people are "(metaphysically?) self-determined." A free-willian is, by contrast, saying that they are "influenced," perhaps, but not "predetermined" by anything.
...a causally closed system denies freedom to anything outside that system.
True, but not at all helpful, since we don't know that this is "a causally-closed system." Physicalism assumes it, maybe; but it doesn't know it.
If for example the will is to change the past, then there is no such freedom.

Of course not. But this is a function of chronology, not of Determinism. We can't go back in time.

Similarly, I cannot flap my arms and fly. But that doesn't imply I have no choice about things I CAN potentially do. I can choose whether to type this message now, or in five minutes, or in twenty, or not at all. I can feel myself choosing right now.
The experience of free will starts from the consciousness of there being more than one option that would be possible if chosen, and uses the resources in the mind available to consciousness at that moment in arriving at a decision.
That's correct. But what are these "resouces," is the vexed question. Are they merely the sum of a chemical soup in the brain? If so, we should be able to identify empirically which combinations of soup result in which "decisions." Or is there more than chemical soup involved? If so, the idea of will is back in play.
...the formal unpredictability of conscious decisions.
...is an argument FOR free will, not at all against it.

That we cannot identify a set of prior physical circumstances, even including brain chemistry, that inevitably issue in a particular cognitive outcome gives us reason to suppose that Physicalism is not providing an adequate explanation of what's going on.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: Free Will

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RogerSH wrote: Wed Jul 28, 2021 4:12 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Wed Jul 28, 2021 3:59 pm "everything that can happen, does happen".
But there's a very fundamental mathematical error bedded in this very idea.

It requires that "things that can happen" is a finite set, and yet that the Multiverses are infinite. Put those things together, and you have to believe that not only does "everything that can happen, does happen," but also that "everything that can happen, has happened and will happen an infinite number of times."

Infinite universes have in them, by definition, infinite possibilities. There is no end to the set of "things that can happen." Hence, there is no necessity that even ONE time the set of infinite universes needs to repeat an outcome. In fact, there are infinite other possibilities than ANY one outcome at all. So we're still left with the question, why did THIS universe ever happen? Why not one of the OTHER INFINITE POSSIBILITIES that could have happened?

So again, the "infinite universes" hypothesis has zero by way of explanatory power. It doesn't give us any basis to suppose that the outcome we have, the universe we know, should have ever happened at all. There are, by definition, infinite other ways the universe could have been: why this one? And instead of making this outcome necessary and inevitable, it's just as odd and inexplicable as it's always been.
I am referring to a specific and reputable viewpoint in quantum physics.
It's only reputable among those who have not realized the logical and mathematical error in their postulate. I have not seen any of them provide a solution to this obvious problem.
So it looks like a rapidly growing set of futures to every present.
This makes the problem I identified above just as vexed. For what is "infinte possibilities and growing"? :shock: For "infinite" is already "infinite": what can be added by "rapidly growing" to that set? :shock:

P.S. -- I'm enjoying our conversation. Thanks for taking the time.
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Re: Free Will

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Immanuel Can wrote: Wed Jul 28, 2021 4:36 pm I am referring to a specific and reputable viewpoint in quantum physics.
It's only reputable among those who have not realized the logical and mathematical error in their postulate. I have not seen any of them provide a solution to this obvious problem.
So it looks like a rapidly growing set of futures to every present.
This makes the problem I identified above just as vexed. For what is "infinte possibilities and growing"? For "infinite" is already "infinite": what can be added by "rapidly growing" to that set?
It is not just a postulate though. The evidence for quantum theory is as strong as for any theory known to science. The equations of quantum theory describe an infinite and growing number of futures (see below) which are only in special cases able to briefly interact. The question is: do we assume that there is some mechanism that eliminates all but one of those futures after a brief period? (The proposed mechanisms come under such names as collapse theories, pilot-wave theories...) Since there is no evidence for such a mechanism, it is more parsimonious of ontological types (as against instances) to assume there isn't. It is a matter of current debate whether there could be evidence between these positions, that would make them hypotheses rather than metaphysical positions. David Wallace is a very lucid philosopher of science. I'd recommend the opening chapters of his book, before the maths (all greek to me) gets too prominent.

There are an infinite number of real numbers between 1 & 2. Expand the range to 3 and there are infinitely more. So what is the problem?

(Indeed, I'm enjoying trying to work out where a different but essentially rational mind is coming from... :) I'm sorry my time free from domestic distractions is a bit erratic.)
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Re: Free Will

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Immanuel Can wrote: Wed Jul 28, 2021 3:36 pm What would make us think that "truth" and "algorithm" had anything to do with one another?
"That sentence contains exactly 20 vowels." How would you check the truth of that claim? Why wouldn't you call it an algorithm?
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Re: Free Will

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Immanuel Can wrote: Wed Jul 28, 2021 4:33 pm by Immanuel Can » Wed Jul 28, 2021 4:33 pm

RogerSH wrote: ↑Wed Jul 28, 2021 1:59 pm
The question is, does free will require the ability to choose the state of one’s mind at the instant that one is doing the choosing? If it does, then that is certainly impossible if determinism is true… but it is also certainly impossible if determinism is NOT true,
>>That doesn't seem obvious to me at all. Why would it be impossible for a person to choose an action "if Determinism is NOT true"?
This is because it is simply logically impossible for what is being chosen to be also at the same moment what is doing the choosing.

>>But this is not what anyone is saying. A free-willian is not saying, "I choose to run because my running is choosing." That's not merely circular, but also unlike any explanation anybody I know of ever gives. What one says is something like, "I choose to run because I regard the race as worth it."
I didn't say choosing an action, but one's state of mind. It is logically impossible for one's state of mind to choose itself. It's mainly free will sceptics like Galen Strawson & Sam Harris who claim that this rules out free will, but wrongly attribute the impossibility to determinism. "You can't will what you will" is a common slogan.
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Re: Free Will

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Immanuel Can wrote: Wed Jul 28, 2021 4:33 pm On the other hand, if a mental state is neither instantaneously self-determined nor a product of prior physical/mental states, it cannot have the character of a will.

This, again, does not at all seem obvious. Why can't "will" be explained in terms like, "Will is what 'the I' chooses to make out of a set of given, prior circumstances"?
If that "I" has continuity with the I at previous moments, then that is another way of saying that the I at the instant in question is the product of prior mental states. If there is no such continuity, the concept is not recognizable as an I, so it can't have a will as normally understood.

Most of the rest of your post, it seems to me, is an argument for dualism rather than for incompatibilism as such. Maybe you didn't notice my PS: I agree that the combination of determinism of the physical world, dualism and free will is contradictory. I am mainly arguing that determinism and free will in a coherent sense are compatible on monist assumptions. The trouble with dualism is that it seems to treat the mental world as causal and non-causal as convenient. If it is causal, then the combination of mental and physical worlds could be deterministic - but would still allow free will on my analysis, since the mind would be part of the causally-closed system.
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Re: Free Will

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RogerSH wrote: Thu Jul 29, 2021 12:09 pm The evidence for quantum theory is as strong as for any theory known to science.
Quantum Theory is not the Multiverse Hypothesis. They're two distinct postulates, and the latter is 100% speculative, by definition.
There are an infinite number of real numbers between 1 & 2. Expand the range to 3 and there are infinitely more. So what is the problem?
The problem for the Multiverse Hypothesis being used as an explanation for existence is that infinite repetitions of possibilities do not reduce the odds against particular outcomes, unless the particular outcomes are a limited set.

But we can see, from the fact that there are infinite numbers between any two digits, that there are infinite ways the universe could be. So positing infinite worlds does not produce any explanation for the existence of THIS world. It's just as mysterious as ever.

Let me try to explain more gradually, so it becomes readily apparent.

Step 1: Essentially, the reason people invoke the Multiverse Hypothesis is to be able to assert that our existence in this universe is to be expected. The supposition is that if there are enough universese being generated, then it becomes inevitable that a universe like this will exist, right?

Problem 1: If that were true, then not only would THIS universe exist, but it would exist an infinite number of more times. It would have been created an infinite number of times in the past, and would be automatically created an infinite number of times in the future as well, because infinite repetitions of universes would make that unavoidable. (We can come back to this later).

Step 2: The problem with the multiverse strategy is that it presupposes that only the repetitions are infinite, but not the variables involved. If the variables involved are infinite in number, then it makes absolutely no difference how many "recursions" or new universes are being generated: the chance against any one outcome remains infinite. :shock:

Using the Multiverse Hypothesis to explain why, for example, our universe exists requires us to suppose that there are only so many universes that can be produced that are NOT our universe, and our universe then will HAVE TO appear. But this is not true: there is an infinite range of types of universe and different ones that are not at all like ours, and even plausibly things that could be generated that are not universes.

In other words, the universe recursions are infinite; but so are the universes that can be produced. So the likelihood of our universe appearing is never greater than infinitely-against-probability.

Problem 2: What's "generating" this alleged multiverse of universes? Where's the "generator"? And what creates the "rules" by which the "generator" operates? What makes it only produce "universes," and not other things? Where did its governing dynamics originate?

In other words, using the Multiverse Hypothesis only moves the level of explanation back one step: it still leaves us with the impossible question of what is causing the Multiverse to operate in the way it does. So some prior cause has also to be posited, unless we want to "punt" to a dumb explanation like, "The Multiverse just exists because it exists."

Those are but two of the problems inherent in the Multiverse Hypothesis: and being mathematical and logical, they don't even get into the empirical realm.

Problem 3: Of course, as I said before, if empirical evidence for the Multiverse Hypothesis were every adduced, it would defeat and collapse the Multiverse Hypothesis itself; because anything "empirical" is by definition part of THIS universe, not of another. And the Multiverse Hypothesis wants us to believe in universes that are not part of ours (i.e. non-empirical).

So that's a third serious problem for the theory: it's completely and permanently non-empirical by its own nature.

In short, the Multiverse Hypothesis is, and must remain, a speculation. But even as a speculation, it fails to explain, because positing multiple universes still puts us at the two problems I've listed above...1) that of infinite variables offsetting any value of infinite recursions, and 2) that of explaining the origin and dynamics of the supposed "generator."
(Indeed, I'm enjoying trying to work out where a different but essentially rational mind is coming from... :) I'm sorry my time free from domestic distractions is a bit erratic.)
Yes, me too. I'm enjoying the exchange.
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Re: Free Will

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RogerSH wrote: Thu Jul 29, 2021 12:13 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Wed Jul 28, 2021 3:36 pm What would make us think that "truth" and "algorithm" had anything to do with one another?
"That sentence contains exactly 20 vowels." How would you check the truth of that claim? Why wouldn't you call it an algorithm?
Well, in order to reply, you found you couldn't use an algorithm. :shock: Instead, you used a linguistic predication formed of three sentences, two interogative and one declarative.

Linguistics has a relationship to truth. But algorithms are only correctly-formed or incorrectly-formed. That's because mathematics is a closed system of abstractions, one that defines its own terms. The numbers refer to other numbers, but only to empirical objects if we humans force the particular applications ourselves: as a symbol system, its operations are entirely internal to the system it stipulates. A "2" for example, does not have to refer to any particular objects to operate successufully in the equation 2+2=4. You can do maths with no reference at all to the external world.

By contrast, linguistic utterances are capable of referring to the empirical world. In that, linguistics is not its own closed system, but refers to things outside of itself and its symbology...i.e. to the real, and hence to questions of "truth" and "falsehood". As we say, linguistics can predicate things of reality. Maths, in itself, does not predicate any particular thing.

That's its great advantage, actually: it can be used for anything, but is not confined to referring to anything. But linguistics posit claims about particular things.

You posited a claim about my sentence, and did it by way of linguistics. An equation like 16:20 doesn't even tell us what it refers to: but it actually can be used to describe the ratio between words and vowels above. But it doesn't have to. It could also refer to the number of hairs in somebody's left and right armpits, or the number of football teams in two divisions, or anything else at all. It could even be just a mathematical confection, with no reference to anything. We don't know, without some linguistic application being supplied with the ratio.

That's why mathematical arrangements are not inherently bout truth and falsehood, but are really only about internal constistency with the mathematical symbol system.
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Re: Free Will

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RogerSH wrote: Thu Jul 29, 2021 12:29 pm "You can't will what you will" is a common slogan.
Well, I think it's a bad one. It seems to me that it doesn't describe what's going on, at all.

To "will" is to make a choice within the specific circumstances one is given. It can be an instinctive process, yes; but it is also partly (and often) intentional. One can choose-against one's own inclinations, for example, as when a runner in a race begins to feel muscle pain, and sees that too many runnders are ahead of her, and she cannot now win the race, and that she is very thirsty and discouraged, and yet says, "I"m going to finish this race anyway."

She does, indeed choose what she will do. And she does so, despite the fact that her animal parts, such as her muscles and lungs, are "willing" something quite different.

So we are not automatons stumbling along, driven by some "will" prior to our own deliberations. We are free creatures who choose among options, even though those options are never unlimited in number, and, so to speak, we "make something" of our situation: including choosing our attitudes and attributions.

At the end of the race, the woman may say, "I'm a winner anyway, because I finished." And in a sense, she's completely right, even though both her own body and the statistical facts of the race are quite different.
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Re: Free Will

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RogerSH wrote: Thu Jul 29, 2021 12:53 pm If that "I" has continuity with the I at previous moments, then that is another way of saying that the I at the instant in question is the product of prior mental states.
No, it isn't. "Continuity" there is vague, and is misleading. You're confusing "continuity of identity" (which remains) with "continuity of cause."

But "cause" and "identity" are different. My parents are my cause; but they are not my identity: I am not them. And my continuity with my parents does not make them the explanation of my choices, either.
Most of the rest of your post, it seems to me, is an argument for dualism rather than for incompatibilism as such.
Well, Dualism IS incompatible with Physicalism. Physicalism is Monist.
Maybe you didn't notice my PS: I agree that the combination of determinism of the physical world, dualism and free will is contradictory. I am mainly arguing that determinism and free will in a coherent sense are compatible on monist assumptions.

I did see your admission, but it puzzled me. For Determinism is not compatible with free will. It's exclusive of it, and is, indeed a denial of the very possiblity of any meaningful attribution of action to the will. For a Determinist, "the will" has to be no more than a very odd way we describe a physical step in an inevitably physical chain of causes-and-effects -- not any kind of agency in its own right.
The trouble with dualism is that it seems to treat the mental world as causal and non-causal as convenient.
No, that would be Idealism.

Dualism has to insist that the mental realm is real and causally active, and the physical world is equally real and causally relevant. Niether is merely made the handmaid of the other, as will is made under Compatibilist theories.
...but would still allow free will on my analysis, since the mind would be part of the causally-closed system.
There's the "handmaiding" part.

That statement makes "free will" nothing but a "handmaid" to physical explanations, just an odd description of what is, in truth, nothing but a physical system. One wonders why such a term is even necessary, since it's certainly misleading as to the genuine origins of action as posited by Determinism.
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