Do you believe in free will?

[genkaus]

Yours is the misconception. The concept of free will has contained that as a part of itself for most of its history, usually with reference to duallistic notions, but not always; see below.

For Aristotle, a break in the causal chain allowed us to feel our actions "depend on us" (ἐφ' ἡμῖν). He knew that many of our decisions are quite predictable based on habit and character, but they are no less free nor we less responsible if our character itself and predictable habits were developed freely in the past and are changeable in the future.

This is the view of some Eastern philosophies and religions. Our Karma has been determined by our past actions (even from past lives), and strongly influences our current actions, but we are free to improve our Karma by good actions.

One generation after Aristotle, Epicurus argued that as atoms moved through the void, there were occasions when they would "swerve" from their otherwise determined paths, thus initiating new causal chains. Epicurus argued that these swerves would allow us to be more responsible for our actions, something impossible if every action was deterministically caused. For Epicurus, the occasional interventions of arbitrary gods would be preferable to strict determinism.

Epicurus did not say the swerve was directly involved in decisions. His critics, ancient and modern, have claimed mistakenly that Epicurus did assume "one swerve - one decision." Following Aristotle, Epicurus thought human agents have the ability to transcend necessity and chance.

" ...some things happen of necessity, others by chance, others through our own agency. ...necessity destroys responsibility and chance is inconstant; whereas our own actions are autonomous, and it is to them that praise and blame naturally attach."

—

As I've maintained, and explained previously, the basic question of free will has remained the same : Are our actions up to us?

Any philosopher or philosophy which sees a dichotomy between free-will and determinism, does so due to its seeing the agent as something apart from the causal chain. And the history you provided supports that. You're really not saying anything new here.

You're not "correcting" anything, you're taking a concept we know to be flawed and replacing it with a new concept, presumably in the hopes that the new concept will furnish all the things the old concept did, only without all its problems.

No, the basic concept remains the same: "An agent's control over his actions". The flaw or the error in the prior understanding came from the misconception of what an agent is. By correcting that flaw, it is expected that the ensuing understanding would be corrected as well.

What about free will is worth preserving, and is that or those things actually preserved by your new concept. If moral culpability is the only thing you're trying to save, you haven't saved it.

How so? If according to the corrected free-will, an agent is in control of his actions, then he is morally responsible for them. Though that was not the goal of correcting the error.

If the feeling of freedom is what you're trying to save, I suggest we don't need that "feeling" for anything useful. If your fear is that without the belief that we have free will people will stop caring and stop living (like those people on the planet in the movie Serenity), I think a) you need to demonstrate this would actually happen, b) that this would be a bad thing even if true. I forget who said it, maybe William James, but it has been said that the truth is never a mistake; and I haven't seen anything to contradict that. If there is some other something that you think is "rescued" by your redefinition then name it. I personally don't think you can, which makes redefining free will along compatibilist lines a lot of work for absolutely no result.

All such reasons are irrelevant. If any of these were the reason for my conclusion, then I'd be arguing from consequences. As I explained in my earlier post, I considered that question of "is free will possible?", figured out what free will could realistically mean and went from there.

I just want to note for your benefit that I am intentionally skipping this point. Partly because I'm not up to it at the moment, and partly because the question of what an emergent property is, what their ontological status is and whether there can be anything attributed to them independent of non-emergent properties is such a large topic that I'm not sure it isn't simply a distraction.

A quick example. Let's suppose we simulate a hurricane on a computer by programming in all the relevant conditions, humidity, pressure, temperature and gravity, and all the relevant rules of physics. Suppose it's six days before landfall of Katrina, and we want to try to predict what areas are going to be hardest hit. We run our simulation and six days later, Katrina comes ashore exactly where our model predicted. Now, the course of the hurricane in our simulation is an emergent property: we did not program in which direction Katrina was going to go, that emerged as a result of the totality of all lower level properties. However, calling the hurricane's course emergent doesn't in and of itself get you anything, as emergent properties are every bit as deterministically caused as lower level causes, they are just a higher level characterization of the same phenomenon.

Emergent entities and their properties, by their very nature cannot be independent of their constituent entities. But their consideration is not a distraction, since in doing so we can regard it as an entity in its own right.

[Angrboda]

Yes, I'm projecting, it has nothing to do with this whole new line of bickering having been started by your comments about the abuse you've suffered. Or your inability to accept an apology when it was offered. FFS

You posted your apology in response to a reply which I was revising at the same time as you were posting the apology. I tried to revise my prior statement to a) graciously accept your apology, and, b) explain why I was taking the steps I was at the time. Unfortunately,, myBB doesn't support the text strikeout option which I intended to imply a rescission, and you'd already read it, so I added a reference to the revision in the next post which you hadn't already read. Unfortunately, the way that unraveled, I guess what I wanted to communicate to you, my acceptance of your apology, didn't get communicated. I'm sorry if you felt I was dissing your apology, I wasn't: I was just stuck with a multiple timeline thing going on, and, despite my best attempts, I didn't unravel it clearly enough to communicate my acceptance of your apology. I apologize. That was my fault.

And without quoting you directly, the reason I'm not directly answering your questions now is because I don't think doing so would be a good thing. As noted, emotionally I'm worn out, and further argument is only likely to aggravate already raw nerves, if not in you, in me. And I don't think that would be a useful result, as I'd like to salvage a relationship with someone who I think is smart, witty and enjoyable to talk to (and to watch rip into woo peddlers). What I see is that if we try to go forward with discussion of these points at this time, we will be more likely to destroy that relationship than prove anything definitively about EM. It's not that I am backing down from my argument, I'm backing down from what I see as a threat to both our friendship and my emotional well-being.

[The Grand Nudger]

No worries, that's the good thing about disagreements, they can be dropped or resumed at will. No threats to any friendship, so no worries there either.

[Angrboda]

OK, so the first three pages were devoid of this level of conversations. Where would be a good place to start so a substance dualist can jump into the conversation? Perhpas a list of questions or a post number reference?

It started with a trickle on page 5, first post, when I necroposted to a dormant thread. Imho, it really started to get going on . My whatever you want to call it with me and Rhythm is probably 5-10 pages further in (maybe starting in pages 15-20), but, I think our discussion was largely a tempest in a teapot, and so is probably not worth seeking out on its own account (Rhythm may feel otherwise; that's just imho).

---

I just want to note for your benefit that I am intentionally skipping this point. Partly because I'm not up to it at the moment, and partly because the question of what an emergent property is, what their ontological status is and whether there can be anything attributed to them independent of non-emergent properties is such a large topic that I'm not sure it isn't simply a distraction.

A quick example. Let's suppose we simulate a hurricane on a computer by programming in all the relevant conditions, humidity, pressure, temperature and gravity, and all the relevant rules of physics. Suppose it's six days before landfall of Katrina, and we want to try to predict what areas are going to be hardest hit. We run our simulation and six days later, Katrina comes ashore exactly where our model predicted. Now, the course of the hurricane in our simulation is an emergent property: we did not program in which direction Katrina was going to go, that emerged as a result of the totality of all lower level properties. However, calling the hurricane's course emergent doesn't in and of itself get you anything, as emergent properties are every bit as deterministically caused as lower level causes, they are just a higher level characterization of the same phenomenon.

Emergent entities and their properties, by their very nature cannot be independent of their constituent entities. But their consideration is not a distraction, since in doing so we can regard it as an entity in its own right.

Yes, and if the emergent entity is not independent of its constituent entities, and those constituent entities are fully determined, then the emergent entity is also full determined. The emergent entity doesn't "break free" of lower level properties just because it is an emergent entity.

Where do you expect that any entity that is fully determined by entities that themselves are fully determined is going to get anything non-deterministic? You don't get to just "invent new properties" because you used the word emergent. Think again of my example. The hurricane follows the same path as the real thing, not because the underlying properties and the emergent property happen to coincidentally converge on the same result, the result is the same because the emergent property is fully determined by the underlying properties. In what sense is our model hurricane and its path not fully determined even though those are both emergent properties?

I get the feeling that like others are using "quantum mechanics" in place of "magic", you are using "emergent properties" as a substitute for "magic". You can't get indeterminism or freedom out of a system in which the behavior of the constituent entities are fully deterministic, no matter how many "emergent properties" or "emergent entities" there are.


(And I'll point out a couple things just so neither you or I get confused. 1) equating chaos and unpredictability with indeterminism; chaos, or chaotic systems are fully deterministic, the unpredictability comes from a lack of knowledge about the system (in principle, see Heisenberg; we may not have adequate mathematics either). That is not indeterminism, that is a practical knowledge problem. 2) You might half be thinking of emergent self-organization, which is not really related, but that again does not get you indeterminism. 3) Not sure this was you, but someone was asking whether determinism equals predestination; no, because the laws of our universe include laws that are essentially stochastic ("in that a system's subsequent state is determined both by the process's predictable actions and by a random element" ). Quantum mechanics is probabilistic, so the future state isn't fully determined by the present state, only the probabilities of any particular future state (I think I'm implicitly appealing to the Copenhagen interpretation, which, may be slightly illicit, as interpretations of QFT and QFT itself are two separate things).)


-- and I think I'll bow out here : I need to be doing other things; thanks for the discussion everyone --

(ETA: There is a famous quote which I won't run down but basically says that if a thing with a certain property is indistinguishable from a thing without that property, then the property alleged is not a property at all; what property of the simulated hurricane or its path is not fully described by the underlying properties, and if there is none, then the emergent entity's properties are indistinguishable from the properties of its constituent entities, and any hypothetical "added" property is not a property. (That might actually be a part of the definition of what a property is; old, grey, neurons, weakening....)

[genkaus]

Yes, and if the emergent entity is not independent of its constituent entities, and those constituent entities are fully determined, then the emergent entity is also full determined. The emergent entity doesn't "break free" of lower level properties just because it is an emergent entity.

Umm... ok.

Where do you expect that any entity that is fully determined by entities that themselves are fully determined is going to get anything non-deterministic?

Nowhere.

You don't get to just "invent new properties" because you used the word emergent.

I don't.

Think again of my example. The hurricane follows the same path as the real thing, not because the underlying properties and the emergent property happen to coincidentally converge on the same result, the result is the same because the emergent property is fully determined by the underlying properties. In what sense is our model hurricane and its path not fully determined even though those are both emergent properties?

None. What about it?

I get the feeling that like others are using "quantum mechanics" in place of "magic", you are using "emergent properties" as a substitute for "magic".

I'm not.

You can't get indeterminism or freedom out of a system in which the behavior of the constituent entities are fully deterministic, no matter how many "emergent properties" or "emergent entities" there are.

Your point?

(And I'll point out a couple things just so neither you or I get confused. 1) equating chaos and unpredictability with indeterminism; chaos, or chaotic systems are fully deterministic, the unpredictability comes from a lack of knowledge about the system (in principle, see Heisenberg; we may not have adequate mathematics either). That is not indeterminism, that is a practical knowledge problem.

You are confused.

2) You might half be thinking of emergent self-organization, which is not really related, but that again does not get you indeterminism.

Never said it does.

3) Not sure this was you, but someone was asking whether determinism equals predestination; no, because the laws of our universe include laws that are essentially stochastic ("in that a system's subsequent state is determined both by the process's predictable actions and by a random element" Wikipedia: Stochastic). Quantum mechanics is probabilistic, so the future state isn't fully determined by the present state, only the probabilities of any particular future state (I think I'm implicitly appealing to the Copenhagen interpretation, which, may be slightly illicit, as interpretations of QFT and QFT itself are two separate things).)

Not me.

As it stands, it seems you have either not read or not understood my argument for free-will. Address that, and then we'll talk.

[NoMoreFaith]

Honestly Genkaus, I think we do. I think the only person confused is yourself, and I don't want to offend. (Hell with free will, we're all confused to a certain extent).

Your definitions comply with determinism, but no matter what you do, you still make a non-sequitor leap to free will because the "agent" appears to make a choice.

You have not successfully defined how the agent is different from the illusion of it, and I know we're starting to retread old ground. So I don't expect you to respond beyond what you have done already.

I'm starting to suspect a level of argumentum ad temperantiam. Taking a position between the two sharply contrasting views yet with no evident veracity of the claim.

[tackattack]

---

OK, so the first three pages were devoid of this level of conversations. Where would be a good place to start so a substance dualist can jump into the conversation? Perhpas a list of questions or a post number reference?

I don't know much about substance dualism, apart that there is a great deal of difference of opinion even within this.

If you can define what substance dualism means to you (and I've just had to do some light reading on it myself) it would probably give good points to consider.

---

Well without knowing what definition you guys have already established I guess I could give a simple version of what I believe.

The brain is physical. The mind is mental. The agent of self is a mental attribute. Free will is also a mental attribute. I believe will is not forced or predetermined by cusal chains outside of any influence. These abstracts or insubstantials hold no material space as the brain does, therefore they're seperate from the material. Therefore I believe that there are more than determined and material things that exist in reality. I believe reality exists in in more than just material substance.

I think Tack, that anytime is a good time for you to hop in, and the best place for you to begin would be by showing the other half of this duality, or the hook that allows it to interface with the demonstrated half, or both.

What do you mean show the other half? I think we've done the khook bit but I'm willing to go into more detail this time as you guys look like you've gotten pretty deep. I though we were talking about free will though, not my dualism or your materialsim? If you guys could perhaps restate what you've already defined and I'll assume that somewhere in there it's been a whole buch of materialists talking about freewill. I don't need to invoke God, woo, the supranatural, or the other half of matierlism if those are the constraints of this conversation. I can talk about freewill from a materialst standpoint if that will prevent needless hoopla. That'll at least give me time to catch up on 20 or so pages of really deep conversation this weekend.

[NoMoreFaith]

Well without knowing what definition you guys have already established I guess I could give a simple version of what I believe.

Its best, because while I call myself a hard determinist, does not mean I accord to every thinker on the matter. To discuss, as genkaus proves with clear "compatibilism but not really", we need a clear understanding of your thinking, not just the accepted norm for a label of thinking.

The brain is physical. The mind is mental. The agent of self is a mental attribute. Free will is also a mental attribute. I believe will is not forced or predetermined by cusal chains outside of any influence. These abstracts or insubstantials hold no material space as the brain does, therefore they're seperate from the material. Therefore I believe that there are more than determined and material things that exist in reality. I believe reality exists in in more than just material substance.

If this is accepted, would you also say that a hallucination has substance separate from reality? It holds no material space, so is separate from the material, therefore has a reality of its own.
Does a hallucination create its own separate existence through the mind?

If you guys could perhaps restate what you've already defined and I'll assume that somewhere in there it's been a whole buch of materialists talking about freewill.

Or the lack of it. I can't say there is much consensus on the issue.

My point of view, thou Genkaus believes it is loaded through a assumption of determinism, which was an aspect of disagreement. I am still considering how much merit that argument has.

Let's play God and pause time for one second;

The universe can only be changed in a limited number of ways.
1) Changing the current or past state of the universe in this instant we have paused.
2) Changing the fundamental laws of the universe that dictate how the universe progresses from one instant to another.

In my view, changing 1 or 2 requires supernatural means (potentially technology sufficiently advanced as to appear magical).

You were created by the causal events of the universe leading up to this point. You lack the ability to change either premise 1 or 2 of the universe therefore you lack the ability to change the future of the universe.

In order to prove free will, I believe that either a supernatural 3rd cause (which I dismiss) or a problem with the 2 assumptions I have made about causal events.

Otherwise, I define free will as the freedom to act without certain types of constraint. My argument is that the constraints are complete and total.

Every natural system, ever investigated, whether weather systems, or the nervous system, to our concept of self, has always been proven to be determined and it is egotistical to believe we have a special ability to remove ourselves from the standard causal chain by which the universe moves from one instant to another.

Changing the future in the quoted argument of mine, is a little inaccurate, as has been pointed out, but rather we are not free to exempt ourselves from the natural progression of universal causation.

What we believe to be free will is the conscious justification for our decisions that are already made by the combination of a million factors.

Rather unkindly, Free Will is the name we give to our inability to comprehend even a hundredth part of the factors behind each and every decision, right down to a facial tick.

Thats more or less my position.

[The Grand Nudger]

"Mental" but separate from the brain would be the other half, in this case. I'm wondering why you think that these are somehow different things, this isn't a position that one can reach by evidentiary means, as that leads us to mind as effect. You seem to be invoking the dues ex machina, I'm wondering why you feel the need to do this, since we have a pretty good idea of how all of this "mental" stuff is accomplished (even though we don't have a complete picture, of course). It's a bit of manouvering to state that ideas or concepts are not material, as this is exactly what we understand them to be, our way of interpreting and communicating electro-chemical signals which are very much material, and can be pointed to (scans, chemical analysis), quantified (cognitive testing in addition to scans and analysis), tampered with (psychoactive drugs), or entirely removed (trauma, intentional or unintentional).

How do you propose that this separate "mental" entity interfaces with the brain? Where is it, where does it come from from, and what can it do? What would it look like if someone had a functioning brain but not a functioning "mental entity"?

[genkaus]

Honestly Genkaus, I think we do. I think the only person confused is yourself, and I don't want to offend. (Hell with free will, we're all confused to a certain extent).

Your definitions comply with determinism, but no matter what you do, you still make a non-sequitor leap to free will because the "agent" appears to make a choice.

You have not successfully defined how the agent is different from the illusion of it, and I know we're starting to retread old ground. So I don't expect you to respond beyond what you have done already.

I'm starting to suspect a level of argumentum ad temperantiam. Taking a position between the two sharply contrasting views yet with no evident veracity of the claim.

We are retreading old ground.

If there was an unjustified leap from the determinism-compatible premises (the definition) to free-will, then that would suggest a position where free-will is incompatible with determinism. Mine is not such a position.

As for the illusory aspect, I've said that if an agent is considered as an illusory entity (or supernatural) then free will would be illusory (or supernatural) as well. The issue of the agent's metaphysical existence is still open to question (i.e. what constitutes the self?).

Finally, the Golden Mean fallacy - to my understanding - requires acceptance of common understanding of two contradictory positions and then try to find a common ground. My position relies of rejection of the common understanding - thus making it probably more controversial.