Free will/evil/punishment

[bennyboy]

I think AI computing allows the possibility of making choices which are not pre-programmed. In other words, the programmer has no way to know what the computer will choose to do. I wouldn't categorize it as free will either. But what about free will is free, and where does that freedom come from?

[The Grand Nudger]

Good questions.  Both of which probably ought to have a little something in the way of an answer before we confidently assert that will -is- in fact free, eh?

[henryp]

I think AI computing allows the possibility of making choices which are not pre-programmed.  In other words, the programmer has no way to know what the computer will choose to do.  I wouldn't categorize it as free will either.  But what about free will is free, and where does that freedom come from?

The programmer might not know because the computational task of predicting the output of some really complex code could be an impossibility.  With unlimited time and resources, however, I'm almost certain the behavior could be mapped out.

So, I'd say rather than free will, we're just dealing with a lack of knowledge which looks a lot like what many call free will.  

And the point at the end, what about free will is free...I think the idea is that there is no free will.  We have what can exist in our universe, and it doesn't include this free will.

[bennyboy]

So, I'd say rather than free will, we're just dealing with a lack of knowledge which looks a lot like what many call free will.  

It sounds goofy, but I wonder if part of the fabric of reality includes this fact-- that there are barriers to knowledge which make things like mind and will unfathomable. For sure, if you see the brain as supervenient on the brain, modeling all the QM particles in the brain is going to present a computational barrier that we will probably never overcome.

I claim agnosticism, but I'm actually an ambiguist-- I think that especially at boundary conditions, polar opposites conflate into a single paradox, and perspective supercedes "reality." So in this case, I think at the boundary of our investigations of the mechanics of the brain, QM craziness will actually give way to a seemingly non-determinist mind and will that cannot be differentiated from a deeply free will, but that if you investigate mind and will, they will give way to a classical determinism. Impossible for both to hold true, but it's also impossible for a wave to be a particle. /LSD flashback speculation

[The Grand Nudger]

Isn't it delicious when something regarded as plainly obvious by a great many just seems to evaporate the moment we scrutinize it?  The unmoved mover of mind seems like something which we ought to be able to demonstrate...as much as we contend that it exists and that we have leveraged it for a great multitude of effects.  It seems strange, to me, that such a present and prescient ability of human beings, purportedly at the heart of so much that we are and do..............can just vanishe when people go looking for it.  -That- might be an even more impressive ability than the one from which free will takes it's name. It hides at boundary conditions.  It's existence hinging on conversational shorthand for an unknown quantity.

Maybe free will just doesn't want to be found?

[henryp]

So, I'd say rather than free will, we're just dealing with a lack of knowledge which looks a lot like what many call free will.  

It sounds goofy, but I wonder if part of the fabric of reality includes this fact-- that there are barriers to knowledge which make things like mind and will unfathomable.  For sure, if you see the brain as supervenient on the brain, modeling all the QM particles in the brain is going to present a computational barrier that we will probably never overcome.

I claim agnosticism, but I'm actually an ambiguist-- I think that especially at boundary conditions, polar opposites conflate into a single paradox, and perspective supercedes "reality."  So in this case, I think at the boundary of our investigations of the mechanics of the brain, QM craziness will actually give way to a seemingly non-determinist mind and will that cannot be differentiated from a deeply free will, but that if you investigate mind and will, they will give way to a classical determinism.  Impossible for both to hold true, but it's also impossible for a wave to be a particle.    /LSD flashback speculation

I don't know what enough of those words mean to reply to most of it.

I will say that I don't think determinism is necessary for an absence of free will.  If QM truly is random/unpredictable, our future is undetermined.  But that wouldn't change the fact that "We" aren't a part of what makes it.

[bennyboy]

Maybe the problem isn't in defining free will. Maybe it's in defining the self, which is the idea that we are in some way unique to the rest of the universe, i.e. that we are IN it rather than OF it.

[The Grand Nudger]

We can be "in it" and simultaneously "of it" I would assume? Just a matter of perspective really, eh? I think that we've defined a way in which we might be unique to "the rest" pretty well - at least in a very minimal way, in that we even entertain the notion of an unmoved mover in our minds. We don't grant that concession very lightly for "the rest". After all, the universe is clockwork...but not "I". The free part is the important bit, the defining bit, of that concept of will, not the self, not the will..not I or "the rest". That's pretty much announced at the outset isn't it?

Defining something though, is a far stretch from it actually being true.

[bennyboy]

Defining something though, is a far stretch from it actually being true.

zomg don't even get me started.

[Mudhammam]

How would I know what your will was, or what you took your will to be.  How?  I've seen many an idea of will tossed around here.  Would you prefer that I -imagined your position for you and then argued against it-..........jackass.

It's a bit difficult giving you the benefit of doubt considering our recent exchanges but it seems like someone interested in another's position will *first* read what they say and *then* ask for clarification on a specific point that they feel has been inadequately addressed... rather than resorting to simple-minded shrugs and name-calling.

There we go.  See.....elaboration was required and extremely helpful, because your idea of free will and mine are identical........except that I don't think it's free at all...and even after saying that... I'm not sure you and I actually disagree on the issue.  You've put a subset of internal things in one box, and called the rest "other".  The question asked is whether or not all of those things belong in the same box.  Your categories are helpful in trying to understand your framework...but they do not advance an answer to that question.  I certainly don't see how I could rescue it from bondage -by applying the label of "other" to a category I have invented in order to accommodate it.....

It seems to me that both of us feel that a certain amount of things can be crossed off the list.  What remains, what we do when we make decisions, whatever that is..is "free will" to both of us.  Yeah?  

The difference between compatibilists and determinists, as I see it, is purely semantical... which is why I find your insistence on further demonstration in the present context, well, confused. But nonetheless I'll try to clarify. A person who acts on his will, without coercion, is in my view acting freely. You will probably assert that the genetic and environmental factors that shape a person's will are coercive but I rather find it more useful to draw a distinction between influences and compulsions, the latter negating free will in the sense that a person has no choice, real or imaginary, whereas the former allows for a decision to be made in accordance with the reasons and desires that the person themselves find most pleasant. Take the terrorist who shot up the church in South Carolina, for example. We can diagnose him with mental illness and explain his behaviors as a result of his personal history, all of which is legitimate in tracing causes back to their roots. That doesn't change the fact that he acted of his own volition---no one strapped a bomb to his chest and forced him to behave in the way that he did. Like Schopenhauer said, "I can do what I will: I can, if I will, give everything I have to the poor and thus become poor myself—if I will! But I cannot will this, because the opposing motives have much too much power over me for me to be able to. On the other hand, if I had a different character, even to the extent that I were a saint, then I would be able to will it. But then I could not keep from willing it, and hence I would have to do so." He willed it, and as a result, acted upon it. He did not choose to will what he willed, but he chose to do what he willed, as in nobody else coerced him to do it. Perhaps you think that he could not have chosen otherwise, that the spindles of necessity do not allow for real possibility; I would only be inclined to agree if it was granted that he had no notion of right and wrong, but I think even the most hardened sociopaths usually have something of a conscience, however distorted it may be. That's the nature of rationality, which separates us from brutes, even if it only exists in some minds to a depressingly small degree. And though some proclaim knowledge to be power, what they really mean is freedom.