Do you believe in free will?

[Angrboda]

This I think is a fundamental error. Neither determinists nor free will theorists are proposing that determinism is in error. Both accept determinism fully. Where free will comes in is assuming that decisions and choices are determined by a law or laws that are not in the currently accepted set of natural laws. A free will is every bit a part of determinism, it's just that these specific choices are determined by something whose behavior and laws, for lack of a better term, are "free" — meaning certain departures from the other natural laws, whose behaviors seem not to possess this trait. The problem for the free will theorist is not to refute determinism — determinism is necessary for both — the problem is to demonstrate the existence of these heretofore unknown laws, and the entities which are ruled by them. (Pineal gland?)

The bolded part does seem to be the most commonly accepted meaning of free-will, even though there is nothing in its actual definition to suggest that. That is the misconception I'm trying to correct.

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."

—

If something is not determined, either by current natural laws, or whatever additions are required to understand our will as free, then its behavior is essentially random, as nothing, free or not, determines its course. And this, as noted, is not free will. (As Rhythm hinted and I agree, compatibilism, the notion that determinism as defined by current natural laws does not preclude free will, usually by changing the definition of free will, is attempting to solve the problem by defining away the hard bits. But the hard bits are the part we find interesting. If a used car salesman offered you a tired old but truly free will, or a shiny new compatibilist free will, most of us would opt for real free will.)

If the current understanding of free-will (as being free from natural law), is based on a misconception (that the agent can exist independently of the natural law), then, in light of modern knowledge, it bears correction. Correcting one's understanding of what something means is not redefinition.

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. 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. 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.

A stickier question, at least for the compatibilist, is what is meant by "I". It's a shortcut to say that whatever is in the brain is the I, because it's not — there are many things in the brain that are not the I, and some, Buddhists, contend there isn't even an I. Equating the brain with the I is largely handwaving, albeit handwaving which many materialists have fought hard to sell.

That question, in my opinion, is the crucial point which must be settles before the discussion of free-will even begins. But this is not a question that can be resolved by looking at things reductionally, but holistically.

Drawing an analogy - what is a computer? Is it the CPU? The RAM? The motherboard? The keyboard? Mouse? Monitor? The hard-disk? Or is it the operating system?

None of these things can be singly pointed out to represent a "computer". Even if they are simply put together - in a bag - they still wouldn't be a computer. We need to put these component entities in a specific arrangement, make them capable of performing specific functions. Only then the emergent entity called "computer" can come into existence.

Similarly, we cannot keep pointing to parts of oneself and keep asking "Is that me?", when what "you" are, is the sum of it all, in a particular arrangement. So, no, you are not your brain. Atleast, you are not just your brain.

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.



(Anyway, my browser crashed so I've lost my place, and to be honest, I'm kinda burned out from all of Rhythm's abuse, so I'm gonna step back for an indefinite period of time. [and no, Rhythm, I'm not blaming you, I'm just reporting my emotional state to explain why I'm stepping aside for an unknown length of time, and to an unknown extent.].)

[The Grand Nudger]

Hey hey, no worries Apo (and hopefully no love lost in the long run), I intended to abuse your opinions and statements, collateral damage, I apologize.

[Angrboda]

Oh c'mon, Rhythm, let's be honest. Throughout the first 3/4ths of this you kept repeatedly accusing me of claiming something supernatural. That I couldn't substantiate my "woo" or "supernatural" claims made me a target of ridicule to you, and you indulged. Where are your accusations of me peddling woo now?

Ack. Just read your apology after posting. More later.

[The Grand Nudger]

Perhaps that's because you would state the case for eliminative materialism, and then recoil in apparent shock and horror that someone might actually go with it, proceeding to then call the position you had just offered your support of handwaving and ignorance, "a hard sell". Perhaps that's because you offered up what "some buddhists" would contend as though it had any bearing whatsoever on demonstrable science. For 3/4ths of this thread (insomuch as our conversation is a part of it) you've been firmly stating your case, and then arguing against your case. I've been wondering what other mysterious thing we are referring to, since we're not looking to accept explanations which are the product of evidence, and completely in line with eliminative materialism's suggestions as to how we should proceed. Since we're apparently making assumptions about what we do not know by reference to what we do not know, and not what we do. I keep asking you the same questions, and you keep moving right along. Woo doesn't always have to cast spells or call itself a god. It need only offer some mysterious "other". In this case, the "other" would seem to be "no other", but this is not the position of cognitive science, or eliminative materialism...so precisely who's position is it, and where does it come from? If the thing that we call the self is not the function of the brain (no more, no less)..the only thing known in the natural world which can account for this, and indeed the only place where it is accounted for by evidence, then what other means are you invoking?

[Angrboda]

My "recoiling in shock in horror" was an illusion created by your subconscious. Got any evidence for it being real? Since I'm the one who supposedly exhibited those things, I'm relatively confident what you assert did not happen.

Oh, and regarding the love lost. Not per se, though I'm not as confident in your reasoning abilities as I used to be. I see evidence of flawed thinking, and while lately I've come to the conclusion that making assessments of other people on forums, for me, has been a case of me largely making up my mind without waiting long enough for sufficient number of experiences to collect to properly ground my assessment (usually resulting in my lowering my overall assessment of a person from previously thought), I'm not sure I have an answer of what I should think in the meantime. Yes, I still love you, yes I still think you're a great person (and said so last night on another forum), but your credibility as a thinker has taken a serious hit in my eyes, and I don't know that that can be repaired by love. Maybe I'm still possessed by the demons of my hurt feelings, I don't know; and I won't know until time has passed, and the normal processes of integration of new experience with old settles how I feel about you. In the meantime, I'm not blaming anyone particularly, just patiently waiting for all my thoughts and feelings to fall into place.

[The Grand Nudger]

We are our brain, the self is the brain. That's eliminative materialism. That's the position of demonstrable evidence. I actually mentioned some of your more notable responses to this statement in my post above, that's my evidence. I also linked you a textbook, and two journals, and the wiki for eliminative materialism, because I was fairly certain you were unclear about some portion of what you were arguing for and against (since they are one and the same), and I still am, or I'd have dropped it.

Will you be answering any of the direct questions I ask of you at any point?

[Angrboda]

I added to my reply after your reply to it. You might want to examine that addition. In the meantime, I suggest we just stop. You think you're right in faulting me, I think I'm entirely right in faulting you, odds are, neither position is 100% true, and repeated accusations and counter-accusations is more to exercise our own demons than to address the problem.

(Though I'd appreciate your listing the direct questions you've been asking and how they relate to my original statement that the self is caused by the brain, but the self is not the brain. I'm not offering to answer them immediately, I just want to understand what you are saying I did or did not say, and why. I'll consider them and, perhaps, come back to them after I have a chance to remove my emotions from the equation (to the best of my ability).)

[The Grand Nudger]

The constant appeal of those that refuse to address concrete criticism of the philosophy which they feel proves them correct "Neither of us can prove this or that, we're probably both wrong".

I'm not trying to excersize any demons. Did I mis-interpet your position as that of eliminative materialism? Does EM not hold that these concepts that we have tried to develop, such as self, are relics of a poorly explored mechanism, better reduced to the biological? Is the product of that reduction not the brain? Is this conclusion not well evidenced? Have I misrepresented those conclusions that have arisen out of evidence? I am incredibly unsatisfied with this agree to disagree business. Especially after you've slung so much mud my way, and then played the victim as though my hand were the only one with a sword in it.

[Angrboda]

The constant appeal of those that refuse to address concrete criticism of the philosophy which they feel proves them correct "Neither of us can prove this or that, we're probably both wrong".

That wasn't an appeal of "those that refuse to address concrete criticism" but a well evidenced conclusion from psychological research into cognitive bias. And that's not even what I said. I said that us blaming the other is likely not going to be a case of one being all wrong and one being all right in the matter. But as usual, you're projecting your assumptions on to my words, and equivocating by restating what I said in ways that aren't faithful to what I wrote, these are common forms of cognitive bias (and reasoning mistakes) and if you think your thinking has evaded all bias, that is likely yet another cognitive bias known as the bias blindspot. I'm quite willing to accept that I'm biased and my thinking is probably in some sense irrationally biased and flawed. You apparently think you are not; I guess that makes you a new species. (And you wonder why I question your credibility?)

[The Grand Nudger]

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

So the answer is no, you don't care to reconcile your disagreement with EM with your approval of EM (or even reiterate your support for EM, as well as your argument against it), no problem. You don't want to show where I've misrepresented either the position of EM or cognitive science. NP. What else are we going to complain about next? How hurtful it is that I won't stop asking you questions? You ask, I answer, I ask, off on a tangent we go (but god forbid I mention that either, it's "abuse").