Free Will Debate

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

@polymath257

If I will something, it doesn't stop being willed simply because it was pre-determined.

That’s exactly what happens. Freely willed events and pre-determined events are the opposite of each other. A thing cannot be itself and its opposite at the same time.

Boru

[polymath257]

I can’t add anything more than the example of the sun.  A deterministic free will is that we own our actions like the sun owns its reactions. 

But the sun does NOT have sensitive dependence on initial conditions. Slight changes in the initial conditions do NOT produce large scale differences in the outcome, but rather similarly minor differences.

With brains, small differences in initial conditions would produce a different choice.

To say this is absolutely not what the term is taken to mean in common use and for a long time is an understatement. 

So what *is* the common use? I have yet to be able to make sense of it.

A hammer owns its strikes this way.  A switch owns its effects this way.  Water owns its wetness, so on and so forth, all things ever believed to lack free will turn out to have it.  In fact….all things, full stop , have this sort of free will.

Not true, the major differences in the outcome of what happens to a hammer comes from outside of the hammer. The internal; state of the hammer is NOT relevant to where the hammer strikes. That is very differeent than the case for brains.

It was the contention that we were somehow outside of a causal chain.  That our choices were a pull yourself up by your bootstraps kind of thing.

Except that we are also supposed to be the initiators of causal events. But somehow our preferences and viewpoints are also supposed to be involved.

That just means the whole concept is incoherent: we are supposed to be independent of causality but also intimately involved in it.

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@polymath257

If I will something, it doesn't stop being willed simply because it was pre-determined.

That’s exactly what happens. Freely willed events and pre-determined events are the opposite of each other. A thing cannot be itself and its opposite at the same time.

Boru

So a 'free will' should not have *any* dependence on my personality, desires, attitudes, tastes, hopes, or anything else about me? That seems rather strange.

It seems to me that we *want* free will to be determined by 'my' choices. And there is nothing about that contradicting determinism.

it seems to me that the opposite of pre-determined is 'random'. And having the choices be random seems even less 'free' than having them determined by my internal state (even if that internal state is determined by previous events).

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I can’t add anything more than the example of the sun.  A deterministic free will is that we own our actions like the sun owns its reactions. 

But the sun does NOT have sensitive dependence on initial conditions. Slight changes in the initial conditions do NOT produce large scale differences in the outcome, but rather similarly minor differences.

With brains, small differences in initial conditions would produce a different choice.

To say this is absolutely not what the term is taken to mean in common use and for a long time is an understatement. 

So what *is* the common use? I have yet to be able to make sense of it.

A hammer owns its strikes this way.  A switch owns its effects this way.  Water owns its wetness, so on and so forth, all things ever believed to lack free will turn out to have it.  In fact….all things, full stop , have this sort of free will.

Not true, the major differences in the outcome of what happens to a hammer comes from outside of the hammer. The internal; state of the hammer is NOT relevant to where the hammer strikes. That is very differeent than the case for brains.

It was the contention that we were somehow outside of a causal chain.  That our choices were a pull yourself up by your bootstraps kind of thing.

Except that we are also supposed to be the initiators of causal events. But somehow our preferences and viewpoints are also supposed to be involved.

That just means the whole concept is incoherent: we are supposed to be independent of causality but also intimately involved in it.

---

@polymath257


That’s exactly what happens. Freely willed events and pre-determined events are the opposite of each other. A thing cannot be itself and its opposite at the same time.

Boru

So a 'free will' should not have *any* dependence on my personality, desires, attitudes, tastes, hopes, or anything else about me? That seems rather strange.

It seems to me that we *want* free will to be determined by 'my' choices. And there is nothing about that contradicting determinism.

If determinism is correct, then what you think of as ‘choices’ are nothing of the sort - you aren’t willing anything. In other words, you only feel as if you’re making a choice. If you debate with yourself at length whether to pick up a spoon with your right or left hand, the result will always be what it was always going to be (in a deterministic universe).

But again, I’m not arguing for or against determinism OR free will. I’m saying it’s a mug’s game to try to determine which is correct.

Boru

[polymath257]

But the sun does NOT have sensitive dependence on initial conditions. Slight changes in the initial conditions do NOT produce large scale differences in the outcome, but rather similarly minor differences.

With brains, small differences in initial conditions would produce a different choice.


So what *is* the common use? I have yet to be able to make sense of it.


Not true, the major differences in the outcome of what happens to a hammer comes from outside of the hammer. The internal; state of the hammer is NOT relevant to where the hammer strikes. That is very differeent than the case for brains.


Except that we are also supposed to be the initiators of causal events. But somehow our preferences and viewpoints are also supposed to be involved.

That just means the whole concept is incoherent: we are supposed to be independent of causality but also intimately involved in it.

---

So a 'free will' should not have *any* dependence on my personality, desires, attitudes, tastes, hopes, or anything else about me? That seems rather strange.

It seems to me that we *want* free will to be determined by 'my' choices. And there is nothing about that contradicting determinism.

If determinism is correct, then what you think of as ‘choices’ are nothing of the sort - you aren’t willing anything. In other words, you only feel as if you’re making a choice. If you debate with yourself at length whether to pick up a spoon with your right or left hand, the result will always be what it was always going to be (in a deterministic universe).

But again, I’m not arguing for or against determinism OR free will. I’m saying it’s a mug’s game to try to determine which is correct.

Boru

I made a choice: that choice was determined by my psychology. I was uncertain about hat I wanted to do, I felt the urge to decide the way I did. And then I did it. How is that *not* 'will'? Willing the choice is part of the causal sequence.

[Anomalocaris]

Because there are no married bachelors.

Boru

If I will something, it doesn't stop being willed simply because it was pre-determined.

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If the conditions in your brain that determined which brand of milk you choose ultimately depends largely on the totality of your external experience and the genes which were passed externally to the first cell that would become you,  is there still really a causal nexus is within you, or your “mind” simply become a convenient accounting bucket in which to place not the cause, but a collection of intermediate processes somewhere in the middle between cause and the effect in question, that so happen to occur within a particular durable configuration of molecules to which we attach particular emotive significance?

Yes, there is. if something had been slightly different within my brain, then I would have made a different decision. If, instead, something in that first cell had been slightly different, I would not have been at the store at all.

Yes, the mind (and will) are intermediate stages in a process going back billions of years. So? that doesn't change the fact that my mind is where the 'decision' was made.

the question seems to me to be, can something be sufficiently different in your brain to have caused you to make different decision, without that difference being directly traceably to an earlier difference that had already existed outside your brain? 

if not, then no decision really originated in your brain.   it is just first perceived by you as a difference in your brain.

[polymath257]

If I will something, it doesn't stop beingh willed simply because it was pre-determined.

---

Yes, there is. if something had been slightly different within my brain, then I would have made a different decision. If, instead, something in that first cell had been slightly different, I would not have been at the store at all.

Yes, the mind (and will) are intermediate stages in a process going back billions of years. So? that doesn't change the fact that my mind is where the 'decision' was made.

the question seems to me to be, can something be sufficiently different in your brain to have caused you to make different decision, without that difference being directly traceably to an earlier difference that had already existed outside your brain? 

if not, then no decision really originated in your brain.   it is just first perceived by you as a difference in your brain.

Why would that be desirable? I *want* my decisions to be based on my experiences (outside events affecting me). It would be exceedingly strange if they were not.

Most likely, that small difference in my brain that 'decided' is the result great number of previous events, both inside and outside of my brain. No single one of them would be enough for a different decision, most likely. Those previous influences had to come together to affect the activity of my brain for the decision to happen.

In other words, both external and internal events affect my decisions. Duh.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

If determinism is correct, then what you think of as ‘choices’ are nothing of the sort - you aren’t willing anything. In other words, you only feel as if you’re making a choice. If you debate with yourself at length whether to pick up a spoon with your right or left hand, the result will always be what it was always going to be (in a deterministic universe).

But again, I’m not arguing for or against determinism OR free will. I’m saying it’s a mug’s game to try to determine which is correct.

Boru

I made a choice: that choice was determined by my psychology. I was uncertain about hat I wanted to do, I felt the urge to decide the way I did. And then I did it. How is that *not* 'will'? Willing the choice is part of the causal sequence.

But it isn’t possible to know if you were willing the choice or not. If your ‘choice’ was determined by your psychology, then it isn’t a choice at all - your alleged choice was pre-determined by your psychological make-up, which in turn was determined by your genetics, your environment, your education, your relationships, and so on. And all of these would in turn have been pre-determined by other extrinsic factors.

If the universe is deterministic, there can be no place for free will. You can have one or the other, not both.

Boru

[polymath257]

I made a choice: that choice was determined by my psychology. I was uncertain about hat I wanted to do, I felt the urge to decide the way I did. And then I did it. How is that *not* 'will'? Willing the choice is part of the causal sequence.

But it isn’t possible to know if you were willing the choice or not. If your ‘choice’ was determined by your psychology, then it isn’t a choice at all - your alleged choice was pre-determined by your psychological make-up, which in turn was determined by your genetics, your environment, your education, your relationships, and so on. And all of these would in turn have been pre-determined by other extrinsic factors.

If the universe is deterministic, there can be no place for free will. You can have one or the other, not both.

Boru

What does it mean to 'will a choice'? If *I* am the one feeling the desire and it is *my* brain where the last significant cause occurs, then how it that *not* my will?

Yes, I fully expect and *want* my decisions to be based on my desires, experiences, etc. otherwise I fail to see how it could be *my* will or to be free.

[The Grand Nudger]

I made a choice: that choice was determined by my psychology. I was uncertain about hat I wanted to do, I felt the urge to decide the way I did. And then I did it. How is that *not* 'will'? Willing the choice is part of the causal sequence.

It is will, just not a free will.

[polymath257]

It seems that people frame 'free will' in a way that requires it to be an 'uncaused cause'. Is that seriously what people mean by 'free will'?

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I made a choice: that choice was determined by my psychology. I was uncertain about hat I wanted to do, I felt the urge to decide the way I did. And then I did it. How is that *not* 'will'? Willing the choice is part of the causal sequence.

It is will, just not a free will.

So, once again, what is the significance of the adjective 'free' in this context? The decision was 'made by me' in that the *decision* was an event in *my* brain. I based that decision on my experiences, desires, thoughts, etc. How is that *not* free?