Free will and determinism

William Lane Craig fits that description, also a variety of people who believe God knows the future before it happens.

I'll admit I find the attempts to have God's foreknowledge reconciled with supposedly genuine free will to be as nonsensical as the materialist who denies free will but talks of responsibility.

The way I've heard Christian reconcile this is that God has knowledge of all choices an individual can make, but not of what set of paths an individual will ultimately choose to go down, because even the individual doesn't know in advance until each moment of choosing.

It's apparent pure chance because (a) it is predicted by QM, and (b) we measure it and there is no pattern. I'm talking about which particle decays next, not half-lives of groups of particles.

Everything that is indeterministic is not pure chance. I'm not sure why you think I'm saying that. There are half-lives. But it is pure chance which particle decays next.

So there is argument and there is evidence. There is no proof, because this is science, not math.

The science is the half-lives demarcated to different substances (radioisotopes). So just the data.

The claim of pure chance, which I note suggests a bizarre Science-defeating worldview, is a metaphysical projection onto the data.

So, to challenge the metaphysical claim, I don't see how (a) and (b) indicate pure chance. Also not sure how one can claim there is not pattern when a stochastic model can be formed. If there was no pattern, there'd be no half-lives.

It seems contradictory to say the half-lives are indeterministic but not pure chance, but the emission of particles is pure chance. What is there in the measurement of half-lives that goes beyond the observation of the emitted particles that would produce something that isn't pure chance from a series of pure chance events?

We agree that software pseudo-random number generators are not truly random. But any computer that needs true random numbers, such as the lottery machines, have true random number I/O devices that generate streams of random bits.

Even these number generators never produce true random numbers.

Randomness has never been scientifically established to exist. But it's a useful abstraction.

Things only appear random because we don't understand how or why those things happen without looking at the past inputs.

We can never predict in advance, only look back at what happened to figure why something happened the way it did.

There is a relation to the world for particle decay, in the half-lives of various elements. It involves various per-substance constants (see below). But the decay of a specific particle is unpredictable according to QM. If you buy that QM is indeterministic, then indeterministic particle decay should be no problem. If you think that nothing is indeterministic, then I really want to know where you can put free will.

Indeterministic particle decay has never been an issue. Quantum Mechanics is not deterministic by its very nature. It cannot be random either ~ rather, it is multiple possibilities at once, possibilities that are not restricted to a single outcome until something determines where the value finally settles.

I'm not sure why we'd put much stock in the "average person's" view of deep reality. Any gut feelings are almost surely wrong.

I'm not sure why we should put much stock in the average Materialist scientist's view of deep reality either. After many decades of claims, none of them have borne any fruit about the nature of reality as a whole.

I don't trust science to have any of the answers about what is essentially a problem that lies with the domain of metaphysical philosophy. A problem science can say nothing about, because the problem is not one of physics and matter.

It's apparent pure chance because (a) it is predicted by QM, and (b) we measure it and there is no pattern. I'm talking about which particle decays next, not half-lives of groups of particles.

Everything that is indeterministic is not pure chance. I'm not sure why you think I'm saying that. There are half-lives. But it is pure chance which particle decays next.

Where is the scientific evidence that particle decay is actually "pure chance"?

You say "apparent pure chance"... meaning, it appears to be "pure chance", not that it actually is.

What particle decays next cannot be "pure chance", except in lack of foreknowledge of what will happen next.

There is always a reason why one particle decays before another. Because why that one, and not another?

Just because we cannot see the pattern playing out does not mean that there isn't a pattern. It means that we just don't understand how the pattern works.

There are computer models that model particle decay, no? Computer models that model this kind of thing cannot rely on randomness.

Where is the scientific evidence that particle decay is actually "pure chance"?

You say "apparent pure chance"... meaning, it appears to be "pure chance", not that it actually is.

What particle decays next cannot be "pure chance", except in lack of foreknowledge of what will happen next.

There is always a reason why one particle decays before another. Because why that one, and not another?

Just because we cannot see the pattern playing out does not mean that there isn't a pattern. It means that we just don't understand how the pattern works.

There are computer models that model particle decay, no? Computer models that model this kind of thing cannot rely on randomness.

I basically agree with Paul on this issue. The crucial thing is that particles don't age. If a particle has a half life of one second, but has managed to survive for 1 year, it still has exactly the same half life as it did originally.

That is what causes exponential decay - half die in the first period, another half die in the second period (leaving just 1/4 still there) and so on.

The same scheme applies to the disintegration of many chemicals provided the temperature is kept constant.

If my free will simply consisted of my doing things at random, it would feel very odd indeed!

David

Did you mean "him", David?

Thanks, yes I did! The trouble is, I use Grammarly to remove spelling mistakes, but unfortunately it sometimes thinks it knows what word I meant to type and corrects it automatically.

David

The way I've heard Christian reconcile this is that God has knowledge of all choices an individual can make, but not of what set of paths an individual will ultimately choose to go down, because even the individual doesn't know in advance until each moment of choosing.

Personally, I believe God has foreknowledge in general terms because he is ultimately in charge and will direct the most important events himself, but within all that, we still have the free will he gave us when he created us.  Also, we can philosophize on whether or not a hobson's choice can be considered free will.  For example, If a gun was pointed at me and the wielder told me to eat a parsnip or else..., I theoretically have free will, but in reality I'm going to get shot, because there is no way I'm going to eat a parsnip!  God frequently manipulates events to guide us where he wants us to go.  That way he puts me in a position where of my own free will I will do exactly what he wanted me to do.

Personally, I believe God has foreknowledge in general terms because he is ultimately in charge and will direct the most important events himself, but within all that, we still have the free will he gave us when he created us.

Ah, but we only have free will if God isn't interfering. If God is ultimately in charge... our choices don't actually mean anything, because God's plan trumps all, apparently. That's not the world I observe. The world I observe has God not interfering.

Not helping, not harming, just observing. A God that doesn't think or act like a human, because God is not human in any capacity. God is... transcendental in every respect. Beyond any living being's comprehension.

Also, we can philosophize on whether or not a hobson's choice can be considered free will.  For example, If a gun was pointed at me and the wielder told me to eat a parsnip or else..., I theoretically have free will, but in reality I'm going to get shot, because there is no way I'm going to eat a parsnip!

You still have free will in such a case. You have the free will to say fuck you to the wielder. You have the free will to respond however you feel necessary, even if you choices are limited by what you would consider in the circumstances.

God frequently manipulates events to guide us where he wants us to go.  That way he puts me in a position where of my own free will I will do exactly what he wanted me to do.

That's not free will. That's coercion. I don't think that God ever directly intervenes at all, based on my above description of God.

Rather, our spirit guides / guardian angels / whatever-you-call-them have the task of guiding us down the path we ourselves chose before we came here.

True free will means having the potential to fuck up and make mistakes, no matter what they are. Only way to grow and mature is to make mistakes, and learn from them. The bigger, the better.

Ah, but we only have free will if God isn't interfering. If God is ultimately in charge... our choices don't actually mean anything, because God's plan trumps all, apparently. That's not the world I observe. The world I observe has God not interfering.

I was referring to me and by implication to other christians, i.e. those who have chosen to allow God to work this way with them.  God's plan does not trump all in the same way as a company's direction still allows its employers to make choices within that and those who are not employed of course make choices without having to think of the company.

You still have free will in such a case. You have the free will to say fuck you to the wielder. You have the free will to respond however you feel necessary, even if you choices are limited by what you would consider in the circumstances.


That's not free will. That's coercion. I don't think that God ever directly intervenes at all, based on my above description of God.

But the two examples are the same except for the intent and the rights of the "coercer"

I basically agree with Paul on this issue. The crucial thing is that particles don't age. If a particle has a half life of one second, but has managed to survive for 1 year, it still has exactly the same half life as it did originally.

That is what causes exponential decay - half die in the first period, another half die in the second period (leaving just 1/4 still there) and so on.

The same scheme applies to the disintegration of many chemicals provided the temperature is kept constant.

If my free will simply consisted of my doing things at random, it would feel very odd indeed!

David

How can it be random - as in Pure Chance - but also follow the pattern you lay out above?

Also not only is the notion of a probabilistic law odd, but even odder to think the mathematical modeling of stochastic variables implies some compulsion.

The stochastic model isn't telling us anything actual about causation, as per atheist extraordinaire Bertrand Russell:

"All that physics gives us is certain equations giving abstract properties of their changes. But as to what it is that changes, and what it changes from and to—as to this, physics is silent." 

All the stochastic model shows is that, by our best current science, indeterminism is real.

Also note from the Farewell to Determinism paper I posted earlier that marco-level determinism is only seeming determinism:

...part of the point of physics, starting from Newton, was to be able to predict the future, one way or another. So if Nature is not deterministic, how come that our deterministic theories (like Newton’s laws of motion, or any generalization thereof) actually work so well in practice? If there is no determinism, how come we do not see complete chaos all around us? The answer is rather simple — in some cases chaos theory takes a long time to kick in. More precisely, if we consider a small enough physical system, which interacts with its surroundings weakly enough, and it is located in a small enough region of space, and we are trying to predict its behavior for a short enough future, and our measurements of the state of the system are crude enough to begin with — we might just get lucky, so that the the error bars of our system’s state do not increase drastically before we stop looking. In other words, the apparent determinism of everyday world is an approximation, a mirage, an illusion that can last for a while, before the effects of chaos theory become too big to ignore. There is a parameter in chaos theory that quantifies how much time can pass before the errors of the initial state become substantially large — it is called the Lyapunov time [10]. The pertinent Wikipedia article has a nice table of various Lyapunov times for various physical systems, which should further illuminate the reason why we consider some of our everyday physics as “deterministic.”

Are we really going to say all physical phenomena are governed by Pure Chance? Isn't it far more reasonable to say that if seemingly "random" phenomena can produce such reliable seeming determinism, then the nature of causation is neither determined nor random?

Even if we were to accept the physical universe is "governed" by Pure Chance we still have our own mental faculties that distinguish between gibberish sentences and our best math proofs. So then given the organized nature of the mental around our capacity to Reason  - think of the computer science math proofs that allow you and I to talk here - aren't we mental entities the actual source of causal power in the random ocean of the physical, in which case there seems to be little issue for free will? The philosopher Dupre actually makes an assertion along these lines:

Once we see causal order as something special rather than something universal, there is no obstacle to seeing the human will as an autonomous source of such order.

Physicist Aleksandar Mikovic also has similar thoughts though he gets into Platonism:

A law of Nature can be easilly understood within a platonic metaphysics. It is a postulate in a mathematical theory we use to describe the Nature. On the other hand, explaining the laws of Nature within a materialistic metaphysics, is more complicated. If one accepts that the natural laws are different entities from space, time and matter, and are irreducible, then for a materialist it does not seem to be a problem to add a finite set of such objects to his ontology. In this case the natural laws are the postulates of a finite TOE. However, any TOE has to include the aritmethics, so that Goedel's theorems imply that there can not be a finite number of laws which completely explain the universe and one must introduce an infinite number of natural laws. This means that in addition to space, time and matter, one has to introduce an infinite number of other entities, which are not reducible to space, time and matter, and hence one is back at platonism.

In order to avoid introducing an infinite number of non-material entities in a materialistic metaphysics, one then has to give up the idea of a natural law as a mathematical concept (i.e. a postulate in a mathematical theory). Then the only explanation for a natural law in a materialistic metaphysics is that a natural law represents a regular pattern which appears in the fundamentaly chaotic motion of matter. This regularity appears at random and lasts for a very long time. In this case one accepts the view that at the fundamental level there is no order and the particle trajectories and field configurations are completely arbitrary. This doctrine is a logical possibility, but it is highly implausible. The standard example for this type of implausibility is to find a string of letters in a random sequence of letters which corresponds to a well-known novel; or to construct a functioning airplane by using a tornado passing through a junk yard. Also, if the natural laws are finite-duration random regularities, then the Earth can stop orbiting the Sun tomorrow, which means that our reality can disintegrate at any time in the future.

Another problem in a materialistic metaphysics is how an observer will recognize a natural law given that the ideas of order do not exist. This is also a problem in a platonic metaphysics, see [6], but it is a less severe problem, because the basic elements from which one can construct a solution already exist, see [2] for a possible solution.

However, for me and I believe @Valmar the point is that rather than throw our hands up at the first deviation from seeming determinism and invoke Chance it is far more rational to accept that there is a place [for] phenomena like quantum "oddities" as well as free will in the story of causation. To go back to the post where I put those William James quotes:

Chance is a purely negative and relative term, giving us no information about that of which it is predicated, except that it happens to
be disconnected with something else—not controlled, secured, or necessitated by other things in advance of its own actual presence. What I
say is that it tells us nothing about what a thing may be in itself to call it “chance.” All you mean by calling it “chance” is that this is not guaranteed, that it may also fall out otherwise. For the system of other things has no positive hold on the chance-thing. Its origin is in a
certain fashion negative: it escapes, and says, Hands off! coming, when it comes, as a free gift, or not at all.

This negativeness, however, and this opacity of the chance-thing when thus considered ab extra, or from the point of view of previous
things or distant things, do not preclude its having any amount of positiveness and luminosity from within, and at its own place and moment...

So free will is an instance of the "positiveness and luminosity from within."

Thus it is unclear for me, in light of a rational response to quantum indeterminism, to see what exactly the problem is for free will that needs some kind of "how does it work?" explanation that is a work around a supposed randomness/deterministic dichotomy. I understand that there is a problem for some in the confines of their own minds, but someone being a prisoner to mechanistic-materialist belief systems is not a problem against free will in general. Certainly not my humble claim that free will is possible is some possible world. Or to put it another way, free will is a logical metaphysical possibility.

But I will note that even largely within the confines of naturalism one can lay out a story of causation that has a place for free will.