Free will and determinism

Interesting.

I'm a free will guy but I don't have a strong rational basis for why I feel this way.  Its much more emotional for me: I can't imagine this entire existence (mine, yours, everyone's) is just deterministic physicalism.  It doesn't "feel" right.  (Hardly comforting to my rational, scientifically-sensitive self.  )

I think a large portion of free will deniers like the idea because it absolves them from poor decisions in life through. so it's not fully "logical"

There's certainly been no shortage of these kind of threads that have popped up here and they always seem to go about in the same way. I've mostly stepped away from the whole thing for a while now cause really it's all kind of silly in the end to me. To understand free will would be to understand the fundamental way the universe functions, something that may not even be available to humans. Maybe it doesn't exist, maybe it does in a way we just don't understand. Maybe humans are purely deterministic, but in whatever realm potentially comes after the weaves of different possibilities are open to us. Who knows. 

Personally I've kinda of lost faith in the whole free will side as time has gone on. For a while I was adament for it, but now I couldn't really be bothered. When you look at things like NDEs, paranormal experiences, there seems to be no small amount of plans and determined actions going on. Maybe it's all fate in the end, and way we live is the way we're meant to whichever good or horrible way it plays out. I don't know, it's all such a drain on the brain. 

Really I believe the speech from the third Matrix movie between Agent Smith and Neo highlights the whole thing best. 

"Why, Mr. Anderson? Why, why? Why do you do it? Why, why get up? Why keep fighting? Do you believe you're fighting... for something? For more than your survival? Can you tell me what it is? Do you even know? Is it freedom? Or truth? Perhaps peace? Could it be for love? Illusions, Mr. Anderson. Vagaries of perception. Temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose. And all of them as artificial as the Matrix itself, although... only a human mind could invent something as insipid as love. You must be able to see it, Mr. Anderson. You must know it by now. You can't win. It's pointless to keep fighting. Why, Mr. Anderson? Why? Why do you persist?"

"Because I choose to."

I'm sure I repeat myself - I guess I posted my views in the past, more than once. But anyway...

A very long time ago, I guess when I was about 18 years old, some friends and I were talking about whether the world, including ourselves  was deterministic or whether we had free will. I considered it for a few days and came to a pragmatic, purely practical view. That is, it is necessary to believe I have free will. To believe otherwise would make life utterly pointless and I'd have no reason to live.

I'll add that I did wrestle with ideas what was the reason to live or to not live and that took me more than a couple of days to come up with any positive viewpoint. A number of years at least, exploring not just in the abstract but through living out different perspectives on the meaning or otherwise of life. That is a different question and has a different answer.

To return to the matter of free will. I'm sure most people have already heard this said to be Native American tale but it is worth repeating.

The Story of Two Wolves

    An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy. “It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil – his name is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.”

    He continued, “The other is good – his name is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”

    The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”

    The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

That, to me is the essence of free will.


- with apologies to anyone reading who may know the origin and rendering of the story more accurately.

I think a large portion of free will deniers like the idea because it absolves them from poor decisions in life through. so it's not fully "logical"

I don't know if I 100% agree with this but it does annoy me that free will deniers will dismissively say anyone who disagrees with them is just engaging in wishful thinking about what they want to be true.

As you note, the criticism works the other way too, there are plenty of people who take comfort in the idea that their failures are not their own responsibility.

I would at least say even if humans don't have free will there are entities (God?) who make choices as I don't see what ultimately binds causes and effects...but randomness also seems illogical to me. So there has to be a way to get from the prior state where - if one rejects all brute facts of cause/effect binding - an infinite number of effects could happen but only one does. (I don't necessarily mean when you roll a dice it could turn into a hummingbird, but at the very least it seems the final position of the dice could have infinite variations as one goes for an exact measurement.)

The only example I can think of where we internally see how among possibilities one is selected is from the experience of our own decision making. This is a position that seems to extend back to animists in the beginnings of human history to academic luminaries like Whitehead...even Bertrand Russell, the adamant atheist, mused that the causality from the inside might involve something like panpsychism.

With that in mind, looking at parapsychology there seems to be evidence for mental causation at the worldly level (PK) and the importance of choices at the transcendent level (NDE life review). It makes me wonder if there were more weird quantum effects at the classical level or more common + stronger incidences of Psi...if determinism would have ever become a popular position...

That, to me is the essence of free will.

Maybe my previous post needs some expansion. What I was pointing to was not about the outside world, not about the physical. It is about our own thoughts and how we steer and guide ourselves.

I know that much of what we do in daily life is on a kind of autopilot. Sometimes this is useful. Lots of things such as putting on clothes or preparing food or getting on a bus or driving a car, many things are made smoother and more efficient this way.

But other times, autopilot can be disastrous. For example one person says something, another person replies and it turns into an argument or disagreement with unpleasant feeling on both sides. But how much of that exchange is actually deliberate? Sometimes the same types of interactions take place repeatedly in a person's life and the person might say, "that's just the way I am. I say what I think". But I'm not so sure. Much of the time when I observe people there isn't really any deliberation or conscious choice in such things, it's just a habit, a routine like cleaning one's teeth or walking down the street.

So when I speak in favour of free will, I'm not talking about whether or not it exists. What I'm referring to is making use of that capability. Something like, you've got it, use it.

Potentially relevant recent post by Feser:

Quantum mechanics and the laws of thought

It isn’t news that much pop philosophy nonsense is peddled in the name of quantum mechanics.  Perhaps the best-known example is the claim that quantum mechanics refutes one or more of the traditional “laws of thought.”  The arguments are fallacious, but stubbornly persistent. 

The laws of thought are three:
1. The law of non-contradiction (LNC), which states that the statements p and not-p cannot both be true.  In symbolic notation: ~ (p • ~p)
2. The law of identity, which says that everything is identical with itself.  In symbolic notation, a = a
3. The law of excluded middle (LEM), which states that either p or not-p is true.  In symbolic notation: p V ~p

As philosophers often point out, the laws can be stated either in logical terms (i.e. in terms of propositions and their logical relationships) or in ontological terms (i.e. in terms of the things that propositions are about and their metaphysical relationships).  But the difference is irrelevant to the points I will be making, so I’ll ignore it for present purposes.

Skeptical silliness

The reason these are characterized as laws of thought is that reason, it is claimed, would not be possible at all if they were not true.  They are first principles of rationality in the sense that they are so basic to it that they are more obviously correct than any argument that could be given either for or against them.  Hence, it is claimed, even someone who claims to have reason to doubt or deny any of them must implicitly presuppose them in the very effort to question them...

But other times, autopilot can be disastrous. For example one person says something, another person replies and it turns into an argument or disagreement with unpleasant feeling on both sides. But how much of that exchange is actually deliberate? Sometimes the same types of interactions take place repeatedly in a person's life and the person might say, "that's just the way I am. I say what I think". But I'm not so sure. Much of the time when I observe people there isn't really any deliberation or conscious choice in such things, it's just a habit, a routine like cleaning one's teeth or walking down the street.

One of the interesting things I wonder about is the idea that we are continuously surrounded by entities that seek to influence our behavior for good or ill.

It's not exactly a pleasant thought, and I can see people using this to excuse their bad behaviors, but there seems to be successful exorcisms of negative personality traits. (It's actually one of the reasons I am dismissive of the Super Psi theory, as the sub-personalities that it depends on seem to at times confirm the existence of a spiritual aspect to existence.)

I can also see a both/and consideration, where at least thinking of one's negative traits as "Other" may be the first step to bettering one's self. So even if you aren't removing evil spirits from invading your thoughts by personifying them in practice you may find an active imagination technique that jump starts a shift toward better behavior.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar...via%3Dihub
Thoughts on this study?

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ar...via%3Dihub
Thoughts on this study?

Seems like a variation on the debunked Libet stuff?

Though before that even Dennet criticized those tests as not having enough to do with people's actual lives.

Seems like a variation on the debunked Libet stuff?

Though before that even Dennet criticized those tests as not having enough to do with people's actual lives.

This one claims that the previous study saying the RP doesn't appear in deliberate decisions is wrong and that urgency has nothing to do with the apparition of the signal.