Free will and determinism

I'm happy to allow spirits to make their own decisions. But how? Again, you can propose any source of free decisions and I'll go along with it. But my question is about how those spirits make free decisions.

Sorry, but I don't experience myself making a free decision. If I did, then I'd know something about how that is accomplished. What I experience is a short or long series of thoughts, perhaps spread over many days, followed by a decision. I do not experience the way in which I eliminate one of the two semi-final choices and end up with the final choice. That lack of experience may feel free to you, but to me it's just a gap, a leap, a poof!

Now, for simple decisions I may have two semi-final choices. Then I think "oh, but I don't have any shrimp." So then the dinner choice is clear. But that doesn't feel free, either. Instead, if anything, it feels deterministic.

~~ Paul

Maybe it helps to get away from food choices - which Americans always seem to come up with! Think perhaps of a romantic decision. What you describe sounds to me like a series of decisions to think before you act, followed by a decision that you now have your thoughts in place, followed by your ultimate decision.

Think of a tough programming decision. First you decide that the decision is hard but important. Then you go through a process of picking through the pros and cons of various approaches, they you wait until the following day, then you make the decision. Again, all those decisions are free will.

(I realise that what I have written will not satisfy you)

David

That lack of experience may feel free to you, but to me it's just a gap, a leap, a poof!

Why would you assume your lack of this feeling applies to everyone else?

Seems more like a psychological issue?

I thought you had some kind of formal argument against free will?

Maybe it helps to get away from food choices - which Americans always seem to come up with! Think perhaps of a romantic decision. What you describe sounds to me like a series of decisions to think before you act, followed by a decision that you now have your thoughts in place, followed by your ultimate decision.

Yeah I feel like people get caught up on the singular possibility of decision making, as if there is a sudden moment where either your mental content acts as a sum of force vectors that lead to one decision or Pure Chance takes hold and swerves you to an outcome.

Pure Chance is just bizarre as a notion IMO, with its consequences ill thought out. But even the other supposed option is strange - how does qualitative mental content - all the stuff you deliberate about - have some kind of quantitative force? If this were the case wouldn't there not be any deliberation at all, just an instant shift toward a particular decision?

Even if the latter was the case, how exactly would one explain the causal situation? How does, say, the love of a girlfriend you might propose to exert a force upon your decisions?

Trying to think of mental content in physical-esque ways seems to invite confusion...rather it seems you are in a continuous stream of experience, making decisions to do or not do something continuously, to focus on this or that, etc...

Maybe it helps to get away from food choices - which Americans always seem to come up with! Think perhaps of a romantic decision. What you describe sounds to me like a series of decisions to think before you act, followed by a decision that you now have your thoughts in place, followed by your ultimate decision.

Think of a tough programming decision. First you decide that the decision is hard but important. Then you go through a process of picking through the pros and cons of various approaches, they you wait until the following day, then you make the decision. Again, all those decisions are free will.

(I realise that what I have written will not satisfy you)

David

Yes, they feel more deterministic than free. Or, if I wake up in the morning with the solution, then it feels like magic!

~~ Paul

Why would you assume your lack of this feeling applies to everyone else?

Seems more like a psychological issue?

I thought you had some kind of formal argument against free will?

As I said, it feels that way to me. Obviously to other people it feels free.

I had an argument, but I gave it up last time we had this discussion. My argument is that if something is not determined, then it is arbitrary. How can it be non-arbitrary if it is not determined by anything? But I was convinced to open up indeterminism to something other than randomness. Why? Just because I wanted to move along in the discussion. And, of course, I have no proof that randomness is all there is in indeterminism.

~~ Paul

My argument is that if something is not determined, then it is arbitrary.

Proof?

I think you meant to quote Paul, but quoted me quoting Paul's quote.  

There is something about the new layout of the forum that seems to make that more likely to occur.

Because I can't open the old view side by side, I can't put my finger on what it is.

David

There is something about the new layout of the forum that seems to make that more likely to occur.

Because I can't open the old view side by side, I can't put my finger on what it is.

David

Most likely some ghosts in the machine.

Yes, they feel more deterministic than free.

But all those decisions were themselves free to make another way. For example, in my programing example, if you were up against a deadline, you might decide to use the simplest method even though you had a hunch that it somehow wasn't the best.

Or, if I wake up in the morning with the solution, then it feels like magic!
[QUOTE]

~~ Paul

Overnight solutions always seem a bit magical - but that might get you thinking!

David

Proof?

As I said, I have no proof that there is nothing else in indeterminism. You're not going to get proof anyway, since this is not mathematics. And I don't think we could devise a logical proof, because the terms are much too slippery.

If an event occurs for which there are no causes, then don't we agree that it must be arbitrary? If there is something guiding that event to make it non-arbitrary, isn't that thing a cause?

So then it comes down to whether there are indeterministic causes of events. Since no one can describe how that might work, why would I go along with the idea?

I am going along for the sake of discussion, so that one day I might understand how such a thing can work. But it seems to me that it's the people postulating the indeterministic causes that have the burden of evidence, or at least of description. If it cannot be described, then my temptation is to suspend belief. Please don't assume that I am arguing in bad faith just because I haven't accepted the idea.

Note that "an indeterministic cause is one that is not deterministic" is not so much a description as a definition.

~~ Paul