Free will re-redux

Again, Occam's Razor would seem to tell us that we do have free will at some level or at some times.  After all that's how it "feels".  Conversely, we could all simply be falling prey to the illusion.  Seems rather intractable to me.

I'm also interested in how an answer in terms we could presently understand would do for you.  Would this change your worldview or otherwise solve a problem?

I don't trust the feels much.

I don't know what would happen. If I were to be convinced that there is a reasonable description of a free decision, I'd certainly have a tougher time with old-fashioned physicalism.

~~ Paul

Paul,

You are the one saying that events cannot be [other than] random or determined. The person making a claim should provide some reasoning for why the claim is convincing.

Why are non-deterministic events automatically arbitrary.

Just explain to us why you think this is the case, as it seems your issue is not with free will but rather even matter moving in a way that is not determined but also not random.

I think if you do that we'll have at least an understanding of what you are arguing about. People have tried giving their examples [of how free will would work] going all the way back to Skeptiko if not Mind-Energy, that's how long this topic has been debated. And to be honest I don't [think] much of any progress has been made.

I am making that claim for the sake of discussion. I could, instead, simply sit back and ask the people who are making a claim about libertarian free will to describe their conception of how it works. You are making a claim, after all. 

But it's a more interesting conversation if we have some back-and-forth. Here is why I think that there is no such thing as a free decision: Because I am incapable of imagining how an indeterministic nonrandom decision can be made. And so I ask for a description. You'll notice that no one takes me up on that request, at least in this thread.

Yes, my issue is with matter moving in an indeterministic nonrandom way. That is what I have repeated a dozen times now. And that leads directly to having an issue with free will.

I do not recall any examples that were satisfactory. If you like, you could repeat one of the compelling ones and if it does nothing for me then we can switch to discussing the problems with Mary in the black and white room. 

~~ Paul

I don't trust the feels much.

I don't know what would happen. If I were to be convinced that there is a reasonable description of a free decision, I'd certainly have a tougher time with old-fashioned physicalism.

~~ Paul

But I thought you said free will was incoherent, so that even if Idealism is true or Christianity is true it just doesn't matter?

Yes, my issue is with matter moving in an indeterministic nonrandom way. That is what I have repeated a dozen times now. And that leads directly to having an issue with free will.

I do not recall any examples that were satisfactory. If you like, you could repeat one of the compelling ones and if it does nothing for me then we can switch to discussing the problems with Mary in the black and white room. 

~~ Paul

But why should the rest of us think that matter moving in a indeterministic nonrandom way is a problem?

There are 75 pages [on this board] on trying to figure out what would satisfy you. And if we go back to Skeptiko this same issue, whether all events must be either deterministic or random, always comes back to the fore. People have brought up interpretations of quantum physics, philosophy of causality, the issue of creativity, the Hard Problem of Consciousness, Psi experiments...

It just seems pointless to keep trying to figure out what would possibly satisfy you.

But for me it seems that the real issue is whether there really is a deterministic/randomness dichotomy, since you reject it not only with regards to mental causation but also with regards to matter moving in a way that doesn't fall into that dichotomy.

Clearly the materialist Thomas Nail doesn't think that the randomness/determinism exclusivity holds, nor do the physicists I previously mentioned in this thread. Just because you strongly believe it...why should we worry about that?

All to say surely it would be nice to have an argument why non-deterministic automatically means random.

In desperate hope of this conversation not being a repeat of the 75 page thread and all prior Skeptiko free will discussion, here's William James on why "randomness" could just as easily mean "inner causation":

What does determinism profess? It professes that those parts of the universe already laid down absolutely appoint and decree what the other parts shall be. The future has no ambiguous possibilities hidden in its womb; the part we call the present is compatible with only one totality. Any other future complement than the one fixed from eternity is impossible. The whole is in each and every part, and welds it with the rest into an absolute unity, an iron block, in which there can be no equivocation or shadow of turning.Indeterminism, on the contrary, says that the parts have a certain amount of loose play on one another, so that the laying down of one of them does not necessarily determine what the others shall be. It admits that possibilities may be in excess of actualities, and that things not yet revealed to our knowledge may really in themselves be ambiguous.Of two alternative futures which we conceive, both may now be really possible; and the one become impossible only at the very moment when the other excludes it by becoming real itself. Indeterminism thus denies the world to be one unbending unit of fact. It says there is a certain ultimate pluralism in it.

-William James

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.All that its chance-character asserts about it is that there is something in it really of its own, something that is not the unconditional property of the whole. If the whole wants this property, the whole must wait till it can get it, if it be a matter of chance. That the universe may actually be a sort of joint-stock society of this sort, in which the sharers have both limited liabilities and limited powers, is of course a simple and conceivable notion.

—William James

It just seems pointless to keep trying to figure out what would possibly satisfy you.

How about just sticking to what satisfies you, Sci?

How about just sticking to what satisfies you, Sci?

Well everyone can stick to what satisfies them, but skepticism is based on rejecting "I strongly think this is true" as a reason.

In fact your own criticism of the Hard Problem turn on this, that people finding materialism implausible doesn't make it so.

Why I am asking for some kind of argument that all events must be deterministic or random - perhaps you can give us one? I don't even think I've affirmed free will in this thread, only that free will isn't incoherent because one should reject the dichotomy as exclusive.

But I thought you said free will was incoherent, so that even if Idealism is true or Christianity is true it just doesn't matter?

I think it is incoherent. A satisfying explanation of how it might work would go a long way toward disabusing me of that notion.

Neither of those -isms helps. Going with idealism doesn't suddenly help me understand how a free decision works.

~~ Paul

But why should the rest of us think that matter moving in a indeterministic nonrandom way is a problem?

There are 75 pages [on this board] on trying to figure out what would satisfy you. And if we go back to Skeptiko this same issue, whether all events must be either deterministic or random, always comes back to the fore. People have brought up interpretations of quantum physics, philosophy of causality, the issue of creativity, the Hard Problem of Consciousness, Psi experiments...

It just seems pointless to keep trying to figure out what would possibly satisfy you.

But for me it seems that the real issue is whether there really is a deterministic/randomness dichotomy, since you reject it not only with regards to mental causation but also with regards to matter moving in a way that doesn't fall into that dichotomy.

Clearly the materialist Thomas Nail doesn't think that the randomness/determinism exclusivity holds, nor do the physicists I previously mentioned in this thread. Just because you strongly believe it...why should we worry about that?

All to say surely it would be nice to have an argument why non-deterministic automatically means random.

If you can't explain how matter moves in an indeterministic nonrandom way, wouldn't you conclude there is a problem with the concept? So you must have an explanation. That's all I'm asking for.

I have multiple times said that I'm happy to drop the deterministic/randomness dichotomy. Consider it dropped.

Do you now have a description of a free decision?

~~ Paul