Free will re-redux

I don't think that's doom and gloom, since the deterministic position as usually described - adherence to Laws of Nature - also makes no sense.

See you say that, but I feel like it might be at risk of putting all someone's eggs in one basket. I think that continued scientific advancements might point to genuine free will, but it's good to have alternative opinions if we get some wild curveball.

See you say that, but I feel like it might be at risk of putting all someone's eggs in one basket. I think that continued scientific advancements might point to genuine free will, but it's good to have alternative opinions if we get some wild curveball.

I don't think most human beings will be capable of the mental contortions necessary to accept that Free Will and Determinism are compatible.

I mean we can discuss whether morally from a societal perspective I should deride compatbilism given some future scientific claims closing the door on free will, but that's separate from being able to say compatibilism makes any sense at all.

Because, well, it just doesn't.

I don't think most human beings will be capable of the mental contortions necessary to accept that Free Will and Determinism are compatible.

I mean most human beings aren't capable of the mental contortions necessary to deny free will as is so you've got a point there.

The complexities of trying argue this (point) philosophically, make it a waste of time and effort. Better to look for some evidence of thoughts (decision making or not) existing when we know that the brain (which your world view asserts is always responsible for such), couldn't be functioning. That's all we have to do. 

I've seen hundreds of reliable reports of this. When you look in the direction of those reports (and feel a bit queasy) how is it 
that you fail to see them for what they are ? Is it because they make you queasy ?

I'm suspicious that we do not know how to tell whether the brain is functioning, and to what degree. Nor can we tell exactly when the supposed function (e.g., thought) actually occurred. Nor can we control for what happens between the supposed event and its report. But I'm happy to take a look at one good case.

~~ Paul

Glad you chose to visit the forum again Paul!

But I thought we were waiting for you to explain how non-free decisions are made.

By the brain operating deterministically with probably lots of randomness thrown in. That is certainly one way we could make decisions, and we have computers to demonstrate it.

So now all I need is a coherent description of something that is neither deterministic nor random, and I'm all in on exploring whether that could be part of the decision-making procedure. And I'm perfectly happy to stipulate that some of the events we think are random actually are not. But if you're going to carve something nondeterministic, nonrandom out of that randomness, I need some hint as to what it's like.

~~ Paul

It's more that the argument is begging the question. If free will can be explained in terms of some non-free processes, then it isn't free. It's a trick question.

Personally I think there is only mental causation, but a less "extreme" position would be that free will is possible because there is no such thing as a randomness/determinist dichotomy.

Libertarian free will cannot be explained in terms of non-free processes, by definition. My contention is that the very concept of libertarian free will is incoherent.

~~ Paul

I don't exactly understand what you mean by this. If you're a conscious agent then you would experience making a free decision. You haven't chosen to do ANYTHING before?

Sure, but not at any sort of level that would give me a hint how it actually works. I ponder what to have for breakfast and then magically decide to have oatmeal. How did I make that decision?

~~ Paul

By the brain operating deterministically with probably lots of randomness thrown in. That is certainly one way we could make decisions, and we have computers to demonstrate it.

Can you explain "operating deterministically with probably lots of randomness thrown in"?

Libertarian free will cannot be explained in terms of non-free processes, by definition. My contention is that the very concept of libertarian free will is incoherent.

~~ Paul

Why would it be incoherent? Perhaps a direct proof/argument would be the most helpful thing, since nothing's ever been resolved with the Socratic style of questioning we've been through a few times now.

I mean most human beings aren't capable of the mental contortions necessary to deny free will as is so you've got a point there.

I think most people understand that if the universe could be coherently deterministic and/or random there's no free will. I also think people get the same lack of freedom holds if all decisions are really made by the "subconscious" or God.

What I suspect is that most people, upon hearing the supposedly air tight randomness/determinism dichotomy argument, find it unpersuasive. Which is good, since it's a bad argument - perhaps their lack of acceptance is the soul's hazy memory of the Perennial Wisdom.

In the hopes of moving things along, and not ending up repeating everything said in the Mega Free Will Argument thread, here's my understand of why Free Will is supposedly incoherent:

Free will is incoherent because all causal sequences must be deterministic or random.

But let's look at everything following the "because". So we have:

All causal sequences must be deterministic or random.

Let's unpack randomness first, because it's easier. Randomness is when there's at least two options for the "effect" following a "cause". A coin where it was genuinely unpredictable whether it lands head or tails, even if you could make every conceivable prior measurement, would then be "random". For a real world example the position of an electron is probably located in a certain radius within a certain distance from the nucleus of an atom, so the "cause" could be said to be the position of the nucleus.

So the possibilities for the "effect" are constrained but the selection between them doesn't have a reason. So "random" then means "constrained to some possibilities but the selection among those possibilities happens for no reason at all".

Then determinism would be "constrained so that a cause always produces a specific effect". Of course "effect" can mean a set of events spread across space/time, such as earthquake being the cause of multiple buildings to collapse or a forest fire burning down different trees over the course of days. What matters here though is the cause always produces the effect with certainty.

But now let's look at the word "constrain". What constrains the mythical truly random coin to only come up Heads or Tails? The composition of the coin. Similarly the likelihood of the electron's position is constrained by whatever lead to the nucleus of its atom to be in a particular position. So the constraints on random events come from either prior random events or from deterministic events.

But what constrains deterministic events? Why does any particular cause produce a specific effect? We could say its a combination of Energy, Matter, Forces, Fields, etc. But that would all be an explanation for why an event happened, whereas to explain constraint is to explain why all the other possible events - no matter how ludicrous or dreamily absurd - did not happen. At some point someone might invoke the Laws of Physics/Nature, but we can the ask why those Laws don't change. And the only answer that doesn't involve God would be an appeal to a kind of brute fact, which isn't very satisfying.

In fact "determinism" is really an abstraction, which in actual existence is based on our sense of how probably an effect is if its cause occurs. So deterministic events have a probability of 100% based on our expectation, but the "Why" of their constraint is inexplicable, which means deterministic events happen consistently for no reason at all.

Then looking at:

All causal sequences must be deterministic or random.

We can say the same thing with a few equivalent substitutions:

All causal sequences must be events that happen consistently for no reason at all, or events that are constrained to some possibilities but the selection among those possibilities happens for no reason at all.

But the constraints are also deterministic or random, which means they too happen consistently (A->B always holds) or for no reason at all. But that consistency is also happening for no reason at all. This can be changed into the equivalent:

All causal sequences must be events that happen consistently for not reason at all or are a selection among those possibilities where the selection happens for no reason at all.

But then the possibilities that are to be selected from and the consistency of "deterministic" events also happened for no actual reason at the fundamental level of reality. So we can just write:

All causal sequences must be events that happen for no reason at alll.

Which, going back to the top, leaves us with:

Free will is incoherent because all causal sequences must be events that happen for no reason at all.

And that can be shortened into:

Free will is incoherent because all causal sequences happen for no reason at all.

But of course this isn't a very compelling argument, as it asserts that everything that happens is random, that it happens for no reason. Yet this would also mean the reasoning used to get to this point was untrustworthy, and that mathematical proofs have no actual truth content. I'd also say Randomness violates the Principle of Sufficient Reason.

None of the above is an argument for Free Will being real but it does IMO counter the argument that it's incoherent.