I find the notion that free will requires a non-determistic system strange. Consider for the sake of argument that you love apples and hate oranges. Then given a free choice between an apple and an orange, you'll always pick the apple. The system is determisitic, and your free will is what makes it deterministic. On the other hand, if you were required to choose an apple or an orange based on a coin flip, you wouldn't call that free will.
There’s an excellent 2hr or so podcast episode on free will that has drastically changed my mind on the notion of determinism. The main argument is that the notion of “choice” is in fact an illusion and when you dive into what you’re actually doing when you “choose” you realize that it’s really just determinism under the hood.
In other words a deterministic universe is actually completely consistent with our experience once you realize that the mechanism of us “choosing” anything is really an illusion.
For some reason, most opinions on this topic that one reads on forums with of technically inclined people are non-compatibilist (the view that causal determinism and free will are mutually exclusive) while a good number of people that think a lot about will (i.e. philosophers) are compatibilists...
Note though that in metaphysics/theory of mind determinism is defined as the state at a given moment being necessitated from the state at a previous moment. I think one could critique your argument by saying that you're just pushing back the question of determinism by one level (i.e. "what's responsible for your preference of apples in the first place?"). The fact that you always choose the same way can then be taken to be a proof of determinism instead.
A compatibilist line of argument for your position might go something like this: What we consider a free will would hardly be met by a will completely detached from any deterministic constraints whatsoever. If a necessary condition for free will was that it is free from any external conditions, what would there even be for it to 'choose', and on what basis could its choices be made? Only if your mind knows of apples and oranges (objects subject to deterministic systems) and can interact with them (is at least partly part of the same system) can it make a meaningful choice between them. (Again, this view is based on the assumption that determinism exists and that free will is possible.)
Looking in the past doesn't change much, because the agent exists in the past too and is a cause of the present agent. But choice really happens in present, so distant past is a wrong place to look at, but if you look in the wrong place it's expected that you don't see anything.
Sometimes I wonder if those non-tech philosophers are actually smart or they're just free-running their hallucinations with entire System 1 and circular reasoning detection turned off, just because doing so allows them to generate more plausible text faster for stronger in-group approvals...
Isn't the concept of free will somewhat of a mysticist mental pleaser that it'll be the thing that save us in the end in doomsday scenarios? If we accept that the world is deterministic and so are our minds and behaviors, that will be quite depressing, and if we assume free will and our souls are real, that means decisions we make comes from trekky super-reality and therefore potentially infallible, which happy.
> Note though that in metaphysics/theory of mind determinism is defined as the state at a given moment being necessitated from the state at a previous moment. I think one could critique your argument by saying that you're just pushing back the question of determinism by one level
I think this is just tangential to free will. If a state_old -> state_new transition() was deterministic code, but code involved RNG sampling, it can be considered both deterministic and not. It cannot be ruled one way or another here.
> What we consider a free will would hardly be met by a will completely detached from any deterministic constraints whatsoever. If a necessary condition for free will was that it is free from any external conditions, what would there even be for it to 'choose', and on what basis could its choices be made?
This part looks like a strawman sandcastle made up to overload opponents. A lot has to be defined in your favor for that argument to work. What's wrong with rolling a dice(assuming it still works)? Is randomness make a choice laughable meaningless non-choice?
I'm starting to understand why "technically inclined people are non-compatibilist", everything is just way too under-defined that people are barely on same pages.
Supernatural or nonexistent is false dichotomy fallacy. The third option is free will exists and natural. Many things follow this pattern: flat earth, geocentrism, lightning, soul.
Someone who hates oranges might still, on rare occasion, pick one. Maybe they’re having a bad day, misunderstood the instruction, or wanted to turn their life around starting now. We might make decisions with high likelihood but it’s a qualitative leap to go from 99.999999% to 100%.
There’s always more context to a choice than a simple question, but we aren’t limited to vague questions.
What you ate for breakfast January 3, 2024 could be what you always eat with those memories, that body, those resources etc. So saying yes once could very well mean you would say yes 100% in exactly that context without meaning you would always say yes in similar but not identical situations.
On the other hand if it’s random in identical contexts then it’s just random not free will.
The question is rather what circumstances gave rise to the system that would make a given choice. Thats all "free will" is: the current state of a system that gives rise to a specific choice.
Free will as its commonly understood is an entirely religious concept and has little/no utility in explaining behavior. It is, IMO entirely unrelated to consciousness and a distracting subject that traps people into circular reasoning.
Its the state of a system that gives rise to the contemplation. Nothing is free from determinism its determinism all the way down.
The interesting question is what are the myriad factors that contribute to the state of a system at a specific time. From hormones to shoe color to genes to what you ate for breakfast to how you were raised.
Yeah psychology is interesting but not only does it not really have anything to do with the article but it also doesnt provide anything particularly compelling as far as the whole question of "free will" goes.
It's relevant, because if agent's contemplation gives rise to a specific choice, it means the choice is determined by the agent, and thus the agent controls the choice and is responsible for it.
Yes this is true. Also the agents choice depends entirely on the state of the agent at the time it makes the choice. The contemplation is just another process that is determined by the state of the system. Like I said its interesting and theres a whole field of study for this but as far as this post and the question of free will go its entirely irrelevant.
Because as I've said above, the state of the agent determines what choice it will make. The state of the agent is determined by outside stimuli just like everything else. This conversation here is a great example why I consider the idea of free will to be mostly a religious concept and a thought-trap.
Like I said before the more interesting questions are about the interaction of a system with the rest of the world such as what brought the system to a state that it makes a certain choice, what are the dynamics of that state, how might that state change based on different stimuli, can we nail down what exactly is going on in all the relevant parts of the system at a given time etc and if not how close can we get.
Ive got nothing against free will. Its just an idea thats important to some religious beliefs. Its just kind of pointless to talk about when were talking about neurology and the source of consciousness.
I do wish the ever increasing stigma around it in serious conversations would hurry up and increase so we could stop wasting our time with it though ;)
Indeed. The problem is that the word "free" has different meanings when talking about free will and freedom in other contexts. What you talk about is value freedom, while ppl denying the existence of free will refer to "physcial" freedom. Few ppl notice the distinction though which makes the debate somewhat strange.
One thing that's really strange about this article is that it presents compatibilism and incompatibilism as having a different concept of 'free will' – compatibilism sporting an everyday sense of free and incompatibilism roughly a more scientific one. The article assumes incompatibilism to be correct on those grounds and goes from there. Coming from the philosophical literature, this is simply not the case. If both sides assume the same definition of free will, e.g. as "the agent could have chosen differently", they still have a genuine disagreement...
Well there are many versions of compatibilism I guess, but just reading the Wikipedia article on compatibilism I don't think most compatibilists think freedom relies on whether or not causal determinism holds. Please tell me if i'm wrong.
Defining free will:
Compatibilists often define an instance of "free will" as one in which the agent had the freedom to act according to their own motivation. That is, the agent was not coerced or restrained. Arthur Schopenhauer famously said: "Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills."[14] In other words, although an agent may often be free to act according to a motive, the nature of that motive is determined. This definition of free will does not rely on the truth or falsity of causal determinism.[2] This view also makes free will close to autonomy, the ability to live according to one's own rules, as opposed to being submitted to external domination.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism
> don't think most compatibilists think freedom relies on whether or not causal determinism holds
I guess it is technically true that they would be okay if it turned out determinism was false, since their argument is that determinism and free will CAN be true at the same time. Their line of argument is only really worthwhilein the first place if you believe it plausible that causal determinism holds. And I think most of them do (maybe it's telling that the position is also sometimes called 'soft determinism'). If they denied determinism from the outset, they'd probably be in the 'libertarianist' camp instead (not to be confused with political libertarianism).
The 'tree' of positions relating to determinism & free will is roughly:
Do you believe determinism and free will to be mutually exclusive? If no: you're a compatibilist. If yes: you're an incompatibilist. -> In which case: do you believe determinism to be true OR do you believe free will to exist? You believe determinism is true: you are skeptical about free will, to you free will is an illusion. You believe free will to exist: You're a libertarianist and believe complete determinism not to be true.
Although often much lengthier and more technical than Wikipedia, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has very well-vetted entries on philosophical topics, where the authors all are scholars in the respective topic and are asked to write introductory entries (potential downsides: English only and not always completely novice-friendly). There is one on compatibilism, too https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/
Yes, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is great! (and it is referenced in the paper)
A quote from it: "Other compatibilists show less concern in rebutting the conclusion that the freedom to do otherwise is incompatible with determinism. Compatibilists of this stripe reject the idea that such freedom is necessary for meaningful forms of free will (e.g., Frankfurt 1969, 1971; Watson 1975, Dennett 1984)—the “varieties of free will worth wanting,” (Dennett 1984). And even more notably, some compatibilists simply deny that freedom of this sort is in any way connected to morally responsible agency (e.g., Fischer 1994, Fischer & Ravizza 1998, Scanlon 1998, Wallace 1994, Sartorio 2016)."
This is the position of the paper above essentially. It references Dennett. The kind of freedom that matters, and that ppl are talking about in everyday life, is not the type of freedom incompatibilists reject. It still makes sense to talk about freedom, as in "freedom of opinion" etc, even if agents could not have chosen differently.
The paper explains this position from the perspective of reinforcement learning, and also gives a theory for why it is beneficial for intelligent agents to model themselves as being able to have chosen differently even if they actually could not.
Compatibilists often argue that determinism and free will (and moral responsibility) are compatible since their view is that what constitutes freedom is not affected by whether or not determinism holds. Hence, in this case, the debate is not about the consequences of determinism, but rather what freedom is.
In my mind, that the known laws of nature do not permit "free will" in the way incompatibilists define it is trivial. (regardless of whether the universe is truly deterministic or also has some randomness sprinkled on top)
