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)
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.
> police and ambulances (and fire trucks) doing their jobs don't have to follow the sign.
The question was not about whether the rule ought to be followed, but whether it was violated. Content moderation can work under these circumstances, too.
The setup in the beginning even tries to take the ought out of the deliberations: "Your job is to determine if this rule has been violated. You might know of some rule in your jurisdiction which overrides local rules, and allows certain classes of vehicles. Please disregard these rules [...]" an even goes on to mention other sources of norms. It explicitly then says: "Again, please answer the question of whether the rule is violated (not whether the violation should be allowed)."
