I always think that even if we do have some element of free will, the influence from things like nature and nurture are often greater. We can change many things about our and other people’s environment to make goodness more likely and we do have some ability to change our reaction to events, so arguing about whether doing that is a free choice or not seems like sophism. Acting like we have free choice to improve our own and other’s lives and acting on that choice can produce better results than acting like we have no control.
I really do think some people objectively become bad through an illusion of choice, since some environments contain a lot more badness than others, and there’s no reason to assume that people would have done the same things in a more progressive society. Whether they had any choice at all is another issue, but (for example) the murder rate is multiple times higher in the US than elsewhere, so logically there are murderers in prison right now who would be much more peaceful and functioning in society if they had been brought up in Norway.
Yes, that’s exactly what it means. If the wind blows over a tree and it crushes a person, did the tree try to commit a crime? Should we rehabilitate the wind?
Perhaps I phrased my thoughts in an unclear manner.
The only way for a society to function in a deterministic world is if the people involved behave as if they have free will. It’s like the old self-fulfilling prophecies of myth: Choosing not to eat because you’re fated to die of starvation in a few weeks, so there’s no point in eating. Perhaps you can’t control whether you make a difference or not, but a person who thinks that they won’t make a difference might not try, whereas a person who believes in free will (because that’s how the universe has determined what that person will believe) might actually make a difference compared to what might have happened if that person hadn’t tried.
Even if it’s an illusion, I think the illusion useful, or perhaps even necessary, to civilization.
Perhaps not. It’s not like you or I will ever know if that’s the case.
Honestly, regardless of the underlying nature of the universe, being able to post this comment tells me everything that I need to know about free will: if it’s not actually real, what we have is close enough that we should behave as if it’s real.
Probably not, because wind isn’t likely to change based on such treatments, but if for instance a computer program was causing harm then I imagine you would try to change its behavior. But hold up – are you saying that if its physics were non-deterministic that it might make sense to try to put the wind in rehab? Because if not, linking the two is a non sequitur.
No. In a non-deterministic universe, consciousness is real and we have choices. I’m saying in a deterministic universe you throwing a rock no different than the wind blowing.
I think it’s far easier to prove that the universe is deterministic than it isn’t. There have been some experiments recently to try to determine if our reality is just a simulation. I think it was at the University of Washington and if I recall correctly, the experiment didn’t show that we are living Sims (which of course isn’t the same thing as showing that we aren’t Sims).
Eventually an experiment may show conclusively that reality is just math. That table in front of you is just information. All the feelings you have are just the product of a big finite state machine.
As a Daniel Dennett fan, the idea that this is news (or even valuable science) comes as a considerable surprise to me.
I’m not saying he’s answered every question there is on the subject, but if you’ve read some of his books (e.g. Consciousness Explained and Freedom Evolves), most of what people say about “free will” begins to sound like medievals debating whether the stars are holes in the celestial dome, or candles affixed to it.
Experiments have made it clear that our universe is either non-deterministic or multiple. I don’t think you can actually decide which is the case; from all I know the two can always be made mathematically equivalent. It’s just whether you consider one future, which then isn’t fixed by the present, or consider the whole set of futures it can lead to, which then is.
From a mathematical universe perspective the latter might be in some sense more real, but it doesn’t have practical consequences. We know for small scales results work like they are random, on larger scales they work like they are deterministic but chaotic, and we can treat people and things we do accordingly.
In a certain sense yes, but it’s not like randomness makes them any more so; either both outcomes are entirely determined by the past or they both aren’t. I guess maybe you could suppose non-deterministic actions are specific to people, but I’ve already explained at length why I think the definition of choice as causeless behavior is contrary to intuitive meanings, and if you’re going to simply assume otherwise I don’t think there is more for me to add.
Regardless of your premises, the experimental reality is that rehabilitation of people who harm others can be done in ways that lead to reduction of it, and we get better societies accordingly. You can phrase that in whatever terms you like.
Yeah. The whole “There’d be no justice system without free will!” argument seems predicated on the shitty, harmful notion that the justice system exists to punish choices, not to, you know, reduce harm. A machine or computer program with completely deterministic programming could self have systems of self-repair, self-preservation - and even systems for developing and adapting those systems. If a particular tree consistently dropped branches that killed people, the tree would probably be pruned, moved, or chopped down. If a particular human is consistently harming other humans, its ability to do so may be limited by moving it to a new location (prison), ‘pruning’ its ability to cause more harm (probation), or, in some nations, ‘chopping it down’ (execution).
In a metaphysical sense, and of course that’s the one people generally care about, “free will” is nonsensical.
I’ve struggled to see where any definition is of any value, and the best I can come up with is a legal notion expressing ignorance over the internal processes of individuals in a society, and a corresponding assignment of responsibility to those individuals in proportion to the extent of that ignorance.
A belief in non-determinism is built into everything you just said. Some believers in hard determinism would say that the arrival of that tree, the falling of branches and subsequent pruning were all set in motion at the beginning of time. The person wearing the landscaping company shirt that pruned the tree may feel they decided which parts to cut, but that was also determined by the way the universe emerged. The fact that the landscaper is going to be hit by lightning 22 years from now after chugging a Crystal Pepsi is also predictable and unavoidable.
As well as the arrival of apes who figure out that they should cut the tree down to stop being hit by branches because that’s the way evolution shaped their brains to work. None of that violates determinism.
Let’s put it another way: if magical non-deterministic free will was a critical component of making decisions, no software ever would be able to work.
That seems hard to justify, since he didn’t even describe things in terms of contended words like “choices”, just in terms of cause and effect. Look, here’s a Newton’s cradle. What’s making the balls at the end swing out like that?
Does it make sense to say it is the result by the elastic collision on the opposite side, so that the momentum is transferred to it, even if it ultimately results from the boundary conditions of the universe? If so, why is it any different to say the tree was pruned as a result of it killing people, or that the branches picked were the result of decisions of the landscaper? Isn’t that sort of description the whole basis of determinism?
Random is an appearance. The random interface “predicted” which which circle the participant would be be given to choose from the same source of universal intelligence that operates all of us. It is not that there is no free will, but that all free will comes from one source and only appears to be our own.
So, when I read decision, it makes me think that you are implying that there is more than one possible outcome. If you aren’t, then we don’t disagree as I’ve use such language myself before (“sorry I’m late, my car decided this would be a good time to break down”). A determinist would say that it is possible to state a thousand years ago which branches the landscaper would trim, that before getting back in his truck he would clean his glasses, and that he would cut off another motorist as he pulled into traffic.
I would argue that, while our immediate responses to a situation are the result of reflex and conditioning, it is, to an extent, possible to use conscious concerted effort over a period of time to change those conditioned responses, so that you will react differently to similar situations in the future.
All that crap about “collapsing the wavefunction” having anything to do with the “consciousness” of the observer is bullshit. It’s all just degrees of freedom. Our nerves are macroscopic, ergo for us to have perceived something, it must already be entangled with a macroscopic number of particles, and thus no longer be in a state of superposition.
It implies that other outcomes would be possible if the inputs could have been. Taking a hypothetical reality with an equivalent tree but slightly different pruner, one who somehow came prepared to notice different things or in a different state of mind, we would imagine different branches to be cut.
It doesn’t mean that the actual pruner was going to do something else given the actual circumstances they were presented. As Ratel points out this is how we talk about decisions made by software, and my original point was that’s usually how we think about the choices we make too, as things other people would have done differently but the direct consequences of what we are like. If the exact same pruner in the exact same circumstances might not have done the same things, they’re not his decisions in my book, they’re his inability to decide the outcome.
The only one here saying such language is supposed to be non-deterministic has been you, to the point where you’ve called out girard describing someone’s actions as an entirely predictable effect of their intentions based on previous events. I’m asking why, when that’s almost never what people mean by it, should we start pretending that’s the one true meaning just because “free will” is mentioned?
However reality may actually work we know it corresponds to our ordinary experience in ordinary situations. The way we describe people – as making decisions, trying to do things, facing consequences for their actions, being rehabilitated for their crimes and so on – are all words we have for things we’ve noticed around us. If you think they’re philosophically impossible, then, you’ve likely mistaken what they’re actually supposed to mean.
