Does Determinism Negate Free Will?

[moving finger]

How did we get onto “unstable nuclei”? Are you suggesting that every agent must be either “rational” or an “unstable nucleus”? Surely not.

It was an example of something that is unpredictable but does not have FW.

Which has nothing to do with “acting rationally”, which you seem to think is a pre-requisite of free will…….

But if you are sane you will be held accountable for your actions.

Which does not imply that if you are irrational you do not have free will! (again, just so we know what the question was : You asserted that rationality was a pre-requisite for free will, which I challenged. Instead of answering my challenge, you are trying to say that this has something to do with sanity and moral responsibility……… are you just trying to confuse things?)

For the third time, you have made the mistake of assuming that I mean EITHER the falsehodd of the HL argument (b) OR the falsehood of the microphysical argument (a) is adequate to allow FW. As I have already pointed out, they both need to be false.

What you call the high-level argument is false.
If by “low-level argument” you mean “quantum indeterminism”, then indeterminism (if it exists) simply gives rise to indeterminism – it is not a source of free will, it is a source of randomness.

Your quantative/qualitative thing doesn't work.

Quantitative means : Can be measured. If you believe that magnitudes of cause and effect can be quantified then please explain how this can be done, to allow us to conclude (for example) “ahhhhh, this shows more cause than effect”. You have not shown this, all you have done is make oblique references to algebra.

Predictable by an ideal observer such as Laplace's Infinite Intelligence.

Such predictions (whilst possible in principle) are also in principle inaccessible to the beings existing within the universe.

"The power of making free choices that are not entirely constrained by external circumstances or by an agency such as fate or divine will."
(#31 in this thread)

This kind of free will is entirely compatible with determinism (see my post #35 in this thread)

I think you will find that such a belief (depending on how you define free will…….) necessarily means that the agent with the so-called free will must be a source of causal chains, ie is in some way acting uncaused, which is basically what I said earlier.

Earlier you seemed to be supporting the compatiblist idea that an agent is free if they (proximately) cause their actions, even if those causal events are themselves entirely caused ad-infinitum.

Which is why I said “depending on how you define free will”. I think you will find that Libertarians would not accept that everything is deterministic, because 100% determinism would not allow them to have the kind of free will that they seem to wish to have.

The straw-man explanantion has it that only humans behave indeterministically.

My explanation (that you called “straw man”) said nothing about indeterminism. Where did you get this from?

Libertarians do not need to assume this, and QM indicates that indterminism is in faxct widespread.

Indeterminism is not a source of free will, it is a source of randomness. How can randomness allow Libertarians to recover the kind of uncaused causal chain that they need in their philosophy?

MF

 

[Tournesol]

Which has nothing to do with “acting rationally”, which you seem to think is a pre-requisite of free will…….

Humans are indeterministic and have Fw because they can also think rationally.

Unstable nuclei (eg) are indeterministic and do not have FW because they cannot think rationally.

Yet another spurious "nothing to do with" ?

Which does not imply that if you are irrational you do not have free will!

Yes. If you are insane, you are irrational, if you are irrational, you are
not morally accountable, and that you are not morally accountable
means you have no FW.

(again, just so we know what the question was : You asserted that rationality was a pre-requisite for free will, which I challenged.

YOu think unstable nuclie have FW ? Nothing does ..? Eveything does ..?

Instead of answering my challenge, you are trying to say that this has something to do with sanity and moral responsibility……… are you just trying to confuse things?)

Sanity, moral accountability and rationality are all part-and-parcel
of the same issue.

What you call the high-level argument is false.

You mean that people aren't determined by culture (etc)? Or
if they were, there would not be the absence of evoution-and-revolution
that I suppose.

If by “low-level argument” you mean “quantum indeterminism”, then indeterminism (if it exists) simply gives rise to indeterminism – it is not a source of free will, it is a source of randomness.

That is your opinion. Mine is the contrary:-

http:///www.geocities.com/peterdjones/det_darwin.html

Quantitative means : Can be measured. If you believe that magnitudes of cause and effect can be quantified then please explain how this can be done, to allow us to conclude (for example) “ahhhhh, this shows more cause than effect”. You have not shown this, all you have done is make oblique references to algebra.

You do not have two measure two quantities to know they are equal.
Although my argument is concpetual, it is not "qualitative" in a way
that excludes quantativity.

Such predictions (whilst possible in principle) are also in principle inaccessible to the beings existing within the universe.

SO what ? Are you saying that our inability to predict quantum effects is
due to our presence in the universe ?

"The power of making free choices that are not entirely constrained by external circumstances or by an agency such as fate or divine will."
(#31 in this thread) "

This kind of free will is entirely compatible with determinism (see my post #35 in this thread)

Nope. Determinism means you are entriely constrained by circumstances
prevailing before you were born.

Which is why I said “depending on how you define free will”. I think you will find that Libertarians would not accept that everything is deterministic, because 100% determinism would not allow them to have the kind of free will that they seem to wish to have.

As I have been saying.

My explanation (that you called “straw man”) said nothing about indeterminism. Where did you get this from?

I was referring to this exchange:-

Libertarians (so I understand) do not accept that the whole universe behaves deterministically, for they maintain that the human mind (or the innermost regions of the brain) present an exception. According to Libertarians, a person's mind can itself cause that person to perform a particular action when that person chooses so to act, without the choice itself having any antecedent cause. The usual unbroken chain of cause and effect is thus broken, and when a person exercises his or her free will, a new chain is initiated by the act of will itself. However, the supposed mechanism for initiating a new chain of cause and effect by the mere act of free will remains a mystery.

In some ways, this seems reminiscent of Descartes' dualism (the thinking self can act independently both of causation and of the physical self).

Would you agree this is an accurate view of Libertarianism?

No, it is a straw-man. Libertarians do no believe in a rigid causal chain
to which the human brain is an exception. They think strict determinism
is false in general (which is a necessary condition for FW which only becomes
sufficient in the presence of various other factors such as rationallity and lack of external constraint).

Indeterminism is not a source of free will, it is a source of randomness. How can randomness allow Libertarians to recover the kind of uncaused causal chain that they need in their philosophy?

Randomness automatically gives you uncaused causes. The question
is how it impacts rationallity, which is what I address in my essay.
http:///www.geocities.com/peterdjones/det_darwin.html

Once this is defined, how would you then propose to show that human choices are “not entirely constrained by external circumstances”?

a) argue for microphysical indeterminism

b) point out that the suppsoedly determining macroscopic influences
we grow up with (culture etc) have not, historically , prevented all
kinds of evolution and revoultion. If we are all determined by ourt upbringing,
back to the year dot, why aren't we still in caves ?
(#33).

 

[moving finger]

Randomness automatically gives you uncaused causes. The question is how it impacts rationallity, which is what I address in my essay.
http:///www.geocities.com/peterdjones/det_darwin.html

An interesting essay, but the essay does nothing to defend your point of view, it simply attacks a particularly "myopic" view of determinism, hence the essay actually demonstrates very little that is useful in terms of the debate.

If you have a particular belief or philosophy, I humbly suggest that what you need to do is to show how it works, and to defend it. In other words, if you believe that indeterminism gives rise to free will, you need to show how it does this, what the consequences are, what happens if we remove indeterminism, etc. You do not do this, hence it is difficult to take your argument seriously.

I still claim that indeterminism results simply in indeterministic outcomes, it does not result in “free will” (whatever that may be). You do not show how indeterminism results in "free will" in your essay. With respect, if you wish your argument to be taken seriously you need to show not only how indeterminism can result in your kind of “free will”, but also that the removal of indeterminism would then necessarily also remove that same "free will".

MF

 

[Tournesol]

You do not show how indeterminism results in "free will" in your essay.

Free will requires lack of complete constaint, by definition.

Lack of complete causal constraint is equivalent to indeterminism.

Indeterminism is therefore necessary but insufficient for FW
(it also needs to be established that it is not inimical to rationality).

http://www.geocities.com/peterdjones/det_compat.html

 

[moving finger]

Free will requires lack of complete constaint, by definition.

Lack of complete causal constraint is equivalent to indeterminism.

This is the error. You equate your feeling of "I" with total lack of causation. But this is wrong.

The “I” simply “is”. It exists.

The “I” is a source of causation.

We accept the “I” as existing, and as being the source of causation.

Whether the “I” in turn has causal precedents (or is causally random) is irrelevant.

Naïve intuition suggests to us that the “I” must be somehow uncaused, must be independent of prior causes. But why should this be so?

Why does it make any difference whether the “I” is caused or uncaused? What matters is only that the “I” exists in the present time, that the "I" is at least partly unconstrained by present and future events, and that the “I” is responsible for causing future events.

I submit that whether your “present day” “I” can be traced back to prior historical causes or not is totally irrelevant. All that matters IS your “present day” “I”, and not from whence it came.

And I certainly do not see how it helps to suggest that “random indeterminism” may be partly responsible for the source of your “I”.

Indeterminism is therefore irrelevant for the feeling of individuality that humans have.

MF

 

[moving finger]

Free will requires lack of complete constaint, by definition.

I disagree. This depends on one's definition of free will.
Lack of complete constraint implies indeterminism, but you have yet to show how either "lack of complete constraint" or "indeterminism" generates free will (ie the definition of "free will" as "requires lack of complete constraint" may be inconsistent).
I am coming round to the conclusion that our feeling of free will actually requires no complete present or future constraints, but is irrelevant to whether or not we are constrained in the past.

Lack of complete causal constraint is equivalent to indeterminism.

I agree with this statement. But where the fault lies is in assuming that either indeterminism or lack of causal constraint can generate free will.

Indeterminism is therefore necessary but insufficient for FW

I would say that our feeling of free will is not dependent on either historical determinism or historical indeterminism.

I like very much a simple poem that a fellow-member submitted recently :

One ship sails East, and another sails West,
with the very same winds that blow.
Tis the set of the sail, and not the gale,
which determines the way they go.


In other words : The directions of the ships are not so much dependent on the wind, but more on the set of the sails of each ship. The ships are indeed masters of their destiny, but this says nothing about whether the set of their sails has prior causal determination or not.

The error that Libertarians make is in assuming that free will must somehow be associated with an uncaused past.

MF

 

[moving finger]

http://www.geocities.com/peterdjones/det_compat.html

In response to some of the ideas in the above link :

libetarians believe that, having chosen they could have chosen differently under the very same circumstances.

This is a source of error. There is no evidence that such a thing is possible, and in believing this, Libertarians are deceiving themselves. Determinism would say that "if the circumstances are the same, the choices will be the same".

That is, that alternative possibilites were actually available, they have a positive power of choice, since they bring something of their own to a choice, they have ultimate responsibility, unlike computers whose 'choices' are always attributable to external and prior factors.

What evidence do you have that such alternative possibilities were actually available, except as theoretical possibilities within the mind of the agent?

We cannot attribute UR to computers because one is always substitutable for another, the individuality of the computer makes no difference.

Why should individuality make any difference to UR?
If computers cannot be the source of UR, what IS the source of UR?
Indeterminism?

MF

 

[moving finger]

The Libertarian Illusion

Libertarians often emphasise what they consider to be the two (and related) key features of their philosophy of free will:

Alternative Possiblities (AP), the idea that there is a genuine (ie unconstrained) choice available at a given time

and

Ultimate Responsibility (UR), also known as origination, the idea that there is a genuine sense in which an agent is the originator of its voluntary acts, and therefore bears responsibility for them.

Let us study these features in more detail.

The power to make choices is in fact compatible with determinism – a choice after all is simply “taking two or more inputs and producing one output” – and demonstrably deterministic agents like computers can certainly make such a choice (even though such a choice may be a constrained choice).

Obviously (assuming determinism is true), two identically programmed computers will always make the same 'choice' under the the same circumstances, and (given sufficient knowledge of the programming and data) the 'choice' of each computer is always predictable. The Libertarian would say that the computer brings nothing uniquely “of its own” to the choice, that it does not bear “ultimate responsibility” because its choices are always attributable to external and prior causative factors. But this statement is in fact meaningless (what does “of its own” actually mean?).

The above assumes determinism is true. If we now introduce indeterminism, such that two identical computers do NOT always make the same choices, and these choices are NO LONGER predictable, does that mean these computers suddenly “bring something of their own” to the choice, or that they suddenly “bear ultimate responsibility” for their choices?. How can the introduction of indeterminism render “irresponsible” computers suddenly “responsible”? Clearly it cannot.

Indeterminism is therefore a “will-o-the-wisp” when we are looking for the source of ultimate responsibility. Indeterminism cannot be a source of ultimate responsibility.

Libertarians believe that having chosen, they could have chosen differently under the very same circumstances. In other words, if precisely the same circumstances were to be repeated, the outcome could have been different. This scenario is clearly incompatible with determinism. The only way that identical circumstances can give rise to different outcomes is if indeterminism is true. For this reason, many Libertarians embrace indeterminism. But we have just seen that indeterminism does not endow ultimate responsibility.

Somehow, a Libertarian interprets the introduction of indeterminism as meaning that “they bring something of their own to the choice, they have ultimate responsibility”, but Libertarians fail to explain how “something of their own” can arise from an “indeterministic cause”, which we have already seen has nothing to do with ultimate responsibility.

MF

 

[Billy T]

The Libertarian IllusionLibertarians often emphasise what they consider to be the two (and related) key features of their philosophy of free will:
Alternative Possiblities (AP), the idea that there is a genuine choice available at a given time...

Since the last four post have been by you, and I hope we have become friends enough that I can tease you a little, I though I would break your chain of posts with:

Would you please define what you mean by "genuine choice." How can we have a meaningful discussion if you use undefine terms?

PS glad you liked my poem (post 56)

 

[moving finger]

Since the last four post have been by you, and I hope we have become friends enough that I can tease you a little, I though I would break your chain of posts with:

Would you please define what you mean by "genuine choice." How can we have a meaningful discussion if you use undefine terms?

PS glad you liked my poem (post 56)

Hehehehe - Well spotted!
As an attempt at a "weak" defence, I actually copied & pasted the offending phrase from a website referred to me by Tournesol at : http://www.geocities.com/peterdjones/det_compat.html

Now, I would not have chosen the phrase “genuine choice” myself, because I believe there is simply choice, sweet and simple. Yes, that choice can be constrained (inevitable) or it can be unconstrained (evitable), but to my mind both kinds of choice are genuine. What I think the Libertarian who wrote those words actually means by “genuine choice” is probably “uncosntrained choice”, but that is only my guess.

I plead guilty to using ambiguous terms and not defining them.

Any luck on defining GFW?

Cheers

MF