The philosophy thread general discussion

Yes, there would be a sense in which it is not free. And maybe that sense is even the most often associated with rigorous definitions we give of 'free' when talking about metaphysics. However, it is still my view that the definitions we like to use in metaphysics are more restrictive than necessary to cover what we actually want to imply by the term 'free will'.

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What do you want to imply with that term?

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

@De Marquis The underlying physical architecture of the brain and the previous neural activity is me. And of course I want to be influenced by my perception of the environment as I can't make a choice without any knowledge and I can't have any knowledge without being influenced.

Cause and effect is local. The only cause for my decision is the immediate past of me making the decision and nothing before that is relevant. If I was design by someone who predict ahead of time I would make a decision, I still made it.

My actions are predictable given what I want and what I know? Good.

@Meklar and De Marquis

I have said in my previous post what I want to imply by "free will".

edited 3rd Mar '14 11:24:26 AM by higurashimerlin

When life gives you lemons, burn life's house down with the lemons.

"The underlying physical architecture of the brain and the previous neural activity is me."

If that's really true, then I propose that you are a completely determined organic automaton. There is no "freedom" to make different choices anywhere in you. Cause and effect being local is irrelevant, so far as I can see, to the issue of whether or not your choices are determined.

You have stated what you think "will" is, I dont remember you stating what you think "freedom" means. If I missed it, I apologize.

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

I don't see how shunting anything to the immaterial solves the problem. You just replace neural architecture with weird soul stuff. Still just as rooted in cause and effect.

@De Marquis Post 2199 "If I taboo freedom, I would say that I care about whether not we can do what we decided. "

@Elfive Exactly.

edited 3rd Mar '14 1:13:16 PM by higurashimerlin

When life gives you lemons, burn life's house down with the lemons.

That's fine, although it's tantamount to saying that you dont care about the topic of what we have been debating for 3-4 pages, but what the hay...

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

I am still not sure what you are talking about De Marquis.

When life gives you lemons, burn life's house down with the lemons.

"I care about whether or not we are free." If you dont care about that, fair enough, but I wish you had said so two days ago...

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

@De Marquis Let put this frankly.... WHAT?

The only sense in which asking about freedom is meaningful is whether or not our decisions mean anything. In other words whether we control our decision and actions. I am free to do what I want because my decision will predictably follow from my desires.

If you are concern with whether or not we are free and rather talk about some nonsense about the past reaching forward to control our future decisions then you could have said so two days.

When life gives you lemons, burn life's house down with the lemons.

We're just repeating ourselves at this point. I'm not explaining what "determinism" means again.

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

If your actions do not follow deterministically from your decision, which follows from your desires and knowledge then how are you free?

When life gives you lemons, burn life's house down with the lemons.

I've been following this conversation for a while, and what exactly do you mean by "taboo"? Are you sure you've chosen the right English word for what you mean? Because, I can't really understand your argument, especially if you use the wrong words to describe it.

Keep Rolling On

@Greenmantle I was trying to make sure that weren't just arguing about the words "free will" so I ofter to taboo the use the term. This might be helpful: http://lesswrong.com/lw/nu/taboo_your_words/

When life gives you lemons, burn life's house down with the lemons.

Higurashi, I would like to ask you to define what you mean by "free" in this sense. I can see that your position is that as long as your decisions are predetermined, you are free. While I agree that our decisions are predetermined, I simply don't know what meaning of the word "free" applies to that.

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

@Best Of

My position is that if as long as your decisions and actions are determined by your own will, by your own reasoning as to what you want to do then you are free. I don't care where your desires came from as long as there are your own.

When life gives you lemons, burn life's house down with the lemons.

Well, I think we can all agree with that position. It does assume a different definition of "freedom" than the one usually used in discussions about free will, but at least I think you've made your position understandable by now and it is (at least in my opinion) self-consistent.

I wonder if anyone wants to have the more traditional free will debate, though - where a decision is considered "free" if it is fundamentally not "just" the result of preceding natural events and processes.

I sort of think that the current population of this thread would probably not take the non-deterministic side (i.e. the one supporting free will) here, but I could be wrong. (Maybe we have any number of lurkers who are thinking about defending a free will that disproves determinism.)

edited 3rd Mar '14 2:09:00 PM by BestOf

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

I know this is basically re stating whats been said on the last few pages but I've been following the thread on mobile device and couldn't really contribute. However I've come up with a simple thought problem which should clear up any misconceptions with regards to "free will".

Let's take a person called Jack. Jack is placed in a room by some scientists and given the choice to press button A or button B. Let us say, also, that the scientists are able to run perfect simulations of reality and run the choice Jack is given 100 times.(that is they run simulations of Jack's choice 100 times, Including the universe up until jacks choice and his and all other brains in existence up to that point). After some thought Jack chooses button A.

a) If reality is deterministic then the simulations will without fail predict that Jack will choose button A.

b) If reality is non deterministic then the simulations will be split unpredictably between choices A and B.

Now assuming that "Will" (that is agency) is a given if reality is of type a) then we have non-free will that is we could not choose to do otherwise(we would not be automatons). If reality is type b) we have free will and we can actually choose to do different things all else being identical (not automatons).

If we do not have "Will" whether or not reality is type a) or type b) we would be automatons whether or not our choices are determined or not as there is no agency (philosophical zombie).

"Humans are but puppets playing on a stage, I just like cutting the strings"

Doesn't really from my point of view. If there is no free will, then we have the illusion. We think we make decision based on rational considerations, while in reality we are following pre-set paths and we are merely (convincingly fooled) to think it is indeed our own decisions.

If there is free will, well, same thing really except that the said illusion is not an illusion.

@Best Of: "where a decision is considered "free" if it is fundamentally not "just" the result of preceding natural events and processes. " Yeah that does not happen. Interestingly enough if that did happen it might actuality destroy my version.

@Mandemo: Let me put it this way. A calculator will always produce the same output no matter how many times you use it(unless it is broken and thus not a calculator). By your argument it does not do math, but rather follows a predetermined path to print an output. This is invalid because the cause of the printed output is in fact the resulting of the calculator deterministically doing math. Human action is the result of their brain deterministically reasoning about what to do so it is not an illusion that we make a choice.

When life gives you lemons, burn life's house down with the lemons.

We make choices. But we have actual preferences. We have actual methods of creating scenarios. We have actual heuristics. We have actual memories. We are someone. So of course we're going to be predictable, even if the only way to do so would involve making a copy of us.

Whether our desires came from some where else or no where, they didn't originally come from us, because there was no us.

I cant go along with redefining words to mean something other than what they are commonly supposed to mean, as a way of redefining the terms of an argument. Just because we make a decision in no way implies that the decision must be free. You're simply making internal decisions free by definition, which is not a strong argument. This link will help explain what I think you are doing (scroll down to "High Redefinition").

"Free" pretty clearly means independent of something, in the context of a discussion of freewill, it means a will that is at least to some degree autonomous, independent of outside influences. Saying that the chain of cause and effect that happens to occur inside your head is "your will" and then claiming that the fact that the decision is the result of this will in no way demonstrates any degree of autonomy from outside influences. In this context it doesnt matter if it's practical to predict the decision, or how long the chain of cause and effect is, or whether or not the past is linked directly or indirectly to the decision. To be determined it is only necessary to be able to trace the chain of cause and effect back to external influences (provided the chain is unbroken). Unless you believe in "uncaused causes" (which is a legitimate position, but so far you have not adopted it) or you think there is some source of decisions outside the physical forces of the universe, then I still dont see why you assume any will must always be free.

"We learn from history that we do not learn from history."

External influences, such as causing you as oppose to someone else to exist. The kind of freedom you're asking for is the freedom of a ghost of perfect emptiness, but that ghost doesn't exist.

@demarquis: We are not even disagreeing anymore. What I mean when I say free and what you mean when you say free are different. The feeling that I have chosen what do is not right since I did in fact choose. If you want to claim that my decision is "influenced" by the outside then by all means you are right about. And I don't care so long as I do what I chose.

I have had enough this. You have made a claim and I have made a claim. Since our claims are about different things we don't have to debate. The origin of my preferences doesn't destroy my claim.

Unless there is still some point of disagreement I would like to end this. Let us move on.

When life gives you lemons, burn life's house down with the lemons.

That reality, at least for our purposes, behaves as if sentient choice is a causal force in its own right. Or to put it another way, that no one can predict a sentient being's choices with 100% reliability.

Those two viewpoints are not necessarily the same. I take the compatibilist standpoint, that determinism and free will can exist together- so long as we are willing to define 'free will' loosely enough, which I think we should be based on what we want from free will.

Scientifically speaking I also have reason to believe that physical reality is partly random, and thus not totally deterministic. But I don't think this affects the matter of free will either way.

The point is, if the simulations are that reliable, then stating what Jack will do no longer qualifies as a prediction, merely an observation of what has already happened. Because the simulation had to end before a reliable 'prediction' could be made.

edited 3rd Mar '14 11:38:46 PM by Meklar

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