The philosophy thread general discussion

I think this has something to do with probability or the simulation hypotheses (the latter would run with the assumption that the people of this universe are effectively programs)

Like lets say you were running a simulation of a guy in a forest. Specifically how many items would he chop down a specific tree. If he chops down that tree no more than 99% of the time, then that implies that he can defy the prediction and thus proves that he has free will, because of the one time the chose not to chop that tree down. But if he chops it down 100% of the time? Then the implications open the possibility of his choices not being his free will, but being preprogrammed. As if it was his destiny to chop down that tree.

In this case the assumption is prolly not that people make their choices, but that they always make the same choices. And because of that the door of questing free will is opened.

another angle is the idea of Destiny and prophecy. If your predictions are always accurate that that implies a deterministic universe (and/or self-fulfilling prophecies). If your predictions turn out to be wrong that the implications that people can defy destiny and that they in turn have free will.

I'm not sure if either of hypothesis are accurate though.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Feb 12th 2021 at 7:01:47 AM

That's the thing I don't understand, I guess. Why is the "free" will specifically in being able to defy prediction? Wouldn't it be in choosing to cut down a tree in the first place?

Especially when you consider that in this scenario no version of the lumberjack is aware of the prediction. So, the value of the prediction can't affect his decision process.

Wouldn't a consistent will, free or not, imply that he would always choose to do the same thing in the same circumstances? Not because it was destined, or predetermined, but simply because that is the choice that guy would make in that scenario?

That feels like the most natural explanation to me, and yet it seems to be the least commonly held.

That reads like circular reasoning. The way I see it, there is no "self" except the product of all inputs.

Edited by ShinyCottonCandy on Feb 13th 2021 at 8:43:05 AM

"If your behavior could be predicted given perfect information of the initial conditions of the universe and fully accurate physical laws, why would this imply that your behavior was determined by something else besides you?"

And I, in turn, am having trouble understanding why this isn't obvious. I suspect we just think differently. Isn't the answer implicit in your question? The reason is because the initial conditions of the universe are causing you to make the choices that you do. If the initial position of certain quantum particles are just so, they make you have a tuna sandwich 14 billion years later. If they are arranged a little differently, you have ham. I'm obviously oversimplifying, but that's basically what hard determinism says.

I think what may be confusing you is the presence of a conscious self in the equation. That if someone makes a choice, then they must have chosen freely. What we are suggesting is that you could be aware of yourself, and experience making a choice, but if the universe operates according to hard determinism, then all that must be an illusion.

'Course, we don't have to accept hard determinism, but then we have to propose a model of how we think the universe operates instead. Exactly how can biological organisms make undetermined choices within a cosmological framework that makes sense? Dualism is one proposed way, complexity theory is another.

Edited by DeMarquis on Feb 13th 2021 at 9:37:26 AM

It's also kind of interesting that we're drawing a distinction between the universe and ourselves. If hard determinism is true, we are the universe: part of and inseparable from it. Just as what happened in the past influences us now, the things that we do have a causal influence on everything that is within our future light cones. In a few hours, your breath will be connected to the cloud formations on Jupiter and, in 25,000 years, the motion of the stars around the Milky Way's core.

In 10⁵⁰ years, what I typed just now could be embedded in the quantum information emitted from a black hole in Hawking radiation. The universe will always know that we existed.

Some great minds have suggested (paraphrased) that intelligence is the universe's way of observing itself. That could be literally true, although not in the sense that there's intentionality behind it. It's a beautiful accident.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 13th 2021 at 10:07:01 AM

Again, my problem is that the way the initial state of the universe determines your choices is the same way you determine your choices; through you existing.

It's just not an external thing to you? It looks external, because you elide over the fact that you are in it.

Yes, of course any causal chain that includes me and other things can determine my decisions; because it has me in it! You need to show a causal chain without me in it that controls my decisions to prove my will unfree, and determinism doesn't do that.

Everyone just assumes that if your decision can be determined by a set of circumstances, it can't be free; but setting aside that you think that's obvious and define freedom in line with that, how does it represent any actual external control of your will? Why does that impose a constraint on your freedom, instead of just influencing who you are? Because "It seems obvious" is not a reason, and it really seems like the mistake being made is a simple pair of fallacies; that if the initial conditions of the universe, which are external to you, determine your decisions, you can't. But it's not an external control because the way it determines your decisions is by causing you to exist and then you decide. And that if you would always make the same decision, you must lack the ability to have made any other decision; but no, you just would always make the one decision for the reasons you would decide it. If all the problems that make a will unfree are actually just restating that you have a will (because they are), why must it be unfree? Why, other than that you define freedom to mean this being necessarily untrue, does this position make any sense?

I'll be honest, I think my argument about the presence of yourself in the causal chain is killer. If this were a brand new argument, I truly believe I would "win" it and require a new opposing argument to reject mine. But you just have a set idea of "freedom" that fails to reflect any actual measure of, you know, freedom, because instead it demands unpredictability, leaving the "Predictability implies a lack of freedom" much harder to attack. But that doesn't mean it isn't wrong? It's the most obviously wrong thing in the world to me, and despite nobody here agreeing with me, and multiple attempts to get at this point, I have not seen one defense of this principle. You just keep assuming it and from there attacking my arguments whose whole thrust is that assumption is wrong.

I don't mind people just not agreeing with me but is this particular idea that set in convention nobody could tell it was principally what I was calling absurd this whole time? Or am I that much worse at making a clear point than I thought?

It's not circular? I'll be honest I can't understand your point. That selfs exist is all I need for the case, and we can all know that at least one does, cogito ergo sum and all. If selfs exist as products of all inputs, sure, still don't see where it breaks my argument.

Tl;dr: This, but weaponized.

Edited by RaichuKFM on Feb 13th 2021 at 10:19:30 AM

At this point I can only say that you are assigning meaning to words in ways I've never seen anyone else assign them, so I am unable to form a meaningful response to you either way.

"It's just not an external thing to you? It looks external, because you elide over the fact that you are in it."

Well then I have a question. I'm not sure you see the implication of this belief. It sounds like an argument that perhaps the universe has free will, but in that case, so does every rock, every sub-atomic particle. They too, are in the universe. Do you actually believe that your actions are more free than a stone's? Upon what basis do you believe this?

"Everyone just assumes that if your decision can be determined by a set of circumstances, it can't be free; but setting aside that you think that's obvious and define freedom in line with that, how does it represent any actual external control of your will?"

Because that's what freedom ''means'', that's what the definition is: "exemption from external control, interference, regulation, etc." If we are not free in the sense of being free from external control, then what is freedom?

"Why does that impose a constraint on your freedom, instead of just influencing who you are?"

Well now for that to be the case, there would have to be some independent force or factor that was also influencing your decisions, independent of the sum total of all causal forces in the universe, and your brain's responses to them. That really is the crux of the whole question: what is that independent force? If you say "me", I have already pointed out how the presence of an aware self is not evidence in favor of free will, because hard determinism dictates that the experience is an illusion.

Let's try another tack. I'm going to tell you a story. Once, long ago, there was an explosion of space and energy that was the beginning of the universe. At that moment, quantum particles were arranged in a certain non-symmetric way. The laws of physics dictated exactly how these particles would interact—there was no randomness, no alternative paths the universe could follow, those particles did what they had to do given the sum total of natural forces acting upon them. Time passed, particles cohered into atoms and molecules, and eventually gravity pulled them into stars and planets, then galaxies. Again, there was no alternative path: if you could somehow use a giant time machine and rewind the universe back to the beginning, it would all play out exactly the same—identical planets around identical stars at identical places at identical times.

Eventually on one planet chemical elements separated, and there was air, water, soil. Certain molecules catalisized and began merging into ever larger, more complex molecules. Eventually these complex collections of molecules passed some arbitrary line and became alive. Animals evolved neural systems that allowed them to respond to external stimuli in ways that tended to maximize their chances of reproduction and survival. Again, there was no randomness present, everything that happened was dictated by the laws of nature and the sum total of causal forces acting on everything. If you rewound the universe and played it out again, the exact same gazelle would perform the exact same leap to escape the exact same lion. Nothing can change.

Animals evolved ever more complex neural systems until one animal became aware of itself in an apparently new, more sophisticated way. This changed how the universe operates in no way whatsoever. Again, if you rewound everything then the exact same people end up performing the exact same behaviors because natural laws and causal forces dictate that they do so. Everything is predetermined, all is caused, including how I will end this sentence and what you will think and feel when you read it.

Where is there any room for free will in any of that?

"But it's not an external control because the way it determines your decisions is by causing you to exist and then you decide."

No one is disputing that we exist and that we make decisions. The question is whether or not those decisions are free, which is a separate question.

Edit: I just realized that this conversation we are having is reminding me of a previous conversation I had about this same issue. If you have the time, I would recommend that you go back and read those old posts, they might answer some of your questions.

Edited by DeMarquis on Feb 13th 2021 at 12:10:48 PM

Can I ask what words?

Because I know I'm defining free will differently, and have said so repeatedly. The incompatabilist notion of how a will can be Free seems to me to be almost totally separate from, well, any normal definition of the word "free". While not necessarily a problem, incompatibilists then seem to treat any will that is not Free as though it was not free. The conflation seems clear to me.

To that end I've asked for reasons why an un-Free will must be in a relevant sense unfree, or put another way, how it is controlled or constrained through any mechanism other than the willful entity's own decision process.

And people repeatedly in this conversation with me have asserted the former and from it concluded the latter so this conflation is not in my head; most recently, see:

These clearly are instances of someone arguing that un-Free wills, theoretically predictable from initial conditions ones, must be un-free because it means the decision is illusory.

And I've spelled this out repeatedly, so forgive me if I'm frustrated that people keep pinning the fact that their stated definitions don't fully match the extent of their beliefs, and resultant argument disconnects, on me.

It's a motte and bailey nobody realizes they're making, defying freedom under determinism and then, when challenged, retreating to denying a separate notion of "freedom" under determinism. I think you think the latter sense is synonymous with the former, but if you don't ever prove it, and reply to attempts to argue they're not synonymous with an objection I'm making up my own definitions of words, then you simply are arguing something circular.

Please, can someone actually tell me where I'm wrong, without resorting to an apparent obviousness, or convention?

Okay rhetorical question answered, thank you.

I think our difficulty is that to argue controlling factors are "external" from you, requires that they be separate from you. And the initial conditions of the universe are separate. You can say they determine your behavior, but they do so indirectly; they do so through a causal chain, and that causal chain includes you.

If a mechanism includes you, it is not external to you. It is not separate from you. It is distinct, but inclusive of you. Because of this, we can conclude something: if you cause your actions, it will be valid to say the universe caused your actions, because you are part of the universe. But this in no way takes away from your control, because we just assumed you caused your actions and deduced it. If you aren't entirely material, sub out "universe" for some other word that encompasses all material and immaterial things that exist. This also doesn't require the universe or whatever system that contains you to be deterministic. That's orthogonal.

So why, in a deterministic universe, must "The initial conditions of the universe cause my behaviors" represent an external control of you, and not just a necessary consequence of the fact you control your decisions?

I think you'll say it's implicit, but at the point where "external factors" include you, and at the point where "control" means influence at all, the thought that "external" "control" negates freedom has lost its teeth.

As for your story, I have one:

In a space of some sort there is a free willed being, charmingly called A, which finds themself confronted by a set of circumstances A*. Faced with these circumstances, and following their free will, A chooses the option they most like, and make decision X.

In a separate but otherwise identical space is another free-willed being, who happens to be like A in every way, except we can call them A'. Finding themself in circumstances A*, A' follows their free will and chooses the option they most like, and make decision X.

I think you can see where this is going. The fact that this decision is fixed for any and every A, A', A'', is an observable consequence that follows purely from A's will. They like making decision X in circumstances A*, and so would always do that no matter how many times you tried it. (Not that an individual A can ever be in circumstances A* if they remember having been in circumstances A*, since that would be a separate circumstance.)

Where's the contradiction in this? And, if there is no contradiction, why is the fact that a "rewound" deterministic universe would always play out the same any different?

Your ability to make a choice is not contingent on the existence of another reality where you did make that choice.

But really I think the whole big disconnect we have is that you think that any "free" will must determine actions by causal processes independent of any other causal processes. I think it just needs to make its decisions through its own causal processes. Whether its own causal processes are a subset of any other causal processes seems to mean everything to you, and the only way I can understand that is a misunderstanding?

The idea, I think, is that any containing system must be a constraining system. But since the system that constrains your behavior includes you, it's possible what constrains your behavior is just you. And when you constrain your behavior that is decision. So for a will to be unfree in any relevant sense, it needs to be constrained, and constrained by something that isn't itself. Determinism doesn't actually imply that; it implies that your behavior is constrained, yes, but you having a will implies that self-same thing. What constraint does determinism imply that is incompatible with those cobstraints your will itself makes?

I think you'll just say again that I'm describing a will and saying it must be free when it's not. But if what I've said, a will that makes its decisions in a context and evolves itself over time in response to that context, but is not controlled by that context or anything else (except by verbal slight of hand where you can claim any system that contains the will controls the decisions), isn't necessarily free... 1. What value does freedom even have then, and 2. why have you stated this freedom to be necessary to make non-illusory decisions?

The really short version is your idea of a free will isn't so much "free" as "separate from everything else" but people then keep acting like any will that fails the second criteria must also fail the first one, being under outside control and only imagining it's making decisions. And... No? The fact I'm a part of other things and understandable as that part of them that I am, doesn't imply any lack of or limitation upon my freedom.

Edited by RaichuKFM on Feb 13th 2021 at 12:46:30 PM

It's fascinating to watch you spell out your reasoning, and miss what the rest of us are saying by a millimeter.

"The fact that this decision is fixed for any and every A, A', A'', is an observable consequence that follows purely from A's will. They like making decision X in circumstances A*, and so would always do that no matter how many times you tried it."

Simple question, then: ''What is causing A to like that choice?" What is causing A's preferences? Because if their preferences are comprehensively caused by natural law, causal forces and his/her brain's responses to same, then I assert that A's will is not free.

I do not dispute that A has a will, nor that A's will is the proximate cause of his/her decision. I dispute whether or not A's will is free in the sense I (and everyone else I am aware of) defines it: "exemption from external control, interference, regulation, etc."

"The idea, I think, is that any containing system must be a constraining system." I believe so, yes. The idea is that if any system exists that is entirely self-contained, accepting no inputs from any source external to itself, and if the behavior within that system is entirely predictable from an equation describing that system and it's possible states, then that equation constrains the behavior of that system. I believe that this is in fact the mathematical foundation of modern physics.

But it would not be correct to say that the behavior of any sub-system is identical with the entire system. Parts do not equal wholes. You cannot predict the behavior of the entire universe by observing the orbit of the Earth around the Sun, nor can you predict the behavior of the entire brain by observing only the limbic system. You may be a part of the universe, and a product of it's laws, but the entire universe is not equivalent to yourself, nor are you equivalent to the entire system. You, as a distinct entity, are pretty clearly bounded in such a way as to operate independently from other distinct entities within the universe. Hence the question of whether or not your will is free, separately from the rest of the universe, is not meaningless.

You got my implication backwards. You can't predict a whole brain from its limbic system; but you can predict a limbic system from its whole brain. Because that's just predicting the limbic system from itself, plus you know other things. That's the relevance of the subsystem status.

I am a distinct entity and that entity is a system which is a proper sub-system of the universe. If you could predict my behavior just from me, you could say you could predict my behavior from the universe, because knowledge of the latter totally includes the knowledge of the former that you need. If I determine my behavior, then you can accurately say the whole universe determines my behavior, because it includes everything that determines my behavior, plus a bunch of other stuff.

Because of that implication, it means you can't conclude from "The universe determines my behavior" whether or not you determine your behavior. And thus you can't conclude an answer to the question from the premise of determinism, either.

And then you say that's just showing will and not freedom, ignore where I point out the evidence you conflate these two things when you say stuff like an unfree will only has the illusion of choice, and I restate my points and we do it all over again.

You've fallen back on an interpretation of "external" that describes systems which include you, which is a silly definition of "external", which means your definition of "freedom" is tainted by this silliness, but I clearly won't convince you of that however hard I try.

By itself, that's just disappointing, but being in the middle of this conversation and getting drive-by accused of stuff like making up definitions nobody else uses, despite giving my definitions and reasons for using them and why I think they better reflect what the words are actually used to mean in general, has really sapped my will to keep trying. Oh well.

(I should clarify I'm not asking for apology or anything it is just not the sort of thing I can really address well in a discussion.)

Edited by RaichuKFM on Feb 13th 2021 at 1:27:29 PM

Well, I don't know, you are using terms and concepts in ways that I have no familiarity with. To me, the definition of "external" is pretty obvious. If you have a different definition, that's on you. But you were begging for someone to explain to you why we thought you were wrong—I have done so, but you claim not to understand. I am not seeking to persuade you, only to explain myself. If we do not share such basic concepts as "you are different from the rest of the universe" then I don't know where we go from here. Those "other things" that you need to explain the limbic system are pretty important, you know, and including them is in no way that I understand the same as "predicting it from itself". Nor is the limbic system operating in any way free from the rest of the brain. We may just have to leave it there.

Edited by DeMarquis on Feb 13th 2021 at 1:43:38 PM

Yeah, I can't fault you for trying to explain yourself; we both don't seem to understand something which is very basic to the other party, even given a lot of time and effort.

I've never disputed that I'm different from the rest of the universe, instead disputing that the whole universe can be said to be external to me (I'm the part of the universe that is not external to me, after all). I'm unsure where the root of disconnect there is but we were talking past each other by the end of it.

I got sloppy with the limbic system analogy, as you're absolutely right you can't understand the actions of a system without both the behavioral rules of the system and the conditions of the environment, so to predict the limbic system you need the rest of the brain's states, if not its behavior, but at that point you have its behavior implicitly and it falls to distinction without a difference. That was pretty much inexcusable of me, I was just trying to show you had the direction of what I was saying backwards.

Edited by RaichuKFM on Feb 13th 2021 at 1:57:58 PM

Asserting that the rest of the universe is not external to you is a coherent meta-physical position to hold, but one that is widely considered to be contrary to a scientific world-view, which is fine but you seemed to dispute such views a few pages ago. To assert that the universe taken as a whole is self-determining is not to assert that you are self-determining, since, as I pointed out, asteroids are also part of the universal whole and they aren't self-determining, so what makes you different? You never answered that.

I'm different because I have a consciousness, a will, and I make decisions. Asteroids don't. Now, I will say, you could argue the proximate cause of a particular asteroid's behavior, given a circumstance for it to behave in, is the system that is how that asteroid behaves; in the limited sense that an asteroid can behave, which is to say, exhibit behavior that is mainly interacting with other physical things. You could do that, but because the asteroid has no consciousness or will or mind, the condition of that given is an arbitrary division; there's nothing meaningful on the level of "the system of the asteroid's behavior" to make it anything other than a fancy segment of relevant physical laws and material.

However consciousness, as a phenomenon which is experienced by certain systems made up of physical components and the behavior of those components, is grounds for making a non-arbitrary division between the conscious entity and its environmental factors. It's intuitive that there is a difference between internal factors and environmental factors, as it comes to human decisions; my behavior depends on both features of myself and features of my environment, but we understand that the former dependency is qualitatively different from the latter dependency; my "will" is a process that makes decisions in response to things. My decision would vary if the things I was responding to were different, but those things' influence on the decision isn't willful, whereas how I make a decision in response to a given set of factors is willful.

We're not on the same wavelength about the idea of self-caused because I think that "self-caused" is a property in a different way than you do? I am an entity that makes decisions and acts on those decisions, so my behavior, being caused by my decisions, is necessarily self-caused. It's self-caused, because my self caused it. As I understand it, you agree with that I can cause things, since you don't dispute that wills are self-evident. So "self-caused" means something else to you. I'm guessing it requires that the self be the only cause of that thing? Or maybe the first cause, in some sort of ordering. I only care that my will is a cause of a thing, because things can be said to have multiple causes. However you layer or order the causes is presentational, they're all viewing the same singular cause through different lenses, focusing on different partial aspects of it or describing it from different perspectives. To me, if I cause something, saying the laws of physics caused that thing is synonymous. I'm a thing that can be described by physics, after all. The way that the laws of physics causes something is that I caused that thing, described in terms of physics. You seem to view "I caused this" and "Physics caused this" as fundamentally incompatible, in a way I don't think I could ever understand.

Also, okay, I'm going to try the external argument again.

The universe, as a whole, is not external to me. To be clear, it is also not internal to me. The universe, as a whole, contains me. Containment is a separate relationship from exclusion.

A is internal to B if every part of A is contained within B. A is external to B if no part of A is contained within B. A is overlapping with B if some part of A is contained within B. A contains B if every part of B is contained within A.

Thus, it is possible for it to be neither the case that A is external to B nor that A is internal to B; this might sound weird to say, because we think of those as opposites, but they aren't, not strictly. A system or set or whatever can consist of some things that are internal to A, and also some things that are external to A, and thus you can't call the system as a whole "external" or "internal".

Now, you're free to disagree with me here, and think that "external" does not mean "separate" or "outside of" but instead "not internal"; but then you have to be careful you don't accidentally conflate it with the more natural definitions. Respectfully, I think that's what's been happening here. (It's also arbitrary, because you could just as reasonably define "external" as "totally separate, outside of" and then "internal" as "not external" and shove containment/overlap into it.)

The idea that freedom implies a lack of "external" constraint is using external in its sense of separateness, and does not count containment or overlappingness. A system that controls your behavior because it contains you is not external, nor is it internal, relative you. We need to split it into pieces to talk about internal or external parts of it. The most natural split is "You" (internal) and "The rest of the system" (external). Then, only if you can say this new external system^note (or any other subsystem that is fully external) controls your decisions, you have demonstrated an external control on your will and thus its lack of freedom.

(Note also that if you only show external control of behavior you have to also in some way show that isn't only by changing the circumstances you have to choose in, because that's an avenue to affect your behavior without constraining your will, which is why I mentioned external control of "decisions" as the criteria.)

Because showing that a system controls your decisions doesn't show which parts of that system control your decision, and if there is even one internal part of that decision, it is at least technically possible that internal part causes the decision.

To use quotes just to visibly block phrases together: I am not separate from "the universe", because I am part of "the universe". I am separate from "the rest of the universe". Determinism does not imply "the rest of the universe" determines my behavior; it only implies "the universe" determines my behavior.

This is consistent with the idea that I control my behavior, because if we assume my existence is sufficient to control my behavior, any system that includes me and other things (like "the universe") must also be sufficient.

Determinism also implies "the initial conditions of the universe" determine my behavior, but that determination is through a system that includes me, and thus isn't properly external.

Another reason why not slipping "containment" or "overlap" into the definition of "external" is so important is because otherwise if you had an internal cause, you could build a containing system around that by addition and label this new system as one that caused the thing, and this new cause would be considered "external" despite being identical to the "internal" cause we started with.

I think this won't really make sense to you because the idea of an "internal" cause to you seems to require that it bore no relationship whatsoever to any external entities ever, whereas the idea of an "internal" cause to me is just... a cause of something in a system, that comes from something else in that system. But I felt the need to try.

"I'm different because I have a consciousness, a will, and I make decisions."

But if the rest of the universe is internal to you, then it should make no difference. You've been saying that since your self is derived from the laws governing the universe, that means anything the universe causes to happen can be considered to come from you. That just because the Big Bang caused you to eat a tuna sandwich today, you still have free will because you are part of the universe. Now, I want to be honest and admit that I think this is nuts, because it appears wildly illogical to me, like someone asking me to disprove that 2+2=5, and of course that's very hard to do.

Let's reiterate. I said that if your decisions are the result of a chain of causation going back to the beginning of the universe, this means that you are not free of external causes, because the beginning of the universe is outside of you. You came back with a claim that the beginning of the universe isn't outside of you, and therefore it's still you that is making the decision. I then said that well, it's pretty obvious to me that the Big Bang isn't you, and you aren't the Big Bang, so if the BB caused you to eat a sandwich, you aren't determining that decision, the BB is. You then say, no, the BB is internal to me. To me, this does not compute. This is a use of the idea "internal" that is entirely unfamiliar to me, and which I cannot parse.

Now you claim that having consciousness "is grounds for making a non-arbitrary division between the conscious entity and its environmental factors." This seems inconsistent to me. If there is a meaningful difference between your behavior and the asteroid's, then the rest of the universe is external to you and we are back where we started: if these external forces and laws determine your choices, then you have no more freedom than the asteroid. You may exist, you may have a will, you make willful decisions, but the decision you make are not free, because they are ultimately determined by the same forces that dictate the asteroid's behavior, albeit in a much more complex and sophisticated fashion.

"It's intuitive that there is a difference between internal factors and environmental factors, as it comes to human decisions; my behavior depends on both features of myself and features of my environment, but we understand that the former dependency is qualitatively different from the latter dependency; my "will" is a process that makes decisions in response to things."

We understand no such thing: according to determinism, if your will itself is determined by environmental factors, then your will is determined, not free. The orbit of an asteroid is also a process that behaves in response to things. There would have to be some additional causal factor originating from within your will alone for there to be freedom, and you haven't asserted that.

I think you may simply not understand: for many scholars over thousands of years, having a will does not imply freedom. Locating the decision choice inside your brain does not imply freedom either. Tracing a chain of causal factors that happens to pass through you to become behavior also in no way implies freedom. All this is commonly understood.

"I am an entity that makes decisions and acts on those decisions, so my behavior, being caused by my decisions, is necessarily self-caused."

I'm sorry, but the second part of your sentence does not follow from the first: a chess computer is also an entity that makes it's own decisions, yet a computer doesn't have free will (does it?). What makes you different from Alexa? To be "self-caused" can mean more than one thing: it can mean that the proximate cause of the decision were processes inside your mind, and that can be true, but if that proximate cause was itself entirely the product of external causes that came before it, then that does not correspond to what has traditionally been meant by free will. If A causes B and B causes C, then A caused C. B, in fact, contributes no independent causal factor of it's own, it's just an intervening step. For example, if environmental factors within a cloud cause water droplets to condense and begin to fall, and the rain then causes the ground to become wet, it was in fact the environmental factors inside the cloud that caused the ground to become wet. The rain possesses no independent freedom of action. We agree, yes?

If your answer is "no", then I honestly don't know how to continue from here—we apparently employ incompatible logic.

Edited by DeMarquis on Feb 13th 2021 at 7:46:22 AM

One sentence into your post and I don't know what to say.

"But if the rest of the universe is internal to you"

I never said this. I never implied this. I in fact denied this outright.

I think you must be concluding that I think this because I say "The universe is not external to me", however:

"The universe is not external to me" does not imply "The rest of the universe is internal to me".

"The universe" is not the same thing as "The rest of the universe". There is a big difference! The difference is the former includes me and the latter excludes me! This is the most important consideration conceivable when wondering if something is external or internal to something else! I genuinely do not understand how everyone keeps conflating these two things, apparently without realizing it. It is incredibly frustrating to keep getting told I've said things I've never said because you all can't tell these two concepts apart somehow.

"The universe is not external to me" also does not imply "The universe is internal to me", either, because the universe isn't external to me (as it contains things that are internal to me) and isn't internal to me (as it contains things that are external to me), the relationship between the universe and I is that it contains me.

So to clarify:

The universe is not external to me. The universe is not internal to me. The universe contains me, as well as things that aren't me (i.e. the rest of the universe).

The rest of the universe is external to me.

This one I think is a more forgivable mistake: I have never said the initial conditions of the universe are internal to me. What I have said is that the causal chain between the initial conditions of the universe and my behavior includes me. Because it does! If you follow every relevant cause and effect from the Big Bang to me making some particular decision, you wind up with all the physical events that make me exist.

When you say "The initial conditions of the universe determine your actions", what that means isn't "The initial conditions of the universe directly control your actions", it's that "There exists a causal chain that leads from the initial conditions of the universe to your actions, and this chain determines your actions", and it so happens that you're in that chain. I'm not in the initial conditions of the universe, of course I'm not; but you can't come up with any mechanism for the initial conditions of the universe to control my actions through, that doesn't have me in it. If something controls my behaviors using a mechanism that includes me, that can't be external control, unless you show that mechanism also exerts a control on my behavior that isn't through me.

It's both true that the environmental factors inside the cloud caused the ground to be wet, and that the rain caused the ground to become wet. Those are both true at the same time, as independent truths. The rain didn't possess any independent freedom of action, not because the rain's behavior is determined by other forces (although it is) but because it doesn't have a will. It's rain.

Your reasoning depends on the idea that something being caused by the initial conditions of the universe is incompatible with it being caused by the entity itself, whereas my argument is it's completely possible for these two things to be true, side by side.

It's not that I don't understand this. It's that I don't care. I don't care what people have thought previously or for how long they've thought it. And if I did, I'd point out I'm advancing what is simply a compatibilist position and there have been plenty of scholars who have done that. There have been plenty who disagree with your definition of free will, too! But I'm not trying to make arguments from authority, I'm trying to make an argument based on what makes sense.

I've given reasons for what I think and why I think it, and why I define things the way I do and why I think it's wrong to do otherwise. It's fine if you don't agree, but I don't like these suggestions that I might simply not know. Because I'm going to be blunt. My weird definition of freedom that you've never heard of? That's what anyone thinks freedom means until they're exposed to arguments about free will which have a very manufactured definition of freedom.

You've done a funny thing with "external", where you argue "the universe is external from you", which is only possibly true if "external" doesn't imply separate, but then draw conclusions that follow from "the universe is separate from you". It's a motte and bailey, although I don't think it's a conscious one. And it happens because your stated definitions aren't what you actually think. Your intuitions of the definitions are otherwise, maybe not the alternatives that I've suggested, but not the ones you've given, either. If they were in line, the motte and bailey moments wouldn't happen, unless you were acting in bad faith.

Or maybe you just mentally replace "the universe" with "the rest of the universe" every time? I guess it could be that. That's just flat-out wrong in no special way, though.

Whatever the case, it's clear you don't properly understand what I think; see, uh, the start of this. Not that I think you would agree with me if you did fully and properly understand; I'm all but sure you would still disagree. But since there are still major misunderstandings at this stage I don't think this is going to go anywhere. Whether that's my fault or your fault or as I would suspect both of our faults at once I think it's a bit too late to think it might get fixed. And since you've engaged with me fairly long-term now in good faith and in detail, at this point I don't think I can possibly make headway on this with anyone, so I really ought to just go.

Have a nice night, everybody.

I notice you didn't answer my question about A causing C.

The fact that it is an intervening step doesn't mean that it's not a step. In my view the only thing that's relevant to if B causes C is if, you know, B caused C. Sure, A caused B, as well. And you can say that A caused C, but A specifically caused C through B. So you can't say that A determines C in a sense that is separate from B. This is just kinda what I've been saying the whole time.

I didn't specifically answer that thing because I responded to the rain version which was, so far as I can tell, the exact same point?

Yeah looking at it you literally wrote it out as an example of the A causes B causes C principle. So when I replied to that example I was replying to the A -> B -> C principle. What are you even talking about?

Edited by RaichuKFM on Feb 13th 2021 at 12:22:06 PM

I feel we need to get down to basics because I'm finding it so hard to understand your point of view—I dont want to take anything for granted. I noticed, for example, that your reason for stating that the rain doesnt cause the ground to get wet because it doesnt have a will and makes no decisions, not specifically because its an intervening step. And Im glad I did, because it turns out we disagree somewhat. I have no time to expand on this right now—more later.

We disagree even more than that though, because I don't have any reason for stating that the rain doesn't cause the ground to become wet. The rain does cause the ground to become wet. And that's what I said.

This cause doesn't count as "freedom of action" because the rain doesn't have any intentional action to be free or unfree in the first place. The sense in which rain "acts" is fundamentally different from the way willful entities "act". Both types of "acting" can be described through physical processes that obey the same rules, yes, but in my case those processes produce a will, and in the rain's case they don't.

To try and get back to basics, this is how I think things stand:

To you, predictability implies a will is subject to predictable external causal factors, and thus is not free.

To me, predictability implies the willful behavior is subject to predictable causal factors, but not that these factors are external?

To you, the idea of a non-external causal factor must be something that comes directly, immediately, and firstly from the will.

To me, the idea of a non-external causal factor must be something that comes from the will.

The idea that my will is a system which can be understood as resulting from physical systems, chemical systems, etc., is natural to me. And while it may be the case that my behavior is fundamentally a result of physical forces and the initial conditions of the universe, this is compatible with my view that my behavior is freely determined by my will. (Freely meaning "not subject to external control".)

Because my will is a subset of those physical forces, the full set isn't external to me,^note It's not internal to me, either and thus isn't proof of external control. (The set of physical forces minus the ones that are my will, is external to me, but that's a separate set.)

Right. So the contention is over the following: If A causes B, and B causes C, to what extent can A be said to "cause C", and to what extent can B be said to be unimportant to this process. Most people I think would agree that if knowledge of the causal action of A is sufficient to entirely predict or explain C, without reference to any additional contribution from B, then B is unimportant and can be ignored insofar as specifying causal factors for C. I will use information theory to explain this. Causal factors can be evaluated in terms of the information they contribute to our understanding of a phenomenon, and information is defined as anything that improves our ability to predict phenomena in the universe (more technically, anything that reduces the appearance of randomness, otherwise known as "entropy" or the information content). If knowledge of B does not reduce our information entropy with regard to C (ie it adds no new information), then it isn't really a causal factor separate from A. I used rain because once you document all the relevant factors within the cloud, the fact that the rain is falling adds no further information.

If we are still on the same page, I can continue by asserting that according to hard determinism (and modern physics), the existence of a human will adds no information content to our understanding of human behavior (this may be objectively right or wrong, right now I'm only concerned with explaining it).

Edited by DeMarquis on Feb 15th 2021 at 2:44:10 PM

Right, all the information that knowledge of B adds is information already discoverable from the knowledge of A.

But it is still obviously the case that B caused C. You'd be obviously wrong to suggest the ground got wet without the rain. You don't need to know about rain directly from itself to explain why the ground gets wet, because perfect knowledge of the environmental conditions of the clouds and what that causes will teach you what you need to know about rain.

I guess that's what my big issue here is.

This isn't ignoring B. It's just leaving B implicit. There's a big difference!

You're getting information from A, yes, but some of that information is information about B. And you need that information about B to explain C. In fact, that's the only information you need from A; the rest offers additional context, and lengthens the chain of cause and effect you can explain, by showing what caused B (and thus C), but it doesn't show the immediate cause of C.

Understanding the environmental conditions of clouds and how they work and all the consequences, except for what precipitated moisture does after leaving the cloud, won't tell you why the ground got wet. You need to know about rain.

If you actually ignored B when thinking about the causal factors of C, you would be outright wrong; you can't understand why the ground gets wet if you ignore rain. You can understand rain purely as the consequence of environmental conditions which it is, but that's still understanding rain.

You can in turn understand the environmental conditions of clouds as the part of the larger water cycle it is, and to do that, you need to understand rain. You can't understand the whole without understanding its parts; in that if you don't understand the parts, you don't understand the whole, and thus in that if you understand the whole, you understand the parts.

You seem to be under the impression that where you get the information is all that matters, which is just wrong to me. It's what the information is about that matters.

B still matters, whether or not you get your information about it from it or the things that cause it. This is simply equivalent to the fact that you can understand causes from the perspectives of various systems and sub-systems.

What do I have to say to get you to understand that I don't think B is a separate factor from A, and never have? Because I feel like I've been clear about that from the start.

Actually, this kills your whole argument, now that I think about it. Your whole point is that wills which can be totally predicted/understood as the result of causal factors must be subject to control by external causal factors, and thus not free, right?

And for something to be external to something else, it must be separate from that thing, yes?^note I have a feeling you're going to disagree with this, but then just know you're the one not using words in the way people normally do and it was on you to make that clear. The definition of "external" that does not imply "separate" is the one that means "the outer portion of" which is clearly not what is meant by "external" in the context of what contradicts freedom.

I have a will [B], which can be understood in terms of physical conditions of the universe [A]. Specifically because my will is not separate from those physical conditions, (as B is not separate from A, which you've stated as principle), we can conclude that A is not external to B. Ergo, the fact that A determines B simply can't necessarily be external control, because you can't say A is external to B. (And just to head this off, no, you also can't say A is internal to B. The part of A that is B is internal to B, and the rest of A is external to B, but A itself is made of all those parts and thus has a separate form of relationship to B, namely containment.)

My point is and always has been that the way in which physics [A] determines my behavior [C] consists of how physics [A] determines me [B] who then determines my behavior [C]. The fact that you can't say B is separate from A is the cornerstone of my argument. You've accidentally conceded.

Now, this doesn't prove compatibilism is necessarily true. But it does show, by your own definition of freedom and your own conclusion about causal factors, mind, that determinism doesn't necessarily disprove free will in the way you've been saying it does.

Instead, you have to argue that you can show the set A-B (that is, all things in A that aren't in B), which is the largest subset of A that is external to B, determines C. The thing is, though, determinism actually isn't a strong enough assumption to be able to draw that conclusion.

You're probably still not going to agree but I feel like I've finally, successfully, made my point.

Edited by RaichuKFM on Feb 15th 2021 at 3:28:37 PM

Ok, we're almost there. Now the question that remains is, if A sufficiently explains C, and B adds no new information, but is simply an extension of A insofar as its' effect on C is concerned, and B happens to be a self aware mind with a will, to what extent is B free to act independently of A (remember that C is behavior in this scenario)? Most people would conclude that if the will adds no new information to our explanation of behavior, then the will is irrelevant as a causal force, and therefore is determined, not free.

As for the rain making the ground wet, we could already predict that from our knowledge of the cloud, so we can ignore the actual rain itself, it adds nothing new.

By the way, I just want to make clear that my point in writing all this isn't to agree or disagree with you, per se, I just want to explain my own position, because I thought that was what you were asking for.

I think where we're disagreeing here is what it would mean to "ignore" the rain.

You say you ignore the rain because it adds no information, but you already have information about the rain, from the cloud. And if you were to ignore that information, you wouldn't be able to conclude the ground would become wet.

To me, getting information about an event from another source isn't ignoring that event. You fundamentally can't understand the cloud without understanding the rain, so you can't be said to be ignoring the rain by understanding the cloud instead.

The reason the will adds no new information, in your view, is you have already got the information from it; by understanding the physical causes, you have implicitly understood the will, because the will is a subset of those causes. It's not that it doesn't add anything, it's that it's already been added in, if that makes sense?

To say the will adds nothing to the explanation, you need to show that you can get all the information it would add, from sources other than the will. But the sum of physical causes isn't a source "other than" the will, because it's a set of many causes, some of which are the will. The idea of the will adding new information after you've already understood the sum total of physical causes would be a double counting error.

And oh, my bad. I should say I do appreciate you going to lengths to explain your position, even if we seem to keep stumbling on interpreting each other.