There isn't really a 'freewill problem'.

[PyramidHead]

Except that will has no autonomy of decision making or action, will does whatever the brain is doing....just as it is not the legs that act of their own accord but are moved by impulses sent by the brain, the provisional, narrow usage of the word does not prove the proposition. Provisional 'freedom' only refers to an aspect, a condition, a given ability....the dog is free from its chain but is constrained by the fenced enclosure, the dog is not free to roam being references to states within the system, not nature of the system as a whole.

The principle on which compatibilism rests does not actually make it compatible with determinism because determinism does not allow one to do otherwise, within a deterministic system, freedom is an illusion.

Yes, but a leg isn't 'really' free to move either, so all I'm saying is that the word 'free' in free will can be validly used, in a provisional, limited or colloquial way, imo.

It's just a reference to an ability that does not appear to be constricted or blocked. Saying 'you can move your leg freely' says nothing about the nature of motor action....just as calling decision making ''free will'' says nothing about the nature of decision making....which may be entirely determined, therefore not 'free' at all.

Determined does not mean constricted or blocked. Why can't the word 'will' simply mean whatever the actual driver of human action is, whatever brain structures are responsible for orchestrating activity based on sensory input, which would be doing so freely so long as they are not constricted or blocked (though they may, like everything bigger than an electron, be determined)?

 

[Emily Lake]

What worries me slightly is this. A lot of us here would say there's no god. But with this free will thing, it's as if some of us are saying the equivalent of, 'look, if we define god this way, then he exists'.

It's more complex than that - I support free will over determinism, because to me determinism requires something closer to a concept of god than free will does. To me, free will is a non-deterministic process as it applies to intelligence and thought. It's much more similar to the process of evolution than it is to anything related to some cosmic zombie. Arguments for determinism, to me, always sound a lot more like intelligent design arguments.

What exactly do you mean by 'free will'? If I don't ask that, we could be at cross purposes.

What I refer to as 'free will' is essentially what DBT describes as 'will'. But most of the arguments on this topic stem from the protestant/catholic debate - Did god give us free will with which to make our own decisions, even if those decisions are immoral... or has god placed each of us on a path that he already knows the destination for, and we're each of us helpless to do anything other than enact gods will? Take god out of that mess... and you essentially end up at the core of this discussion: Are we able to make decisions about our actions, or are our actions predetermined and beyond our control?

Also, what sort of non-deterministic process do you have in mind? A combo of determinism and random? I've never been able to get from there to the sort of free will that many people and their folk psychology envisage. But maybe you're not talking about that sort of free will, or that combo.

Combination of deterministic and probabilistic (which implies an element of randomization, although not necessarily uniformly distributed randomization). Like I said, very similar to the process of evolution - a lot of it is fairly deterministic... but there's an element of random mutation at play as well. It helps if you think of will as a process within the framework of the brain, just as evolution is a process within an ecosystem.

 

[PyramidHead]

What exactly do you mean by 'free will'? If I don't ask that, we could be at cross purposes.

What I refer to as 'free will' is essentially what DBT describes as 'will'. But most of the arguments on this topic stem from the protestant/catholic debate - Did god give us free will with which to make our own decisions, even if those decisions are immoral... or has god placed each of us on a path that he already knows the destination for, and we're each of us helpless to do anything other than enact gods will? Take god out of that mess... and you essentially end up at the core of this discussion: Are we able to make decisions about our actions, or are our actions predetermined and beyond our control?

Also, what sort of non-deterministic process do you have in mind? A combo of determinism and random? I've never been able to get from there to the sort of free will that many people and their folk psychology envisage. But maybe you're not talking about that sort of free will, or that combo.

Combination of deterministic and probabilistic (which implies an element of randomization, although not necessarily uniformly distributed randomization). Like I said, very similar to the process of evolution - a lot of it is fairly deterministic... but there's an element of random mutation at play as well. It helps if you think of will as a process within the framework of the brain, just as evolution is a process within an ecosystem.

Determinism does not equate to pre-determinism, or fatalism, as it is sometimes called. It says nothing about the precursors of an event, but rather states that for each time-slice of the universe (or a region within it), there is only one possible subsequent time-slice. On any scale bigger than the subatomic, this hypothesis has so far not been disproven.

 

[bilby]

Are we able to make decisions about our actions, or are our actions predetermined and beyond our control?

I would argue that our actions are determined and beyond our control; and that our 'self' is the sum of the influences that determine our actions. So we are also able to make decisions about our actions (indeed we are unable NOT to).

We are a complex set of rules that determine our response to external stimuli; the system exhibits chaos, and so minuscule differences in input can produce massive differences in output, and one of the outputs is changes to the set of rules, and some of the inputs are stored information from previous iterations of the same or similar situations.

What we like to call our 'will' is in fact a dynamic but deterministic instruction set, immersed in, and reacting to, an unpredictable environment.

There is no freedom here; and nor is there any lack of responsibility - responsibility for our choices is a key element of the feedback system that builds and maintains our 'self'.

 

[ruby sparks]

What exactly do you mean by 'free will'? If I don't ask that, we could be at cross purposes.

What I refer to as 'free will' is essentially what DBT describes as 'will'. But most of the arguments on this topic stem from the protestant/catholic debate - Did god give us free will with which to make our own decisions, even if those decisions are immoral... or has god placed each of us on a path that he already knows the destination for, and we're each of us helpless to do anything other than enact gods will? Take god out of that mess... and you essentially end up at the core of this discussion: Are we able to make decisions about our actions, or are our actions predetermined and beyond our control?

Also, what sort of non-deterministic process do you have in mind? A combo of determinism and random? I've never been able to get from there to the sort of free will that many people and their folk psychology envisage. But maybe you're not talking about that sort of free will, or that combo.

Combination of deterministic and probabilistic (which implies an element of randomization, although not necessarily uniformly distributed randomization). Like I said, very similar to the process of evolution - a lot of it is fairly deterministic... but there's an element of random mutation at play as well. It helps if you think of will as a process within the framework of the brain, just as evolution is a process within an ecosystem.

Ok gotcha (I think).

As to this:

"Are we able to make decisions about our actions, or are our actions predetermined and beyond our control?"

It's definitely complicated, imo. I'd say yes (obviously) we can make decisions. I'd say yes, they are either mostly or wholly predetermined (I'm not convinced randomness actually comes into it, or has an effect at the macro level and even if it does I'd say things are still mainly determined, which pretty much implies predetermined given time's arrow) and I'd say that they are beyond our control if we mean do we have control over them.

Those are my off the cuff responses. I'm not wedded to them and don't mind being wrong.

Oddly enough, even if you gave different answers, I think I might still believe in a very similar capacity (call it free will or human agency or whatever you prefer) as you do. Though there may be differences between us.

 

[Emily Lake]

Like all words, ''free'' has a certain essential meaning, something that is not bound, not determined, not obstructed or restricted, for example, so something that is bound or restricted cannot be called free as it doesn't meet the definition of the word. If your hands are bound, for instance, they cannot be described as being free. Your hands are not free. Your legs may not be bound, therefore you are able to walk, you are free to walk.

There's a slight problem here. Strictly speaking, it seems we should never say anyone is free to walk, by the standard that you are setting for 'free'.

Able to walk, your legs are functional, unimpeded, not restrained, there is nothing to prevent you from walking. Perhaps a very provisional form of freedom, narrow and specific. or perhaps not. Offhand, It's hard to say.

Well... Other than traffic rules, cars, other people being where you want to walk, trees in the way, time constraints, other obligations that take precedence... In short all of the other possible reasons that one might provide when they say "Sorry, i can't go for a walk because..."

What you consider "unimpeded" with respect to will is quite different from what you consider 'unimpeded' for walking. When it comes to will, you're essentially saying "Unimpeded by anything at all" but when you apply the term 'free' to walking, you pretty much only mean "Unimpeded by other people or a lack of legs". You're using neither the same definition, nor the same applied measurement in your application of the term 'free'.


ETA: Kind of the same thing I already said here and here... and to which you had no response. I'm not particularly worried about the lack of response to me, but when other people are raising the same objection I think it merits consideration that it's not exactly one person alone pointing out this flaw.

 

[ruby sparks]

Are we able to make decisions about our actions, or are our actions predetermined and beyond our control?

I would argue that our actions are determined and beyond our control; and that our 'self' is the sum of the influences that determine our actions. So we are also able to make decisions about our actions (indeed we are unable NOT to).

We are a complex set of rules that determine our response to external stimuli; the system exhibits chaos, and so minuscule differences in input can produce massive differences in output, and one of the outputs is changes to the set of rules, and some of the inputs are stored information from previous iterations of the same or similar situations.

What we like to call our 'will' is in fact a dynamic but deterministic instruction set, immersed in, and reacting to, an unpredictable environment.

There is no freedom here; and nor is there any lack of responsibility - responsibility for our choices is a key element of the feedback system that builds and maintains our 'self'.

I was with you up until the last bit, about responsibility. Having trouble seeing how that works. Do you for example mean awarding moral responsibility? I might agree that it's something we (our systems) do, in an automatic sort of way, as part of the way they function, but not that it can be justified, morally, as an ought. Though that's tricky, because I'm not wholly convinced that you can't get an ought from an is.

Let me try to put it this way. If a robot malfunctioned, we might (if we're temporarily being reasonable and rational) get it fixed, or taken out of service, or destroyed, but we wouldn't blame the robot itself........

 

[Emily Lake]

For example;

''Free will might be an illusion created by our brains, scientists might have proved.

Humans are convinced that they make conscious choices as they live their lives. But instead it may be that the brain just convinces itself that it made a free choice from the available options after the decision is made.

The idea was tested out by tricking subjects into believing that they had made a choice before the consequences of that choice could actually be seen. In the test, people were made to believe that they had taken a decision using free will – even though that was impossible.

The idea that human beings trick themselves into believing in free will was laid out in a paper by psychologists Dan Wegner and Thalia Wheatley nearly 20 years ago. They proposed the feeling of wanting to do something was real, but there may be no connection between the feeling and actually doing it.

In one of the studies undertaken by Adam Bear and Paul Bloom, of Yale University, the test subjects were shown five white circles on a computer monitor. They were told to choose one of the circles before one of them lit up red.

The participants were then asked to describe whether they’d picked the correct circle, another one, or if they hadn’t had time to actually pick one.

Statistically, people should have picked the right circle about one out of every five times. But they reported getting it right much more than 20 per cent of the time, going over 30 per cent if the circle turned red very quickly.

The scientists suggest that the findings show that the test subjects’ minds were swapping around the order of events, so that it appeared that they had chosen the right circle – even if they hadn’t actually had time to do so.''

That may hold true for some types of tests, and some types of decisions...

But seriously. When I produce a set of options, with probability ranges around each, and the ramifications of each potential option backed by math... then have a discussion with my internal clients about business objectives and risk appetite, and then they make a decision based on that rigorously developed information... I have a really tough time seeing how they actually made the decision before I even presented them with the options, and somehow I'm now just a cog in a magical machine where they're convincing themselves that my work and input didn't have an influence on the decision that they made.

That's some pretty complicated self-delusion that requires other people in order to convince that self.

 

[Emily Lake]

There is, looming on the horizon, for everyone, the prospect that everything we think or do is determined and/or randomly caused and that beyond that we cannot think or do anything otherwise than what we did think or do in any given instant. The 'algorithms' in our brains would, it seems, have to churn out exactly the same output if the system were re-run (allowing for the possibility of randomness).

So... intelligent design and we're the only life in a universe that was purpose built to allow for us to exist - seeing as how it all so perfectly fits, right?

Look - the argument that you're using here is very, very similar to the argument used for intelligent design and a purpose-built universe. And it's a statistical fallacy. Probably a logical one too, but I have no idea what. I do, however, know that it's a statistical fallacy.

What is happening is that one is taking an observed outcome from a possible distribution, then assuming that the distribution doesn't exist because an actual element was observed.

Take two dice as your basis. There are many possible ways to get a score of 7 (six possible ways, to be exact, out of 36 possible rolls). There are two ways to get a score of 11. So... you pick up the dice, toss them across the table top... and lo and behold! you've rolled an 11! Now you conclude that 11 is the only possible outcome of that roll. It couldn't ever have possibly been anything except 11. You observed 11... and on the basis of an actual observation, you discount the possible other combinations available.

But, you say... it's deterministic! If only we knew everything possible about the starting conditions, we would be able to prove that 11 is the only possible outcome of that roll! If we knew exactly the way the breeze was blowing, and exactly the angle and force of the hand, and the exact position of every finger, and the sleeve on the arm, and the height of the person and the friction of the table top, and the composition of the dice, and the depth of the pips, and the gravity at exactly that distance from the center of mass of the earth, and the exact minute interference of the magnetic field of the earth on the trace amounts of iron in the paint used to stain the pips, and the exact minute force of all the radio waves that contacted the dice at every point during their toss, and the exact amount of every bit of solar radiation hitting the dice, and the exact amount of every single bit of electromagnetism that is affecting every single electron at the exact position and velocity of that electron at every single quanta of time through which the dice were moving...

Oh wait. Isn't that last bit actually definitively unknowable?

For being completely illusory, statistics has an awful lot of predictive power out in the world. Given that probability distributions are clearly a figment of our imagination, and everything is perfectly deterministic... It's pretty amazing that the best advances in AI are based on evolutionary algorithms and machine learning that inherently incorporate uncertainty and probability into their functions.

Because at the end of the day, insisting that will is fully deterministic and without freedom is tantamount to insisting that the entire universe is perfectly deterministic... which is, by the way, essentially the same as insisting that statistics and probability are very fancy illusions.

 

[bilby]

Are we able to make decisions about our actions, or are our actions predetermined and beyond our control?

I would argue that our actions are determined and beyond our control; and that our 'self' is the sum of the influences that determine our actions. So we are also able to make decisions about our actions (indeed we are unable NOT to).

We are a complex set of rules that determine our response to external stimuli; the system exhibits chaos, and so minuscule differences in input can produce massive differences in output, and one of the outputs is changes to the set of rules, and some of the inputs are stored information from previous iterations of the same or similar situations.

What we like to call our 'will' is in fact a dynamic but deterministic instruction set, immersed in, and reacting to, an unpredictable environment.

There is no freedom here; and nor is there any lack of responsibility - responsibility for our choices is a key element of the feedback system that builds and maintains our 'self'.

I was with you up until the last bit, about responsibility. Having trouble seeing how that works. Do you for example mean awarding moral responsibility? I might agree that it's something we (our systems) do, in an automatic sort of way, as part of the way they function, but not that it can be justified, morally, as an ought. Though that's tricky, because I'm not wholly convinced that you can't get an ought from an is.

Let me try to put it this way. If a robot malfunctioned, we might (if we're temporarily being reasonable and rational) get it fixed, or taken out of service, or destroyed, but we wouldn't blame the robot itself........

You might, if blame was the only (or simplest) available mechanism for reprogramming it. You can't fix a malfunctioning brain by decompiling its software, and changing the weight given to various actions in the source code; But you can change those weightings by making the brain feel bad, so that it reprograms itself to avoid a repeat of the malfunction.

As self programming machines, humans can be reprogrammed to behave in ways others desire by means of punishment, both personal and exemplary. I choose not to rob a bank because last time I did, I spent five years in jail. Or I choose not to rob a bank because I know that others who have done so have spent time in jail. And my desire to be wealthy is outweighed by my desire to avoid jail.

Emotions are a large part of the input to the decision making system, and these can radically alter the program and thereby its output. Blame and shame are crude programming techniques, and the idea that they are to do with morality and what 'ought' to be done is just a cognitive error - rather like the delusion that we have freedom. They are simply evolved mechanisms for social cohesion that were effective in sustaining populations of social animals.

 

[Emily Lake]

He also (again wisely imo) doesn't get much into citing randomness facilitating free will, because it's hard to see how it does or even could, when you dig down into that idea.

On the other hand, I can easily see how randomness facilitates free will. At least until someone imposes an overly specific and self-limiting definition of what 'free' means that defines it in such a way that will can never be free.

Let's take as the starting point that 'free will' very simply means that it is possible for the same entity, under the same starting conditions, to select a different action from all possible actions in two different runs of a particular decision-making scenario. In short: actions by sufficiently intelligent entities are not perfectly predictable.

To me, that is what free will means.

All you need to do for this to be true is to allow a very small amount of randomness in the process, and a condition of sufficiency to be met for an action to be taken.

So, let's set up a very simple scenario, with the assumption that randomness actually exists in the world.

Let's say you're going to time how long it takes for 10 electrons to pass the the right slit in a two-slit experiment. You're going to start the flow of electrons, and you're going to start your timer. When you reach a count of 10 electrons, you're going to stop the timer. Then you're going to report the time it takes. Pretty straightforward, right?

For argument's sake, let's assume we've mastered time travel. And you're going to rewind the clock after you've timed the electrons... and you're going to rewind it 100 times. Do you think you'll get the exact same time for each of those 100 runs that occur under exactly the same starting conditions? It might seem easy to say "yes, they're the exact same starting conditions, so the time will be exactly the same each time". But will it really? All it takes is a tiny change at the subatomic level to divert one electron during any of those 100 runs to end up with a different time. That's plausible, right? And well within the realm of the uncertainty principle. So it's entirely possible for that measurement to be stochastic - that is to say, not perfectly deterministic.

But that only applies at the subatomic level, right? It certainly doesn't apply at the macro level, when we're talking about human brains, right?

Here's where I say... are you certain?

Let's assume, for argument's sake, that decisions within a brain are made based on the similarity of current conditions to the set of previously experienced conditions and the activities made as a result of those conditions, and a measure of how effective those activities were in producing a net beneficial outcome. And let's also say that the decision-making algorithm within the brain leverages a sufficiency condition across those two measures: How similar the current conditions are to previous conditions, and how beneficial the outcomes are. Let's also assume, for the sake of argument, that the decision-making algorithm within the brain works in series fashion: It selects a memory of a previous condition and outcome, compares that previous condition to the current condition, determines if the previous condition is "enough like" the current condition to be a valid comparison, then determines whether the previous associated outcome is "beneficial enough" to warrant adoption in this current condition.

How is the first memory chosen? Let's assume, for argument's sake, that the first memory chosen is the memory along the path of least resistance for the electron spat out by the neuron engaged that is prompting the use of the decision-making algorithm in the brain. Once that first path is taken, the next electron will take the path of second-least resistance. And it will keep repeating until a sufficiently similar memory is accessed that has a sufficiently beneficial outcome associated with it.

That's a lot of words, but it's actually not all that complex a concept. The math is messy as all hell, and I definitely don't want to have to do that math... but the concept isn't all that difficult if you can make it through the WoT.

Now... is it plausible that a small fluctuation can introduce just enough randomness into the path of least resistance to alter the order in which memories are accessed on two hypothetical runs with identical starting conditions? I don't see why not. It takes only the very tiniest shift to make that happen. And the implication of that is that in two otherwise identical runs of that decision process, the order in which memories are accessed can be different. And if the order in which the memories are accessed is different, then it's also possible that the memory that meets the sufficiency criteria for both similarity of conditions and positiveness of outcome will be different.

All it takes is a very small variance in the pathway traced through the brain in order for a different conclusion to be reached.

Do you think it is impossible for such minute variances to exist? Do you believe that true randomness is impossible?

 

[Emily Lake]

Are we able to make decisions about our actions, or are our actions predetermined and beyond our control?

I would argue that our actions are determined and beyond our control; and that our 'self' is the sum of the influences that determine our actions. So we are also able to make decisions about our actions (indeed we are unable NOT to).

We are a complex set of rules that determine our response to external stimuli; the system exhibits chaos, and so minuscule differences in input can produce massive differences in output, and one of the outputs is changes to the set of rules, and some of the inputs are stored information from previous iterations of the same or similar situations.

What we like to call our 'will' is in fact a dynamic but deterministic instruction set, immersed in, and reacting to, an unpredictable environment.

There is no freedom here; and nor is there any lack of responsibility - responsibility for our choices is a key element of the feedback system that builds and maintains our 'self'.

I was with you up until the last bit, about responsibility. Having trouble seeing how that works. Do you for example mean awarding moral responsibility? I might agree that it's something we (our systems) do, in an automatic sort of way, as part of the way they function, but not that it can be justified, morally, as an ought. Though that's tricky, because I'm not wholly convinced that you can't get an ought from an is.

Let me try to put it this way. If a robot malfunctioned, we might (if we're temporarily being reasonable and rational) get it fixed, or taken out of service, or destroyed, but we wouldn't blame the robot itself........

And that's the same place that I fall off that bus. Without some acceptance of free will, I don't see how responsibility makes any sort of sense. It's completely senseless and simply cruel to blame anyone for anything ever, or to hold people accountable for their actions and decisions. When a company pollutes a stream with improperly treated waste... it wouldn't make any sense at all to hold them accountable for the damage done - they had no ability to take any other action, they could only have done exactly what they did. Punishing them for something they had no control over at all is simply cruel.

Might as well go back to shunning left-handed people because they're left-handed. Or you know, insisting that gay people are evil because they chose to be gay!

 

[bilby]

I was with you up until the last bit, about responsibility. Having trouble seeing how that works. Do you for example mean awarding moral responsibility? I might agree that it's something we (our systems) do, in an automatic sort of way, as part of the way they function, but not that it can be justified, morally, as an ought. Though that's tricky, because I'm not wholly convinced that you can't get an ought from an is.

Let me try to put it this way. If a robot malfunctioned, we might (if we're temporarily being reasonable and rational) get it fixed, or taken out of service, or destroyed, but we wouldn't blame the robot itself........

And that's the same place that I fall off that bus. Without some acceptance of free will, I don't see how responsibility makes any sort of sense. It's completely senseless and simply cruel to blame anyone for anything ever, or to hold people accountable for their actions and decisions. When a company pollutes a stream with improperly treated waste... it wouldn't make any sense at all to hold them accountable for the damage done - they had no ability to take any other action, they could only have done exactly what they did. Punishing them for something they had no control over at all is simply cruel.

Might as well go back to shunning left-handed people because they're left-handed. Or you know, insisting that gay people are evil because they chose to be gay!

I disagree. It's pointless to blame anyone unless blame has a reasonable chance of modifying their behaviour (or the behaviour of others who observe the punishment and build into their programming a desire to avoid that befalling themselves); Blame is not a moral stance, it's a programming technique, as I set out in my previous post:

I was with you up until the last bit, about responsibility. Having trouble seeing how that works. Do you for example mean awarding moral responsibility? I might agree that it's something we (our systems) do, in an automatic sort of way, as part of the way they function, but not that it can be justified, morally, as an ought. Though that's tricky, because I'm not wholly convinced that you can't get an ought from an is.

Let me try to put it this way. If a robot malfunctioned, we might (if we're temporarily being reasonable and rational) get it fixed, or taken out of service, or destroyed, but we wouldn't blame the robot itself........

You might, if blame was the only (or simplest) available mechanism for reprogramming it. You can't fix a malfunctioning brain by decompiling its software, and changing the weight given to various actions in the source code; But you can change those weightings by making the brain feel bad, so that it reprograms itself to avoid a repeat of the malfunction.

As self programming machines, humans can be reprogrammed to behave in ways others desire by means of punishment, both personal and exemplary. I choose not to rob a bank because last time I did, I spent five years in jail. Or I choose not to rob a bank because I know that others who have done so have spent time in jail. And my desire to be wealthy is outweighed by my desire to avoid jail.

Emotions are a large part of the input to the decision making system, and these can radically alter the program and thereby its output. Blame and shame are crude programming techniques, and the idea that they are to do with morality and what 'ought' to be done is just a cognitive error - rather like the delusion that we have freedom. They are simply evolved mechanisms for social cohesion that were effective in sustaining populations of social animals.

Some behaviours are sufficiently plastic as to make blame worthwhile (eg bank robbery); Others are not (eg left handedness), and in the latter class of cases, blame is futile.

But this is an evolved system, so we shouldn't be surprised that it is far from perfect.

 

[Kharakov]

Now, whether a banana has free will if it is not constrained by other bananas may also follow, but no case has been made for it whoops I mean no one has googled a dictionary.

I'm pretty sure bananas have various social rules they follow, until they get hammered because they went bad.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/02/science/plants-consciousness-anesthesia.html

 

[DBT]

No, it is not question begging. I have given accepted definitions of the word free and pointed out that is something is to be defined as being free, that something must necessarily comply with the given definition of the word.

It most certainly is begging the question.

You don't get away with it simply because you believe you've proven your case elsewhere. That's not how internet discussions work.

Sorry, but quoting Wikipedia doesn't establish your claim. It seems that every time I say something your response does not relate to what I said, instead an interpretation that suits your needs. That is the problem.

You mean your claim that you have indisputably resolved the free will debate based on (your interpretation of) dictionary definitions? You're kidding!

That's an example of your style of rationale. What I did was give an acceptable definition of free/freedom, not constrained, bound, restricted, etc, and pointed out that 'will'' is not an autonomous agent of decision making but a part of the brains process of cognition, so it is not will that drives the brain but the brain that shapes and forms a set of behaviours of which will is merely a part.

So will, being a part of brain activity has no freedom of its own, so where does this so called freedom fit into the picture?

I provided three examples in post #767. Here they are again:

"my will is free from intoxicating influences", "my will is free from any [supernatural] divine influences", "my will is free from unwanted coercion from another person" etc. etc... are all logically valid (they don't lead to any logical contradictions). What am I missing?

What you are missing is that your descriptions describe the state of your mind, a state that is formed - not through will but the brain as a whole. Others happen to be addicted to alcohol, drugs, gambling, etc, not because their will is weak, but the overall state of their circumstances, genetics and brain activity....which, opposite to you with no addictions, is manifested as an addiction, fears, habits and a range of maladaptive decision making.

It not being the condition of 'will' that determines behaviour but the actual agent; the Brain.

Just the fact that you offer these example demonstrates that you have not understood what I have been saying, simple and straightforward as it is; that is is brain agency, not will, that is the driver of unconscious and conscious behaviour.

 

[DBT]

This is not controversial.

You mean your claim that you have indisputably resolved the free will debate based on (your interpretation of) dictionary definitions? You're kidding!

It is amusing when dogmatists say things like that.

This is not controversial.

My dogma tells me so.

Hilarious coming from the King of Dogma....

Nor is the dictionary meaning objection valid. We all know what the word free means. It doesn't mean bound or restricted or determined, etc, but the opposite. My definition was fair and reasonable

 

[DBT]

Except that will has no autonomy of decision making or action, will does whatever the brain is doing....just as it is not the legs that act of their own accord but are moved by impulses sent by the brain, the provisional, narrow usage of the word does not prove the proposition. Provisional 'freedom' only refers to an aspect, a condition, a given ability....the dog is free from its chain but is constrained by the fenced enclosure, the dog is not free to roam being references to states within the system, not nature of the system as a whole.

The principle on which compatibilism rests does not actually make it compatible with determinism because determinism does not allow one to do otherwise, within a deterministic system, freedom is an illusion.

Yes, but a leg isn't 'really' free to move either, so all I'm saying is that the word 'free' in free will can be validly used, in a provisional, limited or colloquial way, imo.

I can still say, if I want to, which I sometimes do, that at the end of the day it's the wrong word (for reasons given) and you can say that it cannot (reasonably) be used. Your saying that isn't arbitrary or irrational, nor is it a fallacy, but it is just your reasoned view, and strictly-speaking wrong in the absolute (non-subjective) sense, since the word free can (reasonably) be used, via different reasoning. Your view (and perhaps mine) might be special pleading in an informal sort of way. Or at least let me say I get that general objection. I think we should call them our reasoned opinions regarding labelling, not an absolute decree.

Moving on (hopefully), I pretty much agree with almost everything you say.

There is, looming on the horizon, for everyone, the prospect that everything we think or do is determined and/or randomly caused and that beyond that we cannot think or do anything otherwise than what we did think or do in any given instant. The 'algorithms' in our brains would, it seems, have to churn out exactly the same output if the system were re-run (allowing for the possibility of randomness).

At least it seems very difficult indeed to make a case for there being a convincing alternative to this hypothetical.

This would mean that if a certain person commits a crime, that person literally could not have done otherwise and we would have done the same had we literally been in that person's shoes, so to speak. Of course, we would be them in that case, obviously.

In that scenario, compatibilist free will would be 'fully trapped anyway' and we might ask, in what way is it reasonable to hold that person morally responsible for what they did? I don't mean to suggest there isn't an answer to that. I have read several. But this is what I mean about tricky questions which follow on after the labelling issue has been set aside.

What is the point of the term 'free will' anyway? It is the brain that decides and acts by means of information processing and related motor actions. Will is merely a part of that activity, a prompt or urge to act...which is formed by the brain in response to an apparent need for action, a need to resolve a problem and so on. The term free will tells us nothing about the nature of decision making, its strengths and weaknesses or its pathologies, or why certain decisions are made, decisions that don't benefit anyone, least of all the person who makes them,....yet, there seems to be an almost religious aura surrounding the term. Some sort of sacred attribute of human beings that cannot be denied. Like having a Soul.

That without it we have nothing of value.

 

[The AntiChris]

I provided three examples in post #767. Here they are again:

"As I understand it (this not an attempt to misrepresent you - it's a genuine attempt to understand your position) you say that the only thing 'will' can logically be free from is deterministic causation (and of course it's not free from this - so 'will' can never be described as free). I simply don't understand the reasoning which leads you to this conclusion. It seems to me that to say (for example) "my will is free from intoxicating influences", "my will is free from any [supernatural] divine influences", "my will is free from unwanted coercion from another person" etc. etc... are all logically valid (they don't lead to any logical contradictions). What am I missing?

What you are missing is that your descriptions describe the state of your mind, a state that is formed - not through will but the brain as a whole. Others happen to be addicted to alcohol, drugs, gambling, etc, not because their will is weak, but the overall state of their circumstances, genetics and brain activity....which, opposite to you with no addictions, is manifested as an addiction, fears, habits and a range of maladaptive decision making.

It not being the condition of 'will' that determines behaviour but the actual agent; the Brain.

I am afraid I still don't see how this sheds any light on your insistence that 'will' "cannot logically be described as free" .

what I have been saying, simple and straightforward as it is; that is is brain agency, not will, that is the driver of unconscious and conscious behaviour.

I've no idea what this means. I googled "brain agency" - it appears to be a term you've invented.

__________________________________________

Let me try to simplify the point I'm making. You say:

something that is impeded, restricted by conditions and/or determined by elements that are beyond its control, cannot logically be defined as free.

This simply isn't true.

Everything in the universe is impeded, restricted by conditions and/or determined by elements that are beyond its control to some extent but even you accept that that there are logically valid uses of the word 'free'. You are being inconsistent.

How do you explain this? And please, no attempted [neuro]scientific explanations - this is a philosophical problem.

 

[DBT]

I am afraid I still don't see how this sheds any light on your insistence that 'will' "cannot logically be described as free" .

what I have been saying, simple and straightforward as it is; that is is brain agency, not will, that is the driver of unconscious and conscious behaviour.

I've no idea what this means. I googled "brain agency" - it appears to be a term you've invented.

You are getting pedantic. It's just shorthand for ''it is the brain alone that is responsible for generating behaviour'' What your examples suggest is will as the generator or agent of behaviour, which is not supported by evidence.

You just need to know how to search and what to search for. That may be difficult if you aren't familiar with the subject matter, as appears to be the case;


The Agent Brain
''Many neural structures have been associated to specific attributes of agency experience or to specific steps of the process that leads to sense agency. The collection of neural structures that are thought to mediate agency-related processes is rather wide and includes: the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), the cingulate cortex (CC), the supplementary and pre-supplementary motor areas (SMA and pre-SMA), the posterior parietal cortex (PPC) and its inferior regions and the cerebellum (Gehring et al., 1990; Lee et al., 1999; Blakemore et al., 2001; Chaminade and Decety, 2002; Cunnington et al., 2002; Farrer and Frith, 2002; Blakemore and Sirigu, 2003; Farrer et al., 2003; Lau et al., 2004, 2006; Synofzik et al., 2008a; Balconi and Crivelli, 2009, 2010a,b; Balconi and Scioli, 2012; Balconi et al., 2017). The plurality of those structures and their distribution over the whole brain (see Figure ​Figure1)1) likely mirrors the complexity of the phenomenon and the different methodological and experimental approaches devised to study its facets (for a review see also David, 2010). Again, they are due to the contribution of multiple mechanisms in the coupling of behavior with mental states and sensory effects. Those mechanisms—and the structures that subserve them—can be traced back to overarching functions: monitoring of sensorimotor congruence and multimodal integration, intentionalization (i.e., elaboration and implementation of intentions), action monitoring and ownership/agency attribution.


Stimulating The Agent Brain: Non-invasive Brain Stimulation Evidences

''Neuroimaging and electrophysiological methods can be both enlisted among the correlational techniques (Walsh and Cowey, 2000), which allow for qualifying and quantifying ongoing neural activity during implicit or explicit tasks to compare it with co-occurrent subjective experience, cognitive performances, or behavior. By superimposing and integrating those series of data, it is possible to draw conclusions on anatomical-functional correlates of investigated functions and processes by means of association. Conversely, non-invasive stimulation methods can be enlisted among interference or causal techniques, which grant the advantage of drawing conclusion on neural causation and on the effective role of neural structures in supporting or modulating a specific function or process (Woods et al., 2016). Indeed, NIBS can be used to perturb the ongoing activity of a target structure during implicit or explicit tasks and then observe the consequences of such perturbation on behavior and/or neural activity (e.g., by means of EEG). It is worth noting that conclusions that can be drawn thanks to NIBS studies also show fewer potential biases than those deriving from clinical lesion studies (Walsh and Cowey, 2000). Relevant for the present discussion, NIBS techniques then present notably greater cognitive resolution—defined as the ability to tell something new about brain processes and to answer a wide range of questions on cognitive functioning and its physiological correlates (Walsh and Pascual-Leone, 2003)—with respect to other investigation tools.''
__________________________________________

Let me try to simplify the point I'm making. You say:

This simply isn't true.

Everything in the universe is impeded, restricted by conditions and/or determined by elements that are beyond its control to some extent but even you accept that that there are logically valid uses of the word 'free'. You are being inconsistent.

How do you explain this? And please, no attempted [neuro]scientific explanations - this is a philosophical problem.

You shouldn't try to simplify it by extending what are references to specific states within a system to the whole universe. If the universe is deterministic, all references to freedom are an illusion.

We are talking about the condition of a specific attribute or feature of brain cognition, will, what does will do? What is the role of will. Well, it doesn't make decisions, it doesn't acquire and process information, it does think or initiate actions. The brain does all that Conscious will merely serves as a conscious prompt to act, a sense of urgency, a felt need to take action...will does not decide to do this, it is just a part of conscious response as represented by the brain in response to a given situation.

So, the Agent Brain...brain agency if you like. One and the same thing.

 

[ruby sparks]

So... intelligent design and we're the only life in a universe that was purpose built to allow for us to exist - seeing as how it all so perfectly fits, right?

Look - the argument that you're using here is very, very similar to the argument used for intelligent design and a purpose-built universe.

I would consider that irrelevant or at best a side issue, even if it were the case that there were some similarities. At best it would be some sort of analogy. I eschew any sort of purpose or a designer for starters.

And it's a statistical fallacy. Probably a logical one too, but I have no idea what. I do, however, know that it's a statistical fallacy.

What is happening is that one is taking an observed outcome from a possible distribution, then assuming that the distribution doesn't exist because an actual element was observed.

Take two dice as your basis. There are many possible ways to get a score of 7 (six possible ways, to be exact, out of 36 possible rolls). There are two ways to get a score of 11. So... you pick up the dice, toss them across the table top... and lo and behold! you've rolled an 11! Now you conclude that 11 is the only possible outcome of that roll. It couldn't ever have possibly been anything except 11. You observed 11... and on the basis of an actual observation, you discount the possible other combinations available.

But, you say... it's deterministic! If only we knew everything possible about the starting conditions, we would be able to prove that 11 is the only possible outcome of that roll! If we knew exactly the way the breeze was blowing, and exactly the angle and force of the hand, and the exact position of every finger, and the sleeve on the arm, and the height of the person and the friction of the table top, and the composition of the dice, and the depth of the pips, and the gravity at exactly that distance from the center of mass of the earth, and the exact minute interference of the magnetic field of the earth on the trace amounts of iron in the paint used to stain the pips, and the exact minute force of all the radio waves that contacted the dice at every point during their toss, and the exact amount of every bit of solar radiation hitting the dice, and the exact amount of every single bit of electromagnetism that is affecting every single electron at the exact position and velocity of that electron at every single quanta of time through which the dice were moving...

Oh wait. Isn't that last bit actually definitively unknowable?

For being completely illusory, statistics has an awful lot of predictive power out in the world. Given that probability distributions are clearly a figment of our imagination, and everything is perfectly deterministic... It's pretty amazing that the best advances in AI are based on evolutionary algorithms and machine learning that inherently incorporate uncertainty and probability into their functions.

Because at the end of the day, insisting that will is fully deterministic and without freedom is tantamount to insisting that the entire universe is perfectly deterministic... which is, by the way, essentially the same as insisting that statistics and probability are very fancy illusions.

So I included for the possibility of random. I generally always do that. But in a nutshell, I don't see how adding random to the mix adds anything to free will, even though it's often cited as doing so. Oddly, imo.

Second, something being definitively unknowable (or unpredictable) isn't really relevant either. Let's say for example that we can never definitively know enough about weather (as a partial analogy, though in principle it could apply to any system) to be able to predict it accurately, because of randomness, inherent unpredictability, stochasticism or what have you. That is separate to whether we have a reason to attribute the weather (or a human) with free will. In principle, it's a separate issue. There's a next hurdle.

What you're really doing here is countering hard determinism. Sure. But even if you did that successfully (and we could debate it for months) you don't get to free will anyway, especially if you're only adding randomness and unpredictability. The game is not determinism versus indeterminism, even though, imo, an inordinate amount of time and effort has been expended, possibly wasted, discussing free will as if those were the opponents.

Indeterminism is not free will, or even agency. It's just indeterminism. It's not, imo, the loophole that it's often thought to be. Plus, if there's randomness at the macro level (and it's a big if) it affects everything, a spider, a horse, a daffodil, a rock, etc. It would just be an endemic factor throughout the universe. How it had some special role in supposed human free will would remain to be explained.

Where this idea came from that we only have to counter determinism to get to (or even start out on the road to) free will, I don't know. It may even be that that particular notion is the one wrapped up in religious influence in fact. But that would be a side issue.