Compatibilism: What's that About?

[fromderinside]

So we're back to playing with subjective rather than objective will. Fine.

I call that relative (practical) free will as do many philosophers.

Absolute vs. Practical Free Will https://danielmiessler.com/blog/absolute_vs_practical_free_will/

practical free will is the ability for an individual to experience having options, considering the outcomes of those options within the context of their value system, and then experience making a choice from among them based on what they want to happen.On my view, and the view of most incompatibilists, this type of free will is completely consistent with absolute free will being impossible.
Just because we couldn’t have actually done otherwise than what we did—at the chemical and physical level—doesn’t make the experience of making choices insignificant to us as humans.

If one looks at the history of such one finds a continuous suite of logical dead ends as do relative free will constructions. We apply will against behavior, how one understand it as human do, which isn't even up to the level of rationality. Arguments wind up in dead ends there as well but less so than with those for political and morality systems.

We think we are free to decide so we construct a frame that permits it always to fail because what exists is a determined world.

Naw. I don't want to play.

I'll leave it as in a determined world there is no compatibilism and no free will. Free will is an entirely subjective human thing. It isn't part of objective reality.

This discussion is beginning to remind me of a previous academic - nineteenth and early twentieth century - discussion about the value of abstraction ladders which ended with the explosion of the genetic superiority movement.

You might remember when the co-inventor of the transistor published "The Bell Curve" resurrecting's that thinking for about 10 years in the sixties and seventies. Bad but popular folk thinking can be dangerous. Again I cite Trump.

 

[skepticalbip]

... snip ...

I'll leave it as in a determined world there is no compatibilism and no free will.

I like that, especially as an alibi during trial, "Honest, your honor, I had no free choice in the matter. My actions are determined so beyond my control." ... Unfortunately court judges always have said, "I understand because it is determined that I have to convict you but I would have dropped the charges if I had the freedom of choice to."

 

[DBT]

It matters not whether its mental illness or the brain is functioning normally, producing rational thought and behaviour: it is the state of the brain/system in any given instance of response that determines its response.

Being of 'sound mind' is no more a choice thn it is to be a Sociopath. The state of the system does not equal free will.

To label rational response, non coerced decisions, etc, as examples of free will does not take the nature of the system into account, it just applies and asserts the label.

Yes, it is the brain that is determining the response. When the brain is healthy enough to make decisions, and when the person is not subject to coercion or undue influence, then that is "operational" free will. Free will never requires that the brain be free from itself (that is an impossibility). It only requires that it be free from coercion and other forms of undue influence.

The nature of the brain's system is that it is a collaborative collection of specialized functions that work together to keep the body working, so that the living organism can survive, thrive, and reproduce. One of those functions is to organize sensory data into a model of reality that can be logically manipulated to provide mental capabilities like imagination, evaluation, and choosing.

The ability to imagine alternative ways to accomplish the organism's goals, to estimate the likely outcomes of each option, and to choose the one it calculates will have the best result, gives the species a survival advantage when facing a variety of environmental challenges.

And that's how free will works, by the brain choosing what the body will do next. Will I have an apple? Or, will I have a banana? My brain will figure that out. And what my brain chooses, I have chosen.

You are simply asserting free will. The brain, its structures, functions, attributes and features do not function on the principle of will. Will is experienced in conscious form as a prompt or urge to respond, to act.

The brain no more functions on the principle of will (be it conscious or unconscious) than the 'laws' of physics, the world or the universe. If it claimed the brain has 'free will' so then has the world, the universe and everything in it that functions 'freely' - as in unimpeded or without coercion.

To function freely, without coercion, does not entail will, be it conscious or unconscious. whether you are being coerced or not, the brain is able to weigh the cost to benefit and respond. The brain has evolved to respond.

The brain, while functional, responds according to its inputs and past experience in every situation.


Hallet for instance argues;
''Recognizing that consciousness is awareness does change the way we can look at the fundamental problem of free will. Free will is more correctly defined as “the perception that we choose to make movements.” Looking at it in this way produces at least two possibilities. The first is that there is a process of free will, an aspect of consciousness, that does choose to make a specific movement. The second is that the brain’s motor system produces a movement as a product of its different inputs, consciousness is informed of this movement, and it is perceived as being freely chosen. It is not certain which of these is correct, but there are some good arguments in favor of the latter.''

 

[DBT]

... snip ...

I'll leave it as in a determined world there is no compatibilism and no free will.

I like that, especially as an alibi during trial, "Honest, your honor, I had no choice in the matter. My actions are determined so beyond my control." ... Unfortunately court judges always have said, "I understand because it is determined that I have to convict you but I would have dropped the charges if I had been able to."

The threat of punishment acts as a deterrent, assessment of cost to benefit, discouraging some, but not all who are tempted to do the wrong thing. That some are willing and able to do the wrong thing motivated the implantation of laws to discourage that sort of behaviour....

 

[Marvin Edwards]

So we're back to playing with subjective rather than objective will. Fine.

I call that relative (practical) free will as do many philosophers.

Absolute vs. Practical Free Will https://danielmiessler.com/blog/absolute_vs_practical_free_will/

practical free will is the ability for an individual to experience having options, considering the outcomes of those options within the context of their value system, and then experience making a choice from among them based on what they want to happen.On my view, and the view of most incompatibilists, this type of free will is completely consistent with absolute free will being impossible.
Just because we couldn’t have actually done otherwise than what we did—at the chemical and physical level—doesn’t make the experience of making choices insignificant to us as humans.

If one looks at the history of such one finds a continuous suite of logical dead ends as do relative free will constructions. We apply will against behavior, how one understand it as human do, which isn't even up to the level of rationality. Arguments wind up in dead ends there as well but less so than with those for political and morality systems.

We think we are free to decide so we construct a frame that permits it always to fail because what exists is a determined world.

Naw. I don't want to play.

I'll leave it as in a determined world there is no compatibilism and no free will. Free will is an entirely subjective human thing. It isn't part of objective reality.

This discussion is beginning to remind me of a previous academic - nineteenth and early twentieth century - discussion about the value of abstraction ladders which ended with the explosion of the genetic superiority movement.

You might remember when the co-inventor of the transistor published "The Bell Curve" resurrecting's that thinking for about 10 years in the sixties and seventies. Bad but popular folk thinking can be dangerous. Again I cite Trump.

But free will is objective, not subjective. We can walk into a restaurant and observe it in action. People come in, they sit at a table, they browse the menu, and they place their order. After they finish their meal, the waiter brings them their bill, holding them responsible for their deliberate act. We notice that the waiter does not bring the bill to their prior causes. He does not bring the bill to their parents. He does not bring the bill to the Big Bang. He does not bring the bill to Causal Necessity. He does not bring the bill to the Big Bang.

So, free will happens in physical reality, and we can observe it. We also can observe someone working out a complex decision with pencil and paper, perhaps listing the pros and cons of one automobile versus another, to help decide which car to buy. We also observe groups of people discussing their options and making decisions as a collective, such as at a Parent Teacher Association meeting, or a club, or a legislature.

Choosing what we will do is an actual event we can observe taking place in empirical reality. And when someone decides for themselves what they will do, while free of coercion and undue influence, it is a freely chosen "I will", or simply "free will".

 

[fromderinside]

People who invented 'free will' will most always observe that other people who execute such are doing so objectively from their perspective. "From one's perspective" one observing is one (another one) is not doing so objectively! Read your Wundt!!! Where is the control? Experiments tend to be designed independent of one. Sheesh!

A little hand wave and everything is fine. Nope. Subjective actual events happen all the time. A word pairing doesn't accomplish a thing.

Think about it. What is a magic act? Why it's another person deceiving you because that person, aware of your limitations, is taking advantage of that knowledge. Slip and shod walked on a wet floor. Slip fell down shod did not. Experiment? Observation? Objective? Subjective? Word game?

Seldom has so much been said about so little. Better, conduct AND PUBLISH an experiment, not correlational study, involving people.

Step up your 'splaining.

Take an experimental psychology course.

Sometimes, like now, I hate the idea of social science taught by non-scientific persons.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

It matters not whether its mental illness or the brain is functioning normally, producing rational thought and behaviour: it is the state of the brain/system in any given instance of response that determines its response.

Being of 'sound mind' is no more a choice thn it is to be a Sociopath. The state of the system does not equal free will.

To label rational response, non coerced decisions, etc, as examples of free will does not take the nature of the system into account, it just applies and asserts the label.

Yes, it is the brain that is determining the response. When the brain is healthy enough to make decisions, and when the person is not subject to coercion or undue influence, then that is "operational" free will. Free will never requires that the brain be free from itself (that is an impossibility). It only requires that it be free from coercion and other forms of undue influence.

The nature of the brain's system is that it is a collaborative collection of specialized functions that work together to keep the body working, so that the living organism can survive, thrive, and reproduce. One of those functions is to organize sensory data into a model of reality that can be logically manipulated to provide mental capabilities like imagination, evaluation, and choosing.

The ability to imagine alternative ways to accomplish the organism's goals, to estimate the likely outcomes of each option, and to choose the one it calculates will have the best result, gives the species a survival advantage when facing a variety of environmental challenges.

And that's how free will works, by the brain choosing what the body will do next. Will I have an apple? Or, will I have a banana? My brain will figure that out. And what my brain chooses, I have chosen.

You are simply asserting free will. The brain, its structures, functions, attributes and features do not function on the principle of will. Will is experienced in conscious form as a prompt or urge to respond, to act.

The brain no more functions on the principle of will (be it conscious or unconscious) than the 'laws' of physics, the world or the universe. If it claimed the brain has 'free will' so then has the world, the universe and everything in it that functions 'freely' - as in unimpeded or without coercion.

To function freely, without coercion, does not entail will, be it conscious or unconscious. whether you are being coerced or not, the brain is able to weigh the cost to benefit and respond. The brain has evolved to respond.

The brain, while functional, responds according to its inputs and past experience in every situation.


Hallet for instance argues;
''Recognizing that consciousness is awareness does change the way we can look at the fundamental problem of free will. Free will is more correctly defined as “the perception that we choose to make movements.” Looking at it in this way produces at least two possibilities. The first is that there is a process of free will, an aspect of consciousness, that does choose to make a specific movement. The second is that the brain’s motor system produces a movement as a product of its different inputs, consciousness is informed of this movement, and it is perceived as being freely chosen. It is not certain which of these is correct, but there are some good arguments in favor of the latter.''

Yes, I think you've got the notion of "will" right. A person's will is their specific intent for the immediate (I will have a cheeseburger now) or distant (last will and testament) future. Once the intent is set, it motivates and directs our subsequent actions.

The response of the brain when solving a problem, such as making a significant decision, is not governed by the past and the current stimulus. The past and the current problem are inputs into the current process, and it is the current process that works out a solution or decision.

Free will is not "how the brain functions". Free will is specifically the cases where a brain makes a decision while the person is free of coercion and undue influence. The decision-making function is performed by the brain. When another brain is pointing a gun at it, then that other brain gets to dictate what that decision will be. In this case, the brain holding the gun is held responsible for the behavior.

The notion of free will is used to make the distinction between the brain being coerced versus the brain holding the gun. The distinction is used to assign responsibility for the behavior. So, the notion of free will makes a meaningful distinction. But, if the brains belong to two twins, then the neural structures and genetic dispositions are likely to be indistinguishable. It is in the realm of behavior that free will makes a significant distinction.

Only the person (and his brain) can be said to have free will. Only the brain is capable of imagining, evaluating, and choosing. So, a freely chosen "I will" is only possible within an intelligent brain. The universe has no brain. So, the universe makes no choices.

Generally speaking, purpose and reason exist locally. Purpose arrived in the universe with the first living organisms. Living organisms have biological drives to survive, thrive, and reproduce. Reasoning, the rational causal mechanism, arrived in the universe when the first intelligent species evolved. Purpose and reason exist locally, and uniquely in each living organism of an intelligent species.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

People who invented 'free will' will most always observe that other people who execute such are doing so objectively from their perspective. "From one's perspective" one observing is one (another one) is not doing so objectively! Read your Wundt!!! Where is the control? Experiments tend to be designed independent of one. Sheesh!

A little hand wave and everything is fine. Nope. Subjective actual events happen all the time. A word pairing doesn't accomplish a thing.

Think about it. What is a magic act? Why it's another person deceiving you because that person, aware of your limitations, is taking advantage of that knowledge.

Seldom has so much been said about so little. Better, conduct AND PUBLISH an experiment, not correlational study, involving people.

Step up your 'splaining.

Take an experimental psychology course.

No, I had to drop out before taking experimental psych because I got involved with student government and changing the honor court into a student court based upon protecting rights rather than securing the honor of the student body.

Free will is a simple matter of definition. It applies to overt behavior that we're all familiar with. Either the person decided for themselves what they would do, or the choice was imposed upon them by someone or something else. If the person made the bad decision then he is held responsible for his behavior. If someone or something else imposed a choice upon him, then they are held responsible. It's a simple concept, although it has been confused by a lot of philosophical speculations.

 

[fromderinside]

People who invented 'free will' will most always observe that other people who execute such are doing so objectively from their perspective. "From one's perspective" one observing is one (another one) is not doing so objectively! Read your Wundt!!! Where is the control? Experiments tend to be designed independent of one. Sheesh!

A little hand wave and everything is fine. Nope. Subjective actual events happen all the time. A word pairing doesn't accomplish a thing.

Think about it. What is a magic act? Why it's another person deceiving you because that person, aware of your limitations, is taking advantage of that knowledge.

Seldom has so much been said about so little. Better, conduct AND PUBLISH an experiment, not correlational study, involving people.

Step up your 'splaining.

Take an experimental psychology course.

No, I had to drop out before taking experimental psych because I got involved with student government and changing the honor court into a student court based upon protecting rights rather than securing the honor of the student body.

Free will is a simple matter of definition. It applies to overt behavior that we're all familiar with. Either the person decided for themselves what they would do, or the choice was imposed upon them by someone or something else. If the person made the bad decision then he is held responsible for his behavior. If someone or something else imposed a choice upon him, then they are held responsible. It's a simple concept, although it has been confused by a lot of philosophical speculations.

So is objective. Your reason for moving from one discipline to another (see bolded) describes for me your problem. You needed to change why things got done. Objective reason false science. All you did was change the goal posts not the operations. Relative objectivity is lazy man's science. It works for people today. But, if you read history, you'd conclude one shouldn't make a science of it. You'd have to redefine you parameters every time something new came up. I believe I laid that out.

There was a radical break about 500 years ago, could have been 2200 year ago had people read Archimedes carefully, when rationalism gave way to empiricism. Going back one sees things didn't move forward very rapidly until Galileo.

We still haven't figured out enough about how humans in groups behave to construct a system for governing that is adaptable enough to survive changes in attitude or technology. We have done that going from rationalism to empiricism. Rationalism is still very comfortable, but incomplete. Empiricism makes use of rationalism by adding control, independence and well defined operations. Having a logical conversation is nice but does it move the discipline forward? Probably not.

Did we use Galileo's discovery of gravity to move science forward. Well we're at the big bang in explaining how the world works and it holds together pretty well. Babbage's work on number works pretty well too.

I've spent 50 years working with thresholds but there are still people out there telling me there are none. Shrug.

Apparently defining a threshold as requiring movement of four atoms to define a limit to hearing isn't good enough.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I don't pay attention to the free will discussions. They seem like interminable exercises in talking past each other.

I may be a compatibilist, though I'd have to look it up to know for sure.

I'm a free willy; I experience free will all the time.

The world isn't perfectly deterministic. But what isn't determined may be random, which hardly helps us us defend free will.

But, if you say free will is an illusion, then I'll point out that the illusion is free will. If A equals B then B equals A. What we experience, that we call free will, is what we mean by free will. And, as a practical matter, everybody believes in free will. Nobody says, "Oh, it's okay that you mug me, because, philosophically speaking, you don't have a choice."

All definitions of free will work. They define the components, "will", "what it means to be free", and "what it's free from" and then set out to make a philosophically coherrent explanation. Everybody is correct, because they define the components differently. Nobody has said anything meaningful.

There is no model of free will that is applicable to anything in the real world. The discussion is a complete waste of time.

 

[DBT]

You are simply asserting free will. The brain, its structures, functions, attributes and features do not function on the principle of will. Will is experienced in conscious form as a prompt or urge to respond, to act.

The brain no more functions on the principle of will (be it conscious or unconscious) than the 'laws' of physics, the world or the universe. If it claimed the brain has 'free will' so then has the world, the universe and everything in it that functions 'freely' - as in unimpeded or without coercion.

To function freely, without coercion, does not entail will, be it conscious or unconscious. whether you are being coerced or not, the brain is able to weigh the cost to benefit and respond. The brain has evolved to respond.

The brain, while functional, responds according to its inputs and past experience in every situation.


Hallet for instance argues;
''Recognizing that consciousness is awareness does change the way we can look at the fundamental problem of free will. Free will is more correctly defined as “the perception that we choose to make movements.” Looking at it in this way produces at least two possibilities. The first is that there is a process of free will, an aspect of consciousness, that does choose to make a specific movement. The second is that the brain’s motor system produces a movement as a product of its different inputs, consciousness is informed of this movement, and it is perceived as being freely chosen. It is not certain which of these is correct, but there are some good arguments in favor of the latter.''

Yes, I think you've got the notion of "will" right. A person's will is their specific intent for the immediate (I will have a cheeseburger now) or distant (last will and testament) future. Once the intent is set, it motivates and directs our subsequent actions.

The response of the brain when solving a problem, such as making a significant decision, is not governed by the past and the current stimulus. The past and the current problem are inputs into the current process, and it is the current process that works out a solution or decision.

Free will is not "how the brain functions". Free will is specifically the cases where a brain makes a decision while the person is free of coercion and undue influence. The decision-making function is performed by the brain. When another brain is pointing a gun at it, then that other brain gets to dictate what that decision will be. In this case, the brain holding the gun is held responsible for the behavior.

The notion of free will is used to make the distinction between the brain being coerced versus the brain holding the gun. The distinction is used to assign responsibility for the behavior. So, the notion of free will makes a meaningful distinction. But, if the brains belong to two twins, then the neural structures and genetic dispositions are likely to be indistinguishable. It is in the realm of behavior that free will makes a significant distinction.

Only the person (and his brain) can be said to have free will. Only the brain is capable of imagining, evaluating, and choosing. So, a freely chosen "I will" is only possible within an intelligent brain. The universe has no brain. So, the universe makes no choices.

Generally speaking, purpose and reason exist locally. Purpose arrived in the universe with the first living organisms. Living organisms have biological drives to survive, thrive, and reproduce. Reasoning, the rational causal mechanism, arrived in the universe when the first intelligent species evolved. Purpose and reason exist locally, and uniquely in each living organism of an intelligent species.

How the brain functions excludes the idea of free will. As pointed out, the brain does not work on the principle of will, architecture, memory/experience and input being its principle elements and drivers.

Saying ''Only the person (and his brain) can be said to have free will'' is simply saying or stating a person has free will. A statement that fails to account for how the brain actually works and how the brain actually produces response.

Compatibilism merely asserts ''the freedom to act is free will.'' Which is done at the expense of ignoring the nature of brain, mind and behaviour.

Why Compatibilism Is Mistaken.
''There are some major difficulties in compatibilism, which I think damage it irreparably.

Take Hobbes’ claim, largely accepted by Hume, that freedom is to act at will while coercion is to be compelled to act by others. This does not give us a sure reason to choose this ‘freedom’.

''Hobbes famously said that man was as free as an unimpeded river. A river that flows down a hill necessarily follows a channel, but it is also at liberty to flow within the channel. The voluntary actions of people are similar. They are free because their actions follow from their will; but the actions are also necessary because they spring from chains of causes and effects which could in principle be traced back to the first mover of the universe, generally called God. So on this view, to be at liberty is merely to not be physically restrained rather than to be uncaused. For Hobbes, to be free is to act as we will, and to be un-free is to be coerced by others.''

Imagine that you were a free-floating spirit, equal to God in your capacity to choose. God gives you the unwelcome news that shortly you are to be placed on Earth, and that you will be endowed with a range of fundamental passions, chosen entirely at the caprice of God. Would you choose to be free, in Hobbes’sense of acting at will, or might you consent to being coerced?

It is very far from clear that you would automatically choose to be free. Much would depend on the nature of the coercion. If you did not know what your fundamental desires were going to be, you might well decide to hedge your bets and back the field. It might be far better to be coerced by others (perhaps most people are good) than to be free to pursue un-chosen but possibly dubious desires. A free-floating ethically-minded spirit that feared an imminent endowment of psychopathic desires would certainly wish for an alert constabulary and swift incarceration: this spirit would wish to be coerced............''

''It seems that we are either caused, and our actions are caused events, or we are free. The middle, compatibilism, is excluded.''

 

[rousseau]

Another way to look at human behavior is to consider it as irrelevant noise. In fact My view is that what humans do actually increases the rate at which humans cease to exist. You're late, you're wrong most of the time, so eventually your actions will determine your death. I'm not prepared to call that free will.

I think the question we need to be looking at is whether the term free will has any relevance at all. If determinism implies a lack of free will, then we're not looking to prove free will. What is actually relevant are the properties of living things and trying to define those properties. Do people feel free? Why not explore that instead of endlessly focusing on why determinism implies a lack of freedom?

IOW, the conversation on free will is dead if determinism is the long and short of it. But we're still left with the question of why we have billions of people who would very much describe themselves as free beings.

To me the answer there is essentially that we are that which is determining. Where those who deny free will have some sense that determinism is happening to us.

So yes, determinism is a thing, but why not move beyond that and explore what is there.

I agree. The way that I moved beyond determinism was by going through it. It was like a black hole that you had to get through to get to the other side. Universal causal necessity/inevitability is a logical fact, but neither a meaningful nor a relevant fact. The notion of freedom itself logically implies a world of reliable cause and effect. Without reliable causation, we could never reliably cause any effect, and would have no freedom to do anything at all. So, freedom itself is deterministic.

There will certainly be one single inevitable future (after all, we have only one past to put it in), but how we get there is by imagining many possible futures and choosing the one we want. Ironically, within the domain of human influence, we get to choose which future is inevitable.

The determinist errs in viewing causation as a force that controls us against our will. Causation never causes anything, and determinism never determines anything. These two concepts are descriptive, not causative. Only the actual objects and forces that make up the physical universe can cause events. The notion of causation is what we use to describe the interaction of these objects and forces as they bring about events.

We happen to be one of those objects that goes about in the world causing stuff to happen, and doing so in a way that satisfies needs that are uniquely located within us, and in no other objects in the universe. And we have brains that let us deliberately choose what we will cause to happen next.

We are both the result of reliable cause and effect and the original causes of new effects.

I find a bit of dissonance with this topic because in many ways I know exactly where fromderinside is coming from, and am pretty much on board with the idea that my determining behaviour is inevitable. And yet no matter how hard I try I just don't feel like an unfree actor in the world. I behave on the premise that I'm a free actor and that I control my fate. And even then, I still get some solace over the idea that I don't control my fate.

Which is why I move us toward something in between where the concept of willing otherwise is absurd and irrelevant, and yet our behaviour is still ours, and it is still completely natural to be what we are. I don't see any value in thinking our way into alienation over the form in which we exist.

So, based on that, I think any conversation about freedom essentially has to centre on freedom from undue influence. Willing otherwise is an absurd concept and has no practical application to a material being, and yet that doesn't make the same being some irrelevant and pointless object who is at the complete whims of the environment.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

People who invented 'free will' will most always observe that other people who execute such are doing so objectively from their perspective. "From one's perspective" one observing is one (another one) is not doing so objectively! Read your Wundt!!! Where is the control? Experiments tend to be designed independent of one. Sheesh!

A little hand wave and everything is fine. Nope. Subjective actual events happen all the time. A word pairing doesn't accomplish a thing.

Think about it. What is a magic act? Why it's another person deceiving you because that person, aware of your limitations, is taking advantage of that knowledge.

Seldom has so much been said about so little. Better, conduct AND PUBLISH an experiment, not correlational study, involving people.

Step up your 'splaining.

Take an experimental psychology course.

No, I had to drop out before taking experimental psych because I got involved with student government and changing the honor court into a student court based upon protecting rights rather than securing the honor of the student body.

Free will is a simple matter of definition. It applies to overt behavior that we're all familiar with. Either the person decided for themselves what they would do, or the choice was imposed upon them by someone or something else. If the person made the bad decision then he is held responsible for his behavior. If someone or something else imposed a choice upon him, then they are held responsible. It's a simple concept, although it has been confused by a lot of philosophical speculations.

So is objective. Your reason for moving from one discipline to another (see bolded) describes for me your problem. You needed to change why things got done. Objective reason false science. All you did was change the goal posts not the operations. Relative objectivity is lazy man's science. It works for people today. But, if you read history, you'd conclude one shouldn't make a science of it. You'd have to redefine you parameters every time something new came up. I believe I laid that out.

There was a radical break about 500 years ago, could have been 2200 year ago had people read Archimedes carefully, when rationalism gave way to empiricism. Going back one sees things didn't move forward very rapidly until Galileo.

We still haven't figured out enough about how humans in groups behave to construct a system for governing that is adaptable enough to survive changes in attitude or technology. We have done that going from rationalism to empiricism. Rationalism is still very comfortable, but incomplete. Empiricism makes use of rationalism by adding control, independence and well defined operations. Having a logical conversation is nice but does it move the discipline forward? Probably not.

Did we use Galileo's discovery of gravity to move science forward. Well we're at the big bang in explaining how the world works and it holds together pretty well. Babbage's work on number works pretty well too.

I've spent 50 years working with thresholds but there are still people out there telling me there are none. Shrug.

Apparently defining a threshold as requiring movement of four atoms to define a limit to hearing isn't good enough.

There were practical (empirical) problems with the Honor Court. It had a single sanction: expulsion. And students would not report incidents of cheating because they didn't want to be responsible for another student being expelled from college. Changing the philosophy to one based in law opened up a wide range of penalties that would be more appropriate. The William Bowers 1964 study "Student Dishonesty and its Control in College" surveyed about 5000 students in 99 colleges. On average, 50% admitted cheating while in college. And a little less that half of those reported that they had cheated only once. So, expulsion could not be justified as the automatic penalty in every case. Many students stopped on their own, without any intervention.

The Honor Code used to include a "failure to report" clause, that threatened to expel anyone who witnessed cheating but failed to report it. The students held a referendum and voted to remove that clause a year before I made my changes. (At the time I had written a flyer supporting the failure to report clause).

I'm not sure what you are saying about thresholds, so I'll avoid trying to comment on that.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

I don't pay attention to the free will discussions. They seem like interminable exercises in talking past each other.

I may be a compatibilist, though I'd have to look it up to know for sure.

I'm a free willy; I experience free will all the time.

The world isn't perfectly deterministic. But what isn't determined may be random, which hardly helps us us defend free will.

But, if you say free will is an illusion, then I'll point out that the illusion is free will. If A equals B then B equals A. What we experience, that we call free will, is what we mean by free will. And, as a practical matter, everybody believes in free will. Nobody says, "Oh, it's okay that you mug me, because, philosophically speaking, you don't have a choice."

All definitions of free will work. They define the components, "will", "what it means to be free", and "what it's free from" and then set out to make a philosophically coherrent explanation. Everybody is correct, because they define the components differently. Nobody has said anything meaningful.

There is no model of free will that is applicable to anything in the real world. The discussion is a complete waste of time.

The operational definition of free will (freedom from coercion and undue influence) applies to practical problems in the real world. It is used when assessing a person's moral or legal responsibility for their actions.

The "philosophical" definition of free will (freedom from causal necessity) contains a self-contradiction resulting in a paradox, thus the interminable debate. There is no such thing as freedom from reliable cause and effect. Without reliable cause and effect, I could never reliably cause any effect, and I would have no freedom to do anything at all. Thus, the paradox. The correct resolution is to discard the philosophical definition and embrace the operational definition.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

You are simply asserting free will. The brain, its structures, functions, attributes and features do not function on the principle of will. Will is experienced in conscious form as a prompt or urge to respond, to act.

The brain no more functions on the principle of will (be it conscious or unconscious) than the 'laws' of physics, the world or the universe. If it claimed the brain has 'free will' so then has the world, the universe and everything in it that functions 'freely' - as in unimpeded or without coercion.

To function freely, without coercion, does not entail will, be it conscious or unconscious. whether you are being coerced or not, the brain is able to weigh the cost to benefit and respond. The brain has evolved to respond.

The brain, while functional, responds according to its inputs and past experience in every situation.


Hallet for instance argues;
''Recognizing that consciousness is awareness does change the way we can look at the fundamental problem of free will. Free will is more correctly defined as “the perception that we choose to make movements.” Looking at it in this way produces at least two possibilities. The first is that there is a process of free will, an aspect of consciousness, that does choose to make a specific movement. The second is that the brain’s motor system produces a movement as a product of its different inputs, consciousness is informed of this movement, and it is perceived as being freely chosen. It is not certain which of these is correct, but there are some good arguments in favor of the latter.''

Yes, I think you've got the notion of "will" right. A person's will is their specific intent for the immediate (I will have a cheeseburger now) or distant (last will and testament) future. Once the intent is set, it motivates and directs our subsequent actions.

The response of the brain when solving a problem, such as making a significant decision, is not governed by the past and the current stimulus. The past and the current problem are inputs into the current process, and it is the current process that works out a solution or decision.

Free will is not "how the brain functions". Free will is specifically the cases where a brain makes a decision while the person is free of coercion and undue influence. The decision-making function is performed by the brain. When another brain is pointing a gun at it, then that other brain gets to dictate what that decision will be. In this case, the brain holding the gun is held responsible for the behavior.

The notion of free will is used to make the distinction between the brain being coerced versus the brain holding the gun. The distinction is used to assign responsibility for the behavior. So, the notion of free will makes a meaningful distinction. But, if the brains belong to two twins, then the neural structures and genetic dispositions are likely to be indistinguishable. It is in the realm of behavior that free will makes a significant distinction.

Only the person (and his brain) can be said to have free will. Only the brain is capable of imagining, evaluating, and choosing. So, a freely chosen "I will" is only possible within an intelligent brain. The universe has no brain. So, the universe makes no choices.

Generally speaking, purpose and reason exist locally. Purpose arrived in the universe with the first living organisms. Living organisms have biological drives to survive, thrive, and reproduce. Reasoning, the rational causal mechanism, arrived in the universe when the first intelligent species evolved. Purpose and reason exist locally, and uniquely in each living organism of an intelligent species.

How the brain functions excludes the idea of free will. As pointed out, the brain does not work on the principle of will, architecture, memory/experience and input being its principle elements and drivers.

Saying ''Only the person (and his brain) can be said to have free will'' is simply saying or stating a person has free will. A statement that fails to account for how the brain actually works and how the brain actually produces response.

Compatibilism merely asserts ''the freedom to act is free will.'' Which is done at the expense of ignoring the nature of brain, mind and behaviour.

Why Compatibilism Is Mistaken.
''There are some major difficulties in compatibilism, which I think damage it irreparably.

Take Hobbes’ claim, largely accepted by Hume, that freedom is to act at will while coercion is to be compelled to act by others. This does not give us a sure reason to choose this ‘freedom’.

''Hobbes famously said that man was as free as an unimpeded river. A river that flows down a hill necessarily follows a channel, but it is also at liberty to flow within the channel. The voluntary actions of people are similar. They are free because their actions follow from their will; but the actions are also necessary because they spring from chains of causes and effects which could in principle be traced back to the first mover of the universe, generally called God. So on this view, to be at liberty is merely to not be physically restrained rather than to be uncaused. For Hobbes, to be free is to act as we will, and to be un-free is to be coerced by others.''

Imagine that you were a free-floating spirit, equal to God in your capacity to choose. God gives you the unwelcome news that shortly you are to be placed on Earth, and that you will be endowed with a range of fundamental passions, chosen entirely at the caprice of God. Would you choose to be free, in Hobbes’sense of acting at will, or might you consent to being coerced?

It is very far from clear that you would automatically choose to be free. Much would depend on the nature of the coercion. If you did not know what your fundamental desires were going to be, you might well decide to hedge your bets and back the field. It might be far better to be coerced by others (perhaps most people are good) than to be free to pursue un-chosen but possibly dubious desires. A free-floating ethically-minded spirit that feared an imminent endowment of psychopathic desires would certainly wish for an alert constabulary and swift incarceration: this spirit would wish to be coerced............''

''It seems that we are either caused, and our actions are caused events, or we are free. The middle, compatibilism, is excluded.''

Compatibilism is not a middle position. Compatibilism asserts that (1) all our actions are caused events and that (2) the meaningful and relevant cause of a deliberate action is the act of deliberation that precedes it. That act of deliberation is a choosing operation. The choosing operation inputs two or more options, applies some criteria of comparative evaluation, and outputs a single choice, usually in the form of an "I will X", where X is what we have chosen to do. So, we usually choose our specific intent and then carry out that intention (our will) with specific actions, motivated and directed by that intent.

All uses of the terms "free" or "freedom" are only meaningful when they reference, implicitly or explicitly, some meaningful constraint. For example, we can set a bird free from its cage (the meaningful constraint). However, we cannot set the bird free from reliable cause and effect. Without reliable causation, flapping his wings would be literally ineffective. In fact, the bird's freedom to fly away requires reliable causation. The notion of freedom from causation is an oxymoron, a self-contradicting logical impossibility. So, it is about time that we simply discarded that notion.

So, what is the meaningful constraint that the "free" in free will references? It is those things which prevent someone from deciding for themselves what they will do: Coercion and other Undue (extraordinary) influences. Causation does not impair our ability to choose for ourselves what we will do. Reliable causation enables us to perform the choosing operation.

The only reason anyone thinks they must be free of causation is that the hard determinist has depicted causation as a boogeyman, an agent that controls their lives and eliminates all of their freedom. This boogeyman sends the theist running to the supernatural and sends the atheist seeking escape through quantum indeterminism.

But reliable causal mechanisms are the very source of all of our freedoms. And we employ the notion of cause and effect to understand how things work and to exercise control over events. We use causation, causation does not use us.

Also, thanks for the lovely quotes. It's always interesting to see how other people have worked out these issues for themselves.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

Well said, Rousseau.

 

[fromderinside]

All definitions of free will work. They define the components, "will", "what it means to be free", and "what it's free from" and then set out to make a philosophically coherrent explanation. Everybody is correct, because they define the components differently. Nobody has said anything meaningful.

There is no model of free will that is applicable to anything in the real world. The discussion is a complete waste of time.

Thank you very much.

But you know me. I'm time waster for 20 years now.

 

[fromderinside]

So is objective. Your reason for moving from one discipline to another (see bolded) describes for me your problem. You needed to change why things got done. Objective reason false science. All you did was change the goal posts not the operations. Relative objectivity is lazy man's science. It works for people today. But, if you read history, you'd conclude one shouldn't make a science of it. You'd have to redefine you parameters every time something new came up. I believe I laid that out.

There was a radical break about 500 years ago, could have been 2200 year ago had people read Archimedes carefully, when rationalism gave way to empiricism. Going back one sees things didn't move forward very rapidly until Galileo.

We still haven't figured out enough about how humans in groups behave to construct a system for governing that is adaptable enough to survive changes in attitude or technology. We have done that going from rationalism to empiricism. Rationalism is still very comfortable, but incomplete. Empiricism makes use of rationalism by adding control, independence and well defined operations. Having a logical conversation is nice but does it move the discipline forward? Probably not.

Did we use Galileo's discovery of gravity to move science forward. Well we're at the big bang in explaining how the world works and it holds together pretty well. Babbage's work on number works pretty well too.

I've spent 50 years working with thresholds but there are still people out there telling me there are none. Shrug.

Apparently defining a threshold as requiring movement of four atoms to define a limit to hearing isn't good enough.

There were practical (empirical) problems with the Honor Court. It had a single sanction: expulsion. And students would not report incidents of cheating because they didn't want to be responsible for another student being expelled from college. Changing the philosophy to one based in law opened up a wide range of penalties that would be more appropriate. The William Bowers 1964 study "Student Dishonesty and its Control in College" surveyed about 5000 students in 99 colleges. On average, 50% admitted cheating while in college. And a little less that half of those reported that they had cheated only once. So, expulsion could not be justified as the automatic penalty in every case. Many students stopped on their own, without any intervention.

The Honor Code used to include a "failure to report" clause, that threatened to expel anyone who witnessed cheating but failed to report it. The students held a referendum and voted to remove that clause a year before I made my changes. (At the time I had written a flyer supporting the failure to report clause).

I'm not sure what you are saying about thresholds, so I'll avoid trying to comment on that.

As far as I can tell you were redoing politics from the Queen Elisabeth era. You start with a misstatement. Practical is NOT empirical. Practical may be explored using empirical methods which are not those you describe.

There is only so much word salad needed to present a method. After reading your stuff I felt like cars were smashing into each other willy-nilly. You exceeded it by way too much. Fingers seem to point everywhere. Not an empirical bone in your discussion. Go to  Scientific method. Read. Evaluate, apply.

 

[fromderinside]

I find a bit of dissonance with this topic because in many ways I know exactly where fromderinside is coming from, and am pretty much on board with the idea that my determining behaviour is inevitable. And yet no matter how hard I try I just don't feel like an unfree actor in the world. I behave on the premise that I'm a free actor and that I control my fate. And even then, I still get some solace over the idea that I don't control my fate.

Which is why I move us toward something in between where the concept of willing otherwise is absurd and irrelevant, and yet our behaviour is still ours, and it is still completely natural to be what we are. I don't see any value in thinking our way into alienation over the form in which we exist.

So, based on that, I think any conversation about freedom essentially has to centre on freedom from undue influence. Willing otherwise is an absurd concept and has no practical application to a material being, and yet that doesn't make the same being some irrelevant and pointless object who is at the complete whims of the environment.

Willing and middle earth have a lot in common. Not the least of which is irrelevance. First. Determinism isn't actually causal at all unless you have something that sets time t = 0 before things. As I understand it things are at time t = -1 as well. Will is a human construct searching for relevance because we believe in it so. We are individuals, separate and distinct entities for chissake. We were mindless chickens pecking at stuff until we began surviving. Now we're the height of life doing the work entropy was doing so poorly.

rat, tat, bumfp?

 

[Marvin Edwards]

Willing and middle earth have a lot in common. Not the least of which is irrelevance. First. Determinism isn't actually causal at all unless you have something that sets time t = 0 before things. As I understand it things are at time t = -1 as well. Will is a human construct searching for relevance because we believe in it so. We are individuals, separate and distinct entities for chissake. We were mindless chickens pecking at stuff until we began surviving. Now we're the height of life doing the work entropy was doing so poorly.

rat, tat, bumfp?

A person's will is their specific intent for the immediate ("I think I will have a banana now") or distant ("last will and testament") future. We usually choose what we will do. The choice is expressed as "I will X", where X is what we have decided to do. Once the will is set, that intention motivates and directs our subsequent actions (going to the fruit bowl, peeling and eating the banana, then disposing of the peel).

I think that's pretty much how our "will" works in empirical reality. The notion of "free will" has to do with the choosing operation itself. It is literally a freely chosen "I will".

What is it supposed to be free of? Cause and effect? No. If it were free of reliable causation we could never carry out our intent.

How about our own genetic dispositions and appetites? No. If it were free from us, then it would be someone else's will, not ours.

The choice only needs to be free of coercion and other forms of undue influence to be truly free will.