According to Robert Sapolsky, human free will does not exist

[DBT]

Again: ''How could I have a choice about anything that is an inevitable consequence of something I have no choice about? And yet ...the compatibilist must deny the No Choice Principle.” - Van Inwagen

Yes, the compatibilist denies the “no choice ‘principle,’” because determinism does not say we have no choices. Only HARD determism (falsely) claims that.

Not so. It is the definition of determinism that says it. A definition that is the same for both sides. The only difference being that compatibilists define free will as a decision made without force or coercion, conveniently ignoring their own definition of determinism which clearly denies the possibility of alternate actions.

In other words, there can be no alternate actions within a deterministic system, just as the compatibilist defines it.

 

[Jarhyn]

Compatibilism fails, once again, because it carefully selects the terms of their argument while ignoring the conditions that negate their position

Contingent things happening to have preconditions that lead to one outcome rather than another do not change the fact that the contingent things were, in fact contingent to the outcome. This is not about "terms and conditions" but the actuality that we have consistent rules of physics that act as determinants.

You have yet again rendered a loaded and not mutually agreed definition of "determinism" that no information scientist here accepts.

There is something wrong with your definition with regards to the "no choice" principle which mutilates the very intent of the idea of choice when spoken by more educated minds than your own.

What is wrong with it is that you see "only one precondition is available" and you jump to the conclusion that it somehow wasn't the precondition that was responsible for the postcondition, or worse you make the nonsensical assumption that only exactly thing can only be responsible for something in only exactly one way, and the only thing that qualifies is the initial condition. NONE of those are good assumptions.

You are responsible for the things you are responsible for, even if other things were responsible before that or for setting up aspects of it; due to the recursive nature of how brains function, they end up being in part responsible for themselves as much as other things are responsible for aspects of them at earlier times.

Someone is getting bad grades? Causally, the only thing you can respond to are the remaining things open to response, which include them as an entity, as a construction of matter capable of agential causes, causes in the form of algorithms being put in interpretive executive systems, and what the execution path and contingencies of the system are. These are called "freedoms" within systems theory.

Nothing you say will erase the algorithm of the "will" nor the real instructions within it that create "contingency", and thus no hand waving will erase the "freedom".

The compatibilist hasn't asked for alternate "actions" the compatibilist has asked for alternate possibilities, alternate artifacts to be provided to a fixed choice function for examination and evaluation. They have asked for "possibilities" not actions or actualities. They have asked for potential inactions. The fact is, if I walk up to the buffet and take the steak, the salad is still, really there, a real possibility even though I didn't take any, even if it's not an actuality. The pile of leafy greens is not an illusion.

 

[DBT]

Modal fallacy? Wow, that's scraping the bottom of the barrel.

No, it’s actually the cream of the crop. Your constant employment of a logical fallacy is the root of your misunderstanding.

Sorry, no, not even close. Laughable in fact. This issue boils down to the flawed semantic argument given by compatibilists.

Simply hinging their position on unforced or uncoerced decisions being defined as 'free will' regardless of the nature of decision making, which is just as internally limiting on freedom of will as external force or coercision.

The given definition of determinism is straightforward. It's not controversial. The conditions within such a system in relation to how the system evolves, no deviation, no alternate action, no choice, is irrefutable.

Your objections have no merit.

You, yourself said as much; Jarhyn - ''a deterministic system is a system in which no randomness is involved in the development of future states of the system.''

Right, no randomness, etc … and, so?

Ask Jarhyn. He gave the definition.

What it does imply is 'no alternate thoughts, decisions or actions.'

That the system does not deviate according to will or wish. That the system evolves from past to present and future without alternate choices.

Which means the decision and action you take in any given instance is the only possible decision and action you could have taken,

No alternatives. A system where decision making is determined and choice is an illusion.

Choice, to reiterate, requires the possibility of selecting a different option at any given moment in time.

Determinism, just as compatibilists define it, permits no alternate decisions or actions to be taken, consequently no choice.

Anyway, you’re in good company in your mistakes, I guess, if you’d call Jerry Coyne good company. He’s a hard determinist like you, and over at his blog, he’s braying about Sopolsky’s book.

It’s funny about Coyne, he‘s always talking about how important free speech is, how vital it is that we support it. It’s funny for two reasons: one is that he bans, at the drop of a hat, anyone who displeases him in the comments section of his blog; and two, and more important, how the hell does he think we have free speech, if we don’t have free will? According to his metaphysics, we’re just ventriloquist’s dummies of the Big Bang!

But that’s your position too, right? We’re just Big Bang meat puppets? Perhaps you recall that I asked you how it is, when a great work of architecture is produced, that architect had nothing to do with it, according to you? Who did, then? The Big Bang? Does the Big Bang build buildings, write symphonies and novels, produce great paintings, etc.? I guess you think it does — but how? Magic?

Making us meat puppets of the Big Bang is exactly like making us meat puppets of God. It’s a religious stance, unsupported by evidence.

But don’t worry, Coyne is quick to make the same mistake. In his blog post he tells a little anecdote about a how an improv jazz musican got pissed at Coyne for telling him his notes were decided “in advance.” I’d get pissed, too, at such an asinine comment. Decided HOW, Jerry, HOW?

Obviously, the musician produced the notes, the architect the building, etc. They were PART OF the deterministic process. They determined, based on antecedent events, what to do next. The musician, at any juncture, was confronted by a choice between note A and note B. Two different choices, two different patheways equally open to him. Given his genes, upbringing, personality, training, and lot of other things, some of which (but not all) were admittedly beyond his control, let’s say he chose A, and with it, the start of a great improv. A lesser musician with a different background might have chosen B and made a clunker. The upshot, though, is that given his antecedents, we can perhaps guess that the musician WILL choose A, but this is not the same thing as MUST choose A, and your constant claim that it is the same is THE MODAL FALLACY.

The musician makes decisions, just like the rest of us, just like every animal with a sufficiently developed brain, just as computers do, select options based on a given set of criteria....and given a deterministic system, the options that are selected are necessarily selected, ie, nothing else was possible in the process or instance of selection, hence there is no choice,

For it to be a choice, it would require the possibility to have done otherwise in that instance.

Determinism, as it is defined by compatibilism, does not permit alternate actions.

Determinism: only one future is consistent with the state of the world at a time + the laws of nature.

 

[Jarhyn]

Simply hinging their position on unforced or uncoerced decisions being defined as 'free will' regardless of the nature of decision making, which is just as internally limiting on freedom of will as external force or coercision.

Ok, so have pointed at the fact that both "internal" and "external" limits apply, and sometimes it is the internal elements that are causal to the outcome and sometimes it is the external elements...

This creates a dichotomy of internal/external.

This dichotomy is the one being recognized here in the broad conversation of internal = free; external = coerced.

Since the internal/external difference of where responsibility exists in the system as far as "here/not-here" goes, the very fact that locations in the universe are different, the renaming of these qualifiers to "free" and "coerced" are also real.

 

[DBT]

Simply hinging their position on unforced or uncoerced decisions being defined as 'free will' regardless of the nature of decision making, which is just as internally limiting on freedom of will as external force or coercision.

Ok, so have pointed at the fact that both "internal" and "external" limits apply, and sometimes it is the internal elements that are causal to the outcome and sometimes it is the external elements...

It makes no difference either way. The structure, mechanisms and processes of a brain are not regulated by 'free will,' nor does it generate free will. You don't choose what goes on in your brain.


Compatibilists carefully select adaptive decisions that are made without external force or coercion as an example of free will, yet ignore internal agency that produces maladaptive behaviors, habits, addictions, self destructive decisions, etc, which is also not forced or coerced by external agents, yet clearly not a matter of free will.

You are, in any given instance, whatever the brain is doing. The state of the brain is the state of you.

This creates a dichotomy of internal/external.

This dichotomy is the one being recognized here in the broad conversation of internal = free; external = coerced.

Since the internal/external difference of where responsibility exists in the system as far as "here/not-here" goes, the very fact that locations in the universe are different, the renaming of these qualifiers to "free" and "coerced" are also real.

No, it doesn't. The brain is not separate from the external world. The information a brain receives from the external world alters its behaviour according to circumstances and events.

Here's a part of the quagmire of evasion that is compatibilism;


Could have, would have, might have

''The compatibilist readily admits that if determinism is true, then we clearly do not have physical alternatives open to us. But this does not matter, he says, for what really matters is that we have the right sort of alternatives open to us, and these are not physical alternatives.

For many compatibilists, perhaps most compatibilists, the right sort of alternatives for free will are what are termed conditional alternatives. They are conditional alternatives since they depend upon certain counter factual conditionals being true. A counterfactual conditional is a type of statement that indicates what would be the case if the conditions that led to a certain state of affairs had been different. For such compatibilists, an agent had an alternative open to him if, had the causal circumstances been slightly different (such that he would have wanted to decide otherwise), he would have decided otherwise (because there would have been nothing to prevent him from realizing that want).''

Where of course, given determinism just as the compatibilist defines it, there can be no 'conditional alternatives' and no possibility of 'had the causal circumstances been slightly different' ever happening.

 

[Jarhyn]

It makes no difference either way. The structure, mechanisms and processes of a brain are not regulated by 'free will,' nor does it generate free will. You don't choose what goes on in your brain.

Yes, it makes a difference because there is a process in the brain, an algorithm, that sorts wills, other algorithms, based on where they came from. Occasionally there is a process that can force the execution of those wills anyway.

At some point it reaches a node I call "me, the part that is actually 'me' in all that wet neurological mess" and that node has privileges within the system of the rest of it to change things according to its own configuration, including aspects of its own configuration.

I don't choose EVERYTHING that goes on in my brain, but I am my brain and my brain does have influence on itself; my whole brain represents a massively recursively connected system, so of course it chooses it's future states according to its present state. There is only one state any given location will chose, but there are an infinite number of locations all choosing something different according to the natural, fixed rules by which the past chooses the future.

Again, there being only one future chosen by one present that was chosen by one past does not change the process nor the momentary responsibilities within the block state.

 

[Elixir]

It occurs to me that if the question of the existence/nonexistence of free will was consequential, there would be some manifestation of free will that would be incompatible with determinism, or some manifestation of determinism that was incompatible with free will.
Since I see neither, I am left with the impression that it is a semantic, rhetorical or abstract question, the answer to which has no bearing on real life experience, decisions or outcomes. But I am probably missing something.
Anyhow, carry on - I don’t mean to stifle conversation …

Yes, that’s right. And I noted one. If we ever saw in real life someone reaching for, say, the salt shaker, but an invisible hand called Determinism guided this person’s hand to the pepper shaker instead (even though this person hates pepper) that would be a manifestation of free will/determinism incompatibility. We never witness this.

So … everyone seems to agree that the question, while interesting, lacks utility.
I’m interested in what makes the question and others like it, interesting. Atheist and theist alike, we all seek exceptions to our beliefs for our own reasons. But the free will “question” doesn’t provide any benefits no matter how it is answered.

IOW if I understand,

Again, there being only one future chosen by one present that was chosen by one past does not change the process nor the momentary responsibilities within the block state.

 

[pood]

So … everyone seems to agree that the question, while interesting, lacks utility.

I don’t agree with that.

 

[pood]

Simply hinging their position on unforced or uncoerced decisions being defined as 'free will' regardless of the nature of decision making, which is just as internally limiting on freedom of will as external force or coercision.

Ok, so have pointed at the fact that both "internal" and "external" limits apply, and sometimes it is the internal elements that are causal to the outcome and sometimes it is the external elements...

It makes no difference either way. The structure, mechanisms and processes of a brain are not regulated by 'free will,' nor does it generate free will. You don't choose what goes on in your brain.


Compatibilists carefully select adaptive decisions that are made without external force or coercion as an example of free will, yet ignore internal agency that produces maladaptive behaviors, habits, addictions, self destructive decisions, etc, which is also not forced or coerced by external agents, yet clearly not a matter of free will.

You are, in any given instance, whatever the brain is doing. The state of the brain is the state of you.

This creates a dichotomy of internal/external.

This dichotomy is the one being recognized here in the broad conversation of internal = free; external = coerced.

Since the internal/external difference of where responsibility exists in the system as far as "here/not-here" goes, the very fact that locations in the universe are different, the renaming of these qualifiers to "free" and "coerced" are also real.

No, it doesn't. The brain is not separate from the external world. The information a brain receives from the external world alters its behaviour according to circumstances and events.

Here's a part of the quagmire of evasion that is compatibilism;


Could have, would have, might have

''The compatibilist readily admits that if determinism is true, then we clearly do not have physical alternatives open to us. But this does not matter, he says, for what really matters is that we have the right sort of alternatives open to us, and these are not physical alternatives.

For many compatibilists, perhaps most compatibilists, the right sort of alternatives for free will are what are termed conditional alternatives. They are conditional alternatives since they depend upon certain counter factual conditionals being true. A counterfactual conditional is a type of statement that indicates what would be the case if the conditions that led to a certain state of affairs had been different. For such compatibilists, an agent had an alternative open to him if, had the causal circumstances been slightly different (such that he would have wanted to decide otherwise), he would have decided otherwise (because there would have been nothing to prevent him from realizing that want).''

Where of course, given determinism just as the compatibilist defines it, there can be no 'conditional alternatives' and no possibility of 'had the causal circumstances been slightly different' ever happening.

Thanks for grabbing another blurb off the web. At least this one deals direclty with compatibilism, vs. the others dealing with libertarianism.

I see the author wrote a whole book on the subject. Too bad he doesn’t know what he‘s talking about. Of courae there are conditional alternatives — we encounter them every day — and of course it is possible that causal circumstances could have been different. To argue otherwise is just to commit once again the same boring old modal fallacy.

 

[Elixir]

So … everyone seems to agree that the question, while interesting, lacks utility.

I don’t agree with that.

So... you don't find it interesting?
Or, what is the utility of the pursuit of An Answer?

 

[pood]

So … everyone seems to agree that the question, while interesting, lacks utility.

I don’t agree with that.

So... you don't find it interesting?
Or, what is the utility of the pursuit of An Answer?

No, I find it interesting, and it has utility.

 

[pood]

Hard determinists like Coyne and DBT and the guy DBT quoted get determinism mixed up with fatalism and pre-determinism, as explained here.

 

[pood]

So … everyone seems to agree that the question, while interesting, lacks utility.

I don’t agree with that.

So... you don't find it interesting?
Or, what is the utility of the pursuit of An Answer?

Actually, I’m not quite sure what you mean by “utility” in this context.

 

[Elixir]

Actually, I’m not quite sure what you mean by “utility” in this context.

Something like practical value, in decision-making.

 

[pood]

Actually, I’m not quite sure what you mean by “utility” in this context.

Something like practical value, in decision-making.

Well, if I believe I can’t really make a decision because I’m a meat puppet of the Big Bang, and I don’t really have free speech because I’m a ventriloquist’s dummy of the Big Bang, what does that mean? This is just a resurrection of the ancient Greek Idle Argument — that all my decisions are idle because we are fated to do x and nothing we do can avoid x. So we might as well just sit on our ass and do nothng, if we believe the Idle Argument. But of course, if we believe the Idle Argument and sit thus on our ass, we are doing something different from, what we would do if we did not believe in the Idle Argument, rendering said argument self-refuting.

And hard determinism is just a modern variant of the Idle Argument.

 

[bilby]

I'm convinced that the question of whether we have freedom of will is completely lacking in utility.

If we do, then what can we do with that knowledge, that we are not already doing? People do stuff, and their actions have consequences, including consequences imposed by other humans.

The imposed consequences are predicated on the idea that rewards or punishments are just, because the actions were chosen by the actor. Is this reasonable?

There are two basic classes of possibilities: The actions were chosen (free will of some flavour); Or they were not chosen (determinism of some hardness or other).

If the first case applies, then yes, our system of rewards and punishments is just (or at least has the potential to be just); People who behave well should be rewarded because they made good choices, and people who behaved badly should, similarly, be punished.

If, on the other hand, the second case applies, then our system of rewards and punishments is (by stark contrast) not unjust, because in a determined universe, justice is not even a thing - whatever rewards or punishments occur could not have been otherwise.

So we have an impasse. Do we believe in a universe where our behaviour is just; Or a very different universe in which our behaviour is not unjust?

Well, if we have freedom to choose, we could pick either of these indistinguishable options, with identical results. And if we don't, we are unavoidably going to pick one or the other, with identical results.

Given the vast gulf between these alternatives, clearly this is a question of importance, and it's answer is of great utility in our daily lives.

Fundamental to the idea that determinism would be a useful concept is the assumption that we can choose it. But if it's true, we don't get a choice. So it's not a useful concept.

That is, if a hard determinist is trying to persuade us to agree with their philosophy, then they either haven't thought it through, or they couldn't do anything else. Either way, there's no possibility of its being a philosophical position that they have chosen on the basis of the evidence, and so no value or utility in their argument.

"I choose to believe that hard determinism is correct" is a self falsifying statement; It can never be true.

 

[Elixir]

Bilby’s post is a better summary of my feeling than my own.

This is just a resurrection of the ancient Greek Idle Argument — that all my decisions are idle because we are fated to do x and nothing we do can avoid x. So we might as well just sit on our ass and do nothng,

My argument, at the risk of overindulging in my entertainment addiction:

So what? If sitting on your ass is what you want to do, you have an ass so sit on and a place to sit on it, then rationale are superfluous. If not, you need to work on that. If you’d rather do something else, then do it if you can.

I know your point doesn’t have to do with how I see it, but I retain the opinion that speculations about will and determinism amount to little or nothing more than entertainment, involving the negotiation of a host of semantic, rhetorical and syntactic tricks snd traps. I am most interested in why it’s such an enduringly popular game.

 

[Politesse]

I'm convinced that the question of whether we have freedom of will is completely lacking in utility.

If we do, then what can we do with that knowledge, that we are not already doing? People do stuff, and their actions have consequences, including consequences imposed by other humans.

The imposed consequences are predicated on the idea that rewards or punishments are just, because the actions were chosen by the actor. Is this reasonable?

There are two basic classes of possibilities: The actions were chosen (free will of some flavour); Or they were not chosen (determinism of some hardness or other).

If the first case applies, then yes, our system of rewards and punishments is just (or at least has the potential to be just); People who behave well should be rewarded because they made good choices, and people who behaved badly should, similarly, be punished.

If, on the other hand, the second case applies, then our system of rewards and punishments is (by stark contrast) not unjust, because in a determined universe, justice is not even a thing - whatever rewards or punishments occur could not have been otherwise.

So we have an impasse. Do we believe in a universe where our behaviour is just; Or a very different universe in which our behaviour is not unjust?

Well, if we have freedom to choose, we could pick either of these indistinguishable options, with identical results. And if we don't, we are unavoidably going to pick one or the other, with identical results.

Given the vast gulf between these alternatives, clearly this is a question of importance, and it's answer is of great utility in our daily lives.

Fundamental to the idea that determinism would be a useful concept is the assumption that we can choose it. But if it's true, we don't get a choice. So it's not a useful concept.

That is, if a hard determinist is trying to persuade us to agree with their philosophy, then they either haven't thought it through, or they couldn't do anything else. Either way, there's no possibility of its being a philosophical position that they have chosen on the basis of the evidence, and so no value or utility in their argument.

"I choose to believe that hard determinism is correct" is a self falsifying statement; It can never be true.

I don't quite grasp why you feel a hard determinist would be so obsessed with choice in the first place. Why would they?

 

[bilby]

I don't quite grasp why you feel a hard determinist would be so obsessed with choice in the first place. Why would they?

I don't feel that a hard determinist would be obsessed with choice.

A hard determinist by definition doesn't believe choice to exist.

 

[Politesse]

I don't quite grasp why you feel a hard determinist would be so obsessed with choice in the first place. Why would they?

I don't feel that a hard determinist would be obsessed with choice.

A hard determinist by definition doesn't believe choice to exist.

So your post makes no sense. Because a hard determinist would not have considered their "choice" to believe consequential. If the world is important to the hard determinist, it isn't because of any woo-driven fascination with "choices".