DBT
Contributor
P1: A freely chosen will is when someone chooses for themselves what they will do, while free of coercion and other forms of undue influence.
P2: A world is deterministic if every event is reliably caused by prior events.
P3: A freely chosen will is reliably caused by the person's own goals, reasons, or interests (with their prior causes).
P4: An unfree choice is reliably caused by coercion or undue influence (with their prior causes).
C: Therefore, the notion of a freely chosen will (and its opposite) is still meaningful within a fully deterministic world.
''Reliably caused'' appears to be a softer way of saying ''fixed.''
The problem with the terms "determined" and "fixed" is that they imply that causation is finished. It gives the impression that everything has already happened (similar to Einstein's Block Universe) . This gives the false impression that there is nothing we can do about anything since it is as if it had "already happened".
In this instance ''fixed'' simply means ''no possibility of an alternate action'' - that in each and every moment in time, each and every state of the system is immutable.
The empirical truth is that things are not "fixed", because events continue to happen, forever. And, no event will ever happen until its final prior causes have played themselves out. This understanding reminds us that our choices and our actions still play a significant role in how things will eventually turn out.
The reference is related to each and every moment in time, initial conditions and the way things go ever after.
When I choose to order the lobster for dinner, I am the most meaningful and relevant cause of that event. The Big Bang is never the meaningful or relevant cause of any human event.
In fact, within the domain of human influence (things we can choose to do), the single inevitable future will be chosen by us from among the many possible futures that we will imagine.
While there will be only a single actual future, many possible futures will occur to us via our imagination, one of those functions of the brain.
Human influences are themselves caused and imbedded within the system, a web that began before we were born.
If alternate actions are possible, events are neither 'reliably caused' or 'fixed' - and we are not talking about determinism.
That's incorrect. Alternate actions are considered "possible" if we are physically able to carry them out. We never need to actually carry out those alternate actions in order for them to be "possible". If we never perform those actions we never call them "impossible", they simply are referred to as things we could have done, but which we did not do.
Possible physical actions are not chosen. They are determined. People performing possible actions did not have a realizable alternate action. The action performed by each and every person is the only possible action open for them in that instance in time.
So only one action is possible for any person in any given instance in time. That other people perform other determined actions has no bearing on the matter of 'free choice.'
So, hard determinists are making errors in the logic of language. Errors in the logic lead to incorrect conclusions and false beliefs.
Nope, freedom is simply incompatible with determinism because determinism doesn't allow freedom of choice. The action that is performed in each and every moment in time is the only possible action. It is not a freely chosen action, as if a real alternative can be realized.
The notion of possibilities is irrelevant to individual neurons. But the notion of possibilities is essential to the brain itself as it performs its decision making function. Without alternate possibilities the brain cannot make a decision.
But as the action that is taken is fixed antecedents, proclivities and brain state, there is no possible alternate action, and never a real choice. A real choice entails a real possibility of doing otherwise.
But as we know, determinism doesn't allow anything to 'do otherwise.'
The menu in the restaurant is a list of alternate possibilities. The brain must narrow this list down to a single option, in order to tell the waiter what dinner to bring. If it fails to choose, it will fail to eat.
Yes, information processing. Information processing is not free will.
An information processor is able to select options based on sets of criteria. This is not free will because the outcome is determined by the state of the processor and the given criteria.
Information processing does not equate to free will.
All the neurons involved in the choosing operation are being driven by the brain's need to order a dinner, AND, the experience of this need itself is a deterministic event that was causally necessary from any prior point in time. When you can realize that both of those statements are true, you'll understand compatibilism.
Different functional areas of the brain are interacting in a reliable fashion with each other, performing the choosing and placing the order for dinner. And all of these events were causally necessary from any prior point in eternity.
Sure, rather than the power of will making decisions, we have an intelligent system, information processing, antecedents and proclivities.
''It is unimportant whether one's resolutions and preferences occur because an ''ingenious physiologist'' has tampered with one's brain, whether they result from narcotics addiction, from ''hereditary factor, or indeed from nothing at all.'' Ultimately the agent has no control over his cognitive states.
So even if the agent has strength, skill, endurance, opportunity, implements, and knowledge enough to engage in a variety of enterprises, still he lacks mastery over his basic attitudes and the decisions they produce. After all, we do not have occasion to choose our dominant proclivities.'' - Prof. Richard Taylor
Nice article. But nothing to change the fact that our brains actually do the choosing, which is what I've been saying all along. As I've said before, I have no problem with any of the facts uncovered by neuroscience.
Computers can do as much without the presence of consciousness or will. The ability to process information is the means by which actions are taken.
Your makeup and past makes you what you are, which in turn determines your actions.
Yes, which means it is really me that is choosing what I do. That genetic makeup and those past experiences exist solely within me, and whatever it is you think they are doing, I am doing.
The issue is not who or what, but how.
''Our brain is not a unified structure; instead it is composed of several modules that work out their computations separately, in what are called neural networks. These networks can carry out activities largely on their own. The visual network, for example, responds to visual stimulation and is also active during visual imagery—that is, seeing something with your mind’s eye; the motor network can produce movement and is active during imagined movements. Yet even though our brain carries out all these functions in a modular system, we do not feel like a million little robots carrying out their disjointed activities. We feel like one, coherent self with intentions and reasons for what we feel are our unified actions.''
Cool! Give it up for my guy Gazzaniga. But you only quoted the part that leaves us with the question. The part that provides the answer to that question comes later, here:
Michael Gazzaniga: The Ethical Brain said:"Our best candidate for this brain area is the “left-hemisphere interpreter.” Beyond the finding, described in the last chapter, that the left hemisphere makes strange input logical, it includes a special region that interprets the inputs we receive every moment and weaves them into stories to form the ongoing narrative of our self-image and our beliefs."
When the "interpreter" has accurate information, then it can provide an accurate description of what is happening and why. But when its information is inaccurate or incomplete, it will still attempt to explain things using confabulation to fill in the blanks. For example, if a hypnotist gives you a post-hypnotic suggestion that when you hear the word "elephant" you will take off your shoes, and then wakes you and triggers you to take off your shoes, you will come up with a story to explain why you did so.
He goes on to show how people use this feature to accommodate ideas that may at first conflict with their religious beliefs. Nice article, worth the read.
The interpreter function is a part of the narrator function, these are brain functions. Neither the interpreter or narrator make decisions or initiate action, just interpret and report them in conscious form.
No help in establishing freedom of will, sorry to say.
From Michael Gazzaniga:
''Experiments on split-brain patients reveal how readily the left-brain interpreter can make up stories and beliefs. In one experiment, for example, when the word walk was presented only to the right side of a patient’s brain, he got up and started walking. When he was asked why he did this, the left brain (where language is stored and where the word walk was not presented) quickly created a reason for the action: “I wanted to go get a Coke.”
Even more fantastic examples of the left hemisphere at work come from the study of neurological disorders. In a complication of stroke called anosognosia with hemiplegia, patients cannot recognize that their left arm is theirs because the stroke damaged the right parietal cortex, which manages our body’s integrity, position, and movement. The left-hemisphere interpreter has to reconcile the information it receives from the visual cortex—that the limb is attached to its body but is not moving—with the fact that it is not receiving any input about the damage to that limb. The left-hemisphere interpreter would recognize that damage to nerves of the limb meant trouble for the brain and that the limb was paralyzed; however, in this case the damage occurred directly to the brain area responsible for signaling a problem in the perception of the limb, and it cannot send any information to the left-hemisphere interpreter. The interpreter must, then, create a belief to mediate the two known facts “I can see the limb isn’t moving” and “I can’t tell that it is damaged.” When patients with this disorder are asked about their arm and why they can’t move it, they will say “It’s not mine” or “I just don’t feel like moving it”—reasonable conclusions, given the input that the left-hemisphere interpreter is receiving.
The left-hemisphere interpreter is not only a master of belief creation, but it will stick to its belief system no matter what. Patients with “reduplicative paramnesia,” because of damage to the brain, believe that there are copies of people or places. In short, they will remember another time and mix it with the present. As a result, they will create seemingly ridiculous, but masterful, stories to uphold what they know to be true due to the erroneous messages their damaged brain is sending their intact interpreter. One such patient believed the New York hospital where she was being treated was actually her home in Maine. When her doctor asked how this could be her home if there were elevators in the hallway, she said, “Doctor, do you know how much it cost me to have those put in?” The interpreter will go to great lengths to make sure the inputs it receives are woven together to make sense—even when it must make great leaps to do so. Of course, these do not appear as "great leaps” to the patient, but rather as clear evidence from the world around him or her.''
Free will? Hardly.