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.
Decision making is not a free will process.
Decision making determines what you will do. When you are free to choose for yourself what you will do, it is a freely chosen will.
As pointed out, computers can select an action from a set of options based on a given set of criteria, and it is the information processor, the computer, that is doing the deciding.
The computer is a machine we have created to do our will. It has no will of its own.
The machine makes decisions according to its own nature and makeup, and the resulting action is freely implemented and performed by whatever system it runs.
No, not always. The bank teller exercises care with the bank's money, always giving the bank's customers only the cash that is available to them in their bank account. That is the "nature and makeup" of the bank teller. The bank robber, points a gun at the bank teller, forcing her to give him money that is not his. The gun forces the bank teller to submit her will to the will of the robber.
When she is dealing with her customers she is making decisions according to her own nature and makeup, but when she is dealing with the robber pointing a gun at her, the guy with the gun is making those decisions for her.
In one case she is free to decide for herself what she will do. In the other case she is not free to decide for herself what she will do.
Do you deny that this is a real and meaningful distinction?
Free will is not involved.
In one case she is free to decide for herself what she will do. In the other case she is not free to decide for herself what she will do. So, the distinction is clearly about free will versus an unfree will.
Our brains are information processors, acquiring and processing information, making decisions (determined), selecting actions (determined) based on a given set of criteria ...
Yes, and in one case it is the bank teller's brain deterministically choosing what she will do (freely chosen will), and in the other case, it is bank robber's brain deterministically deciding what the bank teller will do (his freely chosen will is imposed upon her against her will).
Compatibilists merely apply a label.
Well, yeah. Everybody applies labels. That's how we distinguish one thing from another. We call a cat a "cat" and we call a dog a "dog". We call thinking "thinking" and we call walking "walking".
We call deciding for ourselves what we will do "free will".
We call a guy with a gun deciding for us what we will do "coercion".
We call different events by different names to avoid confusing things, like confusing cats with dogs, or like confusing free will with coercion.
Naming objects and events enables us to communicate with each other. So, it is best that we understand what our labels mean when we use them in the real world.
It's the nature of decision making within a determined system that eliminates the idea of free will being involved in the process.
Free will is the name of the process of deciding for ourselves what we will do. Free will is not "involved" in the process, it is the
name of process itself.
Inner necessitation eliminates freedom of will.
Nope.
Choosing is the inner process that
necessitates the will. When free to choose for ourselves what we will do, it is a freely chosen will. When the guy with the gun forces us to do his will instead of our own, what we will do is not our will is not freely chosen, but the will of the robber imposed upon us against our will.
Will is necessitated by antecedents and the state and condition of the system in any instance in time.
The
antecedent event that
necessitated the will is called "choosing". And it is the reliable result of the person's own
system of goals and reasons at that point in time.
''Everybody acts not only under external compulsion but also in accordance with inner necessity' - Einstein.
Hi, Albert! Were you listening when I explained to DBT that the inner process that necessitates our specific will is the choosing process?
Oh, and Albert, we seldom act under external compulsion. In most cases we are free to follow or dismiss external influences. It is only in cases of coercion that we are compelled to follow external influences.
No, everything came before inexorably brings you to that very action. Antecedents determine current brain state, current brain state initates the determined action.
And there you go again, sweeping meaningful information under the rug of abstract generalities. You are not hiding anything from me. Let's take a closer look at that causal chain to find the missing link.
(Prior to choosing)
We have perfectly reliable cause and effect leading up to the point where we encounter a problem or issue that requires us to make a decision. Perhaps we've just opened the menu in the restaurant.
(The missing link)
We have perfectly reliable cause and effect within the choosing process, where our choice is the reliable effect of who and what we are at that moment. The choice is determined by our own goals and our own reasons. The choice is our specific will as to what we intend to have for dinner. This causes us to announce to the waiter, "I will have the Chef Salad, please".
(Subsequent to choosing)
Our deliberate action causes the waiter to write down our order and carry it to the chef. The chef prepares the meal, gives it to the waiter, who brings us our salad and the bill for our dinner. We eat the salad, and then pay the bill to the cashier on the way out. And the causal chain continues.
So, the causal chain remains unbroken. Perfectly reliable cause and effect before choosing, within choosing, and after choosing.
My point here is that you cannot sweep the choosing process under the rug and pretend it never happened.
No confusion, we talk about possibilities from our limited perspective, awareness or understanding of the state of the world and its events.
Correct! The notion of possibilities, things that
can happen but
might not happen, have evolved to enable us to deal logically with matters of uncertainty, where we
do not know what
will happen, but only
know what
can happen.
If the world is determined, there is no possiblity of a determined action not to happen, we just don't have the necessary information, so we see possibilities.
Apparently, it was
inevitable that there would be possibilities, because it was
inevitable that we would often be uncertain as to what will happen next and even uncertain what we will do next.
Whenever we are choosing, we don't know at the outset what our choice will be. So, we switch to the
logic of possibilities. We have A and B and must choose between them. The fact that we must choose between them logically requires that
we have the ability to choose A and that
we also have the ability to choose B. So, right up front, we have the "
ability to do otherwise" as a
logical fact of the choosing operation. We
can choose A, it is
possible to choose A, we have the
ability to choose A. And the same logical facts are true of option B.
We won't know for certain what we will do, until the choosing process is done. We only know that A and B are real possibilities and that we can choose A is
true, and that we can choose B is also
true.
So, after choosing is finished, and we finally know what we
will do, we will also finally know what we
could have done but would not do.
The deterministic process of choosing will always result in
one thing that we will do, and
at least one other thing that we could have done but did not do.
''Determinism means that events will proceed naturally (as if "fixed as a matter of natural law") and reliably ("without deviation"). ''All of these events, including my choices, were causally necessary from any prior point in time. And they all proceeded without deviation from the Big Bang to this moment.'' - Marvin Edwards.
(Oh. Hi Marvin, nice to see you here as well. Hey, did you get a chance to speak to Albert while you were over there, to straighten him out?)
The choosing process proceeded without deviation. I could choose option A was true. And I could choose option B was also true. The ability to do otherwise showed up precisely when it was causally necessary that it would.
But then again,
all events are always causally necessary from any prior point in time, so no big deal.
Causal necessity changes nothing. It eliminates nothing.
It does not eliminate any possibilities. Instead it guarantees that they will show up precisely when they do.
It does not eliminate free will because the person will either
necessarily decide for themselves what they will do or they will
necessarily be coerced or unduly influenced.
That's how causal necessity works (or rather doesn't work). It is like a background constant, that appears on both sides of every equation, and can be subtracted from both sides without affecting the results. Universal causal necessity/inevitability is the most
trivial logical fact in the whole universe.
It has
no practical implications for any human scenarios, so it is never appropriate to bring it up. And yet the hard determinists keep trying to attach some magical powers to it. It's really very annoying.
Hardly falsely protrayed, seeing that it relates to the accepted definition of determinism...being essentially the same for both sides of the debate
Yeah, but the
libertarian incompatibilists claim that
universal causal necessity/inevitability doesn't exist and the
hard determinists claim that it means a lot of stuff that it simply doesn't. The
compatibilists recognize it as
a logical fact that has no practical significance. While it is a logical fact, it is neither a meaningful nor a relevant fact.
So, the
libertarians act as if it universal causal necessity isn't there. The
compatibilists act as if universal causal necessity is there but it is an insignificant fact that can be
ignored. The
hard determinists annoyingly keep bringing it up as if it meant something and constantly attempt to make it meaningful.
Ironically, the
hard determinists also act as if it isn't there. They restore free will and responsibility by asserting that they are "necessary illusions", things they don't believe are true, but which they must act as if they were true. For example, here's what Albert said about this:
Albert Einstein said:
"In a sense, we can hold no one responsible. I am a determinist. As such, I do not believe in free will. ... Practically, I am, nevertheless, compelled to act as if freedom of the will existed. If I wish to live in a civilized community, I must act as if man is a responsible being."
Page 114 of "The Saturday Evening Post" article "What Life Means to Einstein" "An Interview by George Sylvester Viereck" (Oct 26, 1929)
Free will, by the essential meaning of the term ''free'' in relation to ''will'' would appear to require meaningful regulative control by this free will agency, an ability to make a difference to outcomes.
No. You're imagining
another definition of free will, some kind of "freely floating" will, that is
separate from the material world and from cause and effect. Some people may believe in souls that exist as ghosts, separate from the physical world.
But no one actually
behaves as if that were true. For example, we do not see any of these people volunteering to give a demonstration of hands-free typing, where by simply giving thought to it, the keys are pushed by psychokinesis. The libertarian, just like the rest of us, types upon the material keyboard with her material fingers.
So, we have the
libertarians acting as if they were "material girls in a material world" (Cindi Lauper), despite their claims.
So, we have the
hard determinists acting as if free will and responsibility were real, despite their claims.
The only people making any sense are the
compatibilists, who acknowledge causal necessity, but put it in its proper place, the trash.
