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.
The brain functions on the principle of inputs, memory function and criteria,
The brain inputs the restaurant menu, remembers past eating experiences and its dietary goals, and chooses what it will have for dinner.
Which is not a matter of choice.
Well, we don't choose our brains, or how our brains work, but that does not prevent us from choosing what we will have for dinner. That's what brains do.
Your claim that we have to choose our brain and choose how it works before we can choose anything else is obviously false. And it doesn't matter whether you say it or Robert Kane says it or Albert Einstein says it. It remains a false claim.
If you believe the claim is true, then please offer some proof. So far, you've only offered evidence as to how the brain works. And you seem to think that the fact that our brain is making our choices is somehow different from the fact that we are making our choices. That would only be possible if we existed separately from our brains, but we don't.
Given that it's the state and condition of the brain that determines outcome in the moment of decision making, the option was chosen,
Thank you for owning up to the fact that the option was indeed chosen.
but not through the agency of free will.
Free will is not an independent agent. Free will
is the brain deciding for itself what we
will have for dinner, while
free of coercion and other forms of undue influence.
Nor is there a possible alternate action.
The
possible actions are listed on the restaurant menu. The
single inevitable actuality will become known as soon as you finish choosing it and just before you order it, as in "I will have the Chef Salad, please".
The action that is taken is the only possibility in that moment in time
No, the action taken is the only
actuality in that moment in time. All of the items on the menu remain valid
possibilities. In fact, if the salad doesn't satisfy your hunger, you are still free to order the steak as well.
Quite simply, if free will doesn't do it, it's false to label information processing as free will.
Again, free will is not an entity that goes around doing things. A freely chosen will is what we call the cases where the brain decides for ourselves what we
will do, while
free of coercion and undue influence. Cases where we do not make this choice for ourselves, but in which the choice is imposed upon us by someone or something that is not us, are cases where our will is not freely chosen.
Free will is when we are free to choose for ourselves what we will do. It is about the conditions of the choosing.
Imagining possibilities doesn't mean that any possibility is open to you at any time you wish.
Only the items on the restaurant menu are open to us when choosing our dinner. They are our only possibilities. On the other hand, some restaurants may be open to a possibility that you imagine, if they have the ingredients and feel like accommodating you.
The rules of determinism still apply to both imagination and future actions.
That's okay. Determinism only has one rule: that each event is reliably caused by prior events. And, like free will, determinism is not a causal agent. It does not enforce this rule. It simply notes that all events appear to be following the rule.
This rule is fully satisfied in the restaurant example. In each case, the dinner ordered will be the reliable product of the customer's choosing process. The outcome will be causally necessitated by their own criteria, such as their personal tastes and their nutrition goals (if they have any). Each person's criteria will be the necessary result of their genetic dispositions and their prior life experiences (good ol' nature and nurture). These will in turn have their own history of causation going back as far as anyone wants to imagine.
And the waiter is tapping his pencil on his order pad as he waits eternally for each customer to explore their own infinitely long causal chain. This is why it is never appropriate to bring up causal necessity.
That the brain is doing it doesn't make it free will.
Correct. But the brain doing it while free of coercion and other undue influences does make it free will. And the brain doing it while someone is pointing a gun at it is not free will.
Nothing is being freely willed.
I'll repeat this again. The brain may either make its choice while free of coercion and undue influence or it may make its choice while being coerced by the guy with the gun. One is a freely chosen will. The other is not.
A brain can do nothing that is not enabled by the circuitry of its neural networks, performing its evolutionary function as determined by architecture, memory and inputs. A failure of any of these elements disrupts rational function.
Absolutely correct. So, let's hope that the brains of all the restaurant customers are working well enough to make rational choices.
The issue here is a question of the right kind of regulative control.
So far, we've established that everyone in the restaurant is sane and has a brain capable of deciding what they would order. That is sufficient regulative control. But I see you've brought up an example where that is not the case:
Prefrontal Cortex damage:
''The 20-year-old female subject studied by Damasio et al. was intelligent and academically competent, but she stole from her family and other children, abused other people both verbally and physically, lied frequently, and was sexually promiscuous and completely lacking in empathy toward her illegitimate child. In addition, the researchers say, "She never expressed guilt or remorse for her misbehavior'' ''Both of the subjects performed well on measures of intellectual ability, but, like people with adult-onset prefrontal cortex damage, they were socially impaired, failed to consider future consequences when making decisions, and failed to respond normally to punishment or behavioral interventions. "Unlike adult-onset patients, however," the researchers say, "the two patients had defective social and moral reasoning, suggesting that the acquisition of complex social conventions and moral rules had been impaired." While adult-onset patients possess factual knowledge about social and moral rules (even though they often cannot follow these rules in real life), Damasio et al.'s childhood-onset subjects appeared unable to learn these rules at all. This may explain, the researchers say, why their childhood-onset subjects were much more antisocial, and showed less guilt and remorse, than subjects who suffered similar damage in adulthood.''
Right. This is a case where the patient's choices are
unduly influenced by a significant mental illness. And those with such mental impairments will be treated medically and psychiatrically rather than as if they had acted deliberately, of their own free will.
And this is another reason for the distinction between a choice of one's own free will versus a choice resulting from a mental impairment.
This is why we must not sweep meaningful distinctions under the rug of the general determinism. All actions are always the result of prior causes, without distinction. But we need to make distinctions to deal with distinct realities, like the normal brain making normal decisions versus the abnormal brain making abnormal decisions.
The choice is not subject to will or conscious veto, it is determined by elements beyond the ability of will to regulate or control.
Once the choice reaches conscious awareness, it is subject to conscious veto. In your special case of the abnormal brain, the desire to veto a bad decision before acting on it was impaired. But that is a special case, not a normal case.
The state of the system determines outcome, not will.
If it were the state of the system then the patient would be dead. The system is a process that is never static until we die.
The process includes unconscious activity as well as conscious awareness. It will smoothly shift between functional areas, including conscious and unconscious functions, throughout the process of choosing what we will have for dinner.
You are merely applying the free will label without regard for the ingredients.
There is no argument as to how the brain works. The free will label is applied when the brain belongs to a sane adult who is deciding for his or her self what they will have for dinner. The issue is whether the ingredients happen to include a guy with a gun forcing his will upon them.
In other
words:
''The brain is a physical system whose operation is governed solely by the laws of chemistry and physics. What does this mean?"
You will not find the restaurant menu in any textbook on physics or chemistry. Nor can you construct, or even predict, that menu by all of the knowledge found in the books covering the physical sciences.
You have to move up to the biological sciences to know that living organisms require food to survive, thrive, and reproduce. That's one of the laws of biology. Biological organisms run upon systems made of physics and chemistry, but their behavior cannot be predicted without adding the laws of biology. And you have to move up one more level to the social sciences to understand the psychological laws covering people choosing from that menu, and then there are the laws of economics for running a restaurant.
The laws of physics and chemistry are an insufficient base for determinism. Physical causation is but one causal mechanism. Biological causation is another mechanism. Rational causation is a third causal mechanism.
I think we both know enough about the brain to know that it is a physical structure in which multiple processes are constantly running. And we both know that one of these functions is choosing what the body as a whole will do (including choosing what the brain itself will be working on, like reducing that menu to a single choice so we can order dinner).
Free will is about the specific circumstances of that choosing. Are we sane adults deliberately deciding for ourselves what we will do, or is the choice being imposed upon us by someone or something else, something that is not us.
The argument against free will is built upon the notion that our past and the laws of nature are somehow separate from us, and that the prior causes of us are more responsible for our choices than our own current deliberations over what we should do.
And that argument fails. All of the effects of the past that can affect our decision are now properties of our current self. They are integral parts of who and what we are right now. Our past experiences are obviously a part of who we are right now. And the laws of nature are embodied within us, not working upon us as external agents.
So, the end result is that our choices are truly caused by us, by who and what we happen to be right now. And, if we choose to order a salad for dinner, we will be held responsible for the bill.
