Demystifying Determinism

[The AntiChris]

Help me out please. Was your answer a "yes" or a "no"?

Do you or do you not accept that the conception of 'free will' defended by compatibilists on this forum is not the same as the conception of 'free will' rejected by incompatibilists on the grounds that it is incompatible with determinism?

You should know the answer by now, Incompatibilists argue that the compatibilist definition of free will is, for the given reasons, flawed.

Incompatibilism is the opposite of compatibilism. Incompatibilists argue against Compatibilist definition of free will.

There is your answer. It is the Compatibilists definition of free will that is being questioned.

Yes, both sides are dealing with the same definition of free will.

Which is not to say that there are no other definitions of free will.

This is thoroughly confused (and confusing).

There is nothing confusing about it.

Can you not see the contradiction in what you wrote? Bilby pointed it out as well.

You say "It is the Compatibilists definition of free will that is being questioned." clearly implying that there is a distinct (separate) compatibilist definition of free will.

Then you say "both sides are dealing with the same definition of free will." clearly implying that there is no distinct (separate) compatibilist definition of free will.

I can't lay it out any simpler than that.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

Consequently, in the words of the compatibilist definition of free will is a 'quagmire of evasion.' - William James

The quote is from William James's lecture "The Dilemma of Determinism". James deals with the issue of determinism versus indeterminism, not the definition of free will.

James embraces indeterminism which to him includes both "chance" and "possibility", and rejects both hard and soft determinism, because they both exclude the notions of chance and possibility (note that the compatibilism I subscribe to includes the notion of possibility).

James quickly changes the topic from freedom to chance:

One is the eulogistic word freedom, and the other is the opprobrious word chance. The word 'chance' I wish to keep, but I wish to get rid of the word 'freedom.'

James, William . The Collected Works of William James (8 collections of William James containing dozens of lectures all with active table of contents). . Kindle Edition.

As to freedom, James points out the pragmatic point that we all know that sometimes we are free and other times we are not:

Freedom in all these senses presents simply no problem at all. No matter what the soft determinist mean by it,—whether he mean the acting without external constraint; whether he mean the acting rightly, or whether he mean the acquiescing in the law of the whole,—who cannot answer him that sometimes we are free and sometimes we are not?

As to indeterminism, he addresses what science may and may not claim regarding matters of chance:

Science professes to draw no conclusions but such as are based on matters of fact, things that have actually happened; but how can any amount of assurance that something actually happened give us the least grain of information as to whether another thing might or might not have happened in its place? Only facts can be proved by other facts. With things that are possibilities and not facts, facts have no concern. If we have no other evidence than the evidence of existing facts, the possibility-question must remain a mystery never to be cleared up.

All you mean by calling it 'chance' is that this is not guaranteed, that it may also fall out otherwise.

James rejects determinism, soft and hard, because they both attempt to eliminate the notion of possibility. That is the theme of his lecture, proving the necessity and moral benefits of the notion of chance and possibility.

He has an interesting example of the compatibility of Providence with chance (it is, after all, a lecture to Divinity students). A chess master may know all of the possible moves of the novice, and how to respond to each possibility, such that the end of the game (who wins) is already known even with all of the specific moves unknown.

But when James speaks of what he means by free will, he uses compatibilist language, referring to the "popular sense" of free will:

The indeterminism I defend, the free-will theory of popular sense

The key point of the lecture though is this:

The great point is that the possibilities are really here. Whether it be we who solve them, or he working through us, at those soul-trying moments when fate's scales seem to quiver, and good snatches the victory from evil or shrinks nerveless from the fight, is of small account, so long as we admit that the issue is decided nowhere else than here and now.

My own point here is that it is incorrect to claim that James is saying that "the compatibilist definition of free will is a 'quagmire of evasion.'" That is not at all what James is saying.

James is using the popular definition of free will, a voluntary, unforced choice. It is the first definition found in most general dictionaries. And it is the same definition I am using.

 

[Jarhyn]

I find it ironic that DBT quotes as a reference a religious, wrong, indeterminist.

In other news, lately I have been toying with the idea of a universe model (not the model of this universe but a model of a universe) defined using OISCs on a field of memory, and the ways of translating this between different instruction models and which instruction models allow translation between them, and different ways of visualizing events in the system.

I think this probably has a LOT of overlap with the discussion of abstract algebra and representation theory.

@Marvin Edwards what are your thoughts on playing with some weird computers?

 

[Marvin Edwards]

I find it ironic that DBT quotes as a reference a religious, wrong, indeterminist.

In other news, lately I have been toying with the idea of a universe model (not the model of this universe but a model of a universe) defined using OISCs on a field of memory, and the ways of translating this between different instruction models and which instruction models allow translation between them, and different ways of visualizing events in the system.

I think this probably has a LOT of overlap with the discussion of abstract algebra and representation theory.

@Marvin Edwards what are your thoughts on playing with some weird computers?

I still don't believe that computers prove anything about human free will, other than the fact that a human, of their own free will, invented the computer. Machines are tools we create to do our will. When machines begin to act as if they had a will of their own, we usually repair or replace them.

 

[Jarhyn]

I find it ironic that DBT quotes as a reference a religious, wrong, indeterminist.

In other news, lately I have been toying with the idea of a universe model (not the model of this universe but a model of a universe) defined using OISCs on a field of memory, and the ways of translating this between different instruction models and which instruction models allow translation between them, and different ways of visualizing events in the system.

I think this probably has a LOT of overlap with the discussion of abstract algebra and representation theory.

@Marvin Edwards what are your thoughts on playing with some weird computers?

I still don't believe that computers prove anything about human free will, other than the fact that a human, of their own free will, invented the computer. Machines are tools we create to do our will. When machines begin to act as if they had a will of their own, we usually repair or replace them.

The point is to prove things about systems which have set theoretic conformities.

Human beings are computational entities. We achieve computation with our brains, in a way that navigates to low error within a problem space.

Rather, I like discussing the concepts of will and freedom on the basis of the core concepts being implemented, not about the specific implementations so much.

A will, as viewed in this discussion, is no different from a script: a description of actions to be taken within the system by a subsystem which contains the description in an objective interaction.

Freedom of a given instruction of the will is no more than saying "this element of the script will be interacted with by the system such that it executes behavior on the engine."

This allows saying things about what our universe allows: can you assemble a system which executes a script?

Can that script build script to execute?

Can that subsystem report to itself whether a particular line of the script executed?

It's the same question.

I've written a LOT of state machines. I've written several script interpreters.

I know our universe can host with it's matter machines which execute scripts, and detect which lines of execution are reached, and which are capable of modifying the scripts they are executing.

We are machines. Not all machines are tools. Not all machines are created by humans. There are nuclear reactors that have been created by geology and random chance and that is no less a machine.

Though I will grant that human beings are arguably made by human beings and are complete fucking tools.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

The point is to prove things about systems which have set theoretic conformities.

Human beings are computational entities. We achieve computation with our brains, in a way that navigates to low error within a problem space.

Rather, I like discussing the concepts of will and freedom on the basis of the core concepts being implemented, not about the specific implementations so much.

A will, as viewed in this discussion, is no different from a script: a description of actions to be taken within the system by a subsystem which contains the description in an objective interaction.

Freedom of a given instruction of the will is no more than saying "this element of the script will be interacted with by the system such that it executes behavior on the engine."

This allows saying things about what our universe allows: can you assemble a system which executes a script?

Can that script build script to execute?

Can that subsystem report to itself whether a particular line of the script executed?

It's the same question.

I've written a LOT of state machines. I've written several script interpreters.

I know our universe can host with it's matter machines which execute scripts, and detect which lines of execution are reached, and which are capable of modifying the scripts they are executing.

We are machines. Not all machines are tools. Not all machines are created by humans. There are nuclear reactors that have been created by geology and random chance and that is no less a machine.

Though I will grant that human beings are arguably made by human beings and are complete fucking tools.

I understand scripts writing scripts. Back on the Burroughs medium system, we could provide parameters to NDL (Network Definition Language) and it would create a COBOL program to manage our terminals, or provide parameters to Disk Forte and it would write us COBOL code for a database management program, or parameters to RPL (Report Definition Language) and it would spit out a program to read a database and produce a report.

I also understand reading a Trace to step through the assembly instructions as they execute step by step. (One of the cool things about the Burroughs was that it was built to run COBOL, and a program dump was produced with decimal addresses instead of hex, even though the data was all EBCDIC hex).

But I would never choose to describe anything in terms of "set theoretic conformities", because in all my years of programming, I never had to deal with that concept.

On the other hand, do you know what a Bit-Vector is?

 

[Jarhyn]

The point is to prove things about systems which have set theoretic conformities.

Human beings are computational entities. We achieve computation with our brains, in a way that navigates to low error within a problem space.

Rather, I like discussing the concepts of will and freedom on the basis of the core concepts being implemented, not about the specific implementations so much.

A will, as viewed in this discussion, is no different from a script: a description of actions to be taken within the system by a subsystem which contains the description in an objective interaction.

Freedom of a given instruction of the will is no more than saying "this element of the script will be interacted with by the system such that it executes behavior on the engine."

This allows saying things about what our universe allows: can you assemble a system which executes a script?

Can that script build script to execute?

Can that subsystem report to itself whether a particular line of the script executed?

It's the same question.

I've written a LOT of state machines. I've written several script interpreters.

I know our universe can host with it's matter machines which execute scripts, and detect which lines of execution are reached, and which are capable of modifying the scripts they are executing.

We are machines. Not all machines are tools. Not all machines are created by humans. There are nuclear reactors that have been created by geology and random chance and that is no less a machine.

Though I will grant that human beings are arguably made by human beings and are complete fucking tools.

I understand scripts writing scripts. Back on the Burroughs medium system, we could provide parameters to NDL (Network Definition Language) and it would create a COBOL program to manage our terminals, or provide parameters to Disk Forte and it would write us COBOL code for a database management program, or parameters to RPL (Report Definition Language) and it would spit out a program to read a database and produce a report.

I also understand reading a Trace to step through the assembly instructions as they execute step by step. (One of the cool things about the Burroughs was that it was built to run COBOL, and a program dump was produced with decimal addresses instead of hex, even though the data was all EBCDIC hex).

But I would never choose to describe anything in terms of "set theoretic conformities", because in all my years of programming, I never had to deal with that concept.

On the other hand, do you know what a Bit-Vector is?

Never heard the term bit-vector, but: before I look it up, a bit is a single binary unit, and a vector is a series of values, so a bit-vector would be a binary memory field.

Usually when I see stuff like this I call it "bit twiddling".

So, looking it up, it's a field of bits with an ordered address value operated on as a vector.

Though... for all your years of programming you had to deal with set theoretic programming.

What do you think defining stuff like "classes" with "values" and "fields" is about, exactly, if not set theoretic conformities?

Representing how far? That's representing space as a set of units.

Representing how much? representing mass as a set of units.

Representing how long? Representing time as a set of units.

It's all just working with sets of units, when you get it into the computing framework.

Working with sets of units is set theory, and making it so you can discuss stuff as sets of units is set theoretic conformance.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

Never heard the term bit-vector, but: before I look it up, a bit is a single binary unit, and a vector is a series of values, so a bit-vector would be a binary memory field. Usually when I see stuff like this I call it "bit twiddling". So, looking it up, it's a field of bits with an ordered address value operated on as a vector.

Bit-vectors were a feature of Burroughs' Disk Forte package. The idea was that you could take a single fact, such as male/female, and store it in a bit-vector for all the records in the database. The bit vector was a separate record where each record contained just the one fact. The location of the bit in the bit-vector corresponded to the the relative record number of the database record. So, if you wanted a subset of the database containing only the males or only the females, you would perform one IO to get the bit-vector, and then just one IO for each database record retrieved. The idea was that you didn't need to pass through the whole database.

Bit-vectors with different facts could be combined with a single AND, OR, or NOT instruction, so, if you wanted all the males over 50 years old, or any other combination of facts, the vectors could be combined into a single vector before going to the database.

We never used the bit-vector feature. Ours was a simple hospital admissions and billing system at the time.

Though... for all your years of programming you had to deal with set theoretic programming.

What do you think defining stuff like "classes" with "values" and "fields" is about, exactly, if not set theoretic conformities?

Representing how far? That's representing space as a set of units.

Representing how much? representing mass as a set of units.

Representing how long? Representing time as a set of units.

It's all just working with sets of units, when you get it into the computing framework.

Working with sets of units is set theory, and making it so you can discuss stuff as sets of units is set theoretic conformance.

When I started programming there were no such things as "classes". We had fields and values of course, but we never had to apply set theory, although I did read about optimization algorithms that used it, but I never used. So, "set theoretic conformities" is a phrase I never studied.

I taught myself Basic and COBOL while I was managing some night file clerks at the hospital's Credit Office. Lacking a math degree, but having shown that I could program, I was hired at 2 steps below a "trainee", and it took me 9 months to become a regular programmer.

 

[DBT]

Yes, both sides are dealing with the same definition of free will.

Incompatibilists argue that the compatibilist definition of free will is, for the given reasons, flawed.

Incompatibilists appear to be contradicting themselves.

There is no contradiction.

"We both use the exact same definition. Yours is flawed, and mine isn't." is the very essence of contradiction.

That's not it at all. The definition of determinism is the same, no dispute. The question here is: does the compatibilist definition of free will prove its proposition?

The incompatibilist answer is, no it does not.

The reasons given for why it does not is that the Compatibilist definition ignores or dismisses a crucial element: inner necessitation. That inner necessity is not a source of freedom of will.

''An action’s production by a deterministic process, even when the agent satisfies the conditions on moral responsibility specified by compatibilists, presents no less of a challenge to basic-desert responsibility than does deterministic manipulation by other agents.''

”If the neurobiology level is causally sufficient to determine your behavior, then the fact that you had the experience of freedom at the higher level is really irrelevant.” - John Searle.

The issue is agency, free will is not the driver of cognition or the decision making process - which given determinism, has only one possible outcome.

 

[Jarhyn]

does the compatibilist definition of free will prove its proposition

Definitions don't prove anything alone. Logic proves things from definitions.

The incompatibilist answer is...

Apparently devoid of the ability to show it's work.

That inner necessity is not a source of freedom of will

Freedom is not "sourced" anywhere. It's simply a fact about the system like "this shell has two electrons" or "this person is five feet tall" or "this instruction in this object interpretation process is free to execution in five frames."

The "source" of freedom is much like the "source" of the axioms of math: there isn't one. It is simply automatically present as a property due to the existence of an object interpreter, a behavioral engine that runs on scripts.

 

[bilby]

Yes, both sides are dealing with the same definition of free will.

Incompatibilists argue that the compatibilist definition of free will is, for the given reasons, flawed.

Incompatibilists appear to be contradicting themselves.

There is no contradiction.

"We both use the exact same definition. Yours is flawed, and mine isn't." is the very essence of contradiction.

That's not it at all. The definition of determinism is the same, no dispute. The question here is: does the compatibilist definition of free will prove its proposition?

The incompatibilist answer is, no it does not.

The reasons given for why it does not is that the Compatibilist definition ignores or dismisses a crucial element: inner necessitation. That inner necessity is not a source of freedom of will.

''An action’s production by a deterministic process, even when the agent satisfies the conditions on moral responsibility specified by compatibilists, presents no less of a challenge to basic-desert responsibility than does deterministic manipulation by other agents.''

”If the neurobiology level is causally sufficient to determine your behavior, then the fact that you had the experience of freedom at the higher level is really irrelevant.” - John Searle.

The issue is agency, free will is not the driver of cognition or the decision making process - which given determinism, has only one possible outcome.

Sure. But dualism is wrong. There's no "inner necessity" that stands apart from "me", and no "me" that wants things not allowed by "inner necessity".

"Inner necessity" IS ME.

I am not, in any way, free to act indeterministically; That is a big problem for libertarian free will, but it's no problem whatsoever for compatibilism.

We must act according to inner necessity, when making our choices. They remain our choices though, because inner necessity is what we are.

 

[DBT]

Yes, both sides are dealing with the same definition of free will.

Incompatibilists argue that the compatibilist definition of free will is, for the given reasons, flawed.

Incompatibilists appear to be contradicting themselves.

There is no contradiction.

"We both use the exact same definition. Yours is flawed, and mine isn't." is the very essence of contradiction.

That's not it at all. The definition of determinism is the same, no dispute. The question here is: does the compatibilist definition of free will prove its proposition?

The incompatibilist answer is, no it does not.

The reasons given for why it does not is that the Compatibilist definition ignores or dismisses a crucial element: inner necessitation. That inner necessity is not a source of freedom of will.

''An action’s production by a deterministic process, even when the agent satisfies the conditions on moral responsibility specified by compatibilists, presents no less of a challenge to basic-desert responsibility than does deterministic manipulation by other agents.''

”If the neurobiology level is causally sufficient to determine your behavior, then the fact that you had the experience of freedom at the higher level is really irrelevant.” - John Searle.

The issue is agency, free will is not the driver of cognition or the decision making process - which given determinism, has only one possible outcome.

Sure. But dualism is wrong. There's no "inner necessity" that stands apart from "me", and no "me" that wants things not allowed by "inner necessity".

"Inner necessity" IS ME.

I am not, in any way, free to act indeterministically; That is a big problem for libertarian free will, but it's no problem whatsoever for compatibilism.

We must act according to inner necessity, when making our choices. They remain our choices though, because inner necessity is what we are.

Inner necessity is a process subject to the environment in which it evolves and functions. It is the environment that shapes and forms inner necessity, including self identity - ''it's me'' and ''what we are''- which really has nothing to do with free will.....yet the label is being applied regardless.

Inner necessity does not equate to free will. Sorry.

''The compatibilist might say because those are influences that are “outside” of the person, but this misses the entire point brought up by the free will skeptic, which is that ALL environmental conditions that help lead to a person’s brain state at any given moment are “outside of the person”, and the genes a person has was provided rather than decided.''

 

[DBT]

does the compatibilist definition of free will prove its proposition

Definitions don't prove anything alone. Logic proves things from definitions.

Perhaps you need to work on distinguishing between reality and fiction, to understand that what you imagine or simulate does not necessarily relate to the physical world and its attributes and principles.

The incompatibilist answer is...

Apparently devoid of the ability to show it's work.

First you need to understand the implications of your own definition of determinism. That has yet to happen....if ever.

That inner necessity is not a source of freedom of will

Freedom is not "sourced" anywhere. It's simply a fact about the system like "this shell has two electrons" or "this person is five feet tall" or "this instruction in this object interpretation process is free to execution in five frames."

Ability and function. Determined actions performed without restriction, proceeding as they must. You confuse freedom of action with freedom of will.

Once again:

''Wanting to do X is fully determined by these prior causes. Now that the desire to do X is being felt, there are no other constraints that keep the person from doing what he wants, namely X.'' - cold comfort in compatibilism

The "source" of freedom is much like the "source" of the axioms of math: there isn't one. It is simply automatically present as a property due to the existence of an object interpreter, a behavioral engine that runs on scripts.

''If the moon, in the act of completing its eternal way around the earth, were gifted with self-consciousness, it would feel thoroughly convinced that it was traveling its way of its own accord on the strength of a resolution taken once and for all. So would a Being, endowed with higher insight and more perfect intelligence, watching man and his doings, smile about man's illusion that he was acting according to his own free will.'' - Albert Einstein

 

[Jarhyn]

what you imagine or simulate does not necessarily relate to the physical world and its attributes and principles

No it doesnt, which is exactly what logically allows the will to be unfree: you simulate a provisionally free will, but it is  provisionally free, which is to say not free under all circumstances, not necessarily free, but provisionally so.

The provisions are simple: that the error in the simulation's outcome calculations is low enough, and that the state is as imagined.

When what you imagine is imagined through a faithful simulation according to the rules of reality, and accounts for the current state, the will is actually free with respect to the goal instruction(s).

But what is certain is that no will can be actioned which was not developed. Wills get developed through this process of simulation and logic upon it's outcome.

If the menu contains no main battle tank, your will to order one is not free: your model of reality is bad.

If the menu contains steak but they are out, your will to order a steak is not free: your state definition was bad (as was the state declaration on the menu).

All having an inaccurate simulation gives you is an inability to design wills that even may possibly be free, so rather than the possible errors in simulation leading to the global nullification of freedom, the errors in simulation create a situation where only some wills are rendered unfree.

Indeed, only one will of a set of mutually exclusive wills may ever be free, insofar as part of the state projection is "if the state is mostly like this AND I decided after the deliberation process that I like this alternative".

Note that italic part. This part can be inaccurate, is in fact assumed at the beginning to be inaccurate for all but one of them. But the only way to get an understanding of what may happen is to assume it CAN happen IF you want it to happen, and then decide of what CAN happen IF you want which one you actually want.
Physical principles allow this quite easily since the physical principles of the universe don't seem to change day to day.

Wanting to do X is fully determined by these prior causes.

One of the things that sums to prior cause is that they opened the menu, projected a simulation of all the options they looked at, and calculated of those options which they wanted to do.

Without generating Z, and then Y, and then X, and choosing between them by some process, there is no "wanting to do X". It is fully determined by prior causes, but something determined by prior causes can still be the prior cause that determines something else.

You don't need to choose your proclivities for your proclivities to be the basis of your own choices.

When YOUR proclivities result in YOU making choices, and we don't like the choices you make, then we and perhaps also you may react to adjust proclivities across the system. And so there is regulatory control over proclivities.

 

[bilby]

Yes, both sides are dealing with the same definition of free will.

Incompatibilists argue that the compatibilist definition of free will is, for the given reasons, flawed.

Incompatibilists appear to be contradicting themselves.

There is no contradiction.

"We both use the exact same definition. Yours is flawed, and mine isn't." is the very essence of contradiction.

That's not it at all. The definition of determinism is the same, no dispute. The question here is: does the compatibilist definition of free will prove its proposition?

The incompatibilist answer is, no it does not.

The reasons given for why it does not is that the Compatibilist definition ignores or dismisses a crucial element: inner necessitation. That inner necessity is not a source of freedom of will.

''An action’s production by a deterministic process, even when the agent satisfies the conditions on moral responsibility specified by compatibilists, presents no less of a challenge to basic-desert responsibility than does deterministic manipulation by other agents.''

”If the neurobiology level is causally sufficient to determine your behavior, then the fact that you had the experience of freedom at the higher level is really irrelevant.” - John Searle.

The issue is agency, free will is not the driver of cognition or the decision making process - which given determinism, has only one possible outcome.

Sure. But dualism is wrong. There's no "inner necessity" that stands apart from "me", and no "me" that wants things not allowed by "inner necessity".

"Inner necessity" IS ME.

I am not, in any way, free to act indeterministically; That is a big problem for libertarian free will, but it's no problem whatsoever for compatibilism.

We must act according to inner necessity, when making our choices. They remain our choices though, because inner necessity is what we are.

Inner necessity is a process subject to the environment in which it evolves and functions. It is the environment that shapes and forms inner necessity, including self identity - ''it's me'' and ''what we are''- which really has nothing to do with LIBERTARIAN free will.....yet the label is being applied regardless.

Inner necessity does not equate to LIBERTARIAN free will. Sorry.

''The compatibilist might say because those are influences that are “outside” of the person, but this misses the entire point brought up by the free will skeptic, which is that ALL environmental conditions that help lead to a person’s brain state at any given moment are “outside of the person”, and the genes a person has was provided rather than decided.''

FTFY

The compatibilist says nothing of the kind. You are arguing against libertarian free will - a position that neither of us agrees with.

The influences that made you you didn't stop you from making choices. The waiter doesn't bring the bill to the environment or the genome; You are the entity that ordered the steak, and you must pay for it.

The division between 'environment' and 'inner necessity' is the division between 'not me' and 'me'. Using ong words and phrases doesn't change that; Inner necessity is me, and I am inner necessity.

That I am influenced by my environment is so bleeding obvious that it goes without saying.

That I am a deterministic system in a deterministic universe is a founding axiom in this discussion; This means that only one possible outcome will occur in any given situation. And frequently that outcome is me making a choice.

Highly complex systems acting on vast quantities of rapidly changing data (such as a person ordering lunch) make unpredictable decisions. The only way to discover what the (deterministically inevitable) outcome is, is to wait and see. When this is the case, we recognise the complex system as being the agency responsible for the outcome, because to do otherwise would lead to ridiculous outcomes, such as waiters giving the bill to the cold weather that influenced you to eschew a salad.

In the absence of a god to take a god's eye view of the future, responsibility for it falls on the agents most directly working to enact it.

 

[Jarhyn]

In the absence of a god to take a god's eye view of the future, responsibility for it falls on the agents most directly working to enact it.

Even in the presence of a god taking a gods eye view of the present, there is no gods eye view of the future in it. even a god can only view what has passed, I'm afraid, because to view it, a god must pass through it, and rewinding to an earlier state and exposing it to information about "the unmodified present's future" will only tell you the future of a different past at that point.

 

[DBT]

what you imagine or simulate does not necessarily relate to the physical world and its attributes and principles

No it doesnt, which is exactly what logically allows the will to be unfree: you simulate a provisionally free will, but it is  provisionally free, which is to say not free under all circumstances, not necessarily free, but provisionally so.

The provisions are simple: that the error in the simulation's outcome calculations is low enough, and that the state is as imagined.

When what you imagine is imagined through a faithful simulation according to the rules of reality, and accounts for the current state, the will is actually free with respect to the goal instruction(s).

But what is certain is that no will can be actioned which was not developed. Wills get developed through this process of simulation and logic upon it's outcome.

If the menu contains no main battle tank, your will to order one is not free: your model of reality is bad.

If the menu contains steak but they are out, your will to order a steak is not free: your state definition was bad (as was the state declaration on the menu).

All having an inaccurate simulation gives you is an inability to design wills that even may possibly be free, so rather than the possible errors in simulation leading to the global nullification of freedom, the errors in simulation create a situation where only some wills are rendered unfree.

Indeed, only one will of a set of mutually exclusive wills may ever be free, insofar as part of the state projection is "if the state is mostly like this AND I decided after the deliberation process that I like this alternative".

Note that italic part. This part can be inaccurate, is in fact assumed at the beginning to be inaccurate for all but one of them. But the only way to get an understanding of what may happen is to assume it CAN happen IF you want it to happen, and then decide of what CAN happen IF you want which one you actually want.
Physical principles allow this quite easily since the physical principles of the universe don't seem to change day to day.

Wanting to do X is fully determined by these prior causes.

One of the things that sums to prior cause is that they opened the menu, projected a simulation of all the options they looked at, and calculated of those options which they wanted to do.

Without generating Z, and then Y, and then X, and choosing between them by some process, there is no "wanting to do X". It is fully determined by prior causes, but something determined by prior causes can still be the prior cause that determines something else.

You don't need to choose your proclivities for your proclivities to be the basis of your own choices.

When YOUR proclivities result in YOU making choices, and we don't like the choices you make, then we and perhaps also you may react to adjust proclivities across the system. And so there is regulatory control over proclivities.

Proclivities are an interaction of genes and environment. Proclivities adjust/evolve according to inputs and life experience, age and life events, not will, certainly not free will.

Asserting free will doesn't make it so. You may as well assert God. Given compatibilist arguments, sometimes it seems that the two are practically interchangeable.

''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 -Metaphysics.

Goodbye free will as a label.

 

[DBT]

Yes, both sides are dealing with the same definition of free will.

Incompatibilists argue that the compatibilist definition of free will is, for the given reasons, flawed.

Incompatibilists appear to be contradicting themselves.

There is no contradiction.

"We both use the exact same definition. Yours is flawed, and mine isn't." is the very essence of contradiction.

That's not it at all. The definition of determinism is the same, no dispute. The question here is: does the compatibilist definition of free will prove its proposition?

The incompatibilist answer is, no it does not.

The reasons given for why it does not is that the Compatibilist definition ignores or dismisses a crucial element: inner necessitation. That inner necessity is not a source of freedom of will.

''An action’s production by a deterministic process, even when the agent satisfies the conditions on moral responsibility specified by compatibilists, presents no less of a challenge to basic-desert responsibility than does deterministic manipulation by other agents.''

”If the neurobiology level is causally sufficient to determine your behavior, then the fact that you had the experience of freedom at the higher level is really irrelevant.” - John Searle.

The issue is agency, free will is not the driver of cognition or the decision making process - which given determinism, has only one possible outcome.

Sure. But dualism is wrong. There's no "inner necessity" that stands apart from "me", and no "me" that wants things not allowed by "inner necessity".

"Inner necessity" IS ME.

I am not, in any way, free to act indeterministically; That is a big problem for libertarian free will, but it's no problem whatsoever for compatibilism.

We must act according to inner necessity, when making our choices. They remain our choices though, because inner necessity is what we are.

Inner necessity is a process subject to the environment in which it evolves and functions. It is the environment that shapes and forms inner necessity, including self identity - ''it's me'' and ''what we are''- which really has nothing to do with LIBERTARIAN free will.....yet the label is being applied regardless.

Inner necessity does not equate to LIBERTARIAN free will. Sorry.

''The compatibilist might say because those are influences that are “outside” of the person, but this misses the entire point brought up by the free will skeptic, which is that ALL environmental conditions that help lead to a person’s brain state at any given moment are “outside of the person”, and the genes a person has was provided rather than decided.''

FTFY

Nah. ''It's me, therefore free will'' is nowhere near sufficient to support the incoherent notion of free will. Entailment does not permit free will. Inner necessity does not permit free will.

Will doesn't even drive cognition, it has no regulative ability. Will is merely a prompt or urge to act, emerging relatively late in the process of response.

The compatibilist says nothing of the kind. You are arguing against libertarian free will - a position that neither of us agrees with.

Many a compatibilist has said, ''but...but...but, it is 'me' doing it,' implying free will. There are examples on this very thread.

Compatibilism is based on the definition of acting in accordance to one's will without outside force, coercion or undue influence, ie, ''it is me doing it.''

The influences that made you you didn't stop you from making choices. The waiter doesn't bring the bill to the environment or the genome; You are the entity that ordered the steak, and you must pay for it.

There is no separation. Inputs deterministically effect changes to the brain. The brain processes information and its response is determined by an interaction of inputs, neural architecture and memory function.

This has nothing to do with free will.

The division between 'environment' and 'inner necessity' is the division between 'not me' and 'me'. Using ong words and phrases doesn't change that; Inner necessity is me, and I am inner necessity.

It is inner necessity that negates free will, regardless of it being ''me.'' Neurons and networks is the agency that generates thought and response. Calling neurons 'us' doesn't imbue them with free will. ''It is me, therefore free will,'' is an assertion, not an argument.

''The compatibilist might say because those are influences that are “outside” of the person, but this misses the entire point brought up by the free will skeptic, which is that ALL environmental conditions that help lead to a person’s brain state at any given moment are “outside of the person”, and the genes a person has was provided rather than decided.''

 

[Jarhyn]

Proclivities are an interaction of genes and environment

An environment which also happens to include ourselves.

Proclivities adjust/evolve according to inputs and life experience, age and life events, not will, certainly not free will.

This is an assertion, let's see if you back it up (it's wrong so it's going to be funny to watch you try; we produce outputs that are to us also inputs. This is known commonly in research on basic intelligent processes as "recurrence" within a neural network.

Let's imagine something that can change proclivities: brain modification through physical damage.

Someone has the proclivity to do math. They realize that this proclivity has led some folks to wish them to do some math that will give those other folks an unacceptable measure of power over others. So, they formulate a plan, a will to put a drill bit into a drill, plug in the drill, and drill into their own brain, to destroy the part of their brain that creates this proclivity.

This will is free: they put a drill bit into the drill, plug the drill in, and drill into their own brain, destroying the part of their brain that generates a proclivity to do math. By my definition of "freedom" and "will" this will was free, and adjusted their proclivities...

Asserting free will doesn't make it so

Asserting !(free will) does not make it so, either. Thankfully I have done more than assert, but rather have argued rather concretely and successfully.

If you can find in the above where I reference real alternatives or randomness, good luck. It's a trick question though because I don't reference either.

The person above, thanks to their handy dandy drill clearly has access to change their cognitive states, albeit destructively.

I would imagine time and evolution have fashioned slightly less bloody ways to accomplish it, and they have. One such way is to put together a behavior modification scheme.

"I have a will to create an autonomic will to start salivating whenever I hear a bell" merely requires the will "ring a bell immediately before starting on a meal" to be free: access to the bell and continued effort to ring it whenever a meal starts.

 

[bilby]

Yes, both sides are dealing with the same definition of free will.

Incompatibilists argue that the compatibilist definition of free will is, for the given reasons, flawed.

Incompatibilists appear to be contradicting themselves.

There is no contradiction.

"We both use the exact same definition. Yours is flawed, and mine isn't." is the very essence of contradiction.

That's not it at all. The definition of determinism is the same, no dispute. The question here is: does the compatibilist definition of free will prove its proposition?

The incompatibilist answer is, no it does not.

The reasons given for why it does not is that the Compatibilist definition ignores or dismisses a crucial element: inner necessitation. That inner necessity is not a source of freedom of will.

''An action’s production by a deterministic process, even when the agent satisfies the conditions on moral responsibility specified by compatibilists, presents no less of a challenge to basic-desert responsibility than does deterministic manipulation by other agents.''

”If the neurobiology level is causally sufficient to determine your behavior, then the fact that you had the experience of freedom at the higher level is really irrelevant.” - John Searle.

The issue is agency, free will is not the driver of cognition or the decision making process - which given determinism, has only one possible outcome.

Sure. But dualism is wrong. There's no "inner necessity" that stands apart from "me", and no "me" that wants things not allowed by "inner necessity".

"Inner necessity" IS ME.

I am not, in any way, free to act indeterministically; That is a big problem for libertarian free will, but it's no problem whatsoever for compatibilism.

We must act according to inner necessity, when making our choices. They remain our choices though, because inner necessity is what we are.

Inner necessity is a process subject to the environment in which it evolves and functions. It is the environment that shapes and forms inner necessity, including self identity - ''it's me'' and ''what we are''- which really has nothing to do with LIBERTARIAN free will.....yet the label is being applied regardless.

Inner necessity does not equate to LIBERTARIAN free will. Sorry.

''The compatibilist might say because those are influences that are “outside” of the person, but this misses the entire point brought up by the free will skeptic, which is that ALL environmental conditions that help lead to a person’s brain state at any given moment are “outside of the person”, and the genes a person has was provided rather than decided.''

FTFY

Nah. ''It's me, therefore free will'' is nowhere near sufficient to support the incoherent notion of free will. Entailment does not permit free will. Inner necessity does not permit free will.

Will doesn't even drive cognition, it has no regulative ability. Will is merely a prompt or urge to act, emerging relatively late in the process of response.

The compatibilist says nothing of the kind. You are arguing against libertarian free will - a position that neither of us agrees with.

Many a compatibilist has said, ''but...but...but, it is 'me' doing it,' implying free will. There are examples on this very thread.

Compatibilism is based on the definition of acting in accordance to one's will without outside force, coercion or undue influence, ie, ''it is me doing it.''

The influences that made you you didn't stop you from making choices. The waiter doesn't bring the bill to the environment or the genome; You are the entity that ordered the steak, and you must pay for it.

There is no separation. Inputs deterministically effect changes to the brain. The brain processes information and its response is determined by an interaction of inputs, neural architecture and memory function.

This has nothing to do with free will.

The division between 'environment' and 'inner necessity' is the division between 'not me' and 'me'. Using ong words and phrases doesn't change that; Inner necessity is me, and I am inner necessity.

It is inner necessity that negates free will, regardless of it being ''me.'' Neurons and networks is the agency that generates thought and response. Calling neurons 'us' doesn't imbue them with free will. ''It is me, therefore free will,'' is an assertion, not an argument.

''The compatibilist might say because those are influences that are “outside” of the person, but this misses the entire point brought up by the free will skeptic, which is that ALL environmental conditions that help lead to a person’s brain state at any given moment are “outside of the person”, and the genes a person has was provided rather than decided.''

Again, you present excellent arguments against libertarian free will.

That would be genuinely helpful, if only anyone here was arguing for libertarian free will.

None of your arguments here address free will as defined by compatiblists, other than to assert that their definition is wrong.

But a priori definitions are not wrong, they cannot be wrong, and it's pointless to claim that they are wrong.

Your problem with compatibism appears to simply be a manifestation of linguistic prescriptivism - if I say "free will", you refuse to accept that it means what I have explicitly and clearly told you I mean, and you respond as though i mean what you want me to mean.

That's not how language works.