Demystifying Determinism

[The AntiChris]

If there is only one possible outcome, it's not a choice.

Presumably you're saying that there's no choice under determinism (because determinism allows only one outcome).

It follows therefore that what you mean by choice is a non-determined (random/uncaused) outcome. I don't think that's what most people who use the word mean by 'choice'.

I would say that a choice is where I have multiple different options and each option has a non-zero chance of being the actual outcome.

If things are predestined, then the outcome is 100%, and thus all the other options necessarily do NOT have a non-zero chance.

You've avoided answering my point - "what you mean by choice is a non-determined (random/uncaused) outcome. ".

Is this really what you think most people mean by 'choice'?

 

[fromderinside]

If I go into a restaurant, my order will be either determined or a free choice.

This is a false dichotomy that steps away from the premises. Something can be a deterministic, a choice, and be made while satisfying the requirement of the will to choose as a function of one's own desires rather than imposed from outside all at the same time.

How can something be chosen freely if there is only ever one possible outcome that can occur?

Because choices aren't about what will happen, (which is fixed but unknown), but about what can happen, (which is just fixed).

You choose the salad rather than the steak, but the steak is a possibility (even though you will not order it), because it's on the menu.

If the waiter makes an error and brings you the steak, you might be annoyed, but you shouldn't be shocked. If, however, he makes an error and beings you an armoured combat vehicle, you would be shocked - because there was a choice, and the main battle tank wasn't one of the options. So clearly, "choice" is a real thing.

What must (due to determinism) happen, is unknowable. What might (due to incomplete knowledge) happen, is chosen.

Presented with a menu of options, our brains follow a deterministic path to select one of them. We call that process "choosing", and the fact that it's hypothetically possible (if we had complete knowledge of the state of every particle in, or able to influence, the brain), to model what that choice must be, doesn't change the fact that we don't know what it will be until the brain has completed its "choosing" and returns a decision.

If that choosing was done without coercion, then we say that the brain freely arrives at the choice it has made.

Determinism doesn't change this freedom of choice at all. A "god's eye view" might have shown us that the whole thing was inevitable and immutable - but nobody and nothing has that view, so why would we worry about it? It changes nothing.

What I think I'm doing and what I'm actually doing are quite different. What I think I'm doing is tied to sense and evolutionary circumstances for the most part. What I'm actually doing is beyond any self expression, It is measurable relative to what has been materially determined independent of personal squirt and feeling, things of which we are only now beginning to appreciate.

I don't think you'd argue we operate by what we sense given what we sense is derivative from what existed, determined, before there were even the known beings of which many of us are aware.

My example for today is the difference between of what we are evolutionarily capable and of what we currently pay attention moment to moment on one hand and of what we are constituted on the other hand. The other hand, the basis for our evolution is much more complex, what the world is actually, than what our genetic circumstances have come to over the short interval it's been operating. I make that judgement just given the time scales involved, at least 14 billion years versus less than 4 billion years, in the behaviors if nothing else.

I believe what I want to say is in the above. It may be it's said badly but if one considers the dimensions and consequences of the two propositions a) of what the world is made and b) of what we are made. Then use the measure of gap between evolution and behavior as sort of a tool by which to judge actions and consequences. You might appreciate, as I do, that the separations are justified.

 

[DBT]

DBT merely points out the implications of the given definition of determinism, your definition, the compatibilist definition.

No, you beg questions about what implications determinism has, and so argue without assertion the false notion that your equivocation of "can" and "must"... when in fact this is not a will, such to accept this nonsensical notion, that any reasonable person here will allow to remain free.

Math well supports the ideas of tests of equality and of variables, and in fact this is what an algebra describes, the relationship of variables and equality or inequality of identities, and this is all we as compatibilists seek to recognize as sane notions, albeit applied to such grandiose topics as whole universal systems operating in mathematical isolation

I don't beg anything.

Compatibalists have given their definition of determinism.

The given definition of determinism has a set of terms and conditions, the terms and conditions have , in turn, a clear and undeniable set of implications.

Events fixed by past conditions of the system do not entail freedom to choose options where no options exist because there is only one course of action, that which is determined by the evolution of events which have no alternatives.

That, by your own definition, is what determinism means.

 

[Jarhyn]

A "god's eye view" might have shown us that the whole thing was inevitable and immutable - but nobody and nothing has that view, so why would we worry about it? It changes nothing.

So, I'll speak to that last bit: even having a gods eye view of such a deterministic mathematical system in isolation yields a visibility of choice: The process still needs to happen for the output to be rendered, and even when we already absolutely know the outcome we can still observe the execution of choice functions.

Even when I have the knowledge that this was all inevitable and immutable I can say "at frame X dwarf Urist chose for himself to fight."

Even when I have a gods-eye-view knowing that the door is locked, it STILL makes sense to point out "Urist's will to walk to the door is free; Urist's will to open it is not."

I may even in full fidelity reality, knowing the door is locked, move the handle anyway even while knowing my will is unfree: I may freely execute upon an observably unfree will.

And finally, the fact that the door is locked changes nothing about the fact that "IF the door WAS NOT unlocked (a binary system extension), THEN Urist walks down the hall and commits a merry massacre. I can deven discover the subtle variations upon which massacre, to map out the entire probability structure depending upon in which moment in which the door becomes unlocked or does not become locked... so the extension is clearly mathematically sound and questions like "if the door was not locked" are eminently sensible, and are nonsense at all.

Human foresight is just a less perfect form of the above, and so itself is sensible as an operation, even if less powerful than actually knowing the absolute outcome of such an extension.

Of course we tend to do these extensions BEFORE it is no longer possible for the equilibrium to break in that direction: we have an operation that is set up to trigger the causality that evaluates to the highest probability of success with the greatest personal value (or whatever other heuristic). It's a fixed choice that operates on partial imperfect simulation of what the gods-eye-view is doing.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

Free will means that each option has the possibility of being chosen.

The "possibility of being chosen" means that you are able to choose it. It is something that can happen and it is something that you can make happen, if you choose to do so. But the "ability to choose it" does not require that you actually do choose it. You are able to choose anything (or everything) on the menu. No one is stopping you.

The "probability of being chosen" is the statistical likelihood that you will choose a given item, if we were trying to predict what you would order.

If the outcome is determined, then I do not have the freedom of making the choice myself.

Well, it will either be determined that you will have the freedom to make the choice yourself, or it will be determined that a guy with a gun will make you choose something you don't want. Your "freedom to make the choice yourself" refers to the absence of the guy with a gun (or any other extraordinary influence that effectively makes the choice for you, perhaps a hypnotist, or a significant mental illness, etc.).

In most cases you will find that it is determined that you must make that choice yourself. If you do not make the choice, you will get no dinner.

Determinism doesn't actually change anything.

If I will not choose anything else, how can you say I can?

If you "will" do something then you certainly will. However, if you don't know yet what you "will" do, you consider what you "can" do, and based on the consideration of what you "can" do, you decide what you "will" do. Do you see the difference between "can" and "will"?

When choosing, there are always multiple things that you "can" do, even though there is but one thing that you "will" do. The only reason you're using "can" is because you are uncertain, until you reach the end of your choosing, what it is that you "will" do. The notion of "possibility", something that "can" happen, or something that we "can" choose to do, is part of the rational causal mechanism we use to deal with matters of uncertainty.

But the fact that it can not be determined prior to me making the choice means that it is not predetermined.

The notion of "causal necessity" is that the state of things at any prior point in time will result in a single state of things at any future point in time. This is that "chain of causation", where every event is the reliably result of prior causes, and each prior cause is itself the reliable result of prior causes, ad infinitum.

The human brain is incapable of taking into account an infinite chain of causes. So, we generally limit ourselves to the most meaningful and relevant causes. A meaningful cause is one that efficiently explains why an event happened. A relevant cause is one that we can actually do something about to effect future events.

It will be up to you to decide what you will order for dinner. And you will be held responsible for your choice. You are the most meaningful and relevant cause of your choice. The Big Bang, though it has a place in every causal chain as an "incidental" cause, is never the meaningful or relevant cause of any human choice. This is why the waiter brings you the dinner that you ordered and the bill for it, instead of delivering the dinner and the bill to the Big Bang.

Please show evidence to support that my choice is theoretically 100% predictable.

That's actually simpler than you might think. It begins by simply asking you, "Why did you order chicken instead of the steak or the pork or whatever else you saw on the menu?". You explain your reasoning, perhaps in terms of the price of the dinner, or perhaps in terms of your dietary goals, perhaps in terms of your tastes, perhaps in terms of your recent experiences ("I had bacon for breakfast and a steak for lunch, so I decided to have chicken for dinner"), perhaps in terms of your beliefs and values ("I'm Jewish and cannot eat pork"), or any specific combination of these goals and reasons.

Then we ask you, "Did these goals and reasons cause you to order the Chicken?" And you say, "Yes, they caused me to order the Chicken". And we ask, "If we had known your goals and reasons before your choice, could we have predicted your choice?" And you would say, "Yes. If you knew all that then you could have predicted my choice with 100% accuracy".

 

[Jarhyn]

I don't beg anything.

Sure, and your reflexes are quite fast too, so when things fly over your head, you catch them.

The options clearly exist because as bilby points out, ordering of steak and salad does not yield Main Battle Tanks.

 

[pood]

Free will means that each option has the possibility of being chosen. If the outcome is determined, then I do not have the freedom of making the choice myself.
If I will not choose anything else, how can you say I can?

Surely we can distinguish between “will” and “can”?

I “will” do x, presupposes as a matter of logic that I can do x. The converse, however, is not true. Doing x, does not presuppose that I cannot do y instead.

Here is a different example: suppose God exists, and is omniscient. He infallibly knows all facts about the past, present and future. From this it follows that God knows every choice I will make in my life, even before I was born.

Confronted with this idea, it is easy to suppose that no one has free will, that everyone MUST do, just as they do, because if they did something else, God would be wrong and God cannot be wrong.

The conclusion that we lack free will in the face of God’s omniscience is an example of the modal fallacy. Generally there are two kinds of fallacies, informal and formal. Formal fallacies are fallacies of logic, and cannot be hand-waved away. The modal fallacy is of this type, a logical fallacy.

Modal logic deals with modes of being, with necessity, contingency, possibility, actuality, etc. Under this heuristic, necessary truths are truths of logic — it is a necessary truth that triangles have three sides, for example.

When we look at the God example, we sense, correctly, that something about this setup is logically necessary. The modal fallacy occurs when we misapply necessity.

We could say: If God knows everything I will do in advance, then I necessarily do those things, because God cannot be wrong. If I necessarily do what I do, then I have no free will, any more than a triangle can have four sides.

So now we have: If God knows in advance that I will do x, then I MUST (of logical necessity) do x. No free will.

Now it is certainly true that if God knows in advance I will do x, then I will do x. God can’t be wrong.

The real question is, MUST I do x?

Let’s break the above proposition down into its component parts, its antecedent and its consequent:

ANTECEDENT:

If God knows in advance that I will do x …

CONSEQUENT:

… then I MUST (of logical necessity) do x.

But something is clearly amiss here. For me to do x is a contingent truth — which means it could have been otherwise. It’s not at all like the logical truth that all triangles must have three sides. Therefore I CAN do y instead of x!

The problem with the above formulation of antecedent followed by consequent is that we have placed the formal necessity modal operator (a box symbol in formal modal logic) in the wrong place. The fact that I do x is, was, and always will be, a contingently true proposition, and never a necessarily true proposition (the principle of the fixity of modal status, per Prof. Norman Swartz).

But surely, as noted earlier, something in the formulation under discussion must be logically necessary. And it is, once we place the modal necessity operator in its proper place. Here is is:

Necessarily (if God knows in advance that I will do x, then I will [but not MUST!] do x)

In other words, the necessity operator must be applied CONJOINTLY to both the antecedent and the consequent, and not JUST to the consequent.

Once this is noticed, it becomes obvious that I have free will, and can freely choose either x or y. Suppose I choose y? Then we get:

Necessarily (if God knows in advance that I will do y, then I will [but not MUST!] do y)

I can do either x or y. What I cannot do is escape God’s prior detection of my free choice.

I now invite you to apply this train of modal logic to the causal determinism/free will debate, and see what you get. Hint: whenever DBT informs Marvin that if Marvin orders salad instead of steak Marvin MUST order salad, he commits the modal fallacy (a fallacy of logic, recall). His misapplies the necessity box operator to the consequent of the antecedent rather than conjointly to the antecedent and consequent together. When this mistake is corrected, it becomes clear as a matter of logic that Marvin is free to order steak or salad and the whole argument to hard determinism simply evaporates. We then become eliminativist and note that hard determinism simply collapses into soft determinism (i.e., compatibilist free will).

 

[Jarhyn]

Free will means that each option has the possibility of being chosen. If the outcome is determined, then I do not have the freedom of making the choice myself.
If I will not choose anything else, how can you say I can?

Surely we can distinguish between “will” and “can”?

I “will” do x, presupposes as a matter of logic that I can do x. The converse, however, is not true. Doing x, does not presuppose that I cannot do y instead.

Here is a different example: suppose God exists, and is omniscient. He infallibly knows all facts about the past, present and future. From this it follows that God knows every choice I will make in my life, even before I was born.

Confronted with this idea, it is easy to suppose that no one has free will, that everyone MUST do, just as they do, because if they did something else, God would be wrong and God cannot be wrong.

The conclusion that we lack free will in the face of God’s omniscience is an example of the modal fallacy. Generally there are two kinds of fallacies, informal and formal. Formal fallacies are fallacies of logic, and cannot be hand-waved away. The modal fallacy is of this type, a logical fallacy.

Modal logic deals with modes of being, with necessity, contingency, possibility, actuality, etc. Under this heuristic, necessary truths are truths of logic — it is a necessary truth that triangles have three sides, for example.

When we look at the God example, we sense, correctly, that something about this setup is logically necessary. The modal fallacy occurs when we misapply necessity.

We could say: If God knows everything I will do in advance, then I necessarily do those things, because God cannot be wrong. If I necessarily do what I do, then I have no free will, any more than a triangle can have four sides.

So now we have: If God knows in advance that I will do x, then I MUST (of logical necessity) do x. No free will.

Now it is certainly true that if God knows in advance I will do x, then I will do x. God can’t be wrong.

The real question is, MUST I do x?

Let’s break the above proposition down into its component parts, its antecedent and its consequent:

ANTECEDENT:

If God knows in advance that I will do x …

CONSEQUENT:

… then I MUST (of logical necessity) do x.

But something is clearly amiss here. For me to do x is a contingent truth — which means it could have been otherwise. It’s not at all like the logical truth that all triangles must have three sides. Therefore I CAN do y instead of x!

The problem with the above formulation of antecedent followed by consequent is that we have placed the formal necessity modal operator (a box symbol in formal modal logic) in the wrong place. The fact that I do x is, was, and always will be, a contingently true proposition, and never a necessarily true proposition (the principle of the fixity of modal status, per Prof. Norman Swartz).

But surely, as noted earlier, something in the formulation under discussion must be logically necessary. And it is, once we place the modal necessity operator in its proper place. Here is is:

Necessarily (if God knows in advance that I will do x, then I will [but not MUST!] do x)

In other words, the necessity operator must be applied CONJOINTLY to both the antecedent and the consequent, and not JUST to the consequent.

Once this is noticed, it becomes obvious that I have free will, and can freely choose either x or y. Suppose I choose y? Then we get:

Necessarily (if God knows in advance that I will do y, then I will [but not MUST!] do y)

I can do either x or y. What I cannot do is escape God’s prior detection of my free choice.

I now invite you to apply this train of modal logic to the causal determinism/free will debate, and see what you get. Hint: whenever DBT informs Marvin that if Marvin orders salad instead of steak Marvin MUST order salad, he commits the modal fallacy (a fallacy of logic, recall). His misapplies the necessity box operator to the consequent of the antecedent rather than conjointly to the antecedent and consequent together. When this mistake is corrected, it becomes clear as a matter of logic that Marvin is free to order steak or salad and the whole argument to hard determinism simply evaporates. We then become eliminativist and note that hard determinism simply collapses into soft determinism (i.e., compatibilist free will).

This is simply beautiful.

I would invite you to recognize the equivalence in modal logical possibility to mathematical variability, contingency is functionalization, and actuality is a statement with no varies terms, an immediate identity, and so on.

This is all just math.

 

[SIB]

So the issue is a trait of god. Not that there is one or not.

God can know everything possible to know. "You will do this or that. That is why the snake is one of the most important creations. God had to set it up so that some would choose not it. Or it just doesn't work.

 

[Jarhyn]

So the issue is a trait of god. Not that there is one or not.

God can know everything possible to know. "You will do this or that. That is why the snake is one of the most important creations. God had to set it up so that some would choose not it. Or it just doesn't work.

Except that part of my contribution to the other thread reveals that while god "can" know everything possible to know, it's not necessarily true.

Quite to the point The Toady One, the creator of a particular system of isolated mathematical systems, does not know that Urist will find himself locked in a room tipping over a tantrum following a foiled decision to fight. He knows it's "possible": nothing prevents it but the quirks of which numbers the RNG it's hooked up to spits. He just hasn't seen whether it exists on the topology of this extension of the system along this RNG vector and seed vector, and there's no real way to know short of brute force.

I don't know what's going to happen, even as "god" of the implementation, until it's happened at least once. The system still needs to process choices for the choices to be made, even if that choice is inevitable.

Before the deterministic system will allow the dwarf to move down the hallway, he has to have processed the decision to do so, submitted the value upon the function which drives his walking and so on. It doesn't just happen "like fucking magic". There's f(this)=that, not just this, that. Excluding f(x) is the issue.

 

[Kylie]

If I go into a restaurant, my order will be either determined or a free choice.

This is a false dichotomy that steps away from the premises. Something can be a deterministic, a choice, and be made while satisfying the requirement of the will to choose as a function of one's own desires rather than imposed from outside all at the same time.

How can something be chosen freely if there is only ever one possible outcome that can occur?

Because choices aren't about what will happen, (which is fixed but unknown), but about what can happen, (which is just fixed).

You choose the salad rather than the steak, but the steak is a possibility (even though you will not order it), because it's on the menu.

If the waiter makes an error and brings you the steak, you might be annoyed, but you shouldn't be shocked. If, however, he makes an error and beings you an armoured combat vehicle, you would be shocked - because there was a choice, and the main battle tank wasn't one of the options. So clearly, "choice" is a real thing.

What must (due to determinism) happen, is unknowable. What might (due to incomplete knowledge) happen, is chosen.

Presented with a menu of options, our brains follow a deterministic path to select one of them. We call that process "choosing", and the fact that it's hypothetically possible (if we had complete knowledge of the state of every particle in, or able to influence, the brain), to model what that choice must be, doesn't change the fact that we don't know what it will be until the brain has completed its "choosing" and returns a decision.

If that choosing was done without coercion, then we say that the brain freely arrives at the choice it has made.

Determinism doesn't change this freedom of choice at all. A "god's eye view" might have shown us that the whole thing was inevitable and immutable - but nobody and nothing has that view, so why would we worry about it? It changes nothing.

You seem to be assuming that things are fixed in order to show that they are fixed.

 

[Kylie]

If there is only one possible outcome, it's not a choice.

Presumably you're saying that there's no choice under determinism (because determinism allows only one outcome).

It follows therefore that what you mean by choice is a non-determined (random/uncaused) outcome. I don't think that's what most people who use the word mean by 'choice'.

I would say that a choice is where I have multiple different options and each option has a non-zero chance of being the actual outcome.

If things are predestined, then the outcome is 100%, and thus all the other options necessarily do NOT have a non-zero chance.

You've avoided answering my point - "what you mean by choice is a non-determined (random/uncaused) outcome. ".

Is this really what you think most people mean by 'choice'?

You think that I'm under the impression that just because I have a few choices available that I decide on one randomly?

 

[Kylie]

Free will means that each option has the possibility of being chosen.

The "possibility of being chosen" means that you are able to choose it. It is something that can happen and it is something that you can make happen, if you choose to do so. But the "ability to choose it" does not require that you actually do choose it. You are able to choose anything (or everything) on the menu. No one is stopping you.

The "probability of being chosen" is the statistical likelihood that you will choose a given item, if we were trying to predict what you would order.

Agreed.

If the outcome is determined, then I do not have the freedom of making the choice myself.

Well, it will either be determined that you will have the freedom to make the choice yourself, or it will be determined that a guy with a gun will make you choose something you don't want. Your "freedom to make the choice yourself" refers to the absence of the guy with a gun (or any other extraordinary influence that effectively makes the choice for you, perhaps a hypnotist, or a significant mental illness, etc.).

In most cases you will find that it is determined that you must make that choice yourself. If you do not make the choice, you will get no dinner.

Determinism doesn't actually change anything.

My point is that until I make the choice, it can not be predicted.

If I will not choose anything else, how can you say I can?

If you "will" do something then you certainly will. However, if you don't know yet what you "will" do, you consider what you "can" do, and based on the consideration of what you "can" do, you decide what you "will" do. Do you see the difference between "can" and "will"?

When choosing, there are always multiple things that you "can" do, even though there is but one thing that you "will" do. The only reason you're using "can" is because you are uncertain, until you reach the end of your choosing, what it is that you "will" do. The notion of "possibility", something that "can" happen, or something that we "can" choose to do, is part of the rational causal mechanism we use to deal with matters of uncertainty.

My point is that until I choose one of the options, you can't eliminate the possibility that I might choose another one.

But the fact that it can not be determined prior to me making the choice means that it is not predetermined.

The notion of "causal necessity" is that the state of things at any prior point in time will result in a single state of things at any future point in time. This is that "chain of causation", where every event is the reliably result of prior causes, and each prior cause is itself the reliable result of prior causes, ad infinitum.

The human brain is incapable of taking into account an infinite chain of causes. So, we generally limit ourselves to the most meaningful and relevant causes. A meaningful cause is one that efficiently explains why an event happened. A relevant cause is one that we can actually do something about to effect future events.

It will be up to you to decide what you will order for dinner. And you will be held responsible for your choice. You are the most meaningful and relevant cause of your choice. The Big Bang, though it has a place in every causal chain as an "incidental" cause, is never the meaningful or relevant cause of any human choice. This is why the waiter brings you the dinner that you ordered and the bill for it, instead of delivering the dinner and the bill to the Big Bang.\

If this is true, how can we hold criminals responsible for their crimes?

Please show evidence to support that my choice is theoretically 100% predictable.

That's actually simpler than you might think. It begins by simply asking you, "Why did you order chicken instead of the steak or the pork or whatever else you saw on the menu?". You explain your reasoning, perhaps in terms of the price of the dinner, or perhaps in terms of your dietary goals, perhaps in terms of your tastes, perhaps in terms of your recent experiences ("I had bacon for breakfast and a steak for lunch, so I decided to have chicken for dinner"), perhaps in terms of your beliefs and values ("I'm Jewish and cannot eat pork"), or any specific combination of these goals and reasons.

Then we ask you, "Did these goals and reasons cause you to order the Chicken?" And you say, "Yes, they caused me to order the Chicken". And we ask, "If we had known your goals and reasons before your choice, could we have predicted your choice?" And you would say, "Yes. If you knew all that then you could have predicted my choice with 100% accuracy".

Again, if this is true, how can we hold criminals responsible for their crimes?

And this seems to depend on assigning specific weights on certain criteria, when such may not be possible. If I had a steak for lunch, how much does that move my preference away from steak again? How do you measure this effect? In what units is this effect measured? And maybe I was not impressed with the steak I had for lunch and I'm still in the mood for a really good steak. How do you objectively measure my unhappiness with my lunch steak?

it seems to me that there are so many variables with so many difficulties in making any objective measurements of them that any attempt to do so is worthless. Add to that the point I raised, that if we are to hold that our decisions are an inevitable result of the past situation then we can't truly be held responsible for our actions, and it seems to me that if the future really is determined, we are nothing more than puppets and we have no control over our lives at all.

 

[Marvin Edwards]

My point is that until I make the choice, it can not be predicted.

Until you make the choice, it cannot be predicted by you. Someone else who knows you well may be able to predict the choice before you've made it. They may know it in advance even if you don't.

If you could know your choice in advance then you would never have to make a choice. But the only way you can convince yourself is by going through the choosing process yourself. At the beginning you only know for certain what you can choose. Only at the end will you know what you will choose.

My point is that until I choose one of the options, you can't eliminate the possibility that I might choose another one.

The process of elimination is the way we narrow down our options. But eliminating a possibility from consideration does not turn it into an impossibility. Every option that we've eliminated from consideration is still something that we could have chosen instead of what we did choose.

But the fact that it can not be determined prior to me making the choice means that it is not predetermined.

The notion of "causal necessity" is that the state of things at any prior point in time will result in a single state of things at any future point in time. This is that "chain of causation", where every event is the reliably result of prior causes, and each prior cause is itself the reliable result of prior causes, ad infinitum.

The human brain is incapable of taking into account an infinite chain of causes. So, we generally limit ourselves to the most meaningful and relevant causes. A meaningful cause is one that efficiently explains why an event happened. A relevant cause is one that we can actually do something about to effect future events.

It will be up to you to decide what you will order for dinner. And you will be held responsible for your choice. You are the most meaningful and relevant cause of your choice. The Big Bang, though it has a place in every causal chain as an "incidental" cause, is never the meaningful or relevant cause of any human choice. This is why the waiter brings you the dinner that you ordered and the bill for it, instead of delivering the dinner and the bill to the Big Bang.
[/QUOTE]

If this is true, how can we hold criminals responsible for their crimes?

Because the criminal's deliberate choice to commit the crime is the most meaningful and relevant cause of the crime. Holding the deliberate choice responsible means that we need to persuade the criminal to make different choices in the future. There is nothing we can do to correct the Big Bang. But there is something we can do to correct the offender's behavior.

And this seems to depend on assigning specific weights on certain criteria, when such may not be possible. If I had a steak for lunch, how much does that move my preference away from steak again? How do you measure this effect? In what units is this effect measured? And maybe I was not impressed with the steak I had for lunch and I'm still in the mood for a really good steak. How do you objectively measure my unhappiness with my lunch steak?

it seems to me that there are so many variables with so many difficulties in making any objective measurements of them that any attempt to do so is worthless.

Despite the difficulties you raised, you were still able to choose what you would order for dinner.

Add to that the point I raised, that if we are to hold that our decisions are an inevitable result of the past situation then we can't truly be held responsible for our actions, and it seems to me that if the future really is determined, we are nothing more than puppets and we have no control over our lives at all.

Again, the most meaningful and relevant cause is the offender's own choice to commit the crime. And so we attempt to correct that cause, in order to prevent further harmful behavior. Now, if there are social causes of the crime, then they should also be addressed through community action. But in any case the criminal's behavior will still require correction. Our reasonable corrective actions are justified by the harm caused by the criminal act. No one is ever punished for having free will.

 

[bilby]

If I go into a restaurant, my order will be either determined or a free choice.

This is a false dichotomy that steps away from the premises. Something can be a deterministic, a choice, and be made while satisfying the requirement of the will to choose as a function of one's own desires rather than imposed from outside all at the same time.

How can something be chosen freely if there is only ever one possible outcome that can occur?

Because choices aren't about what will happen, (which is fixed but unknown), but about what can happen, (which is just fixed).

You choose the salad rather than the steak, but the steak is a possibility (even though you will not order it), because it's on the menu.

If the waiter makes an error and brings you the steak, you might be annoyed, but you shouldn't be shocked. If, however, he makes an error and beings you an armoured combat vehicle, you would be shocked - because there was a choice, and the main battle tank wasn't one of the options. So clearly, "choice" is a real thing.

What must (due to determinism) happen, is unknowable. What might (due to incomplete knowledge) happen, is chosen.

Presented with a menu of options, our brains follow a deterministic path to select one of them. We call that process "choosing", and the fact that it's hypothetically possible (if we had complete knowledge of the state of every particle in, or able to influence, the brain), to model what that choice must be, doesn't change the fact that we don't know what it will be until the brain has completed its "choosing" and returns a decision.

If that choosing was done without coercion, then we say that the brain freely arrives at the choice it has made.

Determinism doesn't change this freedom of choice at all. A "god's eye view" might have shown us that the whole thing was inevitable and immutable - but nobody and nothing has that view, so why would we worry about it? It changes nothing.

You seem to be assuming that things are fixed in order to show that they are fixed.

I am treating determinism as a given, for the sake of the discussion. Its actual veracity is a discussion for another thread, and would be a derail here (though you might note that I have mentioned already ITT that I do not subscribe to it).

As I conclude above, it changes nothing; So my argument remains sound even if (as I strongly suspect) reality is not completely deterministic.

 

[Jarhyn]

If I go into a restaurant, my order will be either determined or a free choice.

This is a false dichotomy that steps away from the premises. Something can be a deterministic, a choice, and be made while satisfying the requirement of the will to choose as a function of one's own desires rather than imposed from outside all at the same time.

How can something be chosen freely if there is only ever one possible outcome that can occur?

Because choices aren't about what will happen, (which is fixed but unknown), but about what can happen, (which is just fixed).

You choose the salad rather than the steak, but the steak is a possibility (even though you will not order it), because it's on the menu.

If the waiter makes an error and brings you the steak, you might be annoyed, but you shouldn't be shocked. If, however, he makes an error and beings you an armoured combat vehicle, you would be shocked - because there was a choice, and the main battle tank wasn't one of the options. So clearly, "choice" is a real thing.

What must (due to determinism) happen, is unknowable. What might (due to incomplete knowledge) happen, is chosen.

Presented with a menu of options, our brains follow a deterministic path to select one of them. We call that process "choosing", and the fact that it's hypothetically possible (if we had complete knowledge of the state of every particle in, or able to influence, the brain), to model what that choice must be, doesn't change the fact that we don't know what it will be until the brain has completed its "choosing" and returns a decision.

If that choosing was done without coercion, then we say that the brain freely arrives at the choice it has made.

Determinism doesn't change this freedom of choice at all. A "god's eye view" might have shown us that the whole thing was inevitable and immutable - but nobody and nothing has that view, so why would we worry about it? It changes nothing.

You seem to be assuming that things are fixed in order to show that they are fixed.

I am treating determinism as a given, for the sake of the discussion. Its actual veracity is a discussion for another thread, and would be a derail here (though you might note that I have mentioned already ITT that I do not subscribe to it).

As I conclude above, it changes nothing; So my argument remains sound even if (as I strongly suspect) reality is not completely deterministic.

Well, as mentioned, all stochastic systems can be represented deterministically as a function of presented initial conditions.

I agree that regardless of what drives what we perceive as randomness on the most basic level, it is important to make a concept of free will compatible with the non-disprovable hypothesis of superdeterminism, because if it can't swing around in that space, the non-disprovability of superdeterminism would contradict the conjecture of free will at all.

The solution is to recognize that wills are things that exist as a series of instructions which maps out paths that will perhaps never be taken but which are sensible and for which the results of taking them is known within certain constraints, given particular provisions: wills are functions unto some requirement within a system.

Once we can all recognize they're a part of the language of math, the language of quantitative description and operations, then we can sit down and say "oh, 'will' is just something that is described by math as a part of deterministic function, caused by any such structure as allows parsing of syntax."

And then we continue on our merry way until we see that sometimes, syntax when parsed doesn't satisfy the driving requirement and it either gets cycled in again or the thing that cycled it in gets more weighted, or some large scale state change is triggered, like a tantrum...

And we recognize that all these have a common trend of failure with respect to impacts on the future of any given locality, one of which is, roughly, "a person", separate by defined degrees of freedom and partitioned by various deep gulfs of empty space and chaotically moving molecules which only rarely carry waves of something less chaotic through them.

So, we can see that this blob of dense autonomous stuff is "free within some provision" of that will "to the satisfaction of the requirement": if some variable is within some tolerance, the requirement is satisfied.

Finally, we can recognize that reality will resolve. We can make a comparison of equality by the reification of the critical moment, and the say "the will was free" or "the will was not free" but as discussed this doesn't complete what people call "free will" and what everyone here really wants to discuss.

Really, what people want to discuss is whether people can have some will with some specific requirement, such that this will is free, something along the lines of "select for yourself of these things the thing that will be reified, or gin something else up if you don't like any of this."

 

[The AntiChris]

If there is only one possible outcome, it's not a choice.

Presumably you're saying that there's no choice under determinism (because determinism allows only one outcome).

It follows therefore that what you mean by choice is a non-determined (random/uncaused) outcome. I don't think that's what most people who use the word mean by 'choice'.

I would say that a choice is where I have multiple different options and each option has a non-zero chance of being the actual outcome.

If things are predestined, then the outcome is 100%, and thus all the other options necessarily do NOT have a non-zero chance.

You've avoided answering my point - "what you mean by choice is a non-determined (random/uncaused) outcome. ".

Is this really what you think most people mean by 'choice'?

You think that I'm under the impression that just because I have a few choices available that I decide on one randomly?

It follows from what you've been saying.

You said that determinism does not allow choice. Therefore when you say you "have a few choices available" then you must be assuming non-determinism.

This leaves two possibilities. Either your choice is not reliably determined (random) or you are claiming that we have  libertarian free will (i.e. humans are in some sense self-determining entities).

As you appeared to be taking the same position as DBT I assumed you rejected libertarian free will. Can you clarify please?

 

[fromderinside]

If there is only one possible outcome, it's not a choice.

Presumably you're saying that there's no choice under determinism (because determinism allows only one outcome).

It follows therefore that what you mean by choice is a non-determined (random/uncaused) outcome. I don't think that's what most people who use the word mean by 'choice'.

I would say that a choice is where I have multiple different options and each option has a non-zero chance of being the actual outcome.

If things are predestined, then the outcome is 100%, and thus all the other options necessarily do NOT have a non-zero chance.

You've avoided answering my point - "what you mean by choice is a non-determined (random/uncaused) outcome. ".

Is this really what you think most people mean by 'choice'?

You think that I'm under the impression that just because I have a few choices available that I decide on one randomly?

It follows from what you've been saying.

You said that determinism does not allow choice. Therefore when you say you "have a few choices available" then you must be assuming non-determinism.

This leaves two possibilities. Either your choice is not reliably determined (random) or you are claiming that we have  libertarian free will (i.e. humans are in some sense self-determining entities).

As you appeared to be taking the same position as DBT I assumed you rejected libertarian free will. Can you clarify please?

As I see it the problem isn't with whether determined or other but how in a determined world the illusion of other can survive.

I've put forth the theory that in a determined world beings can arise which are based on the existence of a determined world. That these beings evolve generating senses which, consistent with the fact they are evolved, not determined, IAW incompleteness theorem. Consequently they develop incomplete sense data from the determined reality in which they exist and use it as their source of reality. That is they produce a subjective representation of 'reality'. It is from this faux 'reality' one gets choice and will.

However these beings exist in a determined world, ultimately subject to it's constraints, they are also determined. Reality will come to these beings when they understand their place in the real world which they are beginning to realize through science.

 

[Jarhyn]

consistent with the fact they are evolved, not determined,

This right here is, yet again, a kernel of deep failure to understand determinism. It is a revelator of fatalism, not determinism.

 

[Kylie]

My point is that until I make the choice, it can not be predicted.

Until you make the choice, it cannot be predicted by you. Someone else who knows you well may be able to predict the choice before you've made it. They may know it in advance even if you don't.

If you could know your choice in advance then you would never have to make a choice. But the only way you can convince yourself is by going through the choosing process yourself. At the beginning you only know for certain what you can choose. Only at the end will you know what you will choose.

That's hilarious.

I can't predict what my choice is until I make it. But someone who knows me very well could predict it before me?

Guess what? No one in the world knows me better than I do.

My point is that until I choose one of the options, you can't eliminate the possibility that I might choose another one.

The process of elimination is the way we narrow down our options. But eliminating a possibility from consideration does not turn it into an impossibility. Every option that we've eliminated from consideration is still something that we could have chosen instead of what we did choose.

Missing the point. If there's some way to know with 100% accuracy that I will choose one option - say, that I will choose the chicken for my dinner - then all other options HAVE been eliminated, since the probability of them being chosen is now at 0%.

Because the criminal's deliberate choice to commit the crime is the most meaningful and relevant cause of the crime. Holding the deliberate choice responsible means that we need to persuade the criminal to make different choices in the future. There is nothing we can do to correct the Big Bang. But there is something we can do to correct the offender's behavior.

How does that work though?

So far you have been saying that my future actions have been 100% predictable. That means that I am locked in to that course of action no matter what. Your argument means that, in theory, you can predict what I will eat for breakfast on the 17 of August, 2056, and there's nothing I can do to avoid that.

So, if that's the case, then isn't the criminal similarly locked into committing a crime? They aren't CHOOSING to commit the crime, they are merely completing a course of action that was written in stone at the Big Bang. They can't avoid it at all. So how can they be held responsible?

Despite the difficulties you raised, you were still able to choose what you would order for dinner.

So? That's still entirely consistent with my position. Not so much with yours.

Again, the most meaningful and relevant cause is the offender's own choice to commit the crime. And so we attempt to correct that cause, in order to prevent further harmful behavior. Now, if there are social causes of the crime, then they should also be addressed through community action. But in any case the criminal's behavior will still require correction. Our reasonable corrective actions are justified by the harm caused by the criminal act. No one is ever punished for having free will.

Again, if the course of their actions was written in stone at the moment of the Big Bang, then they are not making a choice. They are simply following the only path that is available to them.