“Revolution in Thought: A new look at determinism and free will"

[pood]

Yeah, if hard determinism is true I had no choice to write what I wrote, and you had no choice to write what you wrote.

So?

Of course it is not true, so there is that.

 

[DBT]

Compatibilism is the argument that free will is compatible with determinism as Compatibilists define it to be . If the world is not deterministic, Compatibilism has no bearing on how the world works, which makes it practically irrelevant. The question then becomes, what is the nature of free will in relation to a non deterministic world, and how does this definition of free will relate to the workings of a non deterministic world with its random and/or probabilistic events.

 

[Copernicus]

Compatibilism is the argument that free will is compatible with determinism as Compatibilists define it to be . If the world is not deterministic, Compatibilism has no bearing on how the world works, which makes it practically irrelevant. The question then becomes, what is the nature of free will in relation to a non deterministic world, and how does this definition of free will relate to the workings of a non deterministic world with its random and/or probabilistic events.

If the world were not deterministic, then compatibilism would be irrelevant by definition. There is a sense in which we do live in a nondeterministic world--quantum indeterminism. However, we interact with reality at a level of events in which experience tells us that causality works and we live in a deterministic world. Moreover, there are ways of interpreting quantum mechanics such that determinism makes sense (e.g. Everett's Many Worlds Interpretation).

 

[bilby]

Accepting the paradigm of Determinism as true (which is may well not be), Free Will would be impossible, because the pre-determined act of seeming to choose between illusory alternatives is not an exercise of will. It is simply a programmed response.

This assumes that programmed responses are:

A) Simple; and
B) Lack freedom

A is certainly false, as any computer programmer can attest; B is highly questionable, and depends on what we mean by "freedom".

 

[bilby]

Stated differently, the existence of Free Will in its pure form depends upon (a) the existence of true “options” or “alternatives,” and (b) humans being capable of thinking (and acting) in a manner that is not 100% caused by prior activity that is outside their control.

I don't agree. Condition (a) is certainly present for most human decisions, as I think you'll agree, and so is of little import; But condition (b) seems unweildy and arbitrary.

Humans are quite capable of acting in a manner that is caused by prior activity that is entirely internal to themselves, and completely unpredictable in advance, even to themselves.

That may not be Free Will "in its pure form", but it waddles and quacks a lot like free will in its form as understood by, well, everybody.

 

[bilby]

If the world were not deterministic, then compatibilism would be irrelevant by definition. There is a sense in which we do live in a nondeterministic world--quantum indeterminism.

I am not seeing how indeterminism has any bearing at all on free will, though.

Free choices are not random, any more than they are forced upon us by the external universe.

Free choices are chosen, not random; And they are chosen by internal and highly complex chaotic systems that are fundamentally unpredictable, just like the weather.

The brain is not a kind of supercomputer; It is an electrochemical system, bathed in an endocrine system that interacts with it in myriad ways, some fairly local and others systemic, with both positive and negative feedbacks. And Bilby's Law of biology applies: All statements about biological systems can be made more accurate by adding "... but in reality, it's much more complicated than that".

 

[DBT]

Compatibilism is the argument that free will is compatible with determinism as Compatibilists define it to be . If the world is not deterministic, Compatibilism has no bearing on how the world works, which makes it practically irrelevant. The question then becomes, what is the nature of free will in relation to a non deterministic world, and how does this definition of free will relate to the workings of a non deterministic world with its random and/or probabilistic events.

If the world were not deterministic, then compatibilism would be irrelevant by definition. There is a sense in which we do live in a nondeterministic world--quantum indeterminism. However, we interact with reality at a level of events in which experience tells us that causality works and we live in a deterministic world. Moreover, there are ways of interpreting quantum mechanics such that determinism makes sense (e.g. Everett's Many Worlds Interpretation).

Nothing much to disagree with....but, how would quantum indeterminism relate to free will? How would free will be defined in relation to a probabilistic or indeterministic word? How would it work? A version of Libertarian free will? A modified Compatibilist definition of free will?

 

[DBT]

Yeah, if hard determinism is true I had no choice to write what I wrote, and you had no choice to write what you wrote.

So?

Of course it is not true, so there is that.

The only difference between 'hard determinism' and 'soft determinism' is that one side claims that free will is not compatible with determinism, and the other claims it is compatible.

Otherwise, the given conditions of determinism, how it works, antecedents, past, present and future states of the system as it evolves, etc, is essentially the same for both sides.

 

[pood]

Rather than focus your responses on insulting the poster, it would be more productive if you would address the substance of the posts.

Again, you may have no choice but to write the way you do. If you do have such a choice, however, then your choices leaving something to be desired.

First, I deny having insulted you. But here again, you see, if you truly believed your position, you would not complain I am allegedly insulting you, because you would recognize I have no choice in the matter. Of course, perhaps you had no choice in your internally contradictory response — in which case we are both meat robots of the Big Bang which is how the biologist Jerry Coyne so charmingly describes humans.

You basically told me you identify with determinism, stoicism, and Buddhism because it works for you, it is congenial. If you believed your own position, you would have said, “I had no choice in the matter.”

Why did consciousness evolve in a hard deterministic world? What the hell is it good for? In such a world if we existed at all we should all be p zombies, and at least one poster on this board believes most or all of us are except for him.

 

[pood]

When downstream deterministic inputs hit me my brain and body work in tandem to choose to determine an output — choose, and determine, working together. Compatibilism!