Does Physics disprove the existence of free will?

[Write4U]

Another way to look at is: how many variables would you need to describe the relevant state of the relevant system, and distinguish that state from any other relevant state (e.g., in this context, one in which a different choice would be made)? In any case of willed choice, we would need the "system" to include all kinds of things, and there would be many variables describing both the internal configuration of the chooser and the configuration of the relevant parts of the external environment.

IMO, determinism is decided at quantum level. Obviously, an action depends on all related circumstances, potentials, internal and external inputs up till the instant before change.
Bohm called it; the "Implicate".

The only time a person will "change his mind" is when made aware of the dangers of pursuing the original "choice", or "movement in the direction of greatest satisfaction".

 

[C C]

One might devise such a rule, but would you be able to keep it at all times? Moreover, would you want someone else to live by such a rule?

It wouldn't need to be universal (applicable to all times, places, people) anymore than deciding to go to the donut shop is a continuous behavior and essential feature of life. Even "survival" as a general interest subsumed under the latter wouldn't be a perpetual concern; some animals relax and occasionally entertain themselves, or take a break from worrying about being killed or investing in future death avoidance. Breathing is necessary but also automatic (one doesn't have to constantly remember or make a choice to do it).

IMO, such a pattern could not be exercised if the pre-set choice is mathematically disallowed.
In the end it's always the mathematics that determine the result, no?

Humans and other organisms existed before the development of mathematics and other concept dependent practices / pursuits. Whereas, say the design of robots, might arguably require being guided by technical, formal schemes. (But the door is contingently open that it might be accomplished in higgledy-piggledy fashion, without prescriptive rules and plans -- another "all crows are black" absolute waiting to be knocked off its roost).

~

 

[Yazata]

If a thermostat is set to switch on below 18C, then if you give it input of 10C it will switch on. Provide it with different information, say 20C, and lo and behold another result. Is this what you would consider a choice?

As a physicalist and a bit of a reductivist, I'd say that our neurological process is compounded out of simpler components that probably do behave like that. The task of neuroscience is to account for how the higher abilities of human beings, the behaviors that we describe using our psychologistic vocabulary, arise from that 'machine-language' kind of level. How does the neural substrate generate perception, beliefs, self-awareness, linguistic meaning and all the rest? It's more of a research-project at this point than it is something that we actually know.

If not, and I strongly suspect it isn't, then what is a choice to you?

I conceive of choice as what results from my own internal self-steering system. More specifically, it refers to behaviors to which my feelings, beliefs and intentions are relevant. (My internal system may regulate many physiological events in my liver or wherever, but I don't really consider those free choices if I wasn't consciously aware of them and my beliefs and intentions didn't contribute to determining them.)

If we are railroaded down a single path, even if we think that we have all the freedom to make choices, can we?

Depends on what is doing the "railroading". If I commit to a single path as the result of my own choice, then my having committed to it doesn't do any violence to free will at all. If I say that my choice was the result of my beliefs, desires and intentions, I don't see any violence being done. It wouldn't be free will if it wasn't the result of those kind of things.

How can you show that a choice has actually been made, between options that are possible with a given set of inputs rather than simply appear/feel possible?

Those look like two different ways of describing the same thing. I prefer the free-will description because

A. It does less violence to how we naturally understand our own and other people's behavior and less violence to our ideas of ethics and personal responsibility.
B. Because it isn't the result of trying to make the entire universe conform to a speculative metaphysical theory.

Even if it feels as if we are free, are we?

I say 'yes', but I don't know. It's all philosophical interpretations being applied to the raw material of experience. And to channel somebody called 'Sarkus', a lot of it will depend on how we conceive of 'free', 'determinism' and all the rest. Some interpretations might be more consistent with some ways of conceiving of things, other interpretations with others. So we need to inquire into which ways of conceiving of things are better justified and so on.

Sure, our sensation of making choice appears to govern where the track goes. But which leads which? Does the track lead the train along its preset (or probabilistic) path, or does the train decide which way the track goes?

I don't want to squish 'preset' and 'probabilistic' together that way. The way I conceive of 'probabilistic' is that the track is well defined for relatively short distances. (That's consistent with our intuitions about our actions being the result of our own immediate intentions.) The further we extend our view, the fuzzier the track and the more splayed out it is into a whole array of possibilities. And yes, I think that our decisions and choices have a lot to do with which of those possibilities is actualized.

Admittedly that's all speculative. But speculation is really all that any of us have to go on at this point.

 

[Baldeee]

Some participants in this argument (Baldeee is one) seem to conceive of determinism as being when we know prior state A with absolute precision, along with all of the relevant dynamical equations, we can predict subsequent state B with absolute precision. So 'determinism' seems to reduce to predictability.

You would be mistaken.
Almost entirely.
It's not a matter of practical predictability.
At all.
It's not a matter of knowing the start state, either.
It is enough, for the argument, that if A then B, and that if A then it can only result in B.
Determinism, theoretically, can result in predictability, but practically that predictability is lost with complexity, inaccuracy of measurement, chaos, and any inherent randomness.
So ignore predictability, at least the practical notion of it.
It is irrelevant to the argument from determinism.
It is enough to know that if A then B is the only thing that can result.

The argument stems from this, and nothing to do with predictability.
If predictability (theoretical) is a conclusion then so be it, but that is a side matter.
And arguing that because the universe isn't practically predictable therefore the deterministic argument is flawed/incorrect is itself erroneous.

So what is determinism? It looks to me like a giant metaphysical speculation arguably based on 19th century classical physics. My guess is that 1000 years from now it will seem just as bogus to people then as medieval Aristotelian physics seems to people today.

Unless one considers free will to lie in inherent randomness, the argument from determinism holds for both determinism and probabilistic determinism (the idea that input A always results in probability function B, with the actual output chosen at random in accordance with that probability function.
While classical physics certainly considered things deterministic, modern physics, I believe, tends toward the probabilistic nature, e.g. quantum mechanics.
If, however, it turns out that the universe doesn't operate in either of these ways then the argument, while remaining valid, becomes unsound, because one can argue that the will is not such a system.
If that is the case, so be it, and we move on.
However, to dismiss a conclusion, and to therefore question a premise, simply because you don't like the outcome, as you seem to be doing, seems unwarranted at this time.
If you have evidence that questions the soundness of the premises, please put it forward.

But to reiterate: nowhere does my argument rely on predicatbility, or is equated with it, or really even mentions it.
If the universe is probabilistic then predictability is nigh on impossible, even theoretically, yet the argument for the lack of free will still holds, unless, as said, one sees free will to reside within randomness.

 

[C C]

[...] When we say that Sylvia freely made the choice of breakfast cereal, we aren't denying that the choice was the result of her desires and beliefs, or that it was unrelated to the breakfast situation she was in, the cereals she had on hand, and so on. Real life examples of what we call free-will don't deny those kind of considerations. If you eliminated all the preexisting motivation and situation stuff, you would have something that looks more like epileptic seizures than free will. Just random movements.

The thing with free-will is that it has to be intentional and motivated to count as free will.

When we say that Sylvia freely chose the Wheaties, we mean that she acted as a result of what we might describe in biologistic vocabulary as her own neurophysiological process, that she exercised her own self-steering abilities, and that we might describe in psychologistic vocabulary as being the result of her own desires and choices. Her hand moving to the Wheaties box wasn't the result of electrodes that some mad scientist had implanted in her brain.

[...] Moving further out and we do start to threaten our free-will ideas. But I'm increasingly skeptical that if we know the precise state of the universe ten years ago, that we can accurately predict Sylvia's choice today (or even that she will make such a choice at this time). 100 years ago and we might be uncertain about Sylvia's existence. Five billion years ago and the existence of Earth might be a leap and the existence of something like life a mere speculation.

And I'm hugely resistant to the idea that if we knew the precise initial state of everything at the 'big bang', along with all of the laws of physics, that everything that happens in all of time, on every planet in every galaxy, including Sylvia's choice of Wheaties today, could be accurately predicted. I'm skeptical that the universe really works that way.

That latter idea, the idea that everything was predetermined (by What?) at the beginning, seem more outlandish to me than Christian theology, to tell the truth. It's a huge statement of metaphysical faith. A weird sort of creationism.

So what is determinism? It looks to me like a giant metaphysical speculation arguably based on 19th century classical physics. My guess is that 1000 years from now it will seem just as bogus to people then as medieval Aristotelian physics seems to people today.

Yah -- again, metaphysical speculations, doctrines, and issues are unsettled territory (and arguably always will be). Prodding "free will" from everyday or legal contexts to that department could accordingly keep the idea of there being a "problem" alive... but what else? Any group of us treating its own particular metaphysical or abstract beliefs as 'fact" doesn't equate to validation of the magnitude where -- say -- everybody is able to see, touch, and persistently find a pink unicorn in a room (which also interacts with the objects therein).

But OTOH, any version of free will that does fittingly reside in metaphysics (according to an overly complex description or whatever characteristics) can certainly play with the other "game" residents (like determinism) as part of the usual intellectual recreation. I assume religious thought has offered versions in the past that qualify for such citizenship.

~

 

[Yazata]

You would be mistaken.

Sorry Baldeee. I didn't mean to put words into your mouth. (I'll let you exercise your free will in deciding what you want to say.)

It's not a matter of practical predictability.
At all.

I didn't mean practical predictability so much as predictability in principle. If somebody could know the state of the universe at time A with absolute completeness and precision (obviously an impossibility in practical terms), then we could know the state of the universe at succeeding time B.

It is enough, for the argument, that if A then B, and that if A then it can only result in B.

I'm not exactly sure what the 'if-then' is doing in 'if A then B'. Logical implication? Causal connection (whatever causality is)?

Nor am I sure how 'if A then B' is different from 'predictability in principle'. If A and B are linked in this way (whatever it is) then knowing A would seem to enable us to know B too.

Determinism, theoretically, can result in predictability, but practically that predictability is lost with complexity, inaccuracy of measurement, chaos, and any inherent randomness.

Wouldn't chaos and inherent randomness contradict determinism?

If the nonlinearity of chaos means that even infinitesimal differences in initial conditions can lead to systems evolving in dramatically different ways, and if reality is inherently fuzzy at its smallest scale (uncertainty principle and all that), then determinism would seem to me to face a serious challenge. It might render determinism more of a metaphysical idealization than a plausible description of how reality behaves.

So ignore predictability, at least the practical notion of it.

OK. I wasn't thinking of the practical notion of it anyway.

Unless one considers free will to lie in inherent randomness, the argument from determinism holds for both determinism and probabilistic determinism (the idea that input A always results in probability function B, with the actual output chosen at random in accordance with that probability function.

I consider free-will to lie in our choices being the result of our own beliefs, desires and intentions applied to the circumstances we are in. Free will depends on there being some deterministic relation between our psychological states such as motivations, and our actions.

But if the precise connection between A and B weakens and grows less precise as the temporal interval between them grows, the argument that long-ago states of the universe determine the smallest details of what happens today weakens as well.

If temporally far distant A no longer precisely determines B, then any deterministic relationship between the two breaks down. So B's behavior isn't already laid out for it by A, by fate, or by God's will. If B is an organism like ourselves, B needs to apply its own cognitive resources to understanding the situation it is in and to behaving as best it can in the circumstances in which it finds itself.

We might agree that those cognitive resources are the result of brain functioning and are themselves deterministic. But as I've argued, the free-willist needn't deny that. Free will depends on actions being determined by the actor's intentions, desires and will.

While classical physics certainly considered things deterministic, modern physics, I believe, tends toward the probabilistic nature, e.g. quantum mechanics.
If, however, it turns out that the universe doesn't operate in either of these ways then the argument, while remaining valid, becomes unsound, because one can argue that the will is not such a system.
If that is the case, so be it, and we move on.
However, to dismiss a conclusion, and to therefore question a premise, simply because you don't like the outcome, as you seem to be doing, seems unwarranted at this time.

Now you are putting words into my mouth. My view is basically that nobody knows at this point. What everyone seems to be doing is applying their own spins both to the raw material of experience and to the details of current scientific theorizing.

What I am arguing is that

1. Modern science doesn't make free-will untenable. I'm arguing for, if not the truth (which is something that probably nobody knows at this point), at least the plausibility of compatibilism.

2. That in our situation of metaphysical ignorance about what's really going on, I choose to continue thinking in terms of free-will because doing so seems to do less violence to ethics and personal responsibility, and it is closer to my own (and most people's) intuitions of how people behave. It also seems less dependent on speculative metaphysical theory.

 

[Write4U]

Humans and other organisms existed before the development of mathematics and other concept dependent practices / pursuits

I don't think that is correct.
I see mathematics as always having existed as an inherent form of orderly universal functions.

IMO the constant of (if A, then B) is a mathematical function. It is what results in determinism.

All "patterns" are mathematical constructs. They existed before we even recognized them.
Humans merely have been able to symbolize and codify these mathematical functions and expressions.

Expressions of the Fibonacci sequence can be found throughout the universe and existed since the beginning of the universe.

Fibonacci recognized this form of exponential function and codified it into a symbolic mathematical progression which can be used in human mathematical equations.
But Fibonacci did not create the mathematical sequence, he identified it's physical expressions (patterns) in nature.

Physical potentials determine the mathematical expression in nature. Physical interactions are expressions of mathematical constants. We have codified them as "equations".

Repeated exposure to recurring mathematical functions is what allows us to recognize them....

And I believe that Determinism rests on our confidence in the consistency of universal mathematical values and functions.

I didn't mean practical predictability so much as predictability in principle. If somebody could know the state of the universe at time A with absolute completeness and precision (obviously an impossibility in practical terms), then we could know the state of the universe at succeeding time B.

I agree....

Moreover, it allowed us to (mathematically) predict the existence of say, the Higgs boson.

 

[Quantum Quack]

Without getting into "taking sides" (re the OP) is musical improvisation an interesting example of some kind on an interface between predetermined actions and actions with more of a degree of freedom?

The musician will build up a "back catalogue" of musical phrases that he or she can dip into but also seemingly diverges from in what is probably popularly considered to be a "spontaneous" way.

I have also come across the description that there can come a point where the instrument is playing the musician than the other way round (a kind of an ecstatic state ,one might imagine)

Does all that have any bearing on the OP or is it just an interesting detour?

I suppose I am thinking mainly of jazz and Indian music (and general composition no doubt)......

I think you raise and interesting point. It reminds me of my attempts at generating music using a software program that allows you to compose for piano and strings.

Typically when using this method to compose and play using a PC to do it with, you end up with a rigidly structured outcome both in pitch, rhythm, tonality. A lack of randomness or human flavor is evident. Not very pleasant to listen to.
So I took the orchestration and added some micro timing and tonality elements. Gaining a simulation of ad-lib or human variation. The results were vastly improved and the piece started to sound more human in both composition and performance to the point that it was very hard to determine whether it was being performed by a machine or human.
However what I found was that to make the computerized output feel real and not digital, I the listener had to imagine a human player and empathize with that imaginary player.
Once this was done the music created took on human attributes and sounded great. If not it sounded flat and lacking in any emotional content regardless of how it was structured and composed.
Part of that imaginary player included an imaginary freedom to choose how to play the piece and not just playing as composed.
I had to ignore the fact that every note , every beat, every digital texture was fully determined to make the performance enjoyable.
=====
Say for example we take a very sophisticated robot (android) that has a massive amount of programming simulating ever aspect of human behavior. For all intents an purposes it's outward behavior is exactly as you would expect a living human to perform. A perfect simulacrum. It offers a perfect illusion of self determination ( free-will)

This concept is explored many times in science fiction literature, movies and video games etc.

Fall out 4 - Video game - Synth Nick Valentine - Private Detective.
It is easy to imagine that he is able to self determine even though his choices are totally driven by digital programing. Our ability to override visual clues even when quite extreme allow us to enjoy the self deception and form an emotional bond with the android via empathy (imaginary)

You now stand the android next to a human of similar characteristics, physical and behavioral.

How would you know which is living and which is not?

The only solution I know of is that until you stop imagining the android as living thus cease empathizing with it, it will appear to be living. ( a self deception)
We have an enormous capacity to project personification onto objects whether they are living or not. A rag doll for example is a new born child to young toddler.
It is easy , too easy for us to get lost in our own reflection I guess. (Slight reference to Alice's Adventures in Wonder land Lewis Carroll 1865)
The key that I wanted to throw into the ring is empathy whether with an imaginary living object or a real one and when it comes down to such a fine distinction between living free will and simulated freewill it may take empathy to determine a solution.

For example:
Miles Davis ( jass muso) could have been deemed as successful not because of his style and technique but because he solicits empathy from his audience and while we may be able to theoretically build an android capable of similar performances it is the ability to empathize with out imagining the androids humanity that makes the difference.

 

[Write4U]

For example:
Miles Davis ( jass muso) is successful not because of his style and technique but because he solicits empathy from his audience and while we may be able to theoretically build an android capable of similar performances it is the ability to empathize with out imagining the androids humanity that makes the difference.

Great musicians and composers are able to dynamically elicit and evoke emotional (empathic) responses in others. One technique is "tension and release". But I don't think an AI could ever express the subtle emotional shadings in humans.
It cannot "feel" (experience) emotion. It has no empathy.

Hence my; *Art is the creation of that which evokes an emotional response leading to thoughts of the noblest kind*...

p.s. Sketches of Spain is my favorite Miles album...
Are you familiar with Tomita?

as compared to;

 

[Quantum Quack]

Both examples quite exquisit... thanks I enjoyed them with my breakfast....

 

[C C]

Humans and other organisms existed before the development of mathematics and other concept dependent practices / pursuits

I don't think that is correct. I see mathematics as always having existed as an inherent form of orderly universal functions. ''All "patterns" are mathematical constructs. They existed before we even recognized them. Humans merely have been able to symbolize and codify these mathematical functions and expressions. Expressions of the Fibonacci sequence can be found throughout the universe and existed since the beginning of the universe.

Cart pulling the horse, a reification of ideas. Reference the empirical patterns as first, not the other way around. Constructs are abstract or general ideas inferred or derived from specific instances, serving a variety of needs. They entail the cognitive discrimination and thought engineering of humans or some sapient organism engendering them. When models and conceptual affairs are mistakenly conflated with observable objects and events which they are about or originally abstracted from, then "confusing the map with the landscape which is actually lived on and encountered" pertains.

Mathematics is a human activity enterprise (the latter gets top billing, not eccentric deviations which should be accompanied by a modifier to make them distinct). It is mathematical realism (a metaphysics orientation) that may treat the former's principles as ontological entities (sometimes prior in rank to the manifested or physical world, or as managing preconditions for it). The perspective of "pure mathematics" even floats on its own without attachment to practical applications or world grounding; though what falls out of such could eventually be recruited for handling concrete affairs. (An old saying was that few things upset a purist more than something s/he introduced finding real-world utility.) So it's an additional caution not to cross-fertilize mathematics with the aims of science and engineering disciplines which employ its services (albeit they make contributions to the former).

The cosmos at large just "is" -- it's not an incrementally growing knowledge research and development project (mathematics) with interest in exploring and analyzing categories like quantity and structure (conjecturing and proposing yet further additions to them). It doesn't engage in investigative slash innovative practices employing language / symbolic systems to express ideational products.

~

 

[Write4U]

It doesn't engage in investigative slash innovative practices employing language / symbolic systems to express ideational products.
~

I know the universe does not need to know mathematics, it IS mathematical in its very essence and all physical things manifest as recurring mathematical patterns. But humans desire to know and we have studied the workings of the universe and found that we can write a language for it.

Humans do need to know how the universe works, our lives depend on it. This is why we invented the symbolic language which allows us to understand the mathematical nature of the universe and use it for our benefit.

Humans have recognized these naturally occurring orderly patterns and codified them into several symbolic languages. Ask any cosmologist. When they identify new or repeating patterns in nature, they will tell you they get a distinct impression of "discovering" pre-existing mathematical values and functions. The universe does not function helter skelter. Nor does it function purposefully. It does function mathematically.

All animals with stereo vision employ mathematics (triangulation) to gauge distance. They don't know they do but some are mathematical masters at it. Watch a cat measure its jump of about six times its own body length, carefully. Ever watched a chameleon measure the distance to its prey and then whip that enormous tongue out to two times its own body length and unerringly catch their prey.

The universe is a self-ordering system with consistent regularities (constants) and that means these values and functions may be symbolized and codified as mathematics. All other animated organisms employ mathematics, without ever knowing they do. We do!

Natural mathematical constants as dictated by the physical potentials, are immutable. The first occurrence of a hydrogen atom pattern in the cooling universe was a mathematical physical event...

Every creation of a hydrogen atom results in a copy of the original.

IMO, at quantum scale the collapse of superposed states is a mathematical (not random) event. David Bohm identified this inherently mathematical preview of emergent reality from a superposed state as the Implicate Order.

 

[Write4U]

Just a musing.

In addition to be deterministically driven, can we make choices between several future deterministic paths?

If I say "I wanna be a doctor", I have set my own deterministic path of study which might take 6-8 years to come to fruition.

It would be like choosing which of several superposed states becomes reality in the future?

 

[iceaura]

It is irrelevant to the argument from determinism.
It is enough to know that if A then B is the only thing that can result.

The conclusion that there is no freedom of will does not follow from that.

However, to dismiss a conclusion, and to therefore question a premise, simply because you don't like the outcome, as you seem to be doing, seems unwarranted at this time.

The conclusion is questioned on the basis of not following from the granted premises - the additional assumption of necessary contravention of physical law, required to make the deduction, is not granted.

If the universe is probabilistic then predictability is nigh on impossible, even theoretically, yet the argument for the lack of free will still holds, unless, as said, one sees free will to reside within randomness.

Freedom of will would reside in the nature of the A - you said "if A", which in this case would be "if the mental apparatus of decision and willed behavior is causal, is determining B".

 

[Baldeee]

Sorry Baldeee. I didn't mean to put words into your mouth. (I'll let you exercise your free will in deciding what you want to say.)

No worries, even if I ultimately have no option but to accept.

I didn't mean practical predictability so much as predictability in principle. If somebody could know the state of the universe at time A with absolute completeness and precision (obviously an impossibility in practical terms), then we could know the state of the universe at succeeding time B.

Sure, predictability in principle is implied by strict determinism.

I'm not exactly sure what the 'if-then' is doing in 'if A then B'. Logical implication? Causal connection (whatever causality is)?

The "if-then" is stating exactly that if the inputs are A then the output must be B.
Causal connection, yes, but more than that it states that each time you have A you then get B.

Nor am I sure how 'if A then B' is different from 'predictability in principle'. If A and B are linked in this way (whatever it is) then knowing A would seem to enable us to know B too.

I'm not saying it doesn't imply predictability in principle, and to be clear, strict determinism does imply that.
My point is that predictability is a by-product only of strict determinism, whereas the argument presented works for the probabilistic variety as well, which is inherently unpredictable other than probabilistically.
Thus to focus on the predictability element is to actually limit the argument to just strict determinism.

Wouldn't chaos and inherent randomness contradict determinism?

Inherent randomness yes, but chaos no.
Chaos is simply the sensitivity of a system to starting conditions.
But this can be strictly deterministic and still be chaotic.
Inherent randomness, however, is indeterministic.
But the argument from determinism still holds for this probabilistic determinism, in as much as a random outcome in accordance with a probability function is still not considered a "free" choice.

If the nonlinearity of chaos means that even infinitesimal differences in initial conditions can lead to systems evolving in dramatically different ways, and if reality is inherently fuzzy at its smallest scale (uncertainty principle and all that), then determinism would seem to me to face a serious challenge. It might render determinism more of a metaphysical idealization than a plausible description of how reality behaves.

Strict determinism has more or less been debunked at that level.
I have no issue with that, but it is still a convenient argument to make: if one accepts the argument for the case of strict determinism at least as valid, then the next issue is whether one considers the probabilistic variety to offer any grounds for the will being free.

OK. I wasn't thinking of the practical notion of it anyway.

Ok.

I consider free-will to lie in our choices being the result of our own beliefs, desires and intentions applied to the circumstances we are in. Free will depends on there being some deterministic relation between our psychological states such as motivations, and our actions.

Probabilistic, sure.

But if the precise connection between A and B weakens and grows less precise as the temporal interval between them grows, the argument that long-ago states of the universe determine the smallest details of what happens today weakens as well.

In a strictly deterministic universe this connection never weakens, no matter how much chaos there is.
In a probabilistic universe then it weakens over time as you suggest, but the argument from determinism remains, in that the probabilistic nature is still random, and a random output still does not seem to offer any room for a free choice.
Hence looking at predictability as a proxy for the argument only applies to the strict determinism case, hence why I advise against that focus.

If temporally far distant A no longer precisely determines B, then any deterministic relationship between the two breaks down. So B's behavior isn't already laid out for it by A, by fate, or by God's will.

Agreed.
But in the probabilistic case, the route from A to B still does not seem to allow any freedom due to the route taken being randomly selected (in line with the probability function).
So unless one sees a random selection as a free choice then predictability has no real bearing on the issue.

If B is an organism like ourselves, B needs to apply its own cognitive resources to understanding the situation it is in and to behaving as best it can in the circumstances in which it finds itself.

Sure, but the question then is whether the application is free or again just a matter of randomness within the probability functions.

We might agree that those cognitive resources are the result of brain functioning and are themselves deterministic. But as I've argued, the free-willist needn't deny that. Free will depends on actions being determined by the actor's intentions, desires and will.

Caused, not necessarily determined (in the sense of strict determinism).
Further, this is where there is a change in notion of free will from the determinist sense to the compatabilist sense.
Neither view is incorrect, because they both use different notions of the terms and apply it accordingly.
And using their own terms, they are each correct in the applicable domain.
I have no issue with that either.
But I presented an argument from determinism, and per that domain I see no freedom (other than in the sense that an object in space has "freedom" to be wherever its inputs dictate).

Now you are putting words into my mouth. My view is basically that nobody knows at this point. What everyone seems to be doing is applying their own spins both to the raw material of experience and to the details of current scientific theorizing.

Apologies, it did seem as though you were dismissing the argument based on its conclusion.
If that was not the intention then okay, and the clarification is appreciated.

What I am arguing is that

1. Modern science doesn't make free-will untenable. I'm arguing for, if not the truth (which is something that probably nobody knows at this point), at least the plausibility of compatibilism.

And I would argue that it depends upon your notion of free will, and "free" within that context.

2. That in our situation of metaphysical ignorance about what's really going on, I choose to continue thinking in terms of free-will because doing so seems to do less violence to ethics and personal responsibility, and it is closer to my own (and most people's) intuitions of how people behave. It also seems less dependent on speculative metaphysical theory.

I understand completely, and in casual conversation this is exactly how I would use the term.
But I disagree that the alternative view is any more or less dependent on speculative metaphysical theory.
If one can provide arguments that covers all understood notions from physics about the nature of interactions, and starts with those as premises, then valid logic takes you to whatever conclusion it does.
It would thus be not dependent on metaphysical theory but from empirical evidence.
Alternatively one can choose to ignore those arguments and that starting point, and simply begin from the empirical evidence of how it appears and feels to us, which is what the compatabilist view is.
But some here take umbrage with the notion that this is what they are doing.
I do not see one view as right, the other wrong, though.
They are both describing exactly the same thing, but with different notions of the terms used.

 

[Baldeee]

The conclusion that there is no freedom of will does not follow from that.

The conclusion that follows is that, whatever you want to call free will, is not actually free.
And the logic is valid.

The conclusion is questioned on the basis of not following from the granted premises - the additional assumption of necessary contravention of physical law, required to make the deduction, is not granted.

There is no additional assumption necessary.
The deduction is quite clear: if A has the property of X, and if system B is made of A then it also has property of X, then if C is a system made of A then it also has property X.
This is fairly basic logic.
The conclusion is valid.
The only question to then consider is if the premises are sound.
No additional premises needed.
If you wish to question the soundness of the premises, feel free to do so.
But your rebuttal on grounds of needing an additional assumption is simply incorrect.

Freedom of will would reside in the nature of the A - you said "if A", which in this case would be "if the mental apparatus of decision and willed behavior is causal, is determining B".

Can you rephrase please?
"if A" does not seem to map to what you say it would be in this case, so I am unsure what you are actually saying.

 

[Sarkus]

As a physicalist and a bit of a reductivist, I'd say that our neurological process is compounded out of simpler components that probably do behave like that. The task of neuroscience is to account for how the higher abilities of human beings, the behaviors that we describe using our psychologistic vocabulary, arise from that 'machine-language' kind of level. How does the neural substrate generate perception, beliefs, self-awareness, linguistic meaning and all the rest? It's more of a research-project at this point than it is something that we actually know.

Of course.

I conceive of choice as what results from my own internal self-steering system. More specifically, it refers to behaviors to which my feelings, beliefs and intentions are relevant. (My internal system may regulate many physiological events in my liver or wherever, but I don't really consider those free choices if I wasn't consciously aware of them and my beliefs and intentions didn't contribute to determining them.)

So if your self-steering system is, unbeknownst to you, one-tracked, predetermined, etc, even if it felt like it wasn't, then you would still consider it a "choice" and an exercise of a will that is "free"?

Depends on what is doing the "railroading". If I commit to a single path as the result of my own choice, then my having committed to it doesn't do any violence to free will at all. If I say that my choice was the result of my beliefs, desires and intentions, I don't see any violence being done. It wouldn't be free will if it wasn't the result of those kind of things.

This seems again to suggest that to you a "choice" is that internal process which takes into account beliefs, desires, intentions and whatnot, and which ends up with an action taken. And that you would consider it a "choice" based on how that feels and regardless of whether it is merely following, unbeknownst to you, a one-tracked, pre-determined path, or not?

Those look like two different ways of describing the same thing. I prefer the free-will description because

A. It does less violence to how we naturally understand our own and other people's behavior and less violence to our ideas of ethics and personal responsibility.
B. Because it isn't the result of trying to make the entire universe conform to a speculative metaphysical theory.

Speculative? It's based on empirical evidence - at least the probabilistic variety of determinism (which is actually a misnomer given that it is inherently indeterministic - but I understand why it has been referred to as probabilistic determinism). I don't agree that it's trying to make the universe conform, but merely takes the premises and runs with it, wherever it may lead.
I also don't think violence to how we understand things is necessarily a bad thing, given that we can't help act (i.e. practical side of things) according to the compatabilist view. We can't suddenly stop our sense of free will (although maybe there are drugs that can do it? I don't know).

I say 'yes', but I don't know. It's all philosophical interpretations being applied to the raw material of experience. And to channel somebody called 'Sarkus', a lot of it will depend on how we conceive of 'free', 'determinism' and all the rest. Some interpretations might be more consistent with some ways of conceiving of things, other interpretations with others. So we need to inquire into which ways of conceiving of things are better justified and so on.

Justification comes from context rather than any absolute. And you are correct that it is all about interpretation, as noone is suggesting that we have no sense of free will. And maybe the solution lies in that word: "sense". Do we have a sense of free will? Both sides will/should (I hope) whole heartedly agree, even if they disagree as to what makes this sense what it is, or what is actually going on etc. Whether we have "free will" or not then becomes irrelevant because what matters, how we operate, think etc, is all about that sense.

I don't want to squish 'preset' and 'probabilistic' together that way. The way I conceive of 'probabilistic' is that the track is well defined for relatively short distances. (That's consistent with our intuitions about our actions being the result of our own immediate intentions.) The further we extend our view, the fuzzier the track and the more splayed out it is into a whole array of possibilities. And yes, I think that our decisions and choices have a lot to do with which of those possibilities is actualized.

I think Baldeee has set out why they can be "squished" that way, in that it's not a matter of predictability, which is a side issue, but whether the logic he set out holds for a given type of interaction. If one accepts that a probabilistic interaction is no more "free" than a strictly deterministic interaction then the logic remains valid for both the deterministic and probabilistic, irrespective of matters of predictability.
Otherwise one is suggesting that randomness allows, if not for an interaction to be "free", but for a system built from probabilistic interactions to be "free" - which gets back to the whole matter of what it means to be "free" etc. I.e. you would be questioning the soundness of one (or more) of the premises with regard probabilistic interactions/systems. I'm not for one moment saying that you shouldn't be questioning it, though. And if that is where a disagreement lies then at least it would have been identified as such.

Admittedly that's all speculative. But speculation is really all that any of us have to go on at this point.

The joys of internet discussions in matters philosophical.

 

[Yazata]

This seems again to suggest that to you a "choice" is that internal process which takes into account beliefs, desires, intentions and whatnot, and which ends up with an action taken.

Isn't that what pretty much everyone means when they use the phrase "free will" or "he freely chose to..."? The idea seems to be that the choice was intentional and the individual's own un-coerced doing. Nothing outside the individual's own decision process forced that particular decision. There's obviously problem cases where circumstances make that fuzzy by constraining the available choices, but that's the thrust of what people mean by 'free will'.

There's no need to interpret it as 'an event totally unrelated to causality'. That latter move seem to me to not only reduce 'free will' to a caricature, it also does violence to what people actually mean when they use the phrase. A choice has to be intentional and consciously willed in order to be an example of 'free-will'.

Speculative? It's based on empirical evidence

Physical determinism is a metaphysical theory built atop a body of empirical evidence. It's consistent with some of that evidence I guess, but it isn't logically implied by it. It's a bit of a leap.

at least the probabilistic variety of determinism (which is actually a misnomer given that it is inherently indeterministic

Yes, I agree with that. I guess that I prefer to call it 'probabilistic causation' I guess, for that reason.

I think Baldeee has set out why they can be "squished" that way, in that it's not a matter of predictability, which is a side issue, but whether the logic he set out holds for a given type of interaction.

I already addressed that. It is a matter of predictability, if we are talking about predictability in principle.

But let's stop talking about predictability for the sake of argument. Let's call it a one-to-one mapping, where event A is mapped onto a particular subsequent event B, which is supposedly determined by A. That's seemingly consistent with Baldeee's 'If A, then B'. (If it isn't, he'll tell me.)

In probabilistic causation, event A isn't mapped onto a single discrete outcome. A is mapped onto a probability distribution that might contain some likelihood of events B1, B2, B3 occurring and so on. So right there, we have lost the one-to-one mapping. It's a one to many mapping.

If we compound this by picking one of the B's that has some probability of happening, B3 say, and apply the probabilistic mapping to it, we get C1, C2, C3 and so on. And that's just for B3. Each of the other B's produces its own distribution.

Chaos and non-linear dynamics only compounds the difficulty. If even an infinitesimal difference in initial conditions can lead to a system evolving in radically different ways, B1, B2, and B3 might lead to dramatically different outcomes.

If we carry it out to Z, we will find that our A isn't mapped onto any particular Z at all. There isn't any 'If A, then Z'.

So determinism in both the 'predictability in principle' sense and the 'one to one mapping' sense seem to fail with probabilistic causation.

Certainly event Z was caused by something, it has some explanation, so it was determined in that sense. Event Z might not be mapped onto event Y with complete precision, but close enough. (That's where predictability comes in.) If we call event Y the actor's intention, it does no harm to free-will. But as we work back through X, W, V, U and so on, to events totally prior to and external to the actor, the mapping between each one of those and Z gets looser and looser.

 

[Speakpigeon]

exploratory setup

Hermann Weyl: The objective world simply IS, it does not HAPPEN. Only to the gaze of my consciousness, crawling upward along the life line [worldline] of my body, does a certain section of this world come to life as a fleeting image in space which continuously changes in time.

Max Tegmark: In the 1920s physicists explained away this weirdness by postulating that the wave function "collapsed" into some definite classical outcome whenever someone made an observation. This add-on had the virtue of explaining observations, but it turned an elegant, unitary theory into a kludgy, nonunitary one. The intrinsic randomness commonly ascribed to quantum mechanics is the result of this postulate. Over the years many physicists have abandoned this view in favor of one developed in 1957 by Princeton graduate student Hugh Everett III. He showed that the collapse postulate is unnecessary. Unadulterated quantum theory does not, in fact, pose any contradictions. Although it predicts that one classical reality gradually splits into superpositions of many such realities, observers subjectively experience this splitting merely as a slight randomness, with probabilities in exact agreement with those from the old collapse postulate.

[...] A mathematical structure is an abstract, immutable entity... If history were a movie, the structure would correspond not to a single frame of it but to the entire videotape. Consider, for example, a world made up of pointlike particles moving around in three-dimensional space. In four-dimensional spacetime --the bird perspective-- these particle trajectories resemble a tangle of spaghetti. If the frog [perspective] sees a particle moving with constant velocity, the bird sees a straight strand of uncooked spaghetti. If the frog sees a pair of orbiting particles, the bird sees two spaghetti strands intertwined like a double helix. To the frog, the world is described by Newton's laws of motion and gravitation. To the bird, it is described by the geometry of the pasta --a mathematical structure. The frog itself is merely a thick bundle of pasta, whose highly complex intertwining corresponds [in is view] to a cluster of particles that store and process information. Our universe is far more complicated than this example, and scientists do not yet know to what, if any, mathematical structure it corresponds.​

So it might depend upon whether an individual's "consciousness" is really migrating around through a vast, figurative maze or landscape of different body states s/he exists as or instead that "awareness" is simply distributed through all of them in static and "simultaneous" manner.

While the former might conform more to commonsense or what one experiences (i.e., that you seem to be transiting from one specious moment or different state of the body slash world to the next), I personally doubt it. From the standpoint that I don't consider "consciousness" to be a chunk of substance or essence oozing through hyperdimensional pipes or framework. We're slaves to what the brain of each body state "knows" in terms of its information processing. A discrimination of cognition can only be about a particular specious "moment" it applies to and not all the others, even if overall awareness is likewise distributed through or inherent in them as well.

But that said, the commonsense avenue might offer a possibility of unpredictability or arbitrary transition in terms of a mathematical structure that accommodated a multiverse or Julian Barbour's arguably different take on it (as opposed to conventional spacetime depictions). In terms of where "consciousness" treated as a nomadic essence would wander next. However, randomness like that wouldn't qualify as decision-making on the surface; a lot of additional proposals and arguments would probably need to be loaded underneath to make the case of will playing a role.

Sorry, there isn't much I could disagree with here except perhaps you could try to keep it shorter. I have a meal to prepare, you know.
And so I'm sure you replied to my post but I'm not sure you answered my question.
I certainly disagree with Max Tegmark's idea that "observers subjectively experience this splitting merely as a slight randomness". I certainly don't experience anything like this and I doubt anybody does. And whatever I experience in terms of free will, I don't even need quantum physics to explain it.
EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

Isn't that what pretty much everyone means when they use the phrase "free will" or "he freely chose to..."? The idea seems to be that the choice was intentional and the individual's own un-coerced doing. Nothing outside the individual's own decision process forced that particular decision. There's obviously problem cases where circumstances make that fuzzy by constraining the available choices, but that's the thrust of what people mean by 'free will'.

There's no need to interpret it as 'an event totally unrelated to causality'. That latter move seem to me to not only reduce 'free will' to a caricature, it also does violence to what people actually mean when they use the phrase. A choice has to be intentional and consciously willed in order to be an example of 'free-will'.

Good, at least someone understands what most people mean when they talk of their free will.
EB