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'.
The question is whether that free will is actually free. We could label a computer program as "free will" but it doesn't mean it is free. It can take in all the internal considerations it wants to - it's own internal temperature, cpu usage etc - but I'm sure you would not refer to it as free. So my point is that whatever you call it, the question remains as to whether it is free. Just calling it free does not make it so. We call it free because, in my view, it
appears or
seems free, not because it necessarily is. And that is the difference between the the two views: do we judge something as "free" merely on how it feels or on something else, such as the underlying physics?
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'.
Labelling something as free does not make it so. I also have zero interest in arguing from consequence. I also never said that it need be interpreted as "an event totally unrelated to causality". Not sure where you got that from.
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.
It is a body of empirical evidence pretty much overturned with the advent of QM, I think, but the apparent randomness of QM still, in my view, doesn't invalidate the argument. If you want to suggest that the argument fails because of the premises - for example you think that physics is not limited to deterministic or probabilistic interactions - then go for it. Suggest alternatives, and let's see where they go. But, as stated, as Baldeee has stated, if you accept the premises, and you think the logic is valid, then the conclusion must surely be accepted, whatever that conclusion happens to be.
Yes, I agree with that. I guess that I prefer to call it 'probabilistic causation' I guess, for that reason.
Understood. I should probably get into the habit of the same, but I find it lacks the deterministic notion of the same input leading to the same probability function.
I already addressed that. It is a matter of predictability, if we are talking about predictability in principle.
No, it really isn't a matter of predictability at all. The argument still stands for probabilistic causation, and that is not predictable in principle, other than probabilistically. So if the argument stands for the case where it is unpredictable in principle, how then can predictability be an important matter?
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 the same post as the logic he set out I believe he specifically states that he includes in the term "determinism" the probabilistic variety, and hence predictability is not an important matter. If one wishes to limit the argument to the strict determinism then yes, predictability is just another way of referring to it. But if the argument holds, as he argues, for both a predictable and unpredictable type of interaction, then the matter of predictability does not seem to be of importance.
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.
Yes.
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.
Yes.
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.
I agree.
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'.
It still maps to a probability function for Z, though, even if the possible Z's are far more than the possible A's, B's, C's etc.
So determinism in both the 'predictability in principle' sense and the 'one to one mapping' sense seem to fail with probabilistic causation.
Yes, but my point is that the argument put forth by Baldeee still holds for probabilistic causation, unless one sees a random choice as being free?
So predictability, or lack thereof, is a red-herring.
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.
I don't disagree with any of this. Probabilistic causation is inherently indeterministic and only probabilistically predictable. However that does not fundamentally alter the argument, unless one sees a random selection as somehow offering the ability for something to be "free".
As JamesR said in seeming agreement to this: "
Randomness - even true quantum randomness - can't save the day if you're an incompatibilist." Maybe you have a different view to this?
)
. Good for us we are quick learners.......
