Is free will possible in a deterministic universe?

[iceaura]

Noone has defined it as having to act supernaturally.

In a deterministic universe - you have.
Explicitly, in your multiple endorsements of Baldee's formulation of your argument (he labeled it "Premise 1", iirc - maybe 2?),
and directly, in your terms, as "doing other than it must".
I have quoted you many times, asserting and arguing from and assuming that freedom consists entirely of doing other than what the universe has determined must be done. You have posted that definition of freedom more than twenty times. You argue from it every time you argue at all.

All I've ever been doing is answering criticism of the position I have, and explaining why I think their analysis of it is flawed.

You have never done either of those things. You have instead repeated denials of the existence of such criticism and analyses.
Like this:

I have no particular intention of discussing a notion of freedom found in a thermostat, as I have already said countless times.

See? No argument, no answering, just denial.
And that strawman has been your one and only method of dealing with the nonseupernatural degrees of freedom found in human decision making. Denial of their existence.

Note, I said that he has failed to offer any notion that is not also found in a thermostat.

And since that is obviously not true -
you have been specifically and explicitly and repeatedly provided both theoretical existence and observed examples of logical levels in human decision making not found in thermostats, for one

- your continued denial of the reality involved has become an issue of its own, involving every single naive materialist on this forum.

 

[Quantum Quack]

In a deterministic universe - you have.
Explicitly, in your multiple endorsements of Baldee's formulation of your argument (he labeled it "Premise 1", iirc - maybe 2?),
and directly, in your terms, as "doing other than it must".
I have quoted you many times, asserting and arguing from and assuming that freedom consists entirely of doing other than what the universe has determined must be done. You have posted that definition of freedom more than twenty times. You argue from it every time you argue at all.

You have never done either of those things. You have instead repeated denials of the existence of such criticism and analyses.
Like this:
See? No argument, no answering, just denial.
And that strawman has been your one and only method of dealing with the nonseupernatural degrees of freedom found in human decision making. Denial of their existence.

And since that is obviously not true -
you have been specifically and explicitly and repeatedly provided both theoretical existence and observed examples of logical levels in human decision making not found in thermostats, for one

- your continued denial of the reality involved has become an issue of its own, involving every single naive materialist on this forum.

Do you think that the hard determinism Sarkus and Baldee are pushing fails the reality test?
To me, it seems that playing logic games is all very well and good but when it comes to the logic being applicable to reality it get's even better....

I think Sarkus and Baldeee need to stipulate whether they are discussing reality or pure logic as it appears to me that this debate you have going is constantly at cross purposes.

 

[Sarkus]

In a deterministic universe - you have.
Explicitly, in your multiple endorsements of Baldee's formulation of your argument (he labeled it "Premise 1", iirc - maybe 2?),
and directly, in your terms, as "doing other than it must".

No, that is the conclusion, as much as it is a conclusion that Socrates is mortal is a conclusion. Or would you claim that to be an explicit assumption as well, given that in that syllogism they are considering (by other premise) "a universe where all men are mortal"? Truly pathetic reasoning on your part, it really is. And it has run through three threads.
It seems no amount of pointing out your error will suffice, and you must continual your delusional ways - because that is what this is now: a belief on your part held in the face of contradictory information.

I have quoted you many times, asserting and arguing from and assuming that freedom consists entirely of doing other than what the universe has determined must be done. You have posted that definition of freedom more than twenty times. You argue from it every time you argue at all.

Because that is the conclusion that has been reached, not the assumption.
If you reach conclusion X, do you then continue to argue as though X is not the case? No, you continue as though X is the case (in the scenario premised), so that further deductive arguments, and the rest of one's thinking, remains consistent.
You are offering up a rather strange requirement if one is to ignore conclusions once reached.

You have never done either of those things. You have instead repeated denials of the existence of such criticism and analyses.

Well, this is evidence (if any more is indeed required) that you are simply blind to the explanations I have given as to why there is no "assumption of the supernatural".

Like this:
See? No argument, no answering, just denial.

There is no denial. You have offered an example of freedom that I say can be found in a thermostat, and I have no interest in discussing such. That is not denial. I am not saying it doesn't exist, I am saying it is a notion I find trivial, and not one I particularly want to discuss. When you can be bothered to offer anything more than an appeal to complexity, and hand-waving about logical levels, and well, you know, offer an actual argument as to why you are not merely talking about a notion of freedom found in a thermostat, let me know.
Until then...

And that strawman has been your one and only method of dealing with the nonseupernatural degrees of freedom found in human decision making. Denial of their existence.

It's not a strawman at all, and I am not denying their existence. How can I deny them when I say they can be found in a thermostat? It is an admission from me that I have no interest in discussing a notion of freedom found in a thermostat. Yet you seem unable to drag yourself away from responding to me to actually offer anything else.

And since that is obviously not true -
you have been specifically and explicitly and repeatedly provided both theoretical existence and observed examples of logical levels in human decision making not found in thermostats, for one

Again, handwaving about logical levels, and appealing to complexity. No actual argument from you. Just pointing to a phenomenon that in itself is not denied, and never has been (we do indeed go through a process of choice) but where the observation of the phenomenon does nothing to identify that the nature of freedom is anything other than that held in a thermostat. More complex, sure. That is not in dispute. But notionally no different... unless you have something to actually offer on that, or is hand-waving and appealing to complexity really all you have?

- your continued denial of the reality involved has become an issue of its own, involving every single naive materialist on this forum.

There is no denial of the reality. I'm sorry that I don't accept your interpretation of that reality as being the Gospel on the matter. It is quite clear you don't agree, but the continued fallacious criticisms you make against it is not going to get you anywhere, because they were identified quite early on for what they were: fallacious.
If you ever have anything other than that, though, do let me know.

 

[Yazata]

It seems to me that there are (at least) two different issues here:

1. How do we define "free will"? If it means "ability to do otherwise", I think that "if I had chosen to" is kind of implicit. Acts of free will are acts that are chosen. Epileptic seizures aren't free will, because they aren't products of choice. Hence a certain kind of determinism is kind of implicit in the idea of free will, in the sense that it's our choices that determine our actions. And presumably it's our desires and beliefs that determine our choices. All of that is entirely consistent with cognitive psychology and with common sense.

2. Is the universe "deterministic" in such a way that past events precisely determine subsequent events? Does that hypothetical determinism hold true at all time scales? Does it hold true precisely without any chaos or probabilistic elements sneaking in?

If we could produce a totally accurate description of past states of the universe, could we produce a one-to-one mapping of those prior states and temporally remote subsequent states? So... if we knew the initial conditions of the universe at the big bang and the "laws" that supposedly determine the evolution of subsequent states from prior states, could we predict (even in principle) that James will choose to stop for the red light today? Does the universe really work that way?

My own view is that I accept #1, but have considerable skepticism about #2. Number 2 seems to me to be an expression of a certain kind of 19th century classical physics and to effectively be a form of creationism, since everything that happens anywhere and anytime in the universe was supposedly determined at the moment of creation, by the universe's initial state and the physical laws that describe the evolution of those states over time.

But... factor in chaotic dynamics in which even infinitesimal differences in initial states can result in dramatically different subsequent histories, and factor in the possibility that the universe might be kind of fuzzy at the microscale, with quantum superpositions and stuff, and the unfolding of the universe might start to resemble the weather more than a row of dominos toppling over.

Knowing what the local weather outside my window is now allows me to predict what the weather will be in ten seconds to an exceedingly high degree of accuracy. Knowing the weather now allows meteorologists to predict the weather a few days out, but with considerably less accuracy. But knowing the weather now is almost useless in predicting the weather in 100 or 1000 years.

So it seems to me that determinism might have different plausibility at different time scales. If we imagine the history of an evolving system as a path in an abstract state-space, we can imagine a bundle of histories that start out arbitrarily close to one another, in almost identical initial states. My guess is that this bundle of histories might very well diverge over time, perhaps dramatically.

Determinism makes very accurate short-range predictions possible. Do this, get that, our familiar causality. States map on to states with near one-to-one precision. And as I claimed in #1 above, I think that "free will" actually requires that kind of local causality if our choices are to determine our actions and if our beliefs, desires and motivations determine our choices.

But on longer time-scales, I question whether determinism holds true at all. I question whether one could map a description of the state of the universe in the more distant past onto a precise description of the state of the universe today. Things seem to be much more fortuitous than that. There's a random element involved.

Which leaves the middle range of temporal intervals. Are people simply puppets with their strings being pulled by their surrounding environment? (There's an obvious political motivation in all this which arises at that point, regarding the possibility of 1984-style totalitarianism and the efficacy of social change programs in creating a new man.)

I think that what happens is what we see happening every day. Our environment, upbringing and so on obviously influence our range of choices, along with our beliefs and motivations. But they don't determine them in any one-to-one manner. So while our environment influences us, it doesn't determine us. It doesn't reduce us to puppets.

 

[Baldeee]

1. How do we define "free will"? If it means "ability to do otherwise", I think that "if I had chosen to" is kind of implicit. Acts of free will are acts that are chosen. Epileptic seizures aren't free will, because they aren't products of choice. Hence a certain kind of determinism is kind of implicit in the idea of free will, in the sense that it's our choices that determine our actions. And presumably it's our desires and beliefs that determine our choices. All of that is entirely consistent with cognitive psychology and with common sense.

Noone would dispute the equating free will to acts of choice, but the ability to choose does not mean that there is an ability to do otherwise.
The choice could simply be our conscious interpretation of the unfolding of events that are as mechanistic and lacking of freedom as the actions of a thermostat.
More complex a process, yes, but not necessarily one that is able to do otherwise.

2. Is the universe "deterministic" in such a way that past events precisely determine subsequent events? Does that hypothetical determinism hold true at all time scales? Does it hold true precisely without any chaos or probabilistic elements sneaking in?

This is a premise of the discussion.
I think everyone is pretty clear that the universe is not deterministic.
That is not the point, here.
The starting point, however, considers the deterministic universe, because that is in essence the simplest case.
If the will can be free in a deterministic universe then that effectively covers the indeterministic universe.
If the will can not be free in a deterministic universe, then if one considers the will to be free in an indeterministic universe, what is it about the indeterminism that allows the will to be free?
But for now we still seem very much to be talking about the premised deterministic universe.

So with that, do you think freedom is possible in the deterministic universe, where everything can be mapped out as you suggest, and is predetermined from the very start?

 

[Yazata]

Noone would dispute the equating free will to acts of choice, but the ability to choose does not mean that there is an ability to do otherwise.

I was trying to arrive at an understanding of what I conceive free will to be. I'd say that an act is free, not if it has no relation to preceeding neural decision processes, but if it was the result of those processes without any external coercion. 'Ability to do otherwise' would have to include an unstated 'if I had chosen to' in order to qualify as free will. (Free will isn't just freedom, it's also will.) It's about lack of constraints that would have prevented me from exercising my will in that way.

The choice could simply be our conscious interpretation of the unfolding of events that are as mechanistic and lacking of freedom as the actions of a thermostat.

I'm inclined to think that a thermostat is a misleading analogy to our human decision process. A thermostat has no decision process and its behavior is pretty much determined by its environment. I see no evidence that human beings are the same kind of puppets.

This is a premise of the discussion.
I think everyone is pretty clear that the universe is not deterministic.

Then why make it an assumption in your and Sarkus' argument, if neither of you two really believe it?

I'll happily agree with you two that if we assume as an initial premise that the universe is entirely deterministic, then freedom would seem to be an illusion. But, if everyone is pretty clear that initial premise is false, then...

If the will can not be free in a deterministic universe, then if one considers the will to be free in an indeterministic universe, what is it about the indeterminism that allows the will to be free?

My strategy is to define freedom as I did above, as the product of one's one internal decision process. Which may indeed be neurological, may involve a deterministic relationship between will and action, or between motives and will.

I'm drawing a big circle around that stuff and calling the circle "me".

But if a deterministic universe becomes less and less plausible as we extend the scale out past the boundaries of "me", then half of the free will vs determinism antithesis evaporates. The problem with the free-will/determinism problem isn't that I determine my own actions, but the idea that the surrounding environment and the universe's past control me like a puppet. I want to say that it's the process occurring inside the circle that determines my behavior and I call that free will.

Though I don't deny that the surrounding environment has a profound influence on the process (and on me). It might push me in certain directions even if it doesn't precisely determine my reactions.

So the neurological decision process finds itself in what appears to be a somewhat random, unpredictable and fortuitous universe, demanding that it react to the situations in which it finds itself in real time. Often there's nothing preventing it from choosing differently, apart from its own motives, beliefs and desires.

But for now we still seem very much to be talking about the premised deterministic universe.

Not me. And while I haven't read all 900 posts in this thread by a long shot, I sense that the thread-starter QQ wasn't accepting that premise either.

So with that, do you think freedom is possible in the deterministic universe, where everything can be mapped out as you suggest, and is predetermined from the very start?

It seems to me that freedom would be impossible in such a universe. But I'm not convinced that's the universe that we live in.

 

[iceaura]

Because that is the conclusion that has been reached, not the assumption.

I quoted you assuming it, arguing from the assumption to reach other conclusions, endorsing Baldee's explicit labeling of it as a premise, etc.
Quoted. You. Assuming.
Pointed directly to the specific step in your reasoning where the assumption was invoked, in order to draw some conclusion.

Here is Baldee making the assumption you endorsed yet again:

The choice could simply be our conscious interpretation of the unfolding of events that are as mechanistic and lacking of freedom as the actions of a thermostat.
More complex a process, yes, but not necessarily one that is able to do otherwise.

We observe - record, measure, write down, log on automatic monitors, etc - that human decision making involves logical levels not available to any thermostat.
The inability to have done otherwise, meanwhile, (clarifying the timeline) has been stipulated to by everyone - it's taken for granted, assumed, as always on these threads. There's no reason for anyone to mention it, as nothing depends on it except supernatural freedom - which is irrelevant here.

One more time:

We have been quite clear in the freedom we are discussing: "ability to do otherwise" (or words to that effect).

You guys have been quite clear, yes, about what you have assumed prior to discussion.
So that's settled. All the naive materialists here are assuming, defining, freedom as supernatural - the ability to violate physical law, act contrary to what a deterministic universe has determined, have done otherwise than natural law determined.

But now a new wrinkle - expected, of course, because the miraculous is what a naive materialist needs to escape from their materialism, but still startling:

I think everyone is pretty clear that the universe is not deterministic.

Now what?
Until now everyone was assuming that the universe was deterministic. I know I was, explicitly,

partly because it helps focus the argument - something badly needed, as one can read above -

partly because that is my actual opinion once granted the necessary qualifications and careful definitions necessary for handling quantum level effects and chaos and similar sources of inherent unpredictability,

and partly because it makes no difference to the nonsupernatural freedom involved in freedom of will as it exists in the real world, so the complications of it would be a waste of time in my posting.

It seems to me that freedom would be impossible in such a {predetermined} universe.

Why?
That is the supernatural assumption, with all its contradictions and logical muddles, and it is neither necessary or helpful.
(to repeat an illustration of the kinds of muddle involved, since you are not going to read up on the discussion: notice the elimination of temporal sequence from invocations of determination via cause/effect -
in this world supposedly cleared of degrees of freedom by predetermined events, future events are often what has been predetermined - e.g. the future color of a traffic light -
so the net situation is that future events are causing/limiting/determining present human capabilities and decisions - reaching back from the future to eliminate the capabilities and freedom of choice between them that is otherwise apparent and observed in human beings.

That is not how causation and determination are normally conceived, to understate matters).

 

[cluelusshusbund]

It seems to me that freedom would be impossible in such a universe.
But I'm not convinced that's the universe that we live in.

Good ponts Yazata... an im also not convienced that we live in a deterministic universe.!!!

 

[Baldeee]

I was trying to arrive at an understanding of what I conceive free will to be. I'd say that an act is free, not if it has no relation to preceeding neural decision processes, but if it was the result of those processes without any external coercion.

So a thermostat is "free" if nothing prevents it from switching on or off at the right temperature?

'Ability to do otherwise' would have to include an unstated 'if I had chosen to' in order to qualify as free will. (Free will isn't just freedom, it's also will.) It's about lack of constraints that would have prevented me from exercising my will in that way.

The will is a process, sure, and there's no issue with equating that to one of making a choice.
The issue is whether the process of the will, of making a choice, is actually one where we have the ability to do otherwise.

I'm inclined to think that a thermostat is a misleading analogy to our human decision process. A thermostat has no decision process and its behavior is pretty much determined by its environment. I see no evidence that human beings are the same kind of puppets.

The thermostat isn't an analogy for the process but for the nature of the freedom involved.
The process of a thermostat is of course different.
It is not conscious, it makes no choice.
But the freedom you are ascribing to the will above is the freedom found in a correctly working thermostat.
Hence the analogy.

Then why make it an assumption in your and Sarkus' argument, if neither of you two really believe it?

It is a starting point.
It is the simplest of universes to try and assess.
If we can't get agreement when looking at the simplest then what hope is there when looking at more complex ones.
I, for one, think that freedom is incompatible with a deterministic universe.
I also think our universe is inherently indeterministic (probabilistic) when looked at in isolation from any notion of a multiverse, and I also think it is a universe that remains incompatible with an ability to do otherwise: the addition of probability/randomness does not seem to offer any scope for it.
But there are some who think freedom is compatible with a deterministic universe, and if they are correct then it should be a small jump for free will being compatible with an indeterministic one as well.
So, for simplicity, at least at this stage, we have focussed on the deterministic universe.

I'll happily agree with you two that if we assume as an initial premise that the universe is entirely deterministic, then freedom would seem to be an illusion. But, if everyone is pretty clear that initial premise is false, then...

Possibly some don't.
If the conversation was between only you and I then we would both be on the same page to this point: a deterministic universe is incompatible with the ability to do otherwise.
We would then move on to the indeterministic universe - and let's pick the probabilistic version to begin with.
If our views now differ as to whether this universe is incompatible or not with freedom then we have isolated that which one of us thinks allows freedom - i.e. the probabilistic nature.
And so the discussion would continue.
But we are not at the initial agreement yet in this thread, or any other of these threads.

My strategy is to define freedom as I did above, as the product of one's one internal decision process. Which may indeed be neurological, may involve a deterministic relationship between will and action, or between motives and will.

So why do you think this notion of freedom is incompatible with a deterministic universe?

But if a deterministic universe becomes less and less plausible as we extend the scale out past the boundaries of "me", then half of the free will vs determinism antithesis evaporates.

Sure, if we are in agreement that freedom is incompatible with a deterministic universe.
This is still where the debate lies.

The problem with the free-will/determinism problem isn't that I determine my own actions, but the idea that the surrounding environment and the universe's past control me like a puppet. I want to say that it's the process occurring inside the circle that determines my behavior and I call that free will.

Of course, just like it is the cogs in a watch that determine the behaviour of the watch.
But how much of that behaviour is "free", an actual ability to do otherwise?
In a wholly deterministic universe you seem to agree that there would be no freedom (just asking for confirmation)?
So what is it in an indeterministic universe that allows the freedom to arise?

So the neurological decision process finds itself in what appears to be a somewhat random, unpredictable and fortuitous universe, demanding that it react to the situations in which it finds itself in real time. Often there's nothing preventing it from choosing differently, apart from its own motives, beliefs and desires.

How do you know that you could have chosen differently?
As part of the choice-making process, the will, we create forward-looking scenarios of what each option might result in, and we select from the one that matches our desire, etc, but how do you know you really could have chosen otherwise?
This is the crux of the issue, it seems, and this would seem to be the issue irrespective of the nature of the universe.

Not me. And while I haven't read all 900 posts in this thread by a long shot, I sense that the thread-starter QQ wasn't accepting that premise either.

Yes, he did.
This thread is an off-shoot of one in which that was very much the assumption, and one only needs to read the OP to see that the deterministic universe is premised once again.

It seems to me that freedom would be impossible in such a universe. But I'm not convinced that's the universe that we live in.

I'll take that as confirmation of my question above, which then leaves the question of what is it about the indeterministic universe that gives rise to an ability to do otherwise, an ability that you agree is not there in the deterministic universe?

 

[iceaura]

The issue is whether the process of the will, of making a choice, is actually one where we have the ability to do otherwise.

Only if one has assumed that freedom involves the ability to do other than has been determined, other than one must - that freedom is supernatural.

Without that assumption, no such issue is relevant here. The supernatural "ability to do otherwise" is beside the point, in other words. It's not an issue here. It's a waste of bandwidth.

Like this:

But how much of that behaviour is "free", an actual ability to do otherwise?

The supernatural assumption cripples again - makes a logical mess of things.

The existence of capabilities not used is a matter of observation at a particular time - like the existence of chairs, rocks, etc., only on the appropriate logical level - the level at which they participate in cause and effect. (If you need illustration: rocks do not exist at the quark level. Capabilities do not exist at the rock level. But quarks, rocks, and capabilities do exist in this universe).

1) Capabilities exist, physically, in the same sense as other observed things and their physically existent observer. They are things. Their existence at a particular moment, when they are observed, can be questioned only in the sense that the existence of an observer and an observable universe can be questioned - that is, not on a science based forum. On a science based forum, a driver approaching a traffic light has - while approaching the light - the capability of stopping, and the capability of going, both, at the same time. Obviously only one will be employed - that has no bearing on the existence of the other one.

2) The assumption of a (pre)determined future is the context of the posts here, a premise of every argument - that also is not in question. Neither is it relevant.

Meanwhile, the process of making a decision and acting willfully on it, as humans do and are observed doing, has many significant degrees of freedom in complex organization. Among the causal factors whose effects can only be described and analyzed by taking their degrees of freedom into account are dreams, memories, personality traits, and similar internal mental events at high logical level - contents of personal identity, constitutive features of the deciding and willful entity.

These collectively appear to fit the decision process with at least some and possibly all of the properties of freedom one could expect, except one: the supernatural ability to act other than physical law and causation determine. Since that is easily discarded from consideration, being both unnecessary and logically muddled, we have an interesting topic for discussion - - - as soon as the supernatural assumption has been dropped.

 

[TabbyStar]

Is it true that radioactive decay is in direct conflict with determinism? Nuclear physics is not a strength for me. I wish to learn more. From my perusing internet determinsm topics, I remember reading that decay was the only true random event known to mankind (the writer's opinion of course).

Can it be true? Ty in advance for replies helping me understand.

 

[iceaura]

If there is but a single course of events, how is there any “genuine alternative” to that one course of events?

By observation of the existence of capabilities at a given time, and the existence of a mechanism of choice between them, both common features of human decision making.

Of course. Your attention has been directed to that physical fact many times.

What do you think “predetermined” means?

It means "determined", in a deterministic universe such as we have assumed. Causes come before effects, see.

 

[iceaura]

Is it true that radioactive decay is in direct conflict with determinism?

No. Radioactive decay is effectively random, and the laws of probability are as rigid and inescapably determining as anything we have. Witness the operations of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

 

[TabbyStar]

No. Radioactive decay is effectively random, and the laws of probability are as rigid and inescapably determining as anything we have. Witness the operations of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

To me if radioactive decay is truly random, that would refute determinism. Again though, my understanding is from countless internet reading sessions. Decay is simply not, "predictable"...or lacks cause. That in itself breaks the long chain of cause/effect which I thought was the foundation of determinism, or at least causal determinsm.

 

[Quantum Quack]

To me if radioactive decay is truly random, that would refute determinism. Again though, my understanding is from countless internet reading sessions. Decay is simply not, "predictable"...or lacks cause. That in itself breaks the long chain of cause/effect which I thought was the foundation of determinism, or at least causal determinsm.

How many causal chains are involved in a single event, do you think?

 

[TabbyStar]

How many causal chains are involved in a single event, do you think?

Just one. Cause/effect

 

[Quantum Quack]

Just one. Cause/effect

At any given moment, universally, how many events are happening?

 

[wegs]

Is it true that radioactive decay is in direct conflict with determinism? Nuclear physics is not a strength for me. I wish to learn more. From my perusing internet determinsm topics, I remember reading that decay was the only true random event known to mankind (the writer's opinion of course).

Can it be true? Ty in advance for replies helping me understand.

Random...or unpredictable? If it's random, then determinism would be false. If it's unpredictable, then determinism doesn't conflict with radioactive decay, in my opinion. The game of semantics to create the universe of my choice. haha

But, seriously. Couldn't that be true?

 

[TabbyStar]

At any given moment, universally, how many events are happening?

Infinite imo. Those are different, discrete chains though. Chains can split, or fork though imo. Are you trying to help me understand better or just baiting?

 

[Quantum Quack]

Random...or unpredictable? If it's random, then determinism would be false. If it's unpredictable, then determinism doesn't conflict with radioactive decay, in my opinion. The game of semantics to create the universe of my choice. haha

But, seriously. Couldn't that be true?

But only if you have a genuine chooser..... hee hee