Free will is an illusion....?

[Hype]

I like twizzlers that is why I continue to post.

Good example of a completely unintelligible "reason".

[Juana]

I like twizzlers that is why I continue to post.

Good example of a completely unintelligible "reason".

and I'm not even drinking, but I did take my marinols so that may have something to do with my love of Twizzlers at this point.

[Hype]

Joseph Raz (huge guy in action theory, law, and moral philosophy) has a book called Engaging Reason ( http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/1 ... 0199248001 ), which is a collection of a bunch of his articles, and one of the examples he uses is a lot like yours:

[quote="Raz, Engaging Reason, "Incommensurability and Agency", p. 50"]So if I want to count the blades of grass in my garden, I do so because I think that this will take my mind off some upsetting event, or because the action has some other good‐making property. If I find myself drawn to count blades of grass but cannot think of any reason for doing so, I would certainly deny that this is a desire of mine. It is a force that seizes me in spite of myself. If I am overcome by it and perform the action, I would be right to say that I could not help it, though in a way it would be an intentional action. All I say, to repeat the point made above, is that anyone will recognize this as a pathological case. 16 In the normal case, if I want to have a drink because I think that it tastes good, and am then convinced (p. 56 ) that it does not, then I no longer want to have the drink. No loss or regret is involved. The desire disappears with the loss of belief in the reason.

There is always a reason for any desire. The statement that one wants to paint potatoes green is incomprehensible, not least to the agent himself, unless there is something in the way he sees the action—in his beliefs about it, its circumstances, and consequences—that makes it appear a sensible action to him. Not everything can be desired. Only what is seen under some aspect of the good can be.[/quote]

[Jasper]

Ever get the feeling you've been talking to a wall?

[Juana]

I talk to walls all the time... unfortunately they're people I supervise in some cases.

[LJF]

Ever get the feeling you've been talking to a wall?

the better question is, does the wall have free will?

[Pure Method]

So, I have a few thoughts/questions.

I have a question in regards to the mechanics behind the "will" (a.k.a. the event known as "choice") in the term free will. In reference to the vending machine example: would it be more suitable to say that at a given moment at a given vending machine, you have a X% likelihood of choosing item A, A Y% likelihood of choosing item B, and so forth? That is to say that, before time* (* all collisions of matter and energy large or small) passes, at the moment before a "choice" has set off its various effects, is there not the possibility that the eventual outcome could be any number or range of reasonable/explicable effects? My problem is contingency - though it gives my marxism fits, I do find reasonable explanations for how and why things could have or maybe even, according to the likelihood of an event, should have occurred otherwise - so is it a probabilistic universe or a unitarily determined one?

[mockbee]

Okay, Pure Method, here is my take today...... I am no expert, nor do I think one exists, but certainly someone can be more learned with sources and such than myself. I suppose I have sources, I just don't remember or know who/what they are......

I think this guy has a good thing to say here:

[quote="Raz, Engaging Reason, "Incommensurability and Agency", p. 50"]

........................There is always a reason for any desire. The statement that one wants to paint potatoes green is incomprehensible, not least to the agent himself, unless there is something in the way he sees the action—in his beliefs about it, its circumstances, and consequences—that makes it appear a sensible action to him. Not everything can be desired. Only what is seen under some aspect of the good can be.[/quote]

I personally don't believe there is free will, in the way people generally think about it. Sure, you can make whatever decision you want, you can balance a glass cup on your head if you wish, but there is also a path to be followed, and if you are balancing a glass cup on your head, just because I suggested it, well, I guess that could be your path, but........... I don't think it ends there. I seriously doubt that is your true path............ the path that the force has set out for you. If you continued on that path of putting glasses on your head and doing things for reasons that are counter intuitive to your already set reasons, the path that the force has laid out for you, you would become very, very despondent and depressed. That is NOT your life you are living anymore. It is a shell of yourself and your soul is slowly slipping away because you have chosen to ignore your inner truth. Everyone has an inner truth and if they choose to constantly ignore it and be hostile towards it, you become less and less yourself and become very angry and depressed. Sure, you have every capacity to follow this 'wrong' path, but in the process you become less and less intently human and become more and more despondent and depressed...........

Does any of that make sense? I don't know where free will fits in there, but more and more, I think free will, if it were a thing, is very bad............

Artemis' example of Alzheimer's patients having free will, if there was such a thing, is very apt.

It is more the rules of the game kind of thing, and you either follow the rules and most likely live a 'fullfilled' [not guaranteed happy, but your chances are far greater to be happy] life, or you choose not to follow the rules and......your life [well a better word might be your soul, or your inner workings] are crushed and depressed and despondent. The force is trying to kill you because you did not follow the rules, or maybe the force is just trying to give you friendly reminders.........

[Hype]

So, I have a few thoughts/questions.

I have a question in regards to the mechanics behind the "will" (a.k.a. the event known as "choice") in the term free will. In reference to the vending machine example: would it be more suitable to say that at a given moment at a given vending machine, you have a X% likelihood of choosing item A, A Y% likelihood of choosing item B, and so forth? That is to say that, before time* (* all collisions of matter and energy large or small) passes, at the moment before a "choice" has set off its various effects, is there not the possibility that the eventual outcome could be any number or range of reasonable/explicable effects? My problem is contingency - though it gives my marxism fits, I do find reasonable explanations for how and why things could have or maybe even, according to the likelihood of an event, should have occurred otherwise - so is it a probabilistic universe or a unitarily determined one?

Susan Wolf has argued that "free will" could be derived from a probabilistic universe. But the quickest objection is that this seems to render choice "not yours" either, since it will depend on some random quantum event triggering whichever probability happens to manifest.

If it were just a matter of strict probabilities, in the absence of something to push you away from the item with the highest probability, you will choose that. Luckily, quantum events don't have discernible macro-effects in brains. Brain-explanations given in terms of electro-chemical pathways are sufficiently predictive (and we can control these now anyway, with rTMS).

The question is still: can an explanation be given (in principle) for why you choose A rather than B?

If it can, then it's still not PURELY your choice, in the sense of your having being radically able to have done otherwise. (You never were able to do otherwise. Whatever explains your choice provides the conditions which served as the necessary cause of the outcome which did occur.)

The weak sense in which anything is "your choice" is if it is done intentionally, knowingly, and in accordance with your desires. But your desires aren't really "your choice" in that sense, anyway, since either they will be derivative of other desires (traced back to evolutionary/genetic/early-childhood inbuilt desires) or they will be inexplicable.

[mockbee]

(You never were able to do otherwise. Whatever explains your choice provides the conditions which served as the necessary cause of the outcome which did occur.)

The weak sense in which anything is "your choice" is if it is done intentionally, knowingly, and in accordance with your desires. But your desires aren't really "your choice" in that sense, anyway, since either they will be derivative of other desires (traced back to evolutionary/genetic/early-childhood inbuilt desires) or they will be inexplicable.

Isn't there a better choice and a worse choice though that we humans make as far as what is 'right' for our mind, body and soul. Obviously there are better and worse but you are saying mistakes never ever ever ever happen.............? I am referring to 'the force' or whatever we want to call it that controls all this craziness we call life.

That gay guy who lives in the south and has 5 kids with a very conservitive family and wife and is tormented inside his entire life about what a bad bad person he is, was absolutely without a doubt 'supposed' to live that life even though his inner workings kept telling him NO! NO! NO! NO...........!

[Hype]

(You never were able to do otherwise. Whatever explains your choice provides the conditions which served as the necessary cause of the outcome which did occur.)

The weak sense in which anything is "your choice" is if it is done intentionally, knowingly, and in accordance with your desires. But your desires aren't really "your choice" in that sense, anyway, since either they will be derivative of other desires (traced back to evolutionary/genetic/early-childhood inbuilt desires) or they will be inexplicable.

Isn't there a better choice and a worse choice though that we humans make as far as what is 'right' for our mind, body and soul. Obviously there are better and worse but you are saying mistakes never ever ever ever happen.............? I am referring to 'the force' or whatever we want to call it that controls all this craziness we call life.

That gay guy who lives in the south and has 5 kids with a very conservitive family and wife and is tormented inside his entire life about what a bad bad person he is, was absolutely without a doubt 'supposed' to live that life even though his inner workings kept telling him NO! NO! NO! NO...........!

I was trying to think of how to respond to your last post. This one helps clarify what you had in mind, I think. You're right that people have inbuilt preferences, dispositions, feelings, etc., and that pushing people to deny these can be extremely psychologically damaging.

In fact, I've argued, many times, that Christianity (and other religions, but Christianity is the largest, and most egregious of them) and the emphasis, especially in sects that rely heavily on converts (so-called "new life Pentecostalism" and other sects where most members are "born again") on a "radical transformation" of the person which occurs when they use their "free will" to "accept Christ", is the source of a huge amount of psychological torture and damage in the world. There are a lot of people out there who hate themselves because they are constantly being told that they can be different than they are in spite of the fact that (in actual fact) they can't be.

If you have, e.g., impulse control issues, or anger-management issues, you can't will yourself out of the dispositions that these are characterized by, not even by believing that Jesus is helping you. It may *feel* psychologically beneficial to have a religious component in your life if you are also doing other things that get actual results, and maybe it will even help facilitate real change. But only if you are engaged in something that is causing real physiological changes (e.g., cognitive behavioural therapy, stress relief, exercise, medication).

It would be really bad to continue believing that you were meant to do something for which your psychology/biology simply isn't suited. Of course some range of "change" is possible for a given individual... and especially as children, the limits on this are unclear... but there are limits, and these limits are determined in part by the physical constitution of the individual and also by the environments to which they are exposed.

[LJF]

[I personally don't believe there is free will, in the way people generally think about it. Sure, you can make whatever decision you want, you can balance a glass cup on your head if you wish, but there is also a path to be followed, and if you are balancing a glass cup on your head, just because I suggested it, well, I guess that could be your path, but........... I don't think it ends there. I seriously doubt that is your true path............ the path that the force has set out for you. If you continued on that path of putting glasses on your head and doing things for reasons that are counter intuitive to your already set reasons, the path that the force has laid out for you, you would become very, very despondent and depressed. That is NOT your life you are living anymore. It is a shell of yourself and your soul is slowly slipping away because you have chosen to ignore your inner truth. Everyone has an inner truth and if they choose to constantly ignore it and be hostile towards it, you become less and less yourself and become very angry and depressed. Sure, you have every capacity to follow this 'wrong' path, but in the process you become less and less intently human and become more and more despondent and depressed...........

Does any of that make sense? I don't know where free will fits in there, but more and more, I think free will, if it were a thing, is very bad............

I would say everything that I made bold from what you said would in fact prove that there is free will. You continue to say you choose, which to me means you are exercising your free will to do something. In your example you are deciding to not do what would be natural for you, again all of that to me proves that you are using your free will to do something.

You are arguing against free will, but to me you really proving that free will exists.

How can free will be a bad thing?

[Hype]

LJF, if individuals each had a 'free will', one way in which this could be bad is that it would entail capriciousness at a basic level. That is, if human behaviour is beyond explanation, intrinsically unpredictable (even in principle, or according to broad patterns), then we cannot have a true social science, nor can we ever hope to have progress in political systems.

But we do seem to be making progress toward true social science, and we do seem to have made progress (broadly speaking) politically, and people DO seem to be generally predictable. And a good thing, too.

[LJF]

LJF, if individuals each had a 'free will', one way in which this could be bad is that it would entail capriciousness at a basic level. That is, if human behaviour is beyond explanation, intrinsically unpredictable (even in principle, or according to broad patterns), then we cannot have a true social science, nor can we ever hope to have progress in political systems.

But we do seem to be making progress toward true social science, and we do seem to have made progress (broadly speaking) politically, and people DO seem to be generally predictable. And a good thing, too.

People are motived by basis needs, so yes to some extent they can be predictable. But it seems to me that you would like to put the human race in a neat little box with a bow on it. How fucking boring would that be. Why should everything have an explanation for it?

There is the herd mentality that influences people to want to be like everyone else. But even that you exercise your free will to fit in, but most people that do that aren't being true to themselves. We are all indivduals, with distinct thoughts and feelings.

Not sure how having free will would mean that we can't have a working political system. Do you want government to tell you when to eat, drink, sleep, etc?

Is your vision to have a world that is totally controlled and every thought or action predictable? That is truly scary.

[Hype]

Why should everything have an explanation for it?

Think about the alternative.

Take some phenomenon, Q. It could be painting potatoes green, or it could be eating a Twix.

If it doesn't have an explanation... it's what we in the business call a "brute fact" (I don't think there are such facts, but if you were right, then there would be). It just is what it is. But that isn't free will, is it? If you are painting potatoes green, or eating a Twix, and you don't know why... then surely this is LESS "your choice" than actions where you can explain why you're doing them. Your own actions would be unintelligible not just to others, but to yourself.

But if you can explain why you're doing them (as we assume we can for all intentional actions), then these actions are determined by factors beyond yourself.

The laws of logic govern these things. If I think: "If I am hungry, then I will go to the fridge and see what there is to eat AND I *am* hungry." Then it NECESSARILY FOLLOWS that I will go to the fridge and see what there is to eat.

Your view still seems motivated mostly by aesthetic or moral concerns, rather than facts... you seem to think a world in which everything is predictable (in principle, of course) would be "boring". I don't agree with that characterization, but even if it were boring, so what? What has that got to do with its being TRUE?

You also seem to think it would somehow be "bad" if people weren't somehow "special", in that they are exempt from the deterministic laws of nature. But so what? It may be bad (I don't think it is), but that doesn't make it false.

To Pure Method's concern about probabilistic laws (since quantum laws are all probabilistic, as are many sociological laws), I respond: probability doesn't resolve the issue of free will, since although probabilistic laws allow us to mediate uncertainty about an outcome, they do not function as a proper explanation, since (if left as merely probabilistic) we cannot say why X with probability 40% happened instead of Y with probability 60%. If that were all there were to the story we would just have to admit the existence of a brute fact that "sometimes things less likely occur, for no reason." But that is CLEARLY unsatisfactory. And it is of no help whatsoever when talking about the human capacity to act freely.

[Matz]

Okay, Pure Method, here is my take today...... I am no expert, nor do I think one exists, but certainly someone can be more learned with sources and such than myself. I suppose I have sources, I just don't remember or know who/what they are......

I think this guy has a good thing to say here:

[quote="Raz, Engaging Reason, "Incommensurability and Agency", p. 50"]

........................There is always a reason for any desire. The statement that one wants to paint potatoes green is incomprehensible, not least to the agent himself, unless there is something in the way he sees the action—in his beliefs about it, its circumstances, and consequences—that makes it appear a sensible action to him. Not everything can be desired. Only what is seen under some aspect of the good can be.

I personally don't believe there is free will, in the way people generally think about it. Sure, you can make whatever decision you want, you can balance a glass cup on your head if you wish, but there is also a path to be followed, and if you are balancing a glass cup on your head, just because I suggested it, well, I guess that could be your path, but........... I don't think it ends there. I seriously doubt that is your true path............ the path that the force has set out for you. If you continued on that path of putting glasses on your head and doing things for reasons that are counter intuitive to your already set reasons, the path that the force has laid out for you, you would become very, very despondent and depressed. That is NOT your life you are living anymore. It is a shell of yourself and your soul is slowly slipping away because you have chosen to ignore your inner truth. Everyone has an inner truth and if they choose to constantly ignore it and be hostile towards it, you become less and less yourself and become very angry and depressed. Sure, you have every capacity to follow this 'wrong' path, but in the process you become less and less intently human and become more and more despondent and depressed...........

Does any of that make sense? I don't know where free will fits in there, but more and more, I think free will, if it were a thing, is very bad............

Artemis' example of Alzheimer's patients having free will, if there was such a thing, is very apt.

It is more the rules of the game kind of thing, and you either follow the rules and most likely live a 'fullfilled' [not guaranteed happy, but your chances are far greater to be happy] life, or you choose not to follow the rules and......your life [well a better word might be your soul, or your inner workings] are crushed and depressed and despondent. The force is trying to kill you because you did not follow the rules, or maybe the force is just trying to give you friendly reminders......... [/quote]

is there a force as you call it that guides us, that's what I want to know and are we able to go against it or are we merely puppets in someone's game? Are all people that say "everything happens for a reason" idiots or on to something?

I like to believe that there is a force and that it's only guiding us, showing us things like here's the moment when you discover you love polo and that you're very talented at it and could possibly become a pro if you want. It doesn't mean you have to follow that path but it's a pretty good idea if you do.

If everything happens for a reason, I don't know, it would take some pretty good organizational skills to plan out 6 billion people's lives down to the minute every day.

[Hype]

Matz, one thing I would suggest is to avoid thinking of 'reasons' as solely in the purview of intelligent subjects (i.e. persons). When someone like me says "there is a reason for everything", I don't mean it in the bullshit "Simon Birch" (God I hate that movie) faith-based way where you think some supernatural mind has planned everything out for purposes, but rather, 'reason' and 'explanation' here are synonyms.

[Pure Method]

Can't a less likely event occur for a reason though? Change in weather (spanish armada), etc.? I just don't like the justification that event Q HAD to happen because it DID happen - this seems like circular reasoning.

[Hype]

Can't a less likely event occur for a reason though? Change in weather (spanish armada), etc.? I just don't like the justification that event Q HAD to happen because it DID happen - this seems like circular reasoning.

I didn't say (or at least, if I did say this, I didn't mean that literally) it had to happen BECAUSE it did happen... that would be not only circular, but also wouldn't get the causality right. Q (any event) had to happen because P, where P is, to use a technical phrase, the sufficient reason for Q. I didn't say this before, because I realize how abstract this can get, and it's difficult to follow abstract reasoning even for philosophers.

Of course less likely events can occur for reasons. In fact, on my view, if a less likely event occurs, it MUST occur for some reason. But probabilistic explanations are usually invoked to describe phenomena for which we don't know the sufficient reasons: usually highly complex (like the stock market) or highly difficult to measure events (like alpha-particle decay in atoms). The way probabilistic explanations are employed is precisely as a placeholder for a sufficient prior determinant, so instead of saying: Q because P, we say Q because x% likelihood that Q. To ask why Q happened rather than S, which had y% likelihood of occurring instead of Q, is, according to probabilistic models of explanation, not really answerable for the sorts of phenomena we appeal to probabilities to explain in the first place.

If you're interested, take a look at this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayes%27_theorem for an example of how some kinds of probabilistic explanation are supposed to go.

(My own view is that probabilistic models are useful but necessarily incomplete... so for practical purposes, we need to use them, but they're theoretically unsatisfactory.)

[mockbee]

(.......probabilistic models are useful but necessarily incomplete... so for practical purposes, we need to use them, but they're theoretically unsatisfactory.)

Like 1+1=2 is great for a 1st Grader; but you are hardly ready to study Calculus.


LJF, I have a question for you. Do you believe in the absolute Law of Gravity? Or is that wishy-washy science because you can raise your hand above your head. Or any other action that are seemingly inexplicable by gravity.


This is a very good discussion we have going here!

[LJF]

(.......probabilistic models are useful but necessarily incomplete... so for practical purposes, we need to use them, but they're theoretically unsatisfactory.)

Like 1+1=2 is great for a 1st Grader; but you are hardly ready to study Calculus.


LJF, I have a question for you. Do you believe in the absolute Law of Gravity? Or is that wishy-washy science because you can raise your hand above your head. Or any other action that are seemingly inexplicable by gravity.


This is a very good discussion we have going here!

no need to be a smart ass just because I have a different opinion then you about free will. Yes I believe in the law of gravity, but to test it I think you should hold a large rock over your head and let go. Then report back to us on the test results, if we don't hear from you I will assume the law of gravity works.

[Hype]

LJF, I'm not sure if this is what Mockbee might have had in mind, but what I take to be important about the recognition of universally applicable laws of nature (that is to say, not the local application of Earth's gravitational force, but the general laws which produce local gravitational forces wherever there is mass) is that in acknowledging their universal applicability, you subsume yourself under them.

Supposing you do not believe yourself exempt from any such laws of nature (physical, chemical, biological, and maybe even sociological laws), it is unclear how you can tenably maintain your view that your actions are in some sense, strictly speaking, independent of the natural causal order. I.e., spherical objects may of necessity roll down an inclined plane, radioactive elements may decay with predictable half-lives, predator-prey ratios among other animals may follow stable patterns which allow future prediction, but for you humans, well, humans are exempt from some of this, some of the time... But why? And how?

[LJF]

LJF, I'm not sure if this is what Mockbee might have had in mind, but what I take to be important about the recognition of universally applicable laws of nature (that is to say, not the local application of Earth's gravitational force, but the general laws which produce local gravitational forces wherever there is mass) is that in acknowledging their universal applicability, you subsume yourself under them.

Supposing you do not believe yourself exempt from any such laws of nature (physical, chemical, biological, and maybe even sociological laws), it is unclear how you can tenably maintain your view that your actions are in some sense, strictly speaking, independent of the natural causal order. I.e., spherical objects may of necessity roll down an inclined plane, radioactive elements may decay with predictable half-lives, predator-prey ratios among other animals may follow stable patterns which allow future prediction, but for you humans, well, humans are exempt from some of this, some of the time... But why? And how?

I'm sorry but I don't follow, are you asking me something or making a statement?

[Hype]

I'm not sure if I'm writing at too high a level, or moving too quickly, or what, but I thought what I said there, and what I was asking were pretty straightforward. I'll try again, with less words, and simpler.

I made two points (hence, two paragraphs):

1. Mockbee asked you whether you believed in gravity. You seemed to think he was being a smart ass. But I took his point to be this: if you believe in gravity, then you believe there are laws of nature that apply to everything, even yourself.

2. Since you seemed to agree that, at the very least, gravity applies to humans just as much as to rocks, you would seem to have no reason not to accept that all the other laws of nature apply just as much to yourself. Given this, it is hard to see how you could believe in 'free will', since that seems to imply that you are exempt from these laws in some way. So I asked you two questions:

a) Why do you think we are exempt from (at least some of?) these laws (at least some of the time?)?
b) How is this (exemption from laws of nature) possible (for humans, but nothing else)?

[LJF]

I'm not sure if I'm writing at too high a level, or moving too quickly, or what, but I thought what I said there, and what I was asking were pretty straightforward. I'll try again, with less words, and simpler.

I made two points (hence, two paragraphs):

1. Mockbee asked you whether you believed in gravity. You seemed to think he was being a smart ass. But I took his point to be this: if you believe in gravity, then you believe there are laws of nature that apply to everything, even yourself.

2. Since you seemed to agree that, at the very least, gravity applies to humans just as much as to rocks, you would seem to have no reason not to accept that all the other laws of nature apply just as much to yourself. Given this, it is hard to see how you could believe in 'free will', since that seems to imply that you are exempt from these laws in some way. So I asked you two questions:

a) Why do you think we are exempt from (at least some of?) these laws (at least some of the time?)?
b) How is this (exemption from laws of nature) possible (for humans, but nothing else)?

Yes you are just too smart for me.

I believe that not just humans but anything that is capable of thought has free will. To me making any decision on your own is free will. Great you don't agree, that is fine. If you aren't being forced to make a certain decision then you are exercising your free will. Sure past experience or whatever else plays into the decision making process, but that is still free will.

If I have to choose between A or B and I choose A because I think that is the better option for me. To me that is all free will. To you it isn't, cool.