Neither do legal definitions have anything to do with determinism. What gets you off the hook legally is being coerced in some way or another. Gun to your head kind of thing. However, there's been quite of bit of philosophical discussion about the relationship of free will to determinism.


PairTheBoard

Right, i.e. you weren't acting of your own free will. Like Patty Hearst. However much philosophical discussion there has been, it doesn't necessarily follow that free will vs. determinism isn't a false dichotomy, unless the meaning of "free will" is twisted to mean something that it doesn't.

I was under the impression that the "Quantum Solution" to randomness was truly random.

From Google:

The quantum random number generator works on the basis of quantum theory. A single photon is directed at a semi-reflective mirror—according to quantum theory, whether the photon is reflected or whether it passes straight through the mirror, is an entirely random process.

This is Pokerstars random number generator.

Legally speaking, I suppose so. However, I don't think that applies to "free will vs. determinism". Patty could have chosen differently if she was willing to risk her life.

From google:
--------------------
Hearst was tried and convicted in March 1976 for bank robbery and felonious use of firearms. Sentenced to seven years, she spent the next three years partly in prison and partly at liberty (during appeals). She was released in February 1979 after U.S. Pres. Jimmy Carter commuted her sentence.
===========

When they picked the jury, I wonder of the defense counsel asked prospective jurors what their philosophical positions were.


PairTheBoard

I suppose I am taking the view of compatibalism, which is indeed that free will vs. determinism is a false dichotomy, and seems to me consistent with how "free will" is used in language, which includes legal speak. Philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday.

In any case, I don't see what quantum theory has to do with it (interesting and worthy though the discussion is, in its own right). That seems to me like reductionism gone mad.

Quantum theory can provide a way out of the deterministic universe argument against free will. Essentially if one is not a Cartesian dualist, the only thing that exists is matter and its physical state. Pre- quantum mechanics, the states of matter appeared to be completely determined by past states. Under a materialist philosophy, humans are nothing but (very complex) pieces of matter. Specifically all of what we call mental states are simply the result of arrangements of matter. If all arrangements of matter are determined directly by past arrangements of matter, and if our mental states are nothing but manifestations of such physical arrangements of matter then it is hard to see any way that free will could be a possibility.

The indeterminacy of quantum mechanics provides an escape hatch for a materialistic view of the universe that could allow free will. Quantum indeterminacy does not imply free will of necessity- my arguments about randomness being predictable in aggregate might well, just as one example, spoil the idea of materialistic free will. Coin flips are random; the percentage of heads (or tails) flipped is not, so long as you flip enough coins. Similarly the behavior of individual atoms, electrons, etc., is certainly random, but we are made of exceedingly large numbers of such randomly behaving entities; our mental states still are determined.

Of course that only applies to a materialistic view of the universe. Personally I see no evidence that anything else exists that influences the universe, but a non-materialistic universe certainly leaves room for free will.

Not quite, as there are loopholes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdeterminism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden...ariable_theory

You are, I think, correct.

The problem is whether we can hate on *******s, or praise nice people. Given that we praise pretty people for being pretty, and clever people for being clever, it isn't much of a problem.

Whether such things can be sufficiently justified is a separate point. Adding in that people behave randomly (in accordance with QM) doesn't seem to be at all helpful.

I thought people were terrible at behaving randomly.

Do people with MS shake randomly?

edit: Honestly, how do you define random anyways? Nothing last forever, so everything is going to change at some point, so even if it is random now we know it wont be random forever?

If everything is going to zero energy entropy, then nothing is random? How could it be random if we know the ending?

Were just looking at it on the wrong time scale. Bad monkey!

The randomness of a sequence, e.g. of 0s and 1s, is defined in terms of the relative length of the computer program that will output it. E.g. the sequences 0000... and 0101... are generated by relatively short programs; pi in binary, not so much. Informally, random sequences are defined as those that are not generated by programs shorter than them; the information contained in them cannot be compressed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algori...andom_sequence

we might be equivocating here.

I was only speaking to whatever teeny tiny eensy weensy amount of difference in human behavior that would exist between classical physics/chemistry/whatever and qm.

My beer drinking is never random.

Buddha said that the difference between classical physics/chemistry/whatever and qm was no greater than the difference between a burp and a fart.

As usual I have to explain things even to the high falootin Phds in this thread.

It is true that there has to be some sort of randomness in physics to allow "free will". If there wasn't this randomness, then a theoretical perfect physicist (himself not made up of normal physical stuff so as to avoid self-reference) would be able to figure out whether you will eat a hot dog tomorrow. But this just means that randomness is a necessary but NOT a sufficient condition for human free will. (In a moment you will see that I add the word "human" because my words don't apply to animals.)

Put another way, Stremba is saying that IF there is no randomness THEN there is no free will. But that doesn't logically imply that IF there IS randomness there IS free will. What it DOES imply though is the contrapositive of Stremba's thesis. Namely that IF there IS freewill Then there IS randomness. And it is this thesis that I think is actually more interesting. The idea that if we are sure there is free will, we can deduce that there is randomness in physics even if we had never encountered quantum theory.

And I contend that it is easy to know that there is free will by going back to Stremba's and Tim's statements. No free will would mean that the perfect physicist could predict the fate of tomorrow's hot dog EVEN if he told you his prediction! He could do that for all other animals but obviously NOT you.

Thus, from pure thought we now see that (A) There is free will for conscious humans, (B) Some physics must be random, and (C) even God can't perfectly predict an individual human's future (unless it is somehow logically impossible for him to always communicate honestly with those humans.

You are forgetting the "will" part of "free will."

You do have the "free" part down pat, which is fairly rare.

What if a free will decision is neither predictable nor random but based on the conscious "quality" of the person's decision making experience? According to the "hard problem of consciousness" such "qualia" have no apparent explanation by way of physicalism.


PairTheBoard

What about robots?

Who built the robots? What is programmed?

Perhaps humans are just God’s little robot people.

My words apply to entities that can consciously understand the prediction about themselves and then choose whether or not to make it true. I assume there are no robots, animals or aliens in that category, but it wouldn't change my point if there was.

the concepts of consciousness, memory, cognition and problem solving do not lead to free will. They don't even point suggestively in the general direction of free will.

If you are equating those things with free will, that is fine however. That is what the compatibilists and also what the common man on the street does.

I agree. I broke this apart to make following the logic easier. It's the classic cause-and-effect logic.

This oft repeated statement basically bumps into a Russel paradox. Do you see why?