A discussion of free will, morality, determinism, nature, etc. between "God" and a man. Feel free to treat the role of God as a literary device. You can skip past the sponsorships to 3 minutes, 14 seconds. I think there are some new ideas here.

Curt reads "Is God A Taoist?" by Raymond Smullyan (with commentary)




PairTheBoard

Not really. If determinism is true and we “reconsider” punishing criminals, that reconsideration is really an illusion — it was just as determined as our prior action of punishing criminals was. We should get no credit for becoming wiser and treating criminals better; we had no choice but to do so. Conversely if we learn that determinism is true yet still punish criminals, we deserve no blame. Again that course of action was completely determined.

Is it that "notions of free will are incompatible with thinking correctly"?

Or is it the notion that "notions of free will are incompatible with thinking correctly" is incompatible with thinking correctly?

Or is it the notion that "the notion that "notions of free will are incompatible with thinking correctly" is incompatible with thinking correctly?" is incompatible with thinking correctly?

Or is it the notion that "the notion that "the notion that "notions of free will are incompatible with thinking correctly" is incompatible with thinking correctly?" is incompatible with thinking correctly" is incompatible with thinking correctly?

Maybe it's that thinking correctly is incompatible with thinking correctly


PairTheBoard

I did not say that we get moral credit. In fact, I expressly denied it.

Cognition (considering and reconsidering) is no more shown to be an illusion from the free will than the workings of an internal combustion engine are. "But it was determined that I'd end up in Cleveland, so automobiles are an illusion."

Nope. At least no more than notions of free will are incompatible with spelling phoenix correctly.

Sorry, but I do not understand why you have chosen to juxtapose these two quotations.

Now you're talking.


PairTheBoard

Or maybe the illusion of free will is itself an illusion?

Free will is not an illusion. At least not in the ordinary sense of the word because as with a mirage or a magician's trick, illusions are the sort of things we can see through with some knowledge or by changing perspective. That's definitely not the case if free will isn't real. If what appears to me as a free choice isn't in fact real, then we're basically delusional in thinking that it is since we have absolutely no way to experience reality any other way. Sure, we could understand what's going on, as with someone who hears voices can understand that what they're hearing is coming from subconscious, but that understanding won't make the voices go away anymore than a deep belief in materialism will make choices seem inevitably compelled.

It needn't be the source of free will, but it may be a necessary condition that underpins the metaphysics of free will.

The "free" in free will inherently implies the independence of the willed decision/choice from a preceding causal chain, else it's not "free" and bound to an existing causal chain (as you've pointed out) and hence not free. But then it follows that a "free will system," which in this case is the human agent making choices, has the unique ability to be the progenitor of new causal chains that lead back to the agent - the human with free will.

Could you elaborate on this. What are the metaphysics of free will and how are they impacted by quantum indeterminacy? Thanks.


PairTheBoard

I don't know what they are. All it means is that whatever it could be, part of its underlying mechanism must be something like quantum indeterminacy.

I think it boils down to a wholly materialistic view of consciousness and how that squares with the possibility of free will. A materialistic view of mental states simply means that all mental states we experience are simply the byproduct of the physical arrangement of atoms that makes up our brain. That is, there is a one to one correspondence between physical configurations of the brain and the mental state that the owner of that brain is experiencing.

Now, under Newtonian mechanics (pre-quantum), ALL physical states of any system are fully determined by pre-existing states and the laws of physics. Every single possible brain configuration, and thus every single mental state one experiences, is caused by the prior state of the brain, it’s environment, and the laws of physics. With this conception, it is difficult to see how free will could enter the picture. You can certainly experience the mental state of “I am going to raise my left arm thirty seconds from now”. It will seem to you to be an example of free will — I certainly could have decided not to take this action. However, the combination of a materialistic consciousness and Newtonian mechanics implies that your action was not caused by your decision to take it, but instead by the prior state of your brain and it’s environment.

There seems to be good reason to want to keep the materialistic view of consciousness. When a probe is placed into certain parts of the brain and a voltage applied there, the owner of the brain experiences a mental state, the nature of which depends on the location and magnitude of the stimulation. It is conclusive— changes to the physical configuration of a brain produce changes in the mental states experienced by the owner of that brain. There is no argument; this is fact. One still might maintain that there is some non physical phenomenon involved that changes simultaneously, so materialistic consciousness is not proven by this, but certainly it is suggested.

Still, we find it hard to escape the feeling that free will is real. If we accept both materialistic consciousness and Newtonian physics, this cannot be the case. That is why quantum randomness is always brought up in the free will debate. It does not imply that we have free will, but it makes free will compatible with physics and materialistic consciousness— not all states are completely determined by prior states.

But knowledge of the physical is not knowledge of the mental. For example, to know what happens in the brain when someone eats chocolate is not to know what chocolate tastes like, as discussed in this thread.


That works both ways. For example, committing stuff to memory over a period of time will enlarge your hippocampus.

Chocolate tastes pretty good.

Our language is telling. What does chocolate taste like? We're asking for a comparison. It's similar with color. We know what it will look like when we see a combination of red and green light. It will look like yellow, even though there is no yellow light present.

Someday we might know enough about the brain to predict whether certain eating foods will result in a pleasant or unpleasant taste. We might know enough to be able to predict whether two different foods will have similar tastes. Will this wine taste like chocolate? It might depend on a specific person's brain "wiring", but if we know enough about what is happening in the brain, we might be able to predict things like this.

Is this a generally accepted notion in physics? It seems then that any causal chain can be disrupted by some random process, right?. So I don't see how anybody is talking about using determinism to predict human behavior with 100% reliability.

I believe it's widely accepted. However, see jason1990's post above where he points out Boem's model which recovers determinism at the expense of locality. There's also "soft determinism" which depends on the statistical predictability of things at the macro level and minimizes the prospects of quantum events triggering chaotic processes.


PairTheBoard

Imo free will or not doesnt really matter. Its like my body being made up of molecules--so what. Molecules are on a different plane of existence than my reality, i could get that info wrong and it wont effect me at all (I could incorrectly think molecules are pixie dust). I think its the same with free will. Its on a different plane of reality than the one humans operate in so its interesting but not important for making any decisions. Also quantum mechanics.

Yes, we are just engaged in an academic exercise here. In fact, I've seen some who just redefine the problem away by saying what we have is what free will is. I want to find the exact words on this, but it's buried in a video by a guy who produces thousands of videos on unrelated topics.

This is ultimately my point. The ingredients of the mechanisms behind something like free will could very well have a basis in our understanding of quantum mechanics.

The reality could be simpler than that, however. Free will itself could simply be a stochastic system, like a finite, multi step Markov chain, where each person is their own chain. Ontologically, this would exclude free will from causal dependence. It may not necessarily be the case that "free will agents" (us) are generators of causal chains, if free will is in fact a complicated Markov chain.

We know we can amplify quantum randomness to have macro level effects. If you play online poker at a site that uses laser light to generate random numbers for shuffling, your fate has been affected by quantum randomness. It affects who gets genetic mutations and some cancers, since the production of ionizing radiation by radioactivity, and the absorption of it by atoms in our bodies, is a quantum process. Does it affect human decision making directly? We don't know.

The problem is that if our actions are non-deterministic only because of quantum randomness over which we have no control, that's not free will. We don't "will" any of it. We're just puppets on mostly deterministic strings that sometimes get randomly blown around.


What libertarian free will proponents claim is that the universe is non-deterministic because free will exists. Not the other way around.


PairTheBoard

So I went back to durkadurka's post where is it all laid out.

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...40&postcount=7

I'm not sure I see a cause and effect relationship between free will and determinism, one way or the other.

I have a hard time believing free will is possible without the existence of "non-physical phenomena", and once such things are allowed, the debate becomes uninteresting to me, since literally nothing can be ruled out.