And I've argued that there is a plausible alternative that it is a decision because you must go through a deliberative decision making process and that part of the process is imagining multiple possible outcomes.

And I've argued that determinism doesn't preclude imagined alternatives or will. Imagined alternatives and will are sufficient substitutes for your free will as a requirement for most normative concepts.*

The above engages your arguments.

*I'm in complete agreement that formally assigning ultimate responsibility is incoherent with determinism.

Would you call the choices that a tornado makes "good" or "bad"?

Could you please elaborate on how we "know" that free will doesn't exist?

A tornado isn't sentient and doesn't have the capacity to alter its behavior. Humans are sentient and can alter our behavior (but we don't have free will). Still, the effect of tornadoes on human well-being is objectively bad.


Like anything else, we of course can't know with 100% certainty that it doesn't exist, but we are basically certain that it doesn't exist because we know our brains are made of of atoms like the rest of the universe and are not separate from causality in any way. A better question would be, "how in the heck could free will exist?"

A brain can have an effect on itself, but that effect, even if it as in the form of conscious thought, was never ultimately caused by the brain(whatever that could even mean). The brain is just a part of the rest of the interactions of the physical universe, which, if not deterministic, are still highly predictable.

If you actually think about it, the notion of free will makes absolutely no sense objectively or subjectively. Thoughts come and go, and even if we are as conscious as possible in any given moment, why are we in some moments and not others? We can't choose anything; even if we wanted to make no choices at all and just lay in bed and do nothing, that would be a choice. We make choices, but we have no control over them.

Sure. It's an incoherent concept (when we include our intuitions about moral responsibility), regardless of whether determinism is true or false.

So nothing can ever equal more than the sum of it's parts?

Correct.

Edit: Well, maybe something could equal more than the sum of its parts in some sense, but even if the brain was like that, I don't see how that leaves room for free will. There'd have to be a ghost in the machine.

What if all those parts separately are capable of little or nothing, but when together they are able to do something very significant?

It's HARDLY incoherent.

And I'm tired of this weak line of argument that is all too common: well how COULD free will like that work?

**** if I know...but that's never been a good argument.

"Space can bend? How could THAT possibly work?"
"Atoms are divisible? How could THAT possibly work?"
"Space is infinite? How could THAT possible work?"
"Space time started, and didn't always exist? How could THAT possibly work?"

This has always been offered against things we don't yet understand. The libertarian doesn't need to explain how free will works: we don't know. That's what's interesting: we're working on how it could work. But you can't demand that we already have an answer worked-out before you'll even entertain the possibility! That's not how this works.

But to show that it's incoherent, you need to show how there's a logical or physical impossibility. No one's done that. Even if we posit physicalism, it doesn't follow that libertarian free will is impossible: perhaps there's a physical mechanism we have yet to discover that isn't deterministic, but isn't merely "random" either. There's nothing incoherent about libertarian free will: stop pretending that it is as a cheap means of argument. It's not fooling anyone (except the gullible).

Do you know what BEGGING THE QUESTION means? You're really good at it.

This is an almost satirically weak analogy. Maybe if space-time curvature, subatomic theory, etc, had been the standard doctrine for millennia with no satisfying account of how they might work, it would be more apt. But those things were all proposed in the teeth of established dogmas. In cases where they're subject to empirical investigation (as you are adamant this issue is not), empirical evidence swiftly followed. The situations don't compare at all. Not even if you regard the free will debate itself as ongoing for many centuries.

That's hardly my point, though. Since free will isn't an empirical question, there are strong disanalogies from the start. But my point is that the structure of the argument is the same: if you can't even guess at how it would work, then screw you, your theories, and the horse you rode in on.

Very weak objection. Philosophy is generally in the business of conceptual analysis and making fine distinctions. That's what we're doing: is choice, decision, normativity, etc. compatible with determinism? I think not, and I've given some arguments to that effect.

Does free will exist? NO ONE HAS ANY IDEA. That's why we're not arguing about that (in philosophy).

There does kind of come a point, though, where one side's failure to articulate its case satisfactorily becomes suspect, no?

In this classic discussion I am with durkadurka in the nondeterministic free will camp.


Each posting in this thread is the result of human free will. The precise structure and idea of each message was based on higher level human reason and thought that had formed intentions and made choices and constructed meaningful sentences. The major choices were to post or not, a choice of what idea to commmunicate, and a choice of how to precisely word the message. All this was done with the deliberation and freedom that composes "free will". Surely this is not an "incoherent" process. Those who want to claim that the precise messages were pre-determined would have the burden of trying to prove that they could predict future forum messages. It would be impossible with any reasonable degree of reliability. Determinism is limited, imo.

How do humans alter their behavior that is different from a tornado? Both, in your opinion, are deterministic and must follow a causal chain.

Maybe you can clarify what you mean by "can alter our behavior".

As Durka pointed out, begging the question.

But the same can be said of the determinism.

Why do you think this? It seems very counter-intuitive to me. I would say that I feel most strongly that I exercise my "free will" when I overcome pre-existing dispositions and tendencies through rational deliberation. Conversely, I feel distinctly "unfree" when I know what the rational course of behavior is, but fail to perform it because of impulsivity, compulsion, bias, or coercion. In fact, I feel most unfree when I end up acting in a way that I cannot predict or justify. In such cases it seems that the decision is generated outside of my conscious mind, by a process to which "I" have no access and over which I have no control. It helps me not at all if I know that this process is not deterministic.

Normally, when we assign blame or praise, the capacity for conscious rational deliberation is extremely important. In cases where this capacity is undermined, we say that there are "extenuating circumstances" or that the agent lacks "competence", and these factors mitigate his culpability.

Also, I'd just like to point out that once you start picking out observable phenomena as "salient manifestations of freedom", the door is wide open for empiricism. Not that this is a bad thing.

Not so much, I think. We know that (for our purposes) effects have causes. If LFW is parsed simply as an exception to that otherwise universal rule, and determinism as just saying 'no exceptions' then it's hardly unsatisfactory in the same sense, is it? I may not know how the magician pulled a coin out of that guy's ear, but my ignorance doesn't lead me to suppose it really did happen by magic.

There are some interesting experimental results informing my view. Basically, we're able to closely approximate game-theoretically optimal behaviour even when game conditions change without our being able to know. And when we try to consciously think about what we should do, we stop approximating the game-theoretical optima and start to do very poorly.

One explanation could be that when we're exercising our will, we tend to be irrational. Irrationality would then be a manifestation, in some contexts, of our will.

I agree that it's counter-intuitive; that's why it's so interesting.

Nope, that's an assumption. Nothing can come from nothing (ex nihilo, nihil fit) is an assumption. Why does every event need a cause? It's called the "causal thesis." More importantly for the LFW question, even if every event needs a cause, why does every event need a sufficient cause? (This was something Leibniz assumed.) The libertarian argues that our free will certainly has causes (who we are, our experiences, etc.) but it doesn't follow that these are sufficient causes for our behaviour: our will fills the causal gap.

Yes, as I just said, if LFW is parsed as an exception to a rule otherwise assumed universal, then its failure to present a coherent model is not equivalent to a failure to precisely model deterministic processes in humans.

No one's saying that they're equivalent: I'm saying that it's (very nearly) irrelevant.

Well Jib kind of did, or seemed to.

Both aren't necessarily deterministic, neither have free will. By "alter our behavior", I just mean we can be caused to think/act in a different way. Tornadoes can't, because they don't think.

EDIT: Essentially though, when addressing human behavior that is detrimental to society, it makes sense to view a criminal in the same way we'd view the behavior of a tornado; he/she had no control over his actions.

No; updating beliefs based on evidence. If the evidence suggests it to be extremely unlikely there is free will, we should assume "no free will" when faced with picking one or the other.

This is the first time I've heard of these experiments, so I have no comment. Do you have a link or something? I agree that it's interesting.

But I'm still struggling to understand how you reconcile the above view and your claim that libertarian free will is necessary for responsibility with the way rationality typically figures in attributing responsibility.