Free Will

[henry quirk]

Henry is not a materialist(physicalist).

Frankly, I don't know what labels apply anymore. Every time I seem to get a handle on the jargon someone comes along and redefines everything. Ten years ago you could have a decent argument -- determinism vs free will -- and pretty much everyone knew what everyone else was sayin'. Today, determinism is pasé, the physical and material are divorced, and free will is tortured even more, the square peg twisted to fit into a round hole Reality.

What I know is this...

Reality is material, physical, an agglutinate of causal chains.

Quantum spookiness is for crap.

Natural, random, selection is for crap.

Reality is not amoral: purpose is embedded within it.

The mind/free will is not material or physical, is not the result of, or synonymous with, the brain while at the same time is dependent on the brain/body to be causally efficacious.

The best (poor) example I can give: the body/brain is hardware, the mind/free will is software, neither can function without the other, neither is the source of the other, the two are compatible but wholly different.

Substance (the brain/body) is mired in cause & effect; information (the mind/free will) is not.

Man is a composite of substance (flesh) and information (spirit), each contributing what each does to form person or agent.

I say we're each a libertarian causal agent, a free will. I say, we each frolic among the causal chains, startin' some, bendin' some, endin' some. I say there's a Prime Mover, a First Cause; I believe it is a person (a causally efficacious free will), very much like us and very different from us.

I believe there is a fact about man (his self-possession or ownness) that naturally leads to moral fact (that some things are not ever permissible between and among men; that man is self-responsible).

I believe man skews toward the moral naturally, but -- as free will -- can choose to be immoral.

I believe men are men, women are women, and neither can turn into the other.

I believe a large, triple pepperoni & mushroom pizza, with beer, is mebbe the finest meal ever devised.

I believe duct tape can be used to fix anything.

I believe coffee & cigarettes are the epitome of true civilization.

I believe the side by side shotgun is the most versatile, robust weapon imaginable.

I believe free men ought never have dealings with slavers ('cept to end them).

I believe the only intrinsic value in Reality is the person; everything, anything, else is valuable only becuz a person declares it valuable.

While not christian, I believe Christianity has much to admire (and you ought not conflate it with the bad christian).

I believe democracy is mob rule, a kind of pleasant slavery.

I believe...that I've rambled and strayed off topic.

'nuff said.

[SpheresOfBalance]

When faced with a decision, the mind calculates the best choice. The calculation might be wrong due to lack of information, wrong information, or wrong logic, but it comes up with the choice that it thinks is the best. Then it chooses this decision. However it cannot help but choose this. It has no choice but to select this. It is predetermined to choose what it thinks is best. Is this free will? Is there something wrong with my idea?

Largely the universe is deterministic, however knowledge/ignorance can change our decisions. We can choose to accept or not accept any particular bit of widely accepted knowledge, that's our choice, our free will. It's how we've learned/evolved.

While the universe determines many things for humans, we are all born equally capable of choosing our own path within the universal matrix. For humans, unfortunately, another determining factor exists. Environment plays a big role in determinism. Never the less within all that deterministic framework we can decide for ourselves.

We can choose what to believe, as belief is often not born of truth(facts). Some believe in theism, some atheism, some agnosticism, and some have changed in which of those they believe. One would think that either one or some combination thereof, would be the absolute truth of things. So one or more of them must be incorrect and/or correct. We can and do choose which of these to believe. Sometimes as we age and gain more knowledge, we switch what we believe, and that is where free will lives. It's where neither the universe nor environment can definitely dictate. We weigh the particulars for ourselves and come to a conclusion based upon what we 'want' to believe, because with many beliefs there are no necessarily valid premises that yield necessarily true facts. At least not in terms of empirical data.

[Belinda]

Henry Quirk wrote:

RC, is mind subject to cause & effect? Is mind just another event in a causal chain?

That is the big ontological question which neither Immanuel Can nor RCSaunders has asked.

So you're not actually reading what either of us writes, B? Because we've explained this aplenty. RC says, in a sort of round-about way, "Yes," and I say, "No."

Henry is not a materialist(physicalist). I may not in the end agree with HQ, but I applaud his getting to the point.

If you'd read what we write, you'd see we've been "to that point" for a long, long time now.

But whatever.

True, IC, I don't read all the posts. I tend to read Henry's as he is amusing and brief despite that he cannot or will not use the academic terminology, which would cut through interminable discussions.

I wish you and RCSaunders would use the generally accepted academic terminology and then restate your ontological preferences.

Causal chains in time sequence are only a part of determinism. Other parts of determinism are causal circumstances which operate at the same time as the decision; and nomic connections i.e. many events are necessary parts of the same unchanging cause.

[Immanuel Can]

I wish you and RCSaunders would use the generally accepted academic terminology and then restate your ontological preferences.

Why not just say what we mean, in plain speech, instead of resorting to obscurantist jargon like that?

Orwell said that academics often hide their folly in convoluted verbiage (big words). And he pointed out, that by resorting to such tactics, they not only fool the naive in their audience; they often even conceal from themselves that their ideas are weak...or even appalling.

I can write in such a way as nobody here will understand, if you like. But I find it contemptible to do that.

Causal chains in time sequence are only a part of determinism.

Causality is absolute, in Determinism. In that view, there is a single ultimate explanation for every phenomenon. And that's equally true if that one cause is posited as an autocratic god figure, or as what Weber called "the iron cage" of material causality.

The rest is just detail and distraction, according to Determinism.

Why does Belinda go to the store? The Big Bang, plus the chain of causes subsequent, made her do it.

Why did Belinda go to the store? It was the unbending will of a god.

C'est toujours la meme chose.

[RogerSH]

Identity through time is a special case of causation: something is as it is at a later time because that it is how it was at earlier times.

It's actually not. Identity (using the word to refer to sameness, not human "identity") does not cause anything. It's simply a recognition that an item at this chronological time is the same one as at a prior chronological time.

But nothing in that relationship has been "caused." It's purely descriptive.

The point is that identity over time, assuming that it is a necessary identity and not a purely contingent one, is a special case of causation. If something is in state S1 at time T1 and also at later time T2, but would be in state S2 at T2 if it was in state S2 at T1, that is a necessary identity, then the later state is determined by the earlier one.

you can imagine a separate mental world that is unable to intervene in the physical world.

Two problems with that hypothesis: one, it's ontologically Dualist. There's no stipulation in a dualistic view that says how the two "realms" must relate to each other, simply that there are two realms. Two, it's evidently the case that the mental and the physical DO appear to interact or "intervene," and every single person alive is mysteriously inclined to act as if they do -- as you are acting right now, by discussing this.

You must have written that before reading on. I make exactly those two points later: yes, it would be a dualist universe, and evidently not the universe we live in. But we can imagine it to see the implications.

Among the things that might influence the choice are: personal preferences; knowledge of the situation in hand and of the likely consequences of each possible choice; lessons gained from experience; some new insight gained by combining past observations; previous mental commitments (e.g. on moral grounds) to make such a choice in a particular way; and so on. You may not have been aware of some of these things, but nevertheless they enter your conscious state when you turn your mind to the matter in hand. These are all things that make up the resources of your personal consciousness, that make it YOUR choice in particular.

But it's not an exhaustive list that you have given here.

We must include such things as, "intuition," or "creativity," or "acting on an intention to produce something new." And what about "fear of possibilities," or "curiosity"? There are lots more mental states that those you've listed.

Of course…which is why I said “and so on”! But in each case they must have arisen out of something that was already in your mind, not anyone else’s. My intuition won’t help your decisions. My feeling curious won’t motivate your exploration.

They at least potentially contribute to the expression of your will.

Of course.

Because all these things come from previous experiences they depend on causal links from the past to the present.

Well, though, the truth is that that claim is merely presumptive, not demonstrable. In point of fact, many of them, like the ones I've listed, appear to project new realities, not simply achingly play out old lines of cause. It looks very much like creative mind-states project into reality things that have not yet existed, and then are somehow capable of creating them in reality, in the physical world.

Explaining novelty is a problem for the inanimate world just as much as for the living one. The former is full of things that didn’t exist at the big bang. There must have been a moment when a soap bubble appeared in the universe for the very first time, for example. This was not the result of somebody imagining it. This is why I have elsewhere stressed that determinism has to treat the world as having numerous structural levels. In the right circumstances, entities at one level can come together to create novel entities at a higher level. Multi-level causality doesn’t consist of “lines” or “chains”. That just isn’t how the physics of complexity works. Why shouldn’t mental entities (ideas, concepts…) be treated in the same way? See also my comments on Picasso below…

Typically, none of these causes would be determining of your decision on their own, but only combined in your consciousness with all the other contributory causes to construct a new state of mind that comes to a decision. What could “agency” be but this?

It could be quite a few other things, actually.

I don't deny that the past may furnish some of the elements that are combined into innovation, invention and creativity. But the combinations and permutations that ensue actually bring about totally new things.

Isn’t that exactly what I am saying? I don’t imagine for a moment, as some writers seem to, that the different contributory causes are combined as an algebraic sum. The word “construct” emphasises that we are talking about new structures emerging from the old. Yet none of the contributory structures would be there if they weren’t the result of some earlier mental states.

[I’ve moved this quote down a bit] Are you familiar with Jaegwon Kim's ideas on this? … Is that your view?

I’m not familiar with that name, but brain => mind isn’t my view anyway, but rather that an account of what the brain does and what the mind does are two equally valid accounts of the same thing going on. Causality is a notoriously slippery concept, but if we confine it to the sense that the effect follows the cause, that clearly cannot apply to the monist account of the mind/brain relationship. Once the brain state has changed, where is no other material effect that could be occurring that can be described as the mind state changing.

(So when you say that to a determinist '"the will" has to be no more than a very odd way we describe a physical step in an inevitably physical chain of causes-and-effects', the answer is that what is so utterly different from other combinations of causes is that it takes place in the conscious mind. If you use language that fails to make this distinction, of course it sounds odd.)

It doesn't merely "sound" odd: you can see, above, it creates the most implausible, counterintuitive, awkward kind of causal description…

… not, as you can see above, unless you insist on introducing a quasi-dualist causal sequence between the brain and the mind.

The brain doesn't even really need the mind to exist. And in truth, it doesn't.

In the same way that neurons don’t need the brain to exist, and atoms don’t need neurons to exist. But we certainly need to talk about higher levels of structural organisation to be remotely intelligible.

*Conversely, consider some choice that simply comes into your mind at whim (in circumstances where there is no need to mentally question the choice using the resources noted above), for no reason at all to do with the fact that it is you and not some generic person. Since it happened for no reason...

There's the flaw. What does it mean to say something happened "for no reason"? The Determinist has to say that such a thing is impossible: "for no reason" would mean "without prior physical-causal chain." But the free will advocate would say the same: there's no such thing as "for no reason," but "reasons" include the initiatives of a personal mind.

(Actually, as I have explained, the educated modern determinist wouldn’t talk about chains, but “for no reason” to most of them would mean “due to a random quantum event, which in itself has no identifiable prior cause in the physical world.”) But more importantly, you are missing the point that I am speaking about the mind here, not the brain. The aim is to draw conclusions that are equally valid under monist or dualist assumptions. So when I say “for no reason” I mean “for no mental reason” irrespective of whether there is a corresponding neurological reason.

The free will advocate says that Picasso's "Guernica" or "Blue Guitar"were produced in accordance with the physical laws of paint and canvas. But physical laws of paint and canvas are in nowise capable of producing "Guernica" or "Blue Guitar." "Guernica" and "Blue Guitar" were conceived in the mind of Pablo Picasso before he employed the physical laws of paint and canvas, and he produced unique results because he was Picasso, and not Braques or Cezanne or Joe Blow. Without Picasso, there would be no "Guernica" or "Blue Guitar."

Exactly! And without there being some person with the inheritance and experiences of Picasso, there would be no Picasso! Just because we can’t trace the web of mental causes doesn’t mean that it is absent. If it were, Picasso’s mind would be featureless and not capable of anything. Even if you believe that “Picasso’s inheritance” needs to include some unique soul-component as well as the genes, the argument remains the same.

"If a 'free' act be a sheer novelty, that comes not from me, the previous me, but ex nihilo, and simply tacks itself onto me, how can I, the previous I, be responsible?"

The problem with this objection is in its construction of the problem. Nobody thinks a will happens "ex nihilo." Nobody thinks there's such a thing as "for no reason." It's just that the free will side includes personal causes in its more general account of causality, and Determinism excludes them from even being a possibility.

William James was a psychologist who died well before Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, so he certainly meant, as I did, “no causes” to mean “no external or personal causes”. Which makes his remark wholly pertinent. [“Nobody thinks a will happens ex nihilo”. Tell that to the neuroscientists who ask their subjects to raise their arms at some entirely random time, and think they are investigating free will!] But the important point is that you seem to agree that decisions reflecting a will are not uncaused, just differently caused, and that difference involves consciousness - hence, in a sense, being caused by the whole person.

But the objection then reverses savagely. For if I am nothing but the sum of prior physical forces, THEN what is the basis of my alleged "responsibility"? There is no "me," no "I" to be responsible for anything. A long chain of prior causes forced to be done what was done. There is no personal agency in there for us to blame, and none to praise if "good" things happen, either.

I’m sorry but I simply do not buy that theory of responsibility! It’s a big subject (see Chapter 8 of my “New Thoughts on Free Will”!) but in a nutshell, we can be responsible for a decision if and only if we are conscious of making it. Responsibility cannot be separated from consciousness.

Now, let us for the sake of argument [1] assume dualism of the usual kind, with a mental world that is able to affect the material world in some way, as well as being affected by it. Now suppose [2] it was the case that uncaused events don’t occur in the mental world. This in itself would not make the mental world per se deterministic, since mental events can be caused by material events;

No: it wouldn't.
Because free willians have "personal causes" in their account of causality. So to say "uncaused events don't occur in the mental world" is only to say, "no event happens without either a prior physical reason OR a personal decision." But it does not imply "uncaused" events.

but if [3] we also assume away quantum uncertainty,

We don't need to: it's actually irrelevant to the question. Quantum uncertainty does not tell us anything about how the will operates.

Well, the Hammeroff/Penrose theory suggests exactly that it does, consciousness being generated by a form of quantum computation, but more to the point, if there are cases where a passing alpha particle from a nearby bit of radioactive material tips the balance of some brain process, that could be an uncaused decision (since the moment of breakdown in the nucleus is not attributable to any prior fact in the universe). I’m just saying, lets ignore such cases for the sake of simplicity.

By contrast, suppose we amend assumption [1] and suppose that although there is a separate mental world which is affected by the material world, it can have no effect on the material world in its turn. Then the material world on its own would be deterministic – nothing would have no cause.
So I repeat: determinism (causal closure) of a system only denies freedom to an agent that is not part of the causally-closed system.

This doesn't follow.

No, it precedes! It is a basic physical principle. One way of looking at it is that determinism can be expressed as constancy of information within the system. Implementing a decision made outside the system would add information to the system, which contravenes the assumed constancy, so is ruled out. However, implementing a decision made within the system just transfers data from one part of the system to another, so doesn’t change the total, so is not ruled out.

If the system is Deterministic, then there is no "agent" and no "freedom"...especially not in a "causally-closed" system.

That certainly doesn’t follow. To say that a particular system is deterministic tells us nothing about anything that is not part of that system. There could be an agent outside the system with freedom to make choices about other things, but NOT about the deterministic system.

So what I claim to have demonstrated here is that a dualist who accepts that mental events are (differently) connected causally, should accept that the combined universe comprising the material world plus the mental world could be deterministic, without denying free will to the mental world.

[Immanuel Can]

The point is ...

Thank you for your thoughtful response, Roger. I regret that I am, at the moment, running short of time; and I don't have the kind of writing time this would deserve. If you don't mind, could I put off responding for a bit? I know that's irritating, but the alternative of cracking off a rush job and not really doing justice to it seems unfair, as well.

I'm not forgetting or ignoring. I promise to revisit this as soon as time affords. Perhaps we can consider our thoughts being on hold.

Again, apologies for the delay.

[RogerSH]

The point is ...

Thank you for your thoughtful response, Roger. I regret that I am, at the moment, running short of time; and I don't have the kind of writing time this would deserve. If you don't mind, could I put off responding for a bit? I know that's irritating, but the alternative of cracking off a rush job and not really doing justice to it seems unfair, as well.

I'm not forgetting or ignoring. I promise to revisit this as soon as time affords. Perhaps we can consider our thoughts being on hold.

Again, apologies for the delay.

Thanks IC, considering how delayed my replies have been, I am certainly not complaining!

[Belinda]

I wish you and RCSaunders would use the generally accepted academic terminology and then restate your ontological preferences.

Why not just say what we mean, in plain speech, instead of resorting to obscurantist jargon like that?

Orwell said that academics often hide their folly in convoluted verbiage (big words). And he pointed out, that by resorting to such tactics, they not only fool the naive in their audience; they often even conceal from themselves that their ideas are weak...or even appalling.

I can write in such a way as nobody here will understand, if you like. But I find it contemptible to do that.

Causal chains in time sequence are only a part of determinism.

Causality is absolute, in Determinism. In that view, there is a single ultimate explanation for every phenomenon. And that's equally true if that one cause is posited as an autocratic god figure, or as what Weber called "the iron cage" of material causality.

The rest is just detail and distraction, according to Determinism.

Why does Belinda go to the store? The Big Bang, plus the chain of causes subsequent, made her do it.

Why did Belinda go to the store? It was the unbending will of a god.

C'est toujours la meme chose.

There are uses and abuses of jargon just as there are uses and abuses of everyday language.The use of academic jargon is that it seals off the byways of interminable wrangling about what people mean. Jargon terminology is also good for private thinking as it labels and categorises complex ideas . A labelled and categorised complex idea can be abstracted from one's mental filing system and re-examined in isolation. This happened to me recently in one of these conversations. Someone objected to something I wrote about the philosopher Berkeley and I wanted to look up 'pre-established harmony' so that was really useful.

As for causal chains and so forth: Belinda went to the store according to the causal chain just as you said, Immanuel. She also went to the store because there were currently in place regulations to mimimise the spread of covid ( causal circumstance) She also went to the store because human beings eat and make decisions(nomic connection).

[RCSaunders]

Reality is material, physical, an agglutinate of causal chains.

What is a causal chain?

[Skepdick]

What is a causal chain?

If I kick you in the balls, then a causal chain is...

My Desire -> muscles contract -> my foot makes contact with you groin -> your nervous system tells you to experience pain.

[RCSaunders]

I wish you and RCSaunders would use the generally accepted academic terminology and then restate your ontological preferences.

If everyone is required to only use some absurd academically approved terms and language, no progress in any field will ever be possible. It is not possible to use the language of the totally failed field of philosophy to explain the true nature of reality and knowledge. If you don't want to learn anything new, just don't read anything that includes language you are not familiar with.

Academia is the intellectual swamp in which all bad ideas are spawned, and all truth rots.

After government, no institution is more dangerous than academia.

[Skepdick]

If everyone is required to only use some absurd academically approved terms and language, no progress in any field will ever be possible. It is not possible to use the language of the totally failed field of philosophy to explain the true nature of reality and knowledge. If you don't want to learn anything new, just don't read anything that includes language you are not familiar with.

Academia is the intellectual swamp in which all bad ideas are spawned, and all truth rots.

After government, no institution is more dangerous than academia.

Que?

"What is the true nature of X?" (where X is any commonly used term) is question posed precisely in the language of academic/pedagogical philosophy!

What's far more dangerous than "government" is ignorance such as your.

[RCSaunders]

If everyone is required to only use some absurd academically approved terms and language, no progress in any field will ever be possible. It is not possible to use the language of the totally failed field of philosophy to explain the true nature of reality and knowledge. If you don't want to learn anything new, just don't read anything that includes language you are not familiar with.

Academia is the intellectual swamp in which all bad ideas are spawned, and all truth rots.

After government, no institution is more dangerous than academia.

Que?

"What is the true nature of X?" (where X is any commonly used term) is question posed precisely in the language of academic/pedagogical philosophy!

Good example. Thanks!

[RCSaunders]

What is a causal chain?

If I kick you in the balls, then a causal chain is...

My Desire -> muscles contract -> my foot makes contact with you groin -> your nervous system tells you to experience pain.

That's an academic explanation, is it?

[henry quirk]

Reality is material, physical, an agglutinate of causal chains.

What is a causal chain?

"an ordered sequence of events in which any one event in the chain causes the next"

In other words: cause & effect (which, as I reckon it, is what determinism is all about).