Free Will vs Determinism

[Londoner]

Me: What I am saying is that I think 'free will' describes exactly that, the will. Actions are determined because they have happened, they are in the past, so they are fixed and stand in a relationship to everything else. But our will is indeterminate.

No - it makes no sense at all to say the will is indeterminate. Such a will would be utterly capricious and useless to exercise.
If the will is not based on our volition and experience then it is worthless or random. For the will to be useful it has , itself to be driven by our experience; and hence caused.

Words like 'useful' and 'capricious' evaluate the decision we make against a particular purpose; it would be silly to turn the light off if I wanted to see to thread a needle. But nevertheless, I cannot pretend that I do not have a choice. I am aware that I could act unreasonably and try to thread the needle in the dark. I am also aware that I do not have to thread a needle in the first place.

If we were simply driven by our experiences, then we would never be conscious of making a decision at all. And I would agree that this is often the case. On my way to thread a needle I might switch on the light without thinking about that particular action. But that is not always the case, sometimes I am not driven, sometimes I am conscious of having a choice. And I think that if I am conscious of having a choice, then I do have a choice.

Why I might actually make one choice rather than another is a different question. Free will is in the realisation that I have the option.

[Hobbes' Choice]

Me: What I am saying is that I think 'free will' describes exactly that, the will. Actions are determined because they have happened, they are in the past, so they are fixed and stand in a relationship to everything else. But our will is indeterminate.

No - it makes no sense at all to say the will is indeterminate. Such a will would be utterly capricious and useless to exercise.
If the will is not based on our volition and experience then it is worthless or random. For the will to be useful it has , itself to be driven by our experience; and hence caused.

Words like 'useful' and 'capricious' evaluate the decision we make against a particular purpose; it would be silly to turn the light off if I wanted to see to thread a needle. But nevertheless, I cannot pretend that I do not have a choice. I am aware that I could act unreasonably and try to thread the needle in the dark. I am also aware that I do not have to thread a needle in the first place.

If we were simply driven by our experiences, then we would never be conscious of making a decision at all..

This is simply not the case. I'm puzzled why you think so. Every decision that we consciously make requires a calculation. But the calculation has to ba based on the antecedent conditions and therefore determined to any given moment, Else it would be of no use whatever.

[Belinda]

Dave Mangnall asked me:

I’d be interested to know more of your version of determinism, and how it allows for free agency.

Thanks for your interest Dave. I refer to Honderich's term "originator" for the supposed entity which is the source of Free Will. Like Honderich, I don't believe that we are free in the sense that we originate our actions and thoughts. Like Spinoza, I believe that without ever being 'originators' we can be more free the more we understand nature including our own human natures.This version of human freedom is one which we can work towards by the use of reason.

Responsibility for our actions and thoughts is the more, the more we understand of nature including human nature. The upshot is that a stupid man is less responsible for their acts and thoughts than a reasoning and knowlegeable man. This is how civilised responsibility within the law works; that a stupid man who cannot have known the law, or who is otherwise mentally disabled gets the benefit of mitigating circumstances. Usually within the more liberal regimes the criminal gets more access to mitigating circumstances and is less likely to be punished .Belief that the criminal themself originated the crime is typical of judges who are inclined to be punitive and less likely to support rehabilitation of criminals.

Another illustration. In the sphere of international diplomacy the practised and efficient diplomat knows a lot about the foreign nationals with whom they are in contact, and also judges interpersonal situations rather more acutely than an average lay person. Such a diplomat has big responsibilities which go hand in hand with freedom to make decisions that affect many people, and their ability to reason is obviously a premium qualification for the job.

Another example. In the spheres of therapies and education those professional workers have the freedom and the accompanying moral responsibility to serve patients or students according to the needs of those they serve.

I'm saying that moral responsibility is inseparable from freedom; not the non-existent 'freedom' of so-called Free Will , but the freedom conferred by knowledge and reason.

There is an important implication for political perspectives. The political upshot from linking freedom and responsibility is left wing in the sense of working towards opportunities for all for social mobility, and for extending the principle in law of mitigating circumstances. The right wing politician will tend to conserve the social status quo and to be more punitive.

[thedoc]

The debate on free will vs. determinism is all dependent on where you draw the line. A hard determinist will claim that all influences mean that life is deterministic. However there may be some influences that are not deterministic, certainly all choices are determined by influences both external and internal, but some internal influences may allow free will, and it only takes a few choices, freely made, to demonstrate free will. Most of our actions are indeed determined and we are left with no choice in the matter, but there are a few actions that could go either way, and there is where the question is.

Hi, Doc.
I agree with what you say about where the question lies. So the question from a hard determinist such as myself is this. When you speak of those choices, freely made, that demonstrate free will, how do you establish that they were freely made? Some physical processes were occurring in your brain when you wrote the above paragraph, causing you to write in the way you did? How could those neural events have happened otherwise? Given that you wrote what you did, how could you not have written what you did?
In your response to Hobbes’ Choice’s first comment, you say “Some conditions MAY influence a decision, but it does not determine that action. The action may be counter to the influence, that is free will. Not all influences contradict free will.” My answer to that is that free will is not established. Your action counter to the influence of which you were conscious was caused by other influences, of which you were unconscious.

There is no way to prove or disprove free will it is just a matter of opinion, similar to the argument that an individual can't prove that individual is not a brain in a vat because all the stimuli are processed in the brain, so are all decisions made in the brain and there is no way to examine them outside the brain. In the end both positions are the opinion of the person who holds that opinion.

[SpheresOfBalance]

Spheres of Balance, what is this entity within you which can originate your reactive response to fear of immediate and violent death?

My understanding of the current human condition and thus that thing that we all fear, so as to cause my response to carry as much weight as possible. Not with regard to being necessarily correct, rather to place as much seriousness into the topic at hand, so that it's gravity can definitely be felt. To cause as much critical thinking about the topic as possible. My thinking is, too trivial an example, so the thinking, thus response. I want those that read my input to feel the potential seriousness of the topic.

I had a very serious job, at a very young age, working for the US DOD, which might have a little to do with it as well.

Why do you ask, do I scare you? Drama my sweetheart, drama!

P.S. My wife's nickname for me is, "Grizzly Bear."

[SpheresOfBalance]

You people are quite confused as to the difference between determinism and free will. You all seem to believe that free will can't be informed or else it's deterministic in nature. Not true! You people take things for granted that are illogical. You confuse the meanings of words and concepts.

Actually there is little confusion as each person has their own idea of what the different words mean and they are not confused about that. The apparent confusion arises when one person expects everyone else to accept their definitions as correct and are confused that no-one else accepts their definition as correct. When everyone is talking past each other because of different definitions, there is little chance for real conversation.

Yeah doc and that's why I prefer to use a dictionary. Since you're an Microferroequinologist I'm sure you understand that largely the problem is the lack of standardization. With everyone's proprietary designs and meanings, people can't share parts or ideas. If everyone utilized a standardized source, there would be no problems, either to repair things or talk about them.

[SpheresOfBalance]

Not strictly literally true. Pawns can't "want." Their "volition," i.e. their motion, is caused by prior material factors outside of themselves. Pawns have no emotions or awareness at all...and certainly, no choices. But on this point the analogy isn't apt: that a pawn has an advantage of sorts over every Determinist. For at least in the case of a pawn, an intelligent agent is manipulating it. That's got to be much better than simply being the pawn of material forces, which can have no purpose in what they impose on one. Material forces, if they control what you do, don't "care" about you, and don't have any "goal" or "purpose" in mind when they do. They just move you around without reason.

No, the pawn does whatever the player wants it to do, whether that is a sacrifice, or an advance to the 8th rank to become a queen. The pawn is a Vehicle for the advancement of the game, nothing more, nothing less. There is a purpose to each move or the game is lost.

Actually every piece on the board does what the player wants them to do, within their unique capabilities of course. The pawn is also a blockade, like a castle wall, because he and his friends together have a bite as well, not to be underestimated. Sure every move should have a purpose, though not always effective, depending on the tact of the opponent. But then Actually I hate war games, been there, done that, had enough for a lifetime. At least to the extent that a piece is taken. Live and let live is the ultimate game!

[SpheresOfBalance]

Your claim that you can initiate causes stands against all physics...

Any human can initiate causes for another human.

[SpheresOfBalance]

Switch on a light. Are you causing the light to appear, or are there ever more deeper levels of causality? The conditions and material of the bulb, the electricity right back to the generator and the nuclear reaction or coal burning that causes the heat - maybe you'd like to include the rays of the sun which nourished the trees that made the coal?

I would say yes; I have caused the light to appear because unless I switched it on, then it would not have come on.

I agree my switching it on is not enough in itself; it would not have come on if the house hadn't been wired for electricity, or electricity been generated, or the laws of physics...but nor could those things have caused the light to come on if I hadn't pressed the switch. They are the causes for lots of things, but here we are not looking for a cause of lots of things, only of one single event, of this particular light coming on, at this particular moment.

I would say that when we are trying to describe a cause, we might mean 'all the causes', but in that case we would have to include everything in the universe that contained me and the light. But usually we are trying to pick the cause most immediately linked to the particular effect; the last and crucial cause in the chain, or web, of causes.

That our ideas about causality are derived from habitual observation does not seem to me to matter. That we have such ideas, that we try to understand the world in that way is a characteristic of humans; it derives from our non-identity of ourselves and our experiences. That we think about our own experiences. Unlike all the other causes we might identify about why the light comes on, we alone have that dual character; we are self-conscious. We can therefore imagine things being other than how they are; the light might be on, or off. Nothing else in the chain of cause and effect is ever in that state. I think it is our ability to imagine alternative futures that is 'free will'.

Good job, I agree!

[SpheresOfBalance]

Switch on a light. Are you causing the light to appear, or are there ever more deeper levels of causality? The conditions and material of the bulb, the electricity right back to the generator and the nuclear reaction or coal burning that causes the heat - maybe you'd like to include the rays of the sun which nourished the trees that made the coal?

I would say yes; I have caused the light to appear because unless I switched it on, then it would not have come on.
'.

This is the very definition of naive causality. And the point about Hume is that he's pointing out that as a fallacy.
If the sun had not shone on the tress in the carboniferous era making the coal that the generator burned to make the electricity -, the light would not have come on too.
That's all a bunch of BS, else all one has to say is that the universe and her physics cause everything, and all this bickering stops! The argument is finished except for one point, nothing in the universe, that we know of, can choose something in the universe, except of course an animal.


What happens when you throw throw the switch and nothing happens?
...throw throw...??

And if the light blows and sets the lamp shade on fire buring down the house - did you cause the house to burn down. Did you kill the baby asleep in the bed?

Well you definitely had a part in it didn't you? I mean being part of the universe's cause and effect and all!

[SpheresOfBalance]

There's some interesting and nuanced discussion in this thread. I'm almost embarrassed to intrude to point out that we're currently running a basic opinion poll about free will and determinism on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/PhilosophyNow/statu ... 5464221697

The question is:

Do we freely choose our actions or are they predetermined by chains of cause & effect stretching back to the dawn of time?

So far with 552 votes cast, the results are:

22% We have free will
18% Determinism is true
47% Both are true
13% Neither are true

Hi, Rick.

I note that 47% of your voters suffer from the Compatibilist confusion between "having free will" and "feeling free", which allows them to believe in determinism (sort of) without having to worry about the consequences for moral responsibility...

The reason you see things this way is because you can only see through your eyes.

[SpheresOfBalance]

The Doc wrote:

Certainly, but which of those influences negates free will, all of them will influence my decision, but where do you draw the line of which influence is freely accepted and which determine our decision.

I draw no line; I believe in absolute necessity which is to say that whatever did happen must have happened . Within this huge constraint there is a measure of freedom. We are saved from fatalism and despair by not knowing the future, and by reason and knowledge. The future doesn't exist. I speculate that existence itself will not stop.The details of what events will exist are up for grabs, and the more a man reasons and knows the more they are a free agent.

So freedom, therefore, is not randomly acausal but is a spectrum of power.

Reason and knowledge increase the number of future choices. Reason and knowledge increase the power of each man to influence the future.

Hi, Belinda.
I can see how The Doc might have thought you believed in some sort of free will. Apparently there are variants in models of determinism. In my version, there is no free agency. We may feel free, if we are unencumbered with external constraints and if our reason and knowledge give us some understanding of what we’re doing. Nonetheless, in my determinism, we are all actors following the dictates of our script as it unfolds. This, for me, is by neither a bad thing nor particularly significant. It’s more of a nuance in perspective. Where free will believers “decide what to do” I find out what I’m going to find myself doing.
I’d be interested to know more of your version of determinism, and how it allows for free agency.

Nothing that an animal decides is preordained. There are inanimate and animate objects. Inanimate objects have no choice, animate objects do! But only within the framework of their deterministic universe. Case closed!

[SpheresOfBalance]

Me: What I am saying is that I think 'free will' describes exactly that, the will. Actions are determined because they have happened, they are in the past, so they are fixed and stand in a relationship to everything else. But our will is indeterminate.

No - it makes no sense at all to say the will is indeterminate. Such a will would be utterly capricious and useless to exercise.
If the will is not based on our volition and experience then it is worthless or random. For the will to be useful it has , itself to be driven by our experience; and hence caused.

Words like 'useful' and 'capricious' evaluate the decision we make against a particular purpose; it would be silly to turn the light off if I wanted to see to thread a needle. But nevertheless, I cannot pretend that I do not have a choice. I am aware that I could act unreasonably and try to thread the needle in the dark. I am also aware that I do not have to thread a needle in the first place.

If we were simply driven by our experiences, then we would never be conscious of making a decision at all. And I would agree that this is often the case. On my way to thread a needle I might switch on the light without thinking about that particular action. But that is not always the case, sometimes I am not driven, sometimes I am conscious of having a choice. And I think that if I am conscious of having a choice, then I do have a choice.

Why I might actually make one choice rather than another is a different question. Free will is in the realisation that I have the option.

Considering this, all one has to think of, is that once each of us was a blank slate, a new born, that knew practically nothing, excepts a few instincts, until we were taught. Nope sorry, no philosophy either! So then how did we come to know to question such things that we are now questioning? Free Will! Within the framework of our deterministic universe!

[SpheresOfBalance]

The debate on free will vs. determinism is all dependent on where you draw the line. A hard determinist will claim that all influences mean that life is deterministic. However there may be some influences that are not deterministic, certainly all choices are determined by influences both external and internal, but some internal influences may allow free will, and it only takes a few choices, freely made, to demonstrate free will. Most of our actions are indeed determined and we are left with no choice in the matter, but there are a few actions that could go either way, and there is where the question is.

Hi, Doc.
I agree with what you say about where the question lies. So the question from a hard determinist such as myself is this. When you speak of those choices, freely made, that demonstrate free will, how do you establish that they were freely made? Some physical processes were occurring in your brain when you wrote the above paragraph, causing you to write in the way you did? How could those neural events have happened otherwise? Given that you wrote what you did, how could you not have written what you did?
In your response to Hobbes’ Choice’s first comment, you say “Some conditions MAY influence a decision, but it does not determine that action. The action may be counter to the influence, that is free will. Not all influences contradict free will.” My answer to that is that free will is not established. Your action counter to the influence of which you were conscious was caused by other influences, of which you were unconscious.

There is no way to prove or disprove free will it is just a matter of opinion, similar to the argument that an individual can't prove that individual is not a brain in a vat because all the stimuli are processed in the brain, so are all decisions made in the brain and there is no way to examine them outside the brain. In the end both positions are the opinion of the person who holds that opinion.

Not true doc! That some distort the meanings of words to suit their own agenda has no bearing on the universal truth of mankind. He is as he is, and we are all more alike than we care to admit. Some distort here and some over there, but we all distort. We deny those things we are uncomfortable with, and admit those we have seemingly mastered. The differences between us, started on day one of our particularly unique course in life. This is why it 'seems' that truth is relative, it's not! Studying the sciences centered around humans shows all those the truth, that care to look! Of course one has to have a solid foundation of the standard meanings of words in order to see it. And that's where a dictionary is extremely handy!

[thedoc]

But then Actually I hate war games, been there, done that, had enough for a lifetime. At least to the extent that a piece is taken. Live and let live is the ultimate game!

I started following a war game that was being developed recently, "World of Warships" which was an offspring of "World of Tanks". I am interested in WWII naval history, especially the naval action, but then I realized that the game was aimed at gamers and not historians. The real navies had simulations that were based on reality and they conducted exercises with real ships, but the game had tiers and upgrades that would have required a lot of time and reconstruction of the real ships. I don't follow the game as closely but I occasionally look at an action just for fun. What really got to me was the video describing the real ships and like most other videos depicting actions from the period, the film editors apparently don't know one ship from another. The videos were constantly showing an incorrect clip while talking about a totally different ship in a different part of the world. For example any time a reference is made to a warship sinking (especially a battleship, but not always), you will see a video clip of the SMS Szent Istvan rolling over in the Adriatic Sea or the HMS Barham blowing up in the Mediterranean Sea.