I’m reading an introduction to perspectives on free will for an introductory philosophy course, which contains a lot of discussion of determinism. I found this article immensely clarifying as an accompaniment.
From the free will thing:
Assuming determinism, the laws of physics completely determine what happens in the universe, including all of your actions. So in principle, everything you do could have been predicted before you were even born. It seems that, if this is true, you are wrong to suppose that you are sometimes able to choose between different options. There’s only ever been one path through life open to you.
But, from the perspective of this post, this quote says nothing more than that there is a concise way of describing both the present and the future, without having to enumerate all the facts about each. Even if there were no deterministic laws, there would still be only one thing that actually happens; it would just not have such a concise description.
(I don’t actually know who wrote the free will introduction or where to find it)
I think this is exactly right. Arguments that physical determinism is incompatible with free will usually assume that your behavior is controlled by physical law, so it cannot also be controlled by you: “The laws of nature (in conjunction with the initial conditions of the universe) made you raise your hand, so how could it be a free choice?” But this sort of argument relies on thinking of laws as somehow controlling physical systems, and this is wrong. While it is entirely accurate to think of the relationship between certain aspects of your mental state and your muscular activity as one of control, it is inaccurate to think of the relationship between the laws of nature and your muscular activity as one of control. You control your actions, the laws don’t.
I have to make one comment and disagree in one aspect.
The comment is about determinism. The description we have of nature at the highest energies is based on quantum mechanics, which is deterministic in the sense that the wave function obey a well defined differential equation, but predictions of measurements are only probabilistic. Even considering this degree of determinism you would still not be able to make precise predictions. Of course, you might consider prediction of probabilities deterministic enough to threaten free will.
Now, I have to disagree that the views of the “laws of physics” as compressed descriptions of nature imply free will in the described way. All evidence points to the fact that there are, let’s say, patterns in nature that are not disobeyed. Any decision one makes has to obey those patterns and the collected evidence up to now supports this. For instance, no matter what you decide to do, the firing of your neurons will obey the patterns we call collectively electrodynamics. Although that does not completely decides your actions, it put limits on it. Call it a partial lack of free will if you like, but it is not completely free.
In a similar vein, Hume argues that determinism is essential for the concept of free will to exist, I believe. I think the argument is that if our actions aren’t controlled by our thoughts, then they’re controlled by a random diceroll of bizarreness from another ontological dimension without meaning to us. I used fanciful terms to describe that, of course, but essentially its saying that since our physical thoughts are what matter to us and are what are associated with free will traditionally, the traditional concept of free will depends on physical determinism once we accept that we are not magic ghost angel souls in human bodies.
For will to cause things to happen determinism must be true, since wills are physical things.
I’m reading an introduction to perspectives on free will for an introductory philosophy course, which contains a lot of discussion of determinism. I found this article immensely clarifying as an accompaniment.
From the free will thing:
But, from the perspective of this post, this quote says nothing more than that there is a concise way of describing both the present and the future, without having to enumerate all the facts about each. Even if there were no deterministic laws, there would still be only one thing that actually happens; it would just not have such a concise description.
(I don’t actually know who wrote the free will introduction or where to find it)
I think this is exactly right. Arguments that physical determinism is incompatible with free will usually assume that your behavior is controlled by physical law, so it cannot also be controlled by you: “The laws of nature (in conjunction with the initial conditions of the universe) made you raise your hand, so how could it be a free choice?” But this sort of argument relies on thinking of laws as somehow controlling physical systems, and this is wrong. While it is entirely accurate to think of the relationship between certain aspects of your mental state and your muscular activity as one of control, it is inaccurate to think of the relationship between the laws of nature and your muscular activity as one of control. You control your actions, the laws don’t.
I have to make one comment and disagree in one aspect.
The comment is about determinism. The description we have of nature at the highest energies is based on quantum mechanics, which is deterministic in the sense that the wave function obey a well defined differential equation, but predictions of measurements are only probabilistic. Even considering this degree of determinism you would still not be able to make precise predictions. Of course, you might consider prediction of probabilities deterministic enough to threaten free will.
Now, I have to disagree that the views of the “laws of physics” as compressed descriptions of nature imply free will in the described way. All evidence points to the fact that there are, let’s say, patterns in nature that are not disobeyed. Any decision one makes has to obey those patterns and the collected evidence up to now supports this. For instance, no matter what you decide to do, the firing of your neurons will obey the patterns we call collectively electrodynamics. Although that does not completely decides your actions, it put limits on it. Call it a partial lack of free will if you like, but it is not completely free.
In a similar vein, Hume argues that determinism is essential for the concept of free will to exist, I believe. I think the argument is that if our actions aren’t controlled by our thoughts, then they’re controlled by a random diceroll of bizarreness from another ontological dimension without meaning to us. I used fanciful terms to describe that, of course, but essentially its saying that since our physical thoughts are what matter to us and are what are associated with free will traditionally, the traditional concept of free will depends on physical determinism once we accept that we are not magic ghost angel souls in human bodies.
For will to cause things to happen determinism must be true, since wills are physical things.