Most of the proposed models in this thread seem reasonable.
I would write down all the odd things people say about free will, pick the simplest model that explained 90% of it, and then see if I could make novel and accurate predictions based on the model. But, I’m too lazy to do that. So I’ll just guess.
Evolution hardwired our cognition to contain two mutually-exclusive categories, call them “actions” and “events.”
“Actions” match: [rational, has no understandable prior cause]. “Rational” means they are often influenced by reward and punishment. Synonyms for ‘has no understandable prior cause’ include ‘free will’, ‘caused by elan vitale’ and ‘unpredictable, at least by the prediction process we use for things-in-general like rocks’.
“Events” match: [not rational, always directly caused by some previous and intuitively comprehendable physical event or action]. If you throw a rock up, it will come back down, no matter how much you threaten or plead with it.
We are born to axiomatically believe actions we take of this innate ‘free will’ category have no physical cause. In this model, symptoms might include:
believing there is an interesting category called ‘free will’
believing that arguing whether humans either belong to, or don’t belong to, this ‘free will’ category, is an interesting question
believing that if we don’t have ‘free will’, it’s wrong to punish people
believing that if we don’t have ‘free will’, we are marionettes, zombies, or in some other way ‘subhuman’.
believing that if we don’t understand what causes a thunderstorm or a crop failure or an eclipse, it is the will of a rational agent who can be appeased through the appropriate sacrifices
believing that if our actions are caused by God’s will, fate, spiritual possession, an ancient prophesy, Newtonian dynamics, or some other simple and easily-understandable cause, we do not have ‘free will’. However, if our actions are caused by an immaterial soul, spooky quantum mechanics, or anything else that ‘lives in another dimension beyond the grasp of intuitive reason’, then we retain ‘free will’.
I’m not particularly confident my model is correct, the human capacity to spot patterns where there are none works against me here.
Most of the proposed models in this thread seem reasonable.
I would write down all the odd things people say about free will, pick the simplest model that explained 90% of it, and then see if I could make novel and accurate predictions based on the model. But, I’m too lazy to do that. So I’ll just guess.
Evolution hardwired our cognition to contain two mutually-exclusive categories, call them “actions” and “events.”
“Actions” match: [rational, has no understandable prior cause]. “Rational” means they are often influenced by reward and punishment. Synonyms for ‘has no understandable prior cause’ include ‘free will’, ‘caused by elan vitale’ and ‘unpredictable, at least by the prediction process we use for things-in-general like rocks’.
“Events” match: [not rational, always directly caused by some previous and intuitively comprehendable physical event or action]. If you throw a rock up, it will come back down, no matter how much you threaten or plead with it.
We are born to axiomatically believe actions we take of this innate ‘free will’ category have no physical cause. In this model, symptoms might include:
believing there is an interesting category called ‘free will’
believing that arguing whether humans either belong to, or don’t belong to, this ‘free will’ category, is an interesting question
believing that if we don’t have ‘free will’, it’s wrong to punish people
believing that if we don’t have ‘free will’, we are marionettes, zombies, or in some other way ‘subhuman’.
believing that if we don’t understand what causes a thunderstorm or a crop failure or an eclipse, it is the will of a rational agent who can be appeased through the appropriate sacrifices
believing that if our actions are caused by God’s will, fate, spiritual possession, an ancient prophesy, Newtonian dynamics, or some other simple and easily-understandable cause, we do not have ‘free will’. However, if our actions are caused by an immaterial soul, spooky quantum mechanics, or anything else that ‘lives in another dimension beyond the grasp of intuitive reason’, then we retain ‘free will’.
I’m not particularly confident my model is correct, the human capacity to spot patterns where there are none works against me here.