The consequences for an individual depend on the details. For example, if you still understand yourself as being part of the causal chain of events, because you make decisions that determine your actions—it’s just that your decisions are in turn determined by psychological factors like personality, experience, and intelligence—your sense of agency may remain entirely unaffected. The belief could even impact your decision-making positively, e.g. via a series of thoughts like “my decisions will be determined by my values”—“what do my values actually imply I should do in this situation”—followed by enhanced attention to reasoning about the decision.
On the other hand, one hears that loss of belief in free will can be accompanied by loss of agency or loss of morality, so, the consequences really depend on the psychological details. In general, I think an anti-free-will position that alienates you from the supposed causal machinery of your decision-making, rather than one that identifies you with it, has the potential to diminish a person.
″...because you make decisions that determine your actions” I don’t know that this would fit with the idea of no free will. Surely you’re not really making any decisions.
“my decisions will be determined by my values”—“what do my values actually imply I should do in this situation” But your values wouldn’t have been decided by you.
I agree with your last sentence. I’m leaning towards, “If we do not have free will, people should not be told about it.” (Assuming the “proof” of no free will eliminates any possibility of constructing selves that do have free will because in that case I would want us to build them and “move into” those bodies.)
I don’t know that this would fit with the idea of no free will. Surely you’re not really making any decisions.
This sounds like “epiphenomenalism”—the idea that the conscious mind has no causal power, it’s just somehow along for the ride of existence, while atoms or whatever do all the work. This is a philosophy that alienates you from your own power to choose.
But there is also “compatibilism”. This is originally the idea that free will is compatible with determinism, because free will is here defined to mean, not that personal decisions have no causes at all, but that all the causes are internal to the person who decides.
A criticism of compatibilism is that this definition isn’t what’s meant by free will. Maybe so. But for the present discussion, it gives us a concept of personal choice which isn’t disconnected from the rest of cause and effect.
We can consider simpler mechanical analogs. Consider any device that “makes choices”, whether it’s a climate control system in a building, or a computer running multiple processes. Does epiphenomenalism make sense here? Is the device irrelevant to the “choice” that happens? I’d say no: the device is the entity that performs the action. The action has a cause, but it is the state of the device itself, along with the relevant physical laws, which is the cause.
We can think similarly of human actions where conscious choice is involved.
But your values wouldn’t have been decided by you.
Perhaps you didn’t choose your original values. But a person’s values can change, and if this was a matter of self-aware choice between two value systems, I’m willing to say that the person decided on their new values.
Something is making decisions, is it not? And that thing that makes the decisions is part of what you would normally describe as “you.” Everything still adds up to normality.
It can can be detrimental, though, to communicate certain subsets of true things without additional context, or in a way that is likely to be misinterpreted by the audience. Communicating truth (or at least not lying) is more about the content that actually ends up in people’s heads than it is about the content of the communication itself.
I also sleep and my heart beats, but “I” don’t get to decide those things, whereas free will implies “I” get to make day-to-day decisions.
I don’t think I’m 100% following with the second-to-last sentence. Are you saying it’s detrimental to disregard the debate of whether we have free will?
The chain of causality that makes your heart beat mostly goes outside your consciousness. (Not perfectly, for example if you start thinking about something scary and as a consequence your heart starts beating faster, then your thought did have an impact. But you are not doing it on purpose.)
The chain of causality that determines your day-to-day decisions goes through your consciousness. I think that makes the perceived difference.
That doesn’t change the fact that your consciousness is ultimately implemented on atoms which follow the laws of physics.
Personally the idea of no free will doesn’t negatively impact my mental state, but I can imagine it would for others, so I’m not going to argue that point. You should perhaps consider the positive impacts of the no-free will argument, I think it could lead to alot more understanding and empathy in the world. It’s easy for most to see someone making mistakes such as crime, obesity, or just being extremely unpleasant and blame/hate them for “choosing” to be that way. If you believe everything is determined, I find it’s pretty easy to re-frame it into someone who was just unlucky enough to be born into the specific situation that led them to this state. If you are yourself successful, instead of being prideful of your superior will/ soul, you can be humble and grateful for all the people and circumstances that allowed you to reach your position/mental state.
That is true but I think would lead to net-complacency… Let’s hope if we ever do find out that free will is definite and humanity accepts it that people take the view you describe here!
Mostly agree, however, I think it unnecessarily muddies the water, to take the concept of free will, which exists on a gradient throughout nature, not as an either/or (Binary concept)...…
And then attempt to answer this non-binary question, with a Binary answer of “either/or”.
It’s like poking around trying to find out how a square answer can fit into the round hole of the question.
A round question can only have a round answer. A question on a topic that exists on a gradient, may only accurately be answered with an answer that also exists on a gradient. You can not logically mix the 2 on any order, and expect an accurate answer.
At least that’s my opinion, I could be wrong. ---Tapske...
The consequences for an individual depend on the details. For example, if you still understand yourself as being part of the causal chain of events, because you make decisions that determine your actions—it’s just that your decisions are in turn determined by psychological factors like personality, experience, and intelligence—your sense of agency may remain entirely unaffected. The belief could even impact your decision-making positively, e.g. via a series of thoughts like “my decisions will be determined by my values”—“what do my values actually imply I should do in this situation”—followed by enhanced attention to reasoning about the decision.
On the other hand, one hears that loss of belief in free will can be accompanied by loss of agency or loss of morality, so, the consequences really depend on the psychological details. In general, I think an anti-free-will position that alienates you from the supposed causal machinery of your decision-making, rather than one that identifies you with it, has the potential to diminish a person.
″...because you make decisions that determine your actions” I don’t know that this would fit with the idea of no free will. Surely you’re not really making any decisions.
“my decisions will be determined by my values”—“what do my values actually imply I should do in this situation” But your values wouldn’t have been decided by you.
I agree with your last sentence. I’m leaning towards, “If we do not have free will, people should not be told about it.” (Assuming the “proof” of no free will eliminates any possibility of constructing selves that do have free will because in that case I would want us to build them and “move into” those bodies.)
This sounds like “epiphenomenalism”—the idea that the conscious mind has no causal power, it’s just somehow along for the ride of existence, while atoms or whatever do all the work. This is a philosophy that alienates you from your own power to choose.
But there is also “compatibilism”. This is originally the idea that free will is compatible with determinism, because free will is here defined to mean, not that personal decisions have no causes at all, but that all the causes are internal to the person who decides.
A criticism of compatibilism is that this definition isn’t what’s meant by free will. Maybe so. But for the present discussion, it gives us a concept of personal choice which isn’t disconnected from the rest of cause and effect.
We can consider simpler mechanical analogs. Consider any device that “makes choices”, whether it’s a climate control system in a building, or a computer running multiple processes. Does epiphenomenalism make sense here? Is the device irrelevant to the “choice” that happens? I’d say no: the device is the entity that performs the action. The action has a cause, but it is the state of the device itself, along with the relevant physical laws, which is the cause.
We can think similarly of human actions where conscious choice is involved.
Perhaps you didn’t choose your original values. But a person’s values can change, and if this was a matter of self-aware choice between two value systems, I’m willing to say that the person decided on their new values.
Something is making decisions, is it not? And that thing that makes the decisions is part of what you would normally describe as “you.” Everything still adds up to normality.
It can can be detrimental, though, to communicate certain subsets of true things without additional context, or in a way that is likely to be misinterpreted by the audience. Communicating truth (or at least not lying) is more about the content that actually ends up in people’s heads than it is about the content of the communication itself.
I also sleep and my heart beats, but “I” don’t get to decide those things, whereas free will implies “I” get to make day-to-day decisions.
I don’t think I’m 100% following with the second-to-last sentence. Are you saying it’s detrimental to disregard the debate of whether we have free will?
The chain of causality that makes your heart beat mostly goes outside your consciousness. (Not perfectly, for example if you start thinking about something scary and as a consequence your heart starts beating faster, then your thought did have an impact. But you are not doing it on purpose.)
The chain of causality that determines your day-to-day decisions goes through your consciousness. I think that makes the perceived difference.
That doesn’t change the fact that your consciousness is ultimately implemented on atoms which follow the laws of physics.
Personally the idea of no free will doesn’t negatively impact my mental state, but I can imagine it would for others, so I’m not going to argue that point. You should perhaps consider the positive impacts of the no-free will argument, I think it could lead to alot more understanding and empathy in the world. It’s easy for most to see someone making mistakes such as crime, obesity, or just being extremely unpleasant and blame/hate them for “choosing” to be that way. If you believe everything is determined, I find it’s pretty easy to re-frame it into someone who was just unlucky enough to be born into the specific situation that led them to this state. If you are yourself successful, instead of being prideful of your superior will/ soul, you can be humble and grateful for all the people and circumstances that allowed you to reach your position/mental state.
That is true but I think would lead to net-complacency… Let’s hope if we ever do find out that free will is definite and humanity accepts it that people take the view you describe here!
Mostly agree, however, I think it unnecessarily muddies the water, to take the concept of free will, which exists on a gradient throughout nature, not as an either/or (Binary concept)...…
And then attempt to answer this non-binary question, with a Binary answer of “either/or”.
It’s like poking around trying to find out how a square answer can fit into the round hole of the question.
A round question can only have a round answer. A question on a topic that exists on a gradient, may only accurately be answered with an answer that also exists on a gradient. You can not logically mix the 2 on any order, and expect an accurate answer.
At least that’s my opinion, I could be wrong. ---Tapske...