P. C. Hodgell said, “That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.” What if we have no free will? Disregarding the debate of whether or not we have free will—if we do not have free will, is it beneficial for our belief in free will to be destroyed?
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...
True, I’ll rephrase. If we do not have free will, would it be beneficial for our belief in free will to be destroyed? If you were a divine operator with humanity’s best interests at heart, would you set up the causal chain of events to one day reveal to humans that they do not have free will?
If we assume that locus of control is a proxy for the perception or belief in free-will, then belief in free-will does appear to have certain beneficial effects. But it seems like a moot point anyway because what was gonna happen was gonna happen anyway, right?
8th grade female physics students who were given “attribution retraining” found “significantly improved performances in physics” and favourable effects on motivation.
Ziegler, A., & Heller, K. A. (2000). Effects of an attribution retraining with female students gifted in physics. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 23(2), 217–243.
Among seventh graders in a, frankly euphemistically titled, “urban junior high school” researchers found support for an ascociation between locus of control and their academic achievement.
Diesterhaft, K., & Gerken, K. (1983). Self-Concept and Locus of Control as Related to Achievement of Junior High Students. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 1(4), 367-375. https://doi.org/10.1177/073428298300100406 (Original work published 1983)
Among widows under the age of 54, Socio Economic Status and Locus of Control were found to impact depression and life satisfaction “independently”. And that the more internal a locus of control was – the better life satisfaction and less chance these widowers had of depression.
Landau, R. (1995). Locus of control and socioeconomic status: Does internal locus of control reflect real resources and opportunities or personal coping abilities? Social Science & Medicine, 41(11), 1499–1505. https://doi.org/10.1016/0277-9536(95)00020-8
Personally, my pet theory is that the “Law of Attraction” probably is effective. Not because of any pseudo-Swedenborg/Platonic metaphysics about the nature of thought, but from a motivational perspective people who are optimistic will have a “greater surface area for success”, because they simply don’t give up that easily.
Free will : A topic I have pondered deeply over the years.
Firstly, like almost everything else in this 4 dimensiona existence, “free will” is not a Binary concept. It is NOT either/or. It is on a gradient.
ALL mammals display traits of free will to varying degrees. The more natural born instincts in a species, the less their free will, the less instincts an animal has, the more free will it can express.
No mammal has zero free will, and no mammal has 100% free will, not humans, not any mammal.
So the idea of free will being “destroyed” is a non-starter. It can perhaps be diminished, but never destroyed.
For those who believe we have 100% free will, ask yourself a couple Q’s.
Can you willingly hold your breath till you die ? No, you would pass out, and begin breathing, against your will.
If you walk around a corner and I yell “BOO”… Did you jump because you decided to, or were your actions dictated by instincts that had nothing to do with free will ???
Same if I poke u with a straight pin, did you decide to draw back, or was it automatic ?
P. C. Hodgell said, “That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.” What if we have no free will? Disregarding the debate of whether or not we have free will—if we do not have free will, is it beneficial for our belief in free will to be destroyed?
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...
I’m afraid I don’t understand this. if we do not have free will, then which things we believe, which errors we mistake for truth, is not a choice.
True, I’ll rephrase. If we do not have free will, would it be beneficial for our belief in free will to be destroyed? If you were a divine operator with humanity’s best interests at heart, would you set up the causal chain of events to one day reveal to humans that they do not have free will?
You would need to make sure that there is no misunderstanding. Otherwise you would be communicating something else than you intended.
So, considering that the debate on this topic is typically full of confusion, the answer is probably: no.
If we assume that locus of control is a proxy for the perception or belief in free-will, then belief in free-will does appear to have certain beneficial effects. But it seems like a moot point anyway because what was gonna happen was gonna happen anyway, right?
8th grade female physics students who were given “attribution retraining” found “significantly improved performances in physics” and favourable effects on motivation.
Ziegler, A., & Heller, K. A. (2000). Effects of an attribution retraining with female students gifted in physics. Journal for the Education of the Gifted, 23(2), 217–243.
Among seventh graders in a, frankly euphemistically titled, “urban junior high school” researchers found support for an ascociation between locus of control and their academic achievement.
Diesterhaft, K., & Gerken, K. (1983). Self-Concept and Locus of Control as Related to Achievement of Junior High Students. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 1(4), 367-375. https://doi.org/10.1177/073428298300100406 (Original work published 1983)
Among widows under the age of 54, Socio Economic Status and Locus of Control were found to impact depression and life satisfaction “independently”. And that the more internal a locus of control was – the better life satisfaction and less chance these widowers had of depression.
Landau, R. (1995). Locus of control and socioeconomic status: Does internal locus of control reflect real resources and opportunities or personal coping abilities? Social Science & Medicine, 41(11), 1499–1505. https://doi.org/10.1016/0277-9536(95)00020-8
Personally, my pet theory is that the “Law of Attraction” probably is effective. Not because of any pseudo-Swedenborg/Platonic metaphysics about the nature of thought, but from a motivational perspective people who are optimistic will have a “greater surface area for success”, because they simply don’t give up that easily.
Free will : A topic I have pondered deeply over the years.
Firstly, like almost everything else in this 4 dimensiona existence, “free will” is not a Binary concept. It is NOT either/or. It is on a gradient.
ALL mammals display traits of free will to varying degrees. The more natural born instincts in a species, the less their free will, the less instincts an animal has, the more free will it can express.
No mammal has zero free will, and no mammal has 100% free will, not humans, not any mammal.
So the idea of free will being “destroyed” is a non-starter. It can perhaps be diminished, but never destroyed.
For those who believe we have 100% free will, ask yourself a couple Q’s.
Can you willingly hold your breath till you die ? No, you would pass out, and begin breathing, against your will.
If you walk around a corner and I yell “BOO”… Did you jump because you decided to, or were your actions dictated by instincts that had nothing to do with free will ???
Same if I poke u with a straight pin, did you decide to draw back, or was it automatic ?
No one, and no thing has total free will.
At least that’s my opinion, I could be wrong.
---Tapske...