Before I begin my response, I would like to point out that I really don’t appreciate your commenting style. I spent a while working on my post, and you didn’t even bother to engage with my first paragraph, where I say that capacity to choose otherwise is asking the wrong question. If you think it is the right question to be talking about, you should argue for that, not just assume it is something we can agree on.
When I talk about choosing, I am talking about modelling the world, not some magical and mysterious capacity that non-choosers lack. A chooser is defined simply to be an entity that takes in information and outputs actions. Choosers are a useful abstraction because such things exist: Many entities perform more optimal actions by using information they possess. But there is no need to hypothesize an elan volonté for how this all works.
Now, to talk a bit more about the content of your comment...
But do you know that? Surely establishing how the capacity for choice actually works requires empirical investigation.
You claim that there is some “capacity to choose”, but whence comes this idea of a capacity to choose? I fear that you just have an intuition that “you make your own choices”, and then you take this intuition too far, saying that no choice can be “real” if it has a causal or physical link to the rest of reality.
I say that choice-making is the process of converting information into actions. You are the one who says it requires some special capacity to choose. You are the one who claims there is anything to talk about there, at all.
Undetermined choices are more momentous… it is nothing special… you are nothing special… only the BB [Big Bang] is special...
Libertarian free will… [not] merely caused… doom [not] inevitable… [sense of control] determinism robs them of.
It doesn’t matter if an undetermined choice is more “momentous”; that doesn’t make it more true. I don’t even grant that undetermined choices are more momentous than determined choices. Our future depends on our choices, whether they are deterministic or not.
I do grant, though, that it would be more important to study choice-making if choice-making was more momentous.
It’s like the difference between a car and a train. The train goes somewhere but it can’t jump off the tracks
And both are controlled by people.
I agree that there are varying levels of ownership we can assign to entities that make choices. The self-tuned PID controller has more ownership over its choices than the human-tuned PID controller, but less than a human has over his/her own choices. The error you are making is in only accepting two extremes: (1) Choices are completely deterministic, owned completely by the universe as a whole, and (2) choices follow from “free will”, owned completely by the agent with free will.
Also, I think it is important to distinguish modelling the world from social responsibility. Whether someone is to be held responsible for their choices is a social problem, not a fact of the universe. We can model a computer as making choices withoutholding it responsible, and instead holding its programmer responsible.
a simulated universe might seem just like a real universe...but it isnt real.
When you run a computer program, is it less “real” if it is written in an interpreted language than if it is written in a compiled language? (An interpreted language works by simulating a virtual computer which executes higher level instructions using the base computer, while a compiled language directly outputs instructions to be used on the base machine. This is, of course, a great simplification of how interpreters work.) Does “real” to you just mean that you have reached the limit of your understanding? I wonder what you think a physicist would say if you asked him whether an electron is “real”. He, after all, understands that an electron is a theoretical model, not a hard fact of existence.
Instead of seeking to apply labels like “real” or “unreal”, I think you would be better served by looking at what is actually happening.
Before I begin my response, I would like to point out that I really don’t appreciate your commenting style. I spent a while working on my post, and you didn’t even bother to engage with my first paragraph, where I say that capacity to choose otherwise is asking the wrong question.
Funnily enough, I could say something similar. I think you missed that I am talking about naturalistic models of free will, and how they can coincide with mechanistic accounts of choice … And that I am not saying that any particular model is a really true.
Turning back to the first paragraph of your previous:-
People often use free will to explain how we make choices, but have great difficulty explaining how free will itself works. Philosophers gesture towards ideas like “the capacity to choose” or “the freedom to do otherwise”, but these concepts just raise the same question to me: What are “capacity” and “freedom”? I suspect that the reason free will is so hard to explain is because it is not actually clarifying anything. It’s a fake explanation, like the physics textbook that says everything runs on energy.[1] “What makes the bicycle move?” Energy! “How do we make choices?” Free will! It doesn’t really answer anything.
That’s not unconditionally true, it’s only true if FW is put forward as a black box where the explanation stops. But it’s possible to have a white box model of FW, one with moving parts. You can have both things—the moving parts/comprehensibility , and the Freedom to do Otherwise.
Free will isn’t always a Mysterious Answer, it depends on the philosopher. Naturalistic libertarians like Robert Kane and Tony Doyle have proposed mechanisms
If you think it is the right question to be talking about, you should argue for that, not just assume it is something we can agree on.
When I talk about choosing, I am talking about modelling the world, not some magical and mysterious capacity that non-choosers lack.
I am not talking about anything mysterious or magical. What I said was:-
“That leaves naturalistic libertarian free will as the controversial case”
Note the emphasis on naturalistic!
A chooser is defined simply to be an entity that takes in information and outputs actions. Choosers are a useful abstraction because such things exist: Many entities perform more optimal actions by using information they possess. But there is no need to hypothesize an elan volonté for how this all works
I’m not.
But do you know that? Surely establishing how the capacity for choice actually works requires empirical investigation.
You appear not to have answered that question.
You claim that there is some “capacity to choose”, but whence comes this idea of a capacity to choose? I fear that you just have an intuition that “you make your own choices”, and then you take this intuition too far, saying that no choice can be “real” if it has a causal or physical link to the rest of reality.
No. I haven’t defined libertarian free will that way.
It is defined as not being fully determined. It is not defined as total disconnection from reality. Why would anyone believe it if it were?
I say that choice-making is the process of converting information into actions.
So do I. One of my points is that mechanistc choice mechanisms can coincide with naturalistic , unmysterious, free will.
You are the one who says it requires some special capacity to choose.
Am I, though? What does special even mean? I am putting forward a theoretical model that is naturalistic, explcable, and testable. The only difference from your model is the inclusion of indeterminism
You are the one who claims there is anything to talk about there, at all.
Undetermined choices are more momentous… it is nothing special… you are nothing special… only the BB [Big Bang] is special.
Special, meaning it’s the only uncaused cause.
It doesn’t matter if an undetermined choice is more “momentous”;
Momentous things matter more than trivial thungs by definition. Of course, it helps if they are real as well.
that doesn’t make it more true. I don’t even grant that undetermined choices are more momentous than determined choices. Our future depends on our choices, whether they are deterministic or not.
But not to the same extent , as I argued at length.
agree that there are varying levels of ownership we can assign to entities that make choices. The self-tuned PID controller has more ownership over its choices than the human-tuned PID controller, but less than a human has over his/her own choices. The error you are making is in only accepting two extremes: (1) Choices are completely deterministic, owned completely by the universe as a whole, and (2) choices follow from “free will”, owned completely by the agent with free will.
I don’t believe in your 2, and never said anything along those lines.
Also, I think it is important to distinguish modelling the world from social responsibility.
Both ways! An inward firing account of choice, the brain mechanisms that enable it, does not answer all the questions, because some of them are outward firing questions about how people interact and societies work
Whether someone is to be held responsible for their choices is a social problem, not a fact of the universe.
It is of course both. You have no moral responsibility alone on a desert island; but also none if you live in a society but don’t have the appropriate brain functions
We can model a computer as making choices without holding it responsible,
Yes, but you can also have a richer model as well.
Taking the wider, humanistic concerns into account doesn’t have to place you and n “woo” territory.
and instead holding its programmer responsible.
a simulated universe might seem just like a real universe...but it isnt real.
When you run a computer program, is it less “real” if it is written in an interpreted language than if it is written in a compiled language?
Potentially, yes, because an interpreter can include a sandbox , that prevents the code from doing what it thinks it’s doing.
(An interpreted language works by simulating a virtual computer which executes higher level instructions using the base computer, while a compiled language directly outputs instructions to be used on the base machine. This is, of course, a great simplification of how interpreters work.)
Well, I think understand that because I wrote my first interpreted program 50 years ago and my first compiled program 40 years ago.
Does “real” to you just mean that you have reached the limit of your understanding?
No, I didn’t say anything like that.
I wonder what you think a physicist would say if you asked him whether an electron is “real”. He, after all, understands that an electron is a theoretical model, not a hard fact of existence.
Few physicists would agree.
Instead of seeking to apply labels like “real” or “unreal”, I think you would be better served by looking at what is actually happening.
I actually believe in empiricism.
(Me: “But do you know that? Surely establishing how the capacity for choice actually works requires empirical investigation”)
And explanation.
But I don’t have a fully equipped neurology lab, so I can’t test my testable model of free will.
I assume you’re in the same position.
What were you expecting me to do, that I’m in a position to do, and yet not doing? And, are you doing it yourself?
However, I think this is the wrong model to have for the possibility of choosing otherwise. Instead, you should imagine that a different choice function in your place might choose a different action
But do you know that? Surely establishing how the capacity for choice actually works requires empirical investigation.
You appear not to have answered that question.
I was using the word “model” to mean “picture in your head”, not “theorized laws which capacity for choice follow”. I was arguing that it was an error to define capacity for choice in a split-brain way, and that you should instead define it in a substitution-brain way. I didn’t answer your question because it wasn’t really engaging with what I had said. It’s probably my fault for being sloppy in my word choice.
I agree that establishing how choosing actually works in brains requires empirical investigation.
The only difference from your model is the inclusion of indeterminism
My model was agnostic about indeterminism, and still is.
Special, meaning it’s the only uncaused cause.
You’re sure using special to mean more than that later on!
Momentous things matter more than trivial thungs by definition.
If you read the second part of my sentence after the semicolon, and the sentence after that paragraph, it is clear that I am just saying that being more momentous doesn’t affect the truth value of a proposition, not that momentous things matter less.
But not to the same extent , as I argued at length.
Not really. You mostly just repeated “more momentous” in various ways, such as more real, more special, and so on. If you want me to care more about choices in the world where choices are non-deterministic than the world where choices are deterministic, I think you would have to tell me something about how that would change the world. For example, perhaps if choices are non-deterministic, we can reduce crime rates by studying psychology, whereas if choices are deterministic, crime rates will never go down no matter how much psychology we as a civilization learn. Therefore, in the first world, it’s useful to study psychology, while in the second world it is not. I don’t believe that is the case, though. But that’s the kind of argument that would get me to care one way or the other.
You do mention something about the world being doomed/not necessarily doomed, but again, I don’t think that actually is a matter of determinism or not. At some point in the future, the world will either be doomed or not doomed, and our actions will decide which is the case. We should therefore take actions to avoid the doomed world, and our brains are configured to follow this precept in either world. Adding true randomness back in just makes it so that there is now aleatoric uncertainty about the future, not simply epistemic uncertainty.
But you seem to be arguing for something more than just “a brain which uses a truly random source of entropy to run a random algorithm”. I don’t want to comment on it, because clearly I don’t understand.
I don’t believe in your 2, and never said anything along those lines.
Sorry.
An inward firing account of choice, the brain mechanisms that enable it, does not answer all the questions, because some of them are outward firing questions about how people interact and societies work
I feel like these are separate areas that can be solved individually. The first area is a question of modelling the brain: How does the brain learn? How does it map information to better than random actions? The second area is a question of social responsibility: As a society, when should we hold people responsibility so that we can accomplish X? What system of rewards and punishments helps us develop a healthy society?
The first area is about psychology, neuroscience, and AI. The second area is about ethics, economics, and game theory. It’s true that answers in the first area can inform us about answers in the second area, but I don’t see the case for the other direction.
It is of course both. You have no moral responsibility alone on a desert island; but also none if you live in a society but don’t have the appropriate brain functions
I disagree. I think it is not both. Who we choose to hold responsible and for what actions is solely a social problem, though of course we should use material facts and mathematical laws to inform us of how to do that well.
Yes, but you can also have a richer model as well.
Richer than what? I haven’t proposed any model of social responsibility.
Potentially, yes, because an interpreter can include a sandbox , that prevents the code from doing what it thinks it’s doing.
This is an interesting perspective. I personally take the perspective that two things are identical if you can’t distinguish between them, so code running in a sandbox is just as real to the program as when it is not in a sandbox, as long as the sandbox faithfully simulates interacting with the outside world. Nevertheless, to an outside observer, these situations do not look identical, so there is a sense in which the program running in the sandbox is less real to the outside observer. But I think this stretches the meanings of “real” and “unreal” beyond their typical use-case of distinguishing between ideas and the material world or between truth and fabrication. It’s probably more useful to coin a new term like “root” or “base” to distinguish between a simulated universe and a universe not running in a simulation.
I actually believe in empiricism.
I wasn’t trying to say you don’t believe in empiricism! I was trying to argue that it would be more pragmatic to simply describe the world instead of worrying about whether the label “real” or “unreal” applies.
But I don’t have a fully equipped neurology lab, so I can’t test my testable model of free will.
You mentioned libertarian free will, which according to Google says that human beings can make choices undetermined by prior causes, physical laws, or divine predetermination. Would brains taking advantage of true randomness in the universe count, provided it exists? Or does there need to be some special substance which is only used in choice-making? Or am I just completely missing the mark?
I don’t really find the distinction between “a brain uses a random algorithm which takes advantage of true randomness” and “a brain uses a random algorithm which uses chaos for its ‘entropy’” very important for understanding how choice-making works.
I would be very interested in hearing a test you could perform to validate/invalidate your model of free will. I’m still not really sure what you mean by free will, see, and I think that would help a lot.
I assume you’re in the same position.
Pretty much.
What were you expecting me to do, that I’m in a position to do, and yet not doing? And, are you doing it yourself?
Right now I would mostly appreciate you explaining what your model of free will is.
I was using the word “model” to mean “picture in your head”, not “theorized laws which capacity for choice follow”. I was arguing that it was an error to define capacity for choice in a split-brain way, and that you should instead define it in a substitution-brain way.
But that wasn’t forced on you by the evidence. And, since it wasnt, it was presumably based on your concept of choice.
The only difference from your model is the inclusion of indeterminism
My model was agnostic about indeterminism, and still is
is it though? You wrote.
This solves the problem of capacity to choose otherwise without requiring stochasticity?
So stochasticity is a problem? Or just unnecessary. The problem with your solution to the ability to have done otherwise—which is an old one—is that it doesn’t solve the problem in the right way. In a sense , you could have done otherwise if you were a different person or in a different universe, but under the circumstances, you are you who you are, in the universe your are in. But what people want is an ability to have done otherwise under the very circumstances. A real ability, not a theoretical possibility.
If you read the second part of my sentence after the semicolon, and the sentence after that paragraph, it is clear that I am just saying that being more momentous doesn’t affect the truth value of a proposition, not that momentous things matter less.
But not to the same extent , as I argued at length.
Not really. You mostly just repeated “more momentous” in various ways, such as more real, more special, and so on. If you want me to care more about choices in the world where choices are non-deterministic than the world where choices are deterministic, I think you would have to tell me something about how that would change the world.
That’s pretty easy. In a fundamental sense, you can’t change and anything given determinism, because there would be a single, inevitable future. Things can change, but in a way that’s fixed
For example, perhaps if choices are non-deterministic, we can reduce crime rates by
If choices are deterministic , crime rates will go down or not, and we can’t change that by making different choices.
You do mention something about the world being doomed/not necessarily doomed, but again, I don’t think that actually is a matter of determinism or not. At some point in the future, the world will either be doomed or not doomed, and our actions will decide which is the case.
Our actions will cause it under determinism, and decide it under free will. The two are not the same.
We should therefore take actions to avoid the doomed world,
Under determinism, you can only take the action you are determined irrespective of what you should.
An inward firing account of choice, the brain mechanisms that enable it, does not answer all the questions, because some of them are outward firing questions about how people interact and societies work
I feel like these are separate areas that can be solved individually. The first area is a question of modelling the brain: How does the brain learn? How does it map information to better than random actions? The second area is a question of social responsibility: As a society, when should we hold people responsibility so that we can accomplish X?
The point is not to reject free will out of hand. You shouldn’t reject it as being magical, or as being useless. You may reject it as being untrue … But that is not how you are rejecting it , because you are not actually investigating brain function..
Potentially, yes, because an interpreter can include a sandbox , that prevents the code from doing what it thinks it’s doing.
This is an interesting perspective. I personally take the perspective that two things are identical if you can’t distinguish between them, so code running in a sandbox is just as real to the program as when it is not in a sandbox, as long as the sandbox faithfully simulates interacting with the outside world.
Who’s “you”? From the outside perspective , they actually are different. They might seem the same from the inside perspective , but that ’s only seeming.
Nevertheless, to an outside observer, these situations do not look identical, so there is a sense in which the program running in the sandbox is less real to the outside observer. But I think this stretches the meanings of “real” and “unreal” beyond their typical use-case of distinguishing between ideas and the material world or between truth and fabrication.
I think it’s exactly the other way round. It goes against ordinary usage to say convincing illusions are real.
I wasn’t trying to say you don’t believe in empiricism! I was trying to argue that it would be more pragmatic to simply describe the world instead of worrying about whether the label “real” or “unreal” applies.
Nothing is less pragmatic than struggling to bring about changes in a simulation that could have the plug pulled any time.
But I don’t have a fully equipped neurology lab, so I can’t test my testable model of free will.
You mentioned libertarian free will, which according to Google says that human beings can make choices undetermined by prior causes, physical laws, or divine predetermination. Would brains taking advantage of true randomness in the universe count, provided it exists?
Yes. That’s the point of naturalistic libertarianism. It’s based on physical indeterminism, not souls or magic.
I don’t really find the distinction between “a brain uses a random algorithm which takes advantage of true randomness” and “a brain uses a random algorithm which uses chaos for its ‘entropy’” very important for understanding how choice-making works.
It’s important for underestimated choice is. Only one implies an open non inevitable future.
Choice making could work indeterministically even if it doesn’t make a difference. Choice mechanisms can coincide with free will concepts, because not all free will concepts are magical.
I would be very interested in hearing a test you could perform to validate/invalidate your model of free will.
A naturalistic model is falsifiable. But not by me, because I don’t have a fully equipped neurologist lab.
Naturalistic libertarianism doesn’t require any kind of soul, or fundamental third alternative to determinism and indeterminism. It assumes indeterminism, and there is no need to override determinism if the universe is not deterministic in the first place.
The basic mechanism is that the unconscious mind proposes various ideas and actions , which the conscious mind decides between, and finally puts the chosen one into action.
Sam Harris makes much of the fact that the conscious mind, the executive function, does not predetermine the suggestions, and concludes that in the absence of of predetermination, there is no conscious control at all. In contrast, I argue that the choice between impulses, the decision to act on one rather than another, the gatekeeping mechanism, is conscious control—and conscious control clearly exists in health adults.
Indeterminism as such is not a problem. The problems are various things which are assumed to follow from it, such as lack of purpose or control. A choice between impulses which both come from abo your desires cannot leave you doing something that is random in the sense of unrelated to your desires.
If there is indeterminism in the mechanism itself (and there doesn’t have to be) it provides the libertarian could-have-done-otherwise as well as conscious control. If the indeterminism is located at the option-choosing stage, then it amounts to a Robert Kane type theory where free will relates mainly to “torn” decisions. If the indeterminism is located at the option -generation stage that is a possible source of creativity.
Are you under the Control of Randomness?
An internal coin toss, or random number generator in the brain, is not an agent with its own agenda, so you are not under its compulsion in a gun-to-head sense. (This is similar to the standard compatibilist argument that physical determinism is not equivalent to compulsion by an agent other than oneself). Also, it takes billions of neurons acting in concert to make a decision: there is no justification for supposing that one indeteministic event is responsible for the whole decision, any more than there is for assuming one deteministic event is.
Indeterminism based free will doesn’t have to separate you from your own desires, values, and goals, because, realistically ,they are often conflicting , so that they don’t determine a single action—and because reasons can explain without determining. These points are explained by the parable of the cake:-
If I am offered a slice of cake, I might want to take it so as not to refuse my hostess, but also to refuse it so as to stick to my diet. Whichever action I chose, would have been supported by a reason. Actions and reasons that explain them can can be chosen in pairs. In the case of the cake argument (diet, refuse) and (politeness, eat).
Before I begin my response, I would like to point out that I really don’t appreciate your commenting style. I spent a while working on my post, and you didn’t even bother to engage with my first paragraph, where I say that capacity to choose otherwise is asking the wrong question. If you think it is the right question to be talking about, you should argue for that, not just assume it is something we can agree on.
When I talk about choosing, I am talking about modelling the world, not some magical and mysterious capacity that non-choosers lack. A chooser is defined simply to be an entity that takes in information and outputs actions. Choosers are a useful abstraction because such things exist: Many entities perform more optimal actions by using information they possess. But there is no need to hypothesize an elan volonté for how this all works.
Now, to talk a bit more about the content of your comment...
You claim that there is some “capacity to choose”, but whence comes this idea of a capacity to choose? I fear that you just have an intuition that “you make your own choices”, and then you take this intuition too far, saying that no choice can be “real” if it has a causal or physical link to the rest of reality.
I say that choice-making is the process of converting information into actions. You are the one who says it requires some special capacity to choose. You are the one who claims there is anything to talk about there, at all.
It doesn’t matter if an undetermined choice is more “momentous”; that doesn’t make it more true. I don’t even grant that undetermined choices are more momentous than determined choices. Our future depends on our choices, whether they are deterministic or not.
I do grant, though, that it would be more important to study choice-making if choice-making was more momentous.
And both are controlled by people.
I agree that there are varying levels of ownership we can assign to entities that make choices. The self-tuned PID controller has more ownership over its choices than the human-tuned PID controller, but less than a human has over his/her own choices. The error you are making is in only accepting two extremes: (1) Choices are completely deterministic, owned completely by the universe as a whole, and (2) choices follow from “free will”, owned completely by the agent with free will.
Also, I think it is important to distinguish modelling the world from social responsibility. Whether someone is to be held responsible for their choices is a social problem, not a fact of the universe. We can model a computer as making choices without holding it responsible, and instead holding its programmer responsible.
When you run a computer program, is it less “real” if it is written in an interpreted language than if it is written in a compiled language? (An interpreted language works by simulating a virtual computer which executes higher level instructions using the base computer, while a compiled language directly outputs instructions to be used on the base machine. This is, of course, a great simplification of how interpreters work.) Does “real” to you just mean that you have reached the limit of your understanding? I wonder what you think a physicist would say if you asked him whether an electron is “real”. He, after all, understands that an electron is a theoretical model, not a hard fact of existence.
Instead of seeking to apply labels like “real” or “unreal”, I think you would be better served by looking at what is actually happening.
Funnily enough, I could say something similar. I think you missed that I am talking about naturalistic models of free will, and how they can coincide with mechanistic accounts of choice … And that I am not saying that any particular model is a really true.
Turning back to the first paragraph of your previous:-
That’s not unconditionally true, it’s only true if FW is put forward as a black box where the explanation stops. But it’s possible to have a white box model of FW, one with moving parts. You can have both things—the moving parts/comprehensibility , and the Freedom to do Otherwise.
Free will isn’t always a Mysterious Answer, it depends on the philosopher. Naturalistic libertarians like Robert Kane and Tony Doyle have proposed mechanisms
I am not talking about anything mysterious or magical. What I said was:-
“That leaves naturalistic libertarian free will as the controversial case”
Note the emphasis on naturalistic!
I’m not.
You appear not to have answered that question.
No. I haven’t defined libertarian free will that way.
It is defined as not being fully determined. It is not defined as total disconnection from reality. Why would anyone believe it if it were?
So do I. One of my points is that mechanistc choice mechanisms can coincide with naturalistic , unmysterious, free will.
Am I, though? What does special even mean? I am putting forward a theoretical model that is naturalistic, explcable, and testable. The only difference from your model is the inclusion of indeterminism
Special, meaning it’s the only uncaused cause.
Momentous things matter more than trivial thungs by definition. Of course, it helps if they are real as well.
But not to the same extent , as I argued at length.
I don’t believe in your 2, and never said anything along those lines.
Both ways! An inward firing account of choice, the brain mechanisms that enable it, does not answer all the questions, because some of them are outward firing questions about how people interact and societies work
It is of course both. You have no moral responsibility alone on a desert island; but also none if you live in a society but don’t have the appropriate brain functions
Yes, but you can also have a richer model as well.
Taking the wider, humanistic concerns into account doesn’t have to place you and n “woo” territory.
Potentially, yes, because an interpreter can include a sandbox , that prevents the code from doing what it thinks it’s doing.
Well, I think understand that because I wrote my first interpreted program 50 years ago and my first compiled program 40 years ago.
No, I didn’t say anything like that.
Few physicists would agree.
I actually believe in empiricism.
(Me: “But do you know that? Surely establishing how the capacity for choice actually works requires empirical investigation”)
And explanation.
But I don’t have a fully equipped neurology lab, so I can’t test my testable model of free will.
I assume you’re in the same position.
What were you expecting me to do, that I’m in a position to do, and yet not doing? And, are you doing it yourself?
I was using the word “model” to mean “picture in your head”, not “theorized laws which capacity for choice follow”. I was arguing that it was an error to define capacity for choice in a split-brain way, and that you should instead define it in a substitution-brain way. I didn’t answer your question because it wasn’t really engaging with what I had said. It’s probably my fault for being sloppy in my word choice.
I agree that establishing how choosing actually works in brains requires empirical investigation.
My model was agnostic about indeterminism, and still is.
You’re sure using special to mean more than that later on!
If you read the second part of my sentence after the semicolon, and the sentence after that paragraph, it is clear that I am just saying that being more momentous doesn’t affect the truth value of a proposition, not that momentous things matter less.
Not really. You mostly just repeated “more momentous” in various ways, such as more real, more special, and so on. If you want me to care more about choices in the world where choices are non-deterministic than the world where choices are deterministic, I think you would have to tell me something about how that would change the world. For example, perhaps if choices are non-deterministic, we can reduce crime rates by studying psychology, whereas if choices are deterministic, crime rates will never go down no matter how much psychology we as a civilization learn. Therefore, in the first world, it’s useful to study psychology, while in the second world it is not. I don’t believe that is the case, though. But that’s the kind of argument that would get me to care one way or the other.
You do mention something about the world being doomed/not necessarily doomed, but again, I don’t think that actually is a matter of determinism or not. At some point in the future, the world will either be doomed or not doomed, and our actions will decide which is the case. We should therefore take actions to avoid the doomed world, and our brains are configured to follow this precept in either world. Adding true randomness back in just makes it so that there is now aleatoric uncertainty about the future, not simply epistemic uncertainty.
But you seem to be arguing for something more than just “a brain which uses a truly random source of entropy to run a random algorithm”. I don’t want to comment on it, because clearly I don’t understand.
Sorry.
I feel like these are separate areas that can be solved individually. The first area is a question of modelling the brain: How does the brain learn? How does it map information to better than random actions? The second area is a question of social responsibility: As a society, when should we hold people responsibility so that we can accomplish X? What system of rewards and punishments helps us develop a healthy society?
The first area is about psychology, neuroscience, and AI. The second area is about ethics, economics, and game theory. It’s true that answers in the first area can inform us about answers in the second area, but I don’t see the case for the other direction.
I disagree. I think it is not both. Who we choose to hold responsible and for what actions is solely a social problem, though of course we should use material facts and mathematical laws to inform us of how to do that well.
Richer than what? I haven’t proposed any model of social responsibility.
This is an interesting perspective. I personally take the perspective that two things are identical if you can’t distinguish between them, so code running in a sandbox is just as real to the program as when it is not in a sandbox, as long as the sandbox faithfully simulates interacting with the outside world. Nevertheless, to an outside observer, these situations do not look identical, so there is a sense in which the program running in the sandbox is less real to the outside observer. But I think this stretches the meanings of “real” and “unreal” beyond their typical use-case of distinguishing between ideas and the material world or between truth and fabrication. It’s probably more useful to coin a new term like “root” or “base” to distinguish between a simulated universe and a universe not running in a simulation.
I wasn’t trying to say you don’t believe in empiricism! I was trying to argue that it would be more pragmatic to simply describe the world instead of worrying about whether the label “real” or “unreal” applies.
You mentioned libertarian free will, which according to Google says that human beings can make choices undetermined by prior causes, physical laws, or divine predetermination. Would brains taking advantage of true randomness in the universe count, provided it exists? Or does there need to be some special substance which is only used in choice-making? Or am I just completely missing the mark?
I don’t really find the distinction between “a brain uses a random algorithm which takes advantage of true randomness” and “a brain uses a random algorithm which uses chaos for its ‘entropy’” very important for understanding how choice-making works.
I would be very interested in hearing a test you could perform to validate/invalidate your model of free will. I’m still not really sure what you mean by free will, see, and I think that would help a lot.
Pretty much.
Right now I would mostly appreciate you explaining what your model of free will is.
But that wasn’t forced on you by the evidence. And, since it wasnt, it was presumably based on your concept of choice.
is it though? You wrote.
So stochasticity is a problem? Or just unnecessary. The problem with your solution to the ability to have done otherwise—which is an old one—is that it doesn’t solve the problem in the right way. In a sense , you could have done otherwise if you were a different person or in a different universe, but under the circumstances, you are you who you are, in the universe your are in. But what people want is an ability to have done otherwise under the very circumstances. A real ability, not a theoretical possibility.
That’s pretty easy. In a fundamental sense, you can’t change and anything given determinism, because there would be a single, inevitable future. Things can change, but in a way that’s fixed
If choices are deterministic , crime rates will go down or not, and we can’t change that by making different choices.
Our actions will cause it under determinism, and decide it under free will. The two are not the same.
Under determinism, you can only take the action you are determined irrespective of what you should.
The point is not to reject free will out of hand. You shouldn’t reject it as being magical, or as being useless. You may reject it as being untrue … But that is not how you are rejecting it , because you are not actually investigating brain function..
Who’s “you”? From the outside perspective , they actually are different. They might seem the same from the inside perspective , but that ’s only seeming.
I think it’s exactly the other way round. It goes against ordinary usage to say convincing illusions are real.
Nothing is less pragmatic than struggling to bring about changes in a simulation that could have the plug pulled any time.
You mentioned libertarian free will, which according to Google says that human beings can make choices undetermined by prior causes, physical laws, or divine predetermination. Would brains taking advantage of true randomness in the universe count, provided it exists?
Yes. That’s the point of naturalistic libertarianism. It’s based on physical indeterminism, not souls or magic.
It’s important for underestimated choice is. Only one implies an open non inevitable future.
Choice making could work indeterministically even if it doesn’t make a difference. Choice mechanisms can coincide with free will concepts, because not all free will concepts are magical.
A naturalistic model is falsifiable. But not by me, because I don’t have a fully equipped neurologist lab.
Naturalistic libertarianism doesn’t require any kind of soul, or fundamental third alternative to determinism and indeterminism. It assumes indeterminism, and there is no need to override determinism if the universe is not deterministic in the first place.
The basic mechanism is that the unconscious mind proposes various ideas and actions , which the conscious mind decides between, and finally puts the chosen one into action.
Sam Harris makes much of the fact that the conscious mind, the executive function, does not predetermine the suggestions, and concludes that in the absence of of predetermination, there is no conscious control at all. In contrast, I argue that the choice between impulses, the decision to act on one rather than another, the gatekeeping mechanism, is conscious control—and conscious control clearly exists in health adults.
Indeterminism as such is not a problem. The problems are various things which are assumed to follow from it, such as lack of purpose or control. A choice between impulses which both come from abo your desires cannot leave you doing something that is random in the sense of unrelated to your desires.
If there is indeterminism in the mechanism itself (and there doesn’t have to be) it provides the libertarian could-have-done-otherwise as well as conscious control. If the indeterminism is located at the option-choosing stage, then it amounts to a Robert Kane type theory where free will relates mainly to “torn” decisions. If the indeterminism is located at the option -generation stage that is a possible source of creativity.
Are you under the Control of Randomness?
An internal coin toss, or random number generator in the brain, is not an agent with its own agenda, so you are not under its compulsion in a gun-to-head sense. (This is similar to the standard compatibilist argument that physical determinism is not equivalent to compulsion by an agent other than oneself). Also, it takes billions of neurons acting in concert to make a decision: there is no justification for supposing that one indeteministic event is responsible for the whole decision, any more than there is for assuming one deteministic event is.
Indeterminism based free will doesn’t have to separate you from your own desires, values, and goals, because, realistically ,they are often conflicting , so that they don’t determine a single action—and because reasons can explain without determining. These points are explained by the parable of the cake:-
If I am offered a slice of cake, I might want to take it so as not to refuse my hostess, but also to refuse it so as to stick to my diet. Whichever action I chose, would have been supported by a reason. Actions and reasons that explain them can can be chosen in pairs. In the case of the cake argument (diet, refuse) and (politeness, eat).