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).
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).