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Author | Topic: Do I have a choice? (determinism vs libertarianism vs compatibilism) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Tusko Member (Idle past 132 days) Posts: 615 From: London, UK Joined: |
Thanks - I hope this gets to the heart of it.
I'm feeling increasingly like I'm proposing something really wacky. Just a week ago i thought my views on free will were pretty run of the mill - even that they made sense! My definition of 'meaningful freedom' would be if you could rerun history twice and a person would make two different choices on two different occasions, even though all the run up had been the same. I don't see how this could happen, unless it was determined arbitrarily - and I don't think that would be free either. But if it could happen without it being arbitrary, then that would be meaningful freedom to me. But that's the only kind of freedom that I can think of. So I don't see how we could be free. The idea of freedom doesn't really make sense to me, like the idea of an omnipotent, omni-benevolent, omni-everything god doesn't make sense to me. To me the outcome of every choice is the result of previous circumstances (experiences, biology, chemistry, physics). I don't think there's much to pick between internal and external 'constraints' - because other people's internal constraints easily become other people's external ones (so a man who abuses children and takes away their compatiblist freedom abuses them because of his internal constraints, which were put in place by someone who abused him... I'm not saying that all people who are abused are going to abuse others by the way). Is this helping?
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JavaMan Member (Idle past 2350 days) Posts: 475 From: York, England Joined: |
Thanks - I hope this gets to the heart of it. Yes. I'm going to have to think about it. I may be some time ... .
I'm feeling increasingly like I'm proposing something really wacky. Just a week ago i thought my views on free will were pretty run of the mill - even that they made sense! I hope you don't feel as though I'm picking on you. I'm responding to your posts more than other people because you're making a good fist of putting forward a coherent argument. And don't be too intimidated by the people arguing against you - we're not that clever - we've just got a secret stash of arguments from Hobbes, Locke, Hume and Mill that we can call on when things get sticky . 'I can't even fit all my wife's clothes into a suitcase for travelling. So you want me to believe we're going to put all of the planets and stars and everything into a sandwich bag?' - q3psycho on the Big Bang
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Tusko Member (Idle past 132 days) Posts: 615 From: London, UK Joined: |
Tusko writes: I don't draw a distinction between external coercion (people with guns) ... and internal constraining factors (my biological inheritance, my lifetime of experience and their effect on me). To do so seems artificial. Javaman writes: I hope you realise how silly that sounds. In what way is it artificial to distinguish between you doing something because you want to do it, and you doing something because someone is holding a gun to your head? So maybe this is where I'm being weird? It still seems to make sense to me. Obviously I'm happier about doing things that I choose to do than things I'm forced to do by other people, especially if the things that I'm forced to do inflict pain or suffering on anyone (especially myself!) so they are different in that way. But what I'm saying is: am I any freer if I do what I want than if I do what someone else wants? I don't think I'm given more choice if I do what I want, because there is only one thing that I do want, given two options. And isn't freedom having choices? Maybe an example would help. You have an apparent choice when you choose between pistachio and strawberry. But given the circumstances (previous memories, biological factors) you can only reach one decision. You are constrained by yourself: by all those factors mentioned previously. If Javaman is holding a gun to my head and asking me to microwave my puppy, then I have an apparent choice to have my head blown open or to melt the mutt. But given the circumstances (my history of cowardice, the stress hormones in my bloodstream etc...) I can only ever reach one decision. I am constrained by all those factors mentioned previously. Is this sounding odd? I'm not saying that because we can only do one thing at any juncture thats not freedom (I hope not anyway) I'm saying that the decisions that we do make at any one juncture seem to result entirely or almost entirely from past happenings. ABE - and by the way, you are being eminently reasonable and i'm not feeling at all picked on. I just want to sound friendly and open to your ideas. I want to underline that I'm not defending my position from a bunker of ego - I'm quite happy to change my view if someone can explain just what it is that I'm getting all twisted (if I am!). Edited by Tusko, : ABE noted at end Edited by Tusko, : No reason given.
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Rob  Suspended Member (Idle past 5879 days) Posts: 2297 Joined: |
Tusko said: I see free will as something that relates not to the universe as a whole but to a very specific subset of the whole - beings with the ability to reason. Javaman said in response:I'd agree with this, apart from the limitation of 'beings with the ability to reason'. I'd change this to 'beings with the ability to choose' - reason is only a very small factor in most of my choices; there seems to be a whole realm of unconscious processing in there. I would like to quote something from Lewis for both of you."Nowadays, when we talk of the "laws of nature" we usually mean things like gravitation, or heredity, or the laws of chemistry. But when the older thinkers called the Law of Right and Wrong "the Law of Nature," they really meant the Law of Human Nature. The idea was that, just as all bodies are governed by the law of gravitation and organisms by biological laws, so the creature called man also had his law--with this great difference, that a body could not choose whether it obeyed the law of gravitation or not, but a man could choose either or obey the Law of Human Nature or to disobey it. We may put this in another way. Each man is at every moment subjected to several sets of law but there is only one of these which he is free to disobey. As a body, he is subjected to gravitation and cannot disobey it; if you leave him unsupported in mid-air, he has no more choice about falling than a stone has. As an organism, he is subjected to various biological laws which he cannot disobey anymore than an animal can. That is, he cannot disobey those laws which he shares with other things; but the law which is peculiar to his human nature, the law he does not share with animals or vegetables or inorganic things, is the one he can disobey if he chooses. This law was called the Law of Nature because people thought that every one knew it by nature and did not need to be taught it. They did not mean, of course, that you might not find an odd individual here and there who did not know it, just as you find a few people who are colour-blind or have no ear for a tune. But taking the race as a whole, they thought that the human idea of decent behavior was obvious to everyone. And I believe they were right. If they were not, then all the things we said about the war were nonsense. What was the sense in saying the enemy were in the wrong unless Right is a real thing which the Nazis at bottom knew as well as we did and ought to have practiced? If they had no notion of what we mean by right, then, though we might still have had to fight them, we could no more have blamed them for that then for the colour of their hair. (C.S. Lewis / Chapter Title: Right and wrong as a key to understanding the universe / 'Mere Christianity') Thought it was worth noting since you both have found your way onto that same ground. Edited by AdminNWR, : off topic
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Tusko Member (Idle past 132 days) Posts: 615 From: London, UK Joined: |
Ive got to be ultra fast here... so apologies.
I agree that it is impossible for anyone to be ulitmately responsible for their nature... so this leads me to think that there can't ever be meaningfulchoice - only apparentchoices. It might feel like a choice, but you're only going to do the thing that your mind decides is the best course of action... and what your mind determines is the best course of action is derived from previous happenings (physical, biological etc..)... and so is predetermined. I don't think the idea of freedom as offered by anyone is internally consistent, like I don't think an omni- everything god makes sense.
PaulK writes: And why would avoiding a particular option because past experiene suggests that it is a bad idea be seen as a constraint on chocie rather than a relevant consideration ? If that's not what you meant then how does past experience affect choice in your view ? I'm not necessarily viewing the constraints as BAD. The ability to reason and past experience is great and it throws up relevant considerations when it comes to making any decision. Its great, but it also makes whatever it is that we will do kind of inevitable. Or at least it seems that way to me?
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5 |
It seems to me that your idea of meaningful choice is not meaningful. It seems to demand that personal preferences or values have nothing to do with the choice, that it is just an arbitrary selection between alternatives that are all equally good to the chooser. But how can that be a meaningful choice ?
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Tusko Member (Idle past 132 days) Posts: 615 From: London, UK Joined: |
I'm sorry if this seems like it is going on a bit... I'm hoping that I get to the bottom of this soon. If its any consolation, I'm finding this invaluable for seeing what my ideas are on this subject.
I don't think meaningful choices as I was describing them happen. I don't think they could happen. They don't make sense. A meaningful choice wouldn't be predetermined, and wouldn't be arbitrary. I don't think this is possible. I guess if it could happen, the super-being who did it would look at two possibilities and they really could do either, so they could freely choose to do one. I don't think humans, or indeed any being I can imagine could do that. That's why the idea of free will doesn't make sense to me. I basically agree with compatiblists it seems, except I deny that what's left can really be called freedom. If I could know all the predetermining factors that affect you at any moment when you have to make a decision - and I mean all of them - then I would be able to accurately predict the decision you would make. If I can accurately predict the decision you are going to make, then it seems predetermined. If it is predetermined then it's inevitable. If its inevitable before it happens then I don't really see room for free will. This is hypothetical because no one could ever predict accurately what someone would do like this (at least not with today's technology!) I don't think its particularly downbeat either - because we get to exercise our ability to reason, and that's a wonderful thing that screwdrivers and trees never get to do. I'm just not drawing a distinction between the predispositions of others who may want to control me, and my internal predispositions to do certain things. They all reduce the range of possible choices that can be taken by anybody to one at each moment of choice. Is that a better way of describing it? It occurs to me that I might be arguing for a shatteringly banal truism, like wood is wood or something, which is a bit disheartening because its been my attitude towards free-will for years. What do you think? Edited by Tusko, : making it make more sense Edited by Tusko, : NOW it makes more sense!
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5 |
But I don't think that it is a freedom worth having. The freedom that compatibilists are concerned with is relevant because it is worth having.
As I see it compatibilism offers a view of free will that is both very close to our intuitive idea of it - and is actually possible. Freedom in any other sense is opposed to will - turning "free will" into an oxymoron.
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nwr Member Posts: 6412 From: Geneva, Illinois Joined: Member Rating: 5.3 |
I don't think meaningful choices as I was describing them happen. I don't think they could happen. They don't make sense. A meaningful choice wouldn't be predetermined, and wouldn't be arbitrary. I don't think this is possible.
I go to the ice cream store. I have a choice of chocolate or vanilla. What is predetermined, is that I can't choose strawberry, for the store does not offer that. However, I am not understanding why you think my choice of chocolate or vanilla is predetermined. Maybe if I hate vanilla, then my choice of chocolate is forced. But what if I like them both - isn't it then a free choice? Compassionate conservatism - bringing you a kinder, gentler torture chamber
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5 |
But I don't think that it is a freedom worth having. The freedom that compatibilists are concerned with is relevant because it is worth having.
As I see it compatibilism offers a view of free will that is both very close to our intuitive idea of it - and is actually possible. Freedom in any other sense is opposed to will - turning "free will" into an oxymoron. I draw the line between internal dispositions and external constraints on the basis that your internal constraints are part of you - if they were different you would not be the person you are. I cannot see any way in which you can be "free" of that without ceasing to be a person (even if you were someone else you would just have a different set of constraints).
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JustinC Member (Idle past 4875 days) Posts: 624 From: Pittsburgh, PA, USA Joined: |
quote:It seems my example would be precluded by iii. then, since it is not possible to choose for some event to occur that far ahead in the future. So maybe the choice would be an immediate action, i.e., how one should act. In that case, you are still choosing between atleast two future states: 1.) where you act in x manner, and 2.) where you act in ~x manner. Or even if the choice is entirely mental, you are still choosing between two different states of mind for the future (if you believe in a materialist notion of the mind then your mind would have to be physically different depending on the choice).
quote: quote:I don't quite see the equating. Can you be more explicit in the two different senses in which it is being used. But I'll try and reword it.
quote:and quote: Edited by JustinC, : No reason given.
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5 |
quote: Which means disqualifying choices which don't fit that restriction. If you need to change the definition of choice to fit your argument then there's something wrong with your argument.
quote: So you are saying that you don't see your own conclusion ?
There is only one possible future according to determinism. That is obviously incompatible with free will as defined in the conclusion of the previous argument.
If you can't see it, then you don't understand your own argument.
quote: I WAS more explicit in my response to your point iii.
Only in the sense that it must be available to be chosen - and we would typically restrict it to options a "reasonable" person would consider. (I would add that we certainly should not use "possible" in the sense of probability here).
It is quite clear that in your conclusion you are not using "possible" in the sense that I stated should be applied in iii and yet you try to equate the two usages. And your proposed rewording of option iii is also unacceptable. I've already explicitly stated that "possible" should be restricted to the availability of options to a reasonabke person, and no further.
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Max Power Member (Idle past 6038 days) Posts: 32 From: Minneapolis, MN, USA Joined: |
I draw the line between internal dispositions and external constraints on the basis that your internal constraints are part of you - if they were different you would not be the person you are. I cannot see any way in which you can be "free" of that without ceasing to be a person (even if you were someone else you would just have a different set of constraints). Is there any difference between a human's freedom and the freedom of a computer program in this view? I can choose A or B based on my internal disposition and external data just as an if - else statement could choose A or B. Am I missing something?
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PaulK Member Posts: 17828 Joined: Member Rating: 2.5 |
That depends. If AI researchers succeeded in producing the program that was conscious and had a human level of understanding then it would have the same sort of freedom. To the extent that the program lacks that then it would be rather meaningless to attribute any degree of free will to it.
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Max Power Member (Idle past 6038 days) Posts: 32 From: Minneapolis, MN, USA Joined: |
That depends. If AI researchers succeeded in producing the program that was conscious and had a human level of understanding then it would have the same sort of freedom. To the extent that the program lacks that then it would be rather meaningless to attribute any degree of free will to it. Is this human level of understanding any different than an extremely complex code? As far as conscious goes, it seems like that is a very subjective term, could a simple program have some level of consiousness? Is it the case that out of complexity comes free will or is there something else going on in this view? I guess the thrust of this line of questioning is how is hard determinism different than compatibilism except that you define something that is complex as free will?
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