How would a society without free-will be ordered?

It seems to me that without free will we would have evolved in the same way animals have, which is strictly survival of the fittest. Murder would have no meaning because we would only kill for reasons of expediency and it wouldn't be considered right or wrong, it would just be what is.We can look at the more intelligent animals around us and try and figure out how we would have evolved differently, with the only real difference being our greater intelligence.All we have known is a life with a moral code and it isn't easy for us to grasp the concept of life without it.Great question by the way.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

Hello PaulK,Its important to remember these people believe isn't necessarily true - its just their perception, like the default one for us is that free will is true.Perhaps I'm being naieve here (or maybe I'm not understanding compatiblism) but I'm not sure if it is necessary that they accept a compatablist idea of free-will for these people a topic of meaningful discussion.I was imagining a people who were hard determinists. Can you explain a bit why you think that people who believed this wouldn't be interesting to discuss?Thanks for your response by the way, much appreciated.

Compatibilism in this context is essentially the idea that the important aspects of Free Will are compatible with determinism.If you assuem a non-compatibilist society then I don't see that you can draw any conclusions about how it would operate. True a society could try to work out the implications of their belif and try to order their society on that basis but they could equally well not bother. Indeed the very effort of doing so would seem to be questionable at least given the premise. Any attempt to change the society would call their doctrien of determinism into question. And if they start making the excuse "we're programmed to do this" then they open a Pandora's box, because ANY decision can be justified on that basis. So I think that it would either make little appreciable difference or it could open things up to any rearrangement - or none.In the end I would not think you would end up with anything too radically out of the range of "normal" human societies because the people would be human and given an easy rationalisation for any concievable change they will tend to fall into the typical patterns -because those work for humans.

I'm glad you like the question. However, I suspect that you think I'm asking a different one than I actually am - I hope you still like mine when we've sorted this out! Let's have a look at this.I'm not saying that these people definitely don't have free will; I'm just saying that they don't think they have free will. After all, I think it remains undecided whether we have free will or not. It is at least concievable that we don't have free will, and yet we act as we do, with law and guilt and a belief in moral accountability.I'm asking this: if a society made the opposite assumption to us, and instinctively rejected free will as icky and horrible, how would their society differ from ours?I disagree with you if you are saying that people who believe that there is no such thing as free will would just go around being beastly to each other. My reasoning in this case is personal: I don't see a reason to believe in free will, but I'm no more nasty or brutish than the next person.With regard to your animal comments - I think there actually have been more and more studies done recently that suggest that our closest relations actually do experience something like empathy for others(perhaps morality is going to far).Again, thanks for getting involved.

I've had a look at compatiblist ideas of free will over the last couple of days on wikipedia and I have to confess that I can't see how it works. It seems if I'm reading it right to suggest that everyone has free will apart from those constrained by their physical surroundings (chains and such). I strongly disagree with this notion. Maybe I'm not reading it right though.In response to your post:I don't see why they wouldn't bother if they didn't believe in any kind of free will. Surely you would only become indifferent if you knew what you were going to do in the future. There's no reason to carry on then I agree (though you are flirting with paradox perhaps?!). But if you don't know what happens next, or why it will happen, and if you enjoy pleasure* and try to avoid pain as best you can, then I think you are in a position very similar to us - exept you don't think that your choices originate in your mind but somewhere else instead.Any attempt to change this society would be recognised not as the result of individual agency but instead the unfolding of inevitable circumstances - so I don't see a problem there.As for using the excuse "I'm programed to do this" - I don't accept that for a reason already outlined. You don't know what it is you are programmed to do - so you don't know what was your inevitable action until it happened. As a result you can't make predictions about what is inevitable, or rationalise bad things you are about to do in this way. You just have to let things unfold.Does this make sense?I realise I'm drifting from my intention with this thread here, but its important that everyone understands what I'm proposing properly (or alternatively I'm disabused of an illogical notion - I'm happy either way!).*I'm not proposing that they would be any more hedonistic than us here: they might delay pleasure as we do, or value long-term pleasure more than short-term.

I see what you're getting at and I didn't answer the question you asked directly.In our society there are many like yourself who are deterministic and don't believe in free will. I very much doubt that you behave much differently than your next door neighbour who does believe in free will. I'm fairly sure that at least 99% of the population have never even considered the question other than in a religious context.My point is that belief or non-belief in free will would make little, if any appreciable difference. The question as I see it is whether free will exists or not. Without free will there is no moral code for us to live to. If free will exists the moral code exists whether or not we believe in free will or not. However if free will does not exist then we are back to my first post.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

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I've had a look at compatiblist ideas of free will over the last couple of days on wikipedia and I have to confess that I can't see how it works. It seems if I'm reading it right to suggest that everyone has free will apart from those constrained by their physical surroundings (chains and such). I strongly disagree with this notion.

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I would certainly also exclude situatiosn of extrem duress (e.g. a gun to the head). And most of the other exceptions generally recognised. That's the thing - compatibilist free will is in agreement with most of our intuitions about free will - it is only the question of determinism versus chance that is the sticking point. And, IMHO it is only because libertarian free will remains unexamined that it is accepted at all - I cannot see how anyone would find chance better than a determinism that recognises that the self is the driving force.

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I don't see why they wouldn't bother if they didn't believe in any kind of free will.

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As you say below:

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Any attempt to change this society would be recognised not as the result of individual agency but instead the unfolding of inevitable circumstances

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..but so would NOT changing it. This is the Pandora's box I referred to - it justifies literally any decision. But keeping things the same doesn't require thinking or making a decision to change both of which are things such a society cannot pay too much heed too, because doing so does suggest individual agency, a power of choice, an ability to weigh up alternatives. In short a form of free will.

The bone of contention in your post comes when you address my opinion that I don't believe that people wouldn't bother if they didn't believe that they had free will. What I'm thinking works or else it doesn't, so I want to tease it out a bit more to find out.As far as I see it, you can only use the "excuse" of determinism to justify your actions AFTER the event. You can look back and say - "I was always going to do that so I don't feel bad about it." However, and this was the point I was trying to make in my previous message to you, you can't use determinism to justify what happens BEFORE its happened. Why? Because you don't know what it is you are going to do. You can only make an educated guess. You might give the tramp your sandwich, you might walk on by. Because you can't tease out the complex of causes acting on you, you can't predict their effect this time, no matter how many times you've walked on by before.Secondly, I strongly disagree when you say that being active and making decisions indicates some kind of free will. I'll try to explain why.I don't see the ability to weigh up alternatives rationally as being any indication of free will. A rational agent at point B in her life, when faced with two alternatives to weigh up, will - given their past history and because of their ability to reason - always choose the same alternative, no matter how many times you run the tape of history. Though they may reason careful and at great length, to me it seems to bear no relationship to free will. If there can only be one choice, how can this be considered free will?How do I know they will make the same choice every time? Because the power to reason, based on our past experiences, necessarily leads us in certain directions.So to recap:Because of the multitude of factors, we can't predict with any degree of accuracy how we will act in an entirely deterministic universe. Therefore, we cannot assume that what we believe we will do in the future is what we will actually do. If I have a fatalistic assumption that I will sit at home on my sofa and eat chips till I die, then this might come true. Equally, I could change my mind and the prediction could be false.Secondly, weighing up options and exercising reason (on either a concious or unconcious level) is not an indication of an individual's ability to make choices. If we could replay the tape of history at one point in our lives when we faced a crucial decision we would always do the same thing. If we did differently on any occasion, this would demonstrate that our ability to make rational decisions was fatally compromised.I think these two points together address your Pandora's Box. Can you help me understand why they don't?Edited by Tusko, : No reason given.

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weighing up options and exercising reason (on either a concious or unconcious level) is not an indication of an individual's ability to make choices.

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I think this captures the point where we disagree, I view this statement as self-contradictory. Making a choice necessarily indicates the ability to make a choice - and weighing up alternatives and execising reason to come to a deicsion is very much making a choice. And if we accept that people can and do make choices (even if by deterministic means) we end up with free will in the compatibilist sense.

Here's my reaction:If a community doesn't believe in or can't comprehend moral accountability, then can one hold them morally accountable? I think you are saying yes, you can. I don't think that would be fair, personally. How can you consider someone who doesn't understand moral accountability to be immoral if they steal something? Note that I am not saying that I would expect them to steal any more than someone who does believe in moral accountability. As part of a society I would expect their tendency to steal would be constrained at least in part by societal factors.With regards to a community where there really isn't such a thing as free will,I think we both agree that moral accountability wouldn't make sense. One of the assumptions I made in my opening post was that there could still be a stable society without moral accountability. Maybe this is wrong - but I don't see why right now.Our fundamental difference comes with the question of whether a society that doesn't believe in/comprehend moral accountability is going to be red in fang and fingernail or not. I think you suggest it will be. I disagree with this. I don't think that altruistic acts that provide the glue that holds our relatively stable society together are the result of moral accountability. If you believe that animals are incapable of free will, and that societies without free will are going to be nasty, brutish and short, then how do you explain the complex, stable societies that form in ape groups... even ant groups?You might say that it comes from some hard wiring in the animals brains. Perhaps you become more comfortable with the idea of hard-wiring when it comes to bees than dolphins, or perhaps you think of them all the same. I'm arguing that we have a hard-wiring of our own. Not just through genetics, but also through our ability to reason.I think that a stable human society comes from the exercise of reason over pragmatic concerns like "how do we treat thieves so we minimise the amount of theft?"You may argue that exercising of reason is an example of free will, but I argue that because it isn't arbitrary, because it will lead to the same decision given the same circumstances, it is supremely deterministic.So I would argue that a belief in moral accountability is really a post hoc explanation for why we act as we do: with a sufficient degree of altruism to allow a society to cohere. I'd argue that the reason it really hangs together is because a sufficient number of us are conditioned to be sufficiently sociable and not because of moral accountability.Edited by Tusko, : No reason given.Edited by Tusko, : No reason given.

Ok - lets see if its possible to get past this. I think that free will would be the ability for one person, given all that has happened previously in the universe, to make a different choice at a certain moment in their life if the tape of history was played back again.The only way I can see that this person would do two different things at this given moment is if the choice was just random and without direction. That doesn't seem to be the exercising of free will; its seems to be the exercising of a lottery machine. Instead, the ability to reason is not arbitrary. It is based on rules and experiences from that person's past. Their ability to reason will lead them to the same decision every time. It was inevitable in other words that they would always make that choice. If it was inevitable that they would make that choice then there was no exercise of free will.So I don't think that anyone ever exercises a meaningful kind of free will. Either things happen arbitrarily or as a result of causality.At least, that's what it looks like to me. Am I going off the tracks somewhere?

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Ok - lets see if its possible to get past this. I think that free will would be the ability for one person, given all that has happened previously in the universe, to make a different choice at a certain moment in their life if the tape of history was played back again.

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I don't think that adding a chance element to our decision-making processes adds any fredom worth having. And I certainly don't think that it is reasonable to refer to such an element as "will".So the only way I can make sense of that requirementis if the replay includes other differences - variations external to the decision-maker. Since the universe is probably not deterministic that makes sense. But compatibilism allows for that - it's about the working of the mind, not the universe as a whole. And cause and effect determinism allows for chaotic systems where minor variations in the inputs cna cause huge differences in the outputs.

The words society, and order immediately bring to mind the concept of choices, of people working together.But if there really were no freewill, if all behavior were set, if all outcomes were predetermined, then would there be anything like society?I can imagine a colony without freewill, ants as an example come close. But even there we can see a moderate amount of choice. The ant crawling over my bare toe may bite me, or may not. Is that an example of freewill? Possibly, or it might be simply the result of some chemical signals.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

I entirely agree...I think it would be impossible for a different outcome with an identical "replay".ABE - see my reply 30 to jar for more explanation.Edited by Tusko, : No reason given.

I'm quite worried here - I thought I was arguing something fairly uncontroversial but it seems not. I think the chances that I'm talking out of my arse have multiplied somewhat.As far as I can work it out, it all comes down to the definition of choice. I think all choices are basically predetermined by circumstances - by your biological inheritance, by your culturally learned preferences, and by your preferences and beliefs developed on a personal day to day level - and so aren't meaningfully free. Its a choice in the sense that either one thing or another is going to be done by the individual - but if previous circumstances essentially dictate what the individual does, then there isn't a freedom - a range - or outcomes from which the individual can choose.I think that this is how we work. I can't prove it, it just seems like that to me. So it seems to me that it is eminently possible that society can occur without individuals making meaningful choices. It seems like that's what happening now in ours. It works because things are so complicated that we can't predict what other people will do.Just to make it clear though, I reject the idea of "meaningful choice" as I'm defining it. I don't see a circumstance where a person could ever come to two different decisions at the same instance in their life unless it was arbitrary, and I don't see arbitrary outcomes as free in a useful way.