Debate 4 Discussion: Is Determinism Compatible with Freedom?: Philosophy Forums

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Debate 4 Discussion: Is Determinism Compatible with Freedom?

Which debater put up the best defense of his position?
phenyl_engine_rods	18	69%
EntropicOrder	8	31%
26 votes

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Debate 4 Discussion: Is Determinism Compatible with Freedom?

Interlocutor
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1 of 2 people found this post helpful Posted 08/02/04 - 11:58 AM:	#1
Debate 4, Is Determinism Compatible with Freedom? has now concluded. This thread is for the discussion of that debate, and for casting a vote for the debater whom, in your opinion, put up the best defense of his position. When voting, take into consideration which argument is better, not which position you agree with--don't let your own personal opinions about which side you believe in affect your vote. After a thorough discussion and significant voting period have taken place, the winner will be awarded his fantastic prize, and be free to boast to the world, that for the time being, he is the Philosophy Forums debate champion--that is, until someone else knocks him from the throne. ------------------- Edit by Paul ------------------- First, my thanks to both phenyl_engine_rods and EntropicOrder for making this a very interesting debate to read. Quality on both sides here, but nevertheless we have to pick to a winner. Just to make it very clear, this poll is to determine the debate winner, not to determine whether we believe determinism compatibile with free will. This poll will remain open for 5 days. Whoever has the most votes at that time will be declared the winner of the debate, and will be presented with the prize choice (either yourchoice@philosophyforums.com email forwarding or access to the moderators forum, whichever the winner prefers). Note that the open discussion will begin after the poll closes. As specified in the original thread, discussion does not start until after the poll closes, in order to avoid prejudicing the voting by arguments made by other people.

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Posted 08/02/04 - 12:30 PM:	#2
I think the debate essentially came down to the question of whether "subjective freedom" is a meaningful definition of freedom. Personally, I would have liked to see one of them make reference to the original post that set up the definitions for the debate, and argue whether subjective freedom fit that description appropriately or not. Anyways, it was a good debate, but I feel that phenyl's statement: To say "I am free" is not to say "I shall act as though I am free;" nor is it to say "I like the way I am acting," as Entropic suggests it should mean in discussing some of our examples. was convincing, and moreover was not rebuted in Entropic's final post. As best as I can tell, phenyl's definition of freedom was the one relevant to the debate. Entropic, if anything would have to have argued that his definition of freedom is the one that's relevant in general. However, he fails to do this. He claims that there is pragmatic value in saying that we appear to have choices and act freely. But this is immediately obvious to anyone, and a debate is not necessary to determine if we feel that we act freely. Entropic argues that there are conceivable choices, that we appear to be free. Not only is this obvious, it is not an interesting point, and I do not believe it was what was being debated. It was not being debated if we appear to be free, if we appear to chose free from "external compulsion or restraint" but that we indeed to choose free from "external compulsion or restraint." Whether determinism allows for such choice wasn't resolved, but I believe Entropic's admission that he does not believe that determinism allows for such choices is an admission of defeat. I'm going to hold off voting until I see some comments on this, maybe Entropic did make a good case for accepting his definition of freedom (although I missed it if he did). Anyways, good debate guys.
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Paul
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Posted 08/07/04 - 06:28 AM:	#3
Congratulations to phenyl on the well-earned win. The thread is now open for discussion by everyone. It seems to me that the notion of "objective freedom" as discussed in the debate is central to the problem. Clearly, the incompatibilist thinks this notion of objective freedom is very meaningful and important. Try to imagine objective freedom for a moment, as incompatibilists describe it for us. Since they say it requires indeterminism, this would mean that somehow effects don't always relate to causes. An interesting example would be the spontaneous generation of a new city without anyone going to the bother of building it -- this would make the city "objectively free." Incompatibilists usually don't expect anything of this sort, though, their argument seems to be that our brain patterns are not 'merely' caused by the rest of the world. Now, what can this mean? Our thoughts pop out of nowhere, with no cause? This would be the total destruction of the individual -- it would be impossible to have a sense of self or indeed to do any thinking at all if thoughts did not relate to causes. Just the brain not relating to things outside of itself, then? No, we're aware that when we cut up someone's brain or just deny it the necessary chemicals we are certainly affecting it. However, the incompatibilist inderterminist does claim that some brain patterns are indeterministic, i.e. not caused by their surroundings. While the incompatibilist inderterminist does see brain patterns insofar as they reflect thought being what's indeterministic on a physical level, we must recognize that they are not crazy enough to believe that the brain patterns simply come out of nowhere. Instead, they believe that something non-physical is causing them. The only way to build a coherent picture of the sort of world which the incompatibilist indeterminist imagines (one in which there is something about our thoughts which must be indeterministic in order to be free) would be to create a dualism: a mind-world in which thoughts all relate to each other causally, which reaches down and causes effects in a physical-world. What you get from this mind-body dualism is actually another form of determinism: two-world determinism, in which the two realities combine to be deterministic but the physical reality by itself is not deterministic. To summarize, the so-called incompatibilists are actually two-level compatiblists, who are only labeling physical determinism as incompatible with freedom because of their dualistic beliefs [be they explicit or implicit beliefs]. They protest physical determinism because physical determinism would contradict their combined two-level determinism. To the incompatibilists here, a simple challenge: can you explain how incompatibilism can work without this dualistic slight of hand in which determinism is only pushed back a level? Now, I realize the above is all aimed primarily at indeterminist incompatibilists, but it's relevant to hard determinists as well. The hard determinist operates under the presumption that there is some real meaningful notion of freedom, which is being denied us by determinism. We are lacking something, they say. They, too, must give us some explanation of what this indeterministic freedom is that they're saying doesn't exist, and they must convince us that it is a reasonable and valid notion of freedom. Again, to make it reasonable we have to suppose that what they're saying is that the dual level determinism doesn't exist -- in other words, the hard determinist says that monism (physicalism) makes us not free because it contradicts dualism. Why, I ask, does having the determinism at one level make us less free than having it combined over two levels? It strikes me as slight of hand, a magician hiding something where it can't be seen in order to pretend that it doesn't exist. Side note clarification: Don't mistake my attacks on indeterminist incompatibilists for being attacks on indeterminists in general. A compatibilist indeterminist need not imagine the sort of dualistic meta-determinism described above. I argue that indeterminism is incompatible with freedom. In that sense I'm an incompatibilist of a different type than discussed in this debate -- although low levels of indeterminsm don't take away a noticeable amount of freedom and so we needn't worry too much about them. The more indeterministic things become, the less freedom we have. If the universe became purely indeterministic, we would have no freedom whatsoever, we would just be random sequences of nonsense with no thought having any relation to the next thought let alone a thought having a relation to an action or effect in the world. If on the other hand things are purely deterministic, then we have no restrictions placed on our freedom by the laws of nature (and only need worry about all the other factors like dictators that limit us). It's probably worth exploring the difference between freedom of thought and freedom of action here, but I'll leave that to someone else. Another side clarification: Note that I haven't taken a position on if determinism is true. Personally, I'm undecided and I leave this to be worked out by quantum physics but I would cautiously lean towards saying that the universe is indeterministic at the quantum level. An element of randomness limits us all, we're just fortunate that it's not generally noticeable to us. Alternatively, you might argue that to be sentient is to impose a determinism on the world and that quantum mechanics is the edges of our imposed order where our ability to impose the order breaks down (chaos shoved into the corners out of view, if you like). Determinism may not be a feature of the universe, but rather of how we must understand the universe... but that would be a long separate argument I'm not prepared to defend here. A secondary point not directly tied to free will but which is important to note: Determinism is often stated as meaning that if everything is known about the universe at a particular point in time, then future states of the universe can be extrapolated from that. Yet Heisenberg's indeterminacy principle puts definite limits on what can be known about the universe, indicating that it isn't possible -- and more importantly, that it isn't a coherent suggestion -- to know everything about a point in time. Determinism is thus a non-starter of sorts -- it may be technically true, but when the "if" condition is by the laws of nature impossible to satisfy (not just practically, but theoretically as well) it becomes a meaningless point. And a yet another point worth making: the incompatibilist seems to by necessity believe that causality is objective. If they didn't believe causality to be objective, they clearly wouldn't be harping on the idea of 'objective freedom.' We should note how this opposes Kant, and ask the incompatibilist for their arguments against Kant's system, and particularly against his argument for the intersubjetivity of causality. Very quickly, my response on the Anne scenario: if the change was made before birth and causes her to rationally wish to do something, she's free. But what could cause someone to rationally want to make the choice to punch innocent people? If it causes her to irrationally do something, she's not free. When the doctor hits your knee and it reflexively moves, that's not freedom, it's instinct. When you hate something without reason, that's not freedom, just emotions pulling you along. Only a rational agent can exert free will. When seeing red causes you to 'lose your mind' so to speak, what you do in the irrational state is not free will. Free will is the ability to make and implement a rational choice. (For this reason, insects for example do not have free will since they don't have the brains to make rational choices.)

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1 of 2 people found this post helpful Posted 08/07/04 - 01:23 PM:	#4
While I have not committed myself to a position on the free will debate in general, I believe PER decisively won this debate. EO started out with a few workable ideas. One was the idea about freedom to do otherwise, which is often pivotal for the compatibilist's case. Secondly, EO introduced possibility. While both of these ideas may not be necessary for a defense of compatibilism, they are often used effectively together, e.g. David Lewis's 1981 paper "Are We Free to Break the Laws." The other idea EO introduced that had promise was agent causation, a position held by Chisholm, though this would be more appropriate for a libertarian point of view. However, while these ideas were presented, they were dropped for the idea of "subjective" freedom, which is basically a surrender without a grounded theory of practical reason. While PER was in grave danger placing causality in the center of the defense, offense was played well. John Locke claimed it is not the question whether the will be free, it is a question whether a man be free, and PER effectively recognized the idea and applied it. Distinctions like "will versus freedom of will" and "choice versus appearance of choice" were skillfully used for an advantage. In addition, superfluous items in EO's case such as the "2% will" business were discarded with celerity and warrant. As a result, I argue PER performed better in this contest and built a better case.
"It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it." -- Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" -- Isaiah 5:20 "What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is the exact opposite." -- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

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0 of 1 people found this post helpful Posted 08/07/04 - 02:15 PM:	#5
However, while these ideas were presented, they were dropped for the idea of "subjective" freedom I'm not so sure he dropped them as much as he tied them into the concept. From possibility and agent causation, he formed the subjective boundaries of the will and asserted it as a self-causing and thusly subjectively free being. I have one question though - EntropicOrder said in his debate that he agreeed that there was no objective freedom because such was the definition of determinism - I'm curious as to whether or not he was wrong. Because if one cannot possibly argue for objective freedom in a determinist universe anymore than one can argue for color in a black and white universe, why is he being held accountable for not arguing it? If there is no hope in arguing objective freedom, but he lost the debate because he didn't focus on objective freedom, it seems he never had a chance to begin with.
"The time has come for people of reason to say enough is enough. Religious faith discourages independent thought, it's devisive, and it's dangerous." -Richard Dawkins

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1 of 2 people found this post helpful Posted 08/07/04 - 06:30 PM:	#6
Because if one cannot possibly argue for objective freedom in a determinist universe anymore than one can argue for color in a black and white universe, why is he being held accountable for not arguing it? He was supposed to be arguing for free will in a deterministic universe; that is what compatibilism is. One can argue for this position, though such an effort is not a guarantor of success. To me, it sounded like EO was claiming, "yeah, I agree, we aren't really free, this free will talk is just a convention." That's why I mentioned the Lewis article; the compatibilist should never take the consequence argument for granted.
"It is better to debate a question without settling it than to settle a question without debating it." -- Joseph Joubert (1754-1824) "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" -- Isaiah 5:20 "What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is the exact opposite." -- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

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1 of 2 people found this post helpful Posted 08/08/04 - 02:01 AM:	#7
JHBowden wrote: John Locke claimed it is not the question whether the will be free, it is a question whether a man be free, and PER effectively recognized the idea and applied it. Yes... note that I used the word "freedom" instead of "free will" in the topic in order to avoid a Locke-type argument that the will is not what is free. I do agree that the way Entropic presented subjective freedom seemed like a surrender, but I believe he could've made a better case by arguing extensively that the concept of objective freedom is nonsense. He did briefly hint around the spot where he said there's no such thing as an objective person, but it needed a more detailed and clearer defense. If he had made it clear that freedom is not a concept applicable objectively -- and that we are thus not objectively un-free, there is nothing we are lacking there, it's just like saying that the color red is not round -- then it would not have been like a surrender. Phenyl effectively kept Entropic on the defensive. As shown in my post, I believe it's more effective to go on the offensive against the incompatibilist and show where their ideas break down.

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1 of 2 people found this post helpful Posted 08/08/04 - 07:04 AM:	#8
Paul, I suppose you are right by saying that we are not objectively un-free either. For us to be objectively un-free, there has to be an objectively separate person (rather than a person only designated to be separate as I mentioned) and an objective past and future. Neither past nor future exist objectively, there is only “what is,” just like the only actual possibility is “whatever happens.” It’s not that persons, time, and freedom are “just” conventions, they are fundamental to knowledge. Therefore, it is useful, or better yet necessary, for us to think of past, futures, and possibilities, and as long as we do we will find freedom useful and necessary as well. I suppose I should have argued further my point that we aren’t objectively free because neither we nor time objectively exist to even find out if we are objectively free, and followed that to it’s conclusion that we are not objectively un-free either. I admit that I was too caught up in the confusion of trying to figure out the relationship between morality and freedom in a deterministic universe to think to clarify that point. I guess I felt it was more important to elaborate on how freedom does exist rather than how it can't exist. Even if I showed that objective freedom doesn't exist in an incompatibilist's universe (I did mention that objectively free will looks a lot like randomness), I would still need to show how some type of freedom does exist in a compatibilist's universe. It seems that my arguments are being dismissed based on the characterization that I am saying freedom is “just” useful, “only” pragmatic, or an “illusion” of actual freedom. I didn’t feel it appropriate for this debate to argue for pragmatism, but maybe I should have. In pragmatism, usefulness is not secondary to what’s true, it is what’s true. In pragmatism, if a sense of freedom is useful in the strong sense, it is not “just” useful, it is truth! JHBowden, you felt my conclusion was, “yeah, I agree, we aren't really free, this free will talk is just a convention.” I suppose this is why I lost the debate if I came across as saying this. I meant that free will is not “just” a convention, but rather knowledge itself is conventional. A pragmatist calling free will useful is the same thing as saying we are really free, just like we are “really” anything. Although, I should have clarified that it is useful in the strong sense rather than the weak sense, and I suppose that was my flaw. Socrastien, you are right in that my concept of freedom ties in with all my ideas of a will designated to be free from the universe (even though it objectively isn’t), how we can conceive of possibilities and choose from them (even though there is only one objective possibility), and conceivability of doing otherwise (even though objectively we can only do whatever we do). These things are all useful in the strong sense and therefore they are true, even though none of them exist independent of some observer. That is pragmatic freedom, as in the philosophy of pragmatism rather than just ordinary usefulness. The usefulness I refer to makes life possible not just easier. Maybe I just didn’t explain that well enough in the debate. I’m not a pro at philosophy or debate, but I do enjoy it much so I will take this as a learning experience.
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1 of 1 people found this post helpful Posted 08/10/04 - 07:23 PM:	#9
EntropicOrder, don't take this just as a learning experience. You did well. Be proud. You were just handicapped, what with defending the inferior position and all . (Just kidding--I'm a compatibilist, too, but we'll get to that in a moment.) Paul, you're a little harsh on the dualist incompatibilist. Just a little. It doesn't seem to me fair to say on the one hand that it seems like sleight of hand to say it's OK to be determined by physical and non-physical causes together but not OK to be determined by physical causes alone; and on the other hand to say, as I suspect you might, that it's OK to be determined by internal and external forces together but not OK to be determined by external forces alone. You're being a little harsh on determinism, too, when you say that Heisenberg's Uncertainty means determinism just doesn't make sense. You still need a little more quantum mechanics to get rid of determinism, as long as you're a little charitable in your understanding of the thesis. You could, for example, take the Copenhagen Interpretation's view that what you're allowed to know is all that's true. That is, Uncertainty doesn't tell you that the antecedent of "if I know the universe's state now, I can tell you its state in a couple minutes" can't be satisfied, but rather simply that you don't need as much information to satisfy that antecedent. Of course, QM will still show you (I think) that the conditional is false, but it seems unreasonable to say that the question is a non-starter. And as for Anne, it's not so simple to call on rationality here. I was anticipating a response like yours, actually. What if the mad scientist also built Anne's genome so that whenever she considered the matter, she came up with an evidently (to her) perfect rational argument that she should punch Bob? And no matter how she thinks on it, no matter how explicitly her fallacies are pointed out to her, her argument still seems flawless. Forget, for a moment, the question of who is rational in this case, Anne or the rest of us--either way, she is exercising her rational faculties (however imperfectly), not merely acting on instinct or reflex. Last, you're right that the compatibilist would be better served going on the offensive--what position wouldn't be better off on the offensive?--but you did rather set things up for the incompatibilist to go on the offensive, what with giving me the first post "in order to establish the problem...which the other side needs to resolve." Sock, I'm the kind of compatibilist you're looking for. I do think we have "objective" freedom even if the universe is deterministic. On one level, I see it, as Entropic does, as a matter of terminology: what he calls "subjective" freedom I would call "objective" freedom. What he calls "objective" freedom, I would call "not freedom at all". I think our intuitions about freedom are confused when it comes to cases like Anne's. I got a little nervous when Entropic started talking about alternate identities. See, I think we feel like Anne is unfree because we compare her with a hypothetical free Anne. When we're talking about a mad scientist altering Anne's genes, this is perfectly valid. There's an alternative to Anne's state which is clearly less coerced--viz., if the mad scientist hadn't operated on her. So far, I agree with everything I argued in favour of incompatibilism. The mad scientist cases are all cases of an unfree agent. But I don't think it's a valid move to go from a mad scientist intefering with Anne's genome to Anne's genome being determined by some "natural" force like evolution or divine meddling. In this case, there's no clearly less coerced alternative to the way Anne turned out. The more you think about it (well, the more I think about it), the more you realize that Anne's got all she could ask for in this case. And I think that makes her free. This is a little muddled still, but maybe it'll come clearer if you all start criticizing it, or at least telling me what needs clarifying. A good place to start criticizing would be this idea of coming by one's genes "naturally". I don't have any precise way of formulating what's natural forces and what's unnatural interference.

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1 of 1 people found this post helpful Posted 08/11/04 - 05:44 AM:	#10
I can't believe I lost to the devil's advocate... But I still feel that Anne's freedom in the case of the scientist is indistinguishable from any other freedom. If you look at her (as you look at anyone else and guess if they make free decisions), she would appear to make free, though irrational, choices. If you were her, you would definitely feel that you had freedom. I see her having all the same properties of a free person even though her development was different. You said that you agreed with my "subjective" version of freedom, but would instead call it objective. So does that mean you agree with the part about a relevant temporal context? If so, then the case of Anne is one of freedom. I call it subjective because of this definition: "Proceeding from or taking place in a person's mind rather than the external world" (dictionary.com as always). In the deterministic external world, there is no such thing as freedom. Only in the mind, once a person has conceived of various possible scenarios does freedom exist. I think you use this definition more: "Particular to a given person; personal", though I think your idea of "depedant upon an observer" is pretty good, although my version of subjectivity is not depedant upon a particular observer necessarily, but depedant upon at least one observer. We can imagine that even without anyone observing a deterministic universe, there is still stuff objectively. Objectively there is movement too. But, it depends on at least one observer to call a group of matter/energy a separate object as he/she sees fit. It depends on at least one observer to label an event relevant. It depends on an observer who has limited knowledge and limited time to see these things as useful.
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