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Debate 7: On the existence of free will

Debate 7: On the existence of free will

dreamweaver
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Posted 03/12/05 - 04:24 AM: Subject: Debate 7: On the existence of free will	#1
A popular and long-questioned topic in Philosophy. Debate Type: Standard Number of Rounds: 3. Socrastein will post first, and will be maintaining the negative position. Paul will post second, and will be maintaining the affirmative position. Since this is a voted winner debate -- there will be a poll where members can vote on who they think won the debate -- the Discussion Thread for this debate will open, with the poll, after the debate has finished. The first two posts from each participant were written previously and were made in ignorance of the other's post. With that done, let the debate begin. Edited by dreamweaver on 03/12/05 - 04:35 AM
_____________________ Dos moi pou sto kai kino taen gaen. ~ Archimedes

Socrastein
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Posted 03/12/05 - 04:27 AM: Subject: The Negative	#2
It is my position that not only does free will not exist, but it cannot possibly exist. No imaginable scenario accomadates this obscure notion to any meaningful degree. I shall argue that we must necessarily act on motives that our out of our control. If we are bound to act on motives that we cannot choose, then we are slaves to external factors. Choice: Selecting from one of two or more courses of action with concious will (To differentiate from subconcious action for example) Motive: That which causes a choice. Premise 1: Choices are either caused or are uncaused (Law of excluded middle) Premise 2: An uncaused choice cannot be a choice (Definition of choice) Premise 3: If choices are caused, they are caused by motives (Which follows from the fact that the cause of a choice is defined as the motive) Deduction A: Choices must be caused (From 1 & 2) Deduction B: Choices are caused by motives (From 3 & A) Deduction C: We cannot choose our motives (From A & B) Conclusion: Our choices are dictated by motives over which we cannot have control. In other words, there is no free will. "If cause does not preceed choice, then it really wasn't a choice. If cause preceeds choice, then, ultimately, choice is not free." - AKG So either choices are random, or they are causally determined. The only way we could choose any other way in a given situation is if our choices are random, and if they are random then they are not choices by definition. So if our choices cannot be random, then of course they must be caused, and if they are caused then we can never choose more than one way in a given situation. If our choices are bound and necessitated by external factors that we cannot possibly choose (As I proved above) then we cannot meaningfully regard our choices as "free". To elaborate even further, if we accept that a choice must be caused to be a choice, and we accept that that choice is by definition caused by a motive, then we must deduce that we cannot choose our motives, because motives precede choice, or as I said above, cause precedes choice, and the cause of a choice is regarded as the motive for that choice. So the cause of our choices must, logically, be out of our control. If our motives are not causal, then they are random, but either way they are out of our control by definition and therefore we can never act against the motives which are externally necessitated. We cannot choose the reasons we choose, lest we fall into an infinite regress of choosing reasons for choices, which would mean that we have all been making choices since before we were born Perhaps Paul will argue a compatabilist position and assert that so long as we are doing what we want to do, we are necessarily free. However, this is a weak form of freedom to say the least. It can be refuted with a classic reduction to absurdity - Paul must then admit that if I hyptonotize him to cluck like a chicken, then he is acting freely. Or if I was to pump him full of a special truth serum that made him disclose his secret fetish with making multiple accounts and then banning himself, he must then admit that he was freely disclosing this information. These kinds of situations are no different than any other situation in which our desires and consequent actions are bound to external necessitation. So if our choices are necessitated by factors that are out of our control by sheer logical necessity, where then can we find freedom? If this such a state is conducive to freedom, then surely computer AI is free, and all animals and insects are free, because the fact that they are bound to act on external, causally determined factors doesn't rob them of their free will Many people, perhaps Paul as well, argue that free-will is a self-evident phenomenon that nobody can reasonably deny. This can be denied on many levels, for example the fact that even without free will we could expect the illusion to reside, and so if such a phenomenon is predicted by both theories, then its occurence says nothing for either position. However, I think this idea is flawed on an even more fundamental level - I don't even think it's true. I myself do not feel like I have free will. Madness! you say? Perhaps, but I think not. I know that whenever I am faced with a decision to make, with proper introspection I can tell that my strongest desire is compelling me to act. I am fully aware that I am bound to my motives, and I am just as aware of the fact that I never sat down and chose these motives (For instance, I never chose to get hungry after not eating for a while, I never chose to go through puberty and experience a hightened sex-drive, I never chose to get tired after physical exertion, I never chose to want to be loved by others, I never chose to prefer happiness to unhappiness, etc.) I think the feeling of free-will comes from a lack of examination of one's own decision making process. I'm fully aware that I am simply "along for the ride" so to speak. I can see this both at the time of my decisions, and even more clearly in retrospect to any decisions. I don't feel like I freely choose to walk half a mile to take Kung Fu lessons on weekday nights - I am well aware that I have an innate desire for health, fitness, and physical prowess that was instilled in me at a very young age by my father, who raise me on martial arts. I know that unless a stronger motive contrary to my motivation to go to Kung Fu arises, I will always walk that half mile to work out. It's quite obvious to me that I am bound to act on the strongest of my motives, and I know that I do not choose my motives. All I do is fulfill them, and try to enjoy doing so. Free will is a nonsensical concept. With careful examination of the notion, it quickly becomes apparent that it has no place in any imaginable reality. We are simply beings bound to act on motives that we do not and cannot possibly choose.
_____________________ "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

Paul
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Posted 03/12/05 - 04:27 AM: Subject: The Affirmative	#3
Everyone can agree that a belief in free will is a common sense position that we grow up with. Anyone philosophically inclined can also see how tempting some consideration of determinism makes it to declare that free will has been lost, that it was mere illusion born from ignorance. In this debate it's my responsibility to show that the latter position is flawed, that it arises from mistakes and that when properly reconsidered we find ourselves having free will again after all. As with any philosophical debate, we must be clear on our terms here. The first definition of 'will' from dictionary.com reads "The mental faculty by which one deliberately chooses or decides upon a course of action: championed freedom of will against a doctrine of predetermination." The first two definitions of 'free' from dictionary.com are "Not imprisoned or enslaved; being at liberty" and "Not controlled by obligation or the will of another: felt free to go." Hopefully by keeping these definitions in mind we will form a clearer picture of what it is that we're talking about when we say we have free will. Nonetheless we will try to cover all reasonable suggested meanings. It's important to realize that for some senses of the word 'will' there would be no sense in arguing for its freedom in the average person. John Locke (in his argument that 'free will' is unimportant and different from true freedom) suggests that free will means that the will is disassociated from our minds and our actions. That sense of free will does not apply to us, since if it did we would be unable to control our thoughts and actions. If Socrastein wishes to use the Lockean version of free will, we could validly say that normal humans don't have free will -- but we still would not be able to say that there's no such thing as free will. The Lockean free will idea is very much a physical idea which is easy to produce. Simply perform an operation that messes up a person's brain so that their arms and legs move about randomly with no connection to when the person wills them to move, and you would have a person with free will according to Locke. (Hopefully we can let the point rest there so that I need not perform such an operation on a subject in order to establish that there is such a person in the universe, since I would not want experimental philosophy to be tarnished forever in the public eye when news leaked.) Another possible way to define free will is 'The ability to have chosen otherwise.' Consider carefully what this does and does not mean. It means that the person actively made a selection from an array of options. It does not mean 'The possibility that they did choose otherwise.' We must accept that the past is set, as this is fundamental to being able to make a choice. A choice is the ability to set something as completed and unchangeable -- the ability to do something, and when it is done it remains done, it does not become a mere probability of being done. If the past were not set in stone, it would be impossible to make a choice for it would always be disappearing from history. Attempts to deny free will on the basis of a past decision being the only possible past decision fall into the trap of denying the very basis of choice which gives meaning to their 'The ability to have chosen otherwise' definition. The sense in which I normally use 'free will' is probably best referenced by simply the word 'freedom' in order to avoid confusion, but 'free will' is still the regular every day term that the average person uses to reference the idea so I will use free will and personal freedom interchangeably. There are four major roads which one can attempt to travel on the question of free will: 1. Determinism is false, so we have free will. [Although I consider the premise here utterly unrelated to the conclusion, I understand that many people find this road appealing so I will take the time to argue that determinism is false.] 2. Compatibilism is true, so we have free will. 3. Compatibilism is false and determinism is true, so there is no free will. 4. Compatibilism may be true but determinism is false because events are fully random, and this prevents free will. In support of #1, note the changes that quantum mechanics has brought to the scientific view. The modern conception of the physical world is inherently one of probabilities rather than actualities. An electron on the the modern view is nothing more than the probability of detecting it in an area. The solidity of an object is merely the improbability of all the atoms of it passing through another such solid object without effect, not the impossibility. Going down to quantum foam, the very creation of matter itself, we deal with virtual particles that consist of a probability of becoming real. If we were to select one thing as the most fundamental feature of quantum mechanics (and M theory as well), it would be that nothing in quantum mechanics can be certain. There can be no single predestined path of events, for the events are nothing more than the sum of quantum probabilities. I will likely spend most of my time in this debate defending path #2, as I personally find it the most relevant. Be aware that to understand compatibilism we need to forge a deeper understanding of determinism. Certainly at a quick glance, determinism seems prima face to deny free will. It's only on careful inspection that it loses force. As a formulation of the basic intent of determinism, let's take "If every single detail about state z (let's call this group of all conditions 'x') were known, y would be a definite conclusion." This may be true, but it's simply meaningless, for it's logically impossible to know every single detail - even if we presume there are a finite number of details. Heisenberg's indeterminacy principle sets an absolute limit. The indeterminacy principle doesn't simply place a limit on our knowledge, it places a limit on where physically speaking it is logical and coherent to talk about position and momentum at once. The concepts of position and momentum decohere at that level such that only one can be kept. It's not that we don't know x at present time -- it's that it is not rational to use the word "know" in connection with x. Some people attempt to assert that there is some kind of meaning in talking about a state which is logically unknowable determining a later state. They have no possible argument for this however, except to appeal to common intuition which is tricked by our common lack of dealings with logically unknowable states. Heisenberg put it this way: "The question of whether from a complete knowledge of the past we can predict the future does not arise because a complete knowledge of the past involves a self-contradiction." Although determinism can survive (in a sense) with such knowledge being self-contradictory, by losing the ability to suggest such knowledge it loses its force as an argument against free will. It is up to my opponent to argue for road 3 or 4. My arguments for 2 have already covered my response to 3, but #4 is at least a logically valid possibility for the universe, I would have to concede. However, the processes of thought and language which go into composing this fourth option illustrate that it is not the case. To understand the beginning of this sentence by the time you reach the end requires that there be some degree of cause and effect (of non-randomness) in your mind. We can therefore conclude that our particular universe is not one which suffers from this total randomness that denies free will to its inhabitants. Note that a partial randomness is not be enough to kill free will -- we would have less free will, but so long as our will can usually be shaped by our thoughts and can usually in turn shape our actions we still have some free will. For a different sort of approach the issue, let's consider the very act of expressing "there is no free will." If there is no example of "free will" in the universe, where would we get the concept? We have a term in language, it didn't come down as a gift from god. This is not merely a fictional variation on things that do exist (like a unicorn), it's a completely distinct concept. We cannot build a concept of free will in order to give the term its meaning in language by cobbling together other things we've come across that can be combined to make it -- we can only have created our definition of free will by pointing at something in our experience and defining the term to mean that feature of experience. It is therefore completely illogical to turn around and claim that even the paradigm case of free will, from which we defined the concept, is not actually free will. If you wish to argue that the thing in our experience from which we create the term is something other than human freedom, that for example only snails have free will, perhaps you can make that argument (unconvincing as it may be to most people). You can also make the argument that there was once free will, back in the good old days, but it no longer exists. You cannot make the argument there is not nor has ever been free will, since if your argument were correct then you would be unable to express it -- by making the argument, demonstrating that you think the words you express have meaning, you are refuting the argument. Finally, for the sake of intellectual honesty I must note that if my arguments made it impossible for the will to ever be unfree then they would undoubtedly be just as flawed as arguments that make it impossible for the will to be free. With that in mind, here are some cases in which the will can be unfree: 1) A mind attempts to make a decision, but is forced in another direction by a puppeteer/god. 2) A person is physically and/or mentally restrained. (Put someone in chains, give them various drugs which take away their ability to choose not to tell you what you want to know.) 3)A person is temporarily insane. In court, we say they are not in control of their actions during the time of insanity. These cases, conveniently, do not seem to be far from our natural intuition of what a threat to free will would be.
_____________________ "If a statement is made, it is to be confronted with the totality of existing statements. If it agrees with them, it is joined to them; if it does not agree, it is called 'untrue' and rejected; or the existing complex of statements of science is modified so that the new statement can be incorporated." - Otto Neurath

Socrastein
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2 of 2 people found this post helpful Posted 03/12/05 - 05:41 AM:	#4
Upon first looking at my opponent's post and it's length I was both nervous and excited at the prospect of having an elaborate and substantial argument to work with. However, upon reading through Paul's post it seems that it's one big bone with very little meat on it. Once one gets past the bits on Lockean 'free will', the past being the past (Go figure), an introduction to Quantum Mechanics, and finally a brief disproof of our minds being indetermined, we finally harken upon an actual argument - at about the last quarter of Paul's post. Paul says that the idea of free will must have come from somewhere, therefore free will exists. How does he prove such an idea? Well by conjecturing that the concept cannot possibly come from anywhere else but free will itself. Paul tells us that unlike a unicorn, you cannot join two concepts together to get free will, it's a completely unique idea that can only be understood through experience. It's funny that Paul says that free will can't possibly be a compound of other ideas. Especially when his post starts out by defining "Freedom" and "Will" and then combining them together to form a coherent picture of what it is he will be arguing for. Most peculiar. Would my opponent assert in the same manner that we must have free tans? I hearby declare a new concept, that of free tans, wherein the increase of melanin in our skin is not controlled by obligation or the will of another. Surely, something must have free tans then? Or at the very least, we used to have free tans in the olden days. I mean how could anyone possibly make the idea of free tans from other concepts? It must have come from experience. But if Paul's argument didn't fail on this level, then surely it would fail due to the fact that he has not and cannot deny that it is possible that what we humans all experience conciously the illusion of free will, and from this assumed-to-be-valid experience we have formed the concept thusly. And even if his attempts to show that my denial of free will is a contradiction don't fail because they're obviously a combination of the notions of will, and freedom, or because it's perfectly reasonable to suspect our feeling of free will to be the source of the concept, then it fails in the manner that I have pointed out in the beginning of my opening post. Paul says that if I say there's no free will, then I'm using words that don't actually have any meaning. That's just fine with me, because I said in my very first paragraph that free will is a nonsensical and obscure concept that when properly analyzed makes no sense and shows no potential for being possible. So no matter which way you want to see his attempt to get me to contradict myself as invalid, it is quite invalid. At the end of his post, Paul gives some parameters within which the will would be unfree. I found the first two to be quite interesting, since they so much reminded me of my opening argument. 1) A mind attempts to make a decision, but is forced in another direction by a puppeteer/god Well, I don't know why he only named puppeteers and god as possible culprits to this heineous manipulation, but I think that 'unchosen motivations' would work just as well. This doesn't only make sense theoretically, it's also observably true. We experience it all the time, or at least I do . There are often times when I attempt or want to make a decision one way, but something else compels me to decide otherwise. For instance, last week I was really hungry and rummaging around for something to eat when I hear a knock on the front door and my brother answers it and then a few moments later walks inside with three large pizzas. I so desparately wanted to resist the greasy meal and instead have something more healthy, but the second I smelled it I knew I was doomed. As strong as my desire for a healthy diet is, unfortunately my desire for bad food (Especially when I'm hungry and it's sitting right in front of my face so hot and fresh) is stronger. For all intents and purposes, the puppeteer was my damned lust for cheese and pepperoni. I did not choose to love such delicious tastes! If my will was free, surely I would have sided with my reason and easily thwarted the attempts of my desires. But sadly, my will is not free, it is bound to my desires, puppeted by them if you please, and all I could do was indulge and try not to think about the regret that would surely ensue after my hunger had subsided and I was left alone with cold, hard reason. 2) A person is physically and/or mentally restrained (Put someone in chains, give them various drugs which take away their ability to choose not to tell you what you want to know) First off, how ironic that both our OPs made reference to the idea of truth serum robbing one of free will I think that this idea is very similiar to Paul's first unfree situation. It's funny that Paul mentions truth serum as taking away free will because it takes away the ability to choose not to tell someone what they want to know. This statement seems to, in its subtext, carry the tacit assertion that without such an influence, we actually have the ability to choose otherwise. So it seems that Paul would say that I had free will not to eat the pizza, but if someone gave me a serum that forced me to eat the pizza, then I wouldn't have free will. I am curious what he would say is the significant difference in these two scenarios? It seems to me, as I said in my OP, that in both such situations our will is bound to act on desires that are out of our control. Be they innate desires or injected desires, I hardly think accounts for a meaningful difference. Either way, it cannot be denied that we will always act on our strongest desire. If that desire is due to a truth serum, or if that desire is due to a hunger and a taste preference, both of which I could not have chosen to have, then my actions are being compelled by conditions outside of my control. So it seems that Paul's biggest attempt at an argument thus far was to try and say that I'm contradicting myself if I deny free will. That was shown to be a false attempt in three different ways; so much for his one and only opening argument. Then Paul tells us exactly under what conditions the will would be unfree, and I have shown that the first two are perfectly compatible with my arguments about motives beyond our control that compel us to act. Paul said that he was going to focus on defending the position of compatabilism. I'm not quite sure why he failed to do so in his opening post, especially when this debate has been shrunken down to only 3 rounds, by his request. I'm sure however that his arguments will actually manage to manifest themselves in his next post Edited by Socrastein on 03/12/05 - 05:51 AM
_____________________ "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

Paul
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Posted 03/12/05 - 10:25 PM:	#5
Before anything else I must thank my opponent for taking it as a premise that an uncaused choice cannot be a choice. This makes my argument for me. Since (as we agree) an uncaused choice cannot be a choice, any attempt after that to argue that a choice being caused makes it not a choice is necessarily self-contradictory nonsense � the conclusion refutes the very premises used in making it. To claim without argument that cause preceding choice makes the choice unfree quite simply begs the question. A major point of compatibilism, of course, is that a choice being caused is a requirement for it being free... which incidentally is what Socrastein's premise 2 also suggests, though he prefers to throw all logic out the window and purposefully seek to create self-contradiction rather than follow this through to the compatibilist conclusion. Indeed we cannot choose the reasons we choose (except in a roundabout sense of our life decisions affecting/building our motivations), just as we cannot sense our sense data without an infinite regress (yet we still sense), and that is exactly why determinism has no force against free will. The fact that Socrastein uses the term �choose� here clearly implies that he thinks it means something (if he honestly thought it meaningless, he would not be able to use the term so purposefully as he does). He has in the process of saying �we cannot choose the reasons we choose� admitted that we do choose � otherwise he wouldn't be talking about reasons for the choice. Socrastein must � even if it's an impossible task � show us how he means to talk about choosing the reasons for a choice without admitting that there is a choice there which the reasons are for. In the middle of his opening post Socrastein presents a strawman of compatibilism, saying that a compatibilist will �assert that so long as we are doing what we want to do, we are necessarily free.� He proceeds to call his strawman weak, and no doubt it is. If I give someone a twinkie overdose (or some worse drug if you don't buy the twinkie defense) which causes them to want to commit murder because their rationality has been impeded by the chemicals, they are not acting with free will when they murder. If a masochist is abducted, chained, and whipped regularly, they are not exercising free will even though they're doing what they want to do. If the decision is not being made by a rational agent, it is not an act of free will. There is no slippery slope here, calling some things acts of free will does not imply calling all things acts of free will. Socrastein absurdly claims that if he hypnotizes me to cluck like a chicken then I must say I am acting freely. Obviously I would not say that, which is why in my opening post I very specifically noted that as a scenario in which the will is demonstrably unfree. This makes a good point at which to go into more detail on the importance of rationality to the issue of free will. Most philosophers who view man as the only rational animal also view man as the only animal with free will. This is no coincidence -- rationality is a central criteria for free will. When a person acts irrationally, they are not acting on their free will. A person with brain damage (or an animal) who simply doesn't have the brain power to make a rational decision about the situation they're confronted with is not exercising free will. Let us return briefly to definition 1a of 'will' from dictionary.com: �The mental faculty by which one deliberately chooses or decides upon a course of action.�Only when the decision is a deliberate act of the mind (an act of rationality) can be it will. It is obvious that hypnosis does not fit the criteria, and the truth serum as well I specifically addressed in my opening post. Similarly the attempt to say that compatibilism means computers and insects are free wholly ignores the primary importance of rationality, which is a faculty any determinist is able to recognize as a very complex feature arising out of evolution which has not been duplicated mechanically yet (though of course it's not logically impossible for an A.I. to someday have free will, merely a very improbable technology). If Socrastein attempts to argue that he is incapable of seeing that rationality exists, this can only be blindness... and if (more likely) he simply argues that rationality is caused, he is missing the entire point and simply begging the question of whether something being caused makes it unfit as a criteria for free will (which is, after all, the entire question of this debate now that we've agreed to set aside indeterminism as irrelevant). Consider the contrast between our two approaches here. While Socrastein insists we should embark on an infinite regress by making choosing be the ultimate criteria for what makes a choice a real choice (the ability to choose the reasons for the choice, he says), and then turns around and uses his self-created regress to call choice an irrational concept (after pushing us off the cliff he admonishes us for falling), I instead make rationality the criteria. Though matching up with intuition is certainly not a requirement for a valid argument, it is useful for determining if you're using a term correctly for your language, so do note again how nicely this rationality criteria meshes with common sense and legal sense � the accused is innocent by reason of insanity if the jury finds that they did not make a rational choice to commit the crime (rational of course is used here in a loose sense). People have always used rationality as the criteria and they always will, no matter if a small group of people believes that using the name of philosophy entitles them to hijack the dictionary to suit their confused intuitions about determinism. In his second post Socrastein first wastes time making many petty insults, then finally moves on to try to say that free will can indeed be formed out of other concepts that do exist. He points out I have defined both �free� and �will.� It is very much worth noting though that I also stated that my use of the term is best captured by the word �freedom� and Socrastein's argument forces him to refuse to admit that there is such a thing as freedom in the universe. Personal freedom is obviously not a concept derived from �buy one, get one free� sales -- although it can be argued that the sales derive from the concept of personal freedom, since �get one free� references the concept of a rational agent being able to make the choice to not leave gold coins for the shopkeeper when picking up the item. Notably, Socrastein merely mocks the argument while failing to actually tell us where the concept of freedom comes from when nothing remotely like it exists in the universe except the things that are derived from it. He gives no suggestion. When he points out my argument that his conclusion would mean that the words he's using to reach it don't actually have any meaning and says �that's just fine with me, because I said in my very first paragraph that free will is a nonsensical and obscure concept that when properly analyzed makes no sense and shows no potential for being possible,� Socrastein makes it clear that he accepts the self-contradictory nature of his position but considers it irrelevant. That his argument is internally contradictory is anything but irrelevant to this debate. When a person refuses be disturbed by contradiction, we can only sadly shake our heads and walk away (or, as TecnoTut's signature has long suggested, beat them until they admit that being beaten is not the same as not being beaten). Socrastein has admitted that his argument is nonsense, yet he continues to make the argument. Apparently he believes you can disprove things by babbling nonsense. In actuality, nonsense can never be formally disproved but only frowned at � however it is beyond dispute that an argument which relies on nonsense as Socrastein has stated that his does is incapable of proving (or even giving any evidence for) anything. Briefly, before I get on with more interesting things, I will comment that of course my opponent's taste in pizza is indeed not a working of free will � but his decision to eat the pizza, presuming he goes through any rational analysis of the emotional benefits compared to financial and physical detriments involved, is an act of free will. That the factors which determine the choice are not freely chosen merely reinforces that the choice itself exists, as has already been shown (partly by Socrastein, unintentionally). Of course a lot of the things we do are not acts of will, but pointing out things are not acts of free will merely reinforces the point that there is a contrast to be drawn � and that contrast must obviously be with the things that are acts of free will. Socrastein says of my arguments �surely it would fail due to the fact that he has not and cannot deny that it is possible that what we humans all experience conciously [is] the illusion of free will.� Ignoring the conspiracy theory nature of the scenario, the suspect application of that ever-abused word �illusion,� the absurdity of suggesting that there can be an illusion of a supposedly logically incoherent concept, the fact that it begs the question to refute my proof that free will cannot be denied by saying that I can't prove free will isn't an illusion, et cetera, this provides a good lead in to the important point that it's the total consistency of determinism in our empirical world which demonstrates transcendental freedom. The Kantian method may be the clearest way to illustrate free will. Let us consider determinism as synthetic a priori. I will not draw up an argument for that here since Kant has already written up an argument for how causality must be synthetic a priori in Critique of Pure Reason, and it's easy to see that if cause and effect is then determinism should be as well. (For those unfamiliar with Kant, I have a reconstruction of Kant's second analogy in which he proves causality to be synthetic a priori which you can download here and a reconstruction of his overall argument for free will here.) Given that determinism is synthetic a priori, we will always see things deterministically -- and certainly this is the case, we do sort every experience in terms of cause and effect. (Even miracles, it should be noted, are seen as cause and effect -- merely a disjointed version.) The reason why determinism permeates all our experiences is that it's a method by which our minds filter and interpret and make sense of the world. Being synthetic a priori, determinism necessarily has no application to the transcendental world. Like space and time, the fact that we experience cause and effect in everything means that causality is a feature of experiencing rather than a feature of the transcendental world. Transcendental determinism is impossible, since causality is synthetic a priori and thus only applies to the empirical world. We must therefore accept transcendental freedom unless a new non-deterministic argument is brought against it (and other than the complete randomness of the universe argument which I've already addressed, I don't see any possibilities on the horizon). Now, if I may ask nothing else, I ask that at least that Socrastein not attempt to beg the question again and that he accept the importance of Aristotle's law of non-contradiction to a productive debate. It is his responsibility to demonstrate that choices being causally determined makes them not true choices. I await his arguments for this. Meanwhile I have demonstrated how the very meaning of the term 'choice' involves causal determination, and he has even agreed with this, yet he expects us to draw the absurd conclusion that 'choice' is a meaningless, self-contradictory word that some insane person in an asylum invented when they couldn't comprehend the law of non-contradiction and which for some reason everyone has since taken to using. It might be said that Socrastein began his opening post by performing a reductio ad absurdum on his own position. In the process of declaring 'free will' not merely wrong but an unintelligible concept, he has proved his argument incorrect.
_____________________ "If a statement is made, it is to be confronted with the totality of existing statements. If it agrees with them, it is joined to them; if it does not agree, it is called 'untrue' and rejected; or the existing complex of statements of science is modified so that the new statement can be incorporated." - Otto Neurath

Socrastein
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Posted 03/13/05 - 12:18 AM:	#6
Paul seems to start his second post off with a bang - or maybe I should say a dud. He jumps right into fallacious reasoning by committing the fallacy of equivocation. He says that by saying choice must be caused, I have made his argument for him, because now if I argue that a caused choice isn't a choice then I'm refuting myself. However, is the issue of this debate "Do we make choices?". I hardly think so. We are not debating choice here, we are debating FREE choice. Paul is equivocating the idea of choice, which I say is and must necessarily be caused to even qualify as choice, with FREE choice. There is no contradiction in my saying that our choices are caused, and thus our choices are not FREE. I can only hope that the reader does not miss the subtle fallacy he is committing there, and mistakenly thinks that I actually have to contradict myself to argue my position. Then Paul jumps right into another ridiculous argument by saying I'm begging the question when I assert that if our choices are causally determined then they are not free. Not only that, but he goes so far as to say that I didn't support this idea, and that I'm throwing logic out the window by positing such an argument! I did very much support my argument and reasons for saying that a casually determined choice is not and cannot be a free one. In fact I specifically correlated my argument with his own admissions of what scenarios constitute an unfree will, in my second post. Paul admits himself that we cannot choose the reasons for which we make choices. And then he continues to fallaciously equivocate "choice" with "free choice". Paul says I must explain how I can even use the word choice without admitting that we do in fact choose. Well, like I said above, this debate is not over whether we make choices, it's over whether we make our choices freely. As I defined choice in my first post, it means nothing more than to select from 2 or more courses of action. It must be noted by the reader, that Paul is equivocating choice with free choice. They are two separate ideas, and Paul is attempting to lure me into contradiction by ignoring the distinction between them. I can assert that humans make choices and just as well argue that those very choices are not free - and that is exactly what I am doing. Then Pauls says that I was making a straw man of compatabilism by raising the possibility that he might argue along the lines that so long as we are following what we will to do we are free. He made it clear that he was not arguing such a position, and so I fully acknowledge that my comments therefore did not apply to his arguments in the least. I'm not so sure it's fair to say I was making a straw man of compatabilism, because I have heard plenty of compatabilists argue that this is what constitutes free will. But the important thing is Paul is not arguing this and I acknowledge that. What Paul is trying to argue is that only a rational agent can have free will. However, I find it curious that he says only an act of rationality qualifies as "a deliberate act of the mind". Perhaps I missed it, but nowhere in his post do I see any argument for this assertion. He simply slips it in there without a fuss hoping that both myself and the audience will accept it as true. However, I am not convinced and Paul is going to have to argue WHY an act is not deliberate if it is not a rational one. Also this begs the question of what exactly is a rational act, and at what point do our actions become irrational and leave our control as being deliberate acts? He seems to be building his argument on completely unsupported conjecture, and that never makes for a solid argument, I should think. Paul also returns to his argument that the idea of free-will must come from experience, and he says that I must deny the notion of freedom to make my case. However, this is completely false. There is no reason that I must accept a term as having actual existence or validity to use it. I argue against God without thinking that such a being actually exists. Same with square-circles. I also find it interesting that he didn't so much as mention my statements about "Free tanning". Surely such a concept has never been experienced and has no actual basis in reality, but you put the words together as I did and they seem to make sense just fine. I was wondering how he would address this, but it seems he chose to ignore it. Then he says I admitted my argument is nonsense! Where on earth did I say such a thing? I said that I don't have to give credibility to the notion of free will to argue against it. In fact, that's exactly how and why I'm arguing against it - because it is a nonsense phrase. Would I similiarly be contradicting myself if I said that square-circles are nonsense? Would this somehow make my argument self-contradictory, because by addressing square-circles I'm admitting that they are a valid concept? Of course not. Lest the reader be decieved into seeing contradiction in my argument that isn't there, I think it will be prudent to reiterate my argument so it can be seen what I am actually saying. The notion of free will is a confused one. It stems from the assumption that the same kind of freedom we refer to regarding slaves and prisoners and dictatorships and what not can also be applied to our will, in that it is not bound as the formerly mentioned peoples are. Two words that make sense, freedom, and will, are completely nonsensical when put together. Just like freedom of tanning, or square-circles. I say that free-will is a nonsensical concept because it is not possible for the will to be free (Just as it is not possible for a square to be a circle). The will is bound by desires/motives we DO NOT choose. Paul admits this. We are causally forced to act on desires that we have no control over. Paul admits this just as easily. Be our decisions rational, or irrational, is irrelevent and Paul has not argued for the relevence, he's just baselessly asserted it like so many things. If we must act on desires that we have no control over, then the will is not free in any meaningful way. Whether we feel like we're free, whether we agree with the decisions we're forced to act upon, makes no difference: I may have no desire to resist the course of a roller coaster, but that does not mean that I have any control or freedom when I ride it. The issue is not, are my actions rational, or are my actions willful, the issue is are my actions FREE? If we are forced to act on motives that are forced upon us, freedom has no place among our actions. Now that I've clearly reiterated my argument, I hope that it's quite clear that the absurdities and self-contradictions that Paul accuses me of are nowhere to be found. He relies on obscurity to make it seem as though I contradict myself, and when I clarify what I have actually said his words lose all weight. Paul closes out by requesting that I argue why choices aren't free if they are caused. And once again commits the fallacy of equivocation and ignores the distinction between choice and free choice. I am arguing against the idea that our choices are free, not against the idea that we make choices. Insects and computers make choices - they act on one of multiple alternative courses of action. He also keeps insisting that I'm contradicting myself, but I trust the readers are clever enough to see that there is no contradiction involved in arguing against a false proposition, as I believe free will to be, anymore than I would be contradicting myself to say that the idea of a square circle is nonsense. Though he has the affirmative position, Paul affirmed very little, and instead relied on attempts to attack my own arguments against free will. Even if he successfully refuted everything I said, he would be left with nothing but the completely unsupported assertion that we're rational so our choices are free. It remains to be seen if he will actually back up his statement and draw a logical connection between rationality and objective freedom of will. If he manages that, he might actually have an argument. But until then, all he has is fallacious equivocation and accusations that I'm contradicting myself, which I have shown to be utterly false. Freedom is "the condition of being free from restraints". This notion can be seen in real life - if I have handcuffs on, I'm restrained. Take them off and my hands are free. A perfectly reasonable concept that has real world validity. However, when this is applied to will and choices, the resulting phrase "Free will" makes no more sense than putting square and circle together. Our will is restrained, and Paul even admits it. He agrees that the will is bound to desires we cannot control. We must act according to our motives, and our motives are outside of our influence. He agrees that choices are causally determined - by that very notion they are constrained by determinism itself. Our choices are very restrained, for they can only ever happen one way, and they can only ever happen one way as a result of motives we can't control. Rationality does not escape these restraints, and thus the will has no freedom. I'd just like to thank Paul for agreeing to debate this topic with me. It was an honor to duke it out with someone of such high intellectual caliber Edited by Socrastein on 03/13/05 - 12:29 AM
_____________________ "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

Paul
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Posted 03/13/05 - 07:28 PM:	#7
As a brief reply to the part of the above post that I feel needs clarification, I must point out that the difference between god (an omni-projection of properties we're very familiar with), square circles (combination of two very familiar concepts) and freedom is clear. Socrastein has again failed to show what component concepts make up freedom. In response to Socrastein's comment �he didn't so much as mention my statements about 'free tanning'� I ask him to re-read my previous post. I made a rather big point out of my response to that already. If he couldn't see the connection between the talk of 'free' combined with any other term and the talk of 'free tanning' and insists I address this term specificially for some reason... well, I can only note that 'free' and 'tanning' are distinct concepts not tied to each other which are combined to make a compound concept 'free tanning'. (As for Socrastein's odd assertion that surely no one has ever actually experienced a free tanning, I have it from good authoritity that several people have sat out in the sun during the summer and found theirselves blessed with one.) If one thing is clear in this debate, it's that Socrastein finds free will completely unintelligible and irrational. By saying that an uncaused choice cannot be a choice he creates the conclusion of the concept of a choice being nonsense via an argument whose premises include a criteria for what makes something a choice. Unfortunately Socrastein prefers to try to project the contradiction onto free will rather than accepting it as his own creation. In his concluding post Socrastein has now backtracked slightly into saying that it's only �free choice� which he considers irrational and not choice itself. He says that this eliminates the contradiction I find in his use of premise #2 from his opening post. Yet let us look again at premise #2 from his opening post: �Premise 2: An uncaused choice cannot be a choice (Definition of choice)� He does not say �free� there, so my arguments which have been based on this premise are valid according to his opening post. Nonetheless, in order to show that my arguments have not depended on any particular word selection but rather on the concept of personal freedom which is at the heart of this topic, I will gladly concede the alteration of �choice� to �free choice.� With this change made, we're left with a question: what would a choice be if it's not free? Dictionary.com supplies these possible ways to define choice: 1.The act of choosing; selection. 2.The power, right, or liberty to choose; option. 3.One that is chosen. 4.A number or variety from which to choose: a wide choice of styles and colors. 5.The best or most preferable part. 6.Care in choosing. 7.An alternative. How does free modify the choice? Can there be an unfree liberty, an unfree alternative? The only answer I can find is that the 'free' modifier makes it a real choice instead of an illusiory one. Incidentally this is consistent with how Socratein has in his previous posts been using �choice� and �free choice� interchangeably, but now in the end wishes to only dismiss free choice when he sees that he can't logically dismiss choice as incoherent on the basis of the meaning of choice. That free choice and choice mean essentially the same thing still is not of any critical importance to my arguments, I must note. Even if we suppose there is some difference, such that choice and free choice are distinct, the same basic problem applies. To illustrate this, I will accept his new choice of words and continue on. The most critical and fatal problem to point out is that his approach demands that we use a concept in order to set the criteria for the concept (for whatever difference there may be between a choice and a free choice, the latter certainly still involves the concept of the former). Socrastein's "but you have to prove you freely chose the reasons for the choice in order for it to be a free choice" regress could be pulled off with nearly any term simply by applying the same technique he uses. If we were debating here the eternal question of whether heat exists, I could just as easily assert that in order for something to be hot it has to consist of hot stuff, since after all it wouldn't really be hot otherwise. (Note that the middle ages theories of heat were actually a lot like that. Socrastein is far from the first to make the blunder.) This, I could point out, leads to an infinite regress -- thus heat is an unintelligible nonsense concept and all thermometers must be confiscated and burned starting tomorrow. When someone argues that molecular motion is the proper way to understand heat, I can demolish their argument by pointing out that they haven't shown that the molecules are hot and if they're not hot they can't be composing the heat. Of course if the molecules were somehow hot then they wouldn't address the question of what heat is -- which is why heat is such an absurdly unintelligible concept we must abandon! If I made such an argument I hope I would be called on it and it would be dismissed as nonsense. Note that Socrastein might object that I have no modifier for 'heat' in the above. I left that off merely for the sake of simplicity. In the above paragraph it would be just as flawed to instead have �When someone argues that molecular motion is the proper way to understand heat, I can demolish their argument by pointing out that they haven't shown that the molecules are warm and if they're not warm they can't be composing the heat.� Or we could even use a new concept of �free heat� (sale at the electric/gas company I suppose) if desired. Briefly, let's review the key reasons why the denial of free will is untenable: Requiring that we use the concept of free choice in the process of establishing what free choice is, as the "in order for something to be a free choice we have to freely choose the reasons behind the choice" regress does, is a fundamental mistake. The proper explanation for what a free choice is should not involve free choices, just as the proper explaination for heat should not involve heat and the proper explanation for nuclear fission shouldn't involve nuclear fission. The concept of freedom comes from the stipulation that some aspect of experience shall be identified with 'freedom' or 'free will'. Unlike square circles and the like, it is not a compound concept. It therefore illogical to say that it is a nonsense concept which doesn't apply to anything. Determinism, if true, is not active in the way commonly imagined. We usually have a simplistic idea of a massive hoard of causes from the past using their combined power to force a present action. Modern science makes such a view untenable if we hold it to be objective. Under relativity theory there is no objective distinction between past, present and future. The unidirectionality of causality is only intersubjective, an artifact of the perspective of being a sentient creature. Objectively we can only say that two events are related -- we cannot say event A causes event B in an objective framework any more than event B causes event A. Quantum mechanics also forces changes to our intuitive view of determinism. A complete knowledge of the past (as required to give deterministic predictions force) involves a self-contradiction, as shown by the indeterminacy principle. Determinism is synthetic a priori. This means it cannot apply to the transcendental world. These arguments stand unrefuted. Fatalists often call compatibilism a quagmire of evasion. This is rather ironic, as it's the fatalists (those who arrive at fatalism through philosophical determinism rather than through religion) who are stuck in the quagmire of philosophy's tendency to generate confusion by distorting language and using various improper senses of terms at once, along with the quagmire of their basic intuitions about what it seems to them determinism should be like. "Philosophy can be said to consist of three activities," Wittgenstein once explained. "To see the commonsense answer, to get yourself so deeply into the problem that the commonsense answer is unbearable, and to get from that situation back to the commonsense answer." Most people spend their whole lives at stage one. Philosohical types tend to struggle long and hard to reach stage two. The denial of free will is stage two, the stage where the common sense answer seems unbearable. We must move beyond that and see in a new light why we do have free will in order to reach stage three. Just as it's difficult to move from stage one to stage two, it's yet more difficult to move from stage 2 to stage 3... making a mess is always easier than cleaning it up. I'd venture to say that no more than half of the people who make it to stage two ever reach stage three, and for many of them it takes long years. And yet the reasons for that final step are all around us, and all that is needed to begin to understand them is to step back from the emotional attachment to stage two's seemingly deep revelations � there is a temptation to cling to the result of hard work and to see anything which leads back to the original position as making the work all be for naught (but it isn't, as the understanding gained in the process is quite valuable). I have shown in this debate the reasons why the denial of free will is an inherently confused and untenable position, the reasons why we must take this final step to resolve what Carnap might term a pseudoproblem of philosophy. Edited by Paul on 03/13/05 - 07:35 PM
_____________________ "If a statement is made, it is to be confronted with the totality of existing statements. If it agrees with them, it is joined to them; if it does not agree, it is called 'untrue' and rejected; or the existing complex of statements of science is modified so that the new statement can be incorporated." - Otto Neurath

dreamweaver
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1 of 1 people found this post helpful Posted 03/14/05 - 01:57 AM:	#8
Thank you gentlemen; this concludes the Debate. The Discussion and Poll for this thread is now open.
_____________________ Dos moi pou sto kai kino taen gaen. ~ Archimedes

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