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Free Will - A Thought Experiment
a challenge to those who believe in free will

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Free Will - A Thought Experiment

madmaxthundercats
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Posted 10/31/09 - 09:50 AM:	#11
bouncingsoul wrote: clearly, you can only imagine yourself making the same choice, but why should we suppose otherwise? It says nothing about the issue of free will. the determinist is actually the one who makes the bold and unjustified claim: that all phenomena can be explained in terms of cause and effect. First of all, how does this thought experiment not say anything about the issue of free will? If our actions are predetermined, then where exactly does free will come into play? Second, it is true that determinism has not been 100% empirically verified, but the vast majority of scientific theory supports and depends on a deterministic, causal framework in which physical events occur. There's a lot more evidence to support it than negate it. If an event is not caused, then what is it? Random? Randomness is not an argument for free will; if all of our behavior is random then we have no more control over it than if it were predetermined. To me, it seems that any event can only be caused or random, and in neither case does "free will" exist. Is there a third option? If so, please enlighten me.

Arkady
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Posted 10/31/09 - 10:15 AM:	#12
bouncingsoul wrote: "Human behavior is determined by our mental states, our mental states are determined the physical states of our brain, and the physical states of our brain are determined by countless antecedent causes originating well before our lifetime." How do you know this? Where is a verified theory of mind which confirms this? Please see my post above. Mental states are a product of mind. Mind arises from the brain, the brain is necessary for its inception and persistence, and is subject to material manipulation. This provides ample support for the physicalist view. To posit some other "mind-substance" is pure superstition. bouncingsoul wrote: In Descartes time it was thought by some that Cartesian mechanism was the only reasonable approach for explaining "physical" phenomena. Post Newton, we ought to know that Cartesian mechanism is nonsense, and any assumed metaphysics of substance can only act as an unjustified constraint on what principles we can posit in our theories of how the world works. The point of the analogy is that it seems obvious to you that everything in the "physical" realm can be explained as causally determined, and since our mental states (so far an ill-defined theoretical notion) supervene on physical events then behaviour is causally determined - just like it seemed obvious to Descartes that all physical events can be explained by extended bodies bumping into each other in vortical motion (therefore no vacuums, no action at a distance etc etc.) Its all dogma. How is it dogma? It is not an unsupported view, and I don't hold it with unflinching certainty. I am amenable to changing my views in the face of good reasons to do so. In fact, I have only very recently come around to a determinist/incompatibilist viewpoint. Your argument from analogy is framed thusly: Descartes held beliefs about mind and matter which were "obvious" to him. Descartes' beliefs were untrue. I hold beliefs about mind and matter which are "obvious" to me. Therefore, my beliefs are untrue. I see no reason to accept this. bouncingsoul wrote: Now, I don't want to come across like my argument is just "well prove it!". Its a more fundamental point than that. Namely - there is no good reason to assume that behaviour is causally determined until a coherent theory which posits specific causal antecedents to behaviour and formalised relations between these causal antecedents and the following behavioural events is confirmed by experiment. So far, no one has hypothesised any such theoretical principles, even for highly idealised cases with any success (or at all as far as I am aware). No. One needn't posit a mechanism at all in order to discern causation. We may not know everything about how the brain's physical states influence mind/behavior, but we know that it does. We don't know everything about how Prozac cures depression, but this fact in no way undermines Prozac's causal efficacy. (This point, incidentally, recently came up in another thread.) bouncingsoul wrote: The metaphysical picture which suggests itself to us based on current knowledge (or even in principle based on humanly possible knowledge) is useless and unhelpful. So far free will looks just like free will, not a conjuring trick of nature. Why assume that such a conjuring trick of nature exists when this aspect of nature has not even begun to be characterised theoretically with any success? I am not assuming a conjuring trick of nature. I am making the wholly unoriginal point that what we believe and feel doesn't always map onto reality with perfect accuracy. One may as well say, "Since I feel that matter is a continuous lump and not made of myriad tiny particles, then why assume otherwise?" Or, "Since I feel that the Earth is not moving, why believe that the universe is playing some sort of trick on us?" A couple of questions: (1)You appear not to subscribe to causal determinism at all, is that correct? If so, do you believe in uncaused causes? (2)What are your views of the nature of mind? Physicalism/monism, dualism, something else? Edited by Arkady on 10/31/09 - 03:41 PM
"Sit down before fact like a little child, and be prepared to give up every preconceived notion. Follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing." -T.H. Huxley

bouncingsoul
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Posted 10/31/09 - 10:50 AM:	#13
I didn't mean that the issue of determinism has nothing to do with free will. But the thought experiment itself doesn't get to the heart of the matter. "Second, it is true that determinism has not been 100% empirically verified, but the vast majority of scientific theory supports and depends on a deterministic, causal framework in which physical events occur" "determinism" has not been verified or disconfirmed by any percentage whatsoever...what has been confirmed is that certain observed regular connections between certain types of event have been explained successfully as mathematically formalised causal relations with experimental verification. Whether or not these connections are necessary - owing to some metaphysical or ontological facts of the matter which mean that all physical events are causal has not been confirmed or disconfirmed at all. "but the vast majority of scientific theory supports and depends on a deterministic, causal framework in which physical events occur" Yes. Perhaps all comprehensive theories about the natural universe must depend on a causal (or probabilistic) framework. What follows about what nature "must be like"? "There's a lot more evidence to support it than negate it." Well not quite. There is a lot of evidence that supports causal (and probabilistic) theories which explain lots and lots of physical events. This doesn't say anything about the causal or non-causal character of phenomena which fall outside such bodies of theory. It does of course give us good reason to carry on our inquiry in this fashion i.e. hypothesising causal and probabilistic explanations for phenomena...but we don't know which aspects of the natural world will or won't be able to be explained in this way. "If an event is not caused, then what is it?" Pre-Newton if an event was not caused by the properties of vortical motion and imapctual interactions of extended bodies, then people said "then what was it"? It turns out we needn't be constrained by metaphysical assumptions about the nature of the physical world, and so we can just posit new principles if they work. As Newton did with gravitation. "Random?" Likewise, many thinkers balked at the uncertainty principle when it was hypothesised. However, we put the principle to the test and it works to help us understand, so we adjust our picture accordingly, and a degree of randomness incorporated into a probabilistic system is allowed into our picture of nature. So what if further hitherto unacceptable principles might be needed to explain mental states/behaviour? What if in the specific case of deiberate, conscious choices, no mathematically formalisable causal or probabilistic theory yields explanatory success in the face of experiment? Well so be it. My point is simply that to assert that determinism must, or probably does hold over all natural phenomena is most likely unhelpful. "To me, it seems that any event can only be caused or random, and in neither case does "free will" exist. Is there a third option? If so, please enlighten me." The universe is a bizarre place, with many seemingly irreducible or properties; the "emergence" of motion and the "emergence" of electrostatic charge (etc.) are just as mysterious even today as the "emergence" of consciousness and other "hard" problems. No explanation has ever been given for the values of the physical constants...and so on. If there is a further property of the universe that certain things in it can deliberately and consciously act, undetermined, as the first cause of a particular set of events, then that won't be necessarily any more mysterious or bizarre than the properties of the universe mentioned above. Although, such aspects of nature might resist any attempts at theoretical explanation through mathematically formalised causal or probabilistic models.

bouncingsoul
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Posted 10/31/09 - 11:42 AM:	#14
Arkady, My argument from analogy isn't just that in the past some apparently obvious views are wrong, therefore today's apparently obvious views are wrong. Rather it was that sticking to a metaphysical picture of "substance" or "the physical realm" is unwise because it potentially imposes unnecessary constraints on the principles properties and kinds of entities which we can posit in order to understand the world around us. You are right that you don't need a fully fledged mechanism to assume causal relations, and I should have been more careful in my previous post. The point is that we have lots of evidence to show that there is a strong correlation between taking Prozac and relieving the symptoms of depression - whereas we don't have such evidence of any strong correlations between specific events and specific behaviours (other than what already passes in common-sense understanding - and often common sense understanding of causes of behaviour mostly don't strike us as properly deterministic e.g. I drink because I am thirsty - but I could choose not to and die of thirst if I wanted). On top of this, we have primitive theoretical understandings of how medicines affect our brains, and thus our moods...nothing absolutley solid, but enough to assume that we can find a mechanism one day. Just as what we feel or believe doesn't always map onto reality, neither does what we reason from certain assumptions. And it may well be the case that our reasonings can never capture properly certain aspects of the universe. When you say I seem not to ascribe to causal determinism at all - of course I believe in causation (how could I not and get on with life? haha) and I am convinced that approaching naturalisitc inquiry by hypothesising causal or probabilistic relations between events is the best way (based on the robustness of causal and prob. theories, and their explanatory power thus far). On uncaused causes - Our best current theories about how physical systems work at a tiny level allow for a degree of randomness. Thus we are positing events that are not fully determined. The interactions of entities behaving this way provides causal ground for almost all physical and chemical phenomena currently observed, again according to our best theories. So, in some sense, unless you want to reject the Uncertainty Principle you have to accept uncaused (or at least not fully determined) causes. As for uncaused causes tout-court - I can conceive of them perfectly well, and have no reason to rule them out (because I don't stick to any metaphysical picture which I take to underpin all physical phenomena). Libertarian free will, which may well obtain, would probably require for some living organisms to exhibit this property of acting as first cause. If there are no uncaused causes (and necessarily so) can you fit the very being of the universe into your ontology? (What caused the big bang for example?) This isn't a challenge as such, just an honest question. My view on the mind is that notions such as physicalism/monism/dualism get in the way of understanding. Distinctions between mental, physical, optical, electrical, chemical events, etc., are best viewed as descriptive conveniences without any metaphysical connatations. Attempting to pinpoint some separate mind substance by appealing to the supposedly special properties of mental states/objects/events is a confusion...the qualitative distinction between "internal" mind phenomena and "external" physical phenomena is exhausted by the grammar of our concepts (i.e. the conventions governing their use). However, asserting that mind phenomena must then 'reduce' theoretically to physical phenomena is unwise if you assert a determinate conception of this metaphysical category of the "physical" and what kinds of thing belong in it. If you don't hold to such a conception, then physicalism is vacuous...you are merely saying that all "stuff happens" in the same ontological realm (whatever that might mean in the absence of any other such 'realms'). Personally I would imagine (as I think almost everyone would) that the properties of the mind, when theoretically articulated and verified by experiment in the abstract, are most likely instantiated by neurological structures which we will then have to find...but if we can't reduce one to the other then so be it... Edited by Incision on 11/02/09 - 08:55 AM. Reason: capitalization, punctuation

bouncingsoul
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Posted 10/31/09 - 11:47 AM:	#15
by the way, thanks for the courteous and challenging discussion people. im new here.

hanuma
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Posted 10/31/09 - 02:24 PM:	#16
reincarnated wrote: The Experiment Using your own preferred concept of free will, consider one of the more important “free will” decisions that you have made at some point in your life, which you also consider to NOT be a capricious decision. In other words, it was an important decision which you made based on a rational and considered assessment of the various possibilities, but at the same time that you consider was a freely willed decision on your part. It might be, for example, a decision to leave school and start work rather than go to college (or vice versa); it might be a decision to marry your sweetheart; it might be a decision to buy a house. My question to you is very simple. On this second time around, would you make the same decision again? Please also provide an explanation for your answer (ie if you answer that you would make the same decision again, why would you do so? Why would you not choose differently the second time around? And if you answer that you would make a different decision, why would you do so? Why would you not choose the same as the first time around?). Hi. Reminds me of something I read by Nietzsche, he asked whether we would change the way we live our lives if we were told that we would have to re-live it over and over again exactly as we lived it the first time. The suggestion is naturally absurd because it pre-supposes that we are living it for the first time and that we won't get given the same prophecy in every other repetition of our life. To answer your question, yes, I am as certain as possible that I would definitely have still been too weak, at the time I am thinking of, to have taken another path, one that might have served me better by now. I'd like to know what the ramifications of that are in terms of the general concept of 'free will'. I generally think of 'free will' as something fundamentally impossible, ultimately we are all bound by desires, freedom being one of them. But it is an ideal that, no matter how unattainable, through chasing it we might yet find a better way to experience life.

Arkady
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Posted 10/31/09 - 04:11 PM:	#17
bouncingsoul, Ok, so you do subscribe to the notion of general causation (don't laugh, some people don't! Even Bertrand Russell likened believing in causation to a superstition...) but you prefer case-by-case discernment of causation and don't make any global judgments about it. For instance, you accept that there are some uncaused causes (e.g. in the quantum realm), which would include the "first cause" of the universe. Is that a fair summary of your views? (Regarding the big bang as a "first cause", I have no idea, and I suspect I'm in good company in that regard; I wouldn't take too seriously anyone who tells you they know where the universe came from!) Even given that there is the possibility of uncaused causes at the quantum level, I have as yet seen no indication that our consciousness arises from any quantum phenomenology. The most credible argument for this position ("credible" excludes Deepak Chopra et al) comes from Penrose and Hammeroff's OR-OCH model of consciousness (or something similar, you can Google it as well as I can), which hypothesizes that consciousness arises from electron oscillations in neuronal microtubules. This theory has been repeatedly savaged, and I see no indication of its becoming widely accepted any time soon. Bottom line: there is no reason to regard consciousness as a quantum system, and therefore no reason to believe it's exempt from causal determinism (even taking as given that quantum systems are so exempt). I believe that mental phenomena "reduce" to physical phenomena because there is no reason at all in the world not to believe it. By your last sentence, I gather that you more or less agree with this position? (I'm afraid I don't follow your point about physicalism being vacuous: on the contrary, it would have been seen as a revolutionary, scandalous position to take until fairly recently in philosophical history. I wouldn't have wanted to have been living through the Inquisition when I denied the existence of a soul...)
"Sit down before fact like a little child, and be prepared to give up every preconceived notion. Follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing." -T.H. Huxley

swstephe
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Posted 10/31/09 - 09:31 PM:	#18
The trick is the OP is asking "why". As soon as you explain why, you give a deterministic external cause for your action. The objective alternative is that your actions at any time are random or chaotic and winding the clock back could potentially lead to a different action, without a deterministic cause that we can determine. So, it is a trap -- explaining "why" makes it deterministic. The question a libertarian would have to answer is why would free will be an advantage in a world where one's actions couldn't be predicted.
Ethics is the measuring of morality. Morality is the measuring of good. Good is the measuring of benefit. Benefit is the measure of values.

Arkady
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Posted 11/01/09 - 03:30 PM:	#19
swstephe wrote: The trick is the OP is asking "why". As soon as you explain why, you give a deterministic external cause for your action. The objective alternative is that your actions at any time are random or chaotic and winding the clock back could potentially lead to a different action, without a deterministic cause that we can determine. So, it is a trap -- explaining "why" makes it deterministic. The question a libertarian would have to answer is why would free will be an advantage in a world where one's actions couldn't be predicted. Even metaphysical libertarians must be struck by just how much of our lives are in some sense "pre-determined" when we're born, even without subscribing to anything even resembling hard determinism: so much of what and who we are is determined by genes, upbringing, environment, culture, historical forces, etc, all of which are nearly completely out of our control.
"Sit down before fact like a little child, and be prepared to give up every preconceived notion. Follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss Nature leads, or you shall learn nothing." -T.H. Huxley

swstephe
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Posted 11/01/09 - 06:46 PM:	#20
Another aspect of the rewind is interesting. Of course, we would live our lives differently if we knew anything of the consequences of our actions. To recreate the exact same conditions, we would also have to be completely unaware that we were repeating our actions. So, as an alternative to Nietzsche, let's say someone told you that this is your second time living your life and this expert knows what your actions were in your previous runs and would therefore know for a fact whether you were repeating your actions exactly the same or making occasional different choices. However, you would be incapable of knowing. Removing the expert, you are still incapable of knowing that you had the ability to make a different choice. Therefore, any feeling that you are free to make a different choice is an illusion -- knowledge about a possibility that you are logically incapable of perceiving on your own. I had my own mental experiment along these lines, which I turned into a small demonstration. I pull out two similar objects, say an apple and a banana. I ask someone to choose one. After they choose, I reset the experiment and ask them to choose again. Whatever they choose, I can demonstrate that there is no free will. First, if they choose the same, I show that they are predetermined to choose the same fruit each time. If they choose differently, I can say they chose the other fruit because the choice was weighed by the need to demonstrate free will. Although there is a trick -- they can't make a different choice because this second choice is a new choice. They would have to travel back in time and be in control of the their past selves to implement this choice. Since time travel into the past is logically impossible -- or would end up with some parallel universe interpretation, a different choice (within the same universe/timeline) would be impossible, too.
Ethics is the measuring of morality. Morality is the measuring of good. Good is the measuring of benefit. Benefit is the measure of values.

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