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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

reincarnated
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Posted 10/30/09 - 09:06 PM: Subject: Free Will - A Thought Experiment	#1
I would like you to participate in an interesting thought experiment. Firstly, some definitions: Metaphysical libertarian free will is the kind of free will that many people intuitively assume that we possess. it is (in crude terms) the ability to be an unmoved mover, an uncaused cause. Such free will choices, we say, are determined by me and ONLY by me, they are not determined by events outside of me. Such free will is generally acknowledged to be incompatible with causal determinism. With this kind of free will, one is actually able to choose more than one possible course of action under any given set of circumstances, we say there are genuine alternative possibilities open to ourselves with this kind of free will. Compatibilistic free will, on the other hand is simply the ability to do what I want to do. “What I want” may indeed be determined (by events outside of my control), but nevertheless as long as I am free to exercise my (determined) will then I say that I have free will. As the name suggests, this kind of free will is compatible with determinism. A compatibilist is under no illusion that he is some kind of free agent in the metaphysical libertarian sense, he accepts that his choices and actions are predetermined (if determinism is true). I believe that determinists and compatibilists will have no problem conducting the experiment which follows, but I expect that metaphysical libertarians may run into some difficulties. 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. Now I would like you to imagine that you could wind the clock back to the precise moment just before you exercised your free will choice in this particular decision, such that absolutely all antecedent states are precisely the same as they were the first time around. This includes all of your brain states, all of the thoughts, beliefs, values, memories etc that were in your mind at the time of the original decision are perfectly replicated. Importantly, this of course means that you have no memory of the fact that you made a decision already and you have simply re-wound the clock, you have no memory of the original decision or any subsequent events. 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?). Thanking you in advance for your kind participation. Reincarnated Edited by reincarnated on 10/31/09 - 01:28 AM. Reason: typo
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Arkady
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Posted 10/30/09 - 11:58 PM:	#2
reincarnated wrote: Now I would like you to imagine that you could wind the clock back to the precise moment just before you exercised your free will choice in this particular decision, such that absolutely all antecedent states are precisely the same as they were the first time around. This includes all of your brain states, all of the thoughts, beliefs, values, memories etc that were in your mind at the time of the original decision are perfectly replicated. Importantly, this of course means that you have no memory of the fact that you made a decision already and you have simply re-sound the clock, you have no memory of the original decision or any subsequent events. My question to you is very simple. On this second time around, would you make the same decision again? This question never ceases to be a source of fascination, reincarnated, and for me, no philosophical question has ever provided such a gut-check. I don't doubt that most people (free will libertarians or otherwise) would concur that if we conducted an experiment in which we, say, fired a cannon shell, we'd get the exact same result each time, provided (as you say), the antecedent conditions are exactly the same. I think where some people run into trouble is that they have difficulty picturing their mind as a purely physical system. It certainly doesn't feel that consciousness (including conscious deliberation) is a result of pulleys, springs, and gears inside of our heads, rendering it subject to the same material, mechanistic causation as everything else in the universe. But, to believe otherwise is to commit oneself to some form of Cartesian dualism, with all of its attendant problems (a commitment which I don't think can be justified in the light of scientific findings, though philosophy of mind is not my forte: there may well be good modern arguments for dualism which I don't know about). So, I believe that one is forced to conclude that the answer to your question is YES, we would make the same decision. Edited by Arkady on 10/31/09 - 12:36 AM
"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

atightropewalker
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Posted 10/31/09 - 07:56 AM:	#3
This assumes that our thoughts are solely determined by previous actions. It may be possible that we have preset default positions regarding ethics, decision making etc. that exist outside of causal time. The free will is then our ability to use realworld experiences to mould our own default positions. This could explain why concepts like languages and seemed to be picked perhaps to fast for empiricism. Now I don't subscribe to this belief, I simply believe (at the moment) that the ability to reflect on other options is our illusion of free will and will adjust how we react to similar future events. Whereas I guess some animals just do the same in every situation we have the handy ability to look at previous occurences of the situation and adjust how we would approach it in future.
"An honest religious thinker is like a tightrope walker. He almost looks as though he were walking on nothing but air. His support is the slenderest imaginable. And yet it really is possible to walk on it." - Ludwig Wittgenstein 'It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand...' - Søren Kierkegaard

aletheist
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Posted 10/31/09 - 08:00 AM:	#4
reincarnated wrote: On this second time around, would you make the same decision again? I am a libertarian, so my answer might surprise you--I would almost certainly make the same decision again, because I would (presumably) weigh the same factors in the same way. There is no inconsistency here; the fact that I (probably) would not have done otherwise does not entail that I could not have done otherwise. Arkady wrote: But, to believe otherwise is to commit oneself to some form of Cartesian dualism, with all of its attendant problems (a commitment which I don't think can be justified in the light of scientific findings, though philosophy of mind is not my forte: there may well be good modern arguments for dualism which I don't know about). I prefer to call myself a substance dualist, and I believe that it is the physicalist position that cannot be justified, at least not currently. As J. P. Moreland has written, besides (libertarian) free will, naturalism/physicalism has yet to provide an adequate explanation for consciousness, rationality, the unified self, intrinsic value, and objective morality.
"Be attentive, Be intelligent, Be reasonable, Be responsible." - Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984)

Arkady
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Posted 10/31/09 - 08:10 AM:	#5
aletheist wrote: I prefer to call myself a substance dualist, and I believe that it is the physicalist position that cannot be justified, at least not currently. As J. P. Moreland has written, besides (libertarian) free will, naturalism/physicalism has yet to provide an adequate explanation for consciousness, rationality, the unified self, intrinsic value, and objective morality. These phenomena are certainly imperfectly (perhaps even poorly) understood, but to assert that this renders the physicalist position untenable is merely to put magical thinking in the place of mechanistic causation. In point of fact, we know that consciousness arises from the brain, depends upon the brain for its persistence, and is itself amenable to material manipulation (via manipulation of the brain). There is no credible reason at all to believe that the mind is an essence fundamentally distinct from the brain. In my opinion, asserting the immateriality of the mind because we don't (yet) fully understand consciousness is akin to asserting the existence of evil spirits because we don't fully understand mental illness. By the way, a quick google search of J.P. Moreland indicates he is a Christian apologist, and (sigh) a member of the Discovery Institute. Not to commit the genetic fallacy here, but it is not exactly shocking that Moreland would argue on behalf of an immaterial essence of the mind. Edited by Arkady on 10/31/09 - 03:43 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 - 08:47 AM:	#6
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. in naturalistic enquiry we don't assume a particular causal relationship to hold between events until we find it. There is no evidence that human behaviour is rigidly determined by causal antecedents. None whatsoever Furthermore there is no evidence that human behaviour can in principle be predicted by a probabilistic system that incorporates randomness (as quantum mechanics does for subatomic phenomena). We have no foothold on questions of human choice/will, or if you like, how, as physical systems, we initiate actions or put to use our capacities in one way or another. No verified body of theory gives a model of how any of this might happen, even in highly idealised cases. So, the determinist has to explain why an earth he is a determinist. Just because so far our inquiry into how the world works has at best only ever yielded theories which posit fixed causal relations/probabiistic relations governed by rules, between events/entities - doesnt mean that determinism is a metaphysical fact. Maybe we won't be able to incorporate how voluntary action works into a comprehensive theoretical framework - ever - because our cognitive tools for building theories cannot yield a formal system which explains it. If so, so be it. The compatibilist often claims to be the hard headed, scientific, naturalistic philosopher, who doesn't believe in magic (e.g. Dennett). However, the naturalism of these people doesn't go far enough - they are the ones who imagine that our theoretical understanding captures reality in some deeper sense than as giving a framework for understanding certain aspects of the natural universe, through idealised cases, structured by our perspectives and saliencies. So much for compatibilism, its completely obtuse and confused.

unenlightened
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Posted 10/31/09 - 09:03 AM:	#7
reincarnated wrote: Now I would like you to imagine that you could wind the clock back to the precise moment just before you exercised your free will choice in this particular decision, such that absolutely all antecedent states are precisely the same as they were the first time around. Winding the clock is no problem, but winding time back, I have never managed. If life was like a film, it might be done, but that is rather the question isn't it? If I imagine life as a film, then I imagine it as determined. If I imagine it as undetermined, then I cannot imagine it being wound back, and time only lasts once.
...most of our actions are the result of the past, or according to a future ideal. That's not action, that is just conformity. J Krishnamurti "Philosophy, to the Philistine, is an evolutionary process, watched over by some sort of brisk dynamic Providence, and culminating in the supreme insight of modern thought." John Cowper Powys

Arkady
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Posted 10/31/09 - 09:04 AM:	#8
bouncingsoul wrote: ...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...in naturalistic enquiry we don't assume a particular causal relationship to hold between events until we find it. There is no evidence that human behaviour is rigidly determined by causal antecedents. None whatsoever. To believe in uncaused causes is that for which there is no evidence. None whatsoever. Human behavior is determined by our mental states, our mental states are determined by the physical states of our brain, and the physical states of our brain are determined by countless antecedent causes originating well before our lifetime. Edited by Arkady on 10/31/09 - 04:49 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 - 09:05 AM:	#9
Sorry that last sentence should have read: "so much for determinism...." of course, if causal determinism were a metaphysical fact (although how we might find this out eludes me) then the only concept of free will which would make sense is a compatibilist one...but given the complete lack of a reason to assume causal determinsim with regards to human choices, it seems like a redundant point.

bouncingsoul
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Posted 10/31/09 - 09:22 AM:	#10
"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? 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. 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 antcedents 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). 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?

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