True. Or at least very likely.



This part's not true. You don't necessarily have to deny determinism in order to assert free will (nor appeal to quantum theory etc), and that's where Compatibilist theories come in.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism (not that great an article actually)
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/ (much better)

This is where most of the work in this area is done, in philosophy today. There are a lot of quite strong compatibilist arguments for why free will exists despite determinism - arguments that have nothing to do with quantum theory or metaphysics. Mostly it's argued by philosophers of Mind (eg Daniel Dennett), but strong compatibilist arguments go all the way back to Hume.

You're right about determinism, sure. But after that, you're presenting a false dilemma - those options you gave are not the only possibilities (by a long shot).



They do, you just seemingly haven't heard of them yet. :shrug: Although it may seem that no such explanation can exist, maybe you'll disagree when you look at the problem from some different angles.

Well, I suppose that you could state it as competing desires, but I don't think in the way that you mean. If your desire to think longer about a decision than to make it now is stronger, then you will continue to do so. Then, hypothetically, say that my telling you this has lead you to say something like "Well, my desire to think longer about it *is* stronger, but to prove you wrong, I am going to act now." in which case your desire to prove me wrong is stronger than your desire to make what seems like a better decision to you. Every action could be reduced to some sort of hierarchy like this I suppose, though that's not really the idea behind psychological determinism.

When you say that those electro-chemical processes have degrees of variance, it depends on what level you are talking about. There is NO variance if you are including every variable. If you are looking from a microscopic scale at the brain, then yes, there will undoubtedly be variation.


Well, except that how long you had to think about it is a result of determinism. I don't really know how else to explain it, especially not simply through text.

Well, after trying to find a youtube video that perhaps could explain it better, simply by virtue of being verbal and much longer than a post should be I suppose this one suffices: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEZKIV8TzuM. I don't know who this sort of strange young man is, but he hits on just about every point.

I'll throw in a video too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Utai74HjPJE interview on the compatibility between free will and determinism.

I've no time to watch through it all, but I know he has an interesting approach. Not all contemporary compatibilists agree with his theories on this but they're important nonetheless. There's a lot of ways to skin the compatiblism cat.

They actually very, very much do not. Compatibilism provides no mechanism by which physical matter can be manipulated at relevant level in the brain that is outside of determinism. It's a bunch of speculation based on absolutely nothing.

Seeing how our thinking and actions are caused by electrical impulses which involve electrons (tiny particles), we indeed might on the quantum level be non-deterministic "machines". The problem with quantum non-determinism is though that although we, as observers within the Universe, can not predict where exactly a quantum particle is going to be and how fast exactly it will travel, it doesn't mean that it isn't determined - it only means that we aren't capable of determining it. A die in a perfectly isolated box will definitely fall on one of its six sides when the box is shaken and on which one is determined by its initial position and the forces which acted upon the box wherein the die is. The fact that we can't determine which side it fell on without breaking the perfectly isolated box doesn't mean that which side it fell on isn't determined even if the box remains intact.

I really understand that. So called "hidden variable theory" is about as intuitive as it gets. Even Einstein rejected QM for the explanation you just gave, and he was one of the most intuitive people to ever live. I was in the hidden variable camp until I read lots of Bell's work. Bell's theorem (or the "holy [censored] it actually works like that?" experiments) really has killed hidden variable theory.

Judging by what I've read, I guess that would mean I'm a compatabilist - the individual processes may be determined, but the end results are not. I suppose I'm having a hard time getting my position across plain text as well, but I'm enjoying the excercise nonetheless.

The video was interesting, and pretty much what I thought as well, but where he says "we lack the intelligence to know all the variables involved" is exactly where the deterministic argument, I feel, hits some rocks: I would say it's impossible to know all the variables in a given system, and thus even if it is deterministic, there are no meaningful conclusions to be drawn from the observation. He says, if he could know every particle and force involved with flipping a coin he could determine its precise trajectory, as it's already been determined as soon as it left the hand, but I say the methods involved with finding that information would obscure the results or are just physically impossible for 100% accuracy - bouncing a laser off the coin in flight could change its trajectory in miniscule amounts, for example. So while we might say that processes are fully deterministic, it may still not yield the full "truth" that best describes how those processes interact in the physical universe - the coin toss is still "random." My mind may be making my decisions for me, following preset conditions more or less automatically, but since those conditions are in constant flux and subject to the merest input, how can I not have "free will" to change my own mind?

What I meant by variance is that the excitation states for neurons are not digital, they have a certain threshold that needs to be met by an incoming "signal", and if the "strength" is less than that threshold the neuron doesn't fire. It could be this variance is so great that it is, in effect, a true random generator - when people say, "it's on the tip of my tongue" it's a neural pathway that hasn't fully connected, disrupting the flow of what should be a determinstic system. Again, not something I have had terribly extensive study into, but at least this is my basic understanding of the physiology involved in "thought."

Again, you're still looking at the problem from the wrong angle. They're not trying to 'provide a mechanism that can manipulate physical matter at a level in the brain which is outside determinism'. They're not trying to provide anything on any level 'outside determinism'.

They operate within determinism, that's the whole point. Such theories claim that a choice can be both fully determined and free.

They're not offering anything that contradicts determinism, or exists outside of it. They aren't offering 'speculation' about some kind of special magical action that the brain can perform outside of determinism. They fully accept and agree with everything you just said about determinism .

The difference? What is a 'free' act in the first place? What is a 'choice'? How are you defining these things anyway? There are many competing theories on what these things even are. To understand the problem of free will VS determinism, you need to understand this whole area of philosophy first.

On many of these theories and definitions of freedom, automony and choice, an action can be both 100% determined and yet still free.

All of which turns it into an exercise in semantics and definitions.

Yes e.g I can vote for who I want, I could pick the person I want, or I could pick the person I dont want, because I can.

So? You make it sound like one definition is as good as another. But this isn't so. Maybe the semantics and definitions you are using for concepts like 'free will', 'choice' and 'automony' are logically incorehent or contradictory. In which case your whole argument falls. You'd essentially be arguing: "Determinism is incompatible with my confused, outmoded and incoherent definition of what 'Free Will' is".
And we'd say "So what?"

An important part of philosophy is finding a coherent account of what these concepts actually are. Hell, that's an important part of most philosophy on almost any topic. Most American/British philosophers today would actually argue that this 'exercise in semantics and definitions' is the only task of philosophy, and of paramount importance.

I don't know exactly how you are defining these things (you still have not said how). But I do know that many of the 'traditional' or 'commonsense' definitions of free will (a mishmash of which you're probably using) have been highly criticized as incoherent and incomplete. So unless you're able to give a coherent account of what you even mean by these things, your argument must be taken with a grain of salt.

(PS: I'm not saying I necessarily disagree with the conclusion that free will is impossible. Nor that I necessarily agree with compatibilism. In my mind, it's still an open and tremendously difficult philosophical problem. There are some good compatibilist arguments. There are also some good arguments for why free will is impossible, but I don't see you using them).

I don't really disagree with that. I think there are lots of open questions, and that creating adequate definitions is very important. But I don't think there's anything wrong with only addressing the common conceptions of free will in a thread on a forum filled with average people, which is all I have done. Although unfortunately, what tends to happen is if someone feels their definition of free will has been argued against, they turn to any other definition that affords them whatever comforts from their earlier definition that they want to cling to, but somehow circumvents the arguments from physics.

circumventing in process.

proving a point is entirely a matter of semantics, and it is entirely a matter of logic, and it is entirely a matter of proof.
drop one and you get: I gfnek ajengf atyne gone, ajuxowe:' wage.
No semantics, no logic, no proof or definition.

I am part of the crowd that accepts determinism and free will.
1 + 1 = 2, right?
no matter my free will, that is determined, and hopefully I will come up with that.
If I come up with 1 + 1 = 1, that is not math. My free will still chose it, and it happened so it can be determined by us, in past tense. That I said 1 + 1 = 1.

But with free will, can anyone see into the future. If a man watches another man travel, and the fist says, 'You went, and therefore it was destined' does that negate the choice of the man who walked? As a naive person speaking, to not have free will is to not exist as alive. And the things that have happen are (mostly) determined. If you want to determine something as specific as steps taken on a day a year from now, you better have a big microscope, guesses flowing out of some bodily pore, and a high threshold for failure. I'll stick to basic Chem thank you very much.

Semantics, the more specific the question, the more specific the answer. With a yes no question, the answer is yes or no. Talk about it with physics, talk about it with philosophy. Do we have free will? yes, or no.

Yes

I'll be attending a lecture by one of my university professors tomorrow evening about this subject, and political freedom in particular.

I'll report what I learn.

It is. Just take 1 + 1 = 1 and work from there. You will find that nothing works the same as with the standard axioms that we use but that doesn't mean it is any less valid.

You will find that you cannot prove 1 + 1 = 2 as it is an axiom.

Posts questioning why discussion in a thread is continuing because a member claims to have answered a question that is widely agreed to be open to endless discussion are not welcome.

Man, knew I shouldn't have gone to bed .

I find the question "Do we control our own actions" to be far less of a bastardization of the question "Do people have free will" than the one you're proposing, "Are our actions pre-determined or not." If our actions are determined in advance, but we do the determining, I don't see in what meaningful way that means we don't have free will. To twist Shakespeare a little farther, we are free agents even if we are reading from a script, as long as we wrote the script.

You're right that the question of determinism is far more interesting than (at least my interpretation of) the question of free will...but I disagree that your reformulation is closer to the original question than mine. The original question is one of agency, a tenet which I feel my reformulation sticks to; yours recasts the question in terms of the mutability of the future, which seems to me to be an entirely different question.

Empty rhetoric though innit

part of the semantics argument too. No algebra or calculus would except that.
And general math, rock, dirt. Those are things that do not have free will. They have no life, at least not how we see it. They are, and they do not change. We are, and we do change.

Heh, also, 'where there is a will, there is a way'. So does the way exist without the will?

A man chooses.
A slave chooses to obey.

Oh snap!

something that people may not have noticed yet is that even if we do have free will, our free will would be restrained by the free will of others around us, so even if we may have free will, we may not have free will




that doesn't prove your free will chose it, perhaps you were pre-determined to say 1 + 1 = 1

Unless the others are conveniently handcuffed







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Acky thinks dat was dark :cold:

I'm looking at this as if it was a contained chemistry experiment. Two elements react in the same way over and over again without outside influences. Everything, including those elements, are made of atoms. When atoms and most of what they make up(if not all) react in pre-determined ways without outside influences(and even then, reactions can be determined), then why can't our actions? We are made up of atoms, which react predictably. How can particles that react predictably make up something that doesn't? What are outside influences on the world? Isn't the world one similar to one giant experiment? The whole world is contained within one giant space, which is the world itself, and the particles that make up everything act predictably. Without outside influences, they will continue to act predictably, but why would we be different? Also, for those saying "I chose to do this, but I could have chose not to"(or something following that basic formula), why isn't that a predictable action. To claim to do be able to do one thing when you didn't doesn't prove anything, because you didn't. Why would one have free will just because they did something when another option seemed to have been available? You only chose to do one thing, which doesn't prove you could have chose the other option. How are we capable of choosing what to do when we are made up by predictable particles and when our very existence is due to predtictable reactions? Doesn't every single atom affect every other, therefore our decisions are predictable reactions to what happens around us? We may be complex, but why does that give us free will? Reactions and the factors that affect them are present in a complex variety within us, but couldn't they still be predictable, yet we just can't predict them ourselves?

So, how does free will preclude per-destination, or vice versa.


I am not a blob.

Blob?