Free Will
Free Will
First off, "pure philosophy" doesn't really mean anything. Every kind of philosophy is a kind.
Second, there was some equivocation on the idea of "wanting to do something" and "not doing that thing." In one sense, you can want to do something, and yet choose a greater want over that. This could be a moral choice, like "I want to murder that guy," as one want and "Not being a douche" as the other. In that sense you would avoid doing something you want to. And then there's the sense of "wanting to do something" like intentions, and how you could intend to do something, then proceed to not do it with nothing in the scenario changing doesn't seem to make any sense.
Marx was a philosopher. I don't know how that's a debate.
Let's forget about justice, that's a whole other matter.
So some people have been bringing up Compatibilism, and particularly Semi-Compatibilism, as John Martin Fischer refers to accepting moral responsibility, if not free will, in a deterministic universe. I wrote a solid 3,000 words on this essay a few years back, and I'm gonna try and sum that up concisely if I can.
In short, he uses a Frankfurt example like the one quoted in this thread, but changes it from shooting to voting. Basically, someone's registered independent, goes into the booth with Black, the secret democratic party agent (hehe, what she does isn't democractic, hehe) having planted a chip in his/her brain. He/she deliberates and votes democrat after all, without the chip being activated. He wants to say, look, here's responsibility without "regulative control" (the ability to choose otherwise, as opposed to "guidance control," choosing the only option while having the illusion of choice).
So of course the objection already posed once in this thread is that we're looking at the wrong thing here, and that our agent's struggle to choose is what determines their responsibility. If they were to try and choose republican and have their vote changed, we would no longer hold them accountable. So this makes it seem like the choice really is what gives moral responsibility grounding.
Fischer's answer is more or less something along the lines of, "what if Black knew whether to use the device even before deliberation began?" He more or less says that perhaps Black found some link between something unrelated to the choice (I think 'blushing' is his example) for which Black then knows whether Jones will vote republican or democrat. Surely we can't equate blushing to a real, meaningful alternate possibility.
Here's my answer, which I imagine I am not the first one to write, but I do think it's an enormous problem for Semi-compatibilism: Fischer's answer brings up a dilemma. Either we've assumed determinism or we haven't for this to work. It might look at first like we've assumed determinism if the blush TRULY connects to voting republican. If Black can somehow figure out how Jones will think before Jones has even done anything related to deliberation, we must be assuming some kind of causal link. But if we're actually assuming determinism, then we've got a question-begging argument. We would've assumed both moral responsibility and determinism before we even began.
So let's look at the other option, that determinism hasn't been assumed. In order for indeterminism to truly be preserved, Jones has to be able to actually deliberate here. There can't really be that causal link between blushing and voting if this is a truly indeterministic universe. Or, at least, Black wouldn't be able to know this with 100% certainty. If this is the case, then it seems that Jones can deliberate, and regardless of the eventual outcome, the decision is at least potentially what makes there be moral responsibility.
I'm a free will libertarian, though, so this doesn't much bother me.
Second, there was some equivocation on the idea of "wanting to do something" and "not doing that thing." In one sense, you can want to do something, and yet choose a greater want over that. This could be a moral choice, like "I want to murder that guy," as one want and "Not being a douche" as the other. In that sense you would avoid doing something you want to. And then there's the sense of "wanting to do something" like intentions, and how you could intend to do something, then proceed to not do it with nothing in the scenario changing doesn't seem to make any sense.
Marx was a philosopher. I don't know how that's a debate.
Let's forget about justice, that's a whole other matter.
So some people have been bringing up Compatibilism, and particularly Semi-Compatibilism, as John Martin Fischer refers to accepting moral responsibility, if not free will, in a deterministic universe. I wrote a solid 3,000 words on this essay a few years back, and I'm gonna try and sum that up concisely if I can.
In short, he uses a Frankfurt example like the one quoted in this thread, but changes it from shooting to voting. Basically, someone's registered independent, goes into the booth with Black, the secret democratic party agent (hehe, what she does isn't democractic, hehe) having planted a chip in his/her brain. He/she deliberates and votes democrat after all, without the chip being activated. He wants to say, look, here's responsibility without "regulative control" (the ability to choose otherwise, as opposed to "guidance control," choosing the only option while having the illusion of choice).
So of course the objection already posed once in this thread is that we're looking at the wrong thing here, and that our agent's struggle to choose is what determines their responsibility. If they were to try and choose republican and have their vote changed, we would no longer hold them accountable. So this makes it seem like the choice really is what gives moral responsibility grounding.
Fischer's answer is more or less something along the lines of, "what if Black knew whether to use the device even before deliberation began?" He more or less says that perhaps Black found some link between something unrelated to the choice (I think 'blushing' is his example) for which Black then knows whether Jones will vote republican or democrat. Surely we can't equate blushing to a real, meaningful alternate possibility.
Here's my answer, which I imagine I am not the first one to write, but I do think it's an enormous problem for Semi-compatibilism: Fischer's answer brings up a dilemma. Either we've assumed determinism or we haven't for this to work. It might look at first like we've assumed determinism if the blush TRULY connects to voting republican. If Black can somehow figure out how Jones will think before Jones has even done anything related to deliberation, we must be assuming some kind of causal link. But if we're actually assuming determinism, then we've got a question-begging argument. We would've assumed both moral responsibility and determinism before we even began.
So let's look at the other option, that determinism hasn't been assumed. In order for indeterminism to truly be preserved, Jones has to be able to actually deliberate here. There can't really be that causal link between blushing and voting if this is a truly indeterministic universe. Or, at least, Black wouldn't be able to know this with 100% certainty. If this is the case, then it seems that Jones can deliberate, and regardless of the eventual outcome, the decision is at least potentially what makes there be moral responsibility.
I'm a free will libertarian, though, so this doesn't much bother me.
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- Howdah
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Re: Free Will
Doubt
If I were a petal
And plucked, or moth, plucked
From flowers or pollen froth
To wither on a young child’s
Display. Fetch
Me a ribbon, they, all dead
Things scream.
And plucked, or moth, plucked
From flowers or pollen froth
To wither on a young child’s
Display. Fetch
Me a ribbon, they, all dead
Things scream.
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- Jaeger
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Re: Free Will
If your decisions are based on processing in your unconscious mind before you are aware of your decision then you can't have free will.
- harcha
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Re: Free Will
POC wrote:Also I most likely know a whole lot more than you.
POC wrote:Also as an objective third party, and near 100% accuracy of giving correct information, I would say my opinions are more reliable than yours.
Re: Free Will
To argue that free will doesn't exist, you have to argue that airplanes appear out of necessity, as a consequence of physical laws.
Re: Free Will
I think they do, but also that free will exists. Free will is a silly concept though, and I seem to define it differently than most
Re: Free Will
If that's true then the rate of technological innovations should be constant, since physical laws have been in effect in a constant way for billions of years.Goodspeed wrote:I think they do
And yet what we see is variable rates of technological innovation. What's more, the rates vary geographically and by cultures a lot.
Which contradicts the argument that the rate at which we produce new technologies is just a consequence of physical laws doing work. Physical laws apply in the same way everywhere, so results should be more uniform.
Some might argue: it's because raw resources are not uniformly distributed. But then, Europe is one of the poorest continents in terms of raw resources. Despite this lack of raw resources, Europe produced a lot more technological inventions than other parts of the world that have a lot more resources. And before you claim this is due to colonialism (the usual argument), then what is colonialism due to? How could a continent suddenly start asserting itself over other regions, without first jumping ahead in some technological respect which would make such expansion even possible.
Every way you put it, if physical laws work uniformly everywhere but results are different in terms of human achievement, then either physical laws did not work isotropically or there's an intervening factor that acts despite physical laws while using them.
Re: Free Will
I don't have to be able to explain every single phenomenon to support the argument that the workings of the universe and everything in it are governed by and consistent with physical laws. Idk why Europe innovated more than other continents, ask a historian. But why would you assume the answer somehow transcends physics? That's a really weird assumption to me.
Re: Free Will
Please unarchive this thread or make it possible to edit posts in archived threads
Re: Free Will
Because it needs to be proved. Just as physical laws were once proved, but now people are using them to assume they determine everything, even if we don't really know if they do.Goodspeed wrote:I don't have to be able to explain every single phenomenon to support the argument that the workings of the universe and everything in it are governed by and consistent with physical laws. Idk why Europe innovated more than other continents, ask a historian. But why would you assume the answer somehow transcends physics? That's a really weird assumption to me.
It's just an assumption that from the simple laws that govern the most basic particles there must be a necessary progression up to complex behaviours.
But this has never been proven. It's just an assumption.
Re: Free Will
To be considered fact it needs to be proven, but not for me or you to believe it. For that, it only needs to be the most reasonable explanation. In my opinion it is
Re: Free Will
That's the thing, many forget that this is just philosophical talk. Lack of free will is far from being a proven empirical fact.
And in the end it might not even be provable, since the physical world doesn't work on clear-cut concepts, but on dynamics that are tricky to integrate in clear-cut philosophical categories.
For example, quantum randomness might throw this whole debate into indeterminacy. If an observer in an experiment changes the behaviour of particles, then physical reality itself behaves differently when measured.
This casts a different light on the free will debate, since there's an implication that if a self-directed action is involved in a physical process, particles involved in that physical system will behave differently than if no self-directed action was involved.
And if the building blocks of physical reality, particles, change their behaviour depending on whether they're under scrutiny, how could they determine the scrutiniser.
And in the end it might not even be provable, since the physical world doesn't work on clear-cut concepts, but on dynamics that are tricky to integrate in clear-cut philosophical categories.
For example, quantum randomness might throw this whole debate into indeterminacy. If an observer in an experiment changes the behaviour of particles, then physical reality itself behaves differently when measured.
This casts a different light on the free will debate, since there's an implication that if a self-directed action is involved in a physical process, particles involved in that physical system will behave differently than if no self-directed action was involved.
And if the building blocks of physical reality, particles, change their behaviour depending on whether they're under scrutiny, how could they determine the scrutiniser.
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- Jaeger
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Re: Free Will
If you compare technological innovation to evolution, evolution does not occur at a steady rate either, ie evolution occurs at a slow rate and then some creature developes an eye spot causing relatively rapid evolution of eyeballs, and then evolution slows down again. There's no reason that technological innovations should occur at a constant rate.Dolan wrote:If that's true then the rate of technological innovations should be constant, since physical laws have been in effect in a constant way for billions of years.Goodspeed wrote:I think they do
And yet what we see is variable rates of technological innovation. What's more, the rates vary geographically and by cultures a lot.
Which contradicts the argument that the rate at which we produce new technologies is just a consequence of physical laws doing work. Physical laws apply in the same way everywhere, so results should be more uniform.
Some might argue: it's because raw resources are not uniformly distributed. But then, Europe is one of the poorest continents in terms of raw resources. Despite this lack of raw resources, Europe produced a lot more technological inventions than other parts of the world that have a lot more resources. And before you claim this is due to colonialism (the usual argument), then what is colonialism due to? How could a continent suddenly start asserting itself over other regions, without first jumping ahead in some technological respect which would make such expansion even possible.
Every way you put it, if physical laws work uniformly everywhere but results are different in terms of human achievement, then either physical laws did not work isotropically or there's an intervening factor that acts despite physical laws while using them.
Re: Free Will
Why would you need a peanut butter sandwich to calm the mind.Jam wrote:If you compare technological innovation to evolution, evolution does not occur at a steady rate either, ie evolution occurs at a slow rate and then some creature developes an eye spot causing relatively rapid evolution of eyeballs, and then evolution slows down again. There's no reason that technological innovations should occur at a constant rate.Dolan wrote:If that's true then the rate of technological innovations should be constant, since physical laws have been in effect in a constant way for billions of years.Goodspeed wrote:I think they do
And yet what we see is variable rates of technological innovation. What's more, the rates vary geographically and by cultures a lot.
Which contradicts the argument that the rate at which we produce new technologies is just a consequence of physical laws doing work. Physical laws apply in the same way everywhere, so results should be more uniform.
Some might argue: it's because raw resources are not uniformly distributed. But then, Europe is one of the poorest continents in terms of raw resources. Despite this lack of raw resources, Europe produced a lot more technological inventions than other parts of the world that have a lot more resources. And before you claim this is due to colonialism (the usual argument), then what is colonialism due to? How could a continent suddenly start asserting itself over other regions, without first jumping ahead in some technological respect which would make such expansion even possible.
Every way you put it, if physical laws work uniformly everywhere but results are different in terms of human achievement, then either physical laws did not work isotropically or there's an intervening factor that acts despite physical laws while using them.
I mean why would physical laws first make your mind not-calm, so that later they have to fix it with a peanut butter sandwich
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- Jaeger
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Re: Free Will
The peanut butter sandwich clearly evolved from a peanut sandwich, must have evolved from an air sandwich.Dolan wrote:Why would you need a peanut butter sandwich to calm the mind.Jam wrote:If you compare technological innovation to evolution, evolution does not occur at a steady rate either, ie evolution occurs at a slow rate and then some creature developes an eye spot causing relatively rapid evolution of eyeballs, and then evolution slows down again. There's no reason that technological innovations should occur at a constant rate.Show hidden quotes
I mean why would physical laws first make your mind not-calm, so that later they have to fix it with a peanut butter sandwich
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Re: Free Will
I have a will and I am free to exercise it.
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Re: Free Will
I set two instances of the same StarCraft AI to play a TvT against each other. One of them won. Since the two instances of the same AI displayed variable levels of StarCraft skill despite being subject to the same physical laws, I conclude that StarCraft AIs have free will.Dolan wrote:If that's true then the rate of technological innovations should be constant, since physical laws have been in effect in a constant way for billions of years.Goodspeed wrote:I think they do
And yet what we see is variable rates of technological innovation. What's more, the rates vary geographically and by cultures a lot.
Which contradicts the argument that the rate at which we produce new technologies is just a consequence of physical laws doing work. Physical laws apply in the same way everywhere, so results should be more uniform.
Some might argue: it's because raw resources are not uniformly distributed. But then, Europe is one of the poorest continents in terms of raw resources. Despite this lack of raw resources, Europe produced a lot more technological inventions than other parts of the world that have a lot more resources. And before you claim this is due to colonialism (the usual argument), then what is colonialism due to? How could a continent suddenly start asserting itself over other regions, without first jumping ahead in some technological respect which would make such expansion even possible.
Every way you put it, if physical laws work uniformly everywhere but results are different in terms of human achievement, then either physical laws did not work isotropically or there's an intervening factor that acts despite physical laws while using them.
duck
imo
imo
Re: Free Will
Does the computer on which this was tested have ECC RAM?Vinyanyérë wrote:I set two instances of the same StarCraft AI to play a TvT against each other. One of them won. Since the two instances of the same AI displayed variable levels of StarCraft skill despite being subject to the same physical laws, I conclude that StarCraft AIs have free will.
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- Howdah
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Re: Free Will
the greatest bump of 2021 theyre calling it
If I were a petal
And plucked, or moth, plucked
From flowers or pollen froth
To wither on a young child’s
Display. Fetch
Me a ribbon, they, all dead
Things scream.
And plucked, or moth, plucked
From flowers or pollen froth
To wither on a young child’s
Display. Fetch
Me a ribbon, they, all dead
Things scream.
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- Gendarme
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Re: Free Will
How does one define free will such that a particle does not have it but a human does have it?
Re: Free Will
At a quantum level particles don't even behave deterministically and they even change their behaviour if they're measured.
Basically reality as we know it in its stable form is an effect of the wave function collapse.
So where is determinism exactly? Maybe we're the ones determining how particles behave and this makes us believe particles have fixed deterministic behaviours that determine us.
Basically reality as we know it in its stable form is an effect of the wave function collapse.
So where is determinism exactly? Maybe we're the ones determining how particles behave and this makes us believe particles have fixed deterministic behaviours that determine us.
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- Howdah
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Re: Free Will
MmmRefluxSemantic wrote:How does one define free will such that a particle does not have it but a human does have it?
If I were a petal
And plucked, or moth, plucked
From flowers or pollen froth
To wither on a young child’s
Display. Fetch
Me a ribbon, they, all dead
Things scream.
And plucked, or moth, plucked
From flowers or pollen froth
To wither on a young child’s
Display. Fetch
Me a ribbon, they, all dead
Things scream.
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- Howdah
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Re: Free Will
What’s an observer? An observation? When does collapse occur?Dolan wrote:At a quantum level particles don't even behave deterministically and they even change their behaviour if they're measured.
Basically reality as we know it in its stable form is an effect of the wave function collapse.
So where is determinism exactly? Maybe we're the ones determining how particles behave and this makes us believe particles have fixed deterministic behaviours that determine us.
Doesnt the copenhagen interpretation have some real problems?
If I were a petal
And plucked, or moth, plucked
From flowers or pollen froth
To wither on a young child’s
Display. Fetch
Me a ribbon, they, all dead
Things scream.
And plucked, or moth, plucked
From flowers or pollen froth
To wither on a young child’s
Display. Fetch
Me a ribbon, they, all dead
Things scream.
Re: Free Will
To avoid any confusion I talked about measurement of particles causing wave function collapse.
Observer doesn't have to be anything alive that monitors the particles, could be just a device doing measurements.
Observer doesn't have to be anything alive that monitors the particles, could be just a device doing measurements.
A particle can be in a superposition of states until measured/observed, which causes it to collapse to one quantum state or a linear range of close quantum states.callentournies wrote: When does collapse occur?
Re: Free Will
Emergent properties.RefluxSemantic wrote:How does one define free will such that a particle does not have it but a human does have it?
Just like macro objects in classical mechanics are completely deterministic but made of building blocks that at quantum level behave non-deterministically, so can complex beings have properties that particles don't.
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