Free Will

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No Flag johaggis
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Free Will

Post by johaggis »

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.
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Re: Free Will

Post by callentournies »

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Re: Free Will

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Post by Jam »

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.
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Latvia harcha
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Re: Free Will

Post by harcha »

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.
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Nauru Dolan
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Re: Free Will

Post by Dolan »

To argue that free will doesn't exist, you have to argue that airplanes appear out of necessity, as a consequence of physical laws.
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Netherlands Goodspeed
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Re: Free Will

Post by Goodspeed »

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
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Re: Free Will

Post by Dolan »

Goodspeed wrote:I think they do
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.
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.
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Netherlands Goodspeed
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Re: Free Will

Post by Goodspeed »

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.
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Netherlands Goodspeed
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Re: Free Will

Post by Goodspeed »

Please unarchive this thread or make it possible to edit posts in archived threads
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Re: Free Will

Post by Dolan »

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.
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.
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.
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Netherlands Goodspeed
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Re: Free Will

Post by Goodspeed »

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
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Nauru Dolan
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Re: Free Will

Post by Dolan »

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.
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Re: Free Will

Post by Jam »

Dolan wrote:
Goodspeed wrote:I think they do
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.
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.
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.
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Nauru Dolan
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Re: Free Will

Post by Dolan »

Jam wrote:
Dolan wrote:
Goodspeed wrote:I think they do
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.
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.
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.
Why would you need a peanut butter sandwich to calm the mind.
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

Post by Jam »

Dolan wrote:
Jam wrote:
Show hidden quotes
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.
Why would you need a peanut butter sandwich to calm the mind.
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
The peanut butter sandwich clearly evolved from a peanut sandwich, must have evolved from an air sandwich.
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Re: Free Will

Post by Jam »

I have a will and I am free to exercise it.
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Re: Free Will

Post by Vinyanyérë »

Dolan wrote:
Goodspeed wrote:I think they do
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.
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 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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Nauru Dolan
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Re: Free Will

Post by Dolan »

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.
Does the computer on which this was tested have ECC RAM? 🤔
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Re: Free Will

Post by callentournies »

the greatest bump of 2021 theyre calling it
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Re: Free Will

Post by RefluxSemantic »

How does one define free will such that a particle does not have it but a human does have it?
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Nauru Dolan
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Re: Free Will

Post by Dolan »

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.
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Re: Free Will

Post by callentournies »

RefluxSemantic wrote:How does one define free will such that a particle does not have it but a human does have it?
Mmm
If I were a petal
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To wither on a young child’s
Display. Fetch
Me a ribbon, they, all dead
Things scream.
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Re: Free Will

Post by callentournies »

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.
What’s an observer? An observation? When does collapse occur?

Doesnt the copenhagen interpretation have some real problems?
If I were a petal
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Nauru Dolan
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Re: Free Will

Post by Dolan »

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.
callentournies wrote: When does collapse occur?
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.
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Nauru Dolan
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Re: Free Will

Post by Dolan »

RefluxSemantic wrote:How does one define free will such that a particle does not have it but a human does have it?
Emergent properties.
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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