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Studstill t1_j1yb8uf wrote

Ok, like, I didn't know allegedly serious people were making these arguments, so uhh, just to bullet point it out:

  1. What was "incoherent" about "Free Will" exactly?

  2. Are particles like little tiny people, or rather, where was the justification for applying quantum dynamic statements to conscious living things? (This might be what u/Aka-Pulc0 meant by it being a stretch that we are "part of the world"?)

  3. This reminds me of Xeno, and how movement is impossible, its just a false on its face anti-truism paradox fueled exclusively by "look that coin was heads it was always going to be heads good luck proving this wrong idiot you don't have free will, now let's bang like we were always going to", no?

4.Compatibilism sounds swanky, anyone in particular to check out?

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CryptoTrader1024 OP t1_j1yft4n wrote

As discussed in the free will section of the article, the concept of free will makes very little sense, even if the universe is non-deterministic (God save us if it isn't...). This is for the following reason: if free will means you can do what you want, then we must ask why you want the things you want. Well, some prior causes presumably made you want those choices. Is it really free will if all your choices are caused by wants resulting from prior states of affairs? And what would free will even mean then?

I have absolutely no idea why you think particles not being tiny people would make a difference. You'll have to elaborate here. Yes, particles are not conscious living things, but they are basic to what makes reality. Since we already know that determinism is pretty much the case in classical mechanics, a popular criticism of determinism comes from the murky and fuzzy world of quantum mechanics.

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InTheEndEntropyWins t1_j1yoabt wrote

>As discussed in the free will section of the article, the concept of free will makes very little sense

It is only the incoherent libertarian free will that makes little sense, but that doesn't matter since compatibilist free will is what people really mean and what is relevant when it comes to morality.

>This is rather unsatisfying because it feels like the philosophical version of a shoulder shrug.

I don't see why. It's like someone telling you that 2+2 =4, but you just fine it an unsatisfying answer.

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tokmer t1_j1ysb40 wrote

The reason the compatibalist position is unsatisfying is because compatibalists will typically recognize the determinist nature of everything up until humans come in then they stop.

Like what makes us so fundamentally different from everything else in the universe

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InTheEndEntropyWins t1_j1ytgg3 wrote

>The reason the compatibalist position is unsatisfying is because compatibalists will typically recognize the determinist nature of everything up until humans come in then they stop.

They recognise the deterministic nature of everything including humans.

>Like what makes us so fundamentally different from everything else in the universe

Nothing, that's the point. Humans are fundamentally just like everything else.

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tokmer t1_j1yuxcq wrote

If humans are subject to their environment the same as everything else then there cannot be free will

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InTheEndEntropyWins t1_j1yyhid wrote

>If humans are subject to their environment the same as everything else then there cannot be free will

No because compatibilist free will is "compatible" with a deterministic world.

Or to put it better put, free will has nothing to do with determinism.

Think of free will as like being "happy", the world being deterministic says nothing about whether you can be "happy" or not, similarly the world being deterministic says nothing about compatibilist free will. They are completely different compatible concepts.

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tokmer t1_j1yzoso wrote

Under compatibalist “free will” your choices are still fully determined, all that is saying is that you arent physically restricted from the choice youre making (like you arent in prison so you are free to choose to travel) this is a different concept than what determinists and free will believers are talking about.

Compatibalists believe in determinism but dont like the idea of fate so they redefine free will and call it a day

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InTheEndEntropyWins t1_j1z3cua wrote

> this is a different concept than what determinists and free will believers are talking about.

I argue that you have it backwards. What you are talking about doesn't exist and is just an incoherent idea. But what people really mean is the coherent compatibilist free will.

People have incoherent views around free will, but if you properly probe you'll see that people have compatibilist intuitions.

​

>In the past decade, a number of empirical researchers have suggested that laypeople have compatibilist intuitions… In one of the first studies, Nahmias et al. (2006) asked participants to imagine that, in the next century, humans build a supercomputer able to accurately predict future human behavior on the basis of the current state of the world. Participants were then asked to imagine that, in this future, an agent has robbed a bank, as the supercomputer had predicted before he was even born. In this case, 76% of participants answered that this agent acted of his own free will, and 83% answered that he was morally blameworthy. These results suggest that most participants have compatibilist intuitions, since most answered that this agent could act freely and be morally responsible, despite living in a deterministic universe.
>
>https://philpapers.org/archive/ANDWCI-3.pdf

>Our results highlight some inconsistencies of lay beliefs in the general public, by showing explicit agreement with libertarian concepts of free will (especially in the US) and simultaneously showing behavior that is more consistent with compatibilist theories. If participants behaved in a way that was consistent with their libertarian beliefs, we would have expected a negative relation between free will and determinism, but instead we saw a positive relation that is hard to reconcile with libertarian views
>
>https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0221617

Then when it comes to philosophy professors most are outright compatibilists.

[https://survey2020.philpeople.org/survey/results/all)

There is a saying that that philosophers are mostly compatibilists, most laypeople have compatibilist intuitions, but amateur philosophers don't think free will exists.

So it's amateur philosophers like you that are talking about something completely different to what people really mean.

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tokmer t1_j1z61av wrote

Id have a hard time calling myself any kind of philosopher,

But i think we are making the same point determinists and people who believe in free will are talking about a different thing than what compatibalists are talking about when they say free will.

When a determinist is talking about free will they are talking about the ability to make independent choices.

When someone who believes in free will is talking about it they are talking about the same.

When a compatibalist talks about it they are talking about something different. (Just learned that today)

Why this has happened im not sure and i cant speak on why professionals are more inclined to compatibalism than others.

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InTheEndEntropyWins t1_j1z7jy5 wrote

>But i think we are making the same point determinists and people who believe in free will are talking about a different thing than what compatibalists are talking about when they say free will.
>
>When a determinist is talking about free will they are talking about the ability to make independent choices.

I'm not really familiar with your terminology. I would say a determinist simply states the world is deterministic, rather than making any comment of free will.

When you say "independent choices" independent from what? If it's independent from some external coercive influence, then yeh, that's what I think most people are talking about. If you are saying "independent" from the laws of physics, then no, I don't think that's what most people mean.

>When someone who believes in free will is talking about it they are talking about the same.

I would say people talking about free will are talking about making decisions in line with their desires free from external coercion/influence.

Which is what a compatibilist is saying.

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tokmer t1_j1z81he wrote

Free will to most people would be you come to two doors you have a choice to use either door or none.

A determinist would say you do not you are destined to choose whatever you end up choosing based on your preceding life.

A compatibalist would say you are destined to choose what you choose but it feels free enough as you arent being coerced to choose.

This is my current understanding of the differences

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InTheEndEntropyWins t1_j1zanx1 wrote

>Free will to most people would be you come to two doors you have a choice to use either door or none.

So how do you define choice.

Let's use a simplistic system of a thermostat. That system will make the choice to turn off the heating once it gets to a certain temperature.

Choice is just about a deterministic system being what causes an action.

>A determinist would say you do not you are destined to choose whatever you end up choosing based on your preceding life.

That's what a compatibilist will say also.

>A compatibalist would say you are destined to choose what you choose but it feels free enough as you arent being coerced to choose.

It's got nothing to do with how they feel. It's about whether in fact you are being coerced or not.

Is someone holding a gun making you do an action or did you do it because you wanted to. There is a matter of fact here, it's nothing to do with how they feel.

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tokmer t1_j1zb9cy wrote

But you are being coerced, by the chemicals in your head and all youve grown up to become.

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InTheEndEntropyWins t1_j1zbplx wrote

>But you are being coerced, by the chemicals in your head and all youve grown up to become.

That's dualistic thinking. Your brain isn't something separate to you. You are a body, which has a brain that has conscious activity.

Those chemical are you, they aren't something separate coercing you.

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tokmer t1_j1zc6yt wrote

You can be coerced by chemicals in your head, imbalances exist and can be adjusted to change things. You are coerced constantly by these chemicals you are not them

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InTheEndEntropyWins t1_j1zee8x wrote

>You can be coerced by chemicals in your head, imbalances exist and can be adjusted to change things. You are coerced constantly by these chemicals you are not them

This makes zero sense to me. You are basically saying, "you" are being coerced by your brain. That you are not your brain.

What do you mean by "you" how are your defining it? How is any definition of "you" coherent if it doesn't include your brain the chemicals in it. How is any definition of "you" coherent if it treats the brain and chemicals as some external coercive influence.

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tokmer t1_j1zgt52 wrote

No you are your brain. you are not your endocrine system, you are not psychedelics you consume, you are not an addiction you have. All of these thing effect your brain but they do not become it

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OmarsDamnSpoon t1_j1zbpup wrote

The application of QM to the discussion of free will or determinism is a failure for the applicant to recognize that random =/= choice.

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VitriolicViolet t1_j21ynfh wrote

>if free will means you can do what you want, then we must ask why you want the things you want. Well, some prior causes presumably made you want those choices. Is it really free will if all your choices are caused by wants resulting from prior states of affairs? And what would free will even mean then?

yes that is free will.

those things are 'you', the prior causes being memories, culture, experience and/or neurons, genes and chemistry.

why do you all try so hard to divorce yourselves from yourselves?

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jordantask t1_j1ymjb9 wrote

Of course there is free will. As a product of my prior history, my “prior causes” as you put it make me often want to do things that I shouldn’t do, but I don’t do them as a conscious decision on my part.

If I acted on my impulses I’d have been in prison for a very long time.

The proof of free will lies not in doing what you want to do, but in the choice not to.

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CryptoTrader1024 OP t1_j1ypr7l wrote

this mistakes the idea of determinism with low impulse control, which is nonsense. The whole point is that your 'conscious decision' itself is determined by prior causes. You merely have an illusion of choices and an illusion of choosing.

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Studstill t1_j1yh1tu wrote

I think most of my beef is that "prior causes" don't seem to exist? Like, whos done the experiment to show why the the word APPLE just appeared in all caps? Sounds like it would fractal out to nonsense in almost all relevant contexts. I'd reckon more people are uncomfortable with how much of their lives seemingly is/was out of their will/control rather than by this nonsense of predestination masquerading as physics.

Thats what being conscious is, literally having access to free (thoughts) will. We clearly are conscious, and I know a beagle that seems so too, and thats about as far as I can get before this seems to have serious problems. Particles, even quantum ones, don't have such abilities. A chunk of Uranium doesn't decide to decay, the narrative/anthropomorphizing/thought experiment consists of applying metrics for qualities that do not exist . Those questions of "was I always going to live where I live" etc are pointless because they have no further justification than much verbose (as in the article) handwaving about how our understanding of particle/macro physics can allegedly scale or transition to living entities.

I fundamentally do not understand the argument for applying physical models to whatever consciousness/free will is.

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tokmer t1_j1ysvv2 wrote

Because you are a physical being you were destined to end up this way, based on how you were raised where you were raised what you experienced. (Your environment)

This is determinism, your environment was decided by very measurable phenomenon and you are a product of your environment.

If put in the exact same situation an infinite amount of times you would make the exact same devisions. (Exact same situation also means same memories and everything if you remember trying something 50 times you are in a different situation)

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Studstill t1_j20nmbi wrote

How are you measuring how much I like apples?

How are you stating I would do "the same thing everytime"?

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tokmer t1_j20oeoh wrote

If you right now appeared in front of a set of doors and had to choose one to go through, you would choose a certain door.

If we then wiped your memory and reset the door simulation you would choose to go through the same door every time you were forced to go through the simulation.

Nobody is trying to measure how much you like apples

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Studstill t1_j20r3mk wrote

I understand the situation you keep stating.

I'm not seeing how you are stating it as such.

Why would I go through the same door everytime?

What if one of the doors had an apple on it?

How are the atmospheric conditions always identical? (oh, because this is a simulation*, you said, my bad)

How does determinism apply to non-particle interactions, specifically how is this being stated?

Edit: Maybe I see, so this is simulation theory masquerading as "determinism".

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tokmer t1_j20ripp wrote

The question is why would you ever choose something different

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Studstill t1_j20tvkm wrote

Because choices are seemingly made from a near infinite pool of inputs, and due to local or hyperlocal conditions those inputs are not consistent.

Which means, without simulation fantasy, that we have two major problems:

  1. There is no way to differentiate whether I picked the door I was always going to or did I pick the other one.

  2. There is no way to determine how the door was chosen, so even if we could solve #1, it would still be an infinite trial and error.

Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems the argument is "well what if people were just like protons".

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tokmer t1_j20uyvi wrote

Do you think the idea of determinism is meant to be predictive of future behaviour?

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Studstill t1_j20vew8 wrote

Not exactly, but the thought experiment extrapolation (anti-free will/predestination) seems to be based on such.

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tokmer t1_j20vw3z wrote

I mean yes it could theoretically be predicted given infinite knowledge and understanding but the point is more about morals.

Like how can we morally punish someone for doing something they could never choose not to do?

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Studstill t1_j20w99n wrote

Idk, and at least that (morals) line of thought has real roots and real applications (diminished capacity, et al).

What irks me is still this "if physics is determinable, then ofc everything is predestined and free will is an illusion #ironclad".....

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tokmer t1_j22vkgj wrote

Well how a rock moves is deterministic what makes us any different?

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Studstill t1_j22xubf wrote

Ok, I've read a bunch more in this thread, thanks for bearing with me, but yeah, I think I'd say:

The rock is a uniform solid, just simple predictable matter. I don't think a snake, or hamster, or human operates that way. I don't think that, because I can either choose or be unerringly illusioned to choose X or Y.

It seems just as silly to argue we are the same as a rock, than to say things would always happen one singular way, even if we could run it again.

I thought determinism wasn't this silly, so maybe I'm wrong, I thought it meant that there was an XYZ% of given events, that a coin will 49.999% of the time land on heads, not that the coin will always be heads on a given flip. My understanding of QM seems to back this up, as well.

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tokmer t1_j22zxbr wrote

Firstly qm is on a quantum level not a macro level, yes things can get weird when we look at things at an atomic level and we may not know how all that works but on macro levels we do know.

The coin flip is a great example actually though because when you flip a coin all the physics for that coin is already involved and calculable you can KNOW how that coin is going to land and how many flips its going to do and how far its going to move in any given direction and how many bounces its going to have.

The math is very complex but its there and no amount of quantum mechanics are going to change that.

This isnt a 50% chance this is 100% knowledge.

With the decisions a person makes are much the same albeit much more complex but complexity doesnt change the nature of something.

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Studstill t1_j230esa wrote

Sure, hard agree on complexity/nature of things, and great point about the coin, if its all classical mechanics than I totally follow you, but QM's "chances" are almost exactly how I feel about me controlling my muscles to flip a coin, or a pool shot. I think that's part of what is getting me so bad here, I do shoot a lot of pool, and the idea that a game (or worse all shots) are predestined because we understand the physics at hand is like, idk just inconceivable to the million experiments that I've run personally. To me, once the physical fundamentals of the game are learned, whether a shot goes in or not is almost entirely up to your mental state, and I'm not saying it is too complex to nail down, but that its akin to QM's inability to say things with 100% accuracy such as your vacuum sealed machine controlled coin flip.

Fun note: Someone did some coin experiments and I think said its about 1/10000 that it will land on its side, lmao, this the 49.999 instead of 50.

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tokmer t1_j2324a7 wrote

But quantum mechanics doesnt effect things on a macro level like qm randomness is never going to make a change to the outcome of a coin flip or a pool shot.

But for the pool shot your mental state is also something thats predetermined, the chemicals that flow through your brain the structure of your brain itself all of that is something thats built for each individual moment of your life.

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Studstill t1_j23329a wrote

>But quantum mechanics doesnt effect things on a macro level like qm randomness is never going to make a change to the outcome of a coin flip or a pool shot.

Is this absolutely true?

>mental state is also something thats predetermined, the chemicals that flow through your brain the structure of your brain itself all of that is something thats built for each individual moment of your life.

Again, just to be clear, its not the complexity of it that stops me, its that I don't see the science governing those interactions, I see it being extrapolated but the underlying science is, as of now (and maybe I'm ignorant), not certain on all interactions, particularly fluid flows in adaptable pipes, i.e. the brain.

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tokmer t1_j234nbw wrote

I have no idea if its absolutely true its my understanding that its the consensus of physicists but i am not a physicist and have not done enough research to say any of that for certain.

I would imagine though if qm made such a huge difference on the macro scale our traditional models wouldnt work right? Like we dont see random things happening on a macro level we see very predictable things.

Again im not an authority on this though and i have no citations very very good chance i have some fundamental misunderstanding here.

The parts governing brain though are knowable, we know certain drugs have effects on the brain, we know certain structures have certain purposes, just because we dont have 100% knowledge of it how it all works right now doesnt mean we cant know it right?

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Studstill t1_j2370p8 wrote

Sure, I'm a layperson here too re: QM, perhaps I'll make it back with a refreshed opinion. Thanks!

>Like we dont see random things happening on a macro level we see very predictable things.

Right.

>because we dont have 100% knowledge of it how it all works right now doesnt mean we cant know it right?

Hard agree, but nonetheless I think it could be unknowable, these could be purely philosophical questions with this origin in determinism making it seem scientific.

Being able to smoke pot or know where a hippocampus is has no bearing on it, regardless of the "complexity" or our current "X%" knowledge, we might never be able to play back a memory or fully control functions. I assume deterministic thinking disagrees with this?

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tokmer t1_j239wdt wrote

I only see the memes about fucking up snails on reddit tbh but it seems like there are scientists trying to implant memories and shit right now.

Again though thats entirely from memes so huge grain of salt but yeah according to a determinist it would be possible to put memories into someone or implant desires or whatever

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InTheEndEntropyWins t1_j1yll3j wrote

Dennett is one of the more well known people who argue for compatibilism. I don't like everything he says, in particular the idea about it being a pragmatic approach. I think what people really mean and have always really meant was compatibilist free will.

Here are a couple of papers that I think are nice intros into free will and compatatibilism.

>In the past decade, a number of empirical researchers have suggested that laypeople have compatibilist intuitions… In one of the first studies, Nahmias et al. (2006) asked participants to imagine that, in the next century, humans build a supercomputer able to accurately predict future human behavior on the basis of the current state of the world. Participants were then asked to imagine that, in this future, an agent has robbed a bank, as the supercomputer had predicted before he was even born. In this case, 76% of participants answered that this agent acted of his own free will, and 83% answered that he was morally blameworthy. These results suggest that most participants have compatibilist intuitions, since most answered that this agent could act freely and be morally responsible, despite living in a deterministic universe.
>
>https://philpapers.org/archive/ANDWCI-3.pdf

>Our results highlight some inconsistencies of lay beliefs in the general public, by showing explicit agreement with libertarian concepts of free will (especially in the US) and simultaneously showing behavior that is more consistent with compatibilist theories. If participants behaved in a way that was consistent with their libertarian beliefs, we would have expected a negative relation between free will and determinism, but instead we saw a positive relation that is hard to reconcile with libertarian views
>
>https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0221617

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