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Tyrone takes on free will
Tyrone doesn't believe in free will, he believes in something better than free will...
Just last week Tyrone told me the following:
The traditional debate pits determinists against voluntarists. The determinists believe that man is caught up in the grand causal nexus. The voluntarists believe you somehow break free of cause and effect. You are able to spew forth "uncaused events" more or less at will. You are a truly special being, rather than just another toad.
As for the compatibilists, I say ugh. I am sorry, but you can't believe A and non-A at the same time.
The voluntarists just don't cut it. What strange theory of physics do they hold? At what moment in the evolution of man (or monkeys) did cause and effect cease to apply to brains? Plus neuroscience shows that subconscious brain activity, in the relevant parts of the brain, precedes the moment of conscious decision.
Furthermore I doubt if the voluntarist vision of free will is so fun. How sad to have to stand apart from the causal nexus. How alienating. How totally gauche. Isn't the causal nexus what makes sex so fun?
My vision of free will starts with the problems in defining the self. You know: Parfit, Hume, time-slices, and the fact that I cannot remember what I did last night (fyi, I don't remember what my wife and I discussed on our first date but I do remember what she ordered).
If you are nothing but a time-slice, the free will "problem" goes away. There is no "you" freely choosing, but there is also no "you" caught up as a prisoner of the causal chain. Instead you are your choice. At least "that you" was your choice at the time. No more and no less.
You are identical to your choice. What more dignity or freedom could you possibly expect? Surely that is better than the voluntarist notion of exogenously originating autonomous control.
This view allows us to maintain that human beings are ruled by the same natural laws which govern the behavior of stones. Physics remains monistic. At the same time, you are not reduced to a mere puppet. Ha! There's not even a "you" to be subject to reduction!
To up the ante just a bit, dare I mention multiple worlds quantum mechanics, David Lewis's modal realism, and inflationary cosmology? These views are distinct but all lead us to the conclusion that many possible universes, perhaps all possible universes, exist in some fashion. They will give you lots of time-slices and lots of bits of you walking around. Who cares in what order the deck is shuffled, or where the different cards lie spatially? The time-slice you, temporary as he or she may be, is connected to an infinite or very large number of other time-slices. A very large number of those time slices will be very close to the "you" that constituted your choice. Furthermore some other time-slice will get to experience some almost identical version of your choice, sooner or later. Being a solitary fellow, I like that better than voluntarism.
In some versions of these views, literally everything is removed from the causal nexus. In fact there is no causal nexus in the first place. Surely that should make you feel better and restore your underlying pantheism. No self. No reduction. No causal nexus. Just lots of you, you, you. Better than having your own TV show.
Tyler, of course, is a determinist. He thinks I had to write this post. More to the point, this post is who Tyrone really is.
Tyrone is really quite a sad fellow. Many of you believe in free will, but I know determinism applies to me and to my choices. I feel the pull of those causal chains, day in and day out.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on March 14, 2006 at 07:16 AM in Philosophy | Permalink
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Comments
If you are nothing but a time-slice, the free will "problem" goes away. There is no "you" freely choosing, but there is also no "you" caught up as a prisoner of the causal chain. Instead you are your choice. At least "that you" was your choice at the time.
If there's no 'you', then what does 'your choice' mean?
Posted by: Gyan at Mar 14, 2006 8:42:51 AM
I think you're being too hard on the compatibilists. A compatibilist can also believe:
(1) We do not have free-will in the voluntarist sense
(2) But free-will in the voluntarist sense is not what matters for the practice of attributing responsibility and agency to people.
(3) Thus (very roughly): determinism does not undermine our practice of ascribing responsibility to people.
Posted by: Javier at Mar 14, 2006 9:08:48 AM
You!
Posted by: Will Wilkinson at Mar 14, 2006 9:11:26 AM
Arnold Bennett suggested that the way to get through the day without too much friction was to assume that you have free will, but everyone else's behavior is determined.
Posted by: Mike at Mar 14, 2006 9:26:09 AM
Warning: likely stupidity follows
"The voluntarists just don't cut it. What strange theory of physics do they hold? At what moment in the evolution of man (or monkeys) did cause and effect cease to apply to brains?"
Um, isn't the voluntarist view kind of consistent with the whole Schroedinger's cat thing? Not until the moment our choice occurs is it determinate, and if you somehow managed to put us in an exactly identical situation again, we might choose differently.
God does play dice, and we're the dice... or something.
Posted by: conchis at Mar 14, 2006 9:36:24 AM
I won't try and figure out what Tyrone really believes vis a vis Tyler.
The whole problem with the argument from physics is that it assumes that strict reductionism holds true, and that there is only upwards causation from the level of quarks through atoms, chemistry, cellular metabolism to self.
If instead strict reductionism is not correct, then it is possible that causation can flow both upwards and downwards (ie human will causes nerves to fire which makes atoms in the muscle cells move). This explanation has the advantage of being consistent with our experience as causal beings.
Posted by: Matthew Cromer at Mar 14, 2006 10:09:01 AM
Arguments involving free will and quantum-anything frustrate me because I can't speak with any real confidence about quantum physics---and yet, I know they are wrong.
In some ways, I'm disappointed we left the classical-physics worldview because now an execrable movie like "What the bleep do we know?" is possible. Have you seen this garbage?
Posted by: Lee at Mar 14, 2006 10:41:00 AM
PS,
Those interested in the implications on the timing of subconscious vs. conscious processes in the brain may find this study of interest.
Posted by: Matthew Cromer at Mar 14, 2006 10:42:27 AM
Based on what I know of the world determinism makes more sense than voluntarism, there is however the problem that I have a persistant sense of choosing things. What is the purpose of this illusion? Is the information that I always seem to be choosing things and that almost everyone offers a similar account of making choices just chucked because there is contradictory information. I haven't the foggiest idea the possible mechanism by which free will might come to be, but I don't think that it is impossible that such a mechanism could exist.
Posted by: Michael Foody at Mar 14, 2006 10:58:42 AM
Paper showing why voluntarism is presupposed by rational discourse (so, if you believe rational discourse is possible, you're committed to belief in free will):
http://home.sprynet.com/~owl1/fwill.htm
Posted by: asg at Mar 14, 2006 11:29:49 AM
Think of a developing AI project. Say you're building a robot vacuum cleaner. As you make the robot smarter and smarter (more perception, a memory, greater learning ability) it gains more and more free will. The AI programmer would not add a "free will module" however. Free will is not something that exists separate from the ability to think and act, and thinking and acting are not in contradiction with a deterministic universe. Intelligent actors might represent their choices to themselves, and be worried that they do not have sufficient freedom to make the right choices, but viewing determinism as a threat to freedom is just a category error.
Posted by: Barbar at Mar 14, 2006 11:41:56 AM
here's how i think you square determinism with your sense that you're choosing: you're presented with a math problem (adding a nummber of numbers). it takes some time to do the math pursuant to the applicable rules. while you're doing the math, you do not yet know the result. then you obtain result that was (roughly) determined from the outset (yes, your math could suck, but this is an analogy). making "choices" in the real world is the same. the sums/facts are what they are (even if what they are is merely what you perceive them to be), while doing the math pursuant to the rules that govern your behaviour, you feel like you're choosing. and at the end you have a result that dictates what you do. you feel like you've made a "choice" but in some sense you've merely gone through the process of choosing, rather than actually making an unconstrained choice.
as for causation flowing downwards from our will, that's just silly. where does that will come from? the processes of our brains, which are atoms, etc. unless you're positing some metaphysical will, in which case you're talking religion, in which case rationale discourse gets us nowhere.
Posted by: dj superflat at Mar 14, 2006 12:38:04 PM
Conchis -- The problem with using quantum indeterminacy to justify free will is that most believers in free will find the notion that our actions are randomly determined as offensive as the notion that our actions are predetermined. There's still no room for (what they perceive as) true choice. If I told you that your actions tomorrow would be determined by the flip of a coin, rather than a mechanistic sequence of neuron firings and so on, would that make you feel any better?
Posted by: Glen at Mar 14, 2006 1:22:33 PM
Right on, Tyrone! Next, point out to Tyler that this perspective may help him escape his enslavement to traffic lights: *Who* is it, he might ask, who is stopped at the green?
Posted by: Bill Gardner at Mar 14, 2006 1:46:30 PM
'When it was announced that the Library contained all books, the first reaction was unbounded joy. All men felt themselves the possessors of an intact and secret treasure. There was no personal problem, no world problem, whose eloquent solution did not exist - somewhere in some hexagon. The universe was justified; the universe suddenly became congruent with the unlimited width and breadth of humankind's hope. At that period there was much talk of The Vindications - books of apologiae and prophecies that would vindicate for all time the actions of every person in the universe and that held wondrous arcana for men's futures. Thousands of greedy individuals abandoned their sweet native hexagons and rushed downstairs, upstairs, spurred by the vain desire to find their Vindication. These pilgrims squabbled in the narrow corridors, muttered dark imprecations, strangled one another on the divine staircases, threw deceiving volumes down ventilation shafts, were themselves hurled to their deaths by men of distant regions. Others went insane... The Vindications do exist (I have seen two of them, which refer to persons in the future, persons perhaps not imaginary), but those who went in quest of them failed to recall that the chance of a man's finding his own Vindication, or some perfidious version of his own, can be calculated to be zero.'
Posted by: dlondonx at Mar 14, 2006 3:33:44 PM
That neuro activity precedes a decision does not mean
that the neuro activity determines the decision. It
may simply be the record of the input that is going into
the decisionmaking process. No disproof of free will at all
on that one.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at Mar 14, 2006 4:51:23 PM
If you follow Hume and abandon notions of the self, then you also need to abandon cause and effect.
It was not possible, that this century, so fertile in religious sects and disputes, could escape the controversy concerning fatalism and free-will, which, being strongly interwoven both with philosophy and theology, had, in all ages, thrown every school and every church into such inextricable doubt and perplexity. ... questions, to which the greatest philosophers, in the tranquillity of retreat, had never hitherto been able to find any satisfactory solution.David Hume, The History of England, Volume V, Chapter LI.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at Mar 14, 2006 4:52:09 PM
Glen—exactly. The quantum argument doesn't yield free will, it yields total randomness.
And Tyler (and Tyrone), I agree with Javier that you're too hard on the compatibilists, which is probably what I would call myself if I had to call myself anything. You make choices, but you make the choices you do because of who you are, and that 'who' is a result of your past experiences and biology. Thus you make the choice resulting from your past history. You could not have made any other choice, because the person who would have made the other choice would have been subtly different from you.
In other words, I don't think the question makes sense unless you're a dualist. If we reject the existence of some sort of soul, then "you" is just a physical construct. Thus crude physics can be said to determine your choices; on the other hand, "you" is the person who would make those choices. There comes a point when you have to make a decision; when you make a decision, it isn't random, but is a result of your experiences and personality, both of which are constitutive of your identity but also have underlying physical signatures. Thus saying 'your actions are physically determined' is equivalent to saying 'you have an identity and who you are determines your choices.' Not all that controversial.
Posted by: jadagul at Mar 14, 2006 6:42:23 PM
Glen, quantum indetermanancy does not necessarily mean "randomness". It could provide the opportunity for downward causation to occur, for example.
Posted by: Matthew Cromer at Mar 14, 2006 7:24:12 PM
Glen, quantum indetermanancy does not necessarily mean "randomness". It could provide the opportunity for downward causation to occur, for example.
Posted by: Matthew Cromer at Mar 14, 2006 7:26:11 PM
The rat pushes the lever and receives the cheese; the rat knows that the lever creates the cheese. The experimenter looking down upon the maze knows that the lever's role in cheese creation is merely an illusion.
Free will is merely one of a set of related illusions, along with time, causality, self, sentience, and that time David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear. They're all pretty good illusions, though... darned if I can see through them.
Is the rat's reality not really real?
Posted by: eddie at Mar 14, 2006 8:21:17 PM
People seem to be overlooking the strongest point against determinism, which is that it cannot be argued for by formal logic. No rational person needs to believe in anything that can’t be stated in formal logic.
Here’s the gist of the deterministic argument, and why it fails:
1) We are all the sum total of a set of particles that are subject to immutable natural laws, and these laws can be understood as sets of conditional statements of the form If X, then Y. (e.g. If someone taps you on the shoulder, you will look to your left —the same principle hold for laws governing elementary particles). For every particle there is a consequent for every possible antecedent (i.e. the laws cover every possible state).
2) A complete description of the state of the particles that make up a Person A contains an antecedent applicable to at least one law for every particle of A.
3) Given that for every particle of A, some antecedent of some law is the case, every particle must then obey some natural, immutable law, and thus come to a new state, one that could have been predicted beforehand, given knowledge of the laws.
4) Since the new state follows necessarily given the antecedents, the movement to the new state was necessary and thus not freely chosen. Indeed, any possible set of antecedents is necessarily linked to a set of consequents. In no state can the next state be free. Given a complete description of any state, the next state is known necessarily.
Seem OK, but alas, there is a fly in the ointment:
5) Let’s suppose that persons A and B are such that B must speak with A and tell A whether or not A will do X. This in no way goes against anything in the above argument. No more so than the fact that a ball must come back down or not come back down when thrown into the air. It is simply a limiting of the number of possible natural laws for the sake of simplicity.
6) As well, nothing precludes A and B from being governed by a natural laws such that “If B talks, B tells the truth,” and A being such that “If A is told that A will do X, A will not do X.” These are simply conditional laws.
7) The problem is, when B talks to A, will B tell A that A will do X or that A will not do X? If B knows everything else about A’s current state, then B knows that if B tells A that A will do X, then A will not do X, making B a liar! As well, if B tells A that A will not do X, A will do X, once again violating B’s law. Either way, B must tell A a lie, and thus we have a contradiction in our system. Thus our system is no good.
The problem is that the deterministic model only works for a world in which natural laws are not reflexive. But this isn’t our world.
Posted by: Jthaddeus at Mar 15, 2006 12:56:13 AM
A religious friend of mine believes that a supernatural entity, the soul, subtly manipulates quantum events in your brain and that's how free will is consistent with physics. This actually generates verifiable (but not falsibiable) predictions, in that the distribution of quantum events in brains should be slightly different in some way from the distribution in non-brains.
Of course, you can ask what makes the soul cause certain quantum events to happen way instead of another, but if you find that argument plausible why are you bringing up these issues about physical cause and effect?
FWIW, I think you're being too hard on the compatibilists too.
Posted by: SLS 1L at Mar 15, 2006 1:07:49 AM
Jthaddeus,
Why in your part (6) does nothing preclude B from being governed by the natural law "If B talks, B tells the truth"? B can clearly tell the truth about past events or present states, but in your example B can't tell the truth about the future. Why isn't this just evidence that something precludes B from being governed by the natural law you stated?
Posted by: John Vermylen at Mar 15, 2006 1:14:51 AM
Jthaddeus, it doesn't sound like you've disproved determinism. You've just constructed an impossible situation, which isn't hard to do. For instance, watch me disprove the transitive property:
Suppose x=5 and y=7. But then suppose x=y. Obviously any of these things can happen, so the equals sign can't be transitive.
In other words, you're just saying "the fact that I can come up with a set of statements of a certain form that cannot all be simultaneously true prove that statements of this form are all untrue." That doesn't make any sense.
Posted by: jadagul at Mar 15, 2006 2:03:21 AM
