How do you define Free Will?
How do you define free will?
To better explain what I'm looking for, here are example questions. What are the parameters of human freedom? Can we make only internal choices, or can we actualize our internal choices in the external world? What guides will's actions -- are they self-determined or externally coerced? What sort of free will is necessary for moral responsibility, and does ours satisfy the criterion (thus making us morally responsible)?
I'm currently learning about the various existing notions (feel free to reference any that describe your own position) and am curious to hear opinions.
To better explain what I'm looking for, here are example questions. What are the parameters of human freedom? Can we make only internal choices, or can we actualize our internal choices in the external world? What guides will's actions -- are they self-determined or externally coerced? What sort of free will is necessary for moral responsibility, and does ours satisfy the criterion (thus making us morally responsible)?
I'm currently learning about the various existing notions (feel free to reference any that describe your own position) and am curious to hear opinions.
Comments (60)
In this way, "free will" is a nonsensical phrase, akin to "free thought" or "free digestion." So long as one lives, one wills, thinks, digests, etc. Freedom, at least generically, only applies to the absence of compulsion in determining what to decide.
Conflicting volitions are a common experience, you can't physically stand and sit at the same time but it's perfectly possible to be internally conflicted as to which you prefer.
What is will? I will be, I must be, I must not be, I am going to struggle to become something, I am going to learn - all these are forms of exercising will. Now what is this will and how is it formed? Obviously, through desire. Our many desires, with their frustrations, compulsions, and fulfillments form, as it were, the threads of a cord, a rope. That is will, is it not? Your many contradictory desires together become a very strong and powerful rope with which you try to climb to success, to freedom. Now will desire give freedom, or is the very desire for freedom the denial of it? Please watch yourselves, sirs, watch your own desires, your own ambition, your own will. And if one has no will and is merely being driven, that also is a part of will - being driven is also part of that will, the will to resist and go with it - all that is part of will. Through that weight of desire, through that rope, we hope to climb to God, to bliss, or whatever it is.
So I am asking you whether your will is a liberating factor. Is freedom come by through will? Or, is freedom something entirely different, which has nothing to do with reaction, which cannot be achieved through capacity, through thought, experience, discipline, or constant conformity? That is what all the books say, do they not? Conform to the pattern and you will be free in the end; do all these things, obey, and ultimately there will be freedom. To me all that is sheer nonsense because freedom is at the beginning, not at the end, as I will show you.[/quote]
http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-text.php?tid=591&chid=4910&w=freedom
So, exactly how does one make a choice? Does it just pop out of nowhere, like a daisy?
Quoting Thorongil
:-} I think you may have confused what Schopenhauer meant here, that the will is independent, a thing in-itself. Our perception of the external world is merely a representation of this will, but what this representation may be perceived as does not necessarily represent reality as it is, as our instinctual drives can propel us to act independent of reason for instance.
Not sure the correlation between sitting and standing to this (again, :-} ); our characters are shaped by this will and yes, there are limitations to free-will, but it is not entirely absent and suddenly replaced with 'choice' which basically contradicts what Schopenhauer was attempting to convey. The freedom we assume - the 'choice' - is actually illusory.
I hold that free will requires the ability to do otherwise. In other words, I hold that the free agent has a power of volition that enables them to will different options in an undetermined and nonrandom way. While I am sympathetic to the compatibilist pursuits as good philosophers (questioning unreflective assumptions about freedom and responsibility) and are sympathetic towards their interests (feelings of freedom and moral responsibility that are deeply human and practically unavoidable), I ultimately remain unconvinced by their efforts. I do not find an unfettered will (a will unrestrained or overridden by direct external causes) to be sufficient to have moral responsibility.
Though I am unsure of his thought experiments, I agree with Derk Pereboom that what we really want is some sort of control of the people we are. If we die and are allowed to see the entire path our life took, we want to know that the power, during the individual moments in our lives, that we could have done something different. If determinism is true, then we could not have done anything different than what we have done, are currently doing, and will do in the future. In a counterfactual sense, things could have been different if the parameters had been different, but that is irrelevant to the actual state of affairs.
It was Christianity, specifically Paul who discovered 'free will' as a faculty wherein I struggle with myself. In Romans he says "I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate" (7:15) The emphasis on God's laws changes from the blind obedience of Thou shalt, to the love of God' and his laws in freely willing of their fulfillment, and one's own guilt when his laws are nilled.
Uncoerced choice.
With regard to choice: the absence of coercion, human nature in general, genetic predisposition in particular, and environmental circumstances.
Choice is actualised through subsequent intention, planning, volition, and action.
Yes, and that inner conflict is best described as the tension between rival choices, not between rival wills. You only have one will.
Quoting TimeLine
Perception, and then thought based on perception, furnishes the material which make up the different options available to choose from.
Quoting TimeLine
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here, and I certainly don't see any objection to what I said.
Quoting TimeLine
What is "it?" Again, I have no idea what you're trying to say.
Willing two opposites simultaneously seems nonsensical. It that were the case, willing should be described as indecision, not decision.
Quoting Chany
Yes. To my thinking, hypothetical ability -- that is, our choice would be different if circumstances had been different -- does nothing to satisfy our ability to do otherwise. 'Otherwise' pertains to an alternative, which by nature depends upon the "first" option (the option that will be chosen, if determinism). But under compatibilism, all that's changed is the first option, which the agent is still compelled to choose.
Quoting Cavacava
Since you bring up reason and passions... Say that our reason and our passions are inherent to our design, and in that way, determined. Yet we have the ability to deliberate between them and choose our preferred. Does this undermine self-determination/free choice? In other words, we have the choice between two options, but the options presented to us are externally determined.
Something I've been thinking about.
Quoting Galuchat
You're saying that human nature and genetic predispositions qualify as coercion, correct? Are uncoerced choices possible, then? Human nature and genetic predisposition would seem inescapable and fully influencing of our choices, since they affect the mechanisms by which one chooses.
Passions cause reason to bust a move, and yes they can be externally determined, but the will occupies our internal (reflexive) point of view (ego), which self determines itself based on history, circumstances and what reason and passions tell it.
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by the last sentence. Could you please explain?
That tension is a conflict of the will, and will often fails, we end up doing things we will not to do or not doing things we we will to do. That's why we talk about strength of will or weakness of will, willpower etc. I don't see why the will can't be in conflict?
Incorrect.
Coercion is the use of physical force, threat or intimidation without regard for a person's desires or volition in order to obtain compliance. Using this definition, I suspect that, absent oppressive living conditions, choice coercion is more exception rather than rule.
Correct. In this, it's important to note the difference between coercion and influence.
Human beings are not free to function contrary to human nature. This should be intuitively obvious, but just in case evidence is required: we cannot see in ultraviolet like bees, and we cannot hear ultrasonic frequencies like dogs. Our sense organs detect signals within a specific range. In other words: they are limited, or constrained; they are the parameters of human sensory perception. Also, we cannot fly like birds, we cannot run 40 mph like cheetahs, etc., etc.
In like manner, human choice functions within the limits of human consciousness (the sum total of a person's current mental activity). Its operation is preceeded by problem-solving, and it is the result of decision-making. These are types of controlled and/or automatic information processing. This controlled/automatic functionality provides the requisite flexibility for responding to our environment instantaneously, or in a delayed manner (according to the exigencies of a situation). It also results in thinking which misinterprets its environment under certain conditions (i.e., errors, illusions, and biases). These natural faults in thinking are counteracted only by the application of a morality (which is probably why morality is a human universal).
If not intuitively obvious, an experiment could be developed to test the following hypothesis:
Human choice is ultimately limited to satisfying corporeal desires (being mindful of mortality), social desires (being mindful of a transcendent public good, and obligations imposed by social norms, laws, etc.), or ethical desires (being mindful of moral obligations imposed by conscience, intersubjective morality, etc.), and human preference with regard to satisfier choice is as follows:
1) First Choice: personal satisfiers.
2) Second Choice: social satisfiers.
3) Third Choice: ethical satisfiers.
In addition, a person is not free to function contrary to their own genetic predispositions. This also should be intuitively obvious. If not, two examples should suffice:
1) Temperament (those aspects of personality considered to be innate, as opposed to learned) is an example of a heritable attribute which affects behaviour (limits choices) and remains essentially unchanged throughout the course of a person's life.
2) Mental disorders also affect behaviour (limit choices), sometimes resulting in criminality. Many are genetically determined. Some can be treated (e.g., obsessive-compulsive disorder), and some cannot (e.g., narcissistic personality disorder and psychopathy).
So, the influence of human nature in general, and genetic predisposition in particular place limitations (constraints) on a person's choices. They are parameters of human freedom with reference to choice.
This is why free will, defined as the ability to do otherwise, is an illusion. Whereas, defined as uncoerced choice, responsibility depends simply on the presence or absence of coercion. If the choice was coerced, the person is not responsible for their subsequent action(s), conversely; if the choice was uncoerced, the person is responsible for their subsequent action(s).
To reiterate, how is your argument relatable to Schopenhauer with whom you have incorrectly associated it with? And, please, I have no time to waste on a series of superfluous straw-mans; intentionally substituting the argument by pulling focus on something unreasonable and irrelevant undermines your own intelligence.
Then perhaps you should read more Schopenhauer. What one does is what one wills. Willing to move my hand to the left is moving my hand to the left. There is no willing in the absence of doing.
Choice is possible merely because it's will mediated by intellect. Intellect is what gives eyes to the will and makes it see - stops it from being blind, and hence makes it able to choose based on the material the intellect furnishes.
Quoting TimeLine
Neither do I :-}
Quoting TimeLine
The only freedom that the will has lies in the choices it makes.
Wait, will stops one from being blind? I think Schopenhauer just turned in his grave.
I don't know of any serious arguments that deny constraints or limitations, but if there is even the smallest degree of libertarian freedom then agent causation is real and there is the ability to do otherwise.
How do you define free will?
To better explain what I'm looking for, here are example questions.
One way of explaining it is to imagine yourself typing the following:
"How do you define free will? To better explain what I'm looking for, here are example questions."
Now imagine that as you type what appears on your screen is this:
"How do you do? I'm very well thank you."
Now you can imagine what free will is and what it is to have it thwarted.
Generally, if you know what a reasoned or purposeful action is then you know what free will is. And if you know what it is for a purpose to be frustrated then you know what it is for there to be an absence of free will. And anyone who does not know what a reasoned or purposeful action is a person who has not typed a post on this forum, because to type a post is to undertake such an action.
Do you have reading comprehension problems? :s
Quoting Agustino
Quoting TimeLine
That is what you call a straw-man. If you re-read what I wrote, you would know that:
Quoting Agustino
Quoting TimeLine
I said will is still superior to 'choice'. That is not a straw-man. Now, run along.
Quoting TimeLine
Absolute nonsense. First, YOUR WILL isn't thing-in-itself. Second, Will (impersonal) can be thing-in-itself with reference to the phenomenon, but not absolutely. That's why S. leaves the thing-in-itself as unknown in Vol II.
Yes it is. That is the point when it comes to 'choices' which is a mode of intellect and merely an experience of this undivided will in itself (book III, section 31) and hence why we can't know it, which works in the same way with movement. The experience of the will in itself - our representations - is a lower phenomenon that is irrelevant, spatiotemporal (hence the principal of sufficient reason). Now, I assume by not absolutely you are implying that not everyone is a genius, that some may perhaps be enabled with - or at least not subject to - this principle viz., Kant, but this ability to transcend is nevertheless related to Ideas and it doesn't change the fact that we are subject to the will that is a thing in itself.
• Representations aren't the experience of the will in-itself. Will and Representation are two sides of the same reality.
• I don't see what anything I've written about has to do with genius.
Quoting Agustino
With:
Quoting Agustino
Are you unfamiliar with his aesthetics? You must be considering you didn't understand my spatiotemporal reference. And i'll ignore your little cheap diversion for now.
Yes I am familiar with Book III of WWR, what about it? The point I was driving has nothing to do with it. Furthermore it has absolutely 0 to do with S's discussion of genius.
Why are you bringing the Platonic Ideas in discussion when we were talking about the Will, Representation and Thing-In-Itself? You do know that the Thing-In-Itself is revealed with the quietus of the Will, so how can Thing-In-Itself be Will, ultimately?
Familiarise yourself with this thread. Read all posts there: https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/1036/schopenhauers-transcendental-idealism/p1
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/52614#Post_52614
Actually, it does. Why don't you go read 5.1 of here and see the correlation to the transcendence of the spatiotemporal framework that is relevant to the argument on those that may be free on the principal of sufficient reason. We are talking about choices, no? Representations and the faculty of reason? The experience of objects in space and time? To be a genius is the only time the intellect can surpass the will, when for most it merely serves it.
No, the intellect surpasses the will in saints, where the will completely denies itself. In artistic geniuses this happens only momentarily, via glimpses obtained through Platonic Ideas.
I've read this:
But I still don't see what this has to do with what we were talking about. We weren't discussing Platonic Ideas.
Let's go back to the problem I had initially, the notion that there is no free-will but there is free-choice and the latter purports an intellect or capacity to distinguish between the subject and an object, a person who can experience space and time superior to the independence of this will. As you say Intellect is what gives eyes to the will and makes it see - stops it from being blind, and hence makes it able to choose based on the material the intellect furnishes, but to reach that level of transcendence, to actually be capable of giving 'eyes to the will' manifests itself in what Schop. refers as 'genius' or in his aesthetic argument and corresponds to Platonic Ideas as being the instigator of this capacity to become independent of the principle of sufficient reason. You can see it here:
"According to Schopenhauer, corresponding to the level of the universal subject-object distinction, Will is immediately objectified into a set of universal objects or Platonic Ideas. These constitute the timeless patterns for each of the individual things that we experience in space and time. There are different Platonic Ideas, and although this multiplicity of Ideas implies that some measure of individuation is present within this realm, each Idea nonetheless contains no plurality within itself and is said to be “one.” Since the Platonic Ideas are in neither space nor time, they lack the qualities of individuation that would follow from the introduction of spatial and temporal qualifications. In these respects, the Platonic Ideas are independent of the specific fourfold root of the principle of sufficient reason, even though it would be misleading to say that there is no individuation whatsoever at this universal level, for there are many different Platonic Ideas that are individuated from one another. Schopenhauer refers to the Platonic Ideas as the direct objectifications of Will, and as the immediate objectivity of Will.
Will’s indirect objectifications appear when our minds continue to apply the principle of sufficient reason beyond its general root such as to introduce the forms of time, space and causality, not to mention logic, mathematics, geometry and moral reasoning. When Will is objectified at this level of determination, the world of everyday life emerges, whose objects are, in effect, kaleidoscopically multiplied manifestations of the Platonic forms, endlessly dispersed throughout space and time.
Since the principle of sufficient reason is — given Schopenhauer’s inspiration from Kant — the epistemological form of the human mind, the spatio-temporal world is the world of our own reflection. To that extent, Schopenhauer says that life is like a dream. As a condition of our knowledge, Schopenhauer believes that the laws of nature, along with the sets of objects that we experience, we ourselves create in way that is not unlike the way the constitution of our tongues invokes the taste of sugar. As Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) states in “The Assayer” (1623), if ears tongues and noses were removed from the world, then odors, tastes, and sounds would be removed as well."
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schopenhauer/#4
This goes back to my original post and why I said Quoting TimeLine
Schopenhauer's conception of genius seems different:
Quoting TimeLine
No level of transcendence is required at all. Even a person with a weak intellect - his will is still guided by that intellect - only that the intellect isn't powerful enough to see all the choices that are available, to see the advantages/disadvantages they entail, etc. So the weak intellect is almost as if the will was blind.
I understand what you are trying to say, but when you say "his will is still guided by that intellect" only it lacks 'power' that this grading of the objectification of the will (and I assume lower phenomenon) lacks this so-called power because it is unable to perceive Ideas and is thus subsumed. It becomes irrelevant; you either are, or you are not and when the latter, the intellect is subject to the will.
That the intellect guides the will presupposes that the intellect is subservient to the will already. The will wants X. The intellect tells the will how to get X. Will it take road A or B? That's the choice.
That's why this has nothing to do with genius or sainthood, but with our natural way of functioning.
No, it doesn't, which is where the spatiotemporal argument becomes relevant, that these grades of objectification of the will did not develop by our experience of physical or bodily awareness, but it is distinctly through innerste or the representation of that innermost will, hence the will in itself. The intellect is subservient to the will independent of our cognition. To become conscious of this force does not deny this fundamental feature but merely an awareness that the intellect itself is able to access Ideas that individuates our experience or representation of the world.
I think the point is the guide of the intellect is also the Will itself in action. Intellect cannot guide the Will, that is define a direction of the Will, because intellect is already movement of the Will.
No, intellect doesn't define direction, you're quite right about that. Intellect only tells the Will how to get to where it wants to get. I wouldn't say intellect is movement of the Will though. Intellect is separate from the activity of willing - at least in principle. It's similar to the distinction Hume made between reason and the passions.
However - if we are considering "normally" functioning individuals, then the intellect is subservient to the will, and ONLY works when the will works - so in that sense, yes, the intellect is already movement of the Will. But it doesn't have to be like that - hence Schopenhauer's denial of the will.
Quoting Agustino
?
Quoting Agustino
He denies the illusory will, the representations that individuate. The will in-itself stands outside of this intellect or cognitive faculty and is the force behind everything.
Schopenhauer in the second Volume of WWR pulls back from the complete identification of thing-in-itself with Will. Therefore what is left after the complete abolition of the Will is nothing from the perspective of us - those still full of Will.
I'm sorry, cupcake, but you haven't shown this at all.
Quoting TimeLine
You're really spoiling for a fight here. Such exaggerated hostility looks feigned to me, I must say, as if you were trying to appear ridiculous.
>:O >:O >:O "Ms. Granger, put that hand down!"
If the will is independent of cognition as the thing-in-itself, one cannot within the boundaries of the intellect confirm the existence of it, ergo it would be contradictory to state otherwise and hence why it is unknowable, an immanent metaphysic that defies an empirical answer just as much as one cannot claim freedom from the will. The result is that one is condemned to a paradox. There is a transcendence from this metaphysics, but that still remains an appearance that interprets the thing-in-itself. "I know my will not as a whole, not as a unity, not completely according to its nature, but only in its individual acts, and hence in time, which is the form of my body's appearing, as it is of every body. Therefore, the body is the condition of knowledge of my will." He is trying to strike down our cognitive limitations while at the same time acknowledge the essence of our nature, the key being conceptual knowledge hence Ideas.
Here we go. You are not suddenly right because I don't have a penis. Argument, please.
Have you read this post (and the one quoted from Thorongil, and then followed the discussion)?
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/52614#Post_52614
You're functioning under the wrong impression that the Will is thing-in-itself. If the Will is mediated through time (BUT not through space and causality), then the Will cannot be thing-in-itself. The Will is the ground of the Phenomenon, but there is something beyond this. That's the thing-in-itself.
Timeline's argument seems to be going the other way to me. Not that Will is the thing-in-itself per se, but rather that Will is mediated through the thing-in-itself.
Something like: without the thing-in-itself, there would be no Will, without? Will, there would be no phenomena. As such, any instance of phenomena and the Will may be considered of the thing-in-itself, as the thing-in-itself is ground of both (in the sense of "with"; neither Will nor phenomena can be given without the thing-in-itself).
You said that humans possess 'free choice' and not 'free will' before comparatively stating that by Schopenhauers' "man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills" that implies freedom to be nothing but a compulsion, I am confused as to how you assume choice is not a compulsion. I am of the opinion that this 'choice' you purport is an illusory representation and though conceptualisation of the will through Ideas may enable a transcendence from the cognitive limitations through his aesthetic argument as it is no longer spatiotemporally individuated, it is only a conceptualisation of the thing in-itself. The intellect is always subservient to the will.
Uh, no. I said freedom was the absence of compulsion. This could not be more crucial to understanding what I and Schopenhauer mean by freedom in this context!
Quoting TimeLine
What does this mean? Are you saying we have no choice but to choose? I can agree with that, and I think Schopenhauer would, too. My point is that one is free to deliberate on a course of action until the cows come home, but that one can only will one definite action at a time, and this with complete necessity.
Quoting TimeLine
Indeed it is, according to Schopenhauer. But the subservience in question is ontological in nature, in that the intellect is a manifestation of the will. The intellect must still provide motives for the will to act upon in the individual.
Yes, but in S's system this is non-sensical because it would imply that the thing-in-itself is the ground of the Will - this would suggest that the PSR applies to the thing-in-itself as well, which is totally contrary to the position S would hold. Since the thing-in-itself is beyond space, time, causality and the PSR, it cannot stand as ground for the Phenomenon (or for the Will) for that matter.
I don't think so. The system seems to be treating the it-in-itself not as a ground in the sense of PSR, but rather as just as something, beyond representation, which is necessarily given with Will and phenomena. A sort of metaphysic of immanent presence, where the point is not how the thing-in-itself justified everything else (i.e.PSR), but that's mutually present with anything.
If the thing-in-itself is a necessary side of the reality coin (Will being the other), how does it make sense to speak of the thing-in-itself like a realm which has no significance in relation to Will or phenomena?
While we may not be able to say exactly what the thing-in-itself is, we do know it is a necessary presence given with Will and phenomena. Though not Will or phenomena, we know the thing-in-itself is given with any instance of Will and phenomena.
The specific choice determinism causes the agent to choose, could change between different circumstances. Different scenarios prompt different decisions. Compatibilists believe this satisfies the ability to do otherwise. But the ability to do otherwise refers to doing otherwise, within one given circumstance.
Quoting Galuchat
Is the distinction between influence and coercion whether the agent agrees with the force's dictate? You've said that genetic disposition places limitations on the agent's choices -- much, I think, the same way that a coercive force would do, as far as efficacy is concerned. But you've identified genetic disposition as an influence, distinct from coercion.
If you don't believe that, then you don't believe in free will in any sense that could justify a coherent account of moral responsibility.
Johansson, P; Hall, L; Sikström, S; Tärning, B; Lind, A (2006). "How something can be said about telling more than we can know: On choice blindness and introspection" (PDF). Consciousness and Cognition. Elsevier. 15 (4): 673–692. https://web.archive.org/web/20160605003648/https://www.lucs.lu.se/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Johansson_et_al-2006-How_Something_Can_Be_Said.pdf
This is the wrong question to ask with regard to the relationship between choice and responsibility. It presupposes responsibility and asks for a definition of free choice which provides it. I agree with presupposing responsibility (as this satisfies a fundamental human need for justice), but a better question would be: given a scientifically derived notion of human choice, how can we formulate responsibility to meet the need for justice?
Has any scientific research been conducted which supports libertarian free will (the ability to do otherwise)?
The past is past, so it's not something which can be scientifically tested.
Yes, I can agree with this.