Is "free will is an illusion" falsifiable?
We have people such as Sam Harris stating unequivocally "Free will is an illusion".
To falsify that statement one would have to be able to show that free-will is real.
If somebody discovers a new planet and says that it is 50% water, I can see how we could falsify the latter. We could send some kind of manned or unmanned spacecraft to take measurements, estimate the total volume of the planet and the volume of water on it, and then do some math.
But how could we falsify "Free will is an illusion"?
To falsify that statement one would have to be able to show that free-will is real.
If somebody discovers a new planet and says that it is 50% water, I can see how we could falsify the latter. We could send some kind of manned or unmanned spacecraft to take measurements, estimate the total volume of the planet and the volume of water on it, and then do some math.
But how could we falsify "Free will is an illusion"?
Comments (114)
If the statement is meant to imply a negative hypothesis, there is no non-illursory thing that corresponds to "free will", then it isn't falsifiable. We all know that ypu can't prove a negative. If what he means is that those things that suggest to us that we have free will can be explained by other, deterministic and empirical elements, then it could be falsified by showing that those elements either aren't the things that suggest free will to us, or that such elements don't exist.
Short from showing that free will isn't an illusion, you can show that Harris's argument are unsound, inconsistent, and also that his conception of free will is some sort of a strawman. Daniel Dennett has written a devastating review of Harris's Free Will. (And Harris has replied here.) Although I don't endorse fully Dennett's own brand of compatibilism, myself, I think his view is much more sensible and sophisticated than Harris's. And also, he is fairly successful in pointing out the most glaring flaws in Harris's arguments.
Yeah, of which Harris' has replied and showed how Dennett has misunderstood and misconstrued his statements by equivocation. This is a great one:
Harris is painting himself into a corner here. In his analogy, Atlantis stands for the crudest from of "contra-causal" libertarianism, which very few philosophers endorse; while Sicily stands for compatibilism, which a majority of philosophers endorse in one form of another. Harris then complains that it's as if Dennett were accusing him of denying the existence of Sicily. But arguing that compatibilism is incoherent and not worthy of any serious consideration also is something that Harris attempts to do in his book. So, in the analogy, it's as if Harris was arguing that there really isn't any such place as Sicily and that it is a mythical place as well. Dennett complaint therefore is on target.
In his review of Harris's book, Dennett also argues convincingly that a view akin to compatibilist free will can ground our reactive attitudes (praise and blame) just as well as the crude form of libertarianism that Harris ascribes to ordinary people. There is a debate regarding whether ordinary people's intuitions about free will are more in line with libertarian or compatibilist theories. There is inconclusive evidence in the "experimental philosophy" literature on this topic. But Dennett also argues successfully, in my view, that it is of little significance how ordinary people *theorize* about the source of free will when pressed to do so. So long as they ascribe to each other abilities to freely chose among ranges of options in a manner that reflects well or badly on their characters there is no reason to charge them with irrationality just because they may have a tendency to come up with bad theories regarding the way human beings make choices. In fact, Harris himself is guiltier than most in producing flawed theories about the source of our sense of freedom and responsibility.
Also worth noting, a couple years after Harris replied to Dennett's review of his book, Harris and Dennett had another conversation about free will in a podcast. This the the most recent episode of their dispute that I know of.
I found this a good one: https://youtu.be/pCofmZlC72g?t=42m19s
"Clearly there's a difference between voluntary and involuntary action, yet we don't need free will to make sense of these difference... ...these are just differences that relate to the global properties of individual minds and what's reasonable to expect from these minds in the future"
I am unaware how positions on libertarian vs compatibilist free will turn out in keeping some form of morality but I'd take Dennet's quote by saying what matters is the: "free will worth having".
If we (globally) agree to make a value judgement and decide that morality is worth keeping, we expect people to be able to discern between right and wrong to a degree, very clear guidelines are set in judicial systems across the world and things become more cloudy in social interactions yet we have peer pressure, culture, valuing the opinion of those we relate to, etc. The main thing most would agree on is that humans have the right of self-determination to a degree we don't let that right detract upon that same right we grant others.
To falsify "Free will is an illusion" you'd have to set up a practical exam for moral competence. We tend to go by the concept of innocent until proven guilty and I guess / hope most of us raise our children to be competent to engage the world socially (among other things), the proof expected here is in the pudding and I would feel it violates our right of self-determination to expect more in an empirical sense. Again we have judicial systems to impose the outer limits.
This is not to say that the incentives to behave better in the future should never be subject to criticism, just that anyone who claims free will doesn't exist yet still desires to keep some form of morality could easily start to suffer from trust issues ...unless they arrogantly rationalize their way out of it.
Ok cool thanks for breaking down that analogy further. So, what does Dennett have to say about unconscious choices dominating our free-will? Harris' has come from a background in buddhist meditation where it is observed through meditative practices that your sense of identity is basically an illusion. Tie this in with the neurological findings of unconscious decision making and it looks pretty solid, so how is Dennet refuting these findings with compatibilism?
Well, from my perspective it seems that the only way would be to say that you ARE your unconscious mind which makes decisions. Which, correct me if I am wrong, Dennett does. Well if you ARE your unconscious mind then why can't you account for why you chose one decision over another? Or why can't you just fall asleep at anytime in one second as you wish? This does not mean to say that people's actions shouldn't go unpunished or that they are not to blame, just that the observer is not to blame. Because the observer and the actor are somewhat segregated.
I don't see how knowledge of right/wrong is going to disprove free will. Think about a counter-example of a determined robot who doesn't want to harm anyone... they sure would pass your practical moral competence exam wouldn't they? Yet they are still a robot.
Yep, morality still exists even without free-will.
Who determined the robot didn't want to harm anyone? does the robot has a sense of self preservation? Is it future goal oriented and if so, how does it moderate between achieving it's goals and not bothering people with it.
You make a caricature out of what morality actually comes down to.
And these testaments are derived through introspection and a direct 1st person experience.
See the contradiciton? How you can recall an experience of "no self" without a self to reflect back on to?
Quoting CasKev
For me, this indicates that free will is illusory, despite the fact that we are able to make choices, for whatever reasons. Is there a way to make the above argument unsound?
According to Harris the very foundation of this right -- the possibility of self-determination -- is illusory. This is why he also is pushing an utilitarian theory that has as its sole foundation the imperative to increase human "well being" regardless of the values people may endorse.
Your unconscious mind is a part of who you are, for sure. This includes most of your cognitive habits and abilities as well as the source of most of your "raw" motivations. Harris indeed has been, as you note, influenced by his Buddhist meditation practice in viewing the "self" from the stance of a passive observer who introspects her own states of mind and ponders over the origins of her random "thoughts". This is just about the worst possible stance for inquiring about free agency (or about knowledge, for that matter), which involves active involvement of an agent in the world (including the social world) and not a voluntary retreat from it.
Freedom is not to be found in the passive contemplation of one's own navel. The observer and the actor aren't two different entities. They are two different stances taken up alternatively (and oftentimes simultaneously within the normal flow of life) by the very same embodied human being. Also, the observer no more than the actor can be absolved from responsibility for what she comes to believe since she can reflect critically about the deliveries of her senses and memory. Harris often seems to think that the role of the epistemic "observer" (which he equates with the "self") is limited to her passively witnessing random thoughts popping up in her conscious mind as a result of automatic "free" association.
Yep. But wouldn't this require a person/self to suffer to be correct? If the self is an illusion that vanishes on close analysis how can there be any suffering? I watched Dennett and Harris podcast when it was linked on the old forum here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFa7vFkVy4g
I'm not sure what Dennett's current ontological stance is on self (a center of gravity, but I think it's not relevant to this discussion) but his response to Harris' thought experiment to plausibly remove Ayn Rand ideals from a human brain, was "why?" As in what is the point, the final end. Dennett is consistent. It seems it's Harris who posits theology by adding telelogy to the debate.
That's right, but Harris isn't arguing that the self is an illusion. It's rather the self's sense of her own freedom that is an illusion according to Harris. He believes that the mental phenomena that are being experienced by the self (including the sense of one's own power of free agency) are epiphenomena. They are not unreal but they don't have any causal efficacy according to him.
So, Harris's ethics (as expounded in The Moral Landscape) boils down to the affirmation of the intuition -- which he believes to be a self-evident a priori truth -- that it would be ethically good if all of the epiphenomenal "selves" being generated by biological brains in the universe were somehow being caused to have happy thoughts and pleasurable feelings. This is quite sophomoric, really.
Thanks, so has anyone ever asked him how something can be epiphenomenal and yet cause him to still generate an entire philosophy based around it? I'm sure he must have considered it at least once.
Harris simply bites the bullet and acknowledges that he can't claim any responsibility for his own intellectual achievements. He is even handed about that. If people can't be held morally responsible for their bad deeds -- since they're mere puppets being moved around by the impersonal forces of the universe -- then they can't either be given any real credit for their positive accomplishments.
Of course, Harris's philosophy of powerlessness and irresponsibility is unstable and he attempts to patch it up with the caveat that although people are powerless to make choice among real alternatives, and although they can't be given any real credit for their actions, it still is useful to pretend that they are responsible, and praise and reward them accordingly, in order to manipulate them. People are powerless puppets but you can still use praise and blame (and rewards and punishment) as mere psychological tools for pulling on their strings. Harris is quick to add, though, that blaming or punishing someone who has intentionally done a very bad deed (a murderer, say) is terribly unfair to the criminal since he isn't responsible at all. Blaming or punishing the criminal can justifiably be done only if that's the only means for controlling him, but it would be much better, if possible, to tie him up and hack into his brain in order to remove the source of the criminal impulse.
Though we might not have the willpower to consciously grow our own nails or beat our own hearts we've grown into very peculiar beings which are capable of acting upon information which we gain through a very specific way of interpreting our environment.
To me this all seems like an issue between people who take that as a given and trust others to act somewhat like they themselves would and those who aren't satisfied until they can look inside someone's head in manner they know more about what's going on inside the investigated subject then the subject itself or want to set up an empirical behaviourist framework which could easily turn into a form of totalitarianism.
I would really like mankind as a whole to gain more insight into their automatic behaviours so that we are able to use that information to learn from as a species. Creating dichotomies where something we've only just become able to contemplate rationally is expected to be either true or false in the present moment with our current state of knowledge only makes me feel like we haven't learned enough from our unconscious biases atm.
So, this does not make your argument unsound, it's more like a plea to wonder about what constitutes the "information" we can claim to act upon willingly and if there's a better method to figure that out then we currently do ...somewhat automatically.
I guess that's really just a problem with semantics. What the realization of no self is, is that the "self" you once thought you were basically isn't there at all. So people just call it "no self", when in actuality there is still an experience there which you could aptly call a self or more appropriately "higher self".
In simpler terms, the parameters of which you once defined yourself have been shown to you to be illusory but yet you still exist and are still aware of life (not you but SOMETHING is still aware of life, call it the observer).
So there is no contradiction, just the same term being thrown around twice to make it looks so.
Incase you haven't missed it, it can't be claimed to be who you are because YOU have no OWNERSHIP over it. I mean, sure you can influence it's decisions but you can influence your girlfriend/boyfriends decisions too, does that mean that they are part of who you are? I think not, just a part of your life.
And so by definition, anything that you are unaware of and can not control is therefore not you. Like your heart, or your cells, they form part of your body but they are not you. All YOU are is an awareness, an observer riding around in a body that you so naively and arrogantly call your own. The driver of the car is not the car, remember that.
P.S. Meditation is perhaps the clearest sense of attaining insight on the matter as self-observation is primary. You can't claim physical activity anymore valuable in determining free will over self-observation. Self-observation is primary and comes before decision making, that's why babies need to learn to understand consciousness before they can make decisions. In anycase, it has already been observed by neurological studies that the unconscious mind makes the decisions.
Whether the robot wants to harm or has self preservation is irrelevant, because not wanting to cause harm and seeking self preservation IS NOT dependant on free-will. IT IS dependant on KNOWLEDGE. Like we are taught the golden rule in schools, it does not become our choice not to harm someone but rather fear conditioning from being punished AND combined with (later in life) the rational understanding of the value of not harming others. It has absolutely nothing to do with free will, just fear conditioning and good judgement. That is all morality is. That is why you can't train dogs to act morally and not poop inside, who by the way are apparently all instinct.
Free-will is about desire for outcomes, states of affairs, experience etc. some of which are in the face of morality (which once again is based on learnt paradigms via fear conditioning as well as sound judgement and understanding of knowledge).
I'm not sure why it should be regarded as arrogance to claim your body as your own. (Who else would more rightfully claim ownership over it?) In any case, the body and the brain that you allegedly are "riding in" are causally involved in the exercise of your capacities to perceive the world, to gain knowledge about it, and to act. The proper way to characterize those involvements, in my view, is as enabling conditions for the possession of your mental powers and their exercises. Likewise, your eyes enable you to see but they are not doing the seeing for you, your legs enable you to walk but aren't doing the walking for you, and your brain enables you to think but isn't doing the thinking for you.
I think you alluded to Libet's experiment earlier. The interpretation of this experiment has been widely criticized, and even Libet himself later came to temper his own conclusions. I commented on it just a few days ago.
That, I think, is dubious. True, Harris has engaged with a Buddhist tradition, namely Dzogchen, but many contemporary Buddhists are highly dubious about Harris' interpretations, motivations and credentials. If you look into his degree in neurosciences, it comprises a thesis on the alleged 'neural correlates' of religious belief. It's also noteworthy that Harris has never lectured in neuroscience, nor has ever practiced it apart from this thesis. Furthermore, his PhD was in part published by 'The Reason Project' which was 'a 501(c) (3) nonprofit foundation whose mission includes conducting original scientific research related to human values, cognition, and reasoning.” The thesis forms a large part of his later book, The Moral Landscape, which in my view is basically 'utilitarianism with an fMRI scanner'. For a critical (if not scathing) look at this kind of fMRI-powered neurobabble, have a look at this recent NY Times review, Do You Believe in God, or Is That a Software Glitch? So all in all, I think Harris mainly presents himself as 'a neuroscientist' as part of the overall 'Religion vs Science' polemics, of which he is a prominent spokesman. He gives Buddhism and other eastern practices credit for being more like what he would consider an 'inner science', and indeed there is a lot of truth in that, but scratch the surface with Harris, and it's not hard to find militant atheism, which I think many Buddhists are uncomfortable with.
Quoting Pierre-Normand
As one who has at least studied the subject at postgraduate level, if not through a traditional monastic education, I think a considerable amount of misinformation sorrounds the interpretation of the Buddhist 'no-self'. It's noteworthy that at the very outset, that, when directly asked if the self exists or not, the response from the Buddha is to maintain a 'noble silence'. The question of the nature of the self - and indeed everything! - is inextricably bound up with 'dependent origination', a very deep philosophy which takes years of study to understand. But suffice to say that I don't think the Buddha ever denied that 'the self exists' tout courte, and that this misunderstanding constitutes one of the popular misconceptions about Buddhism generally.
Incidentally I did participate in a debate on the topic of Free Will on the Dharmawheel forum not long back, and I maintained the view that Buddhism basically supports the idea of free will - it has to, because it defines 'karma' in terms of 'intentional action', so I can't see how it could possibly not. But, interestingly, there was quite a bit of dissent from other contributors.
Thanks for those useful explanations. So, Harris's Buddhism really amounts to Pop Buddhism sprinkled with a fair amount of Cartesian prejudice.
I doubt that Sam Harris is the only person saying it. Alex Rosenberg, among others, has probably said it.
Let's not make this a thread about Sam Harris. Let's address the thread topic, please.
Glad you cleared that up. What you're talking about here seems a lot like the free will worth having.
I see that as a form of moral competence, which requires being able to interpret and act upon (for now subjective) information.
You say things like "the rational understanding of the value", "the understanding of knowledge", this indicates you agree that we have a capacity to understand our unconscious behaviours to a degree and can act according to that knowledge. It's up to your sound judgement what you do with that.
As for whether it's 'falsifiable' - recall that the very idea of 'falsifiability' was the brainchild of Karl Popper, in respect of a very specific type of question: namely, to ascertain whether a given proposition could be invalidated by any observation. The point was to draw a demarcation between scientific propositions, which ought to be falsifiable, and metaphysics, which in principle may never be.
So the existence, or otherwise, of 'free will' is not the kind of statement to which the criterion of 'falsifiability' ought to be applied.
(Y) (was hoping for an applause emoticon)
Yet, we have people stating unequivocally that "Free will is an illusion".
If somebody says "Vanilla bean cupcakes are an illusion" then it is clear how that statement can be falsified: show everybody a vanilla bean cupcake.
How can the statement "Free will is an illusion" be falsified?
Clearly you and I.
Quoting StreetlightX
Yes, this is definitely the crux of the problem; or rather, not what kind of freedom (kinds of freedom seems fallacious), but instead, the question of how to define freedom. This question seems ultimately unanswerable, just given the multiplicity of nuances of answers.
Quoting StreetlightX
I'm not sure what you mean, since Augustine pre-dates all the other people you mention.
It seems to always be presented as one part of a binary: free will vs. determinism. And determinism seems to always be presented as saying, "You thought that you had a choice between chocolate or vanilla bean, but you did not have a choice".
Therefore, free will is apparently the freedom to choose between alternatives.
I would say no, it isn't falsifiable. In my opinion we can treat the past deterministically and deduce a certain amount of constraints which will, partially, determine the future. Though the universe might be fully deterministic we do not have the full knowledge of all the constraints which will govern the future. The current state of affairs is one wherein we gain more functional knowledge due to discovering more and more constraints which decrease uncertainty.
The difficulty in making an empirical statement on free will resides in our awareness being akin to a frontier of knowledge, as soon as we are able to make a sure statement that statement can be used as information which governs our current behaviour.
So you get experiments which indicate that we have no free will because the actual decision shows up in an fMRI machine before we are aware of that decision ourselves, to which we can say: "Don't play games while hooked up to an fMRI machine". Similarly, I am able to use common knowledge about unconscious biases as information to observe my own behaviour and negate the effect of such a bias to a degree.
In the present, free will is false in the past but it's true in the future, every time we notice we didn't have a choice in the matter we use that information to evolve towards a state where a similar observation might be made (and I feel the mind / body schism and the objective vs subjective issue tie into this also). To be certain that free will is false now would be to refrain from acting upon that information and negate our human capacities. Denying such agency takes effort though and I would be inclined to accuse those who do so of having a future oriented goal in mind. Just the observation that someone is able to conjure up the concept of free will and deny it's existence would indicate to me that this specific part of the universe is more predictable for me if I consider it as a social peer with moral agency then something which I might be able to describe objectively with empirical science.
The absence of constraints.
But here you're just basing your conception of free will on how it's colloquially presented. There's no philosophical grounds (or there might be, but there are definitely opposing other grounds) to assume this colloquial assumption. The binary that you describe might in fact be the problem. What if free will wasn't a choice between alternatives, but an ability to create reality? Choosing "between alternatives", after all, involves set choices; if the choices are set, is it really free will? If free will is truly free, then nothing can be extant with regards to freedom.
See my reply above.
Harris apparently argues this is so on the basis that every decision is determined by neurology and evolutionary biology - the standard materialist [s]tripe[/s] trope. My meta-analysis of the motivation behind it all is that its aim is to avoid facing the fact that we are really responsible. This is something similar to what Eric Fromm argues in his Escape from Freedom - that we are oppressed by the boundless possibilities that life presents and have a gnawing anxiety that we're somehow missing the point of it all. So one sure defense against that is - there is no point! You're a biologically-programmed robot, get over it!
This means nothing though. Or at least, one cannot draw anything philosophically useful from this answer.
Quoting Noble Dust
But there certainly are different kinds of freedoms; or rather, freedoms understood in various, not-necessarily-compatible ways.
Quoting Noble Dust
True, and my list is comprised of modern representatives of that tradition. Which has no bearing on the fact that free will qua choice is a relatively recent invention in the history of philosophy.
You'd need to explain why you think that.
Quoting StreetlightX
Hmm, I can entertain that idea, but, on the contrary, I tend to come to the realization that, rather than different kinds of actual freedoms existing, it's rather that I'm able to imagine different kinds of freedoms existing, but this doesn't mean that they actually exist. This is just on a philosophical level. Now, if you just mean levels of freedom, then sure, that's a different matter, because I would consider that to be more practical and less philosophical. I'm assuming you still disagree, so can you explain in detail why?
Quoting StreetlightX
Ok, fair enough, as I'm not educated enough to have a good response to this. So are you saying free will was a concept that didn't include the idea of "choice" until recently?
By what kind of subject? Organized by what field of constraints? (And constraint must figure into it; after all, that I cannot turn into a unicorn at will would presumably not be an argument against free will; so what makes an alternative 'count', and why?).
I don't have a conception of free will.
I am reporting, as requested, what I think people who say "Free will is an illusion" have in mind.
Notice that I used words like "apparently".
For all I know, free will could be some metaphysical novelty like triangular circles.
Quoting Noble Dust
That would seem to go against every Enlightenment/modernist assumption about there being objective reality that we observe, inductively or deductively model with theories, etc.
It would seem to play right into the hands of postmodern theorists who say that reality/truth is culturally constructed.
Quoting Noble Dust
I thought that free will simply implies having freedom within the parameters one is working within. We do not hold people accountable for things that they could not have done--we hold them accountable for the choices they made out of everything they could have done.
Even an omnipotent being can't create a rock so heavy that he/she can't lift it, right?
But the onus is on you here: if you say 'you and I' are the subjects of free will, presumably you want to say something like 'you and I, and not this other kind of thing'. But what is the difference that this difference makes? What is 'special' about You and I?
Quoting Noble Dust
I agree! One can imagine a range of freedoms: the question is why one, rather than another, ought to be of any relavence at all. This is why it's important to specify the kind of thing, person, or subject that would have this freedom. One cannot intelligibly talk about free will without at the same time considering the kind of subject that would excercise it.
Quoting Noble Dust
Consider, to keep this short, that the ancient Greeks had no concept of 'will' or it's equivalent - let alone free will. Incidentally, I think was an excellent state of affairs. Note also, as Wosert has, that freedom was traditionally contrasted with slavery, and not 'determinism' - it was a political, practical issue, and not a 'metaphysical' one. Another excellent state of affairs, sadly neglected in much discussion about it today.
Yup...
Quoting WISDOMfromPO-MO
Why would it have to play specifically into their hands?
Quoting WISDOMfromPO-MO
Yes, this is a problem I wrestle with constantly. Ironically, I think you're bringing up one of the core problems with the free will debate here. How much of one's individual actions are your own "free" choices, and how much of them are determined by environment? Is it something that's correlative to age? To "maturity"? Or something like "consciousness" or "awareness"? Perhaps this is why free will is such an unanswerable question for philosophy? It really deals with spiritual questions, not strictly philosophical questions, at least in the analytical sense. This means that, by definition, free will is actually something out of bounds for much of philosophical thought, as much as that philosophical thought is determined by classical analytic thought.
No I don't; I want to say "You and I". Is it unclear to you what I mean when I say "You and I"?
Quoting StreetlightX
No, I disagree; take a step back with me: It's rather that the problem is abstract thought (the method of thought that lead to the imagined states of freedom) is not the proper method to apprehend the concept; experience is what we should use to apprehend the concept. Think about it: free will would be a state of action. Free will would mean acting on some inner state that predicated total freedom. Now, for you to think abstractly, as you've been doing, about this concept, you would need to first have experienced the thing that the concept derives from in order to make valid statements about it. Otherwise you're just creating thought experiments, which are useless because they don't pertain to the reality of experience. So, by saying you agree with me here, you're simply stating that you agree that we can imagine different states of freedom, but that doesn't mean they exist. Now, I was not the one imagining these states, that was you. I was, rather, asking for a definition (provisional is fine) of "freedom", or of "free will".
Incredibly unclear.
Quoting Noble Dust
I guess I'm not sure what we disgree about. This is just the question I've been asking all along.
But as far as I know there are no known universal physical laws that predict human behavior.
Isn't that the heart of the matter? Isn't the big implication of determinism that we could have the ability to accurately predict every thought and action of every human person, and that people could therefore be controlled/manipulated like matter and energy are controlled/manipulated to design and make buildings, cars, communications networks, etc.?
It seems to me that until we discover the universal laws that govern human behavior--if they exist--and are therefore able to accurately predict all human behavior like we are able to accurately predict the weather, we can't say if the aforementioned belief is false or not.
Why?
Quoting StreetlightX
As far as I can tell, it's that you were asking about "levels of freedom", but I was asking for a "definition". But now you seem to be saying otherwise? Maybe I misread?
I completely agree. But, re: your last paragraph: can we discover "universal laws" (scientific terminology), or is the process something different? Wouldn't universal laws preclude free will?
Because the kind of thing that you or I 'am' is not at all clear. And without knowing that, you might as well have said anything at all. Moreover, the kind of subject that is claimed to have freedom is among the most contentious topics in this debate, historically. Kant's subject is not Rousseau's subject is not Augustine's subject is not Locke's subject; and the kind of subject involved in each countours the kind of freedom is each is said to have. And this is before we can even consider, let alone intelligibly discuss, questions of falsifiability.
My point is simply that if one wants to talk about the falsifiability of free will, one really ought to specify, from a wide field of contenders, which notion of free will is in play.
Quoting Noble Dust
I think so. I don't believe I've once used the word 'levels' in our discussion, nor have I intended to discuss anything like it - not that I would know what it means to talk about levels of freedom in the first place.
I'd agree that's what's at the heart of the matter.
Sorry, I wasn't talking about any acheivement (that's a separate discussion). I was speaking specifically about the (meta)physical ability for something that is without effects to be the corner stone of his entire philosophy. The very ability to do such a thing would suggest it is not epiphenomenal but in communion.
See this Dennett interview to see what I meant: https://youtu.be/oj858Vujb6g?t=57s
In a way it's like saying cigarettes have no psychological effects on you and then purchasing them everyday.
Okay, thanks, sure I see that. It fits a lot with my own meditation experiences. The thoughts do appear autonomous after a time and you can passively receive them.
My pet theory is that it may be due to evolution and needing to have a lot of it be automatic. I find when I'm out walking the thoughts come more freely and are specific to what I'm doing. The meditation thing is sort of like an artificial state so the thoughts are often random and give an illusion of being out of control.
The newer stuff like complex mathematics can't be completed in the same way. Answers don't just come to you, you have to (consciously) work them out.
We can accurately predict the behavior of sub-atomic particles, the atmosphere, trees, etc., right?
Maybe if determinism is true such predicting is itself an illusion.
But, no matter if it is an illusion or not, we do not have that same ability to make accurate predictions with respect to the behavior of humans. If we did we would know in advance exactly when, where and by who every bank robbery will be done. If we did we would know in advance who will win every U.S. presidential election.
If we did have the ability to predict and construct accurate models / laws of human behavior like we do with the weather, ecosystems, solar systems, etc. then that would be the end of anybody being able to rationally believe that we have free will, it seems.
However, we may never have those universal laws and predictive power in the realm of human behavior because we consider it unethical to treat humans like lab rats.
Ironic how it seems to be free will keeping us from disproving it ;)
(Don't think that has to do with us never becoming able to model human behaviour, by the time we 'do' manage that we might have become an advanced race or something.)
Of course you can, if you so choose. X-)
I disagree; the kind of thing we are would include aspects like "has free will", or "doesn't have free will". Why would we need to start by figuring out the "kind" of thing we are in order to address a question like "Do we have free will?" On the contrary, these very questions and their answers are the things that describe the kind of "thing" we are. We need to start by asking and answering those questions in order to find out about ourselves, not the other way around. Starting the other way around is completely unintelligble, which must be why you're so hung up on this perceived problem.
Quoting StreetlightX
The one I'm putting into play is mine, not someone else's.
I think we're in agreement.
Because it is basic philosophical practice. Figuring out 'if we have free will' is a noble goal, but not before asking if the question itself makes any sense. What kind of thing is 'free will' such that 'we' might or might not have it to begin with? And correlatively, what kinds of things are 'we' such that we might or might not possess 'free will', as distinct from something that does not posses it? Perhaps the very idea of 'free will' is a simple grammatical error, a thesis which might be 'not even wrong'. It's simple philosophical hygiene, of getting your starting point in order.
I think my problem is that the idea of not being sure "what kind of thing we are" is too vague. Can you elaborate on what the options are here of "what kind of thing we are"?
You have consciousness; the teapot doesn't.
*And should you really be trying to define one ambiguous idea by another, entirely ambiguous idea?
Free will is predicated on consciousness. This is getting boring. You appear to employ an approach that doesn't allow for anything to actually be established. At some point, you have to allow yourself to take something at face value, just so you have somewhere to begin. The most obvious place to begin is experience. Consciousness is where we experience.
Quoting StreetlightX
Please illuminate us all with the ideas that you personally have defined unambiguously, upon which your philosophy is presumably predicated.
Why?
Quoting Noble Dust
No, I'm literally asking what it is you are talking about about, and you're dancing around this point. What I'm asking for is quite simple: establish a distinction, and explain why it matters. This is the ground zero for any argument, let alone philosophy.
What, exactly, is your point?
Isn't simply an argument about whether we are compelled to act in particular ways, by factors outside our conscious control, on the one side, versus the idea that we are active agents who make decisions, and act in ways which are not determined, or not wholly determined, by such factors.
Sam Harris, for example, apparently believes that we don't exercise free will, because of the existence of subconscious drivers which by definition are beyond the scope of our conscious control.
The counter argument is that humans are capable of acting spontaneously and freely and that their actions are not wholly determined by subconscious or genetic or social conditioning, but originate with the human qua free agent.
Well, this is certainly a better definition than any that has been given in this thread so far. It only took four pages for someone to actually say anything remotely substantial. And even if I were to lay aside the gaping problem with that definition (which would entail that if I am not able to act on a desire, by dint of having no money, say, I no longer have free will - a rather bizarre upshot of that definition), it still remains a half-finished thought for the purposes of answering whether or not 'we' have free will.
The next step, if you're going to consider whether or not we have this kind of 'free will', lies in explaining what it would mean to not have it. It's about this point that I imagine people start to talk about 'determinism' or, as Wayfarer has, things like 'conscious control'. But then, what is the relation between the two? What theory of causality is at work here? Where would 'we', apparently free agents, figure into such a theory? Or what theory of consciousness is at work here, if one is going to bring 'consciousness' into it?
Note, by the way, this is the only way in which one can make any progress about this question over 'free will'. This is how philosophy proceeds, by clarifying questions. 'Answers' are the detritus, the leftover scraps, of philosophical questioning, they fall out, like dead leaves, from live questions. Anyone who has an issue with this shouldn't be doing philosophy. Deleuze put it nicely: "Philosophical theory is an elaborately developed question, and nothing else; by itself and in itself, it is not the resolution to a problem, but the elaboration, to the very end, of the necessary implications of a formulated question." Or Zizek: "Theory involves the power to abstract from our starting point in order to reconstruct it subsequently on the basis of it's presuppositions." The answer to the question of whether or not we have free will, will fall out from the sense that can be made of the question itself. Any attempt to 'skip straight to the answer' is vacuity.
Yes. I agree.
For clarity, I would add that choices are constrained and influenced so that outcomes are always unclear. One can try but cannot predict.
There are two aspects of the human condition that affect can choice of direction (we direct ourselves towards future action). The first is creative imagination. The second is will. Both are influenced and constrained in a multitude of ways.
How about the knowledge we can (!) have about what is causing our own behaviour at a certain moment, this simplified internal representation of a complex causal structure is what partially governs both our actions and future orientations, never mind the observation that it's the obfuscation of this knowledge from the outside world which gives us a sense of freedom with it.
It's too complicated to ever know. We can understand some aspects.
Though the supposed proof against free will is characterized by outside observers being able to get better knowledge about our behaviour then we ourselves are able to gather through introspection. Being able to understand somewhat coherently 'why' we act in a certain manner gives us the means to willingly adapt our behaviour; aside from making a case for determinism and against free will, ignoring the causal power of internally stored information (where there are all sorts of problems considering which information we embody, have conscious access to, etc.) also makes a case for behaviourism on a psychological level.
Isn't it obvious that, even from our own point of view, our choices are deterministic?
You choose based on your preferences, how you feel, and on the set of alternatives.
If your feelings are subconscious, and you don't know their reasons,you're still going by an assessment of the situation..
Sometimes you make some sort of intuitive, rough "game-theory" (in quotes because it usually isn't explicit, mathematical, or even conscious) assessment of a situation. Whether that game-theory assessment is intuitive or mathematical doesn't matter. You're still acting based on your predisposition, feeling, and assessment of the situation.
Even from your own point-of view, your choices are deterministic.
Compatibility? Does it make any sense to quibble about whether deterministic responses, resulting from external situations, and our predispositions, are free-will? I'd call it a meaningless question, but if a Y/N answer is needed, isn't "No" the one that seems more reasonable?
Michael Ossipoff
It is not only not obvious, it is contrary to all of my experiences. Determinism it's a story fabricated and propagated by certain interests who wish to be the "guardians" of the Laws of Nature (scientists and the whole medical industry). There is simply not scintilla of evidence to support determinism, no more than any evidence that the priests of religion have any insight into the ways of the Lord. The whole story is a concoction and some sort of dogma designed to appeal to the self-appointed elite who have done nothing more than create their own religion centered around the "Laws of Nature".
Since this could never be done, the statement that free will is an illusion is a valid one.
With that said, there are lots of humans who wish to believe that their actions are in the hands of God and others who prefer their own substitution term "Laws of Nature". I guess it makes them feel at ease that their fate is in the hands of such supernatural power - I guess.
You science-hate is dominating you. Make peace with science.
You equate science with Nazism and everything evil. Want to try living in the pre-science Middle Ages, or the nearly-pre-science Inqujsition? You'd love that.
Quoting Rich
As Schopenhaur said, "You can do what you will, but you can't willl what you will."
Or you could say:
You can't want or not want something because you want to want or not want it.
Your choices are determined by your predispositions (learned or built-in preferences, likes, dislikes), and the information available to you about your surroundings.
Rather like a Roomba.
Not only are your choices deterministic, but in fact they're deterministic from your own point of view.
You can't very well call that "free-will".
...other than the fact that every choice you make is for a reason--a reason that is a pre-disposed preference of yours or a fact about your surroundings. ...and you can't choose your wants and preferences? :)
Michael Ossipoff
A totally meaningless statement. The kind of linguistic parlor games that some philosophers enjoy playing. People make choices and then use energy to try to enact them. This is the experience of life.
This whole subjugation of humans to a supernatural God (or equally undefinable set of Natural Laws, Natural Selection) is a totally fabricated story that appeals to people who are more comfortable with the idea that their lives are fated, that there exists a natural elite class (a favorite of Hinduism) and the answers to life can be found via some revealed word from God (Natural Laws) that are passed through some selected priests (scientists). There is no difference between the religious belief in God or the equally religious belief in Natural Laws and Natural Selection - with similar consequences.
Of course the chosen ones reap the economic rewards but are also responsible for the mass murders that are sowed by the repugnant ideas of some people being more entitled to live than others or fated to live more elite lives than others.
Quoting Rich
I've told why that isn't your experience. But a person who is sufficiently committed to their beliefs can convince themselves of a fictitious experience.
You're committed to your anti-science, evolution-denying position, and we should just agree to disagree.
Michael Ossipoff
Oh, it is definitely my experience. I am constantly making choices throughout my day and that religions and science can convince people that they are not making choices by appealing to some supernatural forces, that have them locked in by some deadly embrace, is absolutely amazing, but that is the nature of people. Some people find such a story quite appealing.
...and those choices are governed, determined, by your predispositions, and your surroundings. And that's your experience.
You don't realize that you're more closely-related to a Roomba than you want to admit.
Michael Ossipoff
There is no magical force governing my behavior nor am I possessed by some demons that mysteriously take over all of my actions. My choices are influenced and affected by memories, habits and other forces around me, but I choose which direction I will attempt to move and what action I will attempt to take. Outcomes are always unpredictable.
It is ironic how science begins to resemble religion once it decides to base its theories on supernatural forces such as Natural Selection, Natural Laws, Big Bangs, Illusions and such. It's like science is simply recreating mythology of the past simply to placate its faithful. Honestly, I can't tell the difference.
I would argue that ideas and systems of ideas--religions, for relating to the sacred/divine; intellectual traditions such as philosophy and science, for asking and answering questions--by themselves are harmless.
They become oppressive/repressive, harmful, etc. when people co-opt them for purposes, goals, intentions, agendas, etc. that have little or nothing to do with their inherent purpose and meaning.
I doubt that the earliest scientists intended for their practice to be used to subjugate and/or dominate people and nature in the name of "progress".
I doubt that the founders of any religion intended for their tradition to be used turn people into pawns in political chess matches.
Or maybe I am naïve.
I don't know. I suspect that the majority of people of the world's various religious faiths/traditions and the majority of the world's intellectuals practicing various traditions such as philosophy and science quietly disapprove of the dumbed-down popularization and politicization by people like Jerry Falwell and Sam Harris of what has taken millennia of sacrifice and hard work to develop, refine and preserve.
Then your post itself is like a rock falling to the ground under the pull of gravity.
What I a writing right now is an effect of antecedent causes and was going to happen no matter what.
It makes it all meaningless, including your own words.
Yet, you expect your own words to be treated as something more than a rock falling to the ground under the pull of gravity.
Not consistent.
What happens is that particular economic interests pick and choose and the promote ideas (religious, philosophical, fabricated scientific) that further their interests. Well known philosophers are not well known because their ideas were particularly fantastic. They are well known because they could be used to promote certain interests. Science and particularly medical science promotes the idea that we are slaves of some supernatural forces which only science has particular insights and control over. It is all a fabrication other than straightforward chemistry (not biology) and physics.
Your & my posts like rocks falling? You catch on fast, Wisdom!
I used Roomba analogy, but mousetrap or thermostat will do.
But no, what you write isn't inevitable "no matter what". It depends on your extrnal circumstances. (...in addition to your predispositions).
For you that makes life meaningless? Then enjoy your angst!
Fine. Don't take anyone's words seriously. ... because they're said for a reason? :)
You'd need to be a lot more specific about what you think is inconsistent.
Michael Ossipoff
Mr. Wisdom:
Human utterances have something in common with falling rocks: Both result from physical causes.
(... though you're primary in the physical system that is your life experience possibility story.)
But I didn't like us to falling rocks. I likenened us to such purposefully responsive devices as Roombas, mousetraps, & thermostats.
Michael Ossipoff
Michael Ossipoff
In any case you can hardly fault me for very taking my position, now can you? I have been possessed by the Great Natural Laws of Nature.
We have memories (including habits) that affect our choices and there are other constraints and forces that affect our choices, but ultimately we make choices and observe what happens. We make constrained movements, our choices, via will. Up, down, left, right, inward, outward. These choices are the creative aspects of our lives and we are continuously exploring and learning from these choices. This is the essence of life.
So then you talk to your disembodied, distributed, Sheldrake morphogenic, holographic, quantum Mind-repository.
Does it tell you what to say?
I guess it won't become a dangerous problem until it starts telling you what to do.
Quoting Rich
No, there are all sorts of philosophical positions here. Some are sillier than others. I wouldn't criticize you for having silly beliefs.
But, just as a suggestion, the sillier your beliefs, the more advisable it would be for you to learn to disagree politely.
I don't criticize you. I only criticize your predispositions :)
Oh wait--Behaviorally, your predispositions are you.
Michael Ossiipoff
The mind creates the body. It is one and the same.
Quoting Michael Ossipoff
Please take up all of your criticisms with the Natural Laws (God) that is determining everything.
Probability is the result of an interaction of "chance and necessity". Let's take a normal dice. The regular cubical shape with the six faces determines that the result of a throw will be a number of pips between one and six. The probability for each number should be one sixth. The boundaries of the situation exclude zero or numbers greater than six. Past experiences, a person's character, his/her karma, God's predestination, etc. etc. might form an influencing framework for a decision. But if nothing determines the result within certain boundaries the remaining rest is pure fortuity. This is what I meant, when I said that volitions either depend on something or are at least partly stochastic.
In terms of life as we experience it, probability is a result of habitual behavior (which is approximately repetitive) and an impulse (novelty) from the creative mind acted on by will.
What is the difference between a creative mind's will and a random generator, if its decisions within certain boundaries do not depend on anything?
The mind learns (doesn't leave a hand in a fire) but then creates novelty or new solutions (putting a marshmallow on a stick). If one studies a child, one might notice how the baby learns and develops creative solutions to problems that are being encountered. Everyone is different but at the same time everyone is creating and learning.
I had to think a lot about wrong decisions in my life hitherto. Retrospectively I came to the conclusion that it was "a mixture of chance and necessity" that formed my way. I consider myself as a part of a mysterious reality somehow in the sense of Buddhist "sunyata" (although I am definitely not a Buddhist).
Robots follow specific instructions created by a mind(s). Robots are as much alive as possible a nucleus throwing off quanta energy. There is novelty, but then we have to discuss the qualitative difference. It is actually quite thin and turns on the question of the differences between life and matter.
As proofed by quantum cryptography, quantum effects deliver the "highest quality of randomness" technically available nowadays (cf. Nature, 540, 213–219 (08 December 2016) doi:10.1038/nature20119) Randomness always occurs within given circumstances and boundaries. Our concept of probability is based upon inductive inferences, which ist according to Hume rather a guessing based on prejudices. (In my Essay "Believing veraciously" at "Internet Archive" I discuss all the empistemological problems associated with induction and came to the conclusion that even science is inevitably based on beliefs.)
Wrong decisions, right decisions. Who knows? It is the Daoist story of the Farmer and his Son. Everything is in flux. Bad today good tomorrow.
Providing the highest quality does not mean random. If indeed it was random, one can toss Schrodinger's equation out the window. All technology depends upon probabilistic behavior. A question one may ask oneself is why, given that quantum theory is entirely developed on probabilistic behavior, is one insisting on randomness? Is it coming from experience? Does life or the universe appear to be random? What is the impetus of such an idea? Something learned in school or from a book?
Quoting Johannes Weg
Yes, I agree. Science is constantly changing and it too is in flux.