What is the use of free will?
We can without doubt agree that we are rational agents. By rational I mean we act or decide based on reason in a situation. Rationality is important when it comes to decision in a situation which is defined as a set of prioritized options. A rational decision is defined as a decision which the agent always choose the best option. Free will however is ability to choose an option regardless of any constraint. This means that free will just allows us to choose the worst option. So the question is what is the use of free will when we, rational agents, can always choose the best option?
Comments (60)
This is a rather contentious definition of free will. It certainly doesn't fit the conceptions of compatibilists. I don't think even most libertarian incompatibilists would be happy with such a definition. Most philosophers agree to distinguish between broadly external and internal constraints on agency and practical deliberation. External constraints limit the options that are open to you in any particular deliberative context while internal 'constraints', including the constraints of rationality and character, enable you to take ownership of the deliberative process.
Compatibilists, unlike libertarians, believe even the internal constraints are deterministic. It is true that some libertarians believe that whatever someone actually does freely, he or she ought to have been able to refrain from doing it (or to do something else) in the exact same circumstances regardless of the antecedent causal constraints on the action being internal or external to the process of deliberation and decision. This is the strongest possible version of the so called 'principle of alternative possibilities' (PAP). But that is a rather minority positions among defenders of the possibility of free will.
To me constraint just limit options whether they are external or internal. You cannot do that because of shame then one option is gone. You cannot do that because of shortage of money then one option is gone.
Quoting Pierre-Normand
I see. But lets back to our discussion. Do you believe that we could live the best if we always choose rationally, pick up the best, rather than choosing freely, pick up the worst?
Yes, I think a confusion over the concept of a constraint, such that it is viewed as a mere restriction or impediment on the exercise of free agency (and hence constitutes a mitigating factor for personal responsibility) lays at the root of some incompatibilist intuitions. Not everything that is a causal antecedent of an action is a constraint in this fashion. Some causal antecedents of someone's action are 'internal' not just in the sense that they can be traced to process or states that are located inside of the skull but also in the sense that they are part of the enablement of the agent's abilities to rationally deliberate about what to do. To be able to deliberate rationally, on that view, entails that one's deliberative process is suitably integrated with one's core values and commitments, for instance (and also enable one to rationally appraise the salient features of one's practical situation). It is somewhat incoherent to view such enabling causal antecedents of one's rational deliberative processes to constitute negative 'constraints' on one's freedom, since removing those so-called constraints just amounts to destroying what makes one into a free rational agent in the first place.
I have no idea what it means to act rationally. People act in many ways motivated by experiences and possibilities.
Quoting bahman
I can someone know the best option? There are just possible actions with unknown effects (hence the well known Daoist story of the father and his son).
Quoting bahman
Actions are subject to constraints but we choose to try to move in a certain direction. Humans have Choice in the direction we wish to try to take action. This is Will or Intention.
Humans have the ability to make Choices in Direction. We are Navigators in Life where nothing is certain or determined.
Choice permits novelty, creation, and evolution.
That claim can be doubted...with evidence to turn doubt into actual negation. Psychological evidence, neurological evidence, evidence from behavioural economics...
Quoting bahman
Reason is not the way we have been shown to make decisions, either in practice or in experiment. Decisions are emotional in their origins, which are typically considered to not be a source of the "rational". Reason is the vehicle to express emotion.
Quoting bahman
What exactly "prioritizes" the options? Reason can provide options...but emotion is what prioritzes them.
Quoting bahman
I once thought I understood what "free will" was, but have long since given up thinking it has an actual definition from anyone, professional or layperson. In my view, the idea of free will can't even be wrong since it is a conceptual reification created in Iron Age philosophy to describe phenomena which were unknown and inscrutable at the time. The term should be consigned to the dustbin of philosophical history as, in my opinion, it is a conceptual dud that derails and suppresses progess in philosophical thought.
I can't believe that Free Will is still taught as relevant. Some ideas die hard. We have choices with unpredictable consequences.
This rather amounts to asking if our being less rationally or morally fallible would make us more or less free. I don't think there is a categorical answer to this question. There is an interesting conundrum that arises from comparing Aristotle's to Kant's idea of moral praiseworthiness. According to Aristotle's conception of a virtuous agent, someone who refrains effortlessly from acting selfishly, say, is more praiseworthy than someone who must make an effort since the first one is manifesting a more virtuous character. Kant, on the other hand, holds that the person who must overcome the most strongly felt temptation in order to refrain from acting selfishly is more praiseworthy since she displays a superior ability to have her reason control her passions. So, your question is rather similar to the question whether someone is freer accordingly whether she displays moral praiseworthiness in accordance to Aristotle's or to Kant's account of moral praiseworthiness.
I think there is a way to reconcile Aristotle's and Kant's intuitions, and this consists in construing moral praiseworthiness not as a metaphysical (intrinsic) attribute of an agent but rather as the normative dimension of a social reactive attitude the function of which is to scaffold moral growth. We praise the person who act virtuously (and/or rationally) effortlessly because she is an exemplar model of virtue (or wisdom or intelligence). And we also praise someone who effortfully emulates acts of virtue because such efforts promote moral (or intellectual) growth. In both case, the aim is the same -- virtuous action and dispositions -- and the achievement of this aim also is what constitutes the ability to act freely and responsibly.
I think I should expand on rational decision. We don't need freedom for rational decision. Free decision and rational decision are in fact different. What is the exactly rational decision: You look at options and prioritize them, I like this one more or that one is more important for me, etc. Prioritizing is done using weighting. We pick up the best option when available options are prioritized.
Rational decision is picking up the best options after prioritizing them. The process of prioritizing is done using weighting. I like this one me, this one is more important, etc.
Quoting Rich
Yes, there are situation that the best option is not available, for example when you like two things similarly.
Quoting Rich
I agree.
No, there are only two sorts of decision making: rational and free decision. We always follow our emotions in any situation. Without emotions we depressed and are not willing to do an. In case of rational decision we choose an options after prioritizing them. We also have free decision. I am arguing that free decision comes to play when we want to choose worst so what is use of it.
Quoting Uneducated Pleb
Emotion and reason are used to give weight to options. I like this one more, this one is more important for me because of future consideration, other example.
Quoting Uneducated Pleb
Interesting.
The issue that I am raising is that free will is the only ability that allows us to do the worst, so what is point of having it. I like this more than that. This is rational decision. I throw this away because I want. This is free decision.
There is not better or worse. There is only a choice to move in a particular direction. Consequences are always unpredictable and changing as things evolve.
What Choice allows is evolution of Mind. We create, experiment, learn, and evolve. It is fundamental to existence.
There are of course better or worse options. I like vanilla ice cream more than chocolate one.
In a subjective way, you have preferences in taste. However, in a practical manner, you might choose a vanilla in some ice cream store that has an absolutely horrible taste to you, which you don't know until you actually taste it. Possibly the chocolate might have tasted better. Consequences of any choice is always unpredictable, but we do choose and then learn. This is the process of human evolution.
What is your opinion about OP?
If I recall correctly, Aristotle was writing to and for a class of gentleman in Athens society, if so, then his position is not unexpected, and I think Kant's moral works were framed more towards the general public (poor people) of his time. I think their thoughts need to have modern interpretation.
The issue that I brought up concerns a conundrum regarding the ascription of moral praiseworthiness to the action of an agent. This connects to the topic of free will because of the connection between freedom and responsibility, on the one hand, and the connection between personal responsibility and praiseworthiness on the other hand. I dont think pointing out that Aristotle and Kant had different target audiences goes to the core of the issue. Both of their arguments seem to me to have intuitive appeal even if we bracket out prejudice and agree that all human beings, aristocrats or not, can justifiably be praised for their efforts in vanquishing bad temptation, or for their being able to do well effortlessly. I was attempting to show that the apparent inconsistency between the Aristotelian and the Kantian criteria of praiseworthiness is the result of a misconception regarding the nature of moral (or rational) praiseworthiness and that both the Aristotelian and the Kantian conceptions of ethics show in different albeit complementary ways why our modern 'metaphysical' conception of praiseworthiness is misguided.
I thank god that all my decision making is determined by me; my motivation; my learning; my experience and my situation. Anything short of that is just throwing the dice.
It is exactly that offered by compatibilists, except that the emphasis is different.
To compatibilism free will is the ability to act determinedly in the absence of constraints.
If you are asking what is the use of Free Will, then I would respond that we see humans are constrained in our choices, but the choices we make are the essence of Life. From these choices we learn and evolve. This is Life.
For sure, but, as I had attempted to stress, the relevant compatibilist idea of a constraint on free will is much more restricted than the idea appealed to by bahman (or by some libertarians). Many compatibilists don't view 'internal' causal antecedents such as values or desires to constitute constraints on free will, whereas bahman seems to be defining free will as the absence of *any* sort of antecedent causal determination, including such things as values, desires or reasons (and not just external constraints such as threats, coercition or lack of resources and opportunities).
But the way you constructed your post, was not incompatible with compatibilism.
I didn't mean to rule out compatibilism. Quite the contrary, I meant to point out that bahman's definition was too strict to accommodate many common conceptions free will, such as compatibilists ones, and also some libertarian ones (which don't all rely on the most restrictive and implausible understanding of the principle of alternative possibilities).
I am asking what is the using free will considering the fact that it always allows us to choose the worst.
I responded that there is no such thing as better or worse choices since consequences (long-term and short-term) are totally unpredictable. What people do is make choices based upon their experiences and emotions (there is an enteric mind that makes gut decisions) and then learn something new from now their decisions. Choices is what defines all of life. It is the essential element of Mind Evolution.
On a social scale, free will allows us to blame others for their actions. When a person chooses "the worst option," the belief in free will allows us to say, "You messed up!"
I think the need to blame people for faults is a psychological need that all or most humans have. In fact, I believe there is a school of thought (the name is escaping me) that says even if free will doesn't exist, it is still a useful fiction. I tend to agree. I would hate to live in a world where, say, someone could cheat on their spouse and the only thing their spouse could say is, "Well, he had no choice."
I should point out that I haven't read all of the responses in this thread, so if my response has already been addressed, feel free to ignore this post or copy and paste the relevant response.
Your response isn't redundant but it's broadly compatible with the conception that I am advocating, which portrays 'reactive attitudes' broadly construed (such as praise and blame, gratitude and resentment, shame and pride, etc.) not as implying the mere acknowledgement of an agent's (or one's own) intrinsic freedom but rather, in part, as constituting this freedom through functioning as social scaffolds of rational and moral growth and competence.
In other words, I view most popular philosophical discussions of free will, determinism and responsibility to go wrong when they seek to establish the antecedent and objective criteria of freedom of choice on account of which an agent can reasonably be held responsible for her actions. I rather view the range of sentiments and social attitudes associated with the normative appraisal of other people's (and one's own) choices and actions to make up the essential cement necessary to hold various bits of human behavior together and thereby to make it possible for people's to behave rationally and morally at all.
For if a utility function cannot be identified and justified independently of the choices the agent actually makes, then one's proposed function is at best describing the agents past history of decisions, which says nothing for or against the idea of the agent having determined vs free-willed choices.
And to merely ask the agent "which choice do you prefer?" before he appears to make a decision isn't to obtain independent information of his preferences.
This is an excellent summary. What I want to add is that even if the internal deliberation was as rational and optimal as possible - completely determined by those ideal constraints - reality is still unpredictable. We can only guess that a choice is likely the best. And our own actions impact on the world in a way that produces some of that unpredictability. Stepping into a muddy river, I might step on a crocodile.
So an ideal rationalist has to second guess their own actions in terms of intended consequences. That uncertainty is a product of any decision and part of the internal milieu. It can’t be computed from some prior state of perfect knowledge, as we might argue about a best guess. It is an irreducible residue of indecision when doing our best to make a decision determined by “all the available prior information”. As a guess about a guess, it is information that only follows the action that causes it to be the case.
In short, there is an irreducible uncertainty at the heart of any model theoretic approach to reality - an observer effect that dogs all rational models. We are entangled with our environments when we make a decision. The decision that results in an interaction is the same as the act of measurement that disturbs the state of the very system it hopes to measure.
If only I had known, I wouldn’t have stepped on the crocodile. But it was only in stepping that I could have known.
The line between internal constraints and external constraints is a fuzzy boundary and not a sharp one. In the final analysis, strict determinism fails as the actor and their environment can’t be absolutely divided.
Mostly decisions can be relatively determined by internal information. A decision had only that one possible optimal outcome and so we had no real choice. However often the reality is the information is ambiguous. We can only discover the rationale after acting.
Hence Buridan’s ass. You just have to make a plunge when no choice is clear.
If you were in fact a deterministic computation, you would blue screen. Your decision making would gridlock. So a good thing we aren’t designed that way. A good thing noise still exists in the system to tilt decisions in less constrained fashion.
In summary, folk want one or other extreme to be true - absolute determinism or absolute freedom. But as you outline, a sensible position depends on zeroing in on the tricky border where both sides seem to be saying something believable. And zoom right in and the very distinction itself evaporates.
Any theory thus has to recognise the further fact that observers and their world’s can’t in the end be completely unentangled in either direction.
So the question really comes down to whether there exist any choices we might make where the answer is not in any way pre-determined by preferences we had before the choice. 'Mind-reading' acts rely on the fact that even something as seemingly random as picking a random number are actually influenced by pre-existing ideas. We rarely pick the lowest, middle or the highest in the specified range, we think odd numbers are more 'random' than even numbers for some reason. The numbers 3 and 7 seem to occur more often than they would if they were truly randomly selected.
If we can't even pick a random number without our pre-existing mental state influencing it towards one decision out of the supposedly 'free' choice, then I don't see much hope of demonstrating that our important choices in life are anything other than determined in advance by the dispositions we already have.
A disposition is an untroublesome form of “Determinism”. But I guess a “problem of personal inclinations” doesn’t have quite the same dramatic ring to it.
This is a very good question. I have to say I was very close to asking this question myself but it wasn't as clear to me as it is to you.
Rationality is inescapable. Homo sapiens = rational animal. It defines us.
As you say it appears that rationality makes free will redundant or something like that.
But think of rationality as a tool. We use it rather than the other way round as your post implies. An artist first chooses what his creation will be and only then does he touch his tools. Likewise, we're free to choose what we want to do but we must do so in a rational manner.
What do you think?
You get the point. One of course can argue that one can choose worse option when he practice his freedom.
Think of the following example. You like vanilla ice cream more than chocolate one. Of course choosing vanilla ice cream is a rational choice. You buy the ice cream and decide to put it in garbage bag which is irrational. Of course you use your freedom to do this. The question is what is the point of free will when it could lead to absurdity in our decision.
Yes, but they'd still have to have some reason to do so wouldn't they? Maybe they think it would be beneficial to choose the 'worst' option just to prove a point about free will, in which case they've identified some benefit in 'proving a point about free will' and so acting to bring about that benefit is not the 'worst' choice any more is it?
I've yet to hear a convincing definition of somebody making a choice which is other than the one they have previously decided is best, for whatever convoluted, confused, sub-concious or mistaken reason.
I didn't think the idea of free will consisted of having a point, but rather consisted in there being no external fact-of-the-matter that precisely determines one's choices, either because of under-determination of choices relative to external matters of fact, or because the 'externality' of the determining matters of fact in relation to one's mental state is disputed under an extended-mind thesis which renders talk of determined choices as meaningless.
The way you framed your original question implies that knowledge of one's personal preferences can play the role of such external matters-of-fact in the sense of [I]weakly[/I] determining one's choices, whereby one still has a final say in which option to choose. Yet if I remember correctly, in another thread you disputed whether conscious choice was in fact possible on the grounds that in appraising the value of one choice, one is no longer aware of the value of the other choices. But if conscious appraisal of actions is not possible , then one doesn't have knowledge of one's personal preferences, and hence personal preferences cannot play the role of determining external matters of fact here, which as a consequence implies that one cannot conclude that one's choices are determined with respect to knowledge of one's preferences.
Perhaps absolute determinism primarily refers to the concrete world we experience and free will to the social reality we experience. Depending on which way you look $50 dollars can mean a little or a lot.
Rationality needs motivation. You have your likes and only after do you use rationality to acquire what you like.
You liked this forum. Sure you had your reasons but then there are others who don't like this form, also with reason. So, who's right here? Rationality clearly shouldn't lead to contradictions. So, who's the culprit? Free will of course.
Worse or better is a judgment performed after the consequences are revealed. And then it is made in comparison to some idealized possible consequence which never happened. There are no better or worse options. There are only possible choices of action which we feel may achieve some desired results, but results are always unpredictable. There is no control over outcomes. Only desires to achieve one. In Life, almost nothing turns out as expected.
Well that then is a rational choice rather than free one.
These two problems are unresolved for me: (1) What is the use of free will? and (2) Conscious decision is impossible. For example, when I talk with people about conscious choice, they deliberately say that they can do it. That is something that I cannot comprehend since I cannot consciously give weights to two subjects.
Am I addressing your post properly?
I don't understand what you are trying to say. Do you agree with my example and the fact that free decision leads to absurdity when we can make ration decision?
We are talking about immediate consequence rather than long term one.
Yes, that's the point. The dilemma you're outlining arises because there is no such thing as free will by the definition you are using. No-one could ever possibly choose the 'worst' option because simply by doing so they have shown that it is, by some metric, the 'best' option. We cannot do other than act according to our will. The only remaining free-will question is from where do we get our will? - from some non-physical realm, or from our previous thoughts/senses.
No, worst option of course exist. The point is the worst option is not worst one if a thought, showing that we have free will for example, intervenes in our decision. A free decision is not biased or initiated by anything. It is a causal chain that we create. Needless to say that I am not here taking a position that free will exist. I am just pointing to a problem related to free will when we are dealing with rational agent. In simple world, a rational agent can function well without free will so what is the point of it if there is any.
Quoting Pseudonym
That, the source of our will, I believe we can never be sure about it.
Immediate consequences are always uncertain, though some more probable than others.
Will is an energetic force just like any other force in nature. The Mind produces and stores it in the body by normal process of eating, drinking, and breathing. The body is a tool of the mind.
OF what, exactly is it free?
Choice is prior to rationality.
Step 1: We want x
Step 2: We use rationality to acquire/achieve x
Rationality isn't against choice/free will. We use rationality to get what we want. Assuming of course that what we want is chosen by free will.
And you know this how?
Practice. Philosophy is not arguing about what someone read in a book. Philosophy is experiencing life in all forms, having patience, and practicing. Then new knowledge comes.
I don't know how many times I've repeated on this forum that NOTHING IS FREE. Such a stance is as far from life experience as is Determinism. Both ideas are just concocted ideas for people to argue over, as a way of amusement in their lives.
Everything is entangled. There is no separation, emptiness or nothingness that can create separation, anywhere. Nothingness may exist but only in the absence of duration. Lacking separation, we have entanglement which means we have Choice in the direction we apply Will, but it cannot possibly be free of constraints or otherwise.
Yes. We don't need free will up to here. So we can make rational decision in a situation.
Quoting TheMadFool
Free decision could be in favor or against rational decision.
Then why call it free will?
It is a problem with nomenclature.
It is clear we are not "free" to do anything we wish to do.
The nature of human nature is that we (our minds) imagine a future possibility and then we use stored energy to attempt to effect this possibility (our will) after considering possible choices of how we can might use our body mechanisms. Outcomes are always uncertain. We can only try.
Beyond this, there are habitual aspects of our nature that we learned and are effected more or less without any conscious effort by the large Mind. Smaller minds in our bodies (e.g. muscle memory) effect these motions but are in consent communication with each other via the nervous system. A healthy body must maintain a healthy nervous system which is why ancient cultures developed specific exercises to nourish and cleanse the muscles, bones, and nervous system.
This is our nature. An understanding of it can lead to a long and fruitful life. You don't learn this from logic. You learn it from experience and practice. It is the skill of observation.
Applied logic can result in trusted realization, and I would definitely define this process as learning just as much, if not more so, than merely remembering that which one is told..
Not in my experience. I find it parenthetical. Observational skills are most helpful.