Objective reality and free will
Isn't it the case that as soon as we assume there is such a thing as an objective reality, a mind-independent world we are a part of, then we are necessarily assuming the absence of free will already?
Because if we assume we belong to a mind-independent world, then that world doesn't depend on our minds, so our minds don't have an influence on it, and so we don't have free will.
Is there anything wrong in this reasoning?
Because if we assume we belong to a mind-independent world, then that world doesn't depend on our minds, so our minds don't have an influence on it, and so we don't have free will.
Is there anything wrong in this reasoning?
Comments (58)
Sure, but if the world is mind-independent then it is not minds that move things around in it, it is the environment that acts on bodies which automatically react to their environment, no?
I think there's a step missing. The world is out there and I can use my body to affect it. But how did my mind affect my body? Searle makes this point in a video. "I tell myself I'm going to raise my right arm and my right arm goes up. How does that happen?" I'm paraphrasing his quote. But that's the real point. The question isn't how my mind can affect the physical world. The question is first, how does my mind affect my body? Once my mind has control over my body, I already have a physical instrument, namely my body, with which to affect the world.
Although I suppose if we say our bodies are part of what's "out there" in the world, then there's no difference. But my experience of my body is very different in nature from my experience of anything else in the world. For example I can not experience the pain of anything else other than my own body. I can have compassion and sadness and so forth, but I can never have an experience of the pain of anyone or anything else. So my body is different than the world; and therefore my point's valid. That the real mystery is how my mind can affect my own body, let alone anything else in the world.
Some parts of life resemble free will, and some parts don't.
But if my mind controls my body, and my body is part of the mind-independent world, then my mind controls a part of the world, so that world is not mind-independent.
It seems to me that if we assume our mind controls our body then we assume our mind has control on the world, while if we assume the world is mind-independent then we assume our mind has no control on the world, and then we just have the illusion of controlling our body.
But if you call the cat for a feed, and in doing that you're saying you use your mind to change the way the world is, then what does it mean to say the world is mind-independent if minds are constantly changing it?
Reality is the stuff that does not care what you say or think.
change in italics.
How would we know that a mind cannot change what it desires?
Quoting Banno
But if "the cat is on the mat" is reality, why does the cat care about what you say and leave the mat when you call its name? Isn't it that your mind has an influence on reality?
So you have everything you desire?
I don't, but that some things are harder to get or some desires are harder to change does not imply that we cannot change what we desire.
I have some desires I didn't use to have and I used to have desires I don't have now. It seems to be a matter of belief whether we assume the outside world alone changes our desires or whether we participate in changing them.
That's hard to say, maybe it is possible and we just haven't found out how? If we acknowledge that our minds change the world and that a mind might change at least some of what it desires, it is possible that our minds might change the world so they have what they desire.
All of the above precludes the existence of Free Will.
In a universe run along quantum principles, it's still billiard balls. But, their existence now becomes probabilistic as opposed to absolute. In other words, at any arbitrary point in time, a billiard ball can wink into existence or wink out of existence. So, unlike a classical universe, although still fully deterministic, prediction become impossible in principle as well as in practice in such a universe. Even for God.
All of the above precludes the existence of Free Will.
Since we are a part of this material universe, we too are made of billiard balls. Therefore, the only way for Free Will to exist is for it to exist outside the time and space constraints of a material universe.
But, then, I would say that, wouldn't I.
No.
I wish all philosophical questions were this easy. ;-)
Quoting leo
Your mind primarily has an influence on it via the way it controls the rest of your body. For example, I think, "I'd like to push the 'n' key on my keyboard"--that's something mental, and so my brain sends a signal via my nervous system (of which it's a part), which activates muscles, tendons, etc., and results in my finger pushing the "n" key, which is an example of influencing the external world.
That's what you were thinking for the first post, I suppose, but didn't say.
You're assuming a thoroughgoing, strong causal determinism to be the case.
Not everyone assumes that, and the conventional wisdom in the sciences rejects it, too. (Not that the conventional wisdom matters for whether it's justifiable to accept or reject something. It's just that the determinism side can't appeal to a consensus, as it often wants to do.)
For some reason these free will debates always proceed as if we are in the mid 1800s re notions of what the consensus view is in the sciences. (Of course, given that some folks reading of "modern" philosophy doesn't seem to extend much past Kant (if not St. Thomas), I suppose this isn't surprising.)
Mind is identical to a subset of brain function.
If free will meant the ability to do anything at all with no limitations, then perhaps. But otherwise free will isn't about absolute power, but the not being caused by the previous moment or the state of things before this moment. Freely choosing between even two options would be enough if it wasn't inevitable. This is not me saying that free will is the case. I am just saying that other things existing independent of us might indicate a lack of some options and limits on power, but it says nothing about free will.
It just means that the world is self-sufficient and works regardless of free will.
But the mind is a tool in the body's arsenal for controlling - itself. Not minds but bodies are the bearers of freedom, freedoms to act and freedoms to do, both limited and enabled by circumstance. Forget 'will'. 'Will' is a bunch of Christian bullshit.
Although ... Libertarian free will doesn't map onto a subjective reality either. But recognizing that reality is objective should reveal that free will doesn't exist from the perspective of anybody who thinks about it clearer. It merely takes a deeper thinker to see that Libertarian free will doesn't map onto any sort of reality whatsoever.
Precisely because that world would not depend on you?
Quoting Terrapin Station
Let's take my original argument:
1. Assume we belong to a mind-independent world
2. Then that world doesn't depend on our minds (that's a tautology)
3. So our minds don't have an influence on it
4. So we don't have free will (we have the illusion of choice)
Where does an underlying assumption of strong causal determinism happen?
If we assume indeterminism instead, how does that change the argument?
Quoting StreetlightX
That's the thing, is there a little free man along with the brain, or is there only a brain enslaved to laws? It's a matter of belief.
My point is that this is a dumb dichotomy. Say there was a 'little free man'. What accounts for 'his' freedom? Another little free man? And so on ad infinitum? As if 'brains' were free or not free. Meaningless claptrap.
The locus of freedom is not to be found centripetally, at some fine, singular point in the brain; it is to be found centrifugally, in the way in which one engages with the world and is so engaged by it in turn. The idea that freedom is a mental issue is philosophically damaging beyond all redemption.
Anyway, I'll say nothing further. No one here knows how to talk about feedom with any coherency. I came to register a grumble is all.
I just used your term, I wouldn't call it a man in the first place, that would prevent the infinite regress. More like there is some element to us that doesn't reduce to a brain or body, some element that gives us the potential ability to shape the world in the way we want, in a way that doesn't depend entirely on the state of our brain or body.
You don't depend on me and I can freely act upon you; same with the world.
Isn't it obvious?
But then such a world is not mind-independent, it is not objective, which is my point.
You're saying the world is clearly mind-independent?
"There is a mind-independent world" is another way of saying that there are things that exist aside from our minds. It's not saying that we can't influence the mind-independent world.
C'mon. You've got to be capable of coming up with a better argument than one that depends on a ridiculous interpretation of language.
Then how did you arrive at this conclusion?
I realize that words can be interpreted in many different ways.
By mind-independent world I mean a world that exists even if there are no minds in it, in which everything behaves according to laws including the minds. If we assume that in a mind-independent world minds follow such laws, then minds have an influence on the world in the sense that they are a part of the world that follows laws that act upon other parts of the world, but they don't have an influence on the world in the sense that they can't act outside of these laws.
So the fundamental question is, can we do things that doesn't follow these laws or not? I'm saying that if we are assuming we are part of an objective reality (which implicitly assumes that everything behaves according to unchanging laws, even if these laws include some randomness, and we're just observing parts of it), then it immediately follows that we are assuming we can't do anything outside of these laws, we can't even act on the randomness in these laws, we don't have free will.
And so if we assume instead that we have free will, then there can't be such a thing as an objective reality, we are the ones shaping through our will what we and others experience, and even physical laws would be limits we impose on ourselves rather than limits existing out there independently of us.
I don't see how we could assume objective reality and free will at the same time.
Innately. All my life I haven't learned a thing, at most I've just remembered things.
Quoting leo
Well, regardless if these minds are free or not - they can't act outside of these laws.
Which is to say, regardless if they are independent of something, they will follow its laws when interacting with it - if they don't, the laws change and the object transmutes.
To summarise: There is flux and flux allows you to not follow laws. Flux is objective and so a law. Hence the mind is ambivalent. Hence you have free will - and your free will has borders.
Quoting leo
I don't see how they're mutually exclusive - I see one arising from the other.
How would you respond to someone who would claim they know innately that the world is not mind-independent?
Quoting Shamshir
Are you saying the mind can choose to not follow laws?
Quoting Shamshir
You see objective reality as arising from free will? But then if that reality was willed it does not exist independently of us, it is not objective, which is why I don't see how they are not exclusive.
"Mind-independent world" doesn't imply realism about laws, and it doesn't imply strong determinism.
Anyone who'd know that innately, would know what I know innately and would validate my claim.
I wouldn't need to respond.
Quoting leo
It can transmute laws, and by that process not follow them.
Quoting leo
Free will persists thanks to an objective reality and objective reality persists thanks to freedom.
If it's subjective, it can't be truly free - as it's always an aspect.
So, an objective reality exists independently of the mind.
It's existence permits and persists the capacity for free will.
Free will in turn allows a mind to draw upon the objective reality and persist the objective reality.
If freedom ceases, there's no room for objectivity and so it too ceases.
It would actually be harder, nigh impossible, to influence a subjective reality.
An objective reality is not only easily influenced, it is influenced by what are independent parts of it.
It's hard for Chess to influence itself; it's easy for chess pieces and chess players, who are independent to Chess, to influence Chess. Same with a mind-independent objective reality.
Quoting Terrapin Station
There are a few things to clarify here otherwise we will just keep talking past each other.
Do you agree with the idea that in a mind-independent world, minds are part of that world?
Then do you agree with the idea that in a mind-independent world, there are constraints to how things can move and what minds can do?
Minds aren't technically part of the mind-independent world, but they're part of a world that mostly consists of mind-independent stuff.
That's like saying that refrigerators aren't part of a refrigerator-independent world, but they're part of a world that mostly consists of refrigerator-independent stuff.
Quoting leo
Yes, but I'm not actually a realist on physical laws; at least not as physical laws are usually characterized.
Even if people can make the conundrum seem a little less absurd by claiming you can interact with a mind independent world, they will nonetheless end up being unable to explain adequately the process by which such interaction is even possible. (they have been trying for 400 years and yet here we are.).
In the end, they will give the process some sort of label such as "transcendence" and then proceed as if the label explains all when of course it explains nothing. And when push comes to shove, they will do the Husserlian thing and point out how truly wonderful is the "magic" of transcendence.
The only reason you can interact with other entities is because they are within the world that you are in.
I don't believe there's anything difficult to it. As I explained earlier, you have a thought that amounts to wanting to type the word "word," and so your brain, via the rest of your nervous system, sends a signal that activates tendons/muscles that enable you to move your arm to the keyboard and move your finger to push the "w" key.
All that does is beg the question as to where the "magic" occurs. Rather than describing the "transcendence" as between yourself and the physical world external to you, you have chosen to describe the "transcendence" as between your thought and the physical world.
None of what you say comes even close to explaining how a non-physical thought somehow creates physical activity in the brain. Unless you are suggesting that your thoughts are physical, in which case you are rejecting the notion of an external reality and are now outside of the original post.
Simply put, the point at which the supposed magic of "transcendence" occurs is not an explanation of how the transcendence occurs. How does that "thought" (of a thinking substance) cause a physical (extended substance) "signal".
And please keep in mind that for the Cartesians, a substance is self-sufficient.
A natural world doesn't necessarily entail determinism. Even though natural laws exist, they are excruciatingly difficult to find. For every attempt to formulate them we need to apply endless scrutiny to make sure that we are right. Subsequently, the future is uncertain which logically discards determinism.
There's no "magic." Mentality is simply a subset of brain functions from the reference frame of being the brain in question. There's no "transcendence."
Quoting Arne
There's no such thing as a nonphysical anything. The very notion of that is incoherent. Thoughts are physical. They're brain states.
Quoting Arne
Say what? Thoughts are physical. They're brain states. There are things external to brain states. That's external reality.
As I said above, "[It's] like saying that refrigerators aren't part of a refrigerator-independent world, but they're part of a world that mostly consists of refrigerator-independent stuff." It's just instead of refrigerators, we're talking about brains. We could talk about suitcases, bookshelves, guitar amplifiers--anything else instead. There's that thing and then there are the things that are outside of that thing.
1. The very notion of "objective" is rooted in substance ontology, i.e., the subject/object distinction.
2. The subject/object distinction is the Cartesian distinction between two self-sufficient substances, i.e., thinking substances (having non physical attributes) and extended substances (having physical attributes).
3. Being self-sufficient, thinking substances (minds) are completely independent of extended substances (physical things). Similarly and being self-sufficient, extended substances (physical things) are completely independent of thinking substances (minds). After all, self-sufficient does mean self-sufficient.
Therefore, when you claim that there are only physical things, you are rejecting substance ontology.
And that is okay. But you need to recognize that you are doing that.
Otherwise, you end up trying to resolve a problem from within a paradigm you have rejected.
Welcome to contemporary man's Cartesian nightmare.
I disagree.
Though I do reject the notion that transcendence is from "subject" to "object."
Instead, transcendence is from "self" to "world."
Whether it's historically/etymologically rooted in that or not doesn't matter. The distinction can (and typically does) simply refer to mental versus nonmental phenomena, which is a distincrion between a subset of brain function and things that aren't a subset of that particular brain function.
Quoting Arne
Okay . . . If only that were any help in making anything "transcendent." ; -)
It matters not how you frame the distinction (mental/non-mental or external/internal or subject/object). Instead, the deeper issue is the relationship between the entities you are trying to distinguish. And you have already rejected the notion of the relationship as being between two self-sufficient substances.
Unless I am missing something, you avoid the Cartesian nightmare by being a non-Cartesian, i.e., you are a materialist.
Correct. I'm a materialist/physicalist.
But you are still alive, so there is still hope for you.
:razz:
Well, if someone can figure out a way to make the notion of a nonphysical something/anything coherent, that would be a start. ;-)
Quoting Terrapin Station
Ok, so in that view both minds and things that aren't mind are part of a world, and both are constrained in how they can behave.
Even if you're not a realist on physical laws, you're a realist on laws that apply to the world (even if we don't know them exactly), because what we call laws are precisely constraints that dictate how things behave or how they can behave.
After some thought, I agree that in such a world there can be some free will if the constraints are fundamentally indeterministic, albeit that's a limited free will that cannot go beyond these constraints.
For instance, if we were to assume that quantum mechanics is fundamentally indeterministic and is a correct description of the world at very small scales, it doesn't leave much place for free will: the mind might act freely on the indeterministic part, but it has to do that in a way that the spatial and temporal probabilities in the laws remain respected, and it isn't clear that we could have an effective free will that way, the mind might only have an imperceptible effect that would hardly qualify as free will.
So objective reality does not necessarily imply absence of free will, but it does imply limited free will at best.
Quoting Terrapin Station
The above allowed for the possibility of limited free will if the mind has a non-physical part that can act freely on the indeterministic part of laws, but now it seems to me that if you assume there is no such non-physical part then there can be no free will in such an objective reality.
If you assume physicalism is true then it's obvious you would see anything non-physical as false, but otherwise why would you say anything non-physical is incoherent?
One doesn't have to believe that physical things are deterministic.
The free will I care about is the ability to choose between a tuna and a turkey sandwich, or between which of a handful of movies to watch, etc.
Sure, but if your mind is physical and follows indeterministic laws, then it doesn't have the ability to choose anything. There is a given probability that your mind will be in such or such state, and that's it, your mind is not making the choice, the indeterministic law is making the choice, the choice is not determined, it is selected randomly while following a given probability distribution.
Basically, there needs to be an additional ingredient for your mind to actually select wilfully one possibility among those that fit the indeterministic law. If your mind is physical, there is no such ingredient, everything simply follows the indeterministic law, and outcomes are selected randomly with various probabilities.
Quoting Terrapin Station
But do you believe you are choosing freely, or that some (in)deterministic law made the choice for you and you are becoming aware of it after the fact?
Aside from "indeterministic laws" being a questionable idea in general, why would one have to believe in indeterminstic laws?
In any event, it could work that you're able to bias probabilities.
If one assumes there is an objective reality in which there are constraints, how could one believe in anything else than deterministic or indeterministic laws to describe these constraints?
By the way when I talk about indeterministic laws I refer to laws such as in quantum mechanics, in which things do not have a definite trajectory but rather there is only a specified probability of finding them in such or such volume of space.
Quoting Terrapin Station
If physical things behave according to laws, and you're able to bias the probabilities in these laws, then you're not following these laws, so there is some part of you that is not physical.
If you want to remain physical, then the best you can do is select outcomes so that the probabilities remain the same (which means that in some instances you won't have any freedom to choose).
I found the quotes below illuminating.
[quote= On Certainty]
Children do not learn that books exist, that armchairs exist, etc.,etc. - they learn to fetch ... Are we to say that the knowledge that there are physical objects comes very early or very late?
...
But can’t it be imagined that there should be no physical objects? I don’t know. And yet “there are physical objects” is nonsense. Is it supposed to be an empirical proposition?—And is this an empirical proposition: “There seem to be physical objects”?
...
“A is a physical object” is a piece of instruction which we give only to someone who doesn’t yet understand either what “A” means, or what “physical object” means. Thus it is instruction about the use of words, and “physical object” is a logical concept. (Like colour, quantity, …) And that is why no such proposition as: “There are physical objects” can be formulated. Yet we encounter such unsuccessful shots at every turn.
[/quote]
Is it not similar with 'mind-independent reality'? Let's make it mundane. I think my wet shoes were downstairs for the last few hours, even though I haven't thought of them until now. I guess I can try to imagine how they exist in the absence of life as I've known it (human and animal.) But I'd be slow to build a system on such questionable imaginings.
I'll agreethe assumption that there is a mind-independent objective reality arguably entails that there are objective limits to the freedom of individual sentient agents. But I see no reason to suppose that freedom must be somehow absolute or in every conceivable respect unlimited in order to count as freedom.
What does it mean to say the world is "mind-independent"? Surely not that this world of ours is a world without any minds in it.
Why should we expect that "a mind has no influence on the world" just because "the world doesn't depend on that mind"?
Should we say the world depends on this hammer? No it does not. But does the hammer have some influence in the world? So it seems.
The world cannot decide to do away with hammers, nor with minds, nor to ignore their efforts and their effects. Minds participate in the world, like everything that exists in the world.
To all appearances, the world does not decide anything. Only minds decide. Minds participate in the world by perceiving and acting in the world. I suppose the freedom of free agents is grounded in that participation.
I want to try to keep this relatively simple (with an emphasis on "relatively"), but as I mentioned, I'm not a realist on laws. I'm not a realist on any abstracts, actually. That's one facet of my nominalism.
I see what is usually parsed as laws as something similar to trope nominalism. Particulars are neither "completely random" nor subject to laws per se, but instead simply have ways they at least tend to "behave." This means that not just any arbitrary thing is going to (be able to) occur--so there are constraints in that sense, but it also means that things don't work akin to strong determinism, they don't literally "follow laws" in any sense. There are similarities of "behavior" tendencies akin to other property similarities, and particularly that fact is what leads to interpreting things in terms of laws.
If anyone reading this is unfamiliar with nominalism in general or with trope nominalism, it's worth reading at least the Wikipedia entry on those topics (the basics of trope nominalism will be described in the overall nominalism article) to get the gist of it.