Freedomain Radio

pcrs:

If you believe in free will and say there is no cause for people's actions, because they just chose it, there is no point in asking why they chose it.

Every time I hear this kind of statement dragged out I start to feel annoyed.  To be fair, I read most of a 90-page paper on a form of compatabilism that used the same argument over and over again, so I'm getting it from multiple fronts.  I thought that it was pretty clear, from Stef's position at the very least, that the definition of free will being worked with here DOES NOT say that there is no cause for people's actions.  The major point of his last video series (which I never heard you comment on even in the last thread) was that people who are ignorant of the causes of their own behavior are the ones who end up determinists, nihilists, agnostics, etc.  I know that I have never said free will means that a choice is uncaused.

I do stand by what I said (and this is developed in the video series posted on the first page of this thread if you haven't seen it): a choice requires a reason in order to be a choice.  In other words, choices have causes in the sense that a person weighs the data at hand to come up with their own cause to take action.  A completely random action with no antecedents would not be a choice; it would just be random.  That is NOT free will.

KevinP

Everett:

What really bugs me about the question of free will/determinism is that I can't seem to find a satisfying way of examining them that doesn't at the beginning assume one of them to be correct.  I really want to be able to figure this out.  Just stating that I want to figure it out is an assertion that I have free will.  But what if I am wrong?  What if it is just an illusion that I "want" to understand the problem?  And how can I know?

I see what you're getting at, I really do.  Hmm.. Well, I don't know if this helps or not, but I consider the two merely as mechanisms by which choices are made.  Thus, if you took that POV, you could start examining the problem just on the basis of making choices, without trying to assume the mechanism behind those choices.  I'm not sure if that would necessarily lead you anywhere though.  It might get you to the next step in the overall morality problem, but not necessarily ever yield an answer as to the foundational mechanism.. <shrug>..

nexalacer:

I'm not sure what this has to do with my post.  I never suggested that the window has free will.  I am actually pretty frustrated that you would even assume that was my suggestion.

My point is simply that the action is absolutely completely dependent on the properties of that which acts.  The effect on the window is dependent on the properties of that which flies into it.  Without considering the properties of that which acts, we cannot understand the causal relationship.

Do you agree?

Sorry my message frustrated you, I never really considered your position is that windows have free will.You are doing some serious thinking trying to find out where our differences lie, you stay calm and do not become irritated and assume integrity on the other side of the debate. I appreciate that.

I think the misunderstanding comes from the ambiguous term "the properties of that which acts are relevant" For the window the properties of the object hitting it, matter and yes we can not understand the cause without knowing it's properties.

nexalacer:

I will come back to this after you answer my question.

nexalacer:

I'm with you here.  But even here, the properties of that which inputs is the critical factor in the effect that outputs, is it not?

It is

allison:

quotes on quantum mechanics

The thing with quantum mechanics is that it is only a mathematical description of what is going on in the world. Like Niels Bohr said:'we don't know if there really is a quantum world, just that this mathematical description works in making predictions' So I am not at all convinced that things are really random at the quantum level, it is just that we seem not to be able to know both position and momentum of particles with enough accuracy to know where individual particles will go and we resort to statistics as the best approximation. I think it is more a problem of the limits of our knowledge then a proof of non causal behavior. Even if you could show real randomness it would not mean free choice though, as someone who is behaving randomly would not be considered free.

KevinP:

Every time I hear this kind of statement dragged out I start to feel annoyed.

I can feel that. What is the hypothesis behind your annoyance? "He knows I am right, but he is just not willing to admit it?" "people try to obscure the truth from me?"

pcrs:

The thing with quantum mechanics is that it is only a mathematical description of what is going on in the world. Like Niels Bohr said:'we don't know if there really is a quantum world, just that this mathematical description works in making predictions' So I am not at all convinced that things are really random at the quantum level, it is just that we seem not to be able to know both position and momentum of particles with enough accuracy to know where individual particles will go and we resort to statistics as the best approximation. I think it is more a problem of the limits of our knowledge then a proof of non causal behavior. Even if you could show real randomness it would not mean free choice though, as someone who is behaving randomly would not be considered free.

I don't think Tenderfoot is talking about merely randomly selecting one option from a set of alternatives.  It's much more subtle than that.  Let's say you're designing a system of logic circuits to model the human brain.  These would be parallel and decentralized.  Now let's throw in the assumption that each component's response time varies unpredictably.  As a consequence, the results of various computations arrive at their destinations in an unpredictable order.  Serial computers deal with unpredictability through use of synchronization methods; however, as far as I can tell this is not possible in a parallel system with nothing analogous to a CPU.

As mentioned in the post I quoted, the order in which memories are accessed could have an effect on the course of action chosen by the brain.  Such a system would be unpredictable (whether or not it would be acausal would depend on the reasons for the variance in response times, and as you said I don't think we have a good enough understanding of quantum physics to get into that).  Leaving aside the question of free will, would this unpredictability alter your view on the deterministic nature of the system?  Would your answer depend on whether the unpredictability of the system's components was epistemological or ontological?

Unfortunately, there's no way to empirically test memory arrival times, as such a test would require repetition, yet the brain would by altered by each trial.

@allison

I don't think serial or parallel configurations or the use of memory make any difference regarding causal/not causal out comes. If you introduce indeterministic or random elements in any system, you can get indeterministic or random behavior on its outputs. If you have only causal elements you can get only causal outputs irrespective of the configuration.

I think the problem is ontological (if I understand correctly what that means). I think that everything is deterministic because experiments show very stable outcomes, so I go with reality is objective and consistent.

I think the problem in the FWvsD debate is epistomological. You can not find the truth about particle physics by introspecting and explaining your emotions. 'I feel responsibilty/blame/anger towards X, that suggests another outcome could have been chosen by X at time Y, causality must be not universal, the "I" must be able to intervene in causality.' In my opinion that Kantian argument should run the other way:Reality is objective and consistent, therefor the "I" can not intervene in causal flow, therefor the feelings I have of responsibilty/blame/anger should be redefined.

It is just another example of human egocentricsm that adjusts the rules of physics to keep the earth in the centre of the solar system. That should have been run the other way as well: keep the laws and put the sun in the middle of the solar system.

pcrs:

I don't think serial or parallel configurations or the use of memory make any difference regarding causal/not causal out comes. If you introduce indeterministic or random elements in any system, you can get indeterministic or random behavior on its outputs. If you have only causal elements you can get only causal outputs irrespective of the configuration.

Am I missing something?  Where did you see that discussion going Allison?

BTW, is anybody going to report in and tell us about the great debate yesterday?!

Captain Trips:

 Am I missing something?  Where did you see that discussion going Allison?

 BTW, is anybody going to report in and tell us about the great debate yesterday?!

 

I agree with your summary CT.

The debate was enjoyable, Stef is a real debating crack, he kept us mostly on the defense, I still have to figure out how he managed to do that. But I guess you have to wait until it is out to judge for yourself.

 Peter,

I think it sometimes seems like we're two ships passing in the night.  It's like the free will and determinist positions don't have any common ground to stand on, making it difficult to have a common conversation.  Free willers have thoughts about human nature that fly in the face of physical scientific evidence and determinists have thoughts about human nature that fly in the face of psychological scientific evidence.  I have a feeling, based on yesterday's debate and what I know about the players in the debate from before, that we want the same thing: we want to be able to have ethics and personal responsibility in a causal universe.  And then each side creates its reductio ad absurdum of the other side that explicity erases that possibility.  For free willers, it is the human-as-falling-rock analogy.  For determinists, it is the completely uncaused magic choice.

That's why, from the start, I've thought that we don't have enough data to actually come down 100% on one side or another.  Do you remember podcast 358, Stef's Wager?  It was his version of Pascal's Wager applied to free will/determinism.  I know it may seem strange, but I think this is the best route I can think of now.  We could literally debate this topic for the rest of our lives with the current knowledge that we have and the results would probably be as "unsatisfying" as they are now, neither side making any headway, the truth remaining some slippery snake that both sides try to grasp but can't seem to get their hands on.

Personally, I want to move on to do some work with UPB.  I think that's more important than this debate right now.  So, I'm going to let this not-so-sleeping dog lie for now.  It's been fun when it wasn't frustrating

Kevin

pcrs:

Sorry my message frustrated you, I never really considered your position is that windows have free will.You are doing some serious thinking trying to find out where our differences lie, you stay calm and do not become irritated and assume integrity on the other side of the debate. I appreciate that.

I think the misunderstanding comes from the ambiguous term "the properties of that which acts are relevant" For the window the properties of the object hitting it, matter and yes we can not understand the cause without knowing it's properties.

Well, to be honest, I can't blame determinists for their position based on the faulty understanding of causality as it appears in the world.  Even the wikipedia entry describes causality as a relationship between actions, not between entities.  It would be interesting to see where this misunderstanding first surfaced, as Aristotle did not make this mistake, and it seems to have appeared at the time of the scientific revolution.  Although that history is tangential to what we're talking about here, it is why I assume some integrity on the determinist side.  I hope after I put forward my thoughts that assumption proves to be warranted.

And I apologize for the confusing nature of my verbage.  I am struggling to find a way to express what I want to express without having to use a mass of words.  I cannot say "action" or "actor" alone, as that implies consciousness, and it's not exactly what I mean.  No matter what event or action occurs, an entity is the initiator of that event or action.  Whether it is a particle of light, an atom, a rock, a fish, or a human, entities are the causes of effects.  This is not to imply consciousness where it is not warranted, it is just an observation of the facts of reality. 

As a side note, I am currently working on this problem simultaneously in English and Japanese.  I find that Japanese allows for the conveyance of the idea of "action" without implying a consciousness much better than English, due to the way that meaning is conveyed through the use of the Chinese characters, Kanji.

Anyway, if you agree that the causal relationship between entities is dependent on the properties of those entities, then we can move forward.  While for non-conscious entities and even for most conscious entities, this change in definition makes little difference as far as the application of the law of causality.  (Thus this change in definition would have little relevance to physicists, perhaps accounting for their apparent ignorance of this problem.)

However, human beings have a property that is different from all other known entities in the universe.  That is not to say some alien entity could not have this property, or that computers might not eventually be built with this property, or that other animals may not someday evolve this property.  I want to be clear that I do not believe this property is inherently special to human beings, I think that as a result of evolution and the billions of years of causal relationships, this property came to exist in human beings.  It is only a matter of circumstance that we have this property: human beings are the only known entities that are capable of creating abstract, generalized concepts based on particular instances.

Other animals are able to comprehend inputs from instances, but as far as we can tell, they are not able to analyze these instances and put together an abstract concept.  I think this is a key aspect to understanding free will as I understand it.

Before I go to the next step, would you agree with the idea that human beings have the unique ability to create abstract concepts, which is an ability that all other known entities in the universe do not have?

nexalacer:

Before I go to the next step, would you agree with the idea that human beings have the unique ability to create abstract concepts, which is an ability that all other known entities in the universe do not have?

I know this question wasn't intended for me, but I'd like to answer it anyway because I'm interested to see where it's headed. I appreciate your appeal to confront this issue by "steps." I think it makes for a more thorough and "on track" debate.

I agree that human beings have the ability to create abstract concepts. I am hesitant to agree that the ability is UNIQUE to human beings, however (though I don't think 'uniqueness' is an important factor in the debate). I am certainly inclined to agree that the complexity or amplitude of the ability to formulate abstract concepts is unique to humans. Will that suffice?

nexalacer:

Even the wikipedia entry describes causality as a relationship between actions, not between entities.

nexalacer:

And I apologize for the confusing nature of my verbage.  I am struggling to find a way to express what I want to express without having to use a mass of words.  I cannot say "action" or "actor" alone, as that implies consciousness, and it's not exactly what I mean.  No matter what event or action occurs, an entity is the initiator of that event or action.  Whether it is a particle of light, an atom, a rock, a fish, or a human, entities are the causes of effects.  This is not to imply consciousness where it is not warranted, it is just an observation of the facts of reality.

I am curious where you're going with the abstract concept thing, but I assume it's in the direction of morality only applying to those actors capable of formulating abstract concepts (thus a rock is not morally culpable for it's "actions").  But that is a position one could hold regardless of the mechanism of choice invoked.  Are you actually working out a methodology for morality in a deterministic frame of reference, per chance?

Captain Trips:

So, maybe this is jumping ahead a bit, or perhaps it is completely off track, but it seems like you are saying that actors are essentially aggregates of causes that eventually express themselves as effects (actions).  The simpler the actor (like a rock), the simpler the relationship between actor (cause) and action (effect).

No, that's not what I'm saying.  I'm saying that causes are not actions, they are entities.  Let me put it in the form of a syllogism that Hajnal used in the chat:

1.  Actions are causes.

2.  Actions cannot occur without entities.

3.  Therefore, entities are causes.

Depending on the properties that an entity has, the actions it can perform and the causal relationships that it can be a part of are different.

Captain Trips:

I am curious where you're going with the abstract concept thing, but I assume it's in the direction of morality only applying to those actors capable of formulating abstract concepts (thus a rock is not morally culpable for it's "actions").  But that is a position one could hold regardless of the mechanism of choice invoked.  Are you actually working out a methodology for morality in a deterministic frame of reference, per chance?

Wait for it.... I'm going where determinists have not gone before because they were incapable of going there without a proper law of causality to work with.

Oneironaut:

I agree that human beings have the ability to create abstract concepts. I am hesitant to agree that the ability is UNIQUE to human beings, however (though I don't think 'uniqueness' is an important factor in the debate). I am certainly inclined to agree that the complexity or amplitude of the ability to formulate abstract concepts is unique to humans. Will that suffice?

You're absolutely right that uniqueness in this ability is not necessary for this ability to have importance in the realm of free will.  The only evidence we have points to human beings being the only entities with this ability, but if there is other evidence out there that shows that other entities also have it, it would have pretty important implications as far as UPB goes.  But we can come back to that later!

Up to this point, we've established two important points:

1.  The law of causality does not state that actions cause effects, rather it says that entities cause effects.  Understanding the properties of those entities is vital to understanding the causal relationships that they are involved with.

2.  Human beings are the only known entities to have the property that consists of the ability to formulate abstract concepts from the empirical evidence of particular instances.

Here is a good point to put forward an important idea about free will that I will prove as we move on:  free will is not digital, nor is it innate.  Human beings aren't born with free will and it's possible that not every human being has the same capacity for free will, though I would guess that healthy humans do have a fairly equal capacity for it.  Free will is an ability that is based on the capacity to formulate concepts that accurately reflect reality.  Therefore, depending on one's proficiency at formulating and working with abstract concepts, one will have a larger capacity for free will.

I think determinists are mostly right about human beings being machines that mostly act following a causal chain that is based on the actions of prior entites they have interacted with.  That is not because free will does not exist, rather it is because most human beings have no idea how to think in conceptual terms.  Their thought patterns are much like other animals in that they only take in their immediate empirical observations and act based on that.  They do not apply their observations to an abstract framework of concepts to determine what is the best action based on all of the principles of the universe that they have developed up to that moment.

Of course, none of this yet proves free will.  I just want to establish some guideposts to where I am going, as well as affirm my agreement with determinists in certain areas.  However, I think my next point will be a possible stumbling block for determinists, so we shall see how it goes.

The formation of abstract concepts that accurately reflect reality is not automatic.  The law of causality as expressed above implies that as a causal entity acts in the real world, other causal entities that are affected by it will then act in the real world based on both the properties of the first causal entity and their own.  The formation of concepts that accurately reflect reality does not occur automatically from this sort of interaction, as concepts themselves do not exist in reality, nor are they dependent on reality.  Concepts that conform with reality are true, but the creation of true concepts is not automatic.  There is plenty of evidence to support this, but I'll give three examples that I think sufficiently support this proposition:

1.  The reality is that the Earth is round.  Sailors of the middle-ages held a concept of the Earth that did not conform with this reality.  They had evidence that could have led them to the formation of this concept, such as the fact that approaching ships appeared to rise up out of the horizon and grow as they got closer.  However, they ignored this evidence and focused on the more in-your-face evidence that the horizon appears flat, therefore the Earth must be flat.  They, like animals, did not take in all of the available evidence and process it in order to formulate an accurate concept, but instead chose only the evidence that supported their flawed concept.  Only with the individual accomplishments of captains who accurately formed a concept that did not end with their ship falling off the edge of the world did sailors finally achieve the circumnavigation of the globe.

2.  The reality is that human beings murdering other human beings is wrong.  Most people will agree with moral concepts that reflect this reality, until you give them the example of a soldier.  Of course, soldier is also just a concept that does not accurately represent the reality of a human being in a costume who murders.  However, the same people that will agree with the moral concept that murder is wrong will simultaneously say that soldiers are good.  They, like animals, take only the evidence of the moment (the propaganda surrounding soldiers) and do not look at the larger conceptual picture.  They are unable to see the conceptual contradictions that they hold because they don't know how to think at a conceptual level.  The concepts they do hold were fed to them by previous causal entities, so they are unable to work out an accurate concept that is not contradictory.

3.  The reality is that evolution is the mechanism by which our current world is populated with a wide variety of species of life.  Creationists focus on individual pieces of evidence, the evidence that is immediately in front of them, when considering whether or not evolution is true.  They will make statements about the observation that new species aren't appearing all round us, or that the eye is too complicated to have developed through natural selection, or a number of other claims that are supposed to invalidate evolution.  They, like animals, are only focused on the evidence right in front of them at any particular moment.  They do not put together the multiple strings of evidence that creates the tapestry of an accurate concept of evolution.

You can probably think of multiple more examples of failures to formulate an accurate concept of reality from all aspects of society.  The problem is really endemic to human society as it stands today.

I want to be clear, this is not supposed to prove free will yet, this is just to prove that the process of formulating concepts that accurately reflect reality is not an automatic process.  Would you agree with this?

nexalacer:

Before I go to the next step, would you agree with the idea that human beings have the unique ability to create abstract concepts, which is an ability that all other known entities in the universe do not have?

I don't think I agree with that. If my cat gets chased by a dog and the next day it meets a completely different dog, it will run away. I can only explain this by concluding it has an idea of the concept of dog based on meeting 1 instance of their species. Do you have an alternative explanation?

My apologies for another long winded post on this subject, but since I think I still increase my knowledge of philosophy and get something out of the debates, I see no reason to stop yet. I tried to make it as short as I can.

I did learn something valuable from this debate, that in my opinion explains much of the misunderstanding at least with free willist Stef. I seemed to get into a contradiction confronted with the question: "can humans be in error? If the deterministic rock can not be in error, then a deterministic human can not be in error and I can not be in error defending free will."
First it is important to realise there is a difference between a theory and the theory holder. The first is abstract and the second lives in reality.

A methaphor most quickly explains what is going wrong in the loop in that argument. If we have a datalink between 2 computers and it gives errors because the cable in between them is broken, you could go in the same circle. Stef:"Is the data link in error?" me:"yes" Stef:"But it could not have done anything else, because of the laws of nature and the broken cable" me:"it is not in error with the laws of physics" Stef:"but you just claimed it was in error"
Neither determinists nor free willist would resort to putting free will in the data link to get rid of this apparrent contradiction. The way to go here is to realise that there is ambiguity in the question "is the datalink in error?" error only exists in combination with a truth statement about reality. If the truth statement is:"The datalink obeys the laws of physics" the 'datalink' is not in error, if the statement is "the data link transfers data" the data link is in error.
In the same way the question:"Is the free willist in error?" is an ambiguis question. I believe his theory about reality is wrong (for this particular theory not with disastrous consequences in daily life, if causes for behavior continue to be sought). Is the holder of the theory himself wrong? Not in the fact that his past interactions would have inevitably caused him to hold this wrong theory. Like the datalink he is not wrong in obeying the laws of physics. He is wrong in believing in a theory that does not match reality. Only life forms theories, a rock can not have a theory, the statement that a rock and a brain are essentially the same is to imprecise. It's like saying a steak and a stone are essentially the same (talking about Newtonian physics) and suddenly ask the question: "Why don't you eat the stone then?"

In a completely dead universe there is no error, because there is no theory held by anyone or anything. We are all determinists and everything behaves causaly.
Let's introduce life. Let me now define 'an error' as a difference that shows up when a theory about reality is compared to reality. As an example: when a lion chases a zebra and jumps to the left, in anticipation of the zebra's move, but the zebra goes to the right, the lion is in error, because it had a theory about the future of reality which was wrong. Causality required the lion to have the wrong theory, but it is my claim you can still call his theory wrong based on the difference with reality, not based on his ability to have another theory than it had.
Complexity can introduce agents that hold theories about reality, theories that rocks can not state. These agents behave completely causal, but their theories can be erroneous, which is why some species debate about them. Computers can operate based on a theory about the future too (e.g. a program that trades the stock market), this theory can also be wrong and the difference I would call an error. The computer is however completely causal, yet every mobile phone and computer has many error detection and correction units.

Does it make sense to blame the erroneous or take them to court? That is a question for later. Why do people try to confront the holder of a wrong theory with his error? Because we know the brain changes its beliefs based on the observation of errors and contradictions (in a causal way, balanced with lots of other factors).

The lion has preferences as well, those are the things he needs to survive and reproduce. So the important thing that confused me in the debate is that any statement about preference requires you name the preferrer, otherwise you get contradictions. The prey prefers something different from the lion. No preferred state without a preferrer.
The indpendent question is there truth/falsehood does not make sense without a theory that is tested on its truth or falsehood. It is not necessary to know who stated the theory under test, to test it. It's truth content can be tested against reality, without attaching the theory to any person in physical reality.
The next step is: the theory about reality was tested and e.g. it was found to be not in compliance with reality=false. Now we can ask who stated or believes the false theory? And is he blame worthy for stating the theory, guilty and in error? Here is were the confusion comes in, I think. Blame, guilt, threat are all mechanism that humans use to communicate to other humans that their beliefs are wrong (which has a function and creates an enormous parallel computing power). I would opt for calling people who hold erroneous beliefs also erroneous. We also say that a data connection has 'errors' although it could not have done anything else, since the cable was broken.