Free will in philosphy and science
In the 'Revolution in thought' thread, the topic of free will came up repeatedly, because it is one of the cornerstones of Lessans' book: the idea that determinism makes free will impossible. This is said by many more, especially scientists and science addicts, but also by some philosophers. That said, a majority of philosophers adhere to compatibilism, the view that there is no contradiction between determinism and free will, provided one gets rid of some impossible metaphysical connotations normally attached to the idea of free will, like that somebody could have done otherwise under exactly the same conditions, including his brain state.
One of the reasons to see a conflict between determinism and free will, is that the relationship 'is determined' is seen as a relation of force: our past, in the form of my biology and personal history forces us to the one thing we do. This idea is attacked by several philosophers: by Norman Swartz, by the Swiss philosopher Peter Bieri, by Daniel Dennett, by Derek Parfit. The idea is that laws of nature are not laws that force things to behave in a certain way, but are descriptions of how things just behave. There is no causal relationship from laws of nature to the events in nature, in fact it is the other way round: events cause some descriptions to be true. If some of these descriptions contain only generic descriptions, i.e. these descriptions apply also to other similar objects in similar situations (maybe endlessly many) then we have a law of nature. Or, as Swartz prefers to say, to get rid of the idea of a law governing processes, a 'grand physical truth'. Or in my own words: laws of nature describe how causation works for different classes of objects and processes, but they cause nothing themselves. True sentences just cause nothing. This should already take the sting out of the idea that we are forced to do what do by our past. We do what we do, and there are true descriptions for it. To judge if an action was free or not we must look at in how far a person was really acting according to his own wishes and beliefs, or that he was coerced by somebody else. Also he may lack the fundamental capabilities for reflecting on his actions: to oversee possible consequences of his actions. Now there is one point, where I cannot follow Swartz completely is on the following point: First he states that that the number of physical laws for all practical purposes is infinite (The Concept of Physical Law, page 127). But the later he goes on: Quote:
Another problem I have with Swartz is the idea of physical necessity (see here). It seems to me that something like physical necessity exists: given some conditions, the consequences are necessary. This of course does not mean that the laws under which we are able to describe the consequences force the consequences to occur. But as I understand Swartz, he concludes from the contingency of the conditions, the consequences are also contingent. But I think they are only contingent as far as the conditions are contingent. Given the truth of a set of conditions, the consequences are physically necessary. |
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Thanks for starting this thread, GdB. I started composing a response, but I've been working all day and now I'm savoring a nice IPA or five :unrevel: so I will try to post tomorrow!
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Isopropanol? (Does not sound healthy...) |
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But also he is surely not the first to present this idea. But he is the most rigorous defender of this idea I know. The same idea you can find e.g. in Raymond Smullyan's funny dialogue Is God a Taoist? Quote:
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The question of free will rests on where you draw the line. By this I mean which influences negate free will and which do not. If one claims that any influence negates free will, then that person in on the side of determinism. I all influences are allowed, and claimed that they do not effect free will, then that person is claiming complete free will. Neither side is completely correct and the actual position is somewhere in the middle, but the exact position is what is really being debated. Christianity claims that God has granted us free will to choose good or evil, but it is also claimed that God knows our decisions in advance. This is my only problem so far, that if our decisions are knowable, then how can those decisions be free? I have heard many arguments in support of this position, but I am not yet convinced, it just doesn't feel right, and I don't have any actual arguments either way.
I believe I'll need to find and read some of the material from the authors that have been referenced in this thread. |
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Case 1: Somebody (e.g. your spouse?) knows you very well. Somebody else asks some decision of yours, you weigh the arguments pro and contra, and then, when you tell what you have decided, your spouse says to you 'I knew you would decide that!' Case 2: An astronomer counts down the moment for a total solar eclipse exactly '10...,4, 3, 2, 1, Totality!'. how did he do this: does this imply that he has power of the sun and the moon? Or does it imply that he has a perfect insight in how moon and sun move? Did his countdown have any influence on what is happening? Case 3: A neurologist has a perfect neuro-imaging device, attached to a supercomputer. The same person as in case 1 asks your decision, but before you can do this, the neurologist writes down your decision. You say what you decided, and the neurologist shows what you have decided: he knew it in advance! My idea, is that, as in case 2, there is an illusion of power. But in reality there is no power at all, you just decide what you otherwise would have done, if your spouse of the neurologist would not have been there. The problem is that foresight seems to imply fatalism: but that is not the case. Say, God has perfect foresight, and knows exactly what you will do. What then? Can you lean back, and say to yourself, 'Well, when everything is fixed, then I must not care about anything'. The error is to think 'Whatever will happen, will happen whatever I decide'. and that is wrong of course. If God knows everything, he also knows how your thoughts develop and lead to your decision. Foresight is no denial of free will. Your thoughts and feelings are the causal prelude to what you decide, and your decision determines what you will do, and so has influence on what happens in the world. The possibility of foresight doesn't change that a bit. 'Trick Slattery however makes this error. I might look later again in his argument, and see where he takes a wrong turn. He is fully aware that determinism does not lead to fatalism, but I have to look up why he thinks foresight precludes free will. |
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Determinism vs. Fatalism - InfoGraphic (a comparison) |
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As a matter of pure logic, there is no conflict between perfect foreknowledge and free will. Norman Swartz discusses this in one of the links GdB gives in his OP, which post I’ll specifically address later, and plus I’ve discussed this before here at :ff:. But let’s look at the alleged problem again.
Put simply, the claim that perfect foreknowledge precludes free will constitutes a modal fallacy. The structure of the claim is: If God foreknows that I will do x, then I must do x — no free will. As Swartz explains, in cases like this (and it generalizes to logical and causal determinism; what we are discussing here is a case of epistemic determinism) — the modal fallacy lies in imparting necessity (must) to the the consequent of the antecedent, whereas the correct step is to assign necessity jointly to the consequent and the antecedent. The repaired argument now goes: Necessarily (If God foreknows that I will do x, then I will [not must!] do x) Given the stipulation that God is omniscient, it follows that he cannot fail to know what I will do. What doesn’t follow is that I must do the thing, that I actually do. Suppose instead of doing x, I choose to do y. Then we would get: Necessarily (If God foreknows that I will do y, then I will [not must!] do y) It is not necessary that I do x or y. I can do either, freely. What IS necessary is that what I do, and what God foreknows, must match, in virtue of God’s omniscience. If I do x, God will foreknow I do x. My doing x provides the truth grounds for what God foreknows. If I do y instead, then God’s foreknowledge will be different, for I will have supplied different truth grounds for his foreknowledge: I will have supplied y instead of x. This result, btw, is the solution to Newcomb’s Paradox. Modal logic is cashed out in a heuristic of possible worlds, by which we mean logically possible worlds. We can now parse out the above scenario in the modal language of (logically) possible worlds: There is a possible world at which I do x. There is a possible world at which I do y. There is a possible world at which I do x, and God foreknows that I do x. (In fact, this proposition is true at all possible worlds, which means it is a necessary truth, like the statement “all bachelors are unmarried.” But note again — this is absolutely crucial to understand — the necessity lies jointly in the relation between the antecedent — what God foreknows — and the consequent — what I actually do. What I do by itself is utterly contingent; i.e., free. There is a possible world at which I do y, and God foreknows that I do y. (also a necessary truth; i.e. true at all possible worlds and false at none of them.) BUT 5. There is no possible world at which I do x, and God foreknows I do y; and there is no possible world at which I do y, and God foreknows I do x. The upshot here is that while I am free to do x or y, there is no possible world at which what I do, and what God foreknows, fail to match. But this fact is no curb on my freedom. Once we see that there is a possible world at which I do x, and another at which I do y, then the whole alleged problem between God’s foreknowledge and my freedom evaporates. Moreover, this modal solution to the alleged conflict between epistemic determinism and free will universalizes to all alleged conflicts between determinism and free will; the same modal solution holds for logical determinism and for causal determinism, and thus it renders the alleged conflict between all forms of determinism and free will a pseudo problem. |
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That assumes a compatibilist meaning of free will, doesn't it?
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I think my problem is similar to the difficulty I have with Lessans/Peacegirl's argument that we don't have free will, but our choices are free. And then she claims that we are compelled to choose only the "best" option in the circumstances. Of course Lessans claims that we always choose in the direction of greater satisfaction, by claiming that every choice we make is in the direction of greater satisfaction. We choose what we choose because we choose it. |
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If God has infallible foreknowledge of what we will do, then he also has an infallible memory of what we did, right? So if yesterday I did x, then God will infallibly recall that fact, right? But does it follow from this that I had to do x, yesterday? I think most people will immediately see the falsity of this. They will recognize that I could have done y instead, but did not. If I had done y, then God would infallibly remember that fact instead, the y fact, rather than the x fact. We don’t even need God here. We have a record that Hitler invaded Poland on Sept. 1, 1939. Because we have this record, does it mean Hitler had to have invaded Poland on that day? Surely not. He just did invade Poland, and that is all. Had he not done so, then today we would have a different historical record — Hitler not invading Poland on that day. Gods infallibly foreknowing I will do x no more forces me to do x than God’s remembering I did x, forced me to do x. What God foreknows or remembers is conditional on what I actually (freely) do. |
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I just said the exact opposite of what you have ascribed to me -- I just got through saying that God's foreknowledge does NOT force our action -- idiot! And yes, once you have chosen x, you were free to choose y, but did not -- that is the entire fucking point. Go keep on shitting up your own stupid thread. This is the thread for adults. :wave: |
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We don’t need to invoke God at all; God is just a special (epistemic) thought experiment that is a subset of Aristotle’s problem of future contingents, also known as logical determinism. The question is: Can there be true statements today, about future contingent events? And if so, what, if anything, does that imply? Suppose today I utter the following statement: “Tomorrow, there will be a sea battle.” And then tomorrow comes and a sea battle indeed takes place, so my statement today was true about an event tomorrow. Does that mean the sea battle had to happen? |
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