Free will in philosphy and science

[GdB]

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:

But note: If I had chosen otherwise, that too, would have been determined. That choice, had I made it, would have, too, been subsumable under a timelessly true physical law, and would have been deducible from that law and a statement of antecedent conditions. Clearly, I could not choose both alternatives; but I could choose either. And in choosing the one, I ‘made’ it the one that was deducible from physical laws and antecedent conditions. But in every sense in which one could possibly want, I was free to choose the other.

For me that sounds a little bit too much like that my choice makes an until the present unknown physical law true. I don't think that there are infinite many physical laws. The idea of physics is to reduce the number of entities and physical laws as much as possible. So I would think that a true physical description of what I will do possibly already exists, but it is at a lower level (closer to the level of neurons, molecules, and atoms). For me Swartz is going one step too far here.

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.