3 ms·

Looks like I'll wake up tomorrow having still never heard a valid justification for believing in free will.

by hyliandev 10y ago

rocqua 10y ago
I'd like to give it a shot (might not make it before tomorrow). Thing is, I'd need to know how you define free-will.
- hyliandev 10y ago
  Something like: the idea that we are truly in control to any degree higher than a calculator is in control of what numbers it gives you.
  - rocqua 10y ago
    So, agency. The core of my argument is going to be agency. We are in control because our actions often arise out of our own agency. This as opposed to there being another agent being able to decide our actions. For this argument to work at all, we need to define agency/being an agent and establish that humans are agents. Moreover, humans must be at least somewhat unique for having agency. Certainly, we don't want rocks, or calculators to be ascribed agency. I'd say an agent needs 2 things: - Intention - 'Potency', that is the posibility to measure and affect things related to those intentiosn. This has again moved the goalposts, since we now need to establish Intention and potency. I'd posit that, if humans have intention, they certainly have Potency and thus only focus on intention. Intention arose in humans through evolution. Skipping some steps, at one point organisms started measuring their environment, and responding to it. This is a huge evolutionary advantage (i.e. move towards the food and away from the predators). Simple measurement and response isn't quite enough though, but there is another advantage to be had: modeling. An organism is modeling when it isn't just measuring the outside world, but also making predictions. Once these predictions start taking into account possible actions by that organism, and those predictions start informing the actions of the organism, those actions have 'intent'. And that is my argument in short form. Free will arises from choosing actions based on their predicted effect in some internal model. There is some stuff to clear up between being an agent, and having agency over your own actions. It might be some other much more effective agent has more control over you than your own agency. I don't believe any such powerful agents exist though.
    - hyliandev 10y ago
      What would be the difference in human agency and a calculator's agency? Or, a human's agency and the agency of a bad guy in a modern video game with complicated AI?
      - rocqua 10y ago
        Neither the calculator nor the bad guy has intention. They lack a feed-back-loop between potential decision and internal model that evaluates that decision. For the videogame UI, there is a massive limitation on agency because it was fully designed by another agent. That designer agent thus has very large influence over the AI. I'd allow for complicated AI with emergent behavior to have agency up to a point. As a corollary, this means humans could have agency even if they were created by god.
  - hackinthebochs 10y ago
    I think this is pretty easy. We as people have likes, dislikes (i.e. preferred states), desires, etc. We also identify with these preferred states and desires. Furthermore, we have the capacity to alter the world and our behavior to bring about these preferred states and desires. To put it another way, we can alter our behavior for the sake of achieving desired goals. This is a higher level of self control than a calculator in that it has no capacity to alter its behavior. If a calculator had preferred states, it has no capacity to alter its behavior to achieve those preferred states. Now, we still don't have the capacity to change our will and so we don't have "ultimate" (contra-causal) free will. But I think its pretty clear that we have more control than a calculator.
    - hyliandev 10y ago
      I'd like to reword what I meant: we do technically have more control than a calculator. I guess what I mean is something more like: how are we any less deterministic than a calculator? I don't mean, harder to predict. I mean, are we not as deterministic as anything else?
      - hackinthebochs 10y ago
        Sorry meant to reply to this sooner. Yeah, we're just as deterministic. The question then is, does determinism invalidate choice? What is it about choice that necessarily makes it contradict determinism? Is it the idea that the choice is predictable under determinism? Is it that there was ultimately only one option available for you and thus only the illusion of choice? If that's the case then we don't have that kind of choice. The way i see it is that choice/free will is just a useful concept at the level of description of people. The mistake is mixing the levels of description and expecting the resulting statements to be coherent. There's no point in a causal chain where a "choice" happens, yet at the level of description of people with behaviors, choice happens. If we don't expect some kind of metaphysical truth underlying the claim that we make choices, then there's no problem. If you want your choices to have some acausal sort of control, then you're out of luck.

Looks like I'll wake up tomorrow having still never heard a valid justification for believing in free will.

rocqua 10y ago

I'd like to give it a shot (might not make it before tomorrow). Thing is, I'd need to know how you define free-will.

hyliandev 10y ago
Something like: the idea that we are truly in control to any degree higher than a calculator is in control of what numbers it gives you.
- rocqua 10y ago
  So, agency. The core of my argument is going to be agency. We are in control because our actions often arise out of our own agency. This as opposed to there being another agent being able to decide our actions. For this argument to work at all, we need to define agency/being an agent and establish that humans are agents. Moreover, humans must be at least somewhat unique for having agency. Certainly, we don't want rocks, or calculators to be ascribed agency. I'd say an agent needs 2 things: - Intention - 'Potency', that is the posibility to measure and affect things related to those intentiosn. This has again moved the goalposts, since we now need to establish Intention and potency. I'd posit that, if humans have intention, they certainly have Potency and thus only focus on intention. Intention arose in humans through evolution. Skipping some steps, at one point organisms started measuring their environment, and responding to it. This is a huge evolutionary advantage (i.e. move towards the food and away from the predators). Simple measurement and response isn't quite enough though, but there is another advantage to be had: modeling. An organism is modeling when it isn't just measuring the outside world, but also making predictions. Once these predictions start taking into account possible actions by that organism, and those predictions start informing the actions of the organism, those actions have 'intent'. And that is my argument in short form. Free will arises from choosing actions based on their predicted effect in some internal model. There is some stuff to clear up between being an agent, and having agency over your own actions. It might be some other much more effective agent has more control over you than your own agency. I don't believe any such powerful agents exist though.
  - hyliandev 10y ago
    What would be the difference in human agency and a calculator's agency? Or, a human's agency and the agency of a bad guy in a modern video game with complicated AI?
    - rocqua 10y ago
      Neither the calculator nor the bad guy has intention. They lack a feed-back-loop between potential decision and internal model that evaluates that decision. For the videogame UI, there is a massive limitation on agency because it was fully designed by another agent. That designer agent thus has very large influence over the AI. I'd allow for complicated AI with emergent behavior to have agency up to a point. As a corollary, this means humans could have agency even if they were created by god.
- hackinthebochs 10y ago
  I think this is pretty easy. We as people have likes, dislikes (i.e. preferred states), desires, etc. We also identify with these preferred states and desires. Furthermore, we have the capacity to alter the world and our behavior to bring about these preferred states and desires. To put it another way, we can alter our behavior for the sake of achieving desired goals. This is a higher level of self control than a calculator in that it has no capacity to alter its behavior. If a calculator had preferred states, it has no capacity to alter its behavior to achieve those preferred states. Now, we still don't have the capacity to change our will and so we don't have "ultimate" (contra-causal) free will. But I think its pretty clear that we have more control than a calculator.
  - hyliandev 10y ago
    I'd like to reword what I meant: we do technically have more control than a calculator. I guess what I mean is something more like: how are we any less deterministic than a calculator? I don't mean, harder to predict. I mean, are we not as deterministic as anything else?
    - hackinthebochs 10y ago
      Sorry meant to reply to this sooner. Yeah, we're just as deterministic. The question then is, does determinism invalidate choice? What is it about choice that necessarily makes it contradict determinism? Is it the idea that the choice is predictable under determinism? Is it that there was ultimately only one option available for you and thus only the illusion of choice? If that's the case then we don't have that kind of choice. The way i see it is that choice/free will is just a useful concept at the level of description of people. The mistake is mixing the levels of description and expecting the resulting statements to be coherent. There's no point in a causal chain where a "choice" happens, yet at the level of description of people with behaviors, choice happens. If we don't expect some kind of metaphysical truth underlying the claim that we make choices, then there's no problem. If you want your choices to have some acausal sort of control, then you're out of luck.