5 ms·

Well, non-determinacy is a necessary condition, but that doesn't mean indeterminacy is. Non-determinacy can be divided into at least two things, indeterminacy (

Well, non-determinacy is a necessary condition, but that doesn't mean indeterminacy is. Non-determinacy can be divided into at least two things, indeterminacy (i.e. determined stochastically) and agent-determinacy (i.e. determined by the actor).

Qz 16y ago
But what determines what the actor determines? 'agent-determinacy' just seems like a synonym for the idea of free will rather than anything that can justify it.
- mbateman 16y ago
  According to agent-causal views, at a certain level nothing else determines what the actor determines. I don't here want to argue which view of human action is the right one, I just want to point out (or argue, since even this is contentious) that there's a three-fold alternative: determined, random, and free. The "free will" in this paper is actually the second and not the third alternative. In the paper they actually protest against this move, arguing that the kind of randomness involved in entanglement is importantly different than stochastic randomness. I only dimly understand the the Kochen-Specker theorem so I can't follow all the details of the argument in this paper, but the resulting view still seems to fall under indeterminism. So alternative title (and subtitle) for the paper: "The Indeterminism Theorem: If Humans Act Indeterministically, Then So Do Fundamental Particles."
  - Qz 16y ago
    I just want to point out (or argue, since even this is contentious) that there's a three-fold alternative: determined, random, and free. The "free will" in this paper is actually the second and not the third alternative. My issue is that I understand determined, and random, but I don't understand 'free'. If you read the article you just linked to, they point out that in the case of this experiment, 'random' is equivalent to 'free', as the free-will human experimenters can be replaced by a computer program with a truly random number generator, but that the non-determinacy necessary for the random number generator to work is the same exact freedom necessary for a human experiment to have 'free' choice over the experiment. Furthermore, that the entangled nature of the particles precludes the type of 'randomness involved in entanglement' that you suggest. Entanglement is specifically non-random in exactly the quality at issue in this experiment. Basically the result of the theorem (as relevant to this conversation) is that 'random' and 'free' are equivalent. There is simply determinate or non-determinate.
  - ugh 16y ago
    Determined and random I can understand, free I can’t. How can any actions be free (as in not determined and not random)? That, to me, seems impossible, at least in a great many situations where humans would claim to have free will. How can any action a agent makes be meaningful without causal links to the outside? Determinism to me seems to be a requirement for agents to make useful decisions.
    - Qz 16y ago
      How can any action a agent makes be meaningful without causal links to the outside? One of the responses that has been raised to that issue goes like this: At any point we have a number of meaningful choices from which to choose. For example, if someone calls you up and asks you to go out to dinner with them, it would be meaningful to say, "sure that's great!" or "no thanks maybe later". In any situation like that, we are 'free' to choose from a set of meaningful choices. Each is meaningful in that it is related to the past, but regardless of eventually choosing one choice, we could have chosen another of those choices, and still had it be meaningful. I don't particularly buy that argument, as the idea of 'could have chosen something else' is just a further escaping of the question of free will. But it is a way of looking at it that seems to avoid the randomness/lack of meaningfulness associated with the idea of free will.
      - ugh 16y ago
        I’m also not sure how that solves the problem. It could be that in any such situation our brain runs a little algorithm that takes into account past experiences (there is your causal link to the outside) or our brain maybe decides at random. Most probably it does a little of both. One is deterministic, the other is random, no free will (as defined before) there. Do proponents of free will (as defined before) claim that there is some entity somewhere, decoupled from the rest of the brain, that makes those decisions? That’s maybe unlikely but, yeah, it is possible. It’s just that I think that such a entity would have to blind to the outside world. If it would base its decisions on information about the outside world it would be just as deterministic as the little algorithm the brain could also run to make decisions. It would essentially be the same and no free will (as defined before). I also don’t see how such a blind entity could make meaningful decisions if there is no information there to base those decisions on. It could easily make random decisions but that's also no free will. (Thinking through the consequences of such a blind entity leads to some quite absurd results: You couldn’t give this entity the names of the alternatives since that would create a causal link to the outside world. I’m not even sure whether you could tell it the number of possible alternatives without creating a causal link to outside world.) (Oh, and if you are wondering why I’m writing ‘as defined before’ whenever I write free will: I do think free will is a useful concept. It’s just that you need determinism for it to work.)
  - siglesias 16y ago
    Unfortunately arguments about free will frequently become thickly tangled webs of sloppy language use and poor word choice decisions. I'm more of the Wittgensteinian school (and that of Schopenhauer, for that matter) that simply examines the common language use cases of "free" and "free will." Thinking about this deeply, you may find that most people use "free" in cases in which they mean, "not restricted," as in, "free as a bird," "free to speak my mind," etc..., in which case we aren't speaking of "freedom to," but rather "freedom from." And here we can think of all sorts of instances in which society is actively trying to shed restrictions on freedom rather than thinking of new ways to create freedoms (and even then, creating freedom is typically loosening certain identified constraints, but only after those constraints are identified). If we examine the "freedom to" case, we get confused by running into an infinitely regressing causal nexus: "Sure, I can do what I will, but can I WILL what I will?" and so on. A blind alley that doesn't have an answer or practical purpose in answering. Hopefully it is plain as day that our actions aren't stochastically random and are ostensibly NOT anything like the results of a random number generator. At the same time the dichotomy in our everyday actions between determined and fully-undetermined also seems off the mark. At best we can say that we live in a world filled with complex relationships between what restricts us and what allows us to do what we desire, and that those desires themselves change based on a number of mutating social and natural factors. Now, if we turn to mathematics and accept its limitations and presumptions, then I challenge anybody to find a better logical or mathematical formulation for "proving" free will than the negative definition "not determined by prior events." It seems anyway that the negative definition "freedom from" jives better with our intuition than its baffling positive brother "freedom to."
  - _delirium 16y ago
    My guess on why they came up with the title they did is that they know a lot about physics, but spent very little time thinking about free will, and so picked a catchy if somewhat inaccurate title for PR reasons, and didn't bother to research it much. That seems in evidence from how little the paper discusses free will (it doesn't even acknowledge that there's controversy over its definition, and that their definition is not a particularly common one). Seems sort of sloppy on the whole, and I really dislike those moves in science, since there's no scientifically good reason for it. Just pick the more precise, accurate title; there's no benefit to physics from attaching a loaded term like "free will" to something that has a clearer, more precise term for it, especially if you attach it inaccurately. In my own papers, I try to do that, and then if I really want to note the connection to a philosophical concept, I note it as a possible connection in a future-work or possible-implications type of section: "if we take free will to be related to 'the stuff discussed in this paper', as some philosophers do (cite), our theorem may have implications for the existence of free will". But obviously that, while more honest, isn't as good PR as naming your thing the Free Will Theorem.
    - Qz 16y ago
      If you read the paper linked above, rather than the wikipedia article, it becomes pretty clear that they are very explicitly talking about free will and that the result of the theorem is directly related to the quantum mechanical science behind the thought experiment. So saying 'there's no scientifically good reason for it' is off the mark. It's also not specifically saying there is free will, it's only saying, if an experimenter has free will in deciding how to do an experiment, then the subatomic particles have the exact same kind of free will in the result that is shown from the measurement. If by some other method we conclude that an experimenter does not actually have this 'free will' thing, then the theorem doesn't really say anything about that. But the whole point of the theorem is directly related to the concept of free will, and naming it the Free Will Theorem is perfectly accurate.
      - deleted 16y ago
        [deleted]
kd0amg 16y ago
Ok, I was not aware of this difference in terminology. Thanks.

Qz 16y ago

But what determines what the actor determines? 'agent-determinacy' just seems like a synonym for the idea of free will rather than anything that can justify it.

mbateman 16y ago
According to agent-causal views, at a certain level nothing else determines what the actor determines. I don't here want to argue which view of human action is the right one, I just want to point out (or argue, since even this is contentious) that there's a three-fold alternative: determined, random, and free. The "free will" in this paper is actually the second and not the third alternative. In the paper they actually protest against this move, arguing that the kind of randomness involved in entanglement is importantly different than stochastic randomness. I only dimly understand the the Kochen-Specker theorem so I can't follow all the details of the argument in this paper, but the resulting view still seems to fall under indeterminism. So alternative title (and subtitle) for the paper: "The Indeterminism Theorem: If Humans Act Indeterministically, Then So Do Fundamental Particles."
- Qz 16y ago
  I just want to point out (or argue, since even this is contentious) that there's a three-fold alternative: determined, random, and free. The "free will" in this paper is actually the second and not the third alternative. My issue is that I understand determined, and random, but I don't understand 'free'. If you read the article you just linked to, they point out that in the case of this experiment, 'random' is equivalent to 'free', as the free-will human experimenters can be replaced by a computer program with a truly random number generator, but that the non-determinacy necessary for the random number generator to work is the same exact freedom necessary for a human experiment to have 'free' choice over the experiment. Furthermore, that the entangled nature of the particles precludes the type of 'randomness involved in entanglement' that you suggest. Entanglement is specifically non-random in exactly the quality at issue in this experiment. Basically the result of the theorem (as relevant to this conversation) is that 'random' and 'free' are equivalent. There is simply determinate or non-determinate.
- ugh 16y ago
  Determined and random I can understand, free I can’t. How can any actions be free (as in not determined and not random)? That, to me, seems impossible, at least in a great many situations where humans would claim to have free will. How can any action a agent makes be meaningful without causal links to the outside? Determinism to me seems to be a requirement for agents to make useful decisions.
  - Qz 16y ago
    How can any action a agent makes be meaningful without causal links to the outside? One of the responses that has been raised to that issue goes like this: At any point we have a number of meaningful choices from which to choose. For example, if someone calls you up and asks you to go out to dinner with them, it would be meaningful to say, "sure that's great!" or "no thanks maybe later". In any situation like that, we are 'free' to choose from a set of meaningful choices. Each is meaningful in that it is related to the past, but regardless of eventually choosing one choice, we could have chosen another of those choices, and still had it be meaningful. I don't particularly buy that argument, as the idea of 'could have chosen something else' is just a further escaping of the question of free will. But it is a way of looking at it that seems to avoid the randomness/lack of meaningfulness associated with the idea of free will.
    - ugh 16y ago
      I’m also not sure how that solves the problem. It could be that in any such situation our brain runs a little algorithm that takes into account past experiences (there is your causal link to the outside) or our brain maybe decides at random. Most probably it does a little of both. One is deterministic, the other is random, no free will (as defined before) there. Do proponents of free will (as defined before) claim that there is some entity somewhere, decoupled from the rest of the brain, that makes those decisions? That’s maybe unlikely but, yeah, it is possible. It’s just that I think that such a entity would have to blind to the outside world. If it would base its decisions on information about the outside world it would be just as deterministic as the little algorithm the brain could also run to make decisions. It would essentially be the same and no free will (as defined before). I also don’t see how such a blind entity could make meaningful decisions if there is no information there to base those decisions on. It could easily make random decisions but that's also no free will. (Thinking through the consequences of such a blind entity leads to some quite absurd results: You couldn’t give this entity the names of the alternatives since that would create a causal link to the outside world. I’m not even sure whether you could tell it the number of possible alternatives without creating a causal link to outside world.) (Oh, and if you are wondering why I’m writing ‘as defined before’ whenever I write free will: I do think free will is a useful concept. It’s just that you need determinism for it to work.)
- siglesias 16y ago
  Unfortunately arguments about free will frequently become thickly tangled webs of sloppy language use and poor word choice decisions. I'm more of the Wittgensteinian school (and that of Schopenhauer, for that matter) that simply examines the common language use cases of "free" and "free will." Thinking about this deeply, you may find that most people use "free" in cases in which they mean, "not restricted," as in, "free as a bird," "free to speak my mind," etc..., in which case we aren't speaking of "freedom to," but rather "freedom from." And here we can think of all sorts of instances in which society is actively trying to shed restrictions on freedom rather than thinking of new ways to create freedoms (and even then, creating freedom is typically loosening certain identified constraints, but only after those constraints are identified). If we examine the "freedom to" case, we get confused by running into an infinitely regressing causal nexus: "Sure, I can do what I will, but can I WILL what I will?" and so on. A blind alley that doesn't have an answer or practical purpose in answering. Hopefully it is plain as day that our actions aren't stochastically random and are ostensibly NOT anything like the results of a random number generator. At the same time the dichotomy in our everyday actions between determined and fully-undetermined also seems off the mark. At best we can say that we live in a world filled with complex relationships between what restricts us and what allows us to do what we desire, and that those desires themselves change based on a number of mutating social and natural factors. Now, if we turn to mathematics and accept its limitations and presumptions, then I challenge anybody to find a better logical or mathematical formulation for "proving" free will than the negative definition "not determined by prior events." It seems anyway that the negative definition "freedom from" jives better with our intuition than its baffling positive brother "freedom to."
- _delirium 16y ago
  My guess on why they came up with the title they did is that they know a lot about physics, but spent very little time thinking about free will, and so picked a catchy if somewhat inaccurate title for PR reasons, and didn't bother to research it much. That seems in evidence from how little the paper discusses free will (it doesn't even acknowledge that there's controversy over its definition, and that their definition is not a particularly common one). Seems sort of sloppy on the whole, and I really dislike those moves in science, since there's no scientifically good reason for it. Just pick the more precise, accurate title; there's no benefit to physics from attaching a loaded term like "free will" to something that has a clearer, more precise term for it, especially if you attach it inaccurately. In my own papers, I try to do that, and then if I really want to note the connection to a philosophical concept, I note it as a possible connection in a future-work or possible-implications type of section: "if we take free will to be related to 'the stuff discussed in this paper', as some philosophers do (cite), our theorem may have implications for the existence of free will". But obviously that, while more honest, isn't as good PR as naming your thing the Free Will Theorem.
  - Qz 16y ago
    If you read the paper linked above, rather than the wikipedia article, it becomes pretty clear that they are very explicitly talking about free will and that the result of the theorem is directly related to the quantum mechanical science behind the thought experiment. So saying 'there's no scientifically good reason for it' is off the mark. It's also not specifically saying there is free will, it's only saying, if an experimenter has free will in deciding how to do an experiment, then the subatomic particles have the exact same kind of free will in the result that is shown from the measurement. If by some other method we conclude that an experimenter does not actually have this 'free will' thing, then the theorem doesn't really say anything about that. But the whole point of the theorem is directly related to the concept of free will, and naming it the Free Will Theorem is perfectly accurate.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]

kd0amg 16y ago

Ok, I was not aware of this difference in terminology. Thanks.