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That may be true, but I think our current conception of free will necessitates some sort of nondeterministic mechanism. Our brains, being physical systems, appe
by netizen-936824 6y ago
That may be true, but I think our current conception of free will necessitates some sort of nondeterministic mechanism. Our brains, being physical systems, appear to be entirely deterministic.
- chordalkeyboard 6y agoI think physical systems are probabilistic rather than deterministic.
- plutonorm 6y agoWhy does determinism preclude free will? If I am the physical processes that occur in my brain, then my decisions are rooted in those processes. Even if those processes are deterministic and there was only ever one outcome for my decisions, I can still say that I have free will because it was the very unfolding of those deterministic processes which led me to me to expressing my free will. There is only a clash between free will and determinism when you imagine that your consciousness is in some vague sense separate from the physical world.
- alisonkisk 6y agoWhat is your definition of free will? > unfolding of those deterministic processes Doesn't sound free to me. Is a computer running a program exercising its free will?
- netizen-936824 6y agoI think this actually perfectly shows how nebulous our definition of "free will" is. I sure can't define it, I can only observe what other people seem to think it means. The definition I tend to observe is one that fits in with a dualistic view, of some outside force making decisions for our body.
- simondw 6y agoBut that just pushes it back a level. How does the outside force arrive at its decisions? Whatever it is, it has an effect on a body, so it must be measurable; could we perform something like Libet's experiment on it?
- cortesoft 6y agoI am not sure why the 'outside force' is required for free will. What characteristic does that provide that is needed for free will? If the physical world is non-deterministic, then there is nothing stopping a physical thing from having free will. If an 'outside force' can exert free will, why can't a physical thing?
- cortesoft 6y agoWhy does a brain being a physical system necessitate it being deterministic? It seems like the more we learn about quantum mechanics, the more things seem to be probabilistic than deterministic. The physical brain being probabilistic fits perfectly with the idea of free will.
- netizen-936824 6y agoQM does have some impact on functional biochemistry, but I highly doubt its enough to make the system nondeterministic at any appreciable level. Not to mention, do we truly know that any part of QM is nondeterministic? Perhaps the nondeterministic appearance of QM is just our lack of understanding combined with our limited perspective.
- PeterisP 6y agoI don't consider randomness as any more "free" than determinism - the concept of "choice" does not appear anywhere on the whole tradeoff spectrum between total randomness and total determinism. It does emphasise the point that any discussion based on a dichotomy between determinism and free will is fundamentally flawed, as randomness can be a relevant factor, so an anti-determinism argument is not necessarily a pro-free-will argument.
- cortesoft 6y agoWell, the definition of randomness is basically the inverse of determinable... it is something that is not predictable. The important characteristic for randomness is that there exists no knowledge that, if possessed, would allow you to predict the outcome. In that sense, free will meets the definition of random. In other words, not all randomness is free will, but all free will is random. So yes, anti-determinism does not prove free will, but determinism would disprove it.