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> Maybe philosophical free will is a solution in search of a non-theological problem. I don't think it's a theological problem; I think it's the way we think a

by gwd 6y ago

> Maybe philosophical free will is a solution in search of a non-theological problem. I don't think it's a theological problem; I think it's the way we think about things every day. Consider four situations: 1. You walk into the kitchen and a pan which you'd placed on top of the fridge at a precarious angle falls on your head. 2. You walk into the kitchen, and your spouse, who honestly thinks you're a burglar who has broken into the house, hits you on the head with a pan. When they realizes it's you, they apologize. 3. You're standing in the kitchen, having an argument with your spouse. They get very angry, grab a pan, and smack you in the head with it. 4. You're standing in the kitchen, having an argument with your spouse. They get very angry, and you see their eyes briefly flit to the pan; but instead they calm themselves down and refrain from hitting you with it. Although the injury to your body may be the same in cases 1-3, our attitudes towards these things are completely different. In the case of #1, the pan indeed had no choice but to fall on your head; it cannot be blamed in the least. In the case of #2, a human being did it, but they had a good justification for it. In the case of #3, we say your spouse is at fault and blame them. In the case of #4, we recognize that your spouse resisted the temptation to hit you, and honor them for their restraint (or at least say they were doing what they should have). And if that was you whose eyes flitted over to the pan, you are aware of a struggle, and of making a choice to lash out or show restraint. But if the universe is a combination of determinism and randomness, then what's the actual difference between #1 and #3? All of them are physical processes which, given the circumstances, really couldn't have been any different. In other words, free will is not some arcane theological concept: a description both of our daily experience of making moral choices ourselves, and our expectations and attitudes towards others.

analog31 6y ago
In cases 1-3, the outputs are all the same (getting hit wit a pan) but the inputs are different. So it still could be that my spouse's behavior is a function of the surrounding circumstances. Another analogy is two primitive societies that are both experiencing repeated episodes where gum is found on the floor of buses. In one society, a person is found to be likely to have done it, and is forced to make a speech at the public square about bus etiquette. In another society, a person is chosen at random. Over the generations, the first society is found to have cleaner buses, and without remembering the way that their custom was invented, call it "personal responsibility."
- gwd 6y ago
  But you haven't said what is qualitatively different about them. Consider instead a teacup which falls off the table when I bump it while trying to pick up something underneath the table instead. So we have three different "setups" and "triggers: A. Setup: Pan it precarious position on fridge. Trigger: My footsteps walking into the kitchen vibrating the floor, vibrating the fridge, loosening the pan and causing it to fall. B. Setup: Teacup in precarious position on the edge of the table. Trigger: Me bumping the table leg, loosening the teacup and causing it to fall. C. Setup: The entire life history of my spouse (including perhaps things I've said and done). Trigger: Something I said, triggering various thoughts and responses in my spouse's brain, causing them to want to hit me. We class A and B as the same thing (inanimate objects with no choice). Should we classify C the same way? Free will to me is a bit like "dark matter" or "dark energy": I don't know exactly what it is, but when I try to "do the math" without it, things don't add up.
  - analog31 6y ago
    >>> Should we classify C the same way? Probably not if you want to survive. ;-) I'm certainly agreeing that it's an interesting puzzle. One particularly curious thing is that the classification scheme is not just descriptive, but is itself one of the sensory inputs that influences behavior. So it's both a puzzle of understanding human behavior, but also coupled to a social phenomenon. I don't know of a society that doesn't classify C differently, so it may have some survival advantage.
  - joefourier 6y ago
    Why don't things add up? Your spouse's behaviour is governed by the same physical laws as the teacups and pans, but they are certainly not an inanimate objects incapable of choice. The problem, I think, is that humans seem to believe that lower-level explanations invalidate higher-level ones. However, that doesn't mean that you should say there is no difference between "Hello world" and a web browser because both are "just" x86 instructions in the end, or "just" transistors being switched on and off. However, good look debugging a web browser by looking at the behavior of individual transistors, even though that is all there is in the end. I think you are looking at it from the wrong angle - complex human behaviour isn't reduced to simple physical laws, but rather, simple physical laws add up to complex human behaviour.

by gwd 6y ago

analog31 6y ago

In cases 1-3, the outputs are all the same (getting hit wit a pan) but the inputs are different. So it still could be that my spouse's behavior is a function of the surrounding circumstances. Another analogy is two primitive societies that are both experiencing repeated episodes where gum is found on the floor of buses. In one society, a person is found to be likely to have done it, and is forced to make a speech at the public square about bus etiquette. In another society, a person is chosen at random. Over the generations, the first society is found to have cleaner buses, and without remembering the way that their custom was invented, call it "personal responsibility."

gwd 6y ago
But you haven't said what is qualitatively different about them. Consider instead a teacup which falls off the table when I bump it while trying to pick up something underneath the table instead. So we have three different "setups" and "triggers: A. Setup: Pan it precarious position on fridge. Trigger: My footsteps walking into the kitchen vibrating the floor, vibrating the fridge, loosening the pan and causing it to fall. B. Setup: Teacup in precarious position on the edge of the table. Trigger: Me bumping the table leg, loosening the teacup and causing it to fall. C. Setup: The entire life history of my spouse (including perhaps things I've said and done). Trigger: Something I said, triggering various thoughts and responses in my spouse's brain, causing them to want to hit me. We class A and B as the same thing (inanimate objects with no choice). Should we classify C the same way? Free will to me is a bit like "dark matter" or "dark energy": I don't know exactly what it is, but when I try to "do the math" without it, things don't add up.
- analog31 6y ago
  >>> Should we classify C the same way? Probably not if you want to survive. ;-) I'm certainly agreeing that it's an interesting puzzle. One particularly curious thing is that the classification scheme is not just descriptive, but is itself one of the sensory inputs that influences behavior. So it's both a puzzle of understanding human behavior, but also coupled to a social phenomenon. I don't know of a society that doesn't classify C differently, so it may have some survival advantage.
- joefourier 6y ago
  Why don't things add up? Your spouse's behaviour is governed by the same physical laws as the teacups and pans, but they are certainly not an inanimate objects incapable of choice. The problem, I think, is that humans seem to believe that lower-level explanations invalidate higher-level ones. However, that doesn't mean that you should say there is no difference between "Hello world" and a web browser because both are "just" x86 instructions in the end, or "just" transistors being switched on and off. However, good look debugging a web browser by looking at the behavior of individual transistors, even though that is all there is in the end. I think you are looking at it from the wrong angle - complex human behaviour isn't reduced to simple physical laws, but rather, simple physical laws add up to complex human behaviour.