4 ms·

I think free will is the feeling of being a choice making agent in the absence of unreasonable external constraints. This isn't original or unique with me, and

I think free will is the feeling of being a choice making agent in the absence of unreasonable external constraints. This isn't original or unique with me, and I've held this view for quite a large number of years (e.g. this comment from 6 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11740316 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11740316). It fits pretty well with what people mean when they say 'free will' or 'free choice' in normal every day life (i.e. if you have a gun to your head, you don't have free will, but in lots of other cases you do). Your definition of it being entirely nonsensical is clearly even worse than this definition for being accepted the way most people use it, since your view implies that there is nothing people mean when then say 'free will', while the fact that almost everyone can tell the difference between someone robbing a bank of their own free will and someone robbing a bank because their loved one is being held hostage tells you that it really does have meaning.

vidarh 5y ago
Try probing what people think having free will actually means, and you'll quickly see that people tend to react very strongly if you suggest that they don't have some vague undefined ability to take actions that are not defined merely by the state of their brains and inputs. To me what you describe does not at all match what I've observed people try to defend as free will whenever you peer beneath the vague veneer of external coercion. > Your definition of it being entirely nonsensical is clearly even worse than this definition for being accepted the way most people use it, since your view implies that there is nothing people mean when then say 'free will', when there clearly is something that is meant. That is not at all what I meant by calling it nonsensical. I am very sure that people do mean "something" and my experience is that this "something" includes a very strongly held belief that peoples actions can't be predicted based purely on the state of their brains and inputs. Try to suggest to people that maybe they're effectively just machines, and you'll find a lot of people balking at it, because it e.g. would imply no soul or anything to set us apart. What I meant by calling it nonsensical is that when you start probing into why people hold beliefs like that, you'll find it evaporate as you probe. You'll find people can't put up arguments for, but more critically few can even describe a version of free will that fits their beliefs. You've given a definition, and that's great, but it's a definition that defines away the problem under discussion - nobody who argues against free will would disagree with you that there exists a feeling of being a choice making agent. We disagree with those who claim that we are choice making agents other than in the same way that an automaton can be. So you are right in the sense that free will by the definition you have given exists. But that's not the kind of free will most people here who are denying free will are debating. If anything, the definition you have given tends to be an important answer to those who believe in "hard free will" to disambiguate them for why you should keep making choices if you don't have free will: Because whether or not it is an illusion, we do have that feeling, and whether or not we have control over the choices made, if we don't make any choices we still suffer the consequences. So the only logical choice, illusory or not, is to still make choices as if you have free will whether or not you think we have "hard free will". That said, once one decides that "hard free will" doesn't exist, it tends to have a significant effect on personal beliefs. E.g. punishment (as opposed to rehabilitation, or incarceration for protection) becomes cruel if you accept that "hard free will" is an illusion - a person may believe they have free will, but if it's an illusion we're punishing people for things they didn't have an actual choice in. (Note that this does not really affect the issue of coercion - a person threatened with a gun to take your example might still be due different treatement than one who did something bad without being threatened, because the latter is still more likely to be a risk to others; but there's a difference between risk mitigation/protection/rehabilitation and vengeance - if it was a truly free choice based on "hard free will" vengeance might well be morally justified, while without "hard free will" vengeance is morally horrendous)
- kybernetikos 5y ago
  You've got some interesting points there, but I think that the reaction some people have to the idea that they might be deterministic is actually to do with dualism and not free will. People try to pull free will into the dualism debate because they are desperately looking for reasons to back up their feeling that they are essentially more than pure material. I don't think that these two topics really have much to do with each other, which I think can be seen by looking at what people really mean when they actually talk about free choice and free will in everyday life rather than in philosophical conversations where they're already trying to justify a position.
  - vidarh 5y ago
    I agree that is probably part of it. In terms of "hard free will" that debate is of course entirely orthogonal - a soul would just be another part of the combined system under consideration, but I can very well see people seeing the two as combined. > I don't think that these two topics really have much to do with each other, which I think can be seen by looking at what people really mean when they actually talk about free choice and free will in everyday life rather than in philosophical conversations where they're already trying to justify a position. I certainly agree that people often conflate these two separate subjects. This is also part of why I push so much on definitions, because so much of the time we speak past each other when discussing these subjects.
- dalmo3 5y ago
  > ability to take actions that are not defined merely by the state of their brains and inputs. How would one prove/falsify that one's actions are merely a function of their brain state and inputs? Even assuming we have a perfect mapping of the brain and perfect measurement of all neural action, experiments still happen over time and the act of observing changes the observed, so you'd never have repeatability. It seems to me that determinism is as unscientific as the soul hypothesis.
  - vidarh 5y ago
    You can reduce that problem arbitrarily: To falsify determinism all you need to show is any instance, however small, of a non-random source of events without a measurable source. To raise serious questions, you don't even need to prove the existence of such an effect - just finding even individual particles reacting in ways that seems to show structure (so e.g. ruling out randomness) without a reasonable idea as to cause would justify substantial effort in identifying the cause, and each failure to identify any would successively and significantly weaken the justification for determinism. In other words: Same as with any other hypothesis for which no experimental data in history indicates otherwise. Given that most of our reality involves trusting cause and effect, and to an extensive amount measuring it, and no such origination has ever been shown, it is justified to consider determinism to be true until there's data to show otherwise.

vidarh 5y ago

Try probing what people think having free will actually means, and you'll quickly see that people tend to react very strongly if you suggest that they don't have some vague undefined ability to take actions that are not defined merely by the state of their brains and inputs. To me what you describe does not at all match what I've observed people try to defend as free will whenever you peer beneath the vague veneer of external coercion. > Your definition of it being entirely nonsensical is clearly even worse than this definition for being accepted the way most people use it, since your view implies that there is nothing people mean when then say 'free will', when there clearly is something that is meant. That is not at all what I meant by calling it nonsensical. I am very sure that people do mean "something" and my experience is that this "something" includes a very strongly held belief that peoples actions can't be predicted based purely on the state of their brains and inputs. Try to suggest to people that maybe they're effectively just machines, and you'll find a lot of people balking at it, because it e.g. would imply no soul or anything to set us apart. What I meant by calling it nonsensical is that when you start probing into why people hold beliefs like that, you'll find it evaporate as you probe. You'll find people can't put up arguments for, but more critically few can even describe a version of free will that fits their beliefs. You've given a definition, and that's great, but it's a definition that defines away the problem under discussion - nobody who argues against free will would disagree with you that there exists a feeling of being a choice making agent. We disagree with those who claim that we are choice making agents other than in the same way that an automaton can be. So you are right in the sense that free will by the definition you have given exists. But that's not the kind of free will most people here who are denying free will are debating. If anything, the definition you have given tends to be an important answer to those who believe in "hard free will" to disambiguate them for why you should keep making choices if you don't have free will: Because whether or not it is an illusion, we do have that feeling, and whether or not we have control over the choices made, if we don't make any choices we still suffer the consequences. So the only logical choice, illusory or not, is to still make choices as if you have free will whether or not you think we have "hard free will". That said, once one decides that "hard free will" doesn't exist, it tends to have a significant effect on personal beliefs. E.g. punishment (as opposed to rehabilitation, or incarceration for protection) becomes cruel if you accept that "hard free will" is an illusion - a person may believe they have free will, but if it's an illusion we're punishing people for things they didn't have an actual choice in. (Note that this does not really affect the issue of coercion - a person threatened with a gun to take your example might still be due different treatement than one who did something bad without being threatened, because the latter is still more likely to be a risk to others; but there's a difference between risk mitigation/protection/rehabilitation and vengeance - if it was a truly free choice based on "hard free will" vengeance might well be morally justified, while without "hard free will" vengeance is morally horrendous)

kybernetikos 5y ago
You've got some interesting points there, but I think that the reaction some people have to the idea that they might be deterministic is actually to do with dualism and not free will. People try to pull free will into the dualism debate because they are desperately looking for reasons to back up their feeling that they are essentially more than pure material. I don't think that these two topics really have much to do with each other, which I think can be seen by looking at what people really mean when they actually talk about free choice and free will in everyday life rather than in philosophical conversations where they're already trying to justify a position.
- vidarh 5y ago
  I agree that is probably part of it. In terms of "hard free will" that debate is of course entirely orthogonal - a soul would just be another part of the combined system under consideration, but I can very well see people seeing the two as combined. > I don't think that these two topics really have much to do with each other, which I think can be seen by looking at what people really mean when they actually talk about free choice and free will in everyday life rather than in philosophical conversations where they're already trying to justify a position. I certainly agree that people often conflate these two separate subjects. This is also part of why I push so much on definitions, because so much of the time we speak past each other when discussing these subjects.
dalmo3 5y ago
> ability to take actions that are not defined merely by the state of their brains and inputs. How would one prove/falsify that one's actions are merely a function of their brain state and inputs? Even assuming we have a perfect mapping of the brain and perfect measurement of all neural action, experiments still happen over time and the act of observing changes the observed, so you'd never have repeatability. It seems to me that determinism is as unscientific as the soul hypothesis.
- vidarh 5y ago
  You can reduce that problem arbitrarily: To falsify determinism all you need to show is any instance, however small, of a non-random source of events without a measurable source. To raise serious questions, you don't even need to prove the existence of such an effect - just finding even individual particles reacting in ways that seems to show structure (so e.g. ruling out randomness) without a reasonable idea as to cause would justify substantial effort in identifying the cause, and each failure to identify any would successively and significantly weaken the justification for determinism. In other words: Same as with any other hypothesis for which no experimental data in history indicates otherwise. Given that most of our reality involves trusting cause and effect, and to an extensive amount measuring it, and no such origination has ever been shown, it is justified to consider determinism to be true until there's data to show otherwise.