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I find the most satisfying version of compatibilism one where an agent is mostly determined by 'state' (genes/experiences etc), but the subjective experience of

I find the most satisfying version of compatibilism one where an agent is mostly determined by 'state' (genes/experiences etc), but the subjective experience of expending mental effort (e.g. when overcoming an addiction) is the agent nudging the wave function collapse this way or that. Add in the ability to influence future 'states' and one has a model much more consistent with the subjective experience of making difficult choices.

JackFr 5y ago
Or you can just accept that reductive materialism is not an adequate description of the world.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  If only any other system of thought could make any kind of verifiable prediction, it would be wise to reject materialism. As it is though, you either have magical systems of thought, that reject the very framework of science; or ones which amount to materialism plus some handwaving.
- SuoDuanDao 5y ago
  Oh I accept that, but I'm also wary of theories that seem to handwave material reality. I've found Dione Fortune's writings the most useful in that regard, though she can be... obscure. Quite influential all the same.
- astrange 5y ago
  Does your non-materialist theory involve true randomness (which is not really making a decision), or is it just more mind-stuff behaving deterministically in another dimension (which is not really free will)? I'm not sure there are alternatives to these.
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    I think the standard position of free will non-compatibilists is that there is some dimension of mind whose future at any time T is not uniquely determined by its state at time T-1 (but it is influenced by that state, it's also not purely random). In this model, each agent possessing free will has a series of possible choices with "weights" for each choice pre-determined by the prior state of the agent (their history, their racial instincts etc). Which choice the agent will select cannot be known in advance. Usually it is implied that the agent has a resource of "will" that they must expend more of to select one of the choices with higher "weight". After the agent selects one particular choice, the universe proceeds deterministically (or probabilistically) until the next moment when an agent must make a choice. Whether this phenomenon is happening directly in material reality (the agent can influence wave function collapse or some other such idea) or it is happening in a separate world of mind/spirit and then there is some miraculous reconciliation of the two worlds is somewhat irrelevant.
  - SuoDuanDao 5y ago
    Well, I model cognition and decision as energy in architecture. The Architecture dictates what adjacent states are available and what the default likelihood is of each. The more the energy expands itself because of its preferences, the more it can nudge the outcome towards one of the less likely adjacent states. Any outcome changes the state of the architecture and the architecture changes the state of the energy, so the two engage in a kind of coevolution. Here's why I believe in free will: The preferences of the energy are subjective, not objective[1]. Its inputs are dictated by the architecture it resides in, but the meaning it attaches to them are determined internally and infinitely[2] more complex. So for example, someone who loves exercising gets very much the same nerve signals as someone who hates it. The difference is in the meaning each attaches to the experience, and meaning is not objective. [1] AKA 'the hard problem of consciousness' [2] Insofar as internal communication happens across a higher-dimensional manifold than its communication with the architecture. For ease of visualization I imagine a three-dimensional gas interacting with the two-dimensional surface of a building, but I am working on a model that properly accounts for time.
tsimionescu 5y ago
That's not compatibilism - as long as "will" can influence the physical world, you have a non-materialist philosophy. Nothing wrong with that, but it's very strange to call it compatibilism. For what it's worth, I don't see any reason to imagine that hard decisions are of any other quality than easy decisions. It's part of my history and experience just as much that I prefer to eat salty foods than sweet ones as it is that I sometimes abstain from eating that pizza to try to manage my waistline, or refuse that job offer because I don't want to work for a company I don't find ethical.
- SuoDuanDao 5y ago
  Good to know - from the context I thought compatibilism simply meant that 'will' could influence the physical world and the physical world got to have a say as well. But I'm not sure what to make of your second paragraph - doesn't saying there are hard and easy decisions require there be a difference of quality between the categories?
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    Compatibilism refers to the position that "free will" can be meaningfully accepted to exist in a purely deterministic world. It is the position that even if we accept that your actions 10 years from now could have been predicted with 100% accuracy the very second the Big Bang happened, we can still hold that you have free will in a meaningful sense. The name refers to the idea that free will is compatible with a perfectly determined future. > doesn't saying there are hard and easy decisions require there be a difference of quality between the categories? Not necessarily. There is a difference of "quantity" if you want, but not quality. It's like the following model: it's easy to compute 1+1, and it's hard to compute 19312123+123468. But they are not qualitatively different, they don't need different explanations: they both have the same nature, they use the same algorithm, one is just a bigger amount of state than the other.

JackFr 5y ago

Or you can just accept that reductive materialism is not an adequate description of the world.

tsimionescu 5y ago
If only any other system of thought could make any kind of verifiable prediction, it would be wise to reject materialism. As it is though, you either have magical systems of thought, that reject the very framework of science; or ones which amount to materialism plus some handwaving.
SuoDuanDao 5y ago
Oh I accept that, but I'm also wary of theories that seem to handwave material reality. I've found Dione Fortune's writings the most useful in that regard, though she can be... obscure. Quite influential all the same.
astrange 5y ago
Does your non-materialist theory involve true randomness (which is not really making a decision), or is it just more mind-stuff behaving deterministically in another dimension (which is not really free will)? I'm not sure there are alternatives to these.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  I think the standard position of free will non-compatibilists is that there is some dimension of mind whose future at any time T is not uniquely determined by its state at time T-1 (but it is influenced by that state, it's also not purely random). In this model, each agent possessing free will has a series of possible choices with "weights" for each choice pre-determined by the prior state of the agent (their history, their racial instincts etc). Which choice the agent will select cannot be known in advance. Usually it is implied that the agent has a resource of "will" that they must expend more of to select one of the choices with higher "weight". After the agent selects one particular choice, the universe proceeds deterministically (or probabilistically) until the next moment when an agent must make a choice. Whether this phenomenon is happening directly in material reality (the agent can influence wave function collapse or some other such idea) or it is happening in a separate world of mind/spirit and then there is some miraculous reconciliation of the two worlds is somewhat irrelevant.
- SuoDuanDao 5y ago
  Well, I model cognition and decision as energy in architecture. The Architecture dictates what adjacent states are available and what the default likelihood is of each. The more the energy expands itself because of its preferences, the more it can nudge the outcome towards one of the less likely adjacent states. Any outcome changes the state of the architecture and the architecture changes the state of the energy, so the two engage in a kind of coevolution. Here's why I believe in free will: The preferences of the energy are subjective, not objective[1]. Its inputs are dictated by the architecture it resides in, but the meaning it attaches to them are determined internally and infinitely[2] more complex. So for example, someone who loves exercising gets very much the same nerve signals as someone who hates it. The difference is in the meaning each attaches to the experience, and meaning is not objective. [1] AKA 'the hard problem of consciousness' [2] Insofar as internal communication happens across a higher-dimensional manifold than its communication with the architecture. For ease of visualization I imagine a three-dimensional gas interacting with the two-dimensional surface of a building, but I am working on a model that properly accounts for time.

tsimionescu 5y ago

That's not compatibilism - as long as "will" can influence the physical world, you have a non-materialist philosophy. Nothing wrong with that, but it's very strange to call it compatibilism. For what it's worth, I don't see any reason to imagine that hard decisions are of any other quality than easy decisions. It's part of my history and experience just as much that I prefer to eat salty foods than sweet ones as it is that I sometimes abstain from eating that pizza to try to manage my waistline, or refuse that job offer because I don't want to work for a company I don't find ethical.

SuoDuanDao 5y ago
Good to know - from the context I thought compatibilism simply meant that 'will' could influence the physical world and the physical world got to have a say as well. But I'm not sure what to make of your second paragraph - doesn't saying there are hard and easy decisions require there be a difference of quality between the categories?
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  Compatibilism refers to the position that "free will" can be meaningfully accepted to exist in a purely deterministic world. It is the position that even if we accept that your actions 10 years from now could have been predicted with 100% accuracy the very second the Big Bang happened, we can still hold that you have free will in a meaningful sense. The name refers to the idea that free will is compatible with a perfectly determined future. > doesn't saying there are hard and easy decisions require there be a difference of quality between the categories? Not necessarily. There is a difference of "quantity" if you want, but not quality. It's like the following model: it's easy to compute 1+1, and it's hard to compute 19312123+123468. But they are not qualitatively different, they don't need different explanations: they both have the same nature, they use the same algorithm, one is just a bigger amount of state than the other.