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> You cannot control what you feel, but you can control your actions. I'll respond in a way that I hope is clear and relatively objective. This will take the f

by xpe 3y ago

> You cannot control what you feel, but you can control your actions. I'll respond in a way that I hope is clear and relatively objective. This will take the form of an "if-then" claim nested within another "if-then" claim. IF a person (1) accepts philosophical materialism, but (2) remains agnostic as to quantum effects at macro scale THEN then the following response follows logically: It depends what you mean by "you". If you (a) mean that "you" consists of the body, including the brain; and (b) you recognize there is a physiological difference between _non-volitional_ and _volitional_ choices; then (c) yes, loosely speaking, "you" can control your volitional actions. If you think carefully, you will recognize the above assumptions also mean: - a person's surrounding context plays an essential role in shaping the kinds of actions that are available. - there are no causes other than material ones (such as a soul) You may notice I didn't use the phrase "free will" above. That is very much intentional. Even if you are a philosopher, that word is nearly impossible to use in a way with a definition that a group of people can agree on. See also: "Volition and Action in the Human Brain: Processes, Pathologies, and Reasons" by Itzhak Fried, Patrick Haggard, ... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5678016/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5678016/

empath-nirvana 3y ago
I think there's two conceptions of free will, one is as you described -- a body being able to act in and of itself without any influence of an external force (beyond sensation, physical constraints, etc). That sort of punts on the question of physical determinism, where it doesn't matter if it was possible for you to have done anything other than what you did. You could be a pure clock work automaton making deterministic responses to external stimuli and still have that sort of "free will", but I don't think that would be satisfying to a lot of people. The second kind of free will, I think would be the ability to have a free choice -- that there is some immaterial entity which can act in somehow a non-deterministic way to choose its behavior, that the course of your entire life wasn't set at the big bang -- that not only can you act independently, but that your choices _matter_ and will result in a future that was not predetermined. I think that is what a lot of people would think of as free will, and it's difficult to define or logically support IMO.
- xpe 3y ago
  I can appreciate a lot of the sentiments above, but I don't think the comment's "two conceptions" really 'decomplects' (a Hickeyism) the key ideas. If anything, it smooshes a lot of them together: different definitions of free will, meaning, origin stories, the divine, flavors of determinism, and more.
dr_dshiv 3y ago
Note that non-material causes can be just as deterministic (if not more so) as matter. Logic and math are physical but not material, for instance.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  > Logic and math are physical but not material, for instance. Logic and math are neither physical, nor material, nor causal.
  - xpe 3y ago
    I think some might be slightly troubled by hearing that logic is not causal. But I agree. One can _test_ a set of statements to see if they are valid logical deductions from another set of statements. Even if true, this does not mean that the deducible statements are _caused_. In some cases, that statement from above (the deduced one) might be 'realized' (noticed by people) before its premises are! We might even be able to logically prove it is true without the other set of statements! Why? There are multiple logical paths (not always mapping to reality) that _could_ prove a particular statement.
  - Retric 3y ago
    When living things or machines do math they are doing a physical thing. The abstract concept of mathematics doesn’t need to exist for that to happen.
  - dr_dshiv 3y ago
    They are physical causes but they are abstracted from matter. The underlying cause originates from the math/logic, not the material instantiation. Physicalism is often conflated with materialism, but the world is physically constituted by more than matter! A lot of this world is obviously caused by the inherent formal influence of math and logic. There are ongoing mysteries in this, to be sure, but these forms are beyond matter. I’m speaking from the Pythagorean-Platonic-Tegmark school of thought. I’m trying to address the typical atheist layperson scientist who hasn’t thought through immaterial reality (rejecting it as supernatural, thinking it involves ghosts or spirits or something). I know there are reasonable counter positions to argue why math isn’t real, but I don’t subscribe.

by xpe 3y ago

empath-nirvana 3y ago

I think there's two conceptions of free will, one is as you described -- a body being able to act in and of itself without any influence of an external force (beyond sensation, physical constraints, etc). That sort of punts on the question of physical determinism, where it doesn't matter if it was possible for you to have done anything other than what you did. You could be a pure clock work automaton making deterministic responses to external stimuli and still have that sort of "free will", but I don't think that would be satisfying to a lot of people. The second kind of free will, I think would be the ability to have a free choice -- that there is some immaterial entity which can act in somehow a non-deterministic way to choose its behavior, that the course of your entire life wasn't set at the big bang -- that not only can you act independently, but that your choices _matter_ and will result in a future that was not predetermined. I think that is what a lot of people would think of as free will, and it's difficult to define or logically support IMO.

xpe 3y ago
I can appreciate a lot of the sentiments above, but I don't think the comment's "two conceptions" really 'decomplects' (a Hickeyism) the key ideas. If anything, it smooshes a lot of them together: different definitions of free will, meaning, origin stories, the divine, flavors of determinism, and more.

dr_dshiv 3y ago

Note that non-material causes can be just as deterministic (if not more so) as matter. Logic and math are physical but not material, for instance.

dragonwriter 3y ago
> Logic and math are physical but not material, for instance. Logic and math are neither physical, nor material, nor causal.
- xpe 3y ago
  I think some might be slightly troubled by hearing that logic is not causal. But I agree. One can _test_ a set of statements to see if they are valid logical deductions from another set of statements. Even if true, this does not mean that the deducible statements are _caused_. In some cases, that statement from above (the deduced one) might be 'realized' (noticed by people) before its premises are! We might even be able to logically prove it is true without the other set of statements! Why? There are multiple logical paths (not always mapping to reality) that _could_ prove a particular statement.
- Retric 3y ago
  When living things or machines do math they are doing a physical thing. The abstract concept of mathematics doesn’t need to exist for that to happen.
- dr_dshiv 3y ago
  They are physical causes but they are abstracted from matter. The underlying cause originates from the math/logic, not the material instantiation. Physicalism is often conflated with materialism, but the world is physically constituted by more than matter! A lot of this world is obviously caused by the inherent formal influence of math and logic. There are ongoing mysteries in this, to be sure, but these forms are beyond matter. I’m speaking from the Pythagorean-Platonic-Tegmark school of thought. I’m trying to address the typical atheist layperson scientist who hasn’t thought through immaterial reality (rejecting it as supernatural, thinking it involves ghosts or spirits or something). I know there are reasonable counter positions to argue why math isn’t real, but I don’t subscribe.