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Well said. > You are in far less control of your actions then you believe. No. But I say this in a way that might surprise you? I view 'free will', as most p

by xpe 3y ago

Well said. > You are in far less control of your actions then you believe. No. But I say this in a way that might surprise you? I view 'free will', as most people understand it, as an illusion. I recognize that I, at best, have a tiny fraction of control. If I consider "me" to be a locus of control w.r.t. volitional action, then I will grant that "me" has causal impact. But what causally impacted "me" at time t? A combination of "me" at time t-1 and my environment. (I'm a materialist who is agnostic w.r.t. determinism.) So, what does this really mean? "I" (right now) can only have volitional control only if one ignores the precursors. It is a mindbending realization to many, but it is the best theory I've found that fits reality. There are lots of us around. We might disagree on how we define 'free will'; we may or may not 'deny free will'. But there is a huge commonality among most rational materialists who accept modern science: we do not conceptualize free will in ways that match 'mainstream' notions of it.

fidrelity 3y ago
I consider free will fundamentally an illusion but at the abstraction level of 'me' (also a faulty abstraction) it does make sense to use these concepts sometimes. But it's important not to confuse the map with the territory.
thegrimmest 3y ago
I agree that free will functionally doesn't exist. However for the purposes of social organization I see no better alternative than to treat each person as an agent and hold them fully accountable for their actions, regardless of upstream "causal" impacts. If you're starving/high/whatever and you violate someone else's fundamental rights, the reasons/excuses you give as to why your control was compromised seem irrelevant. Actions and outcomes count, not intentions.
- pixl97 3y ago
  > Actions and outcomes count, not intentions. There is a whole division in law around mens rea vs actus reus that disagrees with this take.
  - thegrimmest 3y ago
    I'm aware, but the bar for a guilty mind is quite low. You basically have to have known what you are doing, which we assume just about every conscious person does. There are also crimes where mens rea isn't even applied to a perpetrator, but to a reasonable objective analyzer (eg. manslaughter).
    - xpe 3y ago
      > I'm aware, but the bar for a guilty mind is quite low. Do you mean this in terms of a cross-system comparison (i.e. variation between legal systems)? Do you mean this in terms of some philosophy that lays out a more sensible stance? I've been digging into this somewhat; happy to learn more.
- xpe 3y ago
  > If you're starving/high/whatever and you violate someone else's fundamental rights, the reasons/excuses you give as to why your control was compromised seem irrelevant. > If you're starving/high/whatever and you violate someone else's fundamental rights, the reasons/excuses you give as to why your control was compromised seem irrelevant. Actions and outcomes count, not intentions. Yes, people _often_ people give rationalizations of dubious merit. These are muddled, complicated 'reflections' of the full reality. So it is wise to not give them too much weight. (But it can be very interesting to try to parse them, but that's another topic...!) Next point. From a predictive point of view about public safety, the context and situation matters. For example, consider the case of an addict who regularly steals because he is driven by the addiction. If he can break the habit (hopefully with help of many kinds), the theft problem largely goes away. Understanding the dynamic helps us understand downstream outcomes.
MadcapJake 3y ago
yes, a prisoner may be locked inside and have a laid out routine for them, but they do still have a say in the minutiae and their small actions could actually echo into the future. Another thought, just because our unconscious mind also plays a part, people fear that this implies mostly determinism but really why are we considering that as not also our thoughts too? They're just thoughts that our deeper mind has put forth and our deeper mind doesn't usually want to be questioned, they've got more hard data. Still you can fight this or things like suicide, soldiers. daredevils wouldn't be possible. We just don't get to see how it came to conclusions so we assume it's some hard-wired code.
anon84873628 3y ago
It's simpler than that. Your thoughts -- the internal monologue deciding what actions to take -- are the result of physical processes in the brain. There is no way those non-physical thoughts are changing the physical processes; they happen after the fact. We have the illusion of being in the driver seat but really we are just along for the ride. This is assuming you adhere only to what science can prove, and not religious beliefs like the soul. But yeah, the fact that we are the result of past decisions and outside inputs going all the way back to before we even had consciousness at all is also a nice proof by induction.
- tcskeptic 3y ago
  > There is no way those non-physical thoughts are changing the physical processes; they happen after the fact. We have the illusion of being in the driver seat but really we are just along for the ride. How can you conclude this with any certainty?
  - pixl97 3y ago
    PBS: Your Brain: Perception Deception https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU6LfXNeQM4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU6LfXNeQM4 PBS: Your Brain: Who's in Control? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ6VOOd73MA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ6VOOd73MA Rationalization is mostly post ad hoc.
    - xpe 3y ago
      There are other interpretations of some of these experiments (e.g. regarding the action potential). In his book on free will, Mark Balaguer elaborates a little bit. I don't remember the details well, but I'll try to sketch what I think he says. First, in my recollection, Balaguer points out the form of the argument as follows. Given that: (1) a particular study shows that one's (perception of when they decided to act) _lags_ the (experimental measurement of the person's action potential spiking), what can we validly conclude? Some people then claim that (2) claims of making a decision are merely post-hoc rationalizations. I get the sense that such a view is widely held among those who have heard of the experiments -- or at least the popular characterizations of them. Balaguer says e.g. "not so fast". He points out that we need to talk about the logically necessary steps to reason from (1) to (2). He has a section on this; he claims it isn't as watertight as some think. As I recall, part of the discussion has to do with motor planning. Another part is this: there could be a volitional choice that precedes and causes both the action potential spike _and_ the perception/recognition. That volitional choice is unavailable to conscious awareness until some time later, presumably. If true, a person could have made the choice, noticed it later, and still be consistent with the experimental findings. Apologies for the hazy recollection. I recall not being strongly convinced, partly because I wasn't impressed by the book overall, but I also haven't dug into these topics as much as I would like. Lucky for us, the issue of latency between action and perception is squarely in the wheelhouse of distributed systems engineers!
geye1234 3y ago
The trouble with this argument is it applies to your thoughts about reality, not just to your will. Your argument implies your thoughts at time t are solely the result of your state at time t-1 and your environment. But if that's the case, your thoughts aren't about reality; they're just a result of reality, a result of whatever state you happen to be in. But if your thoughts aren't about reality, why should your argument about free will -- or about anything else -- carry any weight? Causal processes are not the same as logical reasoning, and if you reduce the processes of the mind to the former, you remove the possibility of rational argument.
- LeifCarrotson 3y ago
  If you consider the processes of the mind to be acausal, that also removes the possibility of rational argument. It's possible that I'm a Boltzmann brain with nonsensical memories about environmental stimuli that mislead me about what reality is, but it's tedious to prepend every statement about reality with "the conception of reality that my state at time t-1 and my environment have lead me to believe is the most likely candidate for reality." That doesn't seem to be a particularly useful objection to the philosophy that GP espoused, instead, you have to assume his same priors - materialist, agnostic w.r.t. determinism, and some basic assumptions about senses and a shared reality.
  - geye1234 3y ago
    I didn't claim the mind's processes were acausal; simply that they could not be reduced to cause, to the exclusion of anything else. If they can be so reduced, rational argument is impossible, because causal processes are not the same as rational argument. When I punch "2 + 2 =" into a calculator and the screen says "4", it's a causal process. When my kid grasps that 2 + 2 = 4, it's different. His mind has reasoned its way to this truth; it is not simply that the brain-state "2 + 2" has produced the further brain-state "4". If that were the case, he (and we) could never know that 2+2 resulted in 4; it could just as easily produce 5, or a green rabbit, or whatever else our mind had been caused to think at any given time. If reasoning has any validity, it cannot be reduced to causal processes. Therefore any argument -- any attempt at reasoning -- that claims that the mind's processes are merely causal undermines itself in the very process of being made.

by xpe 3y ago

fidrelity 3y ago

I consider free will fundamentally an illusion but at the abstraction level of 'me' (also a faulty abstraction) it does make sense to use these concepts sometimes. But it's important not to confuse the map with the territory.

thegrimmest 3y ago

I agree that free will functionally doesn't exist. However for the purposes of social organization I see no better alternative than to treat each person as an agent and hold them fully accountable for their actions, regardless of upstream "causal" impacts. If you're starving/high/whatever and you violate someone else's fundamental rights, the reasons/excuses you give as to why your control was compromised seem irrelevant. Actions and outcomes count, not intentions.

pixl97 3y ago
> Actions and outcomes count, not intentions. There is a whole division in law around mens rea vs actus reus that disagrees with this take.
- thegrimmest 3y ago
  I'm aware, but the bar for a guilty mind is quite low. You basically have to have known what you are doing, which we assume just about every conscious person does. There are also crimes where mens rea isn't even applied to a perpetrator, but to a reasonable objective analyzer (eg. manslaughter).
  - xpe 3y ago
    > I'm aware, but the bar for a guilty mind is quite low. Do you mean this in terms of a cross-system comparison (i.e. variation between legal systems)? Do you mean this in terms of some philosophy that lays out a more sensible stance? I've been digging into this somewhat; happy to learn more.
xpe 3y ago
> If you're starving/high/whatever and you violate someone else's fundamental rights, the reasons/excuses you give as to why your control was compromised seem irrelevant. > If you're starving/high/whatever and you violate someone else's fundamental rights, the reasons/excuses you give as to why your control was compromised seem irrelevant. Actions and outcomes count, not intentions. Yes, people _often_ people give rationalizations of dubious merit. These are muddled, complicated 'reflections' of the full reality. So it is wise to not give them too much weight. (But it can be very interesting to try to parse them, but that's another topic...!) Next point. From a predictive point of view about public safety, the context and situation matters. For example, consider the case of an addict who regularly steals because he is driven by the addiction. If he can break the habit (hopefully with help of many kinds), the theft problem largely goes away. Understanding the dynamic helps us understand downstream outcomes.

MadcapJake 3y ago

yes, a prisoner may be locked inside and have a laid out routine for them, but they do still have a say in the minutiae and their small actions could actually echo into the future. Another thought, just because our unconscious mind also plays a part, people fear that this implies mostly determinism but really why are we considering that as not also our thoughts too? They're just thoughts that our deeper mind has put forth and our deeper mind doesn't usually want to be questioned, they've got more hard data. Still you can fight this or things like suicide, soldiers. daredevils wouldn't be possible. We just don't get to see how it came to conclusions so we assume it's some hard-wired code.

anon84873628 3y ago

It's simpler than that. Your thoughts -- the internal monologue deciding what actions to take -- are the result of physical processes in the brain. There is no way those non-physical thoughts are changing the physical processes; they happen after the fact. We have the illusion of being in the driver seat but really we are just along for the ride. This is assuming you adhere only to what science can prove, and not religious beliefs like the soul. But yeah, the fact that we are the result of past decisions and outside inputs going all the way back to before we even had consciousness at all is also a nice proof by induction.

tcskeptic 3y ago
> There is no way those non-physical thoughts are changing the physical processes; they happen after the fact. We have the illusion of being in the driver seat but really we are just along for the ride. How can you conclude this with any certainty?
- pixl97 3y ago
  PBS: Your Brain: Perception Deception https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU6LfXNeQM4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU6LfXNeQM4 PBS: Your Brain: Who's in Control? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ6VOOd73MA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ6VOOd73MA Rationalization is mostly post ad hoc.
  - xpe 3y ago
    There are other interpretations of some of these experiments (e.g. regarding the action potential). In his book on free will, Mark Balaguer elaborates a little bit. I don't remember the details well, but I'll try to sketch what I think he says. First, in my recollection, Balaguer points out the form of the argument as follows. Given that: (1) a particular study shows that one's (perception of when they decided to act) _lags_ the (experimental measurement of the person's action potential spiking), what can we validly conclude? Some people then claim that (2) claims of making a decision are merely post-hoc rationalizations. I get the sense that such a view is widely held among those who have heard of the experiments -- or at least the popular characterizations of them. Balaguer says e.g. "not so fast". He points out that we need to talk about the logically necessary steps to reason from (1) to (2). He has a section on this; he claims it isn't as watertight as some think. As I recall, part of the discussion has to do with motor planning. Another part is this: there could be a volitional choice that precedes and causes both the action potential spike _and_ the perception/recognition. That volitional choice is unavailable to conscious awareness until some time later, presumably. If true, a person could have made the choice, noticed it later, and still be consistent with the experimental findings. Apologies for the hazy recollection. I recall not being strongly convinced, partly because I wasn't impressed by the book overall, but I also haven't dug into these topics as much as I would like. Lucky for us, the issue of latency between action and perception is squarely in the wheelhouse of distributed systems engineers!

geye1234 3y ago

The trouble with this argument is it applies to your thoughts about reality, not just to your will. Your argument implies your thoughts at time t are solely the result of your state at time t-1 and your environment. But if that's the case, your thoughts aren't about reality; they're just a result of reality, a result of whatever state you happen to be in. But if your thoughts aren't about reality, why should your argument about free will -- or about anything else -- carry any weight? Causal processes are not the same as logical reasoning, and if you reduce the processes of the mind to the former, you remove the possibility of rational argument.

LeifCarrotson 3y ago
If you consider the processes of the mind to be acausal, that also removes the possibility of rational argument. It's possible that I'm a Boltzmann brain with nonsensical memories about environmental stimuli that mislead me about what reality is, but it's tedious to prepend every statement about reality with "the conception of reality that my state at time t-1 and my environment have lead me to believe is the most likely candidate for reality." That doesn't seem to be a particularly useful objection to the philosophy that GP espoused, instead, you have to assume his same priors - materialist, agnostic w.r.t. determinism, and some basic assumptions about senses and a shared reality.
- geye1234 3y ago
  I didn't claim the mind's processes were acausal; simply that they could not be reduced to cause, to the exclusion of anything else. If they can be so reduced, rational argument is impossible, because causal processes are not the same as rational argument. When I punch "2 + 2 =" into a calculator and the screen says "4", it's a causal process. When my kid grasps that 2 + 2 = 4, it's different. His mind has reasoned its way to this truth; it is not simply that the brain-state "2 + 2" has produced the further brain-state "4". If that were the case, he (and we) could never know that 2+2 resulted in 4; it could just as easily produce 5, or a green rabbit, or whatever else our mind had been caused to think at any given time. If reasoning has any validity, it cannot be reduced to causal processes. Therefore any argument -- any attempt at reasoning -- that claims that the mind's processes are merely causal undermines itself in the very process of being made.