Apparently the idea that we don't have free will is so scandalous that the LA Times decided it needed an opposing opinion. So they recruited John Martin Fischer, a philosopher at UC Riverside, who says "of course we do."
Well. I guess that's that. Argument over.
But maybe not quite. I wouldn't bring this up again except for this paragraph from Fischer's piece:
Some neurobiologists, including Sapolsky, hold that neurobiology supports determinism — that the brain activity science has uncovered reveals essentially mechanical procedures that cause human decisions. Other neuroscientists believe that at a fundamental level the brain works indeterministically, perhaps in accordance with quantum mechanics, which allows for randomness and unpredictability. In other words, whether the past and laws of nature dictate my choices and actions remains scientifically controversial.
I got a bunch of similar comments that brought up quantum mechanics. The suggestion is that since indeterminacy is a fundamental property of quantum mechanics, this means the future is not perfectly predictable and therefore there's room for free will.
But determinacy has nothing to do with free will, and it's remarkable that an experienced philosopher like Fischer would bring it up. Free will is solely a question of whether human beings can somehow interfere with the laws of physics. The human brain, at its deepest level, is of course based on quantum mechanics. This is not controversial. Everything, at its deepest level, is based on quantum mechanics.
So sure, we might not know how any particular particle in our brains is going to behave at any given femtosecond, but that's not the issue. The issue is whether the particle's fate is determined by the mathematical laws of quantum mechanics or whether a human being can somehow affect the outcome.
Unless you're religious or otherwise dedicated to metaphysical spiritualism, there's no evidence that humans have the ability to interfere with either quantum mechanics or any other law of physics. Particles do what they do, and when you add them all up they amount to human actions. End of story.
POSTSCRIPT: Fischer's biggest problem is the notion that if free will doesn't exist, then we can't hold people responsible for their actions. There's no point in punishing a murderer who's little more than a robot, but just letting people do whatever they want seems both intolerable and absurd.
That's a problem! But the solution is to simply ignore it. Intellectually, I'm a pure materialist. But emotionally I believe that I control my actions and so do other people. So what? Just go with it.
Great explanation, Kevin, and a perspective I agree with. Sabina Hoffensteader has an excellent YouTube episode on this subject.
If free will doesn't exist, then we can't not hold people responsible for their actions.
If free will doesn't exist mercy and empathy are pointless.
And for all intents and purposes, mercy and empathy don't exist. We are machines as capable of being cruel or merciful as your vacuum cleaner. Honestly I think the folks that think they have such a deep understanding of the universe that they can state confidently that free will is impossible make as much sense as theists. I think, therefore I am, muthafckr.
I have no deep understanding of the universe that informs my belief, other than "all actions are caused by the current state of the universe plus random noise"
Do you disagree with that understanding?
If not, then my behavior is based on random noise plus the current state of my brain, which is due to the structure of my brain and the inputs that is has received. Up to the point of my first conscious thought, I had no control over either. So my first conscious thought could not have any free will. What would make my second conscious thought different?
If you can find a flaw in this, please let me know.
Indeed.
whether free will exists or not, likelihood of punishment is a factor in determining one's course of action
determinism doesn't mean 'immune to incentives'
What I get out of this is, if you're the one setting the goalposts, the results are whatever you want them to be.
> Why punish a murderer who's little more than a robot
It's really the other way around. If the murderer is just a robot, just destroy it. No reason to care about that. The reason we ask questions about punishment and responsibility comes from the belief that we're all sentient, purposeful creatures. If we're not, then just kill the ones who do bad stuff, and we don't have to feel bad about doing so.
If we're all just robots, "bad" ceases to have any meaning. All the robot did was kill another robot because quantum mechanics made it. If two kangaroos fight until one kills the other, the mob doesn't kill the victor. They just get on with what they were doing. Same with other pack animals. Why should humans be any different?
Unless you go all the way to nihilism because of determinism, there's plenty of solid reasons to punish and discourage socially undesirable acts
Hmm, maybe because that 'nasty, brutish and short' thing is so unappealing?
You do know that robots can be re-programmed, don't you.
Do we know how to re-program the meat robots we call human beings?
Incidentally, in a survey of philosphers I recalled from some time ago ("What Do Philosophers Believe?" by David Bourget and David J. Chalmers), "no free will" was chosen by only about 12%. ("Compatibilism" got a [not very large] majority; the other choices were "libertarianism" and "other.")
It's really uncomfortable watching KD discuss this as if he has never come across Dennett's book "Elbow Room: the varieties of free will worth wanting".
https://www.amazon.com/Elbow-Room-Varieties-Worth-Wanting/dp/0262540428
The critical point is that free will is not a unitary, simple thing, it has "varieties" and they are not all the same.
The latter question is something of a distraction from the actual "biggest problem". If free will doesn't exist, then it's irrational to believe that good and evil exist. There is no more reason to believe Mother Teresa was a good woman than there is to condemn Charles Manson as a bad man. Martin Luther King and his murderer were morally indistinguishable, or to be more accurate, there are no criteria for evaluating the virtue of either of them, any more than one creates a moral frame to assess the actions of a cat killing a mouse. They were all just machines being driven by quantum mechanics.
That may be a correct description of human behavior, for all I know, but it also vaporises the entire moral infrastructure which humans have painfully constructed over the centuries to enable increasingly sophisticated societies to thrive in relative peace and prosperity. If people want to adopt it as an intellectual position that has no practical implications, fine. If it were to become the foundation of a widespread nihilist ideology, God knows where it would lead.
H.L.A Hart had a nice explanation for why it is OK to punish persons even if causal determinism is true. The main idea is that a system that makes a person's criminal liability responsive to that person's choices provides real benefits to that person, by creating a 'zone of danger' that they and others may cross at the price of criminal sanction. Hart said (in 'Legal Responibility and Excuses'):
"no form of determinism that I, at least, can construct can throw any doubt on, or show to be illusory, the real satisfaction that a system of criminal law incorporating excusing conditions provides for individuals in maximizing the effect of their choices within the framework of coercive law. The choices remain choices, the satisfactions remain satisfactions, and the consequences of choices remain the consequences of choices, even if choices are determined and even if other ‘determinants’ besides our choices condition the satisfaction arising from their being rendered effective in this way by the criminal law."
"Why punish a murderer who's little more than a robot?"
Yeah! Why choose, of our own free will, to punish an entity that is hostage to the laws of physics?
Or maybe there is a fundamental inconstancy in the question Kevin poses. Maybe the Punishers are similarly deterministic.
Almost all Free WIll statements collapse when closely examined.
“Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.”
I admit this stuff is over my head but I was thinking about it today and remembered the above from Slaughterhouse Five. When my wife asks why I haven’t completed a task around the house I always use that joke about how time was invented to prevent everything from happening all at once. But I suppose it’s possible that everything did happen at once and time is a construct to make things seem like they are happening in an orderly fashion. If that’s the case, then everything I do will be something I already did and while I am experiencing it now there’s nothing I could do to change it.
That is not the real problem. If things are deterministic, then there's no point to reform. If you're incorrigible, there's no reason for parole.
An aside -- having ADHD can make one's life absolutely feel deterministic. But once on certain drugs and/or on cognitive behavior therapy are applied, suddenly, one has the capacity to exercise what seems like free will.
People seem to be confusing deterministic with predetermined. They are not equivalent.
"Free will is solely a question of whether human beings can somehow interfere with the laws of physics."
This entire discussion is completely pointless. Do we understand the laws of physics well enough to answer this question? For that matter, is it even certain that the laws of physics are ultimately such that this question is even meaningful?
If someone can explain the universe to me - all of it, not just some bits - then I'll listen to their view on free will. Until then, good grief.
It’s also wrong. There are many examples from biology of “emergent properties”- situations where the underlying mechanism appears to be random but the fact that it happens so much at the same time causes the effect to appear microscopically deterministic. The primordial streak in embryonic development is a good example of this, as are many aspects of gene regulation. It’s clear that biology is built on emergence (indeed it has to be, because you are building a machine with molecules, which are inherently quantum entities).
Even more to the point. Free will is entirely a philosophical discussion. Not one of physics.
If we stop calling it free will, and start calling it what it is - determinism- do you really believe that the entirety of existence has been mapped out from the beginning of time?
So--Calvinism?
Yes. But you are making a perceptiual error.
No, because noise is a thing. We can't predict things on the quantum level.
But just because you can't predict a complex system does not mean it has free will. It just has noise.
> Intellectually, I'm a pure materialist. But emotionally I believe that I control my actions and so do other people. So what? Just go with it.
If we generalize here, we can say that your gut trumps your head: you believe things but feel no trouble acting against your beliefs. Based on that, what sort of value should we place on your political opinions?
The plasticity of the brain is amazing.
Just because actions are unpredictable, e.g. chaotic, does not mean they are a function of free will--so we agree on that. With the brain, as we learn things we rewire it. As we grow, we become self aware, learn languages, go to school to learn things we'll forget, etc. All of that affects the choices we make, though "genetics" will play a role too. Sometimes well reasoned arguments can get us to change our ideas, though more often then not, emotional appeals work better and reasoning may get us to stick in our heels.
Now you can argue that there is no free will because the choice was made by all of your experiences and genetics that went into programing your brain, i.e. all that makes you who you are. But if your choice was made by all that makes you you, then that is your choice.
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I am getting tired of the Free Will debate. If we have it or not depends entirely on the definition of "Free Will". If we use Kevin's definition, I agree, we can not invalidate Ohm's law to solve the climate crisis. Does that mean we can't do anything to solve the climate crisis?
To me Free Will is a moral question: Do we have a chance to survive climate change or we all doomed by some forces that predetermine the course of history? Was the election of Trump a collective Free Will decision or did all those Trump voters just have not choice but to vote for him because Free Will Does Not Exist?
Even robots can learn from experience. You don't punish people for misbehavior because they "deserve it" for making a bad choice. Consequences result in measurable changes in behavior. B.F. Skinner argued this long ago in "Beyond Freedom and Dignity."
Any discussion of "free will" that doesn't start with a clear definition of the term "free will", in particular "free of what?", is a waste of time, and this post and the replies are another demonstration of this.
"That's a problem! But the solution is to simply ignore it. Intellectually, I'm a pure materialist. But emotionally I believe that I control my actions and so do other people. So what? Just go with it."
It's a very interesting philosophical problem, but in practice, it's just not that complicated. "Free" and "will" (like most other things that will enter the conversation) are social constructs that humans have created to try to help us muddle through this world. Are we really conscious, sentient beings with free will? Who knows! But we act like we are, and that's realistically the only way we can cope with our lives. Is it moral, just, or ethical to punish people for things tiny particles in their brains made them do? Again, those are all human constructs that have little meaning once you start picking things apart on the quantum level.
In fact, if you're on the "no free will" brain physics side, it's not even our free will to use these concepts, so don't blame me for any inconsistencies that result!
Best just to act like a human being and not overthink it. (Unless you enjoy that sort of thing, or your brain particles make you.)
"... if free will doesn't exist, then we can't hold people responsible for their actions."
FIFY: if free will doesn't exist, then we HAVE NO CHOICE BUT TO hold people responsible for their actions.
But I still maintain that long-term free will exists because we have self-awareness that can have an impact on our future actions. Per the physics question as to whether free will "can somehow interfere with the laws of physics" -- of course it can. Physics says the mere observation of an experiment changes the experiment then self-awareness -- which is essentially observation -- will change what it is observing.
Thus constant self-aware observation will change the things that are being observed, and long-term will influence future decisions that occur outside of our real time consciousness.
And now we have explanations of the power of meditation and wicca and ceremonies -- the constant, considered and careful self-awareness/observation of ourselves influences the future of our decisions.
And then we have also an explanation of why religion and group ceremonies have success at influencing society and the future -- because the self-awareness/observation is directed towards a particular result.
So, maybe (and I don't quite grant it) we have no influence on the in-the-moment decisions, but over time and over our lives we certainly influence it by observing what decisions have been made and that observation influencing the system that makes future decisions.
Harmatia describes the inherent qualities of the hero or his circumstances that reveal the tragic flaw.
Free will or harmatia?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3k5QlQvdio
If free will doesn't exist we'll have to invent it.
But let’s make sure to monetize it. We’ll have a Freemium Will option so it will be inclusive.
lol
😂
And a lite version with ads.
This is a ridiculous debate unless we define 'Free Will'. Does Free Will mean that our consciousness is the deterministic result of atomic processes that have already occurred within our brains, including decisions our subconscious has already made, as governed by physics? If so, it is obvious that we have none, in the same way that our reflexes cause movement in our leg without requiring our brains.
But if we're talking about an individual's ability to make decisions based on input holistically, it's also clear to me that we have this kind of Free Will. This is the context that most of us discuss when we think about Free Will. Free Will #1 has nothing to do with the Free Will #2. Free Will #1 is running at the layer of atomic particles, neurons, and quantum mechanics. Free Will #2 is running at the layer of memories, thoughts, experience, intelligence. This is an emergent property of life and sapience, which is the ability to learn from experience, respond based on rationality and not just animal instinct, and imagine and predict possible futures. This Free Will is not an illusion. Despite our brains running as causality machines at the atomic level, these machines have feedback loops that guide their behavior in the larger world. It is demonstrable that the same person will react differently when presented with the same situation twice, because not only do they learn from the past, but they can imagine different outcomes based on more knowledge about the world. They can calculate scientifically the best option. They can react emotionally to imagined future pain.
Who has not slept on a big decision, and woken up the next day with a conscious understanding of the right choice, as well as the right stratagems to make the desired outcome come about? This feedback loop of decisions, knowledge, imagination, experience and action is Free Will. Are these decisions deterministic? Within the context of an individuals brain, perhaps they are, but not only is randomness such as mood, chemicals that cause emotional state, and billions of other parameters constantly changing the outcomes, but that individual is 100% holistically deciding their future each day. What they do is not deterministic within this larger context. We humans all have choices to make on how we live our lives, and while these choices may be made at some subconscious level and later explained by our consciousness, that doesn't make these decisions based on feedback loops any less real for that.
One more thought on this topic. One might argue that the definition of Sapience is the ability to change the way one thinks about a topic. In other words, most birds (Crows not included) lack Sapience because while they can learn from direct experience, they cannot consider their approach rationally and decide to change their standard reaction and response to stimuli. Humans can do that. Not only that, but we can imagine and build a construct of a possible future and predict with some accuracy what will occur, and take actions based on that. Non-Sapient species play checkers, humans play chess. This plays into the Free Will debate, because this ability to reprogram oneself is the basis for Free Will. Current AI cannot do this, even LLMs are just reacting based on a massive information source. So far only Humans and certain animals can do this (Crows being my favorite: They recently replicated the Aesops' fable of a Crow dropping stones into a glass until the food floated to the top.)
spot on
Yes!
And if I may briefly expound upon your discussion of "feedback loops" (and do correct me if you disagree), I think that language is the key element of this self-referential cycle, "freeing" a conscious entity from its deterministic chain of molecular events.
Totally agree. Language is logically imperfect but can generally work for rationality as long as words are clearly defined. If words are not clearly defined, it can leave us in a confused mess. That's why math is better. Spacial reasoning is even better in some ways than both, because humans intrinsically understand space. This kind of slow thinking allows real decision-making based on ideas. And there's this kind of subconscious thought that doesn't use words or math or space, just results in feelings and urges. But language is what most of us use to make decisions, our primary feedback loop.
I can write a computer program that learns from its mistakes.
I define the lack of free will as the outputs are only determined by the current state plus external inputs plus noise.
Can you specify what else exists in addition that would allow for free will?
Internal inputs have to be products of those three things, so they are not something else.
We could give the murderer a free pass because he's not "really" guilty. But seems better to just give our society a free pass for our imperfect criminal justice system. After all, human society didn't really create the criminal justice system: the laws of the universe are what did that.
Also, if I'm interpreting Kevin correctly (and I may well not be), he's not arguing our universe is deterministic, is he? He's arguing that randomness (ie, lack of determinateness) and lack of free will aren't at odds with each other (which I agree with). In other words, it's not a rational watchmaker who's running your life instead of you, but rather a crazed roulette player.
I'll just take this opportunity to say that any invocation of "quantum mechanics" as an explanation for anything is bullshit.
If you're talking about some physical phenomena, you can describe what's going on. You're writing about science. So why not write about science?
If you're talking about health, emotions, free will, or 5G virus activation and bringing QM into it, you're a con artist bottom feeder who needs to go away.
I think you can use QM as the root cause of noise, which is a factor in human behavior.
Chaos theory. Biochem influences, it doesn't determine. Lots of fuss and feathers about trivia. Anything to get published, right?
Let's define our terms - or one term, "free will". Long before quantum mechanics theologians were debating whether people really had any choice about whether they went to heaven or not - whether everything is really foreordained by God. And actually this has not been decided. There is no proof that God (or maybe Rama, Vishnu and Siva or other gods) does not control everything down to the "random" timing of particle emissions from atoms.
Then there is the question of whether what we see only as random atomic or sub-atomic actions are actually the ultimate determinants of everything - how could human "thought" (if there is such a thing) control these processes?
But on a higher and more practical level there is the question of how much of human decisions are "rational" rather just the result of instinctual "programming". Ants, for example, have very complicated and conditional behavior which could not be learned or the result of conscious reasoning. Are humans really different? Sapolsky is a biologist and his conclusions seem to deal with this matter to some extent.
One area in which instinctive reactions are underappreciated and not well understood is where the welfare of the tribe (clan, nation, party) obviously supersedes the welfare of the individual. This causes people to sacrifice their lives for the good of the country, but it also distorts reality for those affected. This is clearly what happens in cults, and is happening in the MAGA faction (as well as other factions on both left and right, which are not nearly as numerous or important). Understanding this kind of phenomenon would be more useful - and perhaps attainable - than debating the theological or quantum-mechanical versions of free will.
Thank you.
The debate has no bearing on the value of punishment and reward.
* There are behaviors that tend to make life worse for the group
* There are behaviors that tend to make life better for the group
The group issues punishments to deter the former, and rewards to encourage the latter. Rewards and punishments work regardless of whether the group members are free moral agents, or meat puppets. Whether you see it as encouraging the growth of wisdom, or as programming Skinnerian robots, punishment can deter undesirable behavior and rewards can encourage desirable behavior.
The difficulty with the free will concept is that it is not an empirical concept. Philosophers have divided questions into two types: those that are metaphysical, and those that are empirical. An empirical question can be answered by data. More formally, an empirical question can be falsified by data.
"Free will" is not an empirical concept. It cannot be measured and, therefore, positing its existence is a "hypothesis" that cannot be falsified. The concept is, in this way, similar to the concept of god.
Now, it so happens I believe that humans "answer" metaphysical questions based on their psychology. This hypothesis is testable and, therefore, falsifiable, though nobody seems to have conducted the proper experiment. To expand, I rather suspect that people derive comfort from their answers to metaphysical questions. This certainly seems to be the case with belief in god, because religion is first and foremost a self-comforting belief (again, though, the proper experiment has not been conducted). I rather suspect that believing in free will is also a self-comforting mechanism.
How about this hypothesis:
A system without free will behaves based on the current state, external inputs, and noise. No systems exist that are based on anything else.
If you can provide an example of a system that behaves based on something else, then you have disproven the hypothesis. It is falsifiable.
This sounds like a modern version of another medieval debate about, "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?"
I feel free to punish bad behavior regardless of its source. If someone is on drugs, or suffered a brain injury or whatever I will punch them back if they punch me. (Unless of course, I run from them.) The punishment of criminals is perfectly fine and, I think, has no relation to the philosophical debate over free will. Treatment, drug rehab, prison... all are reasonable reactions to criminal behavior.