owleye

Hans...

"Wherever the volition of ones will can be deduced, that volition is always self serving."

1. Well, I suppose you could support this merely by defining (voluntary) actions in such a way that they were always self-serving. However, I'm sure you wouldn't wish to do that.

2. To avoid this, you would need to define the terms: '(voluntary) action' and 'self-serving' in such a way that something was added to our concept of '(voluntary) action' so that 'self-serving' would always be included in it.

2. a. One possible ingredient is that this is what experience teaches us. Of course, you couldn't really use that, either, since this would be an inductive argument in which the modifier 'always' wouldn't fit. But if you drop the 'always' perhaps might take this approach. Naturally you would have to cite the evidence for this conclusion.

2. b. Another possibility is that it has been established as a scientific principle:

2. b. i. It is a law of nature. I suspect this is not what you have in mind, since it would not likely to be controversial.

2. b. ii. If it comes down to what you started with, namely that every action has a preceding cause, then you have to show that all causes of voluntary actions are those that are self-serving. Which gets us back to where we started from.

2. b. iii. Finally, there is a third approach you might take -- in the area of a biological account, where presumably there is an investment of sorts that is built into our genetic makeup that requires us to act in accordance with self-interest (or in your vocabulary: so that acts are self-serving).

(a) If this approach makes sense to you, then you need to make a case for the claims being made above -- that the genetic code in each of requires that all voluntary actions be self-serving (without exception, though you may wish to drop the 'always' if you wish to consider the possibility of exceptions).

(b) The next problem, and more relevant to your claim, even if the 'always' is removed, arises because the notion of "self" in biology lacks clear and distinct boundaries. Is the unit that corresponds to the self, strictly the individual actor? Or might it extend beyond this, to a family unit? Or might it not even extend to a community and beyond?

In any case, you need to do some work here to support your assertions. And asking me whether or not I believe it is totally inconsequential to that support. I would hope that you don't make a practice of taking a poll of people to see whether you have it right.

Even after all this, there will yet be problems, and so I hope you would be back after you attend to the above.

owleye

excreationist

I'll just try and answer this even though it was addressed to Bill...

it is true that "choose" usually implies free will - but maybe an alternative word could be used, such as "select". So some options could be evaluated and the most desirable option is selected.

An analogy is a chess computer that searches through millions of possible move sequences and determines the best move to make. So it makes a selection. Since computers are deterministic, I guess the computer didn't really have a "choice".

So it depends on what you mean by "choice" - the free-will kind, where your decision isn't predetermined by your personality and past experiences and current situation, or the "selection" kind, so that chess computers could be said to "choose".

excreationist

Hans:
"Wherever the volition of ones will can be deduced, that volition is always self serving."

Well I think our brains just attempt to alter our environment that will maximize our pleasure signals and/or minimize our pain signals.

And pleasure signals are just signals that the brain is compelled to seek/repeat, depending on their intensity, and pain signals are just signals that it is compelled to avoid.

But the thing is, when the brain is following that system, it isn't necessarily self-serving.

e.g. say someone had unusual experiences as a child and developed an irrational phobia of open spaces or new people. I guess in a way the person is avoiding the thing that they believe they can't deal with effectively...

BTW, I would say that the "self" is the motivational system - the brain - it is the thing that seeks or avoids things.

John Page

It seems we would agree that the computer's apparent "choice" is human inference, the computer didn't choose at all it just performed. Furthermore, even if you say the computer "selected" something it only did so because of the way it was programmed - anthropomorphism of the computer's actions as "selection" doesn't help explain how we can have freedom to choose.

To summarize, any action of selection or choice requires freedom to select or choose. How about "All beings are free, its just that some are more free than others"? I think this free will stuff has something to do with the mind having an understanding of the consequence of its choices - something I don't believe current computers have - so our freedom is limited by our understanding of the consequences of our actions. As a consequence of this conclusion, freedom of choice requires hypothesizing about the future which in turn requires an imagination to analyze the past and project likely futures.

Does this make sense?

Cheers!

WideEyed

I found <a href="http://www.hazlitt.org/e-texts/morality/ch27.html" target="_blank">this article</a> on Free Will and Determinism quite interesting, and, hopefully, it may offer some added insight to this discussion. I think the 3rd part would be most relevant, but it's all good.

Bill

I would agree with you there. Let me quote the first three paragraphs of Part 3, as they are the ones most relevant to this discussion: That third paragraph, above, is exactly in accord with my own views, and in fact, I agree with the remainder of the entire piece, up to the point where the author disclaims any ability to prove that mind is a function of the physical state of our brains. In this regard, it is important to note when the underlying book was written: Between even as recently as 1985 and 1995, we have made some really dramatic progress in linking physical brain functions with mental functions. One example of even more recent research is <a href="http://www.secweb.org/bookstore/bookdetail.asp?BookID=690" target="_blank">Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief</a>. For this reason, the argument Hazlitt advances in his first part of <a href="http://www.hazlitt.org/e-texts/morality/ch27.html" target="_blank">Chapter 27 of his book</a> is no longer a valid argument. We have now crossed the Rubicon of linking physical brain activity with mental activity in a reasonably methodical way. Four decades of intensive scientific research can do that to a philosophical work like Hazlitt's.

In any case, as the above quote from Hazlitt makes clear, everything turns on just how you define what "Free Will" is. If you define it as being "without cause," then philosophers from Spinoza to the present take issue with that assertion. But if you define "Free Will" as the ability to act in accord with your own preconditioned state, and not under compulsion by some other entity (God or man), then yes, we do have that sort of "Free Will," exactly as Hazlitt asserts.

== Bill

Bill

The computer lacks "Free Will" in any sense because it is acting under the compulsion of its program, which was deliberately created by humans. If you read the quote by Hazlitt, in my above post, you will immediately grasp this point (I hope).

However, both humans and computer are essentially algorithmic engines. You feed in certain stimulii and you get certain expected responses (just ask any advertising executive - this is the nature of what the advertising industry does). What we might currently disagree on is the question of whether or not human beings are actually "programmed" by the learning which takes place during the "growing up" period. I, for one, believe that this is almost exactly equivalent to the "programming" that humans insert into a computer, and that (eventually) humans will be able to adequately model a human brain to such a degree so as to produce a totally artifician "human intelligence." It is only a matter of time.

Thus, at some point in the future, we will be forced to view ourselves as merely advanced biological computational engines, lacking in even the second sort of "Free Will" recognized by Hazlitt, because even that "Free Will" has been programmed into us by others.

== Bill

excreationist

Well people can also learn from the past and analyse their decision making processes more and make bad decisions just for the fun of it. But I don't think this means we have real freedom to choose.

Well we can learn to be aware of our decision-making process in a philosophical detached way, while chess computers can't. This doesn't mean we have freedom of choice. I think the ONLY reason why we believe we have freedom of choice is because it takes time for us to evaluate our options and we don't know what we will choose until after the evaluation. So basically we can't know what we will do in the future - if we did, we might choose to contradict this. Outsiders on the other hand might be able to predict our future decisions though and as long as they don't tell us, will we be unable to consciously contradict them.

BTW, about determinism and moral responsibility:
if something does something bad for society, you'd still punish them, so that they learn to avoid repeating that and also to discourage others. And you could lock them up to protect society.

excreationist

There is a big difference though - chess computers are given explicit instructions by programmers about *exactly* what to do.
Humans on the other hand begin with several basic instincts and automonously learn new behaviours - just to seek their instincts. Humans can be trained like circus animals, but most of what we learn is picked up by us learning for ourselves.

John Page

I'm with you pretty much all the way except this part, where you say "ONLY". I think part of our decision making includes considering an issue from several different angles. I think this "perceived objectivity" contributes to the "free will perception" because it creates the illusion that the decision has come partly from outside ourselves. (Hence illusion of divine inspiration?).

Cheers!