owleye

Kent...

I confess I didn't locate an argument within your statement of belief that free-will is bunk. One of the main reasons why humans are thought to have free will is because they are claimed to be moral creatures having the ability to reign in their negative impulses and act in accordance with principles. If you think this is bunk then it is not enough to talk about the weather, the nature of physical systems, etc. but rather to serve up an argument against the best reasons we have for holding humans accountable for their actions. Moreover, though you wish to add that choice is attributed to animals as well as humans, most animals (and young children, for that matter) aren't really considered sufficiently principled creatures that they can be held entirely responsible for their actions. Assigning blame for actions is something we do because we assume that we could have done other than we actually did.

If you believe we have no free will and are not responsible for our actions -- that is, we cannot be considered as causes for our actions in any strong sense, then we will pass the buck to something else, to our predecessors, or to our ancestors, or to our genes or to the environment we grew up in or to something else. We just can't be blamed for causing anything if we have no free will. Is this quite acceptable to you?

owleye

Mageth

Demothsenes:

Even if you repeat the experiment, there would be different outcomes in due to differences in the brains of the people over time. But we can create models which we use to predict what the others will do, we do it all the time without even realizing it. It's analogous to predicting the weather, we can do it to a degree of certainty, but beyond that, we're clueless about what it'll do next.


The thought experiment assumes exactly the same initial conditions, including the state of the subject's brain.

If one must assume a change in the subject's brain to expect a different outcome, does that not support my position?

One could apply the same thought experiment to the weather; if one were to rewind the weather to 24 hours prior, with exactly the same initial conditions, would one expect the weather 24 hours hence to be any different than it is now (with all inputs over the intervening 24 hours being identical)?

[ August 18, 2002: Message edited by: Mageth ]</p>

Mageth

excreationist:

I didn't say they would have to redevelop their intelligence...

Sorry, I misunderstood your comments.

Through their thoughts. They would appear to others to be mindless vegetables... kind of like in the "Awakenings" movie... I think those people still were supposed to be thinking while they were paralysed.

The people would still be able to have a will... but if that desire involved affecting their environment then they wouldn't be able to do it.

Anyway, they would still be exercising "free will" (i.e. make decisions) I think, just not externally by interacting with the external environment...

Granted, the person would have "free will" to direct his/her thoughts, but the person can no longer exercise free will in interacting with the environment. The fly, in spite of its inferior intelligence, can interact with the environment. In this way, it is able to exercise free will in a way that the person, despite his/her superior intelligence, can't. To me at least, as an observer, it appears the fly has more free will than the paralyzed person.

That was the point of my original post, in countering the "more intelligence equals more free will" argument posed.

Toad Master

I don't know about anyone else but, it's quite acceptable to me. Well said.

Edited: Argh! That did not come out right. No it's *not* acceptable to me. I'm a compatabilist. I believe free-will and determinism are compatable concepts. Sorry about that.

For the determinists I would add: not in "the sense of doing other than we did if the state of the universe were exactly the same," but in the sense of "if we had known better." That is, in a contrafactual sense.

Moral sanctions are meant to influence future behavior. They are not meant to change how we would behave if the universe time-looped back to some prior state. That just never happens and is a total Red-Herring.

-Toad Master

"Philosophy is commonsense gone mad."

[ August 18, 2002: Message edited by: Toad Master ]</p>

excreationist

Feather:
...What happens in the brain is simple: molecules pass between neurons (i.e. the neurons "fire") until a particular "firing" results in a configuration of the brain that is more compatible with the particular brain's wiring than others. Then the paths used to "make the choice" in question stop firing in the way they had been...

I was asking Kent Stevens what word he'd use to describe the thing that people do when they worry about what to do for minutes or days at a time about something, then finally arrive at a conclusion which they may or may not act upon... I would call this process "deciding" or "choosing"...

Kent Stevens

What I am arguing for in this thread is for strong determinism. Currently I am a determinist. Taking a middle ground on this issue is ultimately intellectually misguided I believe. Consequently, weak free will or compatibalism is discarded as an idea. Simply put, free will is bunk.

I think the determinist position has been unfairly represented. As a determinist seemingly I am supposed to believe that we are like a tennis balls that are just hit back and forth by external forces. Seemingly as a determinist when I am convicted of an offence I can say "but X made me do it", where X is my parents, society, poverty, alchol, drugs, genes, nature, my friends, or any petty excuse. As a determinist I am supposed to be incapable of changing myself since the day that I was born. As a determinist maybe I have some overall master theory that predicts and explains what you will do in every minute detail. Well I disagree with these and other unfair characterisations of determinism and determinists.

I believe that we have a degree of influence over what happens in my life. If I succeeded it is because I in the co-operation of others succeeded.

I am responsible for my actions and if I do an offence it is I that completed it and not anyone or anything else that did this offence. Determinism does not rule out the possibility of punishment. It is precisely because people can be influenced by the possibility of being punished, that a moral society would want to use punishment to prevent crime.

A little bit of observation should convince you that people can change especially when young. When a person is born they can learn any possible language so they are not completely fixed by nature.

In terms of having a master theory on human behaviour I think no such thing exists. I could not predict exactly what you will do today let alone five years from now.

Unfortunately, free will and determinism are vague and ill defined. But from my above comments you should see that my form of determinism still believes in responsibility, punishment, and plasticity in humans.

Kent Stevens

At what point do you go from a determinate system to a free will system. Or if you believe in evolution is there progress from a determinate system to a compatibalist system to a full blown free will system. Is a virus a determinist system as it does not so easily fit into the life category? Is a bacteria a determinist system? Is a snail a compatibalist system with both free will and determinate characteristics? Is a chimpanzee a free will or a compatibalist system? The simplest way around this is to say that all systems are determinate. I agree to disagree with your assessment that some living systems are not determinate.

You say that you choose to post a response. Then why not say that a snail chose to go to one plant leaf to eat as opposed to another? Why not also say that a bacterium chose to go South as opposed to North to consume nutriment? I suppose you would not use the word choice because of your conventional definition of it. However, I am using choice as meaning alternative. It is still not necessary to use the word choice at all in the above sentences and the sentences would make sense.

sweep

dear kent,

if a human such as yourself assembled your, shall i say, cognitive framework, from different sources and i were to subsume that information, would that mean that you caused me to 'change my mind'?

&gt; if yes, would that give any meaning as to the terms 'free' and 'will'? i suppose it is a stupid question as the words mean very little in your way of thinking.

secondly, if we can actively nurture or organise thought and actively shift around the boundaries of thought doesn't that mean that we are self determining? If so, can't the terms 'free' and 'will' be applied to the human organism?

perhaps i ought to do away with those terms. Better to say that my will works independently of the source of my mind? But my mind cannot be free in what is willed nor can it be free to replace the constraints, or can it?. it can be free to alter the boundaries and to place imagery freely in juxtaposition.

Any thoughts?

[ August 18, 2002: Message edited by: sweet as a nut ]</p>

Kent Stevens

I still use the word "choice" and the word "deciding". So I could use the word choice and deciding to describe the above situation. However, if I use these terms I realise that I have to also allow other systems the ability to choose or decide. When I play the computer at Chess I can set it to consider a move for 10 minutes. Theoretically the program could consider a move for hours or days or years. Then would it be correct to say that it chose or decided on a move. But my computer has no sentience. If it "thinks" about moves it has a different way of "thinking" than how a human does. A computer processes information and we in a different way also process information.

We can get purely random processes to decide things for us and they are supposed to not have free will. A physical system choses the winning lottery ticket every week. If the lottery machine spends years before it produces a response does it make it more likely to be called a decision? Clearly the length for a process to occur has no bearing on whether it is a decision or not.

As a separate issue I started this thread. Though I agree with Bill, and he argues well, I started this particular thread. Someone claimed that Bill started this thread but this is not the case.

Demosthenes

I'm still sorting through my thoughts, figuring out what exactly I thought free will was. After reading the above post, I agree that people don't have free will when interacting with the environment, but they surely do have some free will within their own brains, there are many outcomes which their brains could easily have taken, but when interacting with the environment, there can only be one outcome, thus free will disappear along the process.

Is free will a physical/philosophical impossibility? Or are there a case where one can set up conditions where free will becomes possible at least for the duration of the conditions.