[I’ve seen your follow-up post on discussion. I thought it would be best to reply to both here.]
It may be that everything is determined by prior events all the way to the big bang. So there’s no ‘internal willer’ isolated from previous events that can steer us one way or another. But we can keep talking about ‘internal’ and ‘external’ loci of control on a compatibilist view of free will (which I’d guess is the common view, including amongst those affirming an internal locus of control).
On this sort of view, internal factors are just those our choices can change—external factors, those which our choices cannot. If I want to run faster, how much time I spend training is an internal factor: it influences how fast I can run, and I can choose (in the compatibilist sense) how much time I spend training. If I have a dense hemiparesis secondary to a birth injury, that’s an external factor—it also influences how fast I can run (indeed, whether I can run at all), and can’t choose whether or not to have a hemiparesis.
So I take those with an internal locus of control to think that—in the main—the outcomes that matter are mainly sensitive to factors that in turn are sensitive to our choices (how hard I work, how long I practice, etc.), whilst those with an external locus of control say that these things are primarily determined by factors outside of that person’s control.
It seems clear to me that IQ should be in the ‘external factors’ camp: IQ seems to be set early in life, has a large heritable component, and the non heritable bit is likely due to environmental things that I also can’t change for myself, either at the time or retroactively. The failure of brain training programs suggests that you can’t improve your IQ by any feat of effort. And we know it has all sorts of influences on how our lives turn out. If I have (due to factors outside my control) an IQ more than one standard deviation below the mean, I won’t be able to become a doctor, or a physicist (or, indeed, joining the US armed services) - no matter what else I do. Mutatis mutandis cases where it might not serve as a strict bar but a variable handicap (c.f. evidence that the beneficial effects of IQ have no clear ceiling).
The alternative account you propose for demarcating ‘external’ versus ‘internal’ factors—internal factors are those causally distal to your brain’s neural output—looks too broad: all internal factors need to be downstream of our neural output, but that isn’t sufficient. The hemiparesis case I allude to above would be one example—that I can’t move one side of my body is due to my neural output, but that is because of this insult which wasn’t due to my neural output. I think the same applies for other cases of brain damage and particular types of mental illness: indeed, this is implicitly recognised by the criminal justice system.
(I’ve added remarks to this effect in the body of the post—thanks for this comment!)
Now, I think that the source of our disagreement are diverging intuitions about free will and IQ.
I think that I can boost my IQ to some extent by exerting willpower; the amount of “thought power” in relaxed, normal and extreme-effort states seem to differ quite substantially.
You may see IQ score as the measure of maximal “thought power” (like when one passes IQ test when fully rested with no distractions and making his best effort); it makes IQ more or less constant, but a worse predictor of success, since success is more determined by average cleverness rather than peak cleverness.
[I’ve seen your follow-up post on discussion. I thought it would be best to reply to both here.]
It may be that everything is determined by prior events all the way to the big bang. So there’s no ‘internal willer’ isolated from previous events that can steer us one way or another. But we can keep talking about ‘internal’ and ‘external’ loci of control on a compatibilist view of free will (which I’d guess is the common view, including amongst those affirming an internal locus of control).
On this sort of view, internal factors are just those our choices can change—external factors, those which our choices cannot. If I want to run faster, how much time I spend training is an internal factor: it influences how fast I can run, and I can choose (in the compatibilist sense) how much time I spend training. If I have a dense hemiparesis secondary to a birth injury, that’s an external factor—it also influences how fast I can run (indeed, whether I can run at all), and can’t choose whether or not to have a hemiparesis.
So I take those with an internal locus of control to think that—in the main—the outcomes that matter are mainly sensitive to factors that in turn are sensitive to our choices (how hard I work, how long I practice, etc.), whilst those with an external locus of control say that these things are primarily determined by factors outside of that person’s control.
It seems clear to me that IQ should be in the ‘external factors’ camp: IQ seems to be set early in life, has a large heritable component, and the non heritable bit is likely due to environmental things that I also can’t change for myself, either at the time or retroactively. The failure of brain training programs suggests that you can’t improve your IQ by any feat of effort. And we know it has all sorts of influences on how our lives turn out. If I have (due to factors outside my control) an IQ more than one standard deviation below the mean, I won’t be able to become a doctor, or a physicist (or, indeed, joining the US armed services) - no matter what else I do. Mutatis mutandis cases where it might not serve as a strict bar but a variable handicap (c.f. evidence that the beneficial effects of IQ have no clear ceiling).
The alternative account you propose for demarcating ‘external’ versus ‘internal’ factors—internal factors are those causally distal to your brain’s neural output—looks too broad: all internal factors need to be downstream of our neural output, but that isn’t sufficient. The hemiparesis case I allude to above would be one example—that I can’t move one side of my body is due to my neural output, but that is because of this insult which wasn’t due to my neural output. I think the same applies for other cases of brain damage and particular types of mental illness: indeed, this is implicitly recognised by the criminal justice system.
(I’ve added remarks to this effect in the body of the post—thanks for this comment!)
Now, I think that the source of our disagreement are diverging intuitions about free will and IQ.
I think that I can boost my IQ to some extent by exerting willpower; the amount of “thought power” in relaxed, normal and extreme-effort states seem to differ quite substantially.
You may see IQ score as the measure of maximal “thought power” (like when one passes IQ test when fully rested with no distractions and making his best effort); it makes IQ more or less constant, but a worse predictor of success, since success is more determined by average cleverness rather than peak cleverness.