I don’t know what people mean by “free will” and I don’t think they usually do either. Clarifying that is the first project, so I applaud this post.
I substitute the term “self-determination” for “free will”, in hopes that that term captures more of what people tend to actually care about in this topic: do I control my own future? Framed this way, I think the answer is more interesting- it’s sort of and sometimes, rather than a simple yes or no.
This is something I used to think about a lot. I haven’t written about it much outside of comments because it’s interesting but less pressing than alignment. I think in sum my take agrees with yours, but I don’t think the terminology and focus on consciousness here is the right way to convey it.
I think someone who’s really concerned that “free will isn’t real” would say sure they help determine outcomes, but the contents of my consciousness were also determined by previous processes. I didn’t pick them. I’m an observer, not a cause. My conscious awareness is an observer. It causes the future, but it doesn’t choose, it just predicts outcomes.
So your terminological move:
“You are not really in control of your behaviour.”
… becomes...
“The continuation of deterministic forces via genetics and experience are not really in control of your behaviour.”
I completely agree that this transformation is correct, but I’m not sure it’s fully satisfying. I’m afraid someone who’s really bothered by determinism and their lack of “free will” wouldn’t find this comforting at all—they’d say “well exactly! Me (or my mind or my brain) being just a continuation of deterministic forces is exactly what bothers me!
So here I think it’s important to break it down further, and ask how someone would want their choices to work in an ideal world (this move is essentially borrowed from Daniel Dennett’s “all the varieties of free will worth wanting”).
I think the most people would ask for is to have their decisions and therefore their outcomes controlled by their beliefs, their knowledge, their values, and importantly, their efforts at making decisions.
I think these are all perfectly valid labels for important aspects of cognition (with lots of overlap among knowledge, beliefs, and values). Effort at making a decision also plays a huge role, and I think that’s a central concern—it seems like I’m working so hard at my decisions, but is that an illusion? I think what we perceive as effort involves more of the conscious predictions you describe (incidentally I did a whole bunch of work on exactly how the brain does exatly that process of conscious predictions to choose outcomes, best written up in Neural mechanisms of human decision-making, but that’s still barely worth reading because it’s so specialist-oriented). It also involves more different types of multi-step cognition, like analyzing progress so far and choosing new strategies for decisions or intermediate conclusions for complex decisions.
So my response to people being bothered by being “just” the “continuation of deterministic forces via genetics and experience” is that those are condensed as beliefs, values, knowledge, and skills, and the effort with which those are applied is what determines outcomes and therefore your results and your future.
This leaves intact some concerns about forces you’re not conscious of playing a role. Did I decide to do this because it’s the best decision, or because an advertiser or a friend put an association or belief in my head in a way I wouldn’t endorse on reflection? I think those are valid concerns.
So my answer to “am I really in control of my behavior?” is: sometimes, in some ways—and the exceptions are worth figuring out, so we can have more self-determination in the future.
Thanks Seth, yes, I think we’re pretty aligned on this topic. Which gives me some more confidence, given you actually have relevant education and experience in this area.
I’m not sure it’s fully satisfying. I’m afraid someone who’s really bothered by determinism and their lack of “free will” wouldn’t find this comforting at all
I absolutely agree, which is why I followed this section up with the caveat
Now, I’ll admit this is not very satisfying, in terms of understanding how our intuitions relate to physical reality
The reason for including this was because it can be an end-of-argument claim for hard determinists. I was meaning only to highlight that an intuition is being smuggled in to an otherwise reductionist argument. I get that this will not be satisfying to believers in free will, as it’s not a positive argument for free will, and is not intended to be. Reducing anything to its component parts can remove intuitive meaning from anything and everything, and if an argument can be used to undermine anything and everything, it is self-defeating and essentially meaningless.
I did a whole bunch of work on exactly how the brain does exatly that process of conscious predictions to choose outcomes
This looks fascinating. I should add that I’m aware that prediction is not only involved in internal processes but is also active while taking actions, where we project our expectations on to the world and our consciousness acts as a sort of error correction, or evaluation function. But for the purposes of not over-complicating the logic I was trying to clarify, I omitted this from the model.
So my response to people being bothered by being “just” the “continuation of deterministic forces via genetics and experience” is that those are condensed as beliefs, values, knowledge, and skills, and the effort with which those are applied is what determines outcomes and therefore your results and your future.
I agree, I had implicitly included beliefs, values etc in my ‘model of self’, and also emphasise effort (or deliberation) as the key “variety of free will worth having”. I’m not, in the slightest, concerned that my desires and intentions are not conscious decisions (I’ve never believed this to be something I was in control of, and when people ask “but are you really in control” at this level, I believe they are accidentally arguing against a straw-man)—although I think desires and intentions can be consciously reviewed, to check their consistency with other values, just like any other aspect of life through the same internal iterative process.
Thanks again for your thought provoking comment, I’m chuffed that you thought the post was worth engaging with.
I don’t know what people mean by “free will” and I don’t think they usually do either. Clarifying that is the first project, so I applaud this post.
I substitute the term “self-determination” for “free will”, in hopes that that term captures more of what people tend to actually care about in this topic: do I control my own future? Framed this way, I think the answer is more interesting- it’s sort of and sometimes, rather than a simple yes or no.
This is something I used to think about a lot. I haven’t written about it much outside of comments because it’s interesting but less pressing than alignment. I think in sum my take agrees with yours, but I don’t think the terminology and focus on consciousness here is the right way to convey it.
I think someone who’s really concerned that “free will isn’t real” would say sure they help determine outcomes, but the contents of my consciousness were also determined by previous processes. I didn’t pick them. I’m an observer, not a cause. My conscious awareness is an observer. It causes the future, but it doesn’t choose, it just predicts outcomes.
So your terminological move:
I completely agree that this transformation is correct, but I’m not sure it’s fully satisfying. I’m afraid someone who’s really bothered by determinism and their lack of “free will” wouldn’t find this comforting at all—they’d say “well exactly! Me (or my mind or my brain) being just a continuation of deterministic forces is exactly what bothers me!
So here I think it’s important to break it down further, and ask how someone would want their choices to work in an ideal world (this move is essentially borrowed from Daniel Dennett’s “all the varieties of free will worth wanting”).
I think the most people would ask for is to have their decisions and therefore their outcomes controlled by their beliefs, their knowledge, their values, and importantly, their efforts at making decisions.
I think these are all perfectly valid labels for important aspects of cognition (with lots of overlap among knowledge, beliefs, and values). Effort at making a decision also plays a huge role, and I think that’s a central concern—it seems like I’m working so hard at my decisions, but is that an illusion? I think what we perceive as effort involves more of the conscious predictions you describe (incidentally I did a whole bunch of work on exactly how the brain does exatly that process of conscious predictions to choose outcomes, best written up in Neural mechanisms of human decision-making, but that’s still barely worth reading because it’s so specialist-oriented). It also involves more different types of multi-step cognition, like analyzing progress so far and choosing new strategies for decisions or intermediate conclusions for complex decisions.
So my response to people being bothered by being “just” the “continuation of deterministic forces via genetics and experience” is that those are condensed as beliefs, values, knowledge, and skills, and the effort with which those are applied is what determines outcomes and therefore your results and your future.
This leaves intact some concerns about forces you’re not conscious of playing a role. Did I decide to do this because it’s the best decision, or because an advertiser or a friend put an association or belief in my head in a way I wouldn’t endorse on reflection? I think those are valid concerns.
So my answer to “am I really in control of my behavior?” is: sometimes, in some ways—and the exceptions are worth figuring out, so we can have more self-determination in the future.
Thanks Seth, yes, I think we’re pretty aligned on this topic. Which gives me some more confidence, given you actually have relevant education and experience in this area.
I absolutely agree, which is why I followed this section up with the caveat
The reason for including this was because it can be an end-of-argument claim for hard determinists. I was meaning only to highlight that an intuition is being smuggled in to an otherwise reductionist argument. I get that this will not be satisfying to believers in free will, as it’s not a positive argument for free will, and is not intended to be. Reducing anything to its component parts can remove intuitive meaning from anything and everything, and if an argument can be used to undermine anything and everything, it is self-defeating and essentially meaningless.
This looks fascinating. I should add that I’m aware that prediction is not only involved in internal processes but is also active while taking actions, where we project our expectations on to the world and our consciousness acts as a sort of error correction, or evaluation function. But for the purposes of not over-complicating the logic I was trying to clarify, I omitted this from the model.
I agree, I had implicitly included beliefs, values etc in my ‘model of self’, and also emphasise effort (or deliberation) as the key “variety of free will worth having”. I’m not, in the slightest, concerned that my desires and intentions are not conscious decisions (I’ve never believed this to be something I was in control of, and when people ask “but are you really in control” at this level, I believe they are accidentally arguing against a straw-man)—although I think desires and intentions can be consciously reviewed, to check their consistency with other values, just like any other aspect of life through the same internal iterative process.
Thanks again for your thought provoking comment, I’m chuffed that you thought the post was worth engaging with.