You may be referring to my draft paper “THE VIEW FROM NOWHERE THROUGH A DISTORTED LENS: THE EVOLUTION OF COGNITIVE BIASES FAVORING BELIEF IN FREE WILL”. I don’t think I’ve bothered to keep the paper online, but I remember you having read at least part of it, and the latest draft distinguishes between “actual control” and “novelist control”. I believe earlier drafts referred to “control” and “control*”.
I’m really glad to see someone as bright as you discussing free will. Here are some comments on this post:
Like you, I think “The phrase means far too many things to far too many people, and you could make a good case for tossing it out the window.” And like you, I nevertheless find myself strongly pulled towards one view in the debate, and writing page after page defending it. Maybe saying that free will is poorly defined just isn’t enough fun to satisfy me.
On the Garden of Forking Paths I said something to the effect (can’t find the post now): Mathematicians, because they strictly define their terms, have no difficulty admitting when a problem is too vague to have a solution. Just look at the list of Hilbert’s 23 problems:
Many of them, like the 4th and 21st problems, are resolved and the answer is “we don’t know! you have to be more precise! what exactly are you asking?”
Philosophers do not seem to have the same ability. I can’t think of a single problem, involving any of philosopher’s favorite fuzzy words like “God”, “soul”, “evil”, “consciousness”, “right”, “wrong”, “knowledge”, where philosophers have said, with consensus, “actually, we figured out that the particular question doesn’t have an answer, because you have to be more precise with your terms.” And philosophers don’t like to argue about terms that refer uncontroversially (or much less controversially) to things we can inspect in the real world, like the laptop on which I’m writing this post. They prefer to argue things that remain arguable.
(It makes me wonder whether philosophers have perverse incentives, like in the medical profession, to actually not solve problems, but keep them alive and worked on.)
Personally, I lean towards no-free-will views. And, in doing that, I defend what I call a cognitive-biases+semantic-ambiguity view. The semantic ambiguity part is, as I just discussed, the idea that “free will” is too vague to work with.
[On this note, we shouldn’t just stop when we come to this conclusion, and defend our pet-favorite-definition, or lack thereof, without convincing anybody else. If we say “free will” is poorly defined, and nobody believes us, because they all prefer their favorite definitions of free will, with which their positions in the debate win, we won’t get anywhere. Instead, what are needed, I think, are large scale studies/surveys investigating how people use ‘free will’, and what they think the term means. Such studies should show, if we are right, that there is enormous variation in how people use the term, and what they think it means, and that people hardly use the term at all anyway. Then we would have knock-down evidence that should persuade many or most of the (more reasonable) philosophers working on this topic.]
The other part of my view, the cognitive biases view, is the part that pulls me to no-free-will-ism. This is what I discuss in my paper, mentioned above, about novelist control. I remember you rightly accusing me of having thrown “the kitchen sink” at the problem. While there is certainly a kernal of truth to that, and I would like to rewrite several paragraphs in the paper, I stand by most of what I wrote, and note in my defense that I only discuss about 15 of the approximately 100 biases listed on Wikipedia—I tried to leave much of the sink alone.
And while I see that you discuss a few cognitive biases / confusing sensations related to “free will”, you don’t mention ones I would consider important: the fundamental attribution error, the illusion of control, the just world phenomenon, and positive-outcome bias, etc.
My pet definition of free will. You seem to have your own favorite definition of free will, with which compatibilism wins (and an extreme one at that, based on your comment in the other post about a person still being responsible despite just being instantiated a couple of seconds ago to commit some good/bad deed). Although I think the meaning of “free will” should be determined by how people tend to use the term, I have my own favorite definition, on which we don’t have free will. I prefer my definition to yours for at least the following reasons:
A. On your definition, free will is something that people uncontroversially have. Nobody ever doubted that people have the sort of local control you discuss. Nobody ever doubted that people are more like rocks than computers. So, compatibilist definitions of free will are boring, and odd, to me for at least that reason.
In contrast, although it would be absurd for people to believe they have novelist control or something like it, it is not absurd to believe that people often believe absurdities, especially positive, anthropocentric ones about themselves, their special possessions, powers, and abilities, and their place in the universe. This is the same species that believed the sun revolved around the earth, a loving God created us and wants us to worship him, that we all possess immaterial souls, etc.
Thus, if you’re willing to say that God, souls, etc., do not exist, but draw the line and say “wait a minute, I’m willing to deny the existence of all of these other absurdities, but I’m not going to give you free will. [Maybe adding: that cuts too close]. I’m even willing to redefine the term, as Dennett does, before admitting defeat”, then you fit Tamler Sommer’s wonderful observation that “[p]hilosophers who reject God, Cartesian dualism, souls, noumenal selves, and even objective morality, cannot bring themselves to do the same for the concepts of free will and moral responsibility.” There seems to be some tension here.
B. On my pet definition of free will, the one I came into the debate with, and strongly feel pulled towards, free will is that power which solved an apparent problem: that my entire life destiny was fixed, before I was born, by circumstances outside of my control. This is what disturbed me (or alleviated me, depending on my mood, I suppose), when I first considered the problem. And, more importantly, this is what I think motivated most people, today and throughout history, when discussing free will. Going on the way back to the Greeks, then to Augustine and the Middle Ages, through the scientific revolution, when people were talking about free will, they were generally talking about this problem: that our fate is fixed before we are born (at least if the world is deterministic, as seemed plausible for so long and even today; and if it isn’t deterministic, that doesn’t seem to help).
In other words, when people were talking about free will, they were not considering the uncontroversial, local control and powers they have. Nobody said “hmm, even if an alien created me five seconds ago to pick up this apple, and implanted within me a desire to pick up this apple, and therefore now I have that desire, and look, lo and behold, I am picking up the apple. What should I call this amazing, beautiful, wonderful power? I know, let’s call it free will!” Admitting that this is a bit of a straw man, but with a good point behind it, I submit that nobody ever talked about free will in a way even remotely close to this.
The point is this: you, Eliezer (and Dennett, McKenna etc.) might be cool customers, but the idea of an alien/God/machine creating me five seconds ago, implanting within me a desire/value to pick up an apple, and then having the local control to act on that desire/value SCARES THE LIVING FU** OUT OF PEOPLE—and not just because of the alien/God/machine.
Nobody, except for a handful of clever intellectuals like yourself, ever thought that free will was supposed to be consistent with situations like that. Rather, my strong suspicion (the reason I lean towards “free will doesn’t exist” instead of “what is free will? tell me what it means and I’ll tell you if it exists”) is that “free will” was designed and intended to protect us from exactly and precisely that vulnerability.
Of course, nothing can protect us from that vulnerability. We can’t build our own lives/characters, even with a time machine; we’re denied by logic even more than physics. So free will never developed a clear definition. In accordance with the law of conjunction, the more philosophers said about free will (or God), the more details crafty philosophers were able to knock out. And so the terms shed more and more of itself (like the Y chromosome) until it was little more than LISP token: that thing that protects us from our fates being fixed before we’re born. How? “Shhhhh. Silly child, we’re not supposed to ask such questions.
This is at least a rough sketch of where I stand on the free will debate, one of the few intellectual topics on which I feel knowledgeable enough to really engage you. I work a lot, and don’t read about free will as much as I used to, but this is my current position. I think we just need more data.
Eliezer,
You may be referring to my draft paper “THE VIEW FROM NOWHERE THROUGH A DISTORTED LENS: THE EVOLUTION OF COGNITIVE BIASES FAVORING BELIEF IN FREE WILL”. I don’t think I’ve bothered to keep the paper online, but I remember you having read at least part of it, and the latest draft distinguishes between “actual control” and “novelist control”. I believe earlier drafts referred to “control” and “control*”.
I’m really glad to see someone as bright as you discussing free will. Here are some comments on this post:
Like you, I think “The phrase means far too many things to far too many people, and you could make a good case for tossing it out the window.” And like you, I nevertheless find myself strongly pulled towards one view in the debate, and writing page after page defending it. Maybe saying that free will is poorly defined just isn’t enough fun to satisfy me.
On the Garden of Forking Paths I said something to the effect (can’t find the post now): Mathematicians, because they strictly define their terms, have no difficulty admitting when a problem is too vague to have a solution. Just look at the list of Hilbert’s 23 problems:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert’s_problems
Many of them, like the 4th and 21st problems, are resolved and the answer is “we don’t know! you have to be more precise! what exactly are you asking?”
Philosophers do not seem to have the same ability. I can’t think of a single problem, involving any of philosopher’s favorite fuzzy words like “God”, “soul”, “evil”, “consciousness”, “right”, “wrong”, “knowledge”, where philosophers have said, with consensus, “actually, we figured out that the particular question doesn’t have an answer, because you have to be more precise with your terms.” And philosophers don’t like to argue about terms that refer uncontroversially (or much less controversially) to things we can inspect in the real world, like the laptop on which I’m writing this post. They prefer to argue things that remain arguable.
(It makes me wonder whether philosophers have perverse incentives, like in the medical profession, to actually not solve problems, but keep them alive and worked on.)
Personally, I lean towards no-free-will views. And, in doing that, I defend what I call a cognitive-biases+semantic-ambiguity view. The semantic ambiguity part is, as I just discussed, the idea that “free will” is too vague to work with.
[On this note, we shouldn’t just stop when we come to this conclusion, and defend our pet-favorite-definition, or lack thereof, without convincing anybody else. If we say “free will” is poorly defined, and nobody believes us, because they all prefer their favorite definitions of free will, with which their positions in the debate win, we won’t get anywhere. Instead, what are needed, I think, are large scale studies/surveys investigating how people use ‘free will’, and what they think the term means. Such studies should show, if we are right, that there is enormous variation in how people use the term, and what they think it means, and that people hardly use the term at all anyway. Then we would have knock-down evidence that should persuade many or most of the (more reasonable) philosophers working on this topic.]
The other part of my view, the cognitive biases view, is the part that pulls me to no-free-will-ism. This is what I discuss in my paper, mentioned above, about novelist control. I remember you rightly accusing me of having thrown “the kitchen sink” at the problem. While there is certainly a kernal of truth to that, and I would like to rewrite several paragraphs in the paper, I stand by most of what I wrote, and note in my defense that I only discuss about 15 of the approximately 100 biases listed on Wikipedia—I tried to leave much of the sink alone.
And while I see that you discuss a few cognitive biases / confusing sensations related to “free will”, you don’t mention ones I would consider important: the fundamental attribution error, the illusion of control, the just world phenomenon, and positive-outcome bias, etc.
My pet definition of free will. You seem to have your own favorite definition of free will, with which compatibilism wins (and an extreme one at that, based on your comment in the other post about a person still being responsible despite just being instantiated a couple of seconds ago to commit some good/bad deed). Although I think the meaning of “free will” should be determined by how people tend to use the term, I have my own favorite definition, on which we don’t have free will. I prefer my definition to yours for at least the following reasons:
A. On your definition, free will is something that people uncontroversially have. Nobody ever doubted that people have the sort of local control you discuss. Nobody ever doubted that people are more like rocks than computers. So, compatibilist definitions of free will are boring, and odd, to me for at least that reason.
In contrast, although it would be absurd for people to believe they have novelist control or something like it, it is not absurd to believe that people often believe absurdities, especially positive, anthropocentric ones about themselves, their special possessions, powers, and abilities, and their place in the universe. This is the same species that believed the sun revolved around the earth, a loving God created us and wants us to worship him, that we all possess immaterial souls, etc.
Thus, if you’re willing to say that God, souls, etc., do not exist, but draw the line and say “wait a minute, I’m willing to deny the existence of all of these other absurdities, but I’m not going to give you free will. [Maybe adding: that cuts too close]. I’m even willing to redefine the term, as Dennett does, before admitting defeat”, then you fit Tamler Sommer’s wonderful observation that “[p]hilosophers who reject God, Cartesian dualism, souls, noumenal selves, and even objective morality, cannot bring themselves to do the same for the concepts of free will and moral responsibility.” There seems to be some tension here.
B. On my pet definition of free will, the one I came into the debate with, and strongly feel pulled towards, free will is that power which solved an apparent problem: that my entire life destiny was fixed, before I was born, by circumstances outside of my control. This is what disturbed me (or alleviated me, depending on my mood, I suppose), when I first considered the problem. And, more importantly, this is what I think motivated most people, today and throughout history, when discussing free will. Going on the way back to the Greeks, then to Augustine and the Middle Ages, through the scientific revolution, when people were talking about free will, they were generally talking about this problem: that our fate is fixed before we are born (at least if the world is deterministic, as seemed plausible for so long and even today; and if it isn’t deterministic, that doesn’t seem to help).
In other words, when people were talking about free will, they were not considering the uncontroversial, local control and powers they have. Nobody said “hmm, even if an alien created me five seconds ago to pick up this apple, and implanted within me a desire to pick up this apple, and therefore now I have that desire, and look, lo and behold, I am picking up the apple. What should I call this amazing, beautiful, wonderful power? I know, let’s call it free will!” Admitting that this is a bit of a straw man, but with a good point behind it, I submit that nobody ever talked about free will in a way even remotely close to this.
The point is this: you, Eliezer (and Dennett, McKenna etc.) might be cool customers, but the idea of an alien/God/machine creating me five seconds ago, implanting within me a desire/value to pick up an apple, and then having the local control to act on that desire/value SCARES THE LIVING FU** OUT OF PEOPLE—and not just because of the alien/God/machine.
Nobody, except for a handful of clever intellectuals like yourself, ever thought that free will was supposed to be consistent with situations like that. Rather, my strong suspicion (the reason I lean towards “free will doesn’t exist” instead of “what is free will? tell me what it means and I’ll tell you if it exists”) is that “free will” was designed and intended to protect us from exactly and precisely that vulnerability.
Of course, nothing can protect us from that vulnerability. We can’t build our own lives/characters, even with a time machine; we’re denied by logic even more than physics. So free will never developed a clear definition. In accordance with the law of conjunction, the more philosophers said about free will (or God), the more details crafty philosophers were able to knock out. And so the terms shed more and more of itself (like the Y chromosome) until it was little more than LISP token: that thing that protects us from our fates being fixed before we’re born. How? “Shhhhh. Silly child, we’re not supposed to ask such questions.
This is at least a rough sketch of where I stand on the free will debate, one of the few intellectual topics on which I feel knowledgeable enough to really engage you. I work a lot, and don’t read about free will as much as I used to, but this is my current position. I think we just need more data.