I would like to know how you understand free will. But since philosophical definitions are generally useless, I would appreciate if you can give a few examples of not having free will. I asked this question on this forum once before, and some people struggled to described the sensation of not having free will, and those who did describe it gave very different descriptions. I am quite sure that your examples of lack of free will would clash with those of others, indicating that the notion is too poorly defined to be discussed productively.
This is a general problem with intuitively understood notions, people use the same term for overlapping but different concepts and/or qualia. “Existence” is one of the worst. People use it in different and contradictory ways, often in the same sentence (this is easy to detect by asking “what does it mean for to not exist?”).
Anyway, just wondering about 3 examples which you personally think describe not having free will.
I would appreciate if you can give a few examples of not having free will.
Alright, that sounds like a good idea. I don’t think there can be a sensation of having or not having free will, any more than there can be a sensation of drawing a conclusion from premises. In a loose sense, there might be an ‘experience’ of these things, in the sense that I might remember having done so. But if drawing an inference produces in me some sensation or other, that’s totally accidental. Same goes, I think, for acting freely.
1) I throw a rock down a mountain and kill Tom. The rock does not have free will.
2) You throw me down a mountain, and I land on Tom, killing him. I had free will, but my will isn’t part of what killed Tom, any more than is the will of Suzie who wasn’t involved.
3) When you threw me down the mountain, you acted thus under duress. You still acted freely, though we might not want to say that you were morally responsible.
4) If you were being mind controlled by a sinister alien, then you’re in no different a situation than and I was in (2): you didn’t act at all. There are tricky but unimportant borderline cases to be found in the territory of influence by, say, drug addiction.
Here’s another intuition of mine:
I throw a large rock down a steep mountain. At the bottom of this mountain, the rock strikes Tom and kills him. Carl, brother of Tom, sets out to find out why Tom died. He would and should not be satisfied to learn that a rock struck Tom. Carl would and should be satisfied to learn that I throw that rock. He should not seek any further, upon learning this. If, contra-factually, I did not throw the rock and it fell by chance, then Carl should be satisfied to learn this.
If asked why his brother died, Carl should answer ‘Hen killed him by throwing a rock down a hill’. If, contra-factually, I did not throw the rock but it fell on its own, then Carl can rightly answer ‘A rock fell on him’, or pick arbitrarily from any one of the string of antecedent causes that precipitated Tom’s death, or just say ‘by chance’ or ‘by accident’. The specialness of myself in this story is due to the fact that I have free will, and that I threw the rock freely. The rock, the texture of the mountain, my parents and ancestors, and the great many necessary antecedents to Tom’s death are all computational nexuses in what led to Tom’s death, but I’m the only one that’s special in this way (so being a necessary computational nexus isn’t sufficient, but is perhaps necessary, to being the free cause of something).
I don’t think there can be a sensation of having or not having free will, any more than there can be a sensation of drawing a conclusion from premises.
Huh. I thought the whole starting point of the debate was that people do have “a sensation of having … free will” and argue what this free will thing is.
Example 1: sure, rocks are probably not interesting objects to ascribe free will to, though a good start. I am more interested in humans not having free will.
Example 2: this is not an example of NOT having free will
Example 3: this is not an example of NOT having free will, as you explicitly state.
Example 4: “mind controlled by a sinister alien” is, as I understand, where you feel you have free will, but “in fact” you do not. This seems identical to “mind controled by indifferent laws of physics” and implies that free will is a pure sensation, since everything is controlled by the laws of physics in a non-dualistic picture. Or am I missing something in your logic? Or does it only work if you are mind-controlled by something that has free will, and then there are turtles all the way down?
There are tricky but unimportant borderline cases to be found in the territory of influence by, say, drug addiction.
Seems critically important to me, as described above.
The story about Carl, Tom and you is not an example of any of the agents NOT having free will, so it does not help.
Huh. I thought the whole starting point of the debate was that people do have “a sensation of having … free will” and argue what this free will thing is.
I’d never seen the problem put this way before reading the free will sequence, so that wasn’t my impression. But I can hardly claim to have a representative sample of free will discussions under my belt.
Example 2: this is not an example of NOT having free will
Then maybe I didn’t understand your request. Could you clarify what you’re looking for? In any case, here’s a no-exhaustive list of things I think don’t have free will: rocks and things like them, plants, most and probably all non-human animals (I’m not really sure), human beings who are very young (i.e. prelinguistic), human beings with severe cognitive impairment (human beings in regard to whom we would correctly say that they don’t have things like beliefs, reasons, justifications etc.)
Here’s a non-exhaustive list of things that I think do have free will: all human beings regardless of circumstances, excepting those on the first list.
So I’m not sure if I can give you an example of what you’re looking for. Do you mean ‘give me a situation in which someone who is normally apt to have free will doesn’t?’ If so, then my answer is ‘I can’t, I don’t think that’s possible.’ I’m not sure about that, of course, given the magnitude of a ‘that’s impossible’ claim, so please offer any counterexamples you can think of.
I also don’t think I’m being at all radical in my understanding of free will here. We don’t always act freely, of course. Sometimes stuff just happens to us, and I take it we can tell the difference between hurling ourselves at Tom, and being thrown at Tom by someone else. So maybe there’s something like an experience of acting freely, though I certainly don’t think that it’s a sensation.
Example 4: “mind controlled by a sinister alien” is, as I understand, where you feel you have free will, but “in fact” you do not.
No, I don’t think the feelings of the agent are relevant. The feeling of having free will, if there is any such thing, is neither necessary nor sufficient for having free will.
I did not want to prime you with my own examples, but since you say
‘give me a situation in which someone who is normally apt to have free will doesn’t?’ [...] my answer is ’I can’t
I will try. Here are some examples where you might feel not having free will, which is an easier question to answer than objectively not having free will, since all you have to do is ask someone about what they feel and think. Note that different people are likely to give different answers.
The voices in your head tell you to stab someone and you are compelled to do it. Subcases: a) you don’t want to do it, but do it anyway, b) you don’t care either way and just do it, c) you don’t understand what wanting or not wanting even means when the voices in your head make you do things. I’m sure there are more alternatives.
You see your arm rising and punching someone, without consciously deciding to do so. Again, various subcases are possible.
You instinctively yelp when startled, before having time to decide whether you should.
Ah, I see. It seems to me that all those examples are like my example (2), where someone has free will but is not presently exercising it (however much it may appear that they are). I agree that, on the face of it, those all seem to me to be examples of not exercising free will. One could be in those situations while having free will all the same. I could, for example, watch my arm punch someone, and yet be freely writing a note to my mother with the other arm.
those all seem to me to be examples of not exercising free will. One could be in those situations while having free will all the same.
I am unclear about the difference between not having and not exercising free will. Are you saying that going with the default choice (whatever it might mean) is not exercising free will? Or the inability to see choices is not exercising free will? Or seeing choices and wanting to choose but being unable to do so is “not exercising”?
No, nothing so complicated. Say I meet Tom on the street. Tom is angry with me, so he pushes me over and I smash a pigeon. Did I smash the pigeon? Yes, in a way. But my smashing a pigeon wasn’t an action on my part. It wasn’t an exercise of my will. Yet I have free will the whole time. Tom’s pushing me over can’t do anything about that.
This isn’t quite a parallel case, but my smashing the pigeon isn’t an exercise of my mathematical knowledge either, but the fact that I’m not exercising my mathematical knowledge doesn’t mean I don’t have it. Does that make sense? I guess I always understood ‘having free will’ as something like having a capacity to act, while ‘exercising free will’ means acting. But I don’t have any reflective depth there, it’s just an assumption or maybe just a semantic prejudice.
I would like to know how you understand free will. But since philosophical definitions are generally useless, I would appreciate if you can give a few examples of not having free will. I asked this question on this forum once before, and some people struggled to described the sensation of not having free will, and those who did describe it gave very different descriptions. I am quite sure that your examples of lack of free will would clash with those of others, indicating that the notion is too poorly defined to be discussed productively.
This is a general problem with intuitively understood notions, people use the same term for overlapping but different concepts and/or qualia. “Existence” is one of the worst. People use it in different and contradictory ways, often in the same sentence (this is easy to detect by asking “what does it mean for to not exist?”).
Anyway, just wondering about 3 examples which you personally think describe not having free will.
Alright, that sounds like a good idea. I don’t think there can be a sensation of having or not having free will, any more than there can be a sensation of drawing a conclusion from premises. In a loose sense, there might be an ‘experience’ of these things, in the sense that I might remember having done so. But if drawing an inference produces in me some sensation or other, that’s totally accidental. Same goes, I think, for acting freely.
1) I throw a rock down a mountain and kill Tom. The rock does not have free will.
2) You throw me down a mountain, and I land on Tom, killing him. I had free will, but my will isn’t part of what killed Tom, any more than is the will of Suzie who wasn’t involved.
3) When you threw me down the mountain, you acted thus under duress. You still acted freely, though we might not want to say that you were morally responsible.
4) If you were being mind controlled by a sinister alien, then you’re in no different a situation than and I was in (2): you didn’t act at all. There are tricky but unimportant borderline cases to be found in the territory of influence by, say, drug addiction.
Here’s another intuition of mine:
I throw a large rock down a steep mountain. At the bottom of this mountain, the rock strikes Tom and kills him. Carl, brother of Tom, sets out to find out why Tom died. He would and should not be satisfied to learn that a rock struck Tom. Carl would and should be satisfied to learn that I throw that rock. He should not seek any further, upon learning this. If, contra-factually, I did not throw the rock and it fell by chance, then Carl should be satisfied to learn this.
If asked why his brother died, Carl should answer ‘Hen killed him by throwing a rock down a hill’. If, contra-factually, I did not throw the rock but it fell on its own, then Carl can rightly answer ‘A rock fell on him’, or pick arbitrarily from any one of the string of antecedent causes that precipitated Tom’s death, or just say ‘by chance’ or ‘by accident’. The specialness of myself in this story is due to the fact that I have free will, and that I threw the rock freely. The rock, the texture of the mountain, my parents and ancestors, and the great many necessary antecedents to Tom’s death are all computational nexuses in what led to Tom’s death, but I’m the only one that’s special in this way (so being a necessary computational nexus isn’t sufficient, but is perhaps necessary, to being the free cause of something).
Huh. I thought the whole starting point of the debate was that people do have “a sensation of having … free will” and argue what this free will thing is.
Example 1: sure, rocks are probably not interesting objects to ascribe free will to, though a good start. I am more interested in humans not having free will.
Example 2: this is not an example of NOT having free will
Example 3: this is not an example of NOT having free will, as you explicitly state.
Example 4: “mind controlled by a sinister alien” is, as I understand, where you feel you have free will, but “in fact” you do not. This seems identical to “mind controled by indifferent laws of physics” and implies that free will is a pure sensation, since everything is controlled by the laws of physics in a non-dualistic picture. Or am I missing something in your logic? Or does it only work if you are mind-controlled by something that has free will, and then there are turtles all the way down?
Seems critically important to me, as described above.
The story about Carl, Tom and you is not an example of any of the agents NOT having free will, so it does not help.
I’d never seen the problem put this way before reading the free will sequence, so that wasn’t my impression. But I can hardly claim to have a representative sample of free will discussions under my belt.
Then maybe I didn’t understand your request. Could you clarify what you’re looking for? In any case, here’s a no-exhaustive list of things I think don’t have free will: rocks and things like them, plants, most and probably all non-human animals (I’m not really sure), human beings who are very young (i.e. prelinguistic), human beings with severe cognitive impairment (human beings in regard to whom we would correctly say that they don’t have things like beliefs, reasons, justifications etc.)
Here’s a non-exhaustive list of things that I think do have free will: all human beings regardless of circumstances, excepting those on the first list.
So I’m not sure if I can give you an example of what you’re looking for. Do you mean ‘give me a situation in which someone who is normally apt to have free will doesn’t?’ If so, then my answer is ‘I can’t, I don’t think that’s possible.’ I’m not sure about that, of course, given the magnitude of a ‘that’s impossible’ claim, so please offer any counterexamples you can think of.
I also don’t think I’m being at all radical in my understanding of free will here. We don’t always act freely, of course. Sometimes stuff just happens to us, and I take it we can tell the difference between hurling ourselves at Tom, and being thrown at Tom by someone else. So maybe there’s something like an experience of acting freely, though I certainly don’t think that it’s a sensation.
No, I don’t think the feelings of the agent are relevant. The feeling of having free will, if there is any such thing, is neither necessary nor sufficient for having free will.
I did not want to prime you with my own examples, but since you say
I will try. Here are some examples where you might feel not having free will, which is an easier question to answer than objectively not having free will, since all you have to do is ask someone about what they feel and think. Note that different people are likely to give different answers.
The voices in your head tell you to stab someone and you are compelled to do it. Subcases: a) you don’t want to do it, but do it anyway, b) you don’t care either way and just do it, c) you don’t understand what wanting or not wanting even means when the voices in your head make you do things. I’m sure there are more alternatives.
You see your arm rising and punching someone, without consciously deciding to do so. Again, various subcases are possible.
You instinctively yelp when startled, before having time to decide whether you should.
Ah, I see. It seems to me that all those examples are like my example (2), where someone has free will but is not presently exercising it (however much it may appear that they are). I agree that, on the face of it, those all seem to me to be examples of not exercising free will. One could be in those situations while having free will all the same. I could, for example, watch my arm punch someone, and yet be freely writing a note to my mother with the other arm.
I am unclear about the difference between not having and not exercising free will. Are you saying that going with the default choice (whatever it might mean) is not exercising free will? Or the inability to see choices is not exercising free will? Or seeing choices and wanting to choose but being unable to do so is “not exercising”?
No, nothing so complicated. Say I meet Tom on the street. Tom is angry with me, so he pushes me over and I smash a pigeon. Did I smash the pigeon? Yes, in a way. But my smashing a pigeon wasn’t an action on my part. It wasn’t an exercise of my will. Yet I have free will the whole time. Tom’s pushing me over can’t do anything about that.
This isn’t quite a parallel case, but my smashing the pigeon isn’t an exercise of my mathematical knowledge either, but the fact that I’m not exercising my mathematical knowledge doesn’t mean I don’t have it. Does that make sense? I guess I always understood ‘having free will’ as something like having a capacity to act, while ‘exercising free will’ means acting. But I don’t have any reflective depth there, it’s just an assumption or maybe just a semantic prejudice.