I am confused about free will. I tried to read about it (notably from the sequences) but am still not convinced.
I make choices, all the time, sure, but why do I chose one solution in particular?
My answer would be the sum of my knoledge and past experiences (nurture) and my genome (nature), with quantum randomness playing a role as well, but I can’t see where does free will intervene.
It feels like there is something basic I don’t understand, but I can’t grasp it.
Let’s try a car analogy for a compatibilist position, as I understand it: there is car, and why does it move? Because it has an engine and wheels and other parts all arranged in a specific pattern. There is no separate “carness” that makes it move (“automobileness” if you will), it is the totality of its parts that makes it a car.
Will is the same, it is the totality of your identity which creates a process by which choices are made. This doesn’t mean there is no such thing any more than the fact that a car is composed of identifiable parts means that no car exists, it is just not a basic indivisible thing.
Your insight is pretty consistent with a lot of philosophers, including my own personal favorite Daniel Dennett. Even if there is a pseudorandom number generator (or a quantum random number generator which might not be pseudo), that our “choices” would be random in this way does not really feel like what people want free will to mean. My reading of Dennett is that our “choices” arise from the law-like operation of our minds, which may be perfectly predictable (if there is no randomness only pseudorandmness of classical thermal noise) or might be as predicatable as any other physical phenomenon within the limits of quantum unpredictability (if you accept that explanation for what is seen in experiments such as two slit and so on).
The thing that amazes me about “free will” is that the “inputs” to what our brain does include the previous “outputs” of what our brain does. So I have decided that obviously if I believe that will power exists, the choices my brain makes in the future will be more likely consistent with what I consciously want my brain to do. So in some sense, free will does exist, well almost, if I get myself believing I have choices my brain will fall more often in the direction of choosing what I consciously want.
There is no substitute for reading Dennett in my opinion, and it is not an easy thing to do.
That sum you speak of is encoded in a massive biological calculator called a brain. Free will is the introspective module of that computer as it examines it’s own calculations, and that data affects the state of the network to be part of future calculations.
Hofstadter (as I remember—it’s been a long time) took it a step further, granting consciousness to our models of others, and to the models of us that we model in others, etc....
You’ve stated compatibilism, and from that perspective free will tends to look trivial (“you can choose things”) or like magical thinking.
Many people have wanted there to be something special about the act of choosing or making decisions. This is necessary for several moral theories, as they demand a particular sense in which you are responsible for your actions that does not obtain if all your actions have prior causes. This is often related to theories that call for a soul, some sort of you apart from your body, brain, genetics, environment, and randomness. You have a sense of self and many people want that to be very important, as you think of yourself as important (to you, if no one else).
You may have read Douglas Adams and recall him describing the fundamental question of philosophy as what life is all about when you really get down to it, really, I mean really. A fair amount of philosophy can be understood as people tacking “really” onto things and considering that a better question. “Sure you choose, but do you choose what you choose to choose? Is our will really free? I mean really, fundamentally free, when you take away everything else, really?”
I am confused about free will. I tried to read about it (notably from the sequences) but am still not convinced.
I make choices, all the time, sure, but why do I chose one solution in particular?
My answer would be the sum of my knoledge and past experiences (nurture) and my genome (nature), with quantum randomness playing a role as well, but I can’t see where does free will intervene.
It feels like there is something basic I don’t understand, but I can’t grasp it.
Let’s try a car analogy for a compatibilist position, as I understand it: there is car, and why does it move? Because it has an engine and wheels and other parts all arranged in a specific pattern. There is no separate “carness” that makes it move (“automobileness” if you will), it is the totality of its parts that makes it a car.
Will is the same, it is the totality of your identity which creates a process by which choices are made. This doesn’t mean there is no such thing any more than the fact that a car is composed of identifiable parts means that no car exists, it is just not a basic indivisible thing.
Your insight is pretty consistent with a lot of philosophers, including my own personal favorite Daniel Dennett. Even if there is a pseudorandom number generator (or a quantum random number generator which might not be pseudo), that our “choices” would be random in this way does not really feel like what people want free will to mean. My reading of Dennett is that our “choices” arise from the law-like operation of our minds, which may be perfectly predictable (if there is no randomness only pseudorandmness of classical thermal noise) or might be as predicatable as any other physical phenomenon within the limits of quantum unpredictability (if you accept that explanation for what is seen in experiments such as two slit and so on).
The thing that amazes me about “free will” is that the “inputs” to what our brain does include the previous “outputs” of what our brain does. So I have decided that obviously if I believe that will power exists, the choices my brain makes in the future will be more likely consistent with what I consciously want my brain to do. So in some sense, free will does exist, well almost, if I get myself believing I have choices my brain will fall more often in the direction of choosing what I consciously want.
There is no substitute for reading Dennett in my opinion, and it is not an easy thing to do.
That sum you speak of is encoded in a massive biological calculator called a brain. Free will is the introspective module of that computer as it examines it’s own calculations, and that data affects the state of the network to be part of future calculations.
Is that actually the ‘strange loop’ that Hofstadter writes about?
Hofstadter (as I remember—it’s been a long time) took it a step further, granting consciousness to our models of others, and to the models of us that we model in others, etc....
You’ve stated compatibilism, and from that perspective free will tends to look trivial (“you can choose things”) or like magical thinking.
Many people have wanted there to be something special about the act of choosing or making decisions. This is necessary for several moral theories, as they demand a particular sense in which you are responsible for your actions that does not obtain if all your actions have prior causes. This is often related to theories that call for a soul, some sort of you apart from your body, brain, genetics, environment, and randomness. You have a sense of self and many people want that to be very important, as you think of yourself as important (to you, if no one else).
You may have read Douglas Adams and recall him describing the fundamental question of philosophy as what life is all about when you really get down to it, really, I mean really. A fair amount of philosophy can be understood as people tacking “really” onto things and considering that a better question. “Sure you choose, but do you choose what you choose to choose? Is our will really free? I mean really, fundamentally free, when you take away everything else, really?”