I agree with Gordon: I don’t think that free will is unpredictability per se.
Determinism needs to be distinguished from predictability. A universe that unfolds deterministically is a universe that can be predicted by an omniscient being which can both capture a snapshot of all the causally relevant events, and have a perfect knowledge of the laws of physics.
The existence of such a predictor, known as a Laplace’s demon is not a prerequisite for the actual existence of determinism, it is just a way of explaining the concept. It is not contradictory to assert that the universe is deterministic but unpredictable. But there is a relationship between determinism and predictability: predictability is the main evidence for determinism. Nonetheless, determinism itself is the crux, and predictability only features indirectly as evidence for it.
Just to clarify my position, I think that the intuitive sense of free will people feel is caused by an inability to predict future states of the world from a subjective state of limited information. My objection in the other comment is to claiming that free will exists when the content of the post is explaining why it doesn’t exist in a form most people would intuitively judge to be free will rather than an explaining away of free will.
In the post I was just trying to describe the internal unpredictability in a deterministic universe, so I think I have already made a distinction between predictability and determinism. The main disagreement between us is that which one is more related to free will. Thank you for pointing out this, I will focus on this topic in the next post.
I second this. In my comment this is why I wanted to ask more about what’s meant by “observer” in the definition. An individual mind/perspective (regardless of computational power) being able to predict action is different than “predictability” by theoretical simulations of the universe.
That said, if we do define free will as predictability by a fellow human observer, then we could absolutely have free will of that type. We don’t even really need proof of that, we can just observe the plethora of evidence that people do not often perfectly predict each others actions.
I agree with Gordon: I don’t think that free will is unpredictability per se.
Determinism needs to be distinguished from predictability. A universe that unfolds deterministically is a universe that can be predicted by an omniscient being which can both capture a snapshot of all the causally relevant events, and have a perfect knowledge of the laws of physics.
The existence of such a predictor, known as a Laplace’s demon is not a prerequisite for the actual existence of determinism, it is just a way of explaining the concept. It is not contradictory to assert that the universe is deterministic but unpredictable. But there is a relationship between determinism and predictability: predictability is the main evidence for determinism. Nonetheless, determinism itself is the crux, and predictability only features indirectly as evidence for it.
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Just to clarify my position, I think that the intuitive sense of free will people feel is caused by an inability to predict future states of the world from a subjective state of limited information. My objection in the other comment is to claiming that free will exists when the content of the post is explaining why it doesn’t exist in a form most people would intuitively judge to be free will rather than an explaining away of free will.
In the post I was just trying to describe the internal unpredictability in a deterministic universe, so I think I have already made a distinction between predictability and determinism. The main disagreement between us is that which one is more related to free will. Thank you for pointing out this, I will focus on this topic in the next post.
I second this. In my comment this is why I wanted to ask more about what’s meant by “observer” in the definition. An individual mind/perspective (regardless of computational power) being able to predict action is different than “predictability” by theoretical simulations of the universe.
That said, if we do define free will as predictability by a fellow human observer, then we could absolutely have free will of that type. We don’t even really need proof of that, we can just observe the plethora of evidence that people do not often perfectly predict each others actions.