I believe that, as far as there is a consensus, it’s that compatibilism is correct.
Free will is defined as “your ability to make free choices unconstrained by external agencies.” “You” has traditionally been defined as a supernatural “soul;” when it was demonstrated that “you” couldn’t have any effect on the world, and probably didn’t exist, many people concluded that “you” therefore had no ability to make choices, forgetting that soul-”you” didn’t actually exist. Compatibilists take a different path, by redefining you as a physical object, in which case free will becomes true.
If you have defined ‘freewill’ as being ordinary everyday freedom to make choices without constraint than it is not the philosopher’s straw man that I was talking about in the post. It does not imply dualism. This then becomes a semantic rather than a philosophical difference. I want to get rid of the word and you want to redefine it so that it is useful. But you don’t need the word. You could just say ‘I was free to make a choice.’ Most people would think you meant ‘free from external constraint’. I believe I said in the post that I was not talking about ordinary freedom from constraint but from the causality of the material world. That was the definition I was using for freewill.
If there are people (you may or may not be one) who cling to the word ‘freewill’ and redefine it so that they can cling to it, there cannot be too many. Because the replies to this post are the first time I have encountered this new definition with any frequency. Of course, I may not have noticed that someone was using the word in a different way from the usual meaning. This is like the redefinition of God to be something like ‘the whole universe’ or ‘the original cause’ in order to not have to admit that they don’t actually believe in God. I suppose that many of the people who say they believe in God would not prompt me to find out how vague their concept was.
I don’t know how common the “free will is freedom from external constraint” view—it’s called compatibilism* - is among the general population. It is, however, the dominant view among professional philosophers.
If you’ve never so much as heard of compatibilism, I have to question why you wrote an article on the subject of free will. It would be like writing on meta-ethics and pleading ignorance of non-cognitivism or error theory. In the future, consider at least reading the relevant SEP entry!
*Technically, many compatibilists believe that there are conditions other than freedom from external constraint that are necessary for free will. Definitionally none of them would say that indeterminism is one of them, though.
I am confused by the depth of feeling against my fairly mild posting which I thought many LWers would value.
One of the first postings that I read on LW was How an Algorithm Feels from Inside and another was Wrong Questions. I was so impressed that I began reading the blog regularly. What I noticed was that many of the contributors seemed to have a very different idea of what thought was than I had or that I felt those two great postings had. In particular I had trouble with two recurring areas: what is consciousness? and how are decisions made?. I have attempted a post on both. The reception has been equally hostile to both. It appears that I misjudged the group and that there is very little interest in a more scientific approach to these questions.
The big problem with your post is that it spends most of its words discussing free will and metaethics without making reference to the substantial material on those topics already posted and discussed on this site. As others have pointed out, not discussing compatibilism has weakened the post as well.
Ultimately, if you were trying to answer the question of how decisions are made, you have should have done so. Too much of the post covered material that wasn’t directly related to what you wanted to get at, and this would have been a problem even without the points mentioned above.
On a related note, you didn’t include any links in your post. Linking to a definition, discussion or explanation of a concept you’re using as a foundation is much better than reinventing the wheel.
All that said, please reconsider abandoning posting on LW. Your comments are frequently worth reading, and your reasoning (if not yet your writing) is usually pretty solid. I’m probably not the best person to make the offer, but I’d be happy to comment on drafts of future posts if you felt that might be useful.
I voted this up before reading it carefully. As is usual, admission of having made a mistake should get an upvote—if I’d read to the end first, I’d have seen the undefined claim that you’re using a more scientific approach.
Unfortunately, I don’t seem to be able to cancel my upvote, but knocking the comment down to −1 seems too harsh.
The post in question was a plea to look at and follow the neuroscience of decision making. That was the point. Don’t worry about the straw men—just follow the science. I am actually not that interested in freewill and want to get past that to something interesting. When I carefully define how I am using a word (like freewill or like consciousness in the last post) I don’t expect to be told that I cannot use the word that way. I was taken back by the reaction, that is all. Here are a bunch of reasonable, rational, intelligent people that I should be able to converse with and they appear to avoid being sensible about neuroscience. Too bad—I can still gain from following the discussions but I cannot give anything to the group except the odd comment, now and then. Don’t worry about the up vote—I can avoid ever using it.
The problem here is that you’re using “free will” in a weird way. While lots of people who haven’t thought about the question think libertarian free will makes sense, and lots of religious philosophers think libertarian free will makes sense, it’s definitely not a prevailing view amongst non-religious people who’ve thought about free will to any great extent. You’re ignoring the philosophical literature (about two thousand years worth, in fact), the various posts made on Less Wrong about the subject, and the general consensus of professional philosophers (at least non-religious ones) (who may or may not be a relevant reference class).
Two straw men indeed.
It’s as though you’ve made a post arguing that “Calcium” doesn’t exist since obviously it refers to its linguistic roots in alchemy, and scientists should get right on finding out what Calcium really is, and you don’t know why anyone thinks that’s a silly suggestion.
I don’t think anyone here thinks the neuroscience of decision-making is not a fruitful path of research, but this post did nothing of the sort. If you have interesting results to share from your work in that field, please do so—I’m sure there are several other readers who work in the same sort of field who would like to compare notes.
I believe that, as far as there is a consensus, it’s that compatibilism is correct.
Free will is defined as “your ability to make free choices unconstrained by external agencies.” “You” has traditionally been defined as a supernatural “soul;” when it was demonstrated that “you” couldn’t have any effect on the world, and probably didn’t exist, many people concluded that “you” therefore had no ability to make choices, forgetting that soul-”you” didn’t actually exist. Compatibilists take a different path, by redefining you as a physical object, in which case free will becomes true.
If you have defined ‘freewill’ as being ordinary everyday freedom to make choices without constraint than it is not the philosopher’s straw man that I was talking about in the post. It does not imply dualism. This then becomes a semantic rather than a philosophical difference. I want to get rid of the word and you want to redefine it so that it is useful. But you don’t need the word. You could just say ‘I was free to make a choice.’ Most people would think you meant ‘free from external constraint’. I believe I said in the post that I was not talking about ordinary freedom from constraint but from the causality of the material world. That was the definition I was using for freewill.
If there are people (you may or may not be one) who cling to the word ‘freewill’ and redefine it so that they can cling to it, there cannot be too many. Because the replies to this post are the first time I have encountered this new definition with any frequency. Of course, I may not have noticed that someone was using the word in a different way from the usual meaning. This is like the redefinition of God to be something like ‘the whole universe’ or ‘the original cause’ in order to not have to admit that they don’t actually believe in God. I suppose that many of the people who say they believe in God would not prompt me to find out how vague their concept was.
I don’t know how common the “free will is freedom from external constraint” view—it’s called compatibilism* - is among the general population. It is, however, the dominant view among professional philosophers.
If you’ve never so much as heard of compatibilism, I have to question why you wrote an article on the subject of free will. It would be like writing on meta-ethics and pleading ignorance of non-cognitivism or error theory. In the future, consider at least reading the relevant SEP entry!
*Technically, many compatibilists believe that there are conditions other than freedom from external constraint that are necessary for free will. Definitionally none of them would say that indeterminism is one of them, though.
I am confused by the depth of feeling against my fairly mild posting which I thought many LWers would value.
One of the first postings that I read on LW was How an Algorithm Feels from Inside and another was Wrong Questions. I was so impressed that I began reading the blog regularly. What I noticed was that many of the contributors seemed to have a very different idea of what thought was than I had or that I felt those two great postings had. In particular I had trouble with two recurring areas: what is consciousness? and how are decisions made?. I have attempted a post on both. The reception has been equally hostile to both. It appears that I misjudged the group and that there is very little interest in a more scientific approach to these questions.
Consider the post ‘dead in the water’.
The big problem with your post is that it spends most of its words discussing free will and metaethics without making reference to the substantial material on those topics already posted and discussed on this site. As others have pointed out, not discussing compatibilism has weakened the post as well.
Ultimately, if you were trying to answer the question of how decisions are made, you have should have done so. Too much of the post covered material that wasn’t directly related to what you wanted to get at, and this would have been a problem even without the points mentioned above.
On a related note, you didn’t include any links in your post. Linking to a definition, discussion or explanation of a concept you’re using as a foundation is much better than reinventing the wheel.
All that said, please reconsider abandoning posting on LW. Your comments are frequently worth reading, and your reasoning (if not yet your writing) is usually pretty solid. I’m probably not the best person to make the offer, but I’d be happy to comment on drafts of future posts if you felt that might be useful.
Thank you and if I even do post, I will take you up on your offer.
I would be happy to comment as well.
(Though I’m almost certainly a far worse choice.)
Thank you and if I even do post, I will take you up on your offer.
I voted this up before reading it carefully. As is usual, admission of having made a mistake should get an upvote—if I’d read to the end first, I’d have seen the undefined claim that you’re using a more scientific approach.
Unfortunately, I don’t seem to be able to cancel my upvote, but knocking the comment down to −1 seems too harsh.
The post in question was a plea to look at and follow the neuroscience of decision making. That was the point. Don’t worry about the straw men—just follow the science. I am actually not that interested in freewill and want to get past that to something interesting. When I carefully define how I am using a word (like freewill or like consciousness in the last post) I don’t expect to be told that I cannot use the word that way. I was taken back by the reaction, that is all. Here are a bunch of reasonable, rational, intelligent people that I should be able to converse with and they appear to avoid being sensible about neuroscience. Too bad—I can still gain from following the discussions but I cannot give anything to the group except the odd comment, now and then. Don’t worry about the up vote—I can avoid ever using it.
Clicking the “Vote up” link again should remove the vote.
The problem here is that you’re using “free will” in a weird way. While lots of people who haven’t thought about the question think libertarian free will makes sense, and lots of religious philosophers think libertarian free will makes sense, it’s definitely not a prevailing view amongst non-religious people who’ve thought about free will to any great extent. You’re ignoring the philosophical literature (about two thousand years worth, in fact), the various posts made on Less Wrong about the subject, and the general consensus of professional philosophers (at least non-religious ones) (who may or may not be a relevant reference class).
Two straw men indeed.
It’s as though you’ve made a post arguing that “Calcium” doesn’t exist since obviously it refers to its linguistic roots in alchemy, and scientists should get right on finding out what Calcium really is, and you don’t know why anyone thinks that’s a silly suggestion.
I don’t think anyone here thinks the neuroscience of decision-making is not a fruitful path of research, but this post did nothing of the sort. If you have interesting results to share from your work in that field, please do so—I’m sure there are several other readers who work in the same sort of field who would like to compare notes.