I generally like this post, and am unsure why it was voted down. However, I think that you need to separate “not useful” from “not true”- while it may or may not be true that neither is particularly useful in real life, under the definitions accepted by LW, both are almost certainly true.
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 haven’t read it yet but “this impossible question is fully and completely dissolved on Less Wrong”.
I do believe that free will is true, or rather a useful terminology, given my own definition.
‘Free will’ is often defined as want free FROM cause. But why shouldn’t ‘free will’ be defined as want free TO cause?
Any measure of ‘free will’ must be based on the effectiveness and feasibility of consciousness volition opposed to the strenght of the environmental influence. We have to fathom the extent of active adaption of the environment by a system opposed to passive adaption of a system by the the environment. The specific effectiveness and order of transformation by which the self-defined system (you) shapes the outside environment, in which it is embedded, must trump the environmental influence on the defined system. What is essential is that the system has to be goal-oriented and the ability to differentiate itself within the environment in which it is embedded.
What I mean is very simple. If I could get what I want I have had free will. In retrospect the degree of freedom of want is measured by the extent to which I had to adapt my will to environmental circumstances opposed to changing the environment to suit my goals. And basically this is what I mean by ‘free will’. To extent this notion of free will you can ‘measure’ the extent to which one changed his will deliberately, that is consciously, i.e. from within (nonlinear). By nonlinear here I mean a system whose output is not proportional to its input. This is opposed to the ‘persuasion’ of a child by an adult or the contrary affection of one’s will by unwanted, non-self-regulated influence of any kind.
(Edit Note: I’m not the usual highly educated LW reader. This might be a lot of garbage indeed. Ask me about it in a few years again.)
I’m saying that to talk about free will we first have to define what we mean by ‘free will’. Further I give a definition of what I mean, how I define the term ‘free will’. I define ‘free will’ as something universal that gradually exists on different levels. I define ‘free will’ as a measure of goal realization. That is, free will of a child < adult < superhuman artificial intelligence. Except if you are jailed, you might have less free will than a kid.
I believe that our feeling of being free agents represents the extrapolated and retrospective perception of goal realization and not what is talked about in metaphysics, that our intentions are free from cause. It’s rather that our ability to cause, to realize our intentions can be and is gradually perceived to be free.
For my part I think any philosopher (or teacher of philosophy) that trains themselves or their students into considering the truthfulness of freewill deserves a spanking. I’m not sure what the official name for that position is.
Metaphysicians call that view “libertarianism” (what a confusing name huh?). Basically, libertarianism, is the view that free will and determinism are incompatible, but we have free will, so materialism is false.
Not all libertarians reject materialism—there is the view (not mine; I’m a compatibilist) that indeterminism in physical laws is sufficient for libertarian free will.
Why do people always fall back to philosophy when talking about free will. It doesn’t need to be a metaphysical concept. It is pretty much a human trait, an attribute of human psychology. We all know we have free will, period.
Determinism is true but thermostats can still control the temperature. And nobody denies that thermostats control the temperature.
— Steven Landsburg paraphrasing Robert Nozick in The Big Questions
This is not a bias, it’s part of our subjective definition of being agents that are able to change their environment as it suits them.
Taking an outside view, I absolutely agree. There is no free will, no reasonable definition will fit those two words in succession. But from a inside view, it makes sense to talk about being free to choose.
Anyone who’s not sure what I mean I recommend reading this post:
What can we make of someone who says that materialism implies meaninglessness? I can only conclude that if I took them to see Seurat’s painting “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte,” they would earnestly ask me what on earth the purpose of all the little dots was.
I like to believe into a timeless universe. So I guess I’m not completely serious. But all this is quickly leaving the intention of this community. There’s probably not much practical value to be found in such musings and beliefs besides a poetic appeal and fun of thinking and dreaming about nonfactual possibilities.
I really have to think more and especially not publicly claim something when I’m too tired. I might consider a tattoo on the back of hands. Think first!
What I rather wanted to say is, it makes sense to talk about being able to realize your goals. Choice doesn’t exist, I contradicted myself there. I should quit now and for some time stop participating on LW. I have to continue with my studies. I was only drawn here by the deletion incident. Replies and that it is fun to to argue have made me babble too much in the past few days.
What XiXiDu said—“free will” is assigned as a problem for aspiring rationalists to solve, and I really don’t see a problem with trying to do so in a top-level post, so I voted up this post in hopes of seeing it out of the negatives.
I think the general view around here is vaguely compatibilist, but only in the sense of realizing that the free will question is asking the wrong question, and I’d rather not give away more than that if you haven’t worked it out.
I agree that the question is the wrong question. And I assume that my saying forget the straw men of determinism and freewill and get on with the real question of how we actually make decisions was fairly clear.
My emotional reaction to compatibilism is that it is a bit of a cope out. It attacks neither determinism or freewill and does not ask the scientific based question, which is the one that can in future be answered. But I certainly think it is an improvement over the old, old argument.
I generally like this post, and am unsure why it was voted down. However, I think that you need to separate “not useful” from “not true”- while it may or may not be true that neither is particularly useful in real life, under the definitions accepted by LW, both are almost certainly true.
I meant to add—thanks for the advice to separate ‘not useful’ from ‘not true’.
Do LW people generally think freewill is true? I had thought that we were generally materialist and didn’t believe in magic mind stuff. Am I wrong?
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.
I haven’t read it yet but “this impossible question is fully and completely dissolved on Less Wrong”.
I do believe that free will is true, or rather a useful terminology, given my own definition.
‘Free will’ is often defined as want free FROM cause. But why shouldn’t ‘free will’ be defined as want free TO cause?
Any measure of ‘free will’ must be based on the effectiveness and feasibility of consciousness volition opposed to the strenght of the environmental influence. We have to fathom the extent of active adaption of the environment by a system opposed to passive adaption of a system by the the environment. The specific effectiveness and order of transformation by which the self-defined system (you) shapes the outside environment, in which it is embedded, must trump the environmental influence on the defined system. What is essential is that the system has to be goal-oriented and the ability to differentiate itself within the environment in which it is embedded.
What I mean is very simple. If I could get what I want I have had free will. In retrospect the degree of freedom of want is measured by the extent to which I had to adapt my will to environmental circumstances opposed to changing the environment to suit my goals. And basically this is what I mean by ‘free will’. To extent this notion of free will you can ‘measure’ the extent to which one changed his will deliberately, that is consciously, i.e. from within (nonlinear). By nonlinear here I mean a system whose output is not proportional to its input. This is opposed to the ‘persuasion’ of a child by an adult or the contrary affection of one’s will by unwanted, non-self-regulated influence of any kind.
(Edit Note: I’m not the usual highly educated LW reader. This might be a lot of garbage indeed. Ask me about it in a few years again.)
I am sorry. I honestly find it very hard to understand what you are trying to say and more importantly why. Honestly, my fault but I don’t get it.
I’m saying that to talk about free will we first have to define what we mean by ‘free will’. Further I give a definition of what I mean, how I define the term ‘free will’. I define ‘free will’ as something universal that gradually exists on different levels. I define ‘free will’ as a measure of goal realization. That is, free will of a child < adult < superhuman artificial intelligence. Except if you are jailed, you might have less free will than a kid.
I believe that our feeling of being free agents represents the extrapolated and retrospective perception of goal realization and not what is talked about in metaphysics, that our intentions are free from cause. It’s rather that our ability to cause, to realize our intentions can be and is gradually perceived to be free.
For my part I think any philosopher (or teacher of philosophy) that trains themselves or their students into considering the truthfulness of freewill deserves a spanking. I’m not sure what the official name for that position is.
Metaphysicians call that view “libertarianism” (what a confusing name huh?). Basically, libertarianism, is the view that free will and determinism are incompatible, but we have free will, so materialism is false.
Not all libertarians reject materialism—there is the view (not mine; I’m a compatibilist) that indeterminism in physical laws is sufficient for libertarian free will.
You are right. My last sentence should have read:
Basically, libertarianism, is the view that free will and determinism are incompatible, but we have free will, so determinism is false.
(I don’t think we are talking about the same thing. My view is, approximately, “contemptuous compatibilism”.)
Why do people always fall back to philosophy when talking about free will. It doesn’t need to be a metaphysical concept. It is pretty much a human trait, an attribute of human psychology. We all know we have free will, period.
— Steven Landsburg paraphrasing Robert Nozick in The Big Questions
This is not a bias, it’s part of our subjective definition of being agents that are able to change their environment as it suits them.
Taking an outside view, I absolutely agree. There is no free will, no reasonable definition will fit those two words in succession. But from a inside view, it makes sense to talk about being free to choose.
Anyone who’s not sure what I mean I recommend reading this post:
Are you being serious or sarcastic here? I’m confused.
Now that was a unsettling reply.
I like to believe into a timeless universe. So I guess I’m not completely serious. But all this is quickly leaving the intention of this community. There’s probably not much practical value to be found in such musings and beliefs besides a poetic appeal and fun of thinking and dreaming about nonfactual possibilities.
I really have to think more and especially not publicly claim something when I’m too tired. I might consider a tattoo on the back of hands. Think first!
What I rather wanted to say is, it makes sense to talk about being able to realize your goals. Choice doesn’t exist, I contradicted myself there. I should quit now and for some time stop participating on LW. I have to continue with my studies. I was only drawn here by the deletion incident. Replies and that it is fun to to argue have made me babble too much in the past few days.
Back to being lurker. Thanks.
It certainly does.
What XiXiDu said—“free will” is assigned as a problem for aspiring rationalists to solve, and I really don’t see a problem with trying to do so in a top-level post, so I voted up this post in hopes of seeing it out of the negatives.
I think the general view around here is vaguely compatibilist, but only in the sense of realizing that the free will question is asking the wrong question, and I’d rather not give away more than that if you haven’t worked it out.
I agree that the question is the wrong question. And I assume that my saying forget the straw men of determinism and freewill and get on with the real question of how we actually make decisions was fairly clear. My emotional reaction to compatibilism is that it is a bit of a cope out. It attacks neither determinism or freewill and does not ask the scientific based question, which is the one that can in future be answered. But I certainly think it is an improvement over the old, old argument.