“Matter” was a poor choice of words (hah). But no, there is no difference between determinism and non-determinism in terms of how free the choices are. Unless you are willing to concede that your choice is determine by the projection postulate, or by which Everett branch “you” end up in.
Not necessarily. Non-determinism (that future is not completely defined by the past) doesn’t have anything to do with choice. A stone doesn’t make choices even if future is intrinsically unpredictable. The question here is why would anyone think that humans are qualitatively different from stones.
I don’t think it can be meaningfully defined. How could you define free choice so that a human would have it, but a complicated mechanical contraption of stones wouldn’t?
You’d have to draw the line somewhere so it would have any meaning at all. What’s the point in the concept if anything can be interpreted as such. What do you mean when you say “free choice” or “choice”?
I define freedom in he libertarian sense, freedom in the compatibilist sense, and so on, separately, rather than trying to find a single true definition.
An agent with desires could be said to lack or have compatibilist free will inasmuch as it is able to act on its desires unimpededly. That could include an AI.
An agent with the ability to make undetermined choices could because to have libertarian free will. That could include an AI, too.
So I dont see the probelm with a “complicated contrivance” having free will.
“able to act on its desires unimpededly” has 2 problems.
First, it is clearly describing the “agent’s” (also not a well-defined category, but let’s leave it at that) experience, e.g. desires, not something objective from an outside view. Second, “unimpededly” is also intrinsically vague. Is my desire to fly impeded? Is an addict’s desire to quit? (If the answer is “no” to both, what would even count as impediment?) But, I guess, it is fine if we agree that “compatibilist free will” is just a feature of subjective experience.
“ability to make undetermined choices” relies on the ambiguous concept of “choice”, but also would be surprisingly abundant in a truly probabilistic world. We’d have to attribute “libertarian free will” to a radioactive isotope that’s “choosing” when to decay, or to any otherwise deterministic system that relies on such isotope. I don’t think that agrees with intuition of those who find this concept meaningful.
We can decide issues of compatibilist free will, up to a point, because it’s the same thing as acting under your own volition in the legal sense.
“ability to make undetermined choices” relies on the ambiguous concept of “choice”, but also would be surprisingly abundant in a truly probabilistic world
That would depend on the nature of choice. If the ability to make choices isn’t common , then widespread indeterminism would not lead to widespread undetermined choices.
Not necessarily. Determinism doesn’t have anything to do with choice. The stone doesn’t make choices regardless of determinism. The question here is why would anyone think that humans are qualitatively different from stones.
If the world actually is non deterministic, their choices actually could matter.
“Matter” was a poor choice of words (hah). But no, there is no difference between determinism and non-determinism in terms of how free the choices are. Unless you are willing to concede that your choice is determine by the projection postulate, or by which Everett branch “you” end up in.
If “free” merely means “free of determinism” ,then an undetermined choice is a free choice, and a determined choice is not.
The project ion postulate does nothing without some pre existing state, so why attribute all the choice to it?
I think your actual objection concerns the ability to combine volition (intention, etc) with freedom.
Not necessarily. Non-determinism (that future is not completely defined by the past) doesn’t have anything to do with choice. A stone doesn’t make choices even if future is intrinsically unpredictable. The question here is why would anyone think that humans are qualitatively different from stones.
Is a computer qualitatively different from a stone? Computers can make choices, in some sense.
I don’t think computers have any more free will [free choice] than stones. Do you?
How are you defining free will?
I don’t think it can be meaningfully defined. How could you define free choice so that a human would have it, but a complicated mechanical contraption of stones wouldn’t?
Why would you want to?
You’d have to draw the line somewhere so it would have any meaning at all. What’s the point in the concept if anything can be interpreted as such. What do you mean when you say “free choice” or “choice”?
I define freedom in he libertarian sense, freedom in the compatibilist sense, and so on, separately, rather than trying to find a single true definition.
An agent with desires could be said to lack or have compatibilist free will inasmuch as it is able to act on its desires unimpededly. That could include an AI.
An agent with the ability to make undetermined choices could because to have libertarian free will. That could include an AI, too.
So I dont see the probelm with a “complicated contrivance” having free will.
Both definitions have their issues.
“able to act on its desires unimpededly” has 2 problems. First, it is clearly describing the “agent’s” (also not a well-defined category, but let’s leave it at that) experience, e.g. desires, not something objective from an outside view. Second, “unimpededly” is also intrinsically vague. Is my desire to fly impeded? Is an addict’s desire to quit? (If the answer is “no” to both, what would even count as impediment?) But, I guess, it is fine if we agree that “compatibilist free will” is just a feature of subjective experience.
“ability to make undetermined choices” relies on the ambiguous concept of “choice”, but also would be surprisingly abundant in a truly probabilistic world. We’d have to attribute “libertarian free will” to a radioactive isotope that’s “choosing” when to decay, or to any otherwise deterministic system that relies on such isotope. I don’t think that agrees with intuition of those who find this concept meaningful.
All definitions have issues.
We can decide issues of compatibilist free will, up to a point, because it’s the same thing as acting under your own volition in the legal sense.
That would depend on the nature of choice. If the ability to make choices isn’t common , then widespread indeterminism would not lead to widespread undetermined choices.
If “free” merely means “free of determinism” ,then an undetermined choice is a free choice, and a determined choice is not.
I think your actual objection concerns the ability to volition, intention, or control with freedom
Not necessarily. Determinism doesn’t have anything to do with choice. The stone doesn’t make choices regardless of determinism. The question here is why would anyone think that humans are qualitatively different from stones.