All two-stage models seem to have this in common: first there is a random, nondeterministic, unpredictable, or ‘free’ stage, which generates possibilities. Then there is a rational, at least partially predictable ‘will’ stage which chooses an action from the possibilities presented.
This might well be a good neurological or psychological model of decision making. (Although I’d expect the actual implementation to have multiple sources of suggestions, and multiple modules and layers of filtering and choosing.) I just don’t see what it has to do with “free will”.
All discussion of “free will” starts with the fact that we feel like we are freely choosing from possible alternatives. It doesn’t matter here how the alternatives were generated: when presented with a multiple choice test, where the alternatives are fixed, we still we’re exercising free will in answering it. Why does it help to specify that the generation of possibilities is random?
(Some of) the philosophers quoted in your link say the benefit is being able to choose otherwise in exactly identical repeating circumstances (e.g. simulation reruns) because the generation of alternatives is not deterministic. I don’t see why that would be a good thing: it just means that some of the time you won’t generate an alternative that you would have chosen in those runs where you did generate—in other words, you lose out because you don’t or can’t generate all the alternatives all the time.
If the generation process is thought to be completely random, and the selection process completely deterministic, I don’t see how this matches an intuition of “free will”. (Granted, arguing about intuitions is usually silly in the first place and assumes too much about the typical mind.)
So what are the empirical claims these models make? At least, that we should find in the brain a separation between random generation of ideas (e.g. amplification of chance or chaotic events) and rational selection of outcomes. That would be a great day for the neuro sciences. I just don’t think it would convince anyone about anything regarding “free will” or the lack thereof. (After all, philosophers kept believing in free will even when physicists were quite sure the universe was deterministic...)
All discussion of “free will” starts with the fact that we feel like we are freely choosing from possible alternatives.
it might be the case that the issue “starts with” the feeling of being able to make choices, but it starts in the sense that what the debate is about is the most direct interpretation of this feeling that we actually can make free choices. The debate is about what causes, or underlies, or best explains the feeling. For centuries there has been a debate about the conflict between free will and determinism (or, earlier, between free will and divine
omniscience or foreordination). That hasn’t been centuries of people stupidly failing to notice that the feeling of freedom is trivially compatible with any amount of determinism so long as the feeling is taken to be an illusion.
It doesn’t matter here how the alternatives were generated: when presented with a multiple choice test, where the alternatives are fixed, we still we’re exercising free will in answering it.
How do you know? For what value of “free will”? It is now acknowledged that there are different concepts of free
will. The compatibilist concept is about being able to make choices without external duress, so by that definition
your answers are freely chosen so long as no one is pointing a gun at your head, or anything like that. But is is obvious that most people are free most of the time under that definition, so the historical debate cannot have been about that concept.
The incompatibilist concept of free will contains further conditions, in particular the condition that when we make a free choice we could have done otherwise. That is a straight contradicition to strict determinism, because under determinism, there is no way things could have been otherwise.
Why does it help to specify that the generation of possibilities is random?
Because random possibilities are free from determination by past events, thus allowing that affairs in fact could be otherwise, that multiple real possibilities are actually available.
(Some of) the philosophers quoted in your link say the benefit is being able to choose otherwise in exactly identical repeating circumstances (e.g. simulation reruns) because the generation of alternatives is not deterministic. I don’t see why that would be a good thing: it just means that some of the time you won’t generate an alternative that you would have chosen in those runs where you did generate—in other words, you lose out because you don’t or can’t generate all the alternatives all the time.
The point is to give an explanation of what the feeling of free choice seems, directly, to be, not to give an account of why it is valuable or optimal.
If the generation process is thought to be completely random, and the selection process completely deterministic,
The generation process cant be completely random, the range of ideas you can generate has to be constrained by your past history and experience...a caveman can’t come up with relativity.
So what are the empirical claims these models make? At least, that we should find in the brain a separation between random generation of ideas (e.g. amplification of chance or chaotic events) and rational selection of outcomes. That would be a great day for the neuro sciences. I just don’t think it would convince anyone about anything regarding “free will” or the lack thereof. (After all, philosophers kept believing in free will even when physicists were quite sure the universe was deterministic...)
A lot of philosophers kept believing in compatibilist free will, which is..well..compatible with determinsim. Very few kept believing in incompatibilist free will. In fact, the revival of incompatibilist libertarianism has come partly from physics, since the “news” that the universe isn’t necessarily deterministic has filtered through very slowly to philosophy...Tony Dore, the Information Philosopher actually has a physics background.
That hasn’t been centuries of people stupidly failing to notice that the feeling of freedom is trivially compatible with any amount of determinism so long as the feeling is taken to be an illusion.
Suppose we’re in one of two possible worlds, and we don’t know which. One is deterministic (or its random components are irrelevant to human choice) and has an illusion of free will. The other has ‘real’ free will, whether in a two-stage model or otherwise. The humans in both worlds have the same experiences and intuitions about free will.
How can we tell in which world we are? It would help if the fact of having this intuition was relevant evidence; after all, it’s the only reason we’re even investigating the subject. Is it evidence? And which way does it point? That’s what I’d like to see addressed. Is there a specific argument that having this intuition is evidence that it is true?
This is just like the objection to p-zombies: they imply that the fact of consciousness isn’t the cause of experiencing and talking about consciousness. Similarly, imagine p-fwills that behave the same as us and report the experience of free will, but they don’t really have free will, they’re just deterministic machines.
Two-stage models are supposed to make empirical predictions, so unlike p-zombies, we should be able to detect such creatures and differentiate them from us. One way to do this would be to prove that they are deterministic whereas we are not. But p-fwills have the same intuition as us about free will, so having free will isn’t a cause of the intuition.
The question of whether having free will would be a cause of such an intuition is the one that should be settled proof.
The incompatibilist concept of free will contains further conditions, in particular the condition that when we make a free choice we could have done otherwise. That is a straight contradicition to strict determinism, because under determinism, there is no way things could have been otherwise.
Who cares whether we could have done otherwise? In real life we never actually experience the exact same circumstances twice, so why would whether or not we could do otherwise be causally related with us having the free will intuition, which is what we’re trying to explain?
Suppose we’re in one of two possible worlds, and we don’t know which. One is deterministic (or its random components are irrelevant to human choice) and has an illusion of free will. The other has ‘real’ free will, whether in a two-stage model or otherwise. The humans in both worlds have the same experiences and intuitions about free will.
How can we tell in which world we are?
With naturalistic libertarianism you need to determine that physical indeterminism exists, which you can do with experiment based on EPR and Bell’s theorem and suchlike, and you also need to verify that the brain uses indeterminiosm in some appropriate way. I stated earlier that naturalistic libertarians put forward falsifiable hypotheses.
But p-fwills have the same intuition as us about free will, so having free will isn’t a cause of the intuition.
That doesn’t follow. In the FW universe, individuals could feel they have FW because they do, in the other, the feeling could be caused by something else.
The question of whether having free will would be a cause of such an intuition is the one that should be settled proof.
I don’t see why. The way fo verifying the existence of naturalistic FW I outlined above doesn’t particularly dpeend on the feeling of FW, and could even be applied in a third hypothetical universe where FW exists, but people don’t feel they have it.
It would help if the fact of having this intuition was relevant evidence; after all, it’s the only reason we’re even investigating the subject.
That’s the “starts with” problem again. It might well be the psychological motivation for getting interested int he subject, but that doesn’t at all means it is the sole evidence that can be brought to bear, or the only thing that needs explaining.
Who cares whether we could have done otherwise?
Free will is what the feeling of free will seems to be. Since we feel that we could have done otherwise, as when we regret an action, the actual ability to have done otherwise is something to look for when looking for the reality of free will.
Is it evidence?
When you are trying to find if something exists, you are looking for something that has all the characteristics it is supposed to have, and that is one of the characteristics it is supposed to have.
ETA Bu that is just the beginning. A decision that could have been otherwise has potentially far greater importance than a “decision” that was inevitable, because it potentially brings about a different future.
In the FW universe, individuals could feel they have FW because they do,
Not if it’s ours or like ours. Here I’m taking the two stage model as the definition of FW; ordinarily I wouldn’t. We feel we have FW because we notice that our intentions cause our actions, and because we aren’t aware of any sufficient cause of our intentions, and because we are usually liable to think our minds are much more transparent to ourselves than they actually are. Since we see no cause and think it’s transparent we often infer there is no cause.
You are implicitly taking it that “has a cause” means “no free will”. I am taking it “that having an external cause” means no FW. It seems reasonable that FW means causing one’s own actions, so it is not exclusive of all forms of causality.
When I wrote “we aren’t aware of any sufficient cause of our intentions,” you should charitably interpret that as “any sufficient external cause.” That doesn’t change the result. Suppose the two stage model is correct for us. In a universe as like ours as possible but deterministic, human beings would think their actions lacking in any external cause. They would think so for the same reason we think so about ourselves.
There’s a difference between would and might. Lack of knowledge of causes, etc, could explain the feeling of Fw. The actual existence of FW could explain the feeling of FW. Your response to the second hypothesis is “Not if i[the universe is] ours or like ours”. You are taking one of the possible , mechanisms for a feeling of FW to be the only possible one, or as somehow masking the other, without supplying a reason for believing it to be so.
Yes, masking, or better, confounding. If 50% of the time when you say “horse”, your horse-beliefs are actually caused by cows, then you’re not a reliable horse detector. The research by Libet, Wegner, etc. applies to the selection of options stage, not just the generation stage, and shows significant influence of “external” causes. Scare quotes: “external” by most libertarians’ lights. (In my view, this is not a problem, but I’m a dyed in the wool compatibilist.) Supposing our universe to have some decisions fitting the libertarian two-stage model, nevertheless in other cases we are just as prone as the guys in the other universe to think ourselves “initiators” of causal chains.
e research by Libet, Wegner, etc. applies to the selection of options stage, not just the generation stage, and shows significant influence of “external” causes.
From what I have seen of such research “”external” equates to “unconscious”, ie free will is tacitly taken to be conscious volitional control. That idea is part of the cluster of issues that make up the problem of free will, but its not the same as libertarian free will. As far as I am concerned, the beliefs and values of my unconscious mind are my beliefs and values..I don’t think I am taken over by an external force when my System 1 decides something.
Understanding the topic conceptually is important, and is often what goes missing in the naiver empirical approaches.
(In my view, this is not a problem, but I’m a dyed in the wool compatibilist.)
Compatibilist free will is almost trivially compatible with determinism, which is a strong clue that is is not what the historical debate has been about. So now we have three things: libertarian free will, compatibilist free will, and conscious control.
I’m with you on System 1, and that is a big flaw in the way Libet and Wegner present their results. But more importantly, on further thought, their causal diagrams are probabilistic. So possibly, you’re right: our beliefs about lack of cause could be caused by an actual indeterminacy, while in an otherwise similar deterministic universe their beliefs are caused by something else. I was wrong to object to that claim.
I still see no appeal in such indeterminism, but that’s another story.
Who cares whether we could have done otherwise? In real life we never actually experience the exact same circumstances twice, so why would whether or not we could do otherwise be causally related with us having the free will intuition, which is what we’re trying to explain?
In real life, we never experience having to divert a trolley to run over a fat man, either.
Trolley problems are useful as test cases of moral theories in unusual and cleanly-defined situations. They can help confirm or disprove a moral theory which we would then apply in the situations we do encounter in real life.
Experiencing the same circumstances twice, down to the level of large-scale physical determinism, is the only case free-will incompatibilists seem to be concerned with. If we could all agree that “free will doesn’t matter because even in a deterministic world we are never in the same situation twice”, then there would be no mystery of free will left to solve. Two-stage models are only necessary or useful because they introduce indeterminancy or randomness. If the circumstances never repeat exactly, you don’t need randomness or indeterminancy, you just need input-sensitivity.
It is a mistake to think that the exact repetition of circumstances is the only thing that could make CHDO matter. In the absence of FW, all decisions are equally inevitable, and the future happens as it must, so there is no criterion for identifying an important decisions. Given FW, different alternate futures pivot on decisions made at a point in time.
All two-stage models seem to have this in common: first there is a random, nondeterministic, unpredictable, or ‘free’ stage, which generates possibilities. Then there is a rational, at least partially predictable ‘will’ stage which chooses an action from the possibilities presented.
This might well be a good neurological or psychological model of decision making. (Although I’d expect the actual implementation to have multiple sources of suggestions, and multiple modules and layers of filtering and choosing.) I just don’t see what it has to do with “free will”.
All discussion of “free will” starts with the fact that we feel like we are freely choosing from possible alternatives. It doesn’t matter here how the alternatives were generated: when presented with a multiple choice test, where the alternatives are fixed, we still we’re exercising free will in answering it. Why does it help to specify that the generation of possibilities is random?
(Some of) the philosophers quoted in your link say the benefit is being able to choose otherwise in exactly identical repeating circumstances (e.g. simulation reruns) because the generation of alternatives is not deterministic. I don’t see why that would be a good thing: it just means that some of the time you won’t generate an alternative that you would have chosen in those runs where you did generate—in other words, you lose out because you don’t or can’t generate all the alternatives all the time.
If the generation process is thought to be completely random, and the selection process completely deterministic, I don’t see how this matches an intuition of “free will”. (Granted, arguing about intuitions is usually silly in the first place and assumes too much about the typical mind.)
So what are the empirical claims these models make? At least, that we should find in the brain a separation between random generation of ideas (e.g. amplification of chance or chaotic events) and rational selection of outcomes. That would be a great day for the neuro sciences. I just don’t think it would convince anyone about anything regarding “free will” or the lack thereof. (After all, philosophers kept believing in free will even when physicists were quite sure the universe was deterministic...)
it might be the case that the issue “starts with” the feeling of being able to make choices, but it starts in the sense that what the debate is about is the most direct interpretation of this feeling that we actually can make free choices. The debate is about what causes, or underlies, or best explains the feeling. For centuries there has been a debate about the conflict between free will and determinism (or, earlier, between free will and divine omniscience or foreordination). That hasn’t been centuries of people stupidly failing to notice that the feeling of freedom is trivially compatible with any amount of determinism so long as the feeling is taken to be an illusion.
How do you know? For what value of “free will”? It is now acknowledged that there are different concepts of free will. The compatibilist concept is about being able to make choices without external duress, so by that definition your answers are freely chosen so long as no one is pointing a gun at your head, or anything like that. But is is obvious that most people are free most of the time under that definition, so the historical debate cannot have been about that concept.
The incompatibilist concept of free will contains further conditions, in particular the condition that when we make a free choice we could have done otherwise. That is a straight contradicition to strict determinism, because under determinism, there is no way things could have been otherwise.
Because random possibilities are free from determination by past events, thus allowing that affairs in fact could be otherwise, that multiple real possibilities are actually available.
The point is to give an explanation of what the feeling of free choice seems, directly, to be, not to give an account of why it is valuable or optimal.
The generation process cant be completely random, the range of ideas you can generate has to be constrained by your past history and experience...a caveman can’t come up with relativity.
A lot of philosophers kept believing in compatibilist free will, which is..well..compatible with determinsim. Very few kept believing in incompatibilist free will. In fact, the revival of incompatibilist libertarianism has come partly from physics, since the “news” that the universe isn’t necessarily deterministic has filtered through very slowly to philosophy...Tony Dore, the Information Philosopher actually has a physics background.
Suppose we’re in one of two possible worlds, and we don’t know which. One is deterministic (or its random components are irrelevant to human choice) and has an illusion of free will. The other has ‘real’ free will, whether in a two-stage model or otherwise. The humans in both worlds have the same experiences and intuitions about free will.
How can we tell in which world we are? It would help if the fact of having this intuition was relevant evidence; after all, it’s the only reason we’re even investigating the subject. Is it evidence? And which way does it point? That’s what I’d like to see addressed. Is there a specific argument that having this intuition is evidence that it is true?
This is just like the objection to p-zombies: they imply that the fact of consciousness isn’t the cause of experiencing and talking about consciousness. Similarly, imagine p-fwills that behave the same as us and report the experience of free will, but they don’t really have free will, they’re just deterministic machines.
Two-stage models are supposed to make empirical predictions, so unlike p-zombies, we should be able to detect such creatures and differentiate them from us. One way to do this would be to prove that they are deterministic whereas we are not. But p-fwills have the same intuition as us about free will, so having free will isn’t a cause of the intuition.
The question of whether having free will would be a cause of such an intuition is the one that should be settled proof.
Who cares whether we could have done otherwise? In real life we never actually experience the exact same circumstances twice, so why would whether or not we could do otherwise be causally related with us having the free will intuition, which is what we’re trying to explain?
With naturalistic libertarianism you need to determine that physical indeterminism exists, which you can do with experiment based on EPR and Bell’s theorem and suchlike, and you also need to verify that the brain uses indeterminiosm in some appropriate way. I stated earlier that naturalistic libertarians put forward falsifiable hypotheses.
That doesn’t follow. In the FW universe, individuals could feel they have FW because they do, in the other, the feeling could be caused by something else.
I don’t see why. The way fo verifying the existence of naturalistic FW I outlined above doesn’t particularly dpeend on the feeling of FW, and could even be applied in a third hypothetical universe where FW exists, but people don’t feel they have it.
That’s the “starts with” problem again. It might well be the psychological motivation for getting interested int he subject, but that doesn’t at all means it is the sole evidence that can be brought to bear, or the only thing that needs explaining.
Free will is what the feeling of free will seems to be. Since we feel that we could have done otherwise, as when we regret an action, the actual ability to have done otherwise is something to look for when looking for the reality of free will.
When you are trying to find if something exists, you are looking for something that has all the characteristics it is supposed to have, and that is one of the characteristics it is supposed to have.
ETA Bu that is just the beginning. A decision that could have been otherwise has potentially far greater importance than a “decision” that was inevitable, because it potentially brings about a different future.
Not if it’s ours or like ours. Here I’m taking the two stage model as the definition of FW; ordinarily I wouldn’t. We feel we have FW because we notice that our intentions cause our actions, and because we aren’t aware of any sufficient cause of our intentions, and because we are usually liable to think our minds are much more transparent to ourselves than they actually are. Since we see no cause and think it’s transparent we often infer there is no cause.
You are implicitly taking it that “has a cause” means “no free will”. I am taking it “that having an external cause” means no FW. It seems reasonable that FW means causing one’s own actions, so it is not exclusive of all forms of causality.
When I wrote “we aren’t aware of any sufficient cause of our intentions,” you should charitably interpret that as “any sufficient external cause.” That doesn’t change the result. Suppose the two stage model is correct for us. In a universe as like ours as possible but deterministic, human beings would think their actions lacking in any external cause. They would think so for the same reason we think so about ourselves.
There’s a difference between would and might. Lack of knowledge of causes, etc, could explain the feeling of Fw. The actual existence of FW could explain the feeling of FW. Your response to the second hypothesis is “Not if i[the universe is] ours or like ours”. You are taking one of the possible , mechanisms for a feeling of FW to be the only possible one, or as somehow masking the other, without supplying a reason for believing it to be so.
Yes, masking, or better, confounding. If 50% of the time when you say “horse”, your horse-beliefs are actually caused by cows, then you’re not a reliable horse detector. The research by Libet, Wegner, etc. applies to the selection of options stage, not just the generation stage, and shows significant influence of “external” causes. Scare quotes: “external” by most libertarians’ lights. (In my view, this is not a problem, but I’m a dyed in the wool compatibilist.) Supposing our universe to have some decisions fitting the libertarian two-stage model, nevertheless in other cases we are just as prone as the guys in the other universe to think ourselves “initiators” of causal chains.
From what I have seen of such research “”external” equates to “unconscious”, ie free will is tacitly taken to be conscious volitional control. That idea is part of the cluster of issues that make up the problem of free will, but its not the same as libertarian free will. As far as I am concerned, the beliefs and values of my unconscious mind are my beliefs and values..I don’t think I am taken over by an external force when my System 1 decides something.
Understanding the topic conceptually is important, and is often what goes missing in the naiver empirical approaches.
Compatibilist free will is almost trivially compatible with determinism, which is a strong clue that is is not what the historical debate has been about. So now we have three things: libertarian free will, compatibilist free will, and conscious control.
I’m with you on System 1, and that is a big flaw in the way Libet and Wegner present their results. But more importantly, on further thought, their causal diagrams are probabilistic. So possibly, you’re right: our beliefs about lack of cause could be caused by an actual indeterminacy, while in an otherwise similar deterministic universe their beliefs are caused by something else. I was wrong to object to that claim.
I still see no appeal in such indeterminism, but that’s another story.
In real life, we never experience having to divert a trolley to run over a fat man, either.
Equivalents occur, for instance Churchill’s decision to destroy the French fleet to prevent it falling into German hands.
These two things are not the same.
Trolley problems are useful as test cases of moral theories in unusual and cleanly-defined situations. They can help confirm or disprove a moral theory which we would then apply in the situations we do encounter in real life.
Experiencing the same circumstances twice, down to the level of large-scale physical determinism, is the only case free-will incompatibilists seem to be concerned with. If we could all agree that “free will doesn’t matter because even in a deterministic world we are never in the same situation twice”, then there would be no mystery of free will left to solve. Two-stage models are only necessary or useful because they introduce indeterminancy or randomness. If the circumstances never repeat exactly, you don’t need randomness or indeterminancy, you just need input-sensitivity.
It is a mistake to think that the exact repetition of circumstances is the only thing that could make CHDO matter. In the absence of FW, all decisions are equally inevitable, and the future happens as it must, so there is no criterion for identifying an important decisions. Given FW, different alternate futures pivot on decisions made at a point in time.