That’s the standard argument for compatibilist free will. Compatibilist free will only needs preferences and the ability to act on them. Adding a dualistic layer to physical reality doesn’t give you any more compatibilist free will, and it doesn’t get you libertarian free will, as you admit. So what is doing?
Let’s work over the case of a deterministic physicalist universe, to simplify. You can divide reality in two disjoint arbitrary sets covering the whole universe, called “Brain” and “Rest”. Laplace demon has all information about “Rest” while no information about “Brain”. Now, he can compute all possible futures of the universe for each possible configuration of “Brain”. This set of possible futures tells us the “degrees of freedom of Brain”, that is, how this subset of the reality can influence the Universe. This is a cumbersome but legitimate exercise, and a totally materialistic one.
Now, we go to the other side of reality: suppose that “Brain” is not an arbitrary part of the universe, but one that has an attached stream of unified conscientious experience (those systems exist: I am one of them, hopefully you too). “Brain” is volitive and has a feeling of free will and choice. What I say, is that the scope of possible futures among which a conscious being chose is an approximation to the “degrees of freedom of Brain” that I defined in the previous paragraph (with the help of a Laplace demon). What I claim from this is that the feeling and the scope of freedom are rigorous mental objects. That they illusory as a Hamiltonian, not as a unicorn!
So I guess my position is “compatibilist”, but my experience reading compatibilist texts is that they are not as clear as my exposition before.
Of course, everything depends on conscience, because it is the mental experience of free will what is under analysis here. What I am trying to do is to assess the rationality of that experience. The unpredictability of the disintegration of an atomic nucleus is not an instance of free will, and in fact, I have developed all my argumentation for a purely deterministic universe (but one where the future can be affected by the present, but no the other way around. How is that possible if the laws of Physics are time symmetric?… That is for me the real open question; the philosophical part [=relation between physical reality and epiphenomenal conscience] is straightforward).
Now, he can compute all possible futures of the universe for each possible configuration of “Brain”. This set of possible futures tells us the “degrees of freedom of Brain”, that is, how this subset of the reality can influence the Universe.
From L’s D’s point of view , everything that your brain does is predictable given Brain+Rest, and in fact, everything your brain does is predictable from the global state of the universe before it existed. So Brain has no degree of freedom.
What I say, is that the scope of possible futures among which a conscious being chose is an approximation to the “degrees of freedom of Brain”
If you consider Brain separately from everything else, then you introduce Knightian Uncertainty: it appears to have degrees of of freedom, because you have neglected a bunch of causal factors. The freedom only seems to exist because of absence of complete information.
how this subset of the reality can influence the Universe.
But it can’t, really, because it’s mutually causally dependent on everything else. You could make the same argument about anything that isn’t a brain+rest.
Of course, everything depends on conscience, because it is the mental experience of free will what is under analysis here. What I am trying to do is to assess the rationality of that experience
You have argued that some things that seem real are real because they seem real. The problem is that because the (degrees of) freedom don’t really exist, the feeling of freedom doesn’t imply actual freedom, so the feeling of freedom is one of the illusory feelings.
The unpredictability of the disintegration of an atomic nucleus is not an instance of free will,
It has the property thats lacking from compatibilist free will (but not libertarian free will) the ability to have happened otherwise, but doesn’t have the purposiveness. You’re not rescuing compatibilist or feeling-based free will.
, I have not better arguments than Bishop Berkeley
“You have argued that some things that seem real are real because they seem real. The problem is that because the (degrees of) freedom don’t really exist”
There are things I can do (because they are under my conscient control, like move my finger) and others that I cannot do (like altering Earth orbit). I am “free” to move or nor a finger, and I am not “free” to alter Earth orbit. Is there anything irrational in this? Anything illusory?
Of course, the way I use my freedom is determined. “Brain” has degrees of freedom, they are real (Laplace demon can compute them, by considering all futures conditional on possible Brain configurations), but, at the end, “Brain” is also a physical system, and can be predicted too.
The set of all possible futures conditional on brain configurations is the “degrees of freedom” of Brain, while, when you predict what “Brain” does with those degrees of freedom, you predict Brain use of its freedom.
How important is that dinstiction? From the perspective of Brain, hugue, for Laplace’s demon irrelevant.
There are things I can do (because they are under my conscient control, like move my finger) and others that I cannot do (like altering Earth orbit). I am “free” to move or nor a finger, and I am not “free” to alter Earth orbit. Is there anything irrational in this? Anything illusory?
You have been assuming determinism, and if determinism is true you are not free to move your finger or not as you choose. Determinism means that the movement of your finger was pre ordained before you were born.
So determinism seems to mean that you can never do anything except the one thing you do. That’s the deterministic argument against libertarian free will. But it’s pretty counterintuitive that both “cannots” are the same.
Compatibilists like Dennett argue that you can move your finger or not in the sense that a very similar version of you, it the same you under slightly different circumstances, would move his finger...but no such slightly different or nearby version of you can change the Earths Orbit.
That leaves everything unchanged … You still lack libertarian free will, you still have compatibilist free will, and having consciousness or qualia still doesn’t make a difference.
How important is that dinstiction? From the perspective of Brain, hugue, for Laplace’s demon irrelevant.
“You have been assuming determinism, and if determinism is true you are not free to move your finger or not as you choose”
I freely chose to move my finger, but my (free) choice is pre-ordained. I can do as a I please (in the set of my “degrees of physical freedom”), so I am free within those bounds; on the other hand, what I want is pre-ordained.
“So it’s compatibilist free will, and having a quale of libertarian free will doesn’t change that”
Well, in fact the whole point was to legitimize the quale of libertarian free will (as a Hamiltonian, not as a unicorn), so I think at this point all our differences are reconciled :-)
But you are not legitimising it as a subjective impression that correctly represents reality…
only as an illusion: you can feel free in a deterministic world, but you can’t be free in one.
I say: “you are free when you do as you want, not matter how determined are your desires”. This is how I define freedom in “Freedom under naturalistic dualism”(and I think that this position is original, so if this is not the case, I would be glad of being corrected).
That’s just ordinary compatibilism—as I said, “it’s not libertarian free will.”
All the work is being done by using a definition of free will that doesn’t require indeterministic “elbow room”, so none of it is being done by all the physics and metaphysics. If it is valid, it would be just as valid under naturalistic monism, supernaturalistic determinism, etc.
And compatibilism isn’t universally accepted as the solution to free will because the quale of freedom is libertarian—one feels that one could have done otherwise. (At least , mine is like that).
An additional non physical layer of consciousness might buy you qualia, but delivers no guarantee that they will be accurate… a quale of libertarian free will is necessarily illusory under determinism.
An additional non physical layer of consciousness might have bought you downwards causation and libertarian free will.
Well, “one feel you can have done otherwise” is the part of the qualia of free will my definition do not legitimize.
When you chose among several options, the options are real (other person could have done otherwise) but once it is “you” who choses, mechanism imply “all degrees of freedom have been used”.
“It’s obvious to you that “all physical facts” doesn’t include consciousness”
If Laplace demon needs conscience attribution to compute future positions and velocities, I rest my case. That could be possible, if “quantum collapse” is both ontologically real and triggered by a conscient observer. This is obviously over my payroll...
But what about ontologically? Surely that is the gold standard.
Regarding this, I have not better arguments than Bishop Berkeley, who turned the Cartesian epistemological subjectivism into ontological subjectivism. That is the real birth of anglo-continental divide, while perhaps Occam laid grounds to the tradition in the Middle Age.
That’s the standard argument for compatibilist free will. Compatibilist free will only needs preferences and the ability to act on them. Adding a dualistic layer to physical reality doesn’t give you any more compatibilist free will, and it doesn’t get you libertarian free will, as you admit. So what is doing?
Let’s work over the case of a deterministic physicalist universe, to simplify. You can divide reality in two disjoint arbitrary sets covering the whole universe, called “Brain” and “Rest”. Laplace demon has all information about “Rest” while no information about “Brain”. Now, he can compute all possible futures of the universe for each possible configuration of “Brain”. This set of possible futures tells us the “degrees of freedom of Brain”, that is, how this subset of the reality can influence the Universe. This is a cumbersome but legitimate exercise, and a totally materialistic one.
Now, we go to the other side of reality: suppose that “Brain” is not an arbitrary part of the universe, but one that has an attached stream of unified conscientious experience (those systems exist: I am one of them, hopefully you too). “Brain” is volitive and has a feeling of free will and choice. What I say, is that the scope of possible futures among which a conscious being chose is an approximation to the “degrees of freedom of Brain” that I defined in the previous paragraph (with the help of a Laplace demon). What I claim from this is that the feeling and the scope of freedom are rigorous mental objects. That they illusory as a Hamiltonian, not as a unicorn!
So I guess my position is “compatibilist”, but my experience reading compatibilist texts is that they are not as clear as my exposition before.
Of course, everything depends on conscience, because it is the mental experience of free will what is under analysis here. What I am trying to do is to assess the rationality of that experience. The unpredictability of the disintegration of an atomic nucleus is not an instance of free will, and in fact, I have developed all my argumentation for a purely deterministic universe (but one where the future can be affected by the present, but no the other way around. How is that possible if the laws of Physics are time symmetric?… That is for me the real open question; the philosophical part [=relation between physical reality and epiphenomenal conscience] is straightforward).
From L’s D’s point of view , everything that your brain does is predictable given Brain+Rest, and in fact, everything your brain does is predictable from the global state of the universe before it existed. So Brain has no degree of freedom.
If you consider Brain separately from everything else, then you introduce Knightian Uncertainty: it appears to have degrees of of freedom, because you have neglected a bunch of causal factors. The freedom only seems to exist because of absence of complete information.
But it can’t, really, because it’s mutually causally dependent on everything else. You could make the same argument about anything that isn’t a brain+rest.
You have argued that some things that seem real are real because they seem real. The problem is that because the (degrees of) freedom don’t really exist, the feeling of freedom doesn’t imply actual freedom, so the feeling of freedom is one of the illusory feelings.
It has the property thats lacking from compatibilist free will (but not libertarian free will) the ability to have happened otherwise, but doesn’t have the purposiveness. You’re not rescuing compatibilist or feeling-based free will.
Oh, dear!
“You have argued that some things that seem real are real because they seem real. The problem is that because the (degrees of) freedom don’t really exist”
There are things I can do (because they are under my conscient control, like move my finger) and others that I cannot do (like altering Earth orbit). I am “free” to move or nor a finger, and I am not “free” to alter Earth orbit. Is there anything irrational in this? Anything illusory?
Of course, the way I use my freedom is determined. “Brain” has degrees of freedom, they are real (Laplace demon can compute them, by considering all futures conditional on possible Brain configurations), but, at the end, “Brain” is also a physical system, and can be predicted too.
The set of all possible futures conditional on brain configurations is the “degrees of freedom” of Brain, while, when you predict what “Brain” does with those degrees of freedom, you predict Brain use of its freedom.
How important is that dinstiction? From the perspective of Brain, hugue, for Laplace’s demon irrelevant.
Both are rigth.
You have been assuming determinism, and if determinism is true you are not free to move your finger or not as you choose. Determinism means that the movement of your finger was pre ordained before you were born.
So determinism seems to mean that you can never do anything except the one thing you do. That’s the deterministic argument against libertarian free will. But it’s pretty counterintuitive that both “cannots” are the same.
Compatibilists like Dennett argue that you can move your finger or not in the sense that a very similar version of you, it the same you under slightly different circumstances, would move his finger...but no such slightly different or nearby version of you can change the Earths Orbit.
That leaves everything unchanged … You still lack libertarian free will, you still have compatibilist free will, and having consciousness or qualia still doesn’t make a difference.
Surely Laplace’s demon wins?
“You have been assuming determinism, and if determinism is true you are not free to move your finger or not as you choose”
I freely chose to move my finger, but my (free) choice is pre-ordained. I can do as a I please (in the set of my “degrees of physical freedom”), so I am free within those bounds; on the other hand, what I want is pre-ordained.
So it’s not free from determinism. So it’s not libertarian free will.
You can do only one thing in any particular situation, the thing that is predetermined.
So it’s compatibilist free will, and having a quale of libertarian free will doesn’t change that.
“So it’s compatibilist free will, and having a quale of libertarian free will doesn’t change that”
Well, in fact the whole point was to legitimize the quale of libertarian free will (as a Hamiltonian, not as a unicorn), so I think at this point all our differences are reconciled :-)
But you are not legitimising it as a subjective impression that correctly represents reality… only as an illusion: you can feel free in a deterministic world, but you can’t be free in one.
I say: “you are free when you do as you want, not matter how determined are your desires”. This is how I define freedom in “Freedom under naturalistic dualism”(and I think that this position is original, so if this is not the case, I would be glad of being corrected).
That’s just ordinary compatibilism—as I said, “it’s not libertarian free will.” All the work is being done by using a definition of free will that doesn’t require indeterministic “elbow room”, so none of it is being done by all the physics and metaphysics. If it is valid, it would be just as valid under naturalistic monism, supernaturalistic determinism, etc.
And compatibilism isn’t universally accepted as the solution to free will because the quale of freedom is libertarian—one feels that one could have done otherwise. (At least , mine is like that).
An additional non physical layer of consciousness might buy you qualia, but delivers no guarantee that they will be accurate… a quale of libertarian free will is necessarily illusory under determinism.
An additional non physical layer of consciousness might have bought you downwards causation and libertarian free will.
Well, “one feel you can have done otherwise” is the part of the qualia of free will my definition do not legitimize.
When you chose among several options, the options are real (other person could have done otherwise) but once it is “you” who choses, mechanism imply “all degrees of freedom have been used”.
Now two smaller points:
“It’s obvious to you that “all physical facts” doesn’t include consciousness”
If Laplace demon needs conscience attribution to compute future positions and velocities, I rest my case. That could be possible, if “quantum collapse” is both ontologically real and triggered by a conscient observer. This is obviously over my payroll...
But what about ontologically? Surely that is the gold standard.
Regarding this, I have not better arguments than Bishop Berkeley, who turned the Cartesian epistemological subjectivism into ontological subjectivism. That is the real birth of anglo-continental divide, while perhaps Occam laid grounds to the tradition in the Middle Age.