Of course my decisions affect the future. It is precisely because the future is determined rather than undetermined that I’ve come to expect certain reliable effects from deciding things. (For instance, my deciding things reliably causes nerve impulses to be transmitted to my muscles, which transduce my decisions, otherwise mere neural firings, into macroscopic effects.)
If things happened one way or the other “at random” the capacity that we call “free will” couldn’t evolve in the first place. Rather, when I drop something midair it falls, always (or near as dammit), and I’m equipped with capacities which exploit this regularity.
But we don’t need strict determinism, since actions and results do not follow with complete reliability anyway; and we don’t need determinism at the decision-making stage in order to have it in the carrying-out stage. In two-stage theories of libertarian free will, a more-or-less indeterministic decision-making stage is followed by a more deterministic phase.
That’s an interesting model, that I hadn’t come across before (even in Dennett, or not with that much clarity); thanks.
OTOH, that doesn’t have much bearing on the question of “the ability of your decisions to affect the future”—since even in a deterministic universe my decisions do affect the future (in the sense above), I have no need to hope for indeterminism, in order to have a justified sense of my own free will.
In fact indeterminism seems to me, on the face of it, to undermine my free will insofar as it undermines the coupling between my decisions and their consequences. But I agree that in this two-stage model indeterminism could have upsides and now downsides, if we knew for sure that its effects were (somehow) confined to the alternative-generation phase.
The bad news, though, is that we’d need to come up with an explanation for why an otherwise deterministic universe should contain an indeterminate process at precisely that location.
since even in a deterministic universe my decisions do affect the future (in the sense above), I have no need to hope for indeterminism, in order to have a justified sense of my own free will.
In a deterministic universe, you cannot say that your decisions affect the future in the sense that the future would be different if they had been different..becuase they would not have been different. In a deterministic universe, decisions are part of the chain of cause and effect, but not a special part.
In fact indeterminism seems to me, on the face of it, to undermine my free will insofar as it undermines the coupling between my decisions and their consequences.
That is not the case in two stage theories.
But I agree that in this two-stage model indeterminism could have upsides and now downsides, if we knew for sure that its effects were (somehow) confined to the alternative-generation phase.
The bad news, though, is that we’d need to come up with an explanation for why an otherwise deterministic universe should contain an indeterminate process at precisely that location.
indeterminism may be readily available as noise in the nervous system, an indeterministic behaviour is useful in some game theoretic situations. How can a predator predict what you will do next, if you do not.
Of course my decisions affect the future. It is precisely because the future is determined rather than undetermined that I’ve come to expect certain reliable effects from deciding things. (For instance, my deciding things reliably causes nerve impulses to be transmitted to my muscles, which transduce my decisions, otherwise mere neural firings, into macroscopic effects.)
If things happened one way or the other “at random” the capacity that we call “free will” couldn’t evolve in the first place. Rather, when I drop something midair it falls, always (or near as dammit), and I’m equipped with capacities which exploit this regularity.
But we don’t need strict determinism, since actions and results do not follow with complete reliability anyway; and we don’t need determinism at the decision-making stage in order to have it in the carrying-out stage. In two-stage theories of libertarian free will, a more-or-less indeterministic decision-making stage is followed by a more deterministic phase.
That’s an interesting model, that I hadn’t come across before (even in Dennett, or not with that much clarity); thanks.
OTOH, that doesn’t have much bearing on the question of “the ability of your decisions to affect the future”—since even in a deterministic universe my decisions do affect the future (in the sense above), I have no need to hope for indeterminism, in order to have a justified sense of my own free will.
In fact indeterminism seems to me, on the face of it, to undermine my free will insofar as it undermines the coupling between my decisions and their consequences. But I agree that in this two-stage model indeterminism could have upsides and now downsides, if we knew for sure that its effects were (somehow) confined to the alternative-generation phase.
The bad news, though, is that we’d need to come up with an explanation for why an otherwise deterministic universe should contain an indeterminate process at precisely that location.
In a deterministic universe, you cannot say that your decisions affect the future in the sense that the future would be different if they had been different..becuase they would not have been different. In a deterministic universe, decisions are part of the chain of cause and effect, but not a special part.
That is not the case in two stage theories.
indeterminism may be readily available as noise in the nervous system, an indeterministic behaviour is useful in some game theoretic situations. How can a predator predict what you will do next, if you do not.