Free will is subtler than most of the suggested points in the post would suggest.
Randomness. If we can act randomly, that hardly proves or even suggests free will. My determinism could be probabilistic, resulting in things like “in this case I will take action A 20% of the time and action B 80% of the time.” It is easy enough to implement something like this in simple computer code, although the objection might be made that it is a pseudorandom number generator we use to roll the dice. However, a random number generator based on measuring the voltage to picovolt accuracy across a room temperature resistor can be made, in this case it is the brownian motion of a bunch of electrons interacting with all sorts of other things around the resistor that produces the random number. This is of the same order of “true” randomness as actually rolling a fair dice would be.
Predictability. Even something which is completely deterministic may require a full detail “simulation” to predict fully. I believe this is the point of bringing up the halting problem in other posts. And the predictor would need to simulate a large chunk of the entire universe including all the 10^23! degrees of freedom of whatever random number generator we might be using to generate probabilistic answers.
The feeling that “I” am controlled by forces or consciousnesses outside of “me” wouldn’t prove a lack of free will. My “chooser” might not be completely 1:1 and onto with my “consciousness.” Then there would be things that surprised “me” and felt out of “my” control even though the locus of agency was completely within me.
For a long time I believed, very strongly, that I had free will. I thought, why would I even discuss the issue with someone who didn’t think they had free will, after all, they were just arguing with me because they had to, not out of a choice about belief.
Now I don’t think I have free will. Randomness doesn’t make free will. Quantum uncertainty isn’t a guarantee of free will by any means, just a guarantee of a kind of randomness that might be particularly difficult or even impossible to predict. Our only hope for “free will” is a fleeting one, that there is “physics” of consciousness in which the particles are conscious and the rules of interaction are called will. Turning the magic into physics, and making me wonder why we would call rule-described interactions in this new physical sphere any free-er than are newton’s laws of billard balls in the presence of thermal noise.
I would add: I feel much worse since losing my “faith” in free will. And I may even be behaving more poorly. At least my language describing my behavior makes me sound like a worse guy, more amoral, more calculating. Of course it just may be my signalling that has gone downhill. It could be we need free will so that we can signal to the other humans that we are willing to drink the same kool-aid they drink, and important thing to know when taking collective action.
At least my language describing my behavior makes me sound like a worse guy, more amoral, more calculating.
This seems like a strange result. Being a ‘worse guy’, ‘calculating’ at least, and ‘being amoral’ if we regard that as a privative term, are all terms we would use only for things we generally treat as having free will. No one talks this way about things we all accept are governed entirely by physical law, like rocks.
Nothing obligates you to describe your behavior to others in language that makes them reluctant to trust you, even if you’re a compatibilist. Admittedly, if you genuinely aren’t trustworthy, then doing so is in others’ best interests, since it causes them not to trust you… but if you’re motivated to act in others’ best interests in the first place, it’s not clear to me in what sense you aren’t trustworthy.
OTOH, if we’re talking about the way you describe yourself to yourself, it may be worth asking whether your “worse-guy” self-description is more or less accurate than the less amoral, less calculating, better guy you previously made yourself sound like.
Free will is subtler than most of the suggested points in the post would suggest.
Randomness. If we can act randomly, that hardly proves or even suggests free will. My determinism could be probabilistic, resulting in things like “in this case I will take action A 20% of the time and action B 80% of the time.” It is easy enough to implement something like this in simple computer code, although the objection might be made that it is a pseudorandom number generator we use to roll the dice. However, a random number generator based on measuring the voltage to picovolt accuracy across a room temperature resistor can be made, in this case it is the brownian motion of a bunch of electrons interacting with all sorts of other things around the resistor that produces the random number. This is of the same order of “true” randomness as actually rolling a fair dice would be.
Predictability. Even something which is completely deterministic may require a full detail “simulation” to predict fully. I believe this is the point of bringing up the halting problem in other posts. And the predictor would need to simulate a large chunk of the entire universe including all the 10^23! degrees of freedom of whatever random number generator we might be using to generate probabilistic answers.
The feeling that “I” am controlled by forces or consciousnesses outside of “me” wouldn’t prove a lack of free will. My “chooser” might not be completely 1:1 and onto with my “consciousness.” Then there would be things that surprised “me” and felt out of “my” control even though the locus of agency was completely within me.
For a long time I believed, very strongly, that I had free will. I thought, why would I even discuss the issue with someone who didn’t think they had free will, after all, they were just arguing with me because they had to, not out of a choice about belief.
Now I don’t think I have free will. Randomness doesn’t make free will. Quantum uncertainty isn’t a guarantee of free will by any means, just a guarantee of a kind of randomness that might be particularly difficult or even impossible to predict. Our only hope for “free will” is a fleeting one, that there is “physics” of consciousness in which the particles are conscious and the rules of interaction are called will. Turning the magic into physics, and making me wonder why we would call rule-described interactions in this new physical sphere any free-er than are newton’s laws of billard balls in the presence of thermal noise.
I would add: I feel much worse since losing my “faith” in free will. And I may even be behaving more poorly. At least my language describing my behavior makes me sound like a worse guy, more amoral, more calculating. Of course it just may be my signalling that has gone downhill. It could be we need free will so that we can signal to the other humans that we are willing to drink the same kool-aid they drink, and important thing to know when taking collective action.
This seems like a strange result. Being a ‘worse guy’, ‘calculating’ at least, and ‘being amoral’ if we regard that as a privative term, are all terms we would use only for things we generally treat as having free will. No one talks this way about things we all accept are governed entirely by physical law, like rocks.
A Christian priest might say that you are in mortal danger of losing your soul.
A Buddhist priest might tell this story.
Nothing obligates you to describe your behavior to others in language that makes them reluctant to trust you, even if you’re a compatibilist. Admittedly, if you genuinely aren’t trustworthy, then doing so is in others’ best interests, since it causes them not to trust you… but if you’re motivated to act in others’ best interests in the first place, it’s not clear to me in what sense you aren’t trustworthy.
OTOH, if we’re talking about the way you describe yourself to yourself, it may be worth asking whether your “worse-guy” self-description is more or less accurate than the less amoral, less calculating, better guy you previously made yourself sound like.