For many people, the idea of free will is bound up with the notion of “could have done otherwise”. By their lights, if only one future is possible for a person — that is, if the person cannot do otherwise — then free will is an illusion.
Philosopher Christian List — author of the recent book Why Free Will is Real — proposes an interesting species of free will based on the claim that while physics may be deterministic, behaviors at the agent level are not. Agents can do otherwise, according to List, and this is enough to ground free will even if physics is deterministic.
I think List is mistaken, but I’ll save my criticisms for the comment thread.
Readers can find List’s argument in this paper:
Free Will, Determinism, and the Possibility of Doing Otherwise
See you in the comment thread.
I’m sure your are right about that, but justice, per se, is a rather vacuous concept.
Is the goal of justice to improve society, or is it to insure that people who misbehave experience pain?
Thought experiment: You have at your fingertips two buttons. One button opens a book that reveals techniques to eliminate recidivism using entirely non-punitive non-coercive means, and the other button destroys the book.
The underlying question is, does “justice” require retribution, or is justice a means to making society safe and pleasant?
What would people think if a criminal whisperer appeared who could tame violent and disruptive people through non-punitive methods?
I don’t know of any such person, but I have seen teachers who control a classroom full of otherwise unmanageable students.
phoodoo,
Yes, of course. If I weren’t making the choice, then I wouldn’t claim to have free will.
Quite the opposite. I am a physical system, not some magic ghost occupying a physical system. When I decide, it is I — the physical system — who is deciding. When I choose, it is I — the physical system — who is choosing.
And I’ve already shown you that what we do fits the definition of choosing, even if determinism is true. A predetermined choice is still a choice, and it’s a free choice if we make it according to our own natures, desires, and deliberations.
You don’t like that idea, but you haven’t been able to find a flaw in it. You just keep repeating the same ineffectual argument instead. As OMagain has noted, it’s about gut feelings for you, not about reason.
This might interest you if you have not seen it:
Pragmatism and the predictive mind
I suspect you may not agree with how he contains norms for attributing original intentionality. Definitely troubles me.
Also, some very well written and interesting reviews recently in NDPR!
I’ve read that and I cited it in my article on Sellars. I’ve been in touch with Williams and I have his dissertation waiting around for me to read it. And thanks for the kudos about the NDPR review!
petrushka,
It depends on who you ask. I go with the former, but there are others who see the function of justice as restoring a kind of balance to the cosmic ledger. Hence the phrase “paying his debt to society”, said of a prisoner.
That’s an easy choice. I’d press the first button and make copies.
Again, it depends on who you ask.
It’s worth mentioning Norway’s system again. They’re not quite “criminal whisperers”, but their 20% two-year recidivism rate is the lowest in the world.
Paying a debt makes sense, it it means restitution. I believe game theory and actual experiments suggest that restitution is the best deterrent.
Suffering doesn’t restore anything, and I see know way for it to be called debt paying.
Of course, murdered people can’t be restored, but courts have nevertheless found ways to monetize lost lives. This is politics, not rocket science.
walto,
Compatibilists still care about “could have done otherwise”. They just mean something(s) different by it than the libertarians do.
My issue is the metaphysics versus the mathematics.
Microstate physics on its own only provides the mathematical connotation of “fixes” .
From that standpoint, it is just as correct to say that the current microstate including my brain state fixes the big bang microstate That current microstate also fixes the future, of course. (modulo the usual stuff about QM interpretations and ignoring SR for as for light cones and meaning of “current”)
So that mathematical connotation says my brain state can validly be seen as fixing the past and future.
Right, but why can’t you use the unicorn qualifier to his argument to show unicorns exist. I assume there is a reason he put the free-will qualitier in, since he is careful to include it in several places. So putting the unicorn qualifier in and showing how the argument (presumably) fails may help to clarify why he is so careful to include the free will qualifier.
I don’t see that. If his reasoning is correct, then determinism is false, and so people could believe anything (although some would be wrong both factually and from an epistemic virtues standpoint).
On the other hand, if you mean only within the context assuming determinism made by his argument, no contradiction would result from people believing in determinism. It takes one honest believer to empower the argument. That is puzzling to me, and may be a clue to a problem with the argument.
Bruce,
Sure, but my argument only depends on the fact of the fixation. The cause of the fixation is irrelevant.
If the microstate sequence is fixed, for whatever reason and by whatever means, then the macrostate sequence is also fixed. Determinism at the microstate level implies determinism at the macrostate level.
It’s thin gruel because it accepts/ignores Strawson’s arguments pointing out that one does not control what one wants, so simply doing what one wants does not seem (to me) to add much.
Dennett’s position is not thin gruel because it goes well beyond “doing what what wants” .
I think we’re going in circles because that brings back the issue of the metaphysical relation of macrostate and microstates. So I am going to stop there on that point.
Here is something else for you. What do you think of Dennett’s position on Ultimate Responsibility, eg from Ch 71 or Intuition Pumps:
He starts by quoting Galen Strawson’s argument that no one can have UR for what they do.
Strawson’s Argument
1. You do what you do, in any given situation, because of the way you are.
2. So in order to be ultimately responsible for what you do, you have to be ultimately responsible for the way you are—at least in certain crucial mental respects.
3. But you cannot be ultimately responsible for the way you are in any respect at all [Strawson details this to include genes, environment, personal action in full article].
4. So you cannot be ultimately responsible for what you do.
End
Dennett denies premise 3. Roughly, he argues that UR is not a binary concept — something you have or do not have — but rather a vague concept so that a normal human adult can achieve to the extent needed to support Dennett’s compatibilism.
See the book for the details of his argument.
————————
(Note: Strawson article cited by Dennett is 2010 NYT opinionator https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/22/your-move-the-maze-of-free-will/)
Not sure how “I” affect my brain. What is “I”?
We seem to know from actual experiment that whatever “I” is, it doesn’t necessarily know what decision has been made by something that “I” am not aware of.
Or something along those lines.
So is this really about consciousness?
keiths,
Right.
My view about that is that it’s the same with the wants as with the actions, although it may be harder to change one’s wants because one wants to. But the claim that we simply cannot change our wants (or our beliefs, e.g.) even if we want to, is probably false.
In any case, doing what I want because I want to is precisely what I mean by doing something freely. Tell me what Dennett’s complications add here. And again, I think the entire “ultimate responsibility” move is wrong.
That remark alone shows that the concept doesn’t (and can’t) do what keiths has wanted it to do.
Bruce,
Right. Here’s what I see as the crux of our disagreement:
I think List really means it when he specifies the relation between micro- and macrostates:
I take his stipulation seriously, and I use it, together with determinism, to show that the overall conclusion of his paper cannot be correct.
You seem not to be taking him at his word regarding his views on supervenience. Am I right about that?
petrushka,
For some people it is. They think that only conscious decisions can be free decisions, but I’m not in that camp.
Bruce,
Strawson’s position sounds close to my own. It’ll be interesting to read Dennett’s critique.
walto,
A classic omniGod would have it, if he existed. In any case, the real point is that we don’t have it. It’s distinct from proximate responsibility in that regard.
That’s the attitude that got you into trouble, by leading you into a contradiction. I’ve avoided that contradiction by maintaining the very real distinction between proximate and ultimate responsibility. The modifiers do plenty.
Bruce:
walto:
How does it show that?
keiths,
No. You’re confused about that.
keiths,
If only God can be ultimately responsible for our actions, why would atheists need the term? And on Bruce’s description, we CAN be ultimately responsible for our actions. If so, it’s not just vague, it’s incoherent.
And “proximately responsible’ just means what i and nearly everybody else mean by ‘responsible.’ This way of putting things makes a big and unnecessary mess. Entirely unhelpful to the compatibalist cause.
walto,
What I said is true. You wrote this…
…thus contradicting your other claims about moral responsibility. That’s why you ended up withdrawing the statement.
There would have been no contradiction if you had simply specified that you were talking about ultimate moral responsibility in the statement above, and with proximate moral responsibility in the statement below:
keiths,
Ok, rub-it-in boy. I know you’re getting your rocks off here, and i hate to interrupt your fun, but i admitted that error. You could bring mine up another three or four times, or you might consider that it’s time to start admitting your own. Your Dennett love is starting to get Charlie-esque
Yeah, if you mean by ‘true’ ultimately confused.
Eta: Also proximately confused
walto,
I’m not trying to “rub it in”. I’m pointing out that you still need to fix the problem, and that simply withdrawing your statement won’t do the trick. You still need to deal with the issue that you raise in that statement:
Let me summarize my thoughts on List for the peanut gallery. (And also because I won’t be able to sleep if I don’t document this).
1. For List, arguments about free will must be made at the level of psychology, and not, in particular, at the level of physics.
2. List wants a way to argue that there is more than one possible future from the psychological viewpoint (List rejects “thin gruel” compatibilism).
3. List accepts the Natural Ontological Attitude and Non-Reductive Physicalism (via supervenience).
4. NOA and NRP imply that our best sciences (NB plural) tell us what is real. In other words, the Metaphysical is the same as the Epistemic, at least as far as scientifically-supported ontology is concerned.
5. Our best psychology is non-deterministic and will stay that way (his book does a better job of arguing that).
6. Non-deterministic means that alternative possibilities are supported.
7. Hence we have real possible futures (NB plural) to select from; we can then take action to realize our selection.
My concern with List is whether NOA is enough to give you modality, since modality is assumed by science, not something addressed by the scientific process. I should say that since posting that, I have skimmed a Ladyman co-authored paper making the case for modality by the No Miracles argument for scientific realism. So I guess my concern is better stated by saying that List needs to work harder to claim that NOA gives modality.
As best I can tell, the exchanges between Keith and me on determinism and supervenience came from a quote in List saying that supervenience means that the lower state “determines” the higher state. Supervenience only requires logical/mathematical senses of ‘determines’; it does not require metaphysical. I tried to explain the difference as I saw it.
You can of course reject either NOA or NRP to reject List’s argument. But I did not see anyone arguing for that.
walto,
Now you’re just swinging blindly. You apparently failed to notice that I disagree with Dennett on this issue.
Take a breather, walto.
For Neil:
I saw your comment way upthread on that determinism paper I linked.
I’m glad you were interesting in reading that paper. Unsurprisingly, I don’t understand your feedback. What did you mean by “Determinism of the Cosmos”? Or “determinism of a theory”, for that matter.
If you want something a bit more sciency, try the Aaronson paper
Ghost in the Quantum Turing Machine
https://arxiv.org/abs/1306.0159
walto,
To emphasize that we aren’t. Whether or not God exists, we aren’t ultimately responsible for what we do. It’s a powerful argument against retributive punishment.
Wait — you’re saying that if we can be ultimately responsible, then the concept of ultimate responsibility is incoherent? That doesn’t make sense.
No, because
a) most people associate moral responsibility with blameworthiness, while you don’t seem to, unless you’ve changed your mind on that; and
b) I associate blameworthiness with ultimate moral responsibility, not proximate moral responsibility.
Aaronson’s speculations are not only old but have been proven dead wrong, especially this:
“First, it would be nearly miraculous if complicated entangled states—which today, can generally survive for at most a few seconds in near-absolute-zero laboratory conditions—could last for any appreciable time in the hot, wet environment of the brain. (Many researchers have made some version of that argument, but see Tegmark [88] for perhaps the most detailed version.)
Quantum photosynthesis, bird navigation via quantum entanglement and quantum vibrations in the mircotubules of human brain are just the tip of the iceberg…
https://www.journals.elsevier.com/physics-of-life-reviews/news/discovery-of-quantum-vibrations
Bruce,
Right, and the logico-mathematical sense of ‘determines’ is the one that List is using. He just means that if the system is in a particular microstate, then there is one and only one macrostate that it can be in. The microstate determines the macrostate.
That stipulation, together with the stipulation that the microstate sequence is fixed, guarantees that the macrostate sequence is also fixed.
I’m thinking a toy example might help here. I’ll come up with one.
keiths,
Oh, its not woo, because its a system!
Systems can make decisions, because, well, heck they are systems!
Bullet-proof logic.
keiths,
As i said, mealy-mouthed, half-compatibalism. Good for those who can’t digest solid food I guess.
Are we ultimately responsible? No. Are we proximately responsible? Um….no. Good thing we’ve got that crucial distinction handy then!
walto,
Correct.
Um….yes.
I don’t know where you’re getting your ideas about my position. Looks like I need to repeat this again:
walto:
Indeed it is. It’s how your contradiction can be avoided.
Hah. You’re funny. I’ve said i was mistaken to write that line, and since then you’ve attribited it to med, what? Five times? Six times? What you are missing is that nobody is ultimately responsible for anythng and everybody is responsible just in case they’re proximately responsible. That’s why the modifiers do nothing useful.
Keiths, walto and the rest of compatibalists,
I have a question that I would like an answer to under the umbrella of compatibalism:
Let’s say some has an urge, or an impulse, whatever, whenever he sees a cat, or a dog or a duck he gets aroused.
Does he have control over this as per compatibalism? Does he have the free will to stop it?
Now, since he has no other alternative he acts upon his arousal and has sex with one of the animals…
If compatibalists were in power would the man be responsible for bestiality? Or, his act had nothing to do with free will?
J-Mac,
This is at least the third time you’ve brought up bestiality at TSZ. Do you have something you’d like to confess?
walto,
You just made my point for me. Read that again. You’re distinguishing between ultimate responsibility, which no one has, and proximate responsibility, which people can have.
Hmm, I thought I was making an obvious distinction.
Many of our theories are deterministic. But our theories could be deterministic without that having any implications as to whether the cosmos (or reality, or the world, or whatever term you want) is deterministic. Unless our deterministic theories are both exact and complete, they do not imply determinism for reality.
Thanks. I’m inclined to see that as failing to distinguish between determinism of the theory and determinism of reality.
This is at least the third time you’ve objected to the subject of bestiality at TSZ.
Do YOU have something you’d like to hide?
Unlike you, I have no problem discussing the issue because it obviously exists, since even the bible mentions it more than once along with homosexuality and adultery…
Would sex with other animals be morally wrong if matrialists supporting evolution were doing it?
How about compatibalists?
Another way putting that is that there’s no such thing as ultimate responsibility and proximate responsibility is just responsibility. Is Jones responsible for the murder? Yes. Is he ‘ultimately responsible’? Who the hell knows, since the phrase doesn’t mean anything at all. There’s no such freaking thing! What the hell is an “ultimately deciding cause” supposed to be? It’s just gobbledygook.
Capisce?
The very ultimate responsibility was embedded in the laws of physics (quantum perhaps?) at the big bang, including the one ultimately responsible for the nonsense you and keiths have been writing back and forth over the last few weeks…
The experiments consistently proving retrocausality are the best evidence of that…😉
Ah, now we have “very ultimate”! That’s even bigger I bet!!
walto,
Of course “ultimate responsibility” means something. Otherwise we couldn’t determine that we don’t have it!
Dang, walto.
walto,
Notice the parallels between these two statements:
And:
Huemer’s argument, for easy reference:
1. With respect to the free-will issue, we should refrain from believing falsehoods. (premise)
2. Whatever should be done can be done. (premise)
3. If determinism is true, then whatever can be done, is done. (premise)
4. I believe MFT. (premise)
5. With respect to the free-will issue, we can refrain from believing falsehoods. (from 1,2)
6. If determinism is true, then with respect to the free will issue, we refrain from believing falsehoods. (from 3,5)
7. If determinism is true, then MFT is true. (from 6,4)
8. MFT is true. (from 7)