The concept of Libertarian Free Will (and the contextualizations that must accompany it) is really just too big to tackle all at once, so I’m going to begin with a thread to serve as a basic primer about my view of Libertarian Free Will (LFW) – what I posit it to be, ontologically speaking, and how I describe it.
The basic difference between compatibilist free will and libertarian free will is that compatibilist intents are ultimately manufactured effects of unintentional brute processes. No matter how many layers of “pondering” “meta-pondering” one adds, or how many “modules” or “partitions” are added to the mix, it all still ultimately boils down to intentions being sufficiently explained as effects of brute (unintentional) forces. That is the root of all will in the compatibilist view; ultimately, humans do as they will, but do not will as they will, regardless of how many pre-action “intentions” they put in the chain.
This fits into an ultimately reductionist view of existence; even emergent properties are generated bottom-up and produce no effects “on their own”, so to speak. In the reductionist view, mind may be an emergent property, but if you damage the brain, the mind becomes dysfunctional. Calling something an “emergent property” – such as free will – doesn’t change the fact that eating a pepperoni pizza on wednesday might, through a biological butterfly effect, cause you to make a different decision the next day than you would have had you not eaten that pizza.
IMO, compatibilist “free will” exists, and it is the kind of “free will” most living creatures utilize. While LFW is available everywhere, IMO most living creatures do not, or cannot, utilize it. They can do as they will, but cannot will as they will. This is a very important distinction.
In Libertarianism, however, free will is not an effect itself; it is a causeless cause. It is taken to be a fundamental “first thing”. This position is an a priori ontological premise. Thus, the primary difference between CFW and LFW is simply whether or not one’s free will is itself caused by something else.
My particular view of LFW is that in individuals, it is an aspect of God’s Will, or Logos, the Word, Shabd, the Demiurge. It is the intent of god, so to speak, whereas everything else is the body of god. The knowable universe is comprised of and powered by two things: psychoplasm & Logos. Everything “in particular” is a reflection, characterization, individualization, or aspect of these two fundamental pillars of existence – Self (Logos) and Other (Psychoplasm). Perhaps at an unknowable level of existence they exist as one thing (monism), but that is by nature unknowable and cannot be meaningfully experienced.
Just like our body obeys our intent, the body of god obeys god’s intent. In fact, our body/mind (careful with the word mind, it can have many connotations) is an actual reflection of the composition and nature of the relationship of the divine body/mind relationship. This fundamental dichotomy is both necessary for individuated experience and is universally mirrored in all things. Individuated experience requires A/not-A, self/other, mind/body. Looking at the body, one need not know anything at all about how it functions to make it work; all they really need do is intend. With no knowledge about how to transform sugars into chemical energy, or how to make neurons fire, or how to make musles work or even any knowledge whatsoever about biology, all one requires to make their body function is intent. One intends, and the body responds.
An observation worth making here: if one existed at the size of, say, an atom, a human body would be a universe. The amount of stuff that goes on just to simply wave your hand is staggering. With no more command and control knowledge than a basic intention, a miniature universe of organized activity springs into action, dedicated to manifesting that intention, and all of that activity occurs lightning-fast. When one takes into account the planck-distance transitions that occur, the quantum leaps at the subatomic level, that an intention can drive such organized activity without the operator having any understanding of the process is about as miraculous a thing as one can imagine. Intentional movement itself is about as “magic” as anything gets.
IMO, this is what occurs when the Logos activates the psychoplasm. LFW is another name for the driving, ordering, creative fundamental force; it is ultimately what orders the physical world into the patterns we see. It is primordial and uncaused; it is that which causes everything that can be experienced to take shape.into a format that can be experienced in the first place. Just as human intent moves trillions of subatomic phase transitions and quantum leaps in accordance with a purpose, so too does Logos move the body of God.
A fine explanation William. The only problem I have with it is that it really just boils down to, “it’s this way because I believe it is this way.” There’s no actual substance to it; no actual evidence to imply such a scenario much less substantiate it. Here’s the kicker for me:
Such is just question begging while navel gazing. For me, such approaches are very unsatisfying as explanations. But I appreciate the write-up nonetheless.
I would appreciate a specific example that illustrates something done as a result of libertarian free will, something that is clearly different from what would be done by a person not having libertarian free will.
As I said, I think the first order of business is to get a good start on just explaining what I’m talking about. However, IMO unless it has a connection to a practical application, it would be nothing but sophistry.
This view lends itself to practical applications which I have been employing for many years now. While it lends itself to empirical examination, it doesn’t necessarily lend itself to traditional consensual empiricism.
The best example I can offer of that is the ability to believe whatever one wishes. Those without free will cannot believe whatever they wish to believe, because their beliefs are functions of prior, limited material causation. IMO, they really cannot even imagine being able to believe whatever they wish to believe.
OK, given these declarations, and your prior declaration that some possess libertarian free will and some do not, how is it that some people come to possess free will, and others not?
Is the faculty of libertarian free will chosen? Or is it determined?
William J Murray,
To “imagine” what one wishes is a great asset, to actually literally “believe” whatever one wishes is delusional behaviour.
I think everyone can agree that imagining you have a million dollars in the bank when you don’t, is very exciting and fun, but to “believe” you have a million when you don’t and then act as if you do, is very dangerous behaviour.
We are restricted to “believing” only those things that we have some sort of evidence for.
William J Murray,
This a very good question and I would really like to see you answer this.
I think your answer will highlight a flaw in your argument William.
Material function brings you (and tends to bring you, IMO) to the open gate of the Logos, but at that juncture, where one “touches” LFW, one can then either turn back or go through it. So, what gets you to the point where you can accept LFW is deterministic function; but at that moment you can use LFW immediately to accept it or deny it.
Getting to the point of being able to choose LFW is a deterministic, functional tendency; accepting or denying it at that point is a free will choice.
The “tendency” I’m speaking of is, IMO, that general, underlying angst of conscious existence that pushes/motivates one along – the faint strains of Logos calling us to it, so to speak.
If they wished to believe that their beliefs are functions of “prior, limited material causation”, then surely they would be believing what they wished to believe just as much as you are.
And aren’t the beliefs of a monotheist who comes from a traditionally monotheistic culture culturally determined?
William J Murray,
I think you’ve built yourself a paradox here.
You have a condition of “A = NOT A”.
IF (NOT A = NOT LFW), how can I choose to transition into A while requiring A to make the decision “to” accept A.
IF I “possess” LFW before “choosing” LFW, there is no need to “choose” LFW, since I already possess it in order to make the choice.
IF I use my LFW to reject LFW, that would be an LFW “choice” that actually rejects the LFW option I was offered, despite the fact that I already “possess” the option that I declined.
Toronto,
Not having free will, as I said, can be a function that reaches the phase transition state where it does have the primordial free will capacity to make the most basic of all free will choices: to accept it going forward (move on into the new post-transition state), or to deny it and go back.
If you refer to A/not-A, then before the transition it was X; the phase state transition changes it to a Y state, then as Y it can choose to go back to being X, or continue being Y. No violation of A/not-A.involved.
Yes. So? I don’t see your point. What one chooses to believe is irrelevant; the discerning characteristic I mentioned was the ability to choose believe whatever one wanted.
If they don’t have free will, yes, more or less.
William J Murray,
Transitions are not something logic deals with, as logic deals only with “A/not A”.
There is no logical value that represents a slope, as logic deals only with levels.
You can’t make an entry in a truth table that is “between” TRUE or FALSE.
IF I need to have LFW to “choose” LFW, as you have described, then I don’t need to make the decision at all since I already have LFW.
If I don’t have LFW how do I make that “free” choice to accept it?
If I can make free choices “before” choosing LFW, then I don’t need LFW to make free choices.
In this case, whether or not I choose LFW, I already have it.
If I already possess LFW, I don’t have the choice of declining it, since I must possess it in order to make that free choice to not accept it.
If I don’t have the “freedom” to decline it, then my “choice” has been forced upon me and thus was not a choice I was “free” to make.
Its paradoxes all the way down.
I would like to see something like a story of two people, one of whom believes falsely due to lack of free will, and one of whom chooses to believe the truth.
I can accept in principle that early childhood training coupled with peer pressure can lead a person to believe things against evidence.
The problem with citing this is that it always looks like I am one of the free ones and you are one of the deluded ones, regardless of who I am and who you are.
For example, from my point of view, the institutions and methods of science have specifically evolved to minimize delusions. Particularly the institutions that encourage peer review and replication of results.
I think that if you examine the context of what I’ve outlined so far (about what pschoplasm is, and how it works), you’ll realize that the concept of “true” and “false” beliefs is a non-sequitur under LFW. Under LFW, belief is not the “result” of examining the world; belief is creative intention one injects into the world. Beliefs are not “true” or “false” under LFW; they are symbolic models of “how you want the world to behave”.
IOW, under LFW, beliefs are prescriptive, not descriptive. Under LFW, the world doesn’t cause you to believe X; you believe X as a form of willful intent.
William J Murray,
If it is NOT something in this world that caused you to believe X, where then did the intention actually come from?
William J Murray,
How do you solve the paradox of having the “free will”, to choose to have “free will”?
William J Murray tries to make an argument for dualism and vitalism by building a caricature of science that he chooses to call “compatibilist free will.” Having constructed that caricature in a way that “you can’t possibly go there,” he then attempts to construct an argument for what he implies is the only alternative.
But William J Murray cannot do this without knowing any science because the caricatures he constructs have nothing to do with reality. Therefore they are fake foils against which he constructs his “Libertarian Free Will,” choosing not only to capitalize his “theory,” but to use the word “libertarian” to enhance its appeal in the eyes of those who rebel against science and other forms of objective knowledge.
That is the emotional and phony-foil level on which William J Murray attempts to build this “theory” of mind.
But he cannot tell us how “free will” pushes atoms and molecules around. He is using the same arguments that the ID/creationists use when they assert that “information” pushes atoms and molecules around. By not knowing anything about how atoms and molecules behave and interact – in fact, by blatantly mischaracterizing the behaviors of matter and energy – he blithely concocts anything that will appear to make scientific explanations “impossible” to those who know nothing about matter and energy.
He also cannot tell us how one chooses to believe that holding a loaded gun to one’s head and pulling the trigger will NOT cause the bullet to enter one’s brain and change one’s thinking. Does William J Murray even dare to try the experiment on himself; and can he choose what the outcome will be after the bullet enters his brain?
By mischaracterizing science – and Murray appears to believe that refusing to learn science allows him to mischaracterize it arbitrarily – he can demonize science in any way that suits his “argument” for his own “sole alternative theory” about how the universe works. It’s the same old “contrived dualism” shtick used by ID/creationists.
The advantage to Murray’s form of “argument” is that he obligates others to try to explain entire broad fields of science to him; and this allows him to word-game endlessly over things he knows nothing about. And all this has to precede any critique of his “theory.”
Ignorance truly is bliss.
Note to those who have asked me about why I don’t respond to various comments/questions; I’ve already answered Toronto’s question, although perhaps not to his satisfaction, but sufficiently in my view.
Mike Elzinga’s post is – to my eyes – entirely irrelevant. How can I have mischaracterized science, when I didn’t even mention it, or make an argument here involving it? My characterization of what “compatibilism” means (which is all he quoted) is obviously not a scientific argument; if he disagrees with how I’ve characterized “compatibilism”, we would be having either a definitional or a philosophical disagreement – not a scientific one.
So, my usual way to respond to both kinds of posts – the repetitive ones, and the ones that are incomprehensibly off-base – is to simply not respond to them. I also try to refrain from responding to posts that are, IMO, not much more than personal attack.
Of course you would begin word-gaming instantly.
But I am not going to teach you any science; you have demonstrated already that nobody can.
Mike Elzinga,
What you have highlighted is not a scientific claim; it is a fairly standard philosophical view of what “compatibilism” means in terms of “free will”. If you disagree with that description of what “compatibilism” means, feel free to offer your concept of compatibiliism and tell me how it makes a qualitative difference in how I contrasted it with LFW.
William J Murray,
You face the same problems teachers do with their students.
I’ve had some good teachers who responded patiently to myself and other students and never gave up trying to explain themselves so that we could understand.
I expect you to show the same patience.
So that you understand my question, I’ll rephrase it.
Being “forced” into a decision is not a demonstration of “free will” by the subject making the decision.
If I am “forced” into making a decision by deterministic forces, that results in “choosing” any one of two options, then that decision does not reflect “free will” on my part, and therefore, free will does not exist for that case.
If however, I am free to choose either of two options, that is an “exercise” of “free will”.
It is a paradox to have the “free will” to choose NOT to have “free will”.
Whether I choose “free will” or NOT, I have demonstrated that I have “free will”, which is a paradox if I decline “free will”.
If I cannot “free willingly” choose to decline “free will”, then I am “forced” to accept “free will”, which restricts my decision to one choice, which is not a choice at all, and means that I do NOT have free will.
Please show me how I can get out of the paradox of having the “free will” to decline “free will”.
If you can’t then I am not free to choose.
Foisting the mischaracterization off onto others doesn’t get you off the hook. A knowledgeable person would have recognized the mischaracterization instantly.
Okay, fair enough.
When I try to describe the motion of an automobile, I can say that the driver depressing the gas pedal is the first cause. Or, I can say that the release of energy from the fuel combustion is a first cause. These don’t really contradict one another. They are just different ways of describing the same thing. The first way, based on the actions of the driver, attempts to build an explanation based on intentions. The second way attempts to describe based on physics.
Which of those two ways of explaining should be used will depend on what the explanation is trying to achieve. The scientist is going to prefer the second if this is part of her science. A court, trying to assess responsibility for an accident, might prefer the first form of explanation.
The mistake that is too often made, is to assume that those ways of explaining contradict one another.
What you are saying, once you’ve stopped sliding the shells and revealed the pea, is that wholly deterministic, material processes yield at least one instance of the exercise of libertarian free will. Indeed, the first and most important instance in every life.
It also follows that absent those deterministic events, free will remains forever impossible. Free will is therefore contingent upon determined, material events.
So, physical determinists could have libertarian free will in your view (not theirs) if they wish to believe in physical determinism, and are able to choose to do so. Is that right?
Well, I think religious people of all religions are very good at believing what they wish to believe in, so surely they all fit your requirements for having free will. Yet the specific beliefs held so often seem to be cultural, which seems to indicate that the wishes behind human beliefs are not derived from an uncaused will.
I’m not sure what you mean by “every life”. I’m not claiming every human reaches a transition point. I would imagine very few do.
Also, the individual human capacity to move into a free will state is what is (generally) determined by material, causal forces; free will itself is not contingent upon anything.
Sure. knowing one has free will isn’t a necessary condition of using it.
Yeah…that’s practical:
The potential for killing Jabberwocks aside, I don’t have the need to believe anything so some phylosophybabble rational for doing so doesn’t much strike my fancy.
Sounds a awful lot like RT to me.
I don’t really understand the purpose of WJM’s argument, other than to clarify what is his personal belief. Otherwise, it’s about as helpful as an argument that declares Judaism to be the one true religion and Christianity an apostate error — what am I supposed to do with that claim?
Free Will, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
…I have implied that free willings are but a subset of willings, at least as a conceptual matter. But not every philosopher accepts this. René Descartes, for example, identifies the faculty of will with freedom of choice, “the ability to do or not do something” (Meditation IV), and even goes so far as to declare that “the will is by its nature so free that it can never be constrained” (Passions of the Soul, I, art. 41). In taking this strong polar position on the nature of will, Descartes is reflecting a tradition running through certain late Scholastics (most prominently, Suarez) back to John Duns Scotus.
The majority view, however, is that we can readily conceive willings that are not free. Indeed, much of the debate about free will centers around whether we human beings have it, yet virtually no one doubts that we will to do this and that. The main perceived threats to our freedom of will are various alleged determinisms: physical/causal; psychological; biological; theological. For each variety of determinism, there are philosophers who (i) deny its reality, either because of the existence of free will or on independent grounds; (ii) accept its reality but argue for its compatibility with free will; or (iii) accept its reality and deny its compatibility with free will. (See the entries on compatibilism; causal determinism; fatalism; arguments for incompatibilism; and divine foreknowledge and free will.) There are also a few who say the truth of any variety of determinism is irrelevant because free will is simply impossible.,,
Waaait…what? Sooo…umm…let me see if I understood this right…”free will” is something that exists unto itself, absent any entity that actually…you know…would posses it to will, want, or believe? That’s interesting.
I realize this is somewhat OT, but in a related light (at least to my mind) does “reification” exist unto itself? What about love? Or do these things require objects to possess/feel them? Just curious.
I haven’t made an argument yet. As I said, the point of this post was to clarify what I was talking about when I argue about LFW going forward. I was asked to begin such a thread in the Intention thread.
My argument going forward from this point will be about the practical application of this perspective.
William J Murray,
Are you saying that an atheist who denies “free will” exists might actually have free will?
“My argument going forward from this point will be about the practical application of this perspective.”
Good luck with that. One could make an argument about the practical application of Judaism being the one true religion and Christianity an apostate error (or vice versa). What would that prove?
Sure.
Who said I’m trying to prove anything?
So all you are doing is claiming that a “glart” is not the same as a “phlagriph.” But somehow you think others should care?
And you want to devote an entire thread to that?
Ah; so this is an exercise to see who will chase an imaginary tail. 🙂
I’m reminded of Dawkins’ crack about the Templeton Foundation offering a prize for “virtuoso believing.” I wonder how such a contest should be judged. So many points for absurdity of the beliefs, so many points for sincerity of the beliefs, some points for circularity, some points for bone ignorance, some points for inconsistency. I personally would judge the Queen of Hearts to be still a bit ahead of WMJ, but he’s catching up fast.
FTFY. 😛
He he; that tale that wags the god. 🙂
Apologies. A slight clarification:
What you are saying, once you’ve stopped sliding the shells and revealed the pea, is that wholly deterministic, material processes yield at least one instance of the exercise of libertarian free will. Indeed, the first and most important instance in those few lives that embark upon free will.
WJM:
I can’t see any other way to parse what you are saying but the following:
Absent the individual capacity to move into a free will state, which is determined by (and therefore contingent upon) material causal forces, libertarian free will isn’t possible. Hence the individual move into a free will state is contingent upon the operation of those material, causal forces. Oh, and free will itself isn’t contingent upon anything.
Yes. That’s the crux of this LFW concept. You keep avoiding to answer my questions regarding this, but it is really quite clear that this means that evaluating the output of the *biological machine* via your LFW boils down to evaluating this output against what you want to believe.
Now, apart from the obvious implications of this evaluation process on any claims you make about being able to tell what’s factual and what’s not, or coming to any conclusions that mean anything to anyone other than you, you still have not given anything resembling an explanation how this LFW does its perceiving, processing, and responding that is uncaused by the *biological machine*. And without that explanation, this: “LFW is another name for the driving, ordering, creative fundamental force; it is ultimately what orders the physical world into the patterns we see” is tautological nonsense.
Yes, a hard one to square with that uncooperative old bastard, Sensory Input, this. However ‘magical’ the ability to turn intent into action may seem, there’s nothing like a severed spinal cord, sleep, certain ‘magical’ narcotics, or a deficiency in certain ions, to interfere with that. Yes, that’s a bit ‘reductionist’, but it is what happens, in what I fondly imagine to be the ‘real world’. Presumably all material interference takes place somewhere downstream of the mind/body ‘interface’.
It’s easy enough to make stuff up and then believe in it outside of daily experience – events occurring in deep time, deep space or the quantum world, for example, or things that require a bit of genuine mental effort to understand, or rely upon indirect observation by others … science, in short.
Somehow, you envisage the succession of fertilised human zygotes each turning (presumably through ‘material’ development programs, though nothing would surprise me) into agents that either can, or cannot, tap into this mysterious LFW. Those that cannot are condemned to just turn intent into action in the ‘conventional’ way – just like a fish or a spider or a dog. But these magic few (coincidentally, the two examples we have here, WJM and Joe, happen both to have concluded that ID is a necessary part of our evolutionary history) are capable of doing exactly what ‘Logos’ does – interact with matter just by thinking about it.
Methinks that Logos has been made in their image. WJM is not a brain in a glass jar; the entire universe inherits its properties from him – this is how the Universe thinks and acts.
One is reminded of Douglas Adams’s Electric Monk:
William J Murray,
So am I right in concluding that a theistic world-view is NOT necessary to live life as a human being with “free will”?
In the absence of any practical examples, I’m inclined to think this philosophy is overpriced at 39 cents. I seem to recall a review of something as being both new and good.
I don’t think there is much to argue about: most librarians I have met are very strong-willed.
Perhaps one more way to rephrase the objection that Toronto has been voicing quite eloquently, and that you don’t seem to understand (basically, another way of showing why your logic above is seriously flawed):
State A or X = no LFW, i.e. I don’t choose what to believe
State not-A or Y = LFW, i.e. I choose what to believe
If I choose what to believe (being in state A), I cannot not choose what to believe (be in state not-A, while already being in state A). I can pretend to not choose what to believe, but it’s obviously a false belief because I did in fact choose.
Well, I am not sure why anyone would hold those *magic few* to be particularly fortunate. Quite the opposite. After all, their presumed *capability* for LFW would mean that their will is entirely uncaused. So, what they want to believe would in last consequence be necessarily independent from everything, i.e. random in relation to any factors determining a choice in the most fundamental sense possible. That’s not a state I would find desirable in the least (apart from the fact that it would be extremely harmful to fitness, and would thus not be expected to survive as a strategy in biological organisms).
Which sounds equivalet to “God being omnipotent, can He make a rock so heavy He can’t lift it?”
This sounds much like a whole class of geometry proofs I did in high school, where I assumed the theorem to be proved was true, and then demonstrated that the assumption led to a contradiction. Step 1: Whatever I choose to believe thereby becomes true. Step 2: When this position causes contradictions and proves inconsistent with itself, see step 1.