Dr. Joshua Swamidass, a theistic evolutionist, joined us recently at TSZ. I think the following comment of his will lead to some interesting and contentious discussion and is worthy of its own thread:
Third, if we drop “Darwinian” to just refer to the current modern synthesis of evolutionary theory, you are right that the scientific account does not find any evidence of direction or planning. I agree with you here and do not dispute this.
So the question becomes, really, is it possible that God could have created a process (like evolution) with a purposeful intent that science could not detect? I think the answer here is obvious. Of course He could. In fact, I would say, unless He wanted us to discern His purpose, we could not.
In my view, then, evolution has a purpose in creating us. Science itself cannot uncover its purpose. I find that out by other means.
walto,
Remember, your own criterion for compatibilist free will is that
Would you really argue that the robot wanted to bark and reset its internal timer? It seems more like a sphexish involuntary tic than the fulfillment of a desire.
I don’t think we even have a good definition of randomness. So it isn’t clear what the question is asking.
“Random” makes sense in abstract mathematics (i.e. probability theory). So it can be a useful term for aspects of reality that we can mathematically model using probability theory.
I would not argue that unless (at a minimum) I knew that the robot had also been programmed to want to bark and reset its timer. But now suppose I DO know that, would I NOW want to argue that the robot was acting of its own accord? It still seems weird to me to suggest that.
I think maybe there’s a HARD PROBLEM of the will. Certainly there’s enough of a gap in understanding here for someone to insist we must throw a god in there.
walto,
Your intuition seems to be something like this: “If someone or something has programmed me to want something, then it really isn’t what I want. It’s what they want me to want.”
Is that a fair paraphrase?
Yes.
I mean, would it be right to say of the robot, ‘Look, it’s doing this freely!”?
keiths:
walto:
Then my next question is, why can’t it be both?
It’s what they want you to want, and it’s what you genuinely want. There’s no conflict between the two.
It isn’t that you have some desires that are being overridden by your programming. Your desires come from your programming.
Note that this remains true if the “programmer” is an impersonal process such as evolution.
Wouldn’t it make sense to respond to the bragging programmer above, ‘Oh, come on, you made it do that!”
Is programming in simultaneous wants enough to make a wind-up toy free? Would that alone satisfy the BECAUSE clause, do you think?
They are not ” your ” desires then.
newton,
Is it that they have to ‘grow up’ in some organic way?
A world that happens to be identical to an infinitude of other worlds where the desired outcome doesn’t happen
I think this absurdity is better avoided by rejecting the idea that there are gods that can do any of that.
If random processes or libertarian choices within time can only be known, by definition, once they’ve happened, then either god knows them within time, once they’ve happened, or he doesn’t know them at all.
ETA: Oh my, now that I think of it it looks like I’m back to square one. Let me think this through
Fwiw, I never thought about this before, but I think I might have some similar intuitions regading evidence and coherence. It seems like there has to be a kind of organic growth for something to be ‘learned’ or ‘known.’ that may be why appeals to authority are frowned on–especially when the authority is someone the appealer doesn’t know the first thing about.
It may be that nature is actually required for freedom AND knowledge.
ETA: this is probably an area where KN would have more credible things to say than I have….
This stuff is really mysterious, isn’t it? The idea that I’ve been determined through a nearly infinite chain of causes to type just these words today seems absurd. But the idea of libertarian free will seems incoherent and impossible.
#anotherhardproblem
Agreed. No rabbits in the PreCambrian.
walto,
There’s more than one way to “make it do that”. Evolution programmed our immune systems to respond to pathogens in certain ways, and they do so independently of our desires. No sensible person would argue that we’re exercising free will via our production of antibodies, however.
Now imagine a guy deploying a pickup line in a bar because he’s horny. He’s been programmed by evolution to want sex, and his behavior is freely chosen with the goal of satisfying that desire. Evolution “made him do it”, but it’s a free choice, unlike the production of antibodies.
If they genuinely qualify as “wants”, and the toy acts on the basis of those wants, then sure, it qualifies as free — but it would also be a far cry from your typical wind-up toy.
I don’t know. I’m kind of inclined to say now that it HAS to be a ‘natural process’–like evolution. Programming is too much like a command for it to seem consistent with freedom.
keiths:
newton:
So a person’s desire for sex, having been programmed into her by evolution, is not really her desire?
I
Do we have to think of evolution as ‘programming’? Maybe it’s a bad analogy.
The point is that the desire is imposed on us, rather than being something that we choose for ourselves. Whether that imposition comes from an agent or an impersonal process seems irrelevant to me.
Once the desire is in place, we choose based on it — but the desire itself is not chosen.
Imagine the dog robot programmer not wanting to be so ‘pushy’ and so programming in, along with the desire to bark, only a .75 probability of the barking at 2 PM. Maybe his thinking was that this way the program was more like an evolutionary ‘prod’ than a firm instruction.
Clearly, that scheme doesn’t do the trick. It really seems like the process has to be LESS like design for the result to be free action!
BTW, this has been a very interesting and fruitful discussion (at least for me). So thanks, all.
The ‘based on it’ is a bit of a trick in the robot case, isn’t it? The desire accompanies the action, but need not play any role.
Me, neither. I keep asking but…
Lots of tiny little fingers that can move atoms about?
I don’t know. I’m sort of in charge of my life, except when I’m not. I make constrained decisions – I’ve no idea how – within the the very limited realm under my own control.
What, exactly? I reject strict determinism. That is all.
ETA or hard determinism, whatever the buzz word is.
🙂
The problem is that randomness–or any other failure of strict determinism doesn’t make control of our actions any easier: quite the contrary in fact.
So if you think you are free, you either have compatibalism or libertarian free will–and each seems highly problematic. It just doesn’t help if there is randomness in the universe; I wish it would!
Yes, I agree with you. But how? HOW??
Opportunities rather than possibilities. If you find your niche, you adapt to it, exploit it. Tapeworms aren’t nasty, they are opportunists.
More to the point, why? Why is living such great fun?
I believe, pinning your hopes on randomness, you rejected compatibalism above too. Maybe libertarian free will as well. The thing is, randomness doesn’t help.
Fun I get, but me typing “serterce” instead of “sentence” here–does anybody actually believe that was in the cards three weeks ago?
Life-changing decisions aren’t easy – they’re scary and irreversible. Whether determinism is a good model of reality is an academic argument unless somone wants to inject some testability.
I’m hugely suspicious of dichotomies. Hugely!
Well, if it’s any consolation, there are really four main choices, as I indicated above:
Libertarian free will, Compatibalism, Hard Determinism, and Utter Non-Control (due to randomness.)
(There are, of course, hybrids, combos, and half-cafs.)
Except that YOU said casinos used randomness to earn money. NOW you are saying you don’t what the word you used means.
Come on Neil.
Clearly you are a glass-half-full kind of guy !
Actually, I don’t think tapeworms would even make the top 50 nasty creatures. Were you aware that there are some shark species where, if a female is carrying multiple baby sharks, the stronger ones will devour the weaker ones while still in the womb?
I find pantheism to be very attractive. It’s theism without the baggage of another conscious mind to deal with.
I think that it’s close to the default position of mankind. If it weren’t for special revelation I assume I would be a pantheist as I have often flirted with the position
For the most part I only would wish that professed atheists would own up to their pantheism. Instead of denying it all the time. It would make discussing this stuff to be a lot easier.
peace
You’ve spent far too much time debating philosophy with your computers and not nearly enough time around other human beings.
Random to who? Russian roulette appears random but that is simply because you don’t know which chamber has the bullet
peace
So? Do you not understand how they manage to do so?
And just what is it that makes things like lizards and labia possible?
Why those things, and not something else? Or is nothing impossible for Evolution?
exactly
That insight needs to be on the decision thread.
Desire seems superfluous to me when it comes to programing all that is necessary is response to stimuli.
yet for some reason desire is there when we choose. Why?
peace
peace
I thought this WAS the decision thread!
Is that a rhetorical question or do you think you know?
ETA: or were you looking for an answer yourself?
walto,
Again, by your own stated criterion, the action can’t be free unless it’s chosen because you want to do it.
When you get your flu shot, the formation of antibodies isn’t an act of free will. They don’t form because you want them to; desire has nothing to do with it. If you’re minding your own business and you suddenly find yourself barking at exactly 2 PM, with no preceding desire or deliberation, then that is also not a free action by your criterion. It’s more like a seizure.
If you use a pickup line in the bar because you’re in the mood for sex, your action is freely chosen because of your desire. With respect to free will, what difference does it make if the desire is programmed into you by some entity versus being instilled in you by evolution?
The casinos use it in ways that are based on the mathematical models of random processes. Whether that is random in some broader sense depends on that very unclear broader sense of “random”.
Not exactly rhetorical.
It seems to me that conscious “desire” is necessary for a decision.
But desire is completely beside the point when it comes to material ie non-personal processes.
I’d like to know how others here understand that relationship.
peace
Alan:
Except for this one, apparently:
Alan:
I’m not sure–that’s what I’m trying to figure out.. When I act in accordance with a command I have no power to resist, am I free? And if someone replies that ‘nature commands too,’ that’s just a metaphor, isn’t it? Like your use of ‘programmed’ above?
Look, I know it’s a hard distinction to make, but the whole idea of compatibalism rests on the denial of ‘compulsion’ in the face of causal necessity. Maybe such denials are less convincing–even ring completely hollow–in the company of programming or design.
walto,
Be careful with the word “command” here. No one is barking an order at you.
You’ve been shaped, by God or by evolution, so that you want certain states of affairs and don’t want others. It’s not like you’re being dragged along against your will. You want something and so you freely act in a way that you think will bring about your desideratum.
The fact that there’s someone, rather than just something, behind your desire doesn’t mean that it’s no longer your desire. In both cases, it’s what you want.
Again, there’s no conflict between
…and either….
…or…
walto:
I still don’t get why you think determinism in the hands of an agent counts as ‘compulsion’ if determinism in the “hands” of an impersonal process doesn’t qualify. The outcome is mandated by determinism either way.
You say you are not even sure what random means, you also say casino owners use randomness to earn money, and you are now saying something about randomness that is so muddled it has no meaning at all.
If randomness has no meaning, how can casino owners use something with no meaning to earn money.