Determinism, Randomness, and Free Will

[mojo pixy]

Not sure I see the paradox myself. Aside from the prospect that Free Will is poorly defined in the first place, one doesn't have to arrive at one's beliefs through an act of pure volition. As much as I might want it otherwise, I believe that when I next wake up, I will be still be living under capitalism.

OK but capitalism isn't a product of your mind, as your beliefs are. Using free will to deny free will, would be the paradox. Like becoming so wealthy that capitalism is no longer a problem for you, or something.

 

[TruXta]

Maybe you'd prefer the "stuff that matters" forum.

No

 

[NoXion]

OK but capitalism isn't a product of your mind, as your beliefs are. Using free will to deny free will, would be the paradox. Like becoming so wealthy that capitalism is no longer a problem for you, or something.

I don't think that people necessarily choose their beliefs, is my point.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I don't think that people necessarily choose their beliefs, is my point.

At the risk of incurring the wrath of TruXta, the point here is to drill down into that word 'choice', no?

It only ever appears as an after-the-fact add-on to an action:

I see that I did A; knowing what I know, I believe that I did A for this reason; it would appear that I could have done B instead had I deemed B the right course of action. But I didn't. Therefore I chose A over B.

Then there is the before-the-action-occurs resolve to carry that action out, which may be something consciously examined. But that can also be seen as an action, the moment of resolve itself being something that can only be viewed retrospectively. You can't get to a place at the moment of choice because all conscious awareness is after-the-fact. Choices only ever reveal themselves retrospectively, even if that retrospective revelation is just a fraction of a second later, in conscious awareness, which we tell ourselves is now, which feels like now, but isn't now when measured from outside.

So I would say yes, you can choose your beliefs just as much as you can choose anything, but the moment of choice will remain hidden. Or rather, it is an after-the-fact story that we tell ourselves, that we write into our memory; or not - we may write into our memory that we had no choice. And we're not always the most reliable witnesses of ourselves. We're biased.

 

[8ball]

The Urban Philosopher-Kings are getting riled.

 

[8ball]

No

It's certainly amusing that these complex carbon-based deterministic mechanisms are focused on this sort of thing.
Maladaption, I expect.

 

[TruXta]

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I don't think that people necessarily choose their beliefs, is my point.

Sorry, just to expand on the above point, I guess you could say that a belief is something for which we consider that we did not have a choice: in the face of the evidence and perhaps in order to follow this series of principles, I can take only A as a possible point of view; B doesn't work. But that is definitional, isn't it? it's defining a belief as a thought over which you have no choice.

 

[8ball]

Sorry, just to expand on the above point, I guess you could say that a belief is something for which we consider that we did not have a choice: in the face of the evidence and perhaps in order to follow this series of principles, I can take only A as a possible point of view; B doesn't work. But that is definitional, isn't it? it's defining a belief as a thought over which you have no choice.

Does this mean the popularity of 'mindfulness' is basically a meme (in the Dawkins sense) that leads to a set of recursive feedback processes?

 

[mojo pixy]

I don't think that people necessarily choose their beliefs, is my point.

OK. I believe people do choose their beliefs, and could with a simple act of will believe different. The fact that a belief is deeply embedded doesn't mean it cannot change, if the will is there to change it. But we are stubborn, perverse creatures.

 

[ItWillNeverWork]

We should get it put in the FAQ. Then everyone would have to.

Only if it sits just below "Why can't we all just be friends?"

 

[ViolentPanda]

I keep reading the thread title as "Determinism, randomness and free wifi".

 

[ViolentPanda]

Let's give it 200 years and see what your thoughts are on the "necessary" bit.

Ah, you too have realised that kabbes is an AI, and therefore, for all intents and purposes, immortal.

 

[ViolentPanda]

But nobody's trying to define God into existence here.

That's (fuck off) dwyer's job.

 

[ViolentPanda]

If I'm missing the point, is that because god wants me to?

No.

 

[smmudge]

OK, I kind of wanted to get something off my chest about an equivocation on the title subject that seems to be common. I'll illustrate with a quote from this article: Photons, Quasars and the Possibility of Free Will



Here we see see an example of randomness being equivocated with choice. Why? When I roll a dice, I don't choose which of the numbers come up. If my behaviour ultimately breaks down to the influence of random quantum fluctuations, then how on Earth would be I be choosing anything?

It's this point which I feel that is missed by the vast majority of people who advocate for some quantum mechanism for free will, like what some do with the Orch-OR hypothesis.



No, instead my fate is subject to the roll of the die. This is no more allowing for free will, any more than a roulette table allows for a steady income.

I don't see the problem with this/what you've quoted, as I did not read the link.

It's not saying that randomness is sufficient for free will, in fact it specifically says it's not. But it is necessary ie that if free will exists, more than one outcome must be possible.

You don't seem to agree because you need other things too, otherwise as you say it's still just a roll of the dice, but the bit you quoted says exactly that.

 

[kabbes]

Randomness does not provide for more than one outcome, though, any more than non-randomness does. There’s still only one thing that happens. It’s just that the thing that happens is unpredictable in advance.

And it totally escapes me what role unpredictability is supposed to play in choice. Total unpredictability is the opposite of choice. The very essence of choice is that the person making it has a non-randomised pathway to it.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I agree about randomness. I don't see the connection.

For free will to be a coherent idea, it requires some kind of a duality to be in play. There needs to be something outside the material world that can impose its will on that material world. And that's that fiction we tell ourselves about ourselves that there is a 'self'. We all feel it, and it feels real enough. That's where I disagree with Dennett - I don't believe that he doesn't feel it too. I think we've evolved to feel it. It is adaptive to feel it - it is necessary to consciousness to feel it, and it is a terrifying feeling to lose that feeling, as many people who have experienced such a thing in a psychotic episode attest. But it's incompatible with a monist view of things, and the monist view of things is the only one that has ever provided any explanatory, predictive value for anything.

So, for instance, Schopenhauer spoke of 'The World As Will and Representation'. I think he had that wrong. Really, it should read simply 'The World As Representation': the 'will' bit is as much a representation as all the rest. It might not feel right, but then neither does the 'space-time' of Relativity. Whether or not it feels right is neither here nor there - of course it doesn't feel right.

 

[ManchesterBeth]

That's (fuck off) dwyer's job.

At least he tries, even if he's 400 years out of date! the same can't be said for the new atheist lot.

 

[8ball]

That's (fuck off) dwyer's job.

Yeh. Part of me misses his presence on these threads. What happened to (fuck off) Dwyer?

 

[8ball]

Randomness does not provide for more than one outcome, though, any more than non-randomness does. There’s still only one thing that happens. It’s just that the thing that happens is unpredictable in advance.

And it totally escapes me what role unpredictability is supposed to play in choice. Total unpredictability is the opposite of choice. The very essence of choice is that the person making it has a non-randomised pathway to it.

It provides for more than one *potential* outcome.

I get the rest of your argument but let’s at least be precise. It’s just an attempt at making room.

Don’t bother arguing against my point - it isn’t mine. Just trying to keep the record straight.

 

[ManchesterBeth]

Yeh. Part of me misses his presence on these threads. What happened to (fuck off) Dwyer?

became a usurer. they always do.

 

[yield]

For free will to be a coherent idea, it requires some kind of a duality to be in play. There needs to be something outside the material world that can impose its will on that material world. And that's that fiction we tell ourselves about ourselves that there is a 'self'. We all feel it, and it feels real enough. That's where I disagree with Dennett - I don't believe that he doesn't feel it too. I think we've evolved to feel it. It is adaptive to feel it - it is necessary to consciousness to feel it, and it is a terrifying feeling to lose that feeling, as many people who have experienced such a thing in a psychotic episode attest. But it's incompatible with a monist view of things, and the monist view of things is the only one that has ever provided any explanatory, predictive value for anything.

So, for instance, Schopenhauer spoke of 'The World As Will and Representation'. I think he had that wrong. Really, it should read simply 'The World As Representation': the 'will' bit is as much a representation as all the rest. It might not feel right, but then neither does the 'space-time' of Relativity. Whether or not it feels right is neither here nor there - of course it doesn't feel right.

It is a duality. In recognition.

Within the Phenomenology this idea is first and foremost a thesis about how we can gain self-consciousness as autonomous agents, namely only by interacting with other autonomous subjects.

 

[kabbes]

It provides for more than one *potential* outcome.

I get the rest of your argument but let’s at least be precise. It’s just an attempt at making room.

Don’t bother arguing against my point - it isn’t mine. Just trying to keep the record straight.

It no more provides for more than one “potential” outcome than non-randomness does, in that the perspective of multiple possibilities only exists from within the perspective of a unidirectional time frame... but from this perspective, there are always an infinity of possibilities until that possibility space has been collapsed. From a time-neutral perspective, there is only one path of how things have/will/do change(d) and this is the path that actually transpire(s/d).

 

[8ball]

From a time-neutral perspective, there is only one path of how things have/will/do change(d) and this is the path that actually transpire(s/d).

So it goes.

 

[smmudge]

It no more provides for more than one “potential” outcome than non-randomness does, in that the perspective of multiple possibilities only exists from within the perspective of a unidirectional time frame... but from this perspective, there are always an infinity of possibilities until that possibility space has been collapsed. From a time-neutral perspective, there is only one path of how things have/will/do change(d) and this is the path that actually transpire(s/d).

"Time-neutral" perspective? I feel like that's something just made up so you can say "that's what happened, so that's the only thing that could have happened" without really knowing that's the case. I mean who has a time neutral perspective of everything?

I don't think randomness is total unpredictability. You can predict that the result will be in a set of something, just not know which of that set it will be. I can flip a coin and not know if I will get heads or tails, but I wouldn't expect the return of dinosaurs to also be a possibility.

 

[kabbes]

If it isn’t the only thing that could have happened then under what conditions would it have played out differently? And what does that have to do with free will?

 

[smmudge]

If it isn’t the only thing that could have happened then under what conditions would it have played out differently? And what does that have to do with free will?

Under identical conditions it would have played out differently.

You don't need infinite possibility, just a minimum of two. For randomness to be the case, under identical conditions, outcome A is possible and outcome B is possible.

Because for you to truly have a choice between doing A and doing B, it needs to be the case that in identical circumstances both A and B are possible outcomes.

 

[ItWillNeverWork]

And that's that fiction we tell ourselves about ourselves that there is a 'self'. We all feel it, and it feels real enough.

In this sentence, who is the 'we' telling themself a fiction about themself? And who is it that feels the self real if there is no self to do the feeling?

The monist view of things is the only one that has ever provided any explanatory, predictive value for anything.

Well it doesn't seem too successful in explaining the self, which the only thing I absolutely know is real.

 

[8ball]

Fuck this pointless bollocks - there’s a thread over yonder about whether you put salt on a boiled egg.

<scarpers>