Does anybody have a good argument for free will? Not just against determinism? I mean I would like to see somebody actually have a theory for how human action is exempt from causality or how dualism would work (matter working with purely mental phenomenon and vice versa). All I seem to hear from Free Will-ists is, “well morality wouldn’t exist,” or, “you wouldn’t be responsible for your actions,” or, “well how would you know what’s true?” or “why would you try and convince anyone of determinism if their thoughts are determined?” All interesting questions to be sure, but I don’t think it counts as a positive case for free will.
I’m sure Robert Kane or some other philosopher has developed an intricate theory, but as I am still kind of n00bish, could anyone dumb this down for me?
Define “free will” first if you’d like a serious debate Like in debates about god vs no-god, one must be able to define “god” first. I personally haven’t heard any logical/rational definition of it.
I always thought twins were a good proof of willpower. Twins are identical in every physiological way, yet they live entirely separate lives. Also, there really is no reason to assume determinism exists because when I will something, it happens. In an interesting departure, if determinism did exist, we would be meant to wonder about free will, which seems pointless. Almost hits upon Descartes’s evil dream conjecture in style.
In my epistemology class in grad school, the professor had been studying neuroscience and said that neuroscientists had evidence showing that our brain orders our bodies to move before the brain region responsible for making decisions activates. I say bull$hit. Scientists don’t know anything through science due to the limit of induction, one. Two, I’m willing to bet they’d have a hell of a time proving that.
Seems to me you would enjoy reading G.E. Moore’s Principia Ethica. I don’t like relativism, but linguistics certainly demands a relativistic approach. As for your God comment…it is very difficult to define. It’s interesting that the religious lot often specify “their” God vs. “others’” God. I believe in God, but I certainly don’t spend my time trying to rationally prove it. For me it’s intuitive, thus my understanding is sufficient for myself. You can rack your brain on what intuitive means, so on and so forth, but I understand it.
I think the real limit of epistemology is in its universal attribution. Everybody wants to prove something to somebody else. That’s the hard part. You know certain things, like your opinion of X, Y and Z, and you know you like eating corn bread, what feels good and doesn’t feel good, whether or not you’re being honest or lying. But when you bring in others trying to know about others, man, it gets tricky.
Whether determinism exists is a separate issue from whether one knows or believes that it exists.
Epistemology ultimately boils down to the definitions one uses for “know”, “knowledge”, and so forth. But saying that there exists evidence in favor of a proposition being true is different from saying that one knows the proposition is true. It’s also different from simply saying that the proposition is true.
Personally, I think that evidence could also point to neuroscientists having misidentified “the brain region responsible for making decisions”. Indeed, who’s to say that there’s only one such region?
None of us is a mind-reader. None of us experiences exactly what others experience, and vice-versa.
Maybe this is what Plato (and others?) meant when he wrote about “higher knowledge” and the like - understanding propositions that are universally or necessarily true. It seems to be the same kind of notion as Aristotle’s “laws of thought”, just expressed in different terms. Semantics, semantics, semantics…
Aristotle’s laws of thoughts were nothing like Plato’s forms. The higher knowledge Plato has in mind are these ideal, abstract forms that stand in causal relations to objects down here on earth. Hence in Raphael’s School of Athens, you see Plato pointing up to the world of the forms, while Aristotle is pointing down to earth, signifying his tendency to posit forms only in the things themselves. The forms, according to Aristotle, do not exist in an abstract realm. They are immanent in substances. These forms were a way of solving the problem universals, e.g. (redness, roundness, triangularity, etc. etc.)
How can different types of objects share the same properties? Plato identified the triangle as participating in the incorruptible, necessary, and eternal form of triangularity. The triangle is just an imperfect copy of triangularity itself. Plato also applied this to the concept of justice and the polis (the Republic). This is why Plato preferred abstract contemplation to empirical research. One has to move past the corruptible and contingent truths as exemplified by physical reality and discover what really is. Physical reality is but a shadow of how things really are and should be. Notice that there is a combination of the factual and the normative here.
Plato thought that our souls originally associated with the forms in a ‘Platonic heaven’, and so when we are born, we are attached to a corruptible body, offering distractions, which we constantly battle our entire lives. There is no such thing as progress, and there is no such thing as new knowledge. All knowledge is just remembering what we once knew perfectly when we existed as souls in the Platonic heaven. Socrates attempts to demonstrate this in one of the dialogues when he draws out a geometric proof from an ignorant slave, thus ‘proving’ his hypothesis of the theory of forms, since this knowledge of geometry was not taught; so it must’ve been innate.
Aristotle rejected all of this. Sensibly, I think. Instead, he solved the problem of universals by holding that they do not exist in some abstract realm. They exist only in the substances (things) themselves, and we gain knowledge of the essential properties of an object by abstraction. The need for empirical observation arises because we may have seen one ‘retarded’ duck, and concluded that duckness must entail a lack of intelligence. So we have to abstract from a large multitude of ducks, and only then can we identify the universal properties. We also, incidentally, find that ‘retardedness’ was an accidental property, a defect, rather than something essential that makes up what it is to be a duck and not something else.
The laws of thought were just first principles that one had to accept in order to engage in any rational argumentation whatsoever. All inquiry requires it.
Twins are identical in every physiological way, yet they live entirely separate lives.
Wrong. Our final brain structure is not shaped by our DNA. In fact, DNA doesn’t contain nearly enough bandwidth to specify our final brain structure. The only things that does - stimulus from the real world. Our brains are shaped by the signals we receive.
Earlier, when these things were not as frowned-upon, researchers took newborn kittens and sowed their eyes shut. Months later, they opened their eyes and they could not understand the real world, because the brain never received a stimulus to develop in that direction. This shows that the brain doesn’t simply develop because the DNA tells it to develop - the environment provides very important signals. Signals which will be different for two different twins.
Define “free will” first if you’d like a serious debate :)>>>>
this. “will” is what you want, your sense of desire. So is the question whether all desires are whims? What is the will supposed to be “free” of? Or “free” to do?
Not sure I would like it, because I am probably one of those commiting “naturalistic fallacy” haha but I’ll try to read it. Good point about belief in God and absolutely no need to rationalize it. I, in a way, admire people who believe for the sake of believing rather than following some cultish (aka religious) rules, which are easily proven to be inconsistent and even crazy in some cases.
Even those who advocate free will do not know what is the will supposed to be free of (thanks Malachi). Is it gravity and other physical laws? I doubt it. I think this belief is problematic when one tried to prove it scientifically. Surely, it’s not hard to prove it through argumentation (I think Stef almost convinced me once in one of his old videos, hehe), but I favour scientific method, especially, when it comes to proving something about physical world, and human brain is physical, will, that arises in it is also part of.. It’s not the same like Mises says “human acts”. It’s self evident. But with free will we delve into much deeper problem (and again, I’m not determinist) I stated in my first sentence.
Furthermore, I think we have an ilusion of free will. And also, I’d like to believe that quantum mechanics will be able to tell us in a future much more about “free will” than any armchair philosopher.
Free Will (the ability to choose A or non-A) is practically not open to the scientific method. It would require a test on the same person over time whilst wiping their memory for future tests as knowledge of the purpose of the event over time would influence his decision along with keeping all variables constant. However this clearly is impossible since the individual would age so even theoretically (time travel is ridculous though makes good stories) so you can never test in the same conditions.
As I argue in my linked artice the will is basic and is uncaused; thus is the pure beginning of a causal change hence why it is free. One could argue that it is dependent on the person’s existence and thus on physical laws which would be true but once in existence the will is free of all causal laws. Now since the physical laws are determinsitic (quantum theory doesn’t necessitate pure randomness, it’s one of many interpretations of the phenomena) the root of will must not be physical. Hence anyone who wishes to hold free will cannot be also a materialist. This account could be described as somewhat mysterious however I cannot find any reason to doubt it. All systems must have an element of mystery due to the regress argument- one’s foundations cannot be rationally accounted for since they are pressuposed in any attempt to justify them.
So you define free will as ability to choose between A or non-A? Maybe you are also one of those, who think, that if people make choices, then they must have free will? Or maybe you just talk about general free will, not a philosophical one? I am confused. And not joking, by the way.
Well I’m not sure if you say I’m talking generally or philosophically althought I believe it is the latter. Did you read the link to my short article on the subject above? And I do believe that choice implies free will though that doesn’t form any part of my argument.
At what point do we gain free will? Do bacteria have free will? Worms? Birds? Cats? People? At what point did we suddenly gain this thing called “free will?”
My point was that Plato saw his “forms”, and Aristotle his “laws of thought”, as kinds of “higher knowledge” in the sense of understanding propositions that are universally or necessarily true. Sorry if I was playing fast-and-loose with words before.
Whether abstract form or material substance “came first” seems like a chicken-or-egg kind of question to me. But I also fail to see how the two notions are necessarily mutually exclusive. One could say that abstract forms exist in a (necessarily) abstract realm, and also that they are immanent in material substances.
I haven’t read much of Plato first-hand (let alone in the original Ancient Greek), but I think there could be another interpretation. This interpretation relates the “higher knowledge” of the abstract forms with the perception of the human mind.
Well, in a way, nothing is ever really invented - just discovered. In the same way, nothing is ever really created (or destroyed) - just rearranged. Again, this is why I maintain that semantics is of paramount importance in these discussions.
All objects are perceptual, however. The only real objects in the universe are its fundamental particles (whatever those turn out to be). Everything we call “an object” - including oneself - is simply an arrangement of these fundamental particles that, strictly and formally speaking, is completely arbitrary.
Would you say that these principles “exist”? If so, where? (Note that this depends on how you define “exist”. Semantics strikes again!)
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I define “free will” essentially as “unpredictable actionability”. However, I’ve also mentioned elsewhere that, in order to predict any future state of the universe, one would have to know literally everything that happpened before. That not only means calculating all future states leading to the future state in question, but also knowing all past states. Since that’s currently very far beyond our grasp (at best), it would appear that we should consider the universe as a whole to have “free will” in this sense.
What’s important here is to note that this is in no way incompatible with determinism. It just means that we can never be completely certain of the mechanism that drives it.
Like in debates about god vs no-god, one must be able to define “god” first. I personally haven’t heard any logical/rational definition of it.
but I’ll try to read it. Good point about belief in God and absolutely no need to rationalize it. I, in a way, admire people who believe for the sake of believing rather than following some cultish (aka religious) rules, which are easily proven to be inconsistent and even crazy in some cases.