Are free will and determinism compatible?

[hammegk]

Paul, your computer exhibits compatabilist free will. Is that the best you can do?

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Paul, your computer exhibits compatabilist free will. Is that the best you can do?

It does? It might be psychologically disposed to make different choices, yet always chooses to do what I program it to do? Who knew?

I'd love to have libertarian free will, if only someone could define it for me.

~~ Paul

 

[Kopji]

Final Destination 4

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15759622/

Plane crash kills man who skipped Lidle flight
After avoiding fatal trip with Yankee pitcher, Californian meets same fate:

A 68-year-old man who almost accompanied Cory Lidle on his fatal flight in New York City last month died in a plane crash in California on Tuesday...

bad luck

 

[Dave1001]

Folks, this is a classic mush-bag free will thread. As Merc says, stop talking about feelings.

Are we discussing a compatibilist free will, where my actions are compatible with determinism but otherwise appear to be my own free choices? Or are we discussing a libertarian free will where my actions are "truly free," something more than entirely deterministic or random?

~~ Paul

Good questions. I don't think we know enough to know yet, but given that the general empirical trend seems to be to show that that what appeared to be our own free choices have had deterministic elements due to things ranging from pheromones to group psychology, I think it's more likely that libertarian free will is an illusory artifact of the imperfect way our brain interacts with its environment.

 

[hammegk]

It does? It might be psychologically disposed to make different choices, yet always chooses to do what I program it to do? Who knew?

I don't believe you wrote all the code on any computer.

I'd love to have libertarian free will, if only someone could define it for me.

You have at least one other thing you can't define, consciousness, Or I should say, you think you do. Thought, of course, exists.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I don't believe you wrote all the code on any computer.

You mean there's some code somewhere that wasn't written by a person or generated by a program written by a person? Who knew?

~~ Paul

 

[Tez]

Well, Quantum Mechanics invalidates this definition of determinism.



Under Quantum Mechanics, this can be true. However, the truth about the future is probabalistic, so



QM invalidates this hypothesis. Nice try though, and I see what you are getting at.

I would say that Free Will doesn't exist as we think of it. Our responses are results of what goes on in our brains at a physical level, but since QM may be involved, that does not necessitate that our actions are predictable in the Classical Mechanics Determinism sense (which is the type of determinism you've outlined above).

As such, I can't really select one of your poll options.

The problem with invoking QM in discussions of free will etc is that whether or not one thinks the indeterminism of QM is "intrinsic" (e.g some kind of propensity) or simply "epistemic" (due to our lack of knowledge about some underlying reality) is predicated on which particular interpretation is being used. For instance, Bohmian Mechanics reproduces QM exactly, and the indeterminism is of this latter form. In fact these issues run smack into problems of interpreting probabilities (quantum or classical) - see e.g. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/probability-interpret/ .

With regards to the definition of emergence, I have to say that wikipedia article is terrible! Classical mechanics is emergent from QM? WTF? If one accepts that the equations of QM go over in some limit to those of classical mechanics, then that is *not* emergence, that is reductionism to its very core.

The only sensible article I've ever read about emergence is by the philosopher of physics Don Howard, and is available here:
www.nd.edu/~dhoward1/Reduction and Emergence.pdf
At least he is precise about defining the concept of emergence, unlike most physicists who simply bandy it around willy nilly...

 

[andyandy]

The problem with invoking QM in discussions of free will etc is that whether or not one thinks the indeterminism of QM is "intrinsic" (e.g some kind of propensity) or simply "epistemic" (due to our lack of knowledge about some underlying reality) is predicated on which particular interpretation is being used. For instance, Bohmian Mechanics reproduces QM exactly, and the indeterminism is of this latter form. In fact these issues run smack into problems of interpreting probabilities (quantum or classical) - see e.g. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/probability-interpret/ .

With regards to the definition of emergence, I have to say that wikipedia article is terrible! Classical mechanics is emergent from QM? WTF? If one accepts that the equations of QM go over in some limit to those of classical mechanics, then that is *not* emergence, that is reductionism to its very core.

The only sensible article I've ever read about emergence is by the philosopher of physics Don Howard, and is available here:
www.nd.edu/~dhoward1/Reduction and Emergence.pdf
At least he is precise about defining the concept of emergence, unlike most physicists who simply bandy it around willy nilly...

Thanks Tez...

good old wiki

i'll check don howard out....

 

[andyandy]

The only sensible article I've ever read about emergence is by the philosopher of physics Don Howard, and is available here:
http://www.nd.edu/~dhoward1/Reductio...0Emergence.pdf
At least he is precise about defining the concept of emergence, unlike most physicists who simply bandy it around willy nilly...

a little derail....but an interesting one

A brief part of the article.....

For our purposes, entanglement is important because it is the clearest example known to me from any domain of investigation of a failure of supervenience. How and why the properties of the two individual systems taken separately is perfectly well understood and today routinely demonstrated in the laboratory, as in experimental tests of Bell’s theorem. Even with perfect, complete knowledge of the states of the separate systems, one cannot account for the
correlations between those systems characteristic of entangled joint states.10 That it must be so in the quantum domain is shown by a simple and straightforward mathematical demonstration set as an exercise for every graduate student in a foundations of quantum mechanics course. Here is holism of a very deep kind, and here is emergence in the sense of a failure of supervenience.11 By my lights, the quantum correlations characteristic of entangled joint states have a better claim to the status of emergent properties than do any of the other properties elsewhere in nature so far nominated for the
prize.

snip

If thermodynamics does not reduce to classical statistical mechanics, then we should not expect condensed matter physics to reduce to particle physics. If emergence is a failure of reduction, then condensed matter physics would be emergent with respect to particle physics. But I have argued that the question of intertheoretic reduction is not the right question. The right question is the
question of supervenience, and what I now want argue is that there is good reason to think that condensed matter physics supervenes on particle physics, once the latter is understood properly as
assuming quantum entanglement as the most fundamental physical property of microphysical systems.

The examples of superfluidity and superconductivity suggest that success in explaining phenomena in condensed matter physics will typically depend upon our making clear
precisely the connection to quantum mechanical entanglement. That means that, far from such
phenomena being emergent with respect to particle physics, they are proven to supervene on particle physics. The properties of entangled composite systems do not supervene on the properties of the
individual components, but the molar properties of mesoscopic condensed matter systems, properties like superfluidity and superconductivity do supervene on the most basic property of the quantum
mechanical microrealm, namely, entanglement. The only emergence is, ironically, that found at the particle physics level itself.
The connection of superfluidity and superconductivity to Bose-Einstein condensation and the connection of the latter to entanglement is no secret. I’m not here asserting a radically heterodox point of view. How, then, could the idea that condensed matter physics is emergent with respect to particle physics have become so deeply entrenched in the community of condensed matter physicists? Frankly, I’m puzzled by this phenomenon.

http://www.nd.edu/~dhoward1/Reduction and Emergence.pdf

edited paragraphs from pages 9-18 - which seem (to me ) to represent the key thrust of the argument.....

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

With regards to the definition of emergence, I have to say that wikipedia article is terrible! Classical mechanics is emergent from QM? WTF? If one accepts that the equations of QM go over in some limit to those of classical mechanics, then that is *not* emergence, that is reductionism to its very core.

The only sensible article I've ever read about emergence is by the philosopher of physics Don Howard, and is available here:
http://www.nd.edu/~dhoward1/Reductio...0Emergence.pdf
At least he is precise about defining the concept of emergence, unlike most physicists who simply bandy it around willy nilly...

Thank you, Sir Tez. I shall read this article. I've never had the vaguest notion what emergence is really supposed to mean.

~~ Paul

 

[chriswl]

Your post here describes you as exactly as free as the leaf in Bierce's definition. I humbly suggest that this redefines "free will" into something very different from what we commonly mean.

A leaf doesn't have a will, free or otherwise. What is the common definition of free will that I'm supposedly replacing? Libertarian free will? As Paul says, no one seems to be able to define what that is. Or even hint at what it might be without saying obviously absurd things.

But we talk all the time about doing things "of our own free will" and this is not meant as a piece of metaphysics, it just means that we are not coerced.

I cannot will my heart to stop beating, but I can will my lungs to stop breathing (for a short time at least). Even though both my heart and lungs are part of the deterministic universe there seems to be an important difference here a difference that deserves a word to identify it.

If we define "free will" as "doing what we want to do" (to paraphrase your definition--if I oversimplify, please correct me), then we are easy prey for the determinist who can figure out how to make you want to do something.

Defining free will as a feeling is, frankly, dangerous. It means that we will not recognize the influence of others on our actions, so long as they can be sufficiently subtle in their manipulation of our desires.

Compatibilists accept that while we are free to do what we want, we do not choose those wants (or if we do, we choose them according to other wants and at the bottom are fundamental wants we didn't choose). So there is no problem understanding that we can be manipulated even when we are acting freely.

Advertising does not take away your free will, being mugged at gunpoint does. One manipulates you by altering your wants, the other leaves those wants unchanged and forces you to act contrary to them.

 

[Mercutio]

Compatibilists accept that while we are free to do what we want, we do not choose those wants (or if we do, we choose them according to other wants and at the bottom are fundamental wants we didn't choose). So there is no problem understanding that we can be manipulated even when we are acting freely.

Advertising does not take away your free will, being mugged at gunpoint does. One manipulates you by altering your wants, the other leaves those wants unchanged and forces you to act contrary to them.

Thank you for illustrating my point. This is precisely why I said that defining free will this way is dangerous. We resist being mugged at gunpoint even if we can afford the loss; it is the process, not the outcome, that we attend to (and of course, we blame the mugger). If we gamble away more than we can afford, we do so with gusto; again, the process rather than the outcome dictates our attention (and we blame the gambler for a lack of willpower, rather than the lottery that uses a carrot rather than a stick to take our money).

In both cases, your environment dictates a particular behavior; in both cases, this behavior may be against your long-term best interest. Focusing on free will as a feeling means that you will only complain about one of them. A more thorough understanding of the causes of our behavior would lead to a focus not on feeling, but on long-term best interest. We should protest being manipulated not because it feels wrong, but because it is bad for us, whether or not it feels wrong.

 

[Tez]

This is a somewhat pithy observation, but it has kept me amused thinking about it:

As I see it, one of the things that makes us uncomfortable about the possibility of free will in a completely mechanistic universe (say one governed by Newtonian mechanics) is the feeling that the fact that our future (and past) actions could then be perfectly calculated by some "uber-being" (or even another human), and this, it seems, is in direct conflict with that instantaneous freedom we feel.

Now, what if the only computer which was physically capable of performing that calculation was at least as large as the universe itself, and provably so. That is, imagine the ``algorithmic complexity'' of the computation is so high that there is no way to make such predictions with any physical objects that are a subset of the full universe. This is not implausible - we cannot actually simulate three massive particles moving under the influence of Newtonian gravity very well at all, and no one expects we ever will be able to. The possible existence of an uber-being (at least one who is in this universe - which is best defined as the set of all physical objects capable of having or having had an influence upon us and thus all we should be concerned about) is relegated to metaphysical status at best, and we can all go on choosing whether or not to end our sentences in periods as we please

 

[hammegk]

Assuming that supervenience lies on entanglement, a materialist loses "emergent properties" as explanations for any just-so-story and has seen his worldview disintegrate into "magic" to explain what he perceives and what he does.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

As I see it, one of the things that makes us uncomfortable about the possibility of free will in a completely mechanistic universe (say one governed by Newtonian mechanics) is the feeling that the fact that our future (and past) actions could then be perfectly calculated by some "uber-being" (or even another human), and this, it seems, is in direct conflict with that instantaneous freedom we feel.

Do you think that's what makes people uncomfortable? I think people simply want to know that their actions were "decided by them," not by purely deterministic and random processes. They are concerned about personal responsibility: How is it my responsibility for murder when it was all predetermined? Who will be the first murderer to use materialism as a defense?

~~ Paul

 

[Dave1001]

This is a somewhat pithy observation, but it has kept me amused thinking about it:

As I see it, one of the things that makes us uncomfortable about the possibility of free will in a completely mechanistic universe (say one governed by Newtonian mechanics) is the feeling that the fact that our future (and past) actions could then be perfectly calculated by some "uber-being" (or even another human), and this, it seems, is in direct conflict with that instantaneous freedom we feel.

Now, what if the only computer which was physically capable of performing that calculation was at least as large as the universe itself, and provably so. That is, imagine the ``algorithmic complexity'' of the computation is so high that there is no way to make such predictions with any physical objects that are a subset of the full universe. This is not implausible - we cannot actually simulate three massive particles moving under the influence of Newtonian gravity very well at all, and no one expects we ever will be able to. The possible existence of an uber-being (at least one who is in this universe - which is best defined as the set of all physical objects capable of having or having had an influence upon us and thus all we should be concerned about) is relegated to metaphysical status at best, and we can all go on choosing whether or not to end our sentences in periods as we please

there seems to be a good amount of redundancy in the universe, such that if randomness generators didn't exist, it could be completely modeled by something significantly less large than the universe.

 

[Dave1001]

Do you think that's what makes people uncomfortable? I think people simply want to know that their actions were "decided by them," not by purely deterministic and random processes. They are concerned about personal responsibility: How is it my responsibility for murder when it was all predetermined? Who will be the first murderer to use materialism as a defense?

~~ Paul

some liability theories would survive fine if we found the universe to be deterministic and random (for example, when you break a contract illegally for great profit and the court determines your damages to be a portion of your profits to restore the other party to where they were prior to the breach + what they would have made if they had contracted with someone else). It's just a matter of accounting. But other liability theories might rightfully end. For example, if a completely random wind blows you into another person, killing that other person, you won't be liable to their estate for wrongful death.

 

[President Bush]

As I see it, one of the things that makes us uncomfortable about the possibility of free will in a completely mechanistic universe (say one governed by Newtonian mechanics) is the feeling that the fact that our future (and past) actions could then be perfectly calculated by some "uber-being"

Laplace's Demon

 

[69dodge]

Do you think that's what makes people uncomfortable? I think people simply want to know that their actions were "decided by them," not by purely deterministic and random processes. They are concerned about personal responsibility: How is it my responsibility for murder when it was all predetermined? Who will be the first murderer to use materialism as a defense?

If I were the judge, I'd say, "that's all very well, Mr. Murderer, but in that case it was also predetermined that I would send you to prison, so off to prison you go."

 

[chriswl]

As I see it, one of the things that makes us uncomfortable about the possibility of free will in a completely mechanistic universe (say one governed by Newtonian mechanics) is the feeling that the fact that our future (and past) actions could then be perfectly calculated by some "uber-being" (or even another human), and this, it seems, is in direct conflict with that instantaneous freedom we feel.

This is how I like to look at it: the uberbeing's predictions would only be accurate if it kept them to itself. If it acts on that information in ways that change the universe at all then it has invalidated its predictions because it hasn't included its own behaviour in the predictions - they are predictions of the universe outside of itself.

Instead of an "uberbeing" I usually think of a scientist with vastly powerful computer. In predicting the entire future of the world he would actually be predicting the world outside his laboratory, assuming no interaction with it on his part. The scientist could attempt to get round the problem of his inability to act on the predictions without invalidating them by getting the computer to include the scientist in its predictions. But the computer couldn't then include the effect of telling the scientist the results of the calculation in its predictions because it would need to know what those results were to calculate the effect they would have on the scientist's behaviour but it wouldn't know the results until it has worked out the scientist's response.

If the computer could predict literally everything in the universe including itself then there would be no problem. But it would then have to predict itself predicting itself, predicting itself... to an infinite regress.

So basically, even in a completely deterministic universe, you can never predict with complete, guaranteed accuracy what your own future choices will be because your hearing the prediction introduces something new that was not taken into account in the prediction itself and risks invalidating it.

Come to think of it, this could be a definition of free will - our ability to act contrary to our predictions of our own behaviour, however accurate those predictions may be.