My apologies for the length of this post. I think I'm going to break it into parts.
Thanks. It does seem to be building toward a pleasant agreement that we mainly discuss the matter in different terminology. Also, I had an idea for a mathematical definition of free will. It would not have occurred to me if I had not had this conversation.
Always glad to be of assistance.
This seems to be to be equivalent to claiming it is not possible for any entity within the physical universe to make decisions without violating the physical laws of the universe, thus everything that appears to be a conscious entity making a choice is not an accurate perception. Am I understanding you correctly here?
Close, at least. It's not so much about an entity violating the physical laws of the universe, but rather the fact that the universe doesn't
contain any entities. An 'entity' is a part of the universe we consider separate to make thinking possible, but it isn't separate from the rest of the universe in any materialistically meaningful way. So 'a concious entity appearing to make a choice' is indeed not an accurate perception - however, not because it would violate any physical laws, but because such entities don't exist.
Adding random elements doesn't add free will. It adds space in which free will could exist.
'Exist' in a loose sense, yes. But there's a difference between a loose and a strict 'exist' - I'll try to explain it below.
As a side note, it's starting to seem to me that random elements aren't even required for free will to exist in the loose sense, though they don't provide any room for the strict. I might get back to that at a later time, I'll skin this cat before that one.
Let me try to describe what I mean mathematically. Assuming there exists some random input to the decision making process can be modeled by inserting a probability distribution function to the model at those points describing.
Xi then is a random variable representing the outcome for a particular time, ti. We can model as a serious of Bernoulli distributions with pi representing the probability that the individual will smoke a cigarette at time ti.
We cannot, in fact, ever determine the true value of pi. All we know is that the probability will vary from one time to the next.
There's no problem that I can see with this - although I haven't really done much math for a few years, so that proves little. But it isn't really anything new, either - you've just said the same thing again, this time with mathematical terms.
Now consider a person who makes a decision to try and quit smoking. Whatever their own personal setting for pi at any particular moment, they have essentially consciously decided to try and reset that series of pi values, making the probability they will have a smoke as close to zero as they can. It isn’t easy. But some people do.
But this is the problem, the same as it has always been. You keep brining in a 'person' that 'makes a decision' without defining exactly what that means. You're simply assuming that the person makes the decision and circularly concluding that free will exists. It doesn't prove anything, and sidesteps the issues I've raised. If your goal is to prove free will exist, or in other words, that a 'person' can 'make decisions',
you cannot use a premise that states so.
As I've stated before, there is no clearly definable 'person'. There is just a vague subset of the physical world that we
call a person. As long as you can't understand that distinction, you won't understand the problem of free will, either. Hence, the first necessary thing would be for you to understand what I'm saying about the difference between the material world and human concepts.
This ability to change or reset the values of that sort of internal parameter based on conscious thought is what I term ‘free will’. It isn’t supernatural, so it should be considered a compatibilist position.
Interestingly enough, when building probability models of that sort, they have a property termed ‘degrees of freedom’. Our choices are limited to what is physically feasible. I think it’s reasonable to term our choices within those limitations as free will.
That's a quite different kind of freedom, though. I recommend you don't read too far into it.
There are no observations independent of the observer, so no, I don’t mean that. Is that what you mean by 'objectively real'? If it is, could you give some example of something that can be observed to exist yet is 'independent of the observer'?
Not
observations independent of observer;
things independent of the observer. There certainly are
things that exist without humans seeing them.
Atoms, for example. As I've said before, 'atom' is simply the word we use to refer to a particular type of clustered energy. It wouldn't be an atom unless we called it such. But the
energy would still be there. All the energy in the universe certainly exist independent of observation.
What
doesn't independently exist is the
subsets of that energy, like atoms, oceans or people. They're all part of the same thing, and they're all groups of tiny, separate things. However, the concepts of 'atom', 'ocean' and 'person' all describe things that
do exist. The separation between sky and ocean is imaginary - but the particles that constitute the ocean certainly do exist.
However, there are also concepts such as 'justice'. Unlike 'ocean', there is no cluster of energy 'justice' refers to. It is an approximation of a purely imaginary thing. Referring to this distinction, it is possible to say that oceans exist, but justice does not.
So with that, 'exist' already has three different meanings: things that truly constitute the material world, things that represent parts of the material world and things that have no relation to the material world, yet are perceived. I'm starting to think I should make up some new words to dispel the confusion.
And I’m not certain that such concepts exist only in human minds. So far as I can tell, the minds containing them exist only on earth. In addition, I’m reasonably certain that should we ever contact intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, they will be acquainted the concept of counting and have names for the ordinal numbers. There was a long discussion on that previously, I think in the SMM&T forum.
But it doesn't matter. There could be intelligent life on every planet on the universe, and they all could speak English and read the Bible, and it still wouldn't change the fact that concepts like 'justice' and 'free will' do not represent anything that materially exist, unlike concepts like 'ocean' and 'person'.
Why do you feel there can be no part of this process that exerts control over it's own behavior? It seems to me that is exactly what human beings do - exert control over their own behavior. Did the mathematical model above make sense in that regard?
Yes, I know and have admitted several times that it
seems that this is what human beings do. I've even provided my theory for
why they think so.
Let's put it like this. I claim that the human mind is composed of small parts that carry out simple operations. Do you agree with this?
Now, we can break each of these small parts down until they're small enough that they can't be considered to have a mind in them. I claim that for each of these parts, any action it takes is determined solely by it's environment and some random events. I claim that there is no way this small part can have anything resembling the concept of 'free will'.
Now, I claim that there is no part of the human mind that can't be broken down to smaller parts, similar to what I've described above. In other words, no single part of the human mind has free will. And the whole of the human mind is nothing but the sum of these parts. So where would the free will come from?
We have no way of determining what is strictly ‘objectively real’. We don’t presume that nothing is real just because we cannot make observations independent of the observer? All we can do is strive for consistency between observers. If you’re going to reject the discoveries/inventions of human minds as not ‘objectively real’, why not reject the entire materialistic universe as not ‘objectively real’. It seems to me that the concept of the self or the soul is every bit as real as a rainbow. While non-material, they are observed by nearly everyone on earth. We term rainbows illusions, but we don’t term those who claim to have seen a rainbow as delusional.
There's a pretty obvious difference: there is a clear and simple physical phenomenon beyond what we call a 'rainbow'. It's just light.
Now, in a sense there probably is a clear and simple physical phenomenon beyond 'free will', too - an illusion created by our enormous capability for abstract thought. If that's what one means by 'free will', then sure, it does exist. But it seems you're claiming that there exist a 'free will' that
isn't just a name we give to a part of the universe that's just as deterministic as the rest of it.
It’s only an illusion in the sense that a rainbow is an illusion. I don’t object to that characterization. We have studied rainbows and figured out what causes them, perhaps we will someday do the same with human consciousness. But nobody claims rainbows are ‘nonsense’ and people are delusional to believe they’ve seen them.
Nobody should claim that rainbows exist independent of observation, either. The concept is utterly meaningless without a human observer. And in a materialistic sense, that means it does not exist. It's as simple as that.
Yes, I think you are right. I am, in fact, really bothered by the demeaning words and the scorn heaped by those who think the materialistic universe is clearly all there is on those who disagree with them.
This seems long enough for now. I'll try to get a response to the rest of your thoughtful post up later.
