> If my decisions are not a product of my prior state, then they are not my decisions. The definition of 'me' is my prior state.
There are two problems with this definition of free will.
First, it implies that your present self (and future selves) are all entirely subservient to your prior state, and surrounding environment. Ie, the present you has no way of overcoming your past self or your environment. This means that you're essentially sitting in a roller-coaster ride, with no levers to pull or opportunity for change. Sure, your past self made the decision to get on the ride. But your present and future self are all helpless from that point on.
Second, did even your past have any free will? The chain of causation extends all the way back. Your past self at time T-X is itself entirely subservient to your past self at time T-X-1. Extend this all the way back, and you realize that you're subservient to your "self" at the moment of conception. At no point did your consciousness have any ability to change the course of the life that was already plotted for it. If I predict at the moment of your birth, every single thing that will happen in your life and every decision you will make, can you really claim to possess free will?
Hence why people try to cling on to randomness and uncertainty. "If the future can be perfectly predicted, people definitely do not have free will => ergo, if the future cannot be perfectly predicted, then maybe we have free will?" I agree with you though that this is shoddy reasoning. Just because there exists randomness at the quantum level, just means that we're passengers in a driverless car that's rolling dice. Randomness that we have no control over, does not grant us free will in any way.
I think simonh was not arguing against the chain of causation, but rather agreeing with it, and arguing against "If the future can be perfectly predicted => people definitely do not have free will" and in favor of "If the future can not be perfectly predicted => people definitely do not have free will"
If an entity's decision process is is not not dependent and repeatable based entirely on it's internal state and perceptions of it's environment, then it must be dependent on some external random element, and that element not being part of that entity, means it's choice is not entirely of it's own free will.
This argument rejects duality of course, as one's "will" itself could be the external element.
Gödel had an interesting argument that I encountered via Rudy Rucker's blog;
“There is no contradiction between free will and knowing in advance precisely what one will do. If one knows oneself completely then this is the situation. One does not deliberately do the opposite of what one wants.”
this quote has stayed with me ever since I first read it and I catch myself at points where I think I've just made a free decision thinking "I should try to overcome my will now and do the opposite", which I can never do, but wouldn't overcoming one's will do something be even more free will ?
My brother has a great anecdote. He was at work talking to some colleagues and one of them said free will was all about freely choosing what you believe. Everyone else agreed. My brother argued you can't necessarily choose what you believe, to much derision from his colleagues. So he challenged them.
"OK, pick something you absolutely believe, that you have believed as long as you can remember and you are absolutely sure about. It doesn't matter what it is and it can be as trivial as you like and change your belief about it."
> I think simonh was ... arguing against "If the future can be perfectly predicted => people definitely do not have free will"
Just so I'm understanding you correctly: Are you claiming that even if the future can be perfectly predicted, people can still have free will?
At the moment of your conception, if I were to predict with 100% accuracy and confidence, every decision you will ever make in your life, would you still claim to possess free will?
> even if the future can be perfectly predicted, people can still have free will?
Not OP, but essentially yes.
Things get weird if you use your predictions to influence what I do. But I'd say that takes away my agency, whilst keeping my free-will intact.
In general, those who claim determinism and free-will do not clash are called 'compatibilists'. Often, the argument is kind-of semantic. It starts with the idea that what most people consider 'free-will' is so ill defined we ought to work on the definition. It then follows that most definitions are very clear on whether we have free-will.
Then, since most people feel like we have free-will, the definition that fits with that is chosen.
At least, that is the case for me. Personally, I think the real difficult discussion lies with the concept of 'x is possible' in a deterministic world. Here, I grasp for bayesian statistics.
That's an interesting perspective. I don't agree with it myself, but I agree that it's impossible to resolve this discussion without a clear definition.
Personally, I define free will as having the ability to "change". To overcome your both your past self, and your environment. Ie, a billiards ball has no free will, because its motion is compelled by its past state, and by the environment around it. Similarly for cars, computers and every other inanimate object. Whereas a human can be said to have free will, because regardless of his past nature, and regardless of the environment around him, he still has the free will to transcend all that and do something wholly "unexpected". To me, that's what separates free will from an automaton. Hence why my definition of free will isn't compatible with determinism.
I appreciate your point though that others might define free will in a wholly different manner.
When we take this argument out of imagined philosophical universes with perfectly deterministic Newtonian-like rules, we find that in fact randomness is everywhere. Quantum mechanics tells us that the behaviour of every particle and photon in our bodies behaves under some level of random influence. Perfect predictability is a fantasy. However conceptually we can simplify this and just imagine that my sate, the definition of how I am as a being, includes a source of randomness.
My argument then is that sure some of my choices are random, mainly because I choose to not use my memories and skills I have learned and hand over the choice to the RNG. That's also often a choice though. See my comment elsewhere on this page on No Country for Old Men.
You talk about unexpectedness. How do you define unexpected in such a way that it is distinguished from random? That's crucial. Truly random behaviour is not intentional and not 'ours'.
One way in which people change their minds is though the assimilation of new information. That's fully compatible with my take on free will. Our prior state includes the decision making apparatus that evaluates and incorporates the new information. Our consistency as a persistent self has not been compromised, it's just been transformed by new information or a new way of thinking about things. We have changed, but in a way that we are 'built' to do. Given omniscience (which is impossible, but for the sake of argument), that transformation would have been predictable in principle and again for me that's not a problem. Someone who knew me well might have predicted that I would change my mind.
That is not a problem. There's a quote in a comment nearby from Godel that addresses this very well.
I suppose I am a compatibilist, but I object to the use of the term 'compatible'. I think some degree of determinism is _required_ in order to have free will. It's essential. Without it, 'I' am taken out of the chain of responsibility for my actions. If they do not flow from me, from my state, my memories, my decision making processes and if those things are not to some extent consistent, then those actions are not mine.
Yes, I would. I'm actually arguing something a bit more though, that if the future can not be perfectly predicted, people can not have an entirely free will.
I'm claiming that non-deterministic action would necessitate that we are at least partially subject to some external, truly random, processes that we don't control, and that in that case that process is what would ultimately causes our actions to be non-deterministic, not the individual themselves.
If my actions are not deterministic in the sum collection of my prior experiences/knowledge, and current perception, which at any given instant could be exactly known, then there must be an additional random source of input that is not 'me' that at least in part drives my actions, and thus such actions are not entirely driven by me and my "Free Will".
Imagine a deterministic entity, in a otherwise deterministic universe, rolling non-deterministic dice to decide it's actions. Does the non-determinism introduced by those dice make those choices more or less an act of that entity's will?
Ie, the present you has no way of overcoming your past self or your environment.
You are answering to someone that clearly expressed that you are your past self. Why would you want getting rid of yourself?
This means that you're essentially sitting in a roller-coaster ride, with no levers to pull or opportunity for change.
Not at all. Human being can learn, practice and make all kind of efforts to change ourselves. Sports, arts, science are all fields where humans show how to improve.
You are getting to the no-levers problem by drawing a line between "you" and "what you do", as if you have nothing to do with what you do. Why?
> But your present and future self are all helpless from that point on.
To me, "helpless" in the context of metaphysical free will means that an agent's actions are deterministic from the view of an outside observer. That is all it can ever mean AFAICT. Any sadness/frustration we may feel about this is equivalent to the sadness/frustration one feels for Heidegger's cat. That is to say, it's there, but it's philosophically incidental.
"Helpless" in the context of physical free will means the normal meaning of helpless in all its glorious ambiguity. It can mean something close to "deterministic" in certain catastrophic situations. But more often it means something like "under the rule of a tyrant," "enslaved," or even "trapped" for whatever reason. In all those cases the sadness/frustration/etc. one feels is part and parcel of the outcome-- it affects whether one decides to fight, acquiesce, cope, etc. Since nobody within physical reality has sufficient knowledge to predict the future, the problem of metaphysical free will doesn't pop up.
There are two problems with this definition of free will.
First, it implies that your present self (and future selves) are all entirely subservient to your prior state, and surrounding environment. Ie, the present you has no way of overcoming your past self or your environment. This means that you're essentially sitting in a roller-coaster ride, with no levers to pull or opportunity for change. Sure, your past self made the decision to get on the ride. But your present and future self are all helpless from that point on.
Second, did even your past have any free will? The chain of causation extends all the way back. Your past self at time T-X is itself entirely subservient to your past self at time T-X-1. Extend this all the way back, and you realize that you're subservient to your "self" at the moment of conception. At no point did your consciousness have any ability to change the course of the life that was already plotted for it. If I predict at the moment of your birth, every single thing that will happen in your life and every decision you will make, can you really claim to possess free will?
Hence why people try to cling on to randomness and uncertainty. "If the future can be perfectly predicted, people definitely do not have free will => ergo, if the future cannot be perfectly predicted, then maybe we have free will?" I agree with you though that this is shoddy reasoning. Just because there exists randomness at the quantum level, just means that we're passengers in a driverless car that's rolling dice. Randomness that we have no control over, does not grant us free will in any way.