Quantum mechanics, free will & the Game of Life (John Horgon)

[Syne]

Wow! That's some complete lack of argument right there.

Are you completely incapable of having a discussion?

See what I'm talking about. Even when I address everything you say, you have to pretend I didn't, in order to avoid having to think or give anything resembling a substantial response.

Notice how you're completely unwilling to engage any argument at all.
It follows logically. If you have no input into the system that determines your choices, it necessarily follows that you have no real idea what contributes to them. You can only make self-satisfying guesses.

Again, you seem to be laboring under the false dilemma that choices are either wholly determined or wholly willed. Neither is true. Yes, your past experience has some influence. But your present actions are contributing to tomorrow's past experience. If you really can't manage to do one thing today that is outside of the influence of your past experience, I pity you. I would really like new experiences too, if I were so helpless to creating them myself.

If the physical world follows the Causality Principle, as C C said, I’m part of the physical world, but the definition as I understand it, would mean that free will has no physical cause.

That's only because you're misrepresenting the Causality Principle (and trying to parrot CC). There are many formulations, including only applying to contingent beings, only applying to physical rather than mental events, principle of sufficient reason, etc.. It's a very narrow view of causality to insist that only physical objects exist, as abstractions clearly do as well. Why would non-physical things have physical causes? But who am I to argue if you're claiming your mind is essentially as mechanistic as a hamster wheel. Such a mind would not be capable of change, unless somehow determined to do so due to other preexisting conditions.

[Secular Sanity]

Are you completely incapable of having a discussion?

See what I'm talking about. Even when I address everything you say, you have to pretend I didn't, in order to avoid having to think or give anything resembling a substantial response.

Notice how you're completely unwilling to engage any argument at all.

"An argument is "usually" a heated debate between people having conflicting views, with each party entrenched to its stand. On the other hand, a discussion is examination by partition of things with the aim of understanding & drawing conclusions with an open mind & with a logical approach."

It follows logically. If you have no input into the system that determines your choices, it necessarily follows that you have no real idea what contributes to them. You can only make self-satisfying guesses.

Again, you seem to be laboring under the false dilemma that choices are either wholly determined or wholly willed. Neither is true. Yes, your past experience has some influence. But your present actions are contributing to tomorrow's past experience. If you really can't manage to do one thing today that is outside of the influence of your past experience, I pity you. I would really like new experiences too, if I were so helpless to creating them myself.

That's only because you're misrepresenting the Causality Principle (and trying to parrot CC).

I wasn’t parroting C C. That was just poor sentence structure on my end. C C’s position seems to be more in line with soft determinism.

Either way, the "will" of the first version of you executes what it wants according to its identity slash programming and the environmental input it is presented with (no hijacking force from the outside).

I'd agree that assimilating the concept of "free will" and being affected by it does not introduce or connect one to a dualistic situation. But not any dogmatism of it absolutely never having benefits or bringing about changes that otherwise would not happen. (When an agnostic stance or suspended belief is serving the same function as a large object blocking a hallway, it can still equate to dogma.) My reasons for that are plural: ranging from the infamous unreliability of socio-psychological research; to Coyne seemingly cherry-picking himself among its conflicting studies just like Edwards; to personal experience/observations.

People who believe they are endowed with innate programming that keeps them stuck in a rut or trapped in this or that habit, accordingly can't modify themselves. And if an intervening rehabilitator changes them or a sequence of unintended events does so, it still requires an underlying or subconscious receptiveness to the idea of re-programming being possible (i.e., "how can this impossibility be happening, how has it been brought about?"). Of having subconsciously absorbed a new routine or orientation revolving around one's self not being a machine determined by fixed, native settings -- regardless of whether that is ever articulated in words by the individual privately or publicly.

Even if it was determined in advance 14-billion years ago that the concept of FW would be stealthily inputted into them in terms of behavioral effects, the changes would not have occurred without it as a mediator. It can't be denied responsibility any more than the human body can be denied responsibility for enabling a collection of molecules to write literature like "Hamlet" (which an ancient configuration could not do or plan, and indeed even the grand-scale state of the cosmos at large right now cannot do and cognitively intend).

There are many formulations, including only applying to contingent beings, only applying to physical rather than mental events, principle of sufficient reason, etc.. It's a very narrow view of causality to insist that only physical objects exist, as abstractions clearly do as well. Why would non-physical things have physical causes? But who am I to argue if you're claiming your mind is essentially as mechanistic as a hamster wheel. Such a mind would not be capable of change, unless somehow determined to do so due to other preexisting conditions.

Not having a soul doesn't make me any less of a human. Not having free will doesn’t make me a non-catalyst. It doesn’t mean I’m going to become lawless and run naked through the streets because that’s not who I am. It doesn’t mean that I’m not allowed to partake in the fruit of my labor. Even if life is meaningless, and without purpose, I can still create it for myself. Even if life is completely absurd in the grand scheme of things, there’s nothing to prevent me from loving it. Does that make me a better person, than say Elte, who hates it? No, but if life is all there is, why not love it? Loving it is easier.

"The Stoic philosopher Epictetus said: Don't seek for everything to happen as you wish it would, but rather wish that everything happens as it actually will — then your life will be serene. And Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius agreed: All that is in accord with you is in accord with me, O World!"

And of course, my favorite, amor fati.

[Ostronomos]

You're imagining things, as genuine free will actually requires the ability to do other than good or moral. The only way you can say urges must comply to some moral standard is for the exact superdeterminism you espouse. Way to not only argue a straw man but also defeat your own argument.

What a fool you are. The ability to do other than good is not an indication of free will. Far from it. Everything is predetermined. The only possibility of free will is through interaction with the probabilistic wavefunction. As I have continued to emphasize. Your argument is sorely lacking.

[Syne]

Are you completely incapable of having a discussion?

See what I'm talking about. Even when I address everything you say, you have to pretend I didn't, in order to avoid having to think or give anything resembling a substantial response.

Notice how you're completely unwilling to engage any argument at all.

"An argument is "usually" a heated debate between people having conflicting views, with each party entrenched to its stand. On the other hand, a discussion is examination by partition of things with the aim of understanding & drawing conclusions with an open mind & with a logical approach."

An argument is:

the act or process of arguing, reasoning, or discussing : argumentation
a coherent series of reasons, statements, or facts intended to support or establish a point of view
a reason given for or against a matter under discussion

You have to actually address the other person's points to be open-minded. Avoidance is just the same intransigence you claim of a "heated debate".


(Way to quote others without citation, btw.)

It follows logically. If you have no input into the system that determines your choices, it necessarily follows that you have no real idea what contributes to them. You can only make self-satisfying guesses.

Again, you seem to be laboring under the false dilemma that choices are either wholly determined or wholly willed. Neither is true. Yes, your past experience has some influence. But your present actions are contributing to tomorrow's past experience. If you really can't manage to do one thing today that is outside of the influence of your past experience, I pity you. I would really like new experiences too, if I were so helpless to creating them myself.

See, you quote this but don't bother to address it at all.

That's only because you're misrepresenting the Causality Principle (and trying to parrot CC).

I wasn’t parroting C C. That was just poor sentence structure on my end. C C’s position seems to be more in line with soft determinism.

Considering that was a parenthetical aside, maybe try addressing the part relevant to the subject under discussion. There is no discussion with someone who patently avoids all reason put forth.

There are many formulations, including only applying to contingent beings, only applying to physical rather than mental events, principle of sufficient reason, etc.. It's a very narrow view of causality to insist that only physical objects exist, as abstractions clearly do as well. Why would non-physical things have physical causes? But who am I to argue if you're claiming your mind is essentially as mechanistic as a hamster wheel. Such a mind would not be capable of change, unless somehow determined to do so due to other preexisting conditions.

Not having a soul doesn't make me any less of a human. Not having free will doesn’t make me a non-catalyst. It doesn’t mean I’m going to become lawless and run naked through the streets because that’s not who I am. It doesn’t mean that I’m not allowed to partake in the fruit of my labor. Even if life is meaningless, and without purpose, I can still create it for myself. Even if life is completely absurd in the grand scheme of things, there’s nothing to prevent me from loving it. Does that make me a better person, than say Elte, who hates it? No, but if life is all there is, why not love it? Loving it is easier.

"The Stoic philosopher Epictetus said: Don't seek for everything to happen as you wish it would, but rather wish that everything happens as it actually will — then your life will be serene. And Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius agreed: All that is in accord with you is in accord with me, O World!"

And of course, my favorite, amor fati.

Wow, instead of addressing my actual reasoning, you run off on an emotional, straw man tangent. No one even mentioned a soul. Not having free will does mean that, at best, your actions are only a way point in the impetus of other things. No one ever implied that you would cease to act in accordance with your own history. That consistency is actually evidence of determinism. To the contrary, if you did suddenly act contrary to expectation, that would demonstrate free will. But you have to believe you have it before you can exercise it. If you have no free will, "you" create nothing. You're just a via for the original impetus.

While hating life has to be a miserable existence, loving fate is only as fulfilling as riding a roller coaster. Sure, the drops and loops can be thrilling, but you'll never leave the track. So you're only thrill is what you're just incapable of anticipating. That's a thrill of happenstance and ignorance, not a thrill of one's own creation and freedom.

The only reason to quit wanting things to go your way is because you've been beaten down by failure and can no longer muster the will to hope. That's pretty damn sad too.

---

You're imagining things, as genuine free will actually requires the ability to do other than good or moral. The only way you can say urges must comply to some moral standard is for the exact superdeterminism you espouse. Way to not only argue a straw man but also defeat your own argument.

What a fool you are. The ability to do other than good is not an indication of free will. Far from it. Everything is predetermined. The only possibility of free will is through interaction with the probabilistic wavefunction. As I have continued to emphasize. Your argument is sorely lacking.

"The ability to do otherwise" is literally the definition of free will. Try to at least learn the basic definitions of the words you're trying to use. But I know you won't, because your delusions of grandeur and Dunning-Kruger prevent it.

[C C]

I wasn’t parroting C C. That was just poor sentence structure on my end. C C’s position seems to be more in line with soft determinism.

I'm arguably working somewhat along the lines of a Wittgenstein approach, with respect to the view that since metaphysical proposals can't be tested, what one is actually dealing with is "word-games" that have been concocted -- rather than, say, discovered. (In some cases those might be elevated to "procedural games", as with methodological naturalism -- in contrast to the dogma of ontological naturalism).

If there's a problem presenting itself in a philosophical word-game, then the solution is to make the latter more internally consistent; and/or less vulnerable to attacks from other word-games. Revise the areas where it is conflicting with itself or where it is assailable.

The concept of free-will (FW) is obviously useful in everyday matters like exonerating one's self from an offense (due to coercion from another rational agent) and breaking out of programming (routines, habits, addictions, etc) in DIY fashion.

Thus, to define FW so that it is dependent upon either a supernatural or a transcendent provenance prior in rank to the sensible world is accordingly making it akin to an unfalsifiable religious belief (i.e, creating a problem).

Or, if there's a metaphysical doctrine (like determinism) that has become pervasively popular with technocratic institutions, then to frame or define FW so that it is incompatible with determinism likewise generates such. (But let's face it, that's because controversy and endless debate among its different factions is what the incompatibilist orientation is seeking to begin with -- it is a desired item.) OTOH, the friction shouldn't be there to begin with respect to "experts" wielding a philosophical dogma about as if vetted fact.

At any rate, my feelings about FW revolve around keeping it in the sphere of the practical world, and if the word-games have to be addressed (which people will predictably take it there because "we" personally believe this or that metaphysics), then formulating it, so that is it agreeable with either determinism or potentially anything else filling that slot, is the remedy. (I.e., why design it to be vulnerable, since humans are the authors of these ideas and conceptual systems -- not gods or supposed objective realms that distribute them like stone tablets with prescriptions on them.)

[Syne]

Thus, to define FW so that it is dependent upon either a supernatural or a transcendent provenance prior in rank to the sensible world is accordingly making it akin to an unfalsifiable religious belief (i.e, creating a problem).

I agree, which is why I like to stick with evidence of free will rather than the why or how.

Or, if there's a metaphysical doctrine (like determinism) that has become pervasively popular with technocratic institutions, then to frame or define FW so that it is incompatible with determinism likewise generates such. (But let's face it, that's because controversy and endless debate among its different factions is what the incompatibilist orientation is seeking to begin with -- it is a desired item.) OTOH, the friction shouldn't be there to begin with respect to "experts" wielding a philosophical dogma about as if vetted fact.

At any rate, my feelings about FW revolve around keeping it in the sphere of the practical world, and if the word-games have to be addressed (which people will predictably take it there because "we" personally believe this or that metaphysics), then formulating it, so that is it agreeable with either determinism or potentially anything else filling that slot, is the remedy. (I.e., why design it to be vulnerable, since humans are the authors of these ideas and conceptual systems -- not gods or supposed objective realms that distribute them like stone tablets with prescriptions on them.)

I think free will is not only compatible with determinism but outright requires determinism. Most compatibilist views tend to redefine free will as something lesser than, which are basically word games. I think genuine free will is such because choices not only originate from the agent but also because the choices have significance beyond whim. In order to have meaningful choice, the consequences of choices have to be determinant, so that they can be predictable enough for motive to feasibly match outcome. Otherwise, the match between motive and outcome is no better than chance.

[Secular Sanity]

I got a Roomba for Christmas. My son was coming home. I locked it in his room and forgot about it. I threw on my headphones and started cleaning in other areas of the house. When I came back down the stairs, I heard his bedroom door rattling. No one was supposed to be in the house except for me. I thought at first that it might be the wind. I opened the door to check but the door pushed back against me. My heart started racing but then I remember the stupid little robot trapped inside. Silly me.

Do robots have free will? Is consciousness a prerequisite?

[Syne]

^See, only thrilling because you failed to anticipate/remember it. Has nothing to do with the robot's programming...which isn't even a vague mimic of free will.

But you seem to have verified my point here: https://www.scivillage.com/thread-9820-p...l#pid42169

[C C]

I got a Roomba for Christmas. My son was coming home. I locked it in his room and forgot about it. I threw on my headphones and started cleaning in other areas of the house. When I came back down the stairs, I heard his bedroom door rattling. No one was supposed to be in the house except for me. I thought at first that it might be the wind. I opened the door to check but the door pushed back against me. My heart started racing but then I remember the stupid little robot trapped inside. Silly me.

Do robots have free will? Is consciousness a prerequisite?

A robot needs a good degree of autonomy from humans. The ability to program itself slash develop its own goals and interests, to exhibit creative interaction with the environment and decision-making that exceeds installed routines. It probably needs limited rights, too, so that it can receive its own blame for _X_ act rather than the responsibility shifting to floor managers, programmers/designers, whatever spit out a machine-learning algorithm it uses at times, etc.

Consciousness wise, I suppose it could still be a p-zombie, having awareness in terms of inner processes and outer behavior that remain invisible to itself or never correlate to manifested representations and sensations.

Like the Sorites paradox, there's no neat border or boundary for intelligence, consciousness, and autonomy. We can formally set standards for such that are useful, but they will always have controversy nibbling at them. Not unlike a virus being a gray zone between something living and non-living.

Evolution might be construed as an incredibly slow, proto-intelligent or creative procedure if no more characteristics were demanded than information storage and having preferences reduced to rudimentary, molecular selection-making.

[Syne]

Like the Sorites paradox, there's no neat border or boundary for intelligence, consciousness, and autonomy. We can formally set standards for such that are useful, but they will always have controversy nibbling at them. Not unlike a virus being a gray zone between something living and non-living.

The Sorites paradox is basically just a word game. The word "heap" is not a description of quantity but a description of shape, i.e. quality. So talking about removing a quantity of grains of sand is pointless. The two do not relate. The idea of borders between things that cannot be related in the same terms is meaningless.

But between conscious and non-conscious, autonomous and non-autonomous there are borders, as they are of the same kind. Only the chronically subjective have any problem defining such boundaries. Viruses are clearly not alive, by many measures of the definition of life. The dumb notion that they may be comes from the motivated reasoning of people who seek an abiogenesis origin of life, and there is zero science behind that wholly subjective belief.