Friday, July 30, 2010

Pragmatic Value of Belief in Free Will

A friend of mine just posted a short essay on his blog that touches on some of the themes that recur here, so I thought I'd share it. The essay, Detrimental Determinism, quotes the results of a study in which participants were given essays to read about free will and determinism from a scientific perspective and then invited to perform a simple task in which cheating was possible. Those exposed to essays that argued for determinism were more likely to cheat--and the more they believed in determinism (as assessed by a questionnaire administered at the end), the more likely they were to cheat.

My friend speculates that the result would be the same if the participants were all Christians and were presented with contrasting essays by theologians who argue for and against divine predestination.

29 comments:

  1. One of these days, I am going to sit down and figure out what the big argument is all about.

    Determinists say that everything happens because of something else. And if it doesn't, then it is indeterminate and doesn't necessarily add anything meaningful to the freewill idea. Perhaps.

    But on the other side, doesn't everybody think that, practically speaking, we still have "freewill". We can't fully understand the entirety of the system of which we are a part. It's incoherent that we could ever have full knowledge of all determining factors, because then we could just do the opposite of what we are "supposed" to do.

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  2. Sometimes I tend to favor a sort of freewill, but how would this work physically? Perhaps certain processes are indeterminate at their tiniest levels, then chaos takes over and multiplies the effects of these indeterminate processes throughout unstable systems (like organisms and weather patterns). So the initial conditions are indeterminate, but then the effects are "blown up" through more predictable deterministic processes.

    So physical laws are constraints on freedom, but not completely deterministic. The question is whether small processes which appear indeterminate are truly so, or if there are hidden variables that we cannot see.

    But determinism has a beauty to it as well. The idea that the cosmos is stamped in place and we are experiencing it through "time" which is the animal sense perception by which we experience the cosmos.

    The Buddhists say that time exists to keep everything from happening all at once. That is cool as well.

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  3. Eric,

    If free will does not exist then morality makes no sense, so it’s no wonder that those who tend to think that free will does not exist will also tend to think that to try to be moral makes no sense. Anyway it’s good to count with one more piece of evidence that religious belief is morally empowering.

    What I must say did surprise me was to read how serious people believe in things that are seriously and demonstrably wrong. So for example in the wired.com article I read that philosopher Galen Strawson (and Oxford University prof) equates indeterminism (the negation of determinism) with “objective randomness” (by which I take it he means true and not apparent randomness, such as pseudo-randomness which is deterministic). But these two concepts refer to two different epistemic states of affair: Indeterminism says that in some particular context it is not possible to exactly predict the next state of a system based on knowledge about its current state. True randomness says that it is not possible to probabilistically predict the next state of a system based on knowledge about its current state any better than according to some probability distribution entailed in its current state. Thus randomness implies indeterminism, but not vice versa.

    In the same article noted novelist Ian McEwan thinks that the arguments for us not having free will are “watertight”. I wonder what he was thinking about, for, as a matter of fact, virtually all theistic philosophers and scientists as well as a significant percentage of naturalistic philosophers and scientists do believe in the existence of free will, and it is rather unlikely that all these professionals would not be aware of the watertight arguments McEwan is speaking of. I really hope he was not thinking of Benjamin Libet’s experimental results, which do not in any way, shape or form show that we don’t have free will, but only that in order to make a random decision we use our brain as a kind of randomness generator. What is remarkable is that the same people who often claim the epistemic principle that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”, themselves believe in the extraordinary claim that we don’t have free will on the flimsiest of grounds.

    What is actually interesting to ponder, is not so much that we now lack any evidence for the non-existence of free will, but that it is extremely difficult to even imagine what kind of evidence that would be. The most powerful evidence I can imagine is if a scientist, after studying the current state of my brain, would tell me that the next thing I would utter is the phrase “this is impressive”, and I found myself incapable of not uttering that predicted phrase. But should I ever experience this, or rather remember experiencing this, I’d rather believe that I had fallen victim to hypnosis or to hallucination or even that microrobots injected in my bloodstream were fooling around with my neurons – rather than that I don’t possess free will. Actually, come to think of it, even in this imaginary case, the evidence would not be against my having free will, for I would certainly choose to *not* utter the predicted phrase, but only that I failed to act according to my free will (or else that I now fail to remember how I did choose). In conclusion it seems that our condition is such that there can’t be evidence that we lack free will, even if in fact we do lack free will.

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  4. Hi Dianelos

    I think I may have touched on this with you before, so sorry if this is repetitive. I don't pretend to understand free will at all, so I'm not trying to establish or win a particular argument here. What I am curious about is what people might mean when they speak of free will. I use the term myself, and certainly build my life about the idea that I, and other people, are free to make choices. However, when I attempt to explain by what I mean by being free in this sense I find myself having great sympathy for St Augustine when he spoke of knowing just what time was until he attempted to express it.

    The best I can do is to say that I take in information, consider as best I can the implications of my available choices, balance this against the strength of my various urges and the values I hold, and then, with all this accounted for, I feel I come down on the side of one action or another. But I don't think this is what people mean by free will, because all of the processes I have just described appear to me to be deterministic, the playing out of a weighted algorithm, to use an inadequate metaphor.

    Most people see free will as sitting outside a deterministic framework, as I understand it. How does this aspect then operate, if it is not influenced by the determining factors of expectation, value system, emotional state etc? I don't mean mechanisitically, but rather what is the element the 'free' aspect would bring to the decision? Some claim that this element must be truly random, or else it would be caused by these other factors, and I have some sympathy with this view, but instinct pulls me from it fairly strongly.

    You may be able to help clarify this. (My interest is not entirely casual, I have in the editing stage a novel based around exactly the conundrum you explained, where a character meets a person who is seemingly able to predict his every move).

    Bernard

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  5. Bernard--The conundrum you raise here is one I've wrestled with in my own philosophical work for a long time. It comes up in relation to my work on the coherence (or lack thereof) of the doctrine of hell insofar as defenders of hell argue that damnation is consistent with a God who wills the good of all creatures because some creatures FREELY choose (with full understanding of what they are choosing) to eternally reject the good. I argue, in a recent article ("A Guarantee of Universal Salvation?" in the journal FAITH & PHILOSOPHY--not available online), that this defense of hell implies a view of freedom in which arbitrariness HAS to play a decisive role (further implying that the damned are in hell because of chance factors). But the discussion here has implications independent of the debate among theistic philosophers about hell.

    In general, I am torn about free will because, on the one hand, I have an intuitive sense that whenever I make a deliberative decision I could have decided otherwise, and what makes the difference is something really rooted in myself; on the other hand, whenever I try to dig deeply into an analysis of choice which makes it such that I could have decided otherwise, the analysis doesn't seem to work without smuggling in arbitrariness at some point in the decision-making process (hence making chance rather than me responsible for the fact that I chose this rather than that).

    I recently reviewed a book by Stewart Goetz, Freedom, Teleology, and Evil, that among other things seeks a novel way out of this conundrum. My review, in a recent issue of Religious Studies, argues that this attempt fails for reasons you might find interesting (unfortunately, the full review is only accessible for journal subscribers).

    If you're interested in these more technical philosophical articles on this topic, you should be able to access them through a university library that has the relevant subscriptions. But if you'd rather e-mail me at my Oklahoma State University address, I'll happily send you the Word documents as an attachment.

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  6. I agree with the conundrum, Eric. On the one hand, it seems that if a choice is made, it could have been otherwise. On the other hand, I don't see how personal freedom is enhanced by the idea of choices having no discernible causes.

    I also don't think that determinism negates morality. Good and evil could still be labeled as such. What I think is incoherent is retributive "justice". But I think that may be incoherent whether there is indeterminate free will or complete determinism.

    But surely some degree of freewill will always be true from our point of view, since we cannot have an outside perspective to our role in the universe.

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  7. Thanks for the links Eric, I'll follow some of it up in time.

    Steven, the link between retributive justice and free will is fascinating because the model of free will we carry (often unexamined) appears to feed directly into our response to so many social issues. As a very basic example, in teaching one is forever analysing what underpins a particularly desirable or undesirable set of behaviours.

    One model lays the blame/praise at the students' feet. They make the choices, and must learn to
    accept the consequences of their actions etc etc

    Alternatively teachers might take a more deterministic approach, looking carefully at the way the environment they create leads to certain behaviours being encouraged or suppressed. In reality, although each teacher carries their own bias, we flip between both approaches constantly. To ignore the fact that students behave in response to environmental cues is to ensure an extremely short career, whereas to fail to acknowledge students can indeed shape and direct their urges is to treat them with unspeakable contempt.

    Free Will is my favourite example (and defence) of my own irrationality. Reason tells me the style of free will I believe in is illusory, and pragmatism tells my reason to take a hike. Reason doesn't stand a chance, and nor should it. It is only one of the faculties I can call upon. I try to bear this in mind whenever I hear a group being accused of being irrational in their beliefs, or am tempted to do the same.

    Bernard

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  8. Bernard,

    A very interesting example!

    I guess dealing with students is somewhat similar to dealing with felons.... ;)

    I don't mean that punishing people is wrong. We should definitely punish people. People need to be accountable for their actions. The question is why?

    Retribution means that revenge is its own purpose. Justice is payback, an "evening out" of things.

    But I don't think punishment makes any sense unless it is an attempt at rehabilitation (or education!), deterrence or security.

    So even if students theoretically cannot help their actions (which doesn't make sense from our practical perspective even if determinism were true), they should still be punished in a way that might determine them to do better.

    good stuff. thanks!

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  9. Bernard,

    You write: “ What I am curious about is what people might mean when they speak of free will.

    I think the common meaning of free will is that, should we have so wanted, we could have chosen differently than how we in fact did.

    The state of the physical universe, inside or outside our skull, does influence how we choose of course, but we always maintain the power to choose differently than how the physical state of the universe determines. Thus free will describes a particular power we have, the power to transcend physical contingency. As some atheists have noted, free will makes of us “little gods”, beings who, just like God, are uncaused causes themselves. Indeed, at its inception free will is a creative power. Like perception and thought, free will is a definitional property of what a “person” is. If I may move our discussion into theology for a moment, I think that God’s free will is the (as tradition has it) second hypostasis of God, i.e. the Word of God, Christ. Which fits very well with John 1:1-3.

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  10. Eric,

    You write: “In general, I am torn about free will because, on the one hand, I have an intuitive sense that whenever I make a deliberative decision I could have decided otherwise, and what makes the difference is something really rooted in myself; on the other hand, whenever I try to dig deeply into an analysis of choice which makes it such that I could have decided otherwise, the analysis doesn't seem to work without smuggling in arbitrariness at some point in the decision-making process (hence making chance rather than me responsible for the fact that I chose this rather than that).

    It seems to me it’s not some kind of “arbitrariness” but rather it’s *us* who affect and indeed drive the decision-making process. Let me elaborate how I understand that process; I would be very thankful if you’d find and point out an error in it:

    Our brain, as all physical systems, is a probabilistic machine. Indeed the most general case of a naturalistically evolving system is one where its current state entails the probability distribution of its future states. And, as it happens, this is exactly how quantum mechanics describes physical systems. A simple but paradigmatic probabilistic system would be to throw two fair dice and add the result. The probability distribution entailed in this simple system is easy to compute. For example, getting the result 12 is relatively rare at probability 1/36 (or about 3%), but to get a 7 is more probable at probability 6/36 (for there are more combinations of die values that add up to 7).

    Now suppose I open the fridge looking for something to eat, and the two choices are to pick a peach or to pick a chocolate. As I have a sweet tooth the probability of my choosing the peach is rather small. Indeed the current state of my brain is such that the probability that it will evolve into a peach-choosing state is about 3%. And that’s the correct probability of me choosing the peach, in the sense that if you wanted to place a bet on how I will choose you couldn’t do better than betting 97/3 against my choosing the peach. As far as physical contingency goes then, the probability of my brain evolving into the peach-choosing mode is the same as the probability of getting a 12 when throwing two dice. So far, naturalism, theism, science, and common sense exactly agree.

    So where does free will come in? Well, I am a person, and, clearly, from my personal point of view there is a huge difference between the two physical systems described above. Whereas I have no power whatsoever to affect the evolution of the two-dice system to make it produce the rare 3% result, I have unrestricted power to affect the evolution of my brain to make it produce the rare 3% result. If I want to choose to eat the peach, no matter how improbable that choice actually is, there I nothing from keeping me to thus choose - not my brain, not the universe, not demons or ghosts or aliens, not even God. For as long as I am a person, and thus as long as I have free will, not even God has the power to stop me from choosing as I will. And that’s indeed why I am personally responsible for my choices.

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  11. Dianelos,

    I agree with your description of probabilities. Sort of.

    The question of freewill is where your desire comes from to eat the peach or the chocolate. we all have competing desires, that are all based in our physical systems. If my appetite says chocolate, it is physical. If my reason says, "No, that'll make me fat", that too is physical.

    Do you think we can have desires that do not have any physical correlations in our brains?

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  12. Steven,

    You write: “Do you think we can have desires that do not have any physical correlations in our brains?

    No, I don’t think that. From all we know it appears that there is an exact correlation between our conscious life and physical processes in our brain.

    The probability of me choosing the peach is 3% because of my particular desires, beliefs, perceptions, tastes, instincts, etc (you can add any mental property you wish here). To put the same proposition in third-person terms which a naturalist may find more familiar: The probability of my brain evolving into the peach-choosing mode is 3% because of the state of the physical processes and/or structures in my brain which exactly correlate to what people call their desires, beliefs, perceptions, tastes, instincts, etc. And, finally: Even though the probability of me choosing the peach I only 3% I have the power to choose it at will.

    What is important to note at this juncture is that how I choose, either the peach or the chocolate, does (slightly in this case) affect the state of my brain henceforth. So the very state of my brain (with its physical analogues of desires, beliefs, perceptions, tastes, instincts, etc) is not an external given, but is to a significant degree the result of the cumulative effect of all my free choices in the past. So, for example and in my experience, choosing not to eat any sweets for a short while (a month) greatly decreases my taste for them, i.e. after a month of applying my free will the next time I find myself in the same state of affairs the probability of my choosing the peach may have grown to 80%. Another more obvious example is how choosing to study rather than to watch TV will affect the future beliefs my brain holds. So, we are not slaves to the probabilities entailed by the physical state of our brain. On the contrary, free will gives us the power to shape our brain and thus the power to guide our life to an important degree. Significantly for theism, this includes the qualitative dimension of our life, i.e. in how we experience that we experience. Of course the power of free will is limited by many physical factors (trivially, I cannot fly around just by the application of my free will, for facts about the physical universe make this impossible; also I simply do not have the time to learn all languages there are, etc), but the cumulative effect of the power of free will is nevertheless significant. Finally it is a common empirical truth that free will when consistently applied tends to increase in power.

    Incidentally what I write above is simply a description of part of the human condition we all share. No doubt neuroscience can and probably will one day discover the exact physical analogues of all the above in our brain. But one doesn’t really need any neuroscience to know that, given how one is (i.e. one’s “character”), the probabilities about how one will choose in some particular context are a previous given. Perhaps we don’t know the exact value of such probabilities with the precision that, conceivably, science will some day be able to compute based on a physical scan of our brain, but we do have a pretty good idea about such probabilities in the case of ourselves, and even in the case of people we know well. And, as per the fact that we are free persons, it is a matter of common experience that even though these probabilities are a previous given, we have the power to pick among them. Again, we know this about ourselves, and about the people around us. And that’s why morality makes sense, and why personal responsibility is real.

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  13. Hi Dianelos

    Thank you for developing the peach cake analogy with your typical clarity. I now feel I understand what you mean by free will. For me the paradox appears to still hold.

    I face the cake/peach choice and the probabilities are in place due, as you say, to the cumulative effect of biology, experience and past choices. Now at this particular moment I come down on one side or the other. This decisive act, you maintain, is the result of a freely willed choice.

    The question then becomes, what is behind that choice? If the answer is nothing, it is truly free, then that is, by one important definition, a random act. I mean by this that it is not affected by such things as tastes, inclinations, past choices, promises to oneself or threats by a dentist. These are the things that set up the probabilities, not the things that collapse these probabilities into a chosen course of action.

    Free will then becomes a chaotic, and I would suggest, amoral force, does it not? What am I missing here?

    Bernard

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  14. Bernard--You articulate the problem well. What I'd add is this: the problem does not go away if you reject (as I do) causal determinism and accept (as I do) "agent causation" (which is the view, roughly sketched by Dianelos, that agents are creative principles that are not themselves caused to make the choices they make by some prior physical events).

    To understand why the problem persists, one needs to distinguish between a CAUSE of an action--such as physical realities about the brain which bring it about causally that an agent does such-and-such--and a REASON for an action--some consideration which speaks in the action's favor, and which the agent acts on.

    Part of why I'm not a reductive materialist is because (a) I believe I act on reasons, and (b) I don't see how that can be made sense of if you assume reductive materialism. If I do X BECAUSE IT IS GOOD FOR MY HEALTH, that means that X-being-good-for-my-health explains why I did it, rather than some prior physical state of my brain explaining why I did it. A brain state might REPRESENT for me "X is good for my health" in much the way that a sentence can: they are sets of physical symbols which have this as their MEANING. But just as there's a difference between a sentence and its meaning, there's a difference between a brain state that represents an idea and the idea that is represented in the brain state. No physical state in my brain can be identical with the FACT that something is good for me. And so, if the fact that something is good for me IS the reason I did it, then something other than a brain state explains why I did it.

    But even if you accept all of this, as I do, the problem with freedom still arises. Assume that we are not causally determined by prior physical realities to do what we do, because we are capable of being moved to act by REASONS, and because the possibility of being moved by reasons requires that we are not already determined to act by prior physical events. Well, even on these assumptions, we still need to ask whether it makes sense for people's choices to be undetermined by all their REASONS for action and yet NOT be arbitrary--and if so how.

    Either I have a reason why I choose X over Y, or I don't. If I don't, then doesn't that mean (barring being physically caused to choose X) that I've chosen at random? Some say the essence of a free agent is the ability to choose AMONG REASONS. But either I have a reason for choosing moral reasons over hedonistic ones, or I don't. The same problem comes up again at every level--even if you root the "free choice" at the point of whether or not you will let the weight of your reasons for acting determine what you do, or let chance do it. Either you have a reason for letting reasons (or chance) prevail, or you don't. And if you don't, isn't it then chance that is determining that you are making the choice on the basis of reasons (or chance)?

    I really don't WANT to accept the implications of this train of thought...and in practice I don't, because I don't know how to think of myself as an agent if everything I do is determined either by reasons or causes or chance. But that doesn't change the fact that I can't find a way to make SENSE of what I'm assuming in practice.

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  15. If reason is based on fact, as Eric said, then I don't see how that affects determinism. I act because of my will, which may be affected by facts for sure, but the facts are not themselves my will. The facts are determining factors, like a rock in my way might cause me to turn left, but the rock isn't itself the reason I turned left. At least I don't think it is - but I think the rock is pretty much just there.

    Einstein said, "We can will ourselves to action, but we cannot will ourselves to will." I accept, as Dianelos showed in his analogy, that we can, to an extent, will ourselves to will. I agree with that. But surely we cannot will ourselves to will ourselves to will. I still almost feel that Dianelos' description tries to differentiate between our various physical desires and the decision-making process. I am not sure they are ultimately that separate.

    I think that probabilities may allow freewill, or at least non-determinism, as small indeterminate changes blow up throughout entire systems, but I think it doesn't change the dilemma that Eric and Bernard have pointed out.

    But since it is incoherent that we could ever know every determining factor, we are still, in many meaningful ways, free agents at the practical level. And that is very, very significant.

    Even as a child when pondering divine determinism, I remember thinking, "who cares? Even if we are determined, we can't what the outcomes are, so it doesn't matter."

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  16. That is "we can't know what the outcomes are."

    BTW, even determinism can be inspiring if you consider that the same forces driving us, that we ARE, are the ones making the sun shine, making our hearts beat, making ideas form in our heads.

    As Alan Watts suggest, why not take it the other way? Instead of no responsibility, perhaps we are responsible for everything. I was the twinkly in my father's eye before I was born. I was the primordial energy of the Big Bang. And you too.

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  17. Bernard,

    You write: “I face the cake/peach choice and the probabilities are in place due, as you say, to the cumulative effect of biology, experience and past choices. Now at this particular moment I come down on one side or the other. This decisive act, you maintain, is the result of a freely willed choice. The question then becomes, what is behind that choice?

    We are, of course. What else? The cumulative effect of biology, experience and past choices greatly affect our choice, for they determine the individual probabilities of the alternatives. But once the probabilities are set it is we who have the power to freely choose, and who do freely choose. It’s a common experience.

    The remaining question is: What are we? Clearly we are physical beings in the sense that our life is circumscribed by the state of the physical universe (including our brain), but we are not only physical beings, as we have power over the state of the physical universe, indeed the power to choose how to affect it beyond what is entailed in its physical state. As we saw that power is not a trifle, because the effect of our past free choices is accumulative, shaping our brain and other physical parameters of our life, and thus can transform our experience of life. It’s difficult to put a figure on it (and this would be an interesting question to investigate further), but my guess is that the cumulative effect of the application of free will is on average more than 50%, i.e. our current experience of life depends more on how we have chosen in the past than on physical contingency (and chance). I wouldn’t be surprised if a more careful analysis would produce an estimate of more than 90%. The implications here are momentous, because they show that the whole of our current experience of life is more dependent on our past exercise of free will than on the physical facts of the universe. Rather, the facts of the physical universe serve as a means for us to build how we are and experience life, kind like a potter needs clay to build a pot.

    So there is a part of us which transcends physical contingency, and which is what is behind our choices. Traditionally, that non-physical dimension of what we are is called “spiritual”. Indeed a good way to describe what we are, is that we are “embodied spirits” or perhaps “embodied persons”. There is much to be said in this context, but I do not wish to deviate too much from our main discussion. Still I’d like to point out that our experience of free will constitutes overwhelming as well as almost continuous evidence for the existence of a spiritual dimension to reality, indeed one that is primary. The attentive contemplation of that dimension of our being, I would say quickly and naturally moves one into the realization that it is infused with a force towards goodness, a kind of ubiquitous gravitational force which is not arbitrary but orderly and points to some central presence. A center from which all that’s good appears to emanate and which theists experience and describe as a person who is perfect in all respects. From where I stand this is a remarkable cognitive trip, one which theologians call the experiential evidence of God. To those who experience it that evidence offers as much warrant for the existence of God as any epistemological method based on the application of the intellect. Indeed, some rare people, the so-called mystics who in their experience of life manage to actually approach God to touching distance as it were, consistently report that their experience of God feels more real than their experience of the physical universe.

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  18. Hi Eric

    So much to comment on here. From what it means to make assumptions in practice that oppose our sense of reason, to what it means for a God to be purposive if the notion of free will is incoherent, to the cruelty forced upon the world by any agent choosing evolution as its means of production (think what happened to child birth when bipedalism met the larger brain) and I'd love to pursue this idea that there is a difference between a brain state and a reason because that doesn't feel solid to me yet.

    All of this will have to wait though, as this is a theatre week for me, we're putting on a play based on a thought experiment by Peter Singer. And yes, the shared experience of an audience collectively holding its breath does feel meaningful for me, and still I think a materialist account can explain this nicely.

    Bernard

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  19. Let me stress that my failure to make sense of a libertarian notion of freedom that doesn't reduce freedom to arbitrariness is not the same as saying that such a notion is incoherent. Our failure to have an adequate account is not proof that there IS no adequate account. I'm still hoping to be convinced by some account other, and I keep looking for such an account--but I haven't found one that satisfies me yet.

    Let me also stress that, as I understand purposive agency, being a purposive agent does not require having libertarian freedom. To be a purposive agent is to be capable of acting on forward-looking reasons: you do X because you believe that doing X will produce outcome Y, and because you judge producing outcome Y to be good. Notice that someone might qualify as a purposive agent under this description even were it NOT the case that they could have done something other than they in fact did. That is, I might be such that I cannot help but believe that doing X will save my child's life (I am convinced); and I might be such that I cannot shake the conviction that saving my child's life is good. And I might be in such a state that for me there are no considerations that speak AGAINST doing X. And it might be true of me (or of all persons) that if one has good reasons to do X and NO reasons not to do, then one will do X (assuming one can). In such a case, in doing X I am being a purposive agent, even though there is no otherwise identical possible world in which I choose otherwise.

    Finally, let me point out that many very traditional theists have maintained that while God is an agent, God's moral perfection implies that God always does what there are the best moral reasons to do. In other words, if the moral reasons to do something are decisive, then there is no possible world in which God fails to do it. But I don't think any theologians who hold this view think that this implies that God is not a purposive agent. Being determined by moral reasons to act as one does is sometimes even taken to be the PERFECTION of one's potential for agency.

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  20. The more I try to understand what free will is, the less it makes sense to me. Bernard and Eric have explained the puzzle well. In this respect I agree entirely with what Steven says about retributive justice. I think that the notion of moral responsibility (if it can be defined at all) has no place in the justice system.

    Dianelos seems to imply that for free will to exist we need to be “more” than physical beings. Is this the generally accepted view on the subject? I would think that this requirement is necessary although I don't quite see how that solves the puzzle because whatever does the choosing, the result is determined either by reasons or causes or chance, as Eric says above.

    The argument that we are more than physical because we have power over the state of the universe does not seem to work. Machines have that power and they are certainly purely physical. Even hypothetical intelligent robots would still be purely physical – and if I understand Eric correctly, they would qualify as purposive agents.

    Thanks Steven for mentioning Alan Watts. I too like his way of thinking.

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  21. Eric,

    You say: I really don't WANT to accept the implications of this train of thought [...].

    You and others have expressed similar feelings many times (a need or desire that reality be this way instead of that way). Although the following question may be unanswerable, I think it needs to be asked.

    Suppose you didn't have the need you referring to, that you had no emotional stake at all in this issue, that you didn't mind whether reality turned out to be this way or that way but simply wanted to know how it is. How would that effect your views?

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  22. JP--I'm not convinced that my the substance of my deepest and most profound longings DON'T say something, somehow, about the way things are. While I readily admit that much that goes by the name of desire needs to be excluded from our doxastic (belief-forming) practices in order to arrive at true beliefs (at least within certain domains of inquiry), I think there may be some distinctions that need to be made between different species of want or desire.

    In the case at hand, when I say I "want" it to be true I mean that there is something in me that "tugs" me towards accepting it--but this "tug" is not exactly like the tug of desire in a more prosaic sense, because it has elements of the tug towards acceptance I feel when I see a water bottle on the table and am tugged towards accepting the truth of the statement, "There is a water bottle on the table."

    In their book, The Agnostic Inquirer, Sa ndy Menssen and Tom Sullivan offer a helpful concept that may be fitting here--the concept of a "CUE-fact." A CUE-fact is a kind of putative fact that is acceptable "conditional upon explanation." Menssen and Sullivan put it this way: "...a CUE-fact is one you are inclined to accept, are pulled towards, and would accept IF ONLY it were explainable. Given the tug toward the fact, all that remains--all that is required for acceptability--is a respectable explanation."

    Suppose you have a spouse who you trust implicitly and love deeply and whom you could never imagine being the type of person who would cheat on you. But then there is some deeply compromising evidence that seems impossible to explain except under the assumption that he/she has had an affair. Your spouse assures you of his/her innocence. You WANT to believe him/her--and this want is not just a crass desire, but a deeper tug: Your instincts scream his/her innocence, so much so that the hypothesis that he/she's had an affair seems impossible for you to believe...except for this seemingly damning piece of evidence.

    In this case, all that's lacking for you to accept his/her innocence AS A FACT is an adequate explanation for how this evidence could exist given that innocence.

    The interesting question in such cases is what you do when you DON'T have such an explanation. Do you trust your wife--operate as if the PUTATIVE fact of her innocence is a known fact? Do you do so for awhile, but keep your eye out for further damning bits of evidence and jump ship on her the moment such evidence comes in? Do you ignore your intuitions and just go with the facts, operating as if she's cheated on you?

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  23. Eric

    We are tugged towards very many beliefs. Historically, a good number of these have turned out to be quite wrong, but not all of them, nd that's important too. I think you are right, the question becomes, in the absence of evidence, what do we do about such tuggings?

    I wonder what is wrong about saying, well I want to believe this, it suits me to believe it, and so in the absence of any evidence either way, that's just what I will do.

    It seems to me that the psychological block is that implicit in this is the acknowledgement that it is just something I've sort of made up for my own comfort. I'm okay with that, indeed I think it's really the only form of belief available to us.

    Perhaps there is also a logical impedimant as well. Is it possible to believe in something like absolute moral values for pragmatic reasons, or does the acknowledgement that it has been embraced for this purpose rather reduce it to a form of pragmatic relativism?

    I suspect it does, and this is one of the things that pushes (tugs) me towards agnostic stances.

    Under this view, scientific knowledge is a particular class of pragmatic knowledge, specifically that knowledge where the evidence I use in favour of pragmaticaly embracing it is available for others to scrutinise, critique and embrace, the end result being that planes really do stay in the sky.

    Bernard

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  24. Hi Bernard,

    I wonder what is wrong about saying, well I want to believe this, it suits me to believe it [...]

    You put it very well and I tend to agree. This reminds of Martin Gardner's faith. He said essentially (I can't find an exact quote now) that he didn't have any good evidence to support his belief, that non believers had far better evidence for their convictions and that he could not convincingly argue his case but he choose to believe in God because it made him fell more secure (or gave him more comfort). I must add however that I have mentioned this to a philosopher friend and, to say the least, he was not impressed. But I don't quite understand why... This position strikes me as devastatingly honest, cutting through all the paperwork, so to speak. I don't know if I could do the same but I respect this without any hesitation.

    If anybody does not know of Gardner, he is best know for his work in mathematical games and his writings attacking pseudoscience (among a lot of other things). He died recently at the age of 95 and is worth a detour. Please check him out. Eric may know his son James, a professor at the University of Oklahoma.

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  25. Interesting line of thinking here by everyone. Thanks!

    JP, glad you like Watt's thinking as well. He prattles on, but damn he'll pull out some amazing stuff. Eastern ideas in a Western context...thank goodness.

    So do we not judge truths by their success? Leaps of faith cannot be empirically verified, but perhaps their effects can? Of course, the path is narrow here. The line is fine between a beneficial faith and a detrimental delusion.

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  26. Eric,

    You write: “ Either I have a reason why I choose X over Y, or I don't. If I don't, then doesn't that mean (barring being physically caused to choose X) that I've chosen at random? Some say the essence of a free agent is the ability to choose AMONG REASONS. But either I have a reason for choosing moral reasons over hedonistic ones, or I don't. The same problem comes up again at every level--even if you root the "free choice" at the point of whether or not you will let the weight of your reasons for acting determine what you do, or let chance do it. Either you have a reason for letting reasons (or chance) prevail, or you don't. And if you don't, isn't it then chance that is determining that you are making the choice on the basis of reasons (or chance)?

    My main focus has been to demonstrate that a perfect correlation between mental and brain properties does not in any way restrict the notion of libertarian free will. But, if I understand you correctly, the problem you see is about how we are to understand free will independently of any physicalist preocupations. So, you say, suppose there are two possible choices of equal probability of being picked, say the moral and the hedonistic one. How do I do it when I freely pick, say, the hedonistic one? If I have some reason for picking it then I am not really free, because that particular reason “made me pick it”. If I pick it by chance then I am not really free, because the toss of a coin “made me pick it”.

    So both these options (reason and chance) lead to absurdities, namely to the idea that, against our most intimate experience of life, libertarian free will does not exist. Not to mention they render morality and personal responsibility meaningless concepts. Given that both these options lead to absurdities the implication is that there must be a third option. It seems to me that the natural understanding of free will is that it is an autonomous and creative power, that all persons possess. It is because of this power that, within the limitations of the physical environment we experience, we are uncaused causes ourselves. Nothing causes us to pick one choice over the other; we do.

    In conclusion the natural understanding of free will, and the one that perfectly comports with how it feels like when we use free will, is that free will gives us sovereign power to pick a choice. What choices are open to be picked and at what probability is determined by other facts of our experience of life (which the physicalist names “the state of our brain”) – but this does not affect the notion of free will.

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  27. Dianelos

    Isn't there still a problem with the third option, in that it appears to still be categorisable under the other two. Either the uncaused causer is affected by the circumstances that set up the probabilities (determined) or isn't (random). What is the third option that escapes this choice?

    Bernard

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  28. Eric,

    Some more comments on the issue of free will and how it relates to scientific knowledge.

    You write: “To understand why the problem persists, one needs to distinguish between a CAUSE of an action--such as physical realities about the brain which bring it about causally that an agent does such-and-such--and a REASON for an action--some consideration which speaks in the action's favor, and which the agent acts on.

    It sounds like you are holding on to a deterministic view. We know today that the physical realities about the brain do not bring it about causally that an agent does such-and-such. They only bring about the probabilities with which an agent will do this rather than that. That’s what science says is the case for all physical systems. How it comes about that a physical system will actualize one of its possible future states is something that science does not specify (and need not specify).

    Having said that, it seems to me that if we accept that there is a 100% correlation between our conscious life and physical processes within our brain, then what we mean when we speak in first-person terms of “reason for an action” perfectly correlates with what we mean when we speak in third-person terms of “physical cause for an action”.

    Should we accept that there is such a 100% correlation? I think we should. First there is already a significant amount of direct scientific evidence. Secondly, it would be inelegant if God, without any need at all, would have physical phenomena related to human actions represent an exception to the physical closure that all other phenomena in the universe appear to conform with. Therefore if we discovered that there is not a 100% correlation between mental properties and physical properties in our brain, then this would be a problem not only for naturalism but for theism also.

    And so, if the fact that something is good for me IS the reason I did it, then something other than a brain state explains why I did it.

    But if there is a 100% correlation between first-person mind-properties and third-person brain-properties, then any explanation based on mind-properties given in first-person language can be translated into the corresponding third-person language about brain-properties. Consider the example you give: If neuroscience can point out the physical correlate of the mental state “X-being-good-for-my health”, and further point out that according to physical laws the probability of that physical state evolving into the “I-choose-X” physical state is over 99%, then why can’t the naturalist claim that she has a purely physical explanation of the “I-choose-X” physical state actually obtaining?

    Now I agree that there is a difference between a brain state that represents an idea and the idea itself. It strikes me as quite obvious that the latter has semantic content that the former lacks. Therefore an explanation based in first-person language has something that an explanation based on third-person language lacks. Which again implies that we are not purely physical beings. But which does not imply that there is no explanation of human choices in third-person language; there is (or at least in principle there can be such an explanation), only it’s an inferior explanation, indeed one that misses the whole experience of choosing.

    [continued in the next post]

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  29. [continued from the previous post]

    If I do X BECAUSE IT IS GOOD FOR MY HEALTH, that means that X-being-good-for-my-health explains why I did it, rather than some prior physical state of my brain explaining why I did it.

    I’d say that why I did it is ultimately explained by the fact that I made a free choice. “X-being-good-for-my-health” may have made this choice very probable, but does not explain my picking it. Indeed, we all have the experience of sometimes acting *against* reason, in the sense of choosing *against* what is the more probable choice given all the mental properties (beliefs, desires, tastes, etc) which affect our choices. That’s how bad people sometimes act against their character and choose charity, and how good people sometimes act against their character and choose evil. Which, again, perfectly correlates with how science describes physical systems; physical systems sometimes will evolve to a rare state, albeit rarely.

    Indeed I don’t see any contradiction, let alone any tension, between agent causality and the physical state of our brain. Our brain’s physical state holds a physical analog of our mental properties, and thus “causes” the probability distribution. That’s the physical causality (not deterministic causality) that according to science governs our brain. Agent causality comes into play when we freely pick the actual choice among the various alternatives. So it’s not like there must be either physical causality or else agent causality. If there were only physical causality (and the actual choice among the various alternatives were picked by chance) then we wouldn’t be free but only puppets driven by physical contingency and arbitrary chance. If there were only agent causality (and the actual choice were independent from the physical contingencies of our brain) then we would appear to be supernatural beings with arbitrary power over our physical state. It’s the interplay of the two which describes our condition: to be affected by our physical environment including our brain, but to have the power to transcend it, and actually shape it to a significant degree, one free choice at a time.

    Assume that we are not causally determined by prior physical realities to do what we do, [snip]

    A side issue: If a lowly photon is not causally determined by prior physical realities to pass through one of the two slits, then we are certainly not causally determined by prior physical realities to do what we do. This is not something we have to simply assume, but is as close to certainty as it gets. I understand some theologians see in non-determinism some affront to God’s sovereignty, but I trust that’s not how you feel about this issue. After all, by creating us persons with free will God does place a limit on His/Her control over events. Moreover I don’t see where the notions of perfect power and knowledge imply absolute control over all events, even at the absence of created persons. If God wants to toss a coin and be surprised by the resulting random event then God can surely do it.

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