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Free Will and Determinism

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  • Free Will and Determinism

    The University of Oxford offers online courses in philosophy. I took a metaphysics course and wrote a paper for it. What do you think?

    In this essay, I will argue that free will is compatible with determinism. First, I will define the terms “free will” and “determinism.” Then, I will argue that free will is compatible with determinism given that all of these conditions are met: 1) An agent can act in accordance with his or her true self, 2) An agent can weigh the reasons for and against various courses of action, and 3) An agent is capable of doing what is morally right or he was capable of doing what is morally right, but lost that ability due to his own fault.

    Free will is the ability to make decisions of the sort for which one can be morally responsible. Free will confers people with moral responsibility. There are philosophers who define free will in the libertarian sense. They say that free will is the ability to choose one way or another given the same exact conditions. For this paper, I’m not defining free will in the libertarian sense. To be morally responsible means to act in a way so that one is praiseworthy or blameworthy. If someone earned an award for being the best employee of the year, then his behavior was praiseworthy. If someone robbed a bank, then his behavior was blameworthy.

    Determinism is the idea that every event including human behavior has a sufficient cause other than itself. According to Robert Kane, an event is determined when there are conditions obtained earlier whose occurrence is a sufficient condition for the occurrence of the event. Events can be guaranteed by the foreordaining acts of God, one’s genetic material, environment or antecedent causes in combination with the laws of nature. A determined event is inevitable or necessary if certain conditions are met. A determined event does not have to occur, no matter what else happens, but it must occur when the determining conditions occur.

    The first condition that must be met in order for free will to be compatible with determinism is that an agent must act in accordance with his or her true self. To act in accordance with one’s true self means acting according to one’s character and strongest desires. If an agent is forced to do something that he does not want to do, then he is not acting in accordance with his or her true self. An involuntary response to some stimulus would not be acting in accordance with one’s true self. Some people might object to this condition by claiming that a mad scientist could make a person commit murder by putting a computer chip in his brain. My response to this objection is that this would not be representative of the person’s true self. A person’s behavior as a result of a computer chip would not necessarily reflect that person’s true character. The computer chip would bypass the normal deliberative process that a person goes though when making a decision.

    The second condition that must be met in order for free will to be compatible with determinism is that an agent must be able to weigh the reasons for and against various courses of action. People are able to use their reasoning process in order to figure out what is best to do and act in accordance with our judgment about what is best. People can make mistakes when they reason, but they still go through the process of deliberation. If a person is deciding which car to buy, he can weigh the reasons for and against buying that particular car. If the reasons for buying a particular car outweigh the reasons against buying that particular car, then he can act in accordance with that judgment. Even though a person is determined to buy a particular car, he can still go through the process of deliberation.

    Some philosophers have argued that a person cannot go through the process of deliberation if determinism is true. For example, Richard Taylor argues that a person cannot deliberate about what to do unless it is up to him to do it. He also claims that the notion of “up to me” is not compatible with determinism. If carrying out some action is up to me, then this implies that whether or not I do it ultimately depends upon me.

    My response to this is that determinism does not eliminate the means by which a decision is made. As long as a person does not know what he or she will choose, there still is a point to deliberation. That person would still need to figure out whether or not there are good reasons for choosing a particular course of action. One’s reasons for deciding to do something can determine which course of action to take, but he or she can still deliberate. The person can find out if there are good reasons for taking a course of action and acting in accordance with his judgment.

    The third condition that must be met in order for free will to be compatible with determinism is that an agent must be capable of doing what is morally right or he was capable of doing what is morally right, but lost that ability due to his own fault. It is important to distinguish the difference between being capable of doing what is morally right and having the desire to do what is morally right. Suppose my co-worker knows how to rescue drowning people. He has the knowledge and skills to save people from drowning. Suppose he goes to a swimming pool and sees someone drowning. There is no external force or external constraint that is preventing him from rescuing that person. Suppose he lacks the desire to rescue that person. He would be morally responsible for not rescuing that person because he had the ability to save him. He did not rescue him because he lacked the desire to rescue him. Someone could say that the event where he did not rescue the drowning person was a determined event. Just because the event was determined does not necessarily mean that he was incapable of saving that person. It could mean that he lacked the desire to save that person.

    Someone could lose the ability to do what is morally right due to his own fault. Suppose there is a person who started shoplifting at the age of twenty. Before that age he had resisted the temptation to steal. When he started to shoplift for the first time, he developed a habit that caused him to have a strong desire to steal. He would shoplift again and again. He thinks that he cannot avoid shoplifting. He feels a strong urge to shoplift and he cannot overcome it. Is he morally responsible for shoplifting even though he lost the ability to avoid shoplifting? Yes, he is still morally responsible for shoplifting. His decision to shoplift for the first time led him down the path of impulsive behavior. It was his fault for making the decision to start shoplifting.

    If determinism were true, the three conditions mentioned above would preserve one’s free will. The first condition ensures that the agent acts in accordance with his character and strongest desires. The agent’s mind, will, and emotions can be involved in his actions. The agent is not like a robot that merely does what it is programmed to do. The second condition ensures that the agent has control over his actions. The agent does not have to act according to instinct. The agent could have his or her reasons for doing something expressed as behavior. The third condition ensures that an agent can deserve reward or punishment. If someone were capable of doing what he or she ought to do, but does not do it because of a lack of desire, then he or she would deserve blame. If someone had the capability to do what is morally right, but lost that ability due to his or her own fault, then he or she would deserve blame.

    Many people are concerned about whether we would have free will if determinism were true. In this paper, I argued that free will is compatible with determinism if certain conditions are met. If all of those conditions are met, determinism is no threat to their free will.
    Last edited by Jaxb; 06-29-2016, 06:39 PM.

  • #2
    sounds like a version of compatiblism.

    Source: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/


    Compatibilism offers a solution to the free will problem, which concerns a disputed incompatibility between free will and determinism. Compatibilism is the thesis that free will is compatible with determinism. Because free will is typically taken to be a necessary condition of moral responsibility, compatibilism is sometimes expressed as a thesis about the compatibility between moral responsibility and determinism.

    © Copyright Original Source

    Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
    Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
    But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:

    go with the flow the river knows . . .

    Frank

    I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.

    Comment


    • #3
      The position for which you're arguing is called compatibilism. If I may offer some brief comments:


      -You seem to be presupposing that there indeed ARE actions for which people can be held morally responsible, when that assertion is very often the issue being disputed.

      -Your definition of determinism as "the idea that every event including human behavior has a sufficient cause other than itself" is unusual.

      -You don't seem to have defined exactly what you mean by "one's true self."

      -Regarding your rebuttal of Taylor, what's your response to the suggestion that the process of deliberation itself is determined?
      Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.--Isaiah 1:17

      I don't think that all forms o[f] slavery are inherently immoral.--seer

      Comment


      • #4
        I am by no means a trained philosopher, so do not give my words any more weight than your average shlub.

        As others have pointed out, what you are arguing is termed compatiblism. In that vein, I might suggest altering condition 1) to read "desires" (which you note in a later paragraph) instead of "true self" as the former is more specific and less abstract than the latter. I understand that you may have wrote it this way as an attempt to counter the "mad scientist" rebuttal, but it is far too vague, at least as defined, to be helpful to your argument.

        I'm a little unclear on your usage of praiseworthy and blameworthy. Praiseworthy seems to be based on an act being rewarded. The condition for being blameworthy does not seem to be explicitly stated, but would I be correct in assuming that it would be based on an act being punished? If so, these two conditions don't seem to offer a method of differentiating a free act in the compatiblist sense from a purely determined act. What is stopping a purely determined praiseworthy act from being rewarded and a purely determined blameworthy act from being punished?

        Also, I think your definition of determinism is outmoded. This excerpt from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy may better explain why than my own words would:
        For a variety of reasons this approach is fraught with problems, and the reasons explain why philosophers of science mostly prefer to drop the word “causal” from their discussions of determinism. Generally, as John Earman quipped (1986), to go this route is to “… seek to explain a vague concept—determinism—in terms of a truly obscure one—causation.” More specifically, neither philosophers' nor laymen's conceptions of events have any correlate in any modern physical theory.[1] The same goes for the notions of cause and sufficient cause. A further problem is posed by the fact that, as is now widely recognized, a set of events {A, B, C …} can only be genuinely sufficient to produce an effect-event if the set includes an open-ended ceteris paribus clause excluding the presence of potential disruptors that could intervene to prevent E. For example, the start of a football game on TV on a normal Saturday afternoon may be sufficient ceteris paribus to launch Ted toward the fridge to grab a beer; but not if a million-ton asteroid is approaching his house at .75c from a few thousand miles away, nor if his phone is about to ring with news of a tragic nature, …, and so on. Bertrand Russell famously argued against the notion of cause along these lines (and others) in 1912, and the situation has not changed. By trying to define causal determination in terms of a set of prior sufficient conditions, we inevitably fall into the mess of an open-ended list of negative conditions required to achieve the desired sufficiency.

        Moreover, thinking about how such determination relates to free action, a further problem arises. If the ceteris paribus clause is open-ended, who is to say that it should not include the negation of a potential disruptor corresponding to my freely deciding not to go get the beer? If it does, then we are left saying “When A, B, C, … Ted will then go to the fridge for a beer, unless D or E or F or … or Ted decides not to do so.” The marionette strings of a “sufficient cause” begin to look rather tenuous.
        In sum, sufficient causes alone don't properly differentiate between a free act and a determined act, but only a radically free act (an act made with no causes external to the will of the actor) and a non-radically free act, which encompasses both a subset of free acts and determined acts. Defined this way, determinism isn't a particularly powerful or explanatory process.

        I've personally always found the process of deliberation problematic for at least some forms of compatiblism. On the one hand, if the deliberation process is itself determined by external causes, then it is simply a middle-man process that leads to the same conclusions as hard determinism. Yet on the other hand, if the deliberation process itself is not determined, then what guarantee is there of reaching the supposedly inevitable conclusion? If there is no guarantee, then what is different between this and all but the most radical notions of free will? Most have us making decisions by some form of reasoning. So in what way is an act determined in this case?

        The issue of capability also seems arbitrarily defined to support the compatiblist position. Why should a person be blamed or praised for an act they had not volitional control over? If there is a causal connection between desire and action, which there seems to be in your position, then having no control over the efficient cause means you have no control over the act, which leads right back to hard determinism. If I have no desires other than those that I happen to have at any given moment and cannot do otherwise than those desires, then we are no different than programmed robots.

        Overall, I think it is a finely written paper. It presents your position in a coherent manner and anticipates counter-arguments. My biggest suggestion would be to tighten your language up a bit since philosophy, being rooted in language, lives and dies on terminology.

        I've had a discussion on a similar form of compatibilism before, though it devolved eventually because we both tried addressing too many points at once. With that in mind, I debated how many points to bring up against your paper, but decided on more critique. If you wish to discuss the above points, feel free to only talk about a couple at a time and come back to the others later if at all if that would be better for you. Either way, keep studying philosophy; it's pretty fun.
        Last edited by HumbleThinker; 06-30-2016, 09:12 AM.

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by shunyadragon View Post
          sounds like a version of compatiblism.

          Source: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/


          Compatibilism offers a solution to the free will problem, which concerns a disputed incompatibility between free will and determinism. Compatibilism is the thesis that free will is compatible with determinism. Because free will is typically taken to be a necessary condition of moral responsibility, compatibilism is sometimes expressed as a thesis about the compatibility between moral responsibility and determinism.

          © Copyright Original Source

          That's right. It is compatibilism.

          Comment


          • #6
            Originally posted by fm93 View Post
            The position for which you're arguing is called compatibilism. If I may offer some brief comments:


            -You seem to be presupposing that there indeed ARE actions for which people can be held morally responsible, when that assertion is very often the issue being disputed.

            -Your definition of determinism as "the idea that every event including human behavior has a sufficient cause other than itself" is unusual.

            -You don't seem to have defined exactly what you mean by "one's true self."

            -Regarding your rebuttal of Taylor, what's your response to the suggestion that the process of deliberation itself is determined?
            I meant one's deepest commitments when I said "one's true self."

            Do you think it would be better to define determinism as the view that every event including human behavior is guaranteed to take place given that certain conditions are met?

            If the process of deliberation is not determined, then one's choosing of X instead of Y would be arbitrary or random.

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by Jaxb View Post
              I meant one's deepest commitments when I said "one's true self."
              Eh, that's still kind of vague.

              Do you think it would be better to define determinism as the view that every event including human behavior is guaranteed to take place given that certain conditions are met?
              That's closer to the definitions I've seen.

              If the process of deliberation is not determined, then one's choosing of X instead of Y would be arbitrary or random.
              Technically, that may be a false dichotomy. But (and my apologies if I've misunderstood you somehow) that doesn't seem to answer my question. You wrote:

              Even though a person is determined to buy a particular car, he can still go through the process of deliberation.


              You seem to be saying that the action of buying a particular car might be deterministic, but the process of deliberation is not. But how would go about proving this? How would you refute the suggestion that the process of deliberation is ALSO deterministic, and that each step and conclusion of your deliberation process was pre-determined?
              Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.--Isaiah 1:17

              I don't think that all forms o[f] slavery are inherently immoral.--seer

              Comment


              • #8
                Nicely written and argued. Good job. A suggestion: instead of "true self" which as Humble Thinker points out, is somewhat vague, what about referring to the person's "beliefs and desires arrived at free of outside interference"? That has potential problems too. Oh well...

                I've always had trouble making sense out of compatibilism, but then again, every position related to free will has serious problems, imo! It's hard to reconcile my coming to a decision that's "up to me" and freely arrived at that's also necessitated by prior conditions. If decisions are only a matter of weighing the relative merits and demerits of various reasons in light of a given set of beliefs and desires, then it's hard to see how the sense that it's up to me is anything more than a 'user illusion', in which case, hard determinism is really the case.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by Jim B. View Post
                  Nicely written and argued. Good job. A suggestion: instead of "true self" which as Humble Thinker points out, is somewhat vague, what about referring to the person's "beliefs and desires arrived at free of outside interference"? That has potential problems too. Oh well...

                  I've always had trouble making sense out of compatibilism, but then again, every position related to free will has serious problems, imo! It's hard to reconcile my coming to a decision that's "up to me" and freely arrived at that's also necessitated by prior conditions. If decisions are only a matter of weighing the relative merits and demerits of various reasons in light of a given set of beliefs and desires, then it's hard to see how the sense that it's up to me is anything more than a 'user illusion', in which case, hard determinism is really the case.
                  Perhaps I'm committing a common sense fallacy, but I personally haven't had an issue thinking of our choices in compatiblist terms for a while, just not in the classical compatiblist sense as the OP does. It seems consistent with experience and what we know of our brain that non-deterministic process limit our choices at any one time, perhaps even theoretically to a single choice, and that we freely choose from that. Our choices, our biology, the events that happen to us because of or without relation to our choices, and other impacts I didn't list all seem to impact our ability to choose in a future moment, whether in the short-term or the long term, just in a non-deterministic manner.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by HumbleThinker View Post
                    Perhaps I'm committing a common sense fallacy, but I personally haven't had an issue thinking of our choices in compatiblist terms for a while, just not in the classical compatiblist sense as the OP does. It seems consistent with experience and what we know of our brain that non-deterministic process limit our choices at any one time, perhaps even theoretically to a single choice, and that we freely choose from that. Our choices, our biology, the events that happen to us because of or without relation to our choices, and other impacts I didn't list all seem to impact our ability to choose in a future moment, whether in the short-term or the long term, just in a non-deterministic manner.
                    I have no problem with the idea that our choices are limited, even severely limited, and that there are all sorts of constraints on our thoughts and actions. One question I have is: If I am "free" to make only one possible choice in any given situation, in what sense am I morally responsible for that choice? I can "endorse" that choice as being one that falls in line with who I am, i.e. my beliefs and desires up to the moment of that choice, but that just pushes the question of ultimate responsibility back one step further, since I wouldn't be responsible for my beliefs and desires, etc. The subjective sense that I have that my choice was "my" choice, one that I as a conscious subject could have chosen differently about given the same conditions, would be a "user illusion" along with the whole concept of moral responsibility. Those things would be nothing more than "stances" as Daniel Dennett would say.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      The big question is the relationship of consciousness and the free will question. Is consciousness epiphenomenal or does it really have causal impact? There are good reasons to think that it's not a physical process, even if caused by physical processes. If that's the case, how could this non-physical thing have an impact on physical processes? If it's selected for, then what is its selectional advantage, other than the ability to make choices?

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by Jim B. View Post
                        The big question is the relationship of consciousness and the free will question. Is consciousness epiphenomenal or does it really have causal impact? There are good reasons to think that it's not a physical process, even if caused by physical processes. If that's the case, how could this non-physical thing have an impact on physical processes? If it's selected for, then what is its selectional advantage, other than the ability to make choices?
                        The selective process surely can be the ability to make choices. In fact it is likely not simply the ability to make choices, but the increased ability to make choices as the intelligent omnivore homo sapien evolved. Other primates and higher mammals makes choices also. but on a simpler scale.

                        There is not good evidence that consciousness and the mind are not a product of the brain. Many animals other than homo sapiens and primates have demonstrated that they consciousness. I do not see any difference between being a product of a physical process and being a physical process. All the present evidence we currently have at hand indicates that the mind and consciousness are product of the brain.
                        Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
                        Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
                        But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:

                        go with the flow the river knows . . .

                        Frank

                        I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Originally posted by shunyadragon View Post
                          The selective process surely can be the ability to make choices. In fact it is likely not simply the ability to make choices, but the increased ability to make choices as the intelligent omnivore homo sapien evolved. Other primates and higher mammals makes choices also. but on a simpler scale.

                          There is not good evidence that consciousness and the mind are not a product of the brain. Many animals other than homo sapiens and primates have demonstrated that they consciousness. I do not see any difference between being a product of a physical process and being a physical process. All the present evidence we currently have at hand indicates that the mind and consciousness are product of the brain.
                          So it seems that you are not an epiphenomenalist? Do you believe in libertarian free will? If consciousness is purely a physical process, then it must conform to event causation (assuming that quantum indeterminacy gets cancelled out at macro scales) which would be strictly deterministic.

                          I can think of things that, even if they are the "products of physical processes," wouldn't be physical processes: mathematical objects, the ideas that I'm expressing right now as I type these keys, ...

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Originally posted by Jim B. View Post
                            So it seems that you are not an epiphenomenalist? Do you believe in libertarian free will? If consciousness is purely a physical process, then it must conform to event causation (assuming that quantum indeterminacy gets cancelled out at macro scales) which would be strictly deterministic.
                            Your drawing conclusions that are false concerning the relationship between quantum indeterminancy and cause and effect events in the macro world. Quantum indeterminancy is only a cause and effect relationship in the Quantum level of existence. Absolutely no such relationship can be inferred. No, libertarian free is not a viable assumption that would make us robotic.

                            Actually, the relationship of cause and effect relationships in the real world and the relationship and function in brains in both humans and animals, as well as ALL of our macro existence is a fractal relationships as described in Chaos Theory. This in and of itself would preclude any possibility of a robotic deterministic nature of everything including the relationship and nature of the brain and the mind.

                            I can think of things that, even if they are the "products of physical processes," wouldn't be physical processes: mathematical objects, the ideas that I'm expressing right now as I type these keys, ...
                            All this remains the product of physical processes that are obviously manifest in the physical world. The distinction is artificial without a clear boundary.
                            Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
                            Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
                            But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:

                            go with the flow the river knows . . .

                            Frank

                            I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Originally posted by shunyadragon View Post
                              There is not good evidence that consciousness and the mind are not a product of the brain. Many animals other than homo sapiens and primates have demonstrated that they consciousness. I do not see any difference between being a product of a physical process and being a physical process. All the present evidence we currently have at hand indicates that the mind and consciousness are product of the brain.
                              Is the rational human spirit that does make choices a product of the brain Shuny?


                              The essential identity of every human being is a rational and immortal soul, which is “entirely out of the order of the physical creation.” Bahá’u’lláh uses the metaphor of the sun to explain the relationship between the soul and the body: “The soul of man is the sun by which his body is illumined, and from which it draweth its sustenance, and should be so regarded.”

                              It is through the exercise of the powers of the soul that human progress is achieved. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá has said that the soul “can discover the realities of things, comprehend the peculiarities of beings, and penetrate the mysteries of existence. All sciences, knowledge, arts, wonders, institutions, discoveries and enterprises come from the exercised intelligence of the rational soul.”

                              http://www.bahai.org/beliefs/life-spirit/human-soul/
                              So it is the immaterial rational soul that governs the physical brain.
                              Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

                              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

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